Skydragon Read online

  Trish – the meanest girl in school – had turned Irene’s name for Amber into an insult.

  ‘Go away,’ said Amber, under her breath.

  Trish arched an eyebrow. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Ooh … she’s angry today,’ said Stacy, one of Trish’s minions. Emma, the other, grinned menacingly.

  Amber noticed an injured ladybird on the path before her. For a moment, she forgot about Trish and reached down to gather it up.

  ‘Awwww,’ Trish mocked. ‘Has slug girl finally found a friend?’

  Trish reached out as if to smack Amber’s palms together and squash the ladybug, but Amber fixed her with a stare so seething even Trish hesitated.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said Amber.

  ‘Be careful not to touch her, Trish,’ Emma piped up. ‘She’s feral.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Trish, smirking. ‘She’s a feral freak.’ The three of them walked off.

  Amber made her way towards the gate. She didn’t want them to see where she was going to release the ladybird.

  Amber placed the ladybird gently onto a leaf of button-bush.

  ‘Don’t worry about Trish,’ came a voice from beside her, and Amber almost jumped.

  It was Justin. They shared several classes, but he seemed to care about music more than any other subject – which Amber liked.

  ‘I, uh …’ she said. Amber and Justin hadn’t spoken much before, she’d just … observed him from afar.

  ‘What is it that you like about bugs?’ asked Justin.

  Amber’s thoughts drifted briefly as she wondered. ‘They’re the closest thing we have to dragons,’ she said.

  ‘There are some pretty big lizards around,’ said Justin with a chuckle.

  ‘Yeah, but they can’t fly,’ Amber said firmly. ‘Some of them, like the spotted apatelodes moth, even look a bit like dragons. Others can secrete acid from their mouths, which is kind of like …’ Amber trailed off, and her face flushed with embarrassment.

  ‘Kind of like breathing fire?’ asked Justin.

  Amber nodded.

  ‘I think it’s cool you love bugs so much,’ he said.

  ‘Cool?’ she replied uncertainly. Justin was popular at school, in an offbeat way. Amber wished she could tell if he was friend or foe.

  ‘Sure,’ Justin continued. ‘Some people spend their whole lives wondering what they’re into. Then get some boring job – something they don’t have any real passion for – just because they have to. But you already know what your passion is, so you can get some, you know, bug job.’

  Despite herself, she grinned. ‘Bug job? Like what?’

  Justin shrugged. ‘Dunno. Exterminator?’

  Amber’s grin fell into a horrified expression, and Justin laughed. ‘Joke, Amber, joke. I mean something like, you know, a bug scientist.’

  ‘Entomologist,’ corrected Amber.

  ‘See? You already know the name for it and everything!’

  The school bell rang. Justin turned and then looked back at Amber.

  ‘So … are you coming?’ he said.

  Amber hesitated, turning to watch a line of ants marching along a twig. All in sync, all knowing where they were going. Working together. Maybe he was nice?

  ‘Hey,’ said Justin, ‘imagine we’re ants and you can follow me – c’mon!’

  Amber laughed, surprised. Had he just made an insect joke?

  The pair walked back up to the school gate in silence, taking their time while the other students hurried past.

  When Amber and Justin arrived in Biology, Trish was sitting at Amber’s favourite desk. It had a good view of a tree outside where bombardier beetles could often be spotted. They were fascinating creatures that could produce explosions of burning chemicals from their butts. Trish probably had no idea about that, and had taken Amber’s usual desk just to spite her.

  Amber ignored Trish and made her way to the desk behind. She was surprised when Justin sat down next to her – as were some of the other students apparently, from the resulting whispers and giggles.

  Amber felt her cheeks burn.

  Mr Brooks, who was short with long brown hair, was standing by the whiteboard.

  ‘All right, everyone,’ he said. ‘Are we all excited about our field trip tomorrow?’

  ‘Urgh,’ muttered Trish to her gang. ‘I can’t believe we have to spend a day in the woods! Bug Face will be in heaven,’ she sneered.

  Amber ignored her. Despite her love of insects, Amber wasn’t looking forward to the field trip either. She went into the woods all the time – to be alone. The idea of everybody else tramping about was far less appealing.

  Mr Brooks picked up a poster. ‘Plenty of interesting insects to check off your list. I trust you’ve all studied the prep notes?’

  He pointed to a picture of a bee. ‘Can anyone name this species?’

  ‘Neon cuckoo bee,’ said Amber, without thinking, then kicked herself for speaking out loud.

  ‘Cuckoo like you!’ said Trish, and her minions giggled.

  ‘Patricia Cunningham!’ snapped Mr Brooks. ‘Perhaps you’d like to name this fellow here?’

  He pointed to one of the dragonflies on the poster. Amber instantly recognised it as a jade clubtail.

  ‘A fly?’ muttered Trish.

  ‘A dragonfly, well done,’ Mr Brook said drily. ‘And what can you tell me about the feeding habits of dragonflies?’

  Trish was silent.

  ‘Anyone?’ said Mr Brooks.

  ‘They’re carnivorous,’ Justin suddenly said.

