by Alan Gratz
“Huh. It looks like a constellation,” Fergus said.
“What?” Archie and Hachi said at the same time.
Fergus showed them his postcard of the monument. It was a picture taken from an airship high above the monument grounds, showing the standing stones not as tall spires but as dots seen from above. Dots that formed a familiar pattern.
“The stones are laid out like the stars in the Ursa Major constellation!” Hachi said.
“The Great Bear,” Archie and Hachi said together.
“You two gotta quit doing that,” Fergus said.
“All we have to do is find the one that’s the mouth,” Archie said. “That’s where we’ll find the Great Bear’s tomb!”
“Well, it’s more like his nose, but I’d have to say the best bet is this one, here, on the end of his head,” Fergus said.
Archie turned the postcard to orient himself and set off for the stone at a run. The stela stood at the end of a long plaza cut from quartz. Just like the rest of the stones, this one had images of the Great Bear’s adventures carved into it, but these had nothing to do with the Great Bear’s pelt or his death. If Archie remembered correctly from the audio tour, this was a story about the Great Bear defeating and then befriending another man who was almost as strong as he was.
“I don’t understand,” he said. It was a standing stone just like the rest. “Where’s the entrance? How are we supposed to get in?”
“Hoist me up,” Hachi told them, and together Archie and Fergus helped her scale the standing stone. “There’s nothing up top,” she told them. “No way in.”
“Maybe there’s a hidden panel,” Archie said. He pushed on the stone’s surface. “You know, like a button or a lever you push.”
Hachi frowned down at him. “And nobody’s accidentally pushed it in all the years this rock was—whoa!”
The stone moved under Archie’s hands. It clicked back a few inches like something mechanical was moving it, then lowered slowly into the ground with a grating sound of rock on rock. Hachi leaped off, and together they watched as the ten-foot-tall standing stone disappeared into the ground, leaving a hole large enough for them to climb into.
“Well that wasn’t on the audio tour,” Fergus said. “I think I’m going to ask for my money back.”
“It wasn’t your money to begin with,” Hachi told him. She drew her dagger and hopped down into the hole, disappearing into a dark cave.
Archie helped Fergus climb down and shot one last look back at the Information Center to see if the park ranger had noticed the sudden disappearance of one of the monument’s seemingly immovable giant stones. She hadn’t come running, so Archie figured they were okay. For now.
“Mr. Rivets, I think you’d better stay here. I don’t know if we could get you back out of there once we got you in.”
“Indeed. I have no wish to be buried with the Great Bear, Master Archie. If the park ranger comes outside, I shall do what I can to distract her. But do be careful, sir.”
Archie had expected the cavern to be dark, but it was suffused with a bright, sparkling glow. The quartz plaza above formed the cave’s roof, and the light of the sun filtered through, giving the place an almost mystical shimmer. He found Hachi and Fergus near the opening of the cave, staring at something on one of the walls.
“It’s more pictures,” Fergus told him. “Images of the life of the Great Bear, looks like. But different from the ones above.”
“Very different,” Hachi added.
The images were crude drawings, ancient cave paintings done with ochre and red clay and charcoal. In the first one, the Great Bear was being born to a human woman, but her husband was not a bear. It was a monster. Not a Mangleborn, Archie guessed, but a Manglespawn—something like the thing in the basement of the Septemberist Society, or the creature they’d fought in the sewers. This one was bearlike. Sort of. It had white, shaggy fur like a polar bear, but it stood on two legs and had four arms, with claws like tusks and a long laughing mouth full of teeth like a shark. In the half-light of the dark cave, the primitive painting gave Archie shivers.
In the next picture, the Great Bear, now a boy, was twisting the bear-thing’s tusklike claws back on itself to kill it. Blood, still as green as the day it had been painted on the rock, gushed from the Manglespawn where its own claws pierced it.
“Okay, if my dad was that thing, I’d kill it too,” Fergus said. “And look here. It looks like he fought beasties all his life, even though he was the son of one himself.”
