“Long story,” Aly said.
Daria nodded. “But you—why are you here? I left you at Mother’s Mountain. Were you caught in the earthquake?”
I glanced at Aly. “Sort of,” I said. “We ran away.”
“It is bad here,” Daria said. “Bab-Ilum needs much fixing. King wants all guards to help. He sent his men to get your house guards. They do not remember the darts that put them to sleep. But they are angry you left. Did you get what you needed?”
“No,” I replied. “We have to go back.”
“Go back?” Daria said. “This is not possible.”
“We have no choice,” I said.
“Please, get it another place!” Daria pleaded. “Did the guards at the garden see you? If they know your faces, they will be cruel. They will not let it happen twice.”
“Daria, I don’t know how to say this,” I said. “I know this is hard to believe. But we’re sick, and we will die unless we get something from that garden. Something we can’t get anywhere else.”
Daria’s eyes softened. “You are sick?” she asked. “Marco, too?”
“We do not have long to live,” I said. “Unless we accomplish our task.”
Daria looked away. “Yes, well . . .” she said softly. “The Garden is full of wonders. I, too, have a friend who was once dying. I . . . I stole something from a tree . . . a fruit . . .”
“So you understand,” I said. “You’ll help us?”
Daria tightened her shawl. She glanced toward the guest house, her face showing a mixture of fear and uncertainty. “Stay here. Do not let the guards at the house see you. I will return.”
As she ran off, Aly and Cass sank to the ground, exhaling with relief.
I looked back the way we’d come. I could see through the gate and down a long, sloped path to the city plaza.
Marco was nowhere in sight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
HIS JACKNESS
“GOOD EVENING FROM WBAB news,” Cass whispered. “We have reports of a small stink bomb near the Euphrates that nuked all wildlife within a hundred-yard radius.”
“Har . . . har . . . har,” Marco drawled, rowing us slowly across the river toward the Hanging Gardens. The sun was now above the horizon, giving us a hint of the sweltering day to come.
“The river reversed course, and the leaves shriveled and fell from trees,” Cass continued. “The soil was declared a toxic waste site—”
Marco flipped up the oar and splashed Cass with water. “Whoops.”
“Will you two grow up?” Aly hissed.
Cass was trying not to giggle. “Sorry, I just never saw anyone take so much time to—”
“I got lost, all right?” Marco said. “I wasn’t born with a GPS inside me.”
“There must not be much of anything left inside you now,” Cass said.
But Marco didn’t answer back. He was looking intently at the shore. The boat made a gentle shhhh as it scraped against the sandy bottom. Cass’s smile vanished as he stared up the slope toward the Hanging Gardens. I jumped out in the shallows and pulled us onto the sandy soil.
Daria stood slowly, glancing nervously at us. “I must convince them you are here to help with the earthquake damage. Hide your faces.”
She had brought us shawls, and we each pulled them over our heads. Daria scurried up the hill. The gate looked abandoned, but immediately a guard appeared. His face was sweaty, his arms dirty. He’d obviously been working on repairs.
We watched quietly as she spoken to him in a language that didn’t sound Aramaic. “How does she pick up so many languages?” Aly whispered. “She’s a genius.”
“Like you with tech,” Cass said. “Not to mention me with directions, and Marco with sports, and Jack with . . . his awesome Jackness.”
I ignored the comment. I didn’t want to think about how lame my Jackness really was. At the moment I was too scared to start feeling sorry for myself.
“You still have Shelley?” Aly asked.
“Locked and loaded,” Marco replied, patting his shoulder bag.
That’s when I noticed Marco’s tunic was on wrong. “You put that on backward,” I said.
“Huh?” Marco answered.
“Wait, you actually removed your tunic?” Aly asked. “You couldn’t keep it on while you—?”
“Aly, please . . . TMI!” Cass whispered.
The guard was raising his voice at Daria. He gestured angrily toward the Hanging Gardens. I could see that the upper level had been badly damaged by the quake. Its beautiful stone-columned crown was now rubble. Maybe half of the trellises on all levels were still intact. But Daria was talking calmly, nodding. I could see a tear running down the side of her face.
