Echo City Page 21

  Creiddylad jumped up onto the platform, stopped by the lever, and stood there with a visible attitude of canine impatience.

  "Do you suppose we're supposed to pull that?" Fresca asked.

  Our guide certainly seemed to think so. I shone my flashlight down the brick tunnel, which ran ruler-straight until darkness swallowed it again. The rail was untarnished and gleamed brilliantly.

  "I guess it's the only option we have," I said. "Unless we want to walk on the track."

  I looked at the others. They just looked back at me, so I gave the lever a hesitant tug. Nothing happened. I laid down my flashlight so I could use both hands and threw my back into it. The switch flipped to a different position with a clunk that I felt through the soles of my feet.

  Creiddylad plunked her butt down and sat in an aristocratic waiting pose, looking expectantly down the track. We waited.

  I thought I could hear something, some sort of distant grinding or rumbling, but it was hard to tell.

  "Hey, guys," Fresca murmured.

  Her hair had started to move. She raised a hand to it, touching it lightly as it lifted from her ears and floated around her face. A riffle ran through Creiddylad's fur, and our ponchos began to flutter.

  There was a breeze blowing down the tunnel, streaming out of the brick opening in the wall and growing stronger. When I faced into it, I smelled something strange, a sort of metal-and-grease smell. And I could definitely hear something, a faint grinding and clattering, getting louder. I thought the breeze was faintly warmer than the air around us.

  We all stepped hastily back. The only one who didn't move was Creiddylad. The rest of us retreated as far back as we could get, all of us aiming our flashlights at the dead black mouth of the tunnel.

  The noise was clearly audible now, a restless clattering like the footsteps of a herd of metal cows thundering toward us. Fresca had her shotgun up, with the flashlight aimed alongside it. When something burst out of the shaft and jolted to a halt, we all three yelled aloud, making Creiddylad yelp.

  Our flashlights scintillated from metal highlights, chrome reflections, glimmers of brass and glass. A tube-shaped vehicle the same diameter as the brick shaft now sat in front of it, nestled against the platform. The top was open, but I could see where it was probably supposed to rotate over and down, sealing the tube.

  Inside, the tube or train car, or whatever, was all brass and steel and gleaming wood. A single row of inward-facing seats down each side were upholstered in red plush. The whole thing looked like a fairground ride built by a steampunk enthusiast.

  We approached it cautiously.

  "I think it's some kind of train," Fresca said.

  "It's a pneumatic train car," Geraldine said. She grinned, a girlish expression of delight. "They built one of these under Broadway, I heard, in the 1860s."

  Creiddylad jumped in without hesitation, and then, to all our amusement, hung her head over the side in a perfect dog-riding-in-car pose.

  "Check that out." Fresca pointed to a three-foot-long, floor-mounted brass lever on the near end of the contraption. "I bet that's the go lever."

  I laughed. "This thing is so steampunk. I don't believe it."

  Geraldine tapped it with her walking cane, and turned to us with another of those little-girl grins. "Well, ladies? Shall we see how far this track goes?"

  I checked my phone for the time. No bars. It was just after eleven a.m. "I gotta be at work in four hours. I don't know, guys."

  Fresca pointed back down the tunnel. "We can't go back there, Kay. This is the only way out. You want to walk through the woods with a man-eating invisible tiger out there somewhere?" She joined Creiddylad on the train car and parked herself in one of the plush seats. "No. I'm not going. You can't make me."

  "But my car," I said. "My job! Fresca, I am going to lose my job."

  "Call in sick."

  I waved my phone at her. "No reception. Don't you work today too?"

  Fresca looked down and away. "I'm—kinda not working at Coffee Palace anymore."

  "What?" I said blankly. "Since when?"

  "Since—recently."

  "Fres! Why didn't you tell me?"

  She met my eyes, defiant. "It's not any of your business."

  "I'm your roommate! It is certainly my business if you can't pay the rent!"

