by Alan Gratz
Fergus thought he saw a flicker of something like surprise cross Blavatsky’s face, but then it was gone, replaced by a soft smile.
“Any friends of Madame Laveau’s are friends of mine,” Blavatsky said.
“Well said!” Theodosia told her. “And now, Madame Bokor, if you are in readiness, we are eager to proceed with tonight’s ceremony. Who wouldn’t be?” she asked, and her courtiers tittered.
“Which is what?” Laveau asked.
“Tonight I steal a page from the Voodoo Queen’s book of spells,” Blavatsky announced to the assembled audience, with a nod to Laveau. “Through Theosophic methods, I shall call upon the loa of Baron Samedi to make our beloved queen young again!”
Two zombi wheeled a mechanical cart into the middle of the room. It was a wooden box with brass fittings, covered all over with gauges and brass pipes and speaking trumpets. To Fergus’s eye, it was a combination of aether aggregator and ancient computer, like the kind he’d seen the madman Thomas Edison use to try to raise a Mangleborn. Alarm bells rang inside Fergus’s head.
“In my quest for knowledge, I have traveled the world,” Blavatsky told the crowd. “When the Corsican brought the Darkness to my beloved homeland of Russia, I fled to the east, through Hindustan and into Tibet, the roof of the world, where I discovered the secret doctrine that links the world we know to every great civilization of the past—Rome, Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, even the First Men—to a deeper, more primeval root race of godlike beings I call the Hidden Masters.”
A deeper, more primeval root race of godlike beings called the Hidden Masters sounded an awful lot like the Mangleborn to Fergus, and they were nothing you wanted to discover in Tibet or anywhere else. He looked worryingly at Hachi, but she was locked in to what Blavatsky was saying like a clutch disc on a flywheel, analyzing every word for answers.
“This root race was the bearer of esoteric and mystical knowledge far in advance of our own,” Blavatsky explained. She drew arcane symbols on the floor around the machine with black powder as she spoke. “They knew all the unexplained laws of nature—of aether and life and lektricity—and held the keys to unlocking the latent powers buried within us all. And they are still with us, these Hidden Masters, if only we will search for them. That is what I have done, moving ever east, from Russia into the Japans, into California, across the Great Plains of North America, and south to Louisiana.”
With a brief detour to Florida when Hachi was a baby, Fergus thought.
“Here in New Orleans, I found a place where the Hidden Masters are closer to the surface, where the power of the root race is strongest,” Blavatsky said. “Tonight, I will reach out to that power.” She held up her necklace, which had a fetish of a young woman on it. “Tonight, I will call forth the astral power of Baron Samedi, one of the intermediary aspects of the Hidden Masters, he whose power to heal and resurrect I used to create le Grande Zombi Armee. I will trap his loa in this charm, and with this around her neck, our beloved Queen Theodosia will not only become young again, she will be immortal!”
Marie Laveau grabbed Fergus and Hachi and pulled them away from the babbling crowd.
“Whatever this is, whatever Blavatsky means to do, it will not work,” Laveau warned them. “What she proposes can’t be done.”
“But you did it,” Fergus said. “You figured out a way to be young again.”
“Not like this,” Laveau said. “Never like this. This is Mangleborn science.” Laveau strode to the edge of Blavatsky’s markings, careful not to step inside them. “Blavatsky, stop this. You do not understand the power you toy with.”
“Why should the secrets of long life be yours alone, Laveau?” Blavatsky threw back at her. “Will you not share them with your queen?”
The men and women of the court watched Laveau. She stood straight and proud. “Those secrets are mine alone,” she said.
“I shall not be so selfish,” Blavatsky said, and she threw a switch on the machine.
The air crackled and the ancient engine hummed, gathering aether to it. But what else was it doing? Fergus longed to get a look inside the thing. By the way it was shaking and the amount of aether it seemed to be aggregating, they would all get a look inside it soon when it blew up in their faces.
“Legba Atibon, guardian of the crossroads,” Blavatsky said, her voice raised over the growing din of the machine, “Legba, guardian of path and gate, open the door.”
