The Curse of the King (19 page)

“Well, that sure happened,” I said.

“Ah, but Massarym, in turn, placed a curse on his father,” Number One said. “Uhla'ar would not die, but would be condemned to remain on earth, neither dead nor alive.”

“He turned Uhla'ar into a ghost?” I asked.

Brother Dimitrios chanted as if reciting by memory. “‘The Curse of Uhla'ar shall not be lifted until the seven Loculi are placed within the Heptakiklos by the actions of the Rightful Ruler. Only then shall the Curse be lifted and
the continent raised once again.'”

“Wait—
raised
?” I said. “Like, this whole island? Right here?”

Number One was beaming. “Kind of quickens the heart, doesn't it?”

“Okay . . . okay . . .” I said, trying to make sense of what she'd just said. “Uhla'ar chased Massarym—right, I know that because I have these weird dreams about the past. But about the Loculi. I thought we just had to bring them back and put them in the Heptakiklos. Bam, done and done. No one told us about any Rightful Ruler.”

“Dimitrios, continue,” Number One commanded.

“‘By two indicators shall the Ruler's identity be revealed,'” Brother Dimitrios recited. “‘The first shall be an act of Locular destruction. The second, an act of self-sacrifice.'”

I flopped back into my chair. “Oh, great—he's the only one who can activate the Loculi. But he has to destroy one, and then kill himself. Sure. I think I know where you're going with this.”

“It is a paradox,” Brother Dimitrios said.

“Massarym was all about mysteries,” Number One said. “One must read the prophecy carefully, in the original language.
Destruction
sounds so final in English. But broken things can be fixed, no? And what if the act of self-sacrifice is just that—an
act
? An
attempt
.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to piece this craziness together. “So you saw me throw the Loculus under the train. Boom, Locular destruction. And just now, you faked me out to see if
I
would
attempt
to sacrifice myself.”

They both nodded.

“Didn't you try this with Marco already?” I snapped. “Back in Babylon, he told us
he
was going to be king. Is this your trick—you tell him, then me, then Cass, then Aly . . . ?”

Brother Dimitrios sighed. “You will forgive us for being impulsive about Marco. We had heard how jumped into a volcano for his friends. In our judgment, he had fulfilled the second part of the prophecy—”

“He didn't jump,” I said. “He was fighting a vromaski, and they both fell off the edge.”

“So we learned,” Brother Dimitrios said. “But alas, only later on. So when in Ancient Babylon, he
destroyed a Loculus
, well, that was the first part of the prophecy! But there, too, we were wrong. He merely destroyed the replacement, your so-called Shelley.”

“He never destroyed a Loculus,” Number One said. “You did, Jack.”

I thought about what happened when I was standing by the tracks in New York City, invisible—when Mom was looking straight at me, somehow knowing I was there.

The first to leave the scene had been Dimitrios, muttering something under his breath. We all heard what he'd said—Cass, Aly, and me. Mom had waited till he was gone—and then she'd pointed at me.

I recited those words under my breath. “The Destroyer . . .” I said, repeating Brother Dimitrios's words, “shall rule.”

“You have fulfilled both requirements, Jack the Destroyer,” the woman said. “Marco has indeed an extraordinary destiny based on his gifts, and Aly and Cass on theirs. But yours is the most important gift of all.”

Brother Dimitrios's eyes were intense. “We must keep this a secret until the training is complete.”

“And then the real work can begin”—Number One's mouth curved upward into a smile that was half ironic, half admiring—“my liege.”

T
HERE'S A FINE
line between destiny and doofusness, and I was walking it.

All the way back to the dorm, I felt like two people. One of them was trembling with excitement and the other was cackling out loud.

My liege
.

Was that supposed to be a joke? Was she flattering me? What did her little smile mean?

And really, what did that painting say? For all I knew, the words in that painting could have been anything—a diary, an Atlantean laundry list, whatever. Did it make any sense that out of the zillion people born in the world since the sinking of Atlantis, I, Jack McKinley the Painfully
Average, would be the future king?

No, it didn't make sense. But neither did magic beach balls, or invisibility, or living statues, or time rifts, or zombies, or acid-spitting creatures.

My worn-out sandal clipped a vine, and I nearly fell over. Massa construction workers looked up and stared at me weirdly. Did they know? Maybe the good news had been sent out to them over some kind of Massaweb. What were they thinking?

All hail, King Jack!

His Royal Highness, Jack the First of Belleville!

A good day to His Jackness, Master of the Kingdom of Atlantis and Ruler of the World!

Sooner or later everyone was going to have to adjust to King Jack. Including me.

I stood up, drew myself up to full height, and gave them a kingly wave with a cupped palm. “Carry on!”

And then one of my new subjects spoke:

“Uh, kid, you just stepped in monkey turds.”

Cass was the first to run toward me from the dorm. “Did they suck out your brains and replace them with Jell-O?”

“Did you see Marco?” Aly asked, her face full of excitement and hope.

“No and no,” I said.

Cass crinkled up his face. “What stinks?”

The last hint of kingliness flew out of my head. I wiped my sandals in a wet, grassy spot. “Sorry, I thought I got it all off.”

“We need to talk, now,” Aly said. “And here, where no one will hear us.”

“And fast, because we're starving and the cafeteria's open,” Cass said.

“I guess you're feeling better,” I said.

Cass nodded. “Oh. That. Yeah, well, sorry about yesterday. Aly and I have been talking. She was right. I'm not going to blame myself, and I'll promise to be more like Torquin. The bravery part, not the grunting and bad driving.”

