It was true. There was no forgetting what Alistair had done for Charlie. The memory was still too fresh, too real, and shame, an all-too-frequent visitor, sat on the pedestal next to Alistair, reminding him of Charlie’s betrayal and mocking him about Polly’s betrayal. Why, after so long and so much, hadn’t Alistair smartened up? Why did he keep letting people trick him?
Hadrian swooped up and down, clearly relishing his perch, and he said, “There are three things you must know about the Mandrake. First, he is a liar. He will try to deceive you by making you think he is weak. He is not weak. He is a most vicious creature, almost as vicious as his master.”
Alistair didn’t have to ask, but he asked anyway. “Who’s his master? Is it the Riverman?”
“Ah, the Riverman,” Hadrian said. “Been ages since I’ve heard that name used. We’ve grown more accustomed to calling him the Whisper. But yes, you are correct. He is master of the Mandrake. This was a peaceable kingdom once, but the Whisper loathes harmony. So he gave us the Mandrake, and therefore we have been forced to take shelter beneath the ground.”
Behind the crowd there was a pair of wooden doors. Did those doors lead to an entire underground city? Did all of these people live beneath that sea of blood?
“The second thing you must know about the Mandrake is this,” Hadrian went on. “He does not always look like a monster. Sometimes he takes on different forms. Small ones. Deceptively innocuous ones. But there is always one way to recognize him. There is a blue mark, in the shape of a horseshoe, hidden behind his left ear. If you see that blue mark, then you kill. You do not hesitate. You do not doubt. You kill.”
“How do you…?” Alistair couldn’t bring himself to say kill. Aquavania may not have been like home, but it wasn’t like a video game either. These figments appeared to have flesh. There was something unmistakably alive behind their eyes.
“Fair question,” Hadrian said. “For that brings us to the third thing. We do not know how to kill the Mandrake. All we know is that the sea of blood protects us from him. He will not enter it. Beyond that, we do not know what the Mandrake’s weaknesses are.”
“And I’m supposed to know what his weaknesses are?” Alistair asked. “I’ve been here for barely a day, and you’re expecting me to—”
“You are a swimmer!” Hadrian barked. “And being a swimmer comes with responsibilities!”
“Aren’t you a swimmer?” Alistair asked. It was a guess, but an educated one. Figments seemed to look up to swimmers, or at least treat them differently. With a crowd of figments at his bidding, Hadrian certainly fit that bill. Fiona had told Alistair stories about how the kids who traveled from the Solid World to Aquavania never aged, at least not physically. Hadrian might have looked like a six-year-old, but that obviously wasn’t the age of his heart and his mind.
“Once upon a time, you could have called me a swimmer,” Hadrian said. “But now I am simply Lord Hadrian, protector of these beautiful people. We count on swimmers like you to help us.”
“And what do I get if I help you?”
“Honor. Esteem. And your choice of tubes.”
Before that tube had jolted down from the ceiling and snatched Polly away, Hadrian had mentioned a place called the Ambit of Ciphers. The name meant nothing to Alistair. “Would one of the tubes take me home?” he asked.
“Unlikely,” Hadrian said. “But there are many ways from this world to other worlds. I’d venture to guess that Polly brought you here through a passage to Mahaloo. Many of the tubes can bring you to worlds like Mahaloo. But they won’t bring you home. That’s simply nonsensical.”
“Is there a tube that will bring me to Fiona Loomis?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“What about the Riv … the Whisper? Does one lead to him?”
The crowd laughed. Either the answer to Alistair’s question was obvious or it was ridiculous. Probably a bit of both.
“You don’t seem nearly up to that task,” Hadrian chuckled. “But that’s neither here nor there. You have to deal with his Mandrake first.”
“And what if I refuse?” Alistair asked as he climbed to his feet.
Hadrian smiled and dragged his heels on the ground to slow himself down. When the swing was almost at a standstill, Hadrian reached up and stroked the loop of one of the hanging ropes. This loop was red, and when Hadrian pulled it, exerting only a small bit of pressure, one of the tubes from the ceiling descended a few feet. There was a whirring sound, and inside the tube there were spinning teeth shaped like the blades of a blender.
“Like all the others who have refused, you will become one with the sea,” Hadrian said.
All at once, fists shot up and the crowd belted out their favorite chant.
“New blood! New blood! New blood!”
* * *
Hadrian showed no interest in questions or objections. He simply tossed him the sword with the ruby-encrusted handle, which Alistair didn’t attempt to catch. When Alistair bent over and picked the sword up from the net, Hadrian yanked at a yellow rope, and a tube shot down from the ceiling and vacuumed Alistair away. Liquid rushed all around him as he snaked through the darkness, up and down, twisting and looping as if riding a waterslide. It might have even been fun, had it not carried the paralyzing prospect of certain death.
Eventually the tube spat Alistair out and he landed butt-first on a dirt road. Before he had a chance to even knock the dust from his clothes, the tube retracted into the sky and disappeared. No maps, no further instructions, no idea where he was. Only a mission to find and kill the Mandrake.
The dirt road wound through a field of wildflowers. In both directions it looked the same: pleasant, bucolic. There were patches of apple and cherry trees, mossy stone walls, and rough signs hewn from wood.
