“Cass, you had the ability to say anything backward, letter for letter,” Aly said. “You called it Backwardish.”
Cass swallowed hard. “Dishwardback?”
“The river . . .” Professor Bhegad said. “It took the ability from him.”
“Skilaki warned us,” Aly said softly. “She said the river required a sacrifice . . .”
“I thought she was talking about maybe giving up a finger or a toe,” Cass replied. “I didn’t think I would lose the thing . . .” He trailed off, but I knew what he was going to say. The thing that made him Cass.
“Let’s go back,” Aly said. “We should have waited for her anyway. She said she’d take a while. Maybe she took some other route.”
I took Bhegad’s arm. “I’ll help you if you’re tired.”
“I’m not,” he said.
We began walking back the way we’d come, but after about fifty yards we came to a three-way fork. “I didn’t notice this coming in,” Aly said.
“The tines of the fork are slanted in the direction we came,” Professor Bhegad said. “Easy to miss when you’re going the other way.”
“Let’s split up,” I said. “Aly takes the left, Cass the center, me the right, Professor Bhegad remains here. Count a thousand paces and then come back. And let’s hope one of us sees the river.”
As my two friends went off, I jogged onto the right-hand path. Almost immediately I could no longer hear their footsteps. The dull grayness of the woods made it hard to avoid roots and brambles, which lashed into my legs as I passed. They made pinpricks of blood that never turned into trickles. Even the blood was gray in the odd light.
The path meandered in many directions, and soon it became noticeably warmer. Overhead I heard a soft chittering sound and looked up to see a cloud of bats explode from a tree, swooping downward.
As I fell to the ground, covering my head, I heard a different sound, farther into the woods—a scuffling, a murmur that sounded nearly human. I stood. Through the twisted trees was a shifting of blackness, a movement of shadows. The air was brightening now into a dull silver, as if a gray sun were rising. “Hello?” I called out.
“Uhhh . . .”
The sound made me leap to my feet. My forehead was now bathed in sweat. Smaller shadows skittered through the woods, ragged-looking squirrels, moles, mice, all going the opposite direction from me, as if they were running from the day’s first light.
I trudged onward carefully, until I reached the edge of a vast, dry field. It too swarmed with fleeing animals—and along the edges, in the surrounding trees, larger forms. Human.
But my eyes were focused on the forest beyond the clearing. There, a raging fire was licking up the trees like matchsticks. Its flames were ash gray, and it gave off a gray light that was frighteningly intense.
And it was headed my way.
I turned and ran. I didn’t stop until I reached Professor Bhegad. He stood, dumbfounded, his eyes focused on the woods behind me. “By the Great Qalani . . .”
“The place is going up in flames,” I said. “We have to get out of here. Where are Cass and Aly?”
“She warned us,” Professor Bhegad said. “Skilaki. I should have known . . .”
The River Photia protects the palace. For those who have passed through Nostalgikos, who come to Artemisia with a true heart, it will allow safe passage. But if it senses intruders, it will destroy them. Skilaki’s words clanged in my head.
“But she told us about a river,” I said. “Not this.”
“She also told us it wasn’t a river of water,” Bhegad said. “Photia is Greek. It means fire.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE DOOR
BEFORE I COULD turn to run after my friends, Aly came racing out of the woods. “Guys,” she said, “this path circles back to Nostalgikos. But we won’t make it. The flames are moving fast. Where’s Cass?”
I started up his pathway, but he was already coming into view, running toward us. “I think I found a way out!” he cried. “Hurry.”
We followed Cass down the center pathway. I stayed with Professor Bhegad, helping him along. In about a hundred yards we reached an iron gate, which hung open on a rusted, broken hinge. Beyond it, a steep hill led upward to a windowless stone blockhouse. “What’s that?” I called out.
Cass was already far ahead of us, jogging quickly toward a distant clearing. We caught up with him at the edge. I looked out into a field of dirt, pebbles, dead vegetation. “Look closely,” he said, his voice a little shaky. “Nothing, right? Now watch this.”
