“Mr. Today?”
“Yes, lad.”
“You said that you made the people of Quill forget.”
Mr. Today nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I did that.”
“Why?”
He scratched his chin. “To keep them from dissenting when Justine began to rule. Because back then I believed in Justine’s plan when she took the title of High Priest—that the best way to rule people was to protect them from everything and frighten them into obedience. I believed in it so much that I gave my full trust to Justine for years, and didn’t always notice what she was up to. And because of that failure on my part, she came up with the plan to segregate the least useful in our society. I offered my services, because I was a better mage than she. It wasn’t difficult to render them useless. I just had to put the Unwanteds in a splatterpaint spell, or paralyze them, or make them fall asleep, then let them stand around on the lawn outside the walls of Quill. No mess.” He shook his head sadly, horrified at his own actions, as tears glistened and seeped into the wrinkles around his eyes. “But then Justine wanted to go a step further. A step too far, in my opinion, at the time. She convinced me to create the Great Lake of Boiling Oil, and then she proceeded to eliminate the Unwanteds permanently. I was horrified, but I didn’t let on—she was so powerful and power hungry by then that she wouldn’t have hesitated to eliminate me if I defied her. And I knew I had to stop her. So I pretended to be behind her actions fully, and I offered to take over the business of dumping all the remaining bodies, which allowed Justine to have more time to do the rest of her job.” He sighed. “So I hid them using magic and, every year, froze and hid the newest group that had been purged.”
“What …” Alex bit his lip. “What made you decide to make Artimé?”
“There was a little girl,” he said softly. “You see, Alex, you have to understand how it all started. Fifty years ago I was young, just a little older than you, and I was foolish. I went along with Justine, disappearing every Purge day to put spells on the Unwanteds. By the time Justine wanted to actually eliminate them entirely, I had a wife, a child, some dear friends in the government—one, especially. And each year, once I took over, I pretended to eliminate the Unwanteds but merely did as I’d done before, casting spells on them and then hiding them with another spell so Justine couldn’t see. But it became hard to cast these spells on children I had grown to care about. One little girl in particular. And I knew it was wrong—all of it was so, so wrong. I decided that if I were to change things and be a better man, I had to release them from these spells and let them live their lives. I had to create a secret haven for them, but I couldn’t just create it and then leave them. So I did what I had to do. I left my life, my friends, my family in Quill and created Artimé. And I sold the idea to Justine as a way to build even more fear in the hearts of the children and scare them into submission—I would hermit myself away and become the dreaded Death Farmer that no one actually saw unless they were Unwanted.”
“Wow,” Alex said, and took it all in. After a moment he looked up at the mage. “So originally you chose power like Justine, back when you were young, but then you changed,” he said. “You became good. So maybe Aaron …?”
Mr. Today smiled. “We will never lose hope, my boy.”
Alex puzzled for a long moment, gazing over the water. “Were you … um … were you secretly in love with Justine or something? Is that why you went along with her?”
Mr. Today afforded a chuckle. “No, Alex. Not in the slightest. Not any more than you could be secretly in love with your twin.”
Alex stared at the mage. “Wait. You mean …”
The old man nodded sagely. “You and I,” he murmured, “have a lot in common.”
They closed in on the south side of the island, where the ground grew hilly. Alex thought that they were probably near the palace, but not a thing could be seen of Quill because of the hideous wall.
“Who was the little girl?” Alex asked presently, although he thought he knew.
“My daughter, Claire. Ms. Morning.”
Alex nodded. “You couldn’t cast the spell.”
“No.” Mr. Today looked away, a wistful expression on his face.
“And so you created Artimé … for her.”
Mr. Today nodded as he pulled the yacht closer to shore and cut the motor. “And for all of you. Best thing I’ve ever done. Still, it’s not enough to make up for all the wrongs,” he said. “Whatever I do—it’ll never be enough.” He scanned the rocks, muttering something to himself as he searched to remember the exact location of the magical passage. “Aha,” he whispered.
