by Brandon Mull
Takoda shook his head furiously. He didn’t want to believe it.
“The pain you described,” Ananda said. “The dizziness. That sinking feeling in your gut. It won’t go away until your bond is complete. You have to touch him.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to. I don’t deserve any of this.”
“It isn’t a punishment, Takoda. It just is.”
But it felt like a punishment. She was holding him captive, after all, there in one of the stone cells of the granary. The same as Kovo.
“Well, what if I refuse the bond?” he asked Ananda. Takoda couldn’t stand the thought of looking into Kovo’s bloodred eyes for the rest of his life, knowing what he had done. Besides, what if their bond made Takoda evil, too? What if a life of horror was the boy’s destiny? He had to believe he had some choice in the matter.
Kovo began pounding the other side of the stone wall—a sound that had become familiar. It was as if he intended to break the wall apart to get to Takoda. After a while, the pounding subsided, followed by the duller sound of scraping.
How long would it take for Kovo to break down the wall, or to scrape the chains until he was free?
Another wave of pain washed over Takoda. He tried to hide it from Ananda, but she saw the boy’s clenched jaw and curling toes. And then a new pain came, at the pit of his stomach. Until he thought he might throw up.
“That’s it,” Ananda said, standing. “If you won’t go to Kovo, I’ll bring him to you.” Takoda begged her to stop, but Ananda ignored him. She unlatched the heavy granary door. The old hinges shrieked as she pulled it open. Takoda started to follow her, but another spell of dizziness dragged the boy back to the ground. Kovo was beating the wall again, and with every vibration Takoda’s head throbbed, as if it was the inside of his skull the ape was pounding.
Takoda could hear Ananda unlatch the door to Kovo’s cell. Instantly, the pounding stopped. A moment later, he heard her open the door. But instead of the shrieking of hinges, all Takoda could hear was Ananda’s voice, shrieking his name.
Takoda pushed himself up and stood, straining against the knot in his stomach. Kovo had taken away everyone the boy loved. Of course he would try to take Ananda from him too.
But as soon as Takoda passed through the doorway, he was relieved to see that Kovo hadn’t hurt her. Instead, Ananda was standing inside the ape’s cell, covering her mouth with her two hands. The horror on her face prepared Takoda for the worst, and yet still, when the boy looked into the room, it was as if the stone floor had dropped out from beneath him.
There were bright smears of blood all over the walls, where the gorilla had pounded and scraped his fists. Kovo himself sat placidly in the center of the cell. He was staring at Takoda again, as intensely as he had before. Only now his knuckles were as crimson as his treacherous eyes.
Kovo’s eyes. Looking into them, the pain and dizziness subsided. Takoda hated it, but it was as if the ape’s terrible gaze was healing him somehow.
Takoda looked away, preferring any pain to even the slightest pang of kinship with the beast. But it was too late. The sickness he felt was nearly gone, replaced by the familiar yearning to reach out and make contact with the animal.
Breathe, he told himself. As he did, the boy’s nostrils filled with the metallic smell of blood. Takoda looked around the cell walls, and something puzzled him.
The room was covered in Kovo’s blood. But that didn’t make any sense. The stories of the ape had always said he was very clever—if Kovo was trying to knock the wall down, he should have pounded the same few stones until they cracked. And yet he’d painted the room with his own blood.
“I’m going to get help,” Ananda said, rushing from the room.
When Takoda turned to follow her, Kovo sprang toward him with alarming speed. The gorilla was stopped short, thanks to a heavy chain attached to a collar at his throat. Kovo lifted a fist in Takoda’s direction and held it out. More blood seeped from the fresh wounds.
“What do you want?” Takoda asked him furiously. “What more could you possibly want from me?”
But Kovo was no longer looking him in the eyes. He was staring at the boy’s clenched fists, dangling at his sides. Kovo glanced at his own fist, then back at Takoda’s. Then he turned his hand over, and the fist unfolded into an open palm.
“I’m nothing like … ” Takoda said to the monster. But the words caught in his throat as he wondered if it was true. His bruised fist was still sore from his fight with Sudo, even though he could barely remember why he had punched him.
