Beast & Crown #2

by Joel Ross

  “Oh, my!” Roz gasped. “Look!”

  Ji turned. “Whoa.”

  “Yrr,” Sally growled.

  “Wow,” Chibo said. “Even I can see the wow.”

  Far below them, the gorgeous blue lake and hills of purple clover spread at the foot of the mountain. Far, far below them. The petrified forest looked small and almost pretty, and past the foothills the Clay Plain extended into the distance.

  Sniffsmells like ogrehome! Nin said. We’re here!

  “My . . . my hands,” Roz said. Then her voice sharpened. “Sally! Are you hurt?”

  For a terrible moment, Ji didn’t recognize Sally. She’d condensed and widened and . . . twisted. She stood on all fours, her rear legs crooked like a wolf’s and her muzzle long and predatory.

  “I’m okay.” She rose unsteadily to her hind feet like a bear. “What’s wrong with your hands?”

  “Two fingers. I only have two fingers on each hand.” Roz took an unhappy breath. “I think I will soon have hooves.”

  “Did I change?” Chibo piped. “I don’t feel different.”

  Roz touched his shoulder gently. “Your eyes are bigger and . . .”

  “You’re shorter,” Ji told him. “A lot shorter.”

  “Check your legs,” Sally said.

  Chibo lifted his pants to reveal a pair of tiny, shrunken legs. “They’re disappearing. They’re just disappearing.” He whimpered and looked at Roz. “Do real sprites even have legs?”

  “They don’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Chibo gave a tremulous smile. “I guess we don’t need them. We fly and, and . . .”

  “And I suspect that sprites are the natural enemy of the kumiho,” Roz offered, trying to cheer him up.

  “The natural enemy?” he asked, his oversized eyes widening.

  “Think back,” Roz told him. “The kumiho cowered every time they saw your wings. Remember outside the goblin pen at Turtlewillow? They stayed away until you fainted.”

  “I guess,” Chibo said, wrinkling his nose. “But they’ve got fangs and venom, and sprites don’t have anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ji said. “Because the Ice Witch is going to break the spell.”

  When Roz looked toward him, she pressed her hand to her chest in surprise. Chibo gasped, his huge eyes widening, and Sally shambled closer.

  She peered at him. “Your face is totally scaly now.”

  “I figured.” Ji raised his hand halfway to his forehead. “The lumps are horns?”

  “Antlers.”

  “Antlers?”

  She nodded. “Tiny ones.”

  “Great, now I’m a reindeer.” He tried to ignore the disgust twisting in his stomach. “Where’s Mount Atra?”

  “Farther in the mountain range.” Roz looked toward the snowy peak that touched the clouds. “We’re already halfway there.”

  “Where are all the ogres?” Sally asked, shaking to dry her fur.

  “Hey!” Chibo said as droplets of water flew at him.

  We don’t call her Mount Atra, Nin said. We call her Dkeruckgctut.

  Ji eyed the ant lions. “Ducker yucky cut?”

  “Ignore Sillyji,” Roz told Nin. “Does that mean something in Humanish?”

  Of verycourse! It means “The Winter Stone We Don’t Talk About, Where the Coldsnow Never Melts No Matter How the Sun Shines, the White-Capped Topmountain Loomrising above the Old Mines Deep in the Ogrelands, the Site of a Terribattle When the Evilhumans Invaded after the—”

  “Okay, okay!” Ji said, turning away. “We get the idea.”

  “Winter stone?” Sally stroked her whiskers. “That’s kind of like the Winter Snake.”

  Ji was about to answer when he noticed tiny shapes gathering along the shore of the lake that bordered the Gravewoods far below them. Metal glinted in the sun and banners flapped in the wind.

  “Look,” he said. “The Summer Army.”

  Lady Mer-Lin-Su saved us! Nin said, and a few ant lions on the tip of Roz’s horn shook their manes.

  “Unless they ride a seaweed ball,” Sally growled, “they’re a full day behind us now.”

  “And the goblins . . .” Roz squinted at the ground. “Hmm. The goblins tunneled beneath the Gravewoods. They’re taking a shortcut through the mountain.”

  Shortcut? Nin said. That’s a funny word.

  “C’mon,” Ji said, kneeling in front of Chibo. “We’ve got a long walk to an icy witch.”

  “I hope she’s nice,” Chibo said, climbing onto his back.

