The dawn of our third day approached. The sky grew light lavender. The hint of a blue sunrise glowed on the horizon. A guard marched along one side of the wall, pacing the length.
“If you don’t meet Oak, there are others,” Ash whispered. “An underground group has taken root in the WC. They may have ways to help you.”
“How do you know this guy Oak?” I said, wanting to keep the conversation going—wanting to stay right here on this branch and not head down into that sprawling darkness of muck and danger.
“I cured him from an injury and helped save his wife. In return, he risked coming here to give me news of what’s going on in Nostos. I grew up in an orphanage on Earth and he … well, he became like a father I never knew. After my Leaving Day, I’ll join him in the WC.”
If you don’t become a dead Goner first.
Ash handed us each a vine.
“Mon Dieu! What am I supposed to do with this? Fly back to Earth?” Charlie said.
Ash didn’t crack a smile. “No. Fly over the wall when the watch turns the corner.”
We all gripped our lifelines and stared down at the new world waiting to consume us.
Ash scanned above. “There’s no other way. I’ll watch for the korax. They answer to Artemis and hide in the trees waiting for us to escape. I’ve seen kids snatched up by them and thrown to the beasts.”
I imagined this new horror as tails flicked through the trees and grunts called up to us. “Ash is right, Charlie,” I said. “If we go down to the ground and try to cross the wall, we’ll be eaten before we get out of here.”
“Zut!” Charlie shook his vine. “Death by flight it is.”
Building up the crazy courage to fly off the tree I asked, “Why save us, Ash?”
Her green eyes creased. “If the Oracle is real then Earth people can be freed. There’d be no more Wild Childs. The ones who grew up and are Goners out there,” she swung her arm toward the WC, “can go home or choose to stay. I can find my friend, Oak. We can be a family.” Ash hooked a hand to my shirt, her eyes boring into mine. “Are you him?”
“Him—who?”
“The one. The Oracle.”
I tried to back up but slipped on a branch. My foot slid. Twigs cracked and I clung to Ash. “I—I don’t know. I could be.”
Saying those last three words sent an electric twang through my body.
I. Could. Be. The. Oracle.
The hunger snarls below grew louder. Ash pulled me closer, her leaf and earth smell washing over me. “I hope you are.”
“If he is, I swear to be the king he wants me to be,” Apollo said in a commanding voice I hadn’t heard in a long time.
“You can do that anyway, King-man,” Charlie said, patting him on the shoulder.
Ash pointed to a darker spot in the corner of an alley. “Swing wide and aim for there. Today’s market day where all realms come to barter for goods the slaves make. Most of the money lines the pockets of Zeus who watches over it all.” She spit out those last words. “If you’re lucky, you’ll find someone in the crowd to keep you safe.”
“If not?” I asked.
“If not, you may get turned in for a reward.”
“We better pick the right someone,” Charlie said.
She started to say more when the guard below turned the corner. “Go!” she urged. “Don’t get stuck or grounded for good!”
Great advice. “I’ll make mash of them first.”
She shot me a tight-lipped smile as I clenched my vine. It bit into my palm and fingers, but I held on harder. Its pain would keep me alive.
Charlie, Apollo, and I darted looks at each other and—sucking in a breath—we jumped.
Chapter Nineteen
We landed with a hard whump on crusted mud, tumbling into each other. I bit my lip to stop from crying out. Charlie’s faint oomph and Apollo’s gasp told me they were both okay. Charlie’s long legs stuck out in the moonlight, and I dragged him and Apollo into a dim corner. The vines we’d swung from curled back into the treetops. Far up, Ash waved and was gone.
Torchlight glinted on the rut-filled streets and written in the mud sprawled the words GET … UNDERGROUND.
How? There was no time to wonder where the message came from or how to follow its command as the determined smack of boots headed our way. We shrunk farther into the shadows.
The road between the shacks spread too narrow to hide us and the doorways offered no cover. I considered climbing to the rooftops but they didn’t appear too sturdy. Caving in to someone’s bed didn’t sound appealing.
