by Kwame Mbalia
That must have been why Old Man Rawlins kept winning.
Soon there was no time for thinking. John Henry and I fought side by side (well, not exactly…I kept some space between us, because the hammer scared me). The horde of iron monsters kept coming. I fought the longest boxing round of my life. Swing after swing, punch after punch. When one enemy was defeated, two more stepped up. Eventually, my arms started to get tired and the grin slipped off my face.
The movies, the comics, the stories—none of them mentioned this.
“Johnny Boy, slight problem down here.”
Brer’s giant face appeared on the hillside again, and the vibrations of his booming voice sent some of the iron monsters tumbling.
John Henry gritted his teeth and kicked a fetterling off his boot, then smashed it with the handle of his hammer. “What is it, Brer? We’re a mite busy here.”
Brer’s face raised its eyebrows in surprise. “That so? Never would’ve guessed. I put on a pot for tea, but I guess you won’t be attending?”
I ducked a leaping fetterling and sent an uppercut into its middle as I rose. The monster exploded and Brer whistled.
“Looks like the coward grew a spine! Well done, champ.”
Before I could snap a reply, John Henry spoke up. “Brer!”
“Okay, okay. Just wondered if you’d seen the large iron monster heading your way. Looks like the ones you’re pummeling now, only ten times bigger? Maybe gives the orders?”
Hairs rose on the back of my neck.
John Henry swept away seven or eight fetterlings, giving us a second to breathe, and glared up at Brer’s face. “No. Why?”
Brer frowned. “Because a little bunny told me it’s about to rip its way inside.”
THE FAR WALL OF THE glade exploded in a shower of broken branches and fetterlings. More butterflies took to the air as the largest fetterling I could’ve ever imagined tried to squeeze through a gap like a T. rex. Even though a whole field, a hill, a stream, thirty-odd yards, and a group of trees separated us, the boss fetterling (Bossling? Yeah, that sounds right.) looked huge. It surveyed the glade, then let out a high-pitched roar that made my teeth hurt.
Smaller fetterlings poured in through the breach around it, leaping over the broken branches and thundering across the field.
“John! Tristan!”
Miss Sarah and Miss Rose soared over the glade, their brilliant black wings spread wide.
“Rose, Sarah!” John Henry sounded relieved. “We need to clear the hill!”
Without a moment to lose, the ladies tucked their wings close and knifed toward the ground. At the last second they unfurled them and unleashed powerful flaps. Slicing wind gusted toward the intruders, lifting them up and sending them tumbling backward until they slammed against the rear wall and disintegrated.
But more fetterlings clawed at the hole that trapped the bossling, trying to help it get through. Meanwhile, their leader slammed from side to side, squeezing even farther into the Thicket. Just when it seemed it would pop free, thorny vines shot out of the ground and entangled it further.
“Take that, you blundering cretin!” someone shouted from behind me.
Brer leaped out of the tunnel entrance and landed next to me, finally appearing in the flesh and not as some magical face in the dirt. His fur was matted and twitching, as if his muscles were spasming, and the giant rabbit was gritting his teeth with effort. I heard a strange song in my head, like something was out of harmony, or an instrument was out of tune, and he glared at me as more vines shot out to wrangle the iron monsters.
“Still here? Ayanna and the others are leaving for the Golden Crescent and the Story Box. They need you! Have you two been chitchatting the whole time?”
I punched a fetterling before I turned to Brer, but John Henry interrupted. “He’s right, Tristan! Their mission is fixin’ to fail if you ain’t with them. Us gods are tied up here.”
Literally.
Two fetterlings were trying to clamp themselves around his barrel-size wrists. John Henry flung them into the air, then batted them into a million pieces.
“Go!” Brer shouted to me, just as the bossling forced its way in.
“Please, Tristan,” Miss Rose called as Miss Sarah hurtled from the sky, a fetterling in each hand, and dashed them to pieces on the ground. “Do this for us!”
Despite the chaos from the raging battle, now that the other gods of MidPass were here, it seemed like they could hold their own. Brer, struggling with the effort, continued to tangle the fetterlings in vines and thorns. John Henry smashed his hammer down left and right, and Miss Sarah and Miss Rose launched devastating strikes over and over from high above.