  “With a name like ‘the Ice Witch’? Of course she’s nice.”

  “Yeah.” Sally loped on all fours toward the mountainside trail. “It’s not like she’s called anything scary.”

  The trail wound through a field of crooked shrubs. Despite the distant snowy peak of Mount Atra, the wind felt warm. Ji gave Chibo’s skinny legs a reassuring squeeze as he followed Sally.

  “I’ve long wondered what was icy about the Ice Witch,” Roz said.

  “What’s the story with her?” Chibo asked.

  “The myth says that she traveled the realm after the first Summer Queen died. She treated the sick with potions and ointments.”

  “That’s non-icy of her,” Chibo said. “I wonder if she healed eyesight.”

  Roz glanced at Chibo. “Perhaps.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chibo said.

  Sally grunted, then headed onto a zigzagging path that led deeper into the mountains.

  “The Ice Witch didn’t just heal people, though,” Roz continued. “She also talked to them. About the wars, about the ogres and goblins, the bugbears and sprites and hobgoblins.”

  Did she talk about ant lions?

  “I don’t think she knew about them,” Roz said. “She hated the nonhumans for starting the war, but she also hated the humans for what they did once they won it.”

  “So she hated everyone?” Sally asked, leading them onto a path that clung to a steep mountainside. “Sounds like Ji.”

  “I don’t hate everyone! I don’t hate anyone.” Ji glanced at the sharp drop-off six inches from his left foot. “Except heights.”

  He gripped Chibo tighter and tried not to look down as he shuffled along the ledge. Sally trotted fearlessly ahead, but Ji scraped his shoulder against the cliff face. Roz edged sideways along the path, testing every step before she shifted her weight.

  She didn’t sound nervous when she spoke, though. “The myth says that the Ice Witch traveled the realm for years before she came across a group of captured ogres and starving goblins. She freed them and fed them.”

  “That’s nice for an icy witch,” Chibo piped.

  “I would agree,” Roz said, “except that she killed an entire battalion of guards in the process.”

  “Oh. I bet the queen didn’t like that.”

  “The queen drove her from the realm,” Roz said, “and locked her in a magical prison.”

  None of them spoke for a while, too focused on not plunging to their death. Finally, the path broadened again, and it ushered them into a wooded highland beneath the white spire of Mount Atra.

  “That’s the whole myth?” Ji asked.

  “There’s not much to it,” Sally said.

  Roz brushed aside a low-hanging branch. “You can see why Lady Ti-Lin-Su wasn’t convinced it was true.”

  “So the witch is like a thousand years old?” Ji asked. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Perhaps there have been many Ice Witches,” Roz suggested. “Perhaps it’s a title, like ‘Summer Queen.’”

  When Sally led them from the woods, the midday sun glowed on a mountainside scene that took Ji’s breath away. Ornate shrubs covered overgrown terraces, and brilliant wildflowers splashed color across the slopes, while tumbling waterfalls glinted merrily in the light.

  “Lovely!” Roz said.

  “What?” Chibo asked.

  “There are ledges in the mountainside,” Sally told him. “And they’re covered in flowers.”r />
  Ridges, not ledges, Nin said. Like bull aardvarks in human cities—

  “Boulevards,” Roz rumbled.

  —with shops and homes and houses and stalls. This is an ogretown.

  Ji took a deep breath of the sweetest air he’d ever smelled. Streams trickled along elaborate channels on the mountainside, collecting in fountains outside cave entrances. Overgrown bushes and vines spilled from higher to lower ridges. Yet other than the waterfalls, nothing moved but a flock of birds and two goats watching with cautious yellow eyes.

  “Where is everyone?” Ji asked.

  Most of the ogretowns are empty, Nin said, a hint of grief in cub’s mind-speak. Once there were a hundred towns, the shamoons say. But now? Only three, and all are shrinkfailing.

  “What happened?” Roz asked.

  The first evilqueen turned the hillfoots into the Gravewoods, and we started withering like a waterless tree.

  “So after the Summer Queen created the Gravewoods, the whole ogre nation started shrinking?”

  Greedy, greedy ogres! Nin said angrily.

  “It’s not your fault,” Chibo said.

  We started the war. And then . . . the shamoons helped the evilqueen’s spell.

  Chibo’s wings flared in surprise. “No way!”

