by C. J. Farley
The residents were friendly, almost cloyingly so. They seemed unafraid of Ines in all her Iron Lion–ness (they probably figured, correctly, that she wasn’t a vegetarian), and they were downright fond of Nestuh. The villagers put garlands of flowers, fruits, and spices around the necks of the visitors. The wreaths were horribly aromatic, but Nestuh cautioned everyone that it would be rude to refuse the gifts, despite the fact that it was terribly smelly to accept them.
“You guys seem well-stocked,” Eli said, holding up a basketful of apples.
“We don’t worry about the environment,” one stout villager with carrot-orange hair said.
“Have you seen a little human girl lately?” asked Dylan, who was now weighed down with a bucket of naseberries.
“I try not to notice things,” one woman carrying a bouquet of passionflowers responded.
“I guess that means they’re not worrying that the web is about to fall on their heads in less than two days,” Eli said.
“Are you the Root of Xamaica?” Ines asked one of the creatures.
“We don’t really put down roots,” a man with a bunch of bananas for hair replied. “We’re more about fruits.”
Ines whispered to Dylan and Eli: “When you get a sec, we need to talk.”
One girl, with gray eyes and star apples in her hair, led the travelers through the town and down a path to a nearby field. Or rather, the field was the town. Or perhaps it’s better to say the field was the townspeople. There they were, row after row of plant people, quiet, bending with the breeze. As they swayed, they sang a song with silly lyrics, a stupid melody, and a goofy rhythm. The fields of plant people went on for acres. A nation of crops, asking only for sunlight and rain and the occasional dollop of manure.
Soon the girl with the gray eyes brought the children and Nestuh to an empty hut. Compared to the other homes, this one was a palace.
“My name is Zarafina,” the star-apple girl said. “This is all for you.”
The hut was filled with platters laden with fruits of every sort—mangoes, breadfruit, papaya, oranges, guinep, naseberries, pomegranates, passionfruit, star apples, rose apples, regular apples, pineapples—and Zarafina herself, who, besides having apple cheeks, let it be known that she was the apple of her parents’ eyes.
Also on display were a range of amusements: a guitar, a Shatranj set, and more.
Dylan and Eli dove in and started piling plates high with fruit.
Zarafina paid special attention to Dylan. She led him to a stone bench to lie on, and prepared to hand-feed him wedges of passionfruit.
“Getting ready for a fruit break?” Ines asked.
“You bet,” Dylan said, moments away from chowing down on a star apple.
“Why don’t you ask where it comes from?” Ines cooed.
“We harvest it ourselves,” Zarafina explained.
“Sweet,” Eli said, who was peeling a piece of breadfruit.
“What she means is they harvest themselves,” Ines said. “That’s not breadfruit. It’s head fruit.”
“You grow this . . .” Dylan began.
“On your heads?” Eli finished.
“Some of it grows on other parts of our bodies as well,” Zarafina said. “I picked that breadfruit off someone’s b—”
Eli and Dylan put down their plates.
“Exactly,” Ines said. She turned to Zarafina. “So where is the Castle of Wonders?”
Zarafina gave her a blank look.
“The cool place beneath the waves where Nanni’s book is kept?” Eli prompted.
“Oh—that Castle of Wonders. It’s on an island just beyond the beach,” Zarafina said.
Ines looked skeptical. “Can we just walk in? Is there a gift shop?”
“So many questions! The people of this village don’t concern themselves with such things. The affairs of this world come and go.”
“So does the weather,” Eli said. “But you can still get wet.”
“Can we go to the Castle of Wonders?” Ines asked. “Like now?”
“No, not now,” Zarafina answered. “Night is coming. It is time for pleasant dreams. In the morning, when we turn our leaves to the sun, we’ll take you there.”
“People here don’t seem to be worried about much,” Ines observed.
“It is the Xamaican way,” Zarafina said. “Because we do not dwell on the things that divide us, we have grown ever so close as a nation.”
And with that, and a wink at Dylan, the girl left.
