A New York Times Notable Book
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
An American Indians in Children’s Literature Best Book of the Year
“Older fascinatingly blends thunder-lizard thrills with lesser-known but important aspects of American history … Readers will adore Magdalys Roca … There’s another installment of this mind-bendingly original series coming, sure to be eagerly awaited.”
— New York Times Book Review
★ “Epic … This high-energy title is perfect for middle graders, with its strong female protagonist, a fresh perspective on history, helpful notes and resources, and an honest portrayal of the complex topics of race and gender.” — School Library Journal, starred review
★ “Delightful historical fantasy … Rooted in real events and attitudes, and appended with facts about the time, this fast-paced adventure makes for a memorable tale in which numerous characters of color take the lead.”
— Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This book is true fire. It is everything I didn’t even know I needed.” — Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
“This is the story that would’ve made me fall in love with reading when I was a kid.” — Tomi Adeyemi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone
“Older’s uprising of sheroes and heroes grips, stomps, and soars from start to finish.” — Rita Williams-Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of One Crazy Summer
“Dactyl Hill Squad is an engaging, lively adventure with a heroine I wish I were, in a world I didn’t want to leave.”
— Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award–winning author of Sing, Unburied, Sing
“This incredible story brings history to life with power, honesty, and fun.”
— Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of Chains
A Publishers Weekly Best of Summer Reading
“An unforgettable historical, high-octane adventure.”
— Dav Pilkey, author/illustrator of the Dog Man series
★ “Blisteringly paced, thought-provoking adventure.”
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ “Intelligent, rousing, and abundantly diverse, this is every bit as satisfying as the first installment.”
— Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Older has middle-graders’ number with this dino-charged series. Stampedes are likely!” — Booklist
Praise
Title Page
Map
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One: Toad, Toad, Toad
Chapter Two: Lakeside Skirmish
Chapter Three: Sinornith Swoop
Chapter Four: Pursuit through the Swamp Trees
Chapter Five: Escape
Chapter Six: Meet the 9th
Chapter Seven: Campfire, No Shenanigans
Chapter Eight: What Lies Ahead
Chapter Nine: RECONNAISSANCE!! Part 1: A Distraction
Chapter Ten: RECONNAISSANCE!! Part 2: Dactyl’s-Eye View
Chapter Eleven: Back and Away Again
Chapter Twelve: RECONNAISSANCE!! Part 3: Sneak and Snipe
Chapter Thirteen: Rendezvous and Run
Chapter Fourteen: Search and Annoy
Chapter Fifteen: Skirt the Edge and Surge
Chapter Sixteen: Get Away
Part Two
Chapter Seventeen: Awash
Chapter Eighteen: The Very … Well, the Very Something General Banks
Chapter Nineteen: Detained
Chapter Twenty: Poop Duty
Chapter Twenty-One: New Sights and Sounds in an Old City
Chapter Twenty-Two: Old Rose’s Sweet Chicory Coffee
Chapter Twenty-Three: Jackson Square
Chapter Twenty-Four: Lafarge’s Grotto
Chapter Twenty-Five: Back to the Barracks
Chapter Twenty-Six: Peuxp Deuxty, Part Deux
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Secret Documents
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Gathering
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Beginning of a Revelation
Chapter Thirty: Official Kerfuffle
Chapter Thirty-One: Thanks, Banks!
Chapter Thirty-Two: Decipher
Chapter Thirty-Three: Lafarge at Large
Chapter Thirty-Four: Goodbye, Hello
Part Three
Chapter Thirty-Five: Across the Wide Gulf
Chapter Thirty-Six: Land Ho!
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Grumpy General Zalaka
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Desert Sunrise
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Lay of the Land
Chapter Forty: Battle Preparations
Chapter Forty-One: The Battle of the Sierra de Tamaulipas
Chapter Forty-Two: Thunder Run
Chapter Forty-Three: Crash Bang Boom!
