by Sheila Grau
“Maybe. But what would she learn from watching us?”
“Polar Bay is the most dangerous area in her realm. What better place to test us?”
“What do you mean by ‘most dangerous’?” Meztli asked.
“I told you, the animals there are huge. Growing up, we Upper Worbians always assumed it was the result of some accidental radiation leak. We know radiation causes genetic mutations, like the giant lizard monsters in Chent. But now I suspect it’s the sudithium. It must have leached into the soil and affected everything in the food chain—from the foxes to the hares to the woolly bear caterpillars.”
“The what?”
“They’re huge. As big as my arm. Black and reddish brown, with spiky fur. Fortunately, they only come out in summer, so we won’t see any. But the other animals? They’re everywhere.”
Darthin saw Meztli and me exchange a look, and he got defensive. “Oh, you’ll see soon enough. The locals are mostly humans, but there are also some yeti, and they’re really, really mean. They look like polar bears walking upright, but with blue faces and hands. And they hate outsiders. Then there’s the giant gyrfalcon that nests in the mountains above town. The locals leave food for it on a tribute spot every day, so it won’t attack people.
“Be careful,” he continued. “Don’t go outside without your bear bangers, your falcon flares, and your bunny hoppers.”
We both laughed.
“Shut up! They make the hares hop away.”
I pulled out my protection kit. The bear bangers and falcon flares were red and blue canisters, respectively, each about the size of my thumb. They were shot off the end of a pen-sized launcher. The bunny hopper was a separate device, but the same size, like a thick pen. It was green, and the end opened like an umbrella and spun around making a really annoying high-pitched sound and erupting in lots of sparkles.
“And pay attention to the rules,” Darthin continued. “The locals have developed a cooperative, live-and-let-live relationship with the giant animals. They don’t want that relationship damaged by outsiders who are quick to kill anything they’re scared of. Rufus nearly got us all killed when he morphed into a wolf and attacked a polar fox that was the size of a horse.”
“Follow the rules. Got it,” I said. If there was one thing I was good at, it was following rules.
After the train reached the Upper Worb capital of Nostopako, we had to take a shuttle dragon north to Polar Bay because there were no roads into that isolated, mountainous region. There wasn’t enough room on the first shuttle dragon, so Professor Murphy went ahead with everyone except Meztli and me, the two guys who had never been there before. We were told to wait for the next dragon.
But the next shuttle dragon didn’t feel like flying, so we had to wait for the one after that, which wasn’t leaving until the following day. Fortunately, the shuttle dock had sleeping bays available, because flight cancellations happened all the time. Dragons . . . Sheesh. They’re such a temperamental way to travel.
Nothing seemed to bother Meztli. He had such a great attitude, and I tried to gain confidence from him as we finally flew north on a huge polar dragon, the kind with thick white fur and scaly wings. We relaxed in a twelve-person cabin on its back. Some locals returning from the south traveled with us.
“Hey, Mez, is this your first trip outside your realm and Stull?”
“No, I go to many realms in my continente and across the ocean too. My parents, they try to find someone to fix my color, but nothing worked.”
“Have you ever been to the Currial Continent? To the country that used to be called Andirat?”
“The broken place, sí,” he said.
“I think that’s where I’m from.”
“Lo siento, amigo. I’m sorry. That place, it’s in very bad shape.”
“What do you mean?”
“The people there, they are so poor. Unless they work for the generals, and even then, mostly poor. Every month each family gets a book of coupons to buy food, but it only lasts for ten days. That’s twenty days of hunger.
“The generals are very paranoid. The people, they can do nothing because you can be arrested for meeting with more than two others. You can be arrested for talking bad about the generals. You can be arrested if they think you might be thinking about revolution. If you look angry, you’ll be arrested. Nobody trusts nobody else. Even family members are afraid that one of them may turn on the others for a reward. It’s loco.”
“That sounds terrible,” I said. I checked my wrists for the twentieth time.
“Why do you keep looking at your hands?” he asked.
“I’m just checking these marks. I’ve been cursed, and whoever did it added a tether, to keep me from traveling outside the curse’s range. But Mistress Moira figured out how to get rid of it. You can kind of see where the marks used to be. I have to make sure they don’t return. If they do, I’m going straight back to Stull.”
He nodded. “There was a master curse bruja in my village. She did curses like that. Very nasty lady. Always thinking everyone was against her. She cursed many of the people in my village, that bruja. Pretty soon, everyone wanted her dead, because if she dies, curses die too. She went into hiding, people say, where nobody can follow.”
“Mistress Moira is going to find out who cursed me. She told me that she’s got connections.”
“She knows people?”
“No—psychic connections. She thinks they’ll help her find the curser.”
And so we flew to the northernmost area of the planet. I watched color seep out of the world, replaced by white. When we began our descent into Polar Bay, I couldn’t tell where the bay started, because it was frozen and covered with snow, just like the land. One vast landscape of whiteness.
We landed next to an enormous hangar. The dragon hurried right into its welcoming warmth, and the doors closed behind us. The space was wide and tall, with enough room for at least five dragons to spread their wings. It was busy with people running about, caring for the two currently in residence—another jumbo polar dragon and a smaller jet-black dragon.