He took five strong paces forward. Before him, a wooden door materialized out of thin air. Its brass doorknob was clearly golden colored, the wood a deep, polished brown.
“What the—?” I said.
“You should see what’s on the other side,” Cass said.
“A door in the middle of the air,” Aly said. “Um, I think I’ll stay here with Professor Bhegad.”
“I’ll go,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t truly have.
Cass took my arm. With his other hand he turned the knob to open the door. We both stepped through.
The air was like a blast of cold water. I was coughing, gulping oxygen, as if my lungs had gone into spasm. For a moment all I could see was a circular metal railing directly in front of us, and a cement floor at our feet. Nothing else. No fire, no trees, not a sign of the underworld.
“Take your time, Jack,” Cass said. “You are not going to believe this.”
From below I heard a loud mechanical farting noise.
Holding tight to the railing, I squinted outward. The austere gray of Bo’gloo was gone.
Totally gone.
In its place were the bright lights and narrow streets of a city at nighttime. I looked across a panorama of rooftops—brick buildings and water towers, radio spires and streetlights. A horn honked and music blared from an open window across the street. In the distance, between buildings, I could see a giant clock face that read 11:17, exactly four hours earlier than the time we’d entered Bo’gloo, back in Turkey.
The mechanical fart came again. Peering down, I saw a bright red double-decker bus pull away from the curb.
“Where the heck are we?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Cass said.
“You have to know—you’re Cass!” I replied. “Oh, wait. Sorry, I forgot . . .”
“Hey!” a voice shouted from below. “What do you two hooligans think you’re doing?”
It was an English accent. I forced myself to look closely at the surroundings now. At the clock face, which was immediately familiar.
“Cass,” I said. “I think that clock is Big Ben. Which means we’re in London.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Cass turned full circle, looking around desperately. “And, um . . . true.” He froze as he faced the structure behind us. “Jack . . . look.”
I turned, too. The door we’d come through was part of a massive wall decorated with columns. “It’s a fake mausoleum,” I said.
Cass peered through the open door. “Bo’gloo is gone,” he said in an awed voice. “There’s just a stairway. It must go down into the main part of the church.”
“Up there, mates!” the voice below was shouting now. “Two lads, in the spire of St. George’s Church!”
The two-toned squeal of a British police siren echoed up the street. “They think we’re vandals,” Cass said.
He pushed me back through the door but I resisted. “Where are we going to go? If the stairs go down into the church, we’ll walk right into them!”
“I don’t know—we’ll figure something out. Just go!” Cass said.
As we rushed through, Cass slammed the door shut. I felt around for a handrail, shifting my feet slowly so I wouldn’t fall down any stairs.
But the cement floor had become soil. And the darkness was lifting.
Instantly the underworld formed around us in all its stifling dullness. Aly and Professor Bhegad were standing where
we’d left them, and they stumbled backward, their eyes wide with shock. “What happened to you?” Aly said. “You disappeared.”
“Quick,” Cass said, taking Professor Bhegad’s arm. “Come with me. We have an escape route. Another portal. We may be arrested, but it’s better than staying here.”
“Arrested?” Aly said. “Are you nuts? We can’t just leave!”
“We’ll die if we stay here,” Cass replied, pointing at the flames that now were leaping across the field toward us. He pushed Professor Bhegad forward, and the door emerged from the gloom again.
Cass swung it open and he pushed Professor Bhegad through. “Let’s get him to safety first.”
The old man’s scream was louder than anything I’d ever heard from him. A blast of white light seemed to grab him by the shoulders, pulling him away from the door and back into Bo’gloo like a giant fist.
He flew past Aly and would have collided with a stout tree if he hadn’t been caught by two withered, bony arms.
“We must stop meeting like this, Professor,” Skilaki said.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE BLAZING FIELDS
HIS EYES ROLLING upward, Professor Bhegad slid downward to Skilaki’s ankles, taking a shower of powdery skin with him.
“No see long time?” the old lady said calmly. “Is that your expression?”
