The man spat angrily. “It was a stupid mistake. The wires got tied. I couldn’t get the explosive rigged in time, so I couldn’t get far enough away. By the time they’d come running, I was cut off from my escape route. They trapped me. Managed to set a few decoy explosions, but in the end, it was just chat et souris.” He eyes scanned the room before he added: “Cat and mouse.”
Elsie spoke up. “You make those explosions?”
“We do,” the man said proudly. “The Chapeaux Noirs. We’re gaining strength. Soon, we’ll have the whole Quintet by the ankles.” He cast his eyes around the room, studying the children. Elsie suddenly became aware of their desperate circumstances, their greasy hair, their unwashed clothes. She hadn’t seen an adult in a full two months; as the man’s look fell on the destitute mass of parentless children, Elsie knew her own poverty.
“That’s how you do it,” the man said. “When you’re fighting with a giant. Get ’em by the ankles and see how quickly they’re on their knees.”
Michael was silent.
The confined man took a deep breath and spoke again. “I’ve told you who I am. Now, it might be helpful if I knew who you are and what you’re doing here.”
“The Unadoptables,” said Michael, attempting the same tone of pride the man had taken. “We live here.”
“The Una—” Nico began, before realizing: “Are you the orphans from Unthank’s slave shop? Escaped after the fire?”
Michael was quick to correct: “We started the fire.”
The room hummed in agreement.
“Wow,” said Nico. “Nice work. I’d applaud if my hands weren’t tied tightly around my back.”
Rachel and Michael exchanged a glance. The boy next to Nico with the machete waited for instruction. “We can’t let you go yet,” said Michael. “Not till we’re sure you’re not an enemy.”
“We all thought that fire had been an accident, like maybe Joffrey had overextended himself,” said Nico. “Pushed you tykes a little too hard and some mechanical slipup caused the whole thing. That was the word, anyway.”
“You’re right about the pushing us too hard bit,” came a voice from the crowd. It was Angela Frye, a longtime belt operator who’d survived five years at the Unthank Home with only a single demerit to her name. “But there weren’t no mechanical slipup. We rebelled.”
“Well, I’m very impressed,” said the man. “You managed to do something in an evening that we’d been trying to do for years. Knocked out one of the arms of the Quintet. Very nice work.”
“I see what you’re doing,” said Michael. “Don’t think I don’t. Nice words aren’t going to win you any friends here.”
“Hey,” said Nico. “Don’t get all riled up. I’m not trying to make friends. I’m a saboteur. I destroy things for a living. I don’t need friends.”
Elsie tugged on Rachel’s jumper; the entire room was fixated on the man in the chair. She could feel the tension in the room growing and wanted to somehow dispel it; to her, it exuded danger and violence. It didn’t feel right.
Just then, Michael looked at Cynthia Schmidt, his fellow elder among the Unadoptables, and said, “What do we do?”
“I say we kill him,” said Cynthia.
Nico Posholsky turned very suddenly and very dramatically pale. Elsie stared in disbelief at the elder children.
Michael, unfazed, looked back at the man. “She thinks we should kill you,” said Michael. “And I might just agree with her. We can’t afford for any adult to know our whereabouts. This is our territory. You are a trespasser. Trespassers are dealt with harshly.”
“Michael,” Rachel whispered, attempting a tone of conciliation. “Let’s not get too carried away. Maybe he can help us find Martha—”
“Quiet,” said Michael. “Let me deal with this one.”
Elsie tugged on Rachel’s hem again, whispering, “I’m scared.” Her sister brushed her hand away, transfixed by the tense standoff between the bound man and the older kids.
At a loss for another solution, Elsie hit the button nub on the back of her Intrepid Tina doll, a thing she reserved for only the direst of situations. More often than not, the prerecorded maxims from the plastic doll had no bearing whatsoever on the situation at hand, though Elsie had become practiced at applying them creatively to her present circumstances. The charged silence of the room was filled with the doll’s chirpy, mechanical voice: “THE JUNGLE IS A DANGEROUS PLACE. TRUSTWORTHY PARTNERS ARE A MUST!”