  "That's funny," Fresca said. "I thought you were my friend." She shuffled around so that her back was to me.

  "That too!" I said to her squared shoulders, desperation welling in my chest. It would have been almost funny if bleak misery hadn't radiated off every inch of her.

  Geraldine inserted herself gently but firmly into the silence between us. "I think we'd all feel better if we ate something."

  I unslung the pack and handed around sandwiches and bottles of water. We hadn't brought anything for Creiddylad, but there were a couple of extra sandwiches, so I took the pickles off and gave one to her. While she snaffled it off the floor of the train car, I checked her over for signs of injury from the fight with the Tiger. She tolerated this with a patient air of Humans, what can you do with them. As far as I could tell, she was unhurt beyond the still-healing wounds from last week, so I patted her head. "Good dog," I said, and poured the dregs of my water bottle into my palm. I held it under her aristocratic muzzle while she lapped it up.

  "I think we should put it to a vote," Fresca said. "Let's be a democracy." She held up her hand. "All in favor of not going back where the Tiger is."

  Geraldine raised her hand.

  "Seriously, guys?" I said. "You realize that even if, by some miracle, we make it to New York, we'll be stuck there. My car is here."

  "That's why they have buses, dear." Geraldine squeezed my arm. "I know you're trying to be practical—"

  "I'm not trying," I said, pulling my arm away. "I am being practical. And from the sound of things, right now I'm the only person in the house who has a job. Or a car. I'd like to keep both of them."

  "Your mother always hated it when life interfered with her plans," Geraldine said reflectively. "She made such careful plans. But life does interfere. That's simply what it does."

  I looked at her, my Grandma Geraldine. She was eighty years old and could barely walk because of bad knees, let alone outrun anything that tried to chase us. And she was all up for having an adventure.

  Losing my job would suck. Getting killed in an attempt to keep from losing my job would just be stupid.

  "All right," I said. I stuffed our trash into the much-lighter backpack. "Onward it is."

  There were no seat belts on the train car, as one might expect of the 19th century, when getting crushed was merely an acceptable hazard of life. I offered Geraldine a hand up, then left the seat beside the control lever open for Fresca. She seemed more cheerful for having eaten, and allowing her the honors was the least I could do. Between the two of us, we found handles on the rotating part of the cylinder, and closed it over us, sealing us in. There were windows for no apparent reason, perhaps to make the passengers feel less like they were trapped in a tin can. I raised the lid a crack to make sure we could get out if we needed to, then closed it again, shutting us inside.

  We looked at each other in the glow of our flashlights.

  "Ladies and gentleman," Fresca said, with a flair of her old showmanship, "the FAA would like to remind you that smoking or tampering with the lavatory smoke detectors is prohibited. Please check the seat pocket in front of you for other important safety information. Thank you for traveling with Shadow New York Express." She handed Geraldine the shotgun and grasped the lever with both hands. "Um. I think it's stuck."

  I reached out to help her. There was a tremendous amount of resistance, but I could feel something grinding, and finally the lever jolted and popped into gear. The car jerked, rocked a little, then began to accelerate. Our flashlights were still our only source of illumination, making the whole experience less like riding the subway and more like a haunted-house ride at an amusement park. I held my flashl
ight up to one of the windows, cupping my hand around it to reduce the glare, but there was nothing to see but a dark blur.

  We rode for perhaps ten minutes before slowing. The blackness outside the windows went gray, then gold, and we bumped gently to a stop. Creiddylad came to her feet; clearly she considered this the end of the line.

  I leaned over the back of my seat to look out. Through the dusty, smudged window it was hard to see clearly, but there was definitely a subway-style station platform out there. Old-fashioned iron lamps on low, ornate poles bathed it in sunset-gold radiance. A flight of stairs led up and out of sight.

  "Go?" Fresca asked, gripping her shotgun.

  "It's that or stay here," Geraldine said.