Simber landed gracefully on the rocks next to the boat. Mr. Today placed the anchor spell while Alex climbed over the side of the craft, and the two embarked onto Simber’s back for the short journey to dry land.
Once they reached the shore, Mr. Today put his hand on the wall and recited an incantation. A great chunk of the concrete block slid aside, and the three walked through it. They found themselves in a dark, narrow, enclosed room. Mr. Today recited a second incantation, and the wall in front of them crumbled to dust. They stepped over it and looked around the dimly lit passageway.
Everything was gray, just like all of Quill. The ceilings were very high, the hallway just wide enough for Simber to walk through without scraping his wings on the walls.
“Be ready,” Mr. Today whispered in the echoing chamber. “There will be six guards, but they’ll most likely be stationed at the entrance.”
Alex fingered his pens and balls of clay inside his vest pocket.
They moved slowly into the heart of the palace, first Simber, then Mr. Today, and then Alex bringing up the rear. They passed doorways on the left and the right, Simber sampling the air, his ears tuned and twitching this way and that. After a moment he stopped short and pointed with a long, sharp claw. Mr. Today and Alex squeezed past Simber’s body to get a look.
Four Quillitary guards stood at the windows near the palace entrance, peering out, and two more sat, leaning against the wall, asleep.
Mr. Today gestured, Alex nodded, and together they attacked. Alex flicked his paintbrush at the first sleeping guard. The paint seeped over him entirely, and within seconds it solidified. Then he tossed two tiny balls of clay at the second sleeping guard. The clay stretched and clamped the guard’s legs to the floor and his arms to the wall. Alex whispered, “Silence,” as the surprised guard awoke, but the guards at the door heard the noise and whirled around. They all shrieked in terror at the sight of Simber, but two of them still had the presence of mind to pull their guns and point. One managed to get a shot off before Mr. Today simply turned all four of them to stone. The bullet pinged off the palace wall harmlessly, leaving a small chip in it.
“A souvenir for Justine,” Mr. Today said.
Alex grinned and looked around. “That’s it?”
Simber grumbled. “Well, that was borrring.”
Mr. Today teasingly sympathized with the great beast. “Oh, Sim, I’m sorry. Say, how about you eat that one over there, hmm?”
The silenced, shackled guard’s eyes widened in fear.
Simber grunted and moved back down the hallway from which they had come, anxious to get back to the action in Artimé.
“Patience,” Mr. Today said. He waved a hand at the palace entrance, and the doorway became a solid wall. He turned in a circle in the large entrance, pointing all around, sealing up all the windows and doors throughout the entire structure.
There was no way into or out of the palace now, except for the secret passage.
“Well, that should do it. They won’t be able to get back in. Nice work by the way, Alex,” Mr. Today said. “I rather liked that clay spell. Did you create that yourself?”
“I did,” Alex said proudly.
“It certainly seems solid,” Mr. Today remarked, leaning over and rapping his knuckles on the frightened man’s shackles. “You’ll have to teach me that one sometime.”
Alex bea
med.
“Remind me that we’ll need to come back and feed these guards in a few days, will you?” Mr. Today said lightly.
“Sure,” Alex said. “So this is it? You’re sure there are no more guards?”
“Only six. I’ve watched carefully over the years. Justine had little to fear.”
“Until we came along,” Alex said, a bit smugly.
Simber rolled his eyes impatiently and moved farther down the hallway. “Marrrcus.”
“Oh, dear. Quite right, Sim. We should be getting back.” His face turned grim, as if he had just remembered that the people of Artimé were still fighting.
Simber growled impatiently and glided back down the hallway the same way they had come. Mr. Today hurried after him, and Alex, feeling a bit relieved despite his concern over the battle in Artimé, followed them into the narrow passage, his mind overflowing with more questions for the mage.
And so it was that when a fist, like a bolt of lightning, shot out from what seemed like nowhere, Alex toppled like a toy soldier.