The attention of everyone in the room swiveled to Elsie, who was standing slack-jawed by her sister. Never had one of Tina’s suggestions been more apt.
The man in the chair seized his opportunity: “We’re in this together, kids. You hate the stevedores? We hate the stevedores. You hate the Quintet? We hate the Quintet. No need for senseless violence, unless it’s directed at our mutual enemies, right?”
Michael’s intensity seemed to soften. “I suppose . . . ,” he began.
“If we can’t be friends, let’s be partners,” said the man. “The jungle is, after all, a dangerous place.”
Elsie smiled at the man. Nico Posholsky smiled back.
CHAPTER 6
The Maiden Returns
to the Mansion; For the Sake
of a Single Feather
Prue, faced with returning for the first time to the southernmost region of the Wood, to a place she hadn’t seen since the triumphant coup that she herself had set in motion—with the worrisome question of how she would be received hanging low over her head—could only think of her friend Curtis.
They’d parted ways in February, on that cold, rainy night when their goal of reuniting the two machinists had seemed hopelessly dashed and the rain had poured down on them, a humiliating and heavy rain. He’d left her angry and ashamed; he’d also left her to weather the final attack of Darla Thennis, the Kitsune assassin, alone. If it hadn’t been for Esben, Prue would undoubtedly be dead right now (sitting nestled into the plush velvet seat of the bouncing rickshaw, her mind briefly touched the void: If she’d been killed, where would she be? She shook the thought away). Not that she blamed Curtis; their task did seem at a complete dead end and he’d been intent, ever since they’d escaped the underground, to discover what had happened to his fellow Wildwood bandits. Reviving Alexei had been Prue’s revelation; Curtis had only been dragged into the debacle out of loyalty to his friend.
The little radio at her side chimed tunefully, and she found herself willing the best to her friend Curtis, hoping he was finding success in his journey; she couldn’t help but wish that he could be here now, witnessing her return to South Wood. And perhaps there was a little needling insecurity in her mind—a concern that she’d been forgotten or that she wouldn’t necessarily be as safe from harm as she supposed.
The rickshaw hit a pothole in the gravel arterial road; the badger apologized. “How are you sitting back there?”
“Just fine, thanks,” said Prue. The trees flew by like telephone poles. The sky appeared in fits and starts above the conifers’ boughs. Houses were appearing between the trunks, little hovels and homes that seemed to be made of the earth itself, with earthen roofs and white stucco walls and dogwood wattle fences surrounding well-tended gardens. From where she sat, Prue could see the back of the badger’s head; he shook it and gave another glance over his shoulder. She’d lost count of how many times he’d done that since their short journey began. “My wife is not going to believe this. Me giving the Bicycle Maiden a ride on my humble rickshaw.”
Prue blushed. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just a girl.”
“A girl?” shouted the badger, in disbelief. “You’re the one who single-handedly brought down the Svik regime; saved all us common folk from that evil, evil man and all his cronies. Released all those folks from the prison!” He repeated her words: “‘Just a girl.’ Pfft!”
“What’s it like there now?” she asked, her mind still in turmoil over what was to come. “I’ve been away so long.”
“O
h, you’ll find it very much changed, milady,” said the badger. “I’m just a lowly rickshaw driver—I try not to meddle in politics. I’ll say this much: We’re better off than we were under Lars Svik and his lot.”
“That’s good news. Still a little nervous, though. Me showing up after being away so long,” she said.
“Oh, milady. I suspect you’ll be pleasantly surprised. You’re a bit of a folk hero in these parts. You’re immortalized in song, you know.”
“In song?” asked Prue, her curiosity piqued.
“You mean to tell me you’ve never heard ‘The Storming of the Prison’?”
“I haven’t, no.”
“I’d sing it myself, but I can barely carry a tune. Should be on the radio, though. It’s on every hour,” said the badger.
“That’s helpful.”
