Game World

by C. J. Farley

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then we need to show you.”

  Cudgel, Carving Knife, and the other Maruunz turned their backs on Dylan and his friends. Together, side by side, their backs formed one big screen, and their moving tattoos leapt from one Maruunz to another. In silhouette, the tattoos were telling the story of the collective loss of their parents. Huge hummingbirds, clouding the sky, swooped down on warriors in a sneak attack. The Maruunz fought bravely, but were overwhelmed. Then, one by one, the birds reared back and plunged their beaks into the chests of their defeated foes, sucking the spirits out of them like nectar from a flower. Light flashed like paparazzi cameras as the shadows were loosed, and there was a puff of money-colored smoke. All that was left were rows of statues. The Maruunz kids turned back around, their faces grim.

  “I thought when people lose their shadows, they eventually turn to dust or something,” Eli said.

  “It’s the power of the forest,” Carving Knife explained. “That’s why Nanni sent the bodies back here. The same obeah that keeps us young preserves their forms. Not every spell has been sapped by the Baron.”

  “It just hit me,” Ines said. “You said there’s obeah released when shadows are stolen—and the Baron is hunting for more. So that’s why the Baron is ripping people and their shadows apart! He’s harvesting the magic!”

  Dylan peered closer. None of the statues was casting a shadow.

  “So why does the Baron need so much magic?” Ines asked.

  “I wish I knew,” Carving Knife said. “But it is said that the Baron has promised his people a return to the age before the Great Music, when birds ruled the earth and the air and their steps were thunder.”

  “Isn’t that the way the rich always do us?” Eli seethed. “The shadows he’s stealing—they’re people’s dreams! The Baron is taking the dreams of regular people to run his own schemes!”

  “We will be hard-pressed if the Baron attacks again,” Cudgel admitted. “We were once greater in number. Some of us left to join the crew of Ma Sinéad, the pirate queen.”

  “Ma Sinéad is a great female warrior,” Carving Knife declared.

  “Whatever,” Cudgel mumbled.

  “My sister loves pirates,” Dylan said. “When this Ma Sinéad was here, did she say where she was going?”

  Cudgel shrugged. “Ma Sinéad kind of does her own thing.”

  “Did she leave anything behind? A map? A note? A grocery list?”

  “Only this moppet.” Carving Knife pulled out a small figurine.

  Dylan couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  Carving Knife was holding Emma’s pirate doll!

  “Y-y-you got that from Ma Sinéad?” Dylan asked.

  That meant Emma wasn’t a prisoner of the Baron. She was alive! But was she now a captive of the pirate queen?

  Dylan snatched the doll away. That stupid thing had caused a lot of trouble, but he had never been happier to see it. “Tell me everything.”

  Carving Knife told Dylan that Ma Sinéad was a living legend. She was tall and dressed all in crimson, from her headscarf to her red leather boots. People thought she was only a myth up until a few months ago, when she had suddenly appeared and began to rally the people of Xamaica against the Baron.

  She rode the wind in the Black Starr, her flying invisible ship. Her crew was stocked with outcasts—Iron Lions who didn’t talk in questions, Higues with a thirst for adventure, and Wata Mamas with a hunger for action.

  Ma Sinéad had come to Nanni Town just a short while ago on a recruiting mission—a Maruunz already in her crew had led her to the hidden city—and a number of the young Maruunz had joined her. Before Ma Sinéad left, she had bartered for food and supplies. She had traded the doll for coconuts from the great Palm of Protection, the milk of which is said to shield warriors in battle.

  So Emma had probably joined up with Ma Sinéad. Or the pirate queen had captured her and ditched the doll. But Dylan didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want any more windows to fly open in his head. His heart pounded in his chest like it was trying to escape. He had to stay focused and positive.

  “Was Ma Sinéad holding a little girl hostage?” Dylan asked.

  “Cudgel and I were actually too busy fighting each other to notice,” Carving Knife admitted.

  “Nice. And you really have no idea where Ma Sinéad went?”

