by Graci Kim
Emmett is folding Boris, signaling that I’d better be ready to talk again, when a shiver of realization goes down my spine.
If the Horangi were trying to use the seventh artifact for their own benefit, chances are they’d want the eighth one, too. They may well have found it by now. And the bearded man had told me to return to the very beginning, to where I first started. He and the Haetae’s visions were both telling me the same thing.
I swallow hard. “I…I think I’ve figured it out, Em. But you’re not gonna like the answer….”
He crosses his arms. “Try me.”
I force out the words. “We need to find the Horangi clan.”
Emmett cracks up. “Good one, Rye. You almost had me there.”
I stay silent, and he abruptly stops laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shake my head.
“The bearded man and the Haetae said we need to go to the cursed scholars to find the last fallen star?”
I nod. “You saw it in the letter, too. The Horangi were keeping track of the artifacts, and hiding the seventh one. I think they wanted to use it to become divine. If we want to find the eighth artifact, we need to find the scholars.”
“But you know what they did to my mom.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and nod, focusing on a spot on his forehead. “I know.”
“They’re dangerous.”
“I know.”
“And cursed!”
I cringe. “I know.”
Emmett throws his head back and starts cackling maniacally. “You can’t be serious right now.” Spit gathers at the edges of his mouth. “You’re basing this on the words of a giant scaly lion, who was probably a hallucination, and a bearded man who tried to kill us. Who even was he? Why would we trust him? There must be another way. There has to be!”
He looks down at his ring, then stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I can’t, Riley, I just can’t….”
I pinch my thigh. “I know, Em. I know.” I take a big breath. “Which is why I’ve decided to go on alone.”
He screws up his face but doesn’t say anything. So I continue.
“I don’t want to go there, either.” For more reasons than you know. “But I have to. I promised Hattie I would save her. But I can’t ask you to come with me. No—I don’t want you to come with me. You need to go home now.”
Emmett covers his face with his hands and kicks the pavement with his foot. “All of this scares me, Rye,” he finally says. “It scares the freaking jelly beans out of me.”
I nod. I know how hard it was for him to say those words. If Emmett founded a clan, its motto would be Emotions Are Evil. I pat him on the back. “Me too, Em. Me too.” And it’s the most honest thing I’ve said to him in a long time.
He drops his hands and sighs. “But I’m not a quitter. And I’m not about to leave my best friend to walk into a clan of murderers by herself.”
My eyes well up with tears. “But you can’t possibly go there,” I mutter. “Not after what they did—”
He unfolds Boris with a decisive snap. “My mind’s made up. Like you said, Hattie is counting on us, and I’m not gonna let her down, either.” He steps onto the scooter and holds his breath as the blue scales creep up his feet. “Besides, my mom deserves justice. And I’m gonna get it for her.”
He waves me over. “What are you waiting for? Jump on.”
Stunned by this new gutsy Emmett, I climb on behind him without another word.
“Although, uh,” he says, testing Boris’s handlebars, “where exactly do we go to find these mother killers?”
I recall the third scene that played in the Haetae’s vision. The one in which Emmett and I were at the zoo, drinking boba tea. “This is going to sound weird, but you’ll have to trust me,” I say. “We’ve got to go have some tea with the tigers.”
Boris dutifully delivers us to the Los Angeles Zoo. We’re becoming a lot more confident on him now, and by the time we get off, not only are our stomachs intact, but Emmett’s feelings toward the dragon-on-wheels have done a complete 180.
“Aren’t you just the cutest,” he coos, rubbing Boris behind the ears. “And the way you do that invisibility thing—full of surprises, aren’t you!”
On the way over, we’d gotten some gobsmacked looks from saram pedestrians who couldn’t figure out how we were moving so fast. Boris kept pointing an ear toward a toggle on his handlebars until Emmett gave in to curiosity and pressed it. Turns out it put us into stealth mode, which kept us conveniently hidden from suspicious saram eyes. Genius.
After folding up Boris once more, we rush over to the posted directory to find the tiger enclosure.