The badger continued, “I suppose the Caliphs are the only ones you won’t find singing those songs. They say it’s just nostalgia.”
“Caliphs?”
“You’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” said the badger. “Caliphs: members of the Synod, Mystics who meditate at the Blighted Tree. Wasn’t much of a thing during the Svik regime; Lars followed in the footsteps of his uncle, Grigor, and made much of keeping South Wood a secular place. Free from the taint of religion, you see. But it’s out with the old and in with the new. With the Sviks gone, the Synod came roaring back and all these folks come out of the woodwork, having secretly been praying to the Blighted Tree all along, in the privacy of their own homes. Way I see it, gives people hope when they didn’t have it before. And what with the hard winter, they’ve needed it.”
They lapsed into silence, with Prue watching the trees feathering by and the badger politely humming along with the music on the radio. When the song break came up, he was pleased to hear the trumpet fanfare that introduced the next number. “Here it is!” he said. “Like I said, played on the hour, every hour: ‘The Storming of the Prison.’”
Prue listened closely as the words came flowing in a river of static through the radio’s single speaker:
O the storming of the prison
On the evening of the day
When the maiden came a-riding
And we cast the bums away
And we all came out to meet her
With the wagon and the babe
And we all marched to the prison
For to free the poor enslaved
The badger chimed in on the third verse:
O the storming of the prison
At the end of our despair
Give the Avians their freedom
As they rise into the air
Let the fascists die and wither
All the retinue demands!
Let their children hear them suffer
At the Maiden’s stiff command
And the blood of all the martyrs
Will not be shed in vain
At the storming of the prison
We will all be free again.
The triumphant melody was taken up by the brass ensemble and was blatted out ad nauseam until the song slowly faded into silence. The badger looked back at Prue, smiling. “See?” he said. “You’re a hero!”
Prue was still processing the lyrics. “I didn’t command anything.”
“Well, no,” said the badger. “It’s metaphorical. Figurative. You didn’t literally command that the children of the fascists see their parents suffer. Poetic license.” He paused, breathing in through his snout deeply. “Stirs the heart, it does.”
“I actually don’t like the idea of children’s parents suffering at all—or anybody, for that matter,” said Prue, now gathering steam. “I think it’s pretty awful, actually.”
The badger laughed nervously. “It’s the fascists who are suffering, though. I mean, that’s who we overthrew, right?”
“Even fascists,” said Prue. “Whatever a fascist is.”
The badger didn’t have a response to this; he seemed genuinely confused. Up ahead, a small group of teenage boys in the road stalled his progress.
“’Ey,” shouted one of the boys. “Not so fast, there, Citizen Badger.”
There were four of them, ranging in age from what looked to be fourteen to nineteen. They had typical teenage complexions—flushed and spotty—and they all wore identical caps with the visor knocked back. Cycling casquettes, Prue realized. Tricolored sashes—blue, yellow, and green—were draped across their chests, and on the lapels of their natty plaid vests they wore brooches similar to the one the badger wore: a single metal sprocket.
“Hello, lads, citizens,” said the badger cheerily—though Prue could detect a wariness beneath his happy tone. “You’ll be amazed to see—”
He was cut short; the youngest boy stepped forward and approached the rickshaw. “Where’s your brooch, citizen? You ain’t forgot to wear the badge, now have you?”
“N-no!” sputtered the badger. “Of course, I always wear the sprocket. With pride!” This accusation seemed to have put him off finishing his previous, interrupted proclamation.
“I see it, there,” said one of the other boys, chewing on a too-large bite of apple. “It’s on his coat, there.”
“Good,” said the youngest one, now within a few feet of the badger. “Nice to see the guy’s a patriot. Might want to wear it a little more conspicuously, though. You’re not ashamed of the sprocket, now are you?”
“Not in the least!” the badger complained. “The very opposite, in fact. I—”
“Shhh,” said the boy. “Don’t want to upset your passenger.” The boys had now taken an interest in Prue and were beginning to study her, hidden as she was beneath the drapery of the rickshaw’s dangling baubles.