Severing Ties
A stunned Alex lay still for a short time until he had figured out what happened. He quickly reached for a weapon and cried out to Mr. Today for help. Mr. Today turned to see what the commotion was just as Alex pointed the highlighter at his brother and wildly shot a round of blindness spells, missing Aaron but hitting Mr. Today squarely in the eyes, causing him to double over in pain and lower himself blindly to the floor.
“Simber!” shouted the mage.
Simber, who had made it all the way to the secret passage, had to back up the entire way because nowhere was it wide enough to allow him to turn around. He roared his frustration and scuttled ungracefully in reverse.
Aaron, eyeing the others, stood near one of the palace guards. Pure hatred dripped from his features. “You useless, Unwanted piece of dirt,” Aaron seethed. “You ruined my life with this! When this battle is over, Justine will dispose of me, and it’s all your fault! Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” In his hand he held something small and shiny.
Alex’s eyes widened. “Aaron! Why—what—why won’t you just believe me? You’ll stoop to anything, won’t you?” As he talked, buying time, he scrambled for a ball of clay, a fire dragon, a handful of scatterclips, anything! But his supplies were substantially depleted after the long day, and he had to dig deep to grasp hold of anything.
As Mr. Today hurriedly neutralized the blind spell on himself and as Simber scrambled backward, nearly trampling the mage in order to reach the wide foyer where he could turn himself around, and as Alex scooted on his backside along the cold floor, searching wildly for something with which to defend himself, and finally landing his fingers on a freezebrush, Aaron pulled his arm back and shouted, “I hope you die a thousand deaths!” He threw the metal object with all his might.
Alex, hearing the horridly familiar words, seeing the scatter clip, suddenly realized the meaning of Lani’s note. “No!” He pointed the freezebrush frantically at Aaron and uttered a curse, hitting his mark as the scatterclip whizzed toward him.
Mr. Today cried out and cast a glass-wall spell, trying to stop the scatterclip. But it was too late. The simple, innocent scatterclip, combined with the words to make it lethal, had found its mark in Alex’s chest.
Simber, finally turned around, crashed through the glass wall and looked from one twin to the other, at first unsure which boy was which. Mr. Today pointed wildly at Aaron, frozen in place, and Simber immediately pounced on the frozen boy, bringing him crashing to the ground. Aaron screamed, his mouth stuck open, his eyes begging Simber not to hurt him.
Mr. Today rushed to Alex’s side as the boy fell back, his eyes glazing over, a look of surprise turning to horror on his face. He grasped the air wildly, unable to get hold of the clip that had imbedded itself through his vest and into his chest, and gasped for air.
“Don’t—kill—him—,” Alex managed to rasp before he lost consciousness.
Lani helped Samheed into the mansion as one of the protectors met them at the door. They got Samheed settled into the newly created hospital wing alongside others with various wounds. Quickly Lani washed and bandaged her leg, and, despite the protector’s protest, she went back outside as the sun was setting, just as a large shadow passed overhead. She looked up and saw Simber flying elegantly out to sea with a passenger, and she wondered briefly what that was all about. But she didn’t have time to think about it. She scurried toward her commander, Arija, at their station point, pelting ten-minute sleep spells left and right along the way.
“Lani.” It was Florence. “I need you at the front line.”
Lani glanced over at Arija, who nodded. Lani followed Florence to the entrance just as a new line of squealing vehicles and marching Quillitary soldiers poured in, yelling wildly. These soldiers had no guns. Rather, their weapons were quite unrecognizable to anyone who had not grown up in a family that collected rusty scrap metal.
The Artiméans blasted the Quillitary as they arrived, causing a pile-up of hard-shelled, stiffened bodies such that the last vehicles couldn’t get through without driving over them, and even then most of the jalopies conked out.
As darkness settled and the various jungle creatures that could see quite well in the dark came out to fight, the confusion grew. Lani positioned herself behind a tree, finding it difficult to tell who was friend and who was foe.
And then a rumor spread its way to her ears. “The governors have arrived.” Lani shivered. The governors.
