Beast & Crown

by Joel Ross

  Roz ducked her head. “Yes.”

  “Hey!” Sally yipped. “Chibo’s moving!”

  “Thank summer!” Ji rushed to the other side of his cage. “I can’t see—is he out of the sack?”

  “No,” she said. “But he’s wriggling around.”

  “That’s good,” Ji said. “Right?”

  “Definitely,” Roz said. “Definitely good.”

  “Chibo!” Sally yelled. “Can you hear me?”

  Ji held his breath, but no answer came. Sally called Chibo’s name a few more times. Then her tufted ears slumped in adorable dismay. “At least we’re together,” she muttered. “I mean, you promised to rescue him, and you did.”

  “I rescued him right into a zoo,” Ji said. “Into a sack.”

  “That’s better than the tapestry weavers.”

  Ji swallowed. “I still think about those other kids. All the time. The ones I left behind.”

  “You didn’t have a choice,” Roz rumbled.

  “I didn’t even try.” Ji’s eyes felt swollen and hot. “And they’ve been there this whole time, woven into the looms. Without help. Without hope.”

  A breeze rustled the bushes, and then silence fell. Ji squatted beside the water hole. He splashed cool water on his prickly face, then cupped his hands and drank. The water tasted pure and fresh.

  Ji inspected his reflection. At least his face looked the same as always. Except, no—a hint of overlapping scales was visible on his cheek, like he’d fallen asleep on a pair of snakeskin boots and woken with indentations on his skin. He traced the faint marks with a fingertip as the sound of soldiers marching echoed in the streets beyond the menagerie.

  “You really think they’ll fix us?” Sally asked.

  “Sure they will,” Ji said, more confidently than he felt.

  “So we just wait here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At least I brought a book,” Roz said.

  Ji gave a surprised laugh. “You did not!”

  She patted the beaded handbag strapped across her broad shoulders. “One never knows when one might find oneself locked in the Royal Menagerie after being transformed into a half ogre by a—”

  You’re not half ogre! a dozen tiny voices called out. You sillybeet!

  “Nin!” Ji called, leaping to his feet. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  We’re happy as a button in a head!

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Ji said. “That’s not even nonsense.”

  We’re okay now, Nin’s voice said. We didn’t waste an hour weepcrying like a hundred soggy seagulls. We don’t know why you think that.

  “What do you mean, we? Where are you?”

  We’re here and there, Nin’s voices said. There’s more of us now, in bitty pieces. It took us longforever to find you.

  “Can you hear that, Roz?” Ji asked. “Please tell me you can hear that.”

  “Of course I can hear it!”

  “He’s talking into our heads,” Sally said. “We’re hearing his thoughts.”

  “Oh, this is all I need,” Ji said. “Nin thinking inside my head.”

  We can do that now! Nin told him. And we peek you there in the stonycage, miss—you’re not half ogre, you’re half troll!

  “Half troll?” Roz rumbled. “Aren’t trolls simply the eldest ogres?”

  No, no, not at all, Nin scoffed, possibly from behind a big ceramic urn at Ji’s feet. Though a little yes.

  Ji stared at the urn. It stood as high as his knees, and a few leafy stalks rose from the dirt—but he didn’t see a hint of ogre.

  But mostly no, Nin continued. We will explain you the whole story, except first we need to tell Sneakyji something. Badnews.

  “More bad news?” Ji asked the urn.

  Bad badnews! Troublebig for us, and—

  “Roz! Ji!” Sally yowled from the crocodile enclosure. “The sack split! Chibo is coming out!”

  Ji turned away from the urn. “Finally!”

  “Hey, Chibo?” Sally called. “Chibo!”

  “Can you see him?” Ji peered past Sally’s cage. “Is he a butterfly?”

  Troublebad bignews, Nin’s voices said.

  “I am not a butterfly!” Chibo called in a piping voice.

  “Okay, Chibo,” Sally growled. “Don’t freak out. Things are weird right now, but—”

  “I know that,” Chibo said, his voice sweet and fluttery. “I heard everything! I’ve been awake for hours, I just couldn’t talk. Let me get out of this sack and—”

  BADNEWS! all of Nin’s tiny voices shouted. LISTEN TO US, SNEAKYJI!