Chapter Forty-Four: Come to Me
Chapter Forty-Five: Sunrise
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
FOR A FEW moments, a strange quiet settled over the Atchafalaya Swamplands. Magdalys Roca, standing on top of a gigantic toad, looked over to her brother, Montez, whom she’d traveled all the way from New York City to rescue. He stared back at her from the shattered fifth-floor window of a dilapidated mansion; peeling pink shutters dangled off rusty hinges on either side. He carried a sighted rifle, the kind the sharpshooters used, and that made sense: He’d become a soldier in these past couple months of war, a sniper. He’d taken lives, and now, so had Magdalys. And she was a soldier now, just like him.
“Um,” Corporal Wolfgang Hands said from a window a few floors down. He was a big man with a dashing mustache, light brown skin, and a black eye patch. He’d gotten his men to the safety of this swamp mansion after their medical convoy had been ambushed, and this was where Magdalys and her friend Mapper had found them, hemmed in by Confederate Bog Marauders with more on the way. Magdalys had sent the enemy scattering when she’d brought her giant toad crashing down from across the lake. But she could already hear the rustle and yells of the swampland guerrilla soldiers regrouping. “You do know how to control that thing, don’t you, young lady?”
“Sure seems like she does,” someone yelled. “Unless it just happened to take her to us and scatter the Marauders.”
“The other two are still giving ’em a good lickin’ out on the lake,” a young soldier with a nasty scar down the center of his face pointed out. The others scoffed and rolled their eyes. “No pun intended!”
Magdalys smirked. Last time she’d looked, the two toads behind them had been lashing out at an attacking brigade of mounted sinornithosaurs with their humongous tongues, swallowing a few and knocking others out of the sky in wild spirals. She looked Corporal Hands dead in the eye. “I do control these toads, sir,” she said. “My name is Magdalys Roca and I’m the greatest dinowrangler in the world.”
“And I’m Mapper!” Mapper said. “I mean, I’m Kyle, but they call me Mapper.”
“Wait, you wrangle dinos?” Montez said.
“Wait, as in the famous Magdalys Roca that Razorclaw over here won’t shut up about?” Corporal Hands said.
“Wait, as in the Magdalys Roca who I sent that dactylgram?” another soldier yelled.
Magdalys gaped at him. That gram — the matrons of the Colored Orphan Asylum had given it to her the night of the Draft Riots back in July; the night everything changed. “Private Tom Summers?”
He nodded. “
The same! Glad you made it! But I didn’t mean for —”
“Enough chitter chatter!” the corporal hollered. “Those Bog Marauders’ll be back here any minute, and remember, with only one bite from one of their sinosteeds you’ll be —”
“Dying slowly in a pool of your own vomit and drool,” the other five soldiers all groaned at once.
“We remember,” Montez said. Then he hoisted his rifle up, squinted through the sight, and let off a shot that Magdalys heard whiz past her and then land with a distant juicy thunk. She whirled around as the caw of a sinornith rang out, saw it plummeting from the sky, its rider already splashing into the lake below with a yelp.
“Whoa!” She looked back at her brother, blinking. “You really are a crack shot.”
“Time to go,” Montez said. “They’re almost here.” He disappeared from the window, gathering his things, and Magdalys had to remind herself he was still that goofy kid who loved reading and looked out for everyone at the orphanage. Kind of.
JUH!! the huge toad beneath her boomed. It was a guttural, raspy chirp that only Magdalys could hear, or feel really, as it seemed to rise like a tiny marvelous earthquake from within her. And she understood it, this ancient creature’s strange one-sound language — he was ready to go too, and he wouldn’t wait long. Behind her, two of the dactyls they’d flown into the swamplands, Beans and Dizz, huddled protectively over the third, Grappler, who’d been wounded just before they found the toads.
Come! Magdalys sent her thought arcing to the lake behind them, felt it reach the other two toads, felt their attention turn suddenly toward her. Come!
