Battle of the Beasts

by Chris Columbus

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Then I’ll take you on.”

  Will turned to the Walkers. “I’m sorry . . . ,” he started to say, but before he could finish they all hugged him. They had been through so much with Will. He had saved their lives and they had saved his so many times, it was difficult to keep track. That’s the way it is with family.

  “I’m gonna miss you,” Brendan said. “You were like the big brother I never had.”

  “And you were like the brave little brother who was never written for me.”

  They shared a warm smile.

  Eleanor hugged Will one last time and spoke into his chest: “You be careful.”

  Cordelia was the last of the three to look Will in the eyes, and she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake by pushing him away in the plane. He was so much braver and more mature than any of the guys in her school.

  “I hope you find everything you’re looking for,” said Cordelia, her eyes filling with tears.

  “I know I won’t find a better friend than you, my sweet Cordelia.”

  Then Cordelia kissed Will’s cheek so hard he was worried that she would put a hole in it. Will sniffled, wiped his eyes, and abruptly turned. He sprinted off to catch Laramer, who was already moving through the snow. But there was another person with Laramer, a big strong figure walking beside him.

  “Felix?” Eleanor called. “You’re going too?”

  Felix turned back.

  “I have to,” he said. “I’m a fighter, a simple person, not cut out for the life you three lead.”

  “You’re more than a fighter!” Eleanor insisted, running up to Felix. He had become one of her best friends. “You’re smart. You learn so fast. You can do anything you want to. You could end up being a great leader, much better than that awful Emperor Occipus.”

  “Then shouldn’t I do it with the army?” Felix asked. “I can learn from the Americans, and then return to my people.” He leaned in. “I know that the things we do in Rome will someday be part of your history. And I would rather be part of that history than study it.”

  “Not to be rude,” Will said, standing with Laramer, “but what exactly will you do in the air force, Felix? You obviously can’t fly a plane.”

  “No, but you know I learn fast. Can’t you teach me?”

  “He has a point,” Lieutenant Laramer said. “I’ve always been a bit of a history buff . . . and one thing I learned is that there’s never been stronger warriors than Roman gladiators. A gladiator pilot would be just the thing to toast those Nazi cyborgs. How about it, Draper? If you’re such a hotshot, can’t you teach him to fly?”

  Will said, “Yes, sir.”

  Now the Walkers had to do another round of hugs and good-byes. Eleanor cried into Felix’s shoulder. It wasn’t easy for anyone to let go of the gentle gladiator—or for him to let go of them. When he came to Cordelia, he kissed her, technically on the cheek but close enough to the lips to make her jump back, her cheeks burning red.

  “Felix!”

  “Consider it a parting gift from your not-quite-husband.”

  Then Felix was off with Lieutenant Laramer and Will. The Walkers waited for any of them to turn back as they departed, becoming specks in the snow, but only Will did, giving a wave and grin that was dashing, even though it was distant.

  “Well,” said Wangchuk, “it is getting dark now, almost bedtime for us monks. We cannot travel into the cave with you. But we wish you luck on your journey to find the Door of Ways, and to pass the test that it poses, to return safely home. We will never forget you, traveling warriors. Or should we say, traveling Walkers?”

  “We sound like a band from the eighties,” said Brendan.

  Wangchuk bowed, and the rest of his monks bowed with him. The Walkers returned the gesture, and then as the sun began to edge behind a distant mountain, feeling very lonely as a trio, they held hands and entered the cave of the frost beasts.

  The Walkers didn’t know what to expect, so they expected the worst. That had proven effective in the past. The cave was huge and echoing; when they stepped in, they smelled sweet-spicy rot.

  “Oh no, this is where the frost beasts had their meals,” Eleanor said. “It’s all going to be filled with yak bones and people’s rotten old left-behind remains! Uggghhh . . . I feel like I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Don’t think about it, Nell,” said Brendan. “Just close your eyes. And keep holding hands.”

