Beast & Crown

by Joel Ross

  He rubbed his stinging eyes. “Sally, stay on the toproofs. Find a path out of here without running into the soldiers. Chibo, climb down and—”

  Chibo’s vaporous wings spread from the hump on his back. They glimmered a green so dark that it was barely visible, and he swooped down and landed outside the broken bars of Ji’s cage.

  “And what?” he asked calmly, before doing a happy jig. “Did you see that? Did you see? I glided! I glid!”

  “They’re almost here!” Sally growled. “I can take them, Ji. Let’s fight. It’s the only honorable—”

  “Find us a way out!” he snapped, pushing to his feet with an ease that surprised him, considering he’d almost drowned a minute earlier. “Now!”

  “Fine,” she growled. “Jerk.”

  “Nin?” he asked, looking around the destroyed cage. “Where are you?”

  Here and there, like we said!

  “Well, what are you?”

  We don’t know, Nin said. We like digging and scouting and we’re mostly in the urn—

  “You’re mostly in the urn?” Ji rubbed his face with his palm. “You’re some mind-talking, not-visible thing in an urn.”

  We’re some aws! We’re also in the leaves and—

  “Can you lift the urn?” Ji asked Roz.

  “I’m not entirely sure—” She grabbed the urn, two hundred pounds of dirt in a clay pot, then straightened. “Yes.”

  “Good—bring it with us.” Ji looked toward the sound of hoofbeats. “Chibo, start glowing—”

  “I can glow!” Chibo fluted.

  “—and fly above the soldiers in circles around the zoo—”

  “I can fly!”

  “—and lead them away from us. Then meet us outside the palace grounds.”

  “How’s he supposed to find us again?” Sally asked, her tail lashing. “He can barely see!”

  “Right, yeah,” Ji said. “Forget that, Chibo—we’ll save flying for later.”

  “This way, fast!” Sally called, and darted across the roofs.

  Roz lumbered along below her, moving fast despite her size. “Are you sure you can run?” she asked Ji in a gravelly whisper. “You almost died.”

  “I’m okay,” he said, trotting after her. “Actually, I’m better than okay.” His shoulders didn’t ache, his neck didn’t hurt. “For the first time ever. My eyes burn a little, but other’n that I feel kind of . . . great.”

  “Maybe mermen heal fast?” Chibo panted, trying to keep up.

  “I guess.” Ji grabbed Chibo’s hand to help him along—and almost pulled him off his feet. “Wah! You don’t weigh anything, Chibo!”

  “I weigh something.”

  “Yeah, like a sack of feathers.”

  “Sprites are light,” Chibo informed him. “Also, we fly.”

  Ji dragged him after Roz. “And your eyes are green.”

  “No way!” Chibo blinked his unearthly emerald eyes. “Really?”

  “Green as a new blade of grass,” Ji said, trotting past the last cages of the Menagerie.

  They followed Sally down a wide flight of stairs flanked by bugbear statues and terra-cotta warriors. At the bottom of the steps, a fancy promenade stretched in both directions, but Sally stopped halfway down.

  “Follow me!” she yipped, bounding over the railing. “Quick, quick!”

  When Roz hefted the urn onto the railing, a few clumps of dirt fell out—and crawled back inside. Ji did a double take but couldn’t look closer because Chibo needed help over the railing. A moment later, Sally led them across the hillside and onto a wide cart path that ran between high wooden buildings inside the Forbidden Palace.

  “Hide behind that caravan!” she growled. “And shut your faces—there are guards everywhere!”

  Roz squeezed between the caravan and the wall, moving slowly to keep the urn from smacking the wheel. When Ji and Chibo crowded in beside her, one of Chibo’s wings poked from his hump and glowed faintly.

  Ji elbowed him and the wing vanished.

  You all have to be molequiet, Nin announced, but we can still talk. They can’t hear us. We could tell you a story of longsince, if you want. Or how to roast sweetbeets with spicy peppers—

  “Shht,” Sally hissed at the urn. “I’m trying to listen.”

  Silence fell. A dark cloud drifted away from the moons, and shadows loomed against the wall. Then a squad of soldiers trotted down a street on the other side of the buildings, weapons drawn and armor jangling.

