SCALDING TEARS FILLED Ji’s eyes. His fists clenched in fear and frustration . . . and with a creeeeak the bronze-banded doors swung open. Green light spilled out like an emerald fog.
“Hurry!” Chibo fluted from inside. “There’s more coming!”
Roz shouldered into Ti-Lin-Su’s estate, the urn scraping the floor. Ji stumbled after her, into a cool breeze that smelled of marsh and rainfall.
“I flew over the wall!” Chibo announced, wings shimmering in pleasure.
“How’s Nin?” Sally growled, bounding beside them. “Is he—they—still here?”
“The doors!” Ji shouted. “Bolt the doors!”
With a pained grunt, Roz shoved the doors closed a moment before the first black-clad soldiers arrived. The slam reverberated inside the high walls. Pounding sounded from outside as Ji and Sally slid three heavy metal bars across the doors. Then Roz hefted an even bigger bar into place.
“Nin?” Ji knelt beside the urn. “Nin! Say something!”
Silence. No mind-speak came from Nin. No red-and-gold ant lions boiling from the mound in the urn. Nothing but fluttering papaya leaves and four ant lions scratching in the dirt.
“Roz, you’re bleeding,” Sally said. “Are you okay?”
“A trifle tired,” Roz said, wiping her split lip. “But not hurt.”
“C’mon, you headbutton!” Ji begged the urn. “Tell me how to pickle beets! Say some aws or—”
A blare of trumpets shrilled through the night, and a tromp of boots echoed along the street outside.
“We’re cornered.” Sally put her paw on Ji’s shoulder. “We’re trapped and—”
Crack! Soldiers slammed the other side of the doors. The wood shuddered and the bars creaked.
“And that,” she finished.
“Okay” Ji said, wiping his eyes. “We need another way out of here.”
“The water garden,” Roz said in an awed rumble.
Her hood had fallen, revealing her curved horn—and her broad, granite-flecked face was alight with wonder.
When Ji turned away from the door, he saw why. Palm trees rose above walkways that twisted through an enormous water garden. Streams linked dozens of pools, some glittering with golden fish, some thick with seaweed, some steaming like hot springs. Gauzy canopies draped lush islands scattered with cherry trees and seashells and driftwood. Canals flowed through archways into the triple-domed main house.
“That’s not a water garden,” Sally said. “That’s a water forest.”
When Chibo spread his wings, emerald light shone on pillars rising from one pool and illuminated the bookshelves between them.
“This is where Ti-Lin-Su writes,” Roz said, her voice soft. “All her greatest works of poetry and zozology and—”
“Who cares about her?” Ji snapped, above the pounding on the door. “What about Nin?”
“If there is a single ant-lion queen left alive,” a woman’s voice said from the water garden, “the colony might survive.”
Chibo’s wings flared brighter, and Ji’s heart thumped. “You ready for another fight?” he muttered to Sally.
“I’m not going to hob some damp old lady,” she said. “Not even for you.”
Ji followed her big-eyed gaze toward a woman with long white hair, standing waist-deep in the water beside a walkway. The woman fixed a veil around her face, then waded closer, wearing a flowing blue dress that shed water.
“M-my lady Ti-Lin-Su,” Roz sputtered. “We—we do apologize for bursting inside so rudely, and—and for how we look but, but—”
A slam-slam-SLAM sounded from the boulevard, and Ti-Li-Su said, “But there is another queen who worries you?”
“Yes, milady,” Roz said. “Her Majesty’s army is hunting us.”
“So if you’ve got a back door,” Ji said, “we’ll get out of your hair.”
“After you break the spell on us,” Sally growled.
“The spell?” Ti-Lin-Su asked. “Oh, of course! You survived the Diadem Rite? But not before it transferred some of your essence into the heir.”
“The rite made us less than human,” Roz said, her voice thick, “to make Brace more than human.”
“I cannot break this spell,” Ti-Lin Su said. “Its power runs too deep.”
Roz’s shoulders’ slumped. Chibo’s wings sagged and Sally growled, “Then who can break it?”
“That doesn’t matter right now!” Ji said, looking toward the shuddering front doors. “If we don’t get out of here fast, we’re dead.”
Ti-Lin-Su eyed him through her veil. “Ah! I presume that you are the one who rang the black-glazed bell?”
