by Alan Gratz
“Of course you don’t. You didn’t get to stick your pointy knives into anything.”
“No—something’s wrong here, Fergus. Where’s Archie? Where’s Mr. Rivets?” She stared down at the smashed snake statue in the traffic circle below them. “It was a mistake sending him here all by himself.”
“What, you worried Archie got eaten by that beastie?”
“No,” Hachi said. “I’m worried Archie became a beastie of his own.”
* * *
Señor X led the strange little parade just outside of town, where a crumbling old ring of stones just big enough to stuff Uktena into was set into a hilltop.
“Huh,” said Clyde. “It’s like it was made just for this snake guy.”
Buster peered down inside, his headlights clicking on. The hole was lined with smooth, seamless stone all the way down as far as they could see. Beyond that was just darkness. Deep, deep darkness.
“How far down does it go?” Kitsune asked. “It has to be deep enough Uktena can’t climb out.”
“Señor X’s scanner don’t reach the bottom,” Gonzalo said. “Which means it’s more’n half a mile deep.”
Uktena’s tail twitched.
“Deep enough,” Kitsune said. “Flush it.”
“But what about Martine?” Gonzalo asked. “What’ll happen when that jackalope falls down the well? Will she still be all googly-eyed for it?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Clyde said. Buster lowered the Mangleborn so that its tail slid down into the hole. When there was nothing left aboveground but its head, Clyde let it go.
Uktena dropped away into the darkness, and suddenly the bright white light from the gem on Martine’s forehead winked out. Beneath them, Uktena’s howls echoed and echoed up from the deep, deep hole, until finally they disappeared.
“Martine?” Clyde asked. “You okay?”
She blinked and tilted her head. “Yes. My calculations were wrong. A Mangleborn did not mate with my ancestor eight generations ago. It was two hundred and two generations ago.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gonzalo. “Are you saying that thing—are you saying that thing is your great-great-something-or-other-granddaddy?”
“Great to the two hundred and first grandmother,” Martine said. “I have finally found my Mangleborn ancestor.”
“Señor X did say that thing got around,” Kitsune said.
Fergus’s voice came booming to them through the shells in their ears. “Clyde! Wait! Don’t drop that beastie down that hole! We found Mr. Rivets! He says Moffett dropped Archie down that hole before she freed Uktena. He thinks it’s one of those puzzle traps the ancients built!”
Kitsune turned to look at Gonzalo, who just shook his head.
“Um, oops,” Clyde said.
They had just dropped Martine’s very angry great-great-something-or-other Mangleborn grandmother on Archie’s head.
21
Like all ancient puzzle traps created by former Leagues, the one they’d dropped Uktena into—on top of Archie—had a way inside. A way besides the long, dark hole to the center of the earth. Martine found it on a hill nearby. It was another low, round wall, but over its wide opening there was a tarnished brass plate with two holes in it. One hole was round, and about the size of a manhole cover on a sewer, with a ladder leading down. The other hole was a rectangle that stretched from the round side of the metal plate to almost the center, tall enough and wide enough for three or four of them to crawl inside at once.
To the side of the two holes, engraved in the greenish brown metal, was the image of a slithering snake.
“The ladder goes down about forty feet and hits a dead end,” Fergus said, climbing out. “But I’m pretty sure the floor moves. It’s a separate piece from the chamber with the ladder.”
“I guess we take the big hole then?” Kitsune asked, peering down into the rectangular opening
“There’s always a trick to these things,” Hachi said. She and Fergus were the only two of them who’d dealt with League puzzle traps before, and they were wary. “You don’t have anything on this one, Mr. Rivets?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, miss,” Mr. Rivets said, watching the six remaining Leaguers examine the entrance. “As this puzzle trap was never used to trap a Mangleborn, no clues were ever written down to be passed along as nursery rhymes. Or at least, none survive.”
“Nursery rhymes?” Clyde asked.
