“We have to hope Milo’s on the side of the heroes,” Arthur said. “After all, he’s the one we’re searching for.”
“Is that all we’re doing now?” Cecily asked. “I know we’ve got to get home but Tomoe Gozen said it was up to us to continue her mission. She sacrificed herself so we could escape; we can’t let it have been for nothing, can we?”
Thinking of the legendary warrior, Arthur’s heart sank. He wondered what had become of her after they’d gone. With any luck, she’d retreated into the forest on her horse and was still evading capture. Her request had been so unexpected, he still hadn’t had time to process it. “What’s happening to the heroes is awful but how are the three of us supposed to stop Tiburon and help them escape? If we slip up, Tiburon has the power to go back in time and kill our loved ones. Plus, he’s got unlimited resources and an army of robots on his side. All we’ve got is Cloud, a couple of Wonderskills and the imminent threat that we’ll soon turn into protoplasm.”
“That’s the problem,” Cecily said, her voice hollow. “We’ve already got an important mission of our own. Perhaps if Tomoe had known, she wouldn’t have asked?”
Ren’s jaw tightened. “But she did ask. I know the odds are stacked against us, but we’re possibly the only wanderers who know the truth. We can’t just ignore that and abandon the heroes. Plus, Tomoe Gozen believed in us. That’s got to count for something.”
They trudged on in silence for a few minutes, mulling it over. Arthur stared at his footprints disappearing into the sand and imagined what would happen if they made it home without helping the heroes. He’d probably feel guilty for the rest of his life. “Ren’s right,” he said eventually. “We’ve got to find a way for us to get home and save the heroes. Milo Hertz could help do both. Our priority should still be to find him.”
Ren looked down at Cloud. “In that case, we better figure out why Milo’s Fuzzball brought us to this realm.”
Travelling across a desert, it turned out, was very sticky work. After traipsing over his third dune, Arthur was perspiring so much the inner soles of his trainers started to squelch. Sand got everywhere – inside his socks and jeans, down his T-shirt and under his fingernails. Fortunately, he’d filled his Pipsqueaks bottle with water from the vending machine the previous evening, although he still had to ration it. It took over two hours before they were close enough to see their destination in more detail, at which point it became obvious that it was a lot bigger than Arthur had first thought.
The various rooftops – some made of corrugated steel, others decorated with colourful tiles – continued far into the distance and between the golden minarets of mosques there were flashing signs for hotels and restaurants.
Eventually, as the light was dimming, the dunes levelled out and the sand sprouted with thorny evergreen bushes and pale brown grass. Sweaty and exhausted, they spotted a long caravan of camels plodding towards what seemed to be the entrance to the city – a wide stone archway between two round towers. Fine-clothed T-class mimics wearing turbans were riding on top.
“Do you think they can see us?” Arthur hissed. He bent his knees, ready to run. “Maybe we should find a place to hide?”
“Behind what, genius?” Ren replied. “We’re in a desert. There’s nothing but sand.”
Arthur was about to suggest that they could always make like meerkats and burrow when Cloud yapped and scampered off towards the camels.
“I knew I should have kept him on his lead,” Cecily whispered, stomping her foot. “Come on, we have to follow him – he’s got the time-key!”
Hoods up and heads down, they reluctantly slipped alongside the caravan. Cecily hastily grabbed Cloud, reattached his lead to his collar and tucked him under her cloak.
“Well, they’re not jumping off those camels to attack us,” Ren observed. “I wonder why.”
Arthur peered up at the closest T-class, whose droopy grey cheeks were like melted plasticine. He cast his cold blue eyes over Arthur, but didn’t pay him any attention. “Maybe Valeria hasn’t told Tiburon about us yet?” Arthur suggested, keeping his voice low. “The T-classes get their orders directly from him. We need to stay alert.”
The camels snorted as they lumbered on. Hanging from their saddles were baskets of dates, jugs of sloshing liquid and leather coffers filled with grains.