“Forget it,” Takoda said, turning again to leave. He didn’t care if walking away from Kovo made him sick and dizzy. He refused to give his enemy what he wanted.
Kovo pounded the ground and grunted impatiently. When Takoda turned around, the gorilla was scraping the floor with his blood, leaving a half-circle smear on the dirty stone. Kovo looked up at him wildly, and then back at his own fist, still pressed to the ground. Kovo then scraped a zigzag, before staring up at the boy again.
Takoda didn’t know what response the ape was waiting for, but when he didn’t give it to him, Kovo furrowed his brow. He scraped another zigzag above the first, but it left no blood. The grit from the granary floor had caked onto his wounded knuckles.
Kovo pounded the ground again, until there was fresh blood dripping from the ape’s hand. Staring at him hard, Kovo painted a bright zigzag in the exact place he had tried to before.
“It’s a drawing,” Takoda said, and Kovo nodded.
Looking around the cell walls again, the boy no longer saw only chaotic smears. Instead, he noticed one image repeated again and again. It was of gigantic fanged jaws, wide open, howling, baring teeth—all drawn in Kovo’s blood.
Hovering within each gaping mouth was a bloody spiral.
Ananda startled Takoda, setting a bucket of blue-green liquid at his feet. She handed him a rag and ordered him to clean Kovo’s wounds.
“He’s trying to communicate something to me.”
“Of course he is,” Ananda said. “You’re his human partner.”
Takoda wanted so badly for her to be wrong. But he knew already that she wasn’t. He could feel the bond forming with Kovo, even without their touching.
And he could feel the difference inside himself. Some inner strength he thought had died with his mother had found its way back to him.
But Kovo is evil, he wanted to say to Ananda. At least, the other Kovo had been. But with the ape staring at Takoda, his bleeding knuckles pressing into the stone, the boy couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Maybe you’ll bring out the best in him,” Ananda told Takoda gently. And with that she closed the door, leaving him alone with his spirit animal.
Takoda wet the rag with liquid from the bucket, his pulse quickening. He took one step closer to Kovo, then paused. The menacing ape held out a dirty, blood-caked fist. Takoda reached for it slowly with the rag, his hand shaking. Without warning, Kovo snatched the rag out of the boy’s hand and threw it to the ground with a splat.
Then Kovo raised his fist out to him again.
Takoda knew what the gorilla was waiting for. And deep down he knew he was waiting for it too. It was as if a spark of energy was humming in the air between them.
Takoda closed his eyes, searching inside himself, desperately trying to commit his own thoughts and feelings to memory—if for no other reason than to know afterward if something had changed.
Takoda reached out and pressed his smaller fist to Kovo’s.
The bond with Kovo had formed like skin over an old wound. It hadn’t healed the feelings of distrust Takoda had for him. Instead, it had merely buried them, so that Takoda could think of more than death when he looked into Kovo’s eyes. So that the boy didn’t hear the ape’s gibber and think only about his father screaming for him to run.
But when Takoda was startled by a feeling he couldn’t place, he realized it might be part of their bond.
That night he woke
up in a panic, only to find Kovo staring at him from the corner of his room. The ape had been chained to the wall, though the monks had left some blankets and pillows for him, which sat unused in a pile.
Takoda blinked through the darkness, shaking away the nightmare that had woken him.
“Can you feel me, too?” he asked after a moment. “From your side of the bond?”
Kovo looked away, disinterested. Takoda was starting to suspect that Kovo was even less pleased with their pairing than he himself was.
Kovo pointed to the door impatiently.
“It isn’t time to ring the bell yet,” Takoda said tiredly, lying back again.
But Kovo grunted and pointed, not letting the boy go back to sleep. Eventually Takoda gave in. He sighed and threw his legs over the bed, then shambled over to Kovo and unlocked his shackles from the wall.
Kovo followed him out the door, toward the west tower. It was early morning, not yet dawn. The ape moved slowly, his two large nostrils taking in the morning forest air as it poured through the monastery. Takoda tried again to engage the ape with questions, but he was almost entirely unresponsive.
