The Dragon Lantern

by Alan Gratz

  The steamwagon shuddered as they got underway. A bandito shackled Archie’s right leg to the left leg of the boy sitting beside him. Archie wasn’t worried about the chain—he could rip it off whenever he wanted to—but the boy he was shackled to looked frightened. He was a Texian about Archie’s age, and just as small, with light brown skin and black hair. He was grubby like he lived on the streets, but, unlike the other children, at least had blue denim pants, a cowboy shirt that used to be white, and a well-worn pair of brown leather boots. The boy stared straight forward, his eyes distant like so many of the others’.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” Archie and the boy told each other at the same time.

  Archie blinked. This homeless kid was telling him everything was going to be okay?

  “My name’s Gonzalo,” the boy said, still staring straight forward. “What’s yours?”

  Archie didn’t want to tell the kid his real name. He might have read one of Senarens’s dime novels and start talking. “It’s, um, George,” Archie lied.

  Gonzalo turned his head at that, almost like he didn’t believe him, but he didn’t say anything. “Where you from, George?” Gonzalo asked.

  “Philadelphia,” Archie said, telling the truth this time.

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  “What about you?” Archie asked.

  “Austin, originally,” Gonzalo said. “Now kind of all over. Where are your parents?”

  The couple who’d raised Archie, Dalton and Agatha Dent, lived just outside Philadelphia, in Powhatan territory. He’d thought of them as his parents for the first twelve years of his life, but technically he didn’t have parents, because he wasn’t human. The thought chilled him all over again, and he longed for the seclusion of his dark corner in the hotel.

  “I … I don’t have any parents,” Archie told him, which was true and wasn’t true.

  “Me either,” Gonzalo said.

  “So you’ve been living on the streets?” Archie asked.

  Gonzalo nodded, still staring straight ahead.

  Archie looked around at the other children. They probably all had similar stories. It was bad enough that they were orphans with no place to go, no clothes to wear, and no food to eat. Now they were being rounded up by kidnappers and hauled off to who-knows-where, to do who-knows-what.

  As to what, Archie had a guess. In his experience, it always came down to the Mangleborn, the giant prehistoric creatures that stirred every few hundred years to drive humanity mad and destroy everything they’d built. Some Mangleborn-worshipping cultists needed children’s blood for sacrifices, or wanted to turn them into hideous half-human/half-animal Manglespawn, or meant to feed them to a Mangleborn or Manglespawn. Archie shook his head. Whatever it was, he would stop it, and then he was done. For good. And nothing Mr. Rivets could say or do would change his mind.

  Archie heard a roar outside the steamwagon as it slowed to a stop. Here we go, Archie thought. A Manglespawn with a bat’s wings and a bear’s body. Or maybe a Mangleborn with a thousand snakes for arms and rooster legs for feet. Archie popped his neck and got ready to fight.

  “Sounds like a crowd,” Gonzalo said. “A big arena. The Astral Dome, maybe.”

  Archie blinked. Now that Gonzalo mentioned it, it did sound like the roar of a crowd.

  The bandits hooked a cattle ramp with covered sides to the back of the wagon and shooed the children out, two by two. As they passed from the steamwagon, Archie briefly saw the round, silver top of the Astral Dome, one of the Seven Wonders of the New World. The ancient coliseum dominated Houston’s skyline.

  “You’re right,” Archie whispered. “They’re taking us into the basement of the Astral Dome!” He shook his head again. “Underground. It’s always underground.”

  “What is?” Gonzalo asked.

  “Nothing,” Archie said. No reason to scare him until he saw whatever monster it was these guys worshipped. That would be enough scare for a lifetime.

  The roar of the crowd above was louder now, and came every few minutes. It was like they were right underneath the arena floor. Something thudded above them, shaking the stone ceiling and the walls, and the crowd roared again. What exactly did people do in a rodeo? The pens they passed in the hallways under the arena were filled with steam horses and mechanical bulls. Did they race them? Fight them? Archie had no idea. There weren’t a lot of rodeos in Philadelphia.