“Actually, you’d be surprised to find—” began the badger, before he was again rudely interrupted.
“Citizen, stand down,” said one of the other boys. Prue looked closely and saw that he was swinging a bicycle chain.
Another observed, “A citizen in servitude. Carryin’ around some bourgeois too lazy to walk. I believe that’s a symptom of the old order, don’t you think?”
“Citizen,” responded the boy, referring to the other, “I believe you are right.”
“We all threw off the bonds of servitude,” said the boy with the apple in his mouth, “when the Bicycle Coup came.” He then referred back to the badger. “You may be a patriot, but you sure ain’t no revolutionary.”
Prue couldn’t stand it any longer; she was appalled by the boys’ bullying behavior. “Leave him alone!”
The boys froze; they stared at the figure in the back of the rickshaw. “Says who?” said one of the boys.
“Says the Bicycle Maiden,” said Prue, and she hopped from her seat to the road.
The boy eating the apple promptly spat out the white, globby contents of his mouth; the young boy by the rickshaw fell backward into the chest of his friend, and they both spilled out into the road, toppling comically to the gravelly ground. The fourth boy, who’d remained silent during the whole exchange, stumbled forward and addressed Prue in a startled and aghast tone: “You’re . . . her?”
“Yep,” said Prue definitively. “And I don’t really like how you’re talking to my friend the badger here.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” said the boy, swiping the casquette from his head and squashing it reverently to his chest. “It’s just that, these days . . .” His voice faltered. “You really are her? Like, from the songs? The real Bicycle Maiden?”
“It was a LeMond, actually. Red single speeder. My dad bought it for me for my eleventh birthday. Towed a wagon behind it. My brother, Mac, if you remember, started it all.” She waved her hand at the sky, as if to say: all of this.
The two boys who’d fallen had by now stood up and were approaching the rickshaw as if it were wired with explosives. They’d followed the example of the other boy and had removed their caps, holding them ceremoniously at their chests. “We had . . . ,” said one. “We had no idea!”
The badger s
tayed quiet, seemingly pleased by the turn of events.
“Now, if you don’t mind,” said Prue, “let this badger get on with his day; we’ve got some very sensitive information to deliver to the Mansion.” The words seemed to roll from her tongue. She liked being in this position: four boys trembling in her presence.
The oldest boy spoke up: “In fact, would you do us the honor of allowing us to escort you, personally, to the Mansion?”
“We’re Spoke Cadre Twenty-Four,” said one of the other boys. “Sworn to serve the revolution.”
It occurred to Prue that the boys had changed their attitude fairly quickly—what once was a ragtag group of snotty teenagers had suddenly transformed into a fawning clique; it was not becoming of a group of kids who were supposed to be representing the radical change that she herself had set in motion. “I’ve got a better idea,” she said.
And that was how four boys in bicycle caps and woolen vests ended up parading into the more populous part of South Wood as the yoked-up carriage horses to a brightly colored rickshaw with a girl and a badger as passengers.
“A little faster, you on the right,” shouted Prue from her seat. “You’re not really keeping up.” She nudged the badger. “Try it,” she said. “It’s very gratifying.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” said the badger, clearly uncomfortable at being the driven and not the driver.
“C’mon!” pressured the girl at his side.
“Oh, all right,” he said, caving. He then addressed the huffing quartet at the front of the vehicle. “Not so herky-jerky, citizens! A true rickshaw driver measures his steps!”
A grumble arose from the four boys, the Spokes, but the ride did improve somewhat. “That was very satisfying, you’re right,” said the badger, smiling.
By the time they’d left the ramshackle houses of the drowsy suburbs and had entered the pell-mell of the town, the road now a cobbled thoroughfare, a modest procession had grown up around the rickshaw. Word was spreading fast that this particular carriage, one of many in the bustling town, was carrying none other than the Bicycle Maiden herself, she of song and story. Children, human and animal alike, came running after the carriage, offering to help carry the coach toward its awaiting goal: Pittock Mansion.