“I’m telling you, that tramp is up to something,” Ines said.
“She seems pretty cool to me—and nice,” Dylan said, setting up the Shatranj pieces for a game with Eli. It looked a lot like chess, so they figured they’d give it a try.
“I know nice girls,” Ines hissed. “I know bad ones. She ain’t a nice one.”
“Meow! I can see why you’re half-cat!” Eli cracked, moving a pawn.
“I’m an Iron Lion. We like to ask questions. Look at you guys! There’s danger all around us and you take food from strangers—something that even toddlers don’t do—and now you’re playing chess!”
“Shatranj, actually,” Dylan corrected.
“Hello? Spoiler alert! There’s something wrong here,” Ines warned. “We need to figure out how to help.”
Dylan laughed. “How is any trouble with these plant people our problem?”
Ines pulled out a piece of a crimson feather. “This is what I wanted to talk about. I found it as we were walking into town. Don’t you think it’s funny that nobody mentioned anything about a huge feathered monster? These plant people are hiding something!”
Dylan and Eli kept playing their game.
“You can’t ignore what’s happening around us. Your sister is out there somewhere. She could be lost, she could be hurt! You can’t lose focus now!” Ines pleaded.
Emma and the Professor always said Dylan was easily distracted. But the fact that Ines had him figured out too made Dylan even more stubborn. He moved a piece that looked like a queen.
“Go ahead. Be irresponsible,” said Ines. “You’re just like your dad.”
Dylan bit his nails. “What do you know about my dad?”
“I have files. Your dad applied for a Mee Corp. job seven years ago.”
“Impossible. My parents died in a plane crash nine years ago.”
“Is that what they told you?”
Eli was already checking it out on his laptop. “She’s not lying—I just hacked the Mee Corp. records. Your dad did work there, but most of his file has been deleted.”
Dylan strode up to Ines, his face serious as cancer. “Tell me what else you know.”
“I don’t want to get into your family business.”
“You’re already in my business with your stupid files. Now tell me what you know!”
“Your dad was fired from Mee Corp.,” Ines said. “His name was Griffith, right? He had been hired to write a fictional field guide for a game the company was producing.”
“Wait—my dad wrote the Xamaicapedia?”
“He was a paleontologist by training—brilliant but emotionally unstable. That’s why he couldn’t get a real job at a college. He was supposed to give the guide a touch of reality. Trouble is, he began to act like it was really real. He said writing the guide was triggering memories of stuff he thought he had only imagined. And . . .”
“What? Tell me everything. Why did I not hear from him?”
“He died in an insane asylum.”
“You’re lying! When?”
“Three years ago. I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
A wave of anger swept through Dylan. All the pieces of his family puzzle, the ones he had been slowly trying, all his life, to turn into a picture, suddenly scattered. He knocked over the Shatranj set and pieces went flying around the room.
Ines bared her Iron Lion teeth. “Do you really want to try me?” she snarled.
“If you even think of attacking, you better kill me,” Dylan
fired back. “I’m pissed, and I’m not friggin’ joking around.”
Ines’s claws slid out of her paws. Dylan picked up a rock. Eli grabbed a banana.
“How are you gonna stop her with that?” Dylan said to Eli.
“Well, if I peel it, maybe she’ll slip on it.”
There was deadly quiet as the boys and Ines faced off. Then Dylan’s stomach growled and broke the silence.
“Never argue on an empty stomach, mon,” Nestuh broke in. “That’s how two of my aunts ended up eating each other.”
Dylan said nothing, but Eli giggled. Although Ines retracted her claws, she still seemed angry. She paced the room on her silent cat’s paws. “Stop staring at me!” she yelled at Nestuh.
“Those are markings on my back, mon,” Nestuh said. “Dem just look like eyes.”
Ines wheeled around and faced the boys. “Listen, I’m sorry about your dad—but you’re making a mistake by staying here. And it’s your funeral.”