“Brace yourself,” she said to Mapper, and then the whole planet seemed to rock with the sudden explosive landing of a toad on one side of them, and then again as the second one landed on the other side.
“Yeeesh!” Mapper yelled, steadying himself.
Magdalys wiggled her eyebrows at him. “I warned ya!”
He shook his head. “What happens now?” Mapper had been with her all the way from New York — in fact, he was the only one left of the tight-knit squad they’d formed back in Brooklyn. Two Step and Sabeen had been swept up in the Battle of Chickamauga and were probably holed up in Chattanooga with their new friend Hannibal and the rest of the Army of the Cumberland, surrounded by Confederates and anxiously awaiting General Grant to help them escape. Cymbeline Crunk, one of the greatest Shakespearean actresses ever (as far as Magdalys was concerned, anyway) and a Union spy, had flown to Tennessee with General Grant on the back of Stella, the giant pteranodon that Magdalys had saved from a silo back in Dactyl Hill. And Amaya was headed west to find her father, an eccentric general in the US Army, and figure out the riddle of her Apache mother.
Kwa-THOOM!! A mortar shell hurtled through the top tower of the mansion, obliterating it and showering Magdalys and Mapper with debris and broken glass. She glanced at the window Montez had been in just as he poked his big toothy grin out of it and waved. “I’m alright!”
“Let’s move out!” Corporal Hands yelled.
Magdalys exhaled. Just like that, after all that … her brother could’ve been killed. Could still be killed.
She narrowed her eyes at the approaching sinornithosaurs as the corporal barked orders. “Summers and Bijoux, take the toad on the left! Toussaint and Briggs, the right!”
At some point along the way, the journey had stopped being just about saving Montez, and become something much bigger inside Magdalys. The Union needed her, generals kept saying. With her abilities, she could crush the Confederacy. And she knew it was true.
“Aye, aye, sir!” The men called as the magnificent toads lowered themselves toward the windows.
She’d seen firsthand how being able to get inside the minds of dinosaurs could sway the tide of battle. And she’d seen what could happen when agents of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society trying to build a slavery-driven empire all throughout the Americas, had used it to their own ends. In fact, she’d seen it less than an hour ago, when Earl Shamus Dawson Drek, a Bog Marauder who had the same power she did, had bombarded her with swarms of dinos. She’d bested him, breaking through the lock he had on those reptilian minds to divert the attacks away from her and Mapper, but it took everything she had. And Drek was still out there.
She knew they had to be stopped. She knew she was one of the few who might be able to do it. So she’d agreed to join the US Army.
But it wasn’t the Union she cared about, not really.
“Roca,” Corporal Hands called, “you and I will hop on with your sister here.”
Montez nodded and, as bullets whistled through the air around them, climbed out the window and leapt onto the snout of the toad.
Her brother. She watched him make his way up toward her. Yes, it was still for him that she’d done this, but now it was for all her brothers, and her sisters too. She thought about the plantations they’d flown over as they approached the Atchafalaya, the scars etched across her friend Big Jack Jackson’s back. No one she loved would be safe until the Confederacy fell and the Knights of the Golden Circle were defeated forever.
Montez slipped and let out a grunt as he scrambled for purchase — that hide was slippery with slime and swamp water, but the warts and folds allowed for easy footholds. A few more shots rang out but whizzed harmlessly past. Montez pulled himself to his feet, and then made it to the top and wrapped Magdalys in a quick hug as Corporal Hands grumbled and stumbled his way out the window and toward them.
She had an army at her back now. And General Grant had given her the command of her own special elite unit of dinowarriors, had even put it in writing. She could hunt down the Knights and take apart their organization piece by piece.
“Thanks for rescuing me,” Montez whispered.
She punched his shoulder. “Anytime, big bro.”
And taking apart the Knights was exactly what she planned to do.
