The League of Seven

by Alan Gratz

  “Ah, I see,” he said lightly. “So, tell me how you and your little friend came to fall from the sky.”

  Archie was glad to finally have an adult who was interested in hearing his story. Someone who knew what the Mangleborn were capable of, who could help him get his parents back. He started with the thing in the basement of Septemberist headquarters and brought John Otter with him up to the present, leaving nothing out. John Otter was quiet until Archie was done, moving only to pour them tea when the water boiled.

  “It is quite a story already, even though it is not yet finished,” John Otter said. He rubbed the white pelt of the Great Bear between his fingers, thinking. “What you have told me about the Mangleborn rising does not surprise me. There have been signs. Weaker men feel their stirrings and become monsters themselves, though they know not why. Cherokee warriors have made raids on Muskogee villages, and Muskogee warriors have responded in kind,” John Otter told him. “So far they have been isolated incidents, but now there are rumblings of war. A war between the tribes.”

  “A war between the Muskogee and the Cherokee?”

  “And the Shawnee, and the Choctaw, and the Illini, and the Powhatan. And the Yankees. A war between the nations. A civil war that will undo all that the Iroquois did to bring peace to this land. That is, if the Mangleborn are allowed to escape their bonds.”

  “We have to do something. The Septemberists have to do something,” Archie said. “A new League maybe, like the seven heroes of old. A new League of Seven.”

  “If I am not much mistaken, a new League is already forming,” John Otter said.

  “Where? Who? Do you mean me and Fergus and Hachi? That’s what I told them! It’s us, isn’t it! I knew it! Fergus is the tinker, Hachi is the warrior, and I’m the leader! Who else is there? Where do we find them?”

  “Come,” John Otter said, slapping Archie on the knee. Tusker fluttered up from the blanket and trumpeted angrily. “Get dressed and join us for our circle dance. I think you will enjoy it. It’s dark yet besides. We shall return you to your extraordinary friends in Standing Peachtree by daylight tomorrow. From the sound of it, they will be as surprised to find you alive as you were.”

  Archie wanted to keep talking about the League, but John Otter ignored his questions and instead urged him to get dressed in the Cherokee-style pants and shirt he’d given him. Why was it so hard to get adults to tell him anything? To trust him? Archie wanted to scream: The Mangleborn are waking, and we need an army to stop them! But all John Otter wanted to talk about was a woman named Sally Wah-yeh he hoped to see at the circle dance.

  The entire village assembled for the dance around an unlit fire pit. The trunk of a tree that looked like it had been split apart by lightning was carried ceremoniously to the fire pit and was lit, its flickering orange flame fighting off the darkness that fell around them. Men and women in costumes decorated with beads and feathers and animal skins danced around it in a circle, while the spectators beat drums and chanted in Cherokee.

  “They dance to celebrate Selu, the Corn Mother,” John Otter told him, leaning in close to be heard over the singing. An old woman bowed in front of them, offering Archie and John Otter bowls of what smelled like beef stew. Archie thanked her and took the bowl hungrily. It felt like weeks since he had eaten anything. The woman winked at John Otter, and went to serve more food.

  John Otter nudged Archie with his elbow. “Sally Wah-yeh,” he said. “I think she is sweet on me.”

  Archie had seconds—and then thirds—of the stew while he watched the dancing. When the food was gone he was handed a dry, hollow gourd with small rocks inside it, which he shook in time with the dance like others around the circle. John Otter took a drum made from a hollow log and a deerskin and beat on it with his palms. Archie didn’t know what most of the dances meant or what they were for, but it was easy to get caught up in the thumping energy, the push and pull of the ceremony, like the rhythmic sway of a train ride or a submarine voyage.

  Or a Mangleborn vision.

  John Otter nudged him again. “Pay attention now,” he told Archie. “I think you’ll like this next part especially.”