  Very way, Nin told Chibo. This is why we are so full of shame. Our shamoon wanted to build a magic fence to keep humans out of our lands.

  “They thought the Gravewoods would protect the Ogrelands?” Ji asked.

  A few ant lions nodded. So they helped the Summer Queen.

  “Yeah, but—” Sally frowned. “Only because they were trying to protect their kids.”

  A wall is also a prison. It makes you smaller, weaker, brittle. Little cubs cannot grow into mighty ogres if they do not travel and learn.

  “You mean cubs need to travel?” Sally asked. “Before they grow up they need to leave the Ogrelands?”

  The Gravewoods stunts us. It chokes our land and starves our spirits.

  The grief of Nin’s mind-speak seemed to thicken the air. Sally dropped to all fours and trotted along an overgrown ramp to the lowest ridge. Ji followed, squeezing between trellises of snap peas tumbling over patches of flowers and herbs.

  Sally bounded onto a leafy slab. “So there aren’t enough ogres to fill the towns anymore?”

  We’ll be the last. The cubs my age. The last of the ogres.

  “What does the Gravewoods have to do with that?”

  We told you this! That’s what keeps the ogres weak and withering. Our hillfoots turned to stone, our cubs trapped.

  “The Gravewoods only traps cubs?” Ji asked. “Not grown-up ogres?”

  We spoketold you this!

  “You never said anything about ogres withering.”

  Roz shot Ji a quelling look. “Tell us again, please?”

  We spoketold you. Cubs can’t wanderstroll past the Gravewoods. Young ogres are trapped in the Ogrelands.

  “That’s not right,” Ji said. “You crossed the Gravewoods when you went to Summer City. That’s where we met you.”

  We got longlucky. Sorrow tinged Nin’s mind-speak. The other cubs who tried . . . didn’t.

  “Oh,” Ji said, swallowing. “I’m sorry.”

  Most cubs turn to stone faster even than humans—or half humans. And cubs cannot become ogres without leaving the hillfoots. Without finishing a cubwalk, we do not become adults.

  “Cubs need to travel outside the Ogrelands before becoming adults?” Roz rumbled softly. “That’s called a ‘cubwalk’?”

  A cubwalk, yes. A passagerite.

  Roz frowned, her eyes shiny with tears. “But most cubs can’t leave the Ogrelands now. Instead, they turn to stone.”

  The Gravewoods stops the cubwalk. The ant lions on her shoulder nodded sadly. And we wither away. This evilmagic makes every generation smaller than the one before. Soon the last ogre will die.

  22

  THE PATH MEANDERED from ramp to ramp, leading closer to Mount Atra. Honeybees buzzed on hillsides covered with bright flowers and fruit trees. Ji grabbed a papaya, while Chibo used his wings to find kumquats and plucked them by the handful. Roz pulled sweetbeets from vegetable patches, then ate them with loud crunching and rumbled apologies.

  Juice dripped down Ji’s chin as he followed Sally to the top of the ogre town, where a cobbled plaza spread between rock gardens.

  “How come the snow doesn’t melt?” Ji asked, gazing at the brilliant white peak of Mount Atra.

  Dkeruckgctut, Nin explained.

  “Oh, right.”

  The ogretowns are empty now. Tombstones. Marking the slowdeath of the ogres.

  Lowering his gaze, Ji counted four empty hilltop plazas between them and Mount Atra. Each one beautiful, and each of them abandoned.

  “We’ll fix this,” he heard himself promise.

  “How?” Roz rumbled.

  “The humans, they—” Sally stopped. “We. We won the war. Good for us. Victory is sweet, but this isn’t honor. Choking the ogres to death over centuries isn’t justice.”

  The evilqueen stole the humansparks, too, Nin said. Your little magics of small things.

  “I’m not sure ‘stole’ is correct,” Roz rumbled. “She needed to protect her people.”

  “That’s what everyone says when they want power,” Ji said over the thrum of anger in his mind.

  How can we healfix this, Sneakyji? There is no way without defeating the evilqueen.

  “Then we’ll defeat her. I’m tired of running. I’m tired of losing. I’m tired of being hungry and afraid. The queen’s hurt us enough. She’s hurt everyone enough. The ogres, the goblins, the servants—even the blue-bats. We’re going to stop her, whatever it takes.”