The only rise he was able to get out of the gorilla was when Takoda chained him to the foot of the tower. Kovo seemed alarmed that he would leave him behind, and tugged at the iron collar with his bandaged hands.
“You can come with me, if you don’t get in my way,” Takoda told him. “But you have to hurry.”
Kovo snorted derisively, and when Takoda freed him, Kovo bounded up the stairs ahead of the boy.
Kovo raced up the spiral far faster than Takoda had expected, considering his massive size. Takoda had heard of people who could access the strengths of their spirit animals. He tried to focus on his bond as he made his way up the tower, much more slowly than Kovo. But the climb didn’t feel any faster than before.
When Takoda finally reached the top, Kovo was standing majestically on his four massive limbs, his back arched as he stared out over the horizon. He studied the distance, as if he was waiting for something or someone to appear.
“If you’re watching for the sunrise, then you’re looking in the wrong direction,” Takoda told him. Kovo gave no response.
When the sun finally appeared, it was little more than a sliver of bright red light on the horizon, not yet lighting the full sky. When Takoda suddenly rang the bell, it startled Kovo. He spun around, his deep-set eyes wide with panic. Takoda stifled a laugh as the infamous ape scowled at him.
Then Kovo turned and continued watching out the far window of the bell tower as Takoda delivered a second and then a third toll.
On the way down, the boy asked Kovo once again about their bond.
“What powers will you give me?” he asked. Again he was ignored. It was as if they weren’t bonded at all, and Takoda was nothing to Kovo but a pest. “Come on,” he said. “Will I be stronger? Faster? Smarter?”
But all Takoda felt was annoying.
When Takoda saw Sudo later that morning, the older boy avoided his eye. Takoda wondered if it was possible that Sudo had learned his lesson from their fight. More likely, it was the four-hundred-pound gorilla following Takoda throughout the monastery.
Kovo sniffed the air loudly as they passed the bully, then blew out again quickly. The gorilla grimaced, as if he smelled something foul, looking up at Sudo’s frown. A few of the monks laughed as Sudo backed away, blushing.
Walking on, Takoda was nearly certain he noticed a brief smile appear on Kovo’s menacing face.
Before the midday chant, Ananda came to Takoda’s room. She handed him a satchel with charcoal and a scroll of papyrus. The boy expected her to dole out additional punishment, asking him to transcribe monastery doctrine from memory, or to use it for something equally tedious. So he was surprised when she explained what the scroll was for.
“It’s for Kovo,” she said. “So he can draw in a more productive manner.”
Ananda then handed Takoda a package. It was wrapped ceremoniously, as if it were a special gift.
Kovo watched suspiciously as Takoda unwrapped it. Inside, the boy found a new monastery robe. This one was blue, like Ananda’s, instead of the warmer saffron. There wasn’t a stain or tear to be found on the luxurious garment.
“You have a spirit animal now,” she said. “You should dress accordingly.”
“Should I change into it now?” Takoda asked her, unable to contain his excitement. “Is it okay if I wear it to meditation?”
“About that … ” Ananda said. She sighed, taking the robe back from him. She folded it and packed it neatly into the satchel. Then the old monk glanced over Takoda’s shoulder, toward the doorway.
There, standing in the midday sun, was a light-skinned boy with golden hair. He was about Takoda’s height, but that seemed to Takoda to be the only thing the two of them had in common. At least, until a large wolf with cobalt blue eyes followed the boy into the room.
Upon seeing the two together, Takoda knew instantly who they were. He gaped at the heroic duo, then flushed when the boy nodded at him.
“Takoda, this is Conor,” Ananda said. “I need you to trust him. He’s here to take you and Kovo to a safer place.”
Ananda must have known the words would hurt Takoda, because she said them with a great deal of compassion. Still, all Takoda could hear was that he was about to lose his home again. Along with the closest thing he had to a family. And what was Takoda to believe he was gaining, other than an infamously treacherous spirit animal who wanted nothing to do with him?
