by Danny Lasko
The irony of Linus being afraid of our only hope of making it to the coast makes me laugh a bit.
“You should go easy on him,” whispers Annie. “He’s had it tough.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know what a normal child of Hamelin does during the school year?”
I don’t answer. The best I can do is avoid eye contact and pull at the grass below me.
“Most Children live, or lived, at the Garden. Most kids our age go to school, but it’s a school to learn how to use the Soul, study our history, and most importantly grow up around people who share your beliefs. The Sobs lived at the Garden before they moved to Allen. His parents volunteered to move to Allen when they found out yours would be hidden there, just so your family wouldn’t be totally alone. That was two weeks before he was supposed to start school at the Garden.”
“Doesn’t seem like he needed the training. Look at him.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Yeah, I know,” I tell her, giving in. I can’t help but think back at the annual Linus lecture about the Pied Piper and how much I’ve wallowed in my own history that I never really cared about the sacrifice of others. I guess I didn’t really care what the other Children were “sacrificing.” The more the better, after Ames. Still, that wasn’t Linus’ decision. Neither was leaving the Garden. I don’t know how the Synarch found the Garden or how the wizards learned of the Call, but I do know how it could have been avoided.
“How did you guys know I was in trouble?” I ask Annie.
“In the stadium?”
“Yeah.”
“Your dad picked up on it as soon as you came on the field. He grabbed all of us in Allen, made the plan, and got you out.”
“He was watching the game?”
Annie snickers. I’ve never known my father to watch one of my games. He was suspicious of the Synarch’s offer when it came, and as honestly grateful as I am that he was watching it and looking for signs of trouble, a part of me is a little sad that he wasn’t just watching it to see his son play and be proud of him.
“How did they know where to find the Garden?” I ask, not really expecting an answer. But I get one.
“There has to be a wizard among us. Someone who’s playing both sides.”
“It’d be so much easier if everyone just wore uniforms.”
“It’s how they found your family in Ames.” Annie looks down, surely afraid it will give me further reason to hate or distrust the Children. And it does. But I’m more interested in the fact that it was the wizards who found us but the Synarch that burned Ames to the ground. Who gave the order? The wizards or the Synarch?
Annie smiles and finds my hand in the dark.
“It’s not you, is it?” I smile, peering through the darkness, looking for her response. I see it in her sparkling eyes and allow it to pass between us. Every boy who has ever wanted to kiss a girl knows this moment. The moment that the universe not only grants permission but encourages it. I fight the flash inching forward in my mind. I want this to be my own choice.
“Get some sleep.”
“What?”
“You’re the hope of two worlds, Raysh. I can’t let you lose sight of that.”
“Annie, I—what are you talking about?”
“Get some sleep.”
“Right,” I say finally. “You’re right. Good night.”
“Raysh,” she says after I turn away. “Thanks for saving our lives.”
“You’re welcome.”
10
The Castle and the Crown
“SUNNY JIM!”
I jolt awake, cold and confused, both at my surroundings and at the words screamed in my ear. The horses neigh and sigh but refrain from anything drastic. I search for its source and find Linus also sitting up from his bedroll. But by the look of his face, it was his own brain that awoke him. The memories of yesterday and last night rush through my mind. I can’t help but look over to Annie, who’s sitting on a rock sipping something hot wrapped in her hands. She’s beautiful, even if it looks like she hasn’t slept a minute. She seems more amused at the morning quiet’s interruption.
“Clue number two. I’ve got it.”
“Does it change our plan?”
“Not really.”
“Then it can wait.”
“But it’s—”
“Going to wait,” I repeat, scratching my head and pulling myself up. I was more comfortable than I thought I’d be but still stiff. The sky is starting to lighten in the east, but my guess is we’re still about a half hour away from sunrise. I find a seat by Annie and rub her shoulders warm. She hands me a cup of hot cocoa.
“Anything?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
Not sleeping and not doing anything are very different things. I know Annie’s been up all night, watching, thinking, looking for any sign of danger.
“We’re alone,” she says finally. “But I’m not sure I like that. It could mean they just couldn’t find us. Or it could mean they didn’t want to.”
“Didn’t want to, you mean, catch us. They want to follow us. See where we’re going.”
She nods and sips. “Isn’t that what you would do?” Once again, Annie has seen way ahead of me.
“Linus.”
“What?”
“Is it possible for the Looking Glass to be destroyed?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think any of the Children ever considered it.”
“That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” I ask Annie, who’s still sipping her cocoa. “You think the wizards want us to lead them to it so they can destroy it.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
I nod slowly, working out each step in my mind.
“You’re not worried about the Looking Glass.”
Annie shakes her head.
“You don’t think that’s the only thing they’re after.”
“No.”
“The Children,” says Linus. “They want to destroy the Children of Hamelin, where all the Children who will not join the wizards are dead.”
“Yes.”
“We have to find the mole,” I say.
“We have to return the pipe,” says Annie. “We have to trust that the Children are safe and can protect themselves. The sooner we find Berebus, the better the chances for the Children.”
