by Joel Ross
“What are you doing up there?” Ji asked.
“I’ll swoop down at them if there’s trouble.”
“He’s going to swoop at them,” Ji told Roz, in disbelief. “That’s his plan.”
She lofted her eyebrow. “Perhaps you should trust him.”
“Have you met him? He thinks a sneeze is how your brain shouts for help.” Ji peered at Chibo. “You can’t even see! You’ll fly into a tree trunk.”
“I will not,” Chibo piped. “I’ve been practicing swooping.”
“Oh, boy,” Ji muttered.
Chibo flicked a wing toward the forest. “Now get in place before they see you!”
2
AN ANXIOUS KNOT formed in Ji’s empty stomach. “Okay, here I go.”
“They’re only halfway up the hill,” Roz told him. “You’ve plenty of time. Still, better safe than tardy.”
“You mean ‘better safe than sorry,’” Ji said, edgy from nerves. “You’re starting to sound like Nin.”
“I’ll take that a compliment,” Roz told him. “Nin is wise and brave and loyal.”
“He’s a buttonhead,” Ji said, pleased that Roz still talked about Nin in the present tense.
“Nin is not a ‘he’!” Roz rumbled, for the hundredth time. “Or a ‘she.’ Nin is a ‘they’!”
Young ogres didn’t decide if they’d be male or female until they reached adulthood, which meant they were called “cub” instead of “he” or “she.” And things were even more confusing with Nin. The Diadem Rite had transformed a single ogre cub into an entire colony of ant lions. Hundreds of ant lions added up to one Nin . . . except that after dozens of ant lions had died in Summer City, the colony had fallen silent. Nin had fallen silent instead of chattering away in “mind-speak,” which ant lions used in place of regular talking.
Ti-Lin-Su said that if a single ant-lion queen survived, Nin would recover. So far, that hadn’t happened. So far, the clay urn where the ant lions lived had stayed quiet. And with every passing day, Ji’s fear grew. What if they’d lost Nin forever?
“In that case,” Ji said, “they are a whole colony of buttonheads.”
“There’s a slight chance . . .” Roz trailed off.
“What?”
“Well, Articles from a Splendid History is Ti-Lin-Su’s most speculative work. She may have written a few words about ant lions.”
“Like how to save Nin?”
“Perhaps. Her research is exhaustive.”
“All books tire me out.”
“Exhaustive, Ji, not exhausting. Although it’s true that the volumes probably weigh as much as you do. But only a few copies exist. That’s why the coach takes one from library to library across the realm.”
Ji scratched the scales on his wrist. “Do you really think you can figure out where the witch is?”
“I hope to find a clue.”
“And if we find her, do you really think she’ll help?”
“I . . .” Sadness rose in Roz’s eyes. “I hope so. We cannot live like this.”
“Yeah.” Ji tugged his cloak around his shoulders. “Well, I’d better get in place.”
“I’ll tuck you in,” Roz said, and they crunched downhill to the rutted road.
Ji peered toward the fallen cypress tree. “So if I’m the coach driver, I come around the bend, spot the tree, and rein in my horses right”—he stopped at a shallow trench between the two wheel ruts—“here.”
“You’re sure this is the place?” Roz asked, nervously tapping her handbag.
“Definitely. Yeah.” They’d dug trenches on three hillside roads: three traps, because they weren’t sure exactly which route the coach would take. Now Ji had to lie in this one and wait for the coach to stop directly above him. “Maybe.”
If he was wrong, he’d get trampled by hooves and smooshed by wheels. At least half dragons healed fast. So even if he got a little smooshed, he’d survive.
Probably.
He crawled into the trench between the wheel ruts. When he lay on his back, the soil chilled him. He took a shaky breath and looked at the sky between the treetops.
Then Roz’s granite-looking face blocked his view. “Are you ready?”
“If this coach doesn’t have the book,” he told her, “it better be carrying picnics.”
“Chorizo and rice cakes,” she rumbled. “That’s all I ask.”
“You eat bark!”
“Unhappily.”
He wriggled to keep a rock from jabbing his side. “All I want is one bite of kimchi and I’ll die happy.”
