Battle of the Beasts

by Chris Columbus

  “My wife,” Felix said, “are you coming?”

  Cordelia flashed red, then looked up to see Will, Brendan, Eleanor, and Felix headed toward Kristoff House’s front door, being led by the emperor. Felix held his hand out to her. She reluctantly approached, refusing to take it, and heard Occipus speak:

  “There will be guards posted outside all night, to prevent you from escaping.”

  “Why would we want to escape?” asked Felix. “I’ve got a beautiful new bride!”

  Cordelia almost threw up on her shoes.

  “I can’t take any chances,” said Occipus. “You see, everyone who was here will be telling their friends and families how incredible today’s performance was. Tomorrow, they will be lining up to get in. To see all of you young witches and warlocks in your Hades house. And I can’t take a chance that you won’t be here!”

  The Walkers exchanged a worried look with Will.

  “How long will you keep us?” asked Eleanor.

  “For the rest of your lives,” said the emperor casually.

  “What—?” “Hold on a minute—” “Listen—”

  “You can never leave. What would the public say?”

  Once again, Cordelia was about to throw up on her shoes. But she suppressed the urge, took in a few deep breaths, and was able to keep it down.

  “Very well. I’ll leave you in peace. And if you do manage to get past the guards, Felix here knows where his allegiances lie. Isn’t that right, my boy?”

  “Yes, Supreme Emperor,” said Felix. Will and Cordelia looked at him with disgust.

  “Very well! Vale!”

  Occipus joined his raven-haired mistress and they walked arm in arm into the bowels of the Colosseum. Felix, the Walkers, and Will entered Kristoff House. It was chaotic and desolate inside, with papers and clothes thrown everywhere. The Romans had apparently not been interested in any modern American food, because they had thrown cereal all over the place and tossed soda cans in a big pile in the living room. Felix turned to Cordelia.

  “So, my dear, this is where we’ll be living?”

  This time, Cordelia did throw up on her shoes.

  Everything felt horrible for Cordelia now, inside and out. She was trapped. Trapped in every way she could be.

  Felix knelt, took a tossed-aside washcloth, and wiped Cordelia’s shoes clean. He really was very nice, and Cordelia did sort of like him . . . but.

  “You know our marriage isn’t real, right, Felix?” asked Cordelia.

  “It’s not? But the emperor just—”

  “I know,” said Cordelia. “But like I told you. Things are different where we come from. Maybe we should explain. . . .”

  The Walkers and Will started filling Felix in on their unbelievable story, and the sun had set by the time they finished. They were surprised at how well he took it.

  “None of this bothers you?” Brendan asked.

  “My parents fear the wrath of Poseidon and try to please him with fat oxen,” said Felix. “This all makes sense.”

  “Good,” said Cordelia. They were sitting on the floor in the kitchen, because there were no longer any stools, and eating the yogurt and cookies that the Romans had left behind.

  “Here’s the thing, though,” Cordelia said to Felix. “We didn’t grow up hearing stories about Poseidon. We grew up with order, logic. We have real, normal lives somewhere else, with a mom and dad who love us and need us, and we need to get back to them.”

  “How do you intend to do that?”

  “We thought we’d find a clue inside one of the books in this house. But your people have taken the books.”

  It was true. Kristoff’s novels in the library were gone. Cordelia had hoped that Gladius Rex would still be here, so they could at least learn about how to navigate their way through ancient Rome.

  Will took notice of how closely Cordelia was speaking with Felix. He didn’t like this, so he interrupted: “I’ve got an idea for how we can get everything back.”

  “Excuse me,” said Felix. “My wife and I are having a conversation.”

  “Ugh, can you please stop calling her that?” asked Eleanor. Eleanor didn’t like Felix at all, from the moment she saw him fighting polar bears. “‘My wife’ this, ‘my wife’ that. It grosses me out!”

  “Not me,” said Brendan, raising his eyebrows. “I think it’s fun to watch Cordelia squirm.”

  Cordelia punched his arm. Hard.

  “Will you just listen to me?” Will said. “Actually, on second thought, maybe Felix the Greek should go to another room.”

