Battle of the Beasts

by Chris Columbus

  “And where should we get them?” asked Eleanor, slightly less angry. Felix’s hand was steady—and it helped her be, too.

  “You came in a war machine,” said Wangchuk. “Are there no weapons inside?”

  Eleanor could have slapped her forehead, it was so obvious. She had completely forgotten! And weapons weren’t the only thing that was in that tank. There was also the very special thing Volnheim had told them about. . . .

  “You’re right,” she said. “Wangchuk, we do have weapons. Gather your brothers, some warm coats, some Uggs—”

  “Uggs?”

  “Snow boots?”

  “We have snowshoes.”

  “Those will work,” said Eleanor. “Follow me.”

  An hour later they were joined by a bunch of monks outside the monastery’s great doors, all wearing shoes that looked like oversize tennis rackets strung together with dried yak guts. Eleanor, Felix, and Wangchuk had frost-beast coats, but there weren’t enough for everyone, so the others wore yak-fur coats. Eleanor jumped as the doors closed with a thunderous clang. Anything could get her out here. At least I’m not alone, she thought, looking at Felix.

  “I’m staying close to you,” she told him.

  “We’ll stay close to each other,” he said. “I’ll watch your back. You watch mine.”

  “Lead the way, little warrior!” Wangchuk called.

  Eleanor started off, then stopped. “Wait a minute—what if frost beasts come?”

  “They only come out at night,” Wangchuk. “All we have to worry about is the cold.”

  “Oh. Just that. No problem,” said Eleanor. Wind screamed past her face, and she could hardly see with the dizzying reflections of snow all around her. Her nose was running, forming tiny mucus icicles over her top lip. The cold made her move slowly, almost dreamily, and more than once she wanted to lie down and make a snow angel; but any time she stumbled, Felix helped her up, and a monk gave her fortifying tea from a yak-belly flask.

  “We’re getting close,” Eleanor said as they came to the edge of a huge ravine. Below them was a path leading down, like the narrow donkey path that snaked along the side of the Grand Canyon, which she had seen with her family two years before.

  “Look,” Wangchuk said, pointing to a mountain beside the chasm, where a large, vaulted cave sat in the rock. “That’s where they bring their victims.”

  A path beaten down by the frost beasts ran up to the cave. Eleanor turned away; she didn’t want to think about the frost beasts yet. It was easier to contemplate the long journey to the bottom of the chasm, where she could see a faint discoloration.

  The tank.

  Or what was left of it.

  It took half a day to get down. The Tiger I was epic in its annihilation. What had been a pinnacle of engineering was now a twisted hunk of metal that could be mistaken for a sculpture from a modern art museum. The tank was burned and blackened; the housing was sticking out in several different directions. Snow had piled on top of it, turning it into a striking combination of the artificial and the natural.

  “Wow,” Eleanor said. “It looks like Fat Jagger crumpled up the tank and put it in a wastepaper basket.”

  “I hear so much about this Fat Jagger person,” said Felix. “When will I get to meet him?”

  “Not much chance of that,” Eleanor said. “He’s in a different book. But I think you’d really like him.”

  Eleanor turned to the monks. “Okay! So this is the war machine. And what we’re looking for are weapons. I’m thinking the Nazis probably stashed their knives, guns, and grenades. . . . We’ll look for anything that could help against the frost beasts. Oh, this stuff counts as weapons too.”

  She dug a hunk of scrap metal out of the snow. It had been blown off when the tank hit the ground. It was torqued and sharp, like a spearhead.

  “Pieces of the tank are supersharp. If we come back with a bag full of this stuff, we’ll be able to mount it on sticks and make some pretty awesome weapons. So let’s get to it! Felix and I will go in first—”

  “Wait,” shouted one of the monks to Wangchuk. “Isn’t this against our code of conduct?”

  Wangchuk took a deep breath. “The rules have changed,” he said. “We’re living by our own code now.”

  “And we’re making our own legends,” said Eleanor. She walked up to the entrance of the tank, which was not really an entrance at all, just a blown-open hole, and stepped in.

