Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 7

  History of Our People

  By Leandro of the Arrow Realm,

  as told to me by my father,

  Mortimer the Steel Twister

  Long ago, the Greek gods fell from power. They were real and mighty until the rise of other people questioned their rule—the Romans and then the Christians. And so, Zeus, the king of the gods, commanded his family to leave Mount Olympus and conquer a new world before their powers drained completely. They called our new world Nostos and took over rule of the primitive folk that dwelled here. On Nostos, the twelve Olympians would each rule a land with Zeus leading as their great king. Zeus ensured they would have a way to plunder Earth for their own use. With his dying thunderbolt, he created a Lightning Gate for each realm and a Lightning Road to connect our new world to Earth. And so, the Greek gods left their home, never to return or be immortal again. Or so we thought.

  The Greek god’s super powers faded forever. Over the years, the powerless heirs of the twelve Olympians squabbled while the lesser Greek gods blended in with the conquered people. All became lost in our new culture on Nostos. A select few of mixed blood held ancient powers and immortality and were forced to serve the heirs in any capacity. Many of these few came to hide their powers to remain free from enslavement. Chaos soon reigned across Nostos. Our land was plunged into the darkest of ages, leaving thousands starving and dead. The Olympian heirs believed their time had come to an end when one discovered that mortal children of Earth possessed powers to fuel their world. And so began the stealing of children. In time, a deep hatred of these mortals grew inside the Olympian heirs, for these Earth beings held power they needed to survive.

  The Ancient Ones foresaw what would become of the Olympians. Angered by the corruption their people would embrace, the Ancient Ones prophesied that an Oracle would arise to save their world. Today, the Secret Order of the Ancient Ones hides on Nostos, watching and waiting for the Oracle to come forth and redeem their people. They will protect him at any cost, if an immortal Ancient Evil One does not kill him first.

  Each Oracle will have the ability to restore full powers to the heirs of the once-great Olympians if they prove themselves worthy. Once restored, then so shall the Lightning Road to Earth be broken forever … if the Oracle survives.

  I slammed the book shut, dust flying, twisting with emotion about being the Oracle—and not surviving. About Leandro being a real traitor this time and wishing my feelings for him would go away so my heart didn’t hurt so bad.

  “Zut! Why’d you do that?” Charlie asked, tugging the book from me but I held it shut. “What did it say?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Charlie.”

  Ash looked at me knowingly with her bright green eyes. How did she fit into all this?

  “We came here to free Apollo,” I told her. “Hypnos said we’d be set once we got here.”

  “Oui!” Charlie stood taller but bumped his head on the ceiling. “And while you’re at it, Tree Girl, tell us how to blow up the Lightning Road for good so we can go home and never come back.”

  Ash took the book from me and opened it to a new page.

  The Oracle wins the fight alone, but he cannot succeed alone. He must seek out a candle in the dark to find the new road.

  “What does that mean?” Charlie asked, reading over my shoulder.

  “It means if we look for help, we’ll find it, right, Ash?” I said.

  “That’s what Leandro told me.”

  My mind buzzed with this Oracle business. My life had changed with my first dangerous adventure in this world full of questions and no answers. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to get answers now.

  I flipped through the book some more with Charlie and stopped at one passage.

  My Homeland

  Journal Entry 25 on Nostos

  By Leandro of the Arrow Realm

  I have returned to Artemis a pardoned man. It is a feeling of strange amazement. I handed King Apollo’s letter to Queen

  Artemis, requesting she place me in a higher leadership position than work camp guard, and she accepted me without hesitation. Maybe she admires those who evade her hunt, as I have evaded capture as a guard deserter. She may also have forgiven me for deserting her when we were younglings.

  But she is compelled to punish me in some capacity for deserting, as a guard or a friend—perhaps both—I do not know. I am reduced to training her new work camp guards, barely out of baby breeches, and forced to share their eating and living quarters. I have faith I will gain her good graces soon. I must. Being back in the work camp brands me with the memories of my wife and son. I see them down every alleyway, hoping my son is growing well into his manhood somewhere on this world.