  “Why?” asked Felix.

  “You’re a spy,” said Will.

  “I am nothing of the sort,” Felix said. “I’m a gladiator.”

  “Well, you’re clearly the favorite of Emperor Blob-ipus—”

  “Emperor Occipus—”

  “I’ll call him what I like,” said Will, smiling at Eleanor. Eleanor beamed, glad someone was on her side. “And I suspect that once we’ve all gone to sleep, you’re going to report back to him exactly what I called him, along with everything we’ve discussed!”

  “You question my word?” Felix asked, standing to face Will.

  “I do,” said Will, moving closer to Felix. “You’re just another one of Denver Kristoff’s characters. Just like me. Only I was written as an honorable, handsome, brave hero.”

  “So was I!” said Felix.

  “I doubt that. Once we get our hands on Gladius Rex, we’ll find out your true personality!”

  “And what would that be?”

  “A conniving, sneaky, venomous serpent!”

  Felix had his gladiator sword strapped to his belt. Will instinctively reached for the Webley Mark VI pistol that he had lost long ago in San Francisco.

  “Looking for a weapon?” Felix asked.

  “Don’t need one,” Will said, putting up his fists. “Let’s settle this with our dukes!”

  “Nothing I’d like better,” said Felix.

  “Both of you STOP!” Cordelia yelled.

  Will dropped his fists. He didn’t want to, but something in Cordelia’s tone made him.

  “Just as I thought,” Felix said. “You’re not so brave. And if you are such a hero . . . tell me, what exactly have you done to help out Cordelia, Brendan, and Eleanor since you arrived here?”

  “I . . . well . . . I got Occipus’s attention. Yes, I did,” said Will. “I gave him the lighter.”

  “A whole lotta good that did us,” mumbled Brendan. “Now he thinks we’re magicians and he wants to keep us here forever.”

  Will gave Brendan a startled look: Now you’re turning on me?

  “Just sayin’,” said Brendan sheepishly.

  Will glanced down. He never would have admitted it, but he was deeply ashamed at how the last few hours had gone. Ever since he had met the Walkers, he had helped and protected them. But what Felix said was true: In this world, what use was he to anybody? He didn’t have his gun—or his plane. He didn’t belong here just like he didn’t belong in twenty-first-century San Francisco. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere, he thought, except back in the book where I came from.

  Then, just as he was about to burst into tears, something he hadn’t done since he was an infant—But was I ever an infant? Did Kristoff even write me as an infant?—Will remembered what he had been going to tell Cordelia a few minutes before he got distracted by Felix. His whole demeanor changed in an instant.

  “You want to see how useful I can be?” he said. “Follow me.”

  Will remembered exactly where to go. In the hallway between the front door and the kitchen was the spot where he and Brendan had busted into the hollow walls of Kristoff House on their last adventure. He stood there with Brendan, Cordelia, Eleanor, and Felix.

  “There’s a passageway behind this wall,” said Will.

  Cordelia slapped Felix’s hand away from hers. He was trying to hold her hand whenever they walked anywhere, telling her, “It’s a husband’s right.”

  “Wo
uld you stop calling yourself that?” Cordelia said.

  “Maybe if you don’t want me to hold your hand, my shoulder can just touch your shoulder,” Felix said. “See?” He tapped against her. His shoulder was about twice as big as hers. “Is that so bad?”

  “Yes!”

  “Ahem,” Will said. “Are you two finished?”

  Cordelia and Felix nodded. Will stared at the wall: “One place I bet these grotty Roman blighters never got to was inside here. And last time, we discovered all sorts of things in these walls.”

  “Like what?” Brendan asked. “Wine? Those creeped-out books? They didn’t really help.”

  Will didn’t appreciate his attitude. “Have you forgotten Penelope Hope?”

  The Walkers glanced at one another. Penelope Hope wasn’t a good memory. She had been another character from Kristoff’s books, but they hadn’t been able to keep her safe. Now she was gone.

  “Penelope told us that the inside of this house goes on and on,” Will reminded them. “That there are endless mysteries inside its walls. There’s no telling what we might find in there. Maybe another Book of Doom and Desire that can get us all home.”