I clench my teeth. Every time something threatens the people here, hearing that the solution is to “find Berebus Pock” or “return the Soul,” it drives me crazy. I still don’t know exactly what happens when or if we ever do either of those things. It’s not a question of whether I believe that Pock exists or even if we’ll find him. It’s what will happen when we do. I just can’t let go of this world as easily as these two. I want to be where I know I can help.
“Come on. We’ll eat on the way.”
Wildwynd, Silver Wing, and Linus’s Chestnut, Doc , hurtle through the wilderness. Rivers, mountains, even cliff-cinched ravines don’t slow them down. The saddles seem to magically remove the jolting usually caused by a horse’s gallop. If it weren’t for the whipping wind, I’d be more comfortable here than back in Tommy’s van. At least the sunglasses we found in the packs help with that.
We take Linus’s route through the Mojave to avoid Nomad territory, which is always a good idea. Nomads will rob you, slaughter you, and then wonder whether you were a friend of theirs. They’re made up of either lo-pry who couldn’t pass their trials or those who didn’t want to live under the Synarch’s rule. The Synarch knows they’re out there, but they’re incredibly difficult to find. They aren’t technologically advanced, but they have found a way to go undetected by the Synarch’s scanners. The Citizens and lo-pry both know that if you don’t bother the
Nomads, they won’t suck the marrow from your bones.
We reach the Mojave before nine in the morning, but it’s hot already. Even in the fall, the sun can boil a man’s blood at midday. The dusters do their job for the most part, keeping us cool enough and our skin from bursting into blisters. I pull out a wide-brimmed hat from the pack, inspired by the Westerns my dad loved. Loves. I’m starting to understand why he praised them. Cowboys were free men. Survivors. They had to be.
I start to worry about the horses after five hours of traveling through the Mojave. They’ve yet to drink since we left, and they haven’t slowed down even a tick as far as I can tell. Even if I knew how to tell them to slow down and take a drink, there’s nothing in sight to drink from. I glance over to Annie, who appears to be worried about the same thing. She pulls her canteen from her pack and tries to pull on the reins to slow Silver Wing down. The mare jerks back and pushes on.
Finally, the heat breaks as we cross the last of the desert and feel a cool breeze coming from somewhere up ahead. I can’t see the ocean yet but know it’s close. The horses veer off course a little, running up a rise and falling down into a valley where a freshwater pond surrounded by wandering trees, stubborn bushes, and wild grass sits, daring us to drink.
I shake my head while I watch Wildwynd nuzzle the water. They blew it, I think. The Children of Hamelin had all of this at their fingertips. And we hid it from the world.
I get that the world would have wanted the power. I get that had we shown ourselves, they would have either feared us, worshipped us, coveted us, or, perhaps scariest of all, give us full control. But surely there could have been a way to work around it.
The easiest way, I think, would simply be to rule the world. As its rulers, its leaders, we could both protect it and ourselves. We could have offered healing for incurable diseases. Show the world how to create enough power to run a city from half a glass of plain water. We could have prevented how many wars? If the history of the earth has proven anything, it’s that its people can rise up and grab freedom from the clutches of oppression. They just don’t know how to hold on to it when it’s theirs. So little by little, a thought here, a word there, a little gift from the ruling power every now and again, they give it away.
But the Children could’ve kept freedom for the people. Kept it safe. In their control. Shown them the right way to live. Forced those who couldn’t catch the vision to submit.
“I need to tell you about Two,” says Linus, leading Doc behind him, or rather attempting to swat Doc away, who will not be deterred. I shake my head, trying to clear away my thoughts before they’re discovered.
“See here,” he says, pointing to a bold number two on note six. “Look at the writing next to it. It says, ‘Can’t hit it with a fist or a foot, with a branch or a beadle. Lyman is brilliant, but sentimental … and dramatic. Has to be something important to him. Something special.’”
“So the ‘it’ we have to hit is the crown, I’m guessing?”
“I think so, but Pock thinks it has to be hit with a particular instrument.”
“Like what?” asks Annie.
“No idea,” says Linus, raising the pitch of his voice. “But I think I know where to find it. Notes two and six are linked.” He pulls out note two and lays it in front of us. In the middle of the paper is a large black circle, completely filled in with small jagged lines surrounding it, the words “skip two from Sunny Jim, at the jewel of the sea” written above it. Toward the bottom of the page are the words “In the midst of poppies.”
“You know where this is?” I ask.
“I believe I do.”
“Underwater, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Look, will you just—”
“It’s not far from the castle. If I’m right, it’s just up the old coast. See, Baum was fond of a piece of coastline called La Jolla, which means, ‘Jewel’. Jewel of the Sea! See? Sunny Jim is the name of a cave on the coast of La Jolla, named by Baum himself. I believe we’re looking for something in those caves.”
“You just came up with this? Just now?” asks Annie, nudging Linus.