  The inside of the tank was like an alien world, with arcs of metal and coils of wire and stenciled German letters peeking out of mounds of snow. It was graveyard-quiet; the only sound Eleanor heard was the soft pat of her snowshoes. She saw the steering column that Will had used to guide the tank and the massive cannon that shot Volnheim, which was now sticking vertically into the ground. She even saw what appeared to be one of the cyborg’s eyes—a mechanical orb with gears behind it and a wire leading off. It was connected to a charred battery pack. Eleanor saw a tiny stencil above the eye. It was the same golden swastika she had seen on Volnheim’s uniform. Is this Volnheim’s eye?

  “Weird . . .” She picked it up. The iris seemed to be made of mother-of-pearl, the pupil a clear gemstone. Watch-sized gears were placed behind the eye parts. The eye moved in her hand, glancing to the right. Eleanor dropped it.

  “Oh my gosh!”

  “What?” Felix said. He was on the other side of the tank, searching through a bunch of wet dossiers for the Nazi treasure map, which Eleanor had told him to look for.

  “This eye of Volnheim’s—it’s still alive!”

  “Throw it away,” Felix said. “I’d crush it under my snowshoe if I were you.”

  But Eleanor was noticing something. If she held the eye to the left, it kept looking right. If she held it up, it kept looking right. No matter where she positioned it, it trained its gaze on something.

  Eleanor followed its sight line. It led to a lockbox in the snow.

  The box was black with no writing or decoration. It almost looked like a lunch box from prison. It was secured with a padlock, so Eleanor brought it out to Wangchuk and asked him to use his magic to open it. When he turned aside and spoke a few words, the lock snapped open. Eleanor opened the box and reached inside.

  There was only one thing there: a worn, yellowed, folded map of Europe, with a very clear X-marks-the-spot.

  “We got it!” Eleanor told Felix. Then she handed him the eye. “Now you can crush this.”

  “What are you going to do with the map?” asked Felix.

  “My sister wants to keep it, to try and find the treasure to get reward money and help our family . . . ,” Eleanor said. “But I don’t want our family to be rich anymore. And if I leave it out here, she might find it. So after the battle . . . I’m taking it back to the monastery.”

  “To do what?”

  “I’m gonna burn it.”

  Will was back in the cockpit of an airplane; he’d never felt better. He soared and dipped, showing off the P-51 Mustang for Cordelia, pulling every maneuver short of a barrel roll to get her to laugh and scream. The sled dogs behind copied his moves.

  “Do you realize how lucky I am?” he asked as they flew over an aqueduct with flabbergasted farmers standing beside it.

  “No, why?” Cordelia said.

  “Because I know what I love!”

  Cordelia found it hard to appreciate Will’s enthusiasm. Her mind was being weighed on by the big secret she had learned in Eliza May Kristoff’s diary. She wanted to tell Will about it—but she had promised herself to never tell anyone. At least not until the right moment. And she had no idea when that might be.

  Will dove the plane and pulled up, buzzing the tops of some oaks.

  “Careful—”

  “Flying is what I was meant to do! I may never land!”

  “Will,” said Cordelia. “We can’t forget Brendan—”

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten him! One last maneuver!”

  Will turned—and kissed Cordelia. He managed
to hold his face by Cordelia’s lips for a full second before she pushed him away.

  “Will! What are you doing?”

  “Cordelia, I need to tell you something,” Will said. “We’re going to reach Rome soon, and I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to tell you again. So here goes. I know it’s crazy—”

  “Will . . .”

  “I love you.”

  “Oh, Will,” Cordelia said. “Should you really be doing this now?”

  “Why not? Life is fleeting! Surely we’ve seen too many examples of that lately. I know I love you, and I know how we can be together. We can stay here, in Kristoff’s worlds. We don’t have to go back to San Francisco. Your modern world is an awful place anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cordelia said, suddenly feeling like she had to defend her entire way of life. “San Francisco is wonderful.”

  “Really? With people always staring intently at their phones, fingers tapping? I see them through coffee-shop windows . . . poking away as if they have a disease.”

