Lost Kingdom

by Matt Myklusch

  “No, I don’t,” Joey agreed, his mind wandering. “That’s too many hypos. Not good.” He squinted at the fireplace. “How do you know about this stuff? Did you watch that documentary too?” He was making himself laugh now. “That’s funny. The fireplace likes documentaries.…” Joey leaned back a little too fast and bonked his head against the wall, but it didn’t bother him. He felt numb. He stared up at the ceiling of the cottage, his thoughts a muddled mess. Across the room, Leanora was fading fast.

  “I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute,” she said.

  Joey wanted to tell her not to do it, but he couldn’t find the strength to say the words out loud. He understood how she felt. His head lolled. Keeping his chin up and his eyes open was a struggle. He wanted to rest too. Just for a minute. That’s all.

  Shazad tried to shake Joey awake. He was saying something, but it was hard to make out. His voice was a quavering echo with the speed and pitch turned way down. “JOey, DoN’T SLeeP,” Shazad ordered in a disorienting warble. “SLeeP EqUAls DEATH, ReMEMber?”

  Joey rubbed his eyes. He was drifting off. He couldn’t help it. He pushed Shazad away, getting white paint on his shirt in the process. Joey rubbed his fingers together, feeling the wet paint. Then he looked at the paint on the cottage door, dripping in around the doorframe where he had touched it. He couldn’t believe it was going to end this way, but he didn’t know how to stop it. They had painted themselves into a corner by coming to this place.

  Wait a minute.

  A jolt of energy ran through Joey. He sat up straight, temporarily revived by the power of an idea. “That’s it! Shazad, I’ve got it!”

  Shazad turned in surprise, stumbling back toward Joey. “Got what? What’s it?”

  “The paint!” Joey exclaimed, showing Shazad his fingertips. “We painted ourselves into a corner. We can paint our way out! Look on the table; she was mixing up a new batch. She said if you know how to use it… She was showing us but not telling us. We’ve got to go out the same way we came in!”

  Shazad looked confused. Joey knew he wasn’t explaining it properly. He tried to get up and show Shazad what he was talking about, but he couldn’t move. The burst of energy was gone. Spent. He could only hope Shazad had understood what he was saying and had enough strength left to do what was needed.

  The next minute passed for Joey in snippets, viewed as he went in and out of consciousness, fighting the urge to sleep. He saw Shazad staggering over to the table, knocking herbs and roots to the floor. His vision blurred and came back. Shazad now had the bowl of paint cradled under his arm as he searched the room for a brush. The next thing Joey knew, Shazad was painting the door with frantic strokes, splattering it with a bright orange hue. The job complete, he threw the paint away and pushed the door open. Joey couldn’t see what was on the other side. Not from where he was sitting. But he saw Shazad pick up Leanora and shove her out of the cottage. That gave him hope.

  Joey was up next. Shazad lurched over to him with clumsy, awkward steps. Joey could tell he was drained from lack of oxygen and ready to drop. He had no idea how Shazad was still standing. The way he soldiered on was nothing short of heroic. Joey pushed with his legs, trying hard to do his part as Shazad dragged him to his feet. “Hold on to your bag,” Shazad told him. “The mask is in there, right?”

  “Got it,” Joey mumbled as they shuffled across the floor together. “Did it work?” he asked. “The paint?”

  Shazad grunted, straining hard. “It worked.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere safe.”

  “Oh,” Joey said, delirious. “That’s nice. Don’t forget the map.”

  “The map!” Shazad exclaimed, turning around quickly. It was still on the table. Joey’s knees turned into jelly and he collapsed onto Shazad. They tumbled through the open doorway together. A blast of hot air hit Joey in the face as he passed through the portal. The world went white and he shut his eyes, falling forward into the abyss. It felt like he fell forever. And then he didn’t feel anything at all.

  6 Out of the Frying Pan

  Joey came to with the back of his neck burning and his nose in a pile of sand. He worked up the strength to roll over and immediately wished he hadn’t. The heat was so overwhelming and the sun’s glare was so intense, it felt like it was two inches away from his face. Joey threw his hands up to cover his eyes. For a second he thought he was on the beach, but he didn’t hear the ocean, and the birds he saw circling overhead… they weren’t seagulls. Looking up through his fingers, Joey had a sinking feeling they were vultures.