  Archie tried to recapture the thrill of the dance, to lose himself again in the hypnotic stomping and singing, but the thought of the Swarm Queen’s dreamsongs had chilled him. Now he watched, distantly, as a man on stilts wearing a shaggy shirt and a buffalo mask danced into the circle. Archie didn’t see what this had to do with him until the buffalo man was joined by seven others: a blindfolded man with a “seeing stick” to help him find his way; a handsome warrior wearing armor and wielding a sword; a laughing woman with the head and wings of a raven; a limping man with a hammer; a woman with war paint on her face, carrying a bow and arrow; another woman wearing big goggles and carrying a book; and, hidden among them and hard to see, a huge man in black carrying a club.

  “It’s—it’s the League of Seven!” Archie told John Otter over the beating of the drums and the shaking of the gourds. “It’s the League, and they’re fighting a Mangleborn! But—” Archie looked around at all the spectators. The entire village was watching. “Does everyone know about the League here? It’s supposed to be a secret!”

  “You recognize the League, do you?” John Otter asked, the firelight glinting in his smiling eyes. “Ah, but where you and I see the League of Seven, these good people see a myth. ‘The Seven Strangers and the Thunder Giant.’ A story told for so long and by so many that its true meaning has been lost. A hundred years from now, will anyone remember you fought a Mangleborn in the swamps in Florida? No. They will say that a crazy scientist blew himself up trying to bring down the lightning. This Thunder Giant—even now its true name and powers are lost to us. It might be the very same creature that controls your parents. Or perhaps it is the abomination that lies beneath New Rome. Or maybe it is some other Mangleborn entirely.”

  Archie watched as the heroes danced around the Mangleborn, each bringing his or her unique talents to bear. The woman with the book read and pointed. The blind man listened to his seeing stick and danced out of the monster’s way. The tinker built a trap. The raven woman flitted about, playing tricks on friends and foe. The handsome warrior orchestrated their movements and struck the Mangleborn again and again.

  Archie saw again the team of his dream. The same number of heroes, the same collection of talents. Only the details were different.

  “Which League is this?” he asked.

  John Otter shrugged. “The Roman League? The Atlantean League? A League even older than that? How many Leagues have there been? How many times have the people of the world built civilizations, only to have them torn down again by the Mangleborn? What has happened before will happen again, and again, and again. And just as always,” he said, giving Archie a mischievous glance, “a new group of seven heroes will arise when the world needs them most.”

  Archie was only half-listening. All his attention was focused now on the strongman—the Great Bear of the group. The others avoided him, almost as though they were as afraid of him as they were of the Mangleborn.

  “Why is that one dressed all in black?” he asked.

  “He is the Jandal a Haad,” John Otter said.

  Archie’s skin prickled. “The Jandal a Haad,” he whispered. “What the Septemberist Council and the Swarm Queen called me.”

  “Yes,” John Otter said. “His Cherokee name is Nunyanuwi. He is the Stone Man. He is the strongest among them, yet the weakest. He is anger and darkness. The sinister part of ourselves. He wears black because he is the bad wolf, given form.” John Otter turned to Archie, his eyes no longer smiling. “The others fear him because at any moment he can forget that small part of him that is human. Should that happen, should he forget himself and embrace the shadow within, he will become a monster more powerful than the rest of them combined.”

  Archie’s heart hammered. Jandal a Haad. Malacar Ahasherat had called him that. But how was he a stone man? A shadow?

  No. He was the
leader. The one out front. Cadmus. Theseus. Arthur. He was a hero, not a monster.

  And yet the Mangleborn’s words echoed in his head. Jandal a Haad.

  Archie shuddered. “If the Stone Man is so scary, why do they keep him around?”

  “Because he is the only one who understands the darkness well enough to defeat it,” John Otter said. “And, because he is their friend.”

  24

  A trio of young Cherokee warriors on steam horses escorted Archie to Standing Peachtree the next day to help him find his friends. John Otter had told him he couldn’t come—something evil was stirring along the border of Cherokee and Muskogee territory, and he and his tribe had to make sure it didn’t rise. Instead he sent Archie off with a bear hug and made him promise to come back one day and tell him how the story ended. Archie wasn’t convinced he’d be around after the story ended, but he had promised anyway.