As she turned and walked toward us, she began singing softly. Beautifully.
The guard’s body seemed to sag as he listened.
“She’s a good actress, too,” Marco said.
“I think the word is manipulative,” Aly said.
“But it’s for a good cause,” I pointed out.
Looking exasperated, the guard came stomping toward us. Daria looked levelly at him, then let out a whistle—the three-note rebel signal.
The guard paused as he reached us. He peered curiously at our faces, then reached out and pulled off my hood.
His impassive face grew angry-looking. He muttered something I couldn’t understand, then pulled off Cass and Aly’s hoods.
As he reached toward Marco, Marco grabbed the guard’s hand. “Say ‘please.’”
The guard’s eyes grew wide. He shouted back to the other guards.
“He recognizes you,” Daria called out. “He saw you, when you left during the earthquake. He is angry that you sneaked in, even more angry that you ran away without helping. And Marco—”
“Sorry,” Marco said. “That guy bugged me.”
At the gate, two guards with long spears stood tensely.
“What do we do now?” Aly said.
“My favorite thing,” Marco said, crouching into what looked like a football stance. “Charge!”
I couldn’t believe it. He was running up to the gate, shouting wildly. He was also unhooking his pack—the pack that contained the emergency weapons Professor Bhegad had given us.
One of the guards chuckled. Both of them raised their spears and threw. The shafts bulleted toward Marco. He let go of the pack. But instead of falling to the ground, he stood, chest out.
“Duck!” I shouted.
I flinched as the spears converged toward Marco’s torso. At the last moment his right hand lashed out. Then his left. He turned, stumbling backward from the impact. I was sure they’d skewered him.
Dropping to one knee, Marco straightened his back and lifted both arms over his head.
He’d snatched the two spears in midair. “Two outs,” he announced.
Aly gasped. “That boy is going to give me a heart attack.”
The guards’ mouths hung open in astonishment. I was too focused on them to notice Daria’s guard, who had unsheathed a sword and was rushing Marco from behind.
“Marco!” Daria cried out.
Marco turned quickly. Too quickly. The spears he was holding clacked against each other behind his back. They were pointed in the wrong direction. He dropped one and struggled to turn the other around.
The guard was on him in an instant. He raised his sword and swooped it in a sidearm swing—directly to Marco’s neck.
“No-o-o-o!” Aly screamed.
I dived. I wasn’t going to make it. A scream ripped from my throat, and my eyes averted instinctively away from the horror. But not before I saw something black hurtling from the left toward the guard. A sharp clank. A spark.
In mid-stroke, the sword flew from the guard’s hand. It clattered harmlessly to the ground, far from Marco. The man shouted out in shock. He turned toward where the missile had come, the grove of trees by the river.
I saw a flash of green. Then another. Then two more, heading up toward the gate.
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The guards all fell to their knees, clutching their necks.
Footsteps crunched over the rocky soil. Zinn emerged from the undergrowth, followed by Shirath, Yassur, and a small group of lean, strong-looking wardum. “Whoa,” Marco said. “Thanks, guys.”
They nodded toward Marco, but their eyes were on Daria. Zinn seemed full of questions. Daria spoke to them quickly. Her voice became tight, as if she were arguing. Finally she turned to us. “They do not understand what you are doing. It is dangerous to try to go to Mother’s Mountain. If you are on the side of the rebels, why do you do this alone?”
I took a deep breath. “Zinn has a point, Daria,” I said. It didn’t make sense to hide the truth anymore. “Okay, there is something inside Mother’s Mountain. It’s called a Loculus and it was stolen from a place called Atlantis. Its magic cut you off from the rest of the world and created Sippar. But what was stolen must be returned, Daria. Its absence has caused many people to die young. We will be next, if we don’t succeed.”
