The Guardians

by William Joyce

  Toothiana is already ready to defend!

  Katherine startled awake and instinctively grabbed for the dagger on her night table as six or eight of her attackers grasped her arms and legs. A monkey with a grotesquely humanlike face pressed his hand against her mouth so that she could not cry out. Nightlight was there in a flash, batting the animals away with his staff, but for each monkey he hit, seven would take its place. The room was overrun with chattering, maniacal monster monkeys.

  Queen Toothiana knew she had to protect the girl. As Katherine struggled to free herself, Toothiana lunged for the monkeys. In the tangle of tails and clawing hands, Katherine’s tooth was knocked to the floor. Both Toothiana and Katherine cried out at the same time.

  Katherine was determined not to lose that tooth. She elbowed one monkey after another, reaching, reaching, reaching for the tooth. Each time her fingers nearly gripped it, it was kicked away. Katherine darted along the floor on her hands and knees, her eyes never leaving the tooth. Finally, it was within her grasp. One great last stretch, then—got it!

  Only then, when her precious tooth was safely tucked in her palm, did Katherine think to scream, to call out for help. She didn’t get a chance. Once again a hand covered her mouth. Then another had her leg; another, her arm.

  Katherine strained against her captors, trying to squirm away as Toothiana and Nightlight struck at monkey after monkey. The tiny versions of Toothiana dove and charged relentlessly at the primates’ eyes. They were making headway when a second wave of monkeys attacked. There were just too many.

  The largest monkey, the one who seemed the leader, snatched the pouch from around Toothiana’s neck, raised it over his head, and hurled it to one of his minions, who promptly leaped out the window with the prize, followed by a dark mass of his scuffling cohorts.

  Toothiana struggled to follow them, sweeping her wings at the monkeys in her way, but then she stopped short. The monkey who had taken her precious box—she recognized him! That vile creature . . . That monkey was the one who . . . Toothiana’s rage took hold, and in one swift move, she had him in her grip.

  The room became a cyclone of monkeys; they stampeded around the walls and began to bound out the windows in waves. They seemed to be running right across the night sky, as if it had become solid under their feet. And then in a flash of darkness, the monkeys vanished.

  All except one.

  Toothiana pressed her sword against her old enemy’s throat, breathing hard.

  The door flew open. North burst into the room, with Ombric, Bunnymund, Yaloo and his Yeti lieutenants, and even a few sleepy-eyed Lamas right behind him.

  “Villains, explain yourselves!” North demanded, his cutlass ready.

  Toothiana didn’t respond. Nor did she remove her blade from the monkey’s neck.

  North took a step closer, and Toothiana cocked her head, birdlike, from right to left. As North took another step, her feathers flared up, as if to warn him not to come closer. One of her wings hung limp.

  The captive monkey, frantic-eyed, whimpered something that sounded vaguely like “Help!”

  Everyone froze, wonderstruck at the sight of the flying woman they had heard so much about. They had expected a serene being, but here she was in fighting stance and with a death grip on a decidedly evil-looking ape. Ombric was madly sorting through the various dialects of primate languages to best question the captive monkey. Odd how humanlike it looks, he thought. Very odd indeed.

  In all the confusion, it was Nightlight who was the first to notice that Katherine was not in her bed.

  Before he could alert the others, they all felt the surge of his frantic worry.

  North whipped his head back and forth, surveying the room. “Katherine?” he called. Then “KATHERINE!” Dread crept through the Guardians when there came no reply.

  Ombric and Bunnymund reached out to her with their minds, but they got only a confusing darkness in response.

  North turned his attention back to Toothiana and the strange creatures she held prisoner. He glared menacingly at them, raising his sword.

  “Tell me what you’ve done with Katherine,” he demanded, “or you will never take another breath.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Journey Most Confounding, with Flying Monkeys Who Smell Very Badly Indeed

  KATHERINE CLUTCHED HER TOOTH as she tried to push away the putrid cloak that one of the monkeys had thrown over her head. The last thing she had seen had been the monkey with the humanlike face take Toothiana’s pouch. Then it dawned on her. That must be the Monkey King from Toothiana’s story!

