Storm Hawks Chapter 69: Swift Gates and Ravens
Gaven travels from Dundarien to Twelvestones through a mysterious portal Jenna calls a swift gate. The portal opens in the cave beneath Gaven’s observatory ledge on the sheer cliffs of Mount Yonah.
Wait. Calum and Rachel thoroughly explored this cave earlier. They found no portal. They found only a dead end. A trail of clues that led to nowhere.
Calum ran his hands over the smooth pillars and stone walls. Nothing.
Jenna brings two young girls with her. Why? Because the swift gates don’t respond to her touch either.
Yet the swift gates open for the girls. Who are these children?
Gaven stopped before the girls. The youngest clutched the other’s hand. Pale waifs in identical white shifts, they watched him warily. He took a knee so as not to tower over them.
“Don’t worry. I don’t bite. What are your names?”
“Raven,” said the elder and braver of the pair. “And Mouse,” she added in a furtive whisper.
“Here.” Jenna returned with a glass vial. “This is what gets us back to Twelvestones.”
“Who are the girls?”
“We need them to open the gates,” she said cryptically.
Deferential and timid, the girls are obviously not Firstborn. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, they aren’t even common nenes. Jenna seems almost dismissive of them, as if they are merely there to serve her purpose.
Swift gates (later combined as swiftgates) are the remnants of a transportation network created by the technologically advanced civilization of the prior cycle. Dragonkind’s last cycle.
Although Jenna’s trick with a vial of evergreen oil allow her and Gaven to hitch a ride through the swift gate once it’s open, only the girls can open it.
Why? Because the ancient, but still quite functional, transport network activates on biometric sensors. A swift gate opens to anyone its sensors perceive as dragonkind.
In a classic epic fantasy nod to both the great diversity of life and the few common genetic building blocks all known carbon-based lifeforms share, the sensors the dragons designed to detect their kind aren’t perfect.
Their swiftgate sensors perceive nenes as kinfolk, too.
So, back to the girls. Explaining their connection to the swiftgates would be a spoiler at this point.
You’ll learn more about Mouse and her unique gift in Chapter 79. Raven reveals the story of their heritage in Chapter 90.
