Beast of Stone

  Haddie raised her hand as if to match palms with everyone there. “We are steady, together.”

  Elson and Fitzer repeated her words. “We are steady, together.”

  The crowd bestirred themselves. Raffa heard a few scattered calls: “Steady, together.”

  Then Elson raised his voice. “STEADY!” he shouted.

  Fitzer took his cue. “TOGETHER!”

  Half the crowd took up Elson’s cry. “STEADY!”

  “TOGETHER!” answered the other half.

  “STEADY!”

  “TOGETHER!”

  The timbers of the pavilion trembled as a thousand people clapped and stamped their feet and roared.

  Haddie waited, letting the noise of the crowd ebb. At last it was quiet again.

  “Many of you know Raffa Santana,” she said. “He’s half-After, and he’s from a pother family. He has done fine work for us here, acting as camp pother, despite his young age. The squad leaders have already met him, and he would like to speak to you all now.”

  Raffa rose and stepped onto the dais. He put his rucksack down next to the stump, which was only a little taller than knee height. So why did it look as steep as a mountain?

  His legs felt so weak, he wondered if he would be able to get onto the stump without help. He managed it, just barely. He stared down at his feet to make sure they didn’t wander off the edge, then slowly raised his head.

  Every single person in that enormous crowd was looking directly at him.

  Raffa held his breath and tightened his stomach. Don’t throw up don’t throw up don’t throw up don’t throw up.

  In his hand he was holding two of the knitted collars. He clutched them in a death grip.

  The sooner he started talking, the sooner this would be over with. He knew what he wanted to say; he had rehearsed it in his head a hundred times.

  “This afternoon,” he began—and stopped. What came out of his mouth was not words, but a ragged croak. He glanced around wildly, desperate for help—and there in the crowd, he saw his friends.

  Jimble, gazing up at him eagerly, looking so much like Trixin.

  Kuma, her face quiet and steady.

  Garith, his eyes narrowed, concentrating on reading Raffa’s lips.

  Suddenly Raffa noticed that his legs felt stronger: It was as if his friends were holding him upright, and even calming his roiled guts.

  They were supporting him—and counting on him as well.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “THIS afternoon I met with the council and the squad leaders,” Raffa said.

  Elson and Fitzer echoed his words.

  “And I—I made a mistake that I have to fix. A mistake that affects all of you.”

  Deep breath in. Blow it out slowly.

  “As you know, these collars”—he held them up—“are filled with a special botanical powder.”

  “. . . powder.”

  “It will restore the animals to their natural state. But—”

  Here he turned a little, to look at the squad leaders lined up along one side of the stump. “But that’s all it does,” he said, then turned the other way, toward the rest of the squad leaders. “I said it would protect us against injuries. But that’s not—” He swallowed hard, then made himself speak firmly. “That’s not true. It’s NOT MAGIC.”

  “. . . NOT MAGIC.”

  Surprise seemed to swirl through the crowd. Quickly their puzzled murmurs grew into angry shouts.

  “Not magic? What’s the good of pothering, then?”

  “But that means there’s nothing to protect us!”

  “He’s a liar! He lied to the squad leaders! Why should we believe him now?”

  It was the hardest thing Raffa had ever done, to stand there in front of everyone while their fear and anger came pounding at him from all sides. It seemed to go on forever; he felt as if he were shrinking, getting smaller and smaller under the barrage.

  Once again he looked at his friends. He saw concern on their faces . . . but also expectation.

  He raised a trembling hand; the crowd quieted, although they were still seething.

  “It’s all my fault—not the council’s, not your squad leaders’. I’m really, really sorry, but I know that being sorry isn’t enough. So this is what I’m going to do, to convince you that—that we have to do this. And that it will work.”

  He held the collars over his head so everyone could see them, then tied them around his neck. “I’ll be wearing these,” he said, “and I’ll stand way out front of our position. On my own. The animals will see me and attack me first. That’s how sure I am that this will work, and you’ll be able to see it for yourselves.”