Our dragon walked to its tethering spot, and the ground crew unlatched the harness holding the passenger cabin in place on its back. Giant mechanical claws lifted the cabin up, and then the dragon was led forward to a spot where a team of humans waited with food and water and a small pile of treasure for the dragon to lie down with. Once the dragon was settled, the cabin was lowered to the ground.
Meztli and I put on our sky blue Critchlore expedition jackets with the fur-trimmed hoods and followed the lights on the floor that directed us to the baggage claim area in the next room.
We weren’t the only ones visiting Polar Bay, it seemed. As we entered the baggage claim area, I noticed a group of people wearing matching red jackets. When one turned in our direction, I froze.
I had known that by coming here I might be coming face-to-face with vicious monsters, but I never expected to see him and his cruel, beady eyes.
Coach Reythor.
“Pravus’s hoopsmash trainer,” Mez said. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
The evil man spotted us and scowled. I couldn’t look away from him.
“Your amiga is here too.”
“My friend?”
I gasped again. Syke. Seeing her brought back all the hurt and anger I’d felt during our last meeting. But as I watched her, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to her.
She looked . . . faded, somehow. Her iridescent hair had lost some of its sheen, or maybe it was the artificial lighting in the hangar. Normally full of energy and confidence, she looked tired and weak.
She stood with a group of students, most of them towering over her. Her new friend Victus stood next to her, a sneer firmly in place as he spotted us. All in all, they had a team of twelve. Same as us.
“They’re after the sudithium too,” I said. “This is bad. Maybe Darthin was right and this is a test. Maybe Irma
wants to see us go head-to-head.”
Their baggage had been unloaded, and they were preparing to leave. Syke fell behind as she stopped to repack something in her bag.
“Mez, can you get our bags? I want to talk to her.”
Mez nodded and walked over to the conveyer belt by the far wall. I looked at Syke. I wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that she’d been wrong the whole time, that she should have trusted the people who cared about her and not run off to our worst enemy.
I knew that Dr. Critchlore wanted to protect her from knowing about her father, but I knew her better than he did. She wasn’t some frail, delicate child; she was the toughest kid I knew. She could handle the truth. She deserved the truth. I walked over and tapped her shoulder just as she stood up.
“Syke, I have to talk to you,” I said.
“Runt, just leave me alone,” she said. “You’re going to ruin everything. I can’t believe they let you come.”
I had been worried about her, but now I was angry. “Why?” I asked her. “Because I’m some loser who can’t do anything?”
Her mouth dropped open. “I can’t do this,” she said.
She looked so weak, so tired. I handed her the twig I’d been carrying in my pocket since Uncle Ludwig had told me that hamadryads got disoriented without trees. “You need this,” I said. “It’s from your mother’s grotto. You’ve been away from trees for too long. You’re not thinking straight.”
She looked up at me and laughed. “You are such an idiot.”
Victus came back looking for Syke. When he saw us standing together, Syke punched me in the gut.
I collapsed, the wind knocked out of me. My lungs clenched up, and I couldn’t breathe. She stood over me, her face now raging. “I thought I made it clear. I’m done with you,” she said. “Touch me again, and I’ll do worse.”
She picked up her bag and left, Victus smirking as he followed.
“King Natherly’s advisor told the generals where the royal family was hiding. All were reported murdered, but the young prince’s grave was later discovered to be empty.”
—ANDIRAT, A HISTORY
“You okay?” Meztli asked. He held out my bag for me.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
“How much you gonna take from her? She called you an idiot.” Yes, she did.
I smiled, because the old Syke called me an idiot all the time. And I’d seen her tuck that twig into her pocket.
A man approached us wearing an airline uniform. He nodded at our jackets. “Your teacher told me to give this to you,” he said, handing me a note.
I took it and read it. “It says we’re supposed to meet a guy who will take us to his inn. We’ll spend the night there. They didn’t want to wait for us, so they left to set up camp near the crater.”
“Your ride is waiting for you outside,” the man said.
Well, I was tired and hungry, but mostly tired. Too tired to care about being left behind yet again.
We shouldered our bags and went outside. It’s funny. I’d been so worried about the cold, but when we first walked outside, it didn’t even register because my brain was trying to figure out why I was blind. I stumbled over a mound of snow and fell to the ground. With my eyes closed, I fumbled around inside my backpack and pulled out my sunglasses. Even then, I had to squint to reduce the glare. It was unbelievably bright, with the sun reflecting off anything white—which was everything.
And then the cold hit me. I thought I was prepared for it, bundled as I was in layers of clothing and the fancy jacket I’d gotten from the supply depot. But the polar region lets you know in a hurry if you’ve missed a spot. I’m not used to cold, so it was shocking when the slightest breeze instantly numbed my nose. And breathing felt like swallowing ice cubes.
