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  “Well, there’s something else we’re looking for,” Ines broke in. “We’re looking for the Root of Xamaica.”

  “What?” Eli blurted, spitting out his nectar in surprise.

  “Since when?” Dylan asked.

  Ines reached into her backpack and pulled out something she had folded inside: a huge crimson feather. Dylan could feel the magic coming off the feather like heat from a stove. He touched it with a finger and for a second he felt lighter than air; he noticed that as she gripped it, Ines’s feet were hovering a few inches from the ground.

  “This feather is connected to what I’m looking for,” Ines said.

  “What’s all this about?” Eli asked.

  A clucking, tweeting, and even a little quacking erupted among the members of the hummingbird court; all beaks were turned toward the huge feather, which was longer than any bird in the room by far.

  “So the prophecy is true,” the Baron mused. “There is but one who could have conjured such a feather: Nanni, Queen of the Dark Interval, Mistress of the Maruunz, Sorceress of the Land of Look Behind!”

  There was much more clucking and tweeting from the court, and, from some of the more excited members, a little honking, hooting, and gobbling.

  The Baron told the kids that after the end of the Great Music, Queen Nanni had complained to Jah that she had been given no song. Jah told her that she had been granted the greatest gift of all: silence, the dark interval between the notes, without which there is no music. Ashamed nonetheless, she had fled into the Land of Look Behind, clearing a path with a machete of fire. The other creatures of Xamaica laughed and pointed at her retreating backside and said, Krik krak, Nanni’s back!

  Angered, ever afterward Nanni had terrorized Xamaica, the Baron explained. Under cover of darkness, her minions staged acts of destruction. They were untrackable, and seemed to blend in with the night. They called themselves the Confederacy of Shadows.

  “What does any of this have to do with the feather?” Ines asked.

  “There is no creature that flies today with such plumage. In Time Out of Mind, perhaps, but not now. The feather could be the product of one of Nanni’s evil spells.”

  “Nanni’s an enchantress, right?” Eli said. “Doesn’t she have some sort of magic book with all the wealth of the world between its covers? Not saying we want it or anything.”

  “Nanni is an evil witch. Her ill-gotten goods are none of our concern. We are a peaceful people. Our greatest concerns are our flowers and our eggs—and the principles under which we—”

  “Okay, this is all great, but I kinda need to find Emma,” Dylan interrupted. “Can I borrow the Grand Chirper thing?”

  The huge hall fell silent. There was not a peep. There was a squishy plop of something the Baron’s birdbath cleaners would have to deal with later.

  “There are rules to using the Grand Chirper,” declared the Baron. “Every chirp must rhyme. A subject can only be chirped about the same way once. And the chirp must be shorter than thirteen words or the sonic blast could shake the kingdom.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Dylan said.

  He marched up to the Grand Chirper and put the silver shell to his mouth. Feedback echoed through Ssithen Ssille. This time it was the Baron and the other birds who had to cover their ears—or whatever it is that birds have under their feathers.

  What to say? And what rhymed with his sister’s name?

  “Come back soon, little Emma,” Dylan began. “Or big brother will be in a dilemma.”

  The booming chirp echoed through the hall. Eli and Ines, who now covered their ears too, shook their heads.

  “That’s the best rhyme you got?” Eli groaned. “You need to listen to more rap.”

  The Baron took the silver seashell back from Dylan and handed it to an underling, who quickly wiped it with a damp rag before putting it back on its stand.

  “Enough of such things,” the Baron announced. “You will all be my guests for the night and, in the morning, I will hold a feast in your honor!”

  * * *

  Dylan and his friends talked to the Baron for hours. Xamaica, they learned, was an island of roughly the same size as Jamaica—they were interdimensional twins of a sort. Beyond the island, the rest of this planet appeared to be water.