The doors to the room slammed shut, and a glowing white box appeared in the air between two of the trumpets on top of the machine.
“No—she can’t do this,” Marie Laveau said. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Will it kill her?” Hachi asked.
“It will kill us all!” Laveau said.
Hachi rushed Blavatsky and the machine. At the edge of the black powder circle on the floor she was blown back with a CRACK! Fergus rushed to her side.
“Ateg-bini-monse, odan-bhalah wedo, Samedi!” Blavatsky cried. “Samedi ke-ecu-mali, gba ke’dounou voudoun!”
“Hachi? Hachi, are you all right?” Fergus asked.
Hachi shook off the blast and nodded.
“Samedi yeke hen-me a-chay,” Blavatsky cried. “Samedi yeke hen-me a-chay!”
Wind stirred in the room. There was a blinding flash, and someone screamed. People rushed for the exit, but the doors wouldn’t open.
And then the candelabras came to life.
Their metal arms flexed and bent like they were flesh and blood. They jumped from their tables and moved like little metal gorillas, their burning wax arms leaving scorch marks on the floor as they loped about, chasing the horrified courtiers. They were suddenly everywhere—every candlestick in the room had come to life.
“No—no!” Blavatsky cried. “That wasn’t supposed to happen!”
“Madame Blavatsky, turn it off! Turn it off!” Queen Theodosia cried. She hid behind the giant throne at the end of the room while zombi General Jackson, his sword drawn, protected her.
One of the monkey-like candelabras caught a woman’s fancy dress on fire, and she spun screaming before Hachi smothered the fire in the deep, heavy folds of the woman’s bustle.
“Circus! Showtime!” Hachi called.
From the pouches in her bandolier burst three winged wind-up animals—a lion, a gorilla, and a giraffe. There had once been five, but Hachi had given Zee the Zebra to a little girl who needed a friend in Jersey, and had lost Tusker the Elephant to a wind-up panther in Florida. To the three that remained, Hachi said, “We have to keep those candlesticks away from the people!”
The little wind-up toys saluted and flew into action. Mr. Lion grabbed one with his teeth, thrashing it around like a dog with a rag bone. Jo-Jo the Gorilla put his mighty arms around another and dragged it away from a man who had fainted in the corner. Freckles the Giraffe tricked one into chasing her, then toppled a table onto it, knocking its candles from the holder and putting out its fire.
But there were still more. Dozens more. One of them set fire to the thick curtains on the windows, and Marie Laveau pulled them down and stomped on them. Across the room, Hachi moved to protect the queen.
Inside the circle, Blavatsky flipped switches and turned dials, trying to shut the machine down. She clearly didn’t know how to operate it.
“No, that’s amplifying it!” Fergus told her. “No, that’s just confining the portal, not closing it. No, that’s shifting the aether frequency.” He could feel each thing as she did it, his body in tune with the machine—with every machine now. “There, that one! Do that one!” he told her, pointing to a small lever on the side. Blavatsky flipped it, and with a sigh the machine released the aether it had collected and shut down. The wind died away and the glowing white portal closed, but the candelabras still scurried around the room, setting people and furniture on fire.
“I can counteract the spell,” Marie Laveau called, “but I need them all together!”
Getting all the candelabras into one place was going to be
like catching steam. As soon as you threw one into the corner and turned to get another, the first one was gone. Fergus stood in the middle of the chaos watching the little iron monsters merrily chasing the courtiers around the room, and suddenly he had an idea.
Fergus hurried over to where Blavatsky huddled against the wall, kicking candelabras away with her high-heeled black boots.
“I just need to borrow this,” Fergus said, pulling the long copper necklace off her.
Blavatsky started to protest, but he hobbled away to where Jackson was protecting the queen.
“I need that sword,” Fergus told the general.
The zombi took a swing at him with it, and Fergus jumped back just in time.
“Hey! Whoa! Friend!” he cried.
“General Jackson, it’s all right. Give him your sword,” Theodosia said, peeking out from behind her throne.
Slowly, cautiously, Fergus reached out for Jackson’s sword and took it from the zombi’s decomposing hand. The general’s dead eyes stared straight ahead, but Fergus still felt like the zombi was watching him.
