Archie’s muscles twitch. He looks at the child’s menacing teeth, gleaming through her girlish grin. His mind is at odds with itself. Should I run down the mountain, or shake her hand?
“I am Xlea. I am ten in human years. I know this because I have been to your world.” The young Steffanus looks at Archie, who still carries Ella, and at Tessa, Lady Sophia, and Nate. “I have recorded all my adventures on Earth in this book.” Xlea holds up a worn leather journal bursting with drawings and writing, scraps and mementos, and dried flowers—so full that its pages fan. She rattles on. “I’m the only Steffanus birthed of the current blossoms. My sisters weren’t ready, not like me. I was eager to fly and explore.”
“Impatient,” adds Tanius through gritted teeth.
Duggie-Sky appears out of the vapor only a few steps away from Xlea.
“Oh! Hullo!” she says, startled. “And who might you be?”
“We do not have time for this, Xlea!” Tanius growls.
“I’m Duggie-Sky,” the boy says proudly.
“Oh, wonderful!” sings Xlea and she claps her silver hands. “But there is something not quite right about you. Hmm.” She puts a finger to the end of her nose as she studies Duggie-Sky. He stares at her sheepishly and scratches his head of curly black hair. “I know!” Xlea claps again. “May I?” she asks as she approaches and reaches for the boy. He willingly gives her his hands.
“I would not—” warns Yuleeo. The Lord’s warrior is grim.
Archie notices the throbbing orange heat coursing through the Olearon’s veins, and the balling of heat and light on his palms as he readies to attack.
While Archie’s throat is pinched in indecision, he manages to say, “Duggie-Sky, be careful …”
Xlea pulls Duggie-Sky close to her. She is dressed in a vivid yellow gown, cut and braided with shreds of fabric similar to those Tanius wears, though hers is not the color of death but of sunflowers and sunshine and cheer. The girl looks like the kiss of Naiu amidst the angry sky and jolting gale. Xlea bends down and rests her silver forehead against Duggie-Sky’s deep brown one, scabbed where the boy had been attacked by a carakwa in the blue forest not long after the Atlantic Odyssey crashed on the Millia’s southern shore. She closes her eyes. Duggie-Sky mirrors her.
Xlea’s antlers are small, mere coils of ivory and gold. They graze Duggie-Sky’s curls. The minute feels like an hour for Archie, who holds his breath. Finally, the girl pulls back.
“There!” she says and bites her lower lip. “Any moment, I am sure of it, just wait …” She nearly dances atop the black rock with her bare feet.
Duggie-Sky begins to shiver. His fingers twitch as if he plays music on an invisible instrument. His shoulders hop and bulge. Every movable joint flexes, contracts, and clicks loudly. Even his neck snaps to the side.
With this movement, Ella pushes from Archie’s back and lunges forward. She races to Duggie-Sky and struggles to calm his convulsing body. She turns to the others and cries out, “Ewwhoo cankkkeeah!”
The Steffanus woman and girl cover their ears at the screech, and Tanius yanks Xlea away from Ella and Duggie-Sky. Tanius thrusts forward one of her hands, where semi-translucent bands of power surge beyond her fingertips like electricity. Ella’s hair rises and stretches toward the Steffanus. Tanius’s pursed lips curve into a smile as she blinks quickly, mischievously.
Scrunching her brows in determination, Ella whips around to meet the ice-blue and lava-red eyes of the two beings. She points back to Duggie-Sky, who continues to contort. Ella’s glare is fierce and protective. This time, when she opens her mouth, instead of an earsplitting shriek, something else emerges.
“Ell!” Tessa screams.
“Ella, what is it?” Ardenal races to his daughter’s side.
Ella turns away from Tanius and Xlea toward the company, and parts her lips widely. First, a beak emerges, then a small round head covered in green feathers with human eyes that bat thick lashes.
“A green bird?” the Lord whispers.
Archie knows the birds well, as does the Lord. Archie first met the happy fowl in the forest to the south as he escaped the Millia sands, then again in the glass citadel. The citadel, home to the piercing glass throne at the heart of the Olearons’ city, is a finely cut and fused-mirror structure with a dome that rises around and above crystal columns and blue-bark trees. At their topmost branches, green birds nest and frolic. When Archie had snuck into the citadel, finding the secret history of the Olearons, the green birds serenaded him with merry chirps. They spun emerald ribbons of light behind them as they played.
