“You’ll never rule Nostos or Earth,” Apollo said fiercely, standing tall like the royal he was born to be. “Artemis may seem like a new queen, but something else is at force here. We will find out.”
“Who are you to talk, King?” Leandro spat out. “You couldn’t rule your own land, and even your family doesn’t believe you’re the rightful king. You probably killed your own father like they say. Ha!”
“You know it’s a lie!” Apollo stepped toward Leandro with his hands fisted. “You were there when he died on the battlefield fighting Hekate.” He spread a hand out toward Charlie and me. “We all were.”
“Doesn’t matter. No one has faith in you,” Leandro said with a sneer.
Apollo inhaled deeply, turning his father’s ring around in Leandro’s face. “My father did.”
“You can’t stop us.” Leandro cocked his head. “My queen will get the Oracle’s powers, one way or another—in life or death. You shall see.”
Charlie punched at Leandro but I held him back. “What about finding your family?” I asked Leandro. “You’re giving up on them too?”
He looked away. “They’re dead. I’m loyal to Artemis now.”
“Cram it,” Ash stepped forward and drew her knife. “We must do something with you now.”
“Don’t hurt him,” I pleaded.
Leandro nodded at me with a raised eyebrow, as if we were on the same team. “Listen to the boy if you want to live.”
“You don’t tell us what to do,” Ash said in a calm voice. “Your people lost that right long ago. We live by our own rules now.” She waved at the words over the doorway. “We thought you were our friend. Now you’re nothing.”
Leandro stomped his chair legs and the tree house floor shook.
I slid Leandro’s journal back in my coat pocket. “Let him go, Ash. He can’t help us anymore. We’ve got Apollo. We’ll get him home and convince his people to fight Artemis and all of Nostos. We can find a way to free the kid slaves and shut down the Lightning Road.”
“Like Leandro and I were to do … but failed,” Apollo said with a pitiful look at Leandro then he leaned in to me and whispered, “maybe there’s still a way to succeed. Poseidon was secretly in my court. If I bring him the Oracle, he’ll listen. Maybe my people too.”
“Meaning me,” I could barely whisper back. He nodded and I looked at the Wild Childs, who watched and waited. I’d come to save one but now must save them all. “One for the many,” I finally said.
“One for the many,” the Wild Childs thundered back.
Ash spoke up. “I’ll release him, but he’ll face the great beasts like all kids released in the Wild Lands. If he can survive and get over the border wall, he’ll live. If not … he’ll be grounded, for flippin’ good.”
I didn’t know how to prove I was the Oracle, but my destiny was knocking. It was time to open the door.
“It’ll also buy us time to figure out a new plan for the three of you boys,” Ash said. “You can’t stay here.”
We all agreed with that. Ash cut Leandro’s ropes and pushed a knife against his throat. “Now climb down and head back to the evil you work for.”
Leandro jerked his chin up. “You’ve all set your death sentence. And you’ll be the first to die, Oracle.” In a flash, he pulled the knife from his boot. Charlie pushed me out of the way as silver spun through the air toward my head before crashing into the wall.
“It’s your turn to die today, traitor, and I’ll stick you myself if I have to,” Ash said in a steady voice, yanking Leandro from his chair and shoving him toward the trap door. “Now get down there!”
Leandro did as she said. He had no choice with every knife in the place pointed at him. Ash picked up Leandro’s knife and handed it to me. “Yours now. Don’t live by anyone else’s rules.”
The tree house closed in on me as I held the knife in my hand. The lines were drawn and Leandro had crossed them. Would he come back? Or were we sending him to his death?
I handed the tiny knife to Charlie. “Thanks for watching out for me.”
He folded it shut and slid it into his pocket as Ash blindfolded Leandro again. “Good luck on a blind runabout,” she said, tying his hands in front. “This is for trying that little knife stunt.”
“He’ll die out there if he can’t see or use his hands,” I said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Fate will tell,” Ash said. “He’s a soldier and fit to survive on his wits and instincts. We gave him a second chance to live. Let’s see how he uses it.”