  What he had just said terrified him. His only hope was that each animal had been trained to go one-on-one with a human. If a whole pack attacked him—

  His stomach began rumbling again. Stop! Stop thinking about it!

  He stared out at the throng. No one seemed to know quite what to make of his latest pronouncement; they were subdued now, but remained restless. Behind him, the council members had their heads together.

  Then Haddie spoke. “The council cannot allow that,” she said to Raffa. She turned toward the audience. “None of you would allow it, either. He is but a child.”

  A way out. She’s giving me a way out.

  But his next words surprised even himself.

  “You can’t think of me as a child,” he said. “You said it yourself: I’m the camp’s head of apothecary. My parents both gave their blessing for me to do the work here. This tactic was my idea, and it’s up to me to—to see it through.”

  It was very quiet. Raffa knew that the next moments would sway things one way or the other. I have to say something more, while they’re listening.

  “The honest truth is, no apothecary ‘magic’ can protect us against the guards or the animals. But look at this camp.” He gestured broadly with his hands. “Look at what’s been done here in just a few days! It’s almost like—like a village, where there wasn’t anything before. Because of everyone working together, Afters and settlers and Gildeners. Isn’t that a kind of magic? The best kind?”

  Elson bellowed, at the top of his lungs. “THE BEST KIND OF MAGIC!”

  Jimble leapt to his feet. “The best kind of magic!” he cried out.

  And Garith and Kuma stood up, too, and started chanting along with Jimble.

  The best kind of magic . . . the best kind of magic . . .

  Quellin stepped forward to stand next to Raffa. Haddie did the same on the other side. Each put an arm around him.

  Then Fitzer changed the chant by bellowing, “STEADY TOGETHER!” He and Elson began alternating the two phrases.

  STEADY TOGETHER—

  THE BEST KIND OF MAGIC!

  STEADY TOGETHER—

  THE BEST KIND OF MAGIC!

  People in the crowd were looking around. A few here and there stood and joined in. Jimble started bounding up and down the narrow aisles, waving his arms to get people to stand; those who saw him apparently couldn’t resist his pleas. They stood. Others saw them and stood, too.

  It wasn’t long before almost everyone in the crowd was on their feet, the chant so loud it was like a wall of sound for Raffa to lean on.

  Finally Haddie held up her hands for silence. Raffa nearly fell off the stump in his haste to let her take his place.

  “I thought of one more thing,” she said. “If you have anything leather, you can wrap a strip around your neck for extra protection.” She paused for a moment. “Everyone is to have a good rest tonight. So we’ll close for now.”

  She took a deep breath. “ONCE UPON A TIME!” she hollered.

  “HAPPILY EVER AFTERS!!!” the crowd thundered back.

  As the meeting broke up, people began moving stumps and logs out of the way so the tables could be put back in place. Nearly boneless with exhaustion, Raffa picked up his rucksack. He was scanning the crowd trying to find Garith when Fitzer approached him.

  “Wha
t you did just now, young Santana—that was a hard thing,” he said. “And you’ll not stand on your own. I’m leader of Frypan Squad. The Frypans will stand with you.”

  Raffa’s mouth fell open. He couldn’t think of what to say.

  “They’re good folk, all of them,” Fitzer went on. “Just wish I had leather for them, like Haddie said. It’s not easy to come by in the slums.”

  A sudden inspiration hit Raffa: He opened his rucksack and took something out of it.

  “This is enough leather to make collars for your whole squad,” he said. He handed Fitzer a coil of rope.

  His precious rope.

  Which had once been a beautiful leather tunic made by his mother, gifted him for his eleventh birthday. Without the rope, he would have been unable to harvest the scarlet vine that had healed Echo’s terrible wounds. The rope had saved him from drowning in the cavern . . . and helped him escape from the secret compound. . . .

  His throat thickened a little as the man took it and looked it over.

  Then Fitzer untied the last segment, and gave the piece of leather to Raffa.

  “You’ll need that for yourself,” he said, nodding.

  Raffa started to thank him when he was interrupted by a shout.

  “RUNNER! RUNNER IN THE CLEARING!”

