The Siren's Cry

by Jennifer Anne Kogler

  “The man keeping me here has a silver tooth, a beard, and gray eyes . . . but I don’t know who he is,” Miles said at a frantic pace. His wild, uneasy eyes looked Fern up and down. “He took me from my house in Minnesota.” Miles stopped for a moment, still wide-eyed, and scooted toward Fern. “Aunt Chan said he was coming for me, and Aunt Chan is hardly ever wrong. Which is why I can’t forget to give you the picture this time.”

  “Who is Aunt Chan? What picture?”

  “I live with her. She’s one of us,” Miles said plainly. He lifted his Twins cap off for a brief moment to rub his head and then tugged it back over his ears. Though she’d seen his hair before in her dream, Fern was still surprised to see a mop of large black curls underneath his cap. Miles’s fine features in combination with his wild hair were striking.

  Fern had no idea where to go from here. Her questions were like weeds—once she picked one, four more sprang up.

  Time was wasting away, but Fern was stuck.

  “We need to get you out of here. Where does the man who took you keep the key to this cage?” Fern held the large padlock hanging from the cage door in her hands. It was heavy and obviously very sturdy. She scanned the room, but there were no keys anywhere. Then she looked up at the half-open grate.

  “Thank you for coming,” Miles said. “I knew you would.”

  Fern frowned at Miles. Why wasn’t he able to answer her questions in any kind of useful way?

  “You look confused,” Miles said.

  “I have so many questions I want to ask you,” Fern admitted. “But we’ve got to get out of this place first. Do you have any ideas? Or know why you’re here?” she asked. Truth be told, what Fern really couldn’t understand was what she herself was doing here. Five minutes had ticked by and she’d made no progress with the boy.

  “Rod Carew stole home seven times in one season for the Twins.” Miles said. His eyes blinked several times behind his oversize hipster glasses.

  “Um, okay . . .” Fern said, trying not to sound frustrated. Why wasn’t Miles Zapo more concerned with being rescued? Had he lost it here in his darkened cage?

  “See, stealing home is one of the least possible and most impressive feats in baseball,” Miles began, speaking so quickly that his sentences ran together like falling dominoes. “Players steal second all the time. But it’s approximately one hundred twenty-seven feet away from the catcher, so it’s easy to take a big lead off first if the pitcher isn’t holding the runner close. Third’s a little harder, but nothing’s like stealing home. With home plate, the catcher is always there blocking it, no matter what. The pitcher’s mound is only sixty feet, six inches away, and the ball travels there so many times a game—every time the ball is pitched. Runners reach third less frequently than first or second. Stealing home scores a run. Runs, of course, are what win games.” Miles looked intently at Fern.

  “Miles,” Fern said, flabbergasted and growing more frantic. “I appreciate the baseball lesson, but we need to figure out how to get you out of here.” She’d stopped making an effort to sound patient. Perhaps coming here to visit Miles was a mistake, she thought.

  “No, no,” Miles said, shaking his head as if forcing himself to wake up. “You don’t understand. Aunt Chan said this was going to happen. She said when you came, we would want to steal home, right away. She told me, though it would be difficult, that I had to be careful to make sure you knew everything or we couldn’t pull it off. It’s like she said: You’re trying to steal home right now, but we have to get on base first. Then we have to get to second and third. Then we can steal home.” Miles said it as if he had just delivered a profound thought.

  Fern thought she heard a rustling noise coming from the other room. She whipped her head around and peered through the doorway into the orange-lighted space.

  “Please don’t worry. We have time. The man has two monsters, Howling Quetzals, and they leave each night for a few hours,” Miles said, noticing Fern’s uneasy glances at the doorway. “Besides, they don’t come from there,” he said, pointing through the bars of his cage at the doorway. “They come from up there.” He moved his extended finger and pointed up at the grate. Fern wanted reassurance, but other than the fact that a few of them were monsters and one had a silver tooth and strange gray eyes, she had no idea who “they” were. Her belief in Miles Zapo was beginning to fade.

