The donkey’s eyes were closed. The rope of black snot had made its way to the stone floor, not yet ready to release itself from the donkey’s nostrils. I don’t think it can get any grosser than that …
“Nevermind. The rabbit can keep an eye on him. Follow me.” The rooster hopped off, flapping his wings a few times and landing softly on the stone floor. He skittered around the pile of old swords and spears, giving it a wide berth.
“Stay here,” I told Briar.
“No need to tell me twice,” the rabbit said, warily eyeing the donkey.
I followed the rooster around the first pile of weapons, marveling again at the very depth of the room. Beyond the first pile was another pile, this one full of boulders and more steel-clawed traps and, yes, even the massive spring trap I’d used on Cinderella’s rats. It was resting against the wall, both of its steel grates open and ready to trap some new prey.
The rooster caught me staring at it and shook his head. “Took us a while to take that thing apart. You could have been a little less complex in your design.”
“I was too busy worrying about the man-eating rats.”
“Not nearly as bad as the boulders,” the rooster said, weaving around the pile. “Some hero got it in her mind to use clucking catapults on the giants. Not a bad idea, but your cannonball was a bit simpler to deal with when it was all said and done.”
Beyond the second pile, the light sconces grew more infrequent. There were no piles left—just racks of old swords and various bits of armor hanging from hooks on the walls. Breast plates. A shelf full of helmets. One coat of chainmail. I’d never thought of using armor before. I rubbed my shoulder; I could feel the scars underneath my shirt. Yup, some armor might have been really helpful.
“There’s a pile of junk back here,” the rooster said, bouncing from foot to foot. He pointed to the shadows beyond the last light sconce. “Tons and tons of junk the heroes have created over the years, just for fun. Things they’ve used for trade and barter. We’ve stolen all of it back. I suppose we didn’t need to—these pieces of silver and rings and dolls and the such don’t seem to harm anyone—but like I said before, we don’t have much choice. It’s what we must do.” He stopped at a large bookcase that stood at the edge of the light cast by the far sconces and flapped his wings, flying up to the top shelf. There was only one object there: a simple wooden box. “Here it is.”
I reached out, touching the box. Testing it.
“Well, don’t be clucking shy about it,” the rooster said with an annoyed tone. “I’m hardly the trickster type.”
I opened the box, half-expecting … something. A device. A weapon. Something that would help everything make more sense.
It was a note. A message with four words. And as I read those words, I felt my heart nearly stop. The read it again and again, my vision growing more blurred each time. My mouth tasted stale and dry. The handwriting was familiar: Juliette printed her words with a hurried motion, using all capital letters. I flipped the piece of rough paper over, hoping to find something else. But the other side was blank.
Just four simple words:
DON’T TRUST THE RABBIT.
“Well?” the rooster said. “Does everything make sense now? She doesn’t want you to kill us, does she?”
“No,” I said, folding the paper up. I almost put it in my pocket, but I could feel the pen warm and waiting, as if it could read the words itself and might jump out to deal a death blow to Briar itself. I tore the paper up instead, letting the pieces fall like snowflakes onto the stone floor.
“Well, that’s good, I suppose.” The rooster flew back to the floor, landing gracefully. “To be honest, I feel like I’m owed a reprieve from the whole Corrupted killing thing. Although it does get a bit boring down here, especially without the rest of our musical troupe.”
“Hellllllllllllllp!”
We both turned. “Briar,” I whispered, breaking into a sprint.
“Wait for me!” the rooster called out, taking flight and nearly bumping right into the back of my head. There came a crashing sound from the other side of the room. I hurried around the pile of rusted swords and spears, then quickly stepped left as the donkey charged by like a wild bull.
“Wait now!” the rooster cried out, flying high to avoid the donkey. The donkey reached up with his snout and snapped viciously at the rooster, nearly gobbling up his feet. Black snot sprayed from both nostrils, refusing to let go.
