I took a breath and leaned against Rosie, feeling her heart thudding beneath her thick chest. Her soft brown eyes looked up at me, filled with a message of some kind.
“What is it, girl?”
In answer, she reared on her hind legs, growled angrily, and bolted.
“Rosie!” I ran out of the library after her, leaving the others behind.
I followed the hot tug in my gut that led me deep into the jungle, down a winding path. Above me, I heard scuttling sounds followed by howls of laughter. I stopped and looked up.
Three monkeys were perched on a branch, their golden eyes glaring down at me. The center one smiled, smacking its lips.
“Where did the dog go?”
The monkeys stood on their hind legs, gnashing their teeth angrily. Then, as if it felt bad for me, one of the critters pointed to the right. I followed its hairy little finger to a dead end. There was no path, only a thick wall of branches and vines.
Rosie’s roar echoed from the other side. With Fuego, I began slashing through the foliage. Sharp branches cut my face and arms. I finally made my way through to a small clearing where Rosie was pacing while blowing little bursts of smoke from her nose. When she saw me, her eyes blazed and she raced ahead.
Where are you taking me? I wondered as I trailed her as closely as I could.
After a few more minutes, we came to what could only be described as an orange glass house with a thatched roof. It was two levels, stacked one on top of the other with sharp angles that jutted out.
The surrounding trees and vines arched protectively over the place, providing shade from the sun.
“Why did you bring me to a Lego house in the middle of the jungle?” I asked.
Rosie nudged my back with her head, urging me toward the entrance. “What is your deal? You’re the one who led us here,” I argued. “And you want me to go first?”
She gave a quick nod.
“Fine,” I muttered. “Big chicken.”
There was no door to knock on—just an open entrance. “Hello?” I said.
Rosie whined as I stepped inside. The room was hot with thick, humid air that burned my nose and pressed in on me from all sides. There were rows and rows of tables where leafy green plants sprouted from pots. Pink-and-yellow-and-purple-flowering vines spilled over their containers’ edges, dropping to the dirt floor.
“Do not step on the vines!” came a man’s voice.
My eyes darted around and I saw the top of a bald head peek out from behind some plants. It headed my way.
I stepped back, looking over my shoulder for the exit, just in case. The entrance I’d come in was gone—as in no más!—replaced by another orange glass wall.
A man about the size of yesterday’s air spirit rounded the table and came into full view. He had a dirty handkerchief in one hand and a trowel in the other. His eyes were the deepest brown I’d ever seen, and his skin was the color of wet sand. Wiping his tool on pants that for sure looked like they were made out of dried grass, he asked, “Who are you? What do you want? Didn’t you see the No Trespassing signs?”
“Uh—no,” I said, side-glaring at Rosie. No chicken necks for her for a year!
The little dude harrumphed. “Did Aapo send you?”
“Aapo?”
“Don’t act all innocent,” he said. “You look like the kind of spy my sister might hire—tall, young, and awkward. Well, guess what? Tell her she can’t have it.” He shook his head and said, more to himself than to me, “No, that won’t do. I need to send a powerful message to her, to get through her thick skull.” He flicked his eyes to mine. “I could take one of your fingers, send it to her in a box. She hates extremities.”
My stomach bottomed out.
He wiggled his thinning brows like dismemberment was the best idea he’d had all day. “So, what’ll it be? Thumb, or pointer?”
“I’m not a spy!” My heart began to punch its way out of my chest. “I’m sorry, sir, but my dog…she led me here.”
Rosie sniffed the air and sat on her haunches all casual like, as if the guy hadn’t just threatened to cut off one of my fingers. Some protector she was.
The guy’s gaze fell on Rosie like he was noticing her for the first time.
“That’s no dog,” the guy said, rubbing his head while he stuck out his neck to get a better look. “Which means you can’t be working for Aapo, because no hellhound would go near her.” His shoulders seemed to relax. “Does your beast like snake heads? I have a tub of them in the back corner.”
