The Explorers’ Gate

by Chris Grabenstein

  Because Willem had to win at ninepin to give me a head start on tracking down the hidden crown!

  Chapter 26

  “Wake up!” I yelled at the towering statue silently standing atop his granite pedestal.

  “These are the same people who told those hoodlums to pull you down last night. Remember how that felt? That rope around your neck? Hello? Is anybody awake in there?”

  Maybe there was only so much excess life force to go around Central Park tonight. Enough to animate a panther, a falcon, a falconer, and a crazed Christopher Columbus, but not this statue. He just stood there, eyes fixed, back stiff, rifle at rest—staring blankly toward the east.

  Yes, I was talking to the mute monument memorializing the soldiers of New York’s Seventh Regiment who died in the Civil War. The heroic-size replica of a Union Army soldier posed as an outpost sentry was unveiled in this hillside grove near the Sheep Meadow way back in 1874.

  “They’re rebels!” I shouted. “Just like that bunch you tangled with at Antietam and Fredericksburg!”

  The soldier blinked.

  “Where be these Johnny Rebs?” he asked in a voice scraped raw from screaming too many battle cries. “Where be the secesh?”

  “Well, technically, they’re rebel kabouters, not secessionists.”

  “Where be they?”

  “The little guy with the pointy red beard and pointy red cap on the right. His name is Loki.”

  “Aye. I see him.”

  Atop his elevated perch, the soldier had a clear view of everything going on in the Sheep Meadow. He also had a rifle, which he now raised to his shoulder.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “Don’t shoot Loki!”

  “Be he the rebel leader?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Then, by cracky, I shall shoot him where he stands.”

  He thumbed back the hammerlock trigger.

  “But, if he falls,” I said, thinking as fast as I could, “someone else will rise up and take his place.”

  “Then he will be the second Johnny Reb I shoot this day.”

  I heard his bronze finger tighten on the trigger.

  “Wait! Please! We really don’t need to kill anybody!”

  “Balderdash! This is war, lassie. Go boil your shirt if you haven’t the grit for it!”

  “Hold on! I think we can outsmart ’em. Employ strategy as well as tactics.”

  “How? Tell me and be quick about it, lassie!”

  “Okay. We just need to stop them from knocking Willem’s bowling ball off course. See that bald guy holding the globe?”

  “I spy a man methinks resembles Christopher Columbus.”

  “That’s him. But, we don’t want to shoot Columbus.”

  “Aye. For there would be no glorious Union to defend without Columbus having first discovered America.”

  “True. But if Columbus were to fling that globe again, do you think you could shoot it out of the air?”

  “Why, I could knock it into a cocked hat!” The soldier raised his rifle and squinted down the barrel. “I pray that I am not rusty, for I have been standing here on picket duty for a century and more.”

  Off in the distance, I heard a SWOOSH!

  Willem had sent his bowling ball sailing again.

  “Wait for it,” I said. “Steady!”

  The soldier didn’t flinch. Kept his rifle locked against his shoulder.

  Then we heard a swift THWICK! as Columbus launched his heavy bronze globe.

  “Fire!” shouted the soldier.

  I heard the sharp report of his rifle. Smelled gunpowder.

  An instant later, the bronze ball exploded in midair, allowing Willem’s ball to sail on uninterrupted and, once again, bowl over the eight outside pins while leaving the kingpin standing in the center of the diamond. We scored another whopping 12 points.

  “Who blew up that ball?” I heard Loki shout. “Foul! Foul!”

  “Well done, soldier!”

  “Thankee, miss.”

  Loki quit screaming long enough to roll his final ball and score another nine points.

  “Final ball, Prince Willem!” I heard Mazzini decree.

  Willem hoisted his tenth ball into the air, gave it a smack, sent it soaring.

  This time, Columbus hurled his flagpole—pitched it like a well-chucked spear.

  “Fire!” I shouted.

  “Fire!” The soldier squeezed off another round, which shattered the flagpole, turning it into a cloud of glittering dust.

  “Hey!” Loki shouted. “That’s cheating!”

