Sun showers sprinkled the beach with little bursts of rain, sparkling in the cheerful sunlight. A coconut thumped softly onto the sand and rolled toward Indigo’s talons. She picked it up, remembering the day of the animus test. She’d been so relieved to find she was normal, that she didn’t have some kind of spooky magic lurking in her claws. And that was before she knew anything about animus power.
It was nothing, though, compared to the relief she felt once they were sure none of their dragonets had it.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH,” Clearpool screamed. The little green dragonet stomped her feet furiously in the waves. “I can’t GET IT! I’LL NEVER GET IT! ALL THE FISHES ARE STUPID!”
“Remember the song about being patient?” Indigo said, patting her gently on the head. “You have to wait and wait and wait and then pounce.”
“I DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID!” she yelled. “I waited and waited and THEN POUNCEDED and it GOT AWAAAAAAAY.”
“Ah, well, there’s your mistake,” said Indigo. “You forgot one of the waits.”
Clearpool’s wails cut off abruptly. The dragonet tipped her head, thinking. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I did. OK, fish! I’ma get you now!”
She splashed away, leaping over crabs and kicking sand in the hole her brothers were digging.
“Roar!” Cowrie yelled at her. “Get your big galumphing talons out of here!”
“I was NOT galumphing!” Clearpool yelled back. “THIS is GALUMPHING!” She slammed her feet into the sand like a woozy elephant and the whole side of Cowrie’s hole collapsed.
Over the ensuing shrieks of fury, Indigo felt Fathom come wading up behind her. She spread her wings and they leaned into each other, and she felt, like she always did, that she could grow roots right here and be happy entwined with him forever.
“I think,” she said, “that we may have named the wrong dragonet after Clearsight.”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Clearpool howled again, flinging herself into the shallow water and rolling around in a fit of temper. “THIS BROTHER IS A KELP-FACE!” Indigo buried her face in Fathom’s neck, hiding her giggles.
“Maybe she’ll grow into her quiet wisdom,” Fathom said. “Like you did.”
“I beg your pardon?” Indigo said. “ME? I have ALWAYS been quiet and wise.”
“I seem to recall just a few shrieking fits when you were that age,” he said, starting to laugh. “Remember the time I ate the last salmon at breakfast?”
“You didn’t just eat it!” she cried. “You were smug about it! You totally deserved to be dumped in the koi pond!”
Cowrie and Clearpool were wrestling now, getting absolutely covered in wet sand. Next to them, Ripple popped his head out of his own hole, realized that someone else was getting more attention than he was, and promptly scrambled over to flop on top of his brother and sister.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Clearpool shouted at him. “GET OFF!”
“I looooooooooooooove youuuuuuu,” Ripple said, poking his snout in their faces. Blob clambered out of the hole behind him and lolloped over to join the pile.
“Arrgh! Yuck!” Cowrie flailed his wings as he tried to get free. “Ripple! You’re squashing me! DAAAAD! MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”
“Everyone stop squashing one another,” Fathom called without moving.
“RIPPLE IS THE SQUASHER!” Clearpool bellowed.
“Quit mashing one another into the sand and I’ll tell you a story,” Indigo said.
The three dragonets instantly jumped away from one another and came scampering over, plunking themselves into an attentive semicircle around their parents’ talons, with Blob perched happily on Ripple’s head.
“Tell us about the Kingdom of the Sea again!” Clearpool demanded. “And all the palaces!”
“It looks a lot like this,” Fathom said, flicking his tail at the island around them. “Maybe we’ll take you there one day, when you’re all grown up.”
When there’s a new queen, who doesn’t know about Fathom’s promise to Pearl, Indigo thought. Their island was off the southern coast of Pyrrhia, within sight of the rainforest, and they kept up with tribe news by visiting and trading with RainWings every couple of months or so. That’s how they knew that the NightWings had vanished, and nobody knew where they’d gone. There had been stories of Darkstalker sightings everywhere for a while, and then gradually fewer and fewer until they dwindled away. Clearsight must have succeeded, but Indigo wished sometimes that she knew exactly what had happened, and where Clearsight was now.