  “You’re being way too harsh—”

  “And what about these places you call fitness centers? All of those people attached to machines, running in place like hamsters? What’s the point?”

  “To stay in shape.”

  “So why not gather up some friends for a round of football? The point is that people of your world would rather be alone than with another person. But here”—Will dipped the plane and brought it up again, making Cordelia scream—“here we have adventure!”

  “Will, stop!” Cordelia said.

  “And one more thing!” Will said, completely misunderstanding the terrifying effect he was having on Cordelia. “I’ve begun to have little flashbacks of my mum. I think Kristoff may have written about her. Somewhere in one of these books. And I’d like to find her, with you—”

  “All right, stop!” Cordelia screamed. Will gripped the controls tightly and went silent.

  “I’m not ready to be with anybody,” Cordelia said gently. “I’m not interested in being anybody’s girlfriend. I have an incredible amount on my mind and I’m still trying to find out who I am, what I want to do with my life. And I don’t know what it is, but it’s not spending the rest of my life living in a fantasy world.” She sighed. “Not even with you.”

  “Oh,” Will said. His heart felt like it had been freeze-dried and dropped into his shoes. “I see.”

  “I like you as a friend,” Cordelia said. “But I’m not ready for more, and I’m certainly not ready to stay here with you. Is that okay?”

  “Looks like I don’t have much of a choice,” Will said. He was looking for something to help pick his heart back up and put it in the right place. “I guess we can work as friends.”

  “It’s a very contemporary concept,” Cordelia said. “A guy and girl, great friends, who love each other.”

  Will let out a sigh. “I can do that.”

  Cordelia wrapped her arms around him and hugged him as Rome appeared on the horizon.

  Brendan’s ankles were clamped together with big black manacles and he was being pulled forward by a heavy chain. Ungil—the slave with a face even a mother couldn’t love—was in front of him, in the corridor under the Colosseum. Shafts of light edged down from the slits in the ceiling. It reminded Brendan of the gladiator practice he had been through the day before—only now the Colosseum was filled with a deafening roar. This was no practice. These were the real games. And with Occipus’s open-admission policy, they might be the biggest games Rome ever saw.

  “Please,” Brendan said. “Please stop. I have to see Occipus.”

  “Oh, you’ll see him,” said Ungil. “You’ll be in the arena, and he’ll be in the stands. You’ll see each other just fine.”

  “Seriously, maybe we can work something out, if we talk—”

  “The time for talking is over!” Ungil said. “Now it’s time for entertainment.”

  Brendan stayed quiet, but as Ungil continued to pull him along, his brain worked a mile a minute. There had to be a way to escape. They reached an iron staircase that led to a trapdoor. Ungil unshackled Brendan’s feet. Brendan rubbed his ankles. Ungil pulled out a leather club and slapped it in his palm: Slap. Slap.

  “Climb the stairs! The crowd’s waiting.”

  “But what about my gladiator training? You said it took years to train gladiators. Don’t I have to fight some more rats or hang upside down some more?”

  “No. Gladiators I train for years. People who get thrown to the lions I don’t have to train at all.”

  Stall, Brendan told himself.

  “Ungil, I know you’re a smart guy. And like you said, it’s time for entertainment. But I gotta ask: Where’s the entertainment value in me getting taken down by a lion? I mean . . . that’ll probably take ten, fifteen seconds at the most. Nobody pays good money for a fight that lasts under a minute.”

  “Not with you, boy. You betrayed their trust. They want to see your limbs”—Ungil moved his arms apart—“in two different places.”

  There. Brendan saw his chance. He rushed Ungil—

  And Ungil smacked him down with the club.

  “Owww!”

  “No tricks, boy! Get up there!”

  Brendan rubbed the back of his head, trying to see something other than stars. “Please . . . just give me a weapon . . . a garden hoe, your club, anything. . . . It’ll make this event exciting!”

  “I have my orders.”

  “Then what about some clothes?”

  “You’re wearing clothes.”

