The Genie King Read online

  Gethwing staggered to his feet, foaming at the mouth like an angry dog. He broke the chain tying his tail to the obelisk, and it bounced across the stones like a whip. “Wingwolves, attack the turban heads!”

  “No, you don’t!” cried Keeah, reappearing with Max and Dumpella. “Neal, Julie, we’re with you!”

  Neal’s heart thundered. “Genies, we’ll take on the wolves. Do your stuff!”

  “Aye, aye, King Zabilac!” said Hoja.

  Neal’s six fellow genies raised their hands, and sparks shot from one to the other, forming a giant battering ram. With one punch they burst the disc in the center of the square. Flames shot out of the hole that led straight through the earth to the Doom Gate.

  “Bind the dragon; send him into the earth!” cried Anusa.

  At once, a hundred chains materialized and spun around the dragon until he was covered head to foot with leaden bonds. Still struggling, the dragon managed to utter a command. “Neffu, trap the turban-headed boy at all costs. He has the Medallion!”

  Neffu twisted once, and the chains binding her exploded. “I will!”

  “You’ll have to find us first!” said Neal. “Guys, to the palace and the Twilight Star!”

  Neal and his friends charged out of the square. “This way! This way!” called Dumpella. “Escaping is fun! I like it!”

  “They don’t,” said Julie as a dozen wolves swooped out of the sky, their claws flashing.

  Keeah spun on her heels and sent a spray of sparks at the incoming wolves. They howled as the sparks singed their fur.

  “My turn!” Neffu shrieked. Twisting the reins, she dived her chariot at them, hurling blasts of sizzling red sparks. Stones exploded at their feet as the children fled.

  “Don’t worry, Nealie,” said Dumpella. “I know these streets like the pattern of the tiles in the main courtyard behind the palace.” With a running leap, she dived over a low wall. Neal, Julie, Keeah, and Max followed and found themselves racing from one street to another, cutting through shops, leaping over fences, and crawling through gardens into a street of more shops.

  “This looks familiar,” said Max.

  “Go left!” called the frog-faced shop owner from before. “And thanks for the nice tip!”

  “Thank you!” said Keeah.

  Turning left brought the kids into a neighborhood of streets so narrow and houses so close together that the wolves were forced to abandon the chase.

  “How wonderful,” said Max. “Now, Dumpella, show us to the tower —”

  “Yoo-hoo! Don’t forget about me!” snarled a voice.

  All at once, they heard the familiar squeal of chariot wheels.

  “Not Neffu already?” said Neal.

  That sound was followed by the flapping of wings.

  “And the hawk bandits?” said Julie.

  “Not so fast, kidlings!” said Neffu, blocking the street ahead of them. “It would be better for you if you handed over the Medallion right now.”

  “You mean it would be better for you,” said Keeah, just as the hawk bandits fluttered down and cut off escape the other way.

  “Give us the shiny thing, or else!” said Ving.

  “Me want it — now!” said Ing.

  “No!” said the five friends together.

  “Everyone … down!” said Keeah.

  As everyone ducked, Keeah spun around, sending a spray of violet sparks in all directions. The hawk bandits were knocked back, and Neffu collapsed into a heap.

  With a quick right and a left, Dumpella led the friends right into the purple palace.

  “Upstairs!” she said. “To Snorfo and the Twilight Star. We need them both!”

  They jumped from stairway to stairway until they were in Snorfo’s room at the tower summit.

  “Brother,” said Dumpella, barging in, “we need the Twilight Star. You have to help us.”

  Snorfo lay on a mountain of cushions and pillows. He sighed. “What’s the use? I want magic more than anything. But I can’t defend myself against all of you. Take everything. I’m done.”

  “Where’s the Star?” asked Max.

  “Find it yourselves,” said Snorfo.

  Neal remembered his days without magic. He decided to give the duke a reason to help them. “Snorfo, do you like to fly?”

  Duke Snorfo perked up his ears. “More than anything!”

  Neal turned to an urn by the door. He whispered some words over it, and it began to float. “You don’t need the Twilight Star for this. It’s your own private flying urn!”