She threw the piece of feather at Dylan and stomped away into another chamber in the hut. Dylan picked up the feather and stuffed it in his pocket. If it really was magic, maybe he could use it for something. No way she was getting this back. He was still pissed, and he started biting his fingernails. All this drama hadn’t gotten him any closer to finding his sister. He felt tense and his neck was stiff. He was getting too worked up. There was a metallic taste in his mouth—
Suddenly, he was on his back on the dirt floor of the hut.
Eli was standing over him.
“You okay?” Eli asked. “You freaked me out there. I think you had a seizure.”
Dylan struggled to his feet. There was blood in his mouth. He had bitten through part of his tongue. “How long was I out?”
“Just a few seconds. But it was bad. Your eyes rolled back and you were flailing around. Dude, it was scary. Should I get Ines in here? She may know—”
“Forget that. And forget her. I just need something to eat. It’ll settle me down.”
“You heard Ines,” Eli cautioned. “We shouldn’t eat this stuff.”
“I don’t care,” Dylan said, picking up a star apple. “I’m not listening to her anymore. I’m tired of being antelopes. Let’s be lions.”
“Lions don’t eat fruit.”
“You know what I mean.”
Dylan took a bite of the star apple and the juice stung his wounded tongue but it was still sweet. He threw Eli a passionfruit, and Eli began to chow down too. As Dylan ate he could feel the scratches on his chest begin to burn. He tried to ignore it and focus on the food—the juice was running down his chin now, and his hands were stained red and purple. It was as if a voice was whispering to him to eat more and eat faster, to give himself over entirely to his appetite.
Outside, the plant people were singing again. Dylan stopped eating.
“Hey, man, are you okay?” Eli asked Dylan.
“You heard what she said. My dad was around all this time—and now he’s gone. Why didn’t he contact us?”
“He probably stayed away to protect you from whatever demons were driving him. That must have been a nightmare for him.”
Silence. “I hate to say it, but Ines is right,” Dylan said. “We’re all in danger here. I have to stay to find Emma. But I don’t get why you’re still here.”
“How can you say that? You know I always have your back.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Why do you want Nanni’s book so bad?”
“Hello? All the wealth of the world?”
“Since when do you care about money? You hate corporations and profits and all that kinda stuff.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Well?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“If you’re not gonna tell me, who you gonna tell? Remember the first day of middle school? Neither of us had anyone to sit with in the cafeteria. So we sat with each other. We’re the two Musketeers, man.”
“There were three Musketeers. Maybe even four.”
“See? What we have is even more exclusive. So what’s up?”
Eli started to cough, and pulled his snuglet closer around him. “You first. Are you gonna tell me what’s up with your mystery condition?”
Dylan fell silent.
“Your sickness or whatever? The one your sister mentioned before we left. You gonna tell me about it?”
“Maybe,” Dylan said. “But not now.”
* * *
A few hours later, Ines came over to the boys’ side of the hut. Dylan, still thinking about his father, was wide awake.
“What’s going on?” Eli yawned. “It must be three in the morning!”
She opened the door. “You might want to take a look at this.”
Eli and Dylan peeked out the door. The townspeople were all lined up outside. Their eyes were white. Their skin was drawn and gray. They weren’t plant people now—they seemed more like husks. They were zombies.
“Ines?” Eli asked.
“What?”
“Now would be a good time to tell Dylan I told you so.”
The townspeople/zombies were singing again, but this time it was angry and menacing like the chanting of pissed-off monks. Zarafina stood in front of the zombies. Fire blazed from her eyes and her hair was also aflame. In one swift move she pulled off all her skin like a lady slipping off a leather glove. Now she was a body of pure fire.
Ines gagged. “That’s wrong on so many levels!”
“Now I and I see,” Nestuh said. “She’s a Soucouyant.”
“A Sook-ah-who?” Eli said.
“A Sook-ah-what?” Dylan said.
“She’s humanlike by day, and by night she slips out of her skin and becomes a flesh-eating plant,” Nestuh explained.
“So she’s like a creeper vine,” Dylan said. “A human weed.”
“Dude, your girlfriend grows on people—literally,” Eli said.