  “Another hit! Well done, soldier.”

  “Bully for me,” he said. “That’ll teach these muggins to loop a noose around my neck!”

  Willem’s final ball knocked down all eight pins and, once again, left the kingpin standing.

  The thunderstorm ended, the sky cleared, and Mazzini announced the score: “Willem ninety-eight, Loki ninety!”

  “Willem won!” I squealed.

  “Bully for him!” said my new friend. “Bully!”

  “Bully for you, too, sir.” But the soldier didn’t hear me.

  He was frozen again, ready to stand guard for another century—or until duty once again called—whichever came first.

  Chapter 27

  “Team Willem wins!” declared the bust of Mazzini.

  “They cheated!” protested Loki. “Hiring mercenary soldiers to take up arms is against all the rules.”

  “The Civil War soldier wasn’t hired,” I said. “He volunteered.”

  “Enough!” said Mazzini. “I hereby declare the results of the ninepin competition to be official. As it stands, due to the difference in points earned here tonight, Team Willem will have an eight-minute head start for the Crown Quest!”

  “Woo-hoo!” shouted Garrett.

  I was right there with him. Eight minutes was excellent!

  “Tomorrow,” said Mazzini, “Round two shall commence. A child from each team shall face off in a battle of courage and strength to see which prince possesses the fiercest defenders from the mortal realm.”

  “That would be me!” boasted Brent Slicktenhorst, linking his hands together and stretching into a cocky knuckle crunch.

  “Yes,” sneered Loki, “I am quite certain you can best Garrett Vanderdonk, my cousin’s overgrown pet gorilla.”

  Garrett smiled. “Bring it on, Brent, baby. Bring. It. On!”

  “Garrett and Brent?” said the dignified bust. “You young gentlemen are to present yourselves at Bethesda Terrace tomorrow night at nine. Your referee will meet you there with further instructions. Now, go! All of you. Depart this place. For the cloaking spell will soon dissipate.”

  Mazzini hobbled away, his blocky bust rocking side to side.

  Loki and Brent headed east at a very fast clip.

  “You need to whip them into shape!” I heard Loki say.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t want them to be your friends; you want them to fear you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They disappeared into the trees.

  “See you tomorrow, Willem,” Garrett said, shaking the little prince’s hand. “Awesome job tonight, brother.”

  “Truth be told, Garrett, we owe our victory to Miss Van Wyck.” He looked at me with his sparkling blue eyes. “You were extremely wise to enlist the aid of the Civil War soldier, Nikki.”

  I guess I blushed. “Thanks,” I said.

  Willem pulled up a grate and climbed down into a storm drain to take an underground canal boat back to his castle.

  Garrett insisted on walking me home.

  “Just in case Loki tries to kidnap you again.”

  We came out of the park through the Explorers’ Gate. I motioned toward the bust of Humboldt.

  “He talked to me last night,” I whispered.

  “That’s cool. He’s on our side.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yeah. We had a nice discussion the other night.”

  “What?”<
br />
  “Well, me and Willem had been practicing our treasure hunting, which, by the way, we were terrible at until we found you.”

  “I’m sure you guys were fine,” I said modestly.

  “No, Nikki. We stank. In fact, on Friday, a bunch of Loki’s goons came running up from the Lake to scare us out of the park. Good thing we were with Balto. He chased them away.”

  The nasty no-see-ums.

  The dog I had heard barking in the distance.

  “Anyway,” said Garrett. “We came out of the park and Mr. Humboldt told me that I needed to find you, ASAP. That you had the third piece of our puzzle and would probably be going to the big trivia contest in the park the next morning.”

  “He told you all that?”

  “Yeah. I got the feeling he’d been keeping tabs on you.”

  “I see. And did Mr. Humboldt tell you anything else?”

  “Nope. Oh—just that your mother would be very proud and pleased if you did join our Crown Quest team.”

  “Garrett?”

  “Yeah?”

  “My mother is dead.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “No—I mean, what Humboldt said makes no sense.”