“No. I mean yes. I mean, we’re sorry for going on without you, Skilaki, okay?” I said. “We blew it. We made a mistake. We thought we’d find it on our own, but we just found—”
“You banked on Cass’s superior memory, yes? Oh, how Nostalgikos loves superior memories.” Skilaki cackled.
“You told us it only removed bad memories!” Aly protested.
“The Nostalgikos is a river,” Skilaki said with a shrug, “not a surgeon. Its precision is famously uneven. You, however, were left with very specific instructions, and you failed. Quite a mess this is. Perhaps you don’t realize what a responsibility I have to Bo’gloo. To the queen. Who do you think Artemisia will blame?”
“Skilaki, that is a portal!” Cass screamed, gesturing toward the blazing field behind us. “To London! We can escape the fire.”
Skilaki sighed heavily. “You can.” She pointed a gnarled finger at Professor Bhegad. “But not possessing the mark, he is not allowed to leave the underworld.”
Professor Bhegad was writhing at Skilaki’s feet, trying to get up. “Now,” the ex-sibyl said, “you have a choice. You can escape and leave him with me if you like. He, after all, is our prize. Artemisia, however, is not known for her compassion. She will most likely allow the fire to consume the professor and me. But what do you care? You will be home again.”
“Or?” Aly said.
“Or, you may follow me,” Skilaki said.
She began walking up the hill directly behind us, drawing Professor Bhegad along as if he were a floating dog on a leash.
I looked at Aly and Cass. The flames of the fire were drawing nearer, and smoke twined around our nostrils. But Skilaki seemed to know where she was going, and we really had no choice.
A plan was a plan.
We followed, trudging up the hill. The air seemed to clear the higher we got. In hushed tones, Cass and I explained to Aly what had happened beyond the portal.
She listened skeptically. “You went into the real world . . . through a replica of the Mausoleum?” she said. “That’s . . .”
“Bizarre?” Cass said. “Uh, yeah.”
Aly turned away. I knew the rabid look in her eyes. She got that way when she was in front of a computer, figuring out some impossible problem. “So if this replica is a portal to Bo’gloo, what’s to say it’s the only one?”
“Not following you,” Cass said.
“Think about it,” Aly said. “Plenty of Seven Wonders replicas exist in the real world. We saw tons of Colossus statuettes in Rhodes, key chains, whatever. And we read about the Mausoleum, too. The replica of the Mausoleum in England isn’t the only one . . .”
“The municipal courthouse building in St. Louis!” Cass blurted.
“I can’t believe you remembered that,” Aly said.
“Maybe your memory talent is coming back,” I said eagerly.
Cass shook his head. “No. That was just an ordinary bizarre factoid. I couldn’t, like, tell you how to get there by car. I can still feel this sort of hole in my brain.”
Aly put a hand on his shoulder in wordless sympathy.
“So there are other replicas, big deal,” I said. “But there’s no guarantee they’re all portals to this place. And even if they are, how are we supposed to find them? And what do we do about the Loculus, and Professor Bhegad?”
Ahead of us, Skilaki had stopped. A blockhouse stood at the summit of the hill, grimy and windowless. It was a stone bunker, a nearly perfect cube. A wooden door lay rotted and splintered on the ground, leaving the entrance wide open.
Skilaki stepped inside, guiding Professor Bhegad to sit in an old, lopsided wooden chair. He looked dazed. Behind them was a long table full of glass tubes and accordion bellows and mammoth old-timey computer screens.
Aly’s eyes widened. “Is this your control center?”
“Atop the highest hill, remote from the advancing fire,” Skilaki said.
Aly sat a table, staring into the old monitor and sliding a thick coating of dust off the keyboard.
“Ha! It kind of reminds me of an Apple IIe,” I said. “My dad took me to see one at a museum. It’s like the most basic computational system around.”
“Really quite an impressive arrangement, no?” Skilaki said. “Alas, the poor soul who controlled it has been taken from us. But cheery news! Here, my children, is where the ravages of Photia may be stopped.”
“That thing controls the River Photia?” Cass said.
“Thank you, Skilaki,” I said with a sigh of relief. “We’ll take the blame for the fire. We’ll tell Artemisia it was our fault.”