“Aye,” said Fergus. “The ancient Leagues thought it’d be cute to write up the instructions on how to get inside these things as children’s rhymes, so nobody’d ever forget them. People remember the rhymes, all right, but the trouble is, nobody remembers what they mean.”
“How about, ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,’” Kitsune joked.
“But Uktena the horned serpent does not resemble the character in that rhyme,” Martine said.
“Who said I was talking about the snake?” Kitsune said.
Fergus frowned. “Archie is not Humpty Dumpty.”
“It’s not about either of them,” Hachi said testily. “There isn’t a rhyme for the trap.”
“Mr. X, you got nothing on this one?” Clyde asked.
“No. This one was before my time,” Señor X said. Which was saying something, if his other stories were to be believed.
“Okay,” Clyde said. “Archie’s down there with Martine’s great-grandmother, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that you don’t leave a man—or woman—behind,” he said, glancing at Hachi. “So we go in for him.” He nodded at the rectangle. “And this looks like our only way in.”
“What about you?” Hachi asked. “You can’t take Buster in with you.”
The giant steam man sat in the grass beside the big round seal, his tailpipe wagging.
“Yeah,” Clyde said. “But I’m still coming. I’m a UN Cavalryman, don’t forget.”
“I shall remain with Buster,” Mr. Rivets said. “The ancient Leaguers did not design their puzzle traps for machine men, either.”
The League climbed inside the rectangular hole, Fergus’s whole body glowing like a lektric lightbulb to light their way. Eerie flames flickered around Martine’s aetherical harpoon too, casting a green pall over everything.
There was a narrow floor just below the top cover with barely enough room for them to all fit. Across a small gap in the floor was a six-foot-tall round brass cone on its side, pointed right at them.
“Uh, I don’t like that,” Fergus said. “That’s gonna come shooting at us in a minute, mark my words.”
Kitsune slipped down through the gap in the floor before any of them could say not to.
“Give me a light,” she said from below.
Martine stuck the tip of her harpoon in the hole.
“It’s the same thing here. Another ledge, another gap, another round brass cone pointing sideways.”
Clyde told Kitsune to wait, and they all climbed down with her floor by floor. There were five ledges in all, each with its own sideways brass cone. Some of the brass cones were short, leaving them lots of room to stand on the ledge. Others were long, taking up almost the entire space.
There was no gap between the floor and the brass cone on the last ledge.
“Dead end,” Fergus said. “We’re not getting down there through this mess. Must be the other hole up there that leads through.”
“But it dead-ends too. How do we open it?” Gonzalo asked.
“It’s got to be with these,” Hachi said, putting a hand to the brass cone pointed at them.
Martine played again with the little aetherical gizmo she carried and turned its glowing screen toward them. It showed them a layout of the five floors they’d just climbed down, as well as chambers they couldn’t see beyond the brass cones.
“There are coils behind these cones,” Martine told them. “Springs.”
“Crivens,” Fergus said. “I told you! Any second now they’re going to come flying at us and smush us
against these walls!”
“I do not think so,” Martine said. She tapped the screen, and mathematical equations appeared beside the diagram. “The springs are at their tensile extremity.”
Hachi, Gonzalo, Clyde, and Kitsune had no idea what she was talking about.
Fergus took the gizmo from her and studied it. “She means the springs in the wall are already stretched out as far as they go.”
“Why put springs behind the walls if they can’t stretch far enough to push the things?” Hachi asked.
Kitsune’s eyes went wide. “So they can be pushed back,” she said. “And I know why. I know what this is! It’s a lock!”
It was her turn to be stared at.
“Look,” she said, taking Martine’s gizmo. “You slide a key straight down, from above, and the teeth on the key push the brass cones back into the wall. That lets you turn the entire round chamber—”
“Which means the tube with the ladder moves, not the floor,” Fergus said. He showed them on the diagram. “See? The chamber turns, and so does the tube. I’ll bet it lines up with another hole that lets us keep climbing down.”
