“What did you do to your hair?! It looks horrible. Why did you do it?” Absurdly I almost felt like crying.
“Zu says I look fabulous.” He shook his head so the limp locks covered most of his face.
“Your parents are going to die when they see you,” I said. “And speaking of your parents, I went by Case Tigger looking for you and the place is a war zone. Gesilher is locked in the pantry eating his weight in jam, and the Evil Twins are playing slave driver with the other kiddies. I’m not even sure Ylva is still alive. You are supposed to be there, in charge.”
Udo waved his hand loftily “It’s not your problem, Flora. I can handle it.” His breath smelled strongly of spice—boozy spice. And he towered over me, too; when I looked down, I saw why. He was still wearing Springheel Jack’s red boots, and the heels of those boots were a full five inches high. I didn’t see how he could even stand in them.
“What do you want, Flora?” The Zu-Zu coalesced out of the shadows like an Underfed Apparition. “We are busy in practice.” She grabbed ahold of his arm, and he, in turn, slid his arm around her scrawny shoulders.
“I want conversation with Udo.”
“Here I am; converse,” Udo said impatiently.
“Privately.” Before he could protest further, I yanked him away from the Zu-Zu and into a corner.
He shook off my grip, glowering, but didn’t retreat. “What do you want, Flora? I thought we said all there was to say before.”
“I’m sorry about Springheel Jack.”
“Your blasted denizen ate him.”
“Ayah, but he left the boots, the important part. You can still get the bounty on the boots. But I really don’t think you should be wearing them.”
“That’s my business, not yours, Flora. You said you wanted nothing to do with me or my crazy schemes. So why don’t you just go?”
“Springheel Jack clearly had some magickal powers, or he wouldn’t have been able to bounce so far, or fast. You don’t know what those boots can do. Listen to me. It’s important.”
“It’s always important when Flora says it’s important,” Udo said. “Well, I got important time, too, and now ain’t it. Go away, Flora.”
While Udo and I had been talking, the Zu-Zu and her minions had somehow found enough energy to get up off their cushions and stumble to the stage. The hurdy-gurdy player turned his crank once, and the noise nearly deafened me. Califa’s Lip Rouge’s instruments were already charged; it takes a lot of Current and a lot of magickal juice to keep a band’s instruments permanently infested with Amplification Dæmons. Someone in Califa’s Lip Rouge was a pretty good magician. Surely not the Zu-Zu.
Without another word to me, Udo sprang away, leaping across the room in one giant bounce to join the band. He did a little shuffle, and my unease grew when I saw that the snake heads on each boot had come to life and were snapping and spitting.
“Take the boots off, Udo, and let’s go. I don’t have much time,” I pleaded.
“She’s in a hurry,” said the Zu-Zu. “I’m sure she has many important places to go and many important things to do.”
“Everything that Flora does is important, but nothing that anyone else does ever is.” Udo took the tambourine the Zu-Zu handed him, and shook it mockingly at me.
Behind him, the rest of the band broke into a shuffling rhythm, the rat-ta-tat of the drums providing a steady backbeat to the banjo’s twang. Anger flared in me. I should just give up and go. Let Udo have his fun. Yet I didn’t like the way the light was glinting off those sparkly red boots, or the way Udo was suddenly cavorting and jumping in them. Udo’s a good dancer, but he’d never been that energetic before.
“Play ’Fire Down Below!’” the Zu-Zu ordered.
The rhythm turned into the opening stanzas of the song, and Udo tapped out a few steps and gave a little twirl. A single spark flew as his left heel snapped down hard on the floor, and then another spark, from his right heel. As the tempo of the song picked up, so did Udo’s tap dancing—and let me tell you, in all the years that I had known Udo I had never seen him tap-dance before.
“There’s a fire all around, me kids—it’s playing hide-and-seek,” Udo sang.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, ho!” the band chorused.
“It’s trying to find a bunk, me kids, for to get some sleep.”
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, ho!” The Boy Toys laughed and clapped as Udo leaped and twirled, his lank hair flying about him like rope. The sparks were growing larger with each strike of his boot heel, and the snake heads were snapping and hissing. Udo’s face had gone taut with concentration, and sweat beaded his forehead. There was something familiar about his gestures, and the movements were so out of the ordinary for Udo that it took me a moment to recognize them.