  Mr Brooks glanced at him. ‘Yes! Thank you, Justin. Anything else?’

  ‘They eat pretty much whatever they can catch. They can predict the trajectory of their prey. They have excellent eyesight and powerful jaws. They’re, like, the perfect killers of the bug world.’

  ‘Absolutely spot on,’ said Mr Books.

  Justin glanced at Amber, who was staring at him in surprise.

  ‘You think I can’t read notes?’ he said, a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘No, I, er …’

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘there’s a stream out the back of my place. I’ve been watching dragonflies there since I was a kid.’

  ‘I’d like to see that one day,’ said Amber, before she could stop herself. She blushed again.

  Amber’s classmates blundered through the woods so loudly she was sure most of the wildlife would be scared away.

  Ahead, Justin pointed at a red-tailed hawk above the canopy while other students clustered around him, their pens poised to check it off their lists.

  Amber didn’t know why he was helping them. Couldn’t they spot their own red-tails? She’d already seen three. Still, she thought, this was just a test to them – they didn’t love the woods. Not like she did.

  Noticing that Mr Brooks had gone on ahead, Amber took her chance to slip quietly off the path and away from the group. If you want to see anything good, she thought, you have to get off the beaten track.

  It wasn’t long before she came across a massive Hercules beetle, ambling along a fallen branch.

  She wondered about marking it off her list. Sure, she thought. She took her pen and checked off every box in one go – she’d seen everything on the list dozens of times.

  Amber sighed with relief as she got further away from her classmates and began to hear the real sounds of the woods again – birds chirping, the rustle of things moving through the undergrowth, the breeze through the leaves.

  Then, just as she was starting to relax, she became aware of a loud buzzing. Suddenly a huge swarm of hornets flew by, winding through the trees like living smoke. She squinted – it was hard to make out the species from this distance – but then one landed on a leaf nearby. From its distinctive black and white stripes, she knew it was a bald-faced hornet.

  Incredible, she thought. If that was the size of the swarm, how big would their nest be?

  Amber began to track the hornets, following the buzzing sou
nd, until they disappeared around an old shagbark tree.

  Getting closer, Amber saw that the shagbark’s roots ran down into a gully, in the middle of which stood a towering white oak. There, halfway up its trunk, hung the biggest hornet’s nest Amber had ever seen – the huge misshapen orb looking like a partially melted moon, buzzing with squadrons of hornets ten times the number of the swarm she’d followed.

  Amber held her breath. Bald-faced hornets were very aggressive when it came to guarding their nests. She’d better move carefully …

  ‘There you are!’

  Amber spun to see Justin smiling at her, and stumbled on the crumbling edge of the gully.

  Nooooooo!!! Amber fell backwards. Justin reached for her flailing hand, but was too late – their fingertips barely brushed before the world became flashes of tree and earth as she tumbled down into the gully.

  A split second later, she heard Justin call out in panic, but his voice was drowned out by the growing buzzing sound.

  Dazed, she looked up to see she’d landed at the foot of the oak. Out of the great nest, hornets poured in streams towards her.

  ‘Help!’ she could hear Justin shout. ‘Mr Brooks! Anyone!’

  Amber knew this many wasps could easily kill her, but despite her fear she felt adrenaline surge up, pushing her to her feet.

  She stared at the oncoming swarm. They looked larger than life, and had taken on a strange purple tint. Amber blinked, thinking she must have something stuck in her eye, but the purple remained.

  The adrenaline coursing through her body increased until her every vein was tingling.

  Slowly, as if emerging from a chrysalis, she saw the world in a new light. The hornets were no longer simple insects, but hundreds of tiny interconnected souls, purple and bright, while her own life force was bigger, stronger.

  The swarm hesitated now, as if they could sense this too – the network of signals between the insects deferring to Amber’s more powerful signal.

  Peace, she thundered in her mind.

  It was a feeling more than a word, echoing outwards like a shock wave, smothering and frazzling the hornets’ lines of communication. The hornets flew towards her but none landed on her, or stung her. Instead they circled until they formed a kind of shell.

  Amber couldn’t believe it.

  She heard a cry as Justin clambered down into the gully, probably on some foolhardy mission to save her. Justin was rubbing his arm where he’d already been stung. He froze as more hornets darted towards him, seemingly torn about whether to help or flee.

  No, Amber thought. The hornets hesitated again.

  Disperse. The oncoming hornets broke over Justin like a wave, streaming away in different directions.

  Amber ran towards Justin and arrived at his side just as a single hornet landed on his face.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, and it flew away.

  Justin blinked at her in disbelief. ‘You’re not hurt? That’s impossible!’

  ‘Let’s get out of this gully,’ she said, taking him firmly by the arm as the purple tinges in her vision faded away.

  They made their way back to the group, but Justin wouldn’t stop staring at Amber. She couldn’t blame him – what had happened was impossible. And yet …

  ‘How did you stop them stinging you? Stinging us?’ Justin asked.

  Amber struggled for an answer. ‘You know how some people are good with things? Like good with dogs, or good with animals?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Well … I’m … good with insects,’ she said. But Amber wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince – Justin or herself?

