“I’ll make a deal with you, Hadrian!” Alistair cried into the cloudless sky. The sky was a hard blue. No cracks, nothing to indicate that it didn’t go on forever. Still, Alistair suspected there were edges to it; if not roofs and walls, then boundaries of some sort. “Whatever Polly promised you,” he yelled, “I’ll give you the same! I need to find someone. I need to go home!”
No response. A breeze, lilac-tinged and confident, caused his arm hairs to echo the dance of the grass. Birdsong skipped back and forth, calls and responses. Time did its thing.
The view of the Hutch from the platform sparked Alistair’s imagination. He tried to picture it bustling with men, women, and children, the same ones who swarmed the pedestal in the underground fortress and chanted “New blood! New blood!” Could they really be the descendants of peaceful and friendly folks? Could they have been so easily corrupted by lies and fear? How could he know for sure, and why should he even care, because what was there to do, really?
He was stuck. Potoweet was right. He was a fool, and this was a fool’s errand.
He closed his eyes. It had all come at him so fast. Ever since he touched that floating cylinder of water in Fiona’s basement, ever since the ash swirled around him and he plunged into the rainbow river, ever since he washed up in Mahaloo and met Polly and ran and swam and floundered in Hadrian’s net, ever since he came face-to-face with a storytelling hummingbird, there had been no time to think things over. Now he had time, nothing but it.
The urge to cry returned, because Fiona had told him something else. No matter how long Alistair stayed in Aquavania, not a second would pass back home. Back home, time was frozen, and Kyle was lying dead, or dying, with a bullet wound to his stomach. Yes, it was an accident, but Alistair couldn’t kid himself any longer. That bullet was meant for someone. It was meant for Charlie, to stop him from … being who he was, from … being whatever it was he had become.
The longer Alistair stayed in Aquavania, the longer he would have to worry about what might have happened to Kyle, about what was going to happen to Kyle. The longer he stayed in Aquavania, the longer that wound stayed fresh and open, a reminder of all of Alistair’s mistakes.
He threw the sword to the side, and it clanged against the platform and slid off the edge. “No no no no no…” he mumbled, balling up his fists and pressing them against his eyes.
His blood couldn’t keep up with his heart. His hands went numb. He tried to pull in a deep breath, but instead of air, something solid entered his mouth.
Good God!
It squirmed and wiggled, tickling his uvula. Rather than hack or gag, Alistair gulped, and that something became lodged in his windpipe. It cut off all of his oxygen. Choking, he fell to his back, and his eyes turned to the sky long enough to see a tentacle descending to scoop him up and suck him away.
* * *
“New blood! New blood! New blood!”
The chant built into a crescendo as the tentacle spat Alistair onto the net, back in the underground fortress where Hadrian reigned. The trip through the fleshy tube took about a minute, but Alistair still hadn’t dislodged the blockage in his throat. As the net lowered him onto the pedestal, he pounded his own back, trying to knock loose the clog.
“Don’t go so hard on yourself,” Hadrian said, chuckling as he rocked on his swing. “You surrendered faster than most, but that doesn’t make you a coward.”
The crowd snickered as Alistair—now on his knees, doubled over—winced and continued to strike himself between the shoulder blades. It was useless. With his arm twisted the way it was, he couldn’t produce adequate force.
“So you’d like an arrangement similar to the one I made with Polly?” Hadrian went on. “I suspect you have no idea what that entails?”
Alistair couldn’t have responded if he wanted to. His eyes watered; his head was a squeezed lemon. He placed his hands down and arched his back, tried to turn himself into a cat coughing out a hairball.
“I exercised trust and compassion with Polly,” Hadrian continued. “You must understand that I am the only known swimmer who controls a gateway to the Ambit of Ciphers, and Polly desperately wanted to travel there. So she paid her passage by delivering us ten swimmers to fight the Mandrake. The first nine were unsuccessful. You, young sir, are number ten. Would you like to agree to the same bargain?”
His chest heaving, Alistair tried to cough, but all that came out was a throaty rattle. The crowd responded with a fresh chant of “New blood! New blood! New blood!”
“What ails you, boy?” Hadrian said, planting his feet and stopping the swing. “Did you eat something foul up there in the Hutch? Please do not regurgitate on our pedestal. We’ve only just had it cleaned.”
This is it, Alistair thought. I’m going to die right here, choke to death without ever fighting back, without ever knowing squat about Fiona’s fate. It felt like more than a punishment. It felt like being ridiculed. With his last bit of strength, Alistair rose to his feet and, instead of coughing, he tried to swallow. He tipped his head back.
“Here’s the difference between you and Polly,” Hadrian remarked. “She had wit and spark. She knew that making a deal means jousting with words. You, on the other hand, are a complete and absolute bore. Better suited to the froth of the sea.”
Hadrian reached up to grab the red rope, the one that dispatched the toothed tentacle.
“New blood! New blood! New blood!” went the crowd.
And Alistair, head still tipped back, neck straight, opened his mouth. Out flew a bird.
Potoweet shot up from the boy’s throat like a cork from a champagne bottle. As soon as he reached the height of Hadrian’s eyes, Potoweet stopped midair and hovered, wings blurring. Alistair gasped for breath as his body finally surfaced from the depths of suffocation.
“Greetings, Hadrian,” Potoweet said.
