Charlie spewed out a sigh. “Mon dieu, we’ve got big problems here. Bad men want to kill us. One of us needs a cane. And we’re stuck on another world!”
Sam recovered from his coughing fit and motioned for me. He pressed his gnarled fingers to my arm, his brittle nails digging into my skin. “Hope.”
“Hope?”
“There’s a reason you came here. You could be the hope we need to change things on our world.”
“Mon dieu,” I whispered with a gulp, not wanting to be the hope for a whole world.
Then Sam closed his eyes. “Not passing the curse.”
His words commanded the sudden silence, and even the breeze that chilled my skin stopped blowing as if it listened. Sam seemed even more shriveled now, and he feebly tugged his flute out and held it toward me in his shaky hand. “Joshua, take this.”
“But it was your mother’s,” I said.
“Yours now. You can play it. And you may need it.”
I ran my fingers over its smooth, worn ridges, then put it in my back pocket. What do you say when a dying friend passes on his most prized possession? “Thanks” didn’t seem to cut it.
Sam went limp in Bo Chez’s arms, and we were all paralyzed for a moment. Then I motioned for us to move. “Come on!”
“Joshua’s right,” Leandro said. “We can’t stand here any longer.” He plunged ahead through the fog that crept over us.
We ran after Leandro.
We would save Sam.
We would get Finn back.
We would get home.
Leandro would find his family.
We could do all this. We had to.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We reached the same creek again. Its waters still raged around the boulders, although they now ran clear. More hydriads replaced the ones Leandro had killed. Their tusks cruised back and forth through the water as if waiting for our return. The bloody spears of their friends still lay scattered on the creek bank.
“Hekate and her army crossed here,” Leandro said, searching the markings on the ground. “She didn’t even take the bridge. She’s not afraid of the Acheron creeks. The hydriads must fear her. I bet that evil witch is headed back to the power mill. It’s her home base.”
“Can we call the kernitians?”
Bo Chez stared at me. “You can speak to animals.” It wasn’t a question.
“I—yes.”
“It’s been a long time since I knew a malumpus-tongue.” His face sagged, and he looked old for the first time.
I desperately wanted to know when that was but now was not the time.
Leandro and I called to the kernitians. My voice was hoarse and burned with our call for help. We waited as the sky deepened its purple, a heavier darkness creeping over me. Still nothing.
“I fear they won’t come,” Leandro said. “Not when an alarm has been sounded. They could be in hiding. They’re timid creatures.”
And they didn’t.
“We have to jump across again,” I said, and then Bo Chez was in the air with Sam in his arms, leaping to the first boulder. The hydriads swam faster, banging into his rock, as the frothy foam spewed salty spray at us. Charlie chewed on his fingers with renewed intensity, flicking his eyes to me and back to the watery devils.
“We can do it, Charlie,” I said.
But he just stood there, gnawing on a finger.
Bo Chez was already leaping off the last boulder and onto the other side. Leandro went next. He, too, landed safely. “Charlie and Joshua! Hurry!”
I tugged Charlie’s shirt and finally, with wide eyes, he took a deep breath, ran back, and jumped. His long legs made it easier for him than me. He landed steady on the first boulder, hesitated, and launched himself once more. Hydriad tusks raced around the rock in a vicious circle. He jumped again, off balance. And even before he slipped I knew he wouldn’t make it. Charlie hit the boulder. He clung to the top of the rock, his left leg in the water. Tusks thrashed back and forth as he screamed.
“Charlie!” I rushed into the icy water, pushing it angrily away in my eagerness to save my friend. It stung like a thousand icicles jabbing into me.
“Joshua, no!” Bo Chez strode into the creek.
Leandro sailed through the air past him to me, and we both yanked Charlie up and pushed him toward the bank where Bo Chez dragged him to safety. Leandro and I were close behind when a great wave of water slammed into us. We fought our way against the current to get back to the creek bank when hot pain cut through me. A tusk was plunged into my side. Hot needles stabbed me. I clenched the tusk and pulled it out. It glistened red. I shoved it into the rolling water and stumbled forward against the waves.
