Forest of Wonders

by Linda Sue Park

  “Many,” the bat said.

  “What, Echo? Many what?”

  “Man horse.”

  The guards were coming, and they were coming on horseback.

  “Stop,” Echo said. “Stop stop stop!”

  Raffa froze and looked around, eyes wide and nerves jangling. “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Go,” Echo said.

  “Echo, which is it—stop or go?” Raffa didn’t mean to sound cross, but his anxiety was making him impatient.

  “Man horse stop.”

  “One of the guards has stopped?”

  “Many stop. Many many.”

  “They’ve all stopped?” Raffa couldn’t understand it. Why would the guards have stopped pursuing them? “Where? At the field?”

  “Stop wait field.”

  From where he was sitting, Raffa could see only the nearest part of the field. The guards must be on the far side. He tried to think. They were waiting for something. Reinforcements, maybe?

  No matter: He and Kuma had to take advantage of it. He jumped to his feet. “Come on,” he said to Kuma. “Echo, would you fly over the field and tell me when they’ve started moving again?”

  Echo rose into the air. Raffa had taken only a few steps out from under the tree when he heard a high-pitched squeal. He looked up and saw Echo diving, so fast that he was only a blur. The bat dropped out of the sky onto his arm.

  “Bird! Hurt claw!” the bat shrieked. He tried to burrow under Raffa’s tunic, shrieking, squealing, wings thrashing and claws scrabbling.

  Raffa’s heart was hammering; the bat’s panic was contagious. He reached for Echo gingerly, afraid of hurting the tiny creature. “It’s okay, Echo, shussss—”

  Somehow he got hold of the frantic bat and held him gently but firmly. Then he put Echo on his perch and tucked the necklace under his tunic. He pulled at the neckline so he could look down at Echo. “You’re safe now. Can you talk?”

  “Bird—hurt—claw,” Echo said, still panting.

  A raptor. Could it be the same one that had attacked the twins? “The babies, Echo? The bird that hurt Bando and Twig?”

  But Echo hadn’t seen the attack on the twins. So how would he know—

  “Bird hurt Echo!” the bat cried in anguish.

  Raffa gasped. No wonder Echo was so terrified! He looked up and began searching the sky wildly.

  Then he heard a high, thin, whining sound. He had never heard a sound quite like it before, and it made him uneasy.

  The sound grew louder. It seemed to be coming from somewhere up above. Raffa frowned: His head had begun to ache a little.

  In the sky above the field, he saw a single bird on the wing: an enormous owl. It was headed directly toward him.

  And it was screaming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE owl’s screams were like knives of sound. Raffa’s teeth were rattling. His legs seemed to have turned to porridge. With his whole body quivering, he raised his hands to put his fingers in his ears, but his hands were shaking so hard he could barely control them. Even though Garith had told him about this sound, Raffa could never have imagined anything so horrible.

  As he sank to his knees, he realized that this was why Ansel and Garith had rushed off to the laboratory: to get the infusion that had made the squirrel scream. And to feed it to the owl, which was now in the midst of accomplishing its mission of screaming Raffa into unconsciousness. The pain of his uncle’s betrayal was as sharp as the agony in his ears.

  In that moment, he also knew why the mounted guards had stopped. They were keeping themselves out of hearing range of the owl.

  Involuntary tears rolled hot and fast down his cheeks. On the perch necklace, Echo had gone utterly still, and Raffa knew that the little bat had already lost consciousness. The same fate, he was sure, had befallen Twig.

  Raffa saw Kuma’s knees buckle. She slumped to the ground, her hands uselessly over her ears, her face contorted in pain. Roo was twisting her head and neck; her mouth was wide open in a roar, but Raffa heard only the owl’s screams.

  The owl flew in circles overhead. It must have had to draw breath, but to Raffa, its screams had merged into a single endless shriek. Through the blur of tears, he saw dots swimming in front of his eyes. He blinked hard several times. The dots vanished . . . except for one.

  Raffa fought to stay upright and saw that the dot was clearly a person—someone running toward him across the field. Whoever it was, they would soon be within range of the owl’s monstrous powers.

