Beast & Crown #2

by Joel Ross

  “I don’t know.” Ji squinted toward the river. “We’ve been lucky with the moons so far, but if a fourth one rises tonight . . .”

  Roz frowned. “We can’t simply stroll into the village in the daylight.”

  “I can,” Ji said. “If I raise my hood and keep my sleeves down.”

  “I’m not letting you go alone,” Roz told him.

  “That’s stupid. If they see us, they’ll send for the knights.”

  A rare stubborn glint showed in Roz’s eyes. “Not after what you did with that kumiho, Jiyong. We need to stay together.”

  “Fine. I’ll sneak ahead and snag a cart. You can hide in back, and I’ll drive.”

  “Snag?” Sally flicked her tail. “You mean ‘steal’—and you don’t know how to drive a cart. And you’re afraid of horses.”

  “I’m not afraid of them! They just scare me.”

  Sally’s tufted ears pricked with amusement.

  “Won’t someone notice if you steal a cart?” Chibo asked.

  “Not if I’m sneaky enough.” Ji’s shoulders slumped. “But Sally’s right: I can’t drive a cart.”

  “We’ll sneak closer together,” Sally said. “Then we’ll hide while you ask the fisherfolk, um . . . I don’t know. How do you ask about a complex current?”

  Ji widened his eyes and pretended to speak to a villager: “‘My brother said he’d meet me somewhere, but I forget what it’s called. You know, that place where the water current is all doolally? Where is that?’”

  “You’re a trifle too good at lying,” Roz rumbled.

  Ji flashed a grin. “It’ll work, though.”

  Keeping low, they crept to the river. The cool air smelled of mud, and voices rose on the breeze, along with the distant sound of an ax chopping wood. Climbing to a shrubby rise, Ji looked toward the village. A steady flow of people crossed the bridge, and wooden boats drifted in the river. A single fisherman or fisherwoman stood in each boat, gently poling against the current, while a flock of sleek black birds swam and dove around them.

  “Weird boats,” Ji said.

  “Weird how?” Chibo asked.

  “Each one has these crooked posts sticking out. Like the legs of an upside-down cockroach.”

  “Those are perches for the birds,” Roz rumbled. “The fisherfolk train the birds to catch fish. They take the bigger fish and reward the birds with the smaller ones.”

  “Sounds like nobles,” Ji said.

  “There!” Sally pointed downriver toward a clump of bushes. “That’s the perfect hiding spot.”

  “Perfect,” Ji agreed.

  The mud oozed around Ji’s ankles and made horrible squelching sounds every time he took a step. Roz sank in even deeper and made noises even more disgusting. Ji almost teased her, but she looked so mortified that he kept his mouth shut. And when they reached the hiding place, it was perfect.

  So perfect that it was already occupied.

  A mud-splattered kid of five or six crouched behind the bushes, chewing on a pickled eel.

  Sally froze.

  Roz froze.

  The kid spun toward them and cried, “It wasn’t me!”

  “Of course not,” Ji said soothingly, stepping in front of the others. “We won’t tell—”

  The kid didn’t listen. She—or he—scrambled from the bushes and churned through the mud of the bank toward the village bridge.

  “Wait!” Chibo trilled.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Roz rumbled.

  “We’re friends!” Sally growled.

  The kid squeaked in fear and veered to one side, directly into a deeper patch of muck. With a panicked yelp, he—or she—sank to the waist in the mud.

  “Mommy!” the kid wailed, still sinking. “Help! Help, I’m stuck!”

  On the bridge, a few villagers turned toward the screams. A skinny woman dropped her basket. Even from a hundred yards away, Ji saw the horror on her face. As the closest fisherfolk started poling toward the struggling kid, the skinny woman leaped off the bridge and landed with a splash in the river.

  “They’re too far,” Roz said. “They won’t reach her in time.”

  “I’ll get her,” Sally growled.

  “I’ll go!” Ji grabbed her arm. “You stay out of sight!”

  “Help!” the kid screamed.

  “Dorinda!” the skinny woman shouted, splashing slowly closer. “Hold on!”

  The mud sucked at Ji’s feet as he raced toward the kid; it clung to his pants and splashing his cloak. He lunged forward, his legs aching and lungs heaving. He grabbed the kid’s wrist and yanked. She rose an inch and he sank two. An instant later she dropped even deeper—first to her chest, then to her shoulders.

