Dactyl Hill Squad

by Daniel José Older

  Shipment of 40 orphans from the COA for transport South.

  Will deliver at 11 tonight for immediate removal from city limits.

  Magdalys gasped. The paper had today’s date on it. In a little over twelve hours, they were sneaking the orphans out of the city.

  Have everything ready on the Ocarrion.

  If the captain gets antsy again, handle him.

  With great haste,

  R

  Magdalys’s eyes went wide. “Riker!” she said out loud.

  Then the door opened and the tallest woman Magdalys had ever seen walked in and screamed.

  “WHAT ON EARTH are you doing here, you filthy child?” The woman was dressed in a servant uniform and had tightly clenched fists, mahogany skin, and a French accent.

  Magdalys tried to do the innocent-child face that Sabeen had perfected, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t working. “I — I’m sorry, ma’am. I was starving and have nothing to eat, so I snuck in here thinking maybe —”

  “Enough!” the woman screeched. “Look at this filth!” She swung her arm toward the open door, through which Magdalys could see the trail of soot and coal she’d left like bread crumbs. She’d tried to be so careful!

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am! I can —”

  “You can do nothing! How am I supposed to clean this up before Mr. Weed gets back, hm? How? And look!” She stormed across the room so fast Magdalys had to dive out of her way before she trampled right over her. “The papers! Mon dieu!”

  “I didn’t mean to —”

  The woman whirled around. “Did not mean to? You are covered in soot! You have come down the chimney! And now you are looking through Mr. Weed’s papers? This is not a pantry. You are not stupid, child.” Her eyes narrowed. “What are you up to?”

  Magdaly’s mind went irretrievably blank. “I just … I’m just …”

  The woman seemed to make a split decision and whirled back to the blackened papers. “No matter! What matters is this filth that I ’ave to clean up! How to explain this to Mr. Weed, eh?” She gathered up the soot-covered papers, black clouds poofing into the still office air, and headed for the fireplace.

  “Wait!” Magdalys called. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, child, there is no way I will be able to clean these, so I must burn them. Better that they don’t exist at all than for Mr. Weed to think I was going through his things.” She dumped them in the hearth and grabbed a book of matches from the mantelpiece.

  “No!” Magdalys yelled, crossing the room at a run. She dove into the hearth, snatching up all the papers in her arms. If she had to, she’d scale the chimney, but it wouldn’t be easy with her arms full. She started shoving them into her satchel.

  “Mon cherie, you are going to ’ave to do better than that if you are a spy, I am afraid. Now come, get out of there and give!” — she yanked on Magdalys’s satchel — “Me!” Another yank. Magdalys held on tight. “Ze! Papers!”

  From somewhere far away, Magdalys heard a yell. It sounded like a boy. In fact, she realized as it got louder, it sounded like Mapper. The woman turned and yelled, “Mon dieu!” Then a terrific shattering sounded from the far wall and a huge dactyl burst through the window and landed on the desk, Mapper grinning triumphantly on its back.

  “Filthy dino!” the woman yelled. “’Ow am I going to — !?” She backed up against the far wall and threw her arms up in disgust.

  “Mapper!” Magdalys yelled, half laughing, half about to cry. “How — what … even?”

  Mapper shrugged. “I couldn’t think of a plan and you were taking a while, so …” He waved his arms around. “Here we are! Who’s she?”

  “She’s Weed’s —”

  “I am Miss Josephine Du Monde and I am responsible for the cleanliness and sanctity of this ’ouse, which you, young man, ’ave just violated in a most severe way!”

  “My bad,” Mapper said, not looking very sorry.

  The dactyl lifted one clawed foot then the other, its nails scratching nasty gashes into the surface of Weed’s once fancy desk, and squawked. “Uh,” Mapper said, “isn’t that what dactyls do right before they —” With a ppffftttt! noise, the dactyl let loose a nasty, white-and-brown dropping directly onto the carpet. “— that.”

  “Oh my god,” Magdalys said.

  Miss Josephine shook her head. “Oh no no no no … no.”

