When reading a book, beware of paper cuts. Once you shed blood at the hands of a character, you become it. As you've seen, Peacock has suffered this fate already, successfully turning into one of the vampire sisters. Grand was yet to face his decapitation. As for Bells and Rusty...well.
Pursued by the speediest steeds in Mad Tome—the three horses of the Snow Queen—Hinbad was not to be outmatched.
"You try and catch me, you crazy icicle!" he screeched. "I didn't learn to fly for nothing! I can totally outfly you, watch me!"
Unfortunately, because Hinbad was young and giant and overconfident, he focused more on asserting himself than on where he was going. The monkeys screamed directions, trying to prevent the crash, and failed.
Rushing full speed ahead, Hinbad saw the rising page a tad too late. He careened, desperately flapping his wings, and then realized that this maneuver happened only in his head. In reality he propelled forward headlong, tore through the tent of the jungle, and slid into the rich soil the way a knife slides into butter. His whole body quivered from the impact. The monkeys rained off his back, scattering into trees. And Bells and Rusty somersaulted into a cluster of flowers that stunk like decomposing corpses.
There was a silence that follows big explosions, then it erupted with noises.
Bells sat up, dizzy. She brushed off leaves and twigs and gawked around.
The jungle seethed with life. Insects buzzed. Birds shrieked. Everything pulsed and dripped and wobbled. There were no visible paths leading anywhere. Tree branches curled like outstretched fingers aiming to snag her hair. Flowers emitted a nauseating odor. And when she moved, the ground squelched, reluctant to let her go.
"Are you okay?" she asked Rusty, her nimble fingers redoing the ponytail.
"I'm fine," he said, his head down. "You?"
"I think so." She patted herself, failing to notice a peculiar tone to his voice. "Nothing is broken. And we're alive, which is a good thing. But these flowers stink, which is a bad thing." She waited for him to comment or at least to snigger.
He did neither.
"What's wrong, Rusty?"
He looked up, a hand on his cheek.
"What happened to your face?"
"Nothing."
Bells frowned. "Let me see."
"It's nothing, really." Rusty backed away, but Bells was faster. She peeled off his fingers and gasped. A shallow gash ran from his eye to his chin in a jagged scarlet line.
"It's cool, man. You don't need to worry. I cut myself when we fell. On a...on a stick! Right there." He vaguely pointed beyond the flowers and gave her a weak smile.
Bells' eyes widened. "They scratched you."
"Who?"
"The monkeys!"
"No, they didn't."
"You're such a bad liar. It doesn't look like a cut, it looks like a scratch and it looks bad, Rusty. You're bleeding. You're—" She stopped herself, turning cold.
"What?"
Their eyes met.
"What's happening?"
"Listen," she said quickly, "just...stay calm, okay? Stay calm."
"Why?" Rusty cried. "What's the matter?"
Bells stated as evenly as she could, "You're changing into a monkey."
"No." Rusty clasped his face. Soft fur sprouted under his fingers. "No!" he shrieked and jumped to his feet.
"Don't freak out, please. We'll find a way to fix this!" But as she said it, Bells wasn't so sure. She couldn't take her eyes away from Rusty's back where a tail unfolded in a loop. His face darkened to black leather, as did his hands; the rest was overtaken by grey fur.
"It's that monkey," he said, "the one that sat next to me, it scratched me when we started falling!"
A terrible thought struck Bells. She quickly looked over her arms, her legs, then felt her face. "Did it scratch me too? Rusty, tell me, do you see any cuts?"
But Rusty succumbed to panic.
"This is awful!" he shrieked. "Pinch me, I'm dreaming! I want to wake up! Grandma! Grandma, get me out of here!" And he took off.
"Rusty, wait!" Bells dashed after him.
It was useless. Carried forth by his new monkey's agility, Rusty expertly hopped from tree to tree and soon disappeared.
Bells ran a bit more then stopped, blocked by an impassable tangle of vegetation. "That's just great," she muttered. "Why did you have to run, Rusty? How am I going to get through this?"
She peered at the liana that hung down like a green twisting snake, pondering if she should climb it, when a loud noise made her jump and wheel around.
Something smashed into the jungle, something heavy. Then something snorted, and something crunched.
It was the crunch of snow.
A gust of wind chilled the humid air. Bells' skin erupted in goosebumps.
"The Snow Queen," she whispered.
