A green glow infused our cell with a shaky shadow from Charlie’s hand as he ignited a glow stick. We pushed up on the hatch to no use. Trapped. After crawling around, we discovered we were also walled in. This was no tunnel—this was a grave. Resigned and exhausted, we found water, more squirrel mash, ache cakes (didn’t they have any other snacks here? What I wouldn’t give for some pretzels and blankets), and curled up to find a shred of warmth in the damp hole.
“Joshua, I’m scared,” Charlie said quietly.
“Me too. At least we’re among people like us.”
“Except that mean guy who wants to sell us.” Charlie puffed out his cheeks.
“Mortal kids are a big barter item for food in the WC,” Apollo said. “These people are hungry. Zeus doesn’t ration them enough, and he punishes them by taking their food away. That’s when things can get ugly. I remember a few big riots in my father’s time. Many were killed. So you can understand why people are desperate, like Ratchet. Desperation means unpredictability.” He spoke with the weight of his kingdom—and world—on his shoulders.
“I don’t care how hungry he is,” Charlie said. “He’s not selling me for food.”
“Maybe we can hide here in the WC?” I offered. “Oak seems like he may help us more than his friend.”
“We can’t hide out forever.” Charlie hid his face in his arm, followed by a heavy sigh. “We’re not getting back home this time.”
“Yeah, we will.”
“Promise me. As a brother—for my little brother.” Charlie held out a pinky. I hesitated, then hooked his pinky with mine.
“For brothers.”
I bumped Apollo, who looked surprised then hung his head. “You came here for nothing.”
“Not for nothing. We’re all together again.”
Charlie hooked Apollo’s pinky with ours.
Apollo quickly let go. “I didn’t uphold my end of the bargain.”
“What was that?” I said.
He twisted his ring back around. The “A” glinted in the dim light, a symbol of the many King Apollo’s that came before him, all the way back to the original Olympian—the one with power. “To make a difference. Work to end slavery, unite our realms, and someday confront Zeus to find a better way for our world.” He scooped up a fistful of pebbles and dirt and threw it at the door in the ceiling. It rained down.
“Have faith, King Apollo,” I said.
He sank back down. “I did. No one else did.”
Charlie rapped Apollo’s deerskin coat with his knuckles. “We did. We do. And we left our world for you, didn’t we?”
“Yes, you did,” Apollo said. “But is it enough? Look where we are now.”
“You led us to freedom when it seemed impossible before. We believe in you,” I said. “Can’t you?”
Apollo pointed a finger my way. “You don’t even believe in you, why should I?”
I had no good answer and we curled up in silence on the ground of our dirt prison.
“Joshua, promise me something,” Charlie whispered.
“Okay,” I said, knowing promises made here didn’t count.
“If I don’t make it back but you do, tell my dad to please stay.”
“Stay where?”
“With my mom. Tell him they can work it out. Like they used to tell me and my brother when we’d fight.”
“You said your mom and brother were coming to America soon.”
He sighed and rolled over, facing me. “This move was a last chance. All they do is fight. My brother worships my dad. He can’t lose me and our dad. I think my dad loves him best, but it’s okay because I love my brother best.” He inched closer, his breath hot on my cheek. “Promise me you’ll tell my dad he has to do this.”
“I will. But you can tell him yourself when we get home.”
He put his head on his hands and didn’t answer. I started to doze off when he said softly, “If we both don’t get home, can we be brothers for real?”
I hugged myself harder in the dirt. “Sounds good.”
With a sniff, he said no more and his breathing slowed. Apollo sighed and rolled over.
Escape seemed impossible. If only Leandro were here—the real Leandro—he’d know what to do.
Apollo soon fell asleep too, but restlessness and anxiety filled my exhausted body. I pulled out Leandro’s journal and inhaled the worn paper, trying to find his smell—a rich leather scent soaked in earth and chocolate—but it just smelled musty like a lost library book. I flipped to a page and, in the light of the glow stick, read his private thoughts written in scroll-y handwriting.
