Arcadia Falls

by Kai Meyer

  And now the death of Aliza. It probably had happened as he said. Aliza had attacked him, he had defended himself. So why couldn’t she simply believe him? Why did she doubt his honesty? She knew the answer, even if she didn’t want to admit it: He had changed. Ever since Fundling’s supposed death, maybe longer than that, an insidious transformation had been taking place in him.

  He had what he had fought for, revenge on Cesare and his place as head of his clan. They had been as happy together as circumstances allowed. Now, though, he was becoming more obsessed by the hour. Did he feel his pride was injured? Were all the vengeful instincts that he had only just overcome surfacing again?

  They had both been humiliated by their families, only it didn’t mean much to her—not after everything she had already experienced. He, however, was fighting with himself and his circumstances, and that robbed him of his smile and the light in his eyes. His expression was as dark as his mood, and the blackness outside the window had found its way into his heart.

  Distractedly, she looked at their reflections in the pane, and thought how much simpler it would have been if they had been able to talk it over. Let the reflections do it for them—grappling with questions and explanations, all the inevitable talking at cross-purposes.

  “Well?” he asked suddenly.

  She was holding the crumpled pages from Mori’s book. Soon after the train left, she had begun reading the chapter, and she’d only just finished it.

  “He found out a lot about the dynasties,” she said. “A lot of it is superficial, but mostly he wrote down stuff that no one is really supposed to know apart from the Arcadians themselves. No wonder Cesare and your father raised the alarm.”

  “What did he write, then?” Alessandro stretched, and tried to stifle a yawn.

  She leafed through the pages. “He began by summing up the familiar myths. About Arcadia being an island kingdom back in the days of classical antiquity, and King Lycaon falling out with Zeus when he served him human flesh to eat. Angry, Zeus cursed Lycaon and all his people. They became shape-shifters, half human, half animal, blah, blah, blah . . . In fact, the old story more or less as we know it.”

  A train going in the other direction thundered past them, and for a moment their car shook as if it were about to jump off the tracks.

  “What’s more interesting is that Mori obviously heard the same story that Trevini told me: how Lycaon was toppled from his throne by one of the most powerful families in Arcadia. However, Mori doesn’t seem to have known that it was the family of Lamias, at least he doesn’t say a word about that. He claims that after the fall of Lycaon there was a civil war lasting decades, with the troublemakers—my ancestors—on one side, and the Panthera on the other. Your family obviously had it in for us for a long time.”

  “Then that would be why the Hungry Man originally made the Carnevares his closest confidants. Until his arrest, that is. The Panthera and the Lamias became enemies when your lot overthrew Lycaon.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I assume it wasn’t about Lycaon personally but a matter of who represents the next king, you or us.”

  “Mori says that finally peace was made—although not until the kingdom had been devastated by war and half the population wiped out. By then Lycaon was long dead. The Lamias probably assassinated him right at the start of their rebellion. Decades, maybe even centuries passed, before both sides finally signed a new peace treaty in the holiest shrine of Arcadia.”

  “What kind of a shrine?”

  “Doesn’t say anything about that here. At least—”

  They were interrupted when the door of their compartment was pushed abruptly open. Alessandro was already getting to his feet when the conductor said, “Good evening. Tickets, please.”

  Alessandro relaxed slightly and took the wallet out of the duffel bag. “We still have to buy them. Two tickets to Syracuse, please.”

  The gray-haired man gestured with his old-fashioned ticket punch. “I don’t have any change on me. I’ll stop by again on my way back, okay?”

  “We won’t run away from you,” said Rosa wearily.

  The conductor left the compartment, closing the sliding door. Shoulders stooped, he set off down the empty carriage.

  “Did he recognize us?” she asked.

  “Didn’t look like it.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment and let herself lean against the narrow back of the seat.

  Alessandro leaned down and kissed her. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that you’ve been dragged into all this.”

  “It was my own decision to stay in Sicily.” She put her hand on the nape of his neck and gave him another, much longer kiss. His lips were dry and cracked, but they were the only lips she ever wanted to kiss.

  Finally he dropped back into his seat, ran his fingers through his hair, and linked his hands behind his head. “And what happened then? After they had made peace?”

  “That was all. Mori goes in for a little speculation about what may have become of the Arcadians. Their descendants, he says, could have gone on existing in secret, and might show their true face again someday. Which is basically pretty much what the Hungry Man is planning now. Except that Mori is only making assumptions.” She put the pages she had torn out of the book back in the duffel bag, with a pang of guilt for having ruined the bookseller’s valuable copy for so little that was new to them—that’s if he didn’t have a whole crate of copies in his cellar.

  The landscape outside had become rougher and rockier several miles back. Again and again, steep slopes blocked their view. The scenery was at first lost under wild bushes, then bleak and gray in the light falling out of the train windows.

  Once there was a clattering noise that went on for some time, and was unlike the sound of the train passing along the tracks. As if a helicopter had flown overhead.

  “I don’t like this,” she said.

  “You mean the conductor?”