  For a moment, they all just stared in disbelief. Then Miss Josephine very calmly walked over to the fireplace and picked up the matches again. She grabbed the basin of a hand lantern off the desk and turned it upside down, pouring oil all over the carpeted floor.

  “What are you doing?” Magdalys yelled.

  “What does it look like I am doing, filthy child? I am burning the place to the ground, oui?”

  “But —”

  “To be frank, I ’ave been dreaming of doing this for quite a few years now.”

  “But Mr. Weed …”

  The dactyl screeched and took a few steps back from the noxious fumes now rising from the carpet. “Whoa,” Mapper yelled.

  “Mr. Weed,” Josephine said, striking a match, “will beat me within an inch of my life if he finds the ’ouse in such a state.”

  Magdalys’s eyes went wide. “Oh no …”

  “If I am lucky. That’s if he thinks eet was just from negligence that this ’appened, and not because I was spying. If eet’s spying, he will ’ave me ’anged.” The match didn’t light, so she pulled out another.

  “But I thought —”

  “You thought slavery was abolished in New York?” Miss Josephine stopped what she was doing long enough to let out a sad, pitying belly laugh. “Okay, filthy child.” She struck the second match. “But whatever silly thing you ’ave come to believe, you still better run.”

  “Wait!” Magdalys yelled. “The papers! The rest of them. They might … My family. Weed was the one who stashed me in the orphanage, and he took my sisters back to Cuba. I have to … I have to find out what I can.”

  Miss Josephine shook out the match. “Ah, you are one of the orphans … Of course. Very well, quickly now. All of his papers are in this cabinet ’ere.” She nodded at a big wooden cabinet against the wall. “Grab what you can. I am setting this fire in two minutes. And I will have burnt up in the fire, of course, because after today New York will hear no more of Miss Josephine Du Monde, that I promise you.”

  “But you’re not really going to let it burn you up, right?” Mapper said.

  “Mapper!” Magdalys snapped. “Come help me with these papers!”

  He hopped off the dactyl, careful not to land in the massive mound of pteropoop, and hurried over, satchel open. Together they shoved as many documents as they could fit in their bags as Miss Josephine watched approvingly. When they finished, she nodded at them, struck the match, and dropped it.

  All three of them climbed on the dactyl as the flames roared to life behind them. “Go!” Mapper yelled. “Heeyah!” And the dactyl took off through the smashed window and soared out into the Manhattan skies.

  IT WAS JUST past noon by the time Magdalys, Mapper, and Miss Josephine made it back to the Bochinche. They stumbled in, exhausted and filthy from their long journey and near escape from the flames, the two satchels full of documents clutched tightly in their arms.

  People packed the bar from wall to wall. Magdalys had never seen it so full. They squeezed in and closed the door behind them. “What’s going on?” Mapper asked, and someone promptly shushed him.

  “It’s about to start!” a voice from up front called.

  “Ooh, a play!” Miss Josephine, who could see over everyone’s heads, exclaimed.

  A play? Magdalys got on tippy-toes but still couldn’t see what was happening. Then everyone started roaring and clapping and she heard Halsey Crunk proclaim: “Now is the winter of our discontent!”

  “I know that’s right,” a woman in the audience shouted, and everyone cackled. Some other performer might’ve been thrown by the hootenanny, but Ma
gdalys knew Halsey; she’d seen him perform at least a dozen times, and he lived for exactly that lively, loving audience interaction that was happening in the Bochinche. He was probably frowning, deep in character as Richard III, the conniving, hunchbacked king of England, but inside, Halsey was chuckling away.

  “Made glorious summer by this son of New York!”

  That New definitely wasn’t in the original play. Even if you didn’t know, it was obvious by the way Halsey threw it in, and either way, the audience loved him for it. Raucous laughter broke out followed by wild applause.

  Halsey went on, seemingly oblivious, and for a few moments, Magdalys lost herself in the tumbling speech, its highs and lows and wishes and fears. She let the words take her away to some world where things didn’t keep catching fire around her and death didn’t lurk around every corner. Then again, Richard III was one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest plays — she would always remember the soggy paper bags with something heavy in it that they’d used to show proof of some beheaded dukes at the Zanzibar, and the chills it gave her.