She turned to the lake behind them, and the toad waddled from one side to the other, turning too.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Wolfgang yelled, his hands stretched out to either side for balance as he made his way up to them. “Gotta warn us when he gonna do that, young lady!” He scurried to the spot between the toad’s eyes where Magdalys, Mapper, and Montez stood prepping their weapons. Out over the lake, the sinornith riders yelped and let off a volley of musket fire.
But before Magdalys could take apart any evil organizations, she’d have to get out of this mess.
“Get ready,” she yelled. The three soldiers around her raised their weapons. Off to either side, Toussaint, Briggs, Summers, and Bijoux did the same.
JUH!!! the toad burped urgently, lowering itself. Then it hurtled out over the lake amidst the crackle of gunfire.
“ATTACK!!”
THEY CAME CRASHING down at the far edge of the lake with a tremendous fwa-SHOOOOOM!! And a wall of water blasted up on either side of them. Magdalys was pretty sure they’d taken out a few sinorniths on their way down, but a bunch of others were cascading toward them from nearby treetops, their riders howling with glee.
Montez and Mapper were on their feet first, and they’d each taken two shots when a shadow covered the approaching Bog Marauders. The Confederates looked up and their howls turned to screeches and then were cut off entirely when the gigantic toad blitzed out of the sky on top of them and landed with a kaFOOOM!!
JuhJuhJuhJUH! the toad chortled beneath Magdalys.
SHASHOOM!!! came the splash announcing that the third toad had landed on their other side.
More sinornith riders were coming though, and they seemed to be closing in from all around.
“How many of these guys are there?” Mapper grunted. He let off shot after shot at the approaching swarm with his carbine, but Magdalys couldn’t tell if he was hitting any of them. A few bullets zinged past, none too close.
“They’ve been pestering us since we holed up about a week ago,” Wolfgang explained. “First it was just a few, but they musta sent word out and m
ore and more started gathering.” BLAM!! He had a pistol in each hand and shot one and then the other. BLAM!!
The sinorniths glided toward the treetops up ahead, probably so their riders could take more accurate potshots.
“Corporal!” Summers called from the toad to their right. “Private Bijoux has been hit!”
“Crikey,” Wolfgang muttered.
“Ju-ju-just a flesh wound, sir!” Bijoux yelled. “I’m alright!”
The sinoriders dismounted amidst the canopy of live oaks and cypress trees, and then their steeds immediately launched back into the blue skies. They were ugly creatures, with gray-brown feathers, thick hind legs, and narrow necks leading to those fierce raptor-like jaws, which would deliver a deadly dose of venom to anyone they grasped. And they were swooping toward Magdalys and the others with a clamor of squeaks and caws.
Earl Shamus Dawson Drek. Magdalys narrowed her eyes. It had to be him. He’d survived the toad attacks, had probably been hiding in the underbrush all along, biding his time, and now, wherever he was, he had a whole squad of sinorniths at his command.
“Take aim, lads!” Wolfgang commanded. “But we don’t have much ammo to waste, so wait till you have a shot before you fire.”
And it was one thing to fend off attacks against her and one other person, but seven other people, spread out over three toads? Maybe one day, but she wasn’t there yet.
But Drek … if she could get to Drek …
“Can you and your men hold them off for a few minutes, Corporal Hands?” Magdalys asked, trying to get the sharp, clipped military tone right.
“Fire, boys! Give ’em everything you got!” He looked down at her as gunfire erupted around them, gave a kind of sideways tilt with the top of his head. “I think we can handle ’em for a bit. Don’t be long though. I already have a wounded soldier and we’re all in desperate need of a bath.”
“Yes, sir!” Magdalys said, snapping off a salute as best she could. “Can I also borrow my brother for this mission?” She was already backing toward where the dactyls were huddled.
“Alright, but make it quick!” Wolfgang nodded at Montez, who let off two more shots, then stood and followed Magdalys.
“Great,” she said. “Just try not to hit us while you’re at it.”
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