She was the toughest girl I’d ever met. Good thing she picked our side.
“I’ll survive all right and hunt you down,” Leandro said with a smile.
We all watched him feel his way as he climbed through the hatch door. He peered up one last time. His blindfold mocked us. “See you soon.”
“Only in death,” Ash said quietly.
Leandro’s grin fell and then he disappeared through the hole. The kids rushed forward to watch him descend. Beasts bawled from somewhere in the forest—on the hunt.
I hoped it wouldn’t be Leandro they caught.
Chapter Seventeen
After Leandro dropped away, the Wild Childs gathered up the bows and arrows hanging on the walls and sneaked through the tree house door and windows.
“One for the many,” they each said with a nod to Ash as they left.
Ash directed us to leave with her when they were all gone, and we stepped outside onto the tree house platform. Purple night deepened and long shadows softened the craggy world. We stood on a plank road with a roped netting rail that zigzagged from house to house and floated under the forest’s canopy in a sea of darkness. Green lights glowed softly through lopsided windows, and branch shadows wrapped the tiny shacks in prickly fingers. Leaves battered the houses in the sharp wind as the Wild Childs skulked amongst the trees.
Ash waited impatiently on the platform’s edge as we got our bearings. “Follow me!”
And we did, the three of us hanging on to the railing the entire way, bouncing down the plank path. She set us up in a vacated tree house (I didn’t ask why it was empty), and a Wild Child brought us a dinner of squirrel stew and ache cakes. “You all need sleep first,” Ash said, throwing animal hides on wooden slatted cots. “Tomorrow, we’ll get you to the Perimeter Lands.”
“Thanks,” I said. She nodded and left as the moonlight struck her in its crosshairs.
Too tired to talk, sleep claimed us quickly our second full night here. It seemed my head barely hit the floor when Ash lugged me up, a lantern shedding a dim green glow swinging from her hand.
“You’ve slept for hours. It’s still dark out but sunrise comes soon,” Ash whispered. “A good time to go runabout.” She pulled an animal skin coat and pants from a chest and shoved it at Apollo. “Wear these. They may save your life.”
Once his royal clothes were covered up, Apollo was a Wild Child. He’d lost his slumped dungeon pose and, along with the kingly jut of his chin, revealed he was much more than a fugitive of the woods. I hoped others wouldn’t see the king inside that I did.
“I wish you could stay, but I have to protect the kids and the dark will provide cover.”
A Wild Child walked past our house and peered in to make sure all was okay. Ash nodded and the kid moved along.
“Where are they all from?” I asked her.
“Sweden. Italy. Canada. Those places are where the Arrow Realm steals them. Some get traded to other realms. Doesn’t matter where we’ve lived before. We’re all the same now and we’re all we have—that and our freedom.”
“Free? Here in the trees?” Charlie said with questioning eyebrows.
“Free,” Ash repeated, her lips in a tight line. “If we survive the hunt, Artemis leaves us alone. I hope she keeps the deal even with us sticking one of her men.”
“She leaves you alone forever?” I said.
“Until we’re eighteen,” Ash said. “Then we’re Goners on our Leaving Day.”
&
nbsp; Charlie shook his head. “Then you die?”
“Not the lucky ones.” Ash pulled out her knife and twirled it expertly in her hand. It flashed in the lantern light, spinning like a bullet. “We raid the WC—the work camp—for weapons and extra mash. It’s easy for us to get in and out. We’re protected in our tree community, unlike anywhere else on Nostos. As Wild Childs, we stay alive for a reason. We’re stolen children once used as bait to hunt the great beasts—and we survived. Queen Artemis respects this, as did her ancestors. When the first group of Wild Childs started growing up, Queen Artemis of long ago sent an army to round us up. She got most of us, but not all. Those caught were sent to their death on a great hunt. Those that didn’t get stuck were sent to the WC. So, the Wild Child leader in charge went to her and made a deal to save us. If we turn out our own to the ground for the WC on their Leaving Day, then the queen lets us all live. Payment for being left alone. There’s no other place safer on Nostos for Earth kids. The Goners either get to the WC safe and work there … or they don’t.”