“It gets worse, mon,” Nestuh added. “If you eat her fruit and fall asleep, she enslaves you. She’s turned the town into zombies.”
Zarafina now seemed more plant than human. Her mouth and hands looked like Venus flytraps, with yawning openings and spiky fringes. Ivylike tendrils of fire curled around her, writhing and twisting. They snaked out from her body toward the townsfolk, twisting around their limbs and torsos as well. The whole community seemed linked in some viney, creepy, awful way and the Soucouyant was at the center of it. Tongues of flames shot out around her ivy-entwined form.
“Eli—your hand!” Dylan said.
Eli looked at his hand. It was sprouting tiny leaves.
“Did you eat that fruit?” Ines asked.
“S-S-Some,” Eli stammered.
“Did you fall asleep?” Dylan asked.
“Absolutely not!” Now fingers on his left hand were twisting and fusing together like rolls of Play-Doh. “Okay, I-I-I may have nodded off.”
“Yeah, I think we figured that one out, Pinocchio,” Ines said.
Soon the hand had turned green and brown and looked like a leafy vine.
“That thing out there is behind this?” Eli asked.
“Yeah, mon,” Nestuh said. “And did I mention Soucouyants shoot fireballs?”
“I’ve heard of a hot date,” Eli said, “but this is just stupid.”
Dylan closed the door. “Less talking, more running.”
“Where?” Ines asked. “There’s only one exit.”
“How about an air vent?” Dylan said. “That’s what people do in action movies.”
Eli shook his head. “What part of we’re in a hut did you not understand?”
Ines pulled a thick black glove out of her I-Got-Your-Back Pack. “There’s this!”
“What’s that?” Dylan said.
With his one good hand, Eli was already looking it up on his laptop.
Xamaicapedia:
The Gamer’s Guide to Saving the World
A publication of Fiercely Independent Booksellers Inc.
(A wholly owned subsidiary of Mee Corp. Enterprises.)
The Fist of Back-o-Wall: This magic glove can break through any substance. Ideal for breaking though walls, fences, fortifications, and roadblocks. Also suitable for breaking promises, breaking the news, breaking the ice, breaking color barriers, shattering glass ceilings, smashing world records, and coffee breaks. Warning: if used for break dancing, breaking hearts, or breaking wind, please consult a physician and/or lawyer, and maybe crack a window.
Eli grabbed the glove from Ines and slipped it on. His right hand pulsed with energy.
“How did my dad know about this stuff?” Dylan asked.
“Must have had friends in magical places,” Eli said.
“Why’s there only one glove?” Ines asked.
“Worked for Michael Jackson.” Eli punched the wall—and howled in pain. The wall was undamaged.
“Maybe it needs new batteries?” Ines offered.
“You probably need to activate it,” Dylan reasoned. “But how?”
“Ohhh! Visualize!” Ines said. “Think of things with holes!”
“Like all the zeros in your bank account?” Eli cracked.
“Or the hole in your head?” Ines shot back.
“Focus!” Dylan snapped. “What about a motorcycle tire? Or a basketball hoop?”
Eli punched the wall again. This time it shuddered, but didn’t give way.
“We have to think bigger,” Eli said. “What else has a hole?”
“A tornado!”
“The ozone layer!”
“A black hole!”
At that, Eli took another swing—and knocked a hole the size of a car through the back of the hut. Everyone sprinted, scampered, soared, or rolled out. Behind them the hut exploded in flames.
They were lost. As it turned out, the shacks around Robeen Bay weren’t randomly placed. The entire village was set on a massive system of gears and pulleys. The streets were an ever-shifting maze. Just when you thought you were on the way out, there would be a horrible grinding of gears, a terrible groaning of ropes, a frightful slamming of gates, and the maze would change again.
Dylan ripped off another strip of fingernail with his teeth. “There better not be a Minotaur at the end of this.”
“No, mon, I’ve met the Minotaur—he’s a good guy,” Nestuh said. “He gets a bad rap. Besides, he lives on the South Coast.”