The Dragon's Tooth Part 11

LOST AND FOUND.

CYRUS, FINDING HIMSELF wandering the halls outside the Galleria, progressed at a caterpillar pace. His own little shelves at the Archer loaded with ditch discoveries and thrift-store treasures were less than nothing compared to what surrounded him now. The walls were dotted with strange artifacts-tapestries, swords, axes, arrows, muskets, a pair of tarnished green cannons, certificates and charters, bones and teeth and skulls, paintings, maps, and fading photos of men and women in knee-high boots beside cloth-winged planes and sailboats and archaic trucks. Not one display was corralled with a velvet rope. Not one was guarded by a plastic sign commanding those with fingers to keep them to themselves.

And so Cyrus touched. And waited for Mrs. Eldridge to grumble before moving on.

While Cyrus browsed the walls, Antigone's eyes lurched between the ceiling and the floor.

The map frescoes on the ceilings glittered with gold foil, and made no attempt at scale. These were maps where ships and sea creatures were larger than islands, and brightly painted birds and beasts floated in the air above forests.

The floor was a swirling mosaic of painted tiles, segmented into a different kind of map. When Antigone stared at her feet, she was looking down at tiny city streets, winding and twisting beneath her. Minuscule buildings, rivers and bridges, city squares and palaces were spread out in detail. A few steps later, they were gone, replaced by a crisp floor plan of some enormous structure, labeled in tiny Latin.

She scuffed at it with her foot. "Won't this stuff wear off with everyone walking on it?" She wasn't asking anyone in particular. Mrs. Eldridge had already refused to answer any of their questions.

Cyrus glanced over his shoulder, and then turned back to his examination of an oddly tusked skull. "It's probably lacquered or something. Tigs, what do you think this is? A mini-elephant? Maybe a warthog?" He reached out and brushed his hand over smooth, yellowed bone.

"No clue," said Antigone. "Ask one of them."

Four men wearing bulging canvas packs and wide belts heavy with hatchets, sheaths, and holsters hurried down the hall, followed by a boy with his arms full of rope. They split up to move around Antigone.

"Excuse me," Cyrus said. "Do any of you know what this is?"

The men managed to walk by without so much as seeing Cyrus or his sister. Four pairs of eyes twitched away, avoiding the soot- and bloodstained clothes and the questioning faces.

Only the boy turned around, smirking at Cyrus as he walked away. "Outlaw trash," he said. He grinned at Antigone. "Your mother was a savage." Shaking his head, the boy turned his back and hurried to catch up to the men.

"Wow," said Antigone.

Cyrus cupped his hands around his mouth. "Keep walking, you little snot! The outlaws are here!"

"Cyrus Smith!" Mrs. Eldridge came storming back down the hall, her thin white hair straggling in a tattered halo. "It's bad enough that you two can't keep up, and now you're shouting insults?" She crossed her arms and glared.

Cyrus shrugged. No smug kid got to say things about his mom.

"Did you hear what the brat said?" Antigone asked.

"I did," said Mrs. Eldridge. "And I can't say that I disagree. Look at you two, all filth and rudeness, goggling over the floors and touching everything. Do you belong here? No. No, you don't. And that's no insult. Here isn't always the nicest place to belong."

She spun on her heel and began to walk away. "Now stay with me this time, or I'll leave you to find your own way. And," she added, "you will never find your own way."

Cyrus sighed, and then yawned, trying to keep up the brisk pace. As much as he wanted to look at everything, as much as he wanted to be mad at the insulting boy and the rabbit-faced man, he was too hungry and too exhausted, and his head was still too full of smoke and thoughts of Dan. The mosaic floor looked like it would be cool against his skin, and he could easily stretch out beneath one of the long display tables against a wall.

Antigone tugged on his arm, forcing him to keep pace.

"You two should never have come," Mrs. Eldridge said, clicking quickly down the center of the hall. A group of six young girls wearing white snake shirts tucked into pocketed trousers tucked into boots, all carrying short rifles, moved by quickly in the opposite direction, eyes bouncing between Antigone and Cyrus. Three of them flashed friendly smiles. Around the next corner, four middle-aged men in full fencing gear, swords and wire masks tucked under their arms, leaned against the wall, laughing. Their laughter faded when they saw Cyrus and Antigone. Two faces hardened, but a short bald man and a tower with a beard both met Cyrus's eyes. Cyrus gave them his best diner nod, and then smiled when they nodded back.

