“You good?” I called out to Adri.
He was running, using the rope and his expanding and contracting shield as defensive weapons, distractions, and a way to slide around the field. This way, he kept the dragon on the move, while Luna blinded it with flashes of light from her palms.
“Sure,” Adri grinned. “Just getting my steps in.”
I stifled a laugh.
Luna was less than impressed.
“We planning on doing this all day?” she barked.
“I vote No,” I said weakly.
“Why did no one tell me we get a vote?” Adri threw himself across the arena, skidding just past the dragon’s snapping jaws. 236
The trash-machines packing the stands roared at the near miss.
“At least they’re having fun,” I said to no one because no one was listening.
I helped Esme to her feet. In the middle of the chaos, Luna met her eyes with relief.
“I’m okay!” Esme answered her unasked question, steadying herself on my arm for a second, then letting go.
“Thank you,” Luna called across to me warmly.
Then she snapped back to business, blinding the raging dragon with a new blast of light. “Now go free Martí and Kendi!”
So, while Luna and Adri tried not to get eaten, Esme and I ran to get Martí and Kendi awake and detached from the columns.
We needed to hurry because the dragon was changing.
Its head and face were covered with a series of moving metal plates. Suddenly, those plates shifted in different directions, like branches stretching from the trunk of a tree. The left side grew into the grunting head, powerful jaws and crushing arms of a bear. From the right side, came the head and 237shoulders of a spotted leopard with snarling, razor-sharp teeth. And in the middle, the dragon’s flat-nosed, fork-tongued face.
“Look out!” Luna warned, warding off one of the heads with her bamboo sticks.
The bear snapped one of them in half with its paws.
“Really?” she asked, sucking her teeth and grabbing a shield, clicking it into place on her wristband.
I dove into Martí and then Kendi’s memories. It felt like hours but was really less than a minute before they were both free.
The dragon-bear-leopard was still wreaking havoc in the arena.
“Yup. Just what we needed. More of this thing!” Adri shouted, trying to keep the snapping heads at bay. My mouth dropped open as he moved seamlessly between muay thai and other martial arts I couldn’t name. I had almost forgotten his gift.
“That guy’s good,” a newly-free Martí noted, adjusting the pink headband around her afro-puffs as she took it all in … the fight, the dragon, the arena.
She seemed unfazed by the scene in front of her, as if she’d seen worse. I wondered what kinds of tests the Council had put them through before and what 238they’d done to survive.
Now Martí stretched her neck from side to side and bounced lightly on the balls of her feet, loosening her limbs like a prizefighter. She cracked her knuckles, ready to jump in.
It was great to have another fighter awake, but after coming out of a deep dive into her memories, I needed to check that she was okay.
“Had a nice rest?” I asked with a straight face.
Martí stared at me as if I were crazy. When she realised that I was joking, she laughed her most raucous, head back, body-shaking laugh.
“Eres chistosa pues! The mattress was a bit hard … and made of trash, so no. Pero, soy lista. I’m ready to put that thing over there to sleep.”
“Okay, but be careful,” I warned, getting out of her way.
Martí clearly didn’t scare easily. Kendi, on the other hand, clinging to Esme, was shaking in his boots like me. I just did a better job of hiding it.
“Come,” I told him, imitating Luna’s ‘orders not requests’ approach.
I put an arm around his scrawny shoulders and heard his teeth jackhammer. 239
“It’ll be okay,” I comforted him while Esme checked on Martí.
“H-h-how?” he stammered, pointing out our three-headed dragon problem with wide eyes.
The dragon-bear-leopard roared like a screeching train, lashing out with its sinewy body and heads. Esme, Kendi, and I ducked to avoid the flying debris that made up its scales and tail. Adri and Luna went skidding on their backs through the dust and trash.
“Time for backup,” Martí said grimly. Her heart-shaped face, sparkling eyes, and crooked grin began to look much more formidable than cute.
In front of my eyes, her skin hardened and darkened to a perfect shade of black. Her legs and arms flattened and segmented, growing spiky hairs. Lastly, her head, chest and body curved and separated into three armoured sections. My mouth fell open.
Martí had transformed into an insect I’d never seen at that size, with shiny black armor, a hard frill like a triceratops, and two huge, curved horns.
“Yeah!” I cheered.
Esme and Kendi high-fived.
Even though it was only about one third of the dragon’s size, Martí was now the biggest rhinoceros 240beetle I had ever seen. Most importantly, I knew from Da that this insect, aka the Hercules beetle was, in relation to its size, the second strongest animal in the world, able to lift up to 850 times its own weight.
As if to prove it, the Martí beetle lowered her horns and charged the three-headed dragon, sending it sliding into the side of the field, to the deafening jeers of the packed stands.
Adri and Luna picked themselves up. They looked as shaky and dusty as I felt.
“Martí can’t stay that size for long!” Luna warned. “Find somewhere to hide!”
Esme and I grabbed Kendi and ran to the opposite end of the field from the still-stunned dragon.
“In here!” I yelled, pointing to a gap in a tall pile of trash.
Kendi slid in first, then Esme.
“Okay, come on!” she waved me in, but I couldn’t join them.
