“Get down.” Leandro pushed me down hard onto the horse’s back.
I finally gave in and held on tight. He drew back his bow and shot at the oncoming army. Arrows spun out in a blur. Men fell. Again and again.
“What are you doing?” I tried to sit up, but he shoved me down again.
“Trying to not get us killed.”
What?
Before I could argue, he said, “Use the lightning orb!”
I couldn’t argue with that.
We rocketed toward the soldiers, firing on them.
The roar of the fight pounded in my ears: the cries of men struck by the gate’s power, the screams of horses slamming into the ground, the blasts of lightning exploding like fireworks in the smoldering air.
Charlie and Sam stood under the Lightning Gate, gunning their vapes at the two soldiers that remained behind. The cries of scared kids huddling behind the gate filled the air. King Apollo stood off to the side, his hands moving back and forth on a panel. Was he manning the Lightning Gate’s guns? Then the gate unleashed more storm power. White light blasted from its bronze columns and struck the two soldiers. They fell off their horses and didn’t get up.
A glance behind revealed Hekate shoving a soldier off his horse to hoist herself up on it. She slumped over the saddle horn, then joined her army and her brother. The enemy circled around us from the rear as we neared the gate. They were closing us in!
We galloped between the dead, their faces of agony stuck in their final moments. The scent of blood and mud and sweat rose from the fresh graveyard, and there was no escaping it. Hekate’s horse ran fast beside us, leaping over bodies. Charlie and Sam jumped up and down under the gate, and the group of kids screamed. Finn’s face popped up, then vanished behind the sea of kids.
Leandro whirled around and fired his bow. One. Two. Three. More soldiers disappeared behind us.
The Lightning Gate rose up fast. Leandro steered our horse left and we dashed alongside the massive metal sculpture. Sam grabbed Charlie and they ducked behind the gate as we passed it. Our eyes met briefly, and my heart clenched like a fist. My shoulders tightened and my lungs burned, ready to give up. Not yet!
Soldiers came at us, but their horses reared up when the gate fired at them, tossing the men in the air. Lightning cracked like a whip to their chests, and they crashed onto the ground. Only a few stumbled up. Leandro aimed his vape at them and they snatched up their vapes. Too late. Zap. Zap. Zap. They were gone, too. Their horses trotted about and then stood still, as if waiting for their owners.
The trees swayed in and out with deep angry breaths, and then a great creaking of wood screeched around us. Our horse bolted up in terror as giant tree limbs that had grown down and burrowed in the ground came to life and ripped themselves from the earth. They swung in the air like great elephant trunks and reached up—as if the dead spell on them fell away—and tore their pointed branches off with gnarled root fingers. The tree army shot their weapons at Hekate and her men, the jagged daggers hitting their mark again and again as the soldiers dropped on the field, leaving their horses to run off.
But Hekate and her few remaining men kept coming, out of the way of the tree soldiers. The weapons of the woods fell short and tree arms, once buried in the ground, froze in the air.
And then a figure on a horse punched through the mist.
He launched through the air, a hero of giant proportions.
Bo Chez!
I’ll always come for you, he’d said.
He tore through the fog, speeding up from behind our enemy. And hope shot through me as if I had been pierced by Leandro’s arrow.
Hekate saw him and yelled to her men, the ten or so soldiers left to fight. They turned in an arc, heading right for Bo Chez.
Leandro reined his horse in. “Quick,” he said to me. “Get off and into the gate.”
“No!”
“It’s not your day to die a hero.” And he left me no choice as he dumped me on the ground.
“Your Majesty.” Leandro held out the reins of the other horse to him, and the king mounted it in one swoop.
“Take these.” Sam ran over and handed his and Charlie’s vapes to them. They grabbed them and, together, cantered off after Hekate.
“Send the kids home,” Leandro yelled back at me. “You too.”
“Not without Bo Chez!” My words faded away as horses stampeded the meadow.
Leandro circled around to join Bo Chez, and Hekate and her men raced after him, away from us.