“We tried to remove the Loculus,” Cass added. “But that’s what caused the earthquake. Now we have a new plan. An empty Loculus of our own. We need to get it near yours, to connect the two. We will take some of what’s inside. Just enough. That’s what we really need. So the Loculus will stay. It will fill with more energy, the way a person makes more blood after they’re injured. And Babylon will continue to exist.”
Daria contemplated what we’d said. She turned toward the rebels and explained. They listened impassively, skeptically. Zinn especially seemed to have a lot to say.
Finally Daria turned to us and asked, “Zinn would like to know if Sippar is in your world.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head toward her and toward the rebels. They murmured among each other, and Yassur blurted something out.
“They want to know,” Daria said, “if we help you, will you allow us to see your world?”
“I can’t promise that—” I began.
“Yes!” Marco chimed in. “Yes, we can. Get us in there, guys. Daria, tell them to help us. And we’ll do whatever you want.”
Cass, Aly, and I gave him a baffled look, but his eyes were intent on Daria. He smiled as she turned to the others and explained once again.
“How could you say that?” Aly hissed.
Marco shrugged. “How could I not?”
CHAPTER FORTY
MISSILES OF SPIT
I STOOD AND followed the others at the entrance gate. Zinn and the rebels ran inside. “Wait here,” Daria said. “Zinn must be sure there are no more guards.”
“Arrr . . . !” came a guttural cry deep in the garden. Then a sharp whistle.
“All clear,” Daria said.
We sprinted over the lazy, winding paths. Daria led us to the inner wall, just inside which I could see a giant tree bowed with plump fruit. “When we are inside, Marco, take one of the pomegranates,” Daria said. “They are magic and will heal you when you’re sick.”
Marco boosted us all up and over. He climbed last, snatching a pomegranate off the tree as we began to run.
The screaming of the vizzeet hit us like a fist of sound when we emerged into the plaza of the Hanging Gardens. They spilled from among the fallen columns and the cracked-open walls, arms flailing, teeth gnashing. Missiles of spit hurtled toward us like poison rain.
“Yeeeeah!” cried Yassur, dropping to the ground, his hand clutching his eye.
Zinn and Shirath fell to their knees. With quick, sure movements, they picked darts from pouches and began blowing them into the horde. A vizzeet hurtled backward with a keening scream. It knocked over another three, who panicked and began clawing the first. “They do not like confusion!” Daria shouted, her shawl pulled protectively over her head. “Very nervous!”
“We noticed!” I said.
The darts flew fast, tinting the air with green. As vizzeet fell upon vizzeet, Daria and I crawled over to Yassur. Daria pulled a leather pouch from the sash around his waist, held his head back, and began dripping a clear potion from the pouch into his eye. I grabbed Yassur’s blowpipe, loaded it, and put it to my mouth.
The first three shots landed in the dust, but the fourth caught one of the mangy beasts in the shoulder. There were dozens of them now, as if the quake had knocked a whole new tribe of them out of their hiding place. Marco was on his knees beside me, pulling from his tunic pocket a set of matches, a balloon, a string, and a small flask.
“What are you doing?” Aly demanded.
“Kerosene from the KI!” he shouted, first wetting the string and then filling the balloon. He tied the end of the balloon tight and flung it toward the vizzeet. As it landed, just in front of them, he lit a match.
The flame shot along the soaked string. As the balloon exploded, the vizzeet retreated like a tide, rolling in the dirt, tumbling over each other. “Move!” Marco shouted.
We ran around the building. The carved oak doorway was shut fast. Marco reached the cubes first. “What’s the combo again?”
I reached around him and pulled: two . . . eight . . . five . . . seven . . . one . . . four.
The door opened into blackness. We stood at the threshold, willing our eyes to adjust, glancing at the empty chamber that was not empty.
Shirath and Daria raced toward us. Zinn was right behind them, helping Yassur. Marco turned, holding out his arms. “There are traps,” he said. “You cannot see them. We have to follow Cass. Narrow your shoulders.”
Cass took a deep breath. He stood before the opening, his eyes scanning the floor.
