by Alan Gratz
“Archie!” she cried. She broke away from Fergus and ran at him, catching him up in a hug that was as fierce as it was unexpected.
“Archie! Archie! Oh, we were sure you were dead.” She stepped back to make sure it was really him under the suit and wig, then hugged him again. Over her shoulder, Fergus smiled at him.
“I don’t ken how you did it, White, but we’re glad to have you back.”
“There’s not a scratch on you!” Hachi said, finally letting him go to have another look. “How did you survive the fall? And how did you get here? When did you arrive?”
“He showed up at the door wearing a filthy old bearskin rug,” Ms. Ambrose told them. “If you want to know more, I suggest you take to the dance floor. We’re beginning to draw stares.”
“Ms. Ambrose is right,” Hachi told them. The music had just begun to play again, another waltz, and couples were heading out onto the dance floor.
“Aye, you two go,” Fergus said. “My leg is sore enough. Besides, my shoulder’s soaked through from her crying over you.” Hachi punched him playfully on the arm, and he winced. They had grown closer, Archie saw, but they were both clearly elated that he was safe and back together with them. He felt awful for thinking they hadn’t missed him. “I’ll be at the buffet table,” Fergus said, bowing away. “I’ll let our other friend know you’re back and safe.”
“Our other friend? Mr. Rivets! He’s here?” Archie twisted to look around for him as Hachi led him out among the dancers.
“Yes. I’ll tell you all about it after you tell me your story,” Hachi promised. Her flying circus was starting to draw attention, and she shooed them back under her skirts.
“Where exactly are they going under there?” Archie asked.
“A lady never tells,” she said. To Archie’s surprise, she took his hand in one of hers and put his other hand on her hip. The waltz! He was supposed to dance with her.
“Um, I don’t know how to dance,” Archie confessed.
“Oh. All right.” Hachi switched hands, putting hers around him instead. “Just follow my lead.”
The music started, and Archie stumbled along with her, stepping on her feet every other beat. She grimaced more than once, jumping back out of the way as best she could while Archie told her about waking up in John Otter’s hospital, about his guess that the pelt must have saved him, about John Otter’s worries that more Mangleborn were rising, and about how coy he had been when Archie suggested that he and Hachi and Fergus were the beginnings of a new League. Archie skipped the part about the circle dance and the Stone Man—he was still trying to figure that out himself—and pressed Hachi to tell him how she and the others had made it. His stomach lurched to hear that his parents’ airship had crashed, but he was relieved that she and Mr. Rivets had survived.
“Mr. Rivets and I walked all the way to Standing Peachtree,” Hachi said. “Fergus was already here. And of course we thought you—we thought you were dead. Ow! That’s my foot that got twisted!”
“Sorry! I’m sorry. I never learned to dance.” Archie’s natural clumsiness and lack of dancing lessons weren’t helped by his oversized clothes.
“It’s—ow!—it’s all right. This is just for cover anyway, hiding us in plain sight.”
Like hiding the Great Bear’s pelt in with the costumes, Archie thought. He looked around at all the other boys and girls as they twirled and realized it would be harder to find the three of them here than in a secret room somewhere.
“Pretty hard to hide a boy in an all-girls’ school,” Hachi told him, “so Ms. Ambrose put together an impromptu social until we can shake Edison’s men. The other boys are from Dragging Canoe Academy across town.”
“She did all this in a day?”
“Ms. Ambrose is nothing if not resourceful. Ow! What are you wearing, lead shoes? Your feet are like anvils!”
“Sorry. But why would she do all this for you? Ms. Ambrose?”
“I used to be a student here,” Hachi told him.
“You went to school here? Where they wear frilly dresses and teach you to dance?”
“Do you know how coordinated you have to be to dance a minuet?” she asked him. “Ouch. I guess not.”
“So this isn’t some kind of secret warrior school in disguise?”