Smack-smack.
The guard grew closer. We’d be destined for the hunt again—or worse.
“Runabout!” I pulled my friends up and we ran in the opposite direction of the watch. It was dangerous muck to run in, and we twisted our ankles several times as we dashed past tilted buildings. Light bled through the cracks of boarded up windows here and there as the shantytown came awake for market day.
Beyond the thatched roofs, the menacing hedge loomed as far as I could see around the Wild Lands, a constant reminder this WC was a prison. Smoke blew down from chipped chimneys, stinging my eyes, and I slipped in rotten slop flung from doorways, its stench making my stomach curl as flies buzzed our heads. With each step, terror chased at me with the thought of running into another guard or people in the streets calling out the alarm. Would they take us in or turn us in?
Voices murmured through thin walls of the huts as people started their day. Every door we passed had a hanging sign with an image painted on it: a hammer, a loaf of bread, a shirt, a boot. Things the grown-up slaves produced? I darted my eyes about the streets for any place to hide when a door flew open and a heavy-set man stepped out. He wiped his hands on a blood-splotched apron.
We all froze for a second before lurching forward again, but the man saw us and yelled out, “Hey, you kids, stop!”
Charlie and Apollo looked at me with faces like terrified wooden puppets. We ran faster, turning a corner when two skinny dogs with bared teeth raced toward us. A shadow loomed and a tall man stepped in front of us from a doorway. We slammed into him. With a grunt, he clutched us by our clothes and kicked at the vicious dogs. They yelped and ran off.
There was no shaking off the man’s hold. He gripped us tighter, glaring down with thick eyebrows and black boulders of hair that framed his face.
“Kids in camp!” A woman yelled around the corner. At the announcement, the man whipped open a hidden door in the ground and shoved us into a dark pit. He hopped down and closed the hatch.
“Don’t make a sound,” he growled in a low voice. In the disorienting but safe darkness, I had no problem with being quiet; neither did Charlie, who pinched my arm or Apollo whose heavy breaths pumped on my neck. Voices rang out above our hideout.
Doors opened as people called out to one another. “Who was it?” “Wild Childs most likely.” “I could use the food as a reward!” “Aww, let ’em go.” “Yeah, poor dumb kids.” “They’ll never survive the WC.”
Bing-bang. The doors shut as the grown-ups forgot us. I opened my mouth to say something when a man huffed overhead. “Runaways, Mack. We could split the reward.”
“Not if the guards get ’em first.”
“Hold up, I got a stitch in my side.”
“We’ll lose ’em! Think of all them meat and potatoes to eat up!”
“Your stomach doesn’t need it. I’ve got a sick wife, and we can’t make our food quota ’cause she can’t work fast.”
“You better hope it’s indigestion and not a baby on the way. You know what the guards will do to it!”
“Never you mind!”
“Well, move your lazy self and let’s grab ’em!”
Feet thumped away and quiet hung thick in the heavy dark.
“Monsieur?” Charlie whispered.
A rattle brought a green glow stick to life. It grew brighter as the man shook it. We were in a dirt tunnel not quite tall enough for the hunkered over muscled-man.
“Keep quiet and follow me,” he ordered.
He’d saved us so I ran as fast as I could after him with my friends close behind.
The man stopped and pushed a hatch open. He hauled us up by our shirts into a windowless room. Quivering candles lined a side table, and a stink of onions and burned grease filled my nose. A cot sagged against one wall with a thin mattress covered in a ripped gray blanket. In the middle of the room, a patched-up wooden table sloped down on one busted leg. It held a fat candle that sputtered next to three lumpy, black-spotted potatoes.
At the table sat a man with long, red, wavy hair tied behind his neck and a full mustache that curled up on either side of his mouth. His baggy yellowed shirt emphasized his thin arms, and a chain hung from his neck across sharp collarbones. A black square pendant with braided edges and a lion etched on the front dangled from it. One bony hand fingered a huge hunk of bread, green with mold. He ripped off a chunk with his chipped teeth and swallowed it in one bite, then he picked up a small rusty knife and twirled it in his hand as if debating whether to cut open one of those nasty looking potatoes. His eyes were like shards of amber glass, gleaming luminescent in the golden candlelight. They tightened as he studied us.
