Free Moon Rising by Tui T. Sutherland Page B

does that mean, our winglet?” she asked, hoping perhaps she could fall back to sleep while Kinkajou explained. She missed the feeling of her mother’s scales at her back while she slept. She wondered if her mother missed her, too.
    “Oh, it’s the best idea,” Kinkajou said. “I mean, all right, I was a little worried about it at first because I was, like, ACK that means I’ll have to make friends with a NIGHTWING, but now that I know it’s you, there’s nothing more to worry about, because you’re just lovely and not in the business of kidnapping or experimenting on dragons after all. Right?” She poked Moon’s shoulder.
    “Right,” Moon agreed. “What?”
    “We’ve been organized into five winglets — get it? It’s not a whole wing of dragons, just a smaller group, so, a winglet. Five groups of seven dragonets, with one dragon from each tribe. We’re in the Jade Winglet; my friend Tamarin is in the Gold Winglet. The idea is that we’ll work with the other six dragonets and get to be friends with them and then we’ll totally understand all the tribes and nobody will ever want to go to war ever again. It’s brilliant, I love it. I can’t wait to meet our SeaWing, they sound so weird. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
    Kinkajou seized Moon’s tail and tried to drag her to the door.
    “All right, I’m coming,” Moon protested, wriggling free. She rubbed her eyes as Kinkajou bounced ahead to the door.
    And then, with a horrible jolt, she remembered what she’d heard the night before.
    If I kill them …
    Moon shivered from wings to tail. If someone at the school was planning a murder, she had to tell Sunny or Starflight. But she couldn’t — not without revealing her own secret.
    But I have to warn them, don’t I?
    Her mother’s favorite rule rang in her head. Stay secret, stay hidden, stay safe.
    And what if I’m wrong? Maybe it was just a dream. My dream, or someone else’s.
    But it had definitely felt like two voices talking to each other.
    What good is having this power if I can’t do anything about what I hear?
    “I have to go to the library,” Moon said. She didn’t know enough about dreamvisitors. All she knew was that there were three of them, created by an animus dragon thousands of years ago. She knew they were sapphires, and she knew any dragon who held one could walk in another dragon’s dreams and sometimes communicate with the dreamer that way.
    But she didn’t know who had them now. The scroll she’d read said they were lost centuries ago. Maybe if she could figure out where they were, she could find a way to warn Starflight and the others without giving away her own power.
    “You can’t go to the library now ,” Kinkajou said. She held up one of the little boards with a message chalked on it. “We have our first class with our winglet this morning.”
    The sound of the bronze metal gong being struck reverberated through the halls — BONG! BONG! BONG! — three times.
    “That’s the first warning,” Kinkajou said. “Come on, Carnelian!” She grabbed a scroll from one of the racks by the door and threw it at the SkyWing’s head. “We have to figure out where our meeting cave is.”
    Carnelian unfolded her wings with a majestic scowl and flowed off the rock ledge like a wrathful waterfall. She stalked past Kinkajou and Moon without a word and turned left, clearing a path through the milling dragonets with the force of her glare.
    “Does that mean she knows where we’re going?” Kinkajou asked Moon.
    Moon spread her wings with a confused shrug.
    “Well, one way to find out!” Kinkajou bounded after the SkyWing.
    Moon hesitated. She didn’t want to be late for her very first class, although getting to the library to research dreamvisitors seemed more important. But her teacher and clawmates were waiting … and she could always go to the library after class … and maybe she’d find a way to ask about dreamvisitors during the discussion.
    Reluctantly