My Diary from the Edge of the World (17 page)

Walking deeper into the city, we passed street callers (human and ghostly), jugglers, and cowboys playing poker with ghosts in ten-gallon hats (which they'd probably won from the cowboys). A fight burst out of a saloon just ahead of us, and we had to wait for the saloon keeper—a translucent lady in pioneer clothes—to come out and usher the culprits away. We passed a shop window filled with notices headed with words like
STOLEN
or
WANTED
or
WARNING
. The only one I was able to read as we hurried past was asking for information leading to the capture of a gang of ghosts that
had been running loose in town and dragging people into the Underworld.

We walked past caves that stretched back into the darkness of the rocky walls, and crooked houses with ghosts circling the turrets. I gaped at the blinking, flickering signs encrusted into the canyon walls around the city:

• FRESHWATER MERMAIDS AQUARIUM SPECTACULAR!

• THE TRUMP WESTERN GEM CASINO: BEST SLOTS! BEST DRINKS! BIGGEST GIANTS! WE TAKE GOLD AND CASH! WIN A RIDE ON THE BREATHTAKING PEGASUS!

• HAS GAMBLING WORKED UP YOUR APPETITE? TREAT YOURSELF TO A CHEESECAKE ZINGO AT APPLEBEE'S.

• LUCK CITY JAIL, MORGUE, AND WEDDING CHAPEL.

There was even a KFC, which smelled heavenly as we passed the front door.

“You guys stay right here,” Mom said. She walked into a small ice-cream parlor and came out looking like she'd found renewed purpose. “I asked for directions to a safe hotel,” she said.

She led us down a long series of staircases, taking a left, then a right, then another left, almost all the way to the bottom of the gorge, where we could hear rushing
water from an unseen river below. We turned down a street called Widows' Walk and here we finally came upon a row of little inns. We walked past the first three inviting, polished doorways—with names like the Palace and the Sparkling Nugget—because it was obvious we couldn't afford them. Then past four more—less gleaming but still too gleaming for us. Finally we came upon a modest, crooked Victorian with a sign above it that said
GULCH INN AND TAVERN
.

Mom rang the little metal bell three times before we heard anyone moving inside, and then a woman (“Harriet,” she said—we were relieved to learn she was human and that she accepted cash) showed up in curlers to let us in with barely a few words exchanged. She led us past a small dim parlor with a kiosk full of travel brochures, past old, sinking, dusty furniture and up the stairs to a crooked suite of rooms. The suite had gently sloping floors and mismatched but comfy-looking armchairs gathered in a central parlor, three bedrooms branching from the main room, a huge marble fireplace, and three tall windows looking down onto the street.

“This will do fine,” Mom said, peeling some bills out of her envelope and handing them over. “Thank you very much.”

Harriet gave her a tired but not unkind smile, laid the key on the table, and shuffled out into the hall.

“We have some time to get cleaned up,” Dad said. “And then, your mom and I will talk about what to do next.”

They gave Millie and me the room at the back of the suite, looking into the backyard of the house—a flat rocky space that lay between us and the canyon wall. I noticed that, next door, Harriet's neighbor had covered his or her own small lot with sod and grass, and in another moment I saw why. At one end of the lot was a cluster of three pegasusses, (Millie just looked over my shoulder and informed me that the proper word is “pegasi”) glowing white!

I felt someone come up beside me, and turned to see Oliver. We both leaned our foreheads against the window.

The pegasi were gathered at an empty trough, as if waiting for something, and in another moment we saw what. A figure came ambling out toward them carrying a big bucket of water, and slowly she dumped it into the trough.

There was something strange about her hair, and then I realized, with a shudder, what it was. It was moving.

“Snakes,” Oliver said.

The woman seemed to sense us staring down into her yard, and turned, but I had only a moment to see that her face was a deep, rich green before Oliver yanked me suddenly back behind the curtain.

“What?” I whispered breathlessly, my heart pounding against my ribs.

“That,” Oliver said, daring to duck back to the window to see if the coast was clear, “was Medusa.”

I gaped at him. I knew about Medusa from the
Immortals, Where Are They Now?
show. She's a goddess, and a well-known hoarder of pegasi. I figured she must have fallen on hard times if she'd ended up here, in Luck City, selling pegasus rides. And I was glad Oliver had pulled me back from the curtain. Wolf Blitzer from CNN said she could turn people to stone with her eyes.

