The Trap

by Michael Grant

  In first class you lived like a king. A giant stateroom, a butler, a maid, two bathrooms, crystal chandeliers, gold doorknobs, lovely soft feather beds. The toilet paper was linen, and the linens were silk. In the bathroom there were three knobs: hot, cold, and soup. The food served was so fresh you could actually meet the chickens who laid your eggs and the pigs who would become your bacon.

  But none of that mattered because Paddy was not in first class.

  In second class you were still doing pretty well, with a nice little stateroom. There was no soup nozzle in the room, and the toilet paper was just paper, but it was soft (two-ply). And second-class passengers were served pleasant and healthy meals in the cheerful second-class dining room. You didn’t get to actually chat with your pig or lamb or chicken or cow, but you could wave to them.

  But Paddy was not in second class.

  Third class was a little more rough-and-ready. You had to make your own bed, for one thing. And meals were all self-serve at the oat ’n’ swine buffet.

  Nope, not third class, either.

  Fourth class was where most impoverished emigrants traveled. They cooked their own meals over open fires in massively overcrowded holds down in the sweaty bowels of the ship, where they dreamed of spotting the Statue of Liberty.

  Paddy was not in fourth class.

  Fifth-class passengers weren’t even given a place to spread out a blanket. Mostly they climbed into laundry bags and hung those bags from hooks. Thus they rocked back and forth all night, banging up against the steel bulkheads with each passing wave. They were kept awake by the mystery of how they could hang up a bag they were actually in. Their meals were served at the same time as the livestock kept for the first-class passengers’ dinners were fed. In fact, it was the same food.

  So, maybe I should explain because you may not know very much about golems. First of all, it’s golem, like go and then lem. Not Gollum. I am not Gollum. I don’t wants it, precious. A Gollum is 90 percent hobbit and 10 percent evil. A golem is 90 percent mud, and another 7 percent twigs, pinecones, dead beetles, and lint. The last 3 percent is faithfulness. We are very faithful. I will always faithfully try to take Mack’s place while he’s away. Even though it means I have detention because of the whole dissolved-feet situation and the screaming and all.

  Fifth class didn’t dream of spotting the Statue of Liberty because if they ever appeared on the open deck, they’d get a beat-down from beefy ship’s stewards. The only time they were allowed on deck was for gladiatorial games in which they were pitted against each other in pepper mill battles while first-class passengers bet on the outcome.

  Fifth class? Tough place. Unpleasant place.

  But Paddy was not in fifth class. He’d have loved to be fifth class.

  Sixth class meant you slept in the fifth-class bathrooms, or heads as they say on boats. You could sit on one of the toilets until someone needed to use it. This wasn’t a great way to spend ten days, which was how long it took the HMS DiCaprio to get across the ocean to New York.

  But Paddy wasn’t in sixth class.

  Paddy was in seventh class. And seventh class was a very bad class aboard the DiCaprio. Seventh-class passengers were allowed aboard the ship, but once aboard they were hunted by the packs of wild dogs that lived down in the bilges.

  The wild dogs were the offspring of escaped pets. You see, sometimes first-class passengers traveled with poodles or Chihuahuas or Pekingese. Over the years some of these animals had escaped their kennels and had bred and multiplied in the bowels of the great ship.

  Imagine, if you will, poodles bred with Chihuahuas and then hardened and made savage by the dog pack life in the dank, dark holds far, far from light.

  Nobody would want to go up against that kind of horror.

  The bilges of a ship are the lowest level. Down below the engines. Not even the basement of the ship, more like if the ship had a basement but someone dug out a pit below that.

  Anyway, the bilges were where all the water that seeped into the ship collected. Rainwater, sea spray, mop water, overflowing toilet water, spilled coffee water, seasickness results, you name it. It was about up to Paddy’s thighs. It smelled like a toilet.

  For food, the seventh-class passengers had to trap and kill one of the many alligators that slithered through the dank, cold, oily, poo-smelling water.

  So basically it was bad. Very bad. As bad as flying coach out of O’Hare.