“I barely made it up the stairs,” he told her. “Roz rang the bell.”
The white-haired lady turned toward Roz. “The same Miss Roz who called on me the other day? I’ve lived alone for many years, my dear, in quiet meditation. And now you’ve shattered my peace.”
“I apologize.” Roz lifted her head. “However, we hadn’t a choice.”
“I turn away all callers,” Ti-Lin-Su said, wading to the edge of the walkway. “And yet, meeting the four of you is—”
“Five of us,” Ji said, putting a hand on Nin’s urn and trying not to scream in frustration. Why were they just standing around talking? But he couldn’t push this lady too hard—they needed her help.
“Meeting the five of you,” Ti-Lin-Su said, accepting the correction, “is the consummation of my most dearly held ambition.”
“Huh?” Sally growled.
“She’s happy to meet us,” Roz explained.
Ji eyed the shuddering doors. “I’ll be happier when we’re gone.”
“You are part . . . sprite?” Ti-Lin-Su’s veiled face turned toward Chibo. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so breathtaking. May I feel one of your wings?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Chibo said, and shifted a sheet of green light toward her.
Ti-Lin-Su brushed the wavering rays with her fingers. “They truly are made of light,” she said with childlike wonder. “How do they hold you aloft?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” Chibo said, oddly shy. “All I know is I can fly.”
“That’s a tremendous gift.”
“I know! That’s what I keep telling them! It’s the best thing ever!”
“We’re kind of in a rush,” Ji said, as the pounding grew louder and the front doors shook. “So if you could tell us how to get out of—”
“Jiyong!” Roz rumbled. “Hush!”
“Indulge me for another moment, young man,” Ti-Lin-Su told Ji, “and I will show you how to leave undetected.”
“There’s a way out?”
“There is indeed.”
“Thank summer,” Ji said, faint with relief. “And, uh, do you know who can break this spell?”
“Whyever would you want to?” Ti-Lin-Su asked, still waist-deep in the water.
“Just look at us!”
“Very well.” She turned her head, and her breath caught when her veiled gaze fell on Sally. “A hobgoblin!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sally said.
“Strong, fast, acrobatic. Not to mention sleek and stunning. And, I must say, hobgoblins are entirely f—”
“Fuzzy?” Ji guessed.
“Formidable.” Ti-Lin-Su rested her elbows on the walkway. “One must never underestimate a hobgoblin. And you,” she said, looking to Roz. “A troll. So rare and beautiful, and rooted so deeply in the earth.”
“Th-thank you, milady,” Roz said, and managed to blush.
“And not even in my most fanciful imaginings,” Ti-Lin-Su said, looking back to Ji, “did I dream of you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ji muttered, with a glance at the shuddering front doors. “I’m a merman who can’t swim.”
“A merman?” Ti-Lin-Su’s laughter sounded like wind chimes. “You’re no merman. If anyone can assure you of that fact, it is I.”
Roz pressed her hand to her throat. “You!” she gasped to Ti-Lin-Su. “You!”
“Indeed, you clever young lady.”
“What in the moons are you nattering about?” Ji asked. “And can we please, please run away now?”
“She’s a mermaid!” Roz said, her voice thrumming with excitement.
Ti-Lin-Su laughed again and glided through the water. Her tail broke the surface behind her, then splashed back down with a slap.
Sally’s tufted ears pricked up and Chibo’s wings fluttered and Ji’s breath caught. Whoa. Ti-Lin-Su was an actual mermaid! Swimming through the water garden, completely full of both mer and maid. He gave a low whistle. Maybe she really would know who could to turn them human again.
“Perhaps this is a sign that I’ve hidden for too long,” Ti-Lin-Su said, removing her veil to reveal a wrinkled mermaidy face. “Perhaps it’s past time for me to return home.”
“Wait a minute,” Sally said. “If Ji’s not a merman, what is he?”
“The answer to my outstanding question, I very much hope.”
Ji frowned. “The only question I care about is how do we get out of here?”
“Your outstanding question . . . ,” Roz whispered, her eyes widening.
“You are the rarest of beasts,” Ti-Lin-Su told Ji. “The proud echo of an ancient song that has quieted almost to silence.”
“So now I’m a song?” Ji scoffed.
“What she means,” Roz said, “is that you’re a dragon.”