Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  “The good news,” Banks said, pointedly ignoring her dramatic sigh, “is that I’ve brought you back a little gift.”

  “Mags!” Montez yelled, running in.

  She jumped up, catching his hug right in her face, and embraced him. “You’re okay!”

  Briggs, Toussaint, Summers, and Bijoux (with Milo on his shoulder) came in behind him, quickly followed by Corporal Wolfgang Hands. They exchanged high fives and hugs with Magdalys and Mapper. “You guys made it!” Mapper yelled.

  “Of course we made it!” Toussaint scoffed. “What’d you think — we were gonna let you guys rescue us just to get blown apart a week later by the same fools that couldn’t take us out in the middle of nowhere? Nah, man. Not the plan.”

  “Fair enough,” Mapper conceded.

  “It’s good to see you both,” Summers said.

  “Well met, young privates,” Wolfgang said, nodding. “I see you’ve been … shoveling.”

  “It’s the worst!” Mapper moaned.

  “At least now we can all do it together and get it done faster,” Bijoux said.

  Breeka! Milo squawked.

  Magdalys gaped at him. “Wait, you guys are on poop duty too?”

  “The soldier’s life,” Montez sighed.

  “But you’re, like … you’re all, like … war heroes and stuff!” Mapper said. “You guys are legends!”

  “I mean, who you telling?” Toussaint said.

  “But also, if we’re legends, what are y’all?” Briggs insisted. “You rescued us, not the other way around.”

  Wolfgang stepped in front of the others. “None of that matters though, Magdalys. We’ll do what we have to do. What I want to know is: What’s the update on the documents we got from the Knights of the Golden Circle?”

  Magdalys gulped. She’d been shoveling poop all day every day since they’d gotten to New Orleans, and once they’d finally had a day off, they’d spent it tracking down Lafarge. She and Mapper looked at each other, then back at Wolfgang.

  He shook his head. “Guess we better finish up poop duty so we can get started, then, huh?”

  “MAGDALYS?”

  A woman sat in one of the shadowy corners of the saloon they were in, tinkling away at a piano. It was a sweet, ragged ballad she played, now timid, now ferocious, as if the song was discovering itself as it unraveled, a brand-new music.

  “Hm?” Each note seemed to dance around another, like the true melody hid in the negative space of what was being played, and that dancing, jubilant bass run beneath made the whole piece seem perfectly undecided somehow, the happiest and saddest song in the world.

  “Mag-D!” Mapper’s voice.

  How did that woman know Magdalys’s sadness so perfectly? How could it be spoken to by a machine made of wood and ivory? The notes twinkled like tiny candles reflected in dark water; they slipped in and out of dissonance and harmony, formed shapes and explosions in the smoky saloon air made from the sweet tension and release, from silence and the low-register rumble of those bass keys.

  “Hello!” Magdalys finally looked up from the hypnotic pianist, back to the table, where the fellas from the Louisiana 9th pored over pages from the file of documents Milo had helped steal from the Knights of the Golden Circle.

  “You with us, sis?” Montez asked.

  “Yeah, just … never heard anything like that before.”

  Montez smiled. “Yeah, you get used to it down here cuz it’s everywhere.”

  “We made it,” Toussaint bragged. “Took that ol’ classical stuff and breathed some life into it, ya know? Put some flesh on those raggedy bones, hey, hey.”

  “We here to solve this puzzle and stop these Knights,” Wolfgang said, “or we here to teach a musical history lesson?”

  Toussaint acknowledged the point with a nod and clapped twice. “Alright, alright! Let’s do this!”

  Everyone leaned over and stared at the reams of numbers and symbols in the dim saloon.

  The pianist wrapped up her song, took a long swig of something brown in a glass, and then started in on another. Magdalys almost wished the beautiful music would stop so she could concentrate better, but more than that she wished it would never, ever stop, and just follow her everywhere she went to remind her that she would never be alone in her sadness.

  “Uh …” Briggs said after a few moments. “I know I’m supposed to be the intelligence expert of the squad —”

  “That’s never been a thing,” Toussaint said. “Not ever.”