“No. Lady Josephine wanted her students to be strong, smart, and independent, but—ow—the curriculum is heavy on trigonometry and Latin, not target practice and hand-to-hand combat. I did those as what you might call … independent study. Ms. Ambrose knew though.”
“You speak Latin?”
Hachi gave him a tired look and danced out of the way of his feet.
“What happened to Fergus’ tattoos?” Archie asked.
“We had to cover them up with makeup.”
Archie laughed, and Hachi smiled again. “I think he hates the pants worse. Ms. Ambrose wouldn’t let him wear his kilt on account of—”
The double doors to the ballroom banged open, and a group of grown men in dark suits and bowler hats—First Nations and Yankees both—came inside. The music died away, and the dancing and talking stopped.
“On account of them,” Hachi whispered.
“I must protest!” Ms. Ambrose said, intercepting them. “This is a private school. You have no right—”
One of the men produced an aether pistol from under his jacket, and the students gasped as one. Ms. Ambrose was brought up short.
“And as I told you before, miss, we don’t care much for what you think is right. We’re looking for a boy, and we know he came here. Just turn him over to us, and we’ll let you be on about your business.” The men fanned out among the crowd, each with his own raypistol, examining the faces of all the boys. “He’s about five feet eight inches tall,” the man went on, “with black lines on his hands and face, and wearing a skirt.”
“Kilt,” Fergus whispered, coming up behind Archie and Hachi.
Mr. Rivets came with him, carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “It is most gratifying to see you again, Master Archie. Would you care for a canapé? They are stuffed with chicken and asparagus, with just a hint of—”
“Not just now, Mr. Rivets,” Archie whispered. “These men, they can’t be Edison’s. Not if his airship went down in a lake.”
“Pinkertons,” Hachi told him. “Hired detectives.”
“Which means that even though Edison isn’t here, he survived the crash,” Fergus said. “Crivens.”
“What does that mean? Crivens?” Hachi asked.
“I don’t know. It’s just something my da always said. It’s like saying ‘twisted pistons.’ Only different.”
“It’s stupid,” Hachi told him.
“Crivens to you, then,” Fergus said.
“Shhh,” Archie whispered.
The Pinkerton agents drew closer. Would their disguises work? Archie tugged on his wig, hoping it was straight.
“We should split up,” Hachi whispered. “They may have been told to look for Fergus with another boy, a girl, and a Tik Tok. We’re—”
Before she could finish, a Cherokee boy from Dragging Canoe Academy stepped in front of the Pinkertons. “You looking for two Yankee boys and a Seminole girl, one of them with black tattoos all over him? I can tell you all about them. Starting with where they are right now.”
25
Archie held his breath with the rest of the room as the Pinkertons converged on the Cherokee boy. He was a fierce-looking teenager, even in a suit. He wore his black hair swept up and back to a point like a woodpecker’s crown, and his thin, sharp face was covered with pockmarks.
“You know where the boy with the black lines on him is?” the Pinkerton asked.
Ms. Ambrose hurried over, trying not to look like she was hurrying. “That’s quite enough of that, young man. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” she told the Pinkerton agent.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” the detective said. He didn’t raise his raygun at her, but he held it where everyone could se
e it. “What do you know about it?” he asked the boy.
“She hid them right here,” the boy told him. Archie looked for the nearest door, but Hachi put a hand on his arm, and her eyes told him to wait.
“But they’re gone,” the boy said. “She gave them money and a change of clothes, and they left for the train station. She threw together this dance tonight to keep you busy while they got away.”
“We had men stationed outside,” the Pinkerton agent said. “Nobody left after the small boy with the fur coat arrived.”
Archie blanched. They’d watched him walk right up to the front door.
“There’s a secret passage in the basement,” the boy said. “An underground street from where the road was raised a few years back.” He looked defiantly at Ms. Ambrose. “It leads to the basement of the Buck Head Tavern.”
“And why should we believe you?”
The boy sneered. “I don’t care anything about any Yankees on the run, but I wouldn’t mind seeing that dirty Seminole girl get what’s coming to her.”