  “But how do we get through the wall?” Eleanor asked.

  “That’s what we need to figure out,” said Will. “You can’t expect me to come up with everything.”

  “Maybe I can help,” Felix said.

  “And exactly how do you plan on doing that? With your sword? Perhaps you can chop your way through the wall, the way you beat those polar bears? Oh, wait . . . hold on . . . that’s right . . . you almost got eaten by those polar bears!”

  Cordelia laughed. She couldn’t help it. When Will started dishing it out, not even Brendan could match him.

  “I don’t need my sword,” the gladiator responded. Then he wet his thumbs and ran them through his close-cropped hair.

  “What are you doing?” Cordelia asked.

  “When I started gladiator training,” Felix said, “they put me through many difficult and painful trials. Tell me, Will . . . are you able to tow a chariot with your teeth?”

  “Can’t say I’ve tried,” said Will.

  “Well, I can. First you strap a harness to a gigantic ox and put a rope on it. Then you take a gladiator-in-training like myself and put the rope in his mouth. The ox drags the gladiator-in-training through the field for eight hours while he holds on by his teeth. You do that for sixty days and you’ll be able to pull anything with your teeth.”

  “That’s torture,” Brendan said.

  “No. Torture is when they hurt you for secrets. Training is when they hurt you to make you strong.”

  “What else did you learn?” Eleanor asked. She was starting to hate Felix less, impressed by how straightforward he was. Will was always making a wisecrack or bragging about his talents and exploits, but with Felix, what you saw was what you got.

  “This,” Felix said.

  He took a deep breath . . . and puffed out his cheeks, making them nearly the size of water balloons!

  He looked like a frog, or like the great trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. His cheeks were puffed out so far that they were making his ears stick forward from his head. His eyes bulged too.

  “That’s disgusting,” Brendan said as Felix turned in a circle, making them laugh—even Will.

  Felix exhaled and his face went back to normal. “It’s a defense. If your enemy is close by, puff out. This will make him jump, and then—”

  Felix drew his sword.

  “Very nice,” Will said. “You’re quite the human curiosity box. When your gladiator days are over you should get yourself a job in a traveling circus.”

  “Sounds like fun,” said Felix. “I’ll perform feats of strength and you can be the clown. Seeing as that’s all you’re good for.”

  “That’s it,” shouted Will, pulling back his fists, ready to punch Felix. Eleanor got between them.

  “Guys, guys, the wall, please?”

  Will sighed, stepping back. “Very well, but pulling chariots with your teeth and puffing out your cheeks won’t break through this surface!”

  “This will,” said Felix, rapping on his skull.

  “What?”

  “That’s right. Another thing we did as soon-to-be gladiators was ‘inverted noggin training.’”

  “Inverted noggin training? How does that work?” asked Eleanor.

  “They made us stand on our hands and heads, on a large flat rock. We would do this for an hour at a time. Then, after a month, we would remove our hands and just stand on our heads, with our trainers holding our ankles. After another month of that, we could stand on our heads indefinitely!”

  “No way,” Brendan said. “You’d pass out.”

  “Not if you continuously move your feet to keep the blood flowing. It’s all been medically proven by physicians.”

  “Who cares how long you can stand on your head?” Will asked, but then Felix charged the wall.

  Everybody jumped back. Felix ran forward with his head down, hitting the wall—

  Crack!

  He busted through! The wall was no match for his stone-callused noggin. His head was gone from view and his chest, legs, and arms were sticking into the hallway.

  “I’m okay,” Felix’s muffled voice yelled, “but what’s this gammadion doing here?”

  The Walkers and Will looked at one another. Huh?

  “The gladiator’s been using his numb skull too many times,” Will said.

  But Eleanor was more concerned: “What do you mean, Felix? What’s a gum-aid-eon?”

  “Pull me out and I’ll show you!”

  They grabbed Felix’s feet and tugged him out of the wall; he landed in the hallway with a dusty thump.

