by C. J. Farley
Ines tried to fly above the maze to get a better look at possible exits. But each time she took wing, the Soucouyant would toss a fireball. Ines’s wings were metal, but they couldn’t take much more battering. The kids couldn’t go up and they couldn’t go back.
The maze moved again and the kids were facing a stone wall. Eli punched another hole through it, but even with the Fist of Back-o-Wall the kids couldn’t break down walls fast enough.
“Those things are getting closer,” Ines said. “I’m sorry guys—about everything. And Dylan—I really apologize for what I said before about your dad. Before he went to the asylum, he worked at Mort World—you know, that theme park run by my dad’s biggest competitor—so he dropped off our radar. I didn’t realize you didn’t know what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Save it,” Dylan said. “Let’s focus on finding a way out of here.”
“What about the crimson feather?” Eli asked. “We could fly out.”
“The last feather we had went up like a match,” Ines said. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but that thing shoots fireballs.”
“Fire—that’s it!” Eli declared. “I have a plan!”
“What do you mean?” Ines asked.
“Firewalls!” Eli said. “The game and this world are connected. If I can break through the firewalls, I can hack what’s happening to us.”
“But you’ve never been able to hack into Xamaica,” Dylan said.
“I’ve planted a few viruses, but yeah, the firewalls are pretty much impossible to break through. Anyway, this time I’ll have help.”
“The Fist of Back-o-Wall can punch through anything . . .” Dylan began.
“Why not firewalls?” Ines exclaimed, finishing the thought. “That’s beyond genius!”
Eli pulled out his computer from beneath his wheelchair and starting writing code. Even programming with his gloved hand, things didn’t take long. He was able to take control of the moving walls of the maze. With a rumble, a wall in front of them turned and revealed a passageway. “I got this,” Eli said. He rolled ahead.
Jabbing away at his keypad, Eli moved walls and opened up paths. He would press a key and a barrier would pop up between the kids and the zombie plants. He’d type in a command and an alleyway would suddenly appear. They could hear the frustrated shrieks of the Soucouyant fading in the distance until they were completely gone.
“His file said he was good, but I didn’t know he was this good,” Ines said. “We need to hire him for Mee Corp.’s IT team!”
* * *
At last the kids came to the beach. The moon was out. In fact, both of Xamaica’s moons were out, including the ringed one. Huge waves beat against the shore.
The townspeople/zombies were there waiting—and so was the Soucouyant. The kids hadn’t escaped—they had been herded to this spot. Plus, scattered across the beach were a number of large crimson feathers. The flying thing, whatever it was, was closer than ever.
“Bummer,” Eli said.
His computer shorted out. He shoved it back under his chair and beat down the flames on his lap. Then the Fist of Back-o-Wall caught fire, so Eli peeled it off with the arm of his wheelchair and threw it away. The glove writhed on the ground before turning to ashes.
“I’m sorry, guys. It’s like they knew what I was gonna do before I did it.” Eli slumped over in his wheelchair, struggling to breathe; his asthma was acting up. They were all trapped. If only Dylan’s powers were working—he needed that cheat code more than ever. He had to get some sort of outside help.
“Where’s the island?” Ines asked, looking out across the water. “Where’s the Castle of Wonders?”
“There will be no wonders for you,” the Soucouyant hissed in a voice that was amazingly chilly for a creature made of fire, “and no escape.” She held up a book in her left hand. The cover glittered gold in the firelight.
“Nanni’s book!” Eli exclaimed.
“This is what you came for, isn’t it?” the Soucouyant said, sparks spitting from her mouth. “This is the answer to all your problems. A book worth more than everything in the Great Library of Alexandria! The wealth of the world is inside it.”
“It’s a tricky-trick!” Nestuh said. “That’s what dem firewomen do. Dem take your greatest desires and dem tempt you!”
“Liar! The spider wants the book himself!” the Soucouyant said. “Wealth—that’s what you want, isn’t it? Health—that’s what you need, isn’t it? This book is your only hope!”