"Good luck to you both," the beard said as they pa.s.sed. "Your father was a good man."

"Cy," Antigone said when the men were well behind them. "This place is wild."

"I know," Cyrus said. He watched another row of animal skulls go by. "I kinda like it."

Antigone brushed back her hair and looked at Cyrus. "Yeah, but it's weird that Dad was here and he never said anything about it."

Cyrus shrugged.

Antigone looked away. "Those girls with the guns were even younger than you. Like that's safe."

Cyrus grinned. "Dad gave me a BB gun when I was six."

"And then took it away when you shot yourself in the forehead."

"Nope. Wrong. Try again. He took it away when I tried to shoot the neighbor's cat."

"And that's better?"

"And," Cyrus said, "he gave it back one month later. I didn't lose it until I fell off the cliff when I was nine."

Mrs. Eldridge's hand cold-clamped tight on the back of Cyrus's neck.

"Unkindest thing I ever did to Katie Smith was vouching for you with big Mr. Greeves. If I'd been smart enough to keep my trap shut, you'd have been bundled up and shuffled back where you belong. But you're here now, so come on." Letting go, Mrs. Eldridge snapped back around and clicked on. "Standing for Katie's kids." She shook her head, approaching a corner. "And as pups to Billy Bones, no less. You should never have let that old liar into the motel, Cyrus Smith."

They rounded the corner, and Cyrus stopped in his tracks.

"Oh my ...," said Antigone.

A two-story wall of windows overlooked green lawns running down to the unending blue of the Great Lake, perfect mirror to the sky, striped gold by the sun. A flock of brightly colored boats huddled safely inside a long stone jetty, while others, sails clinging to the wind, carved through distant water. Small buildings dotted the lawns, and on a long, flat stretch of gra.s.s, a pale-blue plane touched down.

"It's beautiful," said Antigone. "Let's go down to the water."

Cyrus watched the plane stop and its pilot jump out of his craft. Two men were walking quickly toward it. The pilot pulled off his helmet and shook out his-her-thick strawberry hair. And she couldn't be that old.

"Come on!" Mrs. Eldridge stamped her foot. "Now!"

Cyrus and Antigone followed Mrs. Eldridge through glistening clean halls and down crowded stairs. Door after door, room after room, they saw fewer and fewer people as they went, and the floors grew dustier all the time. Downstairs and downstairs and the rooms lost their windows. The doors they pa.s.sed were rough and oily and sealed with heavy padlocks. The halls were cluttered with odd shapes, covered with filthy canvas sheets, and the few paintings still hanging on the dingy walls were muted with years of airborne acc.u.mulation.

Mrs. Eldridge brushed against a canvas tarp and sent up a small weather system of dust as she moved through an open arch.

Following her, Antigone began to sneeze.

Cyrus stopped. "Remind me why we have to stay all the way down here?" He sniffed. "What's that smell?"

"Get in here, Cy," Antigone said.

Cyrus moved through the arch into a broad room with an extremely low, blue gla.s.s ceiling propped up by intermittent stout pillars. Iron spiral stairs squatted in a corner.

Mrs. Eldridge was still moving.

Antigone looked back at her brother. "It's a pool, Cy. That's the smell. We're under a pool."

"Are you sure?" Cyrus asked. The water wasn't pale and bright like the pools he'd seen. And there were walls in the water, paths that twisted and turned and doubled back on themselves. It was an underwater maze.

While Cyrus watched, a blindfolded woman, barely bubbling, slid by in the dark water three feet above him, her hands tracing the walls at her sides.

"Wow," Cyrus said. "Tigs, how cool is that?"

Antigone shivered and grabbed Cyrus's arm. "It's freaky, Cy. Now c'mon. Mrs. E didn't stop this time."

Through another arch, and at the end of a long, curving corridor lit with naked bulbs, they found Mrs. Eldridge waiting beside a dark, empty mouth gaping in the wall. A thin metal pipe ran down the wall beside the doorway, ending in a small box with a rusty b.u.t.ton. She pushed it, and a light turned on.

"Down these stairs, you will find the Polygon. Now maybe you'll go home. This is no place for you."

They were standing at the top of a stairwell, twisting down. The light Mrs. Eldridge had turned on was out of sight, but its glow rose up around the bend.

"Enjoy," Mrs. Eldridge said crisply. And she began to leave.

"Hey!" Antigone yelled. "That's it? You just drop us off at some dungeon stairs and leave? What are we supposed to do now?"