  But Paddy was a tough kid. On his first night in the bilges he earned the respect of the wild dog pack by biting the pack’s leader on the ear and gnawing away for so long that forever after that dog was known as Rex “One Ear” Plantagenet.

  On his second night Paddy killed and ate an alligator.

  By the time he left the DiCaprio—seventh-class passengers didn’t walk down the gangplank; they were tossed into the water and left to swim ashore—he not only had a belly full of tasty alligator sushi, he had a nice pair of homemade alligator boots and a matching alligator vest.

  Which was frankly disturbing to the first New Yorkers who saw him, what with Paddy having had no facilities for drying or even properly cleaning alligator skin. So his alligator boots had bits of alligator intestine trailing behind.

  On the plus side, no one asked him for spare change.

  Paddy went straight from the dock to the headquarters of the Toomany Society, which was housed in Toomany Hall. The Toomany Society offered help to newly arrived immigrants.

  “What do you do for a living?” the woman at the desk asked.

  “I used to grow oats.”

  “That’ll be really useful here in New York. We have so many vast fields of oats.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?” Paddy asked.

  “Actually, no. I mean, this isn’t New York like it might be in the future, say, the far-off twenty-first century. This is New York in the early twentieth century. And believe it or not, we still have farms here. A hardworking oater can eke out a miserable existence working sixteen backbreaking hours a day, seven days a week in harsh conditions. You’ll marry a dance hall girl, spawn ill-mannered brats, grow old before your time, and die of some miserable disease, possibly consumption. But hey, it’s a living.”

  “What are my other choices?” Paddy asked.

  The woman shrugged. “You’re not fit for anything but oat farming or banking—and you don’t have the wardrobe for banking. And then, there’s always crime.”

  “Tell me about this ‘crime’ of which you speak.”

  “Well, hmm . . . I suppose you’d join a criminal gang, extort money from shopkeepers, rob banks, dress in flashy clothes, and mostly sit around all day drinking with other criminals in between acts of mayhem.”

  Paddy pointed a jaunty finger at her and said, “Bingo.”

  Chapter Eight

  My favorite color used to be purple!” Mack cried out as Stefan and Jarrah pedaled frantically.

  The Tong Elves were just behind them.

  Nine Iron Trout was just ahead, ready to impale them.

  Clearly the Pale Queen’s minions weren’t waiting around for the thirty-five days to be up. They were looking for a quick kill.

  Or in Nine Iron’s case, a slow kill.

  Panicky vendors were trying desperately to save squids and snakes-on-a-stick from the threatening flames. All the commotion was lit by cheery neon lights shining off candy-striped awnings.

  Stefan had powerful legs. But the weight of a not-exactly-steady Mack flailing all over the handlebars slowed him down a bit.

  Mack didn’t snap entirely back to reality until he saw Nine Iron’s cane-sword within about eight feet of skewering him like a fried scorpion.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  Stefan tried to veer right to pass the safe side of the pedicab, but quick-peddling Tong Elves cut him off.

  “Left! Closer!” Mack shouted.

  Maybe Stefan obeyed or maybe he just wobbled, but either way Mack’s left hand came just close enough to a tray of mixed skewers.
>
  He snatched them up, transferred them to his right hand, and with Nine Iron’s deadly sword just two feet from his heart, flung the skewers like darts.

  The sudden movement sent Stefan even farther left, crashing through a grease fire and slip-sliding through a couple of dozen frantic lobsters who were no doubt hoping to reach the ocean. (Sorry: no.)

  The sword missed by millimeters.

  The skewers did not. In a flash of neon, Mack saw that a skewer of fried sea horses had stuck in Nine Iron’s gaunt cheek. And a skewer of fried silkworm cocoons had stuck in Nine Iron’s green bowler hat.

  They flashed past the pedicab and gained speed. Jarrah was alongside, pedaling hard.

  “Why am I riding on the handlebars?” Mack cried.

  “Look out! Here they come!” Jarrah cried, jerking her chin back toward the Tong Elves. With a glance, Mack could see that the pedicab driver had spun his vehicle sharply, making a teetering two-wheel turn, and now raced after the fleeing bikes.