Once I had acclimated and brushed off the snow, I saw them: two huge black transports with truck-like cabins perched on top of long rolling tracks. The red-jacketed Pravus team sat inside. The vehicles took off with a rumble of power, churning up the snow and ice with those tracks. After they’d moved on, I could see the beat-up pickup truck that had been parked behind them. Standing in front of the truck was a large man holding a sign that read DOOFUS.
I shook my head. “Rufus’s idea of a joke.”
“You Runt?” the man said. He was dressed in the traditional clothes of the region—animal-skin garments, complete with a furry-edged hood that framed a face Welnick the Horrible would’ve been jealous of, it was so frightening. His dark eyes were barely discernible through his squinting glare, and his face was huge and round and sported quite a few scars.
I smiled nervously and held out my hand. “Runt Higgins,” I said. “And this is Meztli.”
He looked at my hand, made a sound like, “Hmph,” and motioned for us to get in the truck. Mez and I threw our bags in the back. When I opened the front passenger door, a blue-faced, white-furred monster-child with huge teeth hissed at me. I screamed and fell backward into Meztli’s arms.
The monster had a face that was somewhat girl-like, for a monster. It was etched with lines and framed by the white fur that covered her body. She had a scowl that matched the one the big guy was wearing.
“Hi?” I tried.
She turned her head forward, ignoring me.
Mez and I climbed into the narrow seats behind her, and we took off. We drove in silence down what looked like the only road around, which was just a smushed-down white as opposed to the fluffier white surrounding it. The bay stretched out on our left—flat and white. An iceberg was frozen in place near the middle of the bay. It looked like a giant fist breaking through the ice.
Ahead, I could just make out the small black dots of village houses lined up beneath the protection of the cliff wall.
The land was more varied than it appeared from the sky. The hills on our right were speckled with bare, rocky outcroppings. We drove past a larger mountain that was carved with grooves, probably from runoff. The grooves were filled with snow, but the bumpy parts between the grooves were bare: thin dark lines on a white background.
I leaned forward to talk to our driver. “It looks like that mountain has a barcode.”
Silence.
“Like packages have, at the grocery store. They scan them to get the price.”
Silence.
“Do you have those here?”
Silence.
“Price check on aisle nine, one large mountain.” Pause. “Okay, I’ll shut up now.”
On the back of our instructions was a list of rules. I nudged Meztli so he could look at them along with me. The list read:
Stay inside at dusk and dawn.
Do not go into the crater.
Do not talk to the yeti.
Do not feed the polar hares.
Do not wear orange.
Any aggression toward the local wildlife will result in immediate removal from the area.
Meztli had a sly smile on his face. Something about that look made me wonder if he was thinking about putting on some orange so he could go into the crater at dusk to feed the hares. As if to prove my instincts right, he tapped the yeti girl’s shoulder and said, “Hi.”
She ignored him, and we continued toward town.
The village was a cluster of buildings stretching out in three lines, with larger buildings here and there. The roofs were frosted with snow, like little cakes, but the sides showed a variety of muted colors: blues and greens and reds.
We approached the inn, a light-green two-story building with a bold red stripe near the roof. It seemed to be propped up on stilts that lifted the base a few feet above the ground.
Our host parked. “Out,” he said.
Mez and I grabbed our luggage and hopped out of the truck.
“Come,” he added gruffly, heading up the stairs, not offering to help us with our luggage. Apparently, somebody had forgotten to take the hospitality lesson in hotel management school.
After pointing out our room, he said, “Dinner at six,” turned around, and
left.
We collapsed on the beds, and I didn’t wake up until 6:45.
“Meztli, wake up!” I said, but he just grunted at me. “Dinner!”
“No gracias,” he said, turning over.
Fine. I was hoping for his company, for some sort of cushion against the scariness of our hosts, but I was so hungry I was willing to brave it alone.
The inn’s dining room was small, only three tables, each seating four people, as well as some stools by a counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room. One empty spot remained at the counter, so I sat there. I leaned forward and saw my host’s massive back hunched over the stove.
“Um, excuse me?” I tried.
He didn’t move.
“Hello?”
The guy next to me snorted and shook his head. In front of him was a bowl of soup. It smelled yummy, a rich aroma I couldn’t quite place, both sweet and something else, something that made my mouth water.
Finally my host came to the counter, but he wouldn’t look at me. He picked up the bowls in front of the other two guys.
“Hi, uh, could I get something to eat?”
He turned around without acknowledging me but eventually returned and plopped a bowl of soup down in front of me. Then he disappeared into the kitchen again.
The soup was cold. It was tasty, but cold. I knew that it was my fault for oversleeping and arriving after I’d been told to come down. I began to think that I was not going to get on this guy’s good side ever, not with a start like this.
As I ate my soup, the front door opened. I turned around and saw Rufus and Jud.
Great.
They wore their Critchlore snow parkas and had Critchlore beanies on their heads. I noticed the locals all scowl at Rufus and then turn their backs to him. He came right over to me. The man sitting next to me edged sideways.
“You made it, what a surprise,” Rufus said. “Where’s kitty?”
“Meztli is sleeping,” I said.
“Typical cat,” Rufus said. He eyed the guy next to me. “You look done, fella. Do you mind?”