  He groaned and pushed himself into a sitting position, spitting out grains of sand that were stuck to his lips. His head was throbbing. Joey massaged his temples, trying to wake up and remember what had happened. Flashes of the cottage and the three women ran through his mind. He remembered passing out from oxygen deprivation somewhere in the Himalayas. Most likely, it had been high up Mount Everest, based on how quickly hypoxia had set in. Guess I can scratch that place off my bucket list, he thought, amusing himself. There you go. Way to look on the bright side. He brushed his face clean, still feeling a little punchy. Checking his surroundings, he saw nothing but bright side, everywhere he looked. He was in a desert.

  How did I get here? Joey wondered.

  Even as he asked himself the question, foggy memories solidified to answer it. He remembered Shazad pulling him up and shouldering his weight as they stumbled through the cottage door. The mental fog lifted, and Joey’s mind was suddenly sharp again. He spun around in the sand, jolted back to clarity by concern for his friends. “Nnngh!” Joey felt a shooting pain behind his eyeballs. He had spun around too fast, amplifying his headache. He winced and waited for it to subside.

  The good news was, Leanora and Shazad were both there with him, lying unconscious in the sand. Joey breathed a heavy sigh of relief. They had all made it out. As Joey grappled with the fact that he and his friends had almost died on the mountain, it dawned on him that their current situation was not much of an improvement. He scanned the desert landscape slowly. Nothing but sand dunes as far as the eye could see.

  “This keeps getting better and better.”

  A few of the birds swooped down, landing next to Shazad and Leanora. The birds nudged them with their beaks, testing to see if they were dead or alive. Joey’s friends began to stir, and Joey crawled over to shoo the birds away. “Hey!” he called out. “Leave them alone. Go on. Get out of here. Go!” He flicked sand at the birds, running them off as his friends woke up.

  “You guys okay?” Joey asked his friends as they came around.

  Leanora gave an unconvincing nod. Shazad couldn’t even muster that. He tried to sit up but quit before he got that far. “Ow.” He lay back down and covered his eyes with the meaty part of his forearm. Shazad and Leanora both looked about as good as Joey felt.

  “I’m all right,” Shazad croaked after a short silence. “I’ve got the headache of a lifetime, but I’ll live.” A persistent bird pecked at his side. He swatted it away. “You hear that? Find something else to eat.” The bird squawked and flew away as Shazad propped himself up on his elbows. “Egyptian vultures,” he said, frowning. “Tough little buggers. Too smart for their own good.” He looked around, squinting in surprise. “How’d we end up here?”

  “It was you,” Joey said. “You saved us.”

  Shazad’s eyebrows went up. “I did?”

  “Yeah.” Joey nodded. “Big-time.”

  “What happened?” asked Leanora.

  They talked through the events that preceded their arrival in the desert. It took only the slightest mention of anything to crystalize the memories in everyone’s brain. Soon Shazad was sitting up and telling the story, filling in the gaps for Joey and Leanora. Apparently, Shazad had nearly dropped the bucket of paint, spilling it everywhere before he reached the cottage door. That would have been a disaster. He thought he was going to collapse before he got Joey out too. Then Joey collapsed onto him
as he turned around to get the map.

  “The map!” Joey blurted out. The last thing he remembered, it was still on the table. “Did you save the map?”

  Shazad cocked his head slightly, thinking back. “I don’t know. I think so.” He shook out the folds of his cape and checked to see if he was sitting on it, but found nothing. He didn’t have the map on him.

  “What about the staff?” Leanora asked him. Everybody got up and looked around. There was nothing but sand as far as the eye could see.

  “They’re not here,” Joey said, deflated.

  “There!” Leanora said, pointing behind Shazad. “Look!”

  “What is it?” Shazad asked, turning his head. “Which one?”

  Joey scanned the desert, hoping it would be the map. Sure enough, there it was, a few feet off, half buried in the sand.

