Beast & Crown #2
Page 22
“I’m sorry,” Ji said, in a choked voice. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“I’m not,” Roz said.
“You know we’re about to die, right?” Sally growled at her.
We’re too cub to die! Nin cried.
Chibo sniffled. “We’re too sprite to die.”
“I’m scared of dying,” Roz rumbled, her voice strong. “I’m scared, and I’m sad that I’ll never see Sally become the knight she already is, or watch Chibo light up the sky without even using his sprite wings. I’ve dreamed of meeting the glorious ogre Nin would’ve become.” She fell silent for a heartbeat. “But no, I’m not sorry. These last weeks have meant everything to me. They’ve been so difficult, and such a precious gift.”
Tears sprang to Ji’s eyes. “I’m still sorry.”
“So am I,” Brace said from beneath them. “But you lost, Ji, and now you pay the price.”
“There’s a price to winning, too,” Ji told him.
Brace frowned in confusion—then his diadem glowed and the water tree heaved.
The trunk uncoiled like a scorpion’s tail. Smooth limbs whipped across the hall and pierced Roz, Sally, Chibo, and the entire ant-lion colony. The final branch stabbed Ji’s chest, and a terrible wave swept him away.
31
WHEN JI OPENED his mouth to scream, water filled his lungs. Lights shone above him: a sun and a moon. Despite his terror, he couldn’t swim toward the air, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. The wave suffocated him and a current surged from inside his chest toward the lights.
No, not a current. His self. His self flowed toward the lights—toward the Summer Queen and Prince Brace. To join them, to feed them, to strengthen them. And he wasn’t the only one: he felt Roz and the others nearby, fading like ripples in a pond.
When his mind touched them, he understood two things:
First, they’d shrivel into corpses in a few seconds.
And second, he knew how this worked. After using his dragonpower to pierce Brace, he understood this magic.
His vision cleared. The ruined hall blurred into sight around the water tree, which shuddered as its glossy branches stole their souls. Ji felt himself weaken. His spirit flowed from his chest . . . and he resisted. He threw every ounce of his strength into reversing the flow, into reclaiming his self.
A surge of power answered from the Summer Queen and Brace, and for a moment they played tug-of-war with Ji’s soul. He didn’t have power on his side, only terror. Yet for two beats of his dying heart, it was enough.
Then the queen and Brace drew upon the full might of the crown. The current tugged at Ji’s chest, powerful enough to uproot his deepest self. Too strong, too strong. Ji couldn’t stop them. They were too powerful to resist . . . so he stopped resisting.
He stopped pulling at his soul and instead he pushed. And as in a game of tug-of-war, the other team stumbled backward. The queen and Brace faltered—yet Ji kept pushing, forcing his innermost self from his chest.
Not toward the queen and Brace, though.
Instead, he poured his humanity into Roz and Chibo and Sally—and even Nin. Because “humanity” was the wrong word: Ji flooded his self into them.
Roz’s horn flattened and her skin smoothed. Sally’s tufted ears vanished into her mop of curly hair. Chibo’s hunchback shrank, and the ant-lion queen swelled into a red-skinned ogre cub. Currents rippled across the water tree, and Ji felt the magic seek Balance. Balance. As the others regained their original forms, Ji lost his completely. The ceiling lowered over his head. The water tree seemed to dwindle into a shrub and the Summer Queen into a doll—
Ji grew into a full-blooded dragon.
Shifting scales of opalescent armor covered his serpentine body; golden antlers branched from his forehead. His crimson eyes grew larger than cartwheels and his white teeth stretched longer than elephant tusks. A spiked ridge ran along his jagged spine and his scaled legs ended in four-toed paws with golden eagle talons.
His roar shattered the water tree.
32
THE SUMMER QUEEN slammed to the floor, her eyes wide with terror. The boy prince collapsed in a tangle of limbs and scrambled across the wreckage.
The dragon roared again and curled his snakelike spine. The sun and all four moons spun in his eyes. His plated chest heaved, and flames issued from his nostrils. He swiped with a paw the size of a horse to kill the queen and prince, his claws gleaming like scimitars, and—
A tiny girl in a ragged dress stood between him and his prey.
He paused midswipe.
The girl said a word he didn’t understand. She touched his razor claws with her soft, five-fingered hand and—
“Jiyong,” she repeated, and diamonds glittered on her cheeks.
“Rozario,” he said, his voice an earthquake. “You’re crying.”
“I thought we’d lost you. I felt us lose you.”
“You preciousgifted yourself to us.” Nin wrapped a red arm around Chibo’s trembling shoulders. “To heal us.”
Chibo peered at Ji. “And you broke the spell!”
When Sally marched toward Ji, her curly hair trembled in his breath. “Not for everyone. Not for himself.”
Ji’s crimson gaze considered Sally. So small and so fierce. “Sally,” he roared.
She gulped. “Yeah?”
He liked how her name echoed in the ruined hall. “Sally,” he rumbled again.
