Air Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Kyja turned left and right. “Where did it go?” she cried, holding out the shattered remains of Marcus’s staff.

  “I don’t know.” Marcus scanned the small island. The meadow was empty. Insects chirped and buzzed as though the giant teeth had never been there at all. Prepared for the worst, he looked at his arm. But it was fine—there wasn’t a mark on his bicep. The skin that had turned icy and gray was pink and warm. He flexed his wrist. No pain at all. His leg was fine too. Except for the rip in his pants, he wouldn’t have known he’d been bitten.

  Kyja knelt by him in the grass. She turned his arm, looking at the front and back. “I was sure it got you.”

  “It did.” Marcus had seen the teeth sink into him, felt their icy cold.

  “Did you cast a spell?” Kyja asked.

  Marcus tried to remember what happened. “I don’t think so. I was trying to. But I couldn’t find any magic. Then the teeth cut my leg.” He pointed to the tear in his pants. “And it bit my arm. It was like it froze me or something. I thought I had frostbite.”

  Riph Raph landed on the ground. “I probably scared it away with my flames of death.”

  “More like flames of nothing,” Marcus said. “And it didn’t get scared away. It just . . . poofed. Into smoke.”

  Kyja tugged on a strand of hair. “What did you say it felt like?”

  “Cold,” Marcus said, remembering how he’d lost all feeling in his arm. “Like frostbite. You know, when part of your body gets so cold it actually freezes? We learned about it in Scouts one year.”

  “Frostbite,” Kyja repeated, staring off in the distance. “We have that here too.”

  “What are you thinking?” Marcus asked.

  Kyja turned to him. “Did you say the word frostbite? Out loud?”

  Marcus thought. “I guess so. Yeah. I’m pretty sure I did. Why?”

  “I’m not sure.” Kyja plucked a flower that looked like a tiny orange snowflake and sniffed it. “Mr. Z said the air elementals have a strange sense of humor. I think he called it ‘devilish.’”

  “So?”

  Kyja twirled the flower between her fingers. “I’ve never seen a creature like that before. I’ve never even heard of one.”

  “I never want to see one again,” Riph Raph said. “It nearly used me for a toothbrush.”

  “It used my staff for a toothpick,” Marcus said, picking up a piece of his walking stick.

  Kyja dropped the flower, and it floated slowly to the ground, spinning as it fell. “What if it isn’t even a real creature? What if the air elementals made it up?”

  Marcus looked toward the bridge again. “That thing could have killed us. And for all we know, there could be more of them. Who cares if they’re made up or not?”

  “But if the Aerisians created the creature, they could have named it.”

  Marcus couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He shook his hair out of his eyes. “We nearly got killed, and you’re wondering what that thing’s name was? When the next one comes across that bridge, maybe we can formally introduce ourselves. ‘Hello, Mr. Jaws. Nice to meet you.’”

  Kyja punched him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s not that. It’s just that Mr. Z told us to watch what we said. What if . . .” She shook her head. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “No,” Marcus said, pushing himself up onto his knees. “You’re right.” The little man’s last words had been Watch what you say. “You think he was giving us some kind of clue? Or a warning?”

  “Magic doesn’t seem to work here,” Kyja said. “And we don’t have any weapons. Maybe all we have is our words. What we say.”

  Marcus thought through the idea. “What could we say that would make a difference? Go away? Leave us alone? I don’t think those will help much. We didn’t say anything to make the teeth disappear.”

  “Maybe you did. Accidentally.” Kyja’s eyes sparkled. “If you created a creature that was nothing but a set of giant teeth made of ice, what would you call it?”

  Marcus scratched his head. “Ice fangs?”

  “Canines of cold?” Riph Raph suggested. “Teeth of terror? Dentures of doom?”

  “Dentures of doom.” Marcus couldn’t help giggling. Riph Raph was a pain, but he did manage to get off a good one now and then. “What does it matter? I didn’t say anything important. It bit my arm, and the only thing I could think of was that I was going to lose my hand because I had . . .” All at once he understood. “Frostbite. They named it Frostbite, didn’t they?”