  Meanwhile, I await my queen’s orders to speak privately about a matter that the late King Apollo presented to me upon his deathbed: a new mission for the Arrow Realm to stop using mortal children as bait to hunt the great beasts. It will be hard to stand up to the laws of Zeus. We must face each realm’s resistance one at a time.

  Where does the boy fit into all this?

  I must prevail on my queen’s compassion now.

  However, I find it wise to keep our secret time spent together as youth to myself.

  I slid the slim book inside my deep coat pocket. It fit perfectly. It was Leandro who didn’t fit anymore. He wanted me dead. My chest tightened with that painful fact.

  “Leandro trusts you,” Ash said. She placed a pale hand on my chest, her warmth pulsing into me. “You must trust you.”

  “I will,” I said with more confidence than I felt. How could I trust myself if I couldn’t trust the man who once sacrificed everything to save me?

  “He believes you may be the one.”

  The one.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Maybe. But whatever he is now, you can’t change the truth of his old words.”

  A great weight bore down on me with the journal of my former friend pressing into my side—and the idea I was the key to saving Nostos.

  Ash lifted a latch, stepping through a door out on the platform surrounding the little house.

  We followed her into the wild beyond to find the help we desperately needed.

  Maybe the answers would come.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We’d started climbing again, only to hear a sharp cry and a great crashing noise heading our way on the forest floor.

  “A hunt is on,” Ash whispered. “One for the many.”

  She jumped to another tree and scrambled past the platform and tree house.

  “What are you doing?” I called, hanging on to the trunk next to Charlie who bounced on a limb.

  She jumped farther down. “It’s feeding time.”

  She disappeared through the leaves.

  “Mon Dieu! I’m not getting eaten today!” Charlie said, hugging the tree.

  “But someone else will.” I jumped down to Ash’s tree.

  “Zut! Double zut!”

  The tree shook and he was right behind me. A hungry roar close by had me gripping the trunk, but adrenaline pushed me to tumble faster after Ash. She’d reached the bottom branch below us, a dozen feet from the ground, and nocked an arrow to her bow.

  Bash. Bash.

  The beast’s howl grew closer. The oak and pine trees swayed, shaking their limbs as if wanting to help but not sure how.

  The heavy crunching of wood and brush mixed with the light footfalls of a runner determined to make it. Through the shadows and shafts of moonlight, a slash of purple and gold flew in and out. A pale face painted with fright burst in a clearing. Apollo! He was running for his life.

  A cretan burst over the bushes not far behind him. Its massive jaws with hungry teeth stretched wide open. I yanked at the closest vine and tugged hard. It stayed. “Charlie, hold on to this!” He wrapped it around a limb as I clambered down to Ash’s branch, holding tight to the vine with my heart threatening to lunge through my chest.

  Ash nodded next to me, aiming her arrow. “He’ll have one cha
nce to get it.”

  “And we’ll have one chance to pull him up.”

  Apollo leaped over a bush, heading right for us. His eyes widened when he saw me. His steps faltered, and the beast almost caught him!

  “Grab it, Apollo!” I swung the vine toward him. My foot slipped on the branch, and for one terror-filled second, I thought I’d land headfirst. If that didn’t kill me, the beast would.

  Apollo sucked in his cheeks and pumped his arms faster. With a final jump, he threw himself on the vine and started climbing. I strained with Charlie above, and we drew our friend up, my arms screaming with the effort. The cretan soared over the bush with a mighty roar. Ash’s arrow flew, striking the beast in the chest. Snap! Its jaws missed Apollo by an inch, and the shrieking animal slammed onto the ground, writhing in agony as blood seeped through its yellow fur.

  Then Apollo was on the branch beside us, clinging to me with great gasps.

  Ash darted up, heading to the tree house again and we followed. I shook all over as fear rushed from my body and relief surged in its place. Apollo was alive.

  With no energy to talk, we climbed above the tree house until Ash signaled us to stop. Grateful for a break, I clung to the tree and smiled at Apollo on the limb across from me, as Charlie braced himself on a branch below.

