Moon Rising by Tui T. Sutherland Read Free Book Online

I was gone.” She poked him pointedly with her tail.
    “Hmmm? Didn’t I say I was sorry about that?” Coconut mumbled around a mouthful of papaya. His scales were a kind of quiet lavender blue and his eyes were sleepy. “Or did I? Something like that.”
    “Mostly you say, ‘Hm, what?’ every time I bring it up,” Kinkajou said. She turned to Moon. “I’m going to learn to read eons before he does.”
    “Why is that?” Coconut asked mildly.
    “Because I’m smart and you’re not,” Kinkajou pointed out. “That was implied , Coconut. It was subtext.”
    “Right,” he said, not in the least offended, perhaps because he only seemed to be partially following the conversation. “The mangoes are pretty good,” he said to Moon. “I was told to eat them first because they’re all ripe. I like bananas better but mangoes are fine. I don’t particularly like coconut, though.”
    “Ironically,” Kinkajou said.
    “What?” he said.
    “See?” she said to Moon, grinning.
    Moon nodded, unable to speak through the cacophony inside and outside her ears. At least Coconut’s thoughts were slow and meaningless, although she thought she might go mad if she had to listen to them all day long. He passed her three mangoes, and she sliced them open with her claws, the way she’d taught herself to do when she was alone in the rainforest during one of her mother’s longer absences.
    “Whewf,” said a voice behind her. Moon jumped and nearly dropped her mangoes in the river.
    “It’s just me,” Clay said to her kindly. “I’m glad you found Kinkajou. I thought you two would be a good match.”
    You did? Moon thought with bewilderment. She couldn’t see anything in common between herself and the bubbly RainWing.
    Clay shooed a chicken away from the fruit and glanced around the tumultuous cave. “So,” he said, “my plan hasn’t exactly gone as … planned.”
    “Clay, this place is MADNESS,” Kinkajou said with a laugh.
    “I know,” he said ruefully. “We’ll try something different tomorrow. I thought it would be fun to bring in live prey and let everyone chase it around. That’s what we did in our cave sometimes, growing up, when the guardians wanted us to practice hunting but wouldn’t let us go outside. But I guess it was a little more manageable with five dragonets than thirty-five.” He wrinkled his snout at the nearest panicking sheep.
    Kinkajou shook her head. “I say anyone who is gross enough to eat something that’s alive and wriggling deserves to get pecked. You should take those dragons out hunting with you and leave the rest of us here to enjoy our quiet sensible fruit in peace.”
    “That’s a good idea,” Clay said. “In the meanwhile, maybe I’ll get Tsunami and see if she can help me calm things down.” He gave Moon another reassuring smile and hurried out of the prey center.
    Moon heard the words quiet and peace and calm as if from a long way away. Through the raucous noise of the dragon minds around her, she could sense something running toward the cave — something like a small thread of pure terror, so tiny it could be blown away in a breeze, but so intense she couldn’t miss it, even in the howling gale of emotions in the prey center.
    Who is that, and why is their mind so strange? There were no words to go along with the emotions, and there was something fuzzy about it. Could it be a really young dragonet?
    She lifted her head and turned to watch for it — but as she did, a vast icicle of cold fury stabbed through her brain and she staggered back, crushing the mangoes in her talons with an involuntary convulsion. Bright yellow-orange pulp splattered all over Kinkajou and Coconut and the rocks around them.
    Kinkajou let out a startled yelp, but before Moon could apologize or even get speech back under her control, a louder commotion erupted near one of the tunnels.
    “Catch it!”
    “Mine! I claim it! Mine!”
    “It went that way!”
    All the MudWings and SkyWings