  Kyja nodded. “And right after you said its name, it disappeared.”

  Marcus rubbed his palm across his mouth. “You think it’s like a . . . a test or something?”

  “A word puzzle. A joke.”

  “A pun,” Marcus said. “That’s what we call them on Earth anyway. Like, what do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire? Frostbite. Or the joke about the guy who kept listening to a rubber band, waiting to hear music. ”

  “Rubber band?” Kyja asked, confused.

  Apparently they didn’t have rubber bands on Farworld. But that didn’t matter. This place was starting to make a twisted kind of sense. It was exactly the kind of thing that elementals with a devilish sense of humor would do. “So we passed their test, and now we can cross the bridge.”

  “We might have.” Kyja pointed to the next island, where Marcus could just make out another bridge leading up from that one. A swirling mist floated around the bridges. “Or maybe that test was just beginning.”

  Chapter 21

  Very Punny

  You think there are more Frostbites?” Marcus asked as Kyja helped him to his feet. “If you’re right, all we’d have to do is say their name, and poof.” He flicked the fingers of his right hand like a small explosion.

  “Maybe,” Kyja said. “But that would be too easy. There might be more joke creatures. What did you call them? Pans?”

  “Puns.”

  “Pans or puns,” Riph Raph said. “They aren’t a joke. If you hadn’t said the creature’s name, it would have killed both of you.”

  “The Aerisians wouldn’t have let it kill us,” Marcus said. “They would have stopped it before that happened. Wouldn’t they?”

  Kyja stared at the next floating island. She was beginning to think the Aerisians’ sense of humor might not be all that funny. “I don’t think we can count on anything.”

  Together, the two of them walked toward the first bridge. Marcus had one arm wrapped around Kyja’s shoulders for support, and she carried the broken end of his staff. They scanned the way ahead for any signs of attack. At the edge of the bridge, they paused. The air smelled of fresh flowers, damp grass, and morning sun. A flock of green and gold birds chased each other through the air, chirping what sounded like laughter.

  “It looks so peaceful. It’s hard to imagine anything bad happening here,” Kyja said.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking right before those teeth attacked.” Marcus looked up at Riph Raph, who was circling a few feet above them. “Maybe you should fly ahead and check things out.”

  “What do I look like, monster bait?” Riph Raph yelped.

  “I think we should stick together,” Kyja said. “Three heads are better than two if we get attacked.”

  “Even if one of them is shaped like a turnip,” Riph Raph said.

  A step at a time, Marcus and Kyja crossed the bridge. Kyja wasn’t especially scared of heights, but she thought crossing a rope bridge hanging in the middle of the sky would terrify her. That turned out not to be the case. Although the wooden steps swung gently from side to side, they felt solid. And when she looked down, she saw puffy white clouds instead of an endless drop.

  “They look like big pillows,” Marcus said.

  “Pillows that send you plunging to your death if you fall through them,” Riph Raph said cheerily.

  “If you’re going to keep talking like that, you can go wait back with our coats,” Kyja said.

  The skyte waggled his ears.
“Sorry. I’m nervous.”

  “We all are,” Marcus said. “Just keep an eye out.”

  The last creature had appeared shortly after they arrived on the first island. As the three of them stepped off the bridge onto the second island, they all anxiously searched. Every chirp of a bird or jump of an insect made Kyja flinch. They waited for several minutes on the edge of the meadow. When nothing happened, she allowed herself to relax a little.

  “Maybe there was only one.”

  Marcus slowly unclenched his fist. “I don’t see anything else.”

  With Kyja leading the way and Marcus limping beside her, they started across the meadow. “It is a little funny, when you think about it,” he said. “Giant, icy teeth named Frostbite. What if they made a huge rolling foot called Football?”

  Kyja giggled, feeling more and more relieved with every step. “Or a creature with no body because it quit while it was ahead?”

  They were almost to the next bridge when Riph Raph shouted, “Incoming!”

  Kyja looked up just in time to see something round and green plummet from the sky. It hit Marcus above the eyes, knocking him to the ground in a curtain of spraying bits. For a terrifying second, Kyja thought his head had exploded, before realizing that whatever had hit him had smashed itself open.

