Joshua and the Arrow Realm (26 page)

“Joshua!” Charlie tried to pull me free but splinters dug into me. Blood oozed.

Using my feet, I kicked at the arms trapping me. “Let me go!”

The limbs relaxed and I busted free, crawling backward. Hollow moans of laughter heckled us as the tree shook its arms in a mocking dance. It rose, a black witch of darkness, blacker than any tree in these woods and twice as tall.

The ground shook like an earthquake as the two trees smashed in combat, and the splitting shriek of wood ripped the air as they tore limbs from one another. The Grand Tree's boughs sank lower and lower, its tired body growing weary from the attack. It staggered back and fell.

A familiar voice cut through the chaos.

“Joshua.” It floated down from the sky.

A trick of the Black Heart Tree?

It called again, this time clear and strong. “Joshua!”

Bo Chez!

I
flattened myself against the craggy bark of a nearby tree, searching desperately for my grandfather amongst the leaves above me. There! His face appeared through the canopy shadows. The branches spread apart more, revealing his location, and horror streaked through me. He hung from a vine high over the heart of the Black Heart Tree. His arms and legs were bound tight to his body, leaving him helpless to use his hands to fight with his Storm Master power. But he'd come for me!

I grabbed the Black Heart Tree's trunk and pulled myself up on knotty footholds, trying to avoid stepping on the bones and faces of the dead.

“Joshua, no!” Charlie tried to pull me down. Branches snagged at us and I kicked them away.

“Charlie, it's Bo Chez!”

He fell back with wide eyes, scrambling out of the hooks of the Black Heart Tree.

I pulled myself up higher. Splintered fingers scratched at me. I broke them off and kept climbing. I had to free Bo Chez.

A final glance down showed the terrified faces of my friends on the ground.

Joshua, oh, Joshua.

The words sing-songed in my head, vibrating through the trunk I climbed. Hekate!

Your powers are mine. You die or your friends die. Your grandfather dies. A hero would choose the many over the one. Be a hero—and die!

I clung to my enemy and willed her voice away. It came through stronger.

Give yourself to me. It is your destiny, Oracle.

“No! I won't!” I pushed myself up faster toward the top of the Black Heart Tree. Its branches snatched at me but I smacked them away. Wooden fingers pierced me with their ragged nails. I groaned with each lance. Blood welled, dripping down my arms and neck. I had to end this now. Hekate would keep coming back—keep enslaving people from both worlds.

“Joshua, here!” From another tree, Ash threw me Leandro's fire belt I'd left behind. I caught it midair. Instinct told me to throw it up. It zipped upward, defying gravity, then twisted around a branch near Bo Chez. I grabbed on and hauled myself up, my body fired on adrenaline.

“Go back, Joshua,” Bo Chez yelled, swinging his whole body back and forth to break free.

“No,” I yelled back. “Not without you!”

The Grand Tree stooped lower and lower, and still I climbed. Finally, I stood gasping for breath on a branch right below Bo Chez. His chest heaved for air against the
vine that cut into his burly body. It encircled him from his shoulders to ankles. Exhaustion wrung through me, and one foot slipped off the branch as the sickness in me grew like a poison seeping through my veins. Must keep strong!

The Black Heart Tree stopped moving. Its arms leaned in as if watching and listening.

“I would've never stopped looking for you,” Bo Chez said in a hoarse voice, his eyes full of sorrow.

“I knew you'd come.” I clenched a knobby branch. “How'd you get here?”

“Artemis kidnapped me and threw me in the dungeon. Except it wasn't Artemis.”

“Hekate.”

“Yes. She put Leandro under her spell too. He told her our home location. She wanted to use me as blackmail to persuade you to give up your powers.” He wriggled in his ropes to no use.

“You've been in the dungeon this whole time! The dreams. The messages!”

He gave me a weary smile. “Hypnos entranced me so I had the power to seek you out with my mind in exchange for helping him escape with my storm powers. I used my powers to get you messages, but they tied me up and I was limited … so limited. I almost lost you again.” His voice broke. “I couldn't live with myself if … you're the only family I've got.”

“You sent the lightning to help me and Charlie survive in the Wild Lands.”