Udo was preparing to Invoke.
But Udo didn’t know how to Invoke anything.
“Udo! Stop!” I ran at the stage, but he was already a whirl of motion, gliding and jumping, leaping and bouncing, the clatter of the sparkly red heels louder than the drumming. The drumming grew louder and the sparks from the red boots brighter, sizzling wildly as they flew about the small room.
The song was no longer about a fire down below; Udo was now spitting out smoky, burning Gramatica Words that he couldn’t possibly know on his own, and these Words were enveloping him in a whirling, whirring cocoon. The coldfire light was so bright that when I held up my arm to shield my eyes, they burned with a spotted afterglow.
The drums stopped. The music stopped. I peeked out from under my arm and saw only a bright roiling mass where Udo had stood. The cocoon began to shred and tear, great skeins of coldfire flinging about in the air, sizzling as they fell. A hand—Another hand—Two arms—The cocoon split down the middle and fell away, and there was Udo. He did another little jig, and the snake heads on his boot toes spit venom through gleaming fangs.
“I am myself again!” Udo crowed.
But plainly Udo was not himself at all. His features hadn’t changed, and yet somehow he looked different. His head tilted at an unfamiliar angle, and the smile lurking around his lips was sardonic and cruel. Udo’s eyes are light blue, the color of the summer sea. But now these blue eyes had turned an acrid, wolfish yellow. He no longer looked like Udo. He looked like a cruel, sadistic killer. He looked like Springheel Jack.
Horror flooded me as I realized the sparkly red boots were Springheel Jack. The flesh was merely a vessel. The boots were the true Will. They had enscorcelled Udo, possessed him. Changed him from a boy to an outlaw.
Nini Mo said, Vanity is a silken scarf that gets caught in the wheel of your barouche and snaps your neck like a pretzel. I think Udo had just proven that to be true, though with an entirely different fashion accessory.
Springheel Jack crowed, “Who then is the Jack of All Trades? The Jack-o’-Lantern, Jack Be Nimble, Jack in the Box? I am he, the Jack of Hearts, Jackhammer, the Jack Knife! Lumberjack, Steeplejack, Bootjack, Dancejack, and Jack Dandy! Jackaroo—”
“Jackanapes!” I shouted. “Jack Pudding, Cheap Jack, Jack All, Jack Daw!”
Springheel Jack glared at me. The glare turned into an ugly, lascivious leer that made Udo’s beautiful face look like a gargoyle. Jack bounced. He landed with a thundering roar and the room shook. Another bounce, his hair flying behind him like an oily torn flag, brought him in front of me.
He enfolded me into an embrace of iron, and then, despite my squirms, kissed me with lips that were hard and wet. In the sentimental novels, when the villain sweeps the heroine into his arms, the heroine is quickly overcome by his burning kisses, by the strength of his ardor. Jack’s kiss didn’t burn; it felt as though he was trying to mash my lips into my skull.
“Ooof—” I pounded on whatever part of him I could reach, which didn’t do a darn bit of good. I elevated my knee and gave him a good jab right where it counts, and he released me with a yelp. The Zu-Zu and her Boy Toys were laughing hysterically, though the situation had no humor in it at all.
“I’ll r
emember that, girlie,” Springheel Jack said ominously. Another bounce took him across the room, and then, with a crash, he jumped through the window.
Springheel Jack—Udo—was gone.
Twenty-Six
Shaking. Another Parrot. Stealing.
BY THE TIME I GOT down the stairs and out on the street, there was no sign of Springheel Jack. Those sparkly red boots had lift; who knows where he had sprung away to? How high, how far, how fast—it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was gone.
What was I going to do now? I still had to meet Lord Axacaya, but I couldn’t just let Udo bounce off into the night to commit mayhem, thievery, and terror. But how was I going to find him?