“They get stuck and grounded as in—”
“Shot and dead.” Ash lowered her head. “The queen gets them either way—by hunt or by slave. Life in the WC is still imprisonment, but it’s a life.”
“Not all the queens have honored this deal,” Apollo said. “My grandfather told me hunting stories about it from when he visited here as a young man.” He bent his head. “He loved the hunt.”
“Well, Leandro doesn’t … or didn’t,” I said. “In the Lost Realm, he told me he got in trouble for refusing to hunt kids. It’s how he got his broken arrow scar—the queen branded him a failure.”
Ash handed me a wrap from a trunk filled with squirrel mash and ache cakes, bringing me back to this realm’s unpleasant reality. “Time to leave.”
First, I needed more from her. “Why’d the old queen make that deal to save you?”
She sighed and talked fast, filling us in. “Hundreds of years ago, the son of that ancient Queen Artemis wanted to become a Wild Child. He hated how his people stole kids from Earth, and he went runabout to join ranks with the Wild Childs. His mother sent in her soldiers to bring him back, but there was a fight and the son was accidentally wounded by a soldier’s arrow. The prince nearly died but the Wild Childs healed him and the queen agreed to let her son live a double life as prince and Wild Child. Now every Queen Artemis—with some exceptions—carries on the tradition of letting the Wild Childs live.”
“First they have to escape the hunt and live to become a Wild Child,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, until their Leaving Day. Then the hunt restarts,” I said, my voice rising. “You’re no different from this world, Ash. You throw your friends to the wild beasts, and if they don’t get stuck, they get to live as slaves in the WC?”
“They live, blockhead,” Ash said in a clipped voice with flared eyes. “One Goner at a time saves us all. One for the many. You better be a Goner now too or we’ll all be. Three for the many.”
“I’d rather be a Wild Child,” Apollo said quietly, fiddling with his square buttons. “Better to be imprisoned on your own terms than by someone else’s.”
“That’s flippin’ right,” Ash said, punching fists to her waist.
Apollo rubbed the fur of his new coat and stared into the morning light spilling from the window. “Zeus will never let Artemis win. Once he finds out her plan—and he will—he’ll swarm this realm. He’ll have no tolerance either for the Wild Child community.” He turned back to Ash. “Then you’ll all be Goners, for real.”
“We can hide from Zeus,” Ash said. “We can live in the Perimeter Lands.”
“He empties them out once a year and tosses people off The Edge. Do you want to float to death in the Great Beyond?”
“We’ll cross into another realm then; keep moving if we have to. We can hide in the red desert canyons of the Dred Realm or in the Argos Realm where it never snows.” She threw her hands out to Apollo. “We built all this. We can build it again.”
“You’ll still be living under Zeus’s rules for Nostos wherever you go,” Apollo said. “We all will. And he wants the Oracle as badly as Artemis,” he shot me a look, “and for similar reasons: to control the Oracle. Zeus rules all of Nostos with a heavy hand, but if someone with the power of the original Olympians were to rise, they’d be a threat to him. Some Nostos rulers want Olympian powers and some want things to stay the same.” He lowered his voice. “We are a world divided.”
“Zeus didn’t stop Hekate in the Lost Realm when she took over King Apollo,” I said. “Why now?”
“He doesn’t care about the realms fighting each other,” Apollo said. “But if he finds out the Oracle is here and someone else is after him, he’ll hunt them both down.”
He let these words hang in the air. I scrunched my shoulders in with them all looking at me as if I was the answer.
“Then Zeus will do what?” I said to Apollo.
His black eyes fired into mine, his jaw twitching. “Kill them.”
Ash bent her head, her long hair hiding her face. “My Leaving Day is coming. Someone else will lead the Wild Childs soon.”
“Why don’t you escape on Leaving Day and head into the Perimeter Lands? Bribe someone to help you get to Earth,” I said. “My grandfather did. My mother did.”
