The Dragon Lantern Read online

  “May I say again, Master Archie, the lack of a better idea is not a valid reason for embracing a bad one.”

  “We’re alive, Mr. Rivets. And look!”

  A downtown cable car was leaving the station above them, and the first rows of seats were just visible coming through the floor. Sitting in one of them was the fox girl. She stared back at him in amazement before changing back into an old woman.

  Archie snatched up Mr. Rivets and ran for the cable car platform. The gangplank was full of people, though—men and women heading to work, nannies pushing strollers, deliverymen hauling boxes. Archie had to shuffle back and forth through the maze of them so much he was never going to make it in time.

  “Master Archie, why are you dancing around?” Mr. Rivets asked.

  “What do you want me to do, run over all these people?”

  “Master Archie, there are no people.”

  Archie put a hand out to touch one of the passing pedestrians. It went right through her. He took a step toward a man carrying a large wooden crate and winced, expecting it to hit him in the face, but the man and his box walked right through him. Archie didn’t feel a thing.

  “It’s all in my head,” he said, amazed. So. She could do more than just change her appearance. She could make you see other things too.

  Archie walked forward, passing through person after person, then broke into a run. “All right, Mr. Rivets—you have to tell me if any of these people are real, or things are going to get real messy!”

  But none of them were real. Archie sprinted for the cable car platform. The fox girl, still disguised as an old woman, looked anxiously between Archie and the conductor. They were just going to make it, and she had nowhere to go.

  “First-row priority seating is for city elders and people with disabilities,” Archie called. “Not thieves in fox costumes!”

  The old lady got up from her seat and ran up the stairs of the cable car with the speed and agility of a twelve-year-old girl, surprising the rest of the passengers. Archie and Mr. Rivets got on board right as the cable car left the station, and Archie put the machine man down to climb after her. The cable car went down as they ran up, and when the old lady was level again with the floor where Archie and Mr. Rivets had boarded, she jumped across the two-foot gap between the cable car and platform, her fox tail flashing briefly before she scampered away.

  Twisted pistons! Archie ran up the steps, trying to get to the top row of seats to jump before the cable car passed the level above them completely. He was too slow, and the cable car was too fast! He got to the top just as the cable car was clearing the floor above them and jumped, grabbing on to the platform with both hands. He was just about to slip off when something below him gave him a push up. Mr. Rivets!

  “I’ll catch the next car up,” Mr. Rivets said as Archie clambered onto the deck. “Be careful, Master Archie!”

  “Careful is my middle name,” Archie whispered, using a line he’d used before. As he looked back down the cable car hole he’d just climbed out of, he wondered if that was true anymore—and if he wanted it to be.

  Archie followed the fox girl down a walkway filled with Cahokia schoolchildren in black-and-white uniforms. They laughed and talked and jostled each other, filling the gangplank ahead of him.

  Illusions! They had to be. She was tricking him again. Archie ran right at the last kids in line. Oof! He knocked three kids flat and fell on top of a fourth.

  “Hey! Watch it! Look out, you flange!” they cried.

  “Sorry! Sorry,” Archie said. So. Not illusions. He pulled himself up and worked his way through to the head of the line, where the teacher stood with her hands on her hips.

  “Sorry!” Archie told her. “Just trying to get past.”

  “All right, boys and girls, settle down,” the teacher said. She started doing a head count. “Let’s see if we’ve lost anyone.”

  Archie had almost turned the corner when he heard the teacher say, “Wait, how do I have one extra?”

  Archie spun around in time to watch one of the students he’d flattened peel off the end of the line and take off running in the other direction. Slag! He’d run right into her and hadn’t realized it! Archie pushed his way back through the school group to more shoves and complaints and raced after the fox girl. Mr. Rivets was just coming back up on another cable car, and he pointed at the fleeing child.

  “There, Master Archie! The fox girl!”

  “I know! I know!” Archie cried. He was so close! A man appeared right in front of him, and Archie flinched but passed right through him. Then a machine man appeared, and a wall, and, improbably, an enormous bear, but Archie closed his eyes and ran right through every one of them. He was so close to catching her that the fox girl was just throwing them at him out of nowhere to confuse him.

  The girl ran toward one of the public access ramps where air taxis picked up and dropped off passengers, but there was no ship there. She staggered to a halt, windmilling her arms to keep from falling out of the city. Archie stopped behind her. She could make him see anything she wanted to, but there was no way she was getting past him.

  “Wow,” she said. “I think I can see my house from here.”

  The girl turned to face him, and in the blink of an eye the schoolgirl turned into the fox girl Archie had only caught glimpses of. She was a little taller than Archie, with long, straight black hair that fell past her shoulders and hung down in her face, half-hiding her narrow eyes. Her skin was darker than Archie’s but lighter than most First Nations people, her face soft and round. She wore a baggy white dress that looked like a bathrobe, with a wide white cloth belt tied around her stomach. Sticking up out of her dark hair were two reddish-brown fox ears, and hanging in the air behind her was a reddish brown-and-white fox tail that swished mischievously in the air. It looked for all the world like it was real.

  “Is that what you really look like?” Archie asked.

  “Why? Don’t you believe your eyes?” she asked with a smirk. Her accent sounded foreign, like Anglish wasn’t her first language.

  “Give me the lantern,” Archie told her.

  The fox girl cocked her head sideways. “You are very strong,” she said.

  “I also can’t be hurt,” Archie said. He took a step closer, to show her he meant business.

  “But can you fly?” the fox girl asked. She gave him a wink, stepped backward off the platform, and fell.

  Archie rushed to the edge of the platform and looked down in time to see the fox girl bounce on the big cushy balloon of an Apache Air liner that was cruising by a few stories below. She gave him a playful wave, then slid off onto the smaller airbag of a passing air taxi. She was working her way down, airship by airship! Slag it—where was Hachi? This was what she was good at!

  Mr. Rivets ticked up beside Archie and looked out over the edge at the fox girl. “Astonishing,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “I’m going after her,” Archie said.

  “And how will you do that, Master Archie?”

  “Fergus’s gyrocopter. I’m still wearing it.”

  Archie fumbled for the lever inside his coat that would activate it.

  “Sir, may I remind you of my repeated advice about embracing bad ideas?”

  “I have to get that lantern back, Mr. Rivets. Besides, it’s not like whatever Fergus built can kill me.”

  Archie found the lever and pulled it. A metal rod shot up out of his backpack with a mechanical click! and curved metal fan blades popped out of it like a sideways windmill. The blades started to spin in the strong, high winds of Cahokia in the Clouds, and Archie was suddenly reminded of a steam-powered meat grinder he’d seen at a butcher’s shop in Philadelphia that could chew up whole cows.

  “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.