As the four of them passed through the archway, they were greeted by the chaos of a noisy marketplace bustling with T-class mimics, wanderers and animals. Stalls sold everything from spiced cooked meats and ring-shaped bread dotted with dark fruit, to tablecloths and teapots, and stood between enclosures of grunting cattle and honking ostriches. Arthur briefly wondered if the vendors traded in DIRT, and if you could pay for goods with your Wondercloak. The air stank of camel dung and heavy incense, both of which made his nose tingle.
Up on his tiptoes, he spotted a quiet side road in the shade branching off from the main thoroughfare and guided Cloud, Ren and Cecily over. As they squeezed between tightly packed groups of wanderers, there seemed to be only one topic of conversation on everyone’s lips:
“The hero is a writer; everyone says so.”
“They say he’s a cartographer.”
“Nonsense. He flew airships; he was an aeronaut.”
“His ship was definitely named Lulu.”
“It was called Lola.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, its nickname was Leeloo.”
By the time Arthur had broken through the crowd and reached the quiet side street, he’d heard people say that the hero was an anthropologist, an academic, a poet, a holy man, a historian and an astronomer. The name of his mysterious ship had tens of variations, all beginning with the letter L. Arthur didn’t have the foggiest who it could be.
The four of them paused between a souvenir shop offering Hxperion-branded T-shirts and biographies of Wonderscape heroes and a kiosk selling deep-fried balls of swirling pink gas, called timefritters. Judging from the holographic poster hovering above the awning, the balls seemed to explode in your mouth like nuclear-grade popping candy. Arthur wouldn’t have been surprised if they caused choking, knowing how dangerous everything in the Wonderscape was.
Cloud whimpered and tugged on his lead, aiming his nose towards the end of the road. “All right, all right,” Cecily said, gently pulling back. “We get the message. You want to go that way.”
“Look there,” Ren said, pointing over the rooftops in the same direction.
A few roads away, above a wide thatched roof, a message was written in red vapour.
WONDERSCPE
REALM 105: LAND OF THE EXPLORER
Loot: 250 DIRT, Wonderskill and realm-key
Travel with wonder,
Although the other messages they’d seen had disappeared, this one seemed to be permanent. Which means it’s probably been placed somewhere important, Arthur thought.
The air buzzed as another riddle scroll dropped out of thin air and landed at Ren’s feet. She unfurled it for them all to see. Unlike the previous two, it wasn’t handwritten, but typed in a neat font:
Yonder lies a world to explore,
Accept my challenge and take the tour.
Search the ocean, city and sand
To seek what is hidden in this land.
Over the rooftops I travel free;
Your task is simple: find me.
“No wonder everyone’s gossiping about the hero,” Cecily remarked. “The realm-challenge is like a giant game of hide-and-seek – wanderers have to find him.”
Ren grumbled. “We’re already on a man-hunt. We don’t need another one.”
Cloud held his chin high and wagged his tail as he trotted forwards, leading them through the city. Arthur wondered if the reason the little dog had brought them here was related to this mysterious hero, or if there was something else important about this realm.
Trailing behind, they passed a wagon filled with honey jars that appeared to be moving of its own accord, and a booth selling spices in floating br
ass bowls. They dodged a troop of strange armoured peacocks and turned into a vast clearing with the thatched building in the centre. Despite the structure being big enough to house an entire department store, it had no doors or windows. Instead, the curved walls were plastered with postcards. In the middle of them all was a handwritten notice using red ink on parchment that read:
“IGC,” Arthur mumbled. “What could that stand for?”
Cecily rubbed the corner of a postcard between her thumb and forefinger. “I think it’s in-game communications – see, it’s printed here. And they’re not made of paper either.”
She was right. Even though the postcard had the appearance of paper, Arthur noticed its surface flickering with light.
He bent back a couple more of them to examine both sides. They all had the same design: the front featured a photo of the wanderer or wanderers sending the postcard, and on the reverse was the scribbled name of a recipient and a message. Where a postage stamp would be placed on a twenty-first-century postcard, there was a printed date and time.