  “Fine!” Ji said, glaring at the urn. “What? What’s so important that it can’t wait two seconds?”

  They’re coming to kill you.

  30

  “WHAT?” JI BLURTED. “They’re coming to what?”

  “I beg your pardon!” Roz rumbled, hunching one hefty shoulder. “To kill us?”

  “Who?” Sally cracked her fuzzy knuckles. “Just point me at ’em.”

  “Almost free!” Chibo fluted. “Ooh, maybe I’m half goblin! Imagine how fast I could climb with four arms!”

  “Nin!” Ji said. “What’re you talking about?”

  We heard them planning, Nin said. They didn’t see us there, listening.

  Ji squinted at the urn. “Yeah, because you’re invisible.”

  You headbutton! We’re not invisible. Just small.

  “You look invisible to me.”

  “Ignore him, Nin,” Roz said. “And please tell us what you overheard. Er, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Miss Rozario Songarza.”

  Happiness beamed from the not-visible Nin. The pleasure is all ours, Missroz!

  “How are you talking inside our heads?” Ji asked. “It’s impossible.”

  “Oh, is that impossible?” Sally grumbled. “Let’s ask my tail what’s impossible.”

  “Sally and Ji!” Roz thundered. “Hush this instant! Now, then, Nin—please, tell us what you heard.”

  We can show you, the Nin voices said. Lord Brace was chattalking with your proctor and the magic man, like this—

  The voices suddenly stopped, and Ji saw Nin’s memories instead. He didn’t have time to be terrified before an image rose in his mind: a pair of familiar stingray-leather court boots, with clusters of garnet, topaz, and opals. Brace’s boots. They towered above Ji, as big as houses. And even at that size, the stitching looked perfect. Wow. An-Hank Cordwainer was good.

  When Ji’s view shifted, he caught a flash of Proctor’s boots, then heard voices rumbling above.

  “What’s wrong?” Brace asked unsteadily. “What happened? They turned into monsters.”

  “That filthy boot boy disrupted the rite,” Proctor snarled.

  “Disrupted?” Brace asked. “You mean when he touched the diadem?”

  Ji’s view shifted again, and he heard Mr. Ioso’s voice. “The heir’s servants are not meant to survive the rite, Prince Brace.”

  “What?” Brace asked with a twinge of horror. “Ji and Roz were supposed to die?”

  “It is the most honorable sacrifice for a commoner,” Proctor told him, from high above. “When the new heir wears the diadem, the tree impales his servants and pours their spirits into him.”

  “Impales? You mean stabs? It was supposed to stab them?”

  “Yes, my prince,” Mr. Ioso said. “But they weren’t supposed to survive.”

  “How do you think our queen—or king—lives for so many lifetimes?” Proctor asked, with a low chuckle. “And harnesses such power?”

  “I thought it was because they command all human magic,” Brace said. “I mean, that’s why nobody else has magic anymore, right?”

  “All human magic flows through the king or queen,” Proctor said, with a nod. “But that’s merely the source of the power. The Diadem Rite is what allows a royal to wield it—and what gives them the strength to survive it. All that magic would kill a weaker person.”

  “Your servants must bec
ome less than human,” Mr. Ioso said, “so you become more than human. So you can wield that power.”

  “They turn beastly while you turn royal,” Proctor told Brace. “They die during the rite so that you will live for centuries after it. However, that boot boy ruined everything. He interrupted the rite. Your servants degenerated into monstrosities . . . but they lived.”

  “So we sacrifice a few servants to save thousands of lives?” Brace asked. “To protect the Summer Realm?”

  “Exactly, my prince,” Mr. Ioso said. “We save far more lives than we take.”

  “Well, then . . . what shall we do now?”

  Mr. Ioso waved his hand over a bowl of water. His palm glowed white—and somewhere in the distance, a field of flowers probably turned into shriveled eggplants.

  “We wait until the full moons rise,” he said, “then we finish the rite. We drag the beasts to the tree and kill them on its branches.”

  The vision ended, and Ji reeled, dizzy with shock. He grabbed the cage bars for support as the world tilted.