Her mind raced back over the previous months as she had struggled with the decision: Would she use lethal weapons? She had ultimately decided that she would not, with one exception. And now, as she peered out into the darkness and confusion, that exception was slipping inside Artimé and stealing toward her, carrying a pistol in hand—the kind that only the governors owned. The pistol, Lani knew, was a hundred times stronger that the weak pellet guns that some of the Quillitary had. One shot could kill a full-grown human or beast.
Lani reached into her vest, her eyes narrowing as she glued them on her father. She took out her one and only throwing star, which Samheed had given her when she’d asked him for it months ago. She pressed the metal to her lips and whispered an incantation as her father slipped along the wall, darting between trees, his pistol gleaming whenever it caught a ray of moonlight.
She followed him to a clump of trees. He’s going to hide. Lie in wait. What a coward! She grew angrier and angrier as all the thoughts of the Purge flooded back to her. How his shame must have been so great that he could not even acknowledge her good-bye at the gate. A coward, she thought, over and over again, until it became a challenge to her to make him admit it was so. Beg me not to kill you. See how it feels. All she knew was that she would not give her father a chance like Samheed had done for his father. She had learned her lessons well enough today.
She crept closer and watched him from ten feet away, thinking how stupid he must be not to notice he was being followed. Your intelligence and your strength won’t save you now, dear Father.
Lani shifted to get a better view. She couldn’t see what her father was doing. As she moved around the tree trunk, her vest caught on a tiny branch. It snapped off. Lani froze as Senior Governor Haluki turned sharply at the noise.
“Who’s there?” he whispered sharply.
Lani held her breath. And then, because she was not a coward like her father, she stepped out from behind the tree into the shadows.
“Claire?” Senior Governor Haluki said uncertainly.
Fingering her weapon, the metal growing hot in her fingers, Lani stepped closer, her rage increasing. “No, Father,” she spat. “It’s me. Or have you forgotten me, like all the others conveniently forget their children?” A tiny sob caught in her throat as she twisted her arm behind her expertly, just as Samheed had taught her, and prepared to fire.
Governor Haluki sucked in a breath. “Oh, Lani,” he whispered. He glanced over his shoulder in each direction, and then st
epped toward his daughter, holding out his hand just as she snapped her wrist and sent the deadly star in flight.
“No! Lani—you don’t understa—,” he cried. The star struck him at an awkward angle. As he fell to the ground, rolling and writhing wildly in pain, his body transformed into an enormous gray wolf. He took off running, tripping, limping, into the night.
The gun lay gleaming on the ground where he had stood.
Simber, with the unconscious, bleeding Alex cradled gently in his enormous jaws, and the captured, now thawed, terrorized Aaron hanging on to Simber’s neck for dear life, nodded to Mr. Today and sped fluidly along the shore, leaped into the air, and flapped his powerful wings. He rose up high enough to clear the great wall and flew in a direct path this time, at his top speed, over the barbed-wire ceiling that covered the land of Quill. Aaron cried desperately in fear all the way, knowing that falling would mean certain death but that hanging on might give him another option, eventually. Mr. Today cruised around the perimeter in the boat, which could magically sense the reefs and rocks in the dark.
As the waves pounded the sides of the craft, the weary man’s eyes filled with grief. He whispered constantly, pulling at his hair. “Not Alex. Please, not him. It can’t happen like this. Marcus, you careless fool! How many more deaths will you be responsible for?”
When he neared Artimé, he slowed and cast the anchor spell. Simber, without either boy now, swooped to within sight in the moonlit evening, and the man climbed nimbly on the cheetah’s back.
“How is he?” Marcus asked in a low voice.
“Still alive,” Simber said. “Yourrr enchantment of the vest may have saved him.”
“And the twin, Aaron?”
Simber roared in frustration. “He scrrreamed and pounded me the whole way. Finally he jumped as we flew overrr the inlet at the shorrre of Arrrtimé. I expect he’ll have drrrowned by now, or been eaten by sharrrks. I left him—it was morrre imporrrtant to get Alex inside. He’s lost a lot of blood.” And indeed the blood had stained Simber’s sandstone mouth and neck, making him look fiercer than ever.