  It took Archie a few minutes to notice that the lights in the passageways weren’t gas. They glowed bluish-yellow from behind small orbs set into the walls.

  “Are the lights … lektric?” he whispered.

  “You mean like lightning? No, I don’t think so,” Gonzalo said, his eyes still straight ahead. “I’m told they glow the same way fireflies do. That’s why they call this the Astral Dome. The roof is covered with them, like stars. It’s ancient technology. Older even than the Romans. It’s never dark inside the Astral Dome. Never hot, either.”

  Gonzalo was right—it wasn’t hot in here! Archie felt a cold breeze coming out of a metal vent, cooling the underground passage. “But how—?”

  “Air-conditioning,” Gonzalo said. “Legend says the ancients had a way to cool the entire arena without ice, but no one knows how to do that anymore. Instead, they pack the bottom levels with ice and blow air over it and through the air ducts the ancients built.”

  So. Some kind of ice monster then, Archie thought. Something living in the frozen depths of the Astral Dome. Or maybe it’s the ice itself—a kind of living ice that gets inside you, turns you into a killer snowman.

  “In here, chamacos,” a bandito told them, pointing to a dark chamber deep inside the passageways underneath the arena.

  Here we go, thought Archie. Now we meet the monster.

  The chamber was lined with more of the mechanical bull pens Archie had seen earlier, but these pens were full of children. Mostly Texian, like Gonzalo, and all dirty and thin and ragged. Archie looked around for some sign of Mangleborn or Manglespawn, but there was nothing. Nothing but shabby, crying children, and smiling banditos.

  “A good haul today, jefe,” one of their captors said. He gave Archie a push, and Gonzalo stumbled forward with him on their chain. “We even got a gringo!”

  A redheaded mestizo man with a bushy red beard, black suit, and brown bow tie crossed the room to them. “So I see! He’ll fetch a good price in New Spain.” He lifted Gonzalo’s chin to look at his teeth. “They all will! Put them in the pens.”

  “Procopio Murietta,” Gonzalo muttered.

  “You know this guy?” Archie asked.

  Gonzalo nodded. “He’s wanted for murder, bank robbery, and cattle rustling from Texas to the California Republic, and everywhere in between. And now, apparently, child slavery.”

  Was that really all this was? Banditos rounding up children off of Houston’s streets and selling them as slaves to ranchers across the border in New Spain who couldn’t afford Tik Toks? Not that it wasn’t awful and didn’t need to be stopped. It was, and it did. But Archie had been so sure there would be some Mangleborn connection to it all. He couldn’t believe it was just good old-fashioned bad guys.

  Archie planned out his attack. He could knock down any jail cell door they put him behind, but it would be better to move now, before they locked him away. Better to keep the other kids safe until he was finished with the banditos.

  “We should make our move before they lock us up,” Gonzalo whispered.

  Archie stopped in surprise, bringing Gonzalo up short on the chain that connected them. “Who, you and me?” Archie asked.

  “No,” Gonzalo said. “I was talking to—”

  Something big and wild roared deeper down in the Astral Dome’s sublevels, shaking the ground like an earthquake.

  “Órale! What was that?” said Gonzalo.

  Archie was afraid he knew.

  “The cucuy is hungry,” Procopio announced. “We need tributes.”

  The prisoners in the pens cried out a
nd retreated into the darkness.

  “What’s a cucuy?” Archie whispered.

  “It’s a kind of bogeyman Texian parents scare their kids with,” Gonzalo said. “A monster.”

  “Right. Of course,” Archie said. No matter what, things always came back to the Mangleborn.

  Gonzalo looked at the floor. “Is this one of those creatures you were talking about?” he asked. “The ones causing all the trouble?”

  Archie frowned. “I didn’t say anything about monsters.” He’d been thinking it, but he hadn’t said anything about the Mangleborn. Before he could ask what Gonzalo meant, the redheaded bandito started rounding up children.

  “Take these, and these, and these,” Procopio said, skipping Archie and Gonzalo, “and feed them to the cucuy.”