Of course you do.
My insides clenched, but Rosie’s ears perked up and her mouth started to drool. She took off in the direction he’d pointed. She really needed a leash!
I just stood there, drumming Fuego on the ground. Was I supposed to make small talk? Smell the flowers? Beg to keep my fingers?
The guy sneezed, then wiped his reddish nose with the handkerchief. “Imagine an earth spirit having allergies! The universe has the worst sense of humor.”
Earth spirit? Was this who the Red Queen had wanted me to find? It had to be! But then I remembered what the air spirit had said yesterday: Can’t trust earth or mountain spirits. Maybe I could get to know him a little before I decided whom to trust. “I’m Zane. And you are?”
“I already told you, I’m an earth spirit.”
Okay, next question. “So, you grow all this?”
“What do you mean this?” The guy flung his trowel away like he wanted to fight me or something. “I am sure you mean do I grow magical, amazing, out of the ordinary, mind-blowing creations like never seen before?”
He narrowed his eyes and drew closer. Then, with a sniff, he threw some pea-green dust into my face.
The foul-smelling stuff flew up my nose, sending me into a coughing and wheezing fit that lasted about ten seconds until I finally inhaled a clean breath.
Ah, oxygen. So underrated.
I gripped Fuego, ready to take on this earth spirit, but as soon as I exhaled, I started to giggle. Before I could stop myself, more giggles erupted, and pretty soon I had dropped my cane and was rolling on the floor laughing at absolutely nothing.
The earth spirit stood over me, rubbing his chin and frowning. “That’s not the effect I was going for. Tell me, what are you feeling?”
Feeling? I was doubled up, roaring with laughter. I couldn’t talk, could barely see, since my eyes were leaking like crazy. My sides were going to split open and all I could think of was how long it would take for my friends to find my dead body.
The laughter gripped me like an iron claw. It was torturous. Worse than tortuous.
The earth spirit said, “This is not the right effect. Not even close!”
I sucked in a breath in between uproarious hoots and managed to grunt, “Make…ba-ha-ha…it…ba-ha-ha ga-ha-ha stop.”
The guy walked out of the periphery of my vision, and when he came back, he kneeled down and shoved a small red flower into my mouth. “Eat this.”
The thing tasted like ground-up aspirin. Look, I didn’t want to eat it, but I also didn’t want to die from laughing hysterically. The second I swallowed the last morsel, the laughfest ceased. My ribs felt like they were going to snap in two if I so much as sneezed. Tears streamed down my face. I rolled onto all fours, catching my breath. “Why…did you do that?”
“It was supposed to make you speak only the truth,” he said, sounding perplexed. Then he gasped, sneezed twice, and shouted, “That means you’re not human!”
“I am human, but I’m also a godborn.” I cleared my throat, grabbed Fuego, and stood up.
The guy remained on his knees and bowed his head down to the floor. “Oh, master, godborn, blood of the gods, forgive me,” he wailed. “I had no idea. I’m old. I don’t get many visitors. I have terrible allergies. I can’t think clearly. I was mistaken. I should have known.” He looked up at me. “I’m Kip, at your service.”
I helped him to his feet. “It’s fine. Really.” I mean, it was totally not fine,
but the guy looked so desperate and freaked, I couldn’t watch him spiral downward another inch.
Rosie reappeared, licking her chops happily as if I hadn’t almost just been murdered by laughter.
“The Red Queen,” I said. “She told me about you. She told me to find or follow chapat.”
“Chapat?” Kip brightened. “Why didn’t you say so? I can show you the way.”
“You can?” This was too easy for my comfort.
Kip headed toward the back of the greenhouse.
“I almost died,” I muttered to Rosie, who gave me a wary yeah-right expression. “Fine,” I said, seeing my hellhound’s logic. “But it felt like I was going to die.”
We followed the spirit out a doorway into a lush flowering garden in the middle of the dense jungle. At the center of the garden was an undulating path in the shape of a centipede.