“Joshua!” Leandro lunged for me.
Water roared down on me and all became black.
***
Everything was a bouncy blur. Leandro held me as he ran over rocks and logs. Ripping pain shot into my side.
“Hydriad disease.” Bo Chez’s words carried to me.
Charlie then spoke in a wobbly voice. “Leandro, you said the plant that can cure Prince-man may grow in the greenhouse. Can it help Joshua, too?”
Leandro held me tighter as he ran, his ragged breath on my cheek smelling of bittersweet chocolate. “It should. The Moria plant can just slow down a curse that poisons the soul, such as Sam’s, but it can cure true poisons of the body.”
“But you’re not sure?” Charlie’s voice cracked.
No one answered. Only rhythmic breathing and footfalls followed along with me now. My head was thick and my body was speared through with pain and fever, yet I shivered in wet clothes.
Leandro and Bo Chez’s voices tumbled together.
“Sir, if he has Apollo’s ancient power of music perhaps he could—”
“No! He is not what you want.” Bo Chez’s voice boomed then softened. “He’s too weak, even so. The plant is our best bet.”
“I am sure you’re right on both accounts,” Leandro said.
Moaning, I opened my eyes and tried to focus, but even the dimness of the Lost Realm burned hot in my head.
“We’re almost back at the cave, Joshua,” Leandro said.
Bo Chez’s large hand brushed my sweaty head as he ran alongside Leandro. Even with my eyes closed I’d know his smell anywhere. It was home.
And so we returned to the cave that sheltered us before, but this time Charlie was the only kid standing.
The blurriness overtook me and, once again, darkness claimed me.
***
Cold rock against my hot skin shocked me awake. We were back in the cave. Nightmares clung to me and swirled away. Coldness filled me, although sweat lined my upper lip and Leandro’s cloak lay heavy on me. Sam was under a blanket on a slab next to me, unmoving.
“Leandro, you said we can save Joshua and slow down Prince-man’s curse,” Charlie said. “If you can find the plant and if you come back.” He sighed and muttered. “Zut! These ‘ifs’ just get more and more terrible.”
Zut! I wanted to say, but my tongue wouldn’t form the word.
“I’ll find the plant and I’ll bring it back.” Leandro turned to me. His nostrils flared and, even in the low light, his eyes glinted with fierce determination.
“I’m going with you,” Charlie said in a hoarse voice. Leandro looked at him for a moment, then bowed.
“My lightning will send you there,” Bo Chez said.
Leandro nodded and touched Sam’s head. “He’s getting worse. We need to hurry.” Then he bent down and inspected my wound. His rough hands were surprisingly gentle. “Joshua’s wound is festering and dehydration will set in. He needs spring water.” He poured it slowly in my mouth. It cooled my throat, but I was still hot one moment and shivering the next. The pain was made worse by hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and despair. After all we’d been through, we were going to fail.
I tried to speak, but the words were hard to form. Finally they came. “Save Finn.”<
br />
And then I cried, something I hadn’t done in a long, long time. I cried for all the circumstances that got us here and for all the things we’d suffered with no end in sight.
Leandro pressed a hand to my forehead and stroked my bangs back until I was all cried out. Bo Chez bent down to take my hand, but it was Leandro I needed. I reached out my hand to him. He glanced at Bo Chez, then took my hand, gripping it hard, his muscled fingers heavy on mine.
“Light of Sol go with you,” I whispered, wanting to find hope in his world’s saying.
“And you, Joshua.”
Leandro moved to stand by Charlie, who gave me a brave thumbs up even as he jittered about on his feet.
“Safer to follow Leandro than me,” I told Charlie.
“But you’ll get me home to my brother, just like we’ll get you to Finn,” Charlie said with a lopsided smile.