  “When the big battle against the Baron comes,” Carving Knife said, “she will no doubt be there.”

  Cudgel clapped his hands. “But why are we waiting around? Let us speak of happier things. You said Queen Nanni is off to free our people! We need to celebrate that! Our new friends are right: let brother greet sister, and sister greet brother. Today we live—for tomorrow we die! It’s time for us to return to our houses as one family and mark the occasion—Maruunz style!”

  Was this guy crazy? With his sister possibly being held captive by friggin’ pirates, Dylan definitely didn’t feel like partying.

  Carving Knife clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t you know the prophecy? The Great Web is falling! The Groundation nears its end! Tomorrow is the end of the world! What better reason to party?”

  “One heart! One faith! Maruunz!” cried the Maruunz.

  * * *

  The wind passing through town was carrying the most delicious aromas Dylan had ever smelled. He couldn’t identify the various scents—some were fragrant, some were tangy, others were sweet. The aromas seemed to have colors—green and red and yellow and golden-brown. Something delectable was being baked or stewed or roasted. Just by breathing in the wind, he could almost taste the flavor on his tongue and imagine the rich food in his mouth. Despite his bad mood, he was really hungry and he wondered what was cooking. They came to a wide, flat area in the center of town that was designated for public celebration. The Maruunz kids—boys and girls all working together—were laying out a feast. Hunters returned from the bush, bringing with them slain wild hogs. Cooks took the hog meat, cleaned it, carved it, and removed all the bones.

  Dylan tried to keep his stomach from grumbling. “I am not in the mood for this.”

  “You’re going to need your strength,” Ines said. “If this is gonna be our final meal, let’s make it a good one. Looks like they’re making jerk!”

  “You got in my face about eating with the plant people—but now you want to party with the Maruunz?”

  “The Arrowaks turned out to be fireball-throwing zombies. The Maruunz are on our side. Big difference.”

  “It’s not time for talking,” one Maruunz said. “It’s time for eating!”

  Sitting down at a long mahogany banquet table, the kids started to eat. Dylan began with fruits, continued with several pieces of warm cassava bread, and finished with Maruunz-style jerk pork. It seemed impossible, but it tasted even better than it smelled—it was more than a taste, it engaged all your senses, filling you with visions and sounds of beautiful days and happy nights.

  “Your food is even better than the Baron’s nectar!” Eli remarked.

  “It should be,” Carving Knife boasted. “The Baron’s beverage is brewed from stolen memories. He keeps them in his Green Cloud above his Golden Grove. Someday he’ll likely sell us back our own thoughts, and the price will be blood.”

  “No wonder that nectar had such a bad aftertaste,” Eli said.

  The Maruunz kept bringing food. At some point Dylan held up his hands. “No more! I’m stuffed.”

  Several of the Maruunz began to dance. Dylan definitely was not in the mind-set for this. It was reminding him of how the whole disaster with the pirate doll and Viral Emma began.

  Emma had won the state spelling bee and the science fair and some jealous jerk stole her pirate doll out of her locker as revenge. Dylan thought things were finally getting better at school when he and Eli got invited to a party—he and Eli were never on the guest list for parties. They snuck out before Emma could tag along. Turned out Chad was behind the party and it was being held a
t a friend’s house whose parents were out. The party was pirate-themed and everyone was in costume. There was a talk-like-a-pirate contest and the prize was . . . Emma’s stolen doll. The night only got worse after that. Dylan felt awful about the Viral Emma thing now. He had acted more like an other than a brother.

  He tried to focus on the present. He realized he might be wrong about the Maruunz dancing—some of them were doing something more than that. At first Dylan thought they were performing this Brazilian fighting style he saw online once called capoeira—a couple of the movements seemed similar. But this was different. The dance was warlike—mixing punches and kicks with spins and thrusts. Dancers disappeared and reappeared, twisting about as lightly and easily as tendrils of smoke.

  “This is the Bangaran fighting style,” Carving Knife said proudly.

