Sisterland by Salla Simukka & Owen Frederick Witesman

Author:Salla Simukka & Owen Frederick Witesman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

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The next day, the dragons began flying practice. For such handsome, beautiful, and magnificent creatures, the dragons looked as pitiful as baby chicks who had just begun flight school. All of them fluttered their wings and tripped and fell. Ai-La did her best to coach the others, but her skills were rusty too. Alice and Marissa helped as best they could by pushing and lifting and encouraging the dragons. Even though the whole thing looked hopeless at first, somewhere deep inside the creatures knew they could fly, because by the end of the day, their jumping and flapping looked much more natural. And old Ai-La flew again as if she’d never forgotten how.

“How can we ever thank you?” asked a beautiful green dragon with graceful lines.

Alice smiled at the dragon, then said to Ai-La, “The prophecy said something about us needing to become dragon-handed girls. What could that mean?”

Ai-La thought. She huffed as she mulled the riddle, and small wisps of smoke came from her ears.

“There is one way,” she finally said. “But I’m not sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

“Let’s try!” Marissa said confidently.

The dragons gathered a pile of their hottest chilies and boiled them into a powerful drink. Then they gave Alice and Marissa each a gobletful and encouraged them to down it all in one gulp. Alice looked at Marissa. Marissa looked back and nodded. At the same time, they lifted the goblets to their lips and drank quickly, without stopping to test how hot and spicy the drink really was.

It was very, very hot. They didn’t feel it immediately, but a few seconds after swallowing, Alice felt as though her insides had exploded in flames that burned her mouth and throat and stomach and everything. Alice began to sweat and shake. Her face turned bright red. She was sure she was going to start spewing flames like the dragons. And she saw that Marissa’s situation was just as bad. With her right hand, Marissa took Alice’s left hand, looking for support or help, but nothing eased the girls’ agony. Alice’s head felt dizzy, and for a moment she thought that leathery, scaled wings would soon sprout from her back. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the girls’ clasped hands began to change. They swelled. Their fingers thickened, and their nails grew. Lumps and scales began forming under their skin. The girls looked on, mesmerized and horrified, as Marissa’s right forearm and Alice’s left forearm changed into dragon hands with savage talons that could tear a sheep, limb from limb. When the transformation was complete, the agonizing burning stopped. The power drink had done its work.

“Now we’re ready to meet the queen,” Alice said, and moved her hand to feel how it worked. The claws of the dragon hand were long and terrifying, and when she scratched the ground, they left deep scars. The hand felt strong.

“But we still don’t have the third key,” Marissa said.

Then the smallest dragon, the blue one, stepped forward and shyly said, “I’ve been doing a little thinking.

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