  The air felt colder, so Katherine knew she had been dragged outside. Her mind raced with so many questions, she hardly had time to be scared. The Monkey King has come for revenge, but why take me? she wondered. She felt herself being prodded and shoved and sometimes even thrown from one tight grip to another, speeding along at an impossibly fast pace. The monkeys seemed to be running on solid ground, but sometimes it felt like they were—what? Flying? She pulled at the cloak till she made a small hole. Clouds. Stars. Sky. They were flying! And were extremely high.

  At that moment the cloak slipped to one side, and Katherine caught a glimpse of solid surface below—a road made of shadows. She gasped. It was like Nightlight’s roads of light, but inky and frightening. There’s only one being who could make a sky road of shadows, she realized with dread.

  And then she remembered her dream, her awful dream.

  Screeching incessantly, the monkeys sped on. Katherine tried to reach out to her friends with her mind, but something about this dark highway was blocking her thoughts.

  Her breath formed tiny icicles around her face and nose as freezing air rushed past. She ripped the hole bigger and was finally able to take a deep, unfettered breath, but it was too cold, and she pulled the cloak shut, now feeling smothered again.

  The monkeys had a stink to them that she hadn’t expected; they’d looked much sweeter in the pictures from Ombric’s ancient book. A fleeting wish that she had taken the time to learn the language of monkeys flashed through her mind. Ombric could speak it, no doubt, but as there were no monkeys in Santoff Claussen, it had seemed much more important to learn languages she could actually use—like squirrel and Lunar Moth. She could likely learn it easily enough. She’d learned Great Snow Goose, hadn’t she?

  Oh, Kailash! Katherine thought with a groan. She will be so worried. Nightlight, too. Then it struck her: What if he were wounded? A wave of fear for her friends swept over her, forcing her attention back to the dilemma at hand. She kicked and pushed against the cloak, but it was futile. The monkeys simply held it tighter around her, until she could barely move her arms.

  The temperature was changing again, slowly at first and then more quickly. The icy air warmed. The cloak felt suffocating. Katherine’s stomach lurched as the monkeys took a giant leap and then bounced up and down on what felt like a tree branch.

  The cloak slipped from her head. This time the monkeys made no effort to cover her face as they swung from tree to tree, dragging Katherine along with them. Sometimes it seemed the branches could never hold them, and then they’d plummet down, down, down, in rapid falls, leaves slapping at Katherine’s face and neck. She found herself being thrown from one paw to the next until one of the monkeys would grab a solid branch and begin the ascent again.

  Besides the screeching monkeys—were they ever quiet?—Katherine saw no other jungle creatures at all, not even birds. It was as if the monkeys were the only animals in this land. Where are the other animals? she wondered. Where are the elephants and the tigers? The snakes and the lizards?

  And then, without warning, the monkeys let go of their grasp and dropped Katherine. She didn’t fall far. Just a few feet. When she realized she was unhurt, she began to cautiously look around. She could not see much beneath the jungle canopy, but she was able to pick out what seemed to be the ruins of what once must have been a magnificent city. The jungle had done its best to take it over, but Kather
ine could see evidence of the city’s former glory in the tarnished gold and silver fixtures on the crumbling walls.

  Where in the world am I? She looked in every direction and didn’t see a soul, just the army of monkeys. But now they kept their distance. It had become eerily quiet. So Katherine decided there was nothing to do but investigate. She headed for the closest buildings, stopping at the first to peer at a dirt-covered mosaic. The design, though half buried under a layer of mud and mold, looked exquisite, so using the side of her fist, she wiped the muck off until she could make out the outline of an elephant—an elephant with wings.

  “The flying elephant!” she said with a gasp. I’m in Punjam Hy Loo! It seemed almost a dream. Just yesterday Mr. Qwerty had told them all about this city and the Sisters of Flight!