Chapat is a labyrinth? I thought.
“This is chapat. A place to meditate away your worries,” Kip offered as he wrung his hands.
Rosie howled and reared up on her hind legs, punching her front paws like a prizefighter.
“Meditate?” Seriously? The Fire Keeper wanted me to meditate? Was this some kind of joke?
Kip wiped his head with his handkerchief, flicked his eyes to Rosie, and said, “This is a special path. It will ease your worries, I promise.”
If he only knew that my worries started with hijacked gods and ended with a ruined world.
Gesturing toward the path, Kip said, “Like me, the centipede is a very misunderstood creature, but this will clear your mind. I promise. And then you will have good memories of my home.”
I drew closer to the labyrinth, holding my breath.
The Red Queen’s voice rang out in my head. Follow chapat.
Just as I was about to step onto the trail, Kip gripped my arm. “I nearly forgot. You must consider your deepest worry as you walk. The path will do the rest.”
“Got it.”
“And you won’t tell your godly mom or dad about the laughing fit, right?” He giggled anxiously.
So he hadn’t heard about the missing gods yet. I stepped onto the path, promising I wouldn’t rat him out.
One foot in front of the other. It took all of three seconds for my worries to bubble to the surface.
Enslumbered gods.
Step.
When you least expect it, you’ll pay with your blood for this.
Step.
Are your eyes wide open?
Step.
Those were some pretty gargantuan worries, but the earth spirit was right. With each stride, my fears began to fall farther and farther away. They were still there—I could see them, but I couldn’t really feel them, if that makes sense. Maybe Hondo was onto something with this meditation stuff.
My peripheral vision was reduced to nothing but shifting shadows. Then darkness closed in until all light had vanished. The air was still and cool.
Water drip-drip-dripped in the distance.
Peering through the blackness, I saw that I was in a tunnel with dirt walls and low, craggy ceilings. One by one, tiny torch flames flickered to life along the wall.
Was this some kind of hallucination?
“Hello?” My voice echoed across the chamber as I walked forward. Okay, maybe it squeaked, but yours would, too, if you went from light to underground dark in 0.2 seconds. Was this a trap? What if the earth spirit was some kind of baddie working for Zotz and Blood Moon?
No. No way would Rosie bring me somewhere dangerous.
One step.
“Hello?” My voice echoed across the dark.
Two steps.
Faint images began to appear on the wall. A deep tremble ran through me as I peered closer.
The picture rippled, almost as if it were being reflected off water.
Whoa! This wasn’t an image—it was a memory. A memory of the day I’d met Pacific in the ocean, when she’d given me the jade tooth. She floated on her surfboard, wearing her spotted leopard cape as I shivered nearby in total freak-out mode. It was hard to believe that had happened only nine months ago.
I froze in mid-step, watching the memory play out. Pacific’s voice was like surround sound—it echoed from every torch: I am the keeper of time, she said. No longer the controller of it. Just as I keep but cannot control fate.
The memory vanished. “Pacific?” I called out.
There was no answer. Only her words, which sounded again: I am the keeper of time.
I took another step, and a second memory appeared. I was standing in the Old World with Jazz, Brooks, and Hondo the night I was claimed and took down Ah-Puch. Something heavy surged up in my chest. I don’t know—sadness, longing, some kind of wishing that I could go back. But to what?
Jazz was smiling as he pointed up at the pyramids and said, This is how the marking of time came to be. It was invented in this place. Then someone, no one knows who, created time, and the world began. Or at least the third version of it. Man, I wish I had a camera!
Brooks gazed up. Some say the gods lost the time rope. It used to be wrapped around the earth, but it disappeared, and now they can’t time-travel anymore.
I reached out as if I could touch the memory, but it vanished just as Jazz’s words echoed: It was invented in this place.
Heart pounding, I took another two steps. The next image flared to life. It was from just a few months ago, when I’d stood on that rooftop in Xib’alb’a with Quinn. She looked terrified—that was clear now, but I’m not so sure I saw it then. I peered closer, knowing the details mattered.
