by Kate O'Hearn
Zephyr snorted, “But I don’t have arms. How am I supposed to do it?”
“You are clever, Zephyr,” Themis said. “I am sure you will figure it out.”
“I can’t do it.”
Themis advanced on her. “If you learn nothing else here at Arcadia, learn this. The words ‘can’t’ and ‘cannot’ do not exist. You can do it if you believe in it. And I firmly believe you will go into the orchards and collect nectar and deliver it to me tomorrow.”
“And if I really can’t?”
“Failure is not an option.” Themis’s eyes moved over to Astraea as well. “It would not be good for either of you.”
Astraea jumped forward. “Of course. We understand and we won’t fail.”
Themis looked at Astraea doubtfully. “See that you do not.” As she started to move away, she turned back quickly and pointed to Zephyr. “Do not try to trick me with nectar from home. I want it fresh and will know the difference. Do you understand?”
Zephyr dropped her head. “Yes, Themis. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to do it with hooves and no hands, but I understand.”
Themis moved back to her three-legged stool and sat down. “Fine, you may both go now. I will see you back here tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, tomorrow,” Astraea said. She caught hold of Zephyr’s mane and the two walked out of the office.
6
JAKE MOANED AND OPENED HIS eyes. his head was pounding and every muscle in his body ached. Reaching up, he felt a golf-ball-size lump on the back of his head. “Oooouuuuchhhh . . .”
He was lying on soft grass in some kind of well-groomed but totally weird orchard. Sitting up slowly, he frowned. The trees had large gold flowers that looked like giant teardrops, and the green-and-gold oval leaves were bigger than his head.
A bee the size of his fist was buzzing around the flowers, and when it landed on a bud, the flower opened and the bee crawled inside.
“What the . . .” Jake climbed slowly to his feet and approached the nearest tree. He tentatively touched one of the flowers. It opened, and a few drops of a thick, honeylike liquid poured into his hand. He lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed the liquid’s sweet fragrance.
On the ground beside him were his backpack and skateboard, but his sister was nowhere to be seen. “Moles?” he called. “Where are you?”
All he heard in response was a strange birdsong that seemed to be repeating his words back to him in a high-pitched voice.
“Whoa, how hard did I hit my head?” He took a few more steps, staring in wonder. Nothing looked familiar or remotely normal. The sky above was clear and the bluest he’d ever seen. There was no yellow haze of Los Angeles pollution and no bad smell to the air, which was sweet, fresh, and warm—not hot. He couldn’t see or hear any cars, and there was no one around.
The last thing Jake remembered was falling off his skateboard after . . . after what? Why did he fall off his skateboard? He hadn’t taken a spill in ages. The last time was at the skate park, when he tried to do a triple twist. But he hadn’t been at a skate park. He and Molly were heading to . . . to . . . the Santa Monica Pier!
He remembered that much. It was the rest that was gone. “Moles!” he called again. “Are you here?” Jake’s initial shock was fading and being replaced by panic. Where was he? Where was his sister? What happened to Los Angeles?
Jake bent down, collected his things, and started to run. He didn’t know where, only that he had to find his sister. He passed through row upon row of the strange trees with the weird bees. They seemed to go on forever.
When he couldn’t run any farther, Jake slowed to a walk. He was out of breath, his head throbbed, and he was more frightened than he’d ever been in his life. What was happening?
As he moved forward, he thought he heard the sound of a soft, light voice. There were other sounds with it. It almost sounded like a horse neighing. The sounds were coming from a few rows away.
Following them, Jake passed through several more trees before coming to a full stop. Up ahead was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in his life. Her hair was almost as golden as the teardrop flowers on the trees and hung long down her back. Her face was smooth and clear and she was dressed in a . . . a Greek costume?
Jake took a few more steps, then stopped as his mouth fell open. If the beautiful girl in the pale blue costume was shocking, the large white horse with the big black blaze that approached her was impossible. Someone had glued white feathered wings to it. But the horse didn’t appear to care as it carried a bucket in its mouth and offered it to the girl. When she took it, she bent down to pour the contents into a jug at her feet.