  The nagging weight on her shoulder brought Magdalys back to reality. Riker and Weed were shipping those orphans out of New York tonight. She had to let David and Cymbeline know.

  Magdalys poked Mapper, who stood completely enthralled by the play even though he couldn’t see either. He looked up like he’d been shaken out of a deep sleep, and she motioned for him to pass her the satchel. Then she made her way through the crowd.

  “Dost grant me, hedgehog?” Cymbeline’s voice sang out from the stage. The audience hollered. “Then god grant me too: Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed!”

  David was nowhere to be seen, but Bernice was behind the bar, drying beer mugs and shooting dirty looks at anybody who got out of line. She flashed a big smile when Magdalys finally made it over to her. “Hey, babygirl!” she whispered. “I’ve always wanted to turn this place into a theater on top of everything else. And now look! How was Manhattan?”

  Magdalys didn’t even know where to start. “I need to talk to Mr. Ballantine. I … I have something for him. Is he here? It’s important.”

  “No, dear, but he should be back soon. Said Mr. Napoleon sent a dactyl bout something urgent and he had to rush off.”

  Magdalys gulped. Had the fire stirred up some other trouble for the Vigilance Committee? What if everyone had been arrested or snatched up?

  “You look scared and tired, dearie, and you’re filthy! Goodness. Why don’t you go bathe. I’ll set some dinner out for you in the back room and you can wait for Mr. Ballantine there.”

  Magdalys nodded. The sheer exhaustion of the day felt like a weight that dragged her toward the ground with each passing moment. “Can you let him know …” she mumbled, “… it’s important?”

  “Of course, love,” Bernice said, ushering her toward the stairs. “I’ll tell him when I see him.”

  Magdalys woke with a start. The sun was just beginning its long summer afternoon journey toward the Manhattan building tops.

  The satchels.

  She peered under the bed, gaped at the dusty emptiness. She’d stashed them under there while she bathed and dressed herself with every intention of going downstairs to wait for Mr. Ballantine, and then promptly passed all the way out instead.

  How long had she slept? She had no idea. More importantly: Where were the satchels? All that information, even if it made no sense at all to her yet, had to matter. It had to! After all they’d gone through to get it. But there was nothing under the bed. Nothing under any of the beds. Nothing behind the cabinets or in the one closet or beneath the window drapes. Nothing. The satchels were gone.

  Had Miss Bernice stolen them? Had she been deceiving them all this time? Magdalys bolted out of the room and down the dark stairwell. The bar was emptying out, the show having just ended. Bernice was nowhere to be seen; Mr. Barrett was behind the bar as usual. Magdalys glanced frantically around, then dashed to the back room and stopped short in the doorway.

  “That’s gotta mean Rio de Janeiro,” Amaya was saying. “Where’s that at?”

  “Brazil,” Mapper said, without missing a beat.

  “What about this one?” Amaya crossed the floor with a piece of paper in her hand. A soot-covered piece of paper. The wall behind them was covered, floor to ceiling, in Harrison Weed’s stolen documents. That circular seal with the tyrannosaurus glared out from almost every sheet of paper. Magdalys burst out laughing.

  “Oh, hey, Mag-D!” Two Step called from his perch at the top of a ladder. She hadn’t even seen him up there. “We were just trying to make sense of those papers you and Mapper ganked this morning.” He glanced at the paper Amaya had handed up to him. “Oh, that goes over in stack number one, I think. Nicaragua.”

  “Anyway,” Mapper said, “seems ol’ boy is involved pretty deeply in some kind of international trade. He’s got documents and ledgers detailing sales from here all through the Confederate states, Cuba, and throughout South America.”

  “Sales of what?” Magdalys asked, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.

  Mapper looked at the others, then back at Magdalys. “Uh … us.”

  She nodded, sat down. Even knowing it already hadn’t softened the blow. The staggering cruelty of the human race seemed to sink into her blood and bones. It wasn’t the first time; she knew it wouldn’t be the last. She shook her head, letting it all spin around her for a terrible few moments. All those numbers now decorating the walls, those were all people, somehow. Even if they were dollar amounts or cargo numbers, one way or another they all traced back to human beings. One of them was probably about her. And another her brother and sisters.