Ella gags. The green bird shrugs, shifting itself out of Ella’s mouth until it is free. It briefly perches its velvety padded feet on her lower lip before flying off into the blackness.
Nate barges forward as Ella stands motionless, dumbfounded and embarrassed. “What have you done to her?” he yells at the looming Steffanus.
“I could not stand that abhorrent sound a moment longer.” Tanius sighs, looking relieved. “I have heard it throughout this night, within Baluurwa, and even above the rumble of destruction you have brought to our home. I thought you kept a beast, but no matter. We will only hear pretty chirps from now on.”
Ella opens her mouth and screams. There is no sound, not even the cackle of cancer, only a flock of green birds that pours from between her lips and creates an emerald cloud in the sky. Her lips quiver. Two fat tears plummet from her blue eyes. She shrinks away from the Steffanus beings and slinks over to where Duggie-Sky still writhes. She wraps her arms around him, as if his transformation will surely be as mortifying as hers.
“Don’t worry, Ella and Grandpa.” Duggie-Sky chokes out the words to comfort them, though Ella is apparently beyond a shred of hope. “It feels strange, but good.” Every part of him quivers with energy.
Xlea approaches them. “Your body needs to catch up with your mind, Duggie-Sky,” she says to the wide-eyed boy as he morphs and grows. “That is better,” she concludes once the transformation is complete. Duggie-Sky stands, and Ella’s arms fall from his shoulders. Xlea adds, “Now we can look each other in the eyes.”
The boy is two feet taller than before. His features have matured, and his voice deepened, the toddler drawl completely lost.
The company is speechless—all but Duggie-Sky. “Whoa, this is so cool!” He zips across the black rock much faster than before. He disappears, reappears, and laughs heartily. Finally, he slows enough to say, “Thank you, Xlea.”
“You are welcome—”
“Enough of this distraction!” The Lord’s skin simmers at a low boil. “We have come for a purpose”—his eyes meet those of the company—“and we intend to fulfill that mission. Now, let us pass.”
“Why should we?” Tanius steps in front of Xlea.
“Can you not see?” replies the Lord. “Jarr-Wya is dying. Animals morph unnaturally. How long until they turn their hunt to other blood, to those who walk on two legs? Or to the glass city, the Fairy Vineyard, or Baluurwa the Doomful? From your high vantage point, have you not seen the deserts that spew out of the island, consuming the greenery, smothering it alive? Our crops fail to feed us. Everything is dying, fading. Jarr-Wya is poisoned! From the soil to the seas to the sand. The Millia have turned their golden eyes inland. It is only a matter of time before they seek other shores. And the Bangols—their king means to rule Jarr-Wya as Lord of the Star.”
Tanius shakes her head. “The Star has no Lord.”
“The Star came here to save us,” says Xlea. “To save you, too,” she adds, addressing the Lord of Olearon.
Nameris speaks up. “Only since the Star’s arrival has the land faded and its inhabitants set their anger against each other.”
“Perhaps you do not recall,” growls Tanius, “that many generations ago, well before the Star crashed into our sea, the Olearons besieged Baluurwa to kill every one of my sisters. For a race that exalts peace, you take much pleasure in pain.”
Archie, who has been shifting f
rom foot to foot, finally pipes up. He shuffles into the space between Tanius and the Lord. “Let’s all pause here. It sounds like there’s a lot of history that neither of you were directly involved in. Why the grudges? I believe we all can agree that peace is what we’re after. So why not discuss this calmly?”
“Not one of you will set foot in Baluurwa’s tunnels. You will leave this mountain or blood will be shed.” Tanius raises her daggers. “The Star is good, and it is here to help us. None of you will lay a hand—or a flame—upon it.”
The fiery light in Yuleeo’s hands grows to molten balls, and the warrior launches one at the mature Steffanus. The blazing red orb burns through one of Tanius’s antlers, and her harsh voice catches in her throat, revealing a shred of weakness. The shard of antler falls with a clatter to the black rock and bounces down, coming to rest at Kameelo’s feet. Yuleeo, urged on by the Lord, toys with the second fireball, tossing it in the air and catching it without looking.
“It is true that we believed your race abolished,” the Lord says, sneering, “but what can one and a half Steffanus sisters hope to accomplish against eight Olearons?”