  Ahead was a tall, red-lacquered double door studded with brass bolts as big as a baby’s head. Two uniformed guards were just closing a massive filigreed gate behind a departing cleaning crew.

  Mack, Stefan, and Jarrah shot through the gap, pursued by Chinese shouts of outrage. Which aren’t that different from American shouts of outrage because outrage is a universal language.

  The guards slammed the gates closed behind them, locking out Nine Iron and the elves on bikes.

  Unfortunately now the guards were yelling at Mack, Stefan, and Jarrah, and blowing police whistles, so while things looked better than they had, they still didn’t look good.

  “We have to hide!” Jarrah said.

  They were in a vast square. Buildings all around formed the edges of a cobblestoned courtyard. The walls on all sides were reddish, although in the dim light it was hard to see very clearly.

  Mack was trying to picture the map of the Forbidden City in his mind. He’d glanced at the map but he hadn’t exactly memorized the place. After all, it’s a huge complex full of numerous palaces—some big, some small, all fabulously decorated with dragons and filigree and Chinese characters.

  And still, even now, Mack was thinking just a little bit about Toaster Strudel.

  “Which way?” Stefan asked.

  They were easily outpacing the guards, who were on foot. But Mack had no illusion that these were the only guards. In a few minutes the place would be swarming with guards and cops and, for all he knew, the entire Chinese army.

  Things had loosened up a bit at the Forbidden City, but not so much that they’d let two Yanks and an Aussie ride bikes around the place at night.

  “Just keep riding!” Mack yelled.

  They were pedaling up a long ramp that led to one of the central palaces.

  “If there’s ten thousand rooms,” Jarrah said, “we should be able to find someplace to hide.”

  “Nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine rooms,” Mack corrected her. “The palace of the gods was ten thousand, and emperors didn’t want to look presumptuous by equaling it.”

  Jarrah stared at him. Mack shrugged. “What? I notice these things.”

  “We have to ditch the bikes,” Jarrah said. “We can hide easier on foot.”

  They ducked inside through one of the less grandiose entrances. The lights had been turned off, but emergency exits still glowed and a single distant overhead light shone. They saw a museum, a square chamber filled with ornate clocks and other bits of furniture, which on closer examination also turned out to be clocks.

  “Clock museum,” Mack whispered. He had his iPhone out and was frantically web surfing, trying to pull up a map of the Forbidden City.

  “Cool,” Jarrah said. “The kind of place Mum would love.”

  Stefan backed into a massive, incredibly fragile-looking clock that rocked back on its pedestal.

  Mack heard the sound of running footsteps.

  He dimmed the screen on his phone.

  “This way,” Jarrah said. “Shine a little phone light on this.”

  It was a cabinet at the bottom of an armoire-sized clock decorated with elephants and griffins and little gold leaves. The clock was maybe nine feet tall. But the cabinet wasn’t much bigger than a large toy box.

  “We could hide in there,” Stefan said. “The guards are closing in on this place.”

  “Are you nuts?” Mack whispered back. “I’m not getting in there! It’s tiny! We could be locked in there forever. No air. Suffocating! I won’t be able to breathe. . . . Already I can’t breathe. . . . Like being buried alive! I can’t!”

  Running footsteps were approaching. Flashlight beams cast skittery pools of light by the nearest entryway.

  “Dude!” Stefan hissed. “Where did the Tong Elves hit you?”

  Mack pointed to his left temple. So Stefan hit him in his right temple.

  It was a while before Mack regained consciousness.

  It was a while longer before he realized he had his head in Stefan’s armpit. And Jarrah’s head between his ankles.

  Then it really hit him.

  Mack opened his mouth to scream, but Stefan’s hand was clasped firmly over it, so all he could do was yell, “Mmmm! Mmmmm! Mph-puh-rrrnnn!”

  “I think the coast is clear,” Jarrah said.

  “Mmmm mmmm hhhrrggh!” Mack shouted as Stefan and Jarrah unpacked themselves.

  “I’m going to take my hand away, Mack,” Stefan said. “No screaming, okay?”

  Stefan released Mack, who sucked air for several minutes, like Nine Iron Trout after a marathon.

