The Dragon Lantern

by Alan Gratz

  “Clyde!” Archie cried. “Clyde, what are you doing! We can’t ride a streetcar to Alcatraz Island!”

  “No, but it gives us a running start!” Clyde said.

  The streetcar swerved away, but Clyde kept Buster running straight ahead at full speed toward the bay.

  “A running start at what?” Archie asked, but he was afraid he knew the answer: the Golden Gate Bridge.

  The Golden Gate Bridge was a tall orange suspension bridge that connected the city of Don Francisco to the Marin Headlands on the other side. It had been built millennia ago by some ancient civilization, and from the gold curled corners at the top and the pair of dog-like stone lions that guarded each end, it looked like the same civilization that had made the Dragon Lantern.

  Buster ran up the hill to the entrance of the bridge, sending trucks and taxis steaming up the curbs.

  “Clyde,” Archie said. “Clyde, what are you doing?”

  “I’m going to jump it!”

  “Jump from the bridge to Alcatraz?” Sings-In-The-Night said. “You’ll never make it!”

  Buster leaped over a bus.

  “No—I can make it! The island’s closer to the bridge today.”

  “Wait, what?” Sings-In-The-Night said. “You do know islands don’t move, don’t you?”

  “Here we go!” Clyde cried. “Hang on!”

  Buster angled toward the low point in the suspension wires and jumped.

  29

  Clyde’s arms windmilled in his chair like it was he who had jumped. Archie closed his eyes. Sings-In-The-Night shot out the top hatch. Kitsune yelled “Woohoo!” It looked like they were going to make it, but then they were dropping too fast, too soon—

  KER-SPLASH!

  Buster hit the water feetfirst. The impact ripped Archie from the railing he held and threw him into the metal wall between the front windows. Water gushed up in great waves around the steam man, and he bobbed back up before starting to sink. They had landed just short of the island!

  “Swim, Buster! Swim!” Clyde yelled, doing a dog paddle in his seat. The giant steam man pawed at the water, pulling himself toward the shore. Archie hauled himself to his feet and looked out the window.

  “We’re sinking!” he cried.

  “As long as the water doesn’t put out the furnace, we’re okay!” Clyde yelled.

  Archie looked down again. More than half of Buster was already underwater. The engineering deck had to be completely submerged! The water had just reached Buster’s neck when they felt the lurch of his feet meeting solid ground, and Clyde marched the steam man up out of the water onto Alcatraz Island.

  “Made it!” Clyde said. “Told you we would! Good dog!”

  Buster shook himself like a dog trying to get dry, spraying the buildings below with bay water and tossing around everything and everyone inside him. Kitsune giggled.

  Sings-In-The-Night flew down and hovered in front of them. “Moffett’s on a roof near the central courtyard. She’s knocked down the walls. It’s a prison break!”

  Clyde steered Buster to follow her, stepping over a water tower.

  “Kitsune, you and I can—” Archie began, but suddenly he was overwhelmed with a vision. He was holding his breath underwater, the sea a murky green all around him. He was naked but for a loincloth at his waist, and his long brown hair flowed around his face like seaweed.

  “Enkidu,” said a voice. He put a hand to his ear and found a tiny aetherical device there that carried sound. A Cathay woman riding a snakelike dragon swam up, speaking to him through an aetherical mouthpiece connected to the air tanks she wore. “Enkidu—Sun Wukong and Gilgamesh are already in place. Are you ready?”

  Archie looked around. Nearby floated a young bearded man wearing a tunic and a monkey-man wearing fitted leather armor and carrying a staff.

  Archie shook his head. He wasn’t ready. He didn’t know who “Enkidu” was or what he was doing here.

  An eye opened in the darkness of the water before them: an eye fifty feet tall and glassy black, filled with stars.

  Jandal a Haad, it whispered.

  Archie felt the crack of a slap across his face, and he awoke from his dream back on the bridge of the steam man. Kitsune stood in front of him holding the lead pipe she’d hit him with.

  “Dang, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?” Clyde asked.

  “No,” Kitsune said. “This doesn’t hurt, does it?” she asked Archie, whacking him over the head with it again and again.

  Archie caught the lead pipe. “No,” he said, taking it away from her. “But it’s really annoying.”