Kitsune nodded. “All we need is the key!”
“That’s one muy grande key,” Gonzalo said.
“One they knew only somebody with the superpowers of a Leaguer could turn,” Clyde said.
“They wouldn’t have built a huge lock without leaving a huge key behind for it,” Hachi said.
“Aye, and I think I’ve seen it,” Fergus said. “Or what’s left of it. Martine, you don’t by chance have a scan of that big snake statue from town, do you? The one with the wiggly body and the tail in the shape of a circle?”
Martine tapped at the screen of her gizmo, and an image of the statue appeared, to scale with the puzzle trap. She moved it around on the screen with her fingers and it slid inside, the bends in its body pushing all of the brass cones back perfectly. With a twist of her fingers she turned the looping tail that stuck out the top, and the lock turned.
“Brass,” Hachi said. “So all we need to open the puzzle trap to get Archie out is the giant key that Archie smashed fighting Moffett.”
“It’s all right,” Kitsune said. “I can pick the lock.”
“Of course you can,” Gonzalo said.
“You can pick a giant lock?” Clyde asked. “How?”
“Well, I know how to pick a lock. We just need to push each of these pins back at the same time so the room can turn.”
Hachi pushed on the brass pin beside them. Only when Clyde pushed with her were they able to slide the pin back into the wall.
“So. It just takes two of us to push one pin back,” Hachi said. “There are five pins, and six of us. How are we going to push them all back at the same time?”
“I bet I can push one of them back with Señor X,” Gonzalo said.
“No raygun can sustain that kind of beam,” Hachi said.
“I’m not your average raygun, kid,” Señor X said.
“I can do the same with my harpoon,” Martine said.
“If Buster doesn’t mind me borrowing a few odd pieces here and there, I can pull something together for another one,” Fergus said.
“And I think I can get one of Buster’s fingers in the top hole,” Clyde said.
“Which is how we can turn it too,” Kitsune said. “That just leaves the last one for me and you,” she said to Hachi.
“Let’s do it,” Clyde said. “Archie’s already been down there for hours with that thing.”
They all hurried to get into position, waiting only for Fergus to pull together something using a cargo winch and some brass rails from Buster’s engine room.
“Ready,” Fergus called at last.
“We all have to push our pins back until the row of pins behind them are flush with the wall,” Kitsune told them via shell, “and all at the same time. If just one pin is out of place, the room won’t turn.”
“All right,” Clyde said. “Ready Leaguers? Full steam ahead!”
Buster’s finger curled inside, pushing his pin back easily. The green flame around the shaft of Martine’s harpoon pushed like water on the tip of her brass pin. Señor X fired a spreading repulsor beam that Gonzalo held steady. Fergus’s contraption chugged and steamed, slowly ratcheting two poles in opposite directions: one backward, against the wall, the other forward, against his pin. And on the final ledge, Kitsune and Hachi put their backs into it, pushing with everything they had.
One by one the pins clicked into place, but Kitsune and Hachi weren’t strong enough to push theirs. Not even with the added help of Hachi’s flying circus.
“Push,” Hachi grunted.
“I’m pushing,” Kitsune told her.
Suddenly the rectangular section of wall in front of them rumbled and cracked, separating itself from the rest of the chamber. Krrrrrrrr. It pushed toward them, threatening to squash them if they didn’t slide the pin into place in time.
“The wall! It’s going to crush us!” Hachi yelled. She found an extra ounce of strength somewhere and pushed even harder, and their pin finally clicked into place. The room turned with the pressure from Buster’s finger, and Hachi and Kitsune slid to the floor, their pin safely tucked behind the wall of the turning room.
Hachi frowned. The wall in front of them wasn’t rumbling at them anymore. In fact, it looked as smooth as it had when they’d begun.
“But how—?” Hachi said. And then she understood. “You,” she said to Kitsune. “That wall was never moving. You just made me think it was.”