  “Okay,” she said, clutching the bars of the cage tensely, deciding she had no choice but to play along with Miles’s baseball analogy. “What do I need to know to get us on base?” Fern was apprehensive and annoyed, but looking at Miles amid the filth, banana peels, and cereal boxes in the cage, she was shocked that he hadn’t crumbled from distress. Maybe the Minnesota Twins talk was the only way he could survive—his aunt Chan had turned it into a game to make it less terrifying. Focusing on what a man capable of locking a child in a dark cage was planning to do was enough to drive anyone mad. The Twins talk was a way for Miles to survive.

  But why hadn’t this Aunt Chan woman tried to stop Miles from being taken? Why would she let her nephew go through an ordeal like this one?

  Miles scuttled a few more feet forward until he was almost flush up against the inside of the cage’s door. Looking squarely at Fern through his black-framed glasses, he began his story. Fern concentrated on every detail, wondering which ones would turn out to be important.

  According to Miles Zapo, he was born in the small town of Punta Gorda in the southern part of Belize in Central America. He didn’t remember exactly when, but according to his aunt Chan, she took him to live with her in Minnesota the day he turned one year old, March 10, Fern’s own birthday. He had been living with his aunt for the past twelve years.

  Miles continued speaking about how he never knew his parents, but that his aunt had told him they’d died trying to protect him when he was a small child. His aunt had let him know from a very young age, that he was a member of an especially talented group called Otherworldlies. He said Aunt Chan waited until he was eight years old to tell him about his special birth and the Omphalos prophecy, and that he was an Unusual. Miles stopped speaking for a moment.

  “When did you find out?” he asked, looking at Fern.

  “Only a few months ago. I’ve been raised by Normals.”

  “Normals?” Miles questioned, arching an eyebrow.

  “You know . . . normal people. Humans who aren’t Otherworldlies.”

  “Aunt Chan said you might have different names to explain things,” Miles said.

  “Wait a second,” Fern said as a thought occurred to her. “If you’re an Unusual, why haven’t you teleported out of here?” Her excitement grew. “We’ll both teleport someplace and then decide what to do. . . . There’s no reason to stay here!”

  Miles’s head sunk onto his chest.

  “Believe me, I thought of that the moment Silver Tooth put me here.”

  “Silver Tooth?” Fern asked.

  “Sorry . . . in my head that’s what I call the man who took me. The only things I can remember about him are the silver tooth in the center of his mouth, his black beard, and his gray eyes—they’re like the color of wet clay. I’ve never seen eyes like them before.” Miles shivered as he recalled the man in his mind.

  “So why haven’t you teleported then?”

  “I can’t teleport right now,” Miles said.

  “Why not?” Fern questioned. Though her power had caused her anxiety and pain, she couldn’t imagine losing the ability to teleport. She worried about what she would do if Miles’s disability was permanent. There had to be some way to get him out of here, but Fern wasn’t equipped to break into an iron cage, and there didn’t seem to be any helpful tools around.

  “It’s got something to do with the Howling Quetzals,” Miles explained. “Their low howl puts me in a trance. . . . I don’t even know how long I’ve been down here. I think their chant must drain my power. I tried so hard to reach you, like before.” Miles stopped and hung his head. “But I couldn’t. .
. . I can’t do anything I used to be able to do.”

  Fern could see wells of tears collecting on the ridges of Miles’s lower eyelids. He quickly wiped them away and looked up at Fern once again.

  “You will be able to as soon as we get you out of here,” Fern responded. She could see that Miles needed to be reassured, but she wasn’t positive she was up to the task. Her heart went out to Miles. He was putting on a brave front, but it was clear he was petrified and anxious about everything. Fern had only been in this room for a little over twenty minutes, and she was already feeling its dreadful effect. Her heart began to beat more quickly.

  Fern knew what it felt like to be terror-stricken. When she’d first heard the rumors that her birth mother was a Blout—the evil kind of Otherworldly—she was horrified by the idea that Blout blood coursed through her veins. Then, during the time that Vlad was after her, she was never sure when she woke up each day if it would be her last.

  A life ruled by fear wasn’t a life at all.