  “We lost you for a second there,” Clyde said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Archie told him. But Archie was worried. Why was he hearing the song of a Mangleborn here? Now?

  “There she is!” Clyde said.

  Buster loomed over Mrs. Moffett. She stood on a rooftop with the Dragon Lantern, watching Alcatraz prisoners fight in the courtyard below.

  Sings-In-The-Night met Archie and Kitsune in Buster’s mouth. “Take Kitsune,” Archie told her, and he jumped.

  If there was one thing Archie was good at, it was falling.

  Archie slammed into the rooftop behind Mrs. Moffett, almost crashing straight through. As he climbed to his feet, Sings-In-The-Night landed next to him with Kitsune.

  Mrs. Moffett smiled at them. “So. You’ve brought friends this time,” she said. “Do you really think three children, a giant steam man, and a dozen Dog Soldiers can stop me?”

  Archie didn’t understand—Dog Soldiers? Kitsune winked at him, and he understood: She was making Mrs. Moffett think they had brought reinforcements.

  “Give me the Dragon Lantern,” Archie told her.

  “I can’t just now,” Mrs. Moffett said. “I need to use it again. Do you know who those men down there are?” she asked. “They are the worst criminals in the Republic of California. Maybe the worst criminals in all of the North Americas. Monsters, just like me. Just like you. And I’m going to take six of them with me. That’s what I told them. I’m recruiting, you see. I’m putting together my own league. I call it the ‘Shadow League.’ Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? That’s why they’re fighting—to see which of them will get to escape with me.” She patted the Dragon Lantern lovingly. “If only they realized what winning meant. Well, Sings-In-The-Night and I understand, don’t we?”

  “You can’t use that on more people, Mina,” Sings-In-The-Night said. “How can you, when you know how painful it is. How awful…”

  “Don’t you think someone else should experience that pain, Sings?” Mrs. Moffett asked. “Don’t you think everyone should know what we went through?”

  “I think they should know, yes. But not like this. These men don’t deserve that. Nobody does.”

  “Everybody does,” Mrs. Moffett said. “Californians, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Texans, Cherokee, Iroquois, Yankees. Septemberists,” she said, looking straight at Archie. “Anyone who would trade the lives of children for their own safety and comfort. So I’m going to show them. I’m going to show them what happens when you let children be sacrificed so everyone else can live quiet, happy lives.”

  “Nobody sacrificed me,” Archie said.

  Mrs. Moffett laughed. She laughed long and hard. “No. No, they didn’t sacrifice you, did they, Archie Dent?” She laughed again. “But they didn’t use the lantern on you either.”

  “What do you mean?” Archie said. “You said it was.”

  “I lied,” Mrs. Moffett told him. “Your fox girl can appreciate that, I think. The lantern wasn’t used to create you; it was used to create me. That’s why I wanted it back. But you needed that fairy tale to go after it for me.”

  Archie fumed. “You never knew, did you? You never knew where I came from, or what was done to me.”

  “Oh, no, I know all of those things,” Mrs. Moffett told him. “It was all in the Septemberists’ records. The ones you only get to see when you become the society’s chief. It made for fascina
ting reading.”

  “Tell me,” Archie said.

  “Join me, and I’ll tell you.”

  “What?”

  “Join my Shadow League! The Darkness is in you. It has been all along. They speak to you. You hear the Mangleborn. Do you know how rare that is? But you fight it. You reject this amazing gift you have. Join me, and you’ll never have to deny it ever again. You’re the shadow, after all, aren’t you? Given how they made you, I should think you’re the darkest shadow of all.”

  “She’s lying,” Kitsune said. “She doesn’t really know where you come from. She’s trying to trick you.”

  “The invitation’s open to you too,” Mrs. Moffett said to Kitsune. “You’d be a wonderful addition. And you, Sings-In-The-Night.”

  “No,” the flying girl said.

  “But this is what we were made for, you and me,” Mrs. Moffett said. “Look at us!” she said, rising up on her tentacles. “We’re monsters, both of us! They made us this way—and I was made to be a leader!”

  Mrs. Moffett opened the Dragon Lantern on the men who were left standing in the courtyard below, and they began to shriek.

