My gaze dropped to my palm.Crap.Why hadn’t I thought of that? I tugged out my dust and fashioned it into a broadsword, which I swung around using my uninjured arm, chopping cleanly through the spike-coated bodies. Whenever I killed one, though, sixteen seemed to rise. “Any other ideas?”
“Run.”
“Where?” They were literally everywhere. It was as though the very moss had morphed into snakes.
“To thecalimbor.”
“What if it’s full of them?” I swung my sword, decapitating amikoswhose flat head was leveled with my throat. “We should get back to the train.”
“The tree’s closer.”
It was closer. I still didn’t love his plan, but there was no way I was running in a different direction than he was.
“On the count of three . . .”
As he counted, I sang softly. My nerves were fried, and the smoke from their frying needed an escape hatch.
“Two.”
The rattling seemed to quiet, or maybe I had trouble hearing it over my frantic, throaty melody.
It was a song I’d heard in a human club a year ago. I’d thought it was super cool and had gone to gush to the droid DJ. My enthusiasm had him playing it so many times that night that by the time we’d left the club with Sook, Giya, and the legion of bodyguards assigned to me during my Earthly travels, I’d memorized every note.
Themikosswayed, and then their flat heads plopped right onto the ground. I stopped singing, worried we were in for something worse than a reptilian attack.
“Amara, keep singing.”
I looked over my shoulder at Remo, realizing that my back was still pinned to his. Weren’t we supposed to be running? Had he said one, and I’d missed it?
The rattling started anew.
“Please,” he urged.
My mouth flew open, and I let out a loud sound that was in no way melodious. The flat heads, which had perked up, froze. I adjusted the amount of air rushing out of my mouth. Themikos’ heads began to drift like clumps of mallow, settling on the ground or on a buddy’s quills.
“What now, Remo Farrow?” I sang.
“We still run, but whatever you do, don’t stop singing. Put the sword away first. I don’t want you to lose it and have to dig for it in a snake pit.”
Keeping up my frantic tune, I squeezed the hilt of my weapon until it dematerialized and melted back into my other palm.
“Ready?”
“Nope,” I singsonged.
He snorted and then clapped my hand. We took off running, skating over the tubular bodies, quills crunching beneath our boots’ sturdy soles. Miraculously, neither of us slid. Even more miraculously, none of themikosreacted to being trampled. We reached thecalimborwhen I hit the chorus. Remo tugged open the turquoise door built into the base of the tree, and we burst inside the hull.
“Wait. Don’t close it,” I panted between two verses, fearing we might get locked in again.
He shut it.
“Remo! What if it never opens again?”
“I’d rather be stuck in here than out there. Besides, my grandfather is a creative man. I’m sure he’ll have programmed a new method of torture into this cell.”
Still, I extricated my hand from his and tried the door. The latch unclicked and the hinges worked. When a forked tongue darted through the small gap, I slammed the door shut. The strip of tongue fell onto the white and pink circle tiles, wriggling like a worm, before curling in on itself. I held my breath, praying it wouldn’t morph into a snake. Or ten.
Remo caged the inert purple helix under a glass lid. I pivoted to see where he’d taken it from. A jar, now lidless, graced a wooden countertop built into the hollow trunk. It stood beside a dozen others, filled to the brim with rainbow-striped candy, gold-foil bonbons, floating pastel marshmallows, and garlands of candieddrosapetals. Over the jars, on walls painted the same cheery turquoise as the front door, were scrawled names like “rainbow twists,” “drops of sunshine,” “morsels of cloud,” and “blooming hearts.” Was this candy shop modeled after the one which had been torn down to accommodate the Duciba? Was any of the candy edible or jeweled fakes meant to entice and disappoint?