Jake stood in stunned silence. He couldn’t be seeing what he was seeing. It was all wrong—it was impossible. But the trees, the strange flowers, the beautiful girl—all of them were forgotten when the horse stood taller and opened its wings in a large stretch.
The pity he felt for the abused horse with the glued-on wings vanished—the instant Jake realized the wings were real.
7
“I STILL DON’T THINK IT’S fair,” Zephyr complained after Astraea took the bucket of nectar from her. “Cylus started the fight. He should be here doing this, not us.”
Astraea laughed. “We’re here because you opened your mouth again. All we had to do was sweep the floors of Arcadia One, but you had to speak up and say the night dwellers should do it. If you had kept quiet, we’d each be home now.”
“So you’re saying this is my fault?” Zephyr said.
“Isn’t it?”
“All right, so maybe I might be a little responsible,” Zephyr admitted. “But seriously, this is going to take all night. I never knew it took so many flowers to fill one bucket.”
Astraea carried her own empty bucket over to the tree she was harvesting. She gently caressed a gold blossom and held the bucket under it as it released its nectar. “We’d get through this faster if you stopped complaining and actually did some work.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got hands. I have to lick the flowers to get them to release the nectar. How can something as delicious as nectar come from a flower that tastes so bad?”
Astraea chuckled as she moved from flower to flower. But as she worked, she had the strangest feeling they weren’t alone. She walked slowly back to Zephyr and lowered her voice. “Call me crazy, but I have the feeling we’re being watched.”
Zephyr snorted. “I’ve been feeling it too. . . .” She lifted her head high in the air and sniffed. “I smell something strange.” She looked around. “Over there. What’s that thing in the trees?”
Astraea turned and saw a large, dark shape dashing away from them. It moved strangely and made odd sounds as it ran. “What is that?”
“Let’s find out!” Zephyr bolted after the fleeing creature.
Astraea dropped her bucket and raced behind her friend. As they sped through the orchard, she got only fleeting glimpses of the creature. It was big and black and moving incredibly fast as it barged through the trees as though they were no obstacle at all.
“You stay on the ground. I’m going up!” Zephyr flapped her large wings and took off, climbing high over the treetops.
Astraea was running faster than she ever had in her life, but still the dark figure was getting away. It darted from side to side and then circled back in the direction they had come. Astraea whooshed past their buckets and urns and was about to enter another row of trees when she saw a boy stopped in the row directly in her path. She was moving too fast to stop or even change direction.
She plowed into him at full speed, knocking him backward so hard that he tumbled to the ground and somersaulted several times before coming to a halt on his stomach. Astraea also crashed to the ground and slid across the grass and bashed her knees on a large tree root growing over the surface.
“Astraea!” Zephyr cried. She landed on the ground and charged up to her friend. “Are you all right? Did it attack you? Do you want me to kill it?”
�
��No it didn’t attack me. It just stood in my way and I couldn’t stop.” She sat up and inspected her bleeding knees. “Ouch . . .”
Across from her the boy groaned and rolled over. He sat up and shook his head. “What hit me?”
“I think that was me,” Astraea said. “Why didn’t you move before I hit you?”
“I—I didn’t have time. You—you were running too fast.”
Astraea looked at him and started to frown. The boy was dressed so strangely and smelled completely different from everyone else. His hair was long at the sides but short and spiky on the top of his head. A strange hat lay on the ground beside him, and his clothes were unrecognizable—if anything, he looked more like the man her grandfather had caught earlier in the day. He looked—human!
The boy’s wild eyes flicked between Astraea and Zephyr, who was pawing the ground and snorting. “This is getting too weird,” Zephyr said. “I’m sure that a creature was watching us, and then this boy appears out of nowhere smelling like—what is that smell? He stinks.”
“He doesn’t stink,” Astraea said. “He just smells different.” She climbed painfully to her feet and looked around. “Where did the other one go?”