The red-haired man jabbed his knife in the air and drawled in a deep voice, “So … Ratchet, do we kill ’em or sell ’em?”
The bushy-haired man who’d brought us here crushed a hand to my neck in a fierce handhold. “First, let’s see if they’re tasty or not.”
My knees buckled and I sagged under my new captor’s catch.
We’d run toward death, not away from it.
Chapter Twenty
Ratchet ripped off my bow and quiver, threw them on the table, and searched us for other weapons. He laughed when he pulled out my flute. “I’ll let you keep your music, Reeker, but not this.” He pulled out Charlie’s knife and I groaned as he shoved us to the floor. Apollo carefully slid his ring around and cupped his other hand over the band. His animal skins covered up his royal clothes, but there was no denying the gold on his finger was not anything a Wild Child would possess.
A quick glance around offered one door as another way out besides the hole we’d been dragged from. First, we’d have to get past these two men. Further scrutiny revealed tools hanging from the walls and horse saddles spread out over a long table, their shiny leather decorated with speckled stones and painted birds and beasts. One sat on a wooden frame unfinished. Paintings were propped up on the floor. The red-haired man stood and put his hands on his waist, looking down at us. Shadows fell from his eyes and sunken cheeks, and bones poked through his shoulder blades. He was as starved as the cretan creature we’d encountered.
“The queen’s spies?” Ratchet said.
“Not likely,” the man said. He walked around the table and stood over us, pointing at Charlie who pushed his back into the wall. “And not good eatin’. This one’s too skinny.”
I scrambled up, and Apollo and Charlie stood with me. “We’re not dinner! We’re from Earth like you.” I gulped as the two men looked back and forth at each other as if trying to decide what to do with us, so I took a chance and kept talking. “We’re trying to help a friend and get back home.”
“What friend would that be?” the red-haired man said.
“Apollo,” I said quickly, making it up. Apollo and Charlie darted their eyes at me, then back at the men. “Artemis kidnapped him and put him in the dungeon.”
The man crossed his arms, his mouth twitching. “You are friends with King Apollo? You and these other rag-bags?”
I forced myself not to look at Apollo, afraid I’d give him away and they’d recognize him. I jumped as the man’s laughter boomed around the tiny room.
“It’s a lie!” Ratchet said, clawing my shirt with his grubby hand and shoving me backward.
“Non!” Charlie said, waving his arms. “C’est vrai!”
“Say what?” Ratchet raged, shoving Charlie now.
“T-true,” Charlie stuttered out. “It’s true.”
Apollo remained silent, eyes on the floor, then he nodded at me and mumbled, following my lead. “We got caught saving King Apollo and were tossed in the Wild Lands. We survived and got here. I found these clothes hanging from a tree.” He tossed his head toward me and Charlie, then looked up at Ratchet, who poked his knife at him. “My friends are heroes. You hurt them and you’ll have to answer to me.”
Ratchet pushed him farther into the wall. “You lie! There’s no way into the queen’s castle.” He turned to the red-haired man. “They’re just Reekers. I hid in the shadows waiting to reel in some Wild Lands runaways for reward when I caught ’em running from the guard. I say we sell ’em for food. Tie ’em up for now. We’ve got to open up for market day and get these saddles out or Zeus’s men will fine us, or worse.”
“We’ve got some time … I’m curious about their story,” the red-haired man said, thrusting a hand at me. “Speak fast, boy, and it better be the truth.” He sat back down and began to slowly peel a potato and cut pieces from it, swallowing the slices whole as he watched us.