From the back of the chamber I heard a soft click. The back door slowly opened. Kranag.
But the skeletal old man was nowhere to be seen. In his place was a flash of yellow eyes. A low-slung body walking on all fours. A sleek, scaly neck.
“Hello, Mooshy . . .” Marco picked up the spear he had taken from the guards. He reared back with his arm.
“No!” Daria shouted. “One has been killed already. You must not kill this one!”
Its feet blindingly quick and sure, the mushushu ran the jagged pathway around the traps and leaped toward me with its jaw wide.
Marco thrust the spear. Daria screamed.
The point caught the mushushu in its flank and passed right through. With a croaking cry, the beast fell to the ground at my feet. I caught a rush of stinking, warm breath.
Daria, Shirath, and Yassur knelt before the beast. The mushushu convulsed on the ground, its mouth wide open but emitting only a soft hiss.
Its face began to change before my eyes. Below the skin, bones seemed to liquefy, shifting position. The lizard snout contracted, the buggy eyes sank inward. As the face became more human, the body was wriggling into a different shape, too.
“No . . . ” Daria said, her face twisted into an expression of such shock that it almost made her unrecognizable.
People said he could become an animal himself . . . Daria’s words echoed in my head.
The mushushu was gone. Transformed.
We were staring into the face of Kranag.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
FALLING BACK
DARIA AND I knelt by Kranag. His mouth moved without sound, his papery-white face seeming to shrivel as we watched.
“Let’s go!” Marco said.
He was looking nervously to our left. I could hear the approach of distant footsteps. Shirath, Zinn, and Yassur were lifting Kranag’s body, taking it away from the front of the door.
In a moment I saw why.
Vizzeet began screaming, leaping down from the upper levels of the Hanging Gardens. Black birds swooped down out of nowhere. In a swarm, they descended on the lifeless body of the man who had controlled them.
I turned away. This was a party I did not want to see.
“That is disgusting,” Cass said.
“Forget that!” Marco urged. “Get us back to the Loculus, dude.”
Cass nodded. He turned and led the way into the chamber, zigging and zagging around the invisible traps. As
we made our way to the back, Marco was sweating.
We were as careful as could be this time. This time, nothing shot at us and no gas tried to choke us. We felt our way around the cage and the spikes, which still jutted invisibly up from the ground.
“Okay, now,” Cass finally said as we safely reached the rear wall.
Marco unhooked his pack and pulled out Shelley. Setting the trapezoid quickly on the ground, he gave it a sharp slap.
With a clunk, Shelley fell over onto the dirt. “It’s not working,” Marco said in disbelief. “Bhegad said all we had to do was tap it!”
From the pit, the eerie music washed over me. I could feel all my senses sharpening, my vision focusing. I lifted the metal contraption. It was heavier than I expected, but I held it over my head.
Then I dropped it.
It landed hard on the ground. With a loud clang, it popped to full size, bounced up off the stone floor. It hit me square in the nose. Like a rubber ball, only metal and magical.
As I cried out in pain, Marco caught it in midair.
I took it from him and held it high. It was dull and bronze and strangely translucent. As I brought it toward the pit, I could see through to the other side of it. Holding it steady, I leaned in to find the invisible Loculus.
The music intensified. I knew I was disappearing, even though everything around me seemed pretty much the same. I could tell by the looks on my friends’ faces.
And by Daria’s gasp. “Where is he?”
“Disappeared,” Marco said. “But still here.”
Daria reached toward me but she stumbled on the invisible lip of the pit. Losing her balance, she fell forward, her hand smacking against the surface of the Loculus. Instinctively I grabbed her arm. Screaming, she lurched away.
We both stumbled back into the room. Marco thrust his arm to keep us from falling back into a potential trap.
Cass and Aly were staring, dumbfounded. “Daria disappeared,” Cass said.
“I know,” I replied. “I touched her.”
“Did you touch her right at the beginning?” Aly asked. “The moment she fell in? Because she vanished the moment she stumbled, Jack.”