  Marcus wiped his hand across his face, blinking. He sniffed his palm then cautiously licked one finger. “Tastes kind of like watermelon.”

  “Honey pot,” Kyja said. “It’s called a honey pot.” She waited to see if the melon would disappear now that she’d said its name. Instead she was attacked with a spray of tiny pellets that spattered painfully against her face and chest.

  Marcus gasped. “Are you hurt?”

  Kyja looked down and saw her robe dripping with dark purple. “It’s not blood,” she said. “It’s berry juice.”

  “Someone’s throwing fruit at us?” Marcus asked, rubbing his forehead.

  “Get away from me!” Riph Raph screeched. He flew through the sky, pursued by at least a dozen red apples. It was sort of funny, Kyja thought. But the skyte didn’t look amused at all when one of them bounced off his head, splattering apple juice and pulp down his back.

  “Look out!” Marcus yelled, rolling to one side.

  Kyja ducked as a spiky green fruit narrowly missed hitting her shoulder and embedded its finger-length spines in the ground. If the pin fruit had hit her, those spines would have been stuck in her instead of the grass.

  But there was no time to think about that. The air was filling with more and more fruit. Melons, berries, apples, plums, and many varieties she didn’t even know, all pounded the ground around them as Kyja and Marcus ducked and rolled to avoid the attacks and Riph Raph winged furiously away from the island.

  “What are they?” Marcus yelled as a spicy pear smacked his shoulder.

  “Pin fruit,” Kyja tried. “Honey pot, passion plum, sour apple, poke berries.” She ducked a sugar fruit big enough to have knocked her sprawling, but she couldn’t avoid a flock of flying cherries that spanged painfully off of her shins in quick succession. “It’s not working. I know the names of some, but not others.”

  A bright yellow oval the size of Marcus’s fist made a line drive toward his face, and Kyja swung the broken staff, sending it flying back where it came from.

  “Thanks,” Marcus said. “It’s got to be another pun.”

  Kyja thought furiously. She was pretty good at word games; they were some of the few games she could play that didn’t require magic. “Melon balls?” The fruit kept coming.

  “Cherry bombs!” Marcus shouted. That didn’t work either. “Jump!” he yelled, and Kyja leaped into the air, barely clearing a blue-and-gray striped fruit the size of a log, which rolled across the meadow and off the edge of the island.

  “Apple heads!” Riph Raph called, his beak dripping with something orange. “Berry attacks. Plum bobs.”

  Kyja tried to concentrate, but it was hard to think when at any second, a flying piece of fruit could take your head off. If only . . .

  Then she had it. “Fruit flies!” she screamed. “Fruit flies!” Immediately the attack stopped, and the remaining fruit disappeared.

  “Whoa,” Marcus sighed, trying to catch his breath. “Good one. How did you think of that?”

  Kyja shrugged, embarrassed it had taken her so long. “I just wished the fruit would stop flying so I could think.” Like most puzzles, once you figured out the answer, it seemed obvious.

  “It was on the tip of my tongue,” Riph Raph sputtered, dropping to the meadow.

  “Pretty sure that was a grape.” Marcus snickered.

  “I didn’t notice you thinking of it, Mr. Cherry Bomb,” Riph Raph said.

  “It doesn’t matter who solved the puzzle,” Kyja said. “The important thing is that we figured it out. I don’t know how many islands there are. But it doesn’t look like the tests are going to stop anytime soon.” She pointed ahead, where she could see at least three more islands, connected by swinging bridges. They had to assume each was protected by a pun.

  She reached down to grab Marcus’s wrist, and he let her help him up. “It’s a shame all the fruit disappeared after you solved the puzzle,” he said. “Some of it looked pretty tasty.”

  “Don’t say that.” Kyja laughed. “The Aerisians might hear us and send more.” Overhead, the green and gold birds, who had returned as soon as the fruit disappeared, spiraled and chirped.

  On the third bridge, Kyja paused halfway across, wondering if it was possible to get a glimpse of what the next obstacle would be before they encountered it. But, as though the Aerisians had read her thoughts, as soon as they stopped, the ropes on the bridge erupted into flames.