Mrs. Eldridge turned back, her lined face grim with shadow. "For the last two years, I kept my promise to your mother. I watched over you. I have no wealth, but I kept the lights on in the Archer. I paid for the waffle mix. And in the end, none of that mattered." Her face softened. "The Order has you now. It was always going to. It's in your bones."

"But what do we do?" Antigone asked.

"Do?" Mrs. Eldridge smiled. "You do what Acolytes have struggled to do for a thousand years-survive and achieve. But for now, try to rest. Someone from the staff will find you. With Skelton dead, Greeves will select you a new Keeper."

When Mrs. Eldridge was gone, Antigone looked at her brother. "Cy, we really need to find Horace, and we really need him to be alive."

"Well, we're here now," said Cyrus. "Let's go down."

Antigone shrugged, brushing back her hair. "As long as you're first."

Cyrus laughed. "Feeling brave?"

"Yeah," Antigone said. "If anything sneaks down after us, I'll protect you."

"Great," said Cyrus. "That's a relief."

He began his descent, dragging one hand on the stone wall. Antigone followed him down and around, down and around, pa.s.sing only one lonely oversize lightbulb on the ceiling.

Antigone sneezed, and Cyrus glanced back. "Too dank for you? You could handle the Archer but not this?" His foot slapped on water and skidded off the stair. Flailing, he knocked his sister backward and landed on her legs.

"Ow." Antigone grimaced. "That hurt. Why so coordinated, Rus? That one was on you."

"Don't call me Rus, Tigger." Rubbing his right elbow, Cyrus sat up and pointed at the wall. Water was oozing through the joints in the stone and trickling down the stairs. The steps were skim-coated with moisture, and tiny grooves had eroded into the stone where miniature waterfalls slid down from step to step.

"Oh, great," Antigone said. "We're supposed to sleep down here? We're going to wake up with mushrooms growing under our fingernails."

Cyrus levered himself back to vertical and began moving carefully down the wet stairs. "You know," he said, "I kind of get the feeling that some of these people don't want us around."

Antigone laughed. "What tipped you off? The insults or the dungeon?"

"n.o.body offered us lunch."

Cyrus stopped and Antigone stepped down beside him.

"Ugh." Antigone grimaced. "Yuck."

Below the stairs, there was a small landing, a second lightbulb, and a large door. The landing was swirling with black sc.u.m-topped seepage. The walls were a forest of strange molds-orange rippling things that looked like they were part brain and part lettuce, long dangling things like spider legs, blue fuzz, white rings, brown everything else.

Bubbles slowly percolated in the sc.u.m pool.

"There must be some kind of floor drain, or the stairs would be all full up." Cyrus crouched and looked at the water.

"Cy." Antigone tapped him with her foot. "Look at the door. It's locked. And it has an old flyer nailed to it."

Cyrus began unlacing his shoes.

"Oh, sick." Antigone laughed. "Are you really?"

"What else are we supposed to do?" Cyrus asked. "Go back up and cry to Rupert Greeves or Mrs. Eldridge or that kid from the hall? They're not getting rid of us now."

He stuffed his socks inside his shoes and dipped a calloused toe into the dark liquid.

"And?" Antigone asked.

Cyrus shrugged and stepped into the shin-deep water. In the middle, he bent and fished around with his hands.

"The door, Cy. I care more about the door."

"Then come on in and check it out," Cyrus said. "Yep. Floor drain." He tugged. "But somebody's ... shoved ... in ... an ... old ..." His hands geysered up with a dripping black strip of cloth and oil. "Sock." He squinted at it, wiping his forehead on the back of his arm. "Orange stripes."

Antigone wrinkled her nose. Laughing, Cyrus threw the sock up onto the stairs.

"Cy, that is really one of the sickest things I've ever seen you do."

"You aren't around when I skip school and hit the creeks." Shoving his hand back into the water, Cyrus pulled up a long tangle of hair and drain sc.u.m hooked over his finger.

He held it out to his sister.

"No! Stop it, Cy!" The water was already bubbling quickly, glugging around Cyrus's ankles. He tossed the hair carca.s.s against the wall and turned to face the door.

A single step rose up just beneath the heavy oak door. An iron strap had been bent around the handle and through a ring in the stone wall. An old lock reconnected the strap's two ends.

Antigone splattered through the last shallow water and wiped a coat of dust off the flyer on the door. The paper was old and soft with moisture. Two corners pulled free and curled.

"What's it say?" Cyrus asked.