Beast & Crown #2

by Joel Ross

  “Balance doesn’t sound very nice,” Chibo said.

  “It can be cruel,” Roz admitted. “There is a story of one young mage who’d mastered woodland magic. She drew power from the woods to share with her friends, but magic always seeks Balance.”

  “She lost her powers?” Sally asked.

  “She lost her self. Saplings sprouted from her hair and hills rose from her collarbone. She transformed into a forest.”

  “A forest?” Chibo asked.

  “That’s right,” Roz said. “And her name was Isalida.”

  Chibo’s nearsighted eyes widened. “No way! She made this whole forest?”

  “You mean she is this whole forest,” Sally said.

  “That’s the legend,” Roz told them. “That’s the power of Balance.”

  “So what price are we going to pay for trying to contact Ti-Lin-Su?” Ji asked.

  “Oh, it’s just a minor spell,” Roz said, a hint of worry in her voice. “I’m fairly certain that the worst possible outcome is contacting the wrong person.”

  Ji squinted at her. “Like who?”

  “I’m not sure. The wrong mermaid? A dolphin, perhaps?”

  “So we might ask some octopus to help us find the Ice Witch?”

  Roz took a deep breath. “Apparently the spell relies on the complexity of the watercourse. The more complex the current, the more successful the spell.”

  “Apparently.”

  “I don’t know, Ji! I’m not a mage!”

  “That’s weird. I thought you had woodland magic.” Ji turned to the seedlings growing from the dirt in Nin’s urn. “That’s why you threw pinecones instead of rocks.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Roz said.

  “Next time,” Ji told the urn, “she’ll rain down death with flower petals.”

  5

  JI FINISHED MENDING Roz’s cloak and dress and started fashioning a troll-sized backpack from the wicker basket. He was reinforcing the leather straps when Sally raised a paw to silence Chibo, who’d been singing to Nin’s urn—a weird ditty that rhymed “beets” with “feets.” Chibo hid his wings and Roz barely breathed. Ji even stopped sewing, as if soldiers might hear his needle piercing leather.

  Finally, Sally said, “It’s nothing,” and everyone relaxed.

  When the setting sun touched the hilltops, Ji filled the backpack with avocados, wasp peppers, and even a few linens, though he didn’t know what kind of person traveled with napkins. Heck, what kind of person used napkins? Didn’t they know what sleeves were for?

  Then Sally prowled from the shelter of the pine tree. Roz moved the branches aside, and Ji took Chibo’s skinny hand and followed. The mulch of the forest floor smelled like last week’s tea. Night animals scurried through the underbrush and an owl hooted, marking its territory.

  The air cooled moments before they reached a stream babbling in a rock-strewn gully. Sally headed uphill to a moons-touched grotto. An oval pool rippled at the base of lichen-stained boulders and a “waterfall”—not much taller than Roz—trickled between the rocks.

  “It’s smaller than it sounds,” Sally whispered.

  “It’s perfect,” Roz whispered.

  “We’re still not mages, though,” Sally whispered.

  “We’re still not human, either,” Ji whispered.

  “Why are we whispering?” Chibo whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Ji whispered. “But it’s starting to freak me out.”

  “We must stand in a circle,” Roz said in her normal voice, splashing into the pool. “In the water.”

  “C-cold,” Chibo said when he followed.

  The pool soaked through Ji’s foot wraps and chilled his scaly ankles. “Ti-Lin-Su better know where to find the Ice Witch.”

  “She will if anyone does,” Roz said. “Now hold hands. Um—” She shifted her grip on Nin’s urn. “Ji, touch an ant lion and my hand at the same time.”

  Ji rested his hand on hers, in the dirt in the urn. “Now what?”

  “Can you all see the reflection of the moons in the water between us?”

  “I can’t,” Chibo said. “I mean, not really.”

  “Perhaps we should wait and use the sun,” Roz said.

  “I see a little glow,” Chibo said.

  “That’s good enough,” Roz told him. “Now look at the reflection and imagine Ti-Lin-Su’s face.”

  “That’s easy,” Ji said, as ant lions walked across his fingers. “Her white hair matches the moonlight.”