  “Yeah, you can unburden yourself of that expectation, B,” Summers added.

  Briggs waved them off irritably. “Point is, I have no idea what’s going on with these numbers, y’all.”

  “Well, that makes both of us,” Toussaint admitted.

  “M-m-maybe it’s some k-kinda m-m-m-medical information?” Bijoux suggested. “Mea-mea-mea-measurements?”

  “Right,” Wolfgang said. “But these numbers seem too big to be measurements, even for a dino. And they seem to be in a sequence. Or they grow at least, right?”

  It was true: The numbers formed two columns across each page. The rows were labeled with numbers, and each column had a sequence of three distinct numbers: 45 2 17.27 | 83 11 53.3. Magdalys looked at the next line down: 45 2 18.87 | 83 50 72.3. Something was growing … or …

  “Is it movement?” she asked.

  “Movement,” Mapper said. “Oh my god!”

  “What?” everyone said at once.

  “WHY DIDN’T I SEE IT BEFORE?”

  “Man, explain yourself,” Wolfgang demanded.

  “I FEEL SO RIDICULOUS!”

  “WHAT IS IT?” everyone yelled.

  “Spit it out, Maps!” Toussaint said.

  “Latitude and longitude!” Mapper said. For a few seconds, everyone just stared at him.

  “Whotitude and whichitdue?” Toussaint demanded.

  “He’s right!” Briggs declared.

  “C’mon, man, you’re just saying that to sound like you as smart as the kid,” Montez snapped.

  “No, I’m serious! This one time when we were stationed up at Vicksburg, I found out where the Pinkertons kept their documents and I, you know …”

  “You stole them,” Toussaint said.

  “I borrowed them! And they were full of numbers like that! But on their charts the numbers had locations next to them, right? And these …”

  “They have dates,” Magdalys said, pointing at the numbers starting out each row. “See: oh-four-oh-seven-sixty-two. That’s May seventh, eighteen sixty-two.”

  “She’s r-r-r-right!” Bijoux said.

  “But why would a dino expert need charts with different locations and dates?” she asked.

  Everyone grumbled and grimaced and got back to staring at the numbers, but there was a new excitement in the air now that they’d figured something out. A man walked in with a saxophone, nodded at the pianist, and started blowing along with her, mimicking the melody and then slipping into a whole new improvised part while she played along beneath.

  “It’s mind-boggling,” Wolfgang said. “Numbers aren’t my strong point.”

  “I’m still mad I didn’t realize what it was till now,” Mapper said. “I gotta track down an atlas so we can chart some of these points.”

  Wolfgang patted him on the shoulder. “Stop beating yourself up, kiddo. We should all probably take a break and get some rest.”

  “Oh shoot!” Magdalys smacked her forehead. “I have training tonight! Gotta run!”

  “Training?” Montez asked.

  “Tell ya later!” Magdalys yelled, already hurrying out the door and into the warm New Orleans air.

  “FIRST,” LAFARGE SAID, walking a slow circle in the dusty grotto around Magdalys, “forget everything you know.”

  “Like, about dinos? Or like everything? Cuz …”

  “About dinos! Everything you have read in books, heard on the street, etc. etc.”

  “Did you read Dr. Barlow Sloan’s Dinoguide? Because I actually thi
—”

  “Garbage!” Lafarge snapped, stopping in his tracks. “Absolute unmitigated garbage. The man is a moron in the first degree and beyond any hope of redemption. He is a cad.”

  “Wow.”

  He smiled, fell back into his stride. “Any questions?”

  “Well, I —”

  “No? Good. As I said: Forget everything you know. Everything you thought you knew about dinos. Forget it all. It never existed because it’s all lies, eh? Eh. Lies and garbage. The dinosaur, and of course, the pterosaur as well, yes” — a single brightly colored tupuxuara alighted on Lafarge’s outstretched arm and squawked once — “I didn’t forget you, Hyacinth, no.” He turned to Magdalys. “Everybody wants to talk about flesh and blood, tooth and bone, eh? Your friend Dr. Sloan, for example, is only concerned with the physical facts of the dinosaur.”

