Joshua and the Arrow Realm (22 page)

My chest ached to write it but I had no choice. They'd
have to believe I deserted them. They couldn't think I planned to face off with Artemis alone. If so, they'd follow and face death again.

I left the note on Ash's desk along with Leandro's fire belt. She'd find a good use for it. I changed back into my Earth clothes, took my bow and quiver of arrows, filled my canteen from the jug on the desk, and left the comfort of my friends behind. The dark rushed around me. I dug into a branch while my eyes adjusted to the night, estimating which way to head based on the direction Charlie, Apollo, and I'd first come from out of the castle's pit.

I couldn't risk taking the lantern with me. I had to trust my new abilities to navigate the woods to get into Artemis's castle from up high.

All the tree houses sat dark except the house where Ash held her meeting. A lantern shone from it, and Ash paced back and forth in front of the small window, talking with her hands. She'd get my friends to safety in the Sea Realm.

“Time to scram and cram,” I whispered to no one.

With those final words, I crept away through the treetops. Memory told me it was a few hours journey. After a while, I huddled in the crook of a tree, exhausted from navigating my way across the Wild Lands and Perimeter Lands. I'd slept fitfully for a few hours, waking up to daylight with a huge pain in my neck from curling up against rough wood.

Twigs filled my lap. In my fuzzy sleep-filled state, I went to shove them off when the words they spelled caught my eye: POWER … WITHIN.

Awake now, I stared at them, filled with comfort. My aloneness seeped away a bit.

Every muscle ached and my head throbbed, but it was time to move on. I drank my remaining water and set off in the canopy of green. I backtracked several times, finding myself near The Great Beyond.

The spires of Artemis's castle finally poked through the trees in the distance, and a road appeared below. I trusted it'd lead me to the castle and it did. I clung to a tree and watched Artemis ride across the moat bridge with her army into the castle's courtyard. I searched through the group but didn't see Leandro. Villagers moved back to let them pass, steering clear of the angry queen who cursed at them as she dismounted. A girl my age peered around the edge of a doorway to watch the royal arrival. She reminded me that Artemis used to have a daughter with the ancient power to transform into animals. Ash's words came back to me.
All she had to do was will it. She wanted us both to be birds and fly away together.

A line of cadmean beasts trotted in behind the soldiers on horseback. I flicked my eyes between them and the girl in the doorway, my idea for a disguise forming. I twisted my way down the tree. The castle grew larger. Its towers pierced the leaves below and the trees curled away from them, as if not wanting to touch such evil stone. Soldiers patrolled the walking bridges between the towers, but no one stood watch on the towers themselves. Hiding behind a burst of leaves, the closest tower revealed a round balcony with a wooden doorway. My way in.

W
hen the patrol faced away from me, I leaped and landed hard on rough flagstone. I rolled to a shadowy corner, waiting for shouts or a warning that an intruder was here. Nothing. My heart slowed and I crept toward the door, trying to lift the heavy iron latch but the wood didn't budge.

Could I will myself to be a bird like Livia and fly down one of the chimneys? They all chugged out smoke and I'd be a toasted sparrow. Only one way to get through it—with fire—and only one way to make it—become a cadmean beast. I trembled, remembering my hands covered in strange fur. What if there was no changing back?

I knelt on the cold rock, seeking answers.

I had no magical weapons. I only had me.

Power within
.

I. Was. The. Oracle.

Anger at Nostos drove spikes in me. After all my
friends and I had been through in our deadly adventures, still nothing on Nostos changed. I had to become the thing I feared most to fight this evil.

I closed my eyes, willing it. My skin blistered. Knuckles cracked. Fur ripped along my hands. A moan boiled up from deep inside me. I stood on four legs with power like a train rushing through me. I opened my eyes. The world stood in black and white. Scents punched up my nose from everywhere: earthy moss clinging to trees, smoke wafting from the wall torches at the castle gate. Sounds blared in my ears. Birds chattered in trees miles away. Squirrels thumped along branches. Whispers of the villagers in the courtyard voicing their trepidation of Artemis shouted in my head. I grew dizzy with the overwhelming attack on my senses and forced myself to move forward on heavy, padded feet, my tail swishing behind me.

