“— touch the Venus dragon-trap,” Sundew finished with a sigh.

Cricket shrieked, and eight more dragon-traps snapped shut all around them, excited by the noise. The HiveWing jumped back and crashed into Blue, nearly knocking them both off the branch.

“Swordtail!” Blue shouted. “Swordtail!”

“I was about to point those out,” Sundew said. “One of the most dangerous plants in here. Never touch those. Never never.” She gave Bumblebee a very stern look. “Never, small dragon, do you hear me?”

“Snabble poof,” Bumblebee said in an awestruck tone, staring at the spot where Swordtail had been.

Blue scrambled around Cricket. “Swordtail! Can you hear me?” He reached toward the overstuffed plant below them, where Swordtail’s long blue-and-orange tail dangled, flailing, from between the trap’s jaws.

Sundew smacked Blue’s knuckles. “What did I just say?” she barked. “NEVER TOUCH THEM!”

“How do we get him out?” Cricket asked frantically.

Muffled yells were coming from inside the plant. The sides bulged as Swordtail thrashed and struggled, but Sundew knew that there was no way for a dragon to escape on his own once he was inside.

“SWORDTAIL!” she shouted. “STOP MOVING!”

Of course, he was yelling too loud to hear her.

“Basic carnivorous plant safety lesson number one,” Sundew said to the others, but mostly to Bumblebee’s wide-eyed face. “If you fall into a dragon-trap, go as still as you can. If the plant thinks you’re just a rock or tree branch that fell in by accident, it’ll open back up and drop you. But if you FLAIL AROUND LIKE AN IDIOT,” she shouted at Swordtail, “then it will KNOW YOU’RE A DELICIOUS SNACK FOR SURE.”

“And then what?” Cricket asked, wide-eyed.

“Then it releases its digestive juices and eats you,” Sundew said. “Obviously.” She swatted at Blue as he tried reaching for Swordtail again.

“SWORDTAIL!” Cricket and Blue yelled in unison.

“It’s pretty definitely figured out he’s alive by now,” Sundew said. She pointed to the long hairs along the edges of the plant’s mouth, which were starting to lock firmly together. “It won’t drop him even if he does shut up long enough to hear us. But it’s a slow process — it’ll take at least half a day before it kills him.”

“Can’t we slice it open and cut him out?” Cricket asked, raising one of her talons to flex her claws.

Sundew shook her head. “They’ve adapted for that. It takes forever to saw through the shell of a dragon-trap. Plus they grow in clusters like this on purpose, so if you try, another one will get you.” She pointed to the gaping pink jaws hanging from the trees all around them, particularly the one leaning over Swordtail’s plant, ready to swallow any dragon who tried to help him.

Blue paced up and down the branch. “Swordtail!” he called again. “We’ll get you out, I promise!”

“So what do you normally do?” Cricket asked Sundew. “Your tribe must have found a way to rescue dragons from being eaten.”

Sort of. If having me counts as “finding a way.” Sundew had been studying the nearest plants as they talked. There was a promising kudzu vine choking one of the trees below them, or a thorny greenbrier vine system tangled through the branches just behind the dragon-trap cluster. The sharp-dark stems prickled in the corners of her mind, coiled and dangerous. If she could get to one of them … but then she’d have to reveal her secret abilities to Blue and Cricket.

They’re going to find out pretty soon anyway. And it’s the only way to save Swordtail.

“I can —” she started.

There was a flash of bright orange light and heat beside her. A long thread of flamesilk flew out of Blue’s wrist and slithered around the dragon-trap’s leaves and stem.

“Stop!” Sundew yelled. She lunged across Cricket and grabbed Blue’s arm, slamming it down to the branch. “WHY ARE YOU ALL IMPOSSIBLE?” She whirled and saw the fire already beginning to catch and spread down the length of the dragon-trap stem, toward the tree where its roots were. As the stem burned through, the squirming bulb of the dragon-trap drooped and lolled sideways, setting off three more plants as it knocked into them.

Sundew leaped up to a higher branch and seized a cluster of giant bromeliads. A small blue tree frog jumped out of one of them and gave her a reproachful look as she ripped the flowers free. Inside each cluster of leaves was a pool of water, some the size of her cupped talons, some much bigger. She swooped down and poured them over the fire.

It sizzled and hissed at her. Half the flames went out, but one end began sprinting faster toward the tree. The smoke was already thick and curling into her eyes, making them water. All the nearest dragon-traps had drawn back as far as their stems would allow. Leaves all around her curled away from the fire; she could feel the tree screaming deep in her nerves.

I need a fire-resistant plant — something full of water or sap — or giant leaves I can use to smother the flames. Sundew glanced desperately around and spotted a chokecherry tree on the jungle floor, far below her. She leaped through the smoke to the trunk of the burning tree and pressed her talons against the bark, sending her power down through the wood, through the roots, through the mycelium threads under the soil, into the chokecherry tree.

The chokecherry tree burst upward, growing at the speed of an erupting volcano. Its branches smacked other plants aside; its roots burrowed deep and fast to keep it steady. In a matter of heartbeats, the top of the tree was level with Sundew’s head and the berries on it were enormous, the size of her fists.

She grabbed talonfuls of berries and smashed them onto the branch below the fire, smearing the juice around and around. The flames reached the wet barrier and slowed, prodding the goop in a disgruntled manner.

