Joshua and the Arrow Realm (19 page)

I asked her, “What do you choose?”

“To stay. This is where I feel most free.”

With that, a plan began to form: send her to Earth on the Lightning Road to bring Joshua back. My Child Collector belt would get her there, but we needed a plan to sneak her through the Lightning Gate. I'd be missed if I went. No one would miss a Wild Child.

Fear grips my heart as I now wait for Ash's return from Earth.

What if bringing Joshua here is a death sentence? The myth professes the Oracle will sicken and die if they cross realms, claiming too many Olympian powers at once. How can I control this? What if he is merely a mortal boy and nothing else? Then what? I've tried to analyze my motives. Do I truly do this to free all mortal slaves and restore goodness to our world … or do I do this with the ultimate goal to get my wife and son back? I'm tormented by my selfish desires and kneel here asking the gods for guidance.

If I must die to save the one who can save us all, I can live with this.

Joshua, I will never betray you. By the Arrow of Artemis, I swear this to be true.

Yours in service, Leandro.

What a bunch of bull!

I threw the journal hard at the trunk.

How I wanted to face Leandro and scream at him.
You did betray me, Leandro! Your wife is dead. Probably your son. Why help this world? No one wants to help me!

But the Wild Childs could help me disappear.

Ash's words came back to me.
Trust only those you know in your heart.
I once knew Leandro and Charlie by heart. I'd trusted them. Yet they betrayed me. Funny how Oak and Ash, strangers, were now ones to count on.

In the dusk, the words on my slave brand caught my eye.
No escape. Your armor of flesh and bone fuels us on!
I spit on it, scrubbing hard with the hem of my shirt until my arm burned raw. My tears fueled the need to un-brand myself, but the black words engulfed in a ring of flame still taunted me.
No escape
.

A snap of branches nearby reminded me of the danger roaming the Perimeter Lands. Wild beasts, bandits, Artemis … Leandro. I summoned the strength to leave the ground and pull myself into the branches of a tree. The thought of Leandro's journal being shredded and used as nest material made me glad, but at the last moment, I shoved it back in my pocket. Perhaps there was a sliver of information in it to help me survive.

A dozen feet up, I tucked into a warm tree hollow and ate Ash's remaining squirrel mash and ache cakes before sleep chased me down. I dreamed of Bo Chez again. He stood in the sun, towering over me with stern eyes, the kind for getting bad grades and not using common sense.

“One for the many.” He echoed Oak's words but added his own. “
You
are the one.”

He grew bigger and blocked out the sun, his giant silhouette shadowing me in darkness.

“Not the one,” I yelled. “No one!”

I turned and ran to hide amongst the many.

T
he sky had grown lighter when I awoke. My fifth day in the Arrow Realm. I must have passed the night in my tree. My stiff legs and neck confirmed it. Shaking off sleep, I climbed higher, hoping to see the Wild Childs' houses. If the Wild Childs could survive in a tree world so could I, and no one would look for me there. No one would look for me anywhere.

I pulled myself up faster with urgent purpose. Muted stars winked as they faded with the rising sun. I stopped to stare at them. I clung to the tree, closed my eyes, and visualized staring up at the Big Dipper back home. Holding on to that memory meant holding on to the tiny shreds of the old Joshua. I opened my eyes. The Nostos stars were gone, erased by the blue ball of the rising sun.

I shook myself out of my daze and climbed higher. The limb I stood on cracked in half beneath me, but I sidestepped to another branch in time to watch the wood
crash down. At one point, Artemis and her men galloped below. I froze amongst the leaves in hiding, but the army never looked up. From tree to tree, I moved until the great hedge appeared, signaling the border into the Wild Lands.

Was I crazy to head back to the Wild Childs? They could escape but didn't. They survived on their own terms. Leaving it all behind to start a new life sounded good to me.

I snatched up a vine and swung over the wall, and slammed into a tree, the breath knocked out of me. The scent of smoke hung in the air as if left over from the rain. The Wild Childs camp.