With a snap of my jaws, I commanded the very fire that once tried to kill me. It roared from my mouth in an angry blaze. The door crackled as fire surged across it, gorging on wood. Within moments, its timber split apart and crumbled to ash. Urgency powered me to dash through the door and jet down the stone steps, tumbling into walls with my new four-footed body flying beneath me.

I soon reached a dank, cobwebby hallway, my beast eyes taking in every detail, my senses alive. There was a definite advantage to being a beast than a boy right now. Around a corner, voices jumbled together. I paused, listening with twitchy ears.

“I'm off to her chambers to light the fire before she gets back from the hunt,” said a scratchy woman's voice.

“I've got it worse in the kitchen,” Scratchy's companion
whined. “She'll likely blast me to bits if I ruin her dinner. She's sending those Reekers to the Wild Lands now for sport, not just food.”

“Things sure have changed around here. Death is everywhere. Now her and Leandro are trying to get the Oracle for their own use. Wait 'til Zeus finds out! Indeed! As if a mixed mortal could solve our world's problems. Humph.”

“Who cares about the Reekers?” Whiny shot back. “I've got my own problems to worry about, much less all of Nostos. Like getting extra food rations to feed my family.”

“Or like serving fatty meat and undercooked potatoes to her highness. You better watch your back. Vapes go off around here like fireworks.”

The voices of Scratchy and Whiny grew closer. I shoved my hard-muscled brutish body up against cold rock in the blackest well of shadows. Pushing deeper into it, the wall gave way and, muffling a yelp, I fell into complete darkness. My canine eyes switched to night vision as the hidden door closed shut. A tunnel opened between the walls like Ash said! The voices moved away. I followed the sound as I sprang along my new hideaway.

“She vaped a Reeker yesterday and didn't even use a vape.” Scratchy's voice lowered but my sharp hearing picked it up perfectly.

“You mean like ancient magic?”

“Yes. She shot blue right out of her fingers! The poor Reeker.”

Like that evil Hekate vaped folks to death with her fingers in the Lost Realm!

“What'd the stupid mortal do to get vaped?” Whiny said.

“He hung her dress too close by the fire to dry after washing and singed the back of it.”

“Serves the ignorant Barbaros right. Dumb lot they are. They should stay on Earth among their own kind.”

“Not the Oracle,” Scratchy said. “He's the wise one to fix us up right. Give those nasty heirs back their powers and make 'em do good with them. Give us choices. I could've run my own business, you know. Been rich, if I weren't made to work for Artemis.”

“You'd be nothing of the kind, you lazy bum. You'd end up living in a ditch in the Perimeter Lands like your ancestors, eating acorn paste and washing clothes for the outlaws. Rich. Bah! Take your dreams and bag 'em.”

“Oh, bugger off,” Scratchy said. “Get to the kitchen or you'll be next in line for a vaping—after me, if I don't light her majesty's fire!”

“I'm going. I'm going,” Whiny grumbled.

Footsteps clomped away. A light pierced my eye through a hole in the rock. A peephole set in a door! A fat woman with a torch headed my way. I jumped back before I realized that the woman couldn't see me, and she passed right by. She was Scratchy the fire starter, and this had to be Artemis's chambers! I watched her as she did her work, complaining the entire time. She waddled off and shut the ornate door behind her. Taking a deep breath, I pushed hard against the tunnel door. It creaked open and I slunk through, my beast senses on high alert.

Giant arches rose up in a cathedral ceiling, and firelight flickered across the queen's chambers from the walk-in fireplace. In the center rose a massive bed with Greek columns at each edge. Gold curtains fell from the ceiling all around it. I moved into the royal room, and the overwhelming scent of roses exploded up my nose.

The smell shocked my body stiff. My every limb trembled and I collapsed on the floor.

Only one person had that smell.

Hekate! She had returned, posing as Artemis! How did she do it? Using the queen's body as she'd done before to keep her nasty brother alive, Cronag the Child Collector? I clenched every muscle. A sick dread snaked through my stomach, and I retched in the shadows until nothing more came up.