  “That your mother would be happy if you joined our team?”

  “Right. Because it’s impossible for my mother to be happy about anything I might do in the future because she won’t be there to see me do it.”

  “Huh. I guess you’re right.”

  “Come on,” I said, tugging down on my red cap. “Let’s go ask him what he meant.”

  We marched across the bumpy pavers to face the statue.

  “Good evening, Mr. Humboldt,” I said.

  “I’m not so sure, Miss Van Wyck,” he replied, his eyes firmly focused across the street. “Looks like trouble over at 14 West 77th.”

  I whirled around.

  A hulking beer delivery truck stuttered to a stop in front of my apartment building.

  The door swung open.

  Out hopped a man in a beer-company jumpsuit carrying a clipboard.

  A man with a mohawk haircut and, most likely, even though I couldn’t see it from so far away, a jagged scar running from his eye socket to his chin.

  He rolled up a side panel on the truck and loaded several cases of beer onto a handcart.

  Mohawk was making a massive, late-night beer delivery to my father.

  Chapter 28

  Garrett and I retreated to hide behind the wall at the far corner of the Explorers’ Gate so we’d have a better view of the action outside 14 West 77th—my home!

  “That man with the mohawk has a knife,” I said. “He might hurt my dad.”

  “We should call the police,” suggested Garrett.

  “We can’t.”

  “Sure we can. We’ll just find somebody with a cell phone and ask them to …”

  “No, I mean, well—my father has had problems with the police. If they have to come to our apartment again …”

  “Oh,” said Garrett, thinking. “We’ll ask Willem what to do!”

  “I don’t know. The castle is all the way up near 96th Street. That’s a mile. It would take us twenty minutes to walk it or, I guess, we could take the subway. I don’t have enough money for a taxi.”

  “We can call the castle. There’s a water- fountain phone down near the Lake.”

  “A water-fountain phone?”

  “Yeah. Like the spray nozzle at Grandpa’s place. This way.”

  We headed down the sloping road toward the Lake.

  “It’s up past the bridge.”

  We dashed across Balcony Bridge.

  “Here we go!” said Garrett, stopping at a cast-iron water fountain tucked into the fencing alongside the path. He pressed the button. No water streamed up. “Good! It’s not working.”

  “And that’s good because?”

  “You can hear better without the gurgling water. Plus, this one has a dog bowl.” He pointed to a pan built into the base of the fountain. “It makes an excellent speaker phone.”

  We bent down around the dog bowl. Garrett pressed a knob that should’ve made water flow but didn’t because the fountain wasn’t working which meant, for us, it actually was.

  “Hello? This is Garrett Vanderdonk. Come in.”

  We bent closer. Listened intently.

  “Yo, Garrett. Howzit goin’?”

  “Coach Krunk?”

  “Yeah. I pulled a double shift. Switchboard duty. How may I direct your call?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure …”

  “We need to talk to whoever’s in charge of security,” I said.

  “Dat you, Van Wyck?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Howzit goin’?”

  “Not very well, sir. I think my father might be in danger.”

  “Dis due to the suspicious arrival of a beer-delivery-type vehicle outside 14 West 77th Street?”

  “Yes, sir. But how did you …”

  “Humboldt already phoned it in.”

  “He has a phone?” said Garrett.

  “Well, not exactly. He used what you might call ‘metal telepathy.’ Dese statues? Dey can communicate with one another. So, Humboldt, he told Freddy Lebow who ran around the Reservoir to tell us.”

  Fred Lebow, best remembered as the founder of the New York City Marathon, is immortalized in a life-sized statue atop a black-granite pedestal near the Reservoir. The statue is wearing a tracksuit.

  “Don’t worry, Nikki,” said Krunk. “We sent in our best man and dog. Very stealthy-like individuals.”

  “You sent the Indian Hunter statue to my house?”

  “I’m afraid dat information is—what do you call it?—classified. But, yeah. Dat’s what we done. Da guy’s got a bow and arrow. I’m not sayin’ he’s gonna use ’em, but, hey, if he has to, he has to, am I right?”

