steady and my eyes on the lizard-bird. I can hear drums in the
distance and I know I’m on to something. The clan is so close-
Then my foot gets caught and I tumble forward into a pool of mud.
I remember the obstacle course at the end-of-the-semester gym class.
The mud pit always gets me. I kick but the mud pit feels like suction,
pulling me down a drain. My lizard-bird chirps happily nearby. I spit
out the mud and shout, “You little shit! You led me here!”
He cocks his head and snaps at me before taking off from his perch
and heading all the way into the sky. The last sound the bird makes
definitely sounds like a laugh.
“Wait! Come back!”
I shut my mouth because I’m sinking more. My skin is starting to
itch. Long branches poke my legs. At least, I hope they’re branches,
not the bones of other poor souls that met the same fate. Because this
is not how I plan to go. Not in a mud pit. I stab my dagger as far as
I can out of the pit and try to pull myself up. The ground is so soft
that I might as well be slicing pie.
I calm my breathing and grab at the long grass around me. It comes
out from the roots, but the sinking feeling loosens up.
I’ve got this. I get into the rhythm of grabbing and pulling and
grabbing and pulling. It occurs to me that I’m running out of nearby
grass when a growl rumbles through the forest. Birds take flight.
Glass frogs jump away from the stones and into the river. The forest’s
edge moves. Something snarls in the shadows.
This is it’s trap and I’m in it.
I can smell the dried mud on its fur, the fresh blood on its
teeth.
No, the mud isn’t going to take me.
The beast is-
Long talons grab for my outstretched hand, and I jerk back into
the mud. The B flat of the lizard-bird rings in timeless day. I grab
my dagger and swing out, but it slices through air and I can’t reach
much further.
A body-thank Poseidon-a human body lunges at the beast. He tucks
and rolls between its hind legs, then jumps on the creature, which
throws him right off in a second. The beast leaps over the blond guy.
It lays a scaly paw on his chest and lowers its face so I can finally
see it-a creature I have no name for. The head of a dragon and a
reptilian coarse hide, with long claws that could shred a mountain to
a pebble. I blink to make sure I’m seeing straight. From the belly on,
the beast has the golden hind legs of a lion and a sea serpent’s long,
curling tail. It opens its long snout over my rescuer’s face, saliva
dribbling all over him. I try to grab on to solid ground, the suction
of the pit pulling on me like the tide. Between Blondie, me, and the
lizard-bird, I can’t tell whose screams are whose as we wait for the
death bite that never comes.
The beast leaps sideways and dashes back into the forest,
disappearing into its shadows.
Blondie gets up at once, readying his staff to chase after it.
“Hey!” I shout. “Come back!”
He turns around. I’m hit with a wave of familiarity. I know his
face. And from the shock on his, he knows mine.
“Lord Tristan,” he says, kneeling.
“Save the formalities for later, Dylan,” I say to the
until-now-missing Champion of the West. His blond hair falls over his
blue eyes, and I wonder if he’s been here all this time.
I grab onto the staff he extends, and he pulls me onto solid
ground.
“Best wash this muck off,” he says. “It’ll burn your flesh right
off when it hardens.”
Then he points to a spot on his leg where the scales don’t grow
around the burn.
“Good to know,” I say, then jump into the river.
“How did you find me?” Dylan asks, ripping the meat off the bone
of a rabbit-like creature he caught in one of his many booby traps.
About a mile from where the mud pit is, Dylan has made a fort in a
small clearing. He’s got a proper roasting spit and a hammock of woven
vines. It’s like he’s hiding from the wild right smack in the middle
of it.
He looks slimmer than the last time I saw him. What is it about
this championship that takes the life out of us? The thin platinum
band on his forehead is tarnished, and a long, pearly scar marks an X
on the right side of his chest. The firelight makes the powder blue
scales on his arms glisten. Even though we’re not in the water, we
wear them on our shins and forearms like banner shields.
“No offense, man,” I say, “but I wasn’t exactly looking for you.”
He holds his hands over the flames and stares. The red stone is a
bright ember in the center, like an all-seeing eye.
“Right.” He forces a smile. “I thought that since I’ve been here
for, what? Months? A year? Can’t keep track of the days when the sun
and moon don’t move. I have no knowledge of what’s happening out
there-”
I cross my hands into a T. “Hold up. Months? Are you kidding? You
think you’ve been here for months and you haven’t gone back?”
Dylan shakes his head. “I can’t find a way out! Every time I swim
into the ocean, it spits me back onto the white beach. I’ve walked all
over the island, and nothing. There was supposed to be a clan here,
but if there is one, they haven’t shown themselves to me because I’ve
tried. I have.”
The last bit sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself
rather than me. Dylan slumps a bit and I can see how tired he is. He’s
a full beard away from being a castaway.
“Then the championship hasn’t ended.” Dylan looks behind me to
where the quartz scepter is strapped to my back. “Of course it hasn’t
or you wouldn’t be here.”
“You haven’t been here for months,” I tell him.
His head snaps up and confusion makes his face scrunch up.
“Twelve days.” I stoke the fire and eat some more of the rabbit.
It’s sweet and tender.
He holds his head in his hands. “He should never have made me come
here.”
“Who?”
Fire crackles and pops. I use my staff to turn the logs.
“My father.” The lion merman swallows and starts. “After we left
Toliss, my father-the herald of the Western Seas-had everything
planned out. He said the oracles were in the most obvious of our
sacred places. We would start at the Glass Castle. But when I got
there, the oracle was gone. Instead we were attacked by a sea dragon-”
“Been there,” I say, laughing.
“I knew there was something strange about all this. Why wouldn’t
the king simply give you the throne? You are his true kin. My father
said it was because he would-he would not allow it. None of the
heralds would have a human-raised boy on our throne.”
I nod, keeping my eyes on him. He looks broken. Something inside
him is changed forever, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.
That’s why he’s here. Because he’s got a good heart, a fighting heart.
I could use a merman like Dylan on my side.
“So we kept searching for an oracle. My father’s councilman
thought about this land. The Vale of Tears. What better place to hide
an oracle but a place outside of time? But on our way here, we were
attacked by dozens of merrows. I didn’t know what they were at first.
I’d only heard about them. They’re not supposed to grow so large. They
were on their way landside and I couldn’t-I knew the terror they’d
wreak on land so I turned my army from my father’s and followed them.
That’s when more of them arrived and took my father’s ship. I barely
got away, swimming right into the mist.”
“What did you see in the mist?”
But he doesn’t answer. Instead his eyes flick around the dark then