Ms. Ambrose slapped the boy across the face with venom.
“Go, go,” a Pinkerton agent commanded. “You three, Union Station. You three, Piedmont Park. And someone will have to check the steam horse stables, just in case.” The Pinkerton agents hurried from the room, and Ms. Ambrose followed them to the door and closed it.
The boy came over to Hachi and kissed her on the cheek. Archie and Fergus stared at her.
“What?” she said. “I am a girl, you know.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Fergus told her.
“This is Tooantuh,” Hachi told them. The boy nodded hello. “He’s … a friend.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Fergus said again.
“I miss you,” Tooantuh told Hachi.
“I know,” she said. “But I have to do what I have to do.”
“Whatever that is,” Tooantuh said like he was trying to get her to say more, but Hachi didn’t bite.
“They’re gone, though I don’t doubt they’ve left someone posted outside,” Ms. Ambrose said, rejoining them. “Tooantuh, I’m so sorry I struck you so hard.”
“It’s all right, Ms. Ambrose.” He rubbed his rugged jaw. “It helped sell it.”
“Where’s the music?” Ms. Ambrose called. “Is this a dance or isn’t it? And none of that slow, stodgy stuff. Let’s have a contra dance, maestro!”
The orchestra began playing something lively and the students cheered, running out onto the dance floor at the invitation of a caller who told them what steps they were going to do. Archie and Fergus watched Tooantuh pull Hachi out onto the dance floor and whirl her around like the spinning governor on a steam engine.
“I think there’s a lot about Hachi we don’t know,” Archie said.
“So I’ve noticed,” said Fergus.
* * *
Later that night, Archie and Fergus sat on facing beds in the small dorm room that two of the academy’s students had let them borrow for the night. The bedclothes didn’t have ruffles and there were no dolls or stuffed animals on the beds, but the room still felt like a girl’s room to Archie. It was neat, for one thing, and there was a funny smell like flowers.
“So I come up to the door having been half-drowned, beat-up, interrogated, and shot at, looking as bedraggled as a cat that’s just fallen into a bathtub, and what kind of greeting do I get?” Fergus said. The makeup was gone from his face and arms, and he was back in his kilt. “A raygun in my face. I tell you, I just about told her to shoot me then and there. At least it would have gotten me off my feet. It was all a misunderstanding though. With all the quarrels they been having around here lately between the tribes, she thought I was someone come to make trouble. When she kenned I was a friend of Hachi’s, she pulled me inside. And I must say, hiding out in a school full of beautiful girls is not the worst idea we’ve ever had.”
“Blech,” said Archie.
Mr. Rivets came in with a black suit draped over his arm and shut the door. “Ms. Ambrose and I were able to procure something a little closer to your size, Master Archie.”
“You don’t have to say ‘little,’” Archie muttered, but he took the suit from Mr. Rivets and began to pull off the oversized suit he’d been wearing all night. He’d long since taken off the itchy wig.
“Hachi wouldn’t tell me much about her coming here, besides waking in the smashed-up airship,” Fergus said. “She seems different somehow though. Looser.”
“I actually saw her smile,” said Archie. “It was weird.”
“You were with her, Mr. Rivets. What happened?” Fergus asked.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t say, sir,” Mr. Rivets said.
Archie tensed. The repetition of the stock phrase Tik Toks used when they were forced to keep a secret made him think about his parents and John Douglas’ scrapbook all over again.
Fergus laughed. “Share a candlelit dinner under the stars, did you?”
“I’m afraid what transpired on our sojourn to Standing Peachtree must remain between myself and Miss Hachi, sir,” Mr. Rivets told him. “But you are welcome to ask her yourself.”
Mr. Rivets nodded at the window, where Hachi was climbing inside.
“Hey! I’m getting dressed here!” Archie said, quickly hiding behind Mr. Rivets.
“Please,” Hachi said. “You’re like a little brother to me, Archie.”
Fergus guffawed while Archie pulled up his pants.