“He’s crazed!” Briar called out. I turned to him and felt a sudden wave of fear—the donkey had knocked over the rack containing all of my foils and sabers, and now they were lying on the floor all around Briar, pinning him against the corner of the large room.
“Don’t move!” I ordered, turning back to the donkey. He’d spun around, kicking a case full of spools of copper wire. Splinters of wood flew in every direction.
“Oh, just when I was putting a good word in for us,” the rooster lamented, flapping his wings hard to stay near the ceiling. “Clucking Corruption!”
“This should be easy,” I whispered, willing a few more ounces of adrenaline through my body. The muscles in my arms tingled. I held the gladius out in front of me, pointing it right at the donkey’s rabid face. “Just charge right here into this blade, Mr. Ass.”
The donkey followed my orders, galloping right toward me. His golden eyes were wide, the eyelids twitching. Black snot trailed behind him, clinging to his nostrils. The clomping of his hooves on the stone floor pounded in my ears.
I tightened my grip on the hilt of the sword.
The donkey’s hooves put on the brakes. He slid a few inches, stopping a foot away from my blade.
“Alice!” Briar shouted. “Watch out for—”
I took a step forward with my right foot, swinging the gladius. The donkey turned, easily avoiding the short blade and snorting fresh black snot from both nostrils. His tail swished to the left; his left leg tucked under his belly, revealing the scuffed sole of his hoof that had just a hint of glowing gold.
There was no time to take another swing. The next moment seemed to happen in slow motion: my feet stepping back and losing their balance, the donkey’s left leg kicking backward with a ferocious intensity right where I’d just been, my right arm softening the landing on the stone floor, the breath painfully rushing out of my lungs, the rooster flapping his wings so hard above us that a handful of dark red feathers floated down.
The gladius slipped out of my grip. I pushed myself to my feet, my eyes darting toward the pile of swords and daggers. If I can just get a little closer …
Too late! The donkey turned, whipping his head toward me to size me up again. The rope of black snot went airborne, and out of instinct I reached out to shield my face. The sticky, thick goop looped around my wrist. My hand closed around it, squeezing.
“Ewwwwww,” I said, pulling on it.
The donkey’s head jerked forward. He snorted a few times, but whatever the black goo was, it wasn’t coming loose. I squeezed the slimy stuff tighter and pulled again.
The donkey’s head jerked forward again. He glared at me, eyes blazing and eyelids twitching.
I smiled.
The donkey turned his head, pulling me with him. I pulled back, wrapping the black goo tighter around my hand to keep it from slipping out of my grip. He let out a groaning noise, pulling me closer to the pile of swords and daggers. My foot kicked one of them, sending it skittering across the floor.
More feathers floated down above us.
“Just land somewhere!” I shouted at the rooster. “You’re distracting me and I really don’t need to be distracted any more than I already am!”
“Right,” the rooster said, flying to another rack of sabers behind the donkey and setting down on the top blade. “Just keep him away from me, if you can! Oh, donkey, must you put us all through this?!”
I pulled on the black snot, preventing the donkey from turning around again. He slammed one hoof on the stone floor; instantly, his leg gre
w twice as thick. The twin tips of the hoof sharpened like two incisors.
“Great,” I hissed, pulling again and feeling the blood squeeze into the tips of my fingers. There wasn’t any time to waste. He was mutating, and it wasn’t a stretch to assume that his already sunny disposition would go the way of his body. I pulled him again, stepping onto the pile of daggers. A dagger slipped out from underneath the sole of my right shoe, sliding to the bottom of the pile and landing next to the donkey’s front hoof.
“Careful now!” Briar shouted. “Watch your footing, hero!”
The donkey pulled again and I held on for dear life, pressing my weight onto my heels. The muscles in my arm burned. I reached out with my left arm, grabbing the slippery black snot and wrapping it around my other hand. I pulled again. The donkey’s hooves slid along the stone. I climbed the pile, pulling again, and he followed reluctantly, eyes twitching, one hoof setting down on the blades. We were both on the pile now, but the hard hooves of the donkey were preventing any accidental cuts.
