by Jerry Hart
I hopped on my horse, placing the bottle in a saddlebag, and slowly trotted home so I could put my plan into action.
Chapter 22: Rain
As soon as I got home, I went to the closet and traveled to Dad’s realm. He wasn’t there, but I didn’t think I needed him to do what I planned. I looked down to figure out where I was. I knew it wasn’t Texas; too much snow on the ground. Even though I’d never stepped foot in Dallas, I imagined myself there. My power did the rest.
I was on a single cloud in a relatively cloudless sky. I knew I was in the right place since I’d seen it before. I created more clouds.
Then I brought the rain.
It fell hard. From what I was told, the plague was confined to Dallas. I used the rain as a cloak and traveled to the ground, turning into an old woman the moment my feet touched the ground. I walked into a bookstore and read a newspaper. No other cities reported the disease, and hopefully soon, this city would speak of it no more.
I went to the nearest hospital and left the cure and a note, telling the doctors what it was, and that they were free to test it. I wouldn’t be sure if my plan worked until the next day, at least, so I returned to Dad’s realm and then teleported home to the island.
“Where were you?” Mom asked when I stepped out of the closet.
“Keep this to yourself, but I cured Dallas of the plague.”
“How?”
I told her.
“How did you get the cure?”
“I stole it from Dargo’s palace.”
“Astrid!” Her eyes were wide.
“How else did you think I got it?” It was night and I was young again. I wasn’t usually so smart-mouthed when I was an old lady. “He didn’t even know I was there, and hopefully he never will. But we have another problem: He made another bird, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last. We have to stop him and get rid of the bird.”
“Let’s get Aneela and Victor over here,” Mom said. “Whatever we come up with, they should be involved.”
They joined us, though Victor still seemed depressed. I didn’t regret bringing him in on this and figured he just needed something to do. Estevan joined us as well, and I told them everything I’d done, including finding the skeleton in the wardrobe.
“Why would he still have that?” Estevan asked.
“Sentimental value?” Aneela guessed.
“I doubt it,” he said. “It’s like he needs it, or something, but is trying not to draw attention to it. Otherwise, he would have locked it in a safe or something.”
“Why does he need sleep?” Victor asked. It was the first thing he’d said during the meeting, though he’d asked in a distracted way. He was staring out the kitchen window behind me.
“I guess he has to respect his host’s limitations,” I said. “Though, when I saw him at the bookstore, he was young. The curse doesn’t affect him. Otherwise, he probably still needs to eat and use the bathroom.”
“Do you think he would be susceptible to sleeping potions?” Aneela asked.
“Maybe. Why?”
“If we could slip something into his food or drink, we could lock him up somewhere until we figure out what to do with him.”
“That sounds like a temporary solution,” Victor said, though he didn’t sound pleased.
“It’s better than nothing,” Aneela countered. “It’s not like we can kill him without killing Josh.”
“Josh sounds like he’s prepared to die to save us.”
“No!” Estevan yelled. “He’s my friend, and what’s happening to him isn’t his fault. We have to help him.”
“He still has the ability to leach off of someone’s life force,” Mom said, “though he chooses not to use it. If Dargo’s in charge of that power now, killing him would be difficult anyway.”
“Not if we lock him in a room away from other people,” Victor said.
“Do you hate Josh or something?” Estevan asked.
“I adore the boy, but we can’t let Dargo continue on with his plan.” Victor was involved with our discussion now, no longer looking lost in his thoughts. “Astrid may have cured Dallas, but if he makes more birds, it’ll start all over again. At the palace, Josh told us to kill him. Remember?”
Estevan didn’t reply. Instead, he turned away from Victor, whom he sat next to on the couch.
“I don’t know if separating him would work,” Mom said. “I don’t think proximity has much to do with his power. The day he died in the tornado, I was probably the closest to him, but he ended up leaching off a boy twenty feet away. Just some random kid. Everyone would have to be really far away.”
“We could cut off his head,” Victor suggested.
“Are you freakin’ kidding me!” Estevan said, facing him again.
“That might work, but, again, Josh was completely dead that day. His power still sought out a life force, even when the body was shut down. Besides, could any of us really bring ourselves to cut off Josh’s head?”
Victor shook his head. “It was just a thought.”
“Something else that bothers me,” I said, “is how Dargo talks. It seems so modern. If he really was locked in that cylinder for a hundred years, why doesn’t he talk like someone from that time period? And why keep his original skeleton?”
“And how did he know the key was in his chamber?” Aneela added. “Andor said his great-grandfather was the one who tried to release Dargo, but he got trapped in the chamber.”
A thought came to me. “What if Dargo did escape?”
“What do you mean?” everyone asked at once.
“What if Andor’s great-grandfather did release Dargo, and then got possessed? Then, say, he returned to his chamber to get the birds. But then the rocks fell outside the door.”
“Dargo is a powerful wizard,” Mom said. “Why not just push the rocks away with his power?”
“Maybe he’s not as powerful in someone else’s body,” Estevan guessed, and I thought it sounded plausible. “The great-grandfather dude died in the chamber….”
“And Dargo returned to his original body—the skeleton?” Aneela finished.