“You’re not allowed to die, Jiyong. Where would that leave me?”
“As a half troll highwaywoman bent on revenge?”
Roz’s smile warmed him better than a campfire. “That sounds rather appealing. Very well, you may die.”
“Hey!”
She brushed dirt off his cheek with a thick finger. “If the coach doesn’t stop in the right place, don’t risk it.”
“If I don’t risk it, we don’t get the book,” he said.
“That is true, but—”
“And if we don’t get the book, we don’t find the Ice Witch.”
“And if we don’t find the Ice Witch, we’re stuck like this forever. Half-finished creatures with no home and no hope.” She exhaled. “I cannot bear it, Ji. Not much longer.”
“I know.” He touched her forearm. “Getting twisted into a monster isn’t my cup of hibiscus tea either.”
“Plus, Chibo’s thinner than ever,” Roz said.
“I’m more worried about Sally,” Ji admitted.
“And me,” Roz said, with a glint in her eyes.
Sometimes he thought she could read his mind. “Nah, you’re fine. Anyway, if the stagecoach doesn’t stop in the right place . . .”
“Risk it,” she told him, her voice gruff.
He nodded. “Okay.”
“We’ll get the book.” Roz swept a layer of concealing leaves over Ji. “We’ll find the Ice Witch. And we’ll break this spell before it’s too late.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Unless we’re already stuck like this.” Tears swam in her eyes. “We’ve no idea when the transformation becomes irreversible.”
“We’ll find a way.”
Roz smiled and straightened up. “You always do.”
Ji listened to Roz’s heavy footsteps crunching into the woods and couldn’t tell if he was happy that she believed in him—or terrified that she believed in him. Maybe both.
The leaves tickled his nose. The rock jabbed his side again. He listened for the coach but only heard birds squawking and trees rustling. Time snailed past. His stomach hurt and his scaly toes itched. A bug wandered across his forehead, reminding him of Nin. He fought to stay awake. Surviving on nuts and peppers left him tired all the time. His eyes closed and his mind drifted. . . .
A pool rippled on the ground inside a grand pavilion. The Summer Queen stood on a balcony. She lifted her arms. A water tree with glistening branches rose from the pool. The queen cast the Diadem Rite, the spell that crowned the next ruler of the realm. The spell that strengthened the new monarch by draining the souls of servants, twisting the servants into beasts before killing them. Brace wore the diadem and became the prince. The Prince of Summer. He vowed to protect his fellow humans and destroy the beasts—
The dream changed. A blizzard of colors swept across Ji’s mind. Dozens of bald children worked at a tapestry loom that clattered and jingled. Louder and louder: clatter, jingle, jingle-clatter, clink-jingle.
Ji woke with a start—and gasped. Blackness roiled above him and tree trunks pounded down like monstrous pestles trying to grind him into paste. The air stank of wet leather and—
“Whoa!” a woman’s voice cried. “Sa-sa-sa! Whoa, there!”
Horses! Those weren’t tree trunks, they were horse legs. Horses were walking over Ji, their hooves punching the ground. Harnesses jingled and a coach creaked. The woman—who must’ve been the coach driver—ca
lled “whoa” and the horses stopped directly above Ji, nickering and stomping.
“Driver, have we arrived?” a reedy male voice demanded from inside the coach. “Unless I am greatly mistaken, we are nowhere near Greenmesa!”
“No, m’lord,” the driver said. “When we rounded the last turn—”
“Enough excuses! Why in the name of the queen’s left toe have we stopped?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but a tree—”
“Surely you don’t deny that we are no longer making forward progress?”
“There’s a fallen tree in the road, m’lord!’” the driver blurted.
“What an absurd place for a tree,” the reedy voice told her.
“Tell the guards to move it, Father,” a boy’s voice broke in.
“You heard my son,” the man barked. “Guards! Stop daydreaming and move that tree!”
Ji wrinkled his nose despite his fear of the horses heaving above him. The people inside the coach didn’t sound like librarians to him. Not that he’d ever met librarians, but from what Roz had told him, they weren’t called “m’lord” and were generally in favor of daydreaming.