"Bells, look!" came a call from above. "I can climb trees like a monkey!" Rusty didn't resemble himself anymore, save for his tattered clothes. He wrapped his tail around a liana and whizzed down.
"Careful!" cried Bells. "You'll fall like that."
"No, I won't. This is fun!" He scratched his head. "Want to try? I can teach you. It's easy."
"Listen to me," said Bells desperately. "We can't climb trees right now."
Rusty's face wrinkled. "Why not?"
"Because we need to find Grand! And Peacock! And—" She broke off. "Don't you remember?"
"Remember what?" Rusty caught something in his fur and studied it, then quickly put it in his mouth.
"Rusty! Eww! You're not a monkey, you're a boy! We're in Mad Tome. A monkey has scratched you and you replaced it, don't you understand? And the Snow Queen just got here. She's after me. We need to find Grand and Peacock and get back to the duck pond."
Rusty blinked. "The duck pond?"
"Do you want to stay a monkey forever?" asked Bells.
"Totally! Look what I can do!" He scaled the nearest trunk and swung down from a liana, only to climb back up for another go, an amused expression on his leathery face.
Bells clutched her forehead. "You don't change, Rusty, monkey or not." Her words rang out uncomfortably loud. The jungle was silent. "Rusty?" She had a feeling of eyes on her, many pairs of eyes looking down from the canopy of leaves.
"Rusty!"
The branches shook and groaned. Scores of furry arms reached for Rusty at once and grabbed him, stopping his mouth. He struggled, mutely staring at Bells. Dozens of wrinkly faces exactly like his started giggling. It was the monkeys.
One of them picked off a large nut and threw it at Bells. She cowered. More nuts pelted the ground like huge hailstones.
"Get her! Get her!" they screamed, hooting and ululating.
"Rusty!" called Bells. "Don't give in! Fight them! You have to— Ow!" A nut struck her elbow, hitting a nerve.
"There you are, badling girl." The Snow Queen stepped out from behind the tree. Her mouth twisted in the smugness of a predator that has at last cornered its prey. Steam rose from her, and every plant she touched immediately frosted over.
The monkeys issued a squeal of terror, dropped the rest of the nuts, and fled, Rusty trapped in their midst. The sounds of them tearing through the jungle quickly faded.
Bells stood quiet, massaging her elbow and searching for a way to escape. Behind her was an impenetrable thicket of vegetation. To her left and to her right rose trees that only monkeys could climb, the gaps between them tangled up with lianas. The only exit from this nightmare was up ahead and it was blocked by the Queen.
"Poor badling," she cooed sweetly, advancing. "You look so tired, so dirty, so bruised."
Bells drew back and stepped on something slimy. It protested by releasing an odor of rotting flesh. It was a cluster of flowers, the same kind she and Rusty encountered upon their rather unpleasant landing in the jungle.
She dashed around it.
"What's your hurry?" cajoled the Queen. "Come. I'll clean your face. I'll give you my cloak. It will shield you from this insufferable heat." Her exhale froze the flowers into an icicle bouquet. The good outcome of this was, they stopped stinking. The bad outcome was, they crumbled under the Queen's shoe, the last barrier between her and Bells.
I'm doomed, thought Bells. This is it, I'm doomed.
She imagined herself as the Snow Queen, sitting on an icy throne, arranging and rearranging crystals into sparkling mosaics.
This is horrible. I'll die from boredom!
The Queen was beside her.
"Wait!" cried Bells. "You're just a girl like me. Don't do this. You want to get home, right? I can help you. Let me go and I'll walk up the dirt wall and get out at the pond and tear Mad Tome in half. I promise. And then you can go home! See your mom..." Bells faltered. For some reason it was the wrong thing to say.
The Snow Queen hissed, steam clouding her face. "Home? I don't want to go home. I'm better off here." And with a greedy glint in her eyes, she doffed her icy crown and took a swipe at Bells, missing her by an inch. Bells staggered. Her foot snagged on a root and she fell. The Queen smiled, the crown poised in her hand like a knife. "Say goodbye to life as you know it, Belladonna." And she slashed her.
Bells focused on the sharp tip, waiting for the pain. But it didn't come. The crown swiftly moved away without touching her. The Snow Queen hiccupped. A puzzled expression spread over her features. She rose and hung in the air, swinging left and right.
