Hero of the Five Points

by Alan Gratz

  “I suspect he did it to himself,” Dalton told her. The boy was hearing the Call of a Mangleborn, but why had it brought him here, to this strange place? And what were all the copper chambers for? Dalton tapped on one. It was empty. His eyes followed the pipes to the ceiling and saw a switch there, far too high up for anyone to reach without a careful shot from a raygun or a bow and arrow.

  “Poloma put the kettle on, Poloma put the kettle on, Poloma put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea,” Agatha sang, trying to soothe the listless boy.

  “Great Hera, I know what this place is,” Dalton said. “We have to leave here immediately!”

  “What is it? Why?” Agatha asked.

  Dalton didn’t answer. He took her arm and hurried her toward the door where they’d come in. Something heavy and machine-like clicked under the wooden floor beneath them. Dalton gave Agatha and Etlelooaat a push just as the trapdoor opened beneath their feet. Agatha and the boy tumbled to the safety of the stone floor just beyond the pit. Dalton fell. His fingers caught the top edge of the wooden floor where it hinged and he slammed painfully against the vertical surface of the trapdoor.

  A hundred feet below him churned a copper-sided well of boiling water.

  “Dalton!” Agatha screamed. She set Etlelooaat aside and reached to help Dalton, but the boy’s empty eyes turned once again to the door across the pit and he stepped toward the precipice.

  “No! Catch him, Agatha!” Dalton cried. His fingers burned as he struggled to keep hold. “He’s still under the Mangleborn’s thrall! He’ll walk right into the trap trying to go to it!”

  Agatha caught Etlelooaat before he stepped off into the boiling water. With her other hand she reached down to help Dalton. At long last he crawled up out of the pit and collapsed beside her, panting, while she held tight to Etlelooaat.

  “Poloma put the kettle on,” Dalton said. “Dalton Dent, you’re the world’s greatest fool.”

  “What do you mean? What is this place?” Agatha asked.

  “It’s the first room of a puzzle trap,” Dalton explained. “When the Roman League of Seven trapped the Mangleborn the last time, they built chambers on top of them which are passable only by solving elaborate riddles. The puzzle traps let Septemberists go down to monitor the Mangleborn and their prisons, but keep out all those who would free the monsters to rule the Earth again.”

  “Who would free them?”

  “Madmen,” Dalton said. “Anyone who hears the Call and follows it.”

  “The children,” Agatha said. “You mean, this is where they go? Do you think any of them have made it through?”

  “No,” Dalton said. He got to his feet. “That nursery rhyme you’ve been singing to the children, ‘Poloma put the kettle on,’ it’s no coincidence it came to mind. It’s the clue the Roman League left for how to get through these puzzle traps. Most nursery rhymes are clues to some puzzle trap somewhere in the world.” Dalton pointed to the copper cylinders. “I suspect you have to fill those copper drums with water and boil it to make steam. The steam pressure will open the first door to the next puzzle. There’s a spigot there, in the ceiling. Do you see it?”

  “But how could you reach it?” Agatha asked.

  “With a raygun. Or a good shot from a bow and arrow,” Dalton said. “‘Poloma’ isn’t just a girl’s name; it’s the Choctaw word for ‘bow.’ Poloma put the kettle on. That’s the clue. Turn on the water, set it to boil, the door opens. I’m sure the rest of the stanzas could get you through the other rooms as well, if you could figure them out. But your children, they wouldn’t have known that.”

  “You mean they all ended up …”

  Agatha left off as something clicked again in the floor beneath them and the huge wooden trapdoor ratcheted back up into position, ready to catch the next person who didn’t know how to bypass the traps.

  “If the children continue to live in the tunnels, more of them will be lured here,” Dalton told her. “More of them will fall into this trap.”

  “I’ll move them,” Agatha said. “I don’t know where. But they won’t stay here another night.”

  A boy stuck his head through the door of Sportsman’s Hall and yelled, “Fire! Fire at the Mantotohpa Tannery!”

  Half a dozen Dead Rabbits who’d been sitting over mugs of beer jumped to their feet and ran for the door. Agatha hurried over to Dalton and Mr. Rivets.