My Homeland
Journal Entry 30 on Nostos
By Leandro of the Arrow Realm
My penance is over. Queen Artemis has named me head soldier to oversee the castle guards and given me quarters in the castle. My room is drafty and cold, but I suffer it better than a roomful of forty immature recruits.
I met with her alone for the first time today to discuss the late King Apollo’s final command for his world and his son’s promise to enforce it. I found her much different from our first meeting, as if her mind had shifted. She is no longer willing to help our cause. Her face was stone, and I surmised that stopping the baiting of mortal children and standing up to Zeus are not on her priority list.
I knelt to her then and said, “The first Artemis was a protector of children. Remember the children. All of the children.” She merely stared at me as if that time was forgotten. She pulled off her sunglasses, and the hollows under her eyes revealed her sleepless nights driven by some unknown anxiety.
Truth: I must think of another way to convince her. I cannot bear to remain on this world without my family if there is no chance for change.
Truth. Its meaning changed here constantly. I was too tired to think about it more. Charlie and I’d been here for three days, mostly on the run. Sleep came for me fast, and I dozed off with Leandro’s comforting words, escaping this nightmare for the world I’d left behind. But it wasn’t Leandro who came to me in my dreams. It was Bo Chez.
“Be who you are destined to be,” he said, offering me the lightning orb. Our hands touched as we held it together.
“Why aren’t you here to show me?”
“You are not alone,” he said and let go of the orb. It exploded in my hands with brilliant light, taking Bo Chez with it.
I awoke in the dark pit, and even though I shared it with my friends, loneliness wrapped around me like a gauntlet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The hatch flew open and light stunned my eyes. The glow sticks had died out. I shook my head to wake up and moaned from a painful crick in my neck.
“Come on up, boys.”
We climbed out with Oak’s help. “I checked on you earlier but you were asleep all day and half the night.” He waved his hand at bread and cheese on the table as he sat down. “It’s fresh from the baker’s wife. She has a thing for me. Not many dare to share. It all belongs to Zeus.” He half-smiled as we inhaled the food, a welcome change from squirrel jerky and hard pancakes. The bread was heavy and the cheese creamy. They went down like pizza and ice cream with a jug of his honey water.
A heavy silence wound around us. “Market day?” I said with a final swallow.
“It’s over. The WC is locked up for the night.”
“And Ratchet?”
“He’s in the apprentice lodge.” The more Oak spoke, the more my fear of him lessened.
“Are you an artist?” I asked as Charlie and Apollo crouched down to the paintings stacked on the floor.
“Saddlemaker for Nostos … artist for me. Sometimes royalty orders me to do portraits. A few months ago, they sent Ratchet as an apprentice from the Fire Realm; he’d been working as a slave in the volcanic mines. He seems a bit too eager to capture and sell children for food, but he’s only eighteen and needs more food than this old man.” He tapped a fist to his chest. “We must all survive in our own way.”
I noticed he wasn’t
eating. The food was for us, although he certainly could use it. I finished the delicious cheese, wanting more even as my stomach ached from eating too fast, and went to get a closer peek at the pictures by candlelight. Charlie stroked the edge of the paintings. We’d both wanted to be artists.
The pictures were familiar scenes: the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the Eiffel Tower, Egyptian pyramids, the Tower of London, and more. “To remember Earth?” I asked.
Oak nodded. “It’s been a long time. I was twelve when they stole me from Canada to the Sea Realm. My days were spent working Poseidon’s great water wheel. I was glad to turn eighteen and come here.”
Apollo traced the Statue of Liberty. “I want to go back.”
I’d forgotten he’d been born on Earth when his mother escaped after displeasing his father, the late King Apollo—until a Child Collector stole him back. It dawned on me that Earth had been Apollo’s first home.
“I wish this every day,” Oak said with a sigh. “I don’t want to forget.”
“Me either,” Apollo agreed.
We were all quiet and I wondered how many years had Oak been here. The thought of staying here forever picked at me. I shelved my lost life to ask Oak more questions. “Who do you make saddles for?”