  She had to save Miles Zapo, a fellow Unusual, from this place . . . and from the howling monsters. Fern looked down at her watch. She had five minutes left.

  “Miles, look at me,” Fern commanded. Miles turned his tear-filled, frightened eyes to her. “I swear I’m going to get you out of here. But first you need to tell me everything you know about the Quetzals.”

  Miles wiped his eyes and took a breath, trying to calm himself. After a moment, he began. “A normal quetzal is a fluorescent green bird that’s sacred to my ancestors, the Mayans. But Howling Quetzals are giant horrible versions of them.”

  “What do you mean?” Fern asked.

  “Howling Quetzals are more like scary giant green beasts. Silver Tooth has two of them with him. Always. They’re ugly and they make this high-pitched, droning wail that you can’t get out of your head until everything goes blank. I hear them, pass out, and when I finally wake up, they’re gone. The bottom half of their bodies is covered in giant oil-slick colored feathers with these claw-legs, and their top half is covered with hand-size, slimy, pulsing scales, and they have these black-hole eyes and when they look at you . . .” Miles’s voice drifted off. He began to shudder uncontrollably.

  “Miles.” Fern snapped her fingers in Miles’s face again. She could hear the clock ticking in her head. He stopped shuddering. It was clear to Fern that Miles was barely keeping it together as the memory of what he’d been through seized him. “Miles, do you know what Silver Tooth is after? Why he took you?”

  Fern reached into the cage and put her hand on Miles’s shoulder.

  “Look at me,” she said, trying to make her voice as even as a recently paved road. “When I leave, I’m going to get the entire Alliance to help me break you out of here. You only need to sit tight for a little longer.”

  “No! Aunt Chan says there is no real Alliance,” Miles insisted, referencing the group the Rollens had formed to fight the evil Blouts.

  “I’ve been to the headquarters and it’s real,” Fern argued, remembering her visit to New Tartarus. “It’s very real, and they’ll help you.”

  “You don’t understand . . . we can’t trust them. Aunt Chan says it’s like any power-hungry organization—they’re more interested in gaining control than doing what’s right. Silver Tooth could be from the Alliance, for all we know! You can’t tell them,” Miles said, panic in his voice.

  “Okay. I won’t. I’ll deal with it myself.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” Fern said, sensing Miles’s desperation.

  A sound thundered through the small room. It was as if a large boulder had landed on the air-conditioning duct directly above Fern and Miles. They both became silent instantly, waiting. The noise was moving from the far end of the room toward them. Someone was above them.

  “Oh no! They’re here. I have to give you the picture,” Miles urged.

  Miles removed his Minnesota Twins hat quickly, revealing his curly shock of hair once more. He reached inside the cap itself and peeled off a picture that had been carefully taped to the inside of the dome. He pushed the picture at Fern through the bars. She grabbed it.

  Clomp. Clomp. Clomp!

  “Teleport there!” Miles whispered urgently, pointing to the picture. “As soon as you can!”

  The clomps turned into pounding thuds. Fern looked up and was sure someone (or something) was moving toward the grate.

  “Get out of here!” he insisted. “Silver Tooth is back. . . . He’ll trap you here! Then we’ll both be lost!”

  Fern’s mind raced. She didn’t want to leave Miles at the mercy of Silver Tooth, whoever he was. But if she stayed, the man might disable her in the same way he’d controlled Miles.

  She closed her eyes and visualized the hotel bathroom she’d just left. The pounding grew louder.

  “Go!” Miles screamed, the terror in his voice boiling over.

  Fern, clutching the picture, closed her eyes and tried to block out the thundering crashes above her. She hoped she hadn’t waited too long.

  Chapter 7

  The Washington Monument

  When the clock flashed 12:28 a.m., Sam snuck into the bathroom. Before he left, he carefully turned the alarm off and put a pillow over the phone. He made sure that Preston was sound asleep. Taylor Kushner and Greg Daniels were motionless in the adjacent queen-size bed. Sam took his wristwatch into the bathroom, where he could safely hear the prearranged two-ring signal on the bathroom extension phone. To keep himself from pacing, he lay down on the cold tile floor. He tried to think of something besides Fern struggling and alone in a dark basement somewhere, dealing with who-knows-what.

