The Monster War

by Alan Gratz

  “Or we could do that,” Clyde said.

  Archie pulled Martine to her feet, and she stood bewildered and ramrod straight as everyone hugged her and clapped her on the back and congratulated her.

  “Let me guess,” Hachi said. “That was the friendliest dragon.”

  “Actually, no, he wasn’t,” Martine said. “But he did tell me where the off switch was.”

  Archie went to the edge of Hiawatha’s head and looked down while the others laughed and celebrated their victory. Moffett’s body was still there. She wasn’t getting up again. Ever.

  Hachi came up beside him, holding onto Archie’s arm against the strong winds.

  “She always did like climbing up on things,” Archie said.

  “Yeah,” Hachi said. “But she wasn’t as good at falling off them as you are.”

  Archie chuckled.

  The others joined them, huddling around Archie for protection from the wind.

  “I think I can see mi casa from here,” Gonzalo said.

  “You can’t see anything from anywhere,” Kitsune said, still on his shoulder.

  Archie couldn’t take his eyes off Moffett’s broken body. “I know she did terrible things,” he said. “I know she hurt people. Killed people. But she had a good reason to be mad.”

  “Aye, but that doesn’t excuse what she did,” Fergus said.

  “No. I know,” Archie said. “It’s just—she wasn’t born a monster. Somebody made her into one. The same people who made me into a monster.”

  Gonzalo shook his head. “Meanness don’t just happen overnight.”

  “He’s right,” Hachi said. “They did awful things to bring you to life, Archie. Made you into a boy of living stone. But only you can make yourself a monster.”

  Archie nodded. Still, he felt sorry for Philomena Moffett. She’d never asked for any of this. Neither had he.

  “I guess we oughtta go put that lantern back on top of Cahokia in the Clouds,” Clyde said.

  “We will,” Hachi said. She looked at Archie, and he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “There’s one last thing we have to do here first,” Archie said.

  37

  The Kraken surfaced in a gaslit cave where two more small submarines sat at an ancient stone dock. Martine slid her ship up alongside, and six Leaguers, all of them but Clyde, climbed out, with Mr. Rivets not far behind. They followed Archie up the stone steps from the dock and into a big round room where seven life-sized statues stood guard beside seven doorways.

  The great hall of the Septemberist Society. It was underneath the statue of Hiawatha in New Rome Harbor after all, just as Archie had always suspected.

  Underground, Archie thought to himself. It’s always underground.

  The Leaguers spread out in the room, marveling at the statues. Fergus stood before Wayland Smith, the tinker. Gonzalo stood before Maat, the Aegyptian weigher of souls. Martine stood before Daedalus, the Greek scientist. Kitsune, on crutches, stood before Anansi, the Afrikan trickster. Hachi stood before Hippolyta, the Amazonian warrior.

  Archie stood between Heracles, the brooding, half-naked hulk, and Theseus, the neat, dashing Athenian hero. Once he’d longed to be the hero, but now he knew he was the hulk.

  Archie marched past the statue of Theseus into the Septemberist Society’s offices, and the other Leaguers followed. At the end of a long corridor stood the closed doors of the Septemberist Society council chambers. Archie remembered running up here in a panic the last time, screaming about a Manglespawn in the catacombs below. It seemed like forever ago, but it had really only been months. He felt so much older now. More experienced.

  And so much more sure of himself.

  A polished Mark II Machine Man stepped in his way and put a hand up.

  “What a pleasure it is to see you again, Master Archie,” Mr. Pendulum said. Mr. Pendulum was the head Tik Tok for the Septemberist Society. “But I’m afraid the council is in session at present.”

  “Good,” Archie said. “Tell them the League of Seven is here to see them.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well. How extraordinary,” Mr. Pendulum said, his glass eyes studying them all. “But I’m afraid the council gave strict orders that no one should disturb them.”

  “Lucky for us then,” said Fergus. “We no longer take orders from the Septemberist Society.”

