STICKY DARKNESS SWIRLED around Ji. A thousand blue-bats buzzed in his ears, and the world stank of wet fur and old manure.
Which wasn’t great news, in terms of an afterlife. Maybe he shouldn’t have lied quite so much.
Then the buzzing turned into words: “Ji, wake up!”
He moaned and shifted on a cold stone floor.
“C’mon, you beetlebrain,” Sally called, her voice gruff. “Jiyong! I know you can hear me!”
He groaned. “I can’t see anything.”
“Your eyes are closed,” she growled. “You chuckle-knuckle.”
When Ji tried to open his eyes, they stayed shut—and he panicked. His eyelids were glued closed! He couldn’t open them, he couldn’t see! His eyes burned and throbbed . . . then sprang open.
Ji shivered in relief as the darkness wavered into a lighter gloom. He rubbed his stinging eyes—until a tightness in his fingers stopped him. A ropy burn mark crossed his palm, shiny with scar tissue. A wound from grabbing the diadem. But how had a scar formed already? How long had he been out? Where was he?
He peered through the gloom at rows of cage bars. “We—we’re in the zoo?”
“Yeah, welcome to the Royal Menagerie,” Sally growled at him from the darkness beyond the bars. “You’re in the tusk deer cage. At least they moved the animals before they locked us in.”
Ji moaned and looked around. Leaves scattered on the dirt floor of his cage. Two boulders sat beneath a narrow tree, and a spring lapped at a muddy bank covered in hoofprints.
“What happened?” he asked.
“We passed out after the ice tree stabbed us,” Sally growled. “At least, that’s what I think.”
Ji touched his uninjured chest. “Are you hurt? If we got stabbed, how come we’re not hurt?”
“Because magic.”
“I guess.” He scanned the darkness. “Where are you? Why are you talking so weird?”
“Don’t freak out,” she yipped.
“Then stop talking like that!”
She growled. “Just promise you won’t freak out.”
“I’m not going to freak out.”
“You’re totally going to freak.”
“I’m not!”
“I’m in the crocodile cage to your left,” she growled. “Twenty feet away.”
When Ji pushed to his feet, his knees felt shaky and his throat tight. He crossed toward Sally, his feet squelching in the mud around the burbling watering hole.
“Where’s Roz?” He peered into the gloom of Sally’s cage. “Is everyone okay?”
“She’s in the mountain goat enclosure. Just promise you won’t panic.”
“I told you, I’m not going to panic.” He grabbed the bars and peered at the flat rocks and swampy bog in Sally’s cage. “How can you even see me? Where are you?”
“Hiding from you.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t freak out.”
“I’m not going to freak out!” he repeated.
“Okay.” She didn’t speak for a moment. “Look at your hands, Ji.”
“What?” He glanced at them. “They’re dirty, so what?”
“That’s not dirt.”
When he looked closer, he frowned. Faint scales covered the backs of his hands and disappeared under his shirtsleeves, like a snakeskin tattoo. He rubbed at the markings, but they didn’t blur, they didn’t fade. Sally was right. They weren’t dirt. They weren’t dirt.
“Oh, no,” he whimpered. “No, no. Th-there are f-f-fish scales on my arms.”
“You got off easy,” Sally growled, and stepped to the bars of her cage.
The evening light brushed against her furry face and stubby snout. It shone on her tufted ears. She looked like herself, except crossed with a fuzzy, big-eyed fox. And when she smiled reassuringly, her pointy teeth glinted.
Ji freaked out.
After his babbling terror faded, Ji stood from behind a boulder in his cage. He wiped leaves from his pants and said, “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Sally growled. “I did the same thing.”
“You did not.”
“Well,” she said, “I didn’t jibber like a monkey and wave my arms around.”
“I didn’t jibber like a monkey.”
“What did you jibber like?”
Ji scuffed back to the bars of his cage. “Shut up.”
“I freaked a little, though,” she told him. “I woke up first, you know? I saw my reflection in the water and . . . yikes.”
“You’re actually kind of cute.”
She scowled adorably. “I am not.”
“You are.” He tried to smile. “You’re totally cute, Sally.”
“Shut up.”
“Is that a tail?”
“No,” she yipped, and swished her bushy tail out of sight behind her. She looked like a walking, talking stuffed animal. Her fur was redder than a fox’s, with black stripes like a chipmunk. And she’d shrunk to about four feet tall: she’d abandoned her trousers and belted her shirt around her waist. It fell to her furry knees like a baggy dress.
“You’re shorter,” he said.
“At least I’m not a mermaid.”
Ji frowned at the fishy-looking scales on his arms—then groaned. He opened his shirt and groaned again. Sally was right! He was a mermaid. Only a few faint scales spread across his arms and shoulders, almost like tattoos, but from his chest downward they grew deeper and thicker. And when he yanked up his pant leg he saw heavy, overlapping scales covering his calf.
The rite had changed him into a half mermaid.
Only one more thing to look at. He took a breath and peered fearfully at his feet. They weren’t fins! That was the good news. The bad news was that they were three inches longer, covered in scales, and tipped with short claws instead of nails.
“Do you have gills?” Sally asked, when Ji finished groaning.