“We’ll fix this,” she told him, only trembling a little. “We’ll find a way to—”
A blast of white magic struck Ji’s chin, like the sting of a wasp. He swung his head toward the Summer Queen and Brace, who stood defiantly against a shattered column.
“Thou shalt never—” the Summer Queen started.
Ji closed his paw around her head to crush her skull and— No!
No, to take her crown with the razor tips of his foreclaws. To take the Summer Crown and feel a million lives, a million sparks of human magic, buzzing in the tiny golden circle. Light beamed from Ji’s antlers as he pulled the crown from the queen’s head. Ten thousand chains broke, ten thousand cell doors slammed open, and ten thousand collars crumbled into rust.
A swarm of golden sparks flew like lightning bugs in a summer field. One struck Roz, one struck Sally, one struck every human in the hall before the rest streamed through the mountain toward the realm.
“It’s our magic,” Roz breathed, her voice soft with awe. “The human magic of little things is retur—”
“My queen!” Brace cried, weeping over the fallen Summer Queen. “Don’t go, don’t leave us, we need you.”
Behind him, sheets of clay flaked from terra-cotta warrior statues. Humans and goblins, ogres and mermaids returned to their original forms. Ogres hugged, goblins chuffed, and humans shifted nervously.
“Ji’s still a dragon,” Sally said. “Roz! Why isn’t he turning back?”
“I’m sorry, Sally.” Roz lifted her smiling, tear-streaked face toward Ji. “He always had a dragon’s heart.”
“I’m not sorry,” Ji thundered, and he opened his mind to show them the truth: he’d never change back. He’d given away too much of his humanity. That had been the price he’d needed to pay.
“It’s not fair!” Sally clenched her fists. “It’s not fair.”
“Ji never believed in fairness,” Roz said. “He only believed in us.”
“I’m going to turn you back,” Sally told Ji. “I’m going to get rid of all—all this.” She showed him a brave, watery smile. “You know I always wanted to slay a dragon.”
When Ji laughed, the explosion of his breath sent Sally tumbling across the floor. She flipped onto her hands and leaped away, somersaulting in the air and landing on a cracked balcony.
“You still move like a hobgoblin!” Chibo said, a green glint shining in his brown eyes.
“Maybe I can still buttsting!” Nin said with a waggle of ogre bottom. No, my butt is stingless. Oh! Oh, oh! Do you hear that, Snakyji? I still mind-speak!
Into your mind! Speaking without noise into your mind like—
“My queen!” Brace sobbed as the Summer Queen crumbled into ash in his arms. “My queen!”
“She’s returning to her true form,” Ti-Lin-Su said. “After living for hundreds of years.”
Brace’s diadem turned to water that mixed with his tears as injured goblins marched past him, then knelt on wobbling knees.
“We bow to our new monar-ka!” Chiptooth said. “Wear the ka-rown and rule the realm.”
The ogres bowed low, horns and tusks dipping. The bullish ones knelt on front legs, touching their horns to the ground. Even the mermaids in the ice wall ducked their heads.
“A new monarch?” Chibo asked.
“Someone’s got to wear the crown,” Sally told him.
“Don’t you dare bow to Ji!” Roz said. “All he’s ever wanted is freedom! He won’t serve you as boot boy and he won’t serve you as king. Nobody loves Ji more than I do, nobody owes him more, but—”
“They’re not bowing to him, Missroz,” Nin said.
“What on earth are you—” She stopped when she realized what Nin meant. “Oh!”
“They’re bowing to you,” Nin continued.
“Goodness!” Roz said.
Ji unsheathed a claw and offered her the Summer Crown. “I wouldn’t trust this to anyone but you.”
“And me,” Sally said, wiping tears from her cheek. “He’d trust it to me.”
“You will rule wisely,” Ji told Roz. “You will rule well. We will bow our heads to wisdom and kindness for a change.”
Roz didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at the crown. She gazed into Ji’s crimson eyes, and he felt her looking beyond the dragon, looking at him. He remembered her saying, He is Jiyong. Nothing more and nothing less. He saw her the same way: Rozario Songarza. Nothing more and nothing less.
“Perhaps the problem isn’t power,” she said. “And perhaps the solution isn’t wisdom. Perhaps the problem is in the bowing of heads.”
“Perhaps,” Ji thundered.
“We don’t need a queen,” Roz said. “We simply need to start talking to one another—”
“Oh, boy,” Sally muttered.
“—and to keep talking even when we’d rather not.”
“You won’t wear the ka-rown?” Chiptooth asked.
“No.” Roz smiled gently, then looked at Ji. “In general I am against breaking things, but in this case, would you do me the favor . . . ?”
Ji closed his paw around the Summer Crown. So much fear and pain and loss swirled in that tiny circle of gold. And why? Because people were so afraid of pain and loss. When he opened his paw again, a swarm of blue-bats swirled from his palm—but the crown was gone.
“What have you done?” Brace demanded, his cheeks streaked with tears. “With nobody in charge, you’ve doomed the world to war.”
“Maybe war is the price of freedom,” Jiyong thundered. “Or maybe we can choose what price we pay.”
“With the crown gone,” Roz told Brace, “all the nations are free. Even ours.”