I shook off my sickness and stood on all fours.

Focus, Joshua!

Apollo had killed Hekate with her own curse in the Lost Realm and Bo Chez's words came to me.
Let's hope she doesn't find magic to come back.
But she had, and she'd put a spell over Leandro and Artemis to follow her commands. Now to find the orb!

I dashed around the room, pawing open drawers and closets until my eye caught a box on her dresser. Would she keep it in plain sight? I ripped the lock apart with my teeth. The top clicked open. The lightning orb glimmered inside. Clouds swirled inside the giant gumball-sized crystal. Lightning dashed across the tiny storm. I scooped it up in my giant jaws when a shape moved next to me. My reflection in a mirror. In shock, I dropped the crystal. I faced my worst nightmare. Red eyes burned into mine. Slicked-back fur like arrows sprung all over my monstrous body while muscles rippled across my chest and haunches. A thick tongue panted from my snout as foam dripped in points from dagger teeth. A giant murderous flame-breathing fox stared back at me. Where was I in there?

The loss of my world dunked my heart in a well of sorrow. The beast melted away. Joshua the boy faced me
again. I dropped my bow and quiver and gasped. Stunned to see my return, I didn't hear the soft footfalls outside in the hall or a knock at the door.

“My queen?”

The door ripped open. I lunged for the orb but two words stopped me.

“Stand down!”

I jerked around to Leandro's fierce face and a sword pointed at my chest.

“W
ell, well,” Leandro said darkly. “I came to report that my party still hadn't found the Oracle, and now I have you.”

No chance to scram and cram. Soon rope chafed my wrists as Leandro led me alongside his horse in a throng of soldiers through the dusty, noisy village that filled the castle's courtyard. I considered willing myself into a bird to fly away, but Leandro would know for sure I was the Oracle. I couldn't risk it yet.

“I'm not the Oracle. I'm just a kid.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. “You'll prove it soon enough.”

I feared how as I stumbled along. Thatched huts wound down alleyways and into the shadows of the towering castle. Stray dogs ran about and rough riders drove squeaky wagons carrying crates of clucking chickens and grunting pigs. Tethered goats
baahhed
near
smoking pots where women stirred their contents over open fires. Roasting meat and thick stews invaded my nose and my stomach griped in hunger.

Quiet soon fell over the square, the clop of our horses the one sound cutting the air as we passed the Arrow Realm folk. They stopped their daily market business to watch us pass. Some spit at my feet. Some stared at me with pity.
You're all kept by Artemis too
, I wanted to shout.

“Your journal,” I said. “You should read it.” It bumped into my side with each step.

“Means nothing to me now. Artemis helped me see that. If you don't give us your powers, it'll burn with you.”

“You'll never get my powers.”

Leandro stopped fast and pulled my chin to face him. “Those may be your last words, Reeker.”

I matched his stare-off until he threw his head back and laughed. “No need for you to submit. We have you now. Soon to be all of you.”

I held my breath. “What do you mean?”

“Your body. Could be useful. Hypnosis or maybe possession. My queen will decide.”

“No way.”

“Oh, there is always a way. Trust me.”

I did once.

“You can't make me!”

“You'll change your mind.”

He dismissed me and resumed his horse's trot while I ran to keep pace. Much more of this and my body wouldn't be worth anything.

I willed my feet over muddy ruts. “Leandro, why?”

He flung his hair back with a frown. “A means to an end—or rather a new beginning for some of us.”

“Don't you remember us?” I tried another way.

Leandro looked straight ahead. “There is no us.”

“Release the key.”

He laughed. “You think I'm under some spell you can remove? I've never been under a spell. You've been my target all along.”

“It's a lie!”

“I do not lie.”

“You lied to Hekate to save me. You and Bo Chez. Don't you remember? In the Lost Realm?”

“Irrelevant. It's payback time.”

The Child Collector had said the same thing to me in the Lost Realm.

“For what?”

“My sister.”

“Sister?”

“Hekate.”

“Cronag?” I croaked out.

“Not so dumb after all, are you, Reeker?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Of course it's Cronag the Child Collector, only much better looking thanks to this body!”