  That night Amber lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to shut off her brain.

  Could she really have been connected to the insects? Was she actually sensing – controlling –them through sheer force of will?

  A tiny mosquito whined overhead.

  Buzz off. Within an instant, the room fell silent.

  She would not get much sleep that night.

  Justin sat next to her again in Biology the following day, but Amber wasn’t sure she wanted him there. Especially now that he wouldn’t stop glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve heard about this kind of thing in the news,’ he whispered, pointing to his phone.

  Amber looked at him questioningly.

  ‘People getting strange powers. It’s been happening all around the world recently. Maybe—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Justin!’ she whispered harshly.

  Justin seemed taken aback, but he smoothed his features and nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, putting his phone away. ‘But if you change your mind …’

  When the bell went, Amber ditched Justin in a throng of students and made for the library. There was no way she was going to Maths – right now she had bigger questions to answer than ‘what’s x plus y’.

  In the library, Amber pored over every book she could find on insect behaviour – swarm patterns, hive minds, colony organisation. Usually she’d have found the information fascinating, but today the answers she needed weren’t there.

  Looking up from a book, she suddenly became aware of something inside the wall beside her. She stiffened, concentrating. Yes, a purple shadow, moving slowly up the other side of the wood panelling … a cockroach?

  ‘What a psycho,’ said Trish loudly to her pack at a nearby desk. Snapping out of it, Amber realised she had just been staring at the wall for ages.

  After school, Amber sat in the yard behind Irene’s house, which had been her house for five years.

  Without people around, Amber could finally concentrate. She focused on a line of ants marching through the grass. Her blood tingled, and … there it was – an ethereal purple tinge, glowing along the line.

  Nearby Amber saw a dead beetle the ants hadn’t noticed. She concentrated on the ant leading the line. Food, she thought at it, then looking at the beetle, there.

  The ant paused, antennae twitching, then turned. Soon, the beetle was covered.

  Amber exhaled, not sure if she was relieved or scared that her command seemed to have worked. Could this be real?

  Meow!

  Irene’s old ginger tomcat, Charlie, padded towards Amber. She squinted at him but unlike her insects, there was no purple glow around the loveable old fur ball.

  Stop.

  He didn’t even hesitate, wandering over to nuzzle his face against her hand.

  So, she thought, scratching Charlie’s head absently, doesn’t work on everything.

  She glanced back at the ants, and saw they were all frozen in place.

  Over the next few days, Amber experimented constantly.

  With a butterfly, she tried specific directions. Turn left didn’t work – butterflies didn’t understand the idea of ‘left’ – but go there and picturing where she wanted them to go worked much better. Land there, stay still and eat there also worked.

  Soon, Amber could stand in the middle of the garden and point any butterfly towards the flowers they sought.

  She even sensed grasshoppers in the weeds. She asked them to sing and they obediently rubbed their legs together, singing in their own way.

  Though she’d never say it out loud, for the first time in years, Amber was actually content. While she couldn’t share her abilities with anyone, being able to speak to the insects she had always loved so much felt like a gift from a world that had taken away everything else.

  But Amber had only just begun to realise the extent of her powers.

  One day she was sitting under a tree in the schoolyard when she felt the largest presence she had sensed so far. Her eyes travelled up to the branches, and she spotted a purple outline right away. It was a giant darner – the largest species of dragonfly in the area, larger than some birds. It flexed its crystalline wings in the sunlight.

  ‘Whoops,’ came a voice, and Amber suddenly
felt cold liquid spill down her back. She leapt to her feet and spun to face Trish, who was holding a small carton of milk.

  ‘Sorry,’ Trish said, her words dripping with sarcasm. ‘How careless of me!’

  Emma and Stacy laughed on cue. Amber felt rage shoot through her.

  ‘See ya … Bug Face,’ Trish said, spurring more giggles from her gang.

  Not for the first time, Amber furiously wondered why Trish did this stuff to her. What did I ever do to her? she wondered. What?!

  But before Amber could calm her thoughts, the giant darner had launched from the tree. It dived down and latched tightly onto Trish’s hair, its wings whirring as if trying to haul her up into the sky!

  Trish screamed, dropping her half-empty milk carton and the rest of her lunch, then twisted and turned, grabbing in vain for whatever was attacking her.

  Suddenly the dragonfly let go of Trish’s hair and went for the bare skin on her left arm.

  ‘Arggghh!’ Trish screamed again, and other students watching started laughing at the spectacle.

  Stop, Amber told the dragonfly, as she realised what she’d done. It was an accident!

  Fly away. The darner shot upwards, off into the sky.

  Trish, now shivering with revulsion and covered in lunch scraps and milk, glared at Amber through her messed-up golden curls. Despite a tinge of guilt, seeing Trish get just a taste of her own medicine made Amber quickly able to see the funny side.

  ‘Trish! You seem to have dropped your lunch,’ Amber said.

  ‘Come on,’ Trish snapped at her friends. ‘Let’s leave this freak to herself.’