  But the person continued to race forward at top speed. Though his thoughts were by now little more than scraps and shreds, Raffa managed to wonder why the runner was unaffected by the owl’s screams.

  The figure drew nearer. With a shock, Raffa recognized the way the person was running: He’d seen that gait hundreds of times, maybe thousands.

  Garith.

  The owl’s shrieks stabbed into the core of Raffa’s brain. He fell forward onto his hands and knees, struggling to keep his head up and his eyes on Garith.

  Garith stopped running. His arm began to whirl—was it whirling? Or was Raffa seeing things, his vision a blur, his awareness lacerated by the horrendous noise? No, Garith’s arm was definitely in motion. . . .

  Then something flew out of his hand—something with a long tail. Raffa saw it for only the merest moment before it soared from sight.

  His strength finally left him. He slumped onto his face as the world blurred into blackness.

  “Raffa, wake up! We have to hurry! Please!”

  Raffa opened his eyes and saw a face. It was Garith. But it didn’t sound like Garith. His voice sounded . . . strange somehow. Oddly flat.

  “Come on now,” Garith said. “A few deep breaths.” He helped Raffa to his feet. Raffa swayed dizzily and leaned on Garith’s arm.

  His vision cleared and his eyes widened at what he saw: Several paces away, a great-tufted owl lay on the ground. Raffa was all but certain it was the same one that had chased him and Garith in the Forest. One wing was bent under it; the other, only partly outstretched, was longer than his arm.

  Roo pushed herself to all fours, groaning. She shook like a dog from head to tail for several seconds, then nosed Kuma and whined piteously.

  Raffa limped to where Kuma lay. As he bent over her, she opened her eyes. “Is Roo all right?” were her first words. She sat up slowly, and Roo bellowed in delight.

  The ground beneath Raffa’s feet began to rumble from the pounding hoofbeats of dozens of horses.

  “We have to go!” Garith said in his strange flat voice. With Kuma and Raffa still dazed, they started jogging toward the foothills.

  “Hills up ahead . . . trees,” Garith panted. Raffa knew what he meant. The horses would have to slow down on a forested hillside. As long as Raffa’s group stayed off the trails, they should be able to avoid the guards and find a place to hide.

  They spoke no more, needing every breath for running.

  A squeak sounded from under Raffa’s tunic: Echo was awake now, too. Raffa slowed enough to take out the perch. The bat was grooming himself furiously, as if to wipe away any remains of the owl’s screams.

  Dusk was giving way to dark; Echo became their eyes. He kept track of where the guards were, directing Raffa’s group on a zigzag course away from their pursuers. They waded into a stream and followed it uphill to confuse any hunt hounds the guards might be using. Raffa held the hemp bag above his head to keep Twig from getting wet.

  Dripping and chilled through, they crested the hill and scrambled down the other side. Near the bottom, Echo found a cluster of boulders that formed a hollow. It wasn’t big enough to be a cave, but it provided some shelter.

  They couldn’t risk lighting a fire, for fear that the guards would see the smoke, so they huddled around Roo as close as they dared. Raffa was grateful for the warmth, even if it did smell powerfully of bear. He checked on Twig, who seemed confused and sad but otherwise unharmed.

  Echo flew off and ret
urned to report that the guards had already turned back. It was a relief, but a short-lived one.

  “We can’t stay here long,” Raffa said. “As soon as it’s light, they’ll send birds to track us. We have to get as far as we can tonight.”

  There was no response from Garith, who was staring at the ground.

  “Garith.”

  No response again.

  The suspicion that had been nudging at Raffa now ballooned into dread.

  “Garith,” he repeated, and this time he put a hand on his cousin’s knee.

  Scowling, Garith shook off Raffa’s hand. He raised his head, and Raffa saw fear and uncertainty in his cousin’s eyes.

  Raffa swallowed hard. He knew now what had happened. It was more than a guess: He could see it all clearly in his mind.

  Garith had gone to the laboratory with Ansel, to fetch the infusion that would make the owl scream. Without his father’s knowledge, Garith had used another infusion—the one Raffa had created but not given to the crow.

  Garith had dosed himself . . . with the infusion made to cause deafness.