Zephyr snorted. “I don’t know. It was moving incredibly fast, and then it just vanished.”
“What do you mean, it vanished? How can something just vanish?”
“I don’t know. Next time I see it, I’ll ask,” Zephyr said.
“Who—who are you?” the boy asked.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Astraea said as she peered closer at him.
“Careful, Astraea, we don’t know what it is.”
“Actually, I think I do know what he is.” Astraea said to the boy, “You’re human, aren’t you?”
The boy looked at Zephyr with wide, frightened eyes and nodded.
“Human?” Zephyr cried. She reared and flapped her wings. “Astraea, get back! They’re dangerous and carry diseases!”
“No, they’re not,” Astraea said.
The boy pointed a shaking finger at Zephyr. “What is that thing?”
“Thing?” Zephyr cried. She landed on the ground again and stomped forward. “Did he just call me a ‘thing’?”
“Zephyr, calm down. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” Astraea looked at the boy. “You didn’t mean to call Zephyr a ‘thing,’ did you?”
His eyes were still huge as he looked at Zephyr. “I—I . . . um . . .”
“Okay, you’re right,” Zephyr snorted. “He’s not dangerous, he’s just an idiot.”
“He’s frightened, that’s all.” Astraea focused on the boy. “What’s your name?”
The boy’s eyes were fixed on Zephyr. “I—I’m Jake. Can—can you understand it?”
“It!” Zephyr fumed. “First he calls me ‘thing’ and now ‘it.’ Astraea, stand back. I’m going to stomp him into a puddle.”
“Zephyr that’s enough. Besides, you called him ‘it’ first.” Astraea rose and stood next to her friend. She said to the boy, “If you value your life, you’d better apologize to Zephyr.”
“For what?”
“For calling her ‘thing’ and ‘it.’ She’s very sensitive about name-calling.”
Jake climbed slowly to his feet and approached Zephyr. “You’re not trying to tell me she can understand us. I mean, not really.”
“What’s he think I am?” Zephyr snorted. “Stupid or something?”
Astraea looked back at the boy. “Of course she can understand us. She’s not stupid, you know, but she does have a temper. So you’d better apologize to her before she loses it and stomps you.”
Jake shrugged. “If you say so.” He looked at Zephyr. “I’m sorry I called you ‘it.’ ”
“That’s better,” Zephyr said. “Now, where do you come from?” When he said nothing, Zephyr moved closer. “Well?”
“You’d better answer her,” Astraea warned.
“Answer what?” he said.
“Her question,” Astraea said.
“But she didn’t ask me anything.”
“Yes, she did. She asked where you came from.”
“No, she didn’t. She just neighed at me like a horse.”
“Horse?” Zephyr shrieked. “Tell me he didn’t just call me a horse! That’s it. There’s only so much I can take. Stand back. I’m going to stomp him.”
“Zephyr, please.” Astraea caught hold of Zephyr’s mane and held her down. She looked back at the boy. “And you stop too.”
“Stop what? I didn’t do anything!”
“You called her a horse.”
“She is a horse!” he insisted.
“No, she’s not!” Astraea insisted. “Horses are very different.”
“How?” he cried.
“Just look at her. She looks nothing like a horse.”
“Apart from the wings—which by the way are impossible—she’s exactly like a horse.” Jake looked down and started to shake his head. “This is insane! A horse that isn’t a horse, a girl in costume who runs superfast, and these crazy trees.” He walked a few paces and then stopped. “Wait a minute . . . I know, I’m dreaming.” He looked back at them and started to laugh. “That’s it! This is just some whacked-out dream.” He scratched his head. “That makes sense. I fell and I hit my head and . . . and now I’m dreaming. . . .” He started pacing again. “No, wait . . . not dreaming—it’s a coma! I hit my head really hard, and now I’m in the hospital in some kind of coma and this is all a hallucination.”
Astraea watched the boy talking to himself as though she and Zephyr weren’t there. He was saying things she didn’t understand. “What is a coma?”