“It was all I could manage with my powers so out of reach.”

“It was everything.”

“I told you I'd always come for you,” he said.

I'd never doubt it again—if we survived this day.

“Bo Chez … Hypnos mentioned my father in the dungeon. He said my father would die if I didn't give my powers to the queen. He's not dead … whoever he is.”

“Perhaps you will meet with Hypnos again and find out.”

We hung in silence for a moment as the battle raged below.

“But it's not your time to stay—yet,” Bo Chez said, echoing Leandro's words. The truth hit hard. I'd always be an outsider to both worlds, but if this was the consequence for saving both, I must do it. I belonged in the role I was destined to fill, and belonging starts with belonging to yourself first.

“I have faith in you,” he said. My heart swelled with his. “You must do whatever necessary to complete your mission.”

I said nothing.

“Even if it means leaving me behind on future adventures.”

His gaze held mine, unblinking, his eyebrows great mountains. I shook my head.

“And never seeing me again,” he finished.

One word came to me. “No!” I climbed above Bo Chez until I could climb no farther.

“I'm going to cut you down,” I shouted down. “Jump to the left and land on that branch!”

I sawed at the vine with the edge of an arrow, but it shook in my hands and I dropped it.
Ping. Ping.
It bounced down to Bo Chez who managed to grab it with one finger. He began sawing at his vine cage.

I pulled out my last arrow. Make it count! Soon a string ripped off the vine that held Bo Chez, then another.
Bo Chez cut through one of his ropes. Faster and faster I sawed.

The fire belt! I reached to uncurl it from the branch when something slithered around my ankles and up my leg. It was like a giant hand squeezing me into stone. The same vine I'd been sawing away to free Bo Chez now ensnared me! I screamed with the last breath I could push out before the vine tied me up like a spider would a fly. My bow pressed hard into my back as the vine tightened, and my arrow fell through the mist to my friends below.

“Joshua, hang on!” Bo Chez worked faster at his rope. “Aha!” Another vine popped and he dropped like a sack down a chute, banging into the trunk below, perilously close to the gaping mouth of the Black Heart Tree. The branch we swung from creaked with our weight. The vine and branch holding us up wouldn't hold much longer. The fire belt hung so close but out of reach. Through the eerie silence, laughter cracked the air like wood cymbals smashing together.

“It's going to break, Bo Chez!”

Wider the trunk mouth gaped, breathing in and out like fire bellows. Bo Chez hung over it like an appetizer, with me as the first course.

“She's wanted to take me down ever since I stopped her evil plot centuries ago,” Bo Chez said between ragged breaths.

“How can we stop her? The orb couldn't when I blasted this tree!”

The branch that held our lives in its fingers cracked. We slipped farther. The gasping mouth inhaled deeper, pulling at my legs, sucking me down.

“She wants your powers and mine, Joshua. Don't give her both!”

I shook my head. “What do you mean?”

“You have the orb, don't you?”

I nodded, my stiff fingers rubbing the top of it in my pocket.

“Can you get it?”

“I don't know!”

“Try!”

I wiggled my weak, pain-riddled fingers to no use. We jerked down another foot.

“Throw it in the heart of the beast, Joshua. It's the only way!”

The branch snapped again, splintering in two.

“I can't get it, Bo Chez!” My tears rained down on him.

Here. Today. We'd die together, dragged down into the beating belly of the Black Heart Tree. I must will myself to become a beast! But then the vine around me would bust open. I'd land on Bo Chez and we'd both fall to our death. There must be another way!

“Throw it Joshua.” His voice grew harsh now, an order. “You must sacrifice me.”

“No, Bo Chez!” Tears burst out. “We'll get home. Never come back!”

“That's not your destiny, grandson. You know what you are in this world, don't you?”

I nodded, crying harder, clawing at the orb but my fingers were wrapped in iron.

“A second chance.”

“You got a second chance too, Bo Chez. You can again!”

“My chances are up.”

Snap!
We shot farther down.

“It's not your day to die a hero, Joshua.” Leandro
once said the same thing to me in the Lost Realm. “But it is mine.”

