by Rena Barron
I gritted my teeth and ran straight toward another wall of shadows, which wasn’t my smartest move. When we collided, the impact knocked me on my butt, but something else happened too. A white light began to snake through the shadows, tearing holes in the darkness. The shadows screeched again, but this time, they didn’t break apart. The light kept growing until it swallowed the shadows whole.
“Argh!” Zeran screamed.
I grabbed the two halves of my staff and sprinted toward his voice. Maybe he would be in a new location by the time I got there, but I didn’t have time for these games. I had to find Papa’s soul before it was too late. I had to save my friends. I would get out of this forest if I had to fight every single shadow by myself.
“Can someone explain to me why shadows are trying to eat us?” Eli asked from somewhere near the same location as Zeran.
“We’ve already established that they aren’t exactly friendly,” Frankie said.
I swallowed my hope, knowing that the forest was a trickster. When I got to the clearing, though, I found Frankie and Eli tangled in shadows. I had no time to celebrate. A shadow had Eli by the foot and was dragging him deeper into the forest. Frankie had lassoed her energy magic around his waist and was pulling him back with all her might.
Zeran was fighting three shadow monsters on his own, but they had him surrounded. They lashed out at him, and shards of ice crystallized against his skin. He held his own until one of the shadows flung him to the ground. He didn’t move as the three descended upon him like he was helpless prey.
“I got Eli,” Frankie shouted through gritted teeth. “Help Zeran.”
Frankie was holding on to the energy rope with both hands, and then she let it go. I gasped and for one brief, terrifying moment, I thought Eli was a goner. Frankie launched a mini energy disk. It sliced through the air and cut the shadow right below Eli’s sneaker. If she’d been a few inches off, she would have hit him.
Eli flopped on his back. “I’m going to pass out now.”
I was on top of the shadows attacking Zeran before they saw me coming. Both parts of the staff glowed in my hands. I slammed the sticks into the shadows hard. The impact vibrated up my arms into my teeth. My vision was a blur as I twisted and turned to keep out of their grasp. The shadows screamed as white veins of white started to form around the places that my sticks struck. After enough hits, they fled deeper into the forest.
“Thank you,” Zeran said. “I guess I owe you my life again.”
I reached out a hand to help him up. He looked at me sideways before taking it. “You don’t owe me anything. Thanks for coming back to help us.”
Zeran stood up to his full height and shook off the ice crystals from his arms and wings. “Don’t mention it.”
Frankie helped Eli to his feet. They fist-bumped, then added in an elbow tap for good measure.
“Take that, shadows,” Eli cheered. “We didn’t come here to play with y’all. We’re the League of Godlings and one butt-kicking darkbringer.”
“How are we going to get back to the trail?” Frankie asked.
“Leave that to me.” Zeran brushed dirt from his uniform. “I have an impeccable sense of direction.”
I sighed, expecting as much. “Of course you do.”
It turned out that he wasn’t exaggerating, either. He got us back on the trail in less than ten minutes.
“We better get out of here before they decide to come back,” Zeran suggested.
“Ghosts, I’m okay with,” Eli proclaimed, “but I am not at all into hungry shadows.”
I kept eyes on the edges of the trail, looking for more shadows. “I wish that we could’ve have gone around the forest, even if it was by foot.”
“As I understand and from everything we’ve seen, that’s not how the map works,” Frankie said. “You have to go on the path that it sets for you to get to the Crystal Palace.”
Zeran grinned, much to Eli’s and my annoyance. “Finally, someone’s listening to me.”
“This time we stay on the trail.” I pressed the two parts of my staff back together. There was a flash of bright light from the impact, but then the staff was as good as new. Relief rushed through me. In truth, I’d gotten used to having it around.
“I’ll put up a shield,” Frankie said, as her magic sparked to life on her fingertips.
We started down the trail again. More shadows closed in around us, but this time we were ready.