“There,” Emmett says, pointing at the signboard. “Right next to the bears and the Desert Garden. It’s really close.”
It only takes us a few minutes to walk there. And just as the scene in the Haetae’s bell showed, there’s a food truck parked nearby.
“I don’t know why,” I explain to Emmett, “but the Haetae told me we need to get boba tea.”
Emmett’s eyes sparkle. “Hey, I’ll make the sacrifice if we must!”
We walk up to the window, and a young woman hands over a laminated menu. She has piercings in her ears, eyebrows, and nose, and her hair is dyed in four different colors, like a shaved-ice cone. She is the definition of cool. “Hey, dudes, let me know what you want when you’re ready.”
We nod and study the list, which looks pretty standard. How is ordering one of these drinks going to get us to the Horangi?
I glance inside the food truck to see if there are any clues, and that’s when I spot the poster on the wall. It’s bright red, showing a tiger sitting in a library, drinking boba tea while reading a book. The words YOU NEED A SWEET TOOTH TO KNOW THE TRUTH are written in cursive letters underneath. It looks like a cute hipster ad for drinking boba tea.
The Horangi’s clan color is red, and their motto is Knowledge and Truth. Plus, the tiger is in a library. The poster has to be some kind of secret message.
Emmett has already changed his mind three times about his order, and he’s now wondering whether his mango green tea slushy should have boba, or coconut jelly, or both.
As the woman patiently listens to him, I notice there is water sloshing inside a glass charm on her wrist. Ah, she’s gifted. And she’s selling tea, so she’s probably a Tokki infuser.
She sees me looking at her and smiles. “And you? Have you decided what you want?”
I take a stab in the dark. “I have a real sweet tooth, and I want to know the truth.” I cock my head toward the poster on the wall, hoping I don’t look like an idiot.
She freezes like a rabbit caught in headlights. I must be onto something. She looks down at my empty wrist and narrows her eyes. “Who’s asking?”
I clear my throat and improvise. “Sora sent for us.” I’m starting to become an expert liar, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
The woman breathes out a sigh of relief. She smiles. “Well, I do have a house special, if you’re into forbidden fruit. I’m sure you’ll like it if you’re into the truth. It’s a real trip.”
Forbidden fruit? I have to be on the right track. “That sounds great,” I say. “We’ll get two of those, please.”
Emmett opens his mouth to disagree, but I nudge him in the side. “Trust me, Em, that’s definitely what you want.”
He mumbles under his breath but doesn’t argue.
“Coming right up.” The woman disappears from the window, and when she returns a few minutes later, she’s holding two large boba teas. They’re more expensive than the rest of the teas, but luckily, I have the money Hattie grabbed from the swear jar. We pay, and she passes the drinks over to us with a wink. “And if you speak a word of this to the council, I will hunt you down.”
The woman gives us a beaming smile and we scurry away with our teas. Who knew infusers were working with the Horangi and selling illegal potions on the black market? And in broad daylight, no less.
>
We carry our drinks over to the tiger enclosure and stand there taking long sips of the creamy goodness. Mine tastes like taro milk tea mixed with the sweet banana milk you can get from the H-Mart. Yum. We chew happily on the sweet little balls of tapioca, enjoying the momentary respite from the Cave Bear Goddess’s assignment.
“So what now?” Emmett asks.
“I’m not sure. I—”
I frown. Something is off. I scan Emmett’s body from top to toe. And that’s when I see it. Or in this case, don’t see it.
Emmett’s right foot is gone.
“Ahh, your foot!” I shout, pointing at the empty space between his shin and the ground.
Then, before my eyes, more of Emmett starts disappearing. It’s as if someone has taken an eraser and started to rub him out. His other foot goes poof! and then the invisibility spreads up his legs and torso, engulfing poor Boris along the way. Soon, Emmett is nothing more than a floating head.
“OMG, it’s happening to you, too!” Emmett shrieks. I look down to see my limbs have gone AWOL, and my boba tea is floating in midair.