  Roz touched Ji’s arm gently. “Perhaps not ‘whatever’ it takes.”

  “I’ll do anything,” he told her. “I’ll do anything to set this right.”

  “If there’s nothing you won’t do, then what are you?” Roz asked, echoing a question he’d once posed to the Summer Queen.

  “A monster,” he said. “But that’s what I am.”

  “That’s not what you are.”

  “It’s not what you are!” Ji snapped. “I don’t care what you look like, Roz! You think a horn and hooves make you a monster? You think wings or fangs make you a monster? No. Only your heart makes you a monster.” Ji thumped his chest. “I’m the only monster here, and I will not throw pinecones, Roz. I won’t throw pinecones. I’ll tear this realm apart if I can. I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done.”

  When the air chilled, Ji grabbed carpets from a long-abandoned ogre home and fashioned them into ponchos. Wordless sadness trickled from Nin as they wandered through more empty villages and onto the snow-dusted slopes of Mount Atra.

  Sally cocked her head. “Sounds like the human army’s already at the first village. They’re moving pretty fast.”

  With Brace gaining on them, Ji refused to stop even after the sun set and the night turned frosty. A biting wind rose, and weird shadows lengthened across the snowy landscape. Nin’s ant lions clustered together inside the earth-filled pack, while Chibo’s teeth started chattering.

  Ji tucked Chibo’s poncho tighter around his sprite-y shoulders. “There.”

  “Th-thanks.” Chibo peered at the sky. “H-how many moons is that?”

  “Two.”

  “At l-least we d-don’t have to worry about k-kumiho.”

  “There’s another moon rising behind the mountains,” Sally growled, her fur ruffling in the wind. “I can see the sky lightening.”

  Sky lightning! A cluster of ant lions emerged from Roz’s pack. Where?

  “Not ‘sky lightning,’” Sally told them. “Sky lightening.”

  Sky lightning?

  “Sky lightennning! Getting less dark—” She paused. “I think I hear ogres.”

  “Ogres?” Roz rumbled. “Where?”

  “Far away. Noise carries weirdly in the mountains.”

  Roz peered
westward. “Is it the war party?”

  “I don’t know.” Sally frowned.

  We can’t tell, Nin said.

  “The goblins are closer too,” Roz said. “Still tunneling.”

  Ji kicked a frost-covered weed. “I’m sick of all these frothing armies!”

  “Maybe the goblins are attacking Brace,” Chibo said.

  The ant lions retreated into the pack as Roz frowned. “They aren’t heading for him. They’re heading for us.”

  “Great,” Ji said. “We’ll have to hike through the night.”

  “Chibo can’t go on like this,” Roz said.

  “I’ll carry him,” Ji said.

  “And what happens when you can’t go on?”

  “You’ll carry me,” Ji told her.

  Mindless hours slogged past. The trees gave way to shrubs. The snow deepened until Ji’s ankles disappeared at every step. He stayed warm, though, and a familiar tugging in his heart told him why: there were gems nearby, or precious metals. Not close enough for him to absorb fire, but a distant treasure hoard still warmed his blood.

  Finally, Roz led them into a hollow beneath a shrub, which offered a little protection from the wind.

  “Can you feel the Ice Witch?” Ji asked Roz. “With your troll-y awareness?”

  She shook her head. “The mountain is mostly snow and ice. I can’t feel much.”

  “Neither can my legs,” Chibo said, his shoulders slumped. “If we cast one more spell, I’ll have six wings and no feet.”

  “We’re really beasts now,” Sally growled. “Look at me. Look at Ji.”

  “Don’t look at me!” he said.

  “Antlers are kind of hard to ignore,” Chibo said.

  “Look who’s talking, bug-eyes.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Chibo said. “Well, well . . . you have scales!”

  “Between Ji’s antlers and Roz’s hooves,” Sally said, “we’ve almost got a whole moose.”

  Chibo giggled and Sally stretched out, showing off the thick pelt beneath her tattered shirt. Ji skooched next to her yummy fuzziness. Then Chibo hugged her and Roz cuddled closer. Ant lions burrowed into her fur and Nin murmured warmfurry toastycuddle until sleep came.

  Glimpses of treasure chased Ji’s dreams. Gold coins turned to sand at his touch; rubies watched him through slitted pupils. Diamonds danced at the edge of his imagination, shimmering with the colors of the rainbow.