“Oh. Sweet. Merciful. Heavens,” Hadrian replied.
“And so it is that we find ourselves entangled once again,” Potoweet said.
The crowd fell silent. The only sound was Alistair’s thick breaths. Haw, huh. Haw, huh. Hawwww, huhhhh. Until Hadrian screamed.
“Mandrake!”
That’s when Potoweet unfolded and expanded. His wings fanned. His feathers flared. His body ballooned, and his legs sprouted. His beak twisted until it wasn’t a beak anymore. It was a horn, and floating in the air there was now a creature both beautiful and terrible, a monster with a face like a bird’s face, but with that horn instead of a beak, and with a mouth like a serpent’s mouth that curled up around the sides of his head. He had wings like a peacock’s wings, a body like a man’s body, but with two muscular and furry legs that were part equine, part lupine. This was the Mandrake, and he advertised his delight with a mad shriek.
Panic. The crowd began to scream and push and trample and clog the exit with their flailing bodies. The Mandrake wasted no time. He lunged through the air at Hadrian, and Hadrian tried to dodge but wasn’t fast enough. The Mandrake’s twisted horn pierced the scale mail that protected Hadrian’s body and sank into the boy’s chest.
“You … worthless … bucket … of pus,” Hadrian coughed, and Alistair couldn’t tell if he was talking to him or to the Mandrake, for Hadrian’s eyes fell closed and his body started to convulse.
The Mandrake roared again and kicked at the balcony with his powerful legs. The balcony crumbled, raining stones on the raging crowd, and with a still-writhing Hadrian skewered to his horn, the Mandrake flew up and across the room, over the pedestal and then down toward the teeming masses below. A blast of arctic air erupted from the Mandrake’s mouth, freezing and leveling each and every body it hit.
“Stop!” Alistair screamed. “Please stop! You shouldn’t be doing this!”
The Mandrake responded with a cackle. “I was designed to do this!”
The room flashed from sweltering to frigid in an instant. The exit was still clogged with people and would remain clogged, because the Mandrake released another blast of cold air from his mouth and it froze the bodies in place.
“The red rope!” came a terrified scream from below. “Pull the red one! It’ll pulverize the beast!”
Hadrian’s empty swing rocked back and forth in the open air, its tortoiseshell seat coming close to the pedestal. In Alistair’s sixth-grade gym class, there had been a track and field day when he had registered a long jump of eight feet, which was considered not bad for a twelve-year-old. The shell appeared to reach within eight feet of the pedestal at the apex of its sway, and since it was only going to lose momentum, it was now or never. Alistair took a few steps back. He started to run.
As he reached the end of the pedestal, his foot snagged a bunched-up section of net. He stumbled, and what was a planned leap became an impromptu fall.
“Waaaaa!” Alistair screamed, his voice joining the chorus of cries from the frenzied villagers below. Down he went into clouds of frosty air. Whatever broke his fall was likely to be person or stone, so when he struck a meaty and feathery wing, he was relieved, but only for a split second.
The wing flapped up and Alistair slid down onto the Mandrake’s back. It was an enormous back, rife with rib and muscle, and Alistair was astounded that this was the same beast as Potoweet. Balancing would be impossible without a firm grip, so Alistair reached forward and grabbed at the feathers on the Mandrake’s head.
The Mandrake roared again, tipped its head back, and flew upward, out of the billows of cold air and toward the hanging garden of tentacles. Alistair held on like it was a bucking bronco, but his sweaty hand was already slipping, and when the Mandrake took a sharp turn, Hadrian’s impaled body spun like a propeller and his foot hit Alistair in the face. Alistair lost his grip.
He grabbed at the air as he fell again, and the first thing his hands found were the dangling colored ropes.
Yank, yank, yank, yank.
He snatched and swung from rope to rope like he was on a jungle gym. Tentacles came rocketing down from the ceiling, snapping at the air, striking the pedestal, striking one another, becoming intertwined.
Yank, yank, yank, yank.
More tentacles, ricocheting off one another—the hollow ones pilfering the frozen bodies of figments, the ones equipped with blades chopping things to bits, all of them zipping past the Mandrake, who dipped and dodged as he flew.
Yank, yank, yank, yank.
The walls took a pounding, the screams got even louder, and the ceiling began to crack and let in the chunky, viscous sea. Red liquid began to rain down on them.
Through a torrent of blood and a tangle of tentacles came the awful visage of the Mandrake. The beast was tilted sideways, weaving through the air past the many obstacles, his eyes locked on Alistair. As the blood doused the Mandrake’s body, the creature howled in pain but kept moving.
Alistair was holding on to one rope, and there was one final rope in front of him. Since everything was drenched in blood, everything looked red. He had no idea what pulling this final rope would do, but pulling this final rope was all he could do.
Yank.
As a blast of cold air struck Alistair’s legs, a tentacle grabbed at his head, and with the ceiling caving in and blood pouring down, Alistair slipped away into the dark.
Up and over and around he went as the bays of agony faded and the only noise was the sluice of his body through the tube. It reminded him of a babbling brook, but it was the opposite of relaxing. Because next came a jolt and a crash as the tube busted through a flimsy layer of ice and spat Alistair out onto cold ground.
He was now in a dark cavern where the air was frosty but ripe, and standing in front of him was a penguin.
“Greetings and salutations,” the penguin said.