  “Sorry,” Mack said. “I realize I’m nuts. Okay? I know it’s craziness.”

  Jarrah patted him on the back. “No worries, mate; we’re all nuts or we wouldn’t be here, would we?” Then, more serious, she said, “I felt something in there. Something carved inside the cabinet. Give us the phone light for a minute.” She aimed his phone light into the cabinet. “Yeah. You can’t see it; it’s carved in bas-relief.”

  She fumbled for Mack’s hand and pressed it against the carving. Mack felt intricate bumps and swirls.

  “It’s decoration,” he hissed.

  “Nah. I don’t think so. It was squashed into me bum for the better part of half an hour.”

  Mack focused and ran his fingers carefully, delicately over the carved area. “It’s like letters.”

  Jarrah looked over Mack’s shoulder, then reached past him to feel the letters. “I think it’s Vargran. It has the same letters.”

  “Can you read it?”

  “Not all of it. Just a bit. Feel that? That’s the number nine. Nine snakes? Nine snakes on a wall?”

  “I saw that movie. Awesome!” Stefan said.

  Mack listened hard. No more footsteps. The guards had definitely gone on to search the other 9,998 rooms.

  “Yeah, that’s Vargran,” Jarrah said. “Nine hidden snakes. I think. And then a math problem.”

  “A what?”

  “A math problem: what is three fours?”

  “Eight?” Stefan guessed. Then, in the embarrassed silence, “I’m not that good at math.”

  “Twelve,” Jarrah said. She squeezed Stefan’s arm, comforting. “You’re good at other things.”

  “How do we get out of here, that’s the question,” Mack said.

  He turned reluctantly from the clock cabinet and stood up, sore knees cracking. Just in time to see Nine Iron thrust with his cane-sword.

  Stefan saw it a split second sooner and was a split second quicker to react. He jumped in front of Mack. The blade pierced Stefan in the center of his chest.

  Stefan cried out in surprise and pain.

  Jarrah rushed at Nine Iron and shoved him onto his butt. The sword went flying, twirling across the polished tile floor.

  Mack caught Stefan as he slumped forward.

  “Dude!” Mack cried.

  “Huh,” Stefan remarked. He put a hand over the hole. Blood seeped through his fingers.

  Mack heard shouts and ru
shing feet. No way to know whether it was guards or elves, and it probably didn’t matter.

  “Run!” Mack hissed.

  They ran, with Stefan moving at half speed and looking as if he’d soon be going slower.

  Much slower.

  Chapter Nine

  Run!”

  They ran. Out into the courtyard. Dozens of flashlights stabbed the darkness like light sabers. Chinese voices were yelling.

  Mack didn’t know what they were yelling, but it was probably “Get them!”

  They passed beneath an arch, up a ramp, down a staircase, running blind, no idea where they were going, just running.

  But as they ran, Mack kept thinking he really should stop, give himself up. The guards would call an ambulance for Stefan. They could probably save his life.

  But if they gave up, Mack would be kicked out of the country and sent home. What would become of the Magnificent Twelve then?

  This was not the kind of decision Mack liked to make. Doom Stefan or doom the world. That wasn’t like choosing between shorts and jeans. This was life and death.

  But it probably wasn’t going to matter much. Because suddenly Mack, Jarrah, and Stefan had run out of places to run.

  They were boxed in. Guards were closing from three directions, and the fourth direction was a wall beautifully decorated in tile. Ten flashlights were in their faces, blinding their eyes.

  “We have to give up,” Mack said to Jarrah.

  Mack’s phone rang. He jumped about three feet in the air. “Aaah!”

  “Two . . . three . . . seven . . . nine!” Jarrah said.

  “What are you counting?” Mack pulled out his phone. The display showed his home number. No way he could answer it, no way.

  Today Mack’s teacher said, “Where is your English paper, Mr. MacAvoy?” I said, “In England?” The teacher sent me a very hard look. “Your English paper, Mr. MacAvoy. The one I assigned last week.” This was confusing, so I said, “ I don’t understand ass sign.” So now I have extra detention. Double detained. I think I had better call Mack about the English paper. I hope he’s not busy.