  “I never saw her face,” Chibo said. “Not clearly.”

  “Do the best you can,” Roz said.

  “I’m holding hands with ant lions,” Ji told Chibo. “Believe me, you’re doing better than they are. Now what?”

  “Keep picturing her face,” Roz said.

  Ji looked at the wobbly moons reflected in the rippling pool. He imagined that one splash of water was eyes and the glow was hair. He could almost see a mermaid face in the ripples . . . but not quite.

  “It’s not working,” he said. “Nothing’s happening.”

  “Give it time!” Roz rumbled. “And try to put yourself into it.”

  “How?”

  “We could spit,” Sally suggested.

  “Please don’t,” Roz told her.

  The reflection of the moons blurred in the pool. Ji remembered watching Ti-Lin-Su swim through her water garden; he remembered seeing her burst from the surface, water sheeting her face. He remembered her silvery laugh echoing like the babble of a hillside stream. His memories unspooled, but nothing happened. He was just standing in a chilly pool in the dark woods with mud oozing between his toes.

  “My fingers are cramping,” he said.

  “I can’t remember her face,” Chibo said.

  “Maybe this current isn’t complex enough,” Sally said.

  “Lady Ti-Lin-Su touched your wings, didn’t she?” Roz asked Chibo. “In her water garden in the city?”

  “She told me they’re a tremendous gift,” he said proudly. “Oh! Oh, do you think I should use them? I mean, I sort of remember what it felt like when she touched them.”

  Chibo’s wings swooped from his hunchback, and the instant they dipped into the pool, Ji felt himself pour into the water, like he’d dived into a swimming hole. The current tugged at his heart and dragonscales thickened from his shoulders to his elbows. His vision of Ti-Lin-Su swept into the water as the reflection of the moons became the blurry face of a woman. First a wide mouth appeared, then a square chin and short hair. Not like Ji remembered, but still a face! The magic was working—the spell was working!

  “Can you see that?” he said, whispering in awe.

  “My goodness,” Roz rumbled.

  “Ask her,” Sally breathed. “Ask her about the Ice Witch.”

  “Yeah, and”—Chibo’s wings started glowing—“and how to help Nin.”

  The face came into sharper focus. A glint of gold sparkled on the moons-lit forehead, and a chill rose from Ji’s feet to his heart.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop, it’s the queen!”

  “Ahhh,” the Summer Queen’s reflection said with watery satisfaction. “Now thou art revealed to my magical touch. . . .”

  Ji stumbled out of the pool. “Get away from the water!”

  With a single beat of his wings, Chibo threw himself backward. Sally leaped into the air and grabbed a tree limb, while Roz stomped from the pool onto the bank.

  The reflection faded, and nobody spoke. Ji pressed his palm to his pounding heart, staring at the pool, waiting for the queen’s face to reappear. But the water remained water, dark and still.

  “Apparently,” Roz said, “this current is not complex enough.”

  “Th-that’s the least of our problems!” Ji sputtered. “She found us! The queen knows where we are.”

  “She’ll send knights,” said Sally.

  “She’ll send mages,” said Ji.

  “She’ll send Brace,” said Sally. “He’s not a scared kid at
Primstone Manor anymore, getting bullied by Lord Nichol and Lady Posey. He does magic now—and he knows how to fight.”

  “My feet are freezing,” said Chibo.

  “Okay,” Ji said. “Maybe that is the least of our problems.”

  Roz set Nin’s urn on the ground. “And the greatest of our problems is this: We must contact Ti-Lin-Su if we’re to break the spell. She’s the only one who can tell us where to find the Ice Witch.”

  “The Ice Witch can’t return us to normal if the queen catches us first,” Ji told her.

  “Capture is not as terrible a fate as a life consigned to”—Roz lifted one trollish, four-fingered hand—“to this. Being trapped forever as a twisted beast.”

  Ji glowered at the pool, hating the queen for making Roz hate her half-troll self.

  “Um, Roz?” Sally said, her voice soft. “Your horn changed.”

  “What?” Roz touched her horn. “What happened?”

  “It’s more curved and . . .”

  Roz choked back a sob. “Longer.”

  “I felt new scales grow on my arms,” Ji said.