  The kids watched in wonder. It was part martial arts, part choreography, part battle ritual, part celebration—and part magic. The movements of Bangaran were at the heart of the Maruunz approach to combat. Dylan had seen judo, karate, jiujitsu, and all sorts of martial arts on TV and in the movies—but he had never seen anything like this. He longed to learn more of its secrets. If he was going to find Emma—and maybe fight pirates or whomever—this was the kind of stuff he needed to know.

  Then the drumbeat turned slower and the Maruunz started to sway to the rhythm. Nestuh creeped up closer to the gathering. Eli pointedly turned his back.

  “Welcome back,” Dylan said. “How’re you doing?”

  “I heard the drum, I had to come.”

  “What is it with spiders and drums?”

  “The drum is the heartbeat of Xamaica,” Nestuh explained. “Speaking of hearts, you should ask the girl to dance, mon.”

  “Ines? Are you kidding? We’re from different worlds. Plus, she’s an Iron Lion now.”

  “You got to keep an open mind in such things,” Nestuh said. “I dated a caterpillar dis one time. She completely changed by the end of the relationship.”

  “Ines is totally older than me. She’s like thirteen.”

  “I and I am 1,400 years old,” Nestuh said. “But if a 700-year-old tarantula want to get all kissy-kissy, me not going to kick her off the web. Truth.”

  The drums really were hard to resist. Ines came over to Dylan. “Care to dance?”

  “A girl asking Dylan to dance?” Eli chortled. “This really is the end of the world!”

  Dylan wasn’t going to do it, but Ines literally got her claws into him and pulled him onto the dance floor. She was still an Iron Lion, so Dylan held onto her furry neck. With his eyes closed, it was almost like he was dancing with a human girl. In fact . . .

  “Ines, you’re changing,” Dylan said.

  Ines kept swaying. “Looks like there’s still some magic left in this town. Just keep dancing.”

  So for a moment they were a boy and girl, eyes closed, dancing to drums in the firelight.

  “You know what I miss?” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “New Year’s Day.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “This celebration is giving me flashbacks. Back when I was a kid, my dad used to take me back to Seoul for the holidays to see some relatives. He’d let me dress up in a silk gown that belonged to his great-grandmother, and I’d wear these ceremonial hats and wooden sandals. I remember how the dress used to smell—all crisp and clean and ancient. It was like wearing a history book.”

  “That sounds great. In my house, New Year’s Eve was for the birds. Literally.”

  “Not in Seoul. The whole neighborhood, the whole city for that matter, felt like my family. My dad would take me around to all the houses and I’d do this elaborate New Year’s Day bow. I was beyond cute! Everyone would tuck a coin into my silk sashes. That’s the custom. I made more money on New Year’s Day than I made all year. It was the only time money ever meant anything to me.” Ines put her head on Dylan’s shoulder. “That was one of the last days my father and I spent real time together.”

  “But he’s in all the Mee Corp. ads with you!”

  “Most of those commercials we did—he wasn’t even in the room. They use special effects to put him in the shots. You can have a father and not have a dad.” Ines brushed back the drape of black hair that hung over the right side of her face and wiped away a tear. “There must be some way for me to bring him back.”

  Dylan felt the curtain of depression coming down again. “I know how you feel. When you told me about my dad and how he died in that asylum . . .”

  “I’m soooo sorry about that . . .”

  “It’s okay. It just feels like I’m a puzzle, and I’m missing a piece.”

  * * *

  Later that night, everyone was woken up by a horrible rumble.

  The Maruunz were already mustering. The kids and Nestuh gathered with them.

  “The Baron cast a spell,” Nestuh said. “The Palm of Protection has fallen.”

  “Impossible,” Cudgel declared. “He’d need at least some general notion of where we are to send a spell. This city is still hidden.”

  “Did you cover your tracks when you returned from the forest?” asked Eli.

  “We are warriors,” Cudgel said, taking offense. “We have a code!”

  “What he’s trying to say is, no, we didn’t,” Carving Knife said. “We were too excited. We all thought our parents had come back.”

  “These really are the rejects,” Eli whispered to Dylan. “I don’t care that they’ve trained for four hundred years. The only thing seasoned around here is the food.”