33
FROM THE AIR, Isalida Forest was a rich tapestry of autumn reds and yellows veined with ridges and roads. Jiyong swirled through the clouds toward the treetops, the wind whistling between his antlers.
“Faster!” Chibo cried from his back. “Faster, Jiyong!”
Missroz looks a little green, Nin warned.
“I’m quite fine,” Roz murmured.
“She looks pink to me,” Sally said. “What kind of person wears a dress on a dragon?”
“A special occasion requires my favorite dress,” Roz told her.
“It’s pretty, I guess,” Sally said dubiously. “Posey says it brings out your eyes.”
“Brings her eyes out where?” Nin asked in alarm.
Chibo wrinkled his nose at Sally. “I still can’t believe you and Posey are friends.”
“Yeah, that’s the unbelievable part,” Sally snorted. “We’re riding a dragon, Chibo.”
“At least Posey is good at leading the humans,” Chibo said.
“You really must stop saying ‘the humans,’ Roz told him, a hint of laughter in her voice. “It alarms the humans.”
“You’re all humans and huwomans!” Nin announced. Except Snakyji.
“He’s draconic,” Sally said, and Jiyong felt her soft hand stroke his armored spine.
He didn’t say anything. He rarely spoke these days. Sometimes Roz asked him to talk, just to check that he still could. He liked listening to her read stories as much as ever, though. He liked the music in her voice and the wonder in her eyes.
“He’s a symbol,” Roz said. “He represents something to the Council.”
The Council had been Roz’s idea, and because she was extremely clever and often escorted by a dragon, people tended to listen to her. The Council met in the Forbidden Palace, which only Chibo now called “the Welcome Palace.” Representatives of the human, goblin, and ogre realms—and Ti-Lin-Su and Roz—bickered about borders and trade and treaties. They didn’t agree about much, but everyone seemed happy with the arguing. Ji didn’t really understand why. He just opened one eye and peered at anyone who made Roz angry.
I peeksee the perfect spot! Nin said, dangling from one of Jiyong’s antlers. “Land there, that hilltop clearing!”
Jiyong slithered downward to hover above the grass, his mind echoing with silent laughter. Nobody else recognized the rocky hilltop clearing, but he knew that elegant lacebark tree and those prickly wasp pepper bushes: this was where they’d waited to rob the library coach after fleeing Summer City.
“Delicious,” he thundered.
Roz inhaled deeply. “The forest does smell lovely this time of year.”
“So what now?” Sally asked Nin.
“Now I kisshug you!” Nin lifted her into a bear hug. And we all happycry.
Sally squirmed. “Then what, you doolally ogre?”
“Then I wander for a moon or seven,” Nin said, setting her aside. “On my cubwalk. When I return, I will be an ogre.”
“Are you going to be a boy or a girl?” Chibo asked as Nin hefted him into the air.
The cubwalk will help me decide, Nin said. Now kisshug!
Chibo gave Nin a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll miss you.”
“Or you’ll ‘mister’ me. Depending.”
Roz laughed and cried and told Nin, “Come here, my sweetest cub.”
Finally a little happycrying, Nin said, spinning Roz in circles.
A breeze rustled through the forest, bringing the scent of tiny yellow flowers blossoming a mile away, and the sound of a goose scolding her goslings. Somewhere in the distance a goblin dug and an ogre climbed, and a human added a drop of magic to a fresh-baked pie.
Nin bounded onto Ji’s snout and said, Stonefriend.
Stonefriend, Ji answered.
When I return, Nin said, “I will be different.”
“Good,” Ji rumbled.
Because things changed. You couldn’t stop the unfolding of new days. You couldn’t lock the future in chains. You couldn’t freeze an ogre cub in time—or a realm, or even a boot boy. Ji would stay with his friends as long as they needed, he’d return whenever they called . . . but one day soon he’d fly past the horizon to dance with the moons.
Maybe he wasn’t a hero, but he wasn’t a villain, either. A true story never ended. That’s what the Summer Queen hadn’t understood. No heroes were forever triumphant and no villains were forever defeated. True stories rose and fell like ocean waves, always flowing, always changing, always more.
Chapters ended, but the story never did.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Caitlin Blasdell, Alyson Day, Manuel Blasco, Renée Cafiero, Megan Barlog, Laura Kaplan, Brian Thompson, and Joel Tippie.
About the Author
JOEL ROSS is the author of Beast & Crown and The Fog Diver, which received the Cybils Award and the YouPer Award from the Michigan Library Association and was named to the
Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List. He is also the author of The Lost Compass as well as two World War II thrillers for adults (Double Cross Blind and White Flag Down). He lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, Lee Nichols, who is also a full-time writer, and their son, Ben, who is a full-time kid. To find out more information, go to www.fogdiver.com.
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Copyright
BEAST & CROWN #2: THE ICE WITCH. Copyright © 2018 by Joel Ross. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art by Brian Thompson
Cover design and title type by Joel Tippie
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Digital Edition AUGUST 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-248464-2
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-248462-8
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1819202122CG/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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