Charlie paced around the tree, mumbling to himself. “I’m in charge. Hold the key. Yes. Yes. He’s held. Must wait. Artemis and her men will find us. I’ll get all the glory! No more Reeker for me.”
Each time Charlie passed behind the tree, I rubbed the belt against the rough bark, hoping to saw it in half. He caught me on one round and jabbed the knife at me as he continued his endless journey, making me dizzy as he circled. The sun blazed lower in the sky, and sweat trickled down the crook of my back. I closed my eyes to mere slits but kept them open enough to watch the knife passing by my throat.
If only I had the lightning orb! But I had nothing. Just me. No orb. No Lightning Gate key. No way home. Some hero to this world I turned out to be. I get taken off guard and captured by my own friend. I began to feel sorry for myself when those last thoughts gave me an idea.
Taken off guard.
Take Charlie off guard! If someone can be hypnotized with trigger words then maybe they can be un-hypnotized with trigger words. What were they? The clock was ticking. Artemis and her men would find us soon and I’d be in real trouble.
Think, Joshua, think!
“Charlie, I’m sorry I got you in this trouble. I tried to stop you from following me here, remember? We can get home again, but you’ve got to let me go.”
“I can’t let you go. Your powers belong to Artemis now. She’s going to steal them.”
“Then what?”
He stopped pacing. “Then you die.”
My knees shook and I sagged against the belt.
“Why’d you come with me, Charlie?”
He turned to stare at me. “I didn’t want to be left again. Lose a brother again.”
“Then don’t lose me now. We can still be brothers.”
“Why should I? My parents gave me no choice. My mom won’t come to America with my brother even if we do get back to Earth.”
“But you have a choice here, Charlie. Choose me and I’ll help you get home to your brother.”
He stepped closer. His sweaty heat pouring over me. “No you won’t. You’d go find your new brother and forget about me.” He shook his head. “No! Must hold the key.” His eyes pierced mine yet there seemed no reaching my friend Charlie.
“We’re all we’ve got right now.”
His eyes froze in an unblinking stare. He flicked the knife and cold steel pressed sharply to my throat. I sank into the tree that offered no escape. Was this how my life would end? Bound to a tree by a friend on another world?
“Could you kill the friend you once saved?”
He didn’t answer but pushed the knife deeper into my skin. He tilted his head, inspecting my throat as if deciding whether to stab me or not. Wetness trickled down my neck. Shallow breaths. In and out. In and out. The world began to spin. Don’t faint!
“Must. Hold. Key.”
“I’d rather die than be held,” I whispered. The Charlie I knew wouldn’t kill his best friend. I needed to trust in him—trust the good Charlie that still lived deep inside.
His hand shook. The knife bit harder. His eyebrows rippled with doubt and his mouth twitched in trembling waves. The blade ripped into me with each shake of his hand. “Hold the key. Not destroy the key.”
“Release … the … key,” I wheezed out.
Blackness filled the corners of my mind. A buzzing grew in my ears until it thundered through me.
Right before I passed out, Charlie’s eyes sprung wide with panic.
Chapter Thirty
The black mist in my mind faded. I opened my lids. So heavy. Dim light poured in. Was this heaven? The roughness of leaves and sticks beneath me told me no. Somehow I’d gotten free of the fire belt and lay on the ground. The branches overhead nodded, welcoming me back. Dusk was here. I must’ve been unconscious for a while. I sat. Dizziness squeegeed my brain. When my head cleared, I saw Charlie sitting against the tree across from me, his head down, and his bony knees drawn to his chin. He rocked back and forth, humming the same two notes over and over.
I put a hand to my throat and came away with crusty blood. “Charlie?” I rasped out.
Tears streaked down his face. “You’re not dead.”
My Charlie was back.
I shook my head and stood up, steadying myself against the tree, then walked over and pulled him up along with the knife and belt resting at his feet. The dizziness eased and I glanced around the woods. We were alone with no way of knowing who or what would come for us next.
“I hurt you, Joshua … and the awful things I said.” Charlie wiped his face.
