My hand instinctively goes to my right ear to make sure it’s still

there. The last time someone shot an arrow at me, it went straight

through my palm. This one sinks into the tree behind me.

I slice it in half with Triton’s dagger. Grumble is standing

smugly between Yara and Dylan. They don’t think it’s so funny, and so

Grumble, outnumbered, bows in a mock apology.

“You missed,” I say, putting my dagger and his bow between us. I

wonder how fast he can draw an arrow from his quiver before I raise my

dagger.

“No,” Grumble says. “I hit just where I meant to.”

Dylan tries to form some sort of polite conversation. I need to

get him alone and tell him not to eat the purple apples, but he’s

giddy from something else. “Tristan, Karel and Yara were showing me

some of their weaponry. It’s truly fantastic work.” He holds out a

fighting staff with an intricately etched design. He spins it between

his hands. He bats at the air in front of him, his movements precise

and calculated. When he switches sides, he finds he has an opponent.

One of the warriors is challenging him.

At first Dylan hesitates. But when he sees his opponent’s playful

smile, he relaxes, and they break into a blur of hits that are too

fast for me to follow. As they fight, I feel Yara and Grumble’s eyes

on me, the way my chemistry teacher watches me when I start mixing

things that I’m not supposed to be mixing. Except maybe I’m the

experiment here.

“Impressive toys,” I say.

“We were sent here without weapons,” Grumble says. “But we made

our own to protect ourselves from the beast.”

He hands me a spear. The wood is light but solid with thin vines

carved all over. The spearhead is glass. Sharp. I picture it going

through Archer’s gut.

“When do we start my training?” I say, my knees almost shaking.

“Dylan gets to train.”

Yara nods in Dylan’s direction. “Dylan isn’t training. He’s

flirting.”

“Before, when we lived on the human plane, we supplied weapons to

the court,” Grumble continues. “But they prefer their steel and combat

fire now.”

The blue flame surfaces in my mind, and then I shove it away

before it can consume me the way it did the ship.

“Are you so eager to feel pain, Land Prince?” Grumble says,

walking slightly behind me. I turn because I don’t like anyone at my

back.

“I can handle it.”

He sniffs the air around me. He presses a finger on my chest, and

even though he barely touches me, I can feel a force push me back and

the weeping vines whip the air around us. I step back, back, back

until we are outside the circle of trees. Dylan and Yara and the

others are a distant echo, and there is only Karel pushing me. Why

does he hate me so much? I’m a pretty nice guy. But it’s like a lion

realizing there’s an intruder in his pride.

He shakes his head, dispelling all of my confidence. “You do not

know, Land Prince. You hide behind a mask of strength, but I can see

what you keep underneath. You are cloaked in fear, and that fear will

break your human heart until there is nothing and you are alone in the

dark.”

I stumble back. He gives me one last push, then he’s gone, but his

laughter lingers in the wind. I break into a run.

Rule number five: Don’t piss off Grumble. I mean Karel.

As I run back to the village, I notice the soft change in the

moons. They do move. Not very far, but a purple light falls over the

village, which is as dark as it ever gets down here without being

pitch black.

Leaves crunch hard in front of me and I draw out my dagger. She

chuckles in her translucent form.

“I know you’re there, Yara.”

I turn, but I don’t know if I’m turning the right way because I

can’t see her. Then when I look closely, I see the soft ripple in the

air. She blinks her tiger eyes and then shows the rest of herself.

“Put that away, Land Prince.” She walks ahead of me with her

quiver full of arrows and bow around her arm.

“Do you always walk around here fully loaded?” I jog to keep pace

with her.

She looks at my harness with my dagger in the front and the

scepter in the back. “I hope Karel hasn’t made you change your mind.”

“He’s not that scary.” I shake my head, but I’d be a fool to say

Karel doesn’t rattle me. So I’m going to be the fool and not say it,

just think it. “I have to go through with this, Yara. My people, the

ones here, the ones on the other side, they depend on it.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long time, just walks alongside me

even though I don’t know where I’m going.

“Why aren’t you as angry as Grumble?” I ask. “I mean Karel.”

She stops and watches the sky as the purple darkness deepens

around us. “I was much younger when we came to the Vale of Tears. I’ve

grown up here. It is my home, more than the river I was born in. For

Karel, for many of the older generation, it will always be a place of

banishment.”

I think of Coney Island, the beach, Layla sitting on our lifeguard

tower with the sun in her wavy hair. No matter where I end up, that

will always be my home. The thought of it weighs down on my chest. I

breathe fast, like it’s going out of style.

Something falls from above, right at my feet. I pick up the purple

apple and brush the dirt off the skin. Unlike the weeping trees, this

one holds its branches up, reaching toward the sky. Its leaves are as

dark as the skin of the fruit it gives.

“The goddess tree,” Yara says. “The only one we’ve found in the

Vale.”

I hold it out to Yara.

She shakes her head, but I see her body stiffen. “Too sweet for my

taste. The kids gobble it up.”

I hold it closer to me to see if she’ll stop me from eating it.

“It’s time to eat,” she says, pressing her hand on mine until I

lower the fruit from my lips. “You’ll spoil your appetite.”

I throw the fruit behind me.

We pass the tent where I’m staying on the outside of the village

square, and I’m feeling a little bit better because at least I can

trust Yara. There’s a massive fire pit that looks like it gets regular

use, and people are surfacing from the river, from tents, hopping out

of trees to gather around for dinner. Off to the side there’s a wooden

dais that looks like it’s hardly ever been used.

“This is the town square. We have dinner collectively every

night.”

“Is that like a family tradition?”

She shakes her head. “To make sure we’re all accounted for.”

I follow her as she walks past the tent they shoved me into when I

first got here. “The tent of the elders. Isi is our leader. Karel and

I are in charge of training our children. The Tree Mother is-”

“The oracle,” I offer. She doesn’t deny it, but she also doesn’t

confirm what I’ve said.

“You don’t look so old,” I joke. “I mean, to be an elder.”

“You should know better than anyone else how deceptive our

exterior is.”

We walk in silence for a bit, passing eyes that follow us with

unabashed curiosity.

“I feel like I have something on my forehead.”

She licks her finger and rubs it between my eyebrows. “It’s gone

now.”

“That’s gross.”

“You asked,” Yara says. “We haven’t had a court visitor in-ages.

You have to understand that to us, there isn’t a world outside here.

There’s the outer ring where the beast lives. Then the inner ring,

where we live. This is it.”

Suddenly the warriors start marching past us. They form a circle

around the border of the village where the tree lines start.