  The ground shook again, and the palm trees swayed. A vast voice shook everything. It was the Grand Chirp.

  “Now the time has come for the Bird Nation to collect its ancient inheritance!” the Baron announced in a disembodied voice. “We fight for all Xamaica! For what we do enriches us all!”

  A Maruunz scout approached. “The Baron’s army is nearing the city.”

  “What do we do now?” asked Ines, who had become an Iron Lion again.

  “Resist!” Carving Knife and Cudgel shouted together.

  “Dem finally have something to agree on,” Nestuh sighed.

  There was little time for the ordering of the battle.

  Nanni Town was cannily constructed. Although it was a hidden city, it was also positioned to withstand a siege in case it was discovered. It was surrounded on two sides by rock walls and on the third by the river. That meant there was only one avenue into the city for invaders—through the forest.

  Cudgel, Dylan, Eli, Ines, and Carving Knife huddled to discuss how to deploy their forces. They only had thirty-three people, counting Dylan and his friends. Who knew how many fighters the Baron had?

  Dylan’s heart was beating in his chest like a sneaker thumping in a dryer; his mind was racing NASCAR fast. Focus. The Professor had always told him that the ability to concentrate is a matter of life or death. She sure was right.

  Nanni Town was a mess. The remains of the feast were scattered everywhere—half-filled pots, broken plates, and soup bones were strewn across the town. Maruunz warriors wandered about, looking for direction or their weapons. Dylan had to get it together if he was going to help put this ragtag group on track.

  “So, we should decide on a battle plan,” he announced. “Any ideas?”

  “We spent four hundred years mastering our weapons,” Cudgel said.

  “What he means to say,” Carving Knife clarified, “is that we didn’t get around to overall combat strategy.”

  Eli looked grim. “Just shoot me now. Actually, the Baron will do it soon enough.”

  Nestuh was raising six of his eight legs.

  “Yes?” Dylan said.

  “I have a solution,” Nestuh offered. “The Great Drum of Anancy.”

  “The what of who?” Eli asked.

  “The Great Drum that rallied the beasts of Xamaica in the time of the Great Music!” Cudgel said. “If we had it we could bring all the creatures of the land to our s
ide.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Dylan said. “Who has it, and where is it?”

  “That’s the problem,” Cudgel said. “The Baron has the drum. To get it, someone would have to sneak through his army, find his tent, and steal it.”

  Ines, Eli, and Dylan all shook their heads.

  “Any other ideas that don’t involve suicide missions?” Dylan asked.

  “I need to do this, mon!” Nestuh pleaded. “All my life, all my 1,554 sisters—dem call me failure, now traitor, or even worse! I can’t even spin a web. Truth. Let me do this one thing. I’m telling you, I never betrayed you! Let me prove I can do this.”

  “Nestuh, you don’t have to prove—” began Ines.

  “Oh yes he does,” Eli cut in, flames rising from his horns.

  “There’s got to be another way,” Dylan said. “You know the way you and Anjali took out Chad at school when I was on my skateboard and he was chasing me? We need to do something like that. Come out from unexpected places.”

  Dylan reasoned that the Baron hadn’t found the exact location of the city yet, or else he would already be there. He had probably discovered some of the Maruunz’s tracks and so he likely had a general idea where to look. That meant his army was probably broken up into different expeditionary parties. In the woods, there would be plenty of trees to conceal just how few in number the children were. They could pick apart the Baron’s splintered forces group by group. That was Dylan’s plan anyway.

  Eli was sent to the river with the Maruunz boatmen. Perhaps their small fleet could lure the enemy and Eli, hiding by the bank, would also have the element of surprise.

  Ines was dispatched above the town to lead the air assault. A couple Maruunz with long-distance weapons—arrows, flying stars, and throwing axes—were placed under her command.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Ines said. “This is a real battle.”

  Dylan put a hand on her furry feline shoulder. “You still think you’re this little rich girl with a fake show?”

  “I am. I’m a big faker.”