“Hello, you annoying little man,” the woman said, drawing her words out in a sickly sweet voice. “I am Queen Eagala. I think you need to turn back around. We’ll get a collar and chain on you right away so you can stop stealing my people.” Her voice was eerily familiar, and so were her looks. In an instant, it dawned on him. He knew exactly who she must be.
Alex hesitated, inching his fingers toward his pocket. He didn’t dare slide his eyes toward Lani, but he knew she’d be ready. “I’m not stealing your people, I’m rescuing mine,” Alex said in as calm a voice as he could muster. Against the ladder his fingers slid into his pocket, where the prototypes were. “They want to leave, don’t you, guys?”
“Yep,” Lani said.
Sky followed suit. “Mm-hmm.”
“Sure do,” said Crow.
The ostrich rolled her eyes.
“They can’t leave. They’re on my property, they’re branded, and they work for me now,” said the icy woman. A smile played on her lips as if she was enjoying the little game.
“Maybe you could fire them,” Alex suggested. He put extra emphasis on the word “fire” and glanced at the ostrich, who couldn’t possibly be hurt by the blade on her neck but was playing along beautifully so far.
His fingers felt the sandpapery stone claw, and he tried not to be too distracted as he thought the word: Seek.
“Oh, they’re much too good at working for me to do that,” Queen Eagala said.
Nothing happened, and for a moment Alex feared the worst—that somehow Artimé was gone. But then he remembered what Simber had said, that his claw might not work because he hadn’t created it artistically.
Alex was starting to panic, but he forced himself to remain calm. A drop of sweat rolled down his back as he moved his other hand to grab more spells, but he didn’t have much choice. He clutched the dewclaw harder and said, “So, you seek to hire more people, is that it?”
With that, a ball of fire burst from Alex’s pocket and shot straight up into the air, and everybody reacted. The ostrich slammed back the foot she wasn’t standing on, straight into the man’s kneecap. Then the bird launched her stone head backward into the brute’s face as hard as she could, dropping the guy. The ostrich flapped her stone wings, knocking Crow’s guard in the side of the head. Teeth flew from the man’s mouth. He dropped his saber, staggered a few steps, and fell to the ground on top of the first guy.
At the same time, Lani stuck a pincushion component into her guard’s thigh with one hand and tossed a handful of scatterclips at Queen Eagala, pinning her to the tree behind her. The queen screeched, furious, unable to move.
Lani’s guard, feeling a thousand pins pricking his skin, began dancing around in agony, but still took a swipe with his saber at Lani as she searched for more components. The long, sharp blade caught Lani in the thigh, slicing through the fabric of her pants and deep into the skin. She gritted her teeth, unwilling to show how much it hurt. Seconds later, blood soaked through the fabric and spread in a growing circle around the wound. She whirled around and managed to dodge the next swing, wondering where Samheed could possibly be. Was he already on the ship? She didn’t know, and there was no time to go back through the tunnels now. It was too late. “Samheed!” she screamed, frantic. She couldn’t leave without him.
With his last component, Alex blinded the guard holding Sky, who scooted out from under the knife and grabbed Crow. “Run!” Alex shouted to them, and they went a short distance, but Sky turned back.
Alex jumped up the ladder the rest of the way and slammed a fist into the blinded guard’s gut, almost breaking his fingers. But the guard was expecting it. He picked Alex up like a toy and shook him until his eyes and teeth rattled, and then threw him through the air. Alex slammed back-first into a tree trunk, his head ricocheting into the tree bark without a sound. He flopped to the ground, face-first in the sand, and didn’t move.
“Alex!” Sky screamed as Simber, without a sound, arrived, diving through the trees, knocking them down left and right. “Rrrun forrr the ship!” he growled. He picked up the guard who had tossed Alex like a sack of beans and roared in the man’s face until it turned white and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then Simber grabbed the man, flew straight up, and deposited the guard in the top of the tallest tree, leaving him there. He came back down and dive-bombed the pincushioned guard as the creep started toward Alex’s motionless body. Simber picked the man up with his claws and hurtled him with all his might, sending him soaring far across the island. The man crashed through the palm fronds that made up the shipyard roof.
Samheed had been ambushed on his way to find Lani by some rather ugly guards, but he managed to fight his way out of their grasps and went back to his initial plan. He raced to the fire cave, but by then he could tell he was too late. It was empty. He turned back and raced for the south exit, not exactly sure how to get there in the maze of tunnels. “Lani!” he yelled as he ran past glassed-in caves with Warblerans peering out.
A squirrelicorn darted past his head. “I’m Rufus. Are you Samheed?”
Samheed took one look and blew out a breath of relief. “Yes.”
“I had a feeling you were still down here,” Rufus said. “Follow me.” He buzzed through the tunnels as if he’d lived there all his life, Samheed on his heels. Two Warblerans came out of nowhere and began to chase him, and after working hard all day, Samheed wasn’t as fast as he wanted to be. “Call horse!” Samheed cried, and an invisible steed shot up under him, running at full speed for the exit. Samheed hung on.