  Eleanor followed the instructions, allowing Brendan and Cordelia to lead her through the first huge chamber inside the cave, to a small passageway at the far side. Inside the passageway Eleanor began to notice a crispy clinking sound every time her feet touched the ground.

  “Oh no,” said Eleanor.

  “What?”

  “Bones,” she said.

  Brendan said, “Try to think of them as . . .”

  “Rice Chex,” suggested Cordelia.

  “They don’t sound like Rice Chex!”

  “Then think of them as Lego blocks.”

  “But they’re bones!”

  Eleanor opened her eyes—and saw the bones all around her, reaching up the sides of the passageway, as if it were a clogged artery. This was clearly a space that had been used by the frost beasts to toss away centuries of inedible food parts. The bones were in layers like sedimentary rock, with the ones on top still attached to raggedy bits of flesh. . . .

  Eleanor shut her eyes again.

  “We’re almost through,” Brendan said. “Just stay strong.”

  But now Brendan was noticing something horrible about the bones. They weren’t just lying there. They were moving slightly, because there were colonies of bugs living among them. Big black beetles that crawled and crept all over the bones. He realized he was stepping on them, crunching them under his feet, and he got ready to scream—when Cordelia put a hand over his eyes and mouth.

  “Both of you need to get ahold of yourselves,” she said. “They’re just a bunch of bones and bugs. They’re not going to hurt us. Keep moving!”

  They came through the passageway into a second huge cavern. Cordelia was the only one with her eyes open at this point, and moving into the room answered a big question that had been bothering her since she entered the cave: How is it that we’re able to see?

  After all, the cave looked pitch-black from the outside. But walking through, everything was lit with a silver glow that seemed to come from nowhere, as if there were a very dim light set within the rocks themselves. Now Cordelia saw where that light was coming from, and she told her brother and sister to open their eyes.

  The cavern they were in was over sixty feet high, and twice as wide.

  And one entire wall was covered with a waterfall of light.

  Cordelia didn’t know how else to describe it. It was as if a cascade were coming from a wide opening in the top of the cave, but instead of water pouring out, light came down, shimmering and dancing as if it were alive, but holding a shape that had crisp edges and corners. The magical light illuminated the entire cavern and bled through the other parts of the cave.

  Cordelia was completely mesmerized.

  “The Door of Ways,” said Eleanor, staring.

  “It’s a door?” asked Brendan.

  “It’s two doors, see?”

  Brendan noticed that there was a small seam of blackness in the center of the cascade of light. And to either side of this seam, halfway down from the cave ceiling, were two dark circles, like doorknobs.

  “It’s beautiful . . . ,” said Eleanor.

  “And there’s no bones in here,” Brendan said.

  “I’ll bet this was some sort of sacred place to the frost beasts,” suggested Cordelia. “They probably wouldn’t bring any food or drinks inside.”

  “Like their church?” said Brendan.

  “Maybe.”

  “So what do we do now?” Brendan asked.

  “We go through the door,” said Eleanor, “and face the test.”

  “You wan
t me to walk through that?” asked Brendan.

  Cordelia and Eleanor nodded.

  “It’s like you guys never watched any Star Trek movies!” shouted Brendan. “I mean . . . the first thing about a bright light like that . . . is that it’s probably some kind of laser ray thing. . . . If we step through that, we’re gonna get fried.”

  “Not according to the monks,” said Eleanor. “According to Wangchuk, if we step through the Door of Ways . . . it will challenge us with a test, and then hopefully . . . it will bring us home.”

  “What kind of test are we talking about?”

  “That I don’t know, but I bet it won’t be easy.”

  “Have we ever been through anything easy in these books?” asked Brendan. “Are you guys really sure about this?”

  “Do we have another choice?” asked Cordelia. “We either go through the door or stay here for the rest of our lives.”

  Brendan sighed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  The Walkers went forward on smooth stones. The light seemed to separate and conjoin in tiny, infinite patterns as they approached. It gave off a pleasant hum. The light had some electrical aspect, because as the kids got nearer to it, their hair began to rise from their heads and point straight ahead.