Then Bo Chez threw his ball of fire overhead. It grew into a blazing rope winding around Leandro and Charlie and, just like that, they were gone.
I needed the truth now from Bo Chez. In the weak light, his giant shadow grew even larger on the wall behind him. He moved toward me but wouldn’t meet my eyes. The damp air crawled on my skin and the water dripped in an empty rhythm. The cave walls moved in and out, threatening to swallow me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Bo Chez was looking at me. Then he sat down on the slab.
My voice came to me again. “One more story, Bo Chez. About you.”
He nodded, and began.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“My given name is Patrok. It means glory of the father—and I was for some time, until my father died. I got lucky with a new family when your mother and you came into my life. And I loved your mother like a daughter, Joshua.” He paused and sighed. “She was mortal, but I’m not.”
“What are you?” I could barely whisper it.
The skin wrinkled around his eyes and his massive shoulders fell. “I was a Storm Master, long ago, and came from the Sky Realm ruled by Zeus, the heir of the first Greek god Zeus.” He swiped his prickly hair, exhaled deeply, then went on. “You see, the myth of the twelve Olympians is true, Joshua, but what mortals don’t know is that they fell from power, lost their immortality, and left Mount Olympus to each rule lands of their own on Nostos.”
Leandro’s journal told me this, but the wall between me and Bo Chez grew taller, our division stronger in knowing he wasn’t from Earth.
“Did you come from a fallen god, too?” I sunk into Leandro’s cloak.
“Not exactly. I’m a blend. My people come from this world Zeus took over and renamed Nostos two thousand years ago. Since then, a new people evolved over time of mixed descent.”
“With your power, you must have some fallen god in you though.”
“Their ancient power, anyway,” Bo Chez said.
“How did you become a Storm Master?”
“My mother and father died in a war when I just turned twelve, and I became a ward of the gods. King Zeus took a liking to me, saw I carried the ancient power that only a rare few had—to command all weather—and so he drafted me into his service. I had no choice but to train as one if his elite soldiers: the Storm Masters. Our job was to protect Sky Realm, and other realms Zeus commanded to protect.”
“So you were trained to zap and transport?”
“That was part of it. I mastered the art of the storm. Hurricane. Tornado. Blizzard. Ice. Rain and lightning.” Bo Chez paused. “Hekate holds ancient power, too.”
“But she uses her power for evil,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you were given the lightning orb by Zeus?”
“Yes. All Storm Masters receive one upon graduation. They are the original orbs created by the first Zeus and passed down from generation to generation as Storm Master’s retire. It’s a weapon to be used with care.”
“Jeez, do I know that.” Dizziness flared, and the room spun like a carousel. When my head cleared I asked, “But you never used the orb on Earth?”
He knotted his hands together and lowered his head, but he didn’t answer. The drip of the cave water made his silence worse. I tried another question. “And you really don’t have powers on Earth like you do here?”
“I’ve never tried to use them there. Well, there was one time … ”
“When? And why just once? Did it work?” My questions came out in one tumble.
“No, and power not used is power lost.” Leandro had said the same thing … .
But he’d only answered my last question, notching up my fear. “You wanted it lost?”
He looked up. “I left my world behind for that purpose.”
“So how did you end up on Earth?”
“I didn’t want to be a soldier, using my storm powers to fight. I saved up my soldier’s pay to bribe a Child Collector to send me to Earth when I was a young man.”
“And in your stories—” Pain flared, and I clenched my teeth to go on. “You were the lost Storm Master, weren’t you?”
He looked around the cave then back at me, his eyes crinkled at the edges. “Yes, but I never thought we’d be talking about this here.”
“Did you fall in love with Zeus’s daughter like in the Storm Master story you told me?” I said.
“Yes. Asteria was her name. I believed she was part of a secret order to protect the Oracle, but she would never confirm the truth. Zeus would have punished her severely if it was true because he wanted to find and control the Oracle for his own power. And Asteria’s secrecy became a crack between us. I never saw her again.”