Charlie urged me to talk. I spewed out everything, not wanting them to change their minds and sell us—or eat us. I told them about being stolen away to the Lost Realm months ago and sold off in the Auction Pit, made to work as an energy slave in the power mill by the evil Hekate. How Charlie and I became friends in the Auction Pit. How the son of the former King Apollo, Sam, helped us escape the power mill and rescue my friend, Finn. How we were nearly killed by bandits and beasts. How my grandfather, Bo Chez, turned out to be a Storm Master from the Sky Realm and how we used his lightning orb to help us. How we freed all the kids enslaved in the Lost Realm. And finally, how we’d been brought back to Nostos to free the new King Apollo from Artemis, who planned to rule all of Nostos with the Oracle’s Olympian powers.
“We couldn’t have done most of it without Leandro,” I finished up.
Apollo nodded but Charlie shook his head, muttering in French while tearing at a ragged nail with his teeth.
The red-haired man stopped cutting his potato, hand in the air and shared a glance with Ratchet, who twisted his face up with doubts about our story.
“You know Leandro?” the red-haired man said in a flat voice.
“Yeah, he is … was our friend.”
“He’s not our friend,” Charlie burst out.
“He saved us all once,” Apollo said. “He was a good man … may still be.”
I fixed him with a look to shut him up, afraid he’d reveal his true identity.
I told the man how Leandro, now head guard to Artemis, had betrayed us.
“I doubt very much Leandro would do such a thing,” the man said evenly with a dangerous tone and a raised eyebrow.
“You know him?” I cried out. Of course he would! He was old enough to have been a slave here when Leandro had been a guard. It struck me he might have also known my mother. I fingered Leandro’s journal in my pocket, trying to believe he could still be the hero I’d fought alongside once. If I showed this man the journal, would he help us? The chance disappeared when a gong sounded. It rang three times, and I squeezed the journal between my fingers before letting go. Wheels clattered on hard mud outside the door and voices bounced around as the street came alive.
“Enough of this garbage,” Ratchet said. “We’ve got to put up the shutter and signs. All of Nostos will be in the streets soon, and if our table isn’t out, we’ll lose rations! Throw ’em in the box for now, Oak.”
My heart flipped at his name. “You’re Oak?”
“Yes, that’s my given name.”
“Given to you by the Wild Childs?”
He stood so fast he knocked back his chair. In one stride, he forced his knife against my neck. “How do you know? Spy!”
The knife cut into my skin. I drew in a sharp breath at the pain. Charlie gasped.
“Not a spy,” I whispered through tight lips, praying I didn’t get sliced open. “The Wild Child, As
h … the spudhead … she told me … sent us to you for help … you … blockhead.”
Oak flared his nostrils as his face sagged and he withdrew his knife.
“How do you know Ash?”
“She saved us in the Wild Lands. Me, Charlie, and … all of us here.”
The gong cannoned again.
“Second warning,” Ratchet said. “One more and we’re done for!” He shook a fist at us.
Oak tugged on his thick mustache. “Get out there. I’ll come before the final bell. If they ask, you’re watching the stand for me as my apprentice because I’ve got the stomach guck. That will keep them away for a while.”
Ratchet threw his hands up, weighed himself down with four saddles, and ran out the low side door. His footsteps clumped upstairs and a door opened and slammed, offering up the noisy bustle of the street as market day began.
Oak shoved aside the table and flipped up another hidden door under a worn rug. “You boys stay here for the day and don’t make a sound.”
“Wait—” I hollered but he shut me up as he tossed me down into a deep pit. Charlie and Apollo followed, slamming down on me in cold dirt. I rolled away in pain, massaging my leg.
“If you don’t want to get dead, then get quiet—fast. We’ll talk later. There’s water, blankets, food, and light sticks down there. You seem resourceful, I’m sure you’ll find them.” Oak’s stern face hung over us and was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
The lid on our new prison shut us in total darkness. A click told me we were locked in.
“Can you find the light sticks?” I scrambled around on the dirt floor, trying not to think about creepy crawly things.
My question inspired French curses of what I imagined were the kind I’d lose TV over for spouting off in English. The idea of punishment with no TV filled me with longing for home.
Pitch black crept all around, suffocating me with the panic of being buried underground with no way out. Something slithered across my hand. I snatched up my fingers, catching my breath.
Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 9