More water splashed down on the fire from above. Sundew looked up and saw Cricket with her claws full of bromeliads. Bumblebee was buried deep in her sling, her snout covered by the striped fabric. Cricket poured out the stored rainwater in the flowers, methodically covering all the flames until, at last, they were extinguished.

Sundew rested her forehead against the tree, checking it for damage. Apart from the one burnt limb and the smoke clogging its leaves, the rest of it was shaken but unharmed. The dragon-trap, however, was definitely dead.

She turned toward it and realized that Blue was holding up the head and trying to pry open the jaws at the same time, mostly unsuccessfully. Cricket hovered beside him, supporting the weight of the plant and Swordtail. The other dragon-traps, which had been scared back by the fire, were slowly inching toward them again.

Sundew flew over to Blue. She could hear Swordtail coughing inside the plant.

“That was incredibly stupid!” She snapped her tail back and forth. Her insides felt as though they were boiling with anger, as though the flamesilk had gone straight into her veins as well. “You could have set this whole jungle on fire!”

“I’m sorry!” Blue said, and at least he looked like he meant it, unless the tears in his eyes came from the smoke in the air. “I panicked! I only wanted to save Swordtail — I had no idea it would spread like that.”

“You should have thought about it! You just saw Wasp’s greenhouse go up in flames!”

A fellow LeafWing would have roared back at Sundew. A dragon from her tribe would have bristled, defended himself, argued, stormed around, pointed out all the ways she was wrong. Most conversations in her village ended in fights, or started with a fight, or at least involved some shouting.

But Blue nodded and wiped his eyes and apologized again. “You’re right. I’m really, really sorry, Sundew.”

Which made it kind of impossible to keep yelling at him. The ball of Sundew’s anger bounced back inside her and started mutating into something useless and distracting, like guilt or pity or something. She scowled down at the dragon-trap, which was starting to crack open where Blue was pulling on it.

“I bet your flamesilk is hard to control, isn’t it?” Cricket asked breathlessly, trying to hold up the still-smoking plant.

“Yeah,” Blue said. “So it was extra stupid of me.”

“We’ll help you practice with it,” Sundew said, wondering if she could really offer something like that. There wasn’t a LeafWing alive who knew anything about managing flamesilk. “But for now, promise me you won’t use it in the jungle unless I tell you to.”

“I promise,” he said. “I really promise. Can you help me get Swordtail out? He must be so scared.”

“NO! NOT SCARED!” Swordtail half yelled, half sputtered through the crack in the plant’s jaws. “This plant is in big trouble! I’m going to slice it up from the inside! I’m going to give it such a stomachache! It’ll seriously regret trying to eat ME!”

“You deserved it!” Sundew barked at him. It was a relief to have someone she could be mad at without feeling bad. She hooked her claws around the top edge of the plant’s mouth and motioned for Blue to take the bottom edge. “You basically fed yourself to it!”

“I did not — that is — it — I was just smelling it!” Swordtail growled.

Sundew flapped her wings, pushing herself backward as hard as she could. “The smell is designed to attract dragons,” she conceded. “But only dragons with no brains in their heads! Who like constantly causing trouble for their traveling companions! I said you would get eaten right away and I was right!”

With a ripping, crackling sound, the jaws finally parted. Swordtail hauled himself out and back onto the first branch, coughing and blinking rapidly. The others let go of the dragon-trap, and the head broke off from the blackened stem, tumbling away to the forest floor.

Sundew could sense the hunger of the surrounding dragon-traps. As the smoke faded into the air, they were getting bolder, rustling closer in their stealthy way.

She shoved Cricket and Bumblebee back onto the branch, and Blue clambered after them.

“I’ve never seen such a pileup of idiocy,” she said. “Now really stay close to me and really don’t touch anything!”

“I feel like we could have gotten a bit more of a warning,” Swordtail objected with a cough as they started walking again. “Like, it’d be pretty helpful if you’d point out: that’s a carnivorous plant and that one is super flammable and that one can kill you.”

“All right,” Sundew said, waving at the entire jungle around them. “These are dangerous plants and most of them are carnivorous and all of them can kill you. Do not sniff, touch, eat, poke, lick, or set fire to any of them, or you will probably die, and next time I will let you.”

“She doesn’t mean that,” Cricket whispered to Bumblebee, who chirped sleepily back at her.

“It must have been pretty awful when your tribe first got here,” Blue said.

Sundew did not dignify that with an answer, since she was pretty sure it would involve more yelling at him, and apparently she didn’t really enjoy yelling at Blue. (Yelling at Swordtail, on the other hand, was always satisfying.)

They climbed in silence for a little while, hopping from branch to branch as they descended through the jungle. It was a prickly silence, though; Blue had an aura of guilt around him, Swordtail kept muttering under his breath, and Sundew could feel Cricket’s eyes on her. She knew her well enough by now to guess that Cricket was trying really hard to hold back a question, and that pretty soon she would fail.

“Sundew,” Cricket burst out as they passed a cluster of glowering giant hogweeds.

“Arrgh, what?” Sundew said, casting a glance over her shoulder at the HiveWing. Cricket’s glasses were fogged up from the humidity, and she kept swiping at them with Bumblebee’s sling.

“It’s just …” Cricket hesitated, and Sundew realized what she was going to ask. Even in the midst of fighting the fire with bromeliad pools, of course Cricket would notice what every dragon around her was doing. Especially if it was something weird and unscientific.

Cricket tilted her head at Sundew. “Did you … make a tree grow?”