She crossed her arms. “If we don’t honor our deal, the queen rounds us all up for the hunt. It’s happened once before. No member since has put our people in such danger. One group of Wild Childs tried to escape all at once. Too many died and the survivors returned to their home here.”
“It’s been the way of the Wild Childs for hundreds of years, Joshua,” Apollo said matter-of-factly. “It’s how our world works.”
“Your world stinks, King-man,” Charlie said.
Agreed.
“Ash, what about Leandro?” It hurt to say his name.
“He won’t get grounded.” Ash shook her head. “He knows how to stick the beasts good. Some animals may fear him, and Artemis has a weakness for him too. After all, her daughter was fathered by a Wild Child.”
“What happened to them?”
“The father got grounded on his Leaving Day. The beasts got him before he reached the WC. Artemis found his torn apart body in the woods. Her daughter died years later in a hunting accident.”
“How do you know all this?” I said.
She waved a hand. “We see a lot from these treetops … I see a lot. Like Artemis visiting the Black Heart Tree and sharing secrets with that evil tree monster.”
She shook her head as if tossing those thoughts away. “Enough gossip. You’ve overstayed your welcome.”
She turned to leave when shouts burst from nearby.
Artemis and her men were back!
Chapter Eighteen
“Scram and cram!” Ash pulled at me. “We have to get you out of the Wild Lands.” She ripped open the door, and we peered down over the platform that wrapped around the tree house. The lurid light of lanterns far below fought to find us through the thick of the trees.
“We’ll get you to the Perimeter Lands and then you’re on your own.” Ash dashed through the door to the platform outside. I slid along the tree house, wincing as I scraped against rough bark, splinters skewering my palms. Charlie cried out with pain behind me as a low hanging limb whipped him.
Ash urged us on with a grim face. “If you are the Oracle, Joshua, I’m sure you can come up with a new plan to survive.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Then you better flippin’ plan fast.”
Charlie, Apollo, and I bolted after her on the plank path. We ran across the top of the forest, dashing from one tree house to another. They were connected like roads through a hidden village. Wild Childs were positioned at windows with bows and arrows in hand.
“Nearly there?” Charlie asked between breaths.
Ash put up her hand to quiet him. The muffled calls of Artemis and her men echoed in the distance. It was h
ard to tell which direction they came from. They faded in and out.
“I’d hoped to scram to the Perimeter Lands, but it’s too far and there’s no time,” Ash said.
“Where are we?” I said, clutching a branch. Clouds flew across the fading moon, and wood smoke wafted up. Ash spread the branches apart, and a city of thatched roofs sprawled before us beyond the giant hedge fence that imprisoned the Wild Lands. Blackened chimneys puffed angrily with work in the early morning hours, and muddy paths wound between the mishmash of crooked buildings, their wooden features sagging with rot and age. Torches flickering on shack doors revealed rats running along the dirt ruts in the road.
“The WC,” Ash announced.
“Where they send grown-ups?” Charlie whispered. “I don’t want to go there.”
“They’ll be climbing up to us soon to look for you. Artemis thrives on the hunt and the WC is the last place they’ll check,” Ash said, scanning the woods. Artemis and her men moved off in the distance, their calls growing faint.
“She’s right,” Apollo said. “And I’ve got coins in my boot. We can bribe a guard to get out and make it to the Sea Realm. Poseidon may be my one ally left. Let’s hope he hasn’t turned on me like Artemis.”
“What if we try heading for the Perimeter Lands?” Our choices were slim. “If we can avoid Artemis, we can find help there—maybe from other escaped people.”
Charlie shook his head. “Remember those Takers we ran into in the Lost Realm? They thought we were the bad guys and wanted to kill us, and they were from our own world!”
“Sometimes the people you think are on your side betray you,” Apollo said.
“Yea, and sometimes people who betray you really are on your side,” I said.
“True,” Apollo said in a low voice. “We need more of those right now.”
“The one I trusted is a Goner; he may be in there,” Ash thrust her hand to the decrepit city. “We call him Oak. He’s tall with red hair. A friend from my country, Canada. If you meet the blockhead, say this spudhead Ash sent you to him for help.”
Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 8