  “Thank you guys, so much!”

  “Yo, Garrett? You still on the horn?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You comin’ by to practice tomorrow?”

  “No need, coach. It’s wrestling.”

  “I know, but …”

  “Coach, I’m a state champ. I also weigh twice as much as Brent Slicktenhorst. A quick ankle-pick takedown, maybe a headlock, and he’s on his back kicking like a tipped-over turtle!”

  “A little practice never hoit nobody. Yooze guys got an eight-minute head start so far. You do good tomorrow, yooze can double that!”

  While Garrett and the coach talked strategy, a suspicious horse and rider clanked and clomped down the West Drive.

  I tapped Garrett on the shoulder.

  It was time for us to go.

  Now.

  Because, apparently, the statues pulling for Loki could also pick up on that “metal telepathy” thing.

  “Zare you are!” screamed King Jagiello.

  He crossed his two giant swords high above his crown again.

  “I, Wladyslaw Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, claim you two, once more, for Loki!”

  His heavily armored horse rose up on its hind legs and whinnied an equestrian battle cry.

  “Run!” I yelled.

  “Where to?”

  I pointed to the forest on the far side of the Lake.

  “The Ramble! Hurry!”

  We raced over the bridge that would take us across the northern neck of the Lake and up into the Ramble, a woodsy part of Central Park where the footpaths are narrow, tangled, and jumbled since its thirty-six acres were designed to be a rambling wilderness where city dwellers could forget they lived anywhere near a city.

  “Go right!” I yelled. “Left! Right again!”

  I, of course, had the maze of paths memorized.

  We could hear King Jagiello and his horse snorting and clomping after us in the distance. They would have to move slowly. Several of the Ramble’s paths involved steep stone steps and tight passages underneath arches with very low clearances.

  Behind us, I heard a tremendous clang
and what had to be another flurry of fifteenth-century Lithuanian swear words.

  I figured the King was trying to squeeze underneath one of the arches without lowering his swords.

  Chapter 29

  “We have a pretty good lead on them,” I shouted to Garrett as we rounded a curve.

  “But he has a horse!”

  That gave me an idea. “We need to head south. Past Bethesda Fountain, then down the Mall.”

  “Okay,” said Garrett. “But why?”

  I glanced over at him and, still at a trot, smiled. “Balto!”

  “Ah-hah!” cried Garrett. “Awesome! Kick it up!”

  So we ran even harder. If we could reach Balto and enlist his aid, we could, once again, spook Jagiello’s horse and send the humiliated king home to his pedestal at Turtle Pond.

  So, coming out of the jumbled wilderness, we zoomed across world-famous Bow Bridge even though, normally, I would have slowed down to admire it because it’s one of the most beautiful cast-iron bridges ever built. I don’t think they’ve filmed a single romantic comedy in New York City without it.

  “Up to the Mall!”

  We charged up the western staircase from Bethesda Terrace to the Mall and headed south for what is called the Literary Walk because of all the sculptures of famous writers placed there: Robert Burns, Scotland’s renowned national poet; Sir Walter Scott, a Scottish novelist; William Shakespeare, who wasn’t from Scotland but wrote a play about a Scottish king; and the statue we reached first, Fitz-Greene Halleck.

  “Love your work,” I said as we dashed past the bronze of a bearded gentleman in a suit from the 1800s who sat cross-legged in a chair, pen in hand, contemplating his next eloquent line of poetry.

  “Wait!” Halleck boomed as he rose from his seat. “Halt!”

  I halted, even though I shouldn’t have, because to keep running would’ve been rude.

  “Young lady, do you know who I am?”

  Leaning over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath, I said, “Yes, sir. Fitz-Greene Halleck. Poet and essayist. 1790–1867.”

  “That’s remarkable! Nobody who comes into Central Park knows who I am. Oh, sure, they know Bobby Burns and Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott. They see me, they say, ‘Who the heck is Halleck? What’d he ever do to become a statue?’”

  I heard bronze horse hooves clambering against stone steps.