“It wasn’t you. Artemis put you under a hypnotic spell back at her castle, and Leandro triggered it with his words. ‘Hold the key.’ ”
“You broke the spell.” His tears slowed.
I remembered the last words I spoke. “Release the key.” I’d figured it out! Power swelled inside me. I’d saved myself and Charlie all on my own.
“It’s all over now. We can go,” I said, as I wound the fire belt and clipped it to my belt loop, but Charlie didn’t move.
We stood in silence until he spoke again. “Would you believe that I was a hero to my little brother?”
“Yes. You’ve been a hero to me, to the kids you saved in the Lost Realm and in the cave … to Apollo.”
“Some good it did.” He rocked on his toes and gazed up at the purple twilight sky. “I wish the river had taken me too.”
“Don’t say that.”
The skin bunched up around his bright blue eyes. “Family’s not supposed to let you down.”
Maybe another way could get through to him. I rapped the handle of the knife to his chest and he jumped. “Aren’t you letting them down too?”
He looked shocked at the thought. “How?”
“Your family didn’t abandon you. But you are if we don’t work together to get back to Earth.”
His face sagged. “Like I abandoned you when I ran from the cretan after us in the Wild Lands. I should have stayed and helped you fight.”
“That’s not what I meant! I meant, so what if your parents do get divorced? Lots of people do. You still have each other. I don’t have a mother or a father or a brother. You do. You can’t forget them and make up a whole new family just because you want to.”
Charlie stooped over and stared at his fists.
He pressed his lips together, the tears rolling again. “I let you down big time. I should have been stronger. Not given in to hypnosis like you!’”
“Yeah, well, I forgive you. Isn’t that what brothers do?” I attempted a smile.
“I’m no brother. I don’t deserve any brother!”
He jerked around and ran through the trees.
“Charlie, wait!”
I stumbled after him, but the dizziness flared again. I fell to my knees. I tried to stand but slipped on damp leaves and fell again, jabbing the knife handle painfully in my gut. Charlie’s black hair bobbed through the woods and was gone. Shadows crawled over me from the setting sun.
“Come back,” I whispered to myself.
Alone. Again. Abandoned.
Everyone I’d trusted betrayed me. Ash, Leandro, Charlie—even Apollo with his lack of faith. Now it didn’t matter.
Everything I’d taken a leap of faith to trust in failed me: leaving Earth to come here again, believing I was the Oracle, and that I was going to save this world and all enslaved. Laughter bubbled inside over how ridiculous it sounded, but the laughter soon turned to great big sobs.
I ran like a crazed person, pumping my arms to fly through the woods. I didn’t care to where. Light grew beyond the trees. The Great Beyond. One jump. Fly into space and float in peace. Surrender to the nothing. I tripped on a tree root and fell with a whump to my knees, coming to my senses.
I didn’t want to die—I wanted to forget.
The endless forest pressed around me, comforting me, offering me the chance to hide. No one needed me. As an only child growing up with only a grandfather, I’d never felt lonely. Here, now, ab
andoned by everyone I knew, loneliness stabbed at my heart.
Waves of tiredness overcame me. I curled up alongside a tree to rest but my mind wouldn’t quiet. In the final light of day, I pulled out Leandro’s journal, seeking answers and comfort in what used to be.
My Homeland
Journal Entry 55
By Leandro of the Arrow Realm
I have befriended a Wild Child. I did not mean for this to occur, but occur it did nonetheless. If I did not know any better, I think she planned our meeting. Her name is Ash.
On my weekly patrol of the Wild Lands borders, I became separated from my crew with my trusted hound, Lore, and came upon this wispy tall girl. I nearly shot her through the heart with an arrow as she sat in the shadow of a tree atop a giant agrius beast.
I calmed Lore down after it became apparent this girl’s beast was a trained pet and would do no harm.
“Why are you down here?” I asked her. “Don’t you know the queen will use you as bait?”
She was not afraid of me and spoke words I will never forget. “I claim my own freedom and what keeps me here is nothing you people do. It won’t always be like this. Change is coming.”