TWENTY-SIX
As luck would have it, we become food
We stumbled out of the forest on blistered feet, tired and dirty, and out of food. I shielded my eyes from the weak sunlight as I leaned on the staff. Frankie braced her hands against her knees to take a breather. I almost pointed out that she had leaves stuck in one of her puffy pigtails, but Eli said something first. We wouldn’t have made it out of the forest in one piece if Frankie hadn’t used her shield to protect us from the shadows. When she got tired, Zeran and I took point.
I finally understood what had happened on our field trip at school. Before, I thought the writhing ribbons that somehow crossed into our world belonged to the Lord of Shadows. But it wasn’t him. It was shadows like the ones in the forest that had weaved around the dinosaurs at the Field Museum. The Lord of Shadows had sent them as a reminder and a warning that he was coming to destroy our world. He knew they would strike fear in the hearts of celestials and godlings alike.
We trudged forward, and it felt like we’d spent days in the forest. What if I was too late? No, I couldn’t think that way. Papa would hold on a little longer. He would be okay, and together we would figure out how to stop the Lord of Shadows from tapping into the veil. Still, I couldn’t get rid of that sinking feeling in my belly that I was already out of time.
“Tell us about yourself,” Frankie asked Zeran as we continued following the map. “How did you end up in the army?”
“Command sends soldiers to schools to test us when we’re ten, and I caught their attention,” he said, his face hard. “I tried to hide my magic, but they’re good at getting what they want.”
I thought of the standardized tests that we had to do this year. That was bad enough, but drafting kids into an army to start a war was far worse.
“If it were just me, I wouldn’t care so much, but my little brother Billu can do incredible things with his powers.” Zeran flushed a deeper purple—not only his cheeks, but his whole body turned violet. “Command took him away two months ago, and I left the army to join the Resistance. They said that they could help me get him back. I have to save my brother before Command makes him use his powers to hurt someone.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you and your brother,” I said, rocking on my heels. I wanted to ask him what sort of things his little brother could do, but this was not the time. “How are you going to find him now?”
“Billu is at the Crystal Palace, where the most talented recruits go,” Zeran explained. “I’m coming with you to get him back.”
“Sounds to me like the Lord of Shadows is due for a beat down.” Eli cracked his knuckles. “If it were my little sister, I’d take out his whole crew to rescue her.”
Zeran exchanged a smile of solidarity with Eli. “So you think a godling is helping the Lord of Shadows destroy the veil? I may have been eavesdropping on your conversation the other day.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, still not quite believing it myself. “Have you seen one who, um, looks a little like me?”
“I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning a godling here before you three came a few months ago,” said Zeran.
That should’ve been a relief to hear, but I still didn’t have a good feeling about it. I would find out soon enough if Eleni had been helping the Lord of Shadows. “Why haven’t more darkbringers gone through the tears?”
“Oh, they have,” Zeran confirmed. “The Lord of Shadows only sends the ones who can shift their appearance and act human. Their mission is to infiltrate your world and learn how to exploit your weakness
es.”
Dread coursed through my chest. This was my fault. I was supposed to help protect the veil, and darkbringers had slipped into our world already. I didn’t know why this was such devastating news, when we’d fought darkbringers twice in the human world. But hearing that they had snuck into our world and were hiding right under our noses scared me. Neither Papa nor the orisha council had said anything to suggest that they even knew about it.
My hands shook as I studied the map. The Crystal Palace looked to be another half day’s journey away if the course didn’t change again. “We can get to the palace tomorrow.” I bit my chapped lips. Yes, we’d make it there, but we were in no shape to fight if it came down to it, which it would. We had to come up with a plan.
“I hear a river,” Frankie said, perking up.
My mouth and throat were so dry. “I hate to admit this,” I groaned, “but we’re not going to storm any castles in our current condition. We need water and to find some food.”
Frankie and Eli looked to Zeran, who threw up his hands. “I’m a terrible hunter.”
“But are you an okay fisherman?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“At the very least, you can tell us what we can and can’t eat,” Frankie said.
