“Don’t move,” I said, not taking my eyes off Jekhipe. “I got this. Tiggy, get him out of here when I say.”
Ryan sounded furious. “And you get pissed at me for acting like a martyr?”
“Tiggy! Do you understand me?”
“Sam got a plan?” Tiggy asked, sounding worried.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Yeah, I got a plan.”
That was a lie, but they didn’t need to know that.
“Bullshit,” Ryan said. “Tiggy, he’s going to—”
Jekhipe coiled to strike.
“Tiggy, now!”
Three things happened at once:
Jekhipe struck, teeth flashing;
and,
Tiggy grabbed Ryan and bolted to the side, out of the way;
and,
I jumped in the other direction as Jekhipe snapped its fangs at me. I felt the heat of its mouth as it missed me by inches. It slammed into the precarious battlement face-first. The tower swayed dangerously and then it tipped, tipped, tipped— And then collapsed on top of Jekhipe’s head.
I scooted back as quickly as possible, trying to avoid falling stone. When it landed on Jekhipe, its body tensed and began to writhe. For a moment, I thought it was going to squeeze Kevin and Gary further, but it released them, causing them to sag toward the ground as Gary gasped sharply.
“Sam!”
I turned and looked toward the other end of the island, where the sea of sand had been before I’d destroyed it.
Ruv stood there, waving his arms over his head. “Sam, this way!”
I pushed myself up off the ground and started to run.
Jekhipe roared behind me as I heard it pull itself out of the collapsed battlement. I didn’t look back, didn’t stop to see if it was coming after me or how close it was. All I focused on was Ruv.
Wizard wizard wizard wizardwizardwizard—
My lungs burned with every step I took as I jumped over the ruins of the desert castle that lay spread out around me. Magic was curling itself against my skin, and I knew my eyes were flashing again. The ground shook beneath my feet as Jekhipe tore after me. I could do this, I could make this— “Sam!” Ruv shouted. “Left, move left!”
I moved left.
Jekhipe’s head came down on my right, jaws snapping closed around nothing, much closer than I thought it’d be. The eye on the left side of its head focused on me, still black, but there was a hint of a reptilian shape in the cornea.
I kept running.
I distinctly remembered the island being much shorter than it was right now. Fear and terror of being eaten by a snake dragon monster thing apparently caused me to misjudge distances, because one moment, Ruv looked like he was as far away as the City of Lockes, and the next, I was about to crash into him.
“Go!” I shouted at him. “Go! Go!”
He started moving, and by the time I caught up with him, was running full tilt.
“What’s the plan?” he shouted at me, darting to the left when Jekhipe tried to snap at him.
“The plan? I thought you had a plan! You told me to start running toward you!”
“It was about to eat you!”
“It’s about to eat me now!”
The stone path that led across the cavern lay ahead. We were quickly running out of land on which to run. And the path was broken halfway through, probably farther than we could jump, from where Tiggy had fallen from the sky on top of the mermaid.
We were so fucked.
Wizard, it hissed in my head.
And then—
“That thing!”
Ruv looked at me, face red as he panted. “What thing!”
“Your sailboard sand thing!”
He reached behind him and unhooked it from his pack.
I could do this.
“We get to the end, you go left. You go left and you throw that thing out as hard as you can.”
“What are you going to do?”
I laughed, sounding crazed. “I’m going to jump.”
His eyes bulged. “Are you fucking crazy?”
I grinned at him. “I’m Sam of Wilds.”
We careened toward the edge of the island.
I heard Kevin roaring behind us somewhere, either in the sky or on land, I didn’t know. He wouldn’t get to us in time, regardless. I didn’t know where Ryan and Tiggy were. I hoped they were safe.
And as I reached those final steps, I knew this was quite possibly the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
Ruv went left, just as I’d told him to. As he went, he curled the arm holding the wooden contraption against his chest, then flung it out in a flat arc. The hinges creaked as the board unfolded and the sail rose.
My feet caught the edge of the island, leg muscles coiling, and I pushed myself off into nothing.
It was a good jump. Really, ten out of ten. If I’d seen anyone else do it, I probably would have cheered and thought how cool it was.
But since it was me leaping above the cavern, I couldn’t help but shriek quite loudly, because that shit was insane. I was going to have to have a talk with the others about allowing me to do such stupid things without thinking of the repercussions.
And it was then—flying through the air, trying to reach for Ruv’s sailboard like I had any idea how to use it, a gigantic snake dragon monster thing beginning to flap its wings to lift off and take after me—that I had a very real thought about the state of my life.
The thought?
I might be a fucking idiot.
And there was green and gold as my hand wrapped around the pole that held up the sail. There was red and yellowyellowyellow as I pulled it toward me, putting my feet down on the wooden board as I felt the ominous tilt that signaled a descent.
Jekhipe snarled behind me.
And I pushed.
The magic that had been crawling along my skin burst outward in a brightly colored flash. It hit the sail, causing it to stretch out like it’d been hit with a gale force wind. Instead of falling, the board started to tilt back up, and it was going to be enough. I was going to make it to the other side. I was going to clear this motherfucking jump and it was going to be awesome and I— I started to fall again.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuckfuckfuck!”
My magic was going haywire, creating short, sharp bursts that hit the sail, causing me to jerk forward, but not enough to lift me up. I couldn’t find the edges to grasp on to it, to hold it close, to force it to do what I wanted to do. I thought maybe it had to do with the burst of energy I’d used against the sand mermaids. Magic wasn’t infinite. There wasn’t an endless well within that I could draw from. Used long and hard enough, I felt drained, tired, weak.
Sort of like I was feeling right now.
As I started to plummet into the cavern.
I had three choices here:
I could get eaten by Jekhipe.
I could smash into the side of the cavern.
I could fall all the way to the bottom.
None of those sounded like a good way to go. In fact, they all sounded terrible.
And just as I was sure I was about cross the veil, there came the most idiotic and wonderful thing I’d ever heard in my life bellowing out above me.
“Duh da da daaaaaaaaaaaaa! Kevin’s here to save the daaaaaaaaaay!”
I looked up.
Kevin was dive-bombing directly toward me.
Jekhipe curled in the air, eyes darting from me to Kevin, like it was trying to decide who to go after.