They didn’t need my help.
But the others did.
I threw my hands up in frustration. “Okay!” A fetterling slipped past Brer, and I nailed it with an uppercut that blew its head off. “Fine!”
“About time,” Brer snarled. His left ear pointed at the door. “Now get! They’re in the kitchens, stocking up, but you need to hurry. Follow the tunnel to the right, always to the right, and you’ll find them!”
The bossling finally emerged. It thundered across the field, stomped through the stream, and John Henry raced toward it, hammer in hand. The winged goddesses spiraled above, preparing for another sweeping attack, and Brer kicked high into the air, trying to close off the hole the monster had made in the Thicket’s wall.
“Go!”
I turned and ran.
I sprinted through the Thicket tunnel, turning right whenever I could, and the floor began to slope upward. Gradually the passageway began to widen, until it ended in a circular room with a large hole in the ceiling. Ayanna and Chestnutt stood hunched over a familiar raft, which they’d loaded with bundles of supplies. They both looked up in surprise when I skidded to a stop next to them. Chestnutt grinned, but when she looked at Ayanna and saw the anger simmering on her face, the rabbit’s smile quickly faded.
“Thought you didn’t want to help,” Ayanna finally said.
I clenched my fists, then forced them to relax. I deserved that. Rather than arguing, I picked up the last three bundles of supplies and tucked them on the raft, securing them with straps. Once that was done, I made to get on, but Ayanna stepped in my way.
“Oh no, you don’t. You don’t get to insert yourself after saying no.”
Frustration built up in my chest. “The gods told me I had to!”
“And that’s the only reason you’re here?”
“Yes! No. Wait.” I gripped my skull. If I’d had longer hair, I would’ve pulled it out. “I have to do this, I think.”
“You think?” Ayanna folded her arms and Chestnutt hopped anxiously from foot to foot. “Whatever. Come on, Chestnutt. Let’s go.”
“Hold on.” I reached out but didn’t grab her arm. The look in her eyes when she turned around told me that had been a smart decision.
“What?”
“I…It’s true I don’t want to go.”
“Well, that’s—”
“No, wait. I don’t want to go because I’m afraid.”
There, I said it. Out loud so everyone could hear it, including me. I’d needed to admit that to myself.
“What, and we aren’t?” Ayanna asked. She stepped forward, getting in my face, and pointed back up the tunnel. “You don’t think I’m afraid of those things?”
“Not just of them. Of failing. Of letting another person down.”
Speaking the words felt like ripping a bandage off—or getting my chest waxed. (I assume. Saw a video of that online once. Looked really painful.)
Ayanna’s eyes softened. “Why? ’Cause of Fox? Tristan, that wasn’t your fault. He made that choice. He sacrificed himself for us to escape. You didn’t do anything.”
You didn’t do anything.
She thought I meant Brer Fox, but in my mind it was Eddie’s hand I saw reaching out to me. I didn’t correct her, though—her words applied just the same.
You d
idn’t do anything.
I took a deep breath. “I…I’m trying to believe it wasn’t my fault. So…I think I need to do this. I want to help, if you’ll have me.”
She studied me, then looked at Chestnutt, who twitched an ear. Finally, Ayanna turned back and nodded. “Come on. I guess you might be useful. Besides, I’m pretty sure Miss Sarah and Miss Rose would have my hide if I refused you.”
I forced a smile and stepped onto the raft. Chestnutt hopped on beside me. Ayanna murmured a phrase, and the raft began to hum. Symbols flared briefly in the wood, and then we rose into the air. The raft climbed higher and higher, aiming for the circular hole in the ceiling, until we shot out of the darkness of the Thicket and into the red-orange glow of the afternoon sun.
MidPass stretched out below us. It felt weird leaving the others behind, but they were fighting so we could attempt this heist. Their battle was distracting the iron monsters.
The Drowned Forest lurked like a silent cemetery, and when we rotated the raft to face the curtains of mist and flame beyond, my heart skipped a beat.
The Burning Sea.