  The wind picked up, catching the free end of the map and threatening to lift it into the sky. “Get it!” Joey said, gawking at the fluttering parchment. “Before it blows away!”

  All three of them sprinted across the sand as best they could, slipping and bumping into each other as they went. Their bodies ached, their legs were weary, and they moved like zombies with their shoelaces tied together. By the time they reached the map, it was already airborne. They chased after it as it floated on the breeze, landing ten feet away. Joey got there first and dove for the map, his fingers just missing it as the wind sent it skittering across the sand once more. This comedy of errors repeated dune after dune. Every time they closed in on the map, the wind would carry it off before they caught it. They weren’t fast enough, and once the wind really got going, they weren’t tall enough, either. Soon the map was flying in the air like a kite, totally out of reach.

  “That’s it, then,” Shazad said, hunched over as the map swirled twenty feet above their heads. “We need wings to catch that thing now.”

  Leanora turned. “Shazad, you’re a genius.”

  Shazad looked up. “How’s that?”

  “Your cape,” Leanora said, shaking the shiny fabric on his back. “Give me wings! Make me a bird.” She pointed up at the vultures who were currently sharing the sky with the map. “One of those birds.”

  “Can you do that?” Joey asked.

  “Of course he can do it,” Leanora said. “He turned a wolf into a bunny in Siberia, remember? Tell him, Shazad. You can do it.”

  Shazad nodded reluctantly. “Yes, I can do it, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Have you ever been a bird before?”

  Leanora scrunched up her face. “What kind of question is that? I’ll figure it out. Quick, before it’s too far away!”

  Joey turned his back against the wind as it picked up steam. The map climbed higher and higher. It was sure to land a hundred feet away when it finally came back down. “I don’t know what else we can do, but whatever we do, we better hurry.”

  Shazad shrugged and pulled off his Cape of Transfiguration. “All right.” The cape was no bigger than a bath mat, shiny black on one side and gold on the other. He gave it a hard shake and suddenly it was as big as a king-size bedsheet. “Here goes…” He threw the cape over Leanora, covering her from head to toe. A second later, he whisked the cape away with a lightning-fast motion. It was as if he were pulling a tablecloth out from under a set of glassware and dishes that had been placed on a dining room table. When the cape was thrown aside, Joey looked and saw a bird strutting about where Leanora had once stood. She was the size of a chicken.

  “Leanora?” Joey asked. She had dusty white feathers with spiky tan plumage around her neck and a garish red-orange face that terminated in a horned beak. She looked up at Joey and Shazad with black eyes and cawed at them, making a sound that Joey took to mean “Yes, it’s me.” She spread her wings, which were tipped with black feathers, and flapped them without skill or grace. Joey thought she was going to tip over as she turned around on a clawed foot and tried to fly. She took off awkwardly, rising and falling in the air, following an erratic path.

  “What’s she doing?” Joey asked.

  “Learning to fly,” Shazad replied.

  “It’s like she’s got two left wings.”

  “She’ll pick it up,” Shazad told him. “Eventually. That’s not what I’m worried about.” Before Joey could ask Shazad what he was worried about, the other vultures took notice of Leanora and flew in for a closer look. They cawed back and forth to each other, calling more birds over to where she was. “There. What’d I tell you? Too smart for their own good.”

  Joey noted how close the other vultures were flying to Leanora. How interested they were in her poor flying. “They can tell she’s not one of them?” he guessed.

  “They can tell something’s not right about her,” Shazad confirmed. “Animals don’t like what they don’t understand. They’re a lot like people that way.”

  Leanora found her groove flying and resumed the hunt for the map, which was drifting even farther away. Unfortunately, by then the other vultures in the sky were hunting her. Out of nowhere, one of them dive-bombed Leanora, knocking her off course as she pursued the map. Joey could tell the move had caught Leanora completely off guard. She dropped like a stone, falling ten feet in the blink of an eye. Joey worried she might crash into a mountain of sand, but at the last second she opened up her wings and glided back to safety. More birds came in to continue the attack, screeching and pecking. They swarmed Leanora, relentless in their attempt to drive her out of the sky.

  “They’re trying to kill her,” Joey said.

  “Looks like,” Shazad agreed, his face grim.