Cecily smirked at a photo of four particularly shiny-faced wanderers. “Four hundred years have passed and they still don’t have an anti-sweat filter,” she mused.
Scanning the images, the three of them found it difficult not to smile. The wanderers all had their arms round each other, laughing with glowing faces or pulling silly poses with their Wondercloaks. The writing on the reverse made for an interesting read:
“Exploring this realm sounds lethal,” Arthur commented. “No wonder it’s a challenge to find the hero.” For a moment, he imagined what it would feel like to experience the Wonderscape as a regular wanderer, without the threat of their impending slime-doom, or the knowledge of Tiburon’s dastardly tricks. In any other circumstance, he thought he might enjoy playing the game. AB, he figured, had to be the initials of the hero and after studying more of the wall, it was easy to uncover his identity.
“Amaros Ba,” he read on the back of one postcard. The wanderer who’d sent it – a teenage girl with curly brown hair and a wide-brimmed hat – had written what sounded like an entry copied from an encyclopaedia:
Born on the planet Tyr in 2335, Amaros Ba was a prolific interstellar explorer who documented his adventures across the Horsetail Galaxy in a manuscript called the Tyrian Guide to Travel. He could speak over a hundred different languages, and was famed for his incredible navigation skills. With one glance at the stars, it was claimed Amaros could accurately pinpoint his location in the universe. His many passions included poetry, aeronautics, cartography and astronomy.
“2335!” Cecily read over Arthur’s shoulder. She counted on her fingers. “We’ll be over three hundred years old before this guy’s even born! Providing we actually get home, of course.”
Arthur raised his eyebrows. This realm belonged to a hero from their future – a man from another planet, no less. No wonder they hadn’t been able to decipher his identity. For a split second his skin tingled and he had the feeling of being very small and very insignificant. Then Ren burped.
“Sorry,” she said, covering her mouth. “You two might want to see this. I think Cloud’s found something.”
The little dog was sitting by a section of the curved wall. “Grrf!” he barked, pawing at the messages that covered it.
Arthur ventured closer to investigate and discovered a rusty iron handle peeking through the postcards. “I think you’re right,” he told Ren, pulling on it. “It’s some kind of door but it feels stuck. Can you give me a hand?”
With Ren’s help, he tugged open a sliding panel, revealing a tall concrete tunnel behind. As Cloud bolted inside, Arthur followed him in. In the dim light, he could see a stone door at the opposite end.
And there was a purple hexagon stencilled on it.
Behind him, Cecily gasped. “That’s Milo Hertz’s symbol! Is it locked?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur replied. “There’s no handle on this one.”
The clomp, clomp, clomp of Ren’s combat boots echoed around. “Let me take a look.”
But then Cloud pressed his nose against the bottom of the door and a holographic screen shimmered across the stone. Written in the centre was the phrase PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD, followed by twelve spaces. A Wonderway-style keypad materialized beside it.
Arthur gazed down at his ankles. “I don’t suppose you know the password as well, do you?” The little dog stared up at him blankly.
Cecily slumped against the tunnel wall. “It might be something simple and easy to remember, perhaps? What about Wonderscape or Hxperion?”
Ren shook her head. “Neither of those has twelve letters.”
“What about a word that meant something important to Milo?” Arthur suggested, thinking of the password for his school email account: MaryGillespie2504. It was his mum’s name and birthday.
“Yeah, but Wonderway and Cloud are still too short,” Cecily pointed out.
Thinking of Cloud, something snagged in Arthur’s memory. “This might be unrelated, but I’m pretty sure I counted twelve animals on Cloud’s collar yesterday.”
With a frown, Cecily beckoned the dog over and lifted him into her lap. “Dog, pig, tiger, rat,” she read, twiddling the right-hand bead on his collar. “Rabbit, ox, dragon, snake, horse, monkey, rooster and sheep. How many is that?”