“Kick a dagger at him!” Briar shouted.
“Cause a landslide!” the rooster cawed.
“A landslide would kill me!” I said. “And I’m not a ninja, Briar! I can’t chuck daggers with my feet! At least not without the proper shoes!” My left leg began to shake. I could feel the dagger underneath the sole of my shoe sliding out from its place. Any one of these razor-sharp daggers could cause the rest to come tumbling down, and avalanche of sharp pointy things. “This wasn’t my best idea,” I whispered.
The donkey’s facial muscles bulged. His front legs expanded to twice their size, causing the entire pile of daggers to rumble. He took a step closer. His muscles were pulsating underneath the mangy fur. More clumps of fur fell away as he shuddered.
The dagger underneath my foot, inching out of its place, was no longer my biggest fear. Neither was the mutating donkey with black snot ropes. I could hear another blade a little higher begin to move; suddenly, it slid down the pile, cutting right through my pants and nicking my ankle. My shaky leg gave way and I fell onto the pile, feeling the sharp tips of a dozen different blades cut the backs of my arms, slice through my shirt and nick my back in a dozen different places, including the strap of my sports bra.
My brain automatically counted off the potential number of stitches.
“Ow,” I said, sacrificing my left elbow to get back onto my feet. Two more painful cuts that stung something fierce and drove more adrenaline through my body. The donkey pulled again. The pile shuddered with the sound of a hundred steel clinks. “Right. Well, let’s do this then.” I unwrapped my left hand. The donkey pulled again. This time, I leapt off the unstable pile of blades right at the donkey. The momentum caused him to fall backward, landing on his side at the base of the pile. I flew over him, landing next to the rack of sabers and feeling a sharp pain shoot through the ball of my left foot. I simultaneously cried out and used my right foot to hop onto the saber rack’s lowest pair of wooden hooks.
Hundreds of blades flooded over the donkey and across the stone floor, the sound of their metal clinks causing my eardrums to throb. Curved swords. Straight swords. And daggers—lots and lots of daggers.
The donkey burned away. A little red flame crept up the gooey black snot, leaving my hands stained black.
And smelling like snot.
“Astounding!” the rooster said. He looked down at the old blades that were littering the floor. “I’m glad the dog used such good material when he built these racks or you’d have been missing a foot right now.”
“No,” I said, hopping carefully off the rack. “I’d just have more cuts.” I turned to Briar. The poor rabbit was pressed against the corner of the room, staring in horror at the sea of blades whose shore was only ten feet away from his big furry feet. His eyes were wide, his ears straight up.
“You could have killed me!”
I smiled. “The great Br’er Rabbit, done in by a pile of old blades? I doubt it.”
He cleared his throat, tugging on his vest. His fur went down slowly as he looked up at the wall. “I suppose I could have hopped onto the light sconce … or clutched one of those shields for dear life and hoped the hooks could have held my light weight.”
I navigated my way around the blades, wincing as I felt the dozens of little stinging cuts along my back. The rooster flew beside me, staring at the blades and making a “tsk-tsk” noise. “Such a mess.”
“Sorry about your friend.”
The rooster looked up at me. “Why, that’s quite possibly the nicest thing you could have said. Under the circumstances. Does this mean you’ll spare my life?”
No. Kill him.
My fingers tightened around the pen. I took a deep breath. “Something tells me you’re going to have more heroes’ weapons to collect in the future.”
The rooster nodded. “I’ll do my best. And maybe work out a few solo tunes while I’m waiting around.”
I gave him a nod, then turned to Briar. His front teeth were sticking out a bit as he risked pushing aside one of my old fencing sabers, hilt-first. I reached out a hand, ready to warn him not to risk it.
The words caught in my throat.
DON’T TRUST THE RABBIT.
He looked at me, tapping his paws together. His vest was wrinkled a bit near the second button. It would bother him until it was ironed out. He loved having a presentable, impeccable appearance, even if no one else saw him. It was classic Br’er Rabbit. My helper. My sidekick. My friend.