  They watched, helpless as the aerial battle went on high above their heads. Leanora tried to swoop away, but the other vultures wouldn’t give her any room to maneuver. They penned her in, flapping their wings and shrieking wildly. It was as if they were challenging her—daring her to do something. When Leanora didn’t fight back, they hit her again, sending her tumbling through the air. “C’mon, Lea,” Shazad said. “You’re not gonna take that, are you?” He told Joey this was why he had asked Leanora if she’d ever been a bird before. Apparently, if you know how to handle yourself as an animal, you could fake it and fool other animals around you. However, if you couldn’t walk the walk, things got tricky. Some animals could spot a fake a mile away. They sensed something unnatural and reacted, either by shunning the pretender as an outsider or by lashing out violently. “It should be me up there,” Shazad said, cursing himself as Leanora tried to escape the vulture flock’s wrath. “I’ve flown with vultures before. I’ve even run with wild dogs out here. I would have gone up, but neither of you have ever used my cape. Who would have changed me into a vulture? Who would have changed me back?”

  “You could have warned her,” Joey said, his eyes glued to the bird fight up above.

  Shazad dismissed that. “I didn’t want to put the idea in her head. There was a fifty-fifty chance they’d just leave her alone. Besides, it’s Lea. You honestly think it would have made any difference?”

  Joey grimaced. Shazad had a point. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s Lea. She can hack it. She’s a fighter.”

  “Come on, Lea!” Shazad yelled up at the dueling birds. “Don’t let them push you around!” Leanora didn’t need to be told twice—or even once, really. By the time Joey and Shazad starting cheering her on from the ground, she had run out of patience with the vultures and grown comfortable enough with her wings to fight back effectively. Leanora angled her beak toward the earth and broke off in a wide sweeping arc that first took her away from her tormentors and then swooped up high above them. Next she dove back down and reared up with her talons, clawing the wing of the first bird that had hit her. Feathers flew and the bird slunk off, flying badly with one lame wing.

  “YES!” Joey shouted. “That’s how you do it!”

  Leanora clashed with another vulture, biting at it with her beak and pushing it away with her feet. She whirled on the rest of the flock, thrashing her wings and screechi
ng like a pteranodon. She was angry and her message was clear—get the flock away from me. The birds did the smart thing and backed off, giving Leanora the space she needed to reacquire the map. It was so far away by then it wasn’t much bigger than a postage stamp, but after her battle with the vultures, chasing down the map was easy. Leanora flew off to retrieve it and returned with the parchment clasped tight in her beak. She touched down on the sand at Joey’s and Shazad’s feet and spit it out. Shazad picked it up and threw his cape over Leanora. When he pulled it away, she was human again and the map was back in their possession. Mission accomplished.

  “Well,” Leanora said, inspecting a claw mark on her arm. “That was an experience.”

  “Nice work,” Joey said. “You showed them who’s boss.”

  “Lucky for us they’re scavengers and not birds of prey,” Shazad said.

  “Hey,” Leanora said, pushing back. “Bring ’em on. I’ll take them either way.”

  Shazad smiled. “I bet you would.”

  “Okay, now what?” Joey asked. “Let’s get down to business. Where are we?”

  “Let’s see,” Shazad said, checking the map. As soon as he looked at it, his face fell. “Oh no… I didn’t.” He closed his eyes and let out a self-admonishing breath.

  “What is it?” Leanora asked.

  “I was afraid of this,” Shazad said.

  “Afraid of what?” Joey asked. “Are we in trouble?”

  Shazad let out a terse laugh. “You’re not.”

  Joey leaned in to look at the map, but just for confirmation. The look on Shazad’s face said it all. “You took us to Jorako, didn’t you?”

  “Pretty much,” Shazad said, his expression grim. “This isn’t Jorako right here.” He waved at the empty horizon. “But it’s close.”

  “How close?” The X that marked their location on the map had moved from the Himalayas to North Africa, somewhere in Egypt. That meant they were stranded in the Sahara—the largest desert in the world. Joey looked around for some sign of a nearby town or village. There was nothing in sight. The place looked like Tatooine. “It’s just over the next sand dune, right?”