  The island was ruled by several great powers. Ssithen Ssille, the hummingbird kingdom, dominated the North. Akbeth Akbar, the society of spiders, prevailed in the South. Wholandra, the pyramid city of the Iron Lions, was in the East, and Si-Ling, the empire of the Rolling Calves, was in the West. The waters around the island were run by Ma Sinéad, the pirate queen. All sorts of creatures lived in the center of the island, but the most feared figure was Nanni, who answered to no one and lived in the shadowy reaches of the Land of Look Behind, beyond the Black River, deep in the Blue Mountains. All the powers in Xamaica were in an uneasy truce, but Nanni’s attacks threatened its stability. The Baron said he was doing his best to uphold the principles of the Great Web and to prevent hostilities from escalating. He just needed the other kingdoms to grant him more powers, and put more soldiers under his command, so he could finally finish Nanni.

  “We hummingbirds do the most critical work on the island—counting the wishcoins,” the Baron told them. “Nanni’s actions threaten some of our servants—physicians, craftsmen, artists, and the like. They’re nonessential workers, but it is my firm belief that all should be protected. Nanni must be stopped.”

  “Maybe this is beside the point, but I don’t get why counting wishcoins is so important,” Dylan said.

  “Of course you don’t,” the Baron guffawed. “If I were to really explain it to you—and I wouldn’t do that—the explanation would be so complex, so profound, that your eyes would melt, your ears would bleed, and your heart would likely stop.”

  “Seriously?” Dylan said.

  “From across the worlds, through magic screens, I have studied your financial news networks, your Wall Street zillionaires, your hip-hop stars. I learned all I know about money from them.”

  Eli looked skeptical. “In the murals you have around here, there are piles of wishcoins. How come I don’t see any in the palace?”

  “My boy, of course they’re here. The Golden Grove is stuffed with wishcoins! Look harder! Look deeper! Look smarter!”

  Eli tried, and so did Ines; Dylan stared until his head hurt and his eyebrows felt hot.

  “I think I see a little glittering in the corner . . .” Ines began.

  “I’m not getting anything,” Dylan admitted. “Wait, maybe I see a stack of something by the throne . . . No, still nothing . . .”

  The palace erupted with the wind-chimey laughter of the birds. “It seems that your human minds cannot handle the intricacies of economics,” the Baron chortled. “It truly takes a birdbrain to understand how our financial system works!”

  “But why do you need so much money?” Eli asked.

  Dylan had never seen a bird smirk before, but the Baron did exactly that, which is a tough thing to pull off if you’ve got a beak. “It is the poor that make the rich,” the Baron tweeted. “Money is just metal or paper or dreams unless everyone agrees it is something more. If you look in the mirror and see a worm, why blame the bird that eats you?”

  “I thought hummingbirds only eat nectar,” Eli said.

  The Baron smiled again, and summoned his warrior birds. “I’m going to give you all the hospitality my kingdom can offer. There are many spies about, traitors, agents of Nanni. But I get a good feeling from you. I hope you reward my trust . . . The night winds are blowing,” he blurted into the Grand Chirper. “And my guests must be going.”

  So Dylan and his friends were once again borne aloft by birds.

  “This place is like a mirror image of Jamaica,” Dylan remarked to the other kids as they flew. “I mean, except for the talking birds and the evil sorceress and everything. What’s up with that? Why Jamaica?”

  “What is the Caribbean?” Eli offered. “It�
�s where the old world meets the new. It makes sense that other worlds would intersect there too.”

  Dylan looked down and saw various Xamaican creatures—Rolling Calves, Iron Lions, even dragons—hard at work in the hummingbird kingdom. They were plowing fields, constructing buildings, pulling vast stores of goods stacked on carts.

  Meanwhile, above the trees, hummingbirds lived in leisure, zipping through the Green Cloud, flitting about the flowers, and tweeting tunes. Now and again, a drop of nectar would trickle down a tree trunk or a leaf and the beasts on the ground would push and shove one another to get in a position to catch it on their tongue.

  “Seems like the creatures on the ground work pretty hard to support the folks up here,” Dylan said to the patch-eyed hummingbird.

  “Don’t look down,” the bird responded, in a voice mean enough to scramble eggs. The number on its chest had fallen from 500 to 15,562.

  Dylan realized he had no idea where these birds were taking them.

  The soldier birds put the kids in guest accommodations in a tall palm tree. A large nest made of sticks and mortar had been built at the top, complete with a minibar of sorts stocked with coconuts filled with the nectar drink that the Baron had given them before.