Aly looked like she would explode from excitement. “Jack, we want to hear about your meeting with Brother Creepo. But we have to tell you what happened to us. We got this note from—”

“Not here.” I looked around, thinking about the secret cameras the Massa had planted in the jungle. “There are bugs.”

“In the trees?” Cass asked.

“My room is safe,” Aly said, turning to go back into the dorm. “Leave the sandals and follow me. I destroyed the surveillance cameras.”

“Not all of them,” I said. “There's one the size of a
pinhead, probably up where the wall meets the ceiling, directly above your desk.”

Aly turned back. “Excuse me? How do you—?”

“I'll help you disable it,” I said. “Show me the way.”

I kicked off my stinky sandals and followed Cass and Aly into the new dorm. It was about twice the size of the old building. Instead of being greeted in a cramped hallway by our old Karai guard, Conan the Armed and Sleepy, there was a big empty entryway two floors high. A hallway led to the right, and I found a door marked with my name. I ducked inside to look. It was a big corner room with screened windows, tons of sunlight, and a shelf with a few used books and an iPod dock. I think the dresser had been Marco's in the old dorm, because one of the drawers had been kicked in and repaired with glue.

I could hear Cass and Aly clomping into the room next to me. I washed my feet, then put on a new pair of sandals I found in the closet and sprinted to meet them. Aly was standing on her desk, staring at me as I entered. In her hand was a piece of twisted metal. Just above her, wires jutted from a spot near the roof. “How did you know, Jack? About this camera?”

“Dimitrios showed me,” I said. “The other lenses that you covered with gum? Those were fakes. I was tracking you. They made me think you were in danger.”

“Jack, you're scaring me,” Cass said.

Aly stepped down, eyeing me warily. “So, that note from Fiddle—?”

“A fake, too,” I said. “The Massa led you to that hatch. They made me watch. They told me you were going to be killed. But they were lying. They were testing me. To see if I would sacrifice myself to save your lives.”

They both stared at me silently.

“Well . . . ?” Cass asked softly. “Did you?”

I nodded.

“So . . . they're brainwashing you,” Aly said.

Cass shrugged. “Sounds like bravery to me.”

“It's called behavior modification,” Aly barreled on. “You see it in a million movies. They make you feel like you're going to die. Or that someone you love is going to die. They start breaking down your free will. After a while you don't know what's real or fake. Then they can worm their way into your brain and make you believe anything. Like the
Manchurian Candidate.
”

“The
who
?” I said.

Aly rolled her eyes. “Classic movie. Don't you have any culture?”

“Don't you ever watch any
new
movies?” Cass replied.

“The point is, the Massa are sneaky and weird.” Aly went on. “They deluded Marco into thinking he's going to be the next king. Watch it, Jack. They're probably working on you, too. I think they're trying to separate us—divide and conquer.”

“What exactly did they say to you?” Cass asked.

Number One's words burned in my brain:
We must keep this a secret until the training is complete
.

No way. I needed to tell Cass and Aly the truth. Once you start lying to your best friends, it's hard to go back. But right this moment, I didn't know what was true and what wasn't. What if I really did tell them that Number One anointed me future king? They'd say I was a sucker and a traitor, like Marco.

And I wasn't.

I had to think this through myself. Calmly. Without being influenced.

If what Number One told me was a lie, then nothing changed. But if it was true, I had to do it right. I needed to be very, very cautious.

“Well,” I said, “it turns out that the head of the Massa is this woman called Number One. She's, like, my grandmother's age—”

“Wait,” Aly said. “You met the
head
of the Massa? Just you? Why?”

“I'm special, I guess.” I wanted that to sound like a joke, but I'm not sure it worked. “I think she wants to raise the continent of Atlantis.”

“Like, from under the ocean?” Cass said. “The whole island?”

“It's a Massa thing,” I replied. “When Massarym stole the Loculi, raising the continent was part of his long-term
plan. He wanted to bring back the glory that was Atlantis, blah-blah-blah.”

Cass punched a fist in the air. “That is so emosewa!”

“Are you serious?”
Aly leaned closer, all red in the face. “Um, tell me neither of you knuckleheads know what a disaster this would be.”

“Right, tons of vromaskis and griffins and stuff,” Cass said. “That would suck.”

“No, that's not the point!” Aly said. “Millions of years ago, the entire middle of the United States was a sea. New York City had a mountain range like the Rockies. But the continents drifted.
Slowly
. Meteors collided, sea levels shifted, earth moved, air quality changed, continents sank, species died.
Incredibly slowly
. Raising an entire continent—
voom
, just like that? We're talking massive disaster. Tidal waves and earthquakes, to start. Changing wind and water currents, rising seas, coastal floods, shifting tectonic plates. New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Athens, Capetown—gone. Don't even think about the Netherlands. Dormant fault lines burst open coast to coast, followed by fires. Dirt and dust clouds will block the sun, just like the time of the dinosaurs. And you know what happened to them. We'd be lucky if anyone survived!”

“Chicago's not coastal,” Cass said.

“You get the idea!”
Aly stared at me, her face a mixture
of fear and disbelief. “Do they really believe they can make the continent rise?”

“Maybe you're overreacting,” I said. “How do you know it will be so bad? Maybe Atlantis isn't big enough to cause all that.”

“It doesn't have to be that big to do a lot of damage, Jack!” Aly said.

“Well, people have been predicting ecological disasters and stuff anyway,” I said. “At least this way, Atlantis would appear, with all its energy restored. And if the world had, like, good leaders, they could help.”