In the rest of the images, the Great Bear grew to be a man and had all manner of adventures—but unlike the exploits carved on the stones aboveground, these were darker. In one, he slew an entire village of half men, half ravens. In another, he defeated a seven-headed devil and earned an oversized club, which he wielded in every picture from then on. In yet another, he journeyed into a deep cave in the earth to wrestle a wormlike thing the size of a locomotive.
And in every picture, the invincible white pelt of his demon father protected him from harm.
“I wish there was an audio tour for these,” Archie said.
But nobody would ever hear these stories, Archie knew. Nobody but the League of Seven. On these walls were dark horrors not meant for the people who lived in the bright, beautiful world above to see. The gentle myths of the Great Bear—the half-truths and misremembered events carved into the standing stones above—were enough for them. There could be no gift shop for the deeds memorialized here in this cave.
In the pictures toward the end of the cavern, six other figures joined the Great Bear in his battles.
“The League of Seven,” Archie whispered. Was this the Atlantean League, or an earlier incarnation? He had no idea. But there in the paintings were crude representations of heroes lost to time: a black man with a book, a tan-skinned man in yellow robes pulling a chariot with a pointing figure on top, a smiling brown man with a hat that was black on one side and red on the other, a blindfolded white man with a raygun, a dark-skinned man with a longbow, and a yellow-haired woman in white with a sword, a shield, and a winged helmet. Together they fought giants the size of mountains.
The Mangleborn.
“This Great Bear of yours seems to have quite a temper,” Fergus said. “I thought these people were his mates.” Fergus pointed to a painting where the Great Bear fought the other six members of the League.
“After six did die in battle, only the Great Bear remained,” Hachi said, quoting the book she and Archie had read in the Atlantis Station archives. “Maybe he was the last one left because he killed all his friends.”
“No,” Archie said. “He had to be under the control of a Mangleborn. Like with the bugs. And he had to have overcome it. He couldn’t have killed them all. Could he?”
“It’s a classic myth,” Hachi said. “The strongman driven mad by a god until he hurts the ones he loves. In Greek mythology, Heracles killed his own children when Hera drove him mad.”
“Aye,” said Fergus. “And my father used to tell me and my brothers stories about Cú Chulainn, an ancient Hibernian warrior. He would go into a berserker rage for nae reason and kill anyone who came near him, friend or foe. Killed his own son too.”
Archie wasn’t listening anymore. His eyes had found an enormous stone coffin at the end of the chamber big enough for two grown men to lie down inside. The outside of it was decorated with crude drawings of bears.
Laid over the top, under a club as big as a tree stump, was a white fur pelt with a monstrous head and six shaggy limbs.
“I don’t believe it,” Hachi whispered.
Archie did. He clutched one end of the pelt, almost afraid to disturb this place that hadn’t been entered since the Great Bear was laid to rest. But he had to have it to save his parents from the Mangleborn in the swamp.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I really need it.”
Archie tugged on the white pelt, and the massive club on top of it thumped to the stone floor with a great cra
sh, making them all jump. Archie was sure the park ranger would come running at any moment.
He didn’t care. He had it. He had the Great Bear’s invulnerable pelt.
Suddenly he was scared of the thing. Something about it, something about just holding it, made his skin crawl. He held it out to Hachi. “Here.”
Hachi looked as scared to touch the thing as Archie was.
“No way,” she said.
“It’ll make you invincible!” Archie said. “You can’t be hurt if you’re wearing this.”
Hachi shook her head. “I couldn’t fight with that thing tied around me. It would just slow me down,” she told him.
Archie offered it to Fergus instead. “Here then. You use it.”
“Ah, nae, Archie. While I’m happy not to be dying anytime soon, I think it’s wasted on me. It’s not like I’ll be wading into too many battles with this leg. You wear it.”
Not sure why he was so scared of it, Archie pulled the white pelt up over his back and tied two of the long arms around his shoulders. It made it look like the thing was eating him.
“Aye, see?” Fergus said. “It even matches your hair.”