How could a Wild Child of the treetops know this? Her words lit the truth I knew all along: the Earth boy had a purpose in our world. My heart welled with emptiness after saying goodbye to him in the Lost Realm, adding to the loss of my wife and son.
She said no more as she led me back to my party, then disappeared in a flash before they saw her. I told no one of our meeting. Artemis could no longer be trusted nor could her men. And so the girl and I continued to meet, by chance—or not—it did not matter.
As she opened up, she gave me hope that the Oracle was no myth but the savior to bring our world out of darkness. She wanted to give her people, the Wild Childs, a choice: go home to Earth or remain a Wild Child. Either way they would be free to choose, but only if there was an end to mortal slavery. I knew in my heart who the Oracle was: Joshua.
I asked her, “What do you choose?”
“To stay. This is where I feel most free.”
With that, a plan began to form: send her to Earth on the Lightning Road to bring Joshua back. My Child Collector belt would get her there, but we needed a plan to sneak her through the Lightning Gate. I’d be missed if I went. No one would miss a Wild Child.
Fear grips my heart as I now wait for Ash’s return from Earth.
What if bringing Joshua here is a death sentence? The myth professes the Oracle will sicken and die if they cross realms, claiming too many Olympian powers at once. How can I control this? What if he is merely a mortal boy and nothing else? Then what? I’ve tried to analyze my motives. Do I truly do this to free all mortal slaves and restore goodness to our world … or do I do this with the ultimate goal to get my wife and son back? I’m tormented by my selfish desires and kneel here asking the gods for guidance.
If I must die to save the one who can save us all, I can live with this.
Joshua, I will never betray you. By the Arrow of Artemis, I swear this to be true.
Yours in service, Leandro.
What a bunch of bull!
I threw the journal hard at the trunk.
How I wanted to face Leandro and scream at him. You did betray me, Leandro! Your wife is dead. Probably your son. Why help this world? No one wants to help me!
But the Wild Childs could help me disappear.
Ash’s words came back to me. Trust only those you know in your heart. I once knew Leandro and Charlie by heart. I’d trusted them. Yet they betrayed me. Funny how Oak and Ash, strangers, were now ones to count on.
In the dusk, the words on my slave brand caught my eye. No escape. Your armor of flesh and bone fuels us on! I spit on it, scrubbing hard with the hem of my shirt until my arm burned raw. My tears fueled the need to un-brand myself, but the black words engulfed in a ring of flame still taunted me. No escape.
A snap of branches nearby reminded me of the danger roaming the Perimeter Lands. Wild beasts, bandits, Artemis … Leandro. I summoned the strength to leave the ground and pull myself into the branches of a tree. The thought of Leandro’s journal being shredded and used as nest material made me glad, but at the last moment, I shoved it back in my pocket. Perhaps there was a sliver of information in it to help me survive.
A dozen feet up, I tucked into a warm tree hollow and ate Ash’s remaining squirrel mash and ache cakes before sleep chased me down. I dreamed of Bo Chez again. He stood in the sun, towering over me with stern eyes, the kind for getting bad grades and not using common sense.
“One for the many.” He echoed Oak’s words but added his own. “You are the one.”
He grew bigger and blocked out the sun, his giant silhouette shadowing me in darkness.
“Not the one,” I yelled. “No one!”
I turned and ran to hide amongst the many.
Chapter Thirty-One
The sky had grown lighter when I awoke. My fifth day in the Arrow Realm. I must have passed the night in my tree. My stiff legs and neck confirmed it. Shaking off sleep, I climbed higher, hoping to see the Wild Childs’ houses. If the Wild Childs could survive in a tree world so could I, and no one would look for me there. No one would look for me anywhere.
I pulled myself up faster with urgent purpose. Muted stars winked as they faded with the rising sun. I stopped to stare at them. I clung to the tree, closed my eyes, and visualized staring up at the Big Dipper back home. Holding on to that memory meant holding on to the tiny shreds of the old Joshua. I opened my eyes. The Nostos stars were gone, erased by the blue ball of the rising sun.