  “No!” Archie cried. He charged at Mrs. Moffett, but she turned and screamed. WOMWOMWOMWOMWOM! The roof collapsed under Archie’s feet. Sings-In-The-Night snatched up Kitsune and took off, but Archie fell again. He crashed down through empty prison cells and was buried in broken bricks and twisted metal.

  JANDAL A HAAD, a voice sang in his head. The same voice from before.

  “No!” Archie cried. He spat dust and flailed with his arms and legs, knocking debris away from him. “No! My name is Archie Dent!”

  ENKIDU. HERACLES. ARCHIE DENT. ALWAYS DIFFERENT, BUT ALWAYS THE SAME, the voice sang, and Archie’s head was flooded with images of the League’s other shadows, all mindlessly, furiously breaking and smashing and thumping things, and always hurting the ones they loved. Who was doing this to him? Mrs. Moffett? Kitsune? Only Mangleborn had been able to get inside his head like this, but there weren’t any Mangleborn around. And still the visions came. Rayguns, lektricity, Manglespawn—none of them hurt like this hurt, the agony filling him, making him want to tear his own skin off to get it out. He was Heracles killing his own children. He was Enkidu howling naked in the forest. He was Archie Dent attacking Hachi and Fergus with a metal club in the prison of Malacar Ahasherat. The visions tormented him with pain and sorrow, and he pounded on his own head, trying to drive them away.

  A giant brass hand brushed away the rest of the rubble on top of him, and Buster tried to pick Archie up. But the visions still filled him with rage. Archie batted the big brass hand away and punched at what was left of the prison wall, blowing it apart. Above him, Mrs. Moffett clung to a piece of the wall with her tentacles, the Dragon Lantern still turned on the mutating horrors just beyond him.

  “Tell me!” Archie cried, pounding on the brick wall. “Tell me how I was made! Tell me where I come from!” The wall crumbled and fell on him, and he kicked and swatted at the bricks like they were a swarm of gnats. “Get off me! I hate you! Get off me!”

  Above him, Mrs. Moffett sent Buster staggering with another sonic scream, then turned it on the other steam man that had arrived. There wasn’t another steam man—it was another one of Kitsune’s illusions—but it bought Buster time to get away from the sonic wave.

  BE STILL, JANDAL A HAAD, the dream voice sang, knocking Archie to his knees.

  One of the horrors Mrs. Moffett had created jumped on Archie, its lava skin hissing, and Archie tore it off and used it to beat down what was left of the building’s walls.

  “Archie! She’s getting away!” Sings-In-The-Night called as she flew by. Archie didn’t care. He picked up a twisted prison cell door and hurled it at her to make the bird girl leave him alone.

  JANDAL A HAAD, BE STILL, the voice in his head said again.

  “Who is that?” Archie cried, spinning around. “Who are you? Where are you?”

  I AM GONG GONG, JANDAL A HAAD, the voice said. WHY DO YOU WAKE ME?

  “My. Name. Is. Archie. Dent!” Archie cried, pounding the rubble at his feet with his fists with every word.

  And then the earth underneath him moved.

  Buster staggered, trying to keep his footing. The water tower crumpled. Cracks appeared in the buildings that hadn’t fallen.

  “Earthquake!” someone yelled. But this was no earthquake, and it wasn’t Mrs. Moffett’s screams again. The island was turning over in the water, and as it did, an enormous fin emerged on the side that was rising.

  Alcatraz Prison was built on the back of a Mangleborn.

  “Well, I didn’t see that coming,” Mrs. Moffett said.

  Archie slid on the tilting ground and slammed into the wall of one of the buildings. As the island turned, the buildings leaned and then started to collapse. Buster scrambled up them like a mountain climber, trying to stay away from the water.

  “Archie!” Clyde called. “Archie, we have to get out of here! The island’s alive!”

  Archie didn’t care. Still angry, he ran across the face of one of the sideways buildings and threw himself at Mrs. Moffett. He hit her before she could scream, knocking the Dragon Lantern from her hands. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Archie knew he should dive after it, that the Dragon Lantern was what really mattered, but he was consumed by rage. Mrs. Moffett had lied to him. The Mangleborn beneath them was driving him crazy. The world was falling apart around him. He brought his fists together and smashed them down on the sideways building he and Mrs. Moffett stood on. It collapsed, and they tumbled into a labyrinth of crumbling prison cells.