  Archie picked the thousand-pound Mr. Pendulum up and set him aside like a potted plant.

  “Oh, I say,” Mr. Pendulum muttered as the League of Seven pushed past.

  Ka-THOOM. Archie punched open the council chamber’s massive wooden doors, and the seven council members jumped from their seats at the big round table in the center of the room.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” demanded Frederick Douglass, the head of the Society’s Lawbringer Guild. He stood behind the council chief’s seat; he’d apparently been voted the Society’s new leader after Philomena Moffett had gone rogue.

  Around the table were the other current members of the Septemberist Council: Sally Tall Chief, the actress; Hellcat Maggie, the slumlord; John Two-Sticks, the lacrosse star; General Lee, the soldier; Hevataneo, the inventor; and Archie recognized Ellen Swallow, the scientist, who must have taken the guild leader position from Moffett in his parents’ guild.

  “We’re in the middle of a very important report from General Lee here,” Douglass told them. “We understand you’ve accomplished great things. But if you’ll just wait until we’re finished, we’ll see you then.”

  “You’ll see us now,” Hachi told him.

  “I beg your pardon, young lady!” Tall Chief said.

  “Gonzalo?” Archie said.

  The Texas Ranger stepped forward, pointing Señor X at the council from his hip. “By the authority vested in me by the great Republic of Texas, you are each and every one under arrest for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of children at the secret facility known as Dodge City.”

  The council stared at the League, gobsmacked.

  “You—you can’t be serious,” Douglass said.

  “Dead serious,” Archie told them.

  “This is preposterous!” Two-Sticks said.

  “That was twenty-five years ago!” the Cheyenne inventor told them. “None of us were even on the council then!”

  “You are also charged with conspiracy in the 1864 murders of one hundred men, thirty-seven women, and fifteen children at Chuluota,” Gonzalo told them.

  “And just who’s going to try us?” Hellcat Maggie snarled. “Who’s going to convict us?”

  “We are,” Hachi said darkly, drawing her knives.

  Frederick Douglass threw up his hands. “The Septemberist Society may or may not have had a hand in your creation,” he said, sounding like the lawyer he was. “But if we did, it was necessary. Just look at you! You are full and truly a new League of Seven! If General Lee’s report is to be believed, you have saved the world!”

  “From the menace you created in the first place,” Kitsune said.

  “A new League arises whenever the world needs one,” Archie told them. “Not when you choose to make one. If we exist, it’s only to clean up your mess!”

  “So arrest us then,” said Sally Tall Chief. “Drag us off to the courts of New Rome. Who will believe you? Who will believe any of it? No one knows the Septemberist Society even exists.”

  “There is no more Septemberist Society!” Archie roared. He slammed his fist down on the huge round table with the Society’s all-seeing pyramid eye carved into it. Kra-KOOM! The table split in half and crashed to the floor. The council members jumped back again with real fear in their eyes.

  “You’re finished!” Archie told them. “We’re shutting you down.”

  “But—but who will safeguard the secret of lektricity?” Miss Swallow asked. “Who will protect humanity from the Mangleborn?”

  The room shook, and rock and dust streamed from the ceiling.

  “An earthquake?” Two-Sticks asked, backing away.

  The
roof crumbled. Rock and dirt thundered down on the broken table. Sunlight streamed into the room through a giant hole in the ceiling, and the council put their hands up to shade their eyes.

  “Arf! Arf arf!” Buster whistled happily, his big brass hands covered with dirt. He and Clyde had dug down from the park above.

  Clyde waved hello from inside the giant steam man’s head. “Man, Buster’s got a full year’s digging done in one week, and that’s a fact!”

  “We’re starting a new society,” Archie told the council. “And it’s not going to be a secret anymore. No more working underground. No more operating from the shadows. Before we’re done, everybody in the United Nations is going to know about the Mangleborn and the League of Seven. Everybody in the Americas. Everybody in the world. No more secrets. No more lies. And no more hurting people to save the world.”