  “The Mantotohpa Tannery’s on the edge of Bowery Boy territory,” Agatha told them. “If they show up there’s bound to be a fight—”

  “—and if there’s a fight, Mose might put in an appearance,” Dalton finished. He was already getting up from the table. He’d kept an ear out for the monster for days, ranging as close to Bowery Boy territory as he dared, and occasionally returning to Mose’s old room in the tunnels in his search for him. But the Manglespawn hadn’t put in an appearance since Dalton’s first day in the Five Points. Maybe this was his chance.

  “Keep your knob down, noddle!” Agatha called after him.

  Dalton raced out into the street, Mr. Rivets at his heels. A dozen boys and young men wearing the red shirts and red-striped pants of the Dead Rabbits ran by, pulling a hand-drawn wagon. The wagon carried a tarnished brass steam engine and water pump that towered like the New Rome skyline, and from the corners and sides of the rickety old thing hung ropes, ladders, sand buckets, and hoses. Besides the brassworks, the entire wagon was painted black, with the words BLACK JOKE painted in gold along the side. A Dead Rabbit sat in the driver’s seat, doing more hanging on for dear life than driving as he shouted directions to the chasers.

  Dalton caught one of the Dead Rabbits as he was running past. “Haven’t you got Tik Tok firemen?”

  The Rabbit scoffed. “Maybe up at Astor Place they do, but not down here. The only bolt buckets in the Five Points are yours and the Coppers—when they show.”

  Hellcat Maggie appeared behind the boy and glared at Dalton. He knew what the look was meant to tell him: he was giving himself away. Foul, joyless creature, Dalton thought. Regardless, he resolved to keep his mouth shut as he fell in with the Dead Rabbits running to the fire.

  The Mantotohpa Tannery was fully ablaze when they arrived. Flames rose from the broken windows of the wooden warehouse and black smoke hung thick in the air. There was but one well for the Dead Rabbits to dip their hoses into, conveniently located right across the street from the conflagration, but it was currently being guarded by the meanest-looking Cherokee Dalton had ever seen. The ruffian was short and squat, with arms as thick as stovepipes bulging out from under his rolled up shirtsleeves. His nose was bent, his chin was scarred, and part of his left ear was missing. Pulled down tight over the top of his black mop of hair was an oversized tan plug hat.

  “Looks like the Plug Uglies beat us here,” said one of the Dead Rabbits.

  “Yeah, but only one of ‘em,” Hellcat Maggie snarled. “Quash him!”

  The ugly Plug Uglie stood, revealing the raygun tucked into his waist and the brickbat in his hand. “Just try it, Rabbits!” he said.

  The Dead Rabbits fell on him, fists and bricks flying. The Rabbits quickly had the ruffian on the ground, kicking and stomping him, but his reinforcements arrived. Another hand-drawn fire truck, this one all white with the name WHITE GHOST painted in black on the side, clattered onto the scene pulled by a score of Plug Uglies, all of whom immediately fell to attacking the Dead Rabbits. The street became a battlefield, Dead Rabbits and Plug Uglies hitting and shooting and clubbing one another, and all the while the Mantotohpa Tannery burned behind them.

  Dalton grabbed Hellcat Maggie as she ran past him. “Isn’t anybody going to do anything about the fire?” he asked her over the din.

  “Not while a Plug Uglie yet stands!” she shot back at him, pulling away.

  Dalton turned to Mr. Rivets in despair. “Help me get the water pump running.” Dalton fired up the steam engine’s boiler while Mr. Rivets connected a hose and dragged it to the well. A Plug Uglie threw a brickbat at Dal
ton, missed, and tried to climb the Black Joke to get at him. Dalton kicked him in the chest, sending him him back into the roiling mob below. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t let Agatha keep his father’s raygun.

  “The hose is in the well, sir,” Mr. Rivets said, returning.

  “Good. I’ve got the boiler stoked,” Dalton said. He opened a valve, and the pump arm began to rise and fall. “Soon we can—” Dalton froze atop the Black Joke. Whatever plans he had to put out the fire by himself had just gone up in smoke.

  Mose and the Bowery Boys had come out to play.