"Humph uh uphm uhm mumph?" screeched a familiar voice.
Bells squinted. "Hinbad?"
The Roc chick towered over the clearing, the Snow Queen swaying in his beak. He spit her out and watched her tumble with one amused orange eye. "I said, is she giving you trouble? We were supposed to vote and stuff, like who gets what new badling and—hey, icicle lady, you're not going anywhere."
The Queen was stealthily crawling behind a growth of ferns. Hinbad snapped her by the cloak, shook her like a poisonous snake, and flung her into the emerald distance.
They listened.
There was a cry, a snap, a thump, and blissful silence.
"That's better," concluded Hinbad, prancing to Bells. The ground shook under his weight. "That felt so good. I wanted to do it for such a long time."
"Thank you, Hinbad," squeaked Bells.
He fastened an eye on her. "You're welcome. I like you. You'll make a great Roc chick."
"I will?"
"Don't you want to fly?" He looked up. "There she goes."
The Snow Queen's sleigh burst out of the jungle and hastily swished out of sight.
"I have a feeling she'll be back," said Bells.
"Do you want to fly, then?" Hinbad lowered his head level with hers.
She gulped. "Do I...have to decide right now?"
"What's there to decide?" asked Hinbad, puzzled. "Flying is the best thing in the world. Haroun and Hossain will be so jealous that I claimed you." He made a grating noise that resembled a chuckle.
"Can I find my friends first?" implored Bells. "I'd like to say goodbye to them," she measured her words carefully, "like you'd want to say goodbye to your brothers if you were to leave them forever."
Haroun blinked. "Why would I want to say goodbye to them? They'd never say goodbye to me." He screeched in agitation.
"Sorry, that's not what I meant," stammered Bells. "I just want to see them one more time to...to tell them that I'm going to be a Roc chick and that I'll be flying so they'll be jealous of me because they can't fly and I can!" She forced a smile.
"Sure!" Hinbad nodded happily. "I'll claim you right away so you can fly up to them and show off. Wouldn't that make them choke with envy?" He lowered his voice. "So, like, I'm not supposed to do this, Haroun and Hossain told me to wait for them, but they're not here to stop me, are they? It'll be a great surprise for them, wouldn't it?"
"Well..." Bells twisted her ponytail. "If I replace you now, my friends won't recognize me. They'll think I'm you and run away from me screaming."
"Huh," said Hinbad, jabbing his beak at something squirming in the grass, tossing it up and gulping it so fast, Bells failed to see what it was, but she thought it looked like a fat anaconda perfectly capable of swallowing an eleven-year-old girl whole, and her stomach rolled over itself.
Hinbad belched. "You're clever," he continued, nonplussed. "I didn't think about that."
"You can always claim me later," said Bells hopefully. "Could you maybe take me to them? You're so powerful, so big, your flight is so smooth and speedy. I bet you fly faster than your brothers." She watched the effect of her words take hold.
"I totally do." Hinbad unfolded his wings, uprooting a couple trees in the process. "I am the fastest. Mother told me I'd never fly as well as Hossain, but I'm better than him. I'm better than both of them."
"You are," Bells lauded. "You're graceful and swift. May I once more experience the pleasure of traveling with such a capable flyer?"
"You may!" screeched Hinbad. "Get on. I'll take you to the Monkey City."
"The Monkey City?" repeated Bells. "That sounds familiar. What book is that from?"
"The Jungle Book!"
"I should've guessed." She looked around. "Now it makes sense."
"Did you read it?" asked Hinbad.
Bells blushed. "No, but I watched the movie."
"You should read it. It's a great book. Getting on?"
"Er." Bells glanced up. "You sure it's safe to go? I mean, isn't Mad Tome looking for us?"
"Nah, it's napping," said Hinbad with confidence. "It tired itself out with that tantrum. It always does."
"How do you know?"
"Can't you hear it?"
Bells listened.
Sure enough, underneath the din of the jungle ran a hum, a rustling snore that could be mistaken for the murmur of leaves.
"So that's how you can tell—"
"We have to go, though," interrupted Hinbad. "Before my brothers find me." Evidently he was more terrified of his brothers' wrath than that of Mad Tome. He flattened a wing. Bells climbed on his back and they took off, soaring above the sea of trees that shifted and rippled like green water, with splashes of color erupting here and there in the shapes of startled tropical birds.