  Fresca and I raised the top. The air that flooded into the car was sharp with the Shadow New York scents of smoke and autumn. It was utterly quiet. The only sound was the hissing of the gaslamps on their poles.

  "Whoa," Fresca said, her head tilted back, and I looked up. From inside the car, I hadn't realized the ceiling was so high—or so richly painted. Forty feet or more above us, the light of the hissing lamps gave me glimpses of scenes from Bible stories, from Greek and Roman myth, even Washington crossing the Delaware (with attendant cupids, for some reason), all of them executed in a 19th-century neoclassical style. Smoke and age dulled their colors.

  While I helped Geraldine onto the platform, Fresca wandered around using her phone to take pictures of the gaslamps, the train car, and the ceiling frescoes. I photographed one of the gaslamps just to see if it would turn out instead of smearing into a rainbow blur like supernatural creatures did. It came out oddly blurry, but recognizable.

  "We can't possibly be at New York City already," Fresca said. "It was fast, but nowhere near that fast. This must be, I don't know, Syracuse maybe?"

  I looked up at the ornate ceiling. "A train is an idea of traveling. So ... we traveled to New York, and now we're here. There's no need for the whole journey."

  "That makes no sense."

  "Dream logic," I said. "It's how things work here. I know it doesn't make sense, but you gotta roll with it."

  "Well," Geraldine said, clapping her hands together, "where to now?"

  I'd had a little time to think about this on the train. "Lily-Bell uses this as an entrance to the city, so there must be a door around here somewhere. Spread out and look for a door with a symbol that looks like an eye."

  "What kind of eye?" Fresca said.

  "What do you mean, what kind of eye? How many kinds are there? Just an eye."

  "Or," Geraldine said, pointing to Creiddylad, who was halfway up the stairs, "we could follow the dog."

  I offered her an arm on the stairs, and she took it. "Apparently the past isn't handicapped accessible," I said.

  "Living in the future has its advantages."

  The stairs ended in a space that looked more like the foyer of an old-fashioned theater than a subway station. More frescoes. Marble floors. It was eerily empty and silent. "I wonder if this is a real place," I said, "or just an idea of a place."

  Fresca shivered. "Thanks a lot. Because it wasn't creepy enough already."

  Creiddylad, still serving in her deus ex Lassie role, trotted to what I would have taken for a door to a storeroom—and maybe it was. I leaned over and looked closely at the lever-style brass handle. Sure enough, there was the little eye, drawn in colored chalk.

  "And now we sing?" Fresca asked, gripping the shotgun. "What do we sing?"

  "Great-Grandma said it was personal." I thought for a moment. To get to the Harlem Renaissance, I would need some kind of locationally appropriate song, and I was drawing a total blank. 1920s jazz and blues wasn't my favorite kind of music; I liked later eras better. Maybe Central Park would be easier, as a test? Lily-Bell had sung the Beatles. But when I thought of that place, I thought of my first trip there with Taliesin. Music? There had been an orchestra performing the Nutcracker Suite for the little shepherdess and her flock of woolly music aficionados. Maybe I could hum a selection from that, but the only time I'd heard it was at Christmas shows with Mom. Besides, when I thought of that bizarre pastoral scene, the "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies" wasn't what came to mind. The song that popped into my head was much sillier and brought a grin to my face.

  Lily-Bell had said that I needed a piece of music that summed up the place for me. Maybe this was what she meant.

  "Don't laugh," I scolded the other two, and then turned away so that I didn't have to look at them when I began singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

  I started singing so quietly I could barely hear myself, but my grandmother joined in on its fleece was white as snow, and by the second verse Fresca, who never had a problem making a fool of herself in public, was singing too.

  I gripped the door handle—it was sharply chilly to the touch—and opened it. There was an odd sort of resistance, like pushing through syrup. But the breeze that blew into my face was warm, and I glimpsed autumn leaves and strolling pedestrians. Creiddylad leaped through as soon as the door was wide enough. I followed her, then politely held the door for the other two.