I ran to my friends. Fear filled Finn’s face, his freckles jumping up and down as he chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“Did the other kids get through?” I said.
Sam nodded weakly, and his pinched face told me how much older and tired he’d become. By now the Moria plant’s magic had to be wearing off, and Leandro didn’t have any more leaves. Sam’s time was running out. So was all of ours.
“Hurry!” Sam directed the remaining kids under the gate. I pressed my fingers to the column next to him, wanting to soak up its legendary power as it hummed with electricity. Its carvings flowed in and out of one another as if they were gathering up the gate’s energy to zap everyone home. Time to use it for good instead of evil. The kids looked at me with wide eyes, scared and hopeful all at once.
“We’re almost at max capacity,” Sam said, peering at the Lightning Gate key he’d pushed into the gate like a puzzle piece. He studied the scroll and pressed a series of jeweled squares on the golden box that lit up and flashed. “There’s room for only two more on this trip.”
“Charlie, get out of here.” It took all the energy I had left to push him under the gate.
“Wait!” He reached in his pocket. “Sam, here, the bag.” Sam hesitated, but I grabbed it for him. “I’m glad I followed you, Joshua!”
“Stay cool, Charlie,” I said. We once thought we’d never leave this place, and now goodbye came so fast. He’d see his brother again.
“You’re the cool one, Joshua.” And we smiled at each other. “Au revoir, mes amies!” He shoved a piece of bark in my hand, then ran into the crowd of kids. “That’s goodbye—”
“For now, until—”
“We meet again, my friends!” Then he disappeared in the crowd.
I opened my hand to see Charlie’s final picture, roughly drawn with the charcoal from a burnt stick. On it, two kids painted on easels next to each other by a creek. One tall. One short. And they were smiling at each other. It was signed. Joshua and Charlie went home.
Awesome.
I slid the bark into my pocket, careful not to smudge it, and turned to Finn. “We’ll meet back at my house, okay?” I pushed him forward.
He smiled bravely, but his lip wobbled. What if they all got blown to bits instead of saved? He punched my arm weakly and said, “Ham and cheese.” And I knew it would be okay. He ran into the gate.
“That’s it,” Sam said, and punched a final button on the gate key. “The default setting. To return them from where they each last came.”
Then the lights on the key box died.
A quick glance to the meadow showed Bo Chez and Leandro dodging vape fire. But for how much longer?
Sam’s fingers shook as he tried another combination on the key. It wouldn’t light up again. The fight grew closer. “Hurry, Sam. Hurry!” I croaked out, my throat dry from racing breaths that barreled up my throat.
“I’m trying! I thought I had it, but now it won’t work!”
The ground trembled. A rumble of hooves echoed close.
“Sam, can’t you fire the gate’s weapons?”
He shook his head, studying the scroll and working the panel furiously. “Only kings have the secret code to fire Lightning Gate power.”
Just our luck. The king was fighting for his life right now, and he barely missed Hekate’s fingers of death. I pulled out the orb and prayed it wouldn’t hit Leandro, Bo Chez, or the king as I threw it at the mass heading our way. Blast!
Horses fell. Screams filled the air. Sam frantically worked at the key in the Lightning Gate. The orb came back to me. I threw it again and again. No hesitation now.
The kids cried for help, hiding behind me. “Hurry, Sam!”
He pulled out the gate key and pushed it back in.
“It’s jammed!” He took the key out and tried it again.
Fire bolts spun like spears before us. Vapes lashed out with their deadly tongues. Arrows rained down.
“Got it!” He cried.
I turned my head to see, barely dodging vape fire. The key’s squares flashed with brilliant color. The gate glowed, and a golden sheen moved through it like liquid. Its glimmer grew so bright it was like the sun itself. The kids standing underneath it shimmered. White light exploded from the gate. The air sizzled, and the kids vanished.
The last thing I saw was Charlie’s head above everyone else’s, and Finn’s freckles.