I wasn’t sure about that, but I was sure that we weren’t going to be parted. There was just no way—not with the connection between us. You might as well try to part gold and silver after the two metals were already melted together—it just wasn’t going to happen.
“Be careful,” Emma said, smiling at me through her tears.
“We love you, Katydid,” Avery murmured.
“Thank you. I love all of you, too,” I told them. Then I looked up at my Drake. “Okay—now how do I get on you?”
The Drake advised that my friends should stand back because he was going to move. I relayed this message and my Coven-mates stepped back quickly and got to a safe distance. I took a few steps back myself and then the Drake uncurled himself, like giant cat.
When he rose to his full height, I thought that he might be the size of one of those huge sauropods that had roamed the Earth millions of years before. But again, though he was as big as a dinosaur, he wasn’t built like one and didn’t move like one at all. He had flowing, graceful movements and when he held out one large taloned hand to me, I stepped into it with no fear at all and waited for the spear-like talons to close around me.
“Wait!” Avery exclaimed, just as the talons were closing. He ran forward and pushed a bundle through the long claws. I grabbed it and saw that it was Ari’s clothing—his white shirt and uniform blazer and trousers. “Not that he doesn’t look spectacular naked,” he murmured, giving me a wink. “But things might get kind of awkward later on without these.”
“Thank you!” I gripped the bundle of clothes to my chest and the Drake lifted me carefully to his massive back.
It wasn’t like riding a horse. He put me just behind his neck, but it was much too thick at the base for me to straddle with my legs. Instead, I found a little hollow which seemed to be a dip between two of his immense vertebrae.
I found that I fit perfectly into the hollow, which was as soft and warm as the rest of him. I curled into it comfortably, sitting cross-legged and waving from the immense height down to my Coven-mates below.
The Drake asked if I was comfortable and secure and I told him that I was. He informed me that he was going to take off and that we would be flying quite high, but I shouldn’t worry because he wouldn’t let me fall. I could hold on to the ridge that ran along his backbone if I wanted to.
The ridge he was talking about jutted up like the prow of a ship in front of the little hollow I was in. Leaning forward, I was able to throw my arms around it, noticing that the scales here were a bit harder, though still very warm to touch.
Then, as Avery and Emma and Megan and Griffin called goodbyes to me, the enormous wings unfurled on either side of the Drake. He flapped them once, as though to make certain everything was in working order and I saw that my Coven-mates looked like people standing in the middle of a hurricane, with their wind and clothes whipping all over the place.
This was the same sight I’d seen when the Drake had rescued me from the Guardian and then it had struck fear in me. Now, I simply waved again and then held on tight as he raised up into the air and we flew away into the jeweled night sky.
I remember thinking I had no idea when or even if I would ever return but I had absolutely no regrets or doubts about what I was doing.
None at all.
65
Kaitlyn
The journey to the place where there was a tear between the human world and the Sky Lands took about an hour and a half. We were very high up, as the Drake had predicted, and it was quite cold if I stuck my head up. But if I huddled into the warm dip in his spine and covered myself with Ari’s shirt and blazer, I found I was quite warm and cozy. I rolled up his trousers and used them as a pillow under my head.
Listening to the wind whipping by overhead and feeling the smooth working of the Drake’s enormous muscles as his wings beat the air in long, slow strokes, I felt calm and soothed. I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until I heard his voice in my mind, informing me that we were almost to the rift.
I poked my head up to look and saw a wide, shimmering patch in the sky ahead of us which looked big enough for several Drakes to fly through. Despite being so big, it was subtle—you had to look at it just right in order to see it and it was just kind of a sparkly spot in the sky. Avery had once described it as a portal, but the Drake called it “the rift” and explained that it was a tear in the fabric of reality that let Drakes cross back and forth from the human world to the Sky Lands.