  “This?” Brendan pinched the garment that was tied around his waist. It was a piece of burlap the size of a handkerchief. The only other thing on his body was a dazzling gold wreath stuck down over his head that felt like it weighed twenty pounds. “This is like the tiniest loincloth ever! You can see my—”

  “It doesn’t matter what we can see,” Ungil said, “as long as the crowd will be able to see every bit of you that gets eaten.”

  “But—”

  Ungil leaned in. “I know you’ve probably spent all your life using words to get out of bad situations. But that’s because you’ve been using words on educated people. I am not an educated person.”

  With no weapon, in a skimpy loincloth that looked like something worn by a dancer in a hip-hop video, Brendan ascended the steps and entered the arena. His head was down; he was out of options.

  He saw the crowd; they cheered. He heard a grunt and saw two lions—but not just any lions. These were the creatures he had made fat before . . . and now they were ripped! They had obviously been to lion boot camp, or maybe Brendan’s wish had a cruel twist embedded in it. Their stomachs, which had before been ballooned to gargantuan proportions, were now lean and muscled. Their legs were thick and powerful. And they had a glint in their eyes that wasn’t just hunger. They recognize me! They want revenge!

  The lions were penned inside a metal cage with Brendan, in the center of the arena. One lion was sitting with its paws folded under its chest; the other paced. A metal fence separated Brendan from the lions. Two guards stood outside the cage, ready to pull the fence aside, so that there would be no barrier between predator and prey.

  It was pretty obvious who would come out alive.

  Brendan saw Occipus, with his mistress and Rodicus, lounging eagerly in the stands. On their faces were the same looks that his friends had when they were passing around their phones, watching some cool new YouTube video. Brendan had never thought about what it would be like to be the video.

  He sat down.

  The crowd booed.

  Rodicus called, “Let us welcome Brendan the Brave! Or should we call him Brendan the Betrayer? The boy who—”

  Suddenly there was a commotion in the emperor’s seating area. Emperor Occipus pushed Rodicus out of the way and stood at the ancient megaphone himself. The crowd gasped. The emperor rarely spoke directly to the people.

  “My fellow Romans!” Occipus bellowed. His naturally crabby
and froggy voice achieved unexpected heft when he spoke loud enough. He reminded Brendan of Richard Nixon speaking in the Bohemian Club. “It gives me nothing but pain and grief to see this poor boy harmed, for he is only a child! And yet”—here the emperor turned aside, as if to cough, but Brendan saw him rub his eyes with the flat half of a sliced onion and turn back to the megaphone with big tears running down his cheeks—“he has b-betrayed my trust! He has made me into a f-f-fool! What will this do to the enemies of Rome?” Occipus’s tears turned to anger: “They will take it as a sign of weakness! They will try to invade! And they will take advantage of dissenters among you who have been questioning my authority. All because of this meddling boy! And so, as much as it hurts me to say it”—Occipus hit the onion again—“the boy must die!”

  Occipus stepped away from the announcer’s cone as riotous applause rippled through the Colosseum. But when Rodicus whispered something in the emperor’s ear, he returned: “And remember to stick around for ludi games afterward. We will be entertained by the famous Cretan mimes!”

  The crowd cheered. Gotta give the dude credit, Brendan thought. That was a pretty great performance. Brendan wasn’t moving; he was just picking at the dirt around him.

  The guards opened the metal fence.

  The seated lion started grunting. It was low at first, but then each grunt got louder and louder, like an engine warming up, until the lion let out a roar that drove the arena wild. The two lions approached Brendan.

  Brendan didn’t move.

  “Fight!” the crowd yelled, and when that didn’t get a reaction, they appealed to Brendan’s vanity.

  “Fight, General Brendan!” “Brendan the Brave!” “You can stop the lions!”

  Brendan shrugged: Sorry, folks! He wasn’t going to give the crowd the satisfaction of watching him fight. It was the only power play he had left.

  The crowd hissed and jeered. The lions were as confused by Brendan as the audience was. The animals circled, sniffing Brendan’s hair and body. They seemed to assume he was sick, not worth their time. But the crowd egged on the animals, throwing food and sandals.