Beast & Crown #2

by Joel Ross

  “Or maybe they stop howling before they strike,” Ji said.

  “Do they do that?” Chibo asked Roz.

  “I don’t know.” She squinted toward the rice paddies. “I’m trying to remember what I’ve read about them.”

  “Remember fast,” Ji said, starting downhill toward the burned farms.

  “There’s a poem about fox pearls,” Roz said, hefting the urn and following.

  “They wear pearls?” Chibo asked.

  “The poem describes four glowing white orbs that give a kumiho strength.”

  Ji kicked a weed. “We’re being stalked by pearl-powered demons?”

  “Well, it might be a metaphor.”

  Chibo shifted his wings for light while they crashed through brambles; then Sally waded into a flooded field to get the kumiho off their scent.

  “Can we use rice paddies to talk to Ti-Lin-Su?” Chibo asked. “This is a lot of water.”

  “There’s hardly any current, though,” Roz said. “And I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”

  The cold stung Ji’s feet. Before heading in deeper, he told Chibo to climb onto his shoulders. Roz carried Nin’s urn on her hooded head, using her horn for balance, while Sally’s waterlogged tail drooped pathetically. When the flooded fields finally ended, they followed a trail between two smoldering buildings—and a beast snorted from ten feet away.

  A kumiho!

  Fear burst like fireworks in Ji’s chest. He gripped Chibo’s skinny calves tightly, while Sally bared her fangs, and a massive head swiveled into sight. Blunt horns jutted, baleful eyes peered, and the water buffalo lowed.

  Not a kumiho!

  Ji almost laughed in relief, and Roz murmured, “Oh, thank goodness.”

  “Did you get left behind, boy?” Sally asked the water buffalo.

  “Don’t get too close,” Ji told her.

  “He’s tame, you chuckle-knuckle,” Sally said.

  Ji eyed the beast. “He’s like two thousand pounds. He’s stronger than Roz. Water buffalo are worse than horses.”

  “They’re harmless,” Sally said. “Though my moms once saw one fight off three alligators who were threatening her calf.”

  “He thinks I am an alligator,” Ji mumbled. “Is that a rope around his neck?”

  “Yeah, he’s caught on something.”

  “Good,” Ji said. “That means he can’t eat us.”

  “Oooh, you poor baby,” Sally crooned to the monster, “are you stuck here all alone? Let me get this off you.” She reached toward the great, horned head and removed the rope. “There! Now you can graze.”

  “You furry types stick together,” Ji muttered.

  “What was that?” Sally asked.

  “Nothing,” Ji said.

  She patted the water buffalo on the nose, then headed downhill again. Three moons shone overhead when they finally reached the main road, while the fourth touched the top of a pointy hill.

  “Four pearls,” Roz said, looking toward the lowest moon. “Four white pearls.”

  “You think the kumiho’s strength comes from the moons?” Ji asked.

  “I—I’m not sure.”

  “Shht!” Sally listened for a moment, then shook her head. “I thought I heard something.”

  “B-but you didn’t?” Chibo asked.

  She shrugged and kept moving. The silence stretched taut, frightening Ji more than howls and yowls. Only a sliver of the fourth moon still peeked from behind the hilltop by the time they waded through a last rice paddy.

  “I’m f-freezing,” Sally stammered as they climbed from the water.

  Ji’s teeth chattered in agreement.

  “Not me!” Chibo declared. “Because sprites don’t get cold.”

  “Or b-because you’ve b-been on my shoulders the whole time,” Ji said.

  Chibo considered. “Nah.”

  “Over there!” Roz said in a panicked whisper. “Look!”

  She pointed her horn across the moons-lit landscape, hugging Nin’s urn tight. Higher on the hillside, an animal crept into view. Except it wasn’t an animal.

  It was a demon-beast, mottled white in the light of the four moons.

  7

  THE KUMIHO LOOKED like a pale jaguar and moved with a deadly grace. Even its nine tails were sinuous, a writhing dance of snakes swaying above its muscular butt. Only its long head looked bulky and awkward, more like a bloated rat face than anything feline.

  Chibo couldn’t have seen more than an ugly patch of whiteness, but he still gasped. “Oh, badness.”