  Snorfo jumped onto the urn and flew it around the room. “Yes, yes, yes! Here —”

  He tugged a small iron chest out and, using a very large key, he opened it. The Twilight Star spun magically before them.

  “Yes!” cried Neal. He took the Star in one hand, removed the Moon Medallion from a pouch on his belt, and joined the pieces.

  Click! The room beamed with sudden silver light. At the same time, a thunderous sound came from below, and the children scrambled out to the tower ramparts and looked down.

  Bound in chains from his tail to his head, Gethwing writhed in pain. He lay in the great hole that led all the way from Ut to the Doom Gate on the far side of the world.

  “Thrust the dragon down!” cried Anusa. “Seal him from our world forever!”

  Neal couldn’t take his eyes away from what his genie friends were doing. “Holy moly!”

  “Our eyes do not deceive us,” chirped Max. “The defeat of the Moon Dragon comes — now!”

  Neal’s heart thudded against his chest.

  “It’s working,” he said. “People, we’re winning. Even while Gethwing struggles, we’re winning. We won’t have a war in three days. We may already have won. Droon will soon be free!”

  He turned to Keeah. “Earlier today, you sent the message that you needed us now. Now. At first I thought you meant we won. Now I think that was a glimpse of the future. Because here and now I think we have won —”

  Then … something happened.

  Thip … thip …

  Neal shuddered. “Oh, no …”

  “What’s wrong?” said Keeah. “We have the Medallion. Gethwing is trapped. We can go. We can go —”

  “No,” said Neal. “Someone else is … here.”

  Thip … thip …

  It was the person who had been following them since they arrived in Ut.

  Like a streak of dark light, the shape raced across the city wall. It flitted over the rooftops and right up to the summit of the purple tower where they stood.

  As he watched, Neal suspected that in his heart he had known who it was from the first moment he heard his footsteps.

  A boy materialized on the tower ramparts with them.

  It was Prince Ungast.

  Prince Ungast!

  The moment the boy removed his heavy purple helmet, Neal felt his heart sink.

  Eric was so changed from the last time he had seen him! His old friend seemed like a ghost. Eric’s face was thin and gray with eyes that looked out with a hollow stare. He was no more than a shadow that lurked around the dark prince, like a rag of clothing Ungast would soon cast off, and Eric would be lost.

  Lost forever.

  For the third time that day, everything that had ever happened between Neal and his friend flashed through his mind.

  The moment he and Eric had first met.

  The time they got stuck in the tree outside his house and met Julie. The countless doughnuts they had shared. The day they first went down the rainbow stairs. The moment they saw Droon. Every moment since.

  Neal wrenched himself loose from his thoughts and stepped toward his friend.

  “Eric,” he said. “Eric —”

  Ungast’s black eyes were so unlike his friend’s. They turned on Neal as if on an enemy. He waved his curved blade coldly.

  “Not another step,” he growled.

  Keeah’s breath, close to Neal’s ear, was labored, gasping. Standing next to Dumpella and Snorfo, Juli
e didn’t seem to be breathing at all, while Max shifted from foot to foot, his great spider eyes widening.

  “Eric?” said Keeah.

  “Eric,” Julie repeated.

  The dark prince’s eyes moved slowly over the staring faces, searching them for something they couldn’t identify. They finally came to rest upon the silver object in Neal’s hand.

  “The Moon Medallion,” he whispered. “That’s what I’ve come for.”

  Neal held the Medallion tight. “But …”

  “I’ll take it,” Ungast said sharply, raising his sword threateningly. “And Jaffa City will collapse into the dust it used to be.”

  Keeah stepped to him. “Eric, I thought —”

  The dragon howled from the ground below.

  Glancing down, Neal watched as chain after magical chain wound around Gethwing, until he grew almost still under the weight. He moaned more plaintively with each passing moment.

  The dark prince moved his blade toward Keeah. “You … you …”

  Ignoring the sword, Keeah took another step. “Listen, Eric,” she said, “all this time, we’ve been hoping — I’ve been hoping — that you were still you. The words you said to me. Your request for the Medallion. I thought — we all thought —”

  “Eric?” said the boy. “I’m not Eric … not anymore. That name is … wrong….”