  “Chibo’s eyes got bigger,” Sally said. “And I feel different too.”

  Ji peered at her in the moonlight. “You’re a little shorter,” he said, and didn’t mention that her hands looked more like paws than before.

  “It’s the price of magic,” Roz said, her voice unsteady. “Even for a failed spell, we paid with part of our humanity.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Ji swallowed. “The Ice Witch can still turn us back to normal.”

  “What kind of horrible spell steals your self?” Sally snarled.

  “I can’t imagine this happens to normal humans,” Roz said. “It’s only because we’re—”

  “Abnormal nonhumans?” Sally interrupted.

  “—already changing,” Roz finished.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Ji said. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” Chibo asked.

  “Away from the knights and the queen,” Ji said. “Toward a river. We need to find a better current.”

  “You want to try that again?” Sally asked.

  “Talking to Ti-Lin-Su is the only way to fix this,” he said. “Although, next time, let’s wait till we’re sure the water’s right.”

  Sally started to answer, then caught sight of her hands. Hard pads covered her palms and blunt claws curved from her fingertips. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. After taking a shaky breath, she grunted and led them away, through thickets and over fallen trees. Roz touched her horn and sniffled in the darkness, while Ji tried not to think about the thick scales on his neck. They scrambled along gullies until they reached a hillside surrounded by birch trees. Four moons shone through the leaves, brightening the night.

  “Four moons.” Roz wiped tears from her face. “At least that’s good luck.”

  “It’s about time,” Sally said.

  Chibo tilted his head back. “Looks like two big moons to me.”

  “Can you hear any soldiers?” Ji asked Sally.

  “Not a murmur. And do you see those hills?” She nodded past the trees. “The forest ends on the other side of them.”

  “Oh, good,” Roz said.

  “Er,” Sally said. “Just past the ravine.”

  “Oh, bad,” Chibo said.

  “What ravine?” Ji asked.

  Sally pointed almost straight downhill. “Take five steps and you’ll fall in.”

  Ji squinted until his eyes picked out a rocky slope dropping into the gloom. Still, at least they’d reached the edge of the forest.

  “We’ll keep moving till dawn,” he said. “Then we’ll find a place to camp. We’ll travel at night until we reach a river—”

  “Is a river enough?” Sally asked Roz.

  “Perhaps not as good as the canals and waterwheels of the city.”

  “Look at us, Roz,” Ji said, spreading his arms. “We wouldn’t last three seconds in the city.”

  “You would,” she said in a sharper tone than usual. “Cover your arms and legs, and you’d pass for human.”

  His cheeks flushed. Now Roz was mad at him?

  “We could find a mill in a village,” Chibo suggested.

  “What if we summon the Summer Queen again?” Ji asked. “We need to be sure the water’s right.”

  “What if we transform into beasts completely?” Roz demanded. “That’s worse than anything the queen could do—”

  From deeper in the forest, an inhuman howl tore through the woods. Goosebumps rose on Ji’s arms and his throat clenched. The howl wavered, deepened, then rose again, higher and sharper, like a razor slicing through flesh.

  “Wh-what?” Chibo stammered as the howl continued. “What—”

  “—is that?” Ji finished.

  When the howl faded, Roz pressed her palm to her chest. “A kumiho.”

  “Those are myths,” Ji said.

  “What are they?” Chibo asked.

  “They’re not real,” Ji said.

  “In the stories . . .” Roz hugged herself. “In the stories, the Summer Queen commands them, like the terra-cotta warriors.”

  Ji gulped. The terra-cotta warriors were clay statues with jaguar helmets and tomahawks who the queen could bring to life as mindless, merciless soldiers.

  “She summons them to hunt her enemies,” Roz finished.

  “She’s still weak, though,” Ji said, his voice tight with fear. “That’s what Nin said. That she’d be weak for months after casting a Diadem Rite. Plus, there’s no such thing as kumiho.”

  “What aren’t they, then?” Chibo asked.

  “Fox-demons,” Roz told him. “With poisonous rattlesnakes for tails.”

  Chibo whimpered. “Oh, badness.”