“She must capture them out near the Sierra Madres,” Oliver said, leaning back against the window now that she was gone. “That's illegal.”

“Yeah, they're endangered,” I said, trying to sound knowledgeable. “I donate some of my allowance to a unicorn rescue group, but I keep up on pegasus issues too.”

“I guess the police aren't going to mess with Medusa,” Oliver said. “I wonder if they even have police.”

“Why don't the pegasi fly away?” I asked. But as soon as I said it, I noticed they were tied to a stake at the center of the property with long golden ropes. “Well, I'm surprised nobody steals them.”

He gazed at the paltry lot disapprovingly. “It's not a big enough space for them. She's an irresponsible pet owner.”

I thought about my poor dead dog, Poochie, and how I used to force her to sleep with me and paint her claws with nail polish. And once I made her wear doll clothes, and then piled my stuffed animals on top of her and put her in all these weird positions to take photos for a calendar I tried to sell to all my friends so I could get a new bike. I decided never to mention this to Oliver.

*  *  *

That afternoon, Mom ducked out for a few hours and bought us all some clothes from a thrift store Harriet helped direct her to. “I haggled with the clerk,” she said. “I don't think your grandma would begrudge us buying just these few things; we're a little desperate.” (Mom knows all our sizes; her brain is a catalog of facts about each one of us. She knows where and when we lost all our baby teeth. I wouldn't be surprised if she knew how many freckles there are on my nose.)

Bored, Sam and Oliver and I wandered the house, which had two decrepit, cobwebby back staircases and three separate parlors. Apparently, we were the only guests. We came upon Harriet in the kitchen, sitting on a stool and peeling apples for a pie. We hovered in the doorway uncertainly, but she nodded us toward the old linoleum table. “Have a seat,” she offered. “Stay awhile.”

We sat on the cracked vinyl chairs and watched her work, curious about where she'd gotten the apples. She noticed our stares.

“The cowboys bring in supplies. They pack them in on mules. These are pretty gamey and old, but still okay for baking. I always bake one for me and one to leave on Medusa's doorstep, next door. Kind of an offering. You want to be on good terms with a neighbor like her.

“I was wondering,” I said. “Aren't her animals powerful enough to escape? Even though they're tied up?”

“They've been tamed with golden bridles,” Harriet said, eyes still on the apple in her hand. “Nobody can even fly them without the bridles. Didn't you learn that in school?” As she peeled, the apple skins came off in long, thin lines. “I'm sure Medusa keeps those bridles well protected.” She glanced up at us. There was a kind warmth in her eyes, but also a sadness. “Anyway, they
can't fly very far before getting tired and having to land—they have a big wing span, but their bodies are so heavy. I guess it's not very practical to own a pegasus unless it's for something like selling rides.”

“Why do you look so sad?” Sam asked. I shushed him, but Harriet smiled at him.

“Wouldn't you be sad if you were stuck in Luck City?” she asked.

“I'd be scared of all the monsters,” Sam replied.

She put down her knife, wiped off her hands, and folded them on her lap. “I got stuck here, I guess. I grew up on an island off the coast of North Carolina, a beautiful place. But the mermaids started crawling in and stealing people. We had to adjust . . . most people left.”

“And you came here?”

“I thought I could win enough money to resettle somewhere inland, back north, somewhere nice like upstate New York. I always thought I was good at cards. I'd always felt lucky. But once I got here, I only went into debt. And now I'm stuck. I run this inn for a ghost couple who own three other hotels.” She turned her attention back to her work and began to clear away the apple skins, brushing them off the counter into a bin. “It's a rough place. It traps you in ways you don't expect.
And it's no place for children.” She eyed Sam, then gave me a significant, questioning look. “People come here only because they have no other options.” She spread the peeled apples on the counter to be chopped.

I was about to ask her if she thought she'd ever be able to leave the city, when we heard the front door jangle and creak and Mom's footsteps in the foyer.

Sam ran out to see what she'd bought for him, but Oliver and I only trailed behind slowly. I think the conversation had made us both uneasy.