  She stood up. “If he alerts the police, they’ll be waiting for us at the next station.” With a single stride, she was at the door, opened it, and looked cautiously both ways.

  The corridor beside the compartments seemed to her darker than when they had boarded the train. As if the light had been dimmed.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and was about to turn around, but he was already beside her, carrying the bag.

  “Right or left?”

  “The conductor went left.”

  They turned right and hurried down the corridor to the door into the next car. At the narrow junction between them, the noise of the wheels on the rails was deafening. The concertina-like connecting walls were quivering like the inside of a human organ.

  They entered a small area with a locked toilet cubicle, and then a large, undivided carriage with rows of hard plastic seats, all empty except for two at the far end. Two heads rocked slightly back and forth there, as if on spikes. When one of the two passengers rose, Rosa saw to her relief that it was a little old woman wearing a broad-brimmed hat. She came toward them, supporting herself on the backs of the seats to compensate for the jolting of the train. Rosa wondered whether to tell her that the toilet was out of order, but then let her pass in silence.

  The man in the seat next to the woman’s was younger, maybe her son. He looked up and unabashedly inspected Rosa in her tight black dress. She was glad when they left the carriage and entered the next one, also undivided. There were more passengers in here, six or seven.

  “Let me go first.” Alessandro pushed past her.

  She followed him along the aisle down the center of the rows of seats. Most of the passengers were dozing, except for two young women who broke off their conversation when Alessandro and Rosa passed them.

  The next carriage was the last in the train and had no rows of seats, only metal stools that folded down along the walls. A few crates and large cartons stood at the far end, with a guard in uniform sitting beside them. He looked up from a newspaper and called, “Didn’t you see the notice on the door? No
entry for passengers.”

  Alessandro murmured an apology to avoid unnecessary trouble and was the first back in the carriage they had only just walked through.

  “There isn’t any notice on the door,” whispered Rosa.

  The two young women glanced up again. In the neon lighting, their faces looked as pale as the rocks outside the windows.

  The train was leaving a narrow track between high slopes. Once again, a landscape of silhouettes rolled past like a darkened stage set.

  “We’re slowing down,” said Rosa.

  A moment later everything was pitch dark outside as the train thundered into a tunnel.

  They had almost reached the door back to the next carriage when a violent jolt threw them off their feet. Rosa was just in time to grab the back of a row of seats, and fell on two empty ones. Alessandro stumbled over, landed on all fours, and was on his legs again at once. Brakes screeched. Passengers uttered cries of alarm.

  She struggled up. “Was that the emergency brake?”

  “We’ve stopped, at any rate.”

  The carriages came to a standstill in the middle of the tunnel under the mountain.

  Farther forward, someone called something that Rosa couldn’t make out. Then there was a scream.

  All the lights went out.

  IN THE TUNNEL

  THE CARRIAGE WAS PLUNGED in darkness. The last thing Rosa saw was one of the young women jumping up from her seat. Then she heard swift footsteps coming closer along the central aisle.

  “Alessandro! Here comes—”

  She broke off when she realized that he and the young woman were about to collide. Rosa was on the verge of shifting shape, but then she heard Alessandro speaking soothingly.

  “It’s all right. Nothing for you to be frightened of. The lights will come on again in a moment.”

  In between his words, she heard the whimpering of the young woman, who was weeping with fear. Her companion, behind them in the carriage, called to her.

  “Go back to your friend,” said Alessandro. “This will soon be over.”

  But of course it wouldn’t. It had hardly begun.

  Once again, someone screamed heartrendingly farther forward in the train, and soon there were more shouts. It couldn’t be just because of the darkness.

  The young woman’s sobbing moved away behind them. Rosa heard her speeding up, then a stumble, followed by a male voice cursing. On the way back to her seat, she must have collided with another of the passengers.

  “Alessandro?”

  His hand felt for hers. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Shape-shift?”

  “If the lights come on again, and the others see a panther and a snake, panic really will break out.”

  The shouting from the front was coming closer, rolling toward them.

  “It’s them, isn’t it?” she said. “Malandras.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  She moved back to him in the aisle but met first with the duffel bag, which he was still holding tightly, and then with Alessandro himself. The young woman had obviously reached her fellow traveler, because a voice was speaking reassuringly to her, while she went on whimpering. The man let forth a torrent of curses. Someone asked what they should do now. No one answered.

  “Come on.” Alessandro took Rosa’s hand and led her to the connecting door. There would be an emergency exit to the tracks in the space between the carriages.

  The sliding door opened, and at once the smell of burnt plastic engulfed them. Maybe as a result of the violent braking.

  The screams from the front cars were much louder here, and alarmingly close. Rosa heard Alessandro rattling at the lever to work the emergency exit.

  “Bolted down.”

  The sliding door behind them was still open; the voices in the carriage sounded more and more agitated. Suddenly the young woman’s tears turned to shrieks.

  “My God!” bellowed the man. “Keep your mouth—”

  A moist, tearing sound silenced him. Then there was a rustling that Rosa knew only too well. Feathers sweeping over something.