“Only the Sunny Jim part. The rest I’ve been working on since the box was opened.”
“Linus, you’re earning your keep,” I say. “Sorry to make you ride the horses. Let’s go!”
We ride another couple of hours, over a hilly wilderness speckled with remnants of broken roads and lamp lights grown over by patches of crabgrass and wild vines and the skeletons of old buildings, most of which had been gutted or burned to the ground by either the Synarch or scavenging Nomads. I suspect we wouldn’t have to look hard to find the skeletons of the people who got in their way or at least weren’t fast enough to get out of it. I pull the sword from its sheath and decide it’s better to have it in my hand for the remainder of the journey.
Linus has become the designated navigator, so we follow Doc’s run up the shoreline. My granddad used to tell me that millions would flock to the Southern California coast to relax and vacation. I don’t think anyone’s ventured out here since the fall of the old republic. No evidence of my granddad’s paradise remains. The dusty desolation and the threat of Nomads keep the civilized folk away. A rare tree or bush among the ruins dots the vast beaches spreading so far out, I’m not sure which spans further, the sand or the sea. The only coastal spot along California worth visiting is the fifty miles of silver strand running north and south from Revolution.
Linus and Doc stop ahead of us.
“What is it?” I call.
“I’ve run out of land.”
We catch up to find Linus and Doc balancing on the edge of a wide cliff, giving immediate way to the ocean. The crash of the waves echoes from at least one hundred fifty feet below us.
I look out at the setting sun and let the scene take my breath. Annie scoots up on Silver Wing right next to me.
“Hard to believe this world is so messed up,” I say.
“Maybe it won’t be much longer.”
“According to the old coast map,” explains Linus, “these are the original cliffs. I think we’re going to get lucky. The cave we’re looking for is above sea level.” He points to his left.
“Cave?” asks Annie, taking a gulp of water. “We have to go down there?”
“I think so,” Linus answers.
“Huh,” I add. “Who jumps first?”
Linus pulls Doc back from the edge and rides south along the cliff’s edge toward a clump of old, battered buildings, or what’s left of them. They aren’t much more than pieces of charred wood and brick still fighting off decay caused by the whipping wind and sand. Linus picks through remnants of one off to the side of the main mess. By the look of the foundation, the building wasn’t much bigger than a house in the lo-pry.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“The way in. There’s a passage somewhere under all of this. Help me look.”
I drop off Wildwynd and pull up a piece of debris, only to be snapped at by a golden brown rattlesnake as big around as my forearm. By reflex, my hand shoots back at the snake, grabbing it by its neck, just behind the head, midattack. It wraps the rest of its body around my arm and rattles its fierce tail. I feel the adrenaline bubble through my chest and the sweat wash over my arms. The snake’s going for a swim.
“Wait!” calls Annie. I freeze with my arm cocked back. My heart beats in time with the snake’s rattle.
“It’s scared,” she says.
“I’d be scared, too.”
“You have to let it go.”
I peer at Annie, wondering when she got so benevolent toward things like this. But I’m smart enough not to argue with her. The snake meant no malice, and it was I, after all, who disturbed him. I’d have done the same thing.
I unwrap its thick body from my arm and dro
p it to the ground. It immediately darts away.
“You’re right,” I said. “That was stupid.”
“Shhh.” Annie stops me. She follows the snake slowly, enough to push it, not enough to provoke it. Linus follows. With every attempt the snake makes at hiding under a plank of wood or broken brick, Linus and Annie move the possible hiding places away. I pull up a metal sign, faded and scraped by sun and sand, but I can just make out a profile of a white-haired cartoon with a top hat and monocle. Next to his red waistcoat there’s a white block with most of the words scratched out, except for a large “FORCE” with the character’s name barely visible. Sunny Jim.
“Hey, guys, look at—” Just then, the snake slides down a hole in the sand and out of sight. Linus takes a splintered board and hits the ground around the hole. The sand sinks in.
“I think this is it,” he tells Annie. They pull out shovels from their packs and dig.
“You didn’t care about the snake at all?” I ask, pulling out my own shovel.
“What?” says Annie between shovelfuls of increasingly damp sand. “Oh. No. I hate snakes.”
I join in on the dig, not really knowing for sure what we’re looking for other than an entrance to a cave. After twenty minutes, my shovel clanks against something. I scrape the sand away to find its edges—a long, solid rectangle of wood followed by another standing against its edge. It’s a stair, the first of maybe a half dozen of them before we hit a wall. We dig it out and finally break through to a tunnel bored through the sandstone cliffs, heading west toward the sea.
“How did you know this was here?” I ask Linus.
“Well,” he says, catching his breath, “I know everything.”
It’s hard to argue at the moment.
“He’s been reading everything about Baum nonstop since he saw his name on the note,” explains Annie, stepping down the musty stairs that had been carved out of the stone. “When he learned Baum liked to visit La Jolla, he learned everything about La Jolla, including the entrance to Sunny Jim’s cave and the man made tunnel through the cliff. Knowledge is power.”