  Mrs. Moffett scrabbled up out of the rubble, trying to keep her balance as the world turned. She ran the back of her hand across her mouth and came away with blood, and she smiled.

  “I told you you were a monster,” she said to Archie. “This is who you are. This is why you were created. To destroy.”

  Archie picked up a broken toilet and hurled it at her with a roar. She moved faster than any real person could, her tentacles pulling her sideways across the shattered building, and the toilet exploded where she’d been standing. The Dragon Lantern clattered down through the broken building, and she slithered after it.

  JANDAL A HAAD, Gong Gong murmured inside Archie’s head. JANDAL A HAAD, LET ME SLEEP.

  Archie swung his fists at the floor. He swung his fists at the falling bricks. He saw Mrs. Moffett through his fury, clambering toward where the Dragon Lantern lay half buried in the wreckage. She was almost to it when Sings-In-The-Night swooped down and snatched it away.

  “Archie! I’ve got it! I’ve got the lantern!” she called.

  A thick tentacle whipped out from the writhing mass under Mrs. Moffett and caught Sings-In-The-Night by the leg.

  “And I’ve got you!” Mrs. Moffett crowed.

  It took the Jandal a Haad a long moment to process what was happening. Through the red-rimmed haze of his all-consuming rage, he watched as the bird girl fluttered in Mrs. Moffett’s grasp, trying to break free. The bird girl called to him for help. The stone boy panted, fists still balled, anger still coursing through his veins, the voice in his head telling him to pick up a rock and throw it, kill them both; but the bird girl called out to him again, her words finally penetrating his madness.

  “Archie!” Sings-In-The-Night cried. “Archie, help me!”

  Archie. That was him. His name was Archie. Not Jandal a Haad. He was a person, not a monster. He had a name. He had a family. He had friends. And Sings-In-The-Night was one of them. Sings-In-The-Night was his friend, and she needed help. Archie fought down the fury inside him, still breathing hard. He had to focus. Remember who he was. He had to stop Philomena Moffett. He had to save Sings-In-The-Night. Slowly, with difficulty, Archie’s rage ebbed, only to be replaced by horror.

  Mrs. Moffett had Sings-In-The-Night, and Archie was too far away to help her.

  “Hold on! I’m coming!” Archie cried, his voice ragged from screaming. Archie tried clim
bing across the crumpled iron bars toward her, but they gave way and he fell. He clung desperately to a disintegrating wall and tried to pull himself back up.

  Sings-In-The-Night’s wings tore at the air, trying to pull her free, but Mrs. Moffett’s tentacles anchored them like roots to the rubble. She pulled Sings-In-The-Night down, a tentacle coiling up around the bird girl’s leg while another slipped up around her neck. Sings-In-The-Night let out a choking gasp.

  “Clyde! Kitsune! Help!” Archie called as bricks rained down on him. He could feel the wall he clung to collapsing.

  “They created me to be a leader,” Mrs. Moffett told Archie, her voice quiet and calm in the crashing chaos around them. She took the Dragon Lantern from Sings-In-The-Night, and the bird girl put her hands to the tentacle around her throat and tried uselessly to pull it loose. “But I was always a shadow,” Mrs. Moffett said. “We all were. Monsters. Just like you, Archie. And you know what monsters do, Archie Dent. They destroy everything they love.”

  Crack. Mrs. Moffett’s tentacle snapped Sings-In-The-Night’s neck, and the bird girl’s body went limp.

  “Nooooo!” Archie cried.

  The wall he was holding gave way, and he fell like a stone into the cold, dark sea.

  30

  Seawater swallowed Hachi, tumbling her like a shell on the beach. Water filled her eyes, her ears, and her mouth. She reached out blindly, grabbing the brass railing along the top of the streetcar before she was swept away. The water beat her like fists, trying to rip her loose, and with a searing pain that made her cry out underwater Hachi felt her shoulder dislocate. She gulped water, choking, and let go of the streetcar as the water pushed it over. She tumbled again and didn’t know which way was up in the dark, churning water, until she struck a tree and wrapped herself around it.

  The brunt of the wave finally passed, and the flood waters settled in. Hachi pulled herself up with her one good arm, branch by branch, until her head was above water. She gasped and coughed, sucking in air through the water in her throat. Her shoulder screaming in pain, she tried to climb higher in the tree.