Rough bark scraped my arms and face. I pressed myself against a trunk, thankful to still be alive when growls rumbled below. An agrius beast paced the forest floor, pawing the ground. With each snarl, giant billows of steam blew from its flared nostrils. Not Ash's pet for sure. It stood up on its hind legs, attacking the tree, trying to climb but sliding down, howling in anger. I scrambled higher.

From tree to tree I jumped, following the smoke trail. The agrius beast kept pace. Sap stuck to my fingers and clothes, attracting tiny black bugs that buzzed around me, biting my neck and hands. I swatted at them while brushing the sweat off my forehead. The blue sun burned my eyes between patches of sky above. Water dripped from dewy leaves and I drank each drop greedily, my throat parched and my canteen long empty. The leaves formed letters but I bashed them away before reading their words. “No more messages!”

Pale gray sticks scattered across the trails below. More twig messages from my mysterious friend? No. My
breath quickened in tight spurts. Not sticks. Bones. Of kids hunted down.

NEVER … GIVE … UP.

Had they? Didn't matter. They were the unlucky ones who hadn't survived to become a Wild Child. Or perhaps they
were
the lucky ones. Their suffering had ended. A skull leaned against a boulder, it blank eyes staring up from its hollow face. I lunged to another tree, tearing my eyes away from the path of death. My dread grew into spears of rage. A primitive cry burst from my lungs. My skin rippled. My muscles bulged. The bark bit into me as my body swelled against the tree trunk. A shock of black fur sprung from my hands.

No! This couldn't be happening—not a beast!

A power this big comes with great responsibility
, Oak had said.

The power of the Oracle. Who would teach me how to use it?

Trembling, I willed away this terrifying transformation. My body deflated. The hair on my hands faded to ghostly wisps and then
poof
disappeared.

I hugged the tree, wetting the bark with tears of relief, and looked at the sky. Could I become a bird and fly away or a cadmean beast and torch my enemies? The thought was too frightening. It bound me to Nostos. My tears turned to ones of desperation and the sun held no answers.

Every few minutes, I looked for evidence of the Wild Childs. The thought of finding refuge with others, and the agrius beast's hungry moans below as it hunted me, kept me going. I may die here, but it wouldn't be from being eaten. I fingered Leandro's fire belt, wondering how it could help me, then pulled my hands away, not wanting a connection to him.

Exhaustion sank into my every bone. I hung on to a tree in the nook of its two branches and closed my eyes. One moment of rest. A breeze chilled my skin. As I shivered, my eyes twitched open. The largest tree in the wood appeared through the thick of the forest. The Grand Tree! The protector of the Wild Childs. A beacon of light in this dark Arrow Realm.

My strength was sucked away from lack of food and sleep. I hugged the tree tighter with my remaining strength. If I made it to the Grand Tree, its giant arms would hold me up until the Wild Childs found me.

My foot slipped. I caught a branch but my trembling hands slid off it, finger by finger.

The Grand Tree stomped toward me. Ancient limbs curved and soared upwards with crooked fingers. Closer it grew as the agrius beast paced below, now joined by a cadmean beast. They snapped at one another, battling for breakfast—me. My desperate fingers clung tighter to the branch as I scrabbled to get a foothold on a knotted burl.

“The Reeker is mine, fire-devil!”

“Back off beast! Your stench sickens me.”

The growls and grunts of the standoff grew louder. Then the Grand Tree loomed beside me. I willed my body to hang on and take one final leap. I reached out and, with my heart rapping in my chest, launched myself toward it. Stiff hands reached out for me but I faltered, leaned back, and fell.

I screamed as tree branches whipped my arms and legs. Flames from the cadmean beast blasted my feet and heat surged up my body. I fell toward death, but instead of landing on teeth, I slammed into hard wood. The Grand Tree cupped me to safety. The beasts roared but the Grand Tree roared back louder with ear-splitting
creaks. It slapped two of its limbs down with balled fingers and flung the creatures away. They howled in pain and dashed off through the forest to find another meal.

Clinging to the sides of the Grand Tree's hand, I peered down. The massive Oak uprooted itself, one root at a time, and strode through the woods on knobby feet. The forest swayed back to let it pass as it forged a trail, twisting wooden fingers around its fellow trunk mates, pushing onward. I held on, amazed to be alive.