  She looked in every direction. Were the sisters still here somewhere? What has brought this city so low? Were there still elephants guarding the mountain? She looked for more clues and didn’t notice that the shadows around her were growing larger. Blacker. She didn’t see that hundreds more monkeys were quietly perching on the derelict walls surrounding her.

  It wasn’t until an immense shadow loomed directly over her that Katherine looked up and gulped. It was as she feared.

  “Pitch,” she said, trying to sound calm.

  The Nightmare King greeted her with a ghoulish smile. “Greetings, my Darkling Daughter,” he whispered in a voice that was anything but welcoming.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Panic in the Himalayas

  WHERE IS KATHERINE?” NORTH roared again at the winged woman in front of him. He was sure she had some hand in Katherine’s disappearance, but his sword was pulling away from this strange being—he’d almost forgotten how the sword, the first relic from the Man in the Moon, could tell friend from foe. The sword knew Toothiana meant no harm to any Guardian. But North resisted it. The woman knew something, and she must tell them.

  Nightlight sat on Katherine’s bed. Her pillow had been tossed to the floor, but the three coins that had been left for her were still in place.

  Toothiana’s eyes darted from North to the others, one hand still tight around the struggling monkey’s neck, the other still clasping her sword, poised and ready to end this creature’s life. With a quick glance, she told her mini-selves to stay back. Her feathers fluffed and quivered. With rage? North wondered. Or panic?

  He had seen that look before. As a boy in the wild, he had known it well. It was the look of a trapped animal, one that had nothing to lose, so would go down fighting. North had learned how to approach them—calmly and carefully.

  Then it dawned on North how he and the others must appear to her—this queen who had every reason to mistrust adults. She was facing a sword-wielding warrior, a seven-foot-tall bunny, an ancient wizard, and Abominable Snowmen bearing all manner of weapons. The set of Toothiana’s jaw was fierce, but her eyes, almond-shaped and green, betrayed her. Why, she must feel just like a sparrow caught in a cage, he thought.

  So North held up one hand and sheathed his sword. He approached the queen slowly. Even the monkey stopped his squirming as North took one careful step after another, never blinking, never taking his eyes off her.

  “We mean you no harm,” North said in his most soothing voice. “But we are most anxious to find our friend—the girl you were here to see tonight. Do you know what happened to her?”

  Toothiana cocked her head, held North’s gaze in her own for the longest time, then seemed to make a decision: She would trust this hulking man.

  “Gone. Taken,” she said.

  “Taken where? By whom?” North encouraged, forcing his voice to stay steady.

  “This creature knows,” she said, gesturing toward the monkey.

  Ombric made one cautious step forward. “Is that creature the Monkey King?” he asked, recalling Toothiana’s story.

  She nodded, then gave the creature a hard shake. “Tell what you know!”

  The monkey spat at her. “Never!” he screeched.

  North could scarcely contain himself. “Tell us!” he roared. “Or die!”

  The monkey merely sucked on his teeth and smirked.

  Toothiana grabbed the simian by his feet and swung him upside down, giving him a good shake with each word. “Where. Is. The. Girl? Where. Is. My. Box?”

  “Gone. Taken,” the Monkey King mimicked.

  North unsheathed his sword and brought its tip to the monkey’s chin.

  The Monkey King simply continued to suck on his teeth, as if being held upside down with a sword pressed to his chin was a perfectly normal course of events.

  Bunnymund’s whiskers bristled. He, too, knew the ways of animals, even better than North did. And North—like all poor humans—was beginning to let his emotions get the best of him. It was time for cooler heads. It was time for the Pooka to take charge.

  He pressed a paw on North’s arm until North lowered his sword. Then he eyed the monkey appraisingly. “You’re very clever,” the Pooka told him. “Clever enough to fool all of us. To break into the Lamadary. To lead your troops to capture our friend. And steal this lady’s precious treasure.”

  While he was talking, he was pulling a chocolate egg out of his pocket and carefully peeling it, as one would a piece of fruit. The aroma of a perfectly ripe banana, tinged with the scent of milky chocolate, filled the room.