  “Thank you,” Apollo said, closing his eyes for a long moment.

  Before I could find out how he got to the Wild Lands, Ash whistled long and low into the hollow of a tree trunk. A clunk made me jump as a wooden rope ladder was tossed down. Ash started up it with me fast after her.

  “Where are we headed?” Charlie pulled me back down. “We don’t know where she’s taking us.”

  “Anywhere is better than the ground,” I said, clinging to the ladder.

  “She saved my life along with yours,” Apollo said. “She’s on our side. Although once her friends see my royal clothes, that may change.”

  Ash frowned at our gathering and urged us to keep moving. Charlie broke off a twig and started chewing on it. “Oui, but she’s also got an agrius beast for a friend and left us with that evil hound. Let’s make it across these trees on our own and get back to the Lightning Gate and go home. We’ve got Apollo now, which is why we came here in the first place. He can come home with us, right?” He looked at Apollo. “We could help you find your mother, King-man, like you wanted to before.”

  We’d been brought to rescue Apollo, but now things were much more complicated than the original mission. One thing remained steady: all the Arrow Realm slaves needed to be rescued like the ones we’d saved in the Lost Realm.

  “We need to find help,” I said, peering above, eager to get to Ash who called to us to scram and cram.

  “Those were Leandro’s old words,” Charlie said.

  “No matter what Leandro’s become, his old words are to be trusted,” Apollo said, echoing what Ash had told us earlier.

  “People say a lot of things and then they change.” Charlie chewed on his bottom lip, darting his eyes from me to Apollo.

  “I haven’t changed,” I said. “And the trees have to be safer than the ground, right?”

  “D’accord,” Charlie said. He tossed his twig away, and I let him pull himself up on the rungs ahead of me.

  As I climbed, the trees groaned and the night seemed to go on forever. My legs grew heavier with each step. The forest floor disappeared. We floated in a shadowy sea of wood on the longest ladder ever. Higher we went amongst these sky-highs when a faint whistle cut the quiet.

  Hushed voices called down, but there was nothing above but a wave of leaves between splotches of purple sky. Big, dark squares littered my view above like rescue rafts on an ocean. Confused, I focused on Charlie to keep climbing higher. My hands grew slimy from grasping the moss-covered rungs, and my arms ached with pulling up my weight. The squares grew walls, and the walls became shacks with eyes peering out windows. More and more eyes lit up the tree branches, following our every step.

  Then Charlie cried out. His feet disappeared in the canopy gloom.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I found myself snatched up through a wooden hole onto a platform after Charlie, Apollo following behind. Light spilled from a gourd lantern swinging from a beamed ceiling. We were in a giant log tree house and a serious group of kids encircled us. The room stretched as long as my house back home. Vines crawled through one window and out another. Trees exploded from the floor in several spots and thrust their deformed trunks through the ceiling, waving sawed-off limbs. Over the one door leading out, etched words read:

  Wild Child Rules

  Stick ’em before you get stuck

  Keep on the runabout

  Scram and cram

  Don’t get grounded

  One for the many

  Ash stepped forward, the oldest and tallest of the kids. “Is he awake?”

  A girl my age shook her head with solemn eyes, but I didn’t know or care who “he” was right now as my knee gave out from exhaustion. Ash steadied me but Charlie pulled me close. She raised her eyebrows and let go. A dozen rough knives of all shapes jabbed our way and my bow was ripped from me.

  “He’s a royal one!” a skinny kid with bad acne said, poking a fist in Apollo’s face. “Let’s stick him!” Others started jabbering too, some in a language I didn’t understand.

  Ash held up her hand. “No stick,” she said, clearly in charge, and motioned the thief to hand my bow back. “He’s a friend. They all are. Artemis threw this royal in the dungeon and fed him to the beasts. And we help the hunted, don’t we?”

  The knives fell but not the nasty stares aimed our way, making me want to jump back down the hole I’d been pulled from.

  Ash pointed at me and spread her hands out to the kid army. “Leandro’s Joshua.”

  They stepped back, as if my name carried meaning for them. Good or bad?