“Do what you want!” Eli shouted. “I don’t need your book!”
“Are you sure about that?” the Soucouyant said slyly, then opened the book. A pillar of fire burst from the pages into the sky. Flames raced across the clouds. Images appeared.
“Don’t looky-look!” Nestuh said. “It’s a Soucouyant trick.”
Dylan stared at the fiery scenes in the sky. He saw Eli’s mother and father arguing. Papá’s start-ups were always failing and she just couldn’t live like that anymore. They were in a lawyer’s office signing divorce papers. The scene shifted. Eli’s family was moving out of their apartment. His father was going in one car, his mother and little sister Madeleine were in a taxi to the train station. The scene jumped ahead again. There was a train derailment. There were bodies everywhere. Dylan could see Eli’s dad arriving at the scene. Mamá and Madeleine: they didn’t make it. He sped off in his car. If they hadn’t split this wouldn’t have happened. He ran a red light. He never saw the snowplow.
The images vanished in a burst of flame and the sky was dark again. Gray smoke billowed out of the smoldering book.
“How do you know so much about my family?” Eli asked.
The Soucouyant cackled. “The Inklings are not the only ones who can bridge the worlds! What you see is what will be unless you stop it. Search your heart—you know this to be true! You need this treasure. You need this book. Or your family dies.”
The monster threw the book over the kids’ heads and into the sea.
“Nooooooo!” Eli screamed. He lurched from his chair into the water, flailing at the sinking book with his viney arm and one good hand.
“Yes!” the Soucouyant shrieked. “Give in to your greed!”
“No way—I have a pl—”
Eli never finished. The Soucouyant flung a fireball at him and it exploded just as a huge wave hit.
“Eli!” Ines cried.
He had disappeared—incinerated, or taken by the tide. All that was left, lying on the sand, was a sopping-wet snuglet.
The children moved toward the waves to look for Eli—but the Soucouyant lobbed a fireball that kept them away from the water’s edge.
“Search in vain!” the Soucouyant mocked. “Your friend is drowned, or taken by Ma Sinéad, the pirate queen!”
“Why are you attacking us? What did you do to Eli?” Dylan said. “We’ve done nothing to you!”
“I am in the service of Baron Zonip,” the Soucouyant sneered.
“We’re not your enemies!” Dylan pleaded. “We’re not with Queen Nanni! She’s tricking you! She probably killed my parents and kidnapped my sister! It’s all a setup! We didn’t set fire to the nest trees!”
The Soucouyant laughed, and her mirth sounded like paper crackling in a fire. “The Baron knows you didn’t destroy the nest trees.”
“What? How?”
“Because he did it himself.”
Dylan was silent.
The Soucouyant laughed her burning laugh again. “The Baron needed an excuse to unravel the Great Web of the World. Such a thing cannot be broken by any singular spell—the collective will of Xamaica maintained it.”
“So when the people believed it should come down . . .”
“Only then could the Baron bring it down.”
“Righteous retribution was the perfect cover,” Dylan said.
“And now let the heavens fall,” the Soucouyant hissed.
A great tearing rolled across the sky, like gods gone bowling.
A ghastly cheer rose up from the zombies that was quite the opposite of cheerful.
“Now only two threads remain,” the Soucouyant said. “And not for long. All of Xamaica will hear how a Babylonian boy and his untrustworthy companions staged a jailbreak at Robeen Bay—and perished in the attempt. They will rally around the Baron for protection, and give him the support he requires to tear down the rest of the Great Web. There will be no principles left. The Baron will be free to enlist soldiers, enslave citizens, and slay any who oppose him. And then the way will be clear for his ultimate plan.”
“What about Nanni? The Confederacy of Shadows? I thought this was about stopping her!”
“Ha! The Baron defeated Nanni when you arrived here,” the creature laughed. “And now you will be vanquished as well.”
“The Pharaoh betrayed us,” Ines sobbed. “I guess there were too many witnesses for him to execute us back in Wholandra. I can’t believe Eli is gone!”