“Oh, am I supposed to be the nature boy because I grew up in the Dark?” Zeran rolled his eyes. “Let me whip out my handy guidebook so I can tell you which mushrooms aren’t poisonous. Guess what? They’re all poisonous. Some will cause your eyeballs to bleed, and others will make your belly bloat until it bursts.”
Eli slapped Zeran on the back. “Good thing we have our resident darkbringer to the rescue.”
When we found the river, we drank and refilled our water bottles. After that, we scrubbed our arms and faces and washed off the last of the blue paint from our skin. Stealth mode was officially over.
“Why didn’t you change yourself to look like us instead of wearing those silly outfits?” Zeran asked as he squatted beside the river, trying to weave some leaves into a fishing net.
I blinked at him in disbelief. “We can’t just do that. Can you?”
Zeran nodded. “I was top in my transformation class three years in a row.”
“We can see you didn’t win any awards for net weaving, though,” Eli teased him.
“I’d work a lot faster if you weren’t staring as me the whole time,” Zeran shot back.
“We’ll give you some space,” I said.
Speaking of class, I wondered how the new godlings at Jackson Middle were doing at school. Ogun would be training kids to control their magic, but were the cranky twins still there, too? They had quite the mess to clean up at the Field Museum and lots of memories to erase.
“You know.” Eli poked out his lips and nodded. “I kind of like him—Zeran, I mean. I’m not saying I trust him yet, but he’s cool.”
“He’s okay, I guess,” I said, and Frankie blushed.
We surveyed the area and found a small grove of trees behind some boulders. Glowing golden fruit hung in clusters from the branches between plump green leaves. I had to stop myself from squealing with joy. We’d finally found food.
“OMC!” Eli drooled. When I cocked an eyebrow at him, he added, “OMC, as in oh my celestials!”
“We should wait until Zeran gets here to make sure it’s okay,” I said, but Eli ignored me. He plucked one of the fruits, which looked like a cross between an apple and a pear.
He turned it over in his hand. “What is it with the Dark and their glowing food?”
I remembered then that we’d landed in a field with glowing purple corn the first time we’d come to the Dark. Eli had a point.
“Maya’s right; we should wait—” Frankie started to say, but it was too late. Eli bit into the fruit. Juice filled the corners of his mouth, and he moaned in delight. “It sort of tastes like a kiwi without the seeds.”
Frankie plucked one of her own and lifted it to her nose. “It smells nauseatingly sweet.”
Zeran rushed into the grove, cutting through the bushes and vines at a dead sprint. Sweat streaked down his forehead. “Nulan and the city patrol are headed this way,” he said, out of breath. Before any of us could respond, he spotted the fruit in Frankie’s hand. “Don’t eat that.” He frowned. “It’s dangerous.”
Eli spat out the half-chewed pulp. “Um . . . what did you say?”
“Oh, no.” Zeran massaged his temples. “That’s jeejee fruit. Its sole purpose is to feed the grove.”
“What do you mean feed?” Eli dropped the fruit. It hit the ground and rolled a few feet away. “Tell me that doesn’t mean what it sounds like.”
“The jeejee tree is a predator,” Zeran explained. “The fruit will lure anyone who eats it into a deep sleep. If they’re unlucky enough to nap here, the ground then absorbs them while they’re out cold. I don’t know how that works exactly, but that’s the story.”
“The Dark is such a charming place,” Eli groaned. “Everything wants to eat you.”
“Blame that on Elegguá.” Zeran glanced over my shoulder, his face in a deep frown. “The legends say that when he split the earth, it transformed the Dark in ways that were not natural. Simple harmless trees and animals became more deadly.”
Everyone was looking at me, and I didn’t know what to say. Papa had made a mistake with the veil. He’d paid the price, but so had the people of the Dark. Sometimes mistakes happened and they could be fixed, and sometimes we had to live with them and vow to do better.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice shaking. “He didn’t mean to do that.”