As for their own tribe, surely Wharf and Lionfish must have returned home after they lost Fathom, still believing Indigo had left him. Queen Pearl probably thought Fathom and Indigo were both dead, or that Fathom had fled with the NightWings. She never needed to find out that they were alive, and together, and happy.
It had taken Indigo such a long time to convince Fathom that it was all right for him to be happy. That he wasn’t a secret monster waiting to be unleashed. That he wasn’t the one who did all those terrible things, and they weren’t his fault, and he didn’t have to punish himself forever.
“I want to hear about you and Mommy,” Ripple said. Blob snuggled around his neck, flipping his tentacles contentedly. “About stuff you did when you were little like us.”
“Oh, we were very good,” Fathom said solemnly. “We were never, ever naughty.”
“FIBS!” Clearpool cried, splashing him with her tail. “You were, too!”
“Well,” Fathom said, “all right, I suppose Mommy was, sometimes.” Indigo whacked him with her tail and he grinned at her.
“Mommy,” said Cowrie, “do you know any stories about bad guys?”
Indigo and Fathom exchanged a glance and Indigo felt a weird shiver, like someone was swimming over her grave.
“What do you want to know about bad guys?” Fathom asked.
“Like, how do they get that way,” Cowrie said, poking a piece of driftwood. “And why do they do bad stuff.”
“Well,” Fathom said slowly, “there are lots of ways, and lots of reasons. Sometimes it’s because they’re sad or angry. Some dragons become bad when they have too much power.”
“And some don’t,” Indigo said, twining her tail around Fathom’s. If there was one thing she believed with her entire soul, it was that Fathom had too much goodness in him to ever turn out like Albatross or Darkstalker. He was kind and good all the way through.
“Sometimes … sometimes they don’t know they’re bad guys,” Fathom went on. “They think what they’re doing is the right thing.”
“Oh,” said Cowrie. “So who decides if it’s the right thing or not?”
Fathom hesitated, looking lost.
“ME!” Clearpool suggested.
“How would I know if I was a bad guy?” Cowrie added with a worried wrinkle between his eyes.
“I would tell you,” Indigo said, “and then you’d go back to being good.”
“Or me! I’d tell you and whack you and smush you!” Clearpool offered with great enthusiasm.
“You do that even when I’m being super good,” Cowrie pointed out.
“You know, there’s really no such thing as bad guys,” Fathom said unexpectedly, and Indigo gave him a quizzical look. They had plenty of evidence that that wasn’t true.
“There isn’t?” Ripple echoed.
“I mean … there are dragons who do bad things,” Fathom said. “But maybe that doesn’t make them all bad. Maybe they can also do good things. Maybe some of those bad things are just mistakes.”
“No,” Indigo said firmly. “Some dragons are definitely bad and have to be stopped.”
“I don’t know,” Fathom said. “I don’t think any dragons are all bad.”
“Then you have a selective memory, my love,” said Indigo. “We knew a bad guy once,” she said to the dragonets.
They all gasped with delighted horror.
“A dragon who did bad things,” Fathom amended. “But also some good things, and he cared a lot about his friends.” He saw the look on Indigo’s face and added quickly, “Mostly bad things, though. Anyway, he’s gone now.”
“That’s right,” Indigo agreed. “He’s gone, and he’s never coming back.”
“Will you tell us about him?” Cowrie asked, his blue eyes round and dazzled.
“And how you WHACKED him and SMUSHED him?” Clearpool cried.
“Maybe when you’re older,” Indigo said. Maybe when Fathom has stopped having nightmares about him. She smiled down at her squirming, beautiful, hilarious dragonets. “Race you to the seal rocks!”
They pelted off down the beach, shrieking with laughter, and Indigo nudged Fathom with her wing.
“It’s true. He’s really never coming back,” she said. “You did the right thing, Fathom. You saved Pyrrhia from him forever. It’s safe to be happy.”
“I know,” he said. He unfurled his wings, shaking off the memories, and gave her the smile she’d fallen in love with back when they were tiny dragonets. “I am.”