  “This tree was grown from the seeds of the great Palm of Protection,” a soldier bird declared. “Nanni grew the first palm when she hid in the wilderness, so no one could find her unless she wanted to be found. Nothing may harm you while you rest among its fronds.”

  Then the birds flew away.

  “Best. View. Ever.” Ines said, surveying the forest. “Reminds me of the time I rented the Eiffel Tower for my eleventh birthday party. Except for the Parisians mobs cursing me in French, of course.”

  “Yo, we have to talk,” Dylan said to her. “If I’m gonna find Emma, I need to know everything. That huge feather you pulled out—I’ve seen that before.”

  “No way—it’s one of a kind,” Ines replied.

  But a six-foot red feather wasn’t something that Dylan would just forget. Well, he had, but now it was another memory that had surfaced. He had images in his head of many huge crimson feathers, and a plane—and a beastly roar. But he couldn’t quite sort out if he was recalling a nightmare, something real, or something in between.

  “What other magic stuff do you have in that bag of tricks?” Dylan asked.

  “Probably plenty,” Eli chimed in, then turned his laptop around so Dylan could see the screen.

  “You can get a connection here?” Dylan shook his head in admiration. Back in the real world, Dylan never really saw Eli play Xamaica, but he did see him spend a crazy amount of time trying to steal its secrets. That was how Dylan had first gotten the cheat code. Eli had been looking for passwords that could get him past Xamaica’s firewalls. Dylan had just been playing around with what Eli had already done and stumbled across the most potent password of all—the ultimate cheat code. All he had to do was say it, and he was the most powerful avatar around. If only it worked now.

  “Take a look,” Eli said.

  Xamaicapedia:

  The Gamer’s Guide to Saving the World

  A publication of Fiercely Independent Booksellers Inc.

  (A wholly owned subsidiary of Mee Corp. Enterprises.)

  I-Got-Your-Back Pack: a magic shoulder sack the size of a regular backpack with unlimited room inside. Extremely useful for transporting helpful things on dangerous quests. It can carry weapons, carry food, and carry a tune; it can also hold your horses, hold your temper, and hold onto your hats. Under no circumstances, however, should you use it to hold someone’s feet to the fire—like many Mee Corp. products, the pack is extremely flammable.

  “So I have a few things,” Ines huffed. “A girl has to be prepared.”

  “You’re full of surprises,” Dylan said.

  “She’s full of something,” Eli agreed. “What was that about the Root of Xamaica? That’s not even in the Xamaicapedia.”

  “It’s why I came to Xamaica—I need the Root for something, let’s just leave it at that,” Ines said. “Why did you ask about Nanni’s book?”

  “The only reason I entered your stupid tournament was for the Grand Major Triple-Secret Prize,” Eli fumed. “I have to get something out of this. I want to find that book!”

  “I would trade that book, and her freakish feather, to get my sister back so we can get out of here,” Dylan added. “Do you think the birds have her?”

  “If they were capturing people, why’d they let us go?” Eli asked.

  Dylan shook his head. “We’re not exactly free.”

  “You’re right—we’re five hundred feet up,” Ines said. “How are we going to get down? And, more importantly, is there room service?”

  Just then, an explosion lit up the night. The blast came from the direction of the seven nest-egg trees. Flames leapt up to the sky, squawking filled the air, and the world shook.

  “A Rolling Calf stampede!” Eli shouted. “That crack was one running into a trunk. But normally they would never charge into a forest, so someone must have steered them here.”

  “But why?” Dylan said.

  “There’s a saying—Only death stops a Rolling Calf stampede. Whoever did this . . .”

  “Must want to kill somebody,” Dylan finished.

  Another loud crack—a nearby tree shuddered and began to topple as, presumably, a Rolling Calf struck it from below. Other trees were falling too. Dylan could smell smoke—the forest was on fire and their tree was burning. Dylan whispered his cheat code to himself two times. Nothing.

  “You want to tell me what you’re doing?” Eli inquired.

  “Nope,” Dylan responded, his face feeling hot, and not just from the flames.

  The kids heard a voice calling them through the flickering shadows: “Jump!” Nestuh was at the bottom of the tree trunk and had spun a web to catch their fall.

