One second I was walking beside Biscuit, checking the Sunstone Map while she sniffed the air and muttered something about shade crystals smelling like cold lemonade. The next second, a wall of spinning orange sand appeared from absolutely nowhere and swallowed us whole.
I tumbled sideways. Then backward. Then sideways again, which I was pretty sure wasn’t physically possible, but the desert didn’t seem to care about physics. The tornado spun me around three times, made a sound like a very large sneeze, and then dropped me face-first into a sand dune that was unfortunately not soft at all.
“I meant to do that,” I said automatically, into the sand.
The dune did not respond.
I sat up and looked around. The sky was pale yellow and blazing hot. The Champion’s Crown — still glowing with its three villain-victories worth of warm light — had somehow ended up on backwards during the spin. I fixed it. Three separate dunes stretched in three separate directions, and Biscuit was absolutely nowhere.
“BISCUIT!”
Silence. Then, very faintly, from somewhere behind the tallest dune: “I’M FINE. I HAVE PLANS. SEVERAL PLANS. HOW MANY DO YOU NEED?”
I climbed the nearest dune and immediately understood why everything had suddenly gotten ten times harder.
Below me stretched a sandstone maze the size of an entire village. Identical sandstone walls ran in every direction, turning and doubling back on themselves. Every single junction looked exactly the same. And right in the middle of it, stomping around with great satisfaction, was the biggest, lumpiest pile of animated sand I had ever seen.
Grumbleton.
He was roughly the shape of a wardrobe that had decided to become a person. His blocky fists dragged along the ground. His face — if you could call two pebbles and a crack a face — was twisted into an expression of deep and committed grumpiness. And as I watched, he stomped over to a trail marker, picked it up with one enormous hand, and moved it three spaces to the left, pointing it in completely the wrong direction.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, that’s rude.”
I was still figuring out how to get down the dune without falling — which I did anyway, landing in a heap at the bottom — when Biscuit appeared from around a wall of sandstone, completely unruffled, her copper bowl-cut not even slightly mussed, her enormous backpack bouncing on her back.
“I found four shade crystals,” she announced. “Also I made a map of the maze. Also it’s completely useless because every time I finish drawing a section, that golem moves something.”
“I know. I saw him.”
“He’s moved seventeen markers in the last eight minutes.” She held up her notebook, which was covered in furious crossings-out. “This is the most organized chaos I have ever seen, and I do not mean that as a compliment.”
That was when I noticed the foxes.
There were three of them, sitting on top of the sandstone wall just to my left. Desert foxes — small, sandy-colored, with big square ears and bright curious eyes. They were watching Grumbleton with the calm, professional attention of creatures who had been doing this for a very long time and had formed strong opinions about it.
I looked at them. One of them looked back at me and flicked an ear.
“Hi,” I said, the way I always talk to animals — just normally, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Do you know the way through?”
The middle fox sat up straighter. It made a small, precise sound, somewhere between a bark and a question.
“He moves the markers every twelve minutes,” I translated, feeling the familiar warm tingle of understanding that I’d never quite been able to explain. “Always the same six. He never touches the ones on the east wall.”
Biscuit stared at me. Then she grabbed her notebook. “Say that again. Slower.”
“The east wall markers are fixed. He only moves the west and center ones. The foxes have been watching him do it for weeks.” I grinned at the foxes. “Haven’t you?”
All three foxes blinked in a way that was absolutely a yes.
Biscuit’s nose was already twitching. “If the east markers are stable, I can smell the shade crystals along the eastern path — they’re cold, so they’ll lead toward the center where the air is cooler.” She was already scribbling a new route. “Ollie. This might actually work.”
“I know,” I said, feeling something settle in my chest that felt like a real plan rather than organized falling. “Can you lead us?” I asked the foxes.
The lead fox hopped down from the wall, looked back once, and trotted into the maze.
We followed.
The foxes were extremely good at their job. Every time Grumbleton’s enormous footsteps shook the ground nearby, they’d pause, wait, then dart confidently down a side passage the moment he’d moved on. Biscuit sniffed out two more shade crystals tucked into the sandstone walls — cold lemonade, she confirmed — and solved the riddle carved into a locked gate by identifying that the answer was “shadow,” because shadows smell faintly of cool stone and she’d known that since she was four.
I’d never combined my animal-talking and Biscuit’s planning like this before. Usually I was off doing something chaotic while she made the lists. But this felt different. This felt like two halves of an actually working brain.
We emerged from the far side of the maze just as Grumbleton stomped back to move a marker and discovered — judging by the outraged rumble that shook the dunes — that we were already gone.
The Crystal Oasis shimmered on the horizon, closer than ever, its water catching the light like a thousand sea lanterns.
“You asked me for a plan,” Biscuit said, still scribbling in her notebook. “And then you added foxes to it. I’m putting this in the records.”
“I thought you might,” I said.
The lead fox bumped its head against my ankle once, in a dignified sort of way, and then all three of them trotted back into the maze to resume their extremely important watching.
I looked at the Crown. Still three victories. But it felt, somehow, a little warmer than before.