  Although he tried to banish it from his mind, Sam wondered if this would be his life from now on. Waiting in uncomfortable places, worried to distraction about his sister. He knew it wasn’t fair to be jealous of her, especially when she had suffered so much because of her special powers, but that didn’t stop him from feeling resentment building inside.

  Why hadn’t he been born an Otherworldly? In many ways, Fern wasn’t equipped to cope with the cards she’d been dealt. Sometimes he was certain he could have handled it better—the good and the bad.

  He looked down at his watch.

  12:31 a.m.

  Fern was a minute late. Sam, barefoot, opened the bathroom door and crept out of his room into the hotel hallway. He eased the door closed so it barely made a sound. The hall was empty, and Sam headed to the elevator.

  A floor below him, Lindsey Lin decided she didn’t have a second to lose. She’d been watching the red numbers change on her clock for the last ten minutes.

  When 12:31 appeared, she was certain that something had happened to Fern. She rolled out of bed and stumbled to the door. Lindsey didn’t care if her roommates heard her. Convinced that Fern was in serious trouble, Lindsey pushed the door open and went to the room three doors down from hers. She had to reach her parents—and soon.

  The moment she opened the door into the hall, she let out a gasp. Lindsey let the door swing closed behind her.

  Directly in front of her, Sam sat cross-legged on the hall floor. He stood up in front of Lindsey, his blond hair sticking out every which way. Lindsey wondered how long Sam had been sitting there, waiting for her.

  “What are you doing here?” Lindsey said angrily.

  “You can’t tell your parents Fern is missing,” Sam said, somehow knowing exactly where Lindsey was going.

  “Why not?”

  “Wait a few minutes . . . that’s all,” Sam said, trying to remain calm. He spoke more softly than normal, conscious of the fact that if they were caught in the hallway at this hour, both of them would be in hot water.

  “ We should have told my parents as soon as Fern started having the dreams!” Lindsey argued.

  “Fern’s never been good at keeping track of time. She’ll call. I know she will.” Sam couldn’t explain to Lindsey why he didn’t want to involve her parents, but he was convinced that Fern would be better off witho
ut their help. “Please. Eddie always says there’s actual time and then there’s Fern time—she’s always five minutes late everywhere. Give her a few more minutes.”

  “Get out of my way,” Lindsey snarled, “or I will move you out of my way.”

  “Hold on!” Sam said. “Shhh!”

  Lindsey and Sam had both heard it. From inside Lindsey’s hotel room, the phone rang once. Then again. Then it stopped ringing.

  Lindsey glowered at Sam. Without a word, she pivoted and turned away from him. She opened the door to her room with her magnetic card and let it close in his face.

  But Sam didn’t care. Fern was safe.

  When Fern finally arrived back in her hotel bathroom, everything was as she had left it: The towel was stuffed into the crack under the door, the lid of the toilet seat was down, and the cupboard where she’d stored her shoes was ajar. Yet, on a different level entirely, Fern felt as though everything had changed. She’d confirmed it for herself. There was another Unusual out there—someone just like her, born at the very same time, who’d lost his parents too—and he was in terrible danger. For the second time, Fern wondered if forces stronger than coincidence had brought her to Miles.

  “It’s up to me to save Miles Zapo,” she said softly to herself, still clutching the picture Miles had given her mere minutes ago.

  Fern fell asleep at three in the morning, and when she woke up to Blythe’s blaring alarm three hours later, the last thing she felt like doing was getting ready to stand in line to ride the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument. Blythe and Lee had commandeered the bathroom, taking with them bags of makeup and a variety of state-of-the-art hairstyling appliances unlike any Fern had ever seen. The most annoying part, however, was that all access to the bathroom was blocked. Neither Fern nor Candace even had a chance to brush their teeth.

  “Where did you go last night?” Candace asked as she layered on clothing. Fern had already seen her put on tights, thick corduroy pants, wool socks, and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She placed a down jacket and thick gloves on a nearby chair.