I shook myself out of my daze and climbed higher. The limb I stood on cracked in half beneath me, but I sidestepped to another branch in time to watch the wood crash down. At one point, Artemis and her men galloped below. I froze amongst the leaves in hiding, but the army never looked up. From tree to tree, I moved until the great hedge appeared, signaling the border into the Wild Lands.
Was I crazy to head back to the Wild Childs? They could escape but didn’t. They survived on their own terms. Leaving it all behind to start a new life sounded good to me.
I snatched up a vine and swung over the wall, and slammed into a tree, the breath knocked out of me. The scent of smoke hung in the air as if left over from the rain. The Wild Childs camp.
Rough bark scraped my arms and face. I pressed myself against a trunk, thankful to still be alive when growls rumbled below. An agrius beast paced the forest floor, pawing the ground. With each snarl, giant billows of steam blew from its flared nostrils. Not Ash’s pet for sure. It stood up on its hind legs, attacking the tree, trying to climb but sliding down, howling in anger. I scrambled higher.
From tree to tree I jumped, following the smoke trail. The agrius beast kept pace. Sap stuck to my fingers and clothes, attracting tiny black bugs that buzzed around me, biting my neck and hands. I swatted at them while brushing the sweat off my forehead. The blue sun burned my eyes between patches of sky above. Water dripped from dewy leaves and I drank each drop greedily, my throat parched and my canteen long empty. The leaves formed letters but I bashed them away before reading their words. “No more messages!”
Pale gray sticks scattered across the trails below. More twig messages from my mysterious friend? No. My breath quickened in tight spurts. Not sticks. Bones. Of kids hunted down.
NEVER … GIVE … UP.
Had they? Didn’t matter. They were the unlucky ones who hadn’t survived to become a Wild Child. Or perhaps they were the lucky ones. Their suffering had ended. A skull leaned against a boulder, it blank eyes staring up from its hollow face. I lunged to another tree, tearing my eyes away from the path of death. My dread grew into spears of rage. A primitive cry burst from my lungs. My skin rippled. My muscles bulged. The bark bit into me as my body swelled against the tree trunk. A shock of black fur sprung from my hands.
No! This couldn’t be happening—not a beast!
A power this big comes wi
th great responsibility, Oak had said.
The power of the Oracle. Who would teach me how to use it?
Trembling, I willed away this terrifying transformation. My body deflated. The hair on my hands faded to ghostly wisps and then poof disappeared.
I hugged the tree, wetting the bark with tears of relief, and looked at the sky. Could I become a bird and fly away or a cadmean beast and torch my enemies? The thought was too frightening. It bound me to Nostos. My tears turned to ones of desperation and the sun held no answers.
Every few minutes, I looked for evidence of the Wild Childs. The thought of finding refuge with others, and the agrius beast’s hungry moans below as it hunted me, kept me going. I may die here, but it wouldn’t be from being eaten. I fingered Leandro’s fire belt, wondering how it could help me, then pulled my hands away, not wanting a connection to him.
Exhaustion sank into my every bone. I hung on to a tree in the nook of its two branches and closed my eyes. One moment of rest. A breeze chilled my skin. As I shivered, my eyes twitched open. The largest tree in the wood appeared through the thick of the forest. The Grand Tree! The protector of the Wild Childs. A beacon of light in this dark Arrow Realm.
My strength was sucked away from lack of food and sleep. I hugged the tree tighter with my remaining strength. If I made it to the Grand Tree, its giant arms would hold me up until the Wild Childs found me.
My foot slipped. I caught a branch but my trembling hands slid off it, finger by finger.
The Grand Tree stomped toward me. Ancient limbs curved and soared upwards with crooked fingers. Closer it grew as the agrius beast paced below, now joined by a cadmean beast. They snapped at one another, battling for breakfast—me. My desperate fingers clung tighter to the branch as I scrabbled to get a foothold on a knotted burl.
“The Reeker is mine, fire-devil!”
“Back off beast! Your stench sickens me.”
The growls and grunts of the standoff grew louder. Then the Grand Tree loomed beside me. I willed my body to hang on and take one final leap. I reached out and, with my heart rapping in my chest, launched myself toward it. Stiff hands reached out for me but I faltered, leaned back, and fell.
Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 14
