That was all fine. If the girl was near when they found Prescott, they’d bring her to Steen. But if not, it was more important to finish what had been started. The booger could do its magic whatever without the girl if it had to, but Royce had a very specific debt to settle with Archie Prescott.
Jane crouched between two stacks of shipping crates, sheltering Da’s note from the rain and wanting to scream in frustration because she’d never learned to read properly. She could recognize words if she’d seen them on a map, and knew her letters if she could sing the tune in her head, but the note in her shaking hands might as well have been written in Chinese.
Da was going to Philadelphia, she knew that much. But if he didn’t find the black man there, he might go anywhere following him. He might never come back to New York.
The thought made Jane’s stomach hurt and nearly started her crying again. She concentrated fiercely on a map pasted to the wall of her burrow, placing first New York, then Philadelphia. The boat would steam through Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill to the Raritan Canal across New Jersey, then down the Delaware River to Philadelphia.
Picturing her father inching across the map, Jane calmed herself. She couldn’t be sure that he would return to New York, but she could follow him wherever he was going. She had to follow him. He’d called her by name. Somewhere inside he must know that she was his daughter. But if she didn’t follow him, she might never hear him say it.
She had to get someone to read the note. Who did she know that could read? Elmer, but he was away up Broadway toward Trinity Church, and she didn’t have time to go that far. People in the crowd couldn’t be trusted; one of them would likely just take the note from her and call the policeman.
Jane walked away from the passenger boats, cutting northward across Battery Park toward the freight docks on the Hudson. She couldn’t see anyone she knew and trusted, and Da’s steamer would be leaving in ten minutes.
“Shit!” she said, drawing disapproving glances from passing adults. Shouldn’t Henry be somewhere around? He was always working the ferries and freighters, selling Top Deck cigars and crowing dire warnings about the quality of tobacco available on the boats. Perhaps he’d been run off, if one of the ferry officers had heard his pitch.
No, there he was, sitting in the lee of a row of whiskey barrels and smoking his wares. Jane realized where she was and had to take a deep breath before she could go on. Just a hundred yards north was the dock where Little Bree and the others had been pulled pale and cold from the water. For Da, she thought.
“Henry!” Jane called, hurrying over to him. “Can you read?”
“The nuns made me,” he said. “Cigar?”
She took one from the offered box and stowed it in an inside pocket. “I need a favor, Henry. I’ll give you a dollar.”
“To read? For a dollar you can choose the language.”
“Don’t tease, this is important. It’s for my father.”
She saw the flicker of disbelief in his eyes, but all he said was, “Here, let me see it.” He took the note from her and squinted at it, puffing on his cigar.
“Well, what’s it say?”
“I’ll read it for you,” he said around the cigar. ” ‘Mr. Bennett: Have gone to Philadelphia following ‘Aztec mummy’ lead. Not sure where this will end up, but have a hunch about Louisville. Will write soonest. Archie.’ ” Henry looked up, puzzled. “What’s an Aztec mummy?”
“Dunno,” Jane said, thinking furiously. Louisville; that was all the way down the Ohio River, almost to St. Louis. She had been there once before, riding in the back of Riley Steen’s wagon with one leg chained to the wagon’s frame. The thought of traveling so far alone frightened her terribly, but it would be for Da, and she could do anything if it meant he would call her by name.
She held a crumpled paper dollar out to Henry, but snatched it away when he reached for it. “You have to do something else, too,” she said.
“What? I already read. That’s what you wanted.”
She ignored his protests. “Take that note to Mr. Bennett, at the Herald. You know where that is?”
“Yeah, Fulton Street,” Henry said sullenly. His cigar had gone out.
“Will you do it?” She held the dollar out again and he plucked it from her fingers.
“Yeah, I’ll do it. Haven’t sold anything today anyway.”
“Promise me, Henry. This is,” she remembered the word Da had used, “crucial.”
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
“Promise!”
He stood and dropped the soggy cigar butt. “All right, I promise. Now chase it, will you? I’m busy.”