A moment later, two pairs of leather boots smacked onto the road as guards jumped down from the running boards. The boots weren’t fancy, but they looked well made—a good choice for coach guards, in Ji’s professional opinion as a boot boy. For some reason, the sight of them reassured him. He found the tidy stitches pleasing and the heavy soles comforting.
Then he felt a flash of disgust. What was he thinking? Sure, I’m a half-starving half dragon, half-hidden in a trench, but at least there are boots?
One guard muttered something and the other gave a low chuckle. They walked past the horses, heading for the fallen cypress tree. Leaving the coach behind—leaving the coach unguarded.
Ji’s plan was actually working!
Now he just needed to crawl beneath the terrifying horses to the rear of the coach, where—according to Roz—he’d find a door to the rolling library. He’d creep inside and look for the familiar words: “Ariticles,” “Slendid,” “Histiry,” and “Ti-Lin-Su.” He’d riffle through pages until he found the volume with “Ice Wich.” Then he’d snaffle that book and Roz would solve a puzzle that nobody had managed to unravel in hundreds of years.
Easy.
And if he couldn’t find the book, he’d knock on the door and beg the librarians for help. Except they didn’t sound like librarians. Which meant there might be a need for the backup plan: attack.
3
WHEN JI ROLLED onto his hands and knees, the horses whinnied in alarm. Hooves stomped and tails lashed. Ji trembled and waited for the driver to settle the team. Then he crawled toward the coach.
Something jerked him backward.
He almost yelped in fear. He swung around, ready to fight, and saw that one of the horses was standing on his cloak. He cursed, took a breath, and tugged at the horse’s leg. The horse didn’t budge. Ji tugged harder—and the horse crooked her leg and smacked him in the cheek with her hoof.
This time, he cried out. Pain blinded him and the world spun. Or at least the undersides of the horses spun. Blood trickled to his chin, but he managed to pull his cloak free.
“Father?” the boy asked, from inside the coach. “Did you hear that?”
“All I hear is the sound of my lazy guards pretending to move that tree.”
“I guess.” The boy paused. “I don’t want to go home so early.”
“Nor do I,” his father told him, “but we commandeered the Royal Library Coach because we had no choice.”
Ji stifled a groan. Commandeered? That meant “legally stole,” didn’t it?
“There’s no quicker way to return to Greenmesa,” the man continued. “You read your mother’s letter. All of our blue-bats are dying off? This is a tragedy for my orchards.”
“Yes, father,” the boy said morosely. “The harvest will fail without blue-bats.”
“Perhaps your mother is wrong. Blue-bats do not die off for no reason.”
The boy responded, but Ji wasn’t listening. If they’d commandeered the coach, that meant they weren’t librarians. And that meant Ji couldn’t beg them for help if he needed it.
Well, at least it was the right coach. Ji wiped the tears from his eyes, then belly-crawled beneath the horses. He peeked upward and caught sight of the reins. He couldn’t see the driver in her high seat, which meant she couldn’t see him.
Exhaling in relief, he scooted toward the rear of the coach—and a load of manure plopped to the ground three inches from his left ear. Oh, come on! He was just trying to find some dumb book—he didn’t need to be bombarded with horse poop. He held his breath and squirmed onward. He ignored the pain in his cheek and tried to convince himself that nothing was splattering his neck except mud.
At the rear of the coach, Ji peeked from between the wheels. No guards in sight, no driver. He pulled himself to his feet behind the coach—and almost fell, dizzy from the blow to his face.
He steadied himself on a trunk lashed to the luggage rack. Fancy boxes and tasseled sacks were bound to the coach with a spiderweb of straps. And in a rear panel of the coach, a door had been painted to look like bookshelves. Ji reached for the bronze-colored “book,” as Roz had told him. Sure enough, when he turned the book, a latch clicked and the door opened.
Ji froze at the sound, but nobody raised the alarm. With his nerves jangling, he climbed through the door into a dark, narrow space that smelled of lavender and glue.
A very dark space. Too dark to see.
“Great,” Ji grumbled.