“Hold on tight,” Ayanna said, and we shot forward, on our way to steal from a god.
WE SOARED OVER THE DROWNED Forest. From here, the gaping wound in the sky looked like a part of the sunset. The farther we got from the Thicket, the more normal everything seemed.
But I knew better.
Soon the raft ascended into a thick cloud that smelled like wet coals.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Chestnutt huddled next to me but didn’t answer. Flying as high as we were, where Ayanna said we wouldn’t attract unwanted attention, the air was cold. Chestnutt shivered, and I put her in the front pouch of my hoodie. It was the least I could do.
Ayanna glanced at me, then turned back to guiding the raft. Her staff pulsed with a soft amber light. “We’re headed north, to the tip of MidPass. Then we’ll cut across the Burning Sea and aim for the top of the Golden Crescent.”
“That seems longer than the route John Henry described.”
“Yeah, well, John Henry ain’t here.” She still sounded peeved. I let the conversation die.
Chestnutt poked her nose out of the pouch. “The longer we’re in the clouds, the better,” she said. Her ears emerged and she peeked up at me. “Brand flies move slower in damp air.”
“Brand flies?” I asked. Hadn’t Miss Rose said something about those?
“That way, if a scout fly spots us,” Chestnutt went on, “we should be able to catch it before it alerts the others.”
“Scout fly?”
“Yup, yup.” She hopped out of the hoodie and dove into a supply pack. The bunny emerged with a thick pencil in her mouth, and she began to sketch a picture on the floor of the raft.
“Hey!” Ayanna complained.
“Shorry,” Chestnutt said around the pencil in her mouth. “I’ll cleanishup.”
She hopped around as she drew, and I leaned forward to take a look.
“You’re pretty good!”
“Yup, yup! Ish the only reashon Mish Sharah allowed me to come.”
“Little bunny knows everything about everything,” Ayanna said with a roll of her eyes, but she smiled at Chestnutt to take the sting out of her words. “The weak points of every iron monster, schematics of every palace in every region of Alke—you name it, she can lay it out for you, no trouble at all.”
I whistled. “That’s impressive.”
Chestnutt dropped the pencil and stepped on it to keep it from rolling away. “Thanks!” She beamed. Then she tapped the diagram at my feet with her paw. Two diagrams, actually. “Take a look.”
“What am I looking at?”
“Brand flies.”
“Please tell me the pictures are this big so we can see the details.”
“Afraid not. These are almost their actual size—I might have drawn them a bit small. I can redraw them to make it more accurate if—”
“No, that’s not necessary!” I yelped. “Those are some big insects.”
“Iron monsters,” Ayanna corrected me. “Not just insects.”
“The one on the right, that’s the soldier fly,” Chestnutt went on. “Double-winged, it can hover or accelerate to speeds faster than a bird of prey. Two of its six legs are welded into a stinger that injects a poison. If one of those touches you, it will burn and keeps burning until you pass out.”
“Then the fetterlings come collect you,” Ayanna said, her voice grim. “The Ma—the brain behind the iron monsters has been sending wave after wave after us. It plays for keeps.”
“A one-two punch,” I muttered.
Chestnutt nodded and continued. “It took us a while to figure out what was happening at first. We’d be out gathering supplies, then someone would scream, and we’d never see them again.”
The grim finality of it all, spoken so simply, boggled my mind. This is what Uncle C was stirring up? Whipping the Maafa into a frenzy, like rabies in wild animals. The more I thought about it, the more appropriate the analogy seemed. Uncle C was a disease, the iron monsters were the symptoms, and MidPass—no, all of Alke—was suffering.
Ayanna spoke up. “I found a victim once.”
“And?” I asked, but she fell silent.
Chestnutt hopped closer and whispered to me, “She’s never talked about it, but she volunteered to be a pilot soon after that.”
I watched Ayanna as she guided the raft, her eyes constantly scanning the horizon for something. Survivors? Iron monsters? I didn’t know which, and I wasn’t sure how she could find anything in the thick mist.
My foot accidentally smudged the diagram of the scout fly and I shuddered.
“You really don’t like them, do you?” Chestnutt stared at me, then examined the drawing.