“Thank you, Henry!” Jane called, already running south into the park.
Back down at the ferry slip, she watched as the last of the passengers made their way up the slippery gangplank and either ducked into the shelter of the steamer’s cabin or jostled for position at the leeward side of the boiler. She couldn’t see Da; he must have paid extra to travel out of the storm.
She waited until the deckhand was ready to cast off, then burst from the crowd shouting “Please, sir! Wait! Please!”
The deckhand, a gangly youth of perhaps fifteen made larger by many layers of clothing, paused as she ran up to the very edge of the dock and looked pleadingly up at him. “Please sir, my father’s in Philadelphia and Mother—” Jane let her voice break and made a show of trying not to cry. “Mother’s too sick to go herself, and I have to tell him about her. Please,” she said again, digging a handful of pennies and lint from her trouser pocket. “This is all I have, but mother is so ill …” She stood mutely, letting tears mix with the rain stinging her face.
Throwing a nervous look over his shoulder, the deckhand hesitated, neither casting off nor moving to help her.
“Please,” Jane said again. She didn’t have to fake the tears now.
The steamer’s whistle blew, and Jane sent up a fervent prayer. . Then the deckhand bent down, caught her wrist, and hauled her over the rail.
“Find a hole, little one, and stay there,” he said. “If the captain finds you deadheading, I’ll pitch you off myself to prove I didn’t do it.” He cast off and disappeared below.
Jane worked her way to the stern and hid herself under a tarpaulin covering a pile of luggage. The ferry eased away from the dock, beginning to rock on the windblown chop. Lifting a corner of the tarp, she watched the dock fade slowly into the rain, scared but also comforted by the knowledge that Da was on this same boat. Her scars itched, and she was cold, but Jane was filled with pride at the way she’d been able to help him, and she knew that she would help him again when she got the chance.
At dawn, Riley Steen stopped at a way station just to the south of Philadelphia. The night’s travel in the storm had lamed one of his horses, and the other was blowing hard, responding to neither lash nor curse. He bought fresh horses quickly, with minimum conversation, paying an exorbitant price for nags he’d likely have to replace by the time he reached Baltimore. But horses did not matter and neither did money. The only objective of any importance was reaching Louisville in time to intercept the chacmool.
It had left New York the previous morning, he was certain of that. The ants that had plagued his office since the night of its reanimation had frozen for a moment at exactly three minutes before eleven o’clock. When they started moving again, their patterns were completely disrupted, and Steen had known immediately that the chacmool had stepped off the island. He’d sent notice to Royce that he was leaving within the hour for Louisville and instructed the Rabbit to follow Prescott and capture the girl if, as Lupita predicted, she followed her father.
If events unfolded the way Steen thought they would, quite a grand reunion would take place at his safe house in Louisville. They would reel in first the chacmool, then Archie, and finally little Nanahuatzin herself. Then, with Prescott disposed of, they could proceed to the cave and get about the business of history-making.
Despite Lupita’s derision, St
een felt that his plan was holding together brilliantly. Perhaps his anxiety of the last few months had been unwarranted. Whatever difficulties had been encountered, all of the necessary parties appeared to be on their way to a rendezvous at the proper time. His perseverance over the last thirty years was soon to be rewarded.
And oh, the rewards. With Tlaloc rejuvenated and given form in the world, Maskansisil and his followers would be swatted like mosquitoes. Steen would stand astride an empire that would grow to encompass America, Mexico, even the Floridas. Even Canada.
There was something terribly right, Steen thought, about the ancient Mexican balance of sacrifice and favor. Gods were hungry, and needed to be appeased—as Abraham no doubt had understood in those nervous moments before he’d noticed the ram caught in the thicket. What better sacrifice than to return to the gods the very creatures they had created? Nothing, Steen knew, was ever given without something equal being lost. Human beings had to die in order for the human world to exist. That balance had been ignored for too long, obscured by the absutdities of Christianity. People had flocked like sheep to Gospel platitudes because Jesus promised something for nothing. It was a fool’s bargain.