  Mose dropped the Bowery Boys’ red fire engine onto the cobblestone street with a crash and waded into the fight. Dead Rabbits and Plug Uglies went flying, and the two Five Points gangs quickly dropped their fight with each other and stood together against the invaders from the Bowery. Dalton watched, mesmerized all over again, as the giant Manglespawn strode through the mob, thumping and kicking and smashing. Nothing the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies did could stop him. The little dwarf Tihkoosue yelled something at Mose that Dalton couldn’t hear, and the giant picked up the Plug Uglies’ fire engine to throw it.

  The mob scattered, but Mose didn’t hurl the fire engine at them. He was suddenly distracted by something at his feet, and he dropped the White Ghost on its end, almost crushing Tihkoosue. Brickbats and raygun blasts hit the giant from all sides, but he didn’t care. He was searching desperately for something on the ground, and nothing else mattered.

  “There, Mr. Rivets,” Dalton said. “What’s he doing? What’s he after? Can you see?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” Mr. Rivets said.

  Mose grew more and more panicked until at last he found what he was looking for under the feet of the warring gangsters. He batted aside a dozen men—some of them Bowery Boys—to snatch it up, and Dalton finally caught a glimpse of it.

  “It’s a doll,” Dalton said, astounded. It was a small rag doll with a blue dress and yellow yarn for hair. Mose the Manglespawn, bane of the Five Points gangs, had stopped his rampage to pick up his dolly.

  Mose petted the doll and slipped it back in his pocket, then crushed a Dead Rabbit’s head in his hands. The monster was back.

  Dalton felt the fire hose fill and stiffen in his hands, and the force of the water coming out nearly knocked him from his perch atop the Black Joke.

  He turned the hose on the monster instead of the fire. The water blasted Mose in the face, and the giant roared. He batted at the water like it was a living thing he could pound into submission, staggering back under the Black Joke’s steam-powered gush. The dwarf pointed at Dalton and the Bowery Boys charged the fire engine, but the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies rallied to fight them.

  “Mr. Rivets! We have to keep pushing him back!” Dalton cried. Mr. Rivets put his clockwork shoulder into it, and the Black Joke creaked after Mose, herding him toward the well. With a gurgled roar Mose took a face full of water, choked, stumbled, and toppled backward into the well.

  Dalton switched off the pump, and the gangs stopped fighting. A heavy silence settled on the street as everyone watched the well, half of them hopeful, half of them despairing that Mose had finally been defeated.

  The fire engine lurched, and Dalton nearly fell on his head. He’d just righted himself when the Black Joke’s metal-rimmed wheels screeched against the cobblestones, dragging sideways toward the well.

  Mose was climbing up the fire hose.

  “Cut it loose! Cut it loose!” Dalton cried, scrambling for the connection. Mr. Rivets got there first and unhooked the coupling. The hose shot toward the well under Mose’s weight and whipped down inside, removing Mose’s only avenue of escape.

  A great cheer went up from the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies. The Bowery Boys knew when they were beaten. It was two-to-one Five Points versus Bowery now, and without their monstrous champion to even the odds the Bowery Boys fled into the alleys and down the sidewalks, pursued by bloodthirsty Rabbits and Uglies. Soon only Dalton, Mr. Rivets, Tihkoosue, and the burning tannery were left. The dwarf still hung over the side of the well yelling pitifully after Mose, his little legs wiggling to keep his balance.

  “I guess it’s up to us to take care of the fire then too,” Dalton told Mr. Rivets. “Perhaps we can salvage a hose from one of the other engines.”

  The ground shook, and Dalton had to grab hold of the pump not to fall off the Black Joke. Another boom, and the street lamps wobbled. Tihkoosue scurried back toward them, all smiles.

  “He’s coming ba-aack,” he sang as he passed the fire truck.

  Dalton couldn’t believe it, but the earth rumbled again, harder this time, and the windows in buildings up and down the street shattered. He jumped off the fire engine and ducked behind it as the ground exploded, raining dirt and broken cobblestones all around him. Through the wheels of the Black Joke, Dalton watched as first one and then the other of Mose’s big hands grabbed the edge of the hole. Mose pulled himself up and out, dripping with mud and blood, and roared in anger.

  “I believe we are in a great deal of trouble,” said Dalton.

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Rivets.

  Mose snorted and shook his head like an angry bull.

  Tihkoosue pointed at Dalton. “There he is. There’s the scrub who pushed you down the well! Get him!”