  “Pull, pull!” the skinny woman screamed at him, as villagers gathered on the bridge. “Dorinda!”

  Ji tugged with all his might . . . and couldn’t free the girl. “I can’t!”

  “That’s my daughter!”

  “Grab the pole!” Roz roared from behind Ji. “Get ready!”

  She stood on the bank, her hands cupped in front of her . . . with Sally balanced on her interlaced fingers. Roz heaved, and Sally hurtled through the air, somersaulted twice, and landed in the closest fishing boat. The black birds squawked in alarm as Sally grabbed the fisherman’s pole and thrust it like a lance toward Ji.

  “I can’t reach!” Ji bellowed as the mud reached the kid’s chin.

  A flash of green light swept from the sky. Chibo grabbed the pole and carried it across the water. Ji desperately snagged the wet end of the pole with the claws of one hand while his other hand gripped the sinking kid.

  Still holding the pole, Chibo zoomed in a circle to Roz. She grabbed the dry end of the pole, braced herself, and tugged. With one hand on the pole and one hand on the trapped girl, Ji felt his arms stretch to the point of snapping. He clenched his fists, whimpering in pain . . . and with a great splotching sound, the girl squelched free.

  Ji toppled backward. The girl scrambled across his chest, trailing muck across his face. She crawled to the weedy bank, and Roz dragged Ji after her.

  “Are you okay?” Ji asked, finally releasing the pole.

  The girl took a deep breath. “Monster! Monster!”

  “No, no!” Ji yelped, putting his hood up. “It’s just mud, it’s just—”

  “Snake-monster!” the girl screamed, scrambling away.

  “Get away from her!” the skinny woman yelled at Ji. “Get away!”

  “We saved her life!” Ji said.

  “Don’t touch her!” the woman screamed. “Don’t you touch her!”

  “If I hadn’t touched her, she’d be dead!”

  “Monsters!” the fisherman shouted, standing in his boat. “Ogres!”

  The skinny woman wrapped the crying girl in her arms. “Shh, you’re safe, you’re safe now.”

  Children wept and shrieked on the bridge; adults brandished axes and paddles and screamed, “Call the guard! Monsters! They tried to eat Dorinda!”

  “We did not!” Sally bounded to the riverbank. “We’re not even hungry!”

  “We have avocados!” Chibo fluted.

  For some reason, that didn’t calm the mob. “Kill them! Kill the beasts!” The villagers swarmed toward a riverside path, weapons in their hands and hate in their eyes. “Kill the beasts!”

  “Spread your wings, Chibo!” Ji shouted, raising his arms until his sleeves fell to his shoulders. His scales glinted, thicker and darker than a week earlier. “Roz, roar! Sally . . . hobgoblin!” He stepped toward the villagers. “Stop! Stop right there!”

  “Roar?” Roz suggested.

  “Rozario!” Ji hissed. “Louder!”

  She snapped the pole in half and gave a half-hearted “Roar!”

  The villagers didn’t even slow. They surged forward. Rocks and sticks whipped at Ji . . . until Sally, almost as scary as a kumiho, yowled behind him. The villagers seemed to hit an invisible wall. Fear sprang into a dozen pairs of eyes, and callused fingers tightened on oars
and scythes.

  “We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Ji told them.

  “You tried to eat Dorinda,” a long-haired villager muttered.

  “We don’t eat people,” Chibo said.

  “You jumped out at her,” the villager said. “You trapped her in the quickmud.”

  The rest of the mob muttered, and the fear in their eyes tightened toward anger. Ji knew that look. He knew you couldn’t reason with anger and fear.

  “Yeah, but you—you chased us off!” Ji told the mob, backing slowly away. “We’re running away. Heroes, that’s what you are.”

  A few villagers paused to consider. “Heroes?”

  “That’s right,” Ji said. “We’re running away now, and you’ll never see us again.”

  “All we wanted was to find a fountain,” Sally said.

  “Get out of here!” the long-haired villager snarled. “Filthy monsters.”

  “Beasts! Ogres!” other villagers shouted. “Animals!”