  Everyone stopped whatever they were doing. In that moment of pause, Elson’s voice sounded throughout the pavilion.

  “Council members back to the dais! Everyone else, make way for the runner!”

  As if by magic, a path to the dais opened up, people stepping aside and craning their necks for a look at the runner. Raffa saw her as she entered the pavilion at a trot, her dark face shiny with sweat in the light from the lanterns. She made her way through the pavilion to the dais; the cleared path closed in behind her. Raffa thought of trying to follow, but there were too many people in the way. He spotted Kuma to his left and moved to join her.

  They didn’t have to wait long before they heard Elson again.

  “THE FERRY ROWERS HAVE ALL BEEN CALLED IN TO WORK,” he bellowed. “GUARDS CROSSING OVER TONIGHT. ATTACK AT DAYBIRTH. . . . ATTACK AT DAYBIRTH.”

  It seemed to Raffa that everyone in the pavilion drew a single breath at the same moment: a thousand people in unison.

  Then voices and movement burst out from all sides.

  “Ladle Squad, with me!”

  “Hoy, Basements!”

  “Shingles, over here!”

  Raffa looked at Kuma, and saw in her expression exactly what he himself was feeling: grim determination bounded by fear.

  It was time.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  IN the dead of night, the whole camp seethed with urgent activity. Lanterns burned everywhere, giving the clearing an eerie look of light struggling to push away the heavy darkness. People were rushing around, not in panic but with purpose. Strangest of all, almost every single face glowed blue, the birchbark masks pushed up or down out of the way for the time being.

  Raffa and Kuma hurried to the pother tent. Garith and Jimble were already there. The four friends rubbed blue-goo onto their cheeks and foreheads. They tied powder-filled sacks around their ankles and their wrists. Jimble passed out blowpipe reeds and locuster pods to each of them. Kuma had picked up one of the collars to tie around her neck when Garith stopped her.

  “Wait,” he said, “I’ve got something for you.”

  He pulled out three strips of leather, handed one to her and another to Jimble, and kept the third for himself. “Wrap those around your neck first,” he said. He looked at Raffa. “You have your own, right?”

  Raffa nodded and held up the length of leather from his rope, the one Fitzer had given him. He frowned and did a double take. “Where did you get—”

  Then he saw that the bottom of Garith’s leather tunic had been hacked off. Garith saw him looking and grinned. “Aunt Salima was mad at you when you cut yours up,” he said. “She’ll probably be proud of me.”

  Once fully dressed and equipped, the foursome gathered in a little circle. Raffa stretched his hands out toward Garith, palms together.

  Garith clapped his hands around Raffa’s. Jimble and Kuma joined in, too. They stood quietly for a moment. Raffa felt he should say something.

  We’re going off to fight. Who knows what will happen? What could I possibly say at a time like this?

  It turned out to be easier than he thought. He looked at Jimble, at Garith, at Kuma, and spoke his heart’s desire.

  “See you all back here in a little while.”

  Garith and Jimble went to meet up with Elson’s squad, whom they would shadow throughout the battle. That was the compromise that had been reached, between the boys’ determination to join the fight and the council’s decision that no one younger than sixteen would be assigned to a squad. Raffa and Kuma left the clearing and entered the Forest. Each carried a raccoon on one arm and a lightstick in their free hand. They were going to the area where Kuma had left Roo.

  Raffa had no idea how Kuma would find Roo in the vast Forest in the middle of the night, but Kuma did not seem worried in the least. After they had jog-trotted far enough for the lights and sounds of the camp to have faded behind them, she simply stopped and stood still.

  “Roo!” she called. “Roo, can you hear me?”

  Silence. She waited for a few moments, then called again.

  Sure enough, Raffa heard snorts and snuffles and the sound of a very large animal moving through the brush. The glow from Kuma’s lightstick caught the gleam of two eyes coming toward them.

  Roo and Kuma had their usual affectionate greeting, with Roo sniffing Kuma all over, and Kuma giving the great bear’s neck a thorough scratch. Then Raffa gritted his teeth and stood still while Roo sniffed him between his legs. He was relieved when Roo whined in recognition.