  Standing Peachtree had a long and complicated past, Archie knew. The farthest back anyone remembered, the site was a Roman garrison town called Persicorum, a tiny fort on the frontier of an empire ruled from a city across the sea. After Rome had fallen to the Mangleborn, the fort beside the Chattahoochee River had become a meeting place for the Muskogee and the Cherokee, a border station between two territories. Then the Yankees had come—more invaders from the Old World—calling the place Georgia after some now-forgotten king and turning Standing Peachtree into a trading outpost they called Atalanta. But then the Darkness had fallen and the frightened Yankees had retreated to their cities on the coast, leaving Standing Peachtree to the Muskogee and Cherokee once more.

  The Romans had founded it, the Muskogee and Cherokee had made it a meeting place, and the Yankees had made it a town, but it was the railroad that had made Standing Peachtree a city. As Archie and his Cherokee escorts rode into town, they crossed the tracks that connected the metropolis to the rest of the United Nations, making Standing Peachtree the business hub of the southern tribes. Steamwagons filled with pumpkins and squash and apples clattered past. Airships big and small took off and landed. Muskogee and Cherokee children played lacrosse in the streets—the streets that weren’t being torn up and widened, at least. Everywhere the city was being knocked down and rebuilt to be bigger, taller, and more modern, highlighted by the ten-story-tall Emartha Locomotive and Machine Man headquarters and its huge foundries at the heart of the city.

  Archie was never more glad of his escort than when they led him through the city’s winding, forking streets, fully half of which seemed to be called “Peachtree Street” or some variant. The warriors knew where they were going though, and just as dusk began to fall they stopped and pointed to a large white building on a gaslit street on the north side of town. The sign outside said LADY JOSEPHINE’S ACADEMY FOR SPIRITED GIRLS.

  Spirited girls?

  “Are you sure this is where you want to go?” one of the Cherokee asked him.

  “Unless there’s some other ‘Lady Josephine’ school in the city…”

  The warrior shook his head. Archie dismounted his steam horse and thanked them, and his escorts headed off for dinner at the Buck Head Tavern up the street. Tusker flitted about watching for trouble as Archie walked up the lane to the front door of Lady Josephine’s. Just as he got to the door he realized he was still wearing the Great Bear’s pelt around his shoulders, and he self-consciously pulled it off before knocking.

  A few moments later, a thin young woman in a blue bustle dress opened the door. Her long, delicate arms were pale, but the round face under her pinned-up brown hair was flushed pink, as though she had hurried a long way.

  She did a double take when she saw Archie, like she had been expecting someone else.

  “Hi,” said Archie, suddenly wishing he had rehearsed what he was going to say. “I’m Archie Dent. I’m a friend of Hachi,” he told her, realizing he didn’t know Hachi’s last name—or if she even had one. “She, um, well, we were heading south, to Florida, and she said that if we needed to hide out someplace, we should come here. To meet up. Is Hachi here?”

  “Athena’s owl! You can’t be. But that hair, and that raggedy old thing,” she said, meaning the Great Bear’s pelt. She glanced over his head, looking this way and that, as though there might be someone right behind him. “Hurry!” she said, practically dragging him inside. “Quickly! Before you’re seen.”

  Archie stumbled over the sill as he entered. The entrance hall to Lady Josephine’s Academy for Spirited Girls was magnificent. The floor was made of shining blue-green marble, and two great curved staircases at the far end of the room swept up to a second-floor gallery. Between the staircases stood an enormous bronze statue of a robed woman holding a book in one hand and a sword in the other. Carved into the pedestal below her were the words “Flectere si nequeo superos, Achaeronta movebo.”

  “Is Hachi here? Did she and Fergus—?” Archie began, but the woman was already pulling him by the sleeve through the great hall and up the stairs.

  “Just through here,” she said. She pushed him into a smaller room filled with rows of seats, all pointed toward a wooden stage at the front with a painted backdrop of castle turrets and trees. “I think we have something that might fit you,” she said, working her way quickly through the costumes on a rack. “Yes, here.” The woman handed him a black suit coat and trousers. Archie stared at them uncomprehendingly. He hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on.

  “Hurry now! Put them on,” she told him. “Here, there’s a changing screen over here. And give me this,” she said, taking the Great Bear’s pelt from him.