  “There’s no fountain hereabouts,” the skinny woman murmured, rocking her muddy daughter in her arms. “But there’s the water clock at the manor. Follow the north branch of the river. Now get out—your kind isn’t wanted here.”

  9

  THE JEERS AND taunts of the villagers chased them into the woods. When the shouts faded, Roz bandaged Chibo’s bald head where a rock had cut him. Nobody talked much; they were all still reeling from the hate in the villagers’ eyes. They weren’t human anymore. They weren’t welcome in the human world.

  At least not until they broke this spell.

  “Okay,” Ji said, scraping mud from his cloak. “We need Ti-Lin-Su to find the Ice Witch—”

  “And now we know how to find her.” Roz smoothed her tattered dress. “We’ll cast the spell at this water clock.”

  “What’s a water clock?” Chibo asked.

  “A sort of watery clock,” Ji explained.

  Roz huffed. “A water clock measures time using the flow of water through various bowls and channels and casks. Gears and wheels direct the current into marked containers, where each mark represents a different interval of time.”

  “Like I said,” Ji told Chibo. “A watery clock.”

  “Well . . . yes.” Roz paused and looked northward. “I expect we’re heading for Turtlewillow Manor.”

  Sally looked at her. “There’s a manor called Turtlewillow?”

  “It’s known for its collection of clocks.” Roz started through the woods. “I had no idea that we were so close.”

  “So this clock’s on an estate?” Sally asked.

  “Yes. Generations of barons and baronesses have installed clocks on Turtlewillow property.”

  “Nobles are weird,” Chibo said.

  “I’ve heard the water clock is remarkable,” Roz told him. “If the spell works anywhere, it will work there.”

  Ji scratched the scales on his shoulder and plodded northward. If the spell works anywhere. What if Ti-Lin-Su didn’t know where to find the Ice Witch? What if the Ice Witch refused to break the spell? What if they were already too late?

  That evening, they ate the last of the avocados as they hiked across muddy pastures, following the river by the light of three moons. Ji scanned the horizon fearfully until one of the moons dipped behind the trees. With only two moons in the night sky, they finally slept.

  “We’re getting close to an estate,” Sally said, the next afternoon. “I smell stables.”

  “How about knights?” Ji asked.

  Sally’s nostrils flared. “I don’t think so. Not close, anyway.”

  “Not close is good,” Chibo said.

  “We need to cross the river,” Sally said. “The manor’s on the other side.”

  She found a shallow spot where flat rocks lined one bank. Roz dropped crushed snails into the urn for Nin’s ant lions to eat. Chibo spread his wings and drifted over the river, his toes trailing in the current. Sally unfastened the belt cinching her oversized shirt around her waist, then groomed her tail on a shaded rock.

  Ji rinsed his face and cloak, watching the homey scene. “After we convince the Ice Witch to break the spell, we’ll live like this all the time.”

  “Splashing in a quiet river?” Chibo asked.

  “With nobody chasing us.”

  “If only the witch wasn’t so hard to find,” Ji said.

  Sally tugged at a tangle in her tail. “Yeah, why couldn’t she be like the footmen back at Primstone Manor?”

  Ji scrubbed his hair with his dragon-y fingernails and remembered the manor. He’d spent most of his time cleaning boots and scraping pots and pans, but there’d been good moments, too. He’d hung around with Sally and listened to Roz read stories. He’d plotted to rescue Chibo and even played strategy games with Brace, despite being forbidden to make friends with a noble. Of course, he’d also bowed his head to Posey and Nichol. Still, while they’d bullied Brace, the twins had mostly ignored the servants—as long as the servants never made them wait.

  “Imagine that,” Chibo fluted. “Just ring a bell and the Ice Witch comes running.”

  “If only it were that easy,” Roz rumbled, her eyes daydream-y. “If only we could just say the word and she’d come fix everything.”

  Sally gazed into the distance and Chibo heaved a sigh. Ji wrung water from his cloak and enjoyed the fantasy: Blink your eyes and find yourself standing in front of the Ice Witch. Blink them again, and she’d break the Diadem Rite spell and return everything to normal.

  Then Sally pointed at a lizard basking on the rocks. “Hey, Ji! That looks like you.”

  “At least I’m not a doorbell,” he said.

  “I’m not adorable!”