  He had done it so he could get close to the owl. The thing he had thrown was a stone on a cord, and he had brought down the owl with it.

  Raffa stared at Garith. “You—you—” He could not find the words.

  “I had to do it,” Garith said, his voice too loud. “You wouldn’t have gotten away otherwise.”

  Raffa still couldn’t speak. It was as if the thought was too enormous to fit into his brain at one time. The infusion had been totally untested; its effects might well be permanent. Garith . . . deaf . . . because of him . . .

  “Raffa, I swear I didn’t know,” Garith went on. “About—well, practically everything, it turns out. Da told me—just like he said to you. Training animals to do human stuff. He only told me just now about using them to fight, and that’s why they have to have the bear.”

  He guffawed, but it was a grim sound. “I was only ever allowed in the first shed, the empty one. I saw the scarecrows once and asked about them. Trubb said it was so the birds could get used to being around a lot of people. I believed him—how stupid can a person be? Senior Jayney trained those crows. He’s the one who sent them after you.”

  His eyes filled with tears, and he dropped his head again. “But it was Da who sent the owl,” he said.

  Raffa’s throat swelled. It was bad enough, Ansel being his uncle. He couldn’t imagine what it must feel like for Garith.

  A heavy silence filled the little space. With a thud in his gut, Raffa realized that silence was the only thing Garith could hear now.

  Echo fluttered to Garith’s arm. Garith looked up in surprise. He held out a finger, and Echo moved to perch there, upside down as usual.

  “Raffa friend no good?” the bat asked.

  Raffa cleared his throat. “Echo, this is Garith,” he said softly. “You met him once before, but I don’t think I ever had the chance to introduce you. And, yes, he’s our friend.”

  Friend. Cousin. The closest thing to a brother Raffa would ever have.

  “Echo, Garith is the one who—who stopped the owl.”

  “Garith good!” Echo squeaked excitedly, and Raffa nodded in agreement.

  Garith snorted. “You look like you think—like he’s talking to you, or something.”

  Now it was Raffa’s turn to be surprised. He had forgotten that Garith didn’t yet know about Echo’s ability to speak.

  Raffa pointed at Echo, then tapped his fingers against his thumb like a mouth talking. “The scarlet vine,” he added, and made a snakelike motion with his hand.

  As Garith stared at the bat, Raffa watched his cousin’s expression change from skepticism to uncertainty, and then to wonder.

  Echo looked right at Garith and said, “Garith BIG good.”

  Raffa repeated the words with a gesture. Garith coughed out a laugh of amazement. “Shakes and tremors,” he mumbled. He stroked Echo gently before returning him to the perch.

  Then he grinned at Raffa. “I got the owl on my first try,” he said. “And not a word from you about it being luck. That was better than good—it was pure brilliant skill.”

  His words were still too loud, his laugh a coarse bray. It made Raffa flinch inwardly, but at the same time he had to smile. Garith was still Garith.

  Raffa wondered if he would have done the same in his cousin’s place. Within his own thoughts, he forced himself to be honest: He wouldn’t have been brave enough. Garith had not only taken a dire physical risk, he had defied his father, utterly.

  Then and there, Raffa made a silent vow to find an antidote that would restore Garith’s hearing. He knew now that experimenting would take its own kind of bravery, most of all the willingness to fail. As far as he knew, deafness had never been cured by an infusion.

  But just because it hadn’t been done didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. He’d start with the scarlet vine. If that didn’t work, he’d try every combination he could think of. No matter how long it took, he would never give up.

  His eyes met Garith’s. “It was better than brilliant,” Raffa said.

  Garith nodded proudly even though he hadn’t heard. And Raffa remembered all the times they had understood each other without words.

  Raffa held out his hands, palms flat and together, so Garith could clap them. Then Kuma joined in with another clap so all their hands were joined . . . Raffa’s, surrounded by those of his friends.

  The celebration lasted exactly the length of those two claps, for the problems they now faced were too numerous to count. In Raffa’s mind, they heaped themselves one upon another until the whole pile collapsed into a chaos of thought.

  A battle seemed imminent—one that was an utter mystery. The Chancellor appeared determined to recapture Roo. Hundreds of other animals were still trapped in the sheds.