  “So for a new king to soak up all the human magic,” Roz rumbled in horror, “he needs to turn people into beasts?”

  Ji’s heart thumped like a battering ram. He took a shaky breath, trying to clear his head.

  “And the reason he lives so long,” Roz continued, “is because he kills servants during a rite? He turns them into monsters, then kills them?”

  Ji knew he should’ve been listening to Roz, but he couldn’t get past the fact that he’d just seen a vision. An actual vision, inside his own personal head.

  “How—how did you do that?” he stammered to Nin.

  We don’t know, Nin said. The same way we talk to you in our minds, without mouths.

  “How do you do that?”

  Easy, Nin told him. Just like this.

  “Wait,” Sally said. “You don’t have mouths?”

  “That’s not the point!” Ji said. “He just sent us a vision! A vision! Um, about everyone trying to kill us. . . .”

  “That’s still not as weird as not having mouths,” Sally muttered.

  “We all heard Proctor,” Roz said, her deep voice unsteady. “They need to sacrifice us on the tree to finish the Diadem Rite.”

  Ji chewed on one scaly knuckle for a second. “How much time do we have?”

  “Not long.” Roz turned her granite-hued face upward. “The moons are high.”

  Ji jerked at the bars of his cage, but they didn’t budge. “We have to get out of here.”

  “At least it’s not your fault,” Sally told Ji. “You didn’t ruin us when you grabbed the diadem. You actually saved our lives.”

  He considered her for a moment. “You’re a little squirrelly.”

  “You jerk!” she yipped. “I just complimented you!”

  “What I mean is,” Ji told her, “squirrels can climb.”

  “Huh?” she said.

  “Straight up trees and lampposts . . .”

  “Oh!” Sally said, eyeing the bars of her cage.

  She showed Ji a feral grin, then grabbed one bar in each paw. She flipped upside down and grabbed the bars higher up with her rear paws. He hadn’t even seen those until now.

  “Holy guacamole!” Ji said.

  “Yaoooo!” Sally flipped again, higher, between two bars, then leaped away. “Hobgoblins can move!”

  She hurtled through the air and landed on another bar. She sproinged off that one, spun around a third, then launched herself out of the top of her cage. She landed on a high crossbeam and struck a pose.

  “Wow,” Ji said. “I mean . . . wow.”

  “That is impressive,” Roz rumbled.

  Sallynx sure knows how to hob, Nin added.

  “Now stop messing around!” Ji called. “And get Chibo.”

  “Gotcha,” Sally said, and bounded across the top of her cage.

  “I don’t need getting!” Chibo said in his high, musical voice.

  “Just sit tight and—”

  An emerald glow shone from Chibo’s cage, like a hundred lanterns gleaming through sheets of green silk.

  Ji blinked at the light, then gaped at the sight of Chibo standing amid the brightness. Scraps of the sack scattered the cage floor at Chibo’s feet. He was still skinny and bald, except now he had a hunchback . . . and glowing green wings.

  “W-win-wings,” Ji stammered. “You—whoa—you have wings!”

  They spread to either side of Chibo, flickering and flowing in the air. Changing shape every second, but still wings. And as Ji stared, he realized that they weren’t made of feather and bone; they were made of green light.

  “A sprite,” Roz said in an awed rumble. “He’s half sprite.”

  “No way,” Chibo said, as his wings stretched wider. “No way! I can fly?”

  “Don’t even try!” Ji snapped at him. “Not yet! What if you fall or—”

  Chibo’s wings swept downward and launched him into the air. He spun in a spiral toward the top of his cage, giggling as his wings left a trail of green sparkles behind him.

  “Quiet down or the guards will hear!” Sally snarled, leaping toward him across the tops of the cages. “And turn that light off!”

  “I don’t know how!” Chibo said, and flew smack into one of the widely spaced roof beams. “Oooh, badness,” he moaned, tumbling downward. “I didn’t see that. . . .”

  While Sally jumped down between the roof beams to catch him, Ji turned to Roz. “Pull your bars open.”

  “I can’t.” She shambled to the edge of her cage. “They’re too thick.”