As Emmett turns from a weird bobbing head into nothing at all, I find my eyes blurring until the tiger enclosure and the zoo have faded to black.
When my vision clears again, dense forest surrounds me on all sides, and the sounds of cicadas and birdsong fill my ears. The sun is drooping in the sky, painting a warm golden hue over the trees, and the smell of pine is strong in the air. We aren’t in the zoo anymore—we’re in the mountains. It reminds me of where my family went on a camping trip in the Angeles National Forest a few years ago.
Emmett appears next to me, looking stunned. “I know she said it’d be a trip, but I didn’t think she meant it literally.”
I shake out my limbs, grateful I can see them again. “Be on guard, Em. We don’t know where the Horangi might be hiding.”
“Or what they might do to us,” he mumbles.
Judging by how low the sun is, it’s already late afternoon. If we don’t find the scholars in the next few hours, we’ll have to find somewhere to camp out for the night.
I think of our family trip again and smile when I remember how stubborn Hattie was about putting up the tent by herself. It took her two hours, but she somehow managed to do it before sundown. Which was great, because my blood was half-drained by mosquitos by that point. Eomma and Appa let us roast s’mores on the campfire, and afterward Mong slept with Hattie and me, tucked in tight between our sleeping bags.
A vision of Eomma’s and Appa’s worried faces pops into my mind, and I wonder how they’re dealing with our disappearance. Have they told the police? Will anyone in the gifted community (besides Auntie Okja) help them when they’re in so much trouble with the council?
I sigh. I miss them so much. I miss Mong. I miss our house. I even miss the toilet-sin.
“Let’s start walking,” I suggest to Emmett, heading toward the pine trees. “The quicker we complete this job, the sooner we can go home. Maybe the scholars will be—”
“Riley, help!”
I turn around and stop dead in my tracks. A giant hand made of soil has reached out and started to engulf Emmett in its grasp. It’s like one of those claw machines at the arcade, but upside down; Emmett is the plushie, and I don’t know who’s controlling the game.
“Emmett!” I scream. I try to run to him, but my legs are bolted to the spot.
I look down to see the roots of a pine tree wrapping themselves around my feet.
I wriggle and writhe, trying to free myself. But the more I struggle, the tighter the tree’s hold becomes. Its limbs wind up my legs, and soon my entire body is trapped in its embrace. As black spots appear in my vision and my breath gets shallow, my blood turns cold.
We’re never going to get out of these mountains alive.
WHEN I COME TO, THERE’S A sack over my head. At least I think it’s a sack. It’s heavy and rough and smells like rotten potatoes. I try to rip it off, but my arms are tied behind me. And my hands feel…wet? When I move my feet, I realize they’re also bound and wet. Huh? I try to stand, but I find my butt is stuck firmly to a chair. I’m completely immobilized.
“Let me go!” I scream. But the sound gets absorbed by the stinky sack. Instead, I get a big mouthful of l’eau de potato.
Footsteps sound behind me, and the sack is wrenched off my head. I take a huge gulp of air, and it feels so fresh and satisfying it almost tastes sweet. I glance down at my feet and realize why they feel wet. They’re submerged in water. And what I thought were ropes tying my legs to the white wicker chair are ribbons of water. Wait, water?!
“Riley!” Emmett cries out.
I turn my head to discover him in a chair to the left of me. His is also made of wicker, which makes me feel like we should be on a porch drinking iced tea. Instead, Emmett’s legs are tied to the chair with the mysterious water ropes, and his wrists are bound in the same way. I’ve never seen magic like this.
“Riley, are you okay?” Emmett’s eyes are so full of terror that, in that moment, I know we’ve achieved our goal.
We’ve found the Horangi.
“Are you okay?” I ask. His eyes are bloodshot and his lips purple. I wish I could reach out and squeeze his hand. I can only imagine what he’s feeling right now.
He trembles a little, but he nods. “I’m okay.”
I scan his face and body to make sure he isn’t injured. And when I’m sure they haven’t hurt him, I take stock of our surroundings.