  “Maybe Brace summoned them,” Ji said. “I mean, if they were real. Which they’re not. Let’s go down the ravine, slow and careful—”

  Another howl cut through the night. Roz fell silent, and frost touched Ji’s soul. Then two more kumiho joined in the yipping: a chorus of eerie, unnatural hunger echoed beneath the moons.

  “Forget ‘slow and careful,’” Ji said. “Let’s do this fast and reckless.”

  6

  THE NEXT TEN minutes stretched into a nightmare. The moons leered from above, the trees clawed and scratched. The hillside tumbled away, and every time the kumiho howled, a dagger of fear plunged through Ji’s heart.

  Also, his arm still ached.

  When they reached the bottom of the ravine, the hills blocked the moons-light and oozing muck chilled Ji’s lizard feet.

  “Could you glow a tad brighter?” Roz asked Chibo. She plucked a leaf off her horn.

  Green light brushed a sad trickle of water on the ground. Sally crouched on a fallen log while Chibo clung to Ji’s shirt, trembling from cold and fear. Roz hugged Nin’s urn in her arms, her dress torn again. At least the remaining avocados were safe in her new backpack.

  Ji opened his mouth to speak, and all three kumiho screamed. They didn’t howl, they yowled: long, wavering shrieks.

  “They haven’t done that before,” Chibo whimpered.

  Sally scowled into the darkness. “They must’ve caught our scent.”

  “How close are they?” Ji asked.

  “Closer than they were.”

  Ji rubbed his face. “Okay, enough running. Time to fly, Chibo.”

  “R-really?”

  “Can you see the hilltop on this side of the ravine?”

  “Not even almost.” Chibo’s inhumanly large green eyes peered upward. “It’s up there?”

  “More or less,” Ji said. “Sally, go with him. Roz and I will catch up.”

  “No,” Sally growled. “We’re staying together.”

  “If they catch us—”

  “We’re staying together.”

  “Chibo can’t get away by himself!”

  “I can fly,” Chibo said. “They can’t catch me.”

  “You have to land eventually.” Ji turned to Sally. “Roz and I
will slow them down.”

  “Roz?” Sally’s muzzle curled. “You’re making Roz fight fox-demons?”

  A shiver touched Ji’s heart at the thought of putting Roz in danger, but he said, “She’s tough.”

  “So is Chibo,” Sally said, her eyes fierce. “We’re staying together.”

  “Fine,” Ji muttered. “If things go wrong, it’ll be your fault for once.”

  Climbing the other side of the ravine took twice as long. Four moons swept across the cruel sky while branches slapped Ji’s face and roots snagged his feet.

  Finally, he reached the top—and stared in surprise.

  Dozens of smaller hills spread below him. A few were terraced with rice paddies, and the flooded fields reflected the three moons high in the sky and the fourth closer to the horizon. A chorus of frogs croaked in the darkness, and a water buffalo lowed in the mist. A road snaked through the fields, past a handful of homes and barns. Well, past the smoldering remains of homes and barns. Tendrils of smoke still rose from the charred wreckage.

  Roz set Nin’s urn down, and Chibo’s wings slumped.

  “She burned them,” Ji said, a sick feeling in his stomach. “The Summer Queen burned the farms so we wouldn’t find any food—or help.”

  “How’d she know we would come this way?” Sally asked.

  “She must’ve told her knights to burn all the villages around the forest.”

  “I guess they were full of rice,” Chibo said.

  Roz frowned. “I hope they weren’t full of people.”

  “They wouldn’t have helped anyway,” Sally growled. “They would’ve screamed if they’d seen us.”

  “I am beginning to dislike Her Majesty,” Roz said, raising the hood of her cloak to hide her curved horn.

  “Beginning?” Ji asked. “She turned us into beasts—”

  “Like you care,” Sally muttered.

  “—and tried to stab us with water-branches,” Ji continued. “She sent an army to capture us and then she thought, ‘What else can I throw at them? How about a fox-demon with a poison snake tail?’”

  “A kumiho doesn’t have a snake tail,” Roz told him.

  “But you said—”

  “A kumiho has nine snake tails.”

  Ji groaned and Sally swore. Then Chibo noted, “They’ve been quiet for a while. Maybe we lost them.”