The Dragon Lantern (6 page)

“Are you quite sure about that, sir?” Mr. Rivets asked.

Before he could reply, the wind grabbed Archie's gyrocopter and sucked him out into the empty sky.

“I'll just wait here then, shall I?” Mr. Rivets asked the empty platform.

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Archie screamed.

The gyrocopter whipped him up and away from Cahokia in the Clouds, then dropped like a stone. Archie screamed, and he screamed, and he screamed. The airship the fox girl had fallen on loomed up at him beneath his feet, and he half-crashed, half-ran across the top of it until he slid off the side and was falling again. He wasn't falling as fast as he could be, he realized, but he
was
falling, the cobbled-together capsules of the city flashing by with frightening speed. The sun was up over the horizon now, and in the pink light Archie suddenly had a sweeping view of Cahokia in the Clouds, stretching down and away from him like an upside-down tower. Sunlight glinted off the windows of the buildings that stuck out like barnacles on the city in the sky, and gaslights flickered in the hazy pink sky like morning stars. If he hadn't been screaming his head off and about to pee in his pants, Archie might have found it beautiful.

The balloon bag of a smaller airship twisted up toward him, and Archie swung wildly to avoid it. The course change sent him corkscrewing away from Cahokia in the Clouds, and as he swung himself back he overcompensated. The city came rushing at him faster than he meant it to, and suddenly he was on top of a balcony full of people enjoying their breakfast at a diner. Somebody saw him and screamed. A waiter threw his towel in the air as he ducked, and Archie's feet dragged through the plates and glasses on the tables before he managed to swing back out into space.

“Sorry—sorry!” Archie yelled.

He had to get control of this thing before he ended up halfway to Navajo country—or worse, in a crater in Cahokia on the Plains. The gyrocopter was slowing his descent, but he needed to gain altitude to get any kind of real control. Archie kicked his feet like he was a little kid swinging on a swing set, and a gust of wind caught the gyrocopter and whipped him up again. Archie's stomach turned over, and he was glad he hadn't had any breakfast. The gust died and he came level again, hovering in the sky. Archie gave a tentative smile. Hey—he was getting the hang of this!

Then the gyrocopter dropped like a stone again.

Archie screamed and kicked his legs wildly, trying to do something—anything—to stop his descent. But all he managed to do was make the gyrocopter corkscrew wildly. He dropped through a thin layer of clouds, dodged a rising construction airship by a cog's breadth, and came back around toward the city. That's when he saw her—the fox girl! She was on top of another air taxi, and wasn't disguised as anything—unless that fox costume was a disguise. The air taxi was sailing down, and as it passed one of the public landing platforms, the fox girl jumped back inside the city.

Archie had to hit that platform. He swung toward it, but he was going too fast and coming in too high. He tried to swing back out, to come around again, but it was too late. A big glowing casement window appeared in front of him and—
crash!
—he went flying through it in a shower of glass and wood and smashed gyrocopter. He tumbled into the room like a big heavy chunkey ring, smashing through a small coffee table and slamming into the far wall. A portrait fell off the wall and tore on his head, replacing the head of the lady in the painting with his own.

Archie shook off the dizziness and found a family of Pawnee standing over him. The mother and father looked at Archie with a mixture of disbelief and anger. He had, after all, just destroyed their living room. The father wore denim pants and a white button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves, his black hair parted in the middle. The mother wore a long blue skirt and a brightly colored striped blouse, and had long, dark braided hair. A little girl and boy in pajamas hid behind the legs of their parents.

“Who are you?” the father asked. “How did you crash through our window?”

The hood of Archie's coat had flipped up onto his head in his tumble and he tried to push it back, but the picture frame was in the way. The father lifted the portrait off him, and Archie's hood fell back, revealing his head full of snow-white hair.

The little girl gasped. “It's Archie Dent!”

Archie blinked stupidly. Had he met these people before?

“Don't be a flange,” the boy said. “Archie Dent is a make-believe character.”

“But he has white hair!” the girl said.

“A lot of Yankees have white hair,” the boy said with authority. This far from Yankee territory, he clearly hadn't seen many white people.

Archie put a hand to his hair, still not understanding how they recognized him. “No. I—”

“They think you're a character from a dime novel,” the mother said.

“
The League of Seven versus the Mannahatta Mangleborn
!” the girl said. She ran to get a little paperback book and shoved it in Archie's face. He was still dizzy from the crash, but he could make out an illustration on the cover that looked like him and Fergus and Hachi battling a giant rat monster in a sewer.

The author's name was Luis Philip Senarens.

“Oh slag,” Archie muttered. He tried to get up.

“Be careful! You must be hurt!” the mother said.

“Oh. No,” Archie said. Any ordinary boy who'd come crashing in like that would have broken a few bones and been cut all to pieces, of course. But Archie was no ordinary boy.

“I'm all right,” Archie told them. He patted his thick coat. “Um, lots of padding.”

“Who are the other four Leaguers?” the girl asked him. “The first story only has three—you and Fergus and Hachi. Hachi is my favorite.”

“I—I don't know,” Archie said. Twisted pistons! Senarens was blabbing all the League's secrets in dime novels! “I'm not—I'm a … I'm a delivery boy.”