  “You look funny,” Eleanor told Brendan. Brendan’s hair was like a flattop on a cartoon character, making a beeline for the light.

  “So do you,” said Brendan. Eleanor’s hair looked like Cousin Itt from the Addams family, shooting out horizontally instead of falling over her shoulders.

  “I feel very calm . . . ,” Cordelia said, staring through her own hair. “Is anyone else feeling that?”

  “Yeah,” said Eleanor. “I feel warm and safe all over, like all my worries are going away.”

  “Except for her,” Brendan said.

  Standing in front of the Door of Ways, twenty feet ahead, was the Wind Witch.

  Backlit by the churning glow, she wore a robe that stretched out behind her and crackled where it kissed the light.

  “My babies,” she said.

  “Not you!” Eleanor said. “Don’t you know when enough is enough? Can’t you just leave us alone? And don’t call us ‘my babies’! It’s creepy enough when you call me ‘little one’!”

  The Wind Witch shook her head and smiled. She had a calm demeanor, as if she knew a secret that no one could take away from her.

  “She knows what I’m talking about,” the Wind Witch said, pointing to Cordelia. “Ask her.”

  Eleanor and Brendan turned to their sister, their profiles becoming bleached white.

  “What’s she talking about, Deal?” asked Brendan.

  “The diary,” said Eleanor.

  Cordelia nodded, then shook her head. “Guys. The Wind Witch is . . .” But she stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “Oh, Cordelia,” said the Wind Witch. “I thought you were so much stronger than that. If you don’t have the courage to tell them, I will.”

  “Tell us what?” shouted Brendan.

  The Wind Witch smiled, looked into the eyes of the three Walker children, and said:

  “I’m your great-great-grandmother.”

  “That’s impossible!” Brendan said, his guts twisting at the thought of being related to this monster. “There’s not even a family resemblance! You’re lying!”

  “I’m not,” said the Wind Witch. She began to pace in front of the Door of Ways, which made her look like the silhouette of a phantom in front of a burning star. “I always wondered why I could remember nearly everything about my life . . . except one year. My eighteenth year. It has always been a complete blank. It was only when I came out of Cordelia’s body that I began to suspect the truth.”

  “And what’s that?” said Brendan. “That you’re crazy delusional?”

  The Wind Witch ignored him. “Aldrich Hayes and the Lorekeepers taught my father his magic. And one of the most important principles of Lorekeeper magic is that no one can use it to kill their own child. You can hurt your children with Lorekeeper magic—break their bones, crush their eyes—but they will never die; they will always come back.”

  “The way I did,” said Cordelia, with dawning realization.

  “That’s right. When I came out of your body, I didn’t know how you came back to life. You weren’t my child. But could it be possible that the rule protected all descendants on the bloodline? I began to test my theory. I tried to kill you, Eleanor—and failed. I tried to kill you, Brendan—”

  “And you totally failed.”

  The Wind Witch growled. “Horrible as it was to imagine, I realized that we must be related. And so I followed you three, protected you from the Nazis. I couldn’t let them kill you. I needed more information. But their tank took a terrible toll on my body.”

  The Wind Witch raised her arms. She had a huge blackened hole in her stomach. It was being circled by purple lines of force—a healing spell repairing the damage. But it was still a deep pit that went all the way to her pelvis.

  “When the tank’s shell hit me, I was nearly destroyed. I was able to use my magic to slowly restore most of my body, but it’s only now that I am able to walk and speak again. . . .”

  “So exactly how do you figure that we’re related?” asked Brendan.

  “She had a child with Rutherford Walker,” Cordelia said.

  “What?” Brendan asked. “Ew! Someone had a relationship with the Wind Witch? That’s like kissing a lizard.”

  Cordelia sighed and held up the diary. “It’s all in here.”

