Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill Page B

was as cold and heavy as the stones at their feet.
    Violet quickened her pace, and Demetrius tripped and stumbled, trying to keep up.
    The dragon’s enclosure stood about an hour’s walk for a sauntering adult, and half that for a couple of impatient, quick-footed children. Once it came into view, both Violet and Demetrius slipped into the thick underbrush that crowded the sides of the pathway, to assess the situation without fear of detection. Sure enough, posted on opposite sides of the oval walls were two sentries, sitting on partially covered platforms. One was asleep on his chair, a book open on his lap. The other stood at attention, his eyes focused on the ground, though darting around at the smallest sounds. He seemed particularly frightened of birds.
    “Jumpy bugger, isn’t he?” Violet whispered.
    The enclosure was a renovation of an old structure—the King believed that it had once held enslaved dragons in the dark and wicked days of my world’s faraway past—and made of stone. The King had shored up the crumbling sections, braced the outside of the entire structure with timbers, and seen to the gaps.
    But not all the gaps. Violet slid her fingers around Demetrius’s hand, hanging on tight. She gave a little pull and led him through the thickest part of the undergrowth. She didn’t let go.
    “There’s an open spot. It’s small. I saw it last night.”
    “You were here last night?” Demetrius said incredulously. “By yourself?”
    Violet shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.” She pointed. “It’s right over there.”
    Demetrius couldn’t see it at first. Violet pulled him forward, leading him to where two large trees stood an arm’s length from the old stone wall. There, at the bottom, was a gap large enough for the two of them to fit side by side and look in.
    “Is this safe?” Demetrius asked, crouching down and crawling into the gap.
    “Probably not,” Violet said, crawling in after him.
    The walls were thick—so thick as to swallow up the entire length of their bodies and still stretch beyond their feet and ahead of their faces.



“Don’t go all the way to the opening,” Demetrius said, laying his hand on Violet’s shoulder. “The guard might see you.”
    “The guard can boil his head.” Violet shrugged off her friend’s hand. “I didn’t come all the way out here to see nothing. I already saw nothing last night in the dark.”
    She crawled ahead, bringing her face right up to the opening, resting her chin on her fists. Demetrius inched forward while keeping himself well in shadow. He needn’t have bothered. The guard, well spooked by now, was on the far end of the platform and out of view. The two children peered out of the gap, directly into the cave on the other side of the enclosure. Two thin ribbons of smoke curled out of the darkness.
    “Is that it?” Demetrius asked. He hadn’t laid eyes on the dragon since it was captured, but in his dreams of late, the image of the dragon had enlarged to grotesque proportions. Large enough to swallow the whole of the mirrored world in its jaws.
    “Yes.” Violet fanned her fingers over her mouth. “It’s in there.”
    “Has it moved since last night?”
    She shook her head. “It’s an old, decrepit, useless thing. And my father is an idiot.”
    Demetrius laid his hands on the ground. He squinted toward the darkened cave. The ribbons of smoke stopped abruptly.
    “Did it stop breathing?” Demetrius asked.
    “We can only hope so,” Violet said.
    Demetrius kept his hand on the ground, trying to call up an image of the beast in his mind. To Violet he said, “You don’t have to be unkind. It’s hurt and old and frightened and probably sick. You don’t have to—”
    But Violet interrupted him. Her body shook, and two thin tracks of tears blurred her eyes and oozed down her cheeks.
    “I hate it,” she said, her voice rasped and ragged with anger.
“Hate it.”
    The ground shook slightly—just the tiniest tremor—but