Tanius, in a whirl of pink, lemon, and teal plumes, unfurls with a powerful swoosh her great wide wings from behind her back. Her feathers gleam in every hue, with many colors Archie has no name for, and are frosted in silver with splatters of gold. Her wings stretch six feet on either side. Xlea ducks behind one, just as Tanius flicks her wrist so quickly that the company wonder at the gesture. Until, that is, Tessa screams in horror. Archie notices that one silver hand of the Steffanus in the red dress no longer clutches the blade with its hilt entwined in golden vines and leaves.
The dagger has pierced Yuleeo’s ruddy forehead. There is no blood at first, only startled skin and slowed breath. Then a drip trickles out of Yuleeo’s nose, followed by a stream rushing into his eyes, which remain open as he crumples. The flame at his neck is reduced to a puff of somber smoke.
Archie looks to the Lord, who grimaces, the fire growing behind his black eyes. The Olearons—Islo, Ardenal, Azkar, Kameelo, Nameris, and Junin—step forward for vengeance, while the humans and Luggie, edge back. The Lord sweeps his fingers through the air, igniting his body, and summons a long blade of grass, its green melted to yellow. It whips past him, aiming to coil around Tanius’s neck. She cuts it down with one flick of her remaining dagger.
Suddenly, Xlea swoops down on her own brilliant peach- and plum-colored wings. She looks apologetically at Ella and Duggie-Sky before pulling the dagger out of Yuleeo’s skull and zipping into the air once more, out of reach. The Lord creates a ravenous ball of liquid fire between his pulsating hands. Yellow light blinds Archie. Shepherded by Tessa, the humans stumble down the mountain, five paces away from the heat and sparks that erupt from the Lord.
Tanius takes to the sky, her mighty wings whipping the dust and drying Archie’s eyes with a belligerent wind. He blinks, wets his lips, and holds Ella close. The Lord twists his body, snapping the seams of his royal suit. Its glass breastplate cracks with the movement, though the grotesqueness of his skin remains concealed. He lurches forward, launching the great fireball, but Tanius tilts her wings and dodges the heat. The fire singes her feathers on one wing.
“You will not succeed,” she screams. Turning upward to the shifting pops of lightning, she calls into the moonbeam abyss, “Xlea, it is time!”
As the words leave Tanius’s mouth, she is batted down from her elevation by Kameelo, who unexpectedly flew to attack. Winded yet airborne, the Steffanus wrestles the blazing Olearon, flapping and slashing with terrifying ferocity. Her battle cries echo through the dark world. It is not enough.
A tiny voice within the shifting clouds screams, “No!”
Tanius plummets to the black rock of Baluurwa, crumpling at the center of the company. Her charred wings snap free of her burnt, lifeless body. Her red dress is ash grey, her breastplate tarnished, and her eyes, now white, blow away in the storm.
The Lord brushes his gloved palms against the smooth fabric of his royal attire, as if he had killed Tanius himself. “Do we burn the small one from the sky or resume searching for tunnels?” he asks Islo.
Archie is shocked at the Lord’s disregard for the bloodshed, for the unbreathing lungs. Grief creeps over all present in a haunting shiver. Yuleeo is not acknowledged for his bravery or his sacrifice. The Lord leaves the Olearon’s pale rose body behind him, as he does that of Tanius as well, despite Xlea’s reverberating wails, loud despite the storm.
Islo scans the mountain. “The Steffanus child will prove easy to snuff out later, my Lord. We must climb to the shelter of the tunnels.”
“It is foolish to believe the tunnels are safe,” Azkar grunts, but he lifts his ragged sack, mostly empty, and swings it over his shoulder. He begins to climb.
Kameelo and Nameris bend a knee before Yuleeo and touch him with their hands, bringing his body into their flame so that the three burn but only one is consumed.
The Lord glares back at them. “Did I command your kindness?” Kameelo and Nameris turn, still ablaze, stunned. “No. I did not. There will be a time for ceremony and a time to remember, but not now. Move—find the tunnels!” The brothers leave Yuleeo’s body to wilt under the dying flame. “That order is for you as well, Archibald Wellsley. Time to take up your post as my warrior. And you, too, Luggie.”
The Lord turns to Baluurwa. The humans collect themselves and timidly follow, with Lady Sophia blubbering out a sad tune between tears as they resume ascent.
A raspy whisper cuts between sharp teeth. “You may have murdered our sisters long ago, but you forgot about our seeds.”
This halts the company once more. The Lord grumbles, “Show yourself, child, that we might roast you as we did your elder.”