  “That’s the worst web I ever saw,” Eli whined. “That’s not gonna break our fall. It’s gonna break our backs.”

  “Trust me, mon!” Nestuh shouted up. “Jump!”

  “Hello? I don’t have working legs!”

  “I got eight arms, mon!” Nestuh said. “To me, you all look like you missing limbs!”

  The flames were shooting from below, racing up the tree trunk, even as the kids spotted a squadron of warrior birds flying toward them.

  “We should wait for the birds to help,” Ines advised.

  “They may be coming to finish us off!” Eli warned.

  “You heard what they said—we can’t come to harm in the Palm of Protection,” Ines said. “The stampede is down there. We should stay up here.”

  “But what if the palm burns down?” Eli asked.

  The flames had reached the top of the tree. “Ines—think of something!” Dylan urged. “Do what you do on your show! Turn a hangnail into a hang glider or something!”

  Ines looked at the flames, and then she lay down and curled up like a baby.

  “Did I miss that episode?” Eli asked.

  Dylan chewed on his fingernails. “She’s bailing on us!”

  The flames were reaching higher and it was getting hotter and smokier. Dylan peered around—he had to think his way out of this situation. He grabbed a handful of the feathers that lined the nest. “If only we could fly!”

  “That’s it!” Eli declared. “I have a plan! We need her I-Got-Your-Back Pack!”

  Ines emerged from her stupor. “Why? Oh—I get it!” She took out the crimson feather and all three kids grabbed hold.

  Dylan and Ines jumped off the nest, with Eli rolling beside them. They hurtled through the dark holding the feather and each other. Dylan felt a magical tingling as the feather began breaking their fall. The three kids were floating gently to the earth while flames and sparks jumped up all around.

  “Uh-oh,” Ines breathed.

  The edges of the feather had caught fire, and the kids had to let it go. They were falling again, and fast—this was going to hurt. They hit
the ground hard, right next to the worst-spun web they had ever seen.

  “Ow!” Dylan moaned.

  “Urh!” Eli grunted.

  “Ouch!” Ines yelped.

  The ashes of the crimson feather fell like black snowflakes all around them. Nestuh was crying again. “I and I a failure! I can’t even spin a web right!”

  “At least we’re alive,” Ines said, rubbing her back. “I think.”

  “Nobody thinks I can do anything right!” sobbed the spider. “I’m the youngest of 1,555 kids. They’re all sisters—my father wanted a boy. After that kind of buildup, of course I was a disappointment. My mother ate him soon after I was born.”

  “Don’t tell me—you’re a black widow,” Dylan said.

  “From a long line of black widows, mon. And unless I prove myself in the world, my sisters swear I’ll be the next family meal.”

  “I’d love to hear about your family problems, but we have to get out of here,” Eli interjected.

  He pointed at the sky. The warrior birds were circling the tree. It was only a matter of time before they spotted the kids.

  “The Rolling Calves are that way,” Nestuh said.

  “Then we need to go the other way,” Eli responded.

  They all started to run. Well, actually, Dylan and Ines ran, Eli pulled himself back into his wheelchair and kinda floated and rolled, and Nestuh did that crawling and scampering thing that arachnids do. Above them, it seemed as if the whole treetop city was in an uproar. Dylan saw more soldier birds flying toward the conflagration. Doctor birds, some carrying chicks, others carrying cracked eggs, flew away from it. Something like a wail went up—a mournful, horrible sound that Dylan immediately wished he hadn’t heard and prayed that he would never have to listen to ever again.

  Dylan also wished he hadn’t seen the awful ruin of the nest trees. It was a horrifying vision. Flames twirled on the tops of the trees like angry ballet dancers. Branches broke and fell off all afire. Egg white dripped from the upper reaches in sad, goopy strands. Long stretches of golden yolk sagged down from the palm fronds. Pieces of eggshells tumbled through the air to the ground. The disaster was made all the more horrendous by something that the Baron had told Dylan. Hummingbirds mate once, and for life. The mothers lay a single egg, which is then incubated for ten years. They can never lay another. As the fire raged, Dylan could only think of the loss of all those dreams, all those hopes, all up in smoke.