  Bando and the mother raccoon were missing. Raffa’s parents would arrive in Gilden and learn that he was gone; Raffa felt sore all over at the thought of their worry. He and his friends needed food and rest, but they also had to get as far away from Gilden as they could—with luck, to a place where Roo would forever be out of human reach.

  The perch around Raffa’s neck swayed a little. Echo looked up at him with those enormous eyes . . . eyes that should have been black, not purple.

  Raffa bowed his head and cupped his hand around the little bat. “Echo good,” he whispered.

  Echo blinked. “Need skeeto,” he whispered back.

  Raffa couldn’t help a grin, and felt his spirits lift a little.

  Get to the mountains. That was the first thing. Hiding in the mountains would give them what they most needed: time to figure out everything else.

  He heaved himself upright, reluctantly leaving the warmth exuded by Roo. “Time to go,” he said. A thud to his gut again: Garith couldn’t hear him.

  But Garith had seen him stand and was already on his feet. With Kuma between them, they stepped out of the hollow together.

  The Sudden Mountains lay ahead of them, their peaks a jagged threat against the murky sky. In the deepest part of the night, with the bat as their guide, the two boys and the girl, and the bear and the baby raccoon, began walking toward the west, where none of them had ever been before.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sincere thanks to . . .

  Abby Ranger, who edited this story with endless patience and astute guidance.

  Joe Merkel for the book’s beautiful design.

  Jim Madsen for the perfect cover art and interior illustrations.

  Mark Schley for the wonderful map (say it with me: “I just LOVE maps in fantasy novels!”).

  Jim Armstrong for all the little things.

  The Wing & Claw team at HarperCollins, including Kate Morgan Jackson, Lindsey Karl, Alejandra Oliva, Tiffany Liao, Bethany Reis, Patty Rosati, and Matt Schweitzer.

  The HC sales reps, without whom this book would be forever unread.

  Ginger Knowlton for being awesome, and everyone at Curtis B
rown Ltd.

  Julie Damerell for assistance above and beyond the call.

  The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the Rochester Area Children’s Writers and Illustrators, and We Need Diverse Books, for their support and encouragement.

  The many schools, students, teachers, and librarians who have hosted and inspired me over the years.

  Brighton Memorial Library, where I wrote most of this book.

  Friends: M. T. Anderson, Julia Durango, Marsha Hayles, Theresa Nelson, Margo Rabb, Vivian VandeVelde, and the Lunch Bunch, for breaking bread with me, making me laugh, and listening to me whine.

  My family, especially Anna, Sean, Margaret, Craig, and Ed.

  And most of all, my love and thanks to Ben and Callan, who waved good-bye cheerfully whenever I left to write, and never failed to welcome me home.

  EXCERPT FROM WING & CLAW #2: CAVERN OF SECRETS

  RAFFA SANTANA’S ADVENTURES CONTINUE IN

  CAVERN OF SECRETS

  THE SECOND BOOK IN THE WING & CLAW TRILOGY.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE wind stirred the green needles of the neverbare trees. They swayed and leaned toward each other, murmuring of the coming spring.

  The trees surrounded the entrance to a cave, which was partially blocked by a huge lichen-covered boulder. Or perhaps it was a pile of dried bracken, for it, too, trembled in the wind.

  Then the pile began to stretch and shift, taking on a more distinct shape. A shaggy head . . . an enormous torso . . .

  The gigantic golden bear seemed to be emerging from the mountain itself. She opened her mouth and growled, a low rumble that grew into a throaty roar.

  Raffa was woken by thunder.

  Odd upon strange, he thought. A thunderstorm at this time of year? He rubbed his eyes and saw Kuma sitting up on her pallet.

  “That’s her—she’s awake!” Kuma exclaimed in delight, and jumped to her feet.

  As Raffa followed her out of the shelter, he marveled at the thought of a bear so big that he’d mistaken her growl for thunder.

  They stopped just short of the mouth of the cave. The bear stood on her hind legs, half again as tall as a man, and sniffed the air for several seconds. Back down on all fours, she shook herself so hard that fur flew like snow.