  Ash ordered a group of kids to butcher the cretan below for mash.

  Without speaking, they took sacks from hooks and disappeared through the hole we’d come from. Branches screeched across the side of the tree house and the floorboards creaked beneath us. My breath squeezed tight in my chest as I tried not to peer through the open hatch in the floor that dropped hundreds of feet below.

  “I expected someone taller,” a short kid said, looking at me.

  “Us too,” Charlie spouted back.

  Knives shot up again, but Ash tipped her head back and laughed. “Is that so?” Her smile faded. “We have a gift for you.”

  The kids parted their circle, and at the end of the tree house, a dark figure tied to a trunk shooting up from the floor slumped in a chair, a cloth sack over his head. That cloak, that shape …

  “Leandro!” I ran toward him then stopped in my tracks.

  Ash thrust a hand to my chest, her eyes scrunched up. “We did as he asked and faked his kidnapping to bring him here so he could lead you out safely and raise an army against Artemis. But he’s not the Leandro we know. He was our friend until today. It seems now he’s joined forces with Artemis. We’re all in trouble now. He fought us taking him and we knocked him out. This was not part of the original plan, or killing a soldier to do it.” She paused, then said in a subdued tone, “We’ll have to toss him back or we’ll all be in trouble, even with the queen’s soft spot for us.”

  Leandro twitched awake in his seat, garbled words bursting from under the sack. Charlie tightened his fingers on my arm.

  Ash pulled off the head cover, and Leandro glared at us as he strained against the ropes tying him to the chair. “Let me go, you filthy Reekers! You ignorant Barbaros!”

  He twisted about to get at her and she sucked in her breath.

  “Go on and cry.” Leandro laughed at her. “The queen plans to clean out these Wild Lands and all of you once she gets the Oracle and rules Nostos with lost Olympian powers.”

  A wave of scared chatter rose from the kids.

  “Why’d you turn on us?” I asked Leandro, stepping closer to him. The noi
se died down.

  “I came to my senses. You Reekers are doomed. I’m a fighter. I grew tired of fighting on the losing side.”

  “We’re the winning side.”

  “You’re nothing but ash in the air. We can be immortal. The queen has promised me.” He shook in his chair, trying to bust free, and glowered at me.

  “Don’t you remember me and the Lost Realm—how we freed all the kid slaves? You. Me. Charlie. Apollo. Finn. Bo Chez. We took down Hekate and her brother, Cronag, the Child Collector! And—”

  He shook his head. “It’s history.”

  “It’s all history and you wanted to change it. Don’t you now?” I pulled out his journal. “This could help you remember.”

  He lurched to get at it but I stepped back.

  “Hand it over! That Wild Child gave it to you. She stole it from me!”

  I looked at Ash, who stood with her arms folded. “She said you gave it to her.”

  “You speak untruths, Reeker,” Leandro said to her.

  “So do you,” Ash said.

  “You’ll all be dead. Very soon! The queen will see to it.” I searched his face for any sign of my old friend inside this new enemy. There was none.

  “Artemis may hunt us kids, but she lets the survivors live,” Ash said. “She won’t stick us even if we help these three escape. She’ll get them either way, in the Wild Lands by hunt or in the WC by slave.”

  Leandro smirked at Ash. “Now you speak more untruths. You’ll see soon enough.”

  Hoarse shouts traveled up through the trees. Artemis and her men were after us. Their calls grew faint as they moved off in another direction.

  Any remaining good feelings for Leandro crawled from my heart and died in the pit of my stomach. He had turned on us. There was no need for him to pretend here. “Why’d you have Ash bring us here?”

  “Because my queen asked me to. She wanted to hunt you down before she used you. And so did I.”

  “So you acted all nice and got Ash to bring us here to rescue Apollo?”

  “A ruse, yes, Reeker. I even had the queen toss me in the dungeon with you to see if you could be hypnotized so she could gain your powers.” Leandro tossed his long ropes of hair behind him. “I’ll help the new Queen Artemis rule Nostos as her head soldier. We will have Olympian powers once more and lead our world into greatness again, ruling Earth as well!”