  “Wait! Take me instead!”

  Archie and Gonzalo turned to stare at each other. They’d both yelled exactly the same thing at the same time.

  Copyright © 2015 by Alan Gratz

  Reading & Activity Guide

  THE DRAGON LANTERN

  A LEAGUE OF SEVEN NOVEL

  by Alan Gratz

  Grades 4–8, ages 9–13

  About This Guide

  The questions and activities that follow are intended to enhance your reading of The Dragon Lantern. Please feel free to adapt this content to suit the needs and interests of your students or reading-group participants.

  BEFORE READING THE BOOK:

  Writing & Discussion Activities

  The pre-reading activities below correlate to the following Common Core State Standards: W.4–8.3; SL.4–8.1, 3

  1. Ask each student to reflect on a skill or talent they possess. Are they proud of this ability? Why or why not? How does this ability affect the student’s daily life, friendships, future plans, and dreams? After reflection, ask each student to write a short essay describing a quality or talent he or she would like to have and why.

  2. Invite students to define the word “hero.” Do they know any heroes in their school or community? Can they list some heroes from history, fiction, film and/or television? What qualities make these people heroes? Are heroes all good or all bad? What kinds of heroes does the world need today?

  Discussion Questions

  The discussion questions below correlate to the following Common Core State Standards: SL.4–8.1, 3, 4; SL.6–8.2, 3; RL.4–8.1, 2, 3; RH.4–8.6

  1. The first words of The Dragon Lantern are “Archie Dent dangled from a rope…” What ideas or images does this line bring to your mind? In what ways is Archie dangling both physically and emotionally?

  2. What is the relationship between Fergus and Hachi? How does Archie feel about this relationship?

  3. Who is the Cahokia Man? What is a Mangleborn? Who or what are “Mangleborn,” “Manglespawn,” the “Septemberist Society,” and the “League of Seven” and how do these groups relate to each other?

  4. Throughout the novel, Archie is struggling to adjust to some difficult truths about his identity. What are these truths? How does this make him feel less connected to Fergus and Hachi and, possibly, more empathetic toward the Cahokia Man?

  5. Early in the novel, Archie reflects on the story of the Cahokia Man, noting “The story of course, like most stories … had been rewritten over the centuries, in part because people forgot, and in part because people wanted to forget.” Why do people want to forget? Have you ever had an experience you wanted to forget? Do you think it is right to try to do so? Explain your answer.

  6. Custer gives Archie some advice about being different: “Whatever it is you’re embarrassed about, whatever it is you wish was normal, embrace it. Own it. Because that’s what makes you special. And being special is way better than being normal, no matter what the cost.” What does it mean to be special? Do you agree or disagree with Custer’s statement? Why or why not?

  7. Why does Archie part ways with Hachi and Fergus? Do you think this is a good decision? Is it a necessary decision?

  8. Compare Archie’s main objective with Hachi’s. In what ways are these objectives similar? What are both characters really seeking?

  9. Describe the voodoo world Hachi and Fergus encounter in Louisiana. How is this similar to, and different from, the wild West?

  10. What is a “gris-gris”? How does Marie Laveau react when Fergus declines to call his building abilities magic?

  11. Name at least three ways in which it is important that Hachi is now head of the Emartha Machine Man Company.

  12. What is a FreeTok? What changes does Archie see in Mr. Rivets when they are reunited in Chapter Sixteen? Do you think the outlaw FreeTok Jesse James is right to compare the lives of Tik Toks to slavery? Explain your answer.

  13. What roles does “lektricity” play in the story?

  14. What does Sings-In-The-Night, the bird girl, reveal about the use of the Dragon Lantern? About the League of Seven? Whose frightening true identity does she reveal in Chapter Twenty?

  15. As the dangers mount, in what ways do Archie, Hachi, and Fergus wish they were still together as a team? How do they defeat their foes nonetheless?

  16. Sings-In-The-Night bemoans her strange body and Archie comforts her, saying, “Having bird legs or stone skin doesn’t make you a monster … It’s what you do that makes you good or bad.” How does Archie struggle to believe his own statement as he continues his quest for the Dragon Lantern?