  38

  The New Rome crowd along the parade route roared as the airship carrying the League of Seven floated down Broadway. Ticker tape streamed from windows, and confetti fluttered in the air. Brass bands played “Seven Heroes True” and “Keep Them Monsters Down,” and kids with toy rayguns and homemade bandoliers and cardboard steam man costumes chased through their parents’ legs.

  Mr. Rivets poked his head inside the float’s cabin, where Archie was hiding.

  “Master Archie?” Mr. Rivets said. He came all the way inside. “Why aren’t you with the others?”

  Archie watched the rest of the League through one of the float’s portholes. Gonzalo and Kitsune, holding hands. Martine waving robotically like a cigar store Tik Tok. Fergus mugging for the cameras. Clyde chatting up the crowd through Buster’s loudspeakers as he pulled the float through New Rome’s streets. Even Hachi was waving and smiling, as much as she ever smiled.

  “I still can’t believe they took it so well,” Archie said. “I still can’t believe they believe it. About the League of Seven and the Mangleborn and everything.”

  “I suspect it helped that fifty thousand soldiers recently returned home from Gettysburg with tales of how you helped them defeat three Mangleborn and an army of monsters. And Mr. Senarens’s dime novels have helped as well. Frankly, sir, it’s a wonder the Septemberist Society kept the Mangleborn a secret as long as they did.”

  “Look at all those people, cheering and clapping,” Archie said. “They have no idea what we’re really up against.”

  “I suspect not,” Mr. Rivets said. “But you were right—knowing what darkness lies beneath is far better than pretending it isn’t there. And when the time comes, you and your friends will be there to help them again.” Mr. Rivets paused. “But you still haven’t answered my initial query. Why are you hiding in here? I seem to recall you telling the former Septemberist Council you would no longer be working from the shadows.”

  “I wanted to be a hero, Mr. Rivets,” Archie said. “I wanted to be Theseus. Remember? The guy out front. But that’s not who I am. I’m the shadow. This is where I belong.”

  “You belong with your friends,” Mr. Rivets told him. “You belong with the League of Seven.”

  Archie nodded. “I will be with them. I’ll be with them in the new headquarters we’re building downtown, and I’ll be with them whenever, wherever we need to be to stop the Mangleborn, day or night. I can still be a hero, but I can’t be out there now, smiling and waving at people. Not that kind of hero. Not the way I was born. Do you understand, Mr. Rivets?”

  “Yes, sir. I think I do.”

  Archie was quiet for a long moment.

  “About that, Mr. Rivets,” Archie said at last. “About the way I was born. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I have the strength of a hundred men, right? Because I’ve got the blood of a hundred men inside me.”

  “As I understand it. Yes, sir,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “Well, if it took a hundred lives to create me, and that gave me the strength of a hundred men, maybe I’ve got a hundred lives to live as well. A hundred lifetimes. You understand?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “I mean, I don’t know if it’s true, but—”

  “But if you are correct, sir, you would live for somewhere between eight to ten thousand years,” Mr. Rivets said.

  Archie looked at Mr. Rivets in the dark.

  “All my friends, everyone I know, they’ll all be dead. Nobody I know will be around when I die.”

  “I will be, sir,” said Mr. Rivets. “No matter what may come, I shall be there with you. Always.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my own League of Seven: Susan Chang, Ali Fisher, Kathleen Doherty, Brett Helquist, Bob, Wendi, and Jo. Full steam ahead!

  Reading & Activity Guide

  THE MONSTER WAR

  A LEAGUE OF SEVEN NOVEL

  by Alan Gratz

  Ages 10–14; Grades 5–9

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The questions and activities that follow are intended to enhance your reading of The Monster War. The material is aligned with Common Core State Standards for Literacy in English and Language Arts (www.corestandards.org); however, please feel free to adapt this content to suit the needs and interests of your students or reading-group participants.