20
Archie was dreaming again.
He was in the chamber with the big round well again. The one with the stone doors in the floor that said XX. His parents were here too, staring at the covered pit.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. Malacar Ahasherat pounded on the door of her prison.
At a silent signal, Archie’s parents turned together and walked to the wall. Archie’s father pushed on a stone, and it slid into the wall and clicked. Gears ground and the stone wall dragged away, revealing an enormous machine built into the rock. Its huge brass gears and chains were still.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. Rock dust rained down from the ceiling.
Archie’s mother walked slowly and deliberately to a control panel filled with dials and levers and gauges. She stared at them for a moment, then started turning and pulling and flipping them.
The machine’s gears began to turn. Weights lowered. Wheels spun.
Behind them, the great stone doors that sealed the Swarm Queen in her tomb rumbled and parted.
* * *
“No!” Archie cried as he woke. He looked around, disoriented. He wasn’t underground with his parents. He was in the Hesperus, on his way to Florida with Hachi and Fergus and Mr. Rivets. The Great Bear’s white fur pelt lay on top of him like a blanket, and he was covered in sweat.
Hachi stared at him from her hammock across the cabin, looking like she too had just woken up.
“Did you just see my parents in a dream?” Archie asked.
Hachi nodded. “Now we know why that monster kept them alive.”
“It brought them there to open its seal.”
“I don’t think they know how to operate that machine though,” Hachi said. “The seal opened, but just a crack.”
“They got through because they’re librarians—they’ve studied the puzzle traps. They know how to navigate them. But they’re not machinists. They don’t know how to work the mechanism that opens the seal.”
“That’s the only thing buying us time,” Hachi said. “But they’ll figure it out eventually, just through sheer dumb luck.”
“Fergus?” Archie called. “Fergus, did you see that machine?”
Something metal clanged to the floor, and Archie and Hachi stuck their heads out of their hammocks. Fergus lay on his back at the front of the cabin, under the steering console. Half the ship’s tools lay scattered on the floor around him. Mr. Rivets stood watch nearby.
“Fergus, what are you doing?” Archie asked.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
Archie and Hachi climbed down to join him. “No, we had another dream. What’s wrong? Is the Hesperus broken?”
“No, sir,” said Mr. Rivets. “Master Fergus is not fixing anything. He is instead taking the airship apart piece by piece.”
“I hear it again,” Fergus said, his head still hidden inside the helm. “The beeping. Very faintly.”
Archie was suddenly very much awake. “The meka-ninja, you mean? It’s back?”
“No. I don’t think so. But I think it must have planted another homing device on the Hesperus before it came into that Atlantis power station looking for us. I picked it up while I was sleeping.” Fergus tossed a wrench into the ship’s toolbox. “That’s it. I’ve looked everywhere it could be. It’s not inside.”
“You mean—?”
Fergus tried to sit up and banged his head on the underside of the console. “Ow.”
“He means it’s outside,” Hachi said. She opened the coat closet and pulled out a duster and goggles.
“You can’t go out there,” Archie told her. “We’re ten thousand feet up!”
“Twelve thousand, four hundred and seven feet up, to be exact,” Mr. Rivets said. “The sensible thing would be for us to land and then search the ship.”
Hachi slid into the coat and pulled the goggles over her head. “We haven’t got time. If Edison homes in on that signal—”
“Too late,” Fergus said. He had climbed out from under the console and was pointing at something through the Hesperus’ big front window.
Up through the pink clouds it came: a massive black dirigible. Two big propellers flanked its tail fins, and a passenger cabin twenty times as big as the Hesperus hung beneath its rigid, cigar-shaped gas envelope. The airship broke the surface of the sea of clouds like a whale coming up for air and kept coming, turning its needle nose into the wind. Along its side, Archie could see a large letter “E” crossed by a lightning bolt: the logo of Edison Labs.
“The Black Maria,” Fergus told them. “I’ve been on it before, when we flew to Florida and back. It’s bigger and badder than the Hesperus. Much badder,” he told them.