  “He’s not my —”

  “The temperament, perhaps, too, eh? But he is trapped, as all scientists are, in the realm of facts, of knowledge. A simple realm, for simple people, really.”

  “Yeesh!”

  Hyacinth squawked a chuckle.

  “But the dinos and pteros, they are creatures of emotion. They feel, Magdalys. Their feelings power their temperaments, their physicality, their physiology. And when we connect to them, as only you and I and just a few others can do, it is our feelings that are reaching them. That’s what they understand. Not our thoughts! Not our science or our knowledge, eh? It is what we feel, Magdalys. Because we, too, are creatures of feeling.”

  Magdalys snapped her fingers. “That’s why … !” Her mind was reeling. She’d never thought of it that way before, but it made perfect sense somehow, like she’d known it all along. There were so many moments from the past few months that gave truth to what Lafarge said.

  “Yes? You were saying?”

  But the one that stood out the most was what had just happened. “Drek. He … I faced him again a day later, and I couldn’t stop his dinos.”

  “Go on.”

  “Just before that, my brother had sniped a dactyl Drek rides called Sweet Virginia and —”

  “Ah, the crimson dactyl has been felled,” Lafarge marveled.

  “— he thought I did it. He already wants me dead because he knows what I can do, but after that …” She shook her head. “It was a whole other level.”

  Lafarge nodded. “Rage.”

  “But!” Magdalys waved her hands, trying to find words for her thought. Lafarge still strolled in his infuriating circles around her, hands clasped behind his back, Hyacinth watching from his shoulder. “My rage … it was … is … about something bigger. It was about so much.”

  “Oh?”

  She’d been enraged not just for herself, but for her brother, for Mapper and the whole scattered Dactyl Hill Squad, for the folks enslaved on those plantations they’d flown over, and the truth that there were so many more plantations just like that all over the South. That so much of the world seemed to see her and everyone she loved as barely human at all and worth only what they could pick in cotton. That a whole war had to be fought, countless lives lost, to prove otherwise — even, it seemed, to those fighting to end slavery. She scrunched up her face. None of that seemed like anything she could explain to Lafarge. “I thought it was bigger, my rage.”

  “You have a way to measure a man’s rage? Hm?”

  “No,” she admitted, not liking any of this.

  “But it worked the day before. And then suddenly he had the upper hand.”

  “What did you feel at the time of the second encounter?”

  “Just …” Magdalys tried to find a better word, but none came: “Fear.”

  Lafarge just paced.

  “But other times, I’ve felt fear and still been able to do it,” Magdalys said. “Like back in Brooklyn, the first time I tried to connect with a couple of dinos, we were in a shoot-out at the penitentiary and I was terrified! But it worked then.”

  “I’m sure it did. Sometimes fear will be an engine, yes, as with rage. But it’s one thing to not think you can do much of anything and reach for the impossible out of desperation. It’s a whole other to think you can do everything and suddenly, in the worst possible moment, with Death itself approaching, realize you cannot. It wasn’t just fear you felt out in the bayou though, was it?”

  Magdalys closed her eyes. “Panic.”

  “Mm, exactly.”

  She heard a flapping sound, then a soft pressure on her shoulder let her know Hyacinth had landed there. The tupu made little coos, lifting one foot, then the other while Magdalys just stood there, trying not to cry. “Exactly what?” she said, exasperated.

  “Fear and rage, these will not do, hm?” Lafarge stood directly in front of her, his eyes sharp. “They are explosive. Sometimes incredibly powerful, to be sure. They are, in moments, unstoppable even. As you have seen.”

  “But?”

  “But this is not sustainable, hm? This is not a strategy, not a weapon even. It is a mining accident, a hurricane, a freak occurrence. It will not be there when you need it. Its use is to show you what you are capable of, what you must hone.”

  “But … how? What?”

  “There is something else,” Lafarge said, not unkindly. “Something deeper. There are forces more powerful than your rage, Magdalys.”

  “Like what? Tell me!”

  He stared her down. Seemed to consider something, then shook his head. “You must practice, Magdalys.”