Quinn said, The Sparkstriker saw something evil in her lightning pool, something that scared her. I’ve never seen her frightened. She said the seeds of this evil could only be discovered in the underworld.
Again, the memory faded, and the words whispered across the tunnel: The seeds of this evil could only be discovered in the underworld.
I took another five steps into the tunnel. The flames hissed and groaned. Where were these memories taking me? Why did they matter?
As soon as the images disappeared, I fell against the wall, finding it hard to breathe, like the tunnel was losing air. “Come on, Fuego,” I said with as much strength as I could muster. I had to know where these memories led. I had to follow them to the end.
The last memory gripped me hard, and I swear it was like going back to that awful day all over again. I had just become one with fire and was helping the godborns escape the junkyard prison Zotz had created.
I started for Brooks’s and Hondo’s cages, to set them free, when Ah-Puch grabbed hold of my arm. Do not be fooled by anything you see here, he said. The twins’ mother, Ixkik’, is the master of deception.
Master of deception.
Master of deception.
The memory exploded, forcing me to stumble back. Clutching Fuego, I blinked and saw that I had come to a dead end at a cave wall. A rocky ledge stuck out about waist-high, and it cradled a stone bowl. While I stood there, a blue flame erupted in the bowl, like a match had just been struck.
I ran my hand over the flame, trying to make sense of the memories that had appeared. Of all that I’d been through over the last year, why was I shown those particular moments? Why did they matter the most?
I had started to replay them in my mind, looking for any significance, any connection between them, when I heard:
“ZANE!”
Ah-Puch?
I spun wildly, expecting to see the god of death, but the cave was empty. “Where are you?”
“Literally?” His voice was small and distant. “Floating in utter darkness. Again.”
“Are you with the other gods? I don’t know where you are, or how to save you.” I clenched Fuego with both hands. “How are you even talking to me?”
“I am the god of death, remember? Hard to put me under completely. And you and I are connected, in case you forgot.”
“I didn’t forget.” How could I? Our minds were forever linked the moment I saved his
life with the jade stone.
“But that’s not the point….” His voice trailed off, and I didn’t catch what he said next.
“Talk louder,” I said. “I can barely hear you.”
“Not surprising. I am in terrible shape. The lowest of the low.”
A plump orange-and-black-striped centipede climbed up the rock wall near the bowl of flame until it was at my eye level. Its skinny legs were twitching and 500 percent revolting.
I stared, trying not to get too close. “Wait. Is that you? You’re an insect? How—”
“This is no time to talk about forms and energy, Zane.” The centipede’s head swayed ever so slightly. Did the thing even have eyes?
“Er…okay. What do you want me to do? How do I save you?” I prepared for the god of death to lay out a brilliant multi-point plan.
Instead, he said, “You can’t save me. You can’t save any of us.”
“WHAT?! No! Why…why would you bother coming here if—”
“To say good-bye. To tell you that you really were one of my favorite enemies. And to ask you to give Ren a message from me. Gods don’t feel attachment or love—not like you humans do—but my heart was bigger when she was around. Tell her that.”
“NO! You can give her that message! I just had a bunch of memories about time and magic and evil, and I think they’re connected…. Just tell me where you are.”
“No idea. But it’s far. So far that it took everything I had to reach you. It’s almost as if…”
“As if what?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter! Zotz and Ixkik’ can’t get away with this!”
“Don’t you see?” he said angrily. “They already have. We walked right into their trap. We are to blame for our stupidity.”
“I have to try to help!”
“I knew you would feel that way. That’s the other reason I came: to warn you. Do not risk your life for gods that are already gone. Your father would kill you.”
“Yeah? Well, he’s out of commission right now, so no one’s killing anyone.” My voice had risen to full-throttle panic. “What do you mean, ‘already gone’?”
The Shadow Crosser Page 14
