Joshua and the Lightning Road (11 page)

Yet before this tale of woe and oppression was set in place, the Greek Ancient Ones foresaw what would become of the Olympians. Angered by the corruption their people would come to embrace, the Ancient Ones prophesied an Oracle would arise to save their world. Today the Secret Order of the Ancient Ones hides on Nostos, watching and waiting for the Oracle to come forth and redeem their people. They will protect him at any cost to save their lost world, if an immortal Ancient Evil One doesn’t kill—

I flipped the page, lost in Leandro’s words, when air moved across me and the book was snatched from my hands.

“What are you doing?” Leandro thundered over me, blocking out my light. He shoved the book into his bag and tossed it on the floor away from me.

“Sorry, I just want to find out who you are.”

“Sneakery won’t get you that. You’ll know who I am when, and if, I tell you.” He pulled me up, his strong hands pressing like a vise around my arms. His piercing eyes stared into mine and I leaned back, fearful he would kill me. “Don’t ever go in my satchel again, Reeker. There’s plenty in there to kill you with. You were afraid of the Takers? They are nothing compared to the wrath I bring.”

I believed it. “Okay.”

His narrowed eyes widened and he shook me loose. I staggered back and fell on my slab.

“You like to take things that aren’t yours, don’t you, boy?”

I shook my head and dared a glance at Sam and Charlie. Lucky them, still sleeping.

He thumped a fist to his other hand, his shape outlined against the gleaming rock walls. “You stole that lightning orb.” It wasn’t a question, and his fierce eyebrows furrowed in sharp lines.

I rubbed my eyes. “I borrowed it from my grandfather. He told me it had powers.”

“Borrowed. Hmm. So you thought it might be useful to have on a rescue mission without knowing its purpose or the danger behind it?”

Good thing he couldn’t see my cheeks burning with shame in the low light. “Why is it so dangerous?”

“It’s a powerful weapon. And power in the hands of those who don’t understand it is a very dangerous thing.”

I sure didn’t understand its power, even though driven to use it, but I kept that to myself.

Leandro crossed his arms. “So tell me, thief, why you possess ancient Olympian powers.”

“You mean talking to animals? No idea. It never happened back home.”

Leandro waited for more. I looked away, uncomfortable under his gaze.

“A rare number of my people carry the ancient power of malumpus-tongue which enables them to speak to animals,” Leandro said.

“Great, but why do I?”

His words cut through me. “You must be from Arrow Realm, too, Joshua.”

He couldn’t be right! A boy like me couldn’t be connected to these Greek gods and this world. Yet, the Child Collector had smelled so familiar …

Leandro’s eyes shone in the light that glowed from the cave walls. “And only the elite Storm Masters from the Sky Realm are awarded a lightning orb upon completion of their training to serve as soldiers to King Zeus.”

“But that has nothing to do with me.” I pushed my hands into my thighs, wishing everything around me would disappear. “Oh, man, if we had just stayed out of the attic.”

Leandro was silent, and Sam and Charlie stirred on their slabs as water trickled in a lifeless ping. “Even if you do get home, your life will never be the same again,” he finally said.

The truth hit me like a fist to my gut. Nothing had changed. I was sore and tired. My friends snoozed away beside me. The water hiccupped in its endless drip. And yet something shifted in me. I
was
connected to this realm.

“Do these people steal kids for all the other Nostos lands too?” I said, wanting to change the subject.

“Yes.”

“That’s so wrong. I’d like to tell them that … and hit them!”

Leandro smiled, his anger with me fading. “I like your spirit, Joshua. It reminds me of someone I once knew. Someone I seek now.”

“Who?”

“My wife. You see, Sam was right. I have fallen away. I’m a deserter. And I’m not a Child Collector.”

He let that fact sink in for a moment.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t be like the man who took me,” I confessed.

“Not like him in that respect, no.” He didn’t share any more. “I was once a guard in the Arrow Realm at the adult work camp. It’s where the mortal children from all Nostos lands are sent when they turn eighteen and lose their power. It’s where I guarded those I loved.” He looked away. “And it’s where my wife and son disappeared.”

I sat down, pulling his blanket around me, not knowing how to respond and wanting to know how he got a Child Collector’s belt. But I didn’t think it was the right time to ask. “What do they use kids for in your land, Leandro?”