“That’s why he keeps the skeleton in a place that’s not locked up. Maybe he automatically gets drawn back to it, despite his wishes. Now that the skeleton is out of a prison cell, he can just leave it again if he gets drawn back. Think of it as a temporary headquarters.”
“What would happen if that HQ was destroyed?” Aneela asked.
“Good question,” Victor said, twirling his red beard.
“Wait a minute,” Mom said. “Why did the second island appear when Josh took the crystal from the chamber? I still don’t get that.”
“Well, Rockne is the one who cloaked the island,” I said. “Maybe Dargo couldn’t banish that spell, so he cast one on the key before his host died. So that when someone found it, his spell could override Rockne’s.”
“This is so convoluted,” Estevan said, rubbing his forehead.
“But it does make a crazy kind of sense,” Aneela said.
“How do we know if Dargo has figured out how to use Josh’s power?” he asked.
“We can kill him and find out,” Victor suggested.
Estevan looked at him. “Are you volunteering to sacrifice yourself?”
Victor laughed for the first time in days. “Perhaps.”
“The first thing we should do is destroy the skeleton,” Aneela said. “That would limit Dargo’s options if anything happened to his host.”
“We also have to destroy the bird,” I said. “And we should think of a way to get rid of Dargo without killing Josh.”
“And if we can’t?” Victor asked.
It took me a moment to reply. Finally, I said, “Then we’ll have to kill Josh as well.”
“I know of something we can use,” Victor said. “Something we can drug him with. It will kill him slowly and in a way that may drive Dargo out of the body. But it’s in a dangerous part of the island.”
I perked up, surprisingly. “A quest
?”
He smiled as well. “Yes, my dear. A quest.”
Chapter 23: The Quest
Victor and I set out on horses an hour later to the other side of the island, near where Josh and I first saw the birds. Victor hadn’t told me much about what we were going to do, but he’d brought an axe with him. All I had was a backpack. Once we got closer to our destination, we slowed down to a walk.
“Now are you going to tell me what we’re doing?” I asked, looking up at the rising moon.
“Be happy you’re young again,” he replied. “What we’re doing is not for the geriatric. We’re stealing venom from the hexl.”
“Hexl? I thought that was just a myth.”
“I assure you, it’s quite real. We Dargons have seen it many times without realizing it.”
“What does it look like?”
“I suppose I should spoil the surprise. It looks like a giant flower.”
I smirked. “I think I would know if I saw a giant flower, Victor. Many people would.”
“Oh, you’d think. The hexl is a master at hiding in plain sight, however.”
“How are we supposed to find it at night, then?”
“I saw one, once, decades ago. They sleep at night and are relatively harmless. Their venom is potent.”
I looked around to make sure no one was following us. “What will it do to Dargo?”
“If we manage to slip it into his food or drink, it will slow his heart within minutes. We can only hope he hasn’t mastered Josh’s leaching ability. Dargo will be forced to flee the body.”
“But his go-to location won’t be waiting for him,” I finished.
“Exactly. By the fact he kept his skeleton rather than destroyed it, I’m hoping that means if it is gone and he is forced to leave his host, he will simply perish.”
“So,” I said, “we get the venom, destroy the skeleton, and then poison Josh.” I must’ve sounded worried, because Victor looked at me in the darkness.
“We can save Josh once Dargo is gone. Within the hexl also exists the antidote. I’ll gather both secretions and be ready to administer aid. If everything goes to plan, Josh should be just fine.”
“It’s been so long since we last went on a quest,” I said, feeling a lot better.
“Indeed. What did we do on the last one?”
He remembered, but enjoyed making me tell him. “We chased floxin on the beach.”
“And?”
“And I fell into a pile of bethel poop.”
“Bethels sure do eat a lot, don’t they?” He chuckled.
If Josh were here, he’d ask what all these animals were. I’d already mentioned them, when I found the first red bird, but hadn’t told him what they were. Mom had taught me about the animals on the mainland. I would’ve compared floxin to geese and bethels to elephants. Victor and I had tried to catch one of the blue floxin because their fur is said to re-grow hair on bald people. I still didn’t know if that was true.
“We’re coming up on hexl territory,” Victor said, stopping his horse and jumping off. I did the same. He grabbed his axe from his back and crept up a small hill to our right. When we got to the top, all I saw was a large, steep crater. It was filled with a few trees and lots of dark grass.
“Is it in here?” I asked quietly.
“I’m sure of it.” He stepped into the crater carefully, holding on to a vine with his free hand. I followed, worried that if things went wrong, whether we would have enough time to climb out again.
We walked to the center of the crater, toward a small pink-and-yellow flower petal poking out of the ground.
“Is that the hexl?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yes.” He was not being sarcastic.
I gawked at the flower. It stuck out at least four inches. Victor looked from side to side of the flower, and then he knelt down and asked for the venom jar. I took one out of the backpack and handed it to him. The jar was labeled “venom.” He squeezed the flower’s stamen and some goo oozed out of it. The jar was filled a quarter of the way before he put the lid back on and handed it to me.