  “Just try,” Ji told her.

  “They’re two inches of iron.”

  “You’re six feet of troll,” he said. “And if you can’t get out, we’re all stuck here. Nobody’s leaving without you.”

  Roz grabbed two bars with her granite hands. Her granite, four-fingered hands. Apparently she’d lost a couple of fingers during the rite, though Ji managed not to mention it.

  She started to tug, then looked at him. “Privacy, please?”

  He didn’t see how pulling iron bars apart was immodest, but he turned to inspect the pool in his cage. The water bubbled from underground, maybe from a canal or a spring. He dipped a toe into the water and heard Roz grunting at her bars. Metal creaked. Then squeaked and rattled and grated.

  Ji watched ripples in the water hole. C’mon, Roz, c’mon . . .

  A squeal sounded, and then Roz grunted again. “I can’t! I can’t do it, Ji.”

  When he turned back, she was standing with her shoulders slumped, like she wanted to cry. “It doesn’t matter,” he lied. “I have another plan.”

  She brightened. “You do? What is it?”

  “Let me get out of here first. Then I’ll show you.”

  “If I can’t pull the bars apart,” she said, “there’s no way you can.”

  “Forget the bars,” he told her. “I’m swimming out.”

  “How on earth are you doing that?”

  “I’m half merman, remember?”

  He took a breath and—before he could think twice—dived into the water hole. The cold shocked him, but instead of scrambling back to shore, he clawed deeper into the inky blackness. He thrashed in the water, more like a clumsy squid than a graceful carp, but he knew he could do this. C’mon, fishboy, swim!

  The chilly water drained his strength. Glowing dots appeared in front of his eyes. Maybe he needed to breathe. Merfolk breathed underwater, after all. Except making yourself suck in a lungful of water was not easy. Every instinct screamed at him not to try, but he thought about Sally’s courage and inhaled.

  The water choked him like a noose. He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t breathe water!

  Mindless terror exploded behind his eyes: he needed air more than anything in the world, more than light, more than life. He thrashed wildly, trying to shove himself to the surface, but he was too far away.

  He can’t swim! Nin’s voice shouted faintly. Sneakyji’s drowning, he’s dying!

/>   And then Ji’s lungs stopped. His eyes burned and his body shut down.

  31

  WHEN THE INKY darkness turned to a brilliant pink light, Ji felt nothing but a distant numbness. Not cold, not desperate. Nothing.

  Now this is a better afterlife, he thought. At least Roz is going to like the color.

  Then a war hammer smashed him in the back.

  His body jerked and water gushed from his mouth like a fountain. He gasped and writhed, filling his lungs with beautiful pure air. The war hammer struck again, and he spewed more water and gulped more air—until his vision cleared.

  He was kneeling in the tusk deer cage beside the water hole. Roz held him upright with one of her hands like a vise around both his wrists, while her other hand pounded his back.

  The tears in her eyes glinted like stars.

  “Stop!” he gasped. “Stop hitting me!”

  “Oh, thank summer!” she rumbled with a sob of relief. “You’re alive!”

  “I won’t be for long”—he coughed wetly—“if you hit me again.”

  She glowered at him. “You don’t know how to swim! What were you thinking?”

  “That I’d make a better merman,” he grumbled. “What kind of fishboy can’t even breathe underwater?”

  She held him as he coughed a few more times. “I’m sure you’re a fine merman.”

  “Whoa, Roz!” he said, seeing the ruined bars of his cage, which she’d crushed like cornstalks. “Did you crash through both cages in like two seconds?”

  Once Missroz thought you were dying, Nin said, she broke the bars in an eyeblink.

  “Wow, Roz,” Ji said, with a final cough. “You really . . . wow.”

  Roz blushed. “Don’t make a fuss.”

  “Can I thank you for saving my life?”

  “You may.”

  Touching her forearm felt like touching armadillo-shell boots. “Thank you.”

  “Well, they heard that,” Sally yowled from the roof of the next cage. “There are two squads of soldiers, coming fast.”

  “And a few guards on horses,” Chibo said, squinting beside her. “At least, they sound like guards on horses.”

  “What shall we do?” Roz asked Ji.