  "Wow," Fresca whispered. She stared up at the coruscating sky and then whipped out her phone to take more pictures. Geraldine's eyes were bright and alive, drinking in everything around her.

  I looked back one last time at the train terminal, then took a deep breath and let the door fall shut. On this side, the door was set into a modern-looking building, all glass and shiny faux-marble. There was the tiniest eye scratched into the brass plate under its doorknob.

  My companions stared around them with no more shame than any first-time tourist in the real New York City. Creiddylad, meanwhile, looked about as confused as a dog can look. It was obvious that Central Park was not what she'd expected. She sniffed the nearest lamppost and peed on it—priorities are priorities, after all—and then returned to me, plunked down at my feet and looked up expectantly.

  "Yes, we're going there eventually," I said, petting her ears. The rough, shaggy fur had picked up a few burrs in the woods. I stripped them out with my fingertips.

  We had come out near the little clearing where I had witnessed the sheep attending the symphony, or at least a clearing that looked similar. They weren't there now, but the sidewalks, lawns and the edge of the trees were no less busy: people of all times and places moved about their business, going around and among and, sometimes, through each other.

  Watching Fresca and Geraldine, with their open wonder, made me realize how jaded I'd become about this place. About the whole thing, maybe—the sword and my second sight and the entire world that had opened up around me.

  Although it would be easier to appreciate the wonder and beauty of this new world if bits of it weren't constantly trying to kill me.

  For what felt like the umpteenth time since the sword had gone missing, I unthinkingly touched my hip where I customarily wore it when Muirin and I were out and about. And this time I noticed something—the subtle lodestone tug in my chest was almost as strong as it used to be.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on it. I couldn't get my usual location fix; if I was normally able to home in on the sword like a compass, I now felt more like a compass with its needle swinging free. But it was there. Not close. But somewhere.

  "The sword is in New York!" I blurted, opening my eyes. Fresca stopped trying to take a picture of a soldier in a Revolutionary War uniform and turned to look at me. "This New York, I mean. I can feel it again!"

  "Well, where is it?" Fresca asked.

  "I can't tell. I don't know if someone's done something to it, or if the doors are messing me up." Normally all I had to deal with was regular, real-world geography. No wonder a city linked together by a series of portals would confound my sword-sensing abilities.

  "Did you sense it when you were here before?" Fresca wanted to know.

  "It's not something I'm normally aware of. It's just there. Like not noticing what your own hair feels like until you cut it." I pointed a
t my own recently buzz-cut head. "It's only since I lost it that I've been really focusing on that feeling." And maybe enhancing my connection to the sword while I was at it. Yay.

  "You didn't lose it," Fresca said loyally. "It was taken."

  "Which is the only reason I'm not willing to let it stay lost," I sighed. "Grandma, I'm sorry I got you into this. I'm sorry I got me into this."

  "I'm not." Geraldine's eyes danced. "I haven't had this much fun since your mother and I smuggled a dissident friend of mine through the Iron Curtain."

  "Since you what?" Fresca asked, wide-eyed.

  "Of course," Geraldine mused, "I was a faster runner at the time. Your mother was twelve, I believe."

  "Harlem," I said, trying to steer us back on track, "is still a good place to start. I'm pretty sure I'll get all the help I need finding the sword." Of course, what they were planning to do with it once we got it back—not to mention with me—was still an open question.

  "I take it there's another of those doors around here?" Fresca said.

  "We only need the one," I said, pointing at the door we'd come through. "It'll take us anywhere in the city; it just depends on which song you sing. You need to pick a song that fits the place you're going, and concentrate on it, and that's where the door should open to."

  Geraldine's eyes sparkled. "I've got this one, kiddo."

  She limped up to the door and, laying her age-curled hand against it, began to sing in a strong and surprisingly rich voice. Prior to this trip, I'd no idea my grandmother could sing at all.

  "Went out last night with a crowd of my friends

  Must have been women 'cause I don't like no men.