  “Shh.” Ji clamped a hand over Chibo’s mouth. “It hasn’t spotted us.”

  “Where are the others?” Roz mouthed.

  Sally scanned the hills. “I can’t see them.”

  The kumiho’s snout swiveled and sniffed. Despite the distance, the sense of venomous evil made Ji’s knees weak. He barely managed not to whimper. Heck, he barely managed not to faint. The kumiho’s tails swayed. White fur glimmered and snake tongues tasted the air, trying to get a fix on Ji and the others.

  Chibo made a soft, fearful noise.

  “Shhh,” Sally hissed.

  The kumiho screamed and Ji’s bones turned to jelly. The demon took a step—then spun, quick as a silverfish.

  The water buffalo thundered forward. Two thousand pounds of horn-tipped muscle hurtled at the demon. The kumiho crouched low, snake tails coiled. The buffalo’s massive head thrust closer like a battering ram, and his hooves pounded the earth.

  At the last second, the fox-demon pounced. A blur of milky paleness flashed. Demon claws slashed, and snake fangs struck at the buffalo’s hide.

  A bellow of pain echoed across the valley. The water buffalo fell to his knees, toppled to his side, and lay still. It was over. The fight was already over. The kumiho had killed two thousand pounds of sheer muscle in three seconds.

  Ji wanted to cry, but he needed to run. He needed to get away, to get everyone away. He didn’t have a plan, he didn’t have a clue. He didn’t have anything except panic as he reached for Chibo’s hand—and missed, because Chibo was wrapping his wings around Sally for comfort.

  Sally’s furry muzzle clenched and her eyes shone with unshed tears. “Poor buffalo.”

  “Cry later!” Ji snapped, grabbing again for Chibo. “Run now!”

  “I’m not crying,” Sally said.

  “Well, I’m wetting my dragonpants,” Ji said, dragging Chibo away. “Because that kumiho is going to kill us all! Go!”

  “It’s coming!” Roz said, an edge of panic in her gravelly voice. “It’s coming!”

  “Chibo, take off!” Ji rubbed his face. “All of you, get away. This is my fault, and I—” He gulped, and lied with utter sincerity: “I’ve got enough fire to roast it.”

  “You haven’t,” Roz said.

  “I stole fire from that jewelry box! I drained the gems to fuel my flames and now I’ll—”

  Sally snorted. “You’re such a liar.”

  “Run, Sal—please!”

  “We need to think,” Roz rumbled. “The ‘pearls’ are moons. So long as four moons shine, the kumiho are free to hunt, but once a single moon sets, they’ll vanish.”

  “We can’t make a moon set!” Ji said.

  “Oh, yes we can,” Sally told him, loping away from the kumiho. “C’mon!”

  “What are we—”

  “Move!” she called over her shoulder.

  Ji scooped Chibo into his arms and raced after Sally, following her from the farm into a field, toward the pointy hill with the moon peeking from behind the peak. When another yowl sounded, Ji glanced over his shoulder. Higher on the hillside, the kumiho stared at them, its predatory eyes glimmering in the predawn light.

  “It sees us,” Ji said.

  “Run!” Sally yelled.

  The kumiho leaped to a charred patch of ground, and loped past farms and furrows in a mottled-white flash.

  “It’s too fast!” Ji said.

  Sally sped toward the pointy hilltop. “Sh
ut up and run!”

  With Chibo whimpering in his arms, Ji leaped over a weedy hedge and past a pile of dung. His heart punched his throat and his vision narrowed in terror. Roz thundered along beside him, hugging Nin’s urn tight, while Sally leaped ahead, forging the path.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” she barked. “This way, faster!”

  As Ji scrambled around a mound of rice hulls, he caught a glimpse of the kumiho prowling past the hedge. From this close, it was even more horrific: its pelt looked like rotting meat and its fangs jutted and dripped.

  Its dead eyes stared at Ji and he stumbled over a charred plow.

  Roz shouted, and Ji threw Chibo into the air. “Fly!”

  Green light tinted the world. The kumiho stopped and yowled ferociously, enraged at the sight of its prey escaping. As Chibo’s light dimmed, the demon loped closer. Ji scrambled to his feet and started running faster than he’d ever run before.

  “Almost there!” Sally shouted.