As if to remind me of the urgency of my first errand, the ground began to wiggle beneath my feet. I grabbed the front stoop banister and held on. This trembler was the biggest so far; the air filled with the screeching sound of shifting stone and wrenching wood. The house across the street had gorgeous planters hanging outside its windows; one by one they detached from the windowsills and crashed down, scattering dirt and flowers. The streetlamp flickered and went out. The ground buckled and heaved, cobblestones quivering like jelly. Shrieking people began to spill out of houses, staggering on the rolling ground as though they were drunk.
Maybe this was it—the last big quake. Maybe it was too late—the Sigil had weakened enough to let the Loliga extract her revenge. Mamma, Poppy, the mite in Mamma’s tummy, silly Flynn—how would rickety Crackpot stand against this force? The elemental I had rescued was burrowing down my collar, tickling my neck, tiny claws catching on my skin. I held on to the iron railing with all my might, though it leaped under my grip like a bucking horse. I closed my eyes so that if the Zu-Zu’s house fell on me I would not see it coming. The earthquake seemed to go on forever, but after a while, the trembling began to lessen, then ceased completely.
I opened my eyes. The air was boiling with dust, but through the cloud I saw that the City (or at least this part of it) still stood. Just barely. A giant crack had appeared in the middle of the street, and houses were listing like storm-damaged trees. A few doors down, an entire building had collapsed; it looked like a pile of toothpicks. I stood up, wiping dust from my face, tasting grit in my mouth. The Zu-Zu’s house looked fine. Too bad.
The elemental launched itself out of my collar and disappeared into the dust cloud. It was getting out while the getting was good. Smart thing.
The temblor decided me. Udo would have to take his chances as Springheel Jack for a few hours. If the City fell around our ears, what would his sparkly red fashion disaster matter? The Landaðon kiddies were also on their own. I only hoped that Ulrik and Ulrika would put their feud aside in the face of disaster. I had to get to the Lone Mountain Columbarium and meet Lord Axacaya. The City was running out of time.
I ran up Fillman Street, toward the Lone Mountain jitney stop at Fillman and Turk, hoping the jitney was still running. As I ran, huffing and puffing in those stupid tight stays, I passed a whole lot of mess: screaming people, broken masonry, barking dogs, all nightmarish and shadowy in the light of broken street lamps—or, sometimes, just plain dark.
There was no sign of the jitney, and judging from the snarl of traffic, even if there was a jitney still running, it wouldn’t be getting very far very fast. It was the same for cabs. I would have to walk.
I dodged up Turk. A woman pushed a baby carriage the size of a sixty-pound cannon; a man carried a rocking chair; another man led six dogs on a tandem lead, the dogs all pulling and jumping in different directions. I don’t know where everyone thought they were going. When the earth is shaking, nowhere in the City is safe, but I guess people weren’t thinking too straight—too scared to stay put. The only thing preventing the throngs from turning into a panicked mob were the City militia, who were out in force, keeping order with much whistle blowing and truncheon waving. But no gas gun. I guess Mamma had made good on her threat to have it confiscated.
I ducked between two guards and dashed by them, narrowly missing being run over by a fire squad barreling down the street, horns blowing, fire dogs barking. Another guard tried to grab me, but I dodged around him and kept going, ignoring his shouts and threats. Then I saw, fluttering over the crowd, a splotch of bright blue: Axacaya’s parrot. I followed the parrot’s flight path, shoving my way around a woman carrying a screaming baby, a cluster of howling schoolkids, another whacking militiaman. The parrot darted into an alley, and so did I.
The bird landed on the lip of a trash bin and cocked its brilliant head.
“Axa say go ahead without!” the parrot croaked.
“Go to Bilskinir without him?”
“Ayah,” the parrot replied. “Quickly!”
It launched up and off into the darkness before I could ask it why, where, or—most importantly—how. Bilskinir House sits on the edge of the Pacifica Ocean, a full six miles from the City line. I doubted very much that the Point Lobos horsecar was running, and it would take me hours to walk out there, even if there was no traffic at all. But I had to get there, and quickly.
You gotta do what you gotta do, Nini Mo said.
What would Nini Mo do? She would beg, borrow, or steal transportation—anything to get where she needed to go. The first two options seemed unlikely to be successful in this hullabaloo. That left the last.
So that’s what I did: I stole a horse.