And come April the third, the world would begin to discover just how foolish it had been.
Toxcatl, 5-Dog—March 11, 1843
The strange stars were out, and that meant magic was happening. John Diamond shook his head and muttered mournfully into the cold current of the Green River, hearing his voice echo through the water into the cave. “Never wanted no part of no magic.”
Sorry, Johnny, he silently answered himself. A chorus of the Micteca, the Fleshless Ones, aroused by the magic in the air, took up the refrain: Sorry Johnny sorrysorry Johnny sorry.
He was floating on his back about a foot below the river’s surface, watching constellations ripple and allowing the current to carry him along. “Stay off the mountains,” he said, and a remnant of air bled from his lungs, the bubbles twisting the stars into vivid streaks. “Mountains belong to Tlaloc, He Who Is Made of Earth. Everybody knows that.”
Riley Steen was coming, and soon. The calendar grew ripe and the Fleshless Ones were hysterical for days at a time. In twenty-two days, the sun would rise just as it always had, but if Steen’s plan succeeded, the world would be changed. Tlalocan would exist on earth. Somewhere in the hills of Kentucky a strange cult would reappear, growing until it became a fever that would scorch the Americas with sacrificial fires from New York to the City of Mexico and beyond. And the sun would fill with blood.
In such a world John Diamond would be very lucky if he could simply die, because he had given Rebus the tool that could foil Steen’s plan.
Had he done the right thing? The Micteca laughed.
Jane was as exhausted as she could ever remember being. Even during the time she’d spent as Riley Steen’s captive and occasional performer, she’d been able to rest when they traveled; but for the past three days she’d been on the move constantly, hardly daring to close her eyes for fear that Da would board a train or a boat while she slept and be gone from her forever.
She’d spent the first night shivering in a stairwell across from the Philadelphia hotel where Da stayed, waking up every hour or so to see if the sun had come up and scratching at her face and back. Something was happening to her, and it didn’t seem so wonderful when she was traveling and hiding alone in strange places. Her scars seemed less lumpy to the touch, but she could feel scabs all over her body raised by her continuous scratching. They cracked painfully when she moved in certain ways. A different itch plagued her scalp; she wasn’t sure, but it felt like her hair was actually growing back.
What’s happening to me? she thought. The itch had started the night the black Indian had killed those sailors outside her burrow. Lately it had been constant, and she didn’t always remember to remind herself not to scratch.
She wished she could ask Da about things. He would know, she was sure. After all, he had to be following the man for a reason. But she had to wait, had to bide her time until she was certain he would accept her.
In Philadelphia, Da had gone shopping, of all things, and then boarded the strangest train Jane had ever seen. It was a series of flatcars that each carried a boat. Da and the other passengers had climbed onto the cars and gone straight into the boats, staying inside when the train started to move. Jane had managed to catch the last car and hide herself from the railworkers, and she had ridden half the day huddled under the slant of the hull of the last boat. The railway ended on the bank of a canal, where the boats were lowered into the water and locked together. She hadn’t been able to sneak past the boatmen, and had panicked that she’d be left to make her own way across the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh, where the train was bound.
But the horse-drawn canal boats moved barely faster than she could walk, and Jane had kept just behind the horses, watching the boats carefully lest Da should come out on the deck and see her. Boys called hoggees stood on the decks, using long poles to push the boats off if they drifted too near the canal banks. Even with them poling, the boats often swung near the banks, and Jane was able to make the short jump onto the last boat as night fell. She’d slept gratefully that night on the rear deck, lulled by the boat’s gentle rocking and the soft slap of water against its hull.
One of the hoggees woke her at sunrise. “Where’s yer ticket?” he’d snapped, whacking her feet with his pole.
“Inside with my Da,” she’d answered defiantly. “I like to sleep outside.”
“Oh, very likely,” he’d said. “Maybe I should get the pilot to roust your Dad and we’ll see.”
She hadn’t said anything to that. After a pause the hoggee had said, “We’ll see,” again and given her another whack before walking around the side of the cabin.