Fergus hurriedly coiled the copper wire of Blavatsky’s necklace around the sword from the base of the blade to the point.
“What are you doing?” Queen Theodosia asked him.
“I’m creating a lektromagnet. When it’s energized, the copper coils will turn the saber into a powerful magnet, and we can catch all those wee clackers running about.”
“Fascinating,” Queen Theodosia said. “But where will you get the lektricity?”
“I’ve got that covered,” Fergus said. He held the sword in both hands—one on the hilt, the other near the point of the blade—and thought, Lektromagnet. All through his body and down through his arms, he felt the wonderfully weird and tingly sensation of his black blood rearranging itself, forming the circuits he needed to do the job. The black maze of lines on his arms and face shifted and rearranged, and in moments lektricity was coursing out of his right hand, through the wound copper coils, and back into his left hand with a hum.
A gold fork came flying at Fergus. He ducked instinctively, but the fork smacked into the sword and stuck there. A gold cup came flying at him next, slamming into the sword. Fergus frowned. Gold wasn’t ferrous. It shouldn’t have been attracted to the lektromagnet. Then he understood.
“Nothing in this room’s really gold, is it?” he said to the queen. “It’s all base metals painted over to look expensive.”
“It’s been a lean few years,” Theodosia admitted.
A gold plate slammed into Fergus’s lektromagnet, followed by Queen Theodosia’s supposedly gold crown.
“All right, a lean few decades,” Theodosia admitted.
“Brass,” Fergus said. He wished everything in the room were brass. Then the only things that would come flying at him would be the painted iron candelabras.
One of the little monsters flew up at him and clanked onto the sword. It burned and writhed, trying to escape, but the lektromagnet held it tight.
“All right,” Fergus told it. “Let’s go collect your brothers. Hachi! Throw ’em at me!”
Hachi understood at once, and soon Fergus was ducking a hail of silverware that wasn’t silver and golden candelabras that weren’t gold. The metal came at him from all directions, hitting him in the head, shoulders, arms, legs, and back before latching onto the sword. It quickly got too heavy to carry, and Marie Laveau hauled over a wooden table for him to set the mass of metal on. Fergus’s hands got singed as the candelabras squirmed and burned, but he held on tight. He upped the amps through the lektromagnet, and the last few candelabras—and a few pieces of fake gold jewelry from the courtiers—came flying into the writhing trash heap on his arms.
“Now!” Hachi called to Laveau. “Do it!”
Laveau reached inside her dress and withdrew a small leather pouch. She held it tight in her hands over the mass of metal and closed her eyes, chanting, “Bomba mande, bomba mande, tigui le papa, bomba mande! Papa Legba, please close the door!”
There was another flash, and all at once the doors of the room flew open and the candelabras stopped wriggling. It was over. Courtiers ran for the exits, and guards rushed in to see to the queen. Fergus waited until Marie Laveau gave him a weary, relieved nod, then cut the lektricity to the sword. The gilded ironware clattered down with a racket and spilled onto the floor. Fergus felt like collapsing with them.
Then Hachi was there, putting an arm around him to hold him up.
“You all right?” she asked.
“I think I may have a fork stuck in my butt,” Fergus said, arching and popping his back. Hachi looked as cut up and beat up as he felt, her beautiful red dress tattered and torn.
“You really are Leaguers,” Marie Laveau told them. “No one else could have done what you did here tonight.”
“It was nice to have an assist,” Fergus told her. He nodded at the thing she had taken from her dress. “What’s in the pouch?”
“This is my gris-gris,” she said. It sounded like “gree-gree.” She opened the pouch and poured the contents out into her palm. It was a collection of seven roots and seeds and leaves. It didn’t look like much to Fergus, and he said so.
Laveau laughed. “It may not look like much, but put together with the right incantations, it’s powerful magic. Your gris-gris is powerful too,” Laveau said, nodding at Hachi.
“My gris-gris?” Hachi asked. Just then, her three wind-up animals came flying back to their pouches and climbed inside.