“Do a lot of climbing in and out of windows while you were here, did you?” Fergus asked, grinning.
“Not to meet boys, if that’s what you mean,” Hachi told him. “It’s a girls’ school. With a very early curfew. If we wanted to meet boys, we had to sneak down to the secret passageway in the basement that led to the tavern.”
That shut Fergus up. He had apparently assumed the secret passageway was a lie told by Tooantuh to mislead the Pinkertons. Now, clearly, he was picturing it as real—and picturing Hachi and Tooantuh meeting up down there. Hachi gave Archie a sly smile, enjoying Fergus’ confusion. Whatever had happened on that walk with Mr. Rivets, Hachi did seem like a new person. Or at least a softer version of herself.
“We need to talk about what we’re doing next. Where we’re going,” she said.
“We keep going to Florida,” Archie said.
“Florida,” Fergus agreed.
Hachi nodded. “But we lost everything in the crash.”
“Not everything,” Archie said. “I still have the Great Bear’s pelt.”
“But we have no rayguns,” Hachi told him. “Nothing to fight with. And I really liked that wave cannon.”
“Aye,” Fergus said. “And we even lost them kooky metal hats Tesla gave us, the ones to keep the beastie from driving us mad.”
Archie shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t said anything about it, but the loss of the hats was the most worrisome for him. The new vision he’d had, the one with the Great Bear, was different. The Swarm Queen wasn’t showing him his parents anymore. She was showing him other things. Memories. Visions.
She was talking to him.
“We don’t need the hats,” Hachi told them.
“No?” said Archie. “But how are we going to keep Malacar Ahasherat out of our heads? She could make us crazy.” He saw the Great Bear again, fighting his friends. “She could make us turn on each other.”
“Come with me,” Hachi said, and she climbed out the window again onto the roof.
Fergus shrugged and followed as best he could with his one good leg. Archie grabbed the Great Bear’s pelt and joined them. If he fell again, he wanted to have handy what had saved him last time.
“I’ll just wait here then, shall I?” Mr. Rivets asked.
Hachi was already halfway along the roofline. She took a turn along another roof and skirted around a chimney like she was walking along a sidewalk. Fergus limped along, putting his weight on his straight leg as he balanced on the high roof. Archie tried walking, then slipped and fell, straddling the roofline.
If he could have hugged the roof he would have, despite the sandpaper-like shingles. Instead he crawled along on his hands and knees. He was going to be a bloody mess when he got to wherever they were going, he was sure.
Archie got to the chimney and stood and hugged it, even though his arms weren’t wide enough to go all the way around. A moth fluttered away from the bricks right into Archie’s face, and he spat and coughed, almost losing his balance again. A hand caught him—Hachi—and pulled him around the chimney to the other side, where there was a commanding view of the city over the treetops. High overhead, a bloodred waxing gibbous moon hid among the thin gray clouds.
“We couldn’t have kept talking in the room?” Archie asked. He had little bits of gravel stuck to his hands and knees, but, miraculously, none of it seemed to have gone deep enough to cut him.
Hachi settled in beside Archie and Fergus on the rooftop. “I used to climb out here almost every night,” she told them. “To practice my mantra.”
“Your what?” Fergus asked.
“My mantra. It’s an Old World word. It’s something you say or repeat over and over again to focus your mind. We don’t need Tesla’s tin hats. We just need mantras.”
“That thing you say all the time,” Archie said. “Those names.”
“Yes,” Hachi said. “They … they remind me why I fight, and give me the strength to do what must be done.”
“But surely that’s not enough to keep the beasties out of our heads.”
“You know I share a connection with that monster in the swamp,” Hachi told them. “I have … I have ever since I was very little.” Then, haltingly, she told them the story she had told Mr. Rivets by the fire. She told them about the strangers, about her father and mother, about her mother’s town. Afterward they were all quiet for a long time.
“I’ve had dreams and visions of the monster since I was little,” Hachi told them. “I had to learn to block them. Push them out. My mantra does that. And it helps me remember.”