  “Wait, that’s—”

  “I know perfectly well what it is,” the woman told him. She held it out from her as though it stank and needed washing. “Or what it’s supposed to be. But it will hardly help us hide you and your friends from Edison’s agents. We expect them back in force any time now, and we don’t expect them to take no for an answer this time. This will be returned to you later. Quickly now.”

  The mention of his friends—and Edison—lit a fire under Archie’s boiler. He hurried behind the changing screen and stripped out of his Cherokee clothes.

  “Are you a Septemberist?” Archie asked.

  “Since I do not know what that means, I will have to answer in the negative,” the woman said. “I am Ms. Ambrose. I run this school. Now hurry.”

  The black suit Ms. Ambrose had given him was too big, but he put it on anyway.

  “Tusker, you better hide in here for now,” Archie said. He held one of the jacket pockets open so the little elephant could fly down inside, but it kept sticking its head out to see.

  Archie stepped out from behind the screen to show off the poor fit, and Ms. Ambrose tutted as she stuffed his cuffs up inside his sleeves a few inches to shorten them.

  “You’re rather small for your age, aren’t you?” she said. Archie opened his mouth to argue, but she was too fast for him. “Oh! And that white hair. You’ll stand out like a Hyperborean in Afrika. Here.” She thrust a short black wig at him, and Archie put it on reluctantly. With his baggy clothes and his black bowl-cut wig, he looked like a down-on-his-luck vaudevillian.

  “Not ideal, but it will have to do,” Ms. Ambrose told him. “Come along, come along.”

  Archie let her drag him away again, leaving the Great Bear’s pelt in among the costumes on the rack. It was as good a place to hide it as any, Archie realized—right in plain sight with lots of other strange clothes and costumes.

  Back down the staircase they went, Archie doing his best to keep up and not ask any more questions. If Hachi and Fergus were here and Edison’s men were due any moment, Ms. Ambrose was no doubt taking him to wherever she had hidden the others. A concealed room somewhere. Maybe a secret corridor. But as they hurried across the great hall to another set of double doors, Archie heard music. A string orchestra. The woman swept the doors open and pulled Archie into … a dance hall?

  Boys and girls of all tribes and colors twirled around a glittering gold ballroom hung wi
th mirrors and chandeliers. More young people, all in sharp dress suits and colorful hoop skirts, stood laughing and talking with one another on the edges of the dance. At the back of the room an orchestra played a dignified waltz, and along the sides of the room Tik Tok waiters laid out food on an extravagant buffet.

  Curious groups of boys and giggling groups of girls stared at Archie as Ms. Ambrose led him into the room. One waggle of the headmistress’ finger turned them away again, and they talked animatedly among themselves.

  “We’ll wait until the song ends,” she told Archie. “That way we’ll cause less of a scene.”

  Archie didn’t understand what she meant until he recognized two of the dancers spinning past them. One was a beautiful dark-skinned girl with her black hair done up prettily, wearing a fancy wine-colored dress. The other was a tall, handsome Yankee boy in a black suit and tails who stumped along awkwardly.

  Hachi and Fergus!

  Archie stared as they wheeled slowly around the dance floor arm in arm, Hachi gracefully compensating for Fergus’ limp. Hachi wore a pearl necklace and earrings, her scar plainly visible but hidden in her beauty, and Fergus—Fergus had no black lines on his skin! It was like seeing the heads of his friends on two new and different bodies. But Archie’s wonder was quickly replaced by anger. If these two had thought him dead—and why not? he had thought himself dead too—they didn’t appear to be too broken up over it. In fact, they looked like they were glad he was out of the way.

  The music ended and Fergus led Hachi off the dance floor, his arm still tight around her. Hachi leaned her head on his shoulder, and Archie went red with embarrassment. It was like they were on a date!

  Tusker poked his head out of Archie’s pocket. When he saw Hachi, he trumpeted happily.

  “Might as well go see her,” Archie said. “At least she’ll be happy to see one of us.”

  Tusker burst from his pocket and flew across the dance floor to Hachi, who looked up in surprise. “Tusker?” she said. From somewhere underneath her skirts the other three clockwork animals flew out, chittering with Tusker in their baby language. But Hachi’s tear-stained face wasn’t watching her elephant, it was searching for—