  “We’ve got to clear away the rest of that wall,” he declared. “There’s a piece of fabric on the floor, adorned with this symbol known as a gammadion. It represents the four corners of the world; I remember back in Greece seeing it etched on the coins.”

  “So?” Cordelia asked.

  “So maybe there’s some Greek living in the walls of this house. Could be one of my relatives. . . .”

  Will rolled his eyes and they all exchanged looks, but Eleanor mouthed, Don’t be mean. Felix reminded Eleanor of Fat Jagger, her colossus friend, only a lot smaller and much more vocal. He seemed to really want to help. Eleanor didn’t think he was a spy. As long as he stopped saying gross things about her sister being his wife, he might actually be a lot of help. And a lot of fun.

  The Walkers and Will started grabbing chunks of the wall near the hole, pulling away pieces. Plaster hit the floor. In a few minutes they had cleared a human-sized opening in the wall. They all stepped into the hidden passageway on the other side and looked around.

  “Where’s the gamma-thingy?” Eleanor asked.

  Felix pointed. In a pool of light that came through the wall was a loop of red fabric with a sewn-on black-on-white symbol. Eleanor squinted at it—and gasped.

  “Nazis!”

  “What?” Brendan asked. “What do you mean, Nazis?”

  Eleanor knelt and picked up the fabric, pinching it with two fingers as if it were a dead rodent. Brendan saw it and shouted, “A Nazi armband!”

  “The gammadion,” Felix said. He pointed to the fabric, on which was sewn a very clear swastika. “It reminds me of home!”

  “Home?” Cordelia cried. “That symbol is the personification of pure evil!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s part of a Nazi uniform,” Brendan said.

  “What’s a Nazi?”

  “A bad guy,” Eleanor interrupted. “Like really, really bad. The ultimate bad guys.”

  “The Nazis started World War Two,” Brendan explained, “and they killed six million Jewish people in the Holocaust.”

  “Six million?” Felix asked, his expression turning to shock. “That’s just horrible. Why have I never heard about this?”

  “Because it happens in the future,” Cordelia said. “T
he twentieth century.”

  “Which century is that again? Is that the one you’re from?”

  “Never mind,” Eleanor said. “You just need to trust us: Anything you see with that symbol on it, it’s not a gamma-whatever, it’s a . . . uh . . . a swa-sticker.”

  “A swastika,” Brendan corrected.

  “Yeah, and it stands for a dangerous, screwed-up bunch of people who we don’t want anything to do with. So give it to me.” Eleanor took the armband, tore the swastika off it, threw it to the ground, and stomped on it. And then for good measure, she did something she rarely did. She spat on it.

  “Question is, how did it get here?” said Brendan. “It must be from another one of the books we’re trapped in!”

  “Except this can’t be from one of Kristoff’s novels,” said Cordelia.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was writing before Nazis existed. He published his last book in 1928. Then he disappeared.”

  “And became the Storm King,” said Eleanor.

  Will walked to the torches on the wall, fully intending to light one with his lighter, and then remembered.

  “Bloody emperor took my light. Any matches in the house?”

  “Romans took them,” said Cordelia. “What’s your plan anyway?”

  “We head this way,” said Will, nodding down the hall. “As I recall, it leads to the wine cellar.”

  “The wine cellar?” Cordelia asked. “Is that your big plan, to hit the wine cellar? We need to go somewhere we haven’t been, to look for clues we don’t know exist. Which means we go that way, not toward the wine cellar.”

  “How are we going to see?” Eleanor asked.

  “We’re not,” said Cordelia. “We’ll just have to move slowly, hold each other’s hands, and make our way as best we can.”

  “Finally I get to hold my wife’s hand,” said Felix.

  “Call me that one more time and I’ll smack you!” said Cordelia.

  The Walkers, Will, and Felix started down the hallway, leaving behind the spat-on Nazi armband. Soon the light from their makeshift entryway had faded. They were in total darkness. Felix held one of Cordelia’s hands and Will held the other. The group stayed in a line with Brendan at the front, touching the walls with their fingers. There were many trips and a few “oofs” as they went around pitch-black corners. They suddenly stopped at a place where they could feel the passage fork in two.