A chant went up from the zombies: “Fight! Fight Fight!” The Soucouyant’s hands filled with flame.
“Her next fireball is going to finish us,” Ines cried.
“You were right,” Dylan said. “I shouldn’t have tasted the fruit. I shouldn’t have lost focus!”
“Now,” the Soucouyant screeched, “prepare to go not to a Castle of Wonders, but to a House of Horrors!”
The Soucouyant reared back, ready to throw her fireball. But suddenly the waters rose—and rose. In a few moments, the night was filled with a wall of wet—and all that water was immediately released. The huge wave came down on the beach as if the earth and sea had changed places. The zombies were smashed against the rock. The Soucouyant screamed and was extinguished.
A weird humming filled the air.
“That’s what my dad used to . . .” Ines started to say. Then she and Dylan saw it—there, in the middle of the waves, a shadow fell across the water. It slowly approached them, making neither a splash nor a ripple.
“Dad?” Ines said.
My little warrior, the shadow said. Trust me if you want to live.
The shadow sunk beneath the waves.
“Was that your dad’s shadow?” Dylan asked. “Should we follow?”
Ines had stopped at the water’s edge—she was crying. Dylan put an arm around her. “I know how you feel. We might have lost Eli, we haven’t found Emma. Why bother with anything?”
“I just want to go home. But I don’t even have one anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer and peered at her reflection in the rippling surface.
“Mee Corp. is bankrupt,” she murmured. “We’re, like, beyond broke. There’ll be a big press conference when we get back. It’ll all be gone soon. I’m sure somewhere in Mort World, Mort Clemens is laughing.”
“Bankrupt? What about flying hairdressers in from Dubai and all that stuff?”
Ines sighed. “Everything isn’t everything. Money seems so pointless next to everything we’ve lost here. I just worry about my Global Friends—the kids I support with my charity.”
“Is this connected to that globe you didn’t want Emma to touch at the mansion?”
“That’s how I keep in touch with them, yeah. Who’s going to take care of them if Mee Corp. is broke?” Ines buried her face in her paws.
Dylan picked up the snuglet, which wept seawater. It was hot, like the damp towels they give you at Japanese restaurants. The fireball hadn’t even left any ashes. How could his best friend in the world—in any world—just vanish like that? Dylan felt sick and impossibly sad, like his heart was being gripped by a fist. “Maybe we should follow your dad’s shadow. I don’t see the point of staying here.”
“My dad never told me anything. He never took me anywhere. He let Mee Corp. go bust. And now he says to trust him. I don’t know what to think.”
“So you think it’s really him? Or is it a trap?”
Nestuh skittered up to Ines and Dylan. “You must make a decision or the shadow will be too far away for us to follow it.”
Ines kept looking out over the waves where crimson feathers floated on the surface. Then she shuddered and dove in.
* * *
Dylan, Ines, and Nestuh followed the shadow beneath the waves. Several Watas swam in the sea around them. They found that if they stayed close to the Watas they could all breathe underwater. They could even talk.
“I wonder why they’re helping us,” Ines said.
“We were the only ones who were ever nice to the Wata Mamas, I guess,” Dylan shrugged.
The dark form remained just ahead. Even as they swam, its strange voice carried back to them.
The book was an illusion, said the voice. Wealth is an illusion. Lao-tzu said the wise man accepts his nemesis as the shadow that he himself casts.
“Where are you taking us?” Dylan asked. “Do you know where my sister Emma is?”
“Stop—we have to talk!” Ines commanded.
I’ve waited for this moment. A shadow can only stay if it anchors itself to a single thought. One word was in my mind: daughter.
* * *
They had moved far out to sea, and had gone deep down. But they could sense something happening on the surface.
A reddish glow was moving along the face of the water. It was a massive ball of crimson light, many times bigger than any sea dragon or Iron Lion or indeed any creature the children had seen in Xamaica. Even from the bowels of the sea, the children could feel the power of the beast’s movements, feel the beat of its vast wings—and hear the reverberations of its roar.