  “Pretty sure I cracked the code though,” Mapper said. “At least the basics of it.”

  Code! Magdalys dug through her pockets, pulled out the scrap of paper she’d found. “Guys,” she said, placing it on the table and unfolding it carefully. They gathered around and read.

  “The others …” Amaya said, fists tight, brow furrowed.

  “We gotta … We have to …” Two Step said.

  “We will,” Amaya said. “We will.”

  IT WAS WELL past five o’clock when David, Cymbeline, and Louis Napoleon walked through the door of the back room arm in arm like they’d been friends their whole lives. David stopped mid-laughter when he saw Magdalys, Mapper, Two Step, and Amaya gathered around the stack of papers on the big wooden table. (Sabeen had long since curled up and passed out in the corner.)

  “Magdalys Roca,” David said, smile gone. “I just spoke with a certain Miss Josephine —”

  Magdalys held up a hand. “I know what you’re going to say, Mr. Ballantine, and I’m sorry I disobeyed a direct order, but —”

  “I don’t think you do, Magdalys.” David’s voice was ice. “And I don’t care what the but is; we can talk about that later.”

  Magdalys sat. All the stern talking-tos she’d gotten at the orphanage, all the wagging fingers and tight faces … they circled back around her like a whirlwind of shame. This was different, she knew this was different, but still … the echoes remained.

  “When I give an order,” David said, crossing his arms over his chest, “it’s not because I’m power tripping or just trying to boss you around. I’m doing it because I don’t want you to die.” His voice cracked a little, and Magdalys was suddenly terrified he was going to burst into tears. “There’s so much happening right now, so much danger. For all of us. And you going off on your own, or even dragging someone else along with you on some wild mission to do who knows what —”

  “We were —” Mapper started, but David cut him off with a single glare.

  “And it’s not just Miss Josephine.”

  Magdalys looked up from her hands.

  “Old Wilco Badhoffer came to the Bochinche earlier to complain that some of the chimney sweeps had flown on dactylback to the bone factory on the edge of town.”

  “What’s a bone factory?” Mapper asked.

&nb
sp; “The silo out by those cow pastures that I’m quite positive Miss Bernice told you not to go anywhere near. They slaughter those cows, sell off the meat to places like the Bochinche, and then grind up the bones to make fertilizer.”

  “But … how?”

  “That’s what I’m getting to. They say that’s how Dactyl Hill got its name — all that carrion attracted the pteros, and here we are. Badhoffer was upset because whoever was there got his pteranodon all riled up.”

  Magdalys’s eyes went wide. There was a pteranodon in the silo? A pteranodon was like a pterodactyl but way, waaay bigger and with no teeth and not much of a tail. Dr. Barlow Sloan’s Dinoguide said they were the most intelligent and graceful of the pteros, and fiercely protective of their brood. And if the creature in that silo was one, it was even more gigantic than the average pteranodon.

  Two Step boggled. “That thing was a pteranodon? Whoa!”

  Cymbeline shook her head. “You kids are terrible at keeping secrets.”

  “Thanks for the confession, Two Step,” David said. “And I imagine Magdalys was with you?”

  Two Step crossed an imaginary zipper over his lips. Everyone stared at Magdalys; she just looked away, face sullen. It didn’t even matter if she got caught anymore. The pteranodon changed everything.

  “You guys don’t have legal guardians right now,” David said. “And we figured, quite frankly, between myself, Louis, the Crunks — well, Cymbeline, at least — Bernice, and everyone else here, we’d do a better job of keeping you guys safe than the broken ol’ charity bureaucracy. But now … if you won’t even follow simple orders, I’m not so sure.”

  Magdalys felt the blood pounding through her face. Being back in an orphanage would be like prison. There would be no way out, no way to get south. Her whole body pulsed with the need to grab her things and be gone, grab her things and be gone. But she wouldn’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her storm away.

  “I don’t like holding that over your heads,” David said, “but I don’t know how else to get through to you that this is life and death for us all.”