  Ji’s breath caught. Roz grabbed his shoulder anxiously, in a painful grip, but he didn’t even flinch. When the soldiers disappeared, he exhaled in relief. Chibo rubbed his bald scalp, Roz removed her hand from Ji’s shoulder—

  And two guards on horseback cantered into the cart path.

  Plans whirled in Ji’s head. Should he send Sally under the caravan to startle the guards’ horses? Tell Roz to pry open the door and try to hide inside? Or close his eyes and pray that the guards didn’t spot them?

  Before he decided, the guards clip-clopped past. Ji took a breath . . . then managed not to shriek when Sally appeared in front of him, hanging upside down by her tail.

  “We don’t need to hide,” she purred. “Me and Roz can kick their bums.”

  “Roz isn’t fighting,” he whispered.

  “Look at her! She’s a battle machine.”

  “I am looking,” he told her. “All I see is Roz.”

  Sally shifted her big-eyed gaze toward Roz, who was prodding the big ceramic urn curiously, her expression sweet despite looking like a troll. A few papaya seedlings sprouted from the urn’s dirt, and she brushed a leaf aside, her massive four-fingered hand still delicate.

  “Okay, yeah.” Sally’s muzzle drew downward. “I guess she’s not really a fighter.”

  “But when I look at you,” Ji told her, “I see a battle machine.”

  Her huge eyes brightened. “You do?”

  “The cutest battle machine in the world.”

  She whacked his head with a paw, then cocked her furry ears. “There aren’t any soldiers nearby. What now?”

  “We need—” Ji frowned. “The first thing we need is cloaks. We kind of stand out.”

  “You don’t,” Chibo fluted. “At least not much.”

  “Because he’s half merman,” Sally growled, “and mermen are already half human. So Ji’s only a quarter fishy.”

  Roz lifted her gaze from the urn. “That is excellent arithmetic, Sally!”

  “I guess three quarters of me can’t breathe under water,” Ji said.

  And also can’t swim, Nin added. You looked like a plucked chicken throwing a tantrum in a bathtub.

  Chibo burbled a laugh, then asked Ji, “What’s the second thing we need?”

  “To get out of the city.”

  “What we really need,” Sally said, “is to break the spell and turn human again.”

  To turn ogre again! Nin said.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Roz said. “We’re not even truly a troll, hobgoblin, sprite, merman, and . . . whatever Nin is. We’re twisted, we’re incomplete. We cannot live this way.”

  “We won’t live at all unless we get out of here,” Ji said. “And we don’t know how to break the spell.”

  “But we know who does,” Roz said.

  “Who?” Ji asked. “Brace?”

  “No. Ti-Lin-Su.”

  “The scholar?”

  “She’s the world’s leading zozologist,” Roz said. “She knows more about creatures than anyone.”

  “Fine,” Ji said. “But first we need to survive. Where can we find cloaks?”

  “A laundry?” Chibo suggested.

  “Good,” Ji said. “Did you see one?”

  “I can barely see you.”

  “Oh, right. Uh, did anyone see servants’ quarters or anything?”

  Sally pointed a fuzzy finger. “There are a few dingy buildings that way. Sort of huddled together.”

  “Sounds like servants to me,” Ji said.


  32

  SALLY LED THEM in a winding path around a dozen buildings, avoiding the clink of patrolling soldiers and the nicker of horses. She made them wait behind the outhouses for five stinky minutes, then rushed them over a wall and through a rock garden full of vine-covered pagodas.

  “It’s on the other side of this,” she said, heading toward a tile-roofed temple.

  Ji rubbed his eyes, then followed her into the quiet, cool interior. Hallways extended in every direction, with sliding doors and jade lanterns. The air smelled of citrus and incense, and the carpets silenced even Roz’s footsteps.

  Sally prowled into a dark room in the center of the temple. Fountains burbled and splashed in the shadows. She took five steps, then stopped. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Ji asked.

  Lamplight flared, and Ji saw twenty people praying in silent rows, foreheads touching the ground. And a teenager stood beside Ji, his hand on the lamp he’d just uncovered.

  “Um,” Ji said. “Hi?”

  The teenager screamed, “Monsters!”

  So Ji backpedaled . . . into an old man praying. The old man shrieked—then Sally growled and Chibo unfurled his wings.

  A few more people screamed: “Help! Ogres! Help!”