  “Back!” Kyja screamed, tugging on Marcus’s arm. If they didn’t get off the bridge before the ropes burned through, they would plunge to their deaths.

  “No, we have to keep going,” Marcus said, yanking her forward. “We have to get across.”

  But they couldn’t go backward or forward. Flames raced across the ropes in front of and behind them, cutting off escape in both directions.

  “Get off!” Riph Raph called, circling madly.

  “We can’t,” Kyja yelled back. Thick, yellow smoke billowed from all around them, making it hard to breathe and impossible to see. “It has to be another riddle.” She coughed, choking on the yellow clouds. “Cross fire?” she tried.

  “Something about blaze or flames,” Riph Raph called, hidden by the smoke.

  “It has to have something to do with bridges.” Marcus wrapped an arm across his mouth. “Bridge fire. Burn your bridges.”

  “The ropes.” Kyja gagged, the heat scorching her legs. “They’re the only things burning. Rope fire. Rope flame.” Her lungs ached.

  “Rope burn!” Marcus yelled. “It’s rope burn!”

  The flames disappeared, and Marcus and Kyja stumbled into the next meadow before falling to the ground. “I don’t know if I can take any more of this,” Kyja said, pressing her face into the cool grass.

  Marcus coughed and spat. “I don’t know if we have any choice.”

  Chapter 22

  Air Keep

  Marcus wasn’t sure how many bridges they crossed. After a while, the islands became a blur of attacks and word puzzles. Kyja solved most of them, like the “saw horse” that galloped around threatening to cut off their legs, and the “bee witch” that cast spells while attacking with a long, spear-like stinger.

  Marcus guessed the solution to the “insti-gator” that appeared without warning, snapping its pointed teeth, and the “acro-bat,” whose flying gymnastics even Riph Raph couldn’t match.

  But possibly the hardest one was solved by the skyte himself. Marcus and Kyja could hear the beast’s ferocious growls and feel its claws raking at their backs, but every time they turned around, it somehow managed to move to their rear. They could very well have been eaten alive if Riph Raph hadn’t figured out they were being attacked by a “bear behind.” For the nex
t two islands, he crowed over his success, “A bear behind. Do you get it? Like a bare behind only it was a bear.”

  Marcus and Kyja blushed furiously, trying not to look at each other.

  Marcus had narrowly avoided getting a black eye from the punches of a pointed wizard’s hat, which Kyja correctly identified as a “hat box,” when Riph Raph circled around them and pointed ahead with one wing. “Look at that!”

  Marcus had been so focused on facing each threat that he’d stopped looking ahead. Doing so seemed pointless when the only thing he could see was another bridge leading to yet another floating island. But now, as he glanced across the next bridge, he was stunned to discover a magnificent castle rising out of the clouds.

  “I think it’s made of glass,” Kyja whispered, her eyes wide.

  Marcus could only nod wordlessly. He’d never seen anything like the structure before them. Turrets and parapets glittered in the sunlight. Bridges and towers that seemed too fragile to hold up their own weight rose, fairy-like, into the sky. The entire castle appeared to be spun from fine glass threads with strands of silver and gold embedded in the glass.

  “Is that it?” He swallowed, unwilling to believe they had finally found the home of the air elementals, which they’d worked so hard to reach.

  “I think so,” Kyja said, just as breathless.

  “Air Keep,” Riph Raph hooted.

  As they stared, a gust of wind scooped up hundreds of petals from the flowers strewn across the meadow and sent them dancing and flying over the bridge. A dozen intoxicating aromas filled the air.

  “I think they want us to come in,” Marcus said.

  Kyja glanced at her robe, which was ripped in several places, and at Marcus’s pants, which were shredded from the knees down. “I’m not sure we’re dressed for it.”

  “Who cares?” he cried. An incredible sense of joy and well-being flowed through his limbs, and he found himself limping across the bridge without Kyja’s help.

  Kyja hurried to catch up. “What do you think the Aerisians look like?” she asked as they reached the other side of the bridge. “I think they’ll be fairies.”