  “Only on the outside. On the inside you’re scary.”

  “Um,” Roz said from farther across the river. “Erm.”

  “On the inside,” Sally told Ji, “you’re scaly.”

  “Pardon me?” Roz rumbled. “Help!”

  When Ji looked at her, horror clamped his chest.

  A green eel had climbed Roz’s legs and wrapped around her waist. Rising sinuously from the water, it was as thick as Ji’s wrist. Lumps dotted the creature’s skin, and smaller eels sprouted from its body and clung to Roz’s backpack and elbow and Nin’s urn.

  Ji shouted and lunged toward her. The rocky riverbed tripped him, and he splashed face-first into the water. He thrashed closer, terrified and urgent—and Sally slammed onto his back, between his shoulders. Her weight dunked his head underwater; then she launched herself off him, leaping to help Roz. Ji swallowed a mouthful of muddy water. His hands shoved at the riverbed and he rose, gasping . . . just in time to see Sally tearing the eels away from Roz.

  Not eels. Vines were uncoiling from the stream. Seaweed-y vines covered with lumps that sprouted into spikes and tendrils.

  Roz couldn’t use her hands to free herself because she needed to keep Nin’s urn above the water. Instead, she started climbing the opposite bank, straining to get away. A few strands of seaweed snapped, but others wrapped tightly around her legs.

  Chibo shouted, “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” while Sally tore at the vines with her hands and ripped at them with her teeth.

  “Get away from the river!” Ji barked at Chibo. “Hover above—not too high. Don’t—”

  He lost track of what he was saying when he reached Roz. He splashed onto his butt in the shallow water and slashed at her legs with his scaly feet. His claws cut through a slimy vine that Sally had loosened, and Roz burst free.

  The seaweed fell away, retracted into the churning, muddy water, and vanished.

  Roz stomped up the bank with Sally, and Ji scrambled after her, gasping and dripping. Chibo landed beside them, babbling questions, while Roz flopped to the grass in a sprawl of half-troll limbs.

  “Are you okay?” Sally asked her. “Are you hurt?”

  “What was that?” Chibo demanded.

  “I’m f-fine,” Roz said. “Only f-frightened.”

  “Was it a kumih
o?” Chibo asked. “They can’t come out in daylight!”

  “Seaweed rose from the stream,” Ji told him.

  “And tried to strangle Roz,” Sally growled. “I thought the queen was weak. She’s supposed to be weak.”

  “That’s what the ogres said,” Ji told her as he crouched beside Roz. The whole reason Nin had snuck into the city was to wait for the Summer Queen to cast the Diadem Rite. The ogres believed that casting the rite would weaken the queen—and that was when they’d planned to attack, to sneak through goblin tunnels and overthrow the crown.

  “If she’s weak, how did she send killer seaweed?” Sally asked.

  “I guess she’s getting stronger,” Ji said. “She’s probably been tracking us since we cast the spell.”

  “And we’re about to cast it again,” Sally said.

  “Yeah, but this time we’ll do it right,” he said, trying to sound confident. “This time we’ll find Ti-Lin-Su. Right, Roz?”

  “I don’t know.” Roz’s shoulders started shaking beneath her cloak. “I—I’ve never read about anything l-like this.”

  Sally cocked her head. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Of course. My skin is thick. Too thick.” Roz started to weep. “L-like a rhino’s. I . . . I cannot take it anymore! My skin, my horn. D-did you see how those villagers looked at me? I can’t bear it any longer.”

  All of Roz’s dismay and dread—all her disgust at her transformation—came out in a rush of tears and words. She hated what Brace and the Summer Queen had done to her. She hated what she’d become.

  As Chibo and Sally comforted Roz, a knot of anger formed in Ji’s heart. He made a silent vow. He wasn’t as smart as Roz, he wasn’t as tough as Sally, he wasn’t as curious as Chibo . . . but he was meaner than any of them. And he’d make the queen pay for hurting Roz. He’d make Brace pay. He’d make everyone pay.

  When a cloud drifted in front of the sun, Ji forced himself to unclench his fists and scan the pastureland for threats. He didn’t see any. He didn’t see anything except a far-off tower rising above the hills.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Sally narrowed her eyes. “A clock tower.”

  “Turtlewillow?” he asked Roz.