“Twelve,” Arthur answered. “I was right. Maybe each animal represents a character in the password, like some sort of code? We’ve just got to work it out.” His legs ached as he dropped to his knees and tore out a wad of dry-ish pages from one of the exercise books in his rucksack. He handed Ren and Cecily a few sheets each, along with a pen.
Cecily clicked the top of hers and started scribbling feverishly. “OK, so the password could be the first letter of each animal name?”
Ren inputted it into the keypad but nothing happened. Arthur stared at the list of animals he’d written down, thinking. An idea nagged at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite bring it into focus.
“Maybe it’s to do with the number of legs the animals have?” Cecily theorized. “Rats have four, snakes have zero, roosters have two…” She jotted down a string of twelve numbers and held them up. “Anything?”
This time, Ren tapped the combination in and a message appeared: ONE ATTEMPT REMAINING. She groaned. “We’d better make our next guess count. The dragon is the only animal on the list that doesn’t exist in reality. Maybe that’s a clue?”
Arthur thought about legendary dragons. He knew of St George and the dragon, and the multi-headed Greek Hydra. He remembered his dad reading him tales of dragons in Chinese mythology and Norse stories too.
Hang on, Chinese mythology.
In a flash of inspiration, he looked back at the list. “That’s it!” he blurted. “These animals are all from the Chinese zodiac. Did you ever hear the legend of The Great Race?”
Cecily and Ren shook their heads. Cloud settled himself into a comfy position with his tail curled around his bottom and peered up expectantly, as if he was hoping Arthur would tell the story.
“I don’t remember all the details,” Arthur admitted. “My dad used to read it to me when I was little, but the ruler of all the gods in Chinese mythology is this guy called the Jade Emperor. One day, he holds a competition to see which animal in the kingdom should become his personal guard. Twelve animals take part – the ones on Cloud’s collar. In order to reach the Jade Emperor, the animals must race across a river. Everyone thinks the ox will win because he is a strong swimmer, but the sneaky rat jumps on his back and lands on the other side first, winning the whole competition. The order in which the animals crossed the river decided the position they would appear in the zodiac.”
Cecily chewed on the end of her pen. “So each animal might represent a different number – the position in which they finished the race. Do you remember their order?”
Arthur cringed. He hadn’t heard the story for years. “After the rat and the ox came the tiger followed by the rabbit – they w
ere both fast, so they beat the others. Then I think it was the dragon and the snake, and I’m pretty certain the pig was last, but between them I’m not sure.”
“Well, I was born in the year of the rooster,” Cecily said. “I know because my aunt has this Chinese calendar magnet stuck to her fridge. And my cousin who’s only three months younger than me is the year of the dog, so those must come one after another.”
“That leaves the monkey, the horse and the sheep,” Ren figured. She scrunched her nose. “Surely horses swim faster than sheep?”
“I don’t know, sheep can be pretty fast when they want to be,” Cecily commented.
If it weren’t for their impending slime-doom, Arthur might have laughed. As it was, he took their debate on the swimming prowess of farmyard animals very seriously. Eventually, they hashed out what they thought was the most likely order the animals had crossed the river, so that each creature represented a number between one and twelve. Then Cecily scrutinized Cloud’s collar again. “The animals here are in a different order. Cloud normally takes the form of a dog, so perhaps we should assume that’s the first? If so, the second is pig, then tiger, rat…”
Arthur scribbled down the corresponding numbers in a sequence of twelve and Ren filled them in on the screen. Although some of the numbers had double digits, they fitted into the twelve spaces perfectly. Ren took a deep breath before entering the final number. “All right, fingers crossed.”
The screen flashed. For a heart-stopping second, Arthur thought they’d entered the incorrect password and were about to set off some kind of alarm. But then two words appeared in the centre:
PASSWORD ACCEPTED
15
The door slid open with a low hiss and closed behind them. On the other side, a set of winding steps descended into darkness. Arthur took out his mobile phone and turned on the torch. One good thing about not using it for two days was that it still had some battery life.
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