  Bunnymund motioned to Toothiana to turn the monkey right side up again. As she did, the monkey’s eyes began to gleam. He reached for the chocolate, which Bunnymund dropped into his hand. Popping the confection into his mouth, the Monkey King closed his eyes. “Yum-yum,” he said blissfully.

  Nightlight watched closely. He had never before wanted to harm a creature of flesh and blood. Pitch was darkness, a phantom, but the monkey man was alive—a living being. Nightlight saw the hate in Toothiana’s eyes for this creature. And in North’s. Even Ombric’s. And now he felt it too. And he did not like it.

  The Monkey King motioned for another chocolate as Nightlight fought the urge to spear him through with his staff.

  “What a wise monkey king. You want more. And more you’ll have,” Bunnymund said, patting his pockets and backing away. “But first you must answer our questions.”

  The Monkey King bobbed his head up and down and answered in the language of monkeys.

  Ombric translated. “The King of the Monkeys claims he is much too clever to fall for our tricks.”

  The monkey’s eyes widened. He had never before met a human who could speak monkey.

  “You are indeed clever, Maharaja,” Ombric said, “but perhaps not as clever as you think you are. Who sent you to kidnap our friend?”

  “No one sent me,” the monkey said, speaking in the language of men. He raised his head haughtily. “I am a king. I lead my army where I choose. I am not ‘sent.’ And now I demand to be fed.”

  “Some army,” North scoffed. “They’ve left you behind.”

  “They have not!” he howled.

  “Then where oh where have they gone?” asked Bunnymund.

  No longer a maharajah, the Monkey King is maha-rose.

  The Monkey King stiffened. “They’ll be back.”

  Bunnymund took out another chocolate with a flourish and held it close to the Monkey King’s nose.

  “You’ll get no more answers from me, Rabbit Man,” the Monkey King spat.

  “Then no more yummies for you,” said Bunnymund. He handed the chocolate to Ombric, who peeled tantalizingly, then bit it in half. The banana-laced fragrance filled the room.

  The monkey eyed the other half of the chocolate and whimpered, “More yum-yum.” Bunnymund shook his head.

  “I can’t tell you,” the Monkey King whimpered. “I will be killed until dead.”

  “Who would dare do such a thing to such a clever Monkey King?” Ombric asked, searching for an even tone, though alarm bells were exploding in his head.

  The Monkey King saw a chance to bargain. He drew himself up again. “One who can make me
human again—make me much, much maharaja. Can you do that?”

  North was growing tired of this back-and-forth. The longer this went on, the farther away Katherine could be taken. He leaped forward and smashed the monkey onto the floor. “Tell us what we ask!” he demanded.

  The monkey giggled and pointed at Toothiana. “In her home. They wait at Punjam Hy Loo.”

  Toothiana trembled with rage. “You lie!”

  “No, no, no,” cackled the monkey. “ ’Tis all part of the plan!”

  “Coward!” North spat out, pacing in front of him. “You’re a pathetic excuse for a king.”

  “And always have been,” Toothiana added.

  The Monkey King scowled darkly, his anger building. “Wait until the King of Nightmares makes me the King of Mans again. I will kill you deader than your father!”

  Toothiana pulled her sword to his head. How dare he boast of such things in her presence!

  But North and the other Guardians barely noticed. The words “King of Nightmares” had stilled them. North ceased pacing; Nightlight glowed brightly. Bunnymund’s whiskers twitched, and Ombric’s beard began to curl with worry. They all had only one thought.

  Pitch was back!

  “What does the Nightmare King want with my ruby box?” Toothiana asked now.

  “And why take Katherine and leave the rest of us?” North demanded.

  The Monkey King’s eyes gleamed with triumph. “He seeks to build an army. And turn the girl into his Darkling Princess.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In Which Toothiana Makes a Startling Discovery

  INSTANTLY THE GUARDIANS BEGAN to talk in low, tense voices. Queen Toothiana, however, kept her eyes trained on the Monkey King.