It was hard enough for him to recognize words when he could see them. This was impossible. So while the guards shifted the tree outside—while every second ticked closer to his discovery—he just stood there like a numbskull and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.
Slowly, the spines of books swam into sight around him.
Fat books, skinny books, leather-bound books, metal-bound books—and a hint of something else. A something that tugged at Ji’s stomach. Not books. A pang like hunger, but not regular hunger. He frowned into the gloom . . . and heard the nobleman order his guards to hurry up.
Time to get moving.
Ji stuck his nose an inch from the nearest books, looking for “Arcitles,” “Spendid,” “Histiry,” and “Tii-Lun-Si.” He grabbed a narrow clothbound book with “Spleen” in the title, because that was pretty much the same as “Splendid.” Then he remembered Roz’s lectures about matching every single letter in a word, even though that struck Ji as being outrageously fussy.
His gaze snagged on titles with words from “Apes” to “Tinsel”—and a clunk sounded from outside. Just a horse stomping? Or the guards returning?
C’mon, Ji, he urged himself. C’mon, c’mon. . . .
He sat on a square leather stool and trailed his fingertips across dozens of books, from the highest shelves to the lowest. Letters squiggled and jumbled in the gloom. When the driver called and the coach jerked, Ji yelped. He was out of time. He grabbed the book that looked most like Articles of a Splendid History and scrambled through the door.
He tumbled to the ground behind the coach and started to roll away, afraid of being crushed by the wheels. But the coach just stood there, the fancy luggage stacked high: hatboxes, travel trunks, sacks and bags bulging with goods. The guards were still dragging the tree, the driver was still facing in the other direction. Ji couldn’t tell why the coach had jerked; maybe the horses had given a restless tug.
“Grab that branch!” one of the guards called. “Now pull!”
Ji was starting to slink away when he caught sight of a sack bulging with what looked like food. He’d spent enough time working in a kitchen to know. He darted to the luggage rack, untied the sack, and nearly fainted. Avocados. A sack full of avocados. Dozens of avocados. Shiny, lumpy, and green-black.
They were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He lowered the sack to the road—th
en caught a glimpse of tigerwood gleaming at the top of the luggage rack. A pretty little box was wedged between two trunks.
A jewelry box. Full of jewels. That’s what he’d felt from inside from the library coach: a tug of dragonhunger in the pit of his stomach. What was in the box? Rubies or diamonds? Opals or amethysts or sapphires?
He didn’t know. He didn’t care. All he knew was, he needed them. Not for himself! Not because a bell chimed inside his half-dragon heart whenever he got close to jewels. After the Diadem Rite, he’d learned that dragons didn’t hoard gemstones and precious metal because they liked sparkly things; they didn’t collect valuables because they wanted to go on a shopping spree. No, a dragon’s hoard served a purpose. Dragons converted treasure into fire, draining the power from gems to shoot flames from their eyes.
So Ji needed these gems to keep everyone safe. A dragon’s fire-shooting power relied on treasure, and he couldn’t protect his friends without power.
He climbed the rack and tugged at the tigerwood box. It didn’t move. His palms itched and a thrill thrummed in his chest. He tugged harder, and the box shifted. Just a few more seconds . . .
“What is taking so long?” the nobleman demanded from inside the passenger compartment. “Are they waiting for the tree to move itself?”
“The path is clear, sir,” the driver reported.
Oh, no. Ji yanked at the jewelry box, his pulse crashing in his ears, and—
“Thief!” the driver shouted. “Stealing the luggage—there’s a thief!”
Footsteps pounded as the guards ran toward Ji. And this time, the presence of well-made boots didn’t exactly comfort him.
“I’m learning to read!” Ji yelled, raising his hands.
In a single motion, the female guard drew and loaded her crossbow. The male guard raced toward the coach as the driver lifted her arm, her whip unfurling.
“I’m Lord Nichol of Primstone Manor!” Ji blurted, before realizing what he must look like. “’s servant! I’m his lordship’s servant! I—”
When a rock hurtled from the woods and slammed into the crossbow guard’s arm, Ji felt a flash of triumph. Ha! Eat troll-rock, you skullbrain!