“That’s not Xlea,” says Tessa to Archie.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he replies. Nate nods in agreement.
“Me neither, Dad,” whispers Ardenal. “Keep our family close. My flame is for us.”
Ella touches her father’s arm, her pale pink against his deep crimson, and they share a weak smile.
From the settling dust and the dark of the sunless morning emerge three sets of eyes, unnaturally blue and cut by lines of red. Then antlers, tipped with spools of gold. The swack of air as fifty pairs of wings unfurl. A hundred eyes stare down on the minuscule company, one member less than before.
“We guard the Star,” roar the fifty voices in a hellish chorus. “Tonight, we dampen the light of the Olearons!”
The Lord’s face switches from determined intent to petrified paralysis, from warmongering to the shame of cowardice. He trips backward. Islo rushes between him and the Steffanus sisters, ready to fight, but the Lord reaches through his flame, touching his warrior’s shoulder, murmuring close to his ear. The Lord runs past Nate and Ardenal, past Archie, Tessa, Ella, and a scowling Luggie, and down the avalanche of black rock. Islo turns on his heel, dashes behind the Lord, and calls to the company as he passes: “Run! Flee! To the northwest! To the Fairy Vineyard!”
Chapter 12
Ella
We’re overwhelmingly outnumbered. Thankfully, the Lord isn’t stupid enough to attack the Steffanus horde or we’d all be dead. Kameelo has the advantage of flight. Unfortunately, we have only one Kameelo, but hundreds of wings flap behind us.
Apparently, I’m moving too slowly. Grandpa Archie picks me up and runs. He realizes the danger of lingering on Baluurwa. There are too many warrior women and, like us, they’re steadfast in their mission. But why protect the Star? I’m baffled that they believe it is good, that it’s here to save us.
My skin crawls beneath the heavy stares of the Steffanus warriors from their elevated perches on the miniature floating islands. Ugh, I hate heights. My jaw is clenched tightly; I will not give them the satisfaction of welcoming my green birds to their branches. I wonder if a pair of those eyes above belong to Xlea. However mad I am at what Tanius did to me, my heart still broke
at the sound of Xlea’s cries, though she is quiet now.
Duggie-Sky is overjoyed with his new stature; I can see it in the way he flees the mountain. He’s got a goofy smile on his face as he zooms around, in and out of view like the broken line of a highway. Fine, I admit it—I’m jealous. Duggie-Sky was given a gift—another one—while I’m left mute.
If a Steffanus can work magic like that—growing Duggie-Sky so he’s as tall as a teenager—I wonder what else they can do. Great things I bet, like cure cancer. They must have sensed my illness. Why wasn’t Xlea kind to me like she was to Duggie-Sky?
Ugh, I hate myself some days. So selfish. Snap out of it, Ella! Your internal monologue is suffocating. I’m being carried along on this journey like a queen. When I was captured by the Bangols, a search party came to my rescue. I’ve been cradled this entire time whenever I can’t take another step, my bones aching and my stomach curling with nausea. My family is out here, facing the Steffanus warriors with their leering eyes, the Bangols’ power over the earth, and the Olearons’ flame, all for me, on some bizarre speculation that we might actually find a cure.
Now that’s love.
I despise being a physical burden to others. At least cancer has made me a featherweight—though I doubt it would matter since Grandpa Archie carries me easily. His face is covered in wrinkles like a scrunched-up potato chip bag. At least that’s how it was when we set off from Barcelona on Constellations Cruise Line. Now, since Zeno’s Tillastrion brought us to Jarr-Wya, his face is a chip bag saved from the trash and smoothed.
Grandpa Archie’s hair is the white of freshly whipped icing—except for the new growth. I leave one arm around his neck and reach up with the other. My fingers stroke the baby-bum-soft sprouts where his bald skin was once exposed on his crown and spotted with age.
Why is it growing again? The new hair, from what I can tell in the dark, is chestnut colored like Dad’s was before Rolace changed him into an Olearon.
The spiky new hair glistens with perspiration as Grandpa sprints through the twilight-blue trees, the wreckage of the avalanche a short way behind us. Luggie can barely keep up. If Grandpa is tired, he’s not letting it slow him down. Is it adrenaline? I’ve never seen him move this fast—except, however, for the days he snuck into the attic, back home in Seattle, to read the journals Dad left behind when he disappeared two years ago.
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