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  The Monster War is the third book in Alan Gratz’s action-packed, steampunk League of Seven series. In Gratz’s alternate nineteenth-century America, a secret organization known as the Septemberist Society works to prevent ordinary citizens of the world from realizing that deep in the earth live terrible monsters known as Mangleborn, and that there are technologies, such as electricity, that can awake and excite the Mangleborn to destroy the world.

  Into this scenario comes young Archie Dent who learns that he is part of the newest incarnation of the League of Seven, a group of exceptional individuals called by the Septemberists to defeat onslaughts of Mangleborn. Archie and his newfound League associates, Hachi and Fergus, track down the thief of a dangerous device known as The Dragon Lantern. In doing so, they realize that the Septemberist Society which called them into being may also be responsible for some great horrors.

  As Archie’s adventures continue, more League members are found, and each must grapple with painful truths about their pasts, their friendships, and their terrifying mission …

  Pre-Reading Discussion & Writing Activities

  1. Read aloud these opening lines from the three LEAGUE OF SEVEN stories:

  “The secret entrance to the headquarters of the Septemberist Society could only be reached by submarine.”—THE LEAGUE OF SEVEN

  “Archie Dent dangled from a rope twenty thousand feet in the air watching the blue ribbon of the Mississippi spin far, far below him.”—THE DRAGON LANTERN

  “The chain that shackled Archie Dent to the boy beside him rattled as the steamwagon bounced down a rutted road, and they swayed into each other.”—THE MONSTER WAR

  Point out features in these texts which suggest that the LEAGUE OF SEVEN stories do not occur in a real time and place. What expectations do these opening sentences set up for the stories to come?

  2. The Monster War is set in an alternate nineteenth-century America. “Alternate histories” are works of fiction in which recognizable historical figures have experiences different than those recorded in history books, and notable events have different outcomes. Alternate histories beget the question: Is history inevitable? Consider current problems, such as gun violence in America or global warming, and discuss what you have read in newspapers or online resources covering the ongoing debates as to how these problems should be handled. Informed by your class discussion and current events research, write a short essay addressing the question: “Are historical events inevitable? Why or why not? And, if not, how can individuals have an impact on the history of their world?”

  Supports Common Core State Standards: L.5-8.5, L.9-10.5; SL.5-8.1, SL.9-10.1; W.5-8.1-2, W.9-10.1-2.

  Developing Reading & Discussion Skills

  1. In the opening chapters of
the novel, Archie has been tricked into a captive situation by Mr. Rivets. Why does he resist helping the kidnapped children? What fears does he have about himself?

  2. What does Archie come to realize about Gonzalo and Senor X in Chapter 5? Do these realizations change his relationships to these characters? Do these new insights affect your reader’s perspective on Gonzalo and his “weapon”?

  3. What is “lektricity” and why is it dangerous? How might you respond to Hachi’s words here: “Isn’t everybody who messes with lektricity a madman?”

  4. Archie and his friends find Martine both amazing and frustrating, especially in instances such as their argument over whether a “knot’s a knot” here. Does Martine remind you of anyone from real life, film, or television? In our world, might she be considered non-neurotypical or autistic? Why might this be important to the story?

  5. What is a “proper League of Seven”? Who comprises the League? List the names of The Monster War characters who are members of the League and the roles they play. (Hint: Reread Chapter 10.)

  6. Recount at least two instances in which League members must persuade others that (a) they need to be saved and/or (b) the League of Seven, young and strange as they appear, can save them. What do you think is important about this recurring dynamic?

  7. What is the relationship between Mangleborn and subterranean oil? What other resources, landmarks, or other “ordinary” things readers take for granted, or believe they understand, in their world are, in the story, the result of actions by—or reactions to—Mangleborn?

  8. Here, Kitsune says, “It’s funny how fear makes you do things you never thought you could do.” Do you agree? Can you recall a time in your own life where fear impacted your actions? How might this help you better understand the motivations of characters in The Monster War?

  9. In the first chapter of the novel, Archie tells Gonzalo that he doesn’t have any parents, “which was true and wasn’t true.” As you read the novel, how many ways might you interpret or understand this early observation?