  She slumped. “Practice? Practice? You just got through telling me that all dinos respond to is emotion! That all they are is great big feeling lizards! And now!” Hyacinth fluttered around her head, squawking as she yelled. “And now! After all that! You just tell me to practice?”

  “Mm.” Lafarge nodded. “Yes. And look.” A dozen tupuxuaras burst out into the sky above them. “You are enraged again, eh.”

  “Urg,” she grumbled.

  “But listen, I will tell you a secret, hm?”

  “Your secrets are never as exciting as I hope they’ll be.”

  Lafarge beamed. “Aha! You are learning after all!”

  “Go on …”

  “This …” He closed his eyes. “This is the hardest, most important thing you can learn as a master dinowrangler.”

  “Taking a nap?” Magdalys asked. “Cuz …”

  Lafarge shook his head. “Always in such a hurry. Pay attention.”

  For a few moments, Magdalys stood still and let the warm southern breeze brush her face. Far away, some church bells clanged out the hour, and the smell of poop wafted through the air. Then she looked around with a start — the dinos had gathered again. They’d formed a circle around where she stood beside Lafarge in the grotto and were slowly closing in. Magdalys had never known dinos to be able to move so quietly. “It’s just like you did that first night,” she whispered.

  Lafarge nodded, opened his eyes. The dinos were all around them. “Any wrangler can make a reptile do cute tricks,” he said. “Or summon a few to be by his side, hm? But the Gathering, the Gathering is something very special indeed. Once you can do that, well … anything else is child’s play, eh?”

  “Teach me,” Magdalys said. “I’ve called dinos to me before but —”

  “Only when you were afraid for your life, or full of wrath.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  With a wave of his hand, Lafarge sent the dinos snorting and stomping back into the trees at the far edges of the grotto. “It’s not enough. You are very powerful, Magdalys, but with that alone, you will be destroyed.”

  “I —”

  “Now! You try.” He nodded. “The Gathering.”

  She glanced at him warily, then sighed, closed her eyes, and reached out. They were all around her, and the gentle rumbling of their thoughts rose instantly within her, a curious, bouncing tide. It was too much — she couldn’t connect to so many at once, couldn’t even sort through the endless strands of murmurs and coos to find one to start with.

 
; She shook her head, straining for clarity.

  “Calm, Magdalys. Calm.” Lafarge’s voice was firm but kind. “Remember I said to forget everything you know, hm? Don’t do it the old way, eh? Stop straining so hard.”

  “How then? If not —”

  “Shh!” Lafarge snapped. “Concentrate. Remember what I told you. They don’t care how hard you pull.”

  “What do they care about, then?”

  “Concentrate, Magdalys.”

  She did. She concentrated until the burble of dinovoices within her rose to a fevered, muddled wave that seemed to wash over everything, even her own thoughts. And surely, that meant they had heard her, felt her, and gathered.

  A tiny pinch on Magdalys’s shoulder pulled her from the chaos of voices within. When she blinked her eyes open, she stood all alone; only Hyacinth the tupuxuara stared back at her with those wide yellow eyes. Even Lafarge had walked away and was sipping coffee at a table in the far corner.

  Magdalys sighed. “Hey, girl.”

  Papeena! Hyacinth chirped.

  “Much to do!” Lafarge called. “Better try again, eh!”

  MAGDALYS WALKED DOWN the cobblestone streets of the French Quarter with her mind reeling. Nothing made sense at all, but at the same time, everything seemed to make much more sense than it ever had. And that in itself made no sense!

  She’d woken up early and headed directly to Lafarge’s, and she’d spent most of the next three hours sending pteros in wild spirals through the open sky above the grotto. Twice, she’d caused crashes that injured one tupu and really pissed off another. She’d spent most of that time pretty pissed off herself, in fact, but at some point, the anger had subsided — totally without her permission. A giddy kind of exhaustion took over and forced out everything else, and it hardly made a difference anyway: No matter how Magdalys felt, Lafarge was just going to say “Again,” or “One more time, but better,” or “Yes, but this time don’t mess it up,” when she finished an exercise. Exhaustion became irritation, which became anger again, and that sank pretty quickly back into exhaustion.