By leading them beneath the water, the shadow had saved them from encountering whatever creature was behind that horrid howl.
“I’ve heard that roar before,” Dylan said. “That’s the thing that attacked the Black Starr.”
Ines put a paw against his cheek. “There’s something else. Back at Mee Corp., your dad told human resources a flying dinosaur had crashed his plane and its venom was slowly killing him. Everyone thought he was crazy. That’s why he was fired. But from the looks of that thing, he was on to something.”
Two sharp pains—a cold blue hurt, like frostbite—shot across Dylan’s torso. He clutched at his scratches. His dad wasn’t crazy. Whatever this thing was, he would kill it and avenge the parents he couldn’t even remember. He began to rise to the surface.
Nestuh put a leg on his shoulder and held Dylan back.
“Let me go!” Dylan protested. “I have to fight it. I want to kill it!”
“Nuh, mon, not now,” Nestuh advised. “We have chosen to follow the shadow. He who fight and swim away, lives to fight another day. Unless, of course, him drown.”
So they kept going. They couldn’t get a clear view of the thing through the shimmering surface of the water. But it seemed to be bearing a load.
The things it carried fell without a splash.
The beast was dropping shadows.
Some strange obeah was at work. Without weight, the shadows sank through the water. Without a sound, they drifted down into the far fathoms. Without resistance, chains extended and bound them.
Follow me, my little warrior, the shadow of Ines’s father said.
The children and the spider dove deeper into the waters.
“Talk to me!” Ines urged. “What was that thing?”
The shadow stealer. The crimson beast. The feathered thing from a billion yesterdays.
“Where are we going?” Ines asked.
I must tell you everything—from the beginning, because we are near the end.
“Stop swimming for a second,” Ines said.
But the shadow kept moving and speaking and hurriedly heading toward its unknown destination.
When I started Mee Corp., your mother and I sold gadgets out of a small shop in Seoul. She would write songs in her spare time, and I would tinker on my inventions. But it wasn’t enough for me. I began borrowing hea
vily to help grow the business. I swore I would give anything to succeed. It was then that a package arrived. Inside was a single black tablet. There was a note with it: Play me.
“Xamaica,” Dylan said.
The tablet contained just ten lines of computer code. But I quickly realized the programming was so powerful, so unlike anything that had been seen before, I could use it to form the foundation for the greatest game the world had ever seen. My wife begged me to have nothing to do with it. It was around this time that she gave birth to you. I hurried from work to the hospital—but she died in my arms. I was still in my lab coat and goggles—and, except to clean them, I haven’t taken them off since. I was a single father, and I had to provide for my baby. I used the code on the tablet and began selling the game.
“I’m so sorry about your mom,” Dylan said to Ines.
“But this also means my dad didn’t rip off Eli’s dad. The Baron did.”
Eli will probably never know, Dylan thought grimly. He was gone, like Emma. He was losing everyone.
The first shipment sold out. I opened two new shops to keep up with demand. Soon, business was booming and we moved to America.
“Didn’t you wonder where the game came from?” asked Ines.
Every few months, a Xamaica upgrade would appear in the mail. I grew wary, and began to throw the packages in my fireplace. One day, a stranger arrived at my door with a hooded cloak and glowing red eyes.
“Higues,” Dylan said. “Servants of the Baron.”
He had in his hand the package, miraculously unburned, I had destroyed the night before. I knew then I had made a terrible mistake getting involved in Xamaica. I was convinced that the stranger was the front man for a larger evil. I demanded to know the game’s ultimate purpose. He said three words: We shall see. Then he disappeared.
“What? That’s it?” Dylan said.
“No—I saw the stranger in his office the night my dad disappeared,” Ines said.
Shadows have lost their bodies. We must anchor ourselves in thought.
Ines plowed ahead. “My whole life, you were always just out of reach—I’m not going to let you leave now!” she cried.