  Nin said, We’re ogre! We’ll help!

  The rest of the people bellowed, “Guards! Monsters! Help!”

  Roz rumbled, “No, no, we don’t mean any harm—”

  And Ji shouted, “RUN!”

  So everyone ran: Sally, Chibo, Roz, Ji . . . and all the people. They rushed the exits, shoving and screaming—and, in Roz’s case, begging everyone’s pardon—then burst onto the street together, in a confused jumble.

  For a moment, quiet fell.

  Then a little girl pointed at Sally and said, “That monthter is cwoot!”

  The screaming started again. The old man raised his cane, a shrill whistle sounded, and a stone bounced off Roz’s shoulder. And hoofbeats pounded closer to them from beyond the rock garden.

  “Guards!” Sally growled. “This way!”

  She headed down the block. Roz hefted Nin’s urn higher and followed while Ji grabbed Chibo’s hand and said, “Brighter!”

  Chibo unfurled his wings to their full length. The people gasped and covered their eyes against the brilliant green shimmering.

  “Anyone who follows us gets sprited,” Ji snarled over his shoulder.

  Plus hobgobbled and merdered! Nin added, though the people couldn’t hear his mind-speak. Not murdered! Not like murder. Merdered like merman.

  Ji dragged Chibo down the block after Sally and Roz. Around a corner, Sally bounded through a pair of swinging doors. Inside, three mariachis stood on a stage, practicing a song in an empty room. A string twanged; then silence fell.

  “Just passing through,” Roz rumbled to them. “Lovely melody.”

  Sally shoved through a back door into a tangle of Forbidden Palace alleys with high, whitewashed walls. With her ears swiveling for the sound of pursuit, she led them in what felt like circles for ten minutes. Finally, she trotted along a leafy path into a hidden gap between a hedge and a stand of cedar trees.

  “My goodness,” Roz said. “How did you find this?”

  “I can see in the dark now.” Sally pointed to a low building past the hedge. “That’s a servants’ quarters.”

  “Where are the guards?” Ji asked.

  She pricked up her ears. “We lost them.”

  “Running . . . is stupid,” Chibo panted, plopping onto a stone pile between the tree trunks. “When you can . . . fly.”

  “Stay here,” Ji said. “I’ll grab cloaks and”—he frowned at Sally’s tail and Chibo’s hunchback—“other stuff.”

  He squirmed through the hedge, then peered at the servants’ quarters. Fancy banners flapped on the eaves and light pooled around ornate lampposts, but other than that, it looked like every other servants’ quarters he’d ever seen. So he just marched inside the front door. Two maids and a groundskeeper glanced at him with a complete lack of interest. As long as nobody noticed his scaly “tattoos” or clawed feet, he looked exactly like was he was: just another servant.

  Well, he looked like what he used to be.

  After getting his bearings, Ji slunk into the laundry. He grabbed an oversized cloak with a hood for Roz, an empty backpack to cover Chibo’s hump, and a small, striped poncho to cover Sally’s tail. He tied foot wraps around his sandals to hide his scaly toes, and he was scrounging around for something to hold Nin’s urn when a murmur of conversation approached.

  Time to leave. He slipped down a passage, around a corner—and found himself in a boot boy’s nook.

  A boot girl’s nook, actually: a scrawny girl sat at a workbench, scrubbing mud from an elegant boot heel. She raised her head when Ji stepped inside, and she rubbed her neck. Her hair was blond and her feet were locked in a pair of twenty-pound punishment shoes.

  “Cleaning dueling boots, huh?” Ji headed for the side door. “I hate those.”

  She frowned at her worktable. “Stupid laces.”

  “And they’re not even An-Hank Cordwainer.”

  “She’s my favorite,” the boot girl said.

  Ji stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “She’s a she?”

  “Of course she is!” The girl laughed, still rubbing her neck. “Her name is An!”

  “Oh.” Maybe the ogres had the right idea, and Ji should call everyone “cub,” just in case. “She’s my favorite too.”

  “What happened to your face?” the girl asked.

  “Long story. What happened to your feet?”

  She looked at her punishment shoes. “I tried to run away.”

  “Try again,” he told her, and slipped outside.

  When the door clicked shut behind Ji, soldiers shouted in the distance. He shuddered, then scanned the gloom until he spotted the hedge.