*  *  *

That night, Mom and Dad said they were going out, just the two of them.

“Where are you going?” Millie asked, pointedly suspicious. It was the four of us, sitting in the upstairs parlor. I could hear Oliver and Sam laughing in the back bedroom; they'd been thumb wrestling for about half an hour, and I could only imagine how sore their thumbs must be.

“We have some things we need to do,” Dad said, looking up at the ceiling, then at the decrepit fireplace, everywhere but at our faces.

“What kinds of things?” I asked. Every once in a while, Millie and I work as a team, usually when Mom
and Dad try to keep something from us. We're surprisingly good at getting things out of them when we make a unified effort.

They looked at each other, then Mom said, “We're going to see the genie.” We gaped at them.

“Grandma warned us about the genie,” I said softly. I was thinking about what Harriet had said, about people getting trapped.

Mom looked tired and nervous (though still beautiful as always). “She warned us about Luck City, too,” she said, “but here we are. And we think it's too good a chance to pass up.” A silence settled over us as Millie and I took this in.

“Well, we're going with you,” Millie said.

*  *  *

For obvious reasons, and also because he was still running a fever, Sam stayed home. Oliver volunteered to stay with him. Mom kissed them both on the forehead before we left. (With Oliver, she did it sneakily and quickly, before he could protest.) Though she'd tried to talk us girls out of coming, Millie was so adamant that she'd finally given in.

Once outside the hotel, we gathered on the front stoop.

“How are we going to find him?” Millie asked.

As soon as she said it, we noticed a pale green glowing footprint in the shape of Dad's foot on the ground in front of us, and then another and another, leading down the alley.

Dad studied it. “Supposedly, we just ask,” Dad said, “and he finds us.” He looked up at the three of us. “Looks like he already has.” Millie and I looked at each other, nervous. When Dad followed the tracks, we all trailed along behind.

The trail took us along a crooked alley that sloped downward, even farther into the gulch. At the bottom we reached a wide boulevard bordered on one side by a narrow river of rushing water. Following the path along side it, we soon left the clusters of stone houses behind and found ourselves on a rocky trail that led deeper and deeper into the fold of the gorge—where, up ahead, its walls met in a point at a wide, deep hole that was surrounded by a thick stand of evergreens. Here, about twenty feet left of the hole, was where the river began—at the bottom of the waterfall we'd seen from above. Just as Dad had predicted, an enormous vertical wheel churned in the white water. “This is how Luck City runs,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and taking a moment to study the engineering. Normally
he would have stood there indefinitely, taking the thing apart with his eyes, but Mom tugged on his sleeve, insistent that we all keep going.

Up ahead, the green footsteps disappeared into the wide, gaping hole in the canyon wall, and we all stood staring into the shadows. From the darkness inside, just above the sound of the rushing water, we could hear distant moans.

“He's in
there
?” Millie asked nervously. It looked and sounded a lot like the cave in Grandma's backyard, like a cave to the Underworld.

Mom and Dad both looked nervous. “I suppose being related to angels, they have some connection between life and death,” Dad said. He swallowed. “I suppose they don't mind living so close to the Underworld. Though they can never come out of their caves until they're set free.”

“So he's trapped?”

Dad nodded. “Well, he's stuck to his bottle, which is in the cave. I read it in a brochure back at the inn. There's an ordinance about moving the bottle, all sorts of red tape involved. I think he can work his magic within a two-hundred-yard radius and that's it. Except, of course—the wishes he grants; those reach anywhere.”

I wondered if I should feel sorry for the genie, but a few minutes later, I had my answer. He didn't deserve anyone's pity.

*  *  *

We entered in a group, clustered together and weaving through the trees. We walked into the wide mouth of the cave and let our eyes adjust to the dimness for a moment.

We were in a wide round cavern, its ceiling soaring above us and dripping with stalagmites and stalactites. A few small pines were gathered at the entrance behind us, straining toward the outdoors. Across the way, about twenty feet in front of us, was a kind of grotto—with candles tucked into the nooks of the cave wall and water gathered in a little pond that lay in a shaft of dim moonlight filtering in through a hole in the cave ceiling. The sources of all the moaning and rattling were out of sight, farther down the cave that continued on to the left of the grotto and curved into a deeper darkness.