“Delivery!” the mother said. She looked back over her shoulder at the smashed window.

“Yeah, you're not Mrs. Nittawosew at 23 Windwalker Way, are you?” Archie asked. “No? Wrong house, then. Sorry. I'll just be going.”

Archie climbed to his feet. The mother and children were still staring at him, but the father was looking over his shoulder at the smashed window.

“Window delivery,”
he said. “Ruta, what if we delivered food to people's windows? Cathay food, Texan food, those Yankee cheese-and-tomato pies … Hot from the oven to your window in minutes. We could make a fortune!”

“Here,” Archie said. He snapped the metal rod off his back and handed the twisted wreck of Fergus's gyrocopter to the father. “See if you can use that. As for the rest of it, my … company … will pay for the damages.” He looked around at the disaster area he'd created. The Septemberist Society was going to slip a cog when they got this bill. But all would be forgiven when he got the Dragon Lantern back.

The fox girl!
He had to hurry.

“I'll just see myself out,” Archie said. He hurried down the hall, and the little girl ran after him to open the hatch for him.

“Tell Hachi that Freckles is my favorite,” she whispered.

Archie opened his mouth, then closed it. Senarens! He sighed and leaned in conspiratorially to the little girl. “I'll tell her,” he said. He gave the little girl a wink and a salute before hurrying away.

The fox girl had come back into the city a level below him. There was no Cahokia Man down here, so no central space to hang over the rail and look down. What would he see anyway? A businessman on the way to work? A nanny pushing a stroller? How was he supposed to find the fox girl again, when she could be anyone?

But he had to try. Archie found a stairwell and ran down it. It was another neighborhood of houses and shops, with Cahokians coming and going. He wandered into a morning farmer's market and weaved his way between the stalls and customers. Any one of them could be the fox girl. They could all be illusions too. The fox girl had Archie second-guessing everything. He intentionally brushed a woman shopping at a vegetable stand, just to make sure she was real, and got a suspicious look from her.

This was crazy. He had to admit it: He'd lost her. It was time to go back up to the lodge and check in. Maybe they could check all the outgoing airships, see if there were any last-minute tickets purchased.

And then he saw it—a fox tail disappearing around a pumpkin cart!

Archie tore after her. He came to an open alley between two swaying apartments and saw the fox tail slip around the corner past a pair of trash cans. Archie pounded down the gangplank and turned after her, following the fox tail again as it nipped down a gaslit avenue. In and out of walkways he chased it, until he came at last to a broad path lined by rusty, dilapidated warehouses. There was no fox tail disappearing around a corner this time, but he knew the girl had run here.

Led
him here, he corrected himself. He wasn't so stupid as to believe she hadn't seen him, and hadn't let him see her. But for whatever reason she had done it, he was just glad he hadn't lost her. It's not like she could do anything to hurt him.

Still, Archie made his way slowly and cautiously down the row of warehouses. She was up to something, and he wanted to be ready for it, whatever it was. If she was playing games with him, all he could do was play along and try to grab her if he could get close. He thought again about Hachi, and about Fergus, and how much easier it would have been to catch her with the help of his friends. His League teammates.

The warehouses weren't just rusty and run-down. They were empty. He went inside one, looking for anything out of the ordinary. It was dark inside, and Archie lit the gas lamp connected to his backpack. A Fergus gizmo to the rescue again.

Something clanged and Archie jumped, but it was just a rat scurrying from one hiding place to another. Archie shook his head. Rats, all the way up here in the sky.

Archie turned to leave, and something big landed on his back. He cried out and spun, but whatever it was hung on tight.

“Don't worry. I'm not a rat,” said a voice in his ear. “I'm a fox.”

The fox girl! Archie tried to grab her, but she hopped off. He spun, expecting her to be right behind him, but the warehouse was empty. She was tricking him again, making herself invisible.

“I know you're there,” he said. He held his hands out, trying to feel what he couldn't see.

“You're not bad at playing chase,” she said. The voice came from behind him, and he turned again. “But I grew up here. I know all the backstreets and secret staircases. It's been fun, but I can't play anymore.”

“Why not?” Archie said. “Stay and play.” She seemed to like being chased. Maybe if he could convince her it was a game, she wouldn't disappear for good, and he'd have a chance to catch her.

“Can't. Sorry,” the girl said. She was somewhere else now. Near the door?

Archie wanted to keep her talking. “Why not?” he asked.

“Because
you
might be invulnerable, but I'm not.”

What did that mean? “I'm not going to hurt you,” Archie said. “I just want—”

And then he heard it. A hissing sound, coming from his backpack. The sound of gas escaping. Oxygen, from the canister he'd used to breathe from on top of the balloon. When she'd been on his back, she must have pulled loose one of the tubes.

Fergus's warning came back to him suddenly:
Don't let the lamp near the oxygen. That would be bad.

Boom bad.

Archie scrabbled to turn off the lamp at his shoulder, but too late.

There was a sucking sound, like water down a drain, and then—

THOOM!

Archie's backpack exploded, blowing a hole in the wall of the warehouse and shooting him out into the clouds.

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