A girl with a bow and arrows faces off against a fierce dragon flying in the red sky overhead. The dragon spews fire that burns the village down around the girl.

Question

Image credit: Maya Halko

The dragon streaked over our village in a straight line, blotting out the moon and drenching us in sinister shadow, his toothy maw a fuming furnace. I blinked—and the decimation began.

Walls of flame jumped high as the elms, and orange fire frolicked across the thatched roofs of shadowed huts. Smoke filled my nostrils, burned my lungs. It was as if my last step had ensnared me in a nightmare.

While I stood there immobile, my neighbors ran from their ruined homes, their shrill shrieks piercing the night that had seemed so still and serene.

Wake up, Leah, I told myself, yearning for this to be a dream.

Five seconds before, I'd been halfway home, a pair of rabbits—the evening's meal—dangling by their ears from my fist. Now those rabbits lay prone at my feet, and I was no longer the hunter victorious, but—like them—the doomed prey. My instincts screamed at me to bolt the way the rabbits had, but running hadn't prevented their deaths, and it wouldn't spare mine.

I could make another choice. After all, I still had my father's bow clutched in my other fist—I hadn't dropped that. My quiver of arrows, slung across my back, pressed against my spine.

All around, the people I had known for sixteen years dissolved into madness, as if convinced they'd already caught fire.

Many darted for the forest. Some dashed back into their homes, either hoping to retrieve something precious or believing that their roofs might somehow withstand the fire racing through their neighbors' walls—as if this ordeal were just a fleeting storm.

The updraft created by the colossal creature's circling sent my hair into a flurry, made my skirts dance frantically about my legs. Even with my soul screaming at me to flee, I stayed rooted as the dragon spiraled overhead, a great and spiky black lizard.

His scaly body slithered through the air like a serpent through water, trailing a tail that tapered to a spade. Orange eyes, the hue of flaring embers, burned with rage.

The dragons were all supposed to be dead, though—slain by the king's men.

Apparently, they'd missed one.

I nocked an arrow and raised my weapon as the beast descended, spewing fire in a wicked stream. The flames incinerated the church, the graveyard, and several more houses. I followed him with my aim and then, when he swooped low, let my arrow fly. It glanced off the creature's hide, but I didn't expect to pierce that impervious armor; landing a strike was not half as important as taking a stand.

I hadn't before, after all, when I'd faced a different set of monsters—monsters shaped like men. This time, though, I was no longer a helpless child. I was almost a woman grown.

Despite the arrow's inability to disable him, the brute's taloned feet tore through the earth as he fought to remain upright. The ground shuddered beneath me as I took aim a second time.

"Yooooouuu daaaaaare?" came a voice like thunder, the creature's flaring nostrils trailing smoke, that luminous gaze fixed on me.

In answer, I let a second arrow fly. It arced along the path I sent it—an unswerving hit to the dragon's left eye.

A roar split the night.

Teeth flashed in the blazing glow that surrounded us. The lizard thrashed his head, wounded eye pinched shut, the other rolling in wrath and agony.

I pulled the last arrow from my quiver, but it was denied the chance to repeat the success of its predecessor. The fuming beast had returned to the air, his beating wings fanning the grass flat around my feet.

Question 3


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In what way are Leah and Brim similar in the story?

Both were made orphans when the king burned down their villages.
Both want to help return all the villagers' stolen treasure.
Both were attacking the wrong people in their quests for revenge.
Both lost their families because of the king's ruthless actions.

Answer 1

Both lost their families because of the king's ruthless actions.