  “They’re here,” she whispered. One of the Harpies must have been sitting in the carriage in human form. Rosa remembered the door that she had heard closing just after they boarded the train themselves.

  Now all the passengers in the carriage were shouting at the same time, five or six voices. Several of the travelers seemed to have fallen over one another as they tried to leave their rows of seats. A sharp hiss came out of the darkness, followed by the shrill screech of a bird. A short, strong gust of wind blew past. The rustling sound of beating wings caused even more chaos among the passengers, with screams of panic from the injured and dying.

  Rosa followed Alessandro forward through the next sliding door. No one but the old lady and her younger companion had been sitting in this carriage before. There was nothing to be heard in the vicinity, only the screeching voices of the Harpies in the car behind them.

  Alessandro held Rosa close. “Shift shape and stay under the seats.”

  “How about you?”

  “There must be an emergency hammer for the windows somewhere. If I find it, I can break a pane. We have to get out of this damn train.” She heard his clothes rustle, and then the display of his cell phone suddenly bathed their immediate surroundings in bluish-white twilight. For the first time since the lights had gone out, she could see his face again. There was a silvery gleam in his eyes.

  “We’ll find it sooner if we work together,” she said, shaking her head. Looking around her, she was relieved to see that the sliding door had automatically closed. That wouldn’t stop the Harpies, but it muffled the screams from the other car.

  “Where are the old woman and the man with her?” asked Alessandro.

  She swiftly looked around her. “Never mind that. Let’s find the hammer.”

  “It ought to be hanging somewhere on the wall between windows. But it’s been some time since I traveled by train.” As they ran down the central aisle, with the light of the phone display ahead of them, Rosa looked out for anything else that could break a window. But there was nothing.

  “Over there.” Alessandro pointed to an empty hook on the wall. “It’s been removed.”

  Her eyes wandered farther forward, but so far as she could see in the dim light, there was the only hook. On the front wall beside the next sliding door, someone had sprayed a slogan in garish colors: SAVE WILD LIFE NOW.

  The door was half ajar and sounds came through from the darkness: screams and wails, the trampling of feet, doors being opened, all of it drowned out by the screeching of many birds.

  Rosa looked around again. Then the sliding door at the other end of the carriage opened. Something broad and massive pushed its way in. The opening was too small for the creature; even with its wings folded the Harpy could hardly get through. A hooked yellow beak shimmered in its face, and its round eyes gleamed.

  “Get down!” shouted a voice, this time from the other direction, coming through the half-open door to the carriage in front.

  Rosa reacted faster than Alessandro. As he was still turning to see what was coming their way, she seized him by the arm and pulled him down with her between two rows of seats.

  In rapid succession, muzzle flashes flared. Several shots whistled over their heads. For two or three seconds Rosa was almost deafened; she saw the flashes, but heard nothing except a dull thud as the gun was fired again and again. An acrid smell spread through the air.

  When she cautiously looked up, the Harpy was hanging with wings outspread over the seats at the end of the aisle, head dangling down. The shift back to human shape was already beginning. The wings receded into the body, which lost its hold on the seats and fell to the floor between the rows.

  “Come on, get up!” the voice that had spoken before told her, and only now did Rosa realize that it came from the old woman. When they got to their feet, Rosa was almost a head taller. The woman was very thin, almost bony, and now she
wasn’t wearing a hat. Her sparse hair was short, and poorly cut.

  Alessandro’s cell phone lay on one of the seats, illuminating the woman’s face from below. “Come with me,” she ordered, pointing the way into the carriage ahead of them with an automatic pistol.

  “There are several of them.” Alessandro was keeping between the woman and Rosa, just in case.

  More shots rang out. Something large was flung at the door backward, crashed into the frame, and lost pale feathers that drifted into the carriage like a cloud. The Harpy let out a screech as it swiftly managed to turn its body, thrusting it through the doorway with all its might.

  The old woman pressed the trigger. Her shot went into the shallow brow of the bird, killing the creature on the spot. Even as the bird of prey became a woman with blond hair, the man who had been sitting beside the old woman earlier appeared out of the darkness behind her. He, too, was holding a silvery automatic.

  “We’d hoped to get you two out of the train at the next station,” he said. “But the Malandras boarded the train with you. Some of them must have been waiting here in the tunnel, too, or there’d never have been so many.”

  “Who are you?” Rosa asked the woman.

  “We’re the ones who will get you out of here if you get moving. And please keep your mouths shut.”

  Rosa half expected Alessandro to contradict the speaker, but his restraint surprised her.

  They joined the woman in the center aisle, clambered over the body of the Harpy, and followed the man into the next carriage. The weeping and wailing of injured passengers could still be heard far behind them. Rosa tried to block it from her mind.

  Somewhere or other the electronics switched in with a humming sound, and immediately the emergency lighting came on: sulfur-yellow bulbs set far apart in the ceiling.

  The four of them passed through the empty carriage with separate compartments. The man hurried ahead, and the old woman brought up the rear. She moved remarkably fast, as if her frail exterior were only a costume hiding a completely different person—young, fit, and highly experienced at what she was doing.