The sky had grown lighter when I awoke. My fifth day in the Arrow Realm. I must have passed the night in my tree. My stiff legs and neck confirmed it. Shaking off sleep, I climbed higher, hoping to see the Wild Childs’ houses. If the Wild Childs could survive in a tree world so could I, and no one would look for me there. No one would look for me anywhere.
I pulled myself up faster with urgent purpose. Muted stars winked as they faded with the rising sun. I stopped to stare at them. I clung to the tree, closed my eyes, and visualized staring up at the Big Dipper back home. Holding on to that memory meant holding on to the tiny shreds of the old Joshua. I opened my eyes. The Nostos stars were gone, erased by the blue ball of the rising sun.
I shook myself out of my daze and climbed higher. The limb I stood on cracked in half beneath me, but I sidestepped to another branch in time to watch the wood crash down. At one point, Artemis and her men galloped below. I froze amongst the leaves in hiding, but the army never looked up. From tree to tree, I moved until the great hedge appeared, signaling the border into the Wild Lands.
Was I crazy to head back to the Wild Childs? They could escape but didn’t. They survived on their own terms. Leaving it all behind to start a new life sounded good to me.
I snatched up a vine and swung over the wall, and slammed into a tree, the breath knocked out of me. The scent of smoke hung in the air as if left over from the rain. The Wild Childs camp.
Rough bark scraped my arms and face. I pressed myself against a trunk, thankful to still be alive when growls rumbled below. An agrius beast paced the forest floor, pawing the ground. With each snarl, giant billows of steam blew from its flared nostrils. Not Ash’s pet for sure. It stood up on its hind legs, attacking the tree, trying to climb but sliding down, howling in anger. I scrambled higher.
From tree to tree I jumped, following the smoke trail. The agrius beast kept pace. Sap stuck to my fingers and clothes, attracting tiny black bugs that buzzed around me, biting my neck and hands. I swatted at them while brushing the sweat off my forehead. The blue sun burned my eyes between patches of sky above. Water dripped from dewy leaves and I drank each drop greedily, my throat parched and my canteen long empty. The leaves formed letters but I bashed them away before reading their words. “No more messages!”
Pale gray sticks scattered across the trails below. More twig messages from my mysterious friend? No. My breath quickened in tight spurts. Not sticks. Bones. Of kids hunted down.
NEVER … GIVE … UP.
Had they? Didn’t matter. They were the unlucky ones who hadn’t survived to become a Wild Child. Or perhaps they were the lucky ones. Their suffering had ended. A skull leaned against a boulder, it blank eyes staring up from its hollow face. I lunged to another tree, tearing my eyes away from the path of death. My dread grew into spears of rage. A primitive cry burst from my lungs. My skin rippled. My muscles bulged. The bark bit into me as my body swelled against the tree trunk. A shock of black fur sprung from my hands.
No! This couldn’t be happening—not a beast!
A power this big comes with great responsibility, Oak had said.
The power of the Oracle. Who would teach me how to use it?
Trembling, I willed away this terrifying transformation. My body deflated. The hair on my hands faded to ghostly wisps and then poof disappeared.
I hugged the tree, wetting the bark with tears of relief, and looked at the sky. Could I become a bird and fly away or a cadmean beast and torch my enemies? The thought was too frightening. It bound me to Nostos. My tears turned to ones of desperation and the sun held no answers.
Every few minutes, I looked for evidence of the Wild Childs. The thought of finding refuge with others, and the agrius beast’s hungry moans below as it hunted me, kept me going. I may die here, but it wouldn’t be from being eaten. I fingered Leandro’s fire belt, wondering how it could help me, then pulled my hands away, not wanting a connection to him.
Exhaustion sank into my every bone. I hung on to a tree in the nook of its two branches and closed my eyes. One moment of rest. A breeze chilled my skin. As I shivered, my eyes twitched open. The largest tree in the wood appeared through the thick of the forest. The Grand Tree! The protector of the Wild Childs. A beacon of light in this dark Arrow Realm.
My strength was sucked away from lack of food and sleep. I hugged the tree tighter with my remaining strength. If I made it to the Grand Tree, its giant arms would hold me up until the Wild Childs found me.
My foot slipped. I caught a branch but my trembling hands slid off it, finger by finger.
The Grand Tree stomped toward me. Ancient limbs curved and soared upwards with crooked fingers. Closer it grew as the agrius beast paced below, now joined by a cadmean beast. They snapped at one another, battling for breakfast—me. My desperate fingers clung tighter to the branch as I scrabbled to get a foothold on a knotted burl.
“The Reeker is mine, fire-devil!”
“Back off beast! Your stench sickens me.”
The growls and grunts of the standoff grew louder. Then the Grand Tree loomed beside me. I willed my body to hang on and take one final leap. I reached out and, with my heart rapping in my chest, launched myself toward it. Stiff hands reached out for me but I faltered, leaned back, and fell.
I screamed as tree branches whipped my arms and legs. Flames from the cadmean beast blasted my feet and heat surged up my body. I fell toward death, but instead of landing on teeth, I slammed into hard wood. The Grand Tree cupped me to safety. The beasts roared but the Grand Tree roared back louder with ear-splitting creaks. It slapped two of its limbs down with balled fingers and flung the creatures away. They howled in pain and dashed off through the forest to find another meal.
Clinging to the sides of the Grand Tree’s hand, I peered down. The massive Oak uprooted itself, one root at a time, and strode through the woods on knobby feet. The forest swayed back to let it pass as it forged a trail, twisting wooden fingers around its fellow trunk mates, pushing onward. I held on, amazed to be alive.
Sunlight glimmered and I lifted my face to it. The great tree’s leaves curled into cones and dripped water into my throat. I rode this woodland giant until the treetops were filled with huts spread out amongst a meadow of leaves. Figures appeared amongst branches. The Wild Childs. I recognized one of them standing on the big tree house platform.
Ash.
She didn’t look happy to see me at all.