He sawed through the last rope.
Pop!

Then he fell—a hand reaching out in farewell, eyes begging for forgiveness—and disappeared into the yawing jaws that swallowed him whole.

“No!”

The branch that carried only me now snapped, but it didn't break; it held—and I hung helplessly in the arms of my enemy and wept.

B
o Chez was gone. Really gone! I swallowed hard, forcing my tears away, but I couldn't break my stare from the evil tree's cracked throat where it fed on humans and hope—and my grandfather.

Cloud cover pushed down on me and the trees became swallowed up by fog as snow softly swirled again. My friends remained lost in the misty canopy below. Their voices faded into muffled shouts as the creaking moan of the Grand Tree filled the air with its pain. A death cry shook the air as the great elder crashed down. The whole world shook with its fall.

The Black Heart Tree swayed with its splintered laughter. By chance, the vine trapping me slid up, providing me enough space to grip the lightning orb in my pocket. I held it tight, but exhaustion, grief, and pain sliced through me.

Throw it, Joshua, you must sacrifice me
.

But Bo Chez was already dead! Or was he? What if he
was still alive and I killed him with the blast?

One for the many.

Oak believed it. The Wild Childs believed it.

Could I sacrifice my own grandfather?

With aching fingers, I drew the lightning orb out of my pocket when the soothing voice filled me once again.

Surrender to me. Your life is so hard. Aren't you tired of fighting your destiny?

Yes, so tired of being a hero, of losing my home, my family. Tired of being made to sacrifice. My eyes drooped. The vine unwrapped from me. I grabbed a branch before I fell and held on tight, pressing my body against the evil trunk. Branches floated in, and their twig hands gently cradled me.

So easy. Jump in to my soul.

Yes, so easy. Easy was good. Easy was painless.

I will become you. Carry on your legacy. These are my people. Not yours. Mine to rule. You don't belong here.

I never wanted to be a hero.

My mind uncurled. Bo Chez, Leandro, Charlie, Apollo, Ash, Oak. They all floated away.

Yes, let those simple creatures go. Now for your magic
.
Give it to me, Oracle. You were only the vessel, never the intended. I've been patient enough for thousands of years. My time is now!

Loneliness stabbed me again like when my friends abandoned me, but this flared a different kind of lonely. This loneliness came from being the one person to save your friends—and a whole world. Time to embrace it.

The Black Heart Tree's neck widened, its great mouth craving me. The branches pushed me closer to its gaping jaws.

I possessed what it wanted.

Be. Who. You. Are.
The words of the dying Agri
echoed in my head.

I wanted a chance to discover the real me. Invisible fingers pulled at my spirit, seeking to suck me away.

The Black Heart Tree's mouth breathed in and out.

Come.

It called to me, inhaling deeply.

Leandro's journal poked out from the top of my other pocket, reminding me I had a brother out there. I could find my father. Leandro and his people—my people—believed the Oracle would save them one day.

The Oracle. Me.

I could not crush the dreams of a whole world.

I raised my orb. The jaws of the Black Heart Tree stretched wider. Below it spun a black funnel pumping in and out with a pounding heartbeat.

No!
Vines slithered in, twisting around my wrist.
Nasty Reeker! You killed my brother. It's time to pay for what you've done! Give me what I deserve.

“Not me,” I whispered. My hand shook, growing numb as the vine tightened.

The tree hissed.
Your body is mine! Your powers are mine!

I sucked in a big breath, and with my final strength, ripped the vine off my wrist and threw the orb into the heart of Hekate.

“For Bo Chez!”

A great rumble swelled in the belly of the Black Heart Tree. The branches that held me in safety let go. I seized the fire belt before I fell. My head cleared, freed from the trap of Hekate's spirit. The giant tree shook. I slid down the belt, banging into the tree as I went. Shards of bark ripped into my hands and arms. I cried out but held on.

The sky went white with fire. A great flaming ball erupted from the top of the Black Heart Tree. Fire burst
along the wooden canopy hanging over me. Wood fingers clawed at the air in a final protest and crumbled into ash. The fire raced down the tree toward me and I scrambled to climb down the fire belt that grew with magic.