“Folks from all over Nostos, especially for soldiers and royalty. Once a week, the market is open to all realms for people to buy the goods we slaves make and pay the clerk.”
“You get to make money as a slave?”
“Ha!” Oak sliced the air with his knife he’d been masterfully turning between his fingers. “Zeus gets the money and disperses it as he sees fit throughout the twelve realms. His kingdom, the Sky Realm, gets most of it. He keeps a tight fist on Nostos, making sure every realm keeps in line with his rules. If they don’t, he cuts them off from supplies. A kingdom can starve pretty quickly when that happens.”
“What do you get then?”
Oak put his knife down, brushed his mustache with a calloused finger, and pointed it at me. “We get to live.” He let those words sink in, then waved a hand at us. “And I’m still deciding what to do with you. Ratchet thinks we should haul you to the auction pit and turn you in for food.”
“Instead of eat us?” I burst out. Charlie kicked me and I winced, rubbing my ankle.
Oak threw his head back with a big rumbly laugh. “That was a joke. But there are things out there that will eat you.”
“Mon Dieu, do we know,” Charlie said.
Oak laughed again, then grew solemn. “It’s not only the slaves that starve here but the animals too.” He paused then asked, “Is Ash okay?”
“Yeah, she’s okay. She said she saved someone you knew.”
Oak strode over to the paintings and drew one out from the back. “My wife.” A sad looking woman with curly brown hair stared back at us. She might be pretty if she smiled. “She was dying from the guck, and I nearly died getting into the Wild Lands to find the Moria plant to cure her. I made it over the wall but couldn’t run from the beasts. Ash saved me from being eaten and gave me the plant to take back to the WC from their garden. My wife lived … for a while … until our son was born.”
Charlie, Apollo, and I glanced at each other. “You have a son?”
“Did.” Oak was quiet and then he spoke. “He and my wife died in childbirth. I begged for a doctor but the guards laughed at me. I’d hoped to hide our son until he grew big, like you,” he pointed at Apollo, “and pretend he was old enough to be my saddlemaker. They don’t keep track of us here. As long as we produce goods for Nostos and don’t escape or revolt, they don’t care what happens to us. Except one man I knew, one guard who cared—Leandro.”
Oak brushed the painted hair of his wife with his fingers as if she were real. “For one glorious moment, I dreamed of escaping the WC and finding a way to Earth to live out our days as a family in peace. Leandro was helping us find that dream, working with the WC underground. When the queen found out he had a slave wife and son she made them disappear. Leandro couldn’t bear it and one day he vanished—deserted his post. He never said goodbye but I don’t blame him. He has his demons to chase, as do I.” He wiped the painting carefully with the tip of his leather vest, then slid it back behind the others.
He turned to us, his red hair edged with candlelight, and shook his fists in the air. “When we finish the tunnel, it’ll be my turn to escape, join the Takers, and toss every single Child Collector over The Edge—one by one. No matter how long it takes and no matter if I die trying.” He pulled his hair tighter in a knot at the base of his neck and flipped it away. “If only Leandro were in the WC again. He’d help us.”
“Or betray us,” Charlie said.
Oak strode toward Charlie and hammered him into the wall. “Don’t ever say that! Leandro would never betray me. He’s my friend, and if he betrayed you, it’s because of something you did. Maybe you really are spies!”
He drew a dagger from a hidden sheath under his vest and held it to Charlie’s throat. I pulled at Oak. “Don’t hurt him!”
Oak shoved me aside, leering into Charlie, who looked like a squashed spider against the wall. “What did you do to Leandro?”
Charlie struggled against him with bulging eyes, but Oak was unbreakable.
“He didn’t do anything!” I pulled at his arm. “Leandro’s different. It’s not him!”
Apollo put a hand on Oak’s arm. “We’re on the same side. Leandro was our good friend until he met up with Artemis again.”
Oak put his arm down and Charlie stumbled away, gasping for air.