My entire body ached on the cold rock. More uncomfortable was the thought of Bo Chez with a girlfriend. I shifted my legs and he put a hand on one, warming me.
“It didn’t matter anyway because, like the story, Zeus demanded that Storm Masters make a vow to never marry,” Bo Chez continued. “Zeus needed us to defend his land and his world. I was fine with all this until Asteria came along. She was so beautiful on the inside and out.”
His face blurred. Don’t pass out! Not when there was so much to know, just not of the yucky love stuff.
“My mother … ” I whispered.
“She showed up one day. And my life changed again,” Bo Chez said.
“How?”
“Even though your mother wasn’t my daughter, I became a father—and a grandfather.”
“You’re not my grandfather.” The absolute truth of it hit me like a fist to my chest.
“Not by blood.” His grip on my leg tightened as if to lessen the hurt of those words.
But I knew with certainty that I really was alone—here and on Earth.
“Tell me about her.” The pain in my side throbbed painfully, but then numbness crept in.
Bo Chez stood and paced the cave wall with his hands locked behind his back, his footsteps in sync with the drip-drip. “She said she’d been kidnapped as a child. Like you and Finn. She grew up working in the bakehouse in the Arrow Realm. That’s—”
“Where Leandro’s from,” I said.
“Yes, and when your mother was eighteen she was sent to the adult work camp. She didn’t give me many details about that. She escaped and somehow got a ride to Earth and—”
“Leandro’s wife was a prisoner there. She might have known my mother in the work camp!” I tried to sit up but the room raced around me in circles and I fell back, my heart racing.
“Maybe, we’ll never know for sure. But after she escaped she arrived at my house one day, alone and very scared. We had a deep connection, both being fugitives from another world.”
“And was I there?”
“No. You were born later.” Bo Chez stopped pacing.
“And my father?”
“I don’t know who he is. But from the way you carry ancient Olympian power, your father must be from Nostos.”
But my mother wasn’t, or was she? Playing Sam’s flute came to me. Why did I have powers from two realms
here? It was all muddled in my head, and sharing it with Bo Chez right now was too difficult.
I tried to will strength back into my body but couldn’t even sit up. I pulled Leandro’s cloak tighter to me, fingering its woolen warmth and closed my eyes, drifting down the muddy banks of the creek behind our house where Finn was building our fort. I waved at him, then lay back in the creek’s lazy flow and began to float away … .
Bo Chez shook me. Home faded. “Wake up, Joshua. Don’t go to sleep. Hang on until Leandro and Charlie get back.”
I forced my eyes open. We were both quiet for a moment.
I had to know more. “Why did my mother go to your house?”
“It used to be her house. When a child returns to Earth through the Lightning Road, they return to where they left. When she got home, her family was gone. I promised to take care of her and help her find her family, but we never did.”
“That’s why we moved all the time—because you were looking for my mom’s family?” I said.
“Yes. That, and I didn’t want us to be found.”
“How come I never had these powers back home, Bo Chez?”
“Yours appear to be activated here as mine are.”
“But the lightning orb works there?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Do other things?”
“Yes,” Bo Chez said harshly, then his voice softened, and he placed a hand on the side of my head as he used to do when I was sick. “I’m sorry I made life so hard on you.”
“Not so hard.” It came out a whisper. All my life I’d thought Bo Chez was afraid of lightning like me, but instead he could create it. He was more powerful than lightning itself.
“I had to protect you, Joshua. I was scared someday a Child Collector would steal you. I kept moving us around and had my name changed to Cooper, your mother’s name, so we could be a family. And we did become a family. Well, at least … we were.”
“We could still be.” I looked at his hands that had taken care of me. Wasn’t that what family did? Even if it wasn’t blood family? He could have given me up for adoption, but he kept me. That counted for something.
Joshua and the Lightning Road Page 13