“I’m…not a big fan of insects.”
“You’re afraid of bugs?” Ayanna asked. She turned her head, and I couldn’t tell if she was smirking or not.
“No, I said I’m not a fan,” I said. My voice sounded defensive, and I cleared my throat.
“Mm-hmm.”
Chestnutt grabbed the pencil in her mouth again and began sketching more flies. “Well, I’m glad you’re not afraid—though ish okay if you are—becaush these bugsh travel in shwarms of hundreds.”
“Hundreds?” I asked, feeling faint.
“Yup, yup.”
“I once saw a swarm of a thousand,” Ayanna said.
This time I was sure I saw a little smirk on her face.
“Ish okay to be afraid,” Chestnutt whispered to me.
“I’m not afraid, okay? Just…concerned.”
“That’sh all right. I don’t like heightsh.”
Ayanna winced. “Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry, Chestnutt, but I needed to go higher so we wouldn’t—”
“Ish okay.” Chestnutt continued to draw. “I can’t see the ground in thish cloud, so that actually helps. And if I keep focushing on something else, that helps, too.”
“That’s why you’re drawing,” I said, feeling sorry for the little rabbit.
“Yup, yup.”
“If it makes you feel better,” I whispered, “I’m not that fond of heights, either.”
The bunny looked up and twitched her nose hopefully. “You aren’t?”
“Nope. Gives me the willies. And the Freddies.”
Chestnutt grinned at me, and I watched her sketch a picture of a fox and a tiny rabbit walking side by side. After a while she smudged it out and started on something else. Ayanna stared straight ahead, and I cocked my head and studied her.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow without turning to look at me. “Me? Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
“Okay. You’re not afraid of anything. Well, what are you not a fan of?”
She rolled her eyes. “Pointless conversations.”
“And…”
“And loudmouths who want a
ttention all the time.”
I ignored that. She just wanted to get under my skin so I’d leave her alone, but instead I pressed her some more. “Come on. Chestnutt and I shared our fears. And this is a team, right? Besides, if you don’t answer, I’ll sing that song Gum Baby likes to hum.”
Ayanna stiffened.
I cleared my throat and hummed a few bars. Ayanna flinched and shot me a death glare. Chestnutt waited for her to answer, too, and finally the pilot threw one hand up in the air.
“All right, fine!” Ayanna shook her head at both of us and then turned to keep an eye on our flight. “Surprises. I don’t like surprises.”
“Like preshents?” Chestnutt asked.
“No, like…I don’t know. Like people jumping out at me.”
“Ambushes,” I said quietly. “You don’t like being ambushed.”
She stayed silent, and I started to ask another question, when one of the supply bags began to rustle, scaring me half to death. Ayanna jerked back and the raft wobbled, and my stomach flipped.
“Fetterling!” I shouted, ready to kick the whole bag overboard.
The bag shifted, then lifted, and a face emerged.
“FETTERLING?” THE VOICE THAT CAME from the bag was muffled, but there was no mistaking that high-pitched voice. “Where? Gum Baby need to work off some energy anyway.”
“Gum Baby!” Ayanna shouted. “What are you doing here?”
A lumpy leather-wrapped bundle stood up in the middle of the supplies. Two short, stubby legs poked out from the bottom, and the weird creature stomped indignantly out to the middle of the raft.
“What’s Gum Baby doing here? What’s Gum Baby doing here? Being insulted. How dare you leave on a mission without Gum Baby! That’s like leaving sand out of a sandwich. Or toes out of tomatoes. Or—”
“Okay,” Ayanna interrupted. “First of all, none of that makes any sense.”
“You put sand in sandwiches?” Chestnutt whispered, and I shook my head.
“Second of all,” Ayanna continued, “we’re over here.”
Gum Baby was standing in front of a sack of carrots Chestnutt had brought along. The leather bundle stuck to the doll’s face swiveled left and right. Then, with a grunt and some pulling and a whole lotta sap, off it popped. Her curly hair stood straight up, and she wore miniature overalls that were rumpled. They’d been dyed black, and she had two black feathers glued to her back. It almost looked like…