“A spell perhaps …?” Oak said to himself. “Artemis used to love Leandro. He told me they met in the forest as younglings. She was like a sister, but her mother sent him away. A princess and commoner can never be friends or family.”
Where was this going? I didn’t dare question the man who’d held a knife to Charlie’s throat. He might do the same to mine.
“With Leandro pardoned for desertion and back in her realm, the queen must’ve found a way to put a spell on him to do her bidding,” Oak went on, sliding his knife away and pacing the small room, his mission to hurt Charlie forgotten for the moment.
“Like hypnosis?” I said.
Charlie leaned on the wall and pointed a shaky finger at Oak, but it was Apollo who spoke the words. “The queen’s slave, Hypnos!”
Oak stopped in his tracks. “She has a slave that hypnotizes?”
“Yes. Can we get him to un-hypnotize Leandro?” I said.
“Where is this slave kept?”
“In the castle dungeon.”
Oak crossed is arms. “Not where I’d choose to conduct a rescue. You boys should know that.” He scratched his mustache. “I do have a contact on the inside. And what if it isn’t hypnosis, but a spell?”
Apollo spoke up. “The spellcaster must cast it out.”
“Artemis!” I said.
“Perhaps,” Oak said.
“I bet she did cast a spell on Leandro. She tried to hypnotize me to get my—” I shut up.
“Your what?”
I shook my head but Oak was already at my side, gripping my arms. “What’s this?” He tugged on the journal poking out of my pocket.
“No!” I cried out but he ripped it away and flipped through it, then he blew out a big breath and sat down, slowly turning the pages. Charlie edged toward the escape hatch we’d arrived from. He pointed to the floor. But I wasn’t leaving without Leandro’s journal. It was the one good thing left of him.
Oak thumped the journal shut and tapped it on the table, staring at me in disbelief. “The myth. It’s you? Your name is Joshua?”
“I’m Joshua. I’m–I—” the words wouldn’t form. Charlie shrugged with his hands out in a question and Apollo stared at me. I looked at my feet to avoid Oak’s unblinking amber eyes and fiery hair glinting in the candlelight.
“Just a boy … ” I peered up as he stared at me in wonder and something swelled inside me, the knowledge that these people believed in m
e, in the idea of me. Their belief encouraged my own.
Oak stood up, his thick eyebrows flattened into one. “Do you have powers?”
“Only with my lightning orb,” I lied.
“But you spoke to the animals even after Artemis stole it,” said Charlie, calling me out.
“You did?” Apollo said. I didn’t answer, still trying to figure it out myself.
Oak stared at me for a long moment then handed me back the journal. “From what Leandro told me of the myth, the Oracle will be half mortal, half Olympian and carry the power of his Nostos homeland. You’ve got a parent from the Arrow Realm?”
“I don’t know who my father was, but my mother was a slave from Earth. She lived in this camp.” Here came the chance to ask the question I’d been wanting to ask since we met. “Maybe you knew her?”
“I’ve known many people who’ve come … and gone,” he said flatly, still assessing this new me.
I remembered my wallet jammed in my jeans! I tugged it out—where I kept the one photo of my mother. Thank goodness it was laminated and didn’t get ruined in that nasty moat. I handed it to Oak. “Her name was Diana.”
He fingered it, his face twisting in a contorted expression. My heart beat faster with each second he stared at the photo, and my chest filled with a big bubble of air threatening to burst.
Oak looked at me with pinched eyes. “Yes, I knew her.”
A chill zoomed from my toes to my neck.
He handed back my mother’s photo. “She’s Leandro’s wife.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I let my breath go and shuffled back with shaking legs, nearly tipping the chair over.
“Leandro’s my father?” The idea buzzed in my head like a crazed fly.
The tiny room melted away and a whole world opened up. My father was the hero I’d always imagined. We’d been brought together in a great adventure in the Lost Realm, fought alongside one another—winning our freedom, and the freedom of so many stolen children. He’d been my mentor, my friend. Now he was the father I’d longed for all my life.
Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 10