“And what’s in your gris-gris?” Laveau asked Fergus.
“Mine?”
She pointed to his sporran, the little pouch that hung from the belt of his kilt.
“It’s nae magic,” Fergus told her. He opened it and showed her the screwdrivers and wrenches inside.
“To most people, what you did just now with that sword is as much magic as what I did,” Laveau told him.
“And I am as equally grateful,” Queen Theodosia said, joining them. She was trailed by the empty-eyed General Jackson and a cowed Madame Blavatsky. “Your powers are truly incredible,” the queen told them. “We are in your debt.”
Marie Laveau bowed, and Fergus and Hachi followed her lead.
“The loa are powerful spirits, Your Majesty, and not to be trifled with,” Laveau said, more for Blavatsky’s benefit than the queen’s. “Tonight’s disruption was but an idle for them. They were playing with us. Woe be unto Louisiana when their games become serious.”
“Then perhaps you would lend us your knowledge and protection in two days’ time,” Queen Theodosia said. “Madame Blavatsky means to contact my father, King Aaron, by means of a séance.”
“Is that wise?” Laveau asked.
“We’ll be there,” Hachi put in, ending the debate. Laveau gave her a questioning glance, then nodded.
“We will be there,” Laveau said. “Until then, my queen.”
Laveau bowed again, and led Hachi and Fergus away.
“You would let Blavatsky unleash the power of the Mangleborn and do more damage yet again?” Laveau asked once they were alone.
“She’s not going to have the chance,” Hachi told them. “Two days from now is when we grab her.”
13
Clyde took a step back and bumped into Archie. In front of them loomed Colossus, all ten stories of him, suddenly alive despite no one sitting in the control seat. Behind them, an angry horde of rock creatures pounded on Archie’s back, trying to smash them into pieces.
There was nowhere for them to run.
Colossus swept a giant hand down at them, and Archie fell on Clyde to protect him from the blow. But it never came. Instead they heard the sound of smashing rocks behind them and turned to look. Colossus had knocked aside the first row of attacking rock creatures with a swipe of his arm, and with a swipe of his other arm he knocked even more of them away. Archie ducked again as the giant steam man leaped over them, pouncing right in the middle of the rock creatures. His heavy brass feet reduced half of t
hem to rubble. The other half Colossus chased, running in a circle around the canyon on his hands and feet.
“What … in the name of Hiawatha is going on?” Archie asked.
Colossus caught one of the rock creatures in his mouth and shook it violently, rock and rubble raining down as he tore the thing apart. He tossed it away into the darkness and chased after another one.
“Buster,” Clyde said.
“What?”
“It’s Buster! Colossus is Buster!”
Archie had trouble even processing what Clyde was saying. Colossus was Buster? How could a giant steam man be a dog? And then he remembered.
“The burn mark. Buster’s shadow—it was on Colossus!”
“Ah,” Mr. Rivets said, still blind to what was happening in the canyon. “If that is in fact the case, the animal’s spirit would have been fused with the steam man, just as the humans’ spirits were fused with the rock walls of the canyon.”
Colossus whistled like a train, making Archie and Clyde jump. He hunkered down, his arms stretched out on the ground so that he was face-to-face with one of the rock creatures that was trying to attack him, and whistled twice more. Archie had seen something like this before, he was sure, and then it dawned on him: Buster was barking at the rock creature, trying to get him to play. The rock creature swung a fist at Colossus, and the steam man jumped on him, smashing him into dust.
“Mr. Rivets, why is Buster still acting like a dog when all the rock people are acting like monsters?” Archie asked.
“I have no idea, Master Archie. I can only speculate that it has something to do with the canine’s less complicated cerebral functions. Perhaps that, in combination with the fact that it was fused with something with roughly analogous features.”
“What did he say?” Clyde asked.
“Buster’s brain is simpler, and he got put in something that already had arms and legs and a head for him to run around in,” Archie explained.
Within minutes, Colossus—Buster—had finished “playing” with all the rock creatures, and there was nothing left in the canyon but little piles of rubble. Playtime over, the giant steam man turned and bounded toward them.