Twenty-Seven
Horsejacking. Bilskinir House. Let Me In!
HORSEJACKING turned out to be surprisingly easy. I left the alley and jumped back into the flood of people streaming up Turk, with the idea of heading toward the horsecar barn at Turk and Division. If it was still standing, perhaps I could take advantage of the confusion to help myself to a ride. Getting through the panicked crowds was hard going—in fifteen minutes I barely made it half a block, and I was stepped on twice, almost run over once, and pushed, shoved, kicked, and yelled at many times. But then, as I reached the intersection, the Goddess granted me her favor.
Ahead of me, the hordes parted and a horse trotted straight toward me. It wore a saddle, but its reins were dragging, and by this I guessed that it had been tied up somewhere, jerked free during the earthquake, and bolted. Its head was bouncing nervously, and its eyes were rolling back and forth, trying to look everywhere at once. When the horse saw the fountain on the southwest corner of the intersection (a monument to some victory of the Warlord’s), it rushed over and plunged its muzzle happily into the water. Carefully, slowly, I sidled up, slow and casual, and took hold of the bridle, coiling the reins around my hand.
No one shouted at my daring, and the horse didn’t jerk away Instead, it turned to me, nuzzling me somewhat gratefully. Horses feel better when they have company, and I can’t say I blame them—you always feel braver with two. The horse ducked its head again, slurping more water, and when it was done, it turned an inquiring eye my direction as if to say What now?
The saddle was pretty fancy of well-worn tooled leather, studded with conchos. The stirrups were too long, but I would have to wait until I got out of the crowd to shorten them. I used the rim of the fountain to mount up, and even then, I had to hop pretty high, for that horse was big—at least eighteen hands. The advantage of being mounted was immediately clear. People who weren’t going to move for the 135 pounds of me were quicker to get out of the way of a thousand pounds of horse. Within a few minutes we had veered off Turk and started out the Lobos Road. The road was also clogged with people, but by the time we reached the Presidio crossroads, the way had cleared enough that I could give Sieur Caballo his head.
He took it and flew. The wind rushed through my hair and stung my face, the dark night a blur around me. My brain, which should have been on the future, was fixed on the past. Fixed on Udo. I was a total idiot—I should have seen the danger of Springheel Jack’s boots earlier. When Valefor said that the boots were the source of Jack’s power, I should have realized he meant it literally The boots wore the man, not the other way arou
nd. When the boots had lost their host, they turned to the nearest replacement: Udo. They had beguiled him and turned his own weakness—vanity—against him. How could I have not seen that? No wonder Udo had been acting so strange. I should have realized he had not been himself.
But I couldn’t do anything to help him, not yet. All I could do was hope that he wouldn’t do anything foolish—rob the Califa National Bank or cut all his hair off, for example. And as soon as the City was safe, I would find him and figure out a way to get him unenscorcelled. Ayah, Udo had been a complete and total snapperhead, but I couldn’t let Springheel Jack have him.
My brain churned with recrimination against myself, and with fear that by the time the City was saved, it would be too late for Udo. And that maybe it was already too late for the City—that the Loliga was close to exacting her revenge. Round and round went these thoughts, and then, suddenly, we crested the edge of the Pacifica Playa and there, high over the Pacifica Ocean, was Bilskinir House, a black silhouette against the star-flecked sky.
The road to Bilskinir’s front gate starts down on the Playa and then crawls up the cliff, and only at low tide is the foot of the road dry. Alas for me, when I arrived, the tide was high and the bottom of the road was flooded. By my watch, it was just one o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t wait for low tide, whenever that might be. But from my previous dealings with Paimon, I knew he could control the weather around his House. Surely he could pull the tide back and let me in.
“Paimon!” I shouted. “Paimon!"
Sieur Caballo splashed along the tide line, toward the causeway. He was lathered and thirsty, but I had nothing to water him with, poor boy. I petted his sweaty neck; he dipped his nose down into the surf and then tossed his head, snorting salt water. The wind was roaring straight off the ocean, blowing my hair in my eyes, and freezing my ears into lumps of ice. I flipped my collar up, which helped only my neck. But that was better than nothing.
Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) Page 18