THIS WAY TO THE HUTCH read a crooked sign staked along the side of the road. With nothing else to guide him, Alistair was forced to follow. The air was full of birdsong and the gentle chee of insects, and as he walked toward whatever or whoever the Hutch was, Alistair let the tip of the sword drag in the dirt.
This was the second weapon he had held in as many days. The first one was a gun, with a cold handle and a trigger that fell too easily. In the dark of the clubhouse behind the Dwyer home, Alistair had shot Kyle Dwyer in the stomach. Accidentally, he had to keep reminding himself. Guns weren’t made for shaky hands like his.
The handle of the sword bore the perfect curves to fit Alistair’s grip, but his hands were even shakier now. He wanted nothing more than to drop the thing or, better yet, toss it in a lake where it could vanish, become rusted over and useless. He wanted to stay alive, but not at the expense of someone else’s life. And yet he held on, because he also wanted to see Fiona. He needed to see Fiona, wherever she was.
The road led to a village, but not one like the primitive settlement in Mahaloo and not one like Thessaly, not one like home. It was made up of a grassy square surrounded by a series of stone huts with thatched roofs. A large wooden platform, like a stage on stilts, sat in the center of the square.
Alistair wouldn’t have necessarily called the village pretty, but it felt like a warm and welcoming place to visit. There was what appeared to be a blacksmith’s shop, with an anvil and a rack of iron tools, and what had to be a bakery, with a large open fireplace near the back, and what was clearly a house of worship, with stools for the parishioners and a pulpit for whoever delivered the sermons. It seemed lived-in, this place, but perhaps not lived in for quite a while.
The ivy and weeds had grown cocky, clinging to surfaces and sprouting from patches of ground where they had no right to be. The structures themselves appeared stable enough, relatively free of pests and rot, but they were also lonely. This village was completely empty; not a single person roamed about.
Alistair made his way to the platform so he could examine it closely. A ladder led the twenty feet or so to the top, and with the hilt of the sword tucked under his arm, Alistair climbed rung by rung. Expecting to find something significant, he was disappointed to discover that the platform was merely a platform, a bare, flat rectangle of wooden slats. The view was lovely, but unenlightening. Below and around him was the village. Beyond the village, it was nothing but rolling fields and the dirt road.
Alistair headed back to the ladder, but as he crouched to prepare his descent, a deep voice gave him pause.
“Oh dear, please do not hurry off.” A red hummingbird, wings aflutter, hovered in front of his face.
“That … wasn’t … you?” Alistair asked.
“Who else would it be?” the hummingbird replied.
The sane response for Alistair would have been Hummingbirds can’t talk, but sanity seemed to have no place in Aquavania. Animals were made of the night sky, so why couldn’t they talk? Alistair stood up and squeezed the handle of the sword.
He does not always look like a monster, Hadrian had said. Sometimes he takes on different forms. Small ones. Deceptively innocuous ones.
“Who are you?” Alistair asked.
“I am Potoweet, noble defender of our fair Hutch,” the hummingbird said. “I do not surrender. I do not hide underground. I was first and I shall be last. Who might you be?”
“Alistair. Alistair Cleary.”
It was strange enough that the bird was speaking, but his deep voice was even stranger. One would think a hummingbird’s pitch would be unbearably high, but Potoweet spoke like a wise and distinguished gentleman.
“Ah,” Potoweet said. “You are another fool sent to his destruction. Hadrian’s cruelty and desperation know no limit.”
As he hovered, Potoweet kept his eyes locked on Alistair’s. Each time Alistair tilted his head, Potoweet mirrored the movement with his body, making it impossible for Alistair to see whether he had the blue mark behind his ear, or if he even had ears. Do birds have ears?
“I am looking for the—”
“Mandrake?” Potoweet asked. “And you want to know if I am he?”
Alistair didn’t respond.
“Allow me to land on your sword and you may examine my body,” Potoweet went on. “You will see I have nothing to hide.”
Alistair began to raise the sword, but then thought better of it. “That sounds like a trick. I’m not a fool.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise,” Potoweet said. “You serve Lord Hadrian.”
“I serve myself,” Alistair retorted. “All I want is to find my friend Fiona and go home.”
“And if you dispatch the Mandrake, Hadrian promised to grant you these things?”
“Not … really.”
“Then you are a fool.”
Back home in Thessaly, when Alistair was seven, he had watched Kyle, then thirteen, shoot a robin out of a tree with a BB rifle. The bird had fallen into the mud at the edge of the swamp, where Kyle fetched the dead body and held it up by a tail feather. Alistair had winced and looked away, and Kyle had said, “Don’t get all weepy over a stupid bird. Do you cry over your chicken nuggets?”
Alistair took a step away from Potoweet and readied his sword. “What if I sliced you in half? Then who’d be the fool?”
“Still you, of course,” Potoweet said. “Even if you had the speed to strike me, which I am sure you do not, then you will have killed your one ally.”
“Or I will have killed the Mandrake,” Alistair said.
Potoweet rolled his minuscule eyes and then zagged through the air with the speed and precision of an insect. Alistair could barely fix a gaze on him, let alone a sword. The bird finally stopped when he was right next to Alistair’s ear.
“Let me tell you a story,” Potoweet said.