  “Almost . . . where?” Roz panted.

  “Just run!” Sally barked.

  Even as he sprinted past a makeshift shed, Ji saw the truth: they couldn’t outrun a demon-beast. They were all going to die on this hillside, with three moons glowing high and the fourth slowly setting, with frogs croaking and the scent of smoke in the air.

  Except no. Not all of them. He couldn’t let that happen.

  He’d never done anything harder than slowing down with a vicious kumiho on his heels. Still, he wrestled with his terror until his sprint became a run and his run became a trot. Finally, he halted completely. His knees almost buckled and his heart definitely stopped, but he turned to face the demon. This was his fault. Everything was his fault, and he’d pay the price to make it right.

  “K-keep running,” he whispered, too softly for anyone to hear. “I’ve g-got this.”

  When the kumiho prowled closer, the moons-light dimmed. Ji wanted to scream, but his voice didn’t work. His legs didn’t work either, and his brain was producing panic instead of plans. The kumiho bared its teeth. Black saliva dripped to the ground. The beast crouched to pounce, and Ji prayed that the others would get away. . . .

  Then Sally bounded in front of him, shouted, “Hey, maggot-mouth!” and galloped away on all fours.

  When the kumiho spun toward Sally, Roz grabbed Ji’s arm from behind and yanked him backward. She dragged Ji into a drained paddy, slimy with mud and stinking of fish. The kumiho stalked closer, screaming in rage. Ji’s feet smeared trails in the muck and his terrified gaze tracked the swaying of nine snake tails.

  The demon-beast sprang, cutting through the air like an arrow. Claws extended. Jaws wide. Fangs dripping venom. Thirty feet away, twenty feet away, arcing toward Ji and Roz in a single leap.

  At ten feet away, the demon’s dirty pelt started shimmering like smoke. In midair, the blotchy snout and muscular chest turned vaporous. The nightmarish head blurred into a foggy haze. The pale body feathered into dozens of wispy tendrils—and, like smoke in a breeze, the kumiho dissolved in the fading moons-light.

  Ji gaped in disbelief, his knees wobbling. “The—it—the—”

  “Um,” Chibo piped from behind him. “Where’d the fox-monster go?”

  “It un-un-unraveled. . . .”

  “I told you so!” Sally crowed, leaping in front of him. “I told you we could make the moon set!”

  “What are you talking abo—” Ji gasped in amazement. “Sally! You’re a genius!”

  She laughed. “I know!”

  Ji looked toward the pointy hilltop. The fourth moon was completely—but just barely—hidden behind the peak. If he’d been five feet higher uphill, a tiny splinter of white would still be visible. Once the kumiho had crossed that line, the moon “set” and the demon vanished. That was where Sally had been leading them!

  “You clever hobgoblin!” he said. “You saved us!”

  “Oh!” Roz rumbled. “Oh, I see! Well done, Sally!”

  “I don’t see!” Chibo piped, landing in the muddy field. “What happened?”

  “If you’re five feet farther uphill, there are four moons and a fox-demon,” Ji told him. “But right here, there’s only three moons and her.” He pointed to Sally. “Dame Sally the Magnificent.”

  “I’m glad someone was thinking.” Roz tilted her curved horn toward Ji, her eyes narrowing. “I can’t believe you tried to sacrifice yourself like that.”

  “Um. You’re welcome?”

  “Jiyong!” she snapped. “That was very brave and very wrong of you. You cannot simply let a demon eat you to save the rest of us.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” he explained.

  “That’s not an excuse.”

  He actually thought it was a pretty good excuse. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “You look angry.”

  “I’m not. I just—” Roz wrapped Ji in a sudden, fierce hug. “Promise that you’ll never try anything like that again!”

  “Sure,” he lied.

  “Promise me for real,” she demanded.

  “I promise for real,” he said, though honestly what was he supposed to do? Let the kumiho kill them all?

  “Jiyong,” she said. “The next time they appear, I expect—”

  “The next time?” he asked. “What next time?”

  “Oh. Well, if their power is linked to four moons, then every time a fourth moon rises . . .”

  “They’ll come back?”

  “I expect so, yes.”

  Ji rubbed his face. “Until they catch us.”

  “That strikes me as probable.”