From what I can see in front of me, we are sitting smack-bang in the center of a windowless room that is flooded with water up to our ankles. I’m relieved to see Boris is propped up against the wall, next to the door, which is raised slightly above the water. The room isn’t big, and it’s devoid of any furnishings besides our two chairs. The walls and ceiling are completely white—so white, in fact, that it’s hard to see where the wall ends and the ceiling starts. It feels like we’re inside a picnic cooler.
A tall, lean woman my eomma’s age, with a long neck and intelligent eyes, reveals herself from behind us. “Who are you?” she asks, in a deep, authoritative voice. “And how did you know about the boba-tea portal?”
Her hair is swept up into a French twist, and she’s wearing a black turtleneck and jeans. She looks like a Korean female version of Steve Jobs, but with more hair. She’s the first Horangi I’ve ever met. Well, aside from my birth parents, that is, but they don’t count.
A man and boy walk out from behind us, too. The man is wearing jeans and a turtleneck like the woman, but he also has on a leather biker’s jacket studded with metal stars. The boy—who looks about my age—is dressed in bright-red chinos, an orange-checked shirt, and a red bow tie. He stands out like a beacon against the stark white walls.
The woman studies my face, and for a split second, her eyes widen, as if she’s taken by surprise. “You look just like…”
Her reaction makes my insides wobble. Mostly in a bad way, but a little bit in a good way, too. Does she see my biological eomma or appa in me? Do I have any of their characteristics or traits? What kind of people were they? There are so many questions I want to ask.
But then I remember what they did, and the good feeling vanishes. I don’t care who they were. I already know who my real parents are.
The woman shakes her head and clears her throat. “What brings you here?”
“Untie us, and then we’ll talk,” I demand. “Who kidnaps innocent kids, anyway? No wonder you were disowned by your goddess.”
I have no idea where all this bravado is coming from, but thinking of what these cursed witches did to Emmett’s mom is enough to light a fire in my gut.
She scowls at me. “I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you that you’re the one who has trespassed on our property, and you’re the one being held prisoner. Are you sure you want to keep talking to me that way?”
“Riley,” Emmett warns, “be careful. You know what they’re capable of.”
I bite
my lip. He’s right. We need their help to find the last fallen star, and we can’t do that if we’re dead.
“Let me ask you again,” the woman says. “Why have you come here?”
When I don’t answer immediately, the man rubs his wrists together until his gifted mark glows red. He holds his hands over the metal stars that adorn his leather jacket. With a flick of his wrists he sends the studs flying like tiny ninja weapons straight toward Emmett’s face. When they’re an arm’s length away, they stop and hover in midair, as if awaiting their final command.
Emmett blanches and I scream, “No!”
The thing is, this scene disturbs me for two reasons. The obvious one being that my best friend is yet again in peril because of me. The other is that this man does not have a Gi on his wrist.
“How are you doing that?” I ask, incredulous. Hasn’t the Mountain Tiger Goddess cursed them never again to wield magic? And what kind of magic is this?
The woman crouches in front of me and looks me square in the eye. “I will not ask you the same question three times. If you do not answer, I will have Austin complete the task he has started.” She looks to Emmett. “And that would be a shame for your poor friend, now, wouldn’t it?”
I nod frantically. “Yes, yes, of course. Please, just lower the blades.”
The woman nods, and the man, Austin, makes a swift cupping motion with his hands. The weapons fly back to him and reattach themselves to his jacket. Judging by the way Austin obeys the woman, I’m guessing she’s some kind of senior figure here.
I stare in awe as I try to find the right words. “The truth is, we’ve come to ask for your help.”
The woman frowns, and both Austin and the boy look curiously at me.
“You just said we were disowned by our goddess and banished from the gifted community,” says the woman. “What makes you think you’re in need of our assistance?”
I feel the hard glass of Hattie’s heart vial next to my skin. Because I have to save my sister. “Because we’re looking for something, and we believe you know where it is.”