  “Run, Mr. Rivets!” Dalton cried. He’d only made it a few steps before lightning erupted just above his head, blue-white lektricity crackling through the air so close it made all his hair stand on end. Dalton fell down onto the cobblestones, ducking the blast, but the lightning didn’t stop. The lectricity streamed in a constant flow from the tops of four lampposts on opposite sides of the street, creating a huge deadly X six feet above the street.

  Caught in the center of the lektrical crosshairs was Mose.

  The Manglespawn howled as white-hot lektricity arced into him, burning the shirt off his back and leaving great black scars on his pale brown skin. Mose thrashed and fought to free himself, but the lektricity didn’t let him go. But it didn’t kill him either. In fact just the opposite was true—it seemed to be making everything about him bigger. Bigger and more inhuman. He writhed and lurched as his bones and muscles grew and shifted and mutated.

  Mose bellowed in rage and pain.

  Tihkoosue ran. Dalton scrabbled back to the sidewalk, out from under the lektrical storm. He knew this wasn’t an accident. Couldn’t be. Something like this had to have been arranged days, weeks in advance. Someone had built a lektrical generator somewhere, connected it to the lampposts, then laid in wait.

  It was a trap built just for Mose.

  Mr. Rivets helped Dalton to his feet. “Someone else is interested in Mose, it would seem,” he said.

  “Yes, but who? And where are they?”

  Dalton searched the windows of the nearby buildings, then the rooftops. There. Someone stood on the roof of a building across the street, watching over the side.

  “The well-dressed man with the lektric cane!” Dalton said. “Come on.”

  Dalton gave the lektrical trap and the howling monster within it a wide berth and dashed into the tenement across the street from the burning tannery. The building was empty, its occupants long since fled. Dalton sprinted up the stairs, leaving Mr. Rivets and his slow, plodding brass feet far behind. Dalton couldn’t wait—the Tik Tok would just have to catch up when he could.

  Dalton burst through the door to the roof. The man from the alley stood at the controls of a humming lektric generator. Thick black rubber hoses ran from the machine down the side of the building. At the back of the roof, unseen from the street below, was tethered a small personal airship. As he approached, Dalton could hear the man saying something to himself: “Sing a Song of Sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.”

  “Who are you?” Dalton called.

  The man turned like he had always known Dalton was there, a gentle smile on his face and an unfocused look in his eyes. Up close, Dalton could see
they were about the same age.

  “My name is Thomas Edison,” the young man said.

  “You set the fire, didn’t you?” Dalton said. “You set that fire knowing the gangs would fight over it, and the Bowery Boys would bring Mose.”

  “They are not complicated animals,” Edison said.

  “You have to turn it off, Thomas. The lektrical machine. You’re only making him stronger. He’s got too much Mangleborn blood in him, and the Mangleborn feed on the stuff.”

  Edison cocked his head, fascinated. “The Mangleborn? Is that what you call them? You mean the things that sing to me of a lektrical world. A better world. A world of heavier-than-air flight. Of instantaneous communication. Of light. A world where I would be a chieftan if only I would free them from their prisons.”

  Dalton closed his eyes. This was bad. Very bad. A man with Edison’s talents who was hearing the Call of the Mangleborn was even more dangerous than Mose.

  “Turn it off, Thomas,” Dalton told him again.

  “I’m tempted, you know,” Edison said, his eyes elsewhere. “To free them, I mean. But I want to study them first. These … Mangleborn, and their offspring. That creature on the street. If I could examine it. Test it. Dissect it. Uncover its secrets. Think of it: A child born not just with the strength of ten men, but fifty—a hundred men!”

  “Gods, what kind of monster would that be?” Dalton said.

  Edison raised his cane. Lektricity buzzed from the tip of it. “I’m sorry you don’t share my vision of progress.”

  Dalton took a step back and bumped into Mr. Rivets. The machine man had finally ticked his way up the stairs and onto the roof. Mr. Rivets reached around Dalton, grabbed Edison’s cane, and snapped it in half.

  “You really ought to wait for me in situations such as these, Master Dalton,” Mr. Rivets said.

  It was Edison’s turn to back away. “A Tik Tok bodyguard,” he said. “I shall have to get one of those. But one without the safeties, I should think.”