  A minute later, he poked through the other side, and Roz raised the urn at him. “Ant lions! That’s what Nin is! A colony of ant lions! Look!”

  Ant lions! The queenking of insects! The littlest of bigcats.

  “A whole colony?” Chibo asked. “You mean she’s got more legs than a herd of deer?”

  “Nin’s not a she!” Roz said. “And yes, an ant-lion colony is like a single creature, split into hundreds of tiny parts. One ant lion is simply like a . . . a finger, or an eye. Not a whole animal.”

  Ji peered closely into the urn for the first time. A handful of ant lions crawled on the papaya leaves, and three freshly dug anthills were mounded in the dirt. Except these ant lions were bright red, with yellow manes and fearsome stingers. And big: each one was half as long as Ji’s thumb.

  “May I pick one of you up, Nin?” Roz asked.

  We don’t feel like ant lions. We feel like tiny Nins. Uppick us all you want, Missroz!

  “I’m afraid I might hurt you.” She rested a big granite-flecked finger in the dirt. “Will you climb aboard?”

  An ant lion tossed its mane, stroked Roz’s finger with its antennae, then climbed onto her palm.

  “Can you see through all your eyes?” Ji asked the ant lion. “All at once?”

  We peek here, there, and everywhere!

  “Amazing.” Roz gazed at the ant lion on her palm. “Not even Ti-Lin-Su knows that ant lions are intelligent.”

  “Intelligent?” Ji tossed the striped poncho to Sally, who was straddling a low branch in a cedar tree. “This is Nin we’re talking about.”

  “That’s how we hear them!” Roz said, her deep voice thrumming with excitement. “Ant lion colonies must use mind-speak to talk to one another!”

  “Forget mind-speak. . . .” Ji watched another ant lion climb his pant leg. “Do your stingers sting?”

  We haven’t tried yet. Want us to buttsting someone?

  “Keep your butt to yourself.” Ji tossed Roz the oversized cloak. “And you, Roz, cover your horn.”

  Sally tugged her poncho lower. “I can’t believe I have a tail.”

  It�
�s a doorbell! Nin told her.

  “It’s more of a feather duster,” Chibo said, shrugging into the backpack.

  “Okay,” Ji said. “Now we just have to get past the inner palace wall, then the outer palace wall, then sneak to Ti-Lin-Su’s estate and pray she can help.”

  “That’s your plan?” Sally asked.

  “Well, yeah. What’s wrong with it?”

  “There are soldiers patrolling the wall, Ji. They’re everywhere. There’s no way out.”

  33

  “ARE YOU SURE?” Ji asked, his stomach sinking.

  “Of course I’m sure,” Sally growled. “I saw them.”

  “So we can’t get out.”

  Then we stay here! Nin said, as the ant lion that had crawled onto Ji’s sleeve waved its antennae.

  “Here is bad,” Ji told Nin. “They’ll find us here.”

  The ant lion roared faintly, like a mouse snoring. You smell?

  Ji ignored the tiny Nin and climbed the stone pile. He didn’t have time for weirdness. If they didn’t escape soon, the guards would find them—and then the queen would skewer them on the water tree. He peered between the leaves and saw search beams sweeping the palace grounds from watchtowers on the inner wall.

  “Don’t pick on Ji just because he’s a fish,” Chibo told Nin.

  We don’t mean that! We mean do you smell an airscent, sweet like syrup?

  Sally lifted her snout. “Very faint? Like boiling marmalade?”

  That smell, yes! Just came on the breeze, honeyed and sugary.

  “We don’t need pastry,” Ji said. “We need—”

  “It’s goblins,” Sally growled at him. “It smells like the bone crypt.”

  Burrowdiggers, Nin agreed. Fourarms. We can’t peek-see them, but they smell nearby. And if there’s goblins—

  “I could kiss you!” Ji told the ant lion on his sleeve. “You clever ogre.”

  “You can’t kiss them,” Sally said. “They don’t have lips.”

  “What’s so clever?” Chibo asked Ji.

  “We can hide underground until the coast is clear.”

  “Hide in goblin tunnels?” Chibo asked, his green eyes widening. “Don’t they eat people?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Ji asked him.

  “Actually, yes,” Chibo fluted. “You should all grow wings.”