"Come and see for yourself," said Howard, waving him into the room.
Gregor found his mom sitting up in a chair. His face broke into a grin. "Now what do you think you're doing out of bed?"
"Me? I've been up since six. Cooked a big breakfast, went for a ride on a bat, and now I'm thinking about rearranging the furniture in this room. Getting kind of tired of the decor," she said.
Gregor laughed. Of course, she had done none of those things. This was the first time she had even been out of bed since she had fallen ill. "Maybe you ought to save the furniture for tomorrow."
"Yes, in fact, we should get you back to bed," said Howard. "We do not want to overdo on the first day." He reached to help her up.
"No, Howard, let me try it myself first," she said. With great determination, Gregor's mom got herself to her feet. The bed was only about five paces away, but she barely made it, collapsing on the covers at the last moment.
Howard and Gregor hurried to help position her in bed. "This is most excellent," said Howard encouragingly. "Every day a little more and you will have your strength back in no time. Now I must make my rounds with the medicine."
"That's a good boy, that Howard," said Gregor's mom when he had gone.
"He's the best," said Gregor.
"He'll make a fine doctor," said Gregor's mom. "Maybe you'll be a doctor someday."
Gregor nodded, but he had never even thought about being a doctor. He had no idea what he wanted to be, really. Since he'd fallen to the Underland, it seemed like he already had a job. Warrior. But it was not a job he liked or wanted, and it was certainly not a job his mom approved of for her twelve-year-old son. She knew that the Underlanders considered him the warrior in their prophecies, but she looked upset whenever anyone mentioned it.
"Where's Boots?" he said, to change the subject.
"Oh, she visited with me, then Luxa took her down to the field to get some exercise," said his mom. "Did Lizzie get off okay?"
Gregor gave his mom the update from home. Lizzie off to camp. Plans to sell the violin. The heat wave. She nodded, eager for every crumb of information. He tried to think of more details to stretch it out, but his mind was largely occupied by his encounter with Ripred and the Bane.
"Your head is somewhere else today," said Gregor's mom. Her fingers found a purple scar on her cheek. This was something she did when she started to worry. Rub that scar. "What's the matter, Gregor?"
"Not a thing," he said.
Her look said she didn't believe him, but fortunately, Howard came in at that moment with her medicine and a suggestion that she needed rest.
"I'll see you soon," said Gregor, grateful for an out. He headed off to find his friends. If Luxa had taken Boots to the field in the arena, there must be a game or a training session scheduled. He hoped they weren't using the blood balls for target practice. Even on good days, he disliked watching the wax balls burst open, spraying bloodred liquid as the sword blades hit them. At the moment it was a little more violence than he could handle.
When Gregor arrived, he found a much more benign sort of training in progress. The toddlers were learning to fly on bats. At first glance, it looked like little kids were raining from the ceiling. But none of the raindrops ever reached the ground. The bats would fly a toddler high up in the arena and then flip over, letting them fall into the air. The kid might drop five feet or twenty yards before they would be swept up by a second bat and flown back up into the air.
Mareth was directing the exercise. The soldier stood in the center of the field, leaning on a crutch. The doctors had fashioned a prosthetic device made of fishbone and leather for his missing leg, but he was still in the process of learning to use it. Regalia's queen, Luxa, was assisting him, if you could call it that, because at the moment they were both laughing helplessly at the scene above. Mareth was pointing up at Boots, who was trying out the somersault Luxa had been teaching her. When a bat dropped her, she would curl up in a ball and rotate a few times through the air. But inevitably she'd lose control of the move and go careening toward the ground, flapping her arms wildly like they were wings. "Me!" she called out, as if to remind the bats she needed a lift.
"Stay tucked up, Boots!" Luxa called through her laughter. "Hold your knees!"
"I hold my knees!" confirmed Boots. She launched into another somersault that quickly deteriorated into her baby-bird routine. "Me!"
"Almost, Boots! Try once more!" called Luxa encouragingly. Gregor stopped watching the kids and the bats for a moment and just focused on her. He had not gotten used to the sight of Luxa looking happy.
Being stranded in the jungle for three months with her injured bat, Aurora, and a colony of mice had changed Luxa. She was so glad to be home, and her people were almost ecstatic to see her. It was as if for the first time they had recognized how lucky they were to have this twelve-year-old girl on deck as a ruler. Luxa would not have the full powers of a queen until she was sixteen, but at twelve she had great influence and could now cast votes at the council meetings where policy was decided. While she was stubborn and gave the council fits with her attitude, Luxa was smart, strong, and unquestionably brave. A mutual appreciation had blossomed between the young queen and her subjects.
This all contributed to Luxa's happiness, but Gregor knew the real source of her joy was Hazard, her six-year-old Halflander cousin, with his lime-green eyes and black curls, who had been discovered living in the jungle. When his father, Hamnet, had been killed by an army of ants, Hazard had been orphaned. Luxa had brought him back to Regalia, and true to her word, it was as if they were now brother and sister. He lived with her in the royal chambers, ate with her, followed her like a puppy. And Luxa had allowed herself to love him.
Gregor spotted Hazard flipping off a bat high over his head. Hazard was older than most of the kids, but riding on bats was still a new skill for him. While the boy was allowed to participate in flying exercises, Luxa had strictly forbidden anyone to train him in weapons. His father's dying wish had been for Hazard to be anything but a warrior, and Luxa had promised to fulfill it. While the other kids his age studied combat training, Hazard was developing his already extraordinary talent with languages. Ordinarily, the Regalians made no effort to learn other creatures' tongues. But Hazard had been raised in the jungle, where he'd tried to speak to anything that would speak to him. He'd come to Regalia with a fluency in Lizard and an ability to get by in several other animal languages. Vikus, who was Hazard's grandfather as well as Luxa's, had arranged for a group of tutors. Showing far more patience with the quick, willing Hazard than he ever displayed with Gregor, Ripred was teaching him to squeak in Rat. Temp, the cockroach who had rescued Boots from several disasters, taught both Hazard and the "princess" the clicking dialect of the crawlers. And Purvox, a beautiful red spider, had been shipped in to tutor him in her strange vibrating means of communication. In his spare time, Hazard would try to talk with the bats, although some of their sounds were simply too high-pitched for human ears.
As he walked toward his friends, a voice behind Gregor purred, "Jump." He took one step and leaped as high as he could in the air, stretching his legs out to the sides. The next second he was riding on Ares's back. Gregor always felt a sense of security with Ares. They were bonds, a human-bat team who had taken an oath to defend each other to the death. And after facing a string of impossible difficulties together, they were real friends, too.
"How's it going, man?" Gregor asked.
"Well. It goes well," said Ares.
Gregor ran his hand over Ares's neck. A brand-new layer of glossy black fur was beginning to conceal the purple plague scars. Gregor's bat, who had been the first victim of the plague, had not only managed to survive it but had also made an extraordinary recovery. Within a few weeks of receiving the cure, he'd been begging the doctors to discharge him from the hospital. Afraid that he would fly back to his remote cave outside of Regalia before he had fully healed, the doctors released him into Luxa's custody. So now he lived with her and Hazard and Aurora, in the royal wing of the palace. Gregor thought Ares probably preferred being with his friends to living in that lonely cave anyway.