This spot wasn’t safe enough. They were too exposed. I had an idea.
“Your packs!” I shouted.
“Why?” Esme wondered, as I turned back to the arena. 241
“You want to die?” Kendi shook his head at my foolishness like an old man.
I ignored them and dashed back over the field for our backpacks. Inside, each one had about two or three shields shrunk to the size of discs. I grabbed as many as I could.
“What are you doing?” Luna called out, as she and Adri grabbed rope from the packs, while Martí, in giant beetle form, stood guard over the prostrate dragon.
I didn’t have time to answer, but I could already tell that tying up the dragon’s mouth or limbs wasn’t going to last long. I dug around in the other packs, looking over my shoulder every second to keep an eye on the beast.
At first, its bear, leopard and dragon heads were dazed from being slammed into the side of the arena. But now the metal plates were moving again, absorbing all three heads into one large serpent-like face with a whip-like tongue. In a flash, it was back up and charging toward Martí’s rhinoceros beetle form.
Luna and Adri ran toward it with ropes, but it was too late. Martí lowered her horns and braced for impact, but the dragon only picked up speed, rolling 242into a ball of solid metal and raising the flaps on its back so that they looked like spikes.
“Look out!” I yelled uselessly.
Luna and Adri jumped out of the way just in time.
Crack!
I could hear the impact as the dragon-sized bowling ball connected with Martí’s rhinoceros beetle shell.
She went flying upside-down and landed hard on her back; her insect legs weakly beating the air.
I froze, trying to remember how hard the rhinoceros beetle’s shell was; convincing myself that she’d be okay.
As the dragon slithered toward her, Luna and Adri leapt in, keeping it at bay with Luna’s blinding rays and Adri’s fighting skills.
“Have … to … find … a … weakness …” Adri shouted through gritted teeth, doing some capoeira kicks and spins to evade the dragon’s jabs.
My stomach dropped. “Guys! Martí’s shrinking!” I warned.
And she was … fading down to a quarter of her size. She was no match for the dragon like this. Quickly, I jumped back into action. 243
“Luna! Your stick!”
Luna hesitated, then tossed me her bamboo rod.
“Here!” I ordered, shaking off the shock that she was actually listening to me.
While Adri distracted the dragon, I pushed the bamboo gently between Martí’s shell and the ground. Hopefully, this would work as a lever.
“One, two …” Luna and I pressed down on the stick together with all our strength.
After three or four tries, Martí flipped over and back onto her six spiky legs. Thankfully, she was still moving and in one piece.
“Great!” Adri gave us a thumbs-up, barely avoiding a huge swing of the dragon’s clubbed tail. “Now, some help pleeeeease!” He jumped on the tail, lassoed it with rope, and held on like a cowboy at a rodeo.
Before we could move to help him, Martí shrunk even more.
“You can’t stay like this!” Luna told her.
She was right: it was time for Martí to change back to herself before she got seriously hurt.
Instead, the beetle looked at us with one of its round black eyes, as if there was something it was trying to say. 244
The dragon roared, trying to buck Adri off its tail. Luna skated toward him as he held on for dear life. I looked around for somewhere soft for them to land. Then, without warning, with a whir of her wings, Martí flew up and into the dragon’s wide-open mouth.
I shouted in shock. Luna turned and ran toward me as the dragon slid in my direction. I was stuck to the spot, deaf to the roars of the trash-machine crowd. What had Martí done? Why had she let herself be eaten? Had she just given up?
At the last second, Luna shoved me out of the way of the dragon’s snapping jaws. She stuck her bamboo stick into its mouth, propping it open.
“Martí!” she screamed. The bamboo rod snapped as the dragon reared above us.
“No!” Adri tried to scramble up the dragon’s spiky metal tail.
Luna pulled herself up to her full length and closed her eyes. I couldn’t look away from the gears and joints inside the dragon’s jaws. Its broken-glass teeth and many points of discarded metal shone brightly in the sun. I hoped it would be over quickly for me like it was for Martí. 245
Just before the dragon’s jaws snapped around us, they froze in mid-air. The dragon coughed, blasting us with its trash-flavoured breath. I gagged but kept moving, grabbing Luna’s arm and dragging her out of the way.
“Hey!” Luna protested as I crashed her ‘noble warrior facing death’ moment.
“Sorry!” I cried. “Not sorry!”
I yanked Luna away from the dragon as it went into a fit of coughing. It curled and uncurled in discomfort, then sat down with a confused look.
Too much dust from the trash? Allergies? Indigestion?
I had no idea and didn’t want to find out.
“Come on!” I hurried Adri off its drooping tail.
We stared at the twisting dragon with a mix of confusion, grief, and rage; still reeling from Martí’s loss.
One thing was for sure, we couldn’t stay here.
“Let’s move!”
Now, I was the one shoving both Luna and Adri to safety. Or at least to a safer spot than this.
“Guys!’ Luna pointed, arm shaking.
I couldn’t help but see. 246
“Gross,” Adri groaned.
With lots of writhing and wretching, the dragon reared back, fuel-like slime dripping green from its mouth.
Then it coughed up what looked like a large plastic ball.