He patted his neck. “I don’t think so. At least I’ve still got both legs.”
“And your fingers aren’t even webbed.”
“Lucky me. Um. So what are you?”
“Roz says I’m part hobgoblin. She says the rite must’ve gone wrong when you grabbed the diadem. Brace got the power and we got . . . turned into beasts.”
“She’s changed, too? And Chibo?”
“He’s still in his sack, but she’s over there.” Sally flicked her tail to indicate the next cage. “In the cave. She won’t come out.”
“His sack?” Ji asked. “What are you talking about?”
Sally’s tufted ears flattened against her head. “I don’t know! He’s wrapped in something. I don’t know what’s going on! Just—” She took a breath. “Just talk to Roz, okay?”
“Yeah.” He started to turn away, then turned back “Are you okay?”
“I’m scared out of my skin,” Sally admitted. “Or my fur, I guess.”
“Your pelt?”
“Thanks, fishfeet,” she said. “That’s a big help.”
At least she still teased him like Sally. And she still was Sally. A furry snout and a bushy tail didn’t change her essential Sallitude.
“Nothing wrong with being scared,” he told her. “Being scared just makes you extra determined, remember?”
Her fuzzy face tilted adorably. “It does?”
“You told me that once.”
“I did?” Her ears pricked up. “Really?”
“Yep,” he said. “And you never lie.”
“It must be true, then.” When she nodded, she looked like a tiger cub licking a saucer of milk. “Yeah. Yeah, who cares about scared?”
“Not you, because you’re doolally.”
“I’m brave.” She held her snout higher. “Whatever’s happening, I’ll face it like a knight.”
“An adorable knight,” he said.
A pebble flew through the bars and pinged off Ji’s forehead.
“Ow!”
“Go talk to Roz,” she said, and shooed him toward Roz’s cage.
“Evil chipmunk,” Ji muttered, rubbing his head.
He crunched through fallen leaves to the other side of his cage, looking at his scaly hands in the moons-light. When he whacked his fingers against a bar, he felt a sting of pain. So apparently mermaid scales weren’t armored. Just fishy.
“Roz?” he called, staring at the rocky slabs in the goat enclosure. “Are you there?”
Silence from the other cage.
“C’mon, Roz! Talk to me.”
A rough voice rumbled from a shadowy crevice. “Go away.”
“I’m locked in a cage, Roz. Even if I wanted to go away, I couldn’t.”
More silence.
“What’s a tusk deer?” he asked, because he thought Roz couldn’t resist sharing information.
She stayed silent.
“I bet it’s a deer with a tusk.”
Nothing.
“Probably two tusks,” he said. “Maybe even three.”
“Would you hush?” she grumbled.
“Not until you tell me about tusk deer,” he said.
Silence again.
“Fine,” he said. “What are you?”
“I—I don’t know anymore. I don’t even sound human. We . . . we’re not human anymore.”
He swallowed. Joking around was easy with Sally, but this was Roz. “What happened? I mean . . . how?”
“I’m not sure. When you grabbed the diadem, you must’ve affected the rite in . . . horrible ways. I’m . . . I’m part ogre now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his stomach hollow with regret. “I’m so sorry, Roz.”
A rasping twang sounded from the darkness. Ji gazed into the shadows and realized that she was crying. A lump formed in his throat, and he stood there like an idiot, listening to her cry and trying to think of the right thing to say. He could apologize again, but Roz wouldn’t care about that. So he kept his mouth shut, completely useless.
“I m-miss my sister,” Roz cried into the darkness.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I just—I want everything back the way it was before she left.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And before they came for Chibo.” Roz took a slow breath. “I didn’t even realize how good things were.”
“Yeah,” Ji said.
“Would you please stop staying ‘yeah’?”
“Okeydoke,” he said.
The rasping twang turned to a sniffle of laughter. “That’s hardly better.”
“Yeah,” he said, then added, “I’m sorry, Roz. I’m really sorry. But if I messed up the rite, they’ll have to fix it, won’t they? I mean, if they want to crown Brace.”
“Hm,” she said. “I suppose so, yes.”
“Which means they have to fix us.”
“That’s possible.”
“It’s more than possible!” he said, trying to sound hopeful. “It’s a sure thing. Say that the Diadem Rite is like, um . . . cooking a stew! Well, I opened the lid too soon, that’s all. That’s why we’re half-cooked.”
“Not you,” Sally growled from the crocodile cage. “You’re half-baked.”
Ji ignored her and told Roz, “Once they simmer things for another few hours, we’ll go back to normal.”
“I dearly hope that you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right! I’m always right! Now would you come out where I can see you?”
“I’m horrible,” she said, her raspy voice tearful again.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m a monster.”
“No, Roz,” he said. “You’re not.”
“How would you know? You can’t even see me!”
“Because you’re the least horrible person I’ve ever met. There’s nobody who’s less of a monster than you. Nobody. You could have a goblin face and ten arms, and you still wouldn’t be a monster.”
A low purr sounded from Sally’s cage. A breeze swirled through the cages, and the water hole bubbled. In the distant parade grounds, the tromp and call of soldiers sounded through the evening.
Then a shadow shifted from the crevice, and Roz edged into the open.