Kitsune grinned. “It’s funny how fear makes you do things you never thought you could do.”
“No,” Hachi said. “It’s not funny at all.”
Once the lock was in place, they all climbed back out to the top. The tube with the ladder, just as Fergus had guessed, had rotated so that it didn’t dead-end any more. There was another ladder in another tube beneath it.
“Down we go,” Fergus said.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. Something beat against the walls of the prison far below, shaking the earth for a mile above it.
“Sounds like somebody’s really, really angry,” Kitsune said.
“Martine mesmerized Uktena before. She can probably do it again,” Clyde said.
Kitsune’s whispered response made them all get quiet.
“Who said I was talking about the snake?”
22
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. Whatever was pounding on the walls of the puzzle trap below, it was strong. And angry. It kept pounding, again and again and again. None of them had to say what they were all thinking: that Archie had been trapped in an ancient League prison like he was a monster, and then they had dropped a Mangleborn on top of him. He had every right to be mad. But how mad was he? If Archie had lost control down there they could all be working hard to free a monster as bad as a Mangleborn.
The rest of the League climbed down the ladder into a tall, round, smooth-walled chamber directly below the giant lock. Strange symbols, each about the size of a fist, were carved in rows of seven characters each all the way down the brass wall.
Hachi traced the patterns of the symbols with her fingers. “Atlantean?” she asked.
“No,” Martine said. She was taking the steps on the ladder very slowly, scanning each line.
“Older,” Señor X said. “Older than me. If it’s words, I don’t know what it says.”
“There must be dozens of characters,” Clyde said.
“There are forty-one unique pictographs,” Martine said, still scanning the lines. “No. Forty-two.”
The lines of symbols ended with the ladder at the floor of the chamber. The last row had only six characters. In place of the seventh was a small opening with part of a spinning dial showing through it, like the back end of a steamboat. As the dial was spun, each of the forty-two characters Martine had counted appeared one at a time.
Beside the little window with the dial was a button, almost like a period at the end of a very long senten
ce.
“That’s just brass,” said Fergus. “So we’re supposed to turn that wee wheel to the right character, I suppose, and then push the button. Only we have no idea what any of this says.”
“A nursery rhyme clue would have been a lot of help right now,” Hachi said.
“Why don’t we just try them all?” Kitsune said. She reached for the button.
Hachi caught her wrist.
“Ah ah ah ah,” Fergus said. “We know better than that, Foxy. The minute you start guessing, bad things start happening.”
Kitsune looked around the empty room. “What’s going to happen?”
Hachi glared at her. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the wall will start closing in on us.”
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. The room shook so hard from the beating the prison was getting that most of them staggered.
“All the king’s horses and all his steam men couldn’t put Humpty together again,” Gonzalo said.
“Archie is not Humpty Dumpty,” Fergus said again. “He’s not some nursery rhyme monster. He’s a real boy, just like the rest of us.”
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
“Okay. Maybe not just like the rest of us,” Fergus allowed. “And maybe he’s not a real boy either. But he’s not a monster. He’s my friend. And yours too. All of you.”
Fergus’s words hung in the air a moment, as though no one was quite willing to challenge him. Or agree with him.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
“He’s Archie Dent, and he’s a Leaguer,” Clyde said, ending the discussion. “Now, somebody figure out what character we’re supposed to put in in the next five minutes, or I’m gonna start guessing.”
“Martine?” Hachi asked. The tall Karankawan science-pirate was staring at the lines of text, her head tilted thoughtfully. But whatever she was thinking, she kept it to herself. Fergus and Kitsune tried puzzling out the symbols, thinking that perhaps like Aegyptian hieroglyphs each picture had some real-world corollary, but it didn’t get them anywhere. For her part, Hachi had no idea what any of it meant.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. The room rocked again, and dirt and rock shook loose from the wall. Whatever was beating on the walls was going to bring the whole puzzle trap down around them.