  “It strikes me as terrifying.” Ji took a shaky breath. “There’s only four moons every five or six days, though, right?”

  “The moons are unpredictable.”

  Sally led them from the muddy field onto a rocky path, and Ji said, “We’ll keep moving until we can find a place to talk to Ti-Lin-Su. Even if it means traveling during the days.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what the Summer Queen wants?” Chibo asked.

  “Yeah, but we can’t do anything else. The only question is, where can we cast the spell?”

  “Canals,” Roz suggested. “Or waterways or fountains.”

  “Fountains with lots of spouts,” Sally said.

  “How about a place not in the middle of a town?” Ji thought for a second. “Who can we talk to about the rivers? Someone who’ll tell us where the current is strong or strange or—” He stopped. “Fisherfolk.”

  “Ask fisherfolk about the currents?” Roz nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

  Sally plucked a twig from her arm. “Not as good as the hidden-moon thing, though, right?”

  “Not nearly,” Ji assured her.

  “The next question is,” Roz said, “where do we find fisherfolk who won’t run away from us?”

  “Send in the human-faced boy,” Sally said.

  Ji ignored her. “We’ll follow the river to a fishing village. They’ll know about any weird currents or whirlpools.”

  “So that’s the plan,” Roz said. “First we find the river, then a fishing village.”

  “Then Ti-Lin-Su,” Ji said, “who’ll lead us to the Ice Witch.”

  “Who will break this spell and turn us human again,” Sally said. “And then I’ll stop getting mud in my tail.”

  “Oh, no!” Chibo cried.

  Ji’s heart clenched in fear. “Did you hear something? Knights? Demons?”

  “What? No! I just realized that seeing four moons wasn’t so lucky after all.”

  8

  THE WOODS GREW sparser as the hills became sloping fields and meadows. When dawn lightened the sky, Ji yawned hugely and they stopped to gorge on squishy avocados—and fell asleep.

  Roz shook them awake in a panic. She’d heard the tromp of soldiers in the distance. Still half asleep, Sally guided them into a chilly stream, trusting the water to hide their scent and lead them to the river.

  They slept in snatches the
next day, dreading the kumiho at sunset and the soldiers at dawn. Only two moons rose, though, and they didn’t hear soldiers again. The following evening, Ji took sentry duty while the others rested. Crickets chirped and mice rustled and three moons rose.

  Ji hugged his knees, daydreaming about pan-fried crickets and honey-glazed mouse until something tickled the back of his hand. When he looked down, he saw an ant lion standing there, with a yellow mane and a ferocious stinger. It was smaller than before, though, and a paler red: casting the spell had drained some of Nin’s ogreness.

  “Oh, no,” he groaned. “Nin?”

  The ant lion waved its antennae.

  Ji’s breath caught. “Are you there? Nin? Say something!”

  The ant lion climbed off his hand and wandered toward the colony. Ji crawled to the urn and watched three ant lions repair a fallen mound of dirt. A few more stood aimlessly on the leaves. What if the transformation was complete? What if Nin’s true self was gone and only mindless ant lions remained? Like the urn was a funeral urn, and Roz was just carrying Nin’s body around.

  Tears sprang to Ji’s eyes. He still remembered the last thing Nin had ever told him: Take care of everyone, stonefriend.

  “I’m trying,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t even take care of you.”

  The ant-lion colony didn’t answer.

  The next day, Ji and the others crested a hill and spotted farmland with wary llamas guarding herds of sheep. Beyond that, the stream widened into a river. A village sprawled across both banks. Dozens of houses stood on stilts and a wooden bridge with fluttering banners arched across the river.

  “A village!” Sally said.

  Ji smiled. “Fisherfolk.”

  “Don’t see any hiding places.”

  “No trees?” Chibo asked.

  “No trees,” Sally told him.

  Chibo sighed. “No good.”

  “No problem,” Ji said.

  “No complete sentences?” Roz raised the hood of her cloak. “Though we are beasts at the moment, we needn’t speak like animals. I hope that we break this spell before we’re reduced to grunts and snorts.”

  Sally grunted.

  Ji snorted.

  Chibo giggled.

  “Shall we continue?” Roz asked, a hint of humor in her gruff voice. “Or wait until nightfall?”