  “That’s right,” said Dahlia. “You three know me as a bald old crone, but I didn’t look like this when I was younger. I was quite attractive. And I hated my father, hated him with a passion that’s only extinguished now because I’ve extinguished him. So when he banished The Book of Doom and Desire into his work, where I could never use it, I did the thing I knew would hurt him most.”

  “You had a child with his former best friend,” Cordelia said.

  “That’s not a very nice thing for a lady to do,” said Eleanor.

  “Not if the lady is a tramp,” said Brendan.

  “Really?” said Cordelia, raising an eyebrow to Brendan.

  “Couldn’t resist,” said Brendan, grinning. “Did ya miss me?”

  “Anyway, I paid dearly,” said the Wind Witch. “The baby was taken from me, passed off by Rutherford Walker and his wife as their own. My father did a spell that erased my memories of the entire year so I would never know about the child. But my mother, Eliza May . . . she knew. And she wrote about it.”

  “How did you find all this out without the diary?” Cordelia asked.

  “Because you and I will always be connected, my dear. Now that I have been inside you, I get glimpses of your mind. I know your thoughts and feelings. I saw you reading that diary clear as day. The words leaped off the page and gave me the answers I sought. And now that the truth has been revealed . . . all of us can grow closer.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Join me,” said the Wind Witch. She spread her wings, creating a giant angel shadow in front of the Door of Ways.

  “We can subjugate all of earth together! Along with the worlds my father created. You can be kings and queens with me. We don’t need the book. I can teach you everything I know. We can be conquerors—together, we will take over city after city, country after country, making people worship us, ruling humanity the way humanity rules earth!”

  “Ya know, Grandma,” said Brendan. “I’m starting to think we are related to you. I mean, you’re on one huge power trip. And I can relate. I mean . . . a couple days ago, I was the same way. And you know what?! I almost ended up dead because of it! But I got my family back. And there’s no way I’m ever gonna turn my back on them again. So you can forget about the four of us going on the road together. I’m staying with my sisters. And I hope they feel the same way.”

  “I do,” said Cordelia evenly.

&
nbsp; “Me too,” said Eleanor, with her chin jutting out.

  “Very well,” said the Wind Witch, folding her wings. “You can walk into the Door of Ways. But this door does test you, and do you know how? It shows you what sort of life you will lead once you get home.”

  “It shows us our future?” asked Cordelia.

  The Wind Witch nodded.

  “So take a look,” she said. “And if you don’t like what you see, perhaps you’ll reconsider joining my side.”

  “No way!” Brendan said. “I’m going home right now!” He brushed past the Wind Witch, stepped into the cascading patina of light—and disappeared.

  Brendan felt the brightness of the Door of Ways grow in his eyes, until all he could see was a white churn—and then he was in a college dorm room.

  He heard dim electronic music. He saw two twin beds on either side of a floor that was covered with remnants of pretzels, soda cans, pens, and wires leading to a laptop computer on top of a desk. Tapping away at the computer was Brendan, working on a document. But this wasn’t Brendan as he appeared now. This was College Brendan.

  Although College Brendan was older than Real Brendan—maybe twenty—he looked almost exactly the same, with spiky hair and a sports T-shirt and sneakers. He didn’t notice Real Brendan, who stepped in front of him to look at his face and saw that he was sweating. Oh man, what’s wrong with me? Real Brendan thought. College Brendan had bags under his eyes that were lined and drooping, that made him look like a zombie. His skin was pale white, as if he’d spent a month in this room, and he didn’t even have the muscle tone that Brendan had already, from lacrosse. He was eating from a jumbo-size bag of Cheetos and drinking what appeared to be his fifth can of Pepsi. He looked like . . .

  “A loser!” Brendan yelled at himself. “I’m a total loser! What is this?” He screamed in the face of his older counterpart. “Stop eating this junk! Look at me! What’s wrong with you?”

  But College Brendan just kept tapping away at the laptop, working furiously, completely unaware of Real Brendan’s presence. College Brendan hit the Print command, got up, and grabbed ten new pages from the tray of his laser printer.