“I should think so,” Skilaki retorted.
Then, folding her hands in front of her, she stood there placidly—or at least, as placidly as possible for someone who was losing bits of flesh and hair right and left.
“Um . . .” I said after a moment. “So . . . how do you work this thing?”
She exhaled, sending a blast of putrid air across the room. “Dear boy, do you really suppose I can operate this object of bewildering complexity?”
Aly was moving the mouse around, fiddling with the keyboard. She stared at the black screen, where a glowing orange C:> blinked steadily. “Um . . .”
“Oh, great,” Cass said. “Too primitive for your super brain?”
“Just look at the file structure,” I suggested. “The list of programs and data.”
Aly turned to me. Her face was pale. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. But I’ve forgotten how.”
“Not funny, Aly,” Cass said. “Look at my face. Do you see me laughing anymore? Don’t freak us out.”
“No, I mean it.” Aly’s lips trembled, as if she were about to cry. “My mind is blank.”
Cass groaned. “No . . . no . . . no . . . this cannot be happening . . .”
Professor Bhegad’s face drooped. “Cass’s directional ability, Aly’s hacking skills . . .” he muttered. “The very meat of their G7W talents. Gone.”
“Their worst fears are gone, too, no?” Skilaki pointed out. “You have to give to get.”
“Then why is Photia coming after us?” Aly demanded. “We did everything right! We sacrificed the memories of what is most important to us.” A tear slid down her cheek.
I swallowed hard. Everyone’s fears except mine.
Before I could say a word, Cass spun around. “How can we get our memories back, Skilaki?” he said. “I want whatever I was afraid of. I want my whole brain. I’ll figure a way out of here. Just show me the thing I was afraid of.”
“It’s a griffin,” I told Skilaki. “He has no memory of it anymore.”
“I do not know such a thing either,??
? she said.
“A big red monster?” Aly said. “Half eagle, half lion, disgusting breath?”
“Greef?” Skilaki said. “You mean, the greef? You’re saying it oddly.”
“Wait, you have one?” I asked.
“The queen keeps one, of course,” she said simply, turning her back to us, “to guard her possessions.”
Aly shot me a glance. Griffins guarded Loculi. That was their whole reason for being. And it seemed Skilaki didn’t know a thing about the Loculus’s true function.
If we could find the griffin somehow—and get past it without being devoured—we would get what we needed. And Cass might get his ability back.
“We want to see it,” Aly said. “Maybe the queen can show us—”
“As you wish.” Skilaki stepped outside the bunker, reared her head back, and let out a cry so loud and shrill that the hair stood up at the back of my head.
“Wait, not right now!” Aly called out.
“Children . . .” Professor Bhegad said, his face taut with fear, “I feel it. The fire.”
I could feel it, too. The room was becoming hotter. From the baseboards, smoke began rising in black wisps.
“Out of here!” I shouted. “This place is about to go up in flames!”
Cass ushered Professor Bhegad toward the bunker entrance. I pulled Aly out of her seat by her shirt collar. We bolted outside and collided with Skilaki, who was still looking up at the sky. The acrid smell of burning wood seared my nostrils and I put my hand over my mouth, trying to edge down the hill. Aly was holding my arm and Professor Bhegad was coughing uncontrollably.
Above us I caught a flash of red. The griffin’s unmistakable screech pierced the night air, through the crackling sound of the advancing fire. I craned my neck to see the beast flying jerkily, its wings tinged with fire, its giant beak open wide.
I went to help Bhegad walk down the hill, but my hand never reached him.
With a bone-shattering boom the bunker exploded, blasting us off our feet.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
VASILISSA
“WHAT IS THAT thing?” Cass screamed.
My eyes flickered open. I had hit the ground hard. Cass had landed a few yards to my left. The griffin was thrashing crazily in the scraggly bushes just beyond him. Its awful screeches felt like blows to the head. Above us, the building was a pile of stones and smoke. The fire surrounded the hill now, raging toward us. There wasn’t anywhere to retreat but toward the griffin.