“You don’t have to apologize for your father, Maya.” Zeran sighed and his expression softened a little. “We know the history of the world. He did it to protect the seeds of humanity. Besides, more people died during our wars against the orishas than anything else.”
“Still, I wish none of this had happened,” I insisted, feeling guilty.
“We need to go,” Zeran said. “Nulan isn’t far behind. Eli do you think you can—” Before Zeran finished his sentence, Eli had curled up on the ground, fast asleep.
Frankie put her hands on her hips. “He has the worst timing.”
“Can we wake him?” I said.
Zeran grimaced, shaking his head. “Not for a few hours, at least.” Then he frowned at Frankie. “Can you create a force field for two for a few minutes?”
“Yes!” she answered.
“If you lie on the ground with Eli, the grove will draw you inside the earth . . .”
The dirt had already started to move around Eli like a sleeping giant waking up.
“Ah, that’s clever.” Frankie bounced on her heels. “You want me to hide Eli inside the grove and use the force field to stop the earth from eating us.”
“Exactly,” Zeran exclaimed. “Think you can do it?”
“On it!” Frankie curled up beside Eli. The ground sank faster and swallowed them in seconds. Frankie’s energy bubble flared to life before the dirt completely covered them.
“I can give you a disguise,” Zeran told me. “It’ll only last a few minutes, but that should be enough if Nulan doesn’t stick around. We have to make ourselves as uninteresting as possible.”
“Okay, do it,” I said, hearing the rustling of feet against the leaves nearby. I squeezed the staff and it flashed, turning into a ring again, which I slipped on my finger. If Zeran was planning to betray us, he would’ve done it by now and with a lot less stepping in to play hero. He’d put his life on the line to save Frankie from falling off the cliff, then again to rescue us in the forest.
Zeran touched my cheek, his hand warm against my skin. My face started to vibrate and change shape. My legs grew longer. My locs turned from black to neon green, and my skin morphed from brown to blue.
“Whoa, this is pretty awesome,” I said. Even my voice had grown deeper. “How did you do that?”
Zeran scratched his head, blushing deep purple again. He’d changed his appearance, too. His black horns grew larger and cur
ved away from his face. His eyes turned to an eerie silver, and his teeth became pointy fangs. “I’ll teach you one of these days if we survive.” He brushed the sleeve of my shirt, and my outfit shifted into a dirty mirror of his own—a black soldier’s uniform.
As an ominous fog rolled into the grove, Zeran gave me a look that said what I already knew: they were here. I drew in a breath as patrol officers surrounded us. Their dark gray uniforms blended in with the fog, so it was hard to figure out how many had come. I toyed with the ring on my pinky finger, itching to feel my staff in my hands again.
“Halt!” someone yelled, and we jumped apart.
The officers had their silvery-blue prods, which crackled with electric currents. I wouldn’t soon forget how one of those weapons had knocked Eli out. The darkbringers themselves ranged from the deepest blues to the deepest purples. Some had barbed tails and horns, and others had wings. Some had all three—a barbed tail, horns, and wings. It was weird to think about this right now, but I’d gotten used to how different they looked from humans. Different wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they wanted to destroy the human world. The patrol officers all had one thing in common: they stared at us with their prods raised to strike on command.
“State your name, rank, and unit,” came a voice that raked across my ears like claws.
I dug my nail under the ring as Chief of Order Nulan’s brown face appeared in the fog. I held my breath, afraid that even with my modifications, she’d recognize me.
Zeran rattled off names, ranks, and a unit without missing a beat.
“Where are your ID chips, junior grades?” Nulan asked, stepping closer.
Zeran stood straight with his shoulders back. “We lost them in the forest.”
Nulan grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. “And your unit,” she said, her voice so calm that you wouldn’t have known that she was a cold-blooded killer. “Where are they?”
“Don’t know, sir,” Zeran said as her nails pinched into his skin. He showed no signs of being afraid of her. “We’ve been stuck in the Lost Forest for days—just managed to get out this morning.”