He stood and searched again for something, moving to the right of the flower. I followed him and saw another flower, this one blue and black. “The other jar,” he said, holding his hand out. I gave it to him. He repeated the process and sealed the jar. “Now, let’s get out of here before—”
Of course, he was interrupted. The ground shook and a large thing emerged between us. I was separated from Victor, but I heard him scream at me. “Run!”
I was on the side we had come from. I backed away from what looked like a giant root, and headed toward the vines. I put the antidote jar in the backpack and ran. The root turned toward me, and I saw its head.
The hexl had the head of a giant flower petal, much like the ones we’d just milked. This petal was orange and red and had been under the dirt, inside the left crater wall.
The beast had lifted up far enough for Victor to run under. He swiped at it with his axe, getting its attention. “Here I am, you ugly monster!”
It lunged at him, but he hid behind one of the few trees. I started to climb a vine, but it broke and I fell back into the crater. When I got to my feet, the hexl shot toward me. I barely had enough time to jump to the side as it plunged into the wall. It was like a train-sized snake, and it kept driving into the dirt until it disappeared entirely.
Victor and I were alone in the crater.
“Don’t move,” he said quietly from behind the tree.
He slowly walked toward me. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard the hexl moving around in the dirt, circling the crater. It sounded like a far-away airplane, of which I’d heard plenty while training with Dad. My heart raced as I worried it would shoot out from anywhere at any moment.
“Go, now!” Victor lifted me up so I was able to reach the lip of the crater. I climbed out and turned to pull him up, but the beast shot out from the far side and went straight for him.
“Victor!” I screamed as I covered my face from the dirt that shot up from the impact. After a few seconds, the hexl was gone again, leaving an empty crater. Victor was no longer there.
I stood there, frozen. Not knowing what to do, I headed for the horses. Surprisingly, they hadn’t scattered during the attack. I felt numb; I’d lost three of my friends. Josh, Victor and Champagne—how could they be gone?
Before I got to the horses, I felt a minor earthquake just before the hexl shot straight up. It looked at me for a moment before vomiting something next to the horses. Then it shot out of the ground, over my head, and back into the crater. I covered my eyes from the dirt that rained down on me, and then looked at the vomit.
It was Victor, and he was alive.
I helped him up. “I can’t believe you’re not dead,” I said, nothing but pure joy in my voice.
“I guess it didn’t like the way I tasted. It ate my axe, though.”
With that, we headed home.
Chapter 24: Celebration
With the venom and antidote in our possession, we moved on to the second step in our plan. Mom was a decent sorceress, though she hadn’t used her magic in a while. Her specialty was creating illusions that looked absolutely real. The next day, I waited for Dargo to leave the palace on a horseback tour of the island. It had been over a hundred years since he’d last seen it, after all.
Mom and I tried to enter the palace through the front, but the red-faced soldiers stopped us. No one was allowed inside while the king was gone, they said. The dead, defiant soldiers still swung outside the palace.
I wasn’t discouraged, telling Mom outside the gate about my ability to ride the wind. We casually walked along the edge of the cliff on which the palace stood, and then we jumped.
The wind caught us a few feet from the water’s surface, carried us over the gate and up toward Dargo’s bedroom. The balcony door was open again, so we walked in, and I reflexively looked at the birdcage right inside.
The cage was still covered. Mom and
I walked to the wardrobe and took out the skeleton. Mom placed a small red gem in its place and muttered a spell. Seconds later, a new skeleton was there. It looked exactly like the old one.
“This should hold for a while,” she said, “in case he checks.”
“Can he touch it?”
“No, so let’s hope he only looks at it the way he did when you were here.”
We left the way we came in and took the skeleton home on horseback. Mom was able to make it look like a little girl, though the girl said and did nothing. Mom had to carry her to her horse and hold her while we rode. No one seemed to notice anything wrong.
Victor, Aneela, Mom and I took the skeleton to the second island, which was no longer being guarded, and tossed the bones into the acid pool.
At first, nothing happened, and we all worried.
“Will Dargo know something happened to his skeleton?” Aneela asked.
“Hopefully not,” I said. “Though, we have it covered if he decides to check on it.”
A moment later, the skull started to sizzle and white foam appeared. Soon, the skeleton was no more.
We took a moment to appreciate the significance. Then Mom said, “Now what?”
“Now,” I said, “we kill Dargo.”
* * *
Aneela went up to the palace after Dargo returned and requested to speak with him. She managed to convince the new king to hold a banquet to celebrate his return to power. Invites were sent to every islander.
That was when Estevan, Victor, Mom and I went to work.
The banquet was held the next day. The palace was full of Dargons, but the banquet hall managed to hold all one hundred of us. We took our seats as Dargo entered through a door at the head of the long table. No one touched the food that was laid out by Verna and her team of cooks. Before she left, Verna winked at Aneela.
“Welcome, everyone,” Dargo said clearly from his spot. I sat next to Mom and Aneela, with Estevan and Victor sitting across from us. “I am deeply honored to have you all here to celebrate a new era for Dargo Island. While I was gone, Rockne managed to integrate the island with the mainland, tainting our world with the evils of the other.