  Kuma opened the grain sack she was carrying and took out a piece of honeycomb as big as Raffa’s head. “Here, Roo,” she said. “Eat that up, and then we have work to do.”

  Now they were headed for the Mag, a vast lava field formed during the Great Quake. It was named for the magma that had been forced to the surface from deep within the earth.

  According to the information garnered from the runner, the guards were using only a single river crossing, the one to the south. The crossing farther north gave directly onto the Forest of Wonders, which the guards would want to avoid as long as possible. From the ferry landing, the guards would march through the farmsteads and settlements until they reached the Mag.

  The Mag’s most striking features were the strange stone formations that rose from its solid basalt floor. Some were tall, their irregular crags reaching more than twice a man’s height. Others were low to the ground, pocked and rutted, with what seemed like no other purpose than to twist ankles. Many of the structures had acquired names over the years: the Poisoned Pillar, the Angry Ox, the Three-Headed Beaster.

  In between those distinctive markers were pinnacles and spurs and pyramids and spires of every shape and size, making it impossible to move through the Mag in a straight line. Raffa and Kuma had to constantly divert to go around the bizarre statues of stone.

  Their destination was in the area closest to the farmsteads, where the guards would first enter the Mag. There, a broad plateau of basalt began on the Mag floor and gradually sloped upward over some thirty paces, like a ramp, until it was as high as a house. Although bumpy and pitted, its top surface was more than four paces wide and fairly flat.

  It was called the Bridge, although it spanned nothing and led to nowhere.

  The sound rode on the night breeze, reaching Roo’s ears first. She raised her head and looked toward the edge of the Mag.

  Kuma saw the bear’s movement. “What is it, Roo?”

  The bear was sprawled on the ground at the base of the Bridge, with Raffa and Kuma leaning against her side for warmth. They were all snatching a few moments’ rest after a long practice session. The two humans sat up and listened as hard as they could.

&nbs
p; It sounded like the sea. But Raffa knew that they were too far from the Vast to hear the waves.

  It could have been rain. A hard rain, steady and rhythmic. But although the night sky was cloudy, there was no smell of rain in the air.

  Roo whined, then panted anxiously. Which she would not have done if she were hearing waves or rain.

  Then Raffa knew what the sound was.

  Boots.

  The tread of thousands of guards’ boots, marching through the fields but still a good distance away.

  Kuma put a hand on his arm. “We have time,” she said gently.

  Only then did Raffa realize that he had jumped to his feet and was staring in the direction of the sound, his arms and legs and spine rigid. He blinked and nodded at Kuma, and took a long breath.

  He turned to look in the other direction, back toward the Forest. The moon struggled against the clouds, casting very little light on the landscape below. But if everything was going as planned, dozens of squads should now be arriving at the Mag from the Forest side. The Afters and their supporters would be positioning themselves behind the stone formations, hidden and waiting.

  “We’ll go on up now,” Kuma said quietly.

  Raffa offered a hand to pull her to her feet. She gave him a quick hug. “Ever Afters,” she said with a smile.

  “Ever Afters,” he repeated.

  It’s true, he thought. Kuma is full-After, and I’m half. Garith and Trixin and Jimble—none of them have After blood. Somehow it felt right that he and Kuma were facing the first wave of the battle together, on their own.

  He watched as Kuma and Roo and the raccoons walked up the slope of the Bridge. She turned to wave at him; he waved in return. Then he began hiking back in the direction of the Forest.

  The sound of the approaching troops grew louder. The guards had nearly reached the Mag.

  From a distance, Raffa heard Kuma’s voice. “Freeze, Roo!”

  He spun around just as the moon shoved aside the clouds, so he could see the Bridge clearly. Roo was curled up atop the highest point of the plateau. He couldn’t see the raccoons; they were blocked by Roo’s body. Against the dark sky, the bear looked like one of the many stone formations all over the Mag. If he hadn’t known what to look for, he never would have spotted her.