Kovo.
And that’s what this was really about, wasn’t it? The gorilla was perhaps the greatest villain in the history of Erdas. As a Great Beast he had nearly destroyed the world—twice. The Greencloaks would never let so dangerous a creature out of their sight again. That was what Ananda meant by taking them to a safer place—safer for the rest of the world.
What will they think of me? Takoda wondered. The boy who summoned Kovo?
In the stories Takoda had heard of the four heroes of Erdas, Conor was always described as the kind one. He was the gentle shepherd, forced by circumstance to be a hunter and leader. And yet the young Greencloak seemed to be wrestling with his anger as he gazed at Kovo chained to the wall.
Briggan didn’t even try. The wolf growled openly at the ape, his hackles rising. Takoda remembered his father telling him that Kovo had killed Briggan himself, back when the two were both still Great Beasts.
The ape watched them both impassively, his brooding red eyes practically glowing in the sunlight. If he was surprised to see his former enemies, his face didn’t show it.
“That’s him all right,” Conor said, taking a breath. He pushed his hand into Briggan’s fur and the wolf calmed somewhat, his growl slowly fading.
A wave of despair fell over Takoda. The Greencloaks would hate him, too, just because he was bonded to Kovo. All of Erdas would hate him.
“Neither of you are safe here,” Conor said, as if he knew something that they didn’t. “There’s someone out there hunting the Great Beasts.” His blue eyes met Takoda’s, and Takoda was surprised by what he saw there. Pity … and worry.
Only then did Takoda begin to believe what Ananda had told him. He was not safe. And neither was Kovo.
But what safer place could there have been than the isolated Niloan monastery, wedged between virgin forest and the mouth of a guarded river?
“Zerif knows where you are,” Conor said nervously. “It’s only a matter of time. We really need to hurry.”
Zerif? Takoda was sure he’d heard the name before. Something about the war.
Takoda had nothing but questions for Conor. Why me? Why has Kovo returned? Isn’t the war over? But Conor was already out the door, the gray wolf leading the way.
Kovo beat his chest, gibbering at Takoda urgently to unlock his chains from the wall. He wanted to go with the Greencloaks?
Takoda didn’t feel ready. He glanced around his modest room. He had no belongings, other than the
satchel in Ananda’s hands. She rushed to unlock Kovo’s chains, then stepped to Takoda and threw the satchel’s leather strap over his head.
Takoda stared up into the monk’s kind eyes, trying to think of what to say. But nothing came. Ananda hugged him tightly, not saying a word. The hug wasn’t nearly long enough when Kovo interrupted, pulling Takoda roughly from Ananda and toward the doorway.
Takoda couldn’t help but think of his mother’s final embrace, and how the metal armor had hurt his chest. Ananda’s hug hurt, too. Possibly worse, because this time Takoda knew it was a good-bye. Probably forever.
Kovo’s muscular fist tugged him down the corridor. Takoda turned back to see the monk wiping tears from her eyes. When she saw him she smiled, holding up her bright palm.
“Now you get to run,” Ananda called after Takoda.
And run they did.
Takoda chased Kovo down a long arcade, barely able to keep up with him. They turned, rushing down a brightly lit corridor, and then raced up a tall flight of stairs, a crowd of old monks and students leaping out of the way. Takoda thought he saw Sudo among them, but he was running too fast up the stairs to look back. When they reached the top, he spied Conor pointing toward something in the sky.
An eagle was circling high above the monastery. Takoda squinted to look, covering his eyes from the glare of the noon sun.
“It’s Halawir!” Conor gasped. “Zerif is closer than I thought. We have to find a quicker way to the river.”
Briggan leaped over the edge of the walkway, splashing into an elevated aqueduct below. Conor did the same, and Kovo and Takoda followed, jumping less elegantly into the cold channel of shallow water. They followed the flow, high above the cloisters and gardens of the monastery. Takoda carried his satchel above his head, the swift water tugging at his ankles and waist as Kovo tore off in front of him, water splashing in all directions.