“Maybe we can outrun them,” Hachi said.
“Nae,” Fergus told them. “The Black Maria’s got twin lektric generators hooked up to a pair of Tecumseh aeroprops. He doesn’t even have them up to full spin, from the looks of it. But that’s not the worst of it. That thing’s got a lektric cannon. He can shoot lightning.”
“What’s its range?” Hachi asked.
“I dunno, but it’s not going to matter in a minute.” The Black Maria was already bearing down on them. Archie and Fergus looked to Hachi for ideas. As much as Archie wanted to be the leader of their little League, Hachi was clearly the war chief of their misfit tribe.
“Where are we?” Hachi asked Mr. Rivets.
“We just crossed into the old Georgia colony, miss,” the machine man told her. “Cherokee territory.”
“Head for Standing Peachtree. If we can make it there, we can hide out at Lady Josephine’s.”
“Where?” Archie asked.
“Lady Josephine’s Academy. I went to school there.”
“What is it, a school to teach girls how to kick brass?” Fergus asked.
“Something like that,” Hachi said. She didn’t look like she wanted to explain. “Mr. Rivets, drop us low where the winds are lighter and make for Standing Peachtree, best possible speed. That should give us a little advantage over that big airship out there.”
“Very good, miss.”
CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK. The Hesperus rocked and the floor tilted. Archie glanced out a porthole.
“Grappling hooks!” he said. “Three lines. They’re sending people over!”
“Prepare to repel boarders!” Hachi said. She tossed an oscillating rifle to Fergus and gave Archie an aether pistol, making sure to activate the aggregators on each so they’d be ready to fire. She kept the personal wave cannon for herself. She was up the ladder and out the hatch to the conning tower before Archie and Fergus knew what was going on.
“I’m glad you brought her along,” Fergus told Archie.
“Yeah,” said Archie. “Do you think I should put Mr. Rivets’ Protector card back in?”
“If he’s going to keep us flying, you’d better leave his Airship P
ilot card in.”
“I concur, sir. But do be careful,” said Mr. Rivets.
Archie tied the white bearskin pelt around his shoulders. “Careful is my middle name,” he muttered.
Fergus laughed. “That’s all right. Mine’s ‘Coward.’”
Wom-wom-wom-wom-wom. They could already hear Hachi’s wave cannon outside. Archie and Fergus followed as quickly as they could up the ladder. One of Edison’s three attackers was already gone, blasted over the side by Hachi. Now she was tangled up with another man wielding a lektric prod. The tip of it crackled and sparked. Hachi dodged back and forth on the sloped airship hull, held on only by a safety line clipped to the conning tower.
“She’s insane, that one!” Fergus called over the wind.
The third Edison goon appeared at the conning tower rail. Archie raised his aether pistol and squeezed the trigger. Bwaaat! He missed wildly. Worse, the recoil knocked him back into the rail. He tipped over, lost his balance, and fell, sliding backward down the hull toward the ten-thousand-foot drop. He reached out helplessly for Fergus in the conning tower, slipping away too fast to even scream.
But there was Hachi again. She sprinted around the hull of the ship and grabbed him, her safety line saving them both. She had already taken care of the second Edison goon.
“Hook your safety line,” she told Archie over the wind. “Don’t fall off.”
“Right,” he said, his heart still racing from his near-death experience. “Don’t fall off. I’ll remember that. Look out! Fergus!”
Archie pointed to the conning tower. Fergus was watching them and not the third Edison goon who had climbed up behind him. Fergus turned in time to watch the man jab a crackling lektric prod right into his stomach.
Nothing happened.
The man frowned and pushed it into Fergus’ body again, and suddenly Archie understood. Fergus was absorbing the lektricity from the prod. Three more pokes and it flickered dead, drained of its dark, forbidden energy.
Fergus and the goon stared at the spent lektric prod, then looked up at each other. Fergus put a hand to the man’s chest and—Kazaaack!—lightning blasted the goon over the rail and off the side of the Hesperus.