His chin dropped to his chest. “Bait.”

“Like in traps, for hunting?”

He rocked on his heels and nodded. “To hunt the big beasts of the Wild Lands.”

It couldn’t be true. “Do they live?”

“Not all.”

“And that’s okay with you?”

“It is not!” He strode to me and wrenched up his sleeve. Rough scars crisscrossed his arm. They looked like a broken arrow. I hesitated, then reached my fingers out to trace the smooth ropes that rose over his hard muscles and he flinched. “I saved many mortals from the beast hunt by chasing them into the Wild Child camp to be rescued. And I was ultimately fire-branded a failure when my arrows did not hit their targets on one hunt that Queen Artemis proclaimed ‘a great celebration of our plentiful life.’”

“What were you supposed to shoot?” I pulled my hand away and crammed it back under the blanket.

He dropped his sleeve and lowered his head. His hair fell like two curtains, hiding his face. Then he sighed and bumped a fist to his chin. “Not what, who. Mortal children.” Coldness soaked further into me, imagining myself being hunted by him. “I was the best huntsman there was. I provided food for my people and guarded the mortals in the work camp.” His voice grew deeper. “But this I could not do.”

Visions of kids being run down by arrows in a dark forest filled my head. It struck me—maybe they were the lucky ones. They wouldn’t have to live anymore as slaves.

“Is that why you’re helping us?” I said.

“Partly.” He looked up. “I feel responsible for what my people have done to you—and continue to do. In my underground travels, I’ve saved a few mortal children and secretly sent them back to Earth, but that has been few and far between.”

“Aren’t you afraid of getting killed?”

His face crumbled. “I died long ago when my family disappeared. There is no worse death for me now.”

Getting stolen away to the Lost Realm was better than the Arrow Realm. Being bait would be a way worse fate.

“We’ve got to stop them,” I said, slapping my palm on my slab. “Get others to help. People from here or from Earth like those Takers. Why don’t you do that?”

“We need a leader to rally us.”

“Well, what the heck do you think you could be?” I stood up and paced along the trickling walls, unable to contain my anger at this place, these people.

“We need the Oracle.”

I turned on him. “Why wait for him? He’s just an excuse. I mean, kids are dying!”

Leandro stood and put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing tight. “My mission has been to find my family. I’ve helped mortals along the way, but I am just one soldier.”

I shook his hand away. “Well, maybe you need a new mission. A bigger one, to save more than just your family.”

He gripped both my shoulders this time, and his nose pressed down against mine. “You don’t know our world or me. It’s easy for you to judge, boy.”

“I don’t want to know your world,” I said, slumping in his grasp as my anger faded. His did too, for he let me go, a sorrowful expression on his face.

“What’s going to happen here now?” I said.

“Change is coming.” He frowned, shoving his long locks back, and his thickest white streak glowed in the dim light like a beacon. “Lost Realm folk are just peasants. They fear Zeus, as well as Apollo and Hekate, and hide in their cottages, desperate for the new world their leaders have promised. To many, stealing mortals as a resource is all they’ve ever known. The Lost Realm may have risen out of total darkness on the sweat of mortals, but they live in a worse kind of darkness.”

“What’s that?”

“The darkness inside themselves.”

“How do you change that?”

“Through hope, Joshua.”

My brain burst with fantastical things, and the mysterious crude cave drawings caught my attention. Figures. Animals. Buildings. “What are these pictures?”

Leandro traced the black and red lines that swirled and looped. “Primitive drawings from ages ago.”

In his tracing I saw figures walking through a giant square. “Is that—”

“A Lightning Gate. Yes. Each realm has one. It’s a public way to travel between lands, and to Earth. For those with secret agendas, traveling the back roads is preferable, although more dangerous.”

“Are those people from Earth?” I said, pointing at the figures.

“Could be. Our world has been plundering Earth for its own needs for a long time.”

To the left of the gate was a woman in a robe. Her hand was outstretched and something shot out of her fingers. “Hey, that can’t be Hekate, can it?”

He nodded. “It may be her.”

“How?”

“There are rumors that she carries the ancient power of immortality. She feeds on fear and may be an evil that’s been around a long time.”