He looked at her and grinned. “Oh you’re good, you’re really good. Asking me what a coma is when you’re part of it. That’s a trick question, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Astraea said.
Zephyr stood beside her and leaned her head closer. “I think he’s crazy,” she whispered. “We’d better stand back before we catch it from him.”
“I’m not sure what he is,” Astraea said. She stepped closer to the boy. “And we really don’t know what a coma is.”
He grinned again. “Okay, I’ll play. A coma is when you’re hurt and unconscious for a long time. Sometimes you never wake up. I hit my head really hard, and now I’m in a coma. You’re just part of what’s happening in my damaged brain.”
“Ah, that explains it,” Zephyr said. “He’s brain damaged!”
“Maybe,” Astraea mused. She frowned at Jake. “So where exactly do you come from?”
“Where do I come from?” He laughed. “Nope, this is my coma. I get to ask the questions. Where do you come from?”
“Here,” Astraea answered. “Titus.”
“Oh, Titus. Of course, I should have known,” he laughed again. “I’m from LA.”
Astraea looked at Zephyr and then back to Jake. “Where is La?”
He laughed harder. “Not La, LA. That’s Los Angeles—as in California.”
Astraea shook her head and looked at Zephyr. “Have you ever heard of Los Angeles as in California?”
“Never,” Zephyr said.
“We’ve never heard of it,” Astraea said back to him.
“Of course not,” Jake laughed. “That’s because you’re in my coma.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” Zephyr said. “Let’s just tell someone there’s a human here and go home.”
“We can’t. They’ll take him away,” Astraea said. “Besides, we still have detention. We have to collect nectar for tomorrow.”
Jake started to frown. “Zephyr just said something to you, didn’t she?” When Astraea nodded, his frown deepened. “If she’s part of my coma, why can’t I understand her?”
“Because you’re an idiot,” Zephyr said.
Jake looked at her. “What did she say?”
Astraea looked at Zephyr and then back to him. “She can’t understand it either. Everyone here understands her.”
�
��I didn’t say that,” Zephyr insisted. “Astraea, you’re such a liar!”
“There are more people here?” Jake said.
Astraea nodded. “Of course. Titus is filled with Titans and Olympians.”
“Hey, Titans and Olympians. I know them!” Jake cried. “They’re from the movies.” He looked around. “I’m dreaming about being in a movie! How cool is that!”
“You’re not dreaming!” Astraea said. “This is real.”
“Yeah, right,” Jake laughed.
Zephyr shook her head. “He’s giving me a headache. We’ve got enough nectar. Let’s just go.”
“We can’t leave him here. Grandfather will take him away.”
“So?”
“So it would be wrong.”
Jake started to point at them and laugh harder. “You two are so funny. You’re in my head but you’re arguing.”
“We’re not in your head!” Astraea insisted. “We’re very real, and unless you start to take this seriously, you’re in a lot of danger.”
8
ASTRAEA WATCHED JAKE WANDERING AROUND the orchard. He approached a flower and touched it. He sniffed the nectar that the flower released and then licked it. This made him chuckle. “Honey from a flower—how cool is that!”
“He is completely insane,” Zephyr commented.
“No, he’s just confused. He still doesn’t believe this is real.”
Zephyr looked up. “It’s about to get very real. The sun is going down. In a short while the night dwellers will arrive. I’d love to see what he does when he gets a look at them.”
Astraea looked up at the blazing pinks and red flashing across the sky as the sun started to set. Zephyr was right. It wouldn’t be long before the orchards were full of nectar gatherers. “We have to hide him.”
“Why?”
“I told you already. Something strange is happening here. Yesterday my father saw a human with my grandfather, and then today, during the ceremony at Arcadia, I watched another one being caught. Now we find Jake here in the orchard. The routes to Earth are all sealed, but in two days three humans have arrived here. How many more have come? How are they getting here and why?” She looked back at Jake. “And he’s part of it, whether he believes it or not.”