  The last ray of sunlight sliced across the tower. To Neal, the dark prince seemed larger than before. Had Ungast grown while Eric diminished, as Gethwing himself had? Is that what happened when the good in you faded? The evil grew stronger, more powerful?

  “I came here, drawn by the Medallion,” Ungast said. “Give it to me, or I’ll —”

  “We will give it to you,” said Neal, clasping the silver object to his chest. “You told us to, and we will.”

  “I don’t remember telling you,” said the prince, his sword lowering until it fell to his side.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the Medallion that drew you here,” said Keeah. “Maybe you knew we would be here. Your friends. The ones who care about you. Maybe you were following us.”

  The prince shook his head as if to shake off her words. “No. Give me the Medallion!”

  Neal held it tight. “We’ll give this to you, but not until you become you again.”

  The prince’s eyes flickered. “What?”

  “The Medallion is not for Ungast,” said Julie. “It’s for Eric. Our friend Eric.”

  This time, the prince turned his head away as if the name meant something, as if it rang a distant bell in his mind. When a sound came from below, Ungast glanced over the balcony to where the giant dragon lay. Gethwing’s fiery eyes stared toward the tower’s top.

  “Don’t look at the beast,” said Max. “Don’t meet his glance.”

  With a single swift movement, Neal pushed his hand inside Ungast’s heavy cloak and drew out the wrinkled photograph of the aviator and his plane. “Look at it,” he said, holding the picture steadily in front of his friend. “Look at the picture. Your mother wanted you to have this. As a reminder.”

  Ungast stared at the picture. “A reminder? Of what?”

  “That man is your ancestor,” said Keeah. “But only you really know what this photograph means.”

  Neal imagined he saw a flicker of recognition in Eric’s eyes. “You wouldn’t keep the picture unless some of Eric was still in you.”

  On the ground below, Gethwing moaned, his giant back crushed under the chains.

  The genies prepared to lower the stone disc over Gethwing, sealing him in the earth.

  “We have him!” cried Fefforello, dancing on the colored cobblestones of the square. “The dragon succumbs to the Doom Gate!”

  Ungast turned his face away from the Moon Dragon. He shook his head. “I …”

  “Gethwing is caught. Take the cure,” said Keeah. She removed the vial from around her neck. “Become Eric — become your true self once more. Drink it now. All of it.”

  Keeah wrapped her hands around Ungast’s, which, like his face, were as gray as death. She helped him hold the silver vial. She helped him raise it to his lips.

  Ungast did this tentatively at first, then more eagerly, draining the contents of the vial. Soon the liquid was gone.

  In moments, his gray features softened; color returned to his cheeks, breath to his chest, and sparkle to his eyes.

  Time seemed to stop as it had before for Neal. But this time he knew his friends sensed the moment enveloping them, too.

  They were all together for the first time in so many days.

  Then, as if despite himself, Eric shuddered all over. Dropping his sword, he covered his face with his hands, burst into tears, and sank into his friends’ embrace like a long-lost brother.

  “Eric!” said Keeah. “Eric, Eric …”

  Minutes passed, and when his tears had finally ebbed, Eric Hinkle was himself again.

  “Dude!” said Neal. “It’s been too long!”

  “I can’t believe this, any of it,” Eric said. “It seems like centuries have passed while I’ve been inside this evil body, this dark mind.”

  “Take this,” said Neal, handing him the Moon Medallion. “You asked for it. You need it to finish Gethwing once and for all.”

  “You’re … free … ,” said Julie softly.

  But at the mention of the word free, Eric’s face darkened. As if he remembered an obligation that he had, for just a moment, forgotten. He frowned. “Free … I don’t know … no …”

  Holding the Medallion in his hands, he pulled away from Neal and Julie and Keeah. Neal saw that he was shaking. His face was a mask of worry. Of pain. Of fear.