  17. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, what persuasions does Mrs. Moffett use to convince Archie and his friends to join her Shadow League? How does Archie feel the darkness to which Mrs. Moffett refers as the Mangleborn beneath Alcatraz awakens? How do Clyde and Kitsune react to Archie’s behavior?

  18. What is the relationship between the Daimyo of Ametokai and the Daimyo Under the City? Compare this relationship to the relationship between Archie and the Jandal a Haad.

  19. How does the Dragon Lantern work? Should it ever be used?

  20. How was Archie made? How does this connect Mrs. Moffett to Madame Blavatsky? What do these discoveries lead Hachi and Archie to realize? In the final chapters of the novel, what characters ask for forgiveness? What characters need or want forgiveness? Explain your answers.

  21. What is a human being?

  22. Can The Dragon Lantern be read as a story about how people face the reality of who they really are—and how they can separate their history and origins from the person they are today? If so, what lessons might this novel offer readers about identity?

  Research & Writing Activities

  The research and writing activities below correlate to the following Common Core State Standards: L.4-8.4; RL.5–8.4, RL.5–6.5, RL.6–8.6, RL.4–8.7; SL.4–8.1, 3; W.4–8.2, 7; WHST 6–8.6

  1. Go to the library or online to learn more about the literary subgenre of steampunk. Find at least three sources for your information. Use your research to create an informative poster that includes a definition of steampunk, a short history of the origin of the genre, and a list of some famous steampunk novels and/or movies.

  2. In steampunk novels, famous historical figures often interact with fictional characters. The Dragon Lantern features General George Custer. Learn more about Custer’s life and times, then write a short essay explaining why you think author Alan Gratz chose to use this character to tell the story of Archie and his friends’ pursuit of the Dragon Lantern.

  3. Several Native American tribes are referenced in the novel, as they are in the first League of Seven book. In real American history, these tribes had tragic relocation experiences as the American government set them on the “Trail of Tears.” Research the Trail of Tears then create an annotated map (with dates) showing how at least five tribes were affected by the Trail of Tears.

  4. A. Go to the library or online to find a definition of “colossus.” Learn about things that have been named Colossus through history, such as the Colossus of Rhodes, the Colossus computer, or the Colossus character in the Marvel Comics universe. Use PowerPoint or other multi-media software to create a pre
sentation entitled, “Colussus: Ideas, Images, and History” to share with friends or classmates.

  B. Using pencils, pen-and-ink, or even 3-dimensional arts media, create a drawing or model of Colossus based on details found in the novel.

  5. A. Many characters whom Hachi and Fergus meet in Louisiana are true figures from history. Go to the library or online and use research skills to identify at least three characters from the Louisiana-based chapters of the novel who were not simply invented by the author. If desired, continue your search for real historical figures in the story. Keep track of them in a notebook.

  B. Use your research as the base for a card game: Write each character name on a separate index card. On the reverse side write “F” for fictional or “R” for real historical figure along with 2–3 facts about this individual. Take turns holding up cards to see if friends or classmates can tell the fictional from the real and what they know about the real people.

  6. In the character of Sings-In-The-Night, write at least four journal entries, including one recounting your transformation into a bird girl, one explaining your complicated behavior toward Archie and his friends, one describing your decision to join forces with Archie, and one exploring your feelings toward Mrs. Moffett and what you may understand about her that the other League members do not.

  7. Create a chart comparing Buster, Mr. Rivets, Philomena Moffett, and Kitsune in terms of their machine, human, spirit, and animal qualities. Based on your chart, write a MANIFESTO (a declaration of your guidelines and goals) explaining how all creatures of the earth should be treated. Read your manifesto aloud to friends or classmates.

  8. Create an illustrated booklet entitled, “A Reader’s Guide to the Heroes of the League of Seven.” Make a page for each League member, noting his or her physical appearance, what you know of their history and powers, and how they contribute to the group. Leave two blank pages for future League members to be discovered in novels to come!