DON’T TRUST THE RABBIT.
I could have left him right there. Stuck, until I could decipher Juliette’s strange message.
DON’T TRUST THE RABBIT.
But he was my friend. He wasn’t like the others.
“Er … what now?” he asked.
I turned, kicking aside the blades one by one with my shoe. “Now we go save the world.”
Chapter 15: Alice
Chase drove. Briar navigated. I tended my wounds. We took a pee break at a gas station and I let Chase do a little surgical work on the cuts on my back—enough to stop the bleeding, but nothing of hospital quality. I changed into a violet t-shirt, cursing myself for accidentally packing one of my favorites and hoping against hope that the bandages would hold up so my shirt wouldn’t end up stained.
Where’s your head, Alice? Oh, right … down the abyss.
And yes, I relished that moment, worrying about my shirt. I felt like I had before I became the hero, when fretting over my favorite clothes was my biggest source of stress.
You can’t go back to those times, Alice. So take whatever small victories you can.
I thought about Seth. I thought about what I’d read about golems. A golem was a mythical Jewish creature made of clay. It usually looked human. It could act human and follow orders. It could be as detailed as the creator wanted. But my golem wouldn’t be brought to life with ancient symbols or magic. My golem was going to be something more.
The magic leaves would bring Seth back.
And then I’m going to destroy that statue creature.
I had only one nagging thought. What if the statue was right? What if, somehow, the magic pen was calling on him to help us? What if this was all part of my script? Juliette had let the statue live and he had remained underground, sucking up all of the oil. She’d let the Musicians of Bremen live so that they could continue collecting the heroes’ toys. The Musicians had a purpose. Maybe the statue had a purpose, too.
A thought hit me, then. It was a thought I’d had a lot over the past year, but this time it seemed more intense. More urgent.
I don’t know what to do.
“Just bring Seth back,” I whispered to the window, watching the empty dry land pass by along the highway.
“We should be coming up on the first of the oil fields,” Briar announced. “The Bakken oil formation, initially named after Henry Bakken, the man who first drilled for oil thereabouts.” He shifted in the seat. “Gosh, my butt is falling asleep.”
&nb
sp; “Welcome to my world,” Chase murmured. Briar was sitting beside him in the front. I was sitting behind Briar, rolling the magic pen between my fingers, fighting about a thousand different conflicting feelings that coursed through my blood.
We turned off from the highway, heading northwest. On the brown, dry horizon, the first oil derricks began to appear. Little steel fingers so far away that you could mistake them for a city far off in the distance. But as we got closer and more appeared, I felt a dark feeling wash through my body. There were so, so many of them, and with the setting sun shining an orange light over the dry land, the black towers cast long shadows that seemed to cut across the earth like deep chasms with no bottom.
“Dear me,” Briar said. “This is so different from what I remember with Juliette. So, so many more.”
“Seven billion barrels of oil under our feet,” Chase said. We both looked at him. He shrugged. “The rabbit’s not the only one who can look up information.”
“Mightily impressed,” Briar said. His ears pressed up against the ceiling of the car. “Anything else that might help us with this creature?”
Chase shifted in his seat, slowing the car with one finger on the steering wheel’s trigger. He pulled to the far right of the road. Three semis were coming from the opposite direction, each one hauling a massive silver canister. “Well, those horsehead-looking thingies are called pumpjacks.” He pointed toward the horsehead-shaped machines near the oil derricks to our right. “See how they’re bobbing up and down? They’re pumping up oil.”
“Good!” Briar said. “What else?”
Chase shrugged, speeding up again as the last of the semis passed us. The road was empty again; far ahead, the black towers looked as if they’d multiplied … hundreds of fingers reaching out of the earth. “Oil is formed when dead organisms are buried under rock, right?”
“Right again! I do say, I’m hardly needed here at all. But you still haven’t answered my question. What do you know that can be of use against this oil-thirsty creature?”
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