  “What is it?” Keeah asked. “Gethwing is captured. The genies have trapped him. He is moments away from being sealed away forever —”

  Eric breathed out slowly. “Is he? Is he really?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Julie. “Look at him —”

  “No, you look at him,” said Eric.

  As Eric spoke, they felt the tower shake with a thunderous boom. The giant obelisk exploded into a thousand pieces.

  “What —” gasped Julie.

  “Ungast!” the dragon howled.

  Still wrapped in chains, Gethwing staggered out of the hole. With a thrust of his iron tail, he hurled the genies across the square and pushed away the remains of the stone obelisk as if they were nothing. Still bound, Gethwing staggered to the base of Snorfo’s tower. He thrust a claw out of the web of chains and grasped the tower stones.

  “What?” said Neal. “No. No!”

  “Ungast!” the dragon cried. “I come!”

  Trembling in the prince’s suit of armor that was now far too large for him, Eric stared at the dragon.

  “He’s not finished,” he said. “He has more to do! Gethwing is getting free. And he’s coming … for me!”

  “Ungast!” Gethwing cried again.

  Straining his massive muscles, the dragon planted his feet at the base of the tower and breathed in. His chest expanded, and one by one the magical silver chains began to snap.

  “No!” yelled Hoja.

  Anusa cried out, “Genies, to me! King Zabilac!”

  “Eric, come with us,” said Keeah, her fingers sparking. “We need you. Right now. And we have to get out of here —”

  Eric did not acknowledge her words.

  Neal watched the chains snap and curl away from Gethwing as if they were no stronger than rubber bands. With his arms free, the dragon took hold of the massive stone disc and thrust it over the hole.

  “I am not gone, not dead, not defeated!” Gethwing shouted, and Neal remembered the wheel of life, and the word that Zabilac had used, and it pierced his heart.

  King. King Zabilac. King. King.

  “Eric?” Keeah said. “What’s going on?”

  Her friend did not respond.

  “Eric,” Julie said. “You have the Medallion. You asked for it. We found it. And now you have it. We can stop Gethwing now. Come with us. Be w
ith us again —”

  The tower shook as Gethwing grasped the stones and dragged himself up the side.

  “I … I … can’t, can I?” said Eric. “Can I really come with you? Don’t I have to stay with the dragon?”

  “Neal, tell him,” said Julie. “Tell him!”

  Neal’s eyes met Eric’s and there was a moment when he wished with all his heart that he were somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  But he was not anywhere else.

  He was here.

  And what he had seen when he touched Gethwing’s wheel meant one thing to him. Eric was with the dragon to the very end.

  “You have to stay with him,” said Neal.

  “He what? No! Stay with him?” said Julie, holding Eric’s arm tightly. “I won’t let you!”

  “Genie or no genie, Neal,” said Max, “Eric cannot stay with Gethwing. You see what it’s doing to him. He must come with us! Now!”

  “There is a secret,” said Neal.

  “Enough secrets!” said Keeah angrily. “This is crazy. Eric, we need to stop the dragon here and now. And we need you to do it!”

  Gethwing howled from down below, and it was as if both boys, friends forever, knew at the same time.

  Eric turned and placed his hands on Keeah’s shoulders. “That’s just it. We can’t stop Gethwing now. Look at him down there. So close to being captured, then freeing himself. I realize something now I never knew. Something no one knew. Look at him!”

  They saw the wounded dragon, his limp wings dragging behind him like ragged cloths, scale his way, stone by stone, up the side of the tower toward the top.

  “I don’t know why,” Eric said, shaking his head, “but five times over the last few days, Gethwing has escaped death. I don’t know how.”

  Neal’s mind moved like an arrow from thought to thought. It moved to places he never knew were there. Finally, the arrow hit its mark, and his heart ached to understand the meaning of the wheel.

  It was speeding up.

  Gethwing was not done.

  “Gethwing is … immortal,” said Neal. “I had a glimpse of … something … a vision. There are words. A prophecy about him. About his wheel of life. And he is there and Eric is there. At the end.” His eyes met Eric’s and he knew they both knew he had to stay with Gethwing.