“I’m not sure this was a good idea,” Tsunami said to Turtle. She wasn’t sure why she was whispering; they appeared to be alone in the jungle, and yet it also felt as if there were hundreds of eyes watching their every move.

The tangled trees seemed to be reaching for them with long trailing roots, and branches like skeletal fingers slid into the water. The sand under them had become oozing mud and she couldn’t see anything through the silt and foggy green haze in the river.

At least, she’d thought it was a river … a river they could follow into the interior of the continent. But as the banks closed in and the jutting rocks got sharper, she was getting the distinct sensation of swimming into a very large, sharklike mouth.

She paused, treading water for a moment and turning in a circle. Something enormously long and scaly broke the surface of the river for a moment, and Tsunami readied her claws — but the snake only lifted its head to study them with cold eyes, then rippled away.

Turtle, luckily, had not seen it. He had found a boulder to clutch, panting. She kept forgetting to set her pace slower for him, although she’d been doing it for days.

Somewhere in the middle of the vast ocean, they’d both had a small panic attack, wondering if there was really anything out there, or whether they’d missed it, or whether they were going in the wrong direction and would end up swimming for a thousand years without ever seeing land again. That was when Tsunami had realized why SeaWings had never made this journey before. They might be creatures of the sea, but they needed land, too. They would not swim for days with no end in sight, with no certainty that they would ever find anything.

“Let’s go back,” Tsunami said to her brother. “Let’s find another place to land, more like what Luna described.”

“Yeah,” he gasped. “I thought she said there weren’t any trees.”

“Maybe she meant ‘only terrifying trees,’” Tsunami said, looking up at the vines oozing off the branches overhead.

“Don’t. Move.”

The voice that suddenly spoke from the bank had an odd accent and a note of authority that made Tsunami freeze obediently before her ears had even caught up to the instructions.

“Um,” Turtle started.

“Don’t speak, either,” said the voice. “One … two …”

A dark green shape hurtled past Tsunami’s head and smashed into the snake as it lunged out of the water at them. All Tsunami could see for a moment was a blur of claws and fangs and scales thrashing; she had to close her eyes against the waves kicked violently into her face.

Finally the river went still, and she dared to open her eyes again.

A green dragon with brown eyes hovered overhead, clutching the dead snake in her talons. Her wings were paler green than her body and shaped like leaves, and her underscales were dappled with dark green leaf shapes like shadows.

“Three moons,” Turtle said. “Thank you.”

“Really, really, really thank you,” Tsunami echoed, almost too bewildered to speak.

“What kind of dragons are you?” the stranger asked, flinging the snake back into the river.

“We’re SeaWings,” Tsunami answered, trying to recover her equilibrium. “I’m Tsunami, and this is Turtle. We’re from the other side of the ocean.”

“I’m Willow,” said the green dragon, “and if you want to live, you should turn around and go back there right now.”

*  *  *

Moon found Luna sitting on the farthest edge of the beach again, staring out toward Pantala with the ocean whispering over her claws. Luna twisted toward the little black dragon as she approached and was startled by the grim look on Moon’s face. She’d started to think Moon only ever looked either perfectly serene or mildly concerned.

“What is it?” Luna asked. “A vision?”

“Yes,” Moon said, her gaze shifting toward the horizon. “A vision. Cities burning, dragons hurting one another, more dragons being terrible just because other dragons are different from them, just like all my visions.” She stopped for a moment and rubbed her forehead.

“Does that mean we’re going there? You’ve thought of a way to get to Pantala?”

Moon shook her head. “No.” She looked out at Luna’s distant home again, and Luna imagined she could almost see the flames and screaming dragons reflected in Moon’s dark green eyes.

“We don’t need to,” Moon said. “They’re coming to us.”