Jane had stayed on the boat only long enough for it to swing near the bank again. She couldn’t risk being caught by the pilot, who would surely ask around about a runaway girl. Better to spend another day walking.
Early in the afternoon, the canal ended at the base of a mountain. The boats were once again loaded onto flatcars, and the cars began to move out of the station house—up the side of the mountain. Seeing this mystery, Jane had forgotten her mission for a moment. How were the train cars rolling uphill?
She’d soon discovered that the cars were pulled on thick ropes by a locomotive engine at the top of the first incline. That solved the mystery, but Jane still felt slightly awed by the whole thing. Nothing like it existed in New York, or anywhere else she’d ever been. And if something like this could be built in the wilderness, what wonders would the cities hold? Pittsburgh, or St. Louis? San Francisco even?
I want to see everything, she’d thought then. Everything I’ve never seen.
There were too many people watching from the engine houses for her to sneak aboard the train, or boat or whatever it was. So Jane spent the afternoon climbing along the tracks, watching the train with Da aboard as it passed other trains being lowered down toward Hollidaysburg, the town at the foot of the mountain. By sundown she was struggling through several inches of heavy, wet snow, and her feet were numb. With every hour she fell further behind the train. It must stop at the top of the mountain, she thought— surely they wouldn’t try to go down the other side in the dark.
The last length of track was arrow-straight, and she could see the lights of a town perhaps half a mile farther ahead. Jane crouched under a bridge that crossed the track just above the second-to-last engine house, catching her breath before Da’s train began its ascent. What if the rope breaks? she thought, even though she’d seen the brake attached to the back of each car. It seemed too small to stop anything so huge as a train, and the one trailing Da’s car seemed to have a branch caught in one of its wheels.
Jane’s face suddenly burned with an itch far worse than anything she’d felt before, and she fought down the urge to scratch.
The itch grew, the scarred parts of her skin crawling like they had the nigh
t she’d seen the Indian.
“Oh God,” she said, understanding. The branch wasn’t caught in the brake; it had grown there, just as the boards enclosing her burrow had sprouted fresh twigs where the Indian had bumped against them. She could see the rest of the brake’s frame bulge and deform, splitting as branches sprouted and grew new green leaves.
With a crack like a gunshot the brake splintered. Its wheels rolled down the track, then bounded away into a ditch. The train had nearly reached the summit, but it slowed and a second later Jane heard the snap of the tow rope breaking. The two cars began to roll back down the incline, picking up speed as they went.
Jane burst out from under the bridge and ran up the incline, veering to the side away from the runaway train. “Jump!” she screamed. “Da, jump! Get off the train!”
The rear car’s wheels crunched over the wreckage of the brake. The train shuddered and tilted to one side, jackknifing as the front car pushed the rear aside, then derailed itself. The boat on the rear car snapped its ties and rolled over into the ditch, landing with a terrific crash and sliding upside down for a hundred feet or so. Wreckage trailed up the mountainside above it.
The second car plowed nearly all the way back to the engine house, finally banging to a halt against a wooden loading platform. Jane heard screams other than her own, from inside the cars and along the side of the tracks where passengers had been thrown from the rear car. Four men ran past Jane toward the upended car, shouting for help. Shortly after, passengers from the waiting cars followed, carrying blankets and lamps. Jane stood frozen. Which car had Da been riding in? She didn’t know.
“Da!” she screamed, rooted to the spot by horror and indecision. “Daaaaaaa!”
A hand clamped over her mouth. Jane was lifted off her feet thrashing and still screaming into the callused palm.
“Dammit, girlie, hold still!” growled a rough Irish voice. “You’ve got places to go.” The man holding her grunted as he pitched her across the ditch away from the wreck. She crashed into the brush and immediately another pair of hands seized her and dragged her up an embankment into the forest. Twisting around, she caught a glimpse of the man holding her. He was short and blocky, barely taller than she, with a hump bulging under his patchy fur coat. “Da!” she screamed again, her voice nearly gone, and he punched her hard on the scarred side of her head.
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