A thought overcame me. “Leandro, if she’s an evil immortal Ancient One, maybe a good immortal Ancient One also survived?”

“To thwart her?”

I nodded.

“You have a hopeful heart.” He smiled at me. “But enough wallowing in our wonderings. Let’s wake the others. It’s time we moved on. We have a friend of yours to rescue.”

“What if it’s too late?”

Leandro placed his hand on my shoulder. His sturdy fingers warmed me. “We won’t let it be.”

I suddenly didn’t want to leave our cold sanctuary. It was the one safe place in this dark land.

***

Charlie and Sam stirred with my shaking. They woke up, bags under their eyes reflecting the ones I probably carried as well. Our adventure was running us ragged, but Leandro paced in front of us, full of found energy. He wasn’t a man used to waiting around. He pressed energy bars in our hands and told us to eat and drink quickly.

“Leandro, what are you going do if you ever find your family?” I said, swigging from Sam’s canteen.

He stopped pacing with my question. “I’ll take them with me to Earth to make a new life, a safe life.”

“And if you can’t ever find them?”

“That thought has nearly driven me mad at times.”

“But even if you do find your family, how are you going to take them to Earth?” Charlie said, plucking his teeth with a twig from his pocket.

“I have a special device,” Leandro said.

“A Lightning Gate key,” Sam guessed.

Leandro raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes.”

“To use on the gate and get home?”
Please let it be true.

“Yes.”

Charlie frowned. “So let’s go home! What are we waiting for? And why didn’t you tell us you already had a key when Prince-man mentioned needing one?” He pulled his twig out of his teeth and pointed it accusingly at Leandro, who stepped toward him with a fierce look. Charlie dropped the stick and moved his lips as if trying to form words, but then coughed twice and hung his head.

“I don’t have the codes to get to Earth, only to travel between realms,” Leandro said, confirming what Sam had said earlier. “And I didn’t know you boys well enough to trust you.” Leandro gave me a knowing look. “You may have stolen it.”

“Do you trust us now?” Sam said.

Even though he had saved us—even though I
felt
his trustworthiness—he was still a man with secrets. And I was quickly learning the power of knowing who and when to trust.

“Trust is earned,” he said, still staring at me, and I was thankful once again for the low light that hid my burning cheeks.

“We need to earn it from you, too,” I dared to say.

His brows pulled in, and he spoke in a flat voice. “I saved your life. I think you have.”

“Show us the gate key,” Sam said.

Leandro pulled his satchel from under his cloak and lifted out a flat square that gleamed bronze. He set it on a slab nearby and pushed at its flat surface. In an instant, the paper-thin sheet popped up into a wooden cube the size of a tissue box. Gold sparkles moved through it. In the gold flickered colored squares of rubies and emeralds like a sun in the dark cave.

“Leandro told me he’s not a Child Collector,” I said, confused. “And, Sam, you told us only a Child Collector carries a Lightning Gate key.”

Sam flashed Leandro a sharp look but didn’t speak.

“That’s true,” Leandro agreed. “Each Child Collector from every Nostos land has a gate key and a scroll of all the codes to travel between all lands and Earth. Only Zeus has the original code scroll to re-create the scrolls from. It’s guarded well.”

The golden box shimmered and pulsed. “How did you get this key?” I said.

“I broke into the house of a Child Collector in another land and stole it,” Leandro said.

“How did you get away with it?”

Leandro finally looked away from the Lightning Gate key to stare at me. “I slit his throat. But not before he gave me this.” He traced the scar on his face. Charlie gasped.

Leandro held my gaze, challenging me to judge him as a thick gob stuck in my throat. It burned going down, carrying my fear with it. I hoped he never needed something from me that I wouldn’t give him. “So this is how you move between these lands? By pretending to be a Child Collector?”

“Yes. It’s a good cover and better than taking the back roads, which I do only when necessary. I’ve been attacked far too many times to make it a permanent way of travel.”

“Didn’t you steal the codes too? Why do you need us?” I said.

“The code set was damaged in my fight with the Child Collector, and the Earth code was destroyed. I’ve been attempting to steal a new set of codes for some time.” Leandro held the box out toward me. “Touch it, Joshua. See how the power feels.”