Sunlight glimmered and I lifted my face to it. The great tree's leaves curled into cones and dripped water into my throat. I rode this woodland giant until the treetops were filled with huts spread out amongst a meadow of leaves. Figures appeared amongst branches. The Wild Childs. I recognized one of them standing on the big tree house platform.

Ash.

She didn't look happy to see me at all.

“G
reat one,” Ash whispered in awe as she bowed to the Grand Tree with all of the kids. My ride came to an end as the old oak uncurled its slatted palm to set me on the platform.

“Thank you.” I nodded to the ancient one. It shook its limbs and a thousand green leaves rustled a wind song. With creaking groans, the Grand Tree lifted it roots and marched back to where it came from.

“It's true then,” Ash said, staring at me with ice green eyes. “He goes runabout on Nostos.”

“He saved my life,” I said.

“The Grand Tree is the one good thing in this world we believe in. It's a symbol of peace. You
are
the one.”

I said nothing. The memory of my body bulging into a wild animal paralyzed me with the terrifying—and thrilling—memory.

“And if you
are
this Oracle, then you need to go—
now,” Ash said, crossing her arms. A low murmur grew among the Wild Childs with her words.

“What if I don't want to be the Oracle? I risked my life to come back here and be a Wild Child,” I said. “I survived the hunt. Don't I belong?”

“You put us in danger. Queen Artemis wants you. She'll keep searching for you. She'll know you'll be hiding with us. The soldiers came searching for you. They'll come again. She'll round us up and stick us like her mother did. We'll all be dead Goners and Leandro will help her.”

Yes, he would.

“I don't have anyone.”

“Where is your tall, skinny friend and King Apollo? What did you do with them?” Her eyes were accusing.

“Charlie tried to kill me … and ran off.”

“Why would your friend want to stick you?” Ash demanded.

“He was under a spell or something. I don't know! Artemis did something to him.”

“And Apollo?”

The mad river flashed through my mind. The broken crate. Apollo's face behind me as we navigated the racing rapids. “He's dead.”

Ash pointed her knife at me. I stumbled back into the platform's rails.

“Now the Lost Realm will be after us as well with the royal one dead. We'll all be grounded, Oracle. Take your powers and leave now. They're no good to us!”

The Wild Childs swarmed onto the platform and stood behind Ash, jagged spears pointed at me.

I gripped the rough railing, splinters gouging into my hands. “I'd never hurt Apollo! The river got him. Oak
helped us escape with the other slave kids from a secret cave, but Apollo didn't make it out.”

Ash lowered her knife. “Oak helped you …”

“He risked his life for us.”

“Like he does giving us news of Nostos,” she said quietly. “Did he survive?”

“I-I don't know. He stayed behind to face off with the soldiers who'd found us.”

“And the other kids?”

“They scram and crammed to the Perimeter Lands.”

“They have a runabout chance then.”

I nodded. The spears dropped and I let out the huge breath I'd been holding, telling her everything that had happened. When I finished, she and all the Wild Childs were quiet. The forest seemed to wait for her words as if she commanded them too. Every branch, every leaf, lay still as water on a windless lake.

A final plea. “Ash, I have nowhere else to go.”

She slid her knife away. “Oak helped you. I'll help you.” The Wild Childs gave a collective sigh. “You can stay. For now, Oracle. We'll figure something out.”

I mumbled thanks.

“You'll have to work.” She tossed her head at a Wild Child nearby. “Take him to haul.”

Soon enough I discovered the meaning of
haul
and found my arms aching with the strain of pulling up water. My trainer showed me how to lower the big barrel on a pulley through the forest canopy into the bubbling springs far below. The vine rope rubbed my hands raw, but over and over I dipped the bucket in and pulled it up hundreds of feet to my world in the trees. All afternoon I delivered water for washing and cooking and drinking to the tree community. So much easier to turn on a faucet.

But my day wasn't over. The Wild Childs taught me to whittle my own arrows, and I soon filled my quiver with them. Next came hunting dinner. There were two groups of two kids each. The ground team shot the evening meal and the sky team was the lookout.

Lucky me. I got assigned to the sky team with a skinny girl whose only words were, “Don't get us stuck.”