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“I waited here with him,” the Sparkstriker said, “to make sure he didn’t let go.”
“He’d never let go,” Brooks whispered, wiping her eyes with both hands.
The Sparkstriker said, “We’ve run out of time. I talked to Itzamna.” She held up his glasses. “The enemy has landed in SHIHOM.”
Gasps rose up around me, followed by “How?” “When?” “No!”
Marco said, “How ’bout the devourer gives us back the gods before we go storming SHIHOM?”
The goddess was hunched over, gripping her stomach like she was going to hurl.
“I’m trying,” she moaned. “It’s not working.”
“Maybe it’s like having a baby,” Ren said, “and you just have to let it happen on its own time.”
Adrik’s mouth fell open. “Please say that was just a joke.”
“We must get to SHIHOM now!” the Sparkstriker yelled. She dashed toward a metallic tree and slammed her ax into it. The reverberation rang so hard my spine and skull trembled. Itzamna’s glasses dropped from her grasp.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
“Summoning my warriors,” the Sparkstriker said.
As if once wasn’t enough, she banged her ax against another tree and another until I was sure all my bones were shattered and the world had broken into a million tiny pieces.
I tugged Hondo into a protective hug as the trees vibrated violently. The Old World became a colossal blur as brutal winds raged against us.
The ground quaked. My friends clung to me. The warriors arrived, their capes fluttering. Rosie howled fire. Waves of flame rolled across the sky, making it burn red.
Yeah, it pretty much felt like the apocalypse. But I didn’t yet know how bad the apocalypse could look.
After a dizzying few minutes, we found ourselves inside a tree house. Everyone had made it except the Sparkstriker’s warriors—I guessed she had sent them somewhere on the ground.
It was daytime, but the air was thick with ash and the smell of smoke. Gray light spilled into the large room where we stood. A thin white trunk poked up through the floor and extended all the way through an opening in the ceiling. Above us, plump green leaves drooped from bowing branches. The space was decked floor to ceiling with books and furnished with modern sofas and chrome tables.
Before I could ask where we were exactly, the Sparkstriker said, “This is Hurakan’s place. Hidden from any eyes below. We will be safe here.”
“Safe?” The word came out in a long shuddering breath as I laid down my uncle on one of the couches. I didn’t think we would ever be safe again.
“No such thing as safe,” Marco muttered, looking around.
“Gods have tree houses?” Adrik asked.
A lump formed in my throat. “Hurakan?” My eyes landed on the open book set facedown on the coffee table: The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda. I thought two things: My dad reads? And: He has questions?
That didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
I glanced at the devourer goddess asleep on the rug. “What’s she waiting for?”
“I bet it takes a lot of time and energy to throw up that many people,” Adrik said.
“She’s not going to vomit them.” Marco’s expression twisted into one of disgust. “Is she?”
The Sparkstriker said, “I don’t know how one releases a bunch of gods stuck inside. They didn’t cover that in my training.” Her eyes diverted to Hondo. “And I’ve never seen anyone in his condition, either.”
“But my uncle’s going to be okay, right?” I asked, by which I meant not old. And not dead.
“We just have to wait and see,” the Sparkstriker said like we were waiting for a stupid steak to thaw.
