N. Wilson - The Dragon's Tooth

Eleven times, the basket slowed and flipped some sort of switch. Naked lights sparked to life on the tunnel ceiling, hooks snagged the pulley, flaps opened in the river, and long-dormant springs uncoiled in the ceiling. Eleven times, they were launched, and the lights flickered off behind them. And then Cyrus stopped counting.

The tunnel changed. Brick became stone, and the bones of old arches dotted the walls and ceiling. At one launch, the ruins of another basket, rotten with moisture, dangled in a snarl of cable against the wall. At another, the river veered to the right while they continued on, straight through a much smaller, circular hole in the wall of the tunnel. By the time the next light tripped, the river — or another river — had joined them.

When the basket finally slowed and stopped for the last time, Antigone moaned.

“I was sick before this,” she said. “Can you see, Cy? Are we slingshotting again? I can’t do it.”

Cyrus sat up. He could hear gears and splashing, but the sound was different. No clicking. No whining springs. He felt his way tentatively to his knees and glared at the darkness.

With a crack, two delayed lightbulbs surged to white. One exploded, dropping its glass into the river. The other sputtered and survived.

The current was turning a stone waterwheel. The wheel was powering two tarnished green gears. The gears were cranking a cable up into a hole in the ceiling and back down out of another. Small, hinged wire cages two feet across were rising and descending with the cable.

Beside the basket, a wire platform had been bolted to the stone. Cyrus gauged the distance. It would be easy enough to climb onto the platform and then lean out, grab the rising cable, and hop into one of the cages. At least if you weren’t also trying to carry an unconscious lawyer.

“What do you think, Tigs?” he asked. “You first or me first? This is gonna be tough. He won’t stay in one of those by himself.”

He looked back at his sister. Antigone was huddled in a corner, as pale as Horace. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she was forcing herself to breathe long, even breaths. It was her county-fair face — the face she made before losing her elephant ear and corn dog. It was the face that had thrown up in the front seat — and the backseat — of the Red Baron. And in the boat, out fishing with their dad. Many times.

“We’re here,” said Cyrus. “Tigs, you made it. Come on. See if you can stand up.”

Antigone opened one eye, and then shut it quickly.

“Open your eyes.” Cyrus grabbed her hands.

“You were moving,” she said. “The basket is still rocking.”

“Hardly,” said Cyrus, and he pulled her up.

Both of Antigone’s eyes opened wide and her head bobbed.

“No!” Cyrus yelled. “Turn! Point away!” He spun his sister around and leaned her over the rim of the basket. He couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t smell it. If he did, he’d be chucking, too. The county fair had seen it happen. Twice. The Red Baron hated it. “I’m not listening!” Cyrus began to hum an old car song his parents had used to distract them. His sister’s back quaked beneath his hand. He looked up at the ceiling, breathing through his mouth.

Antigone straightened and turned back around slowly. “Worst ever,” she said. “Seriously.”

Cyrus raised his eyebrows. “Maybe in this state. What about Highway One, the windy one on all the cliffs?”

“Oh, gosh.” Antigone shivered and raised her hand. “Don’t even say that right now.”

“And at least this time the river just takes it away. Sharing a bag is worse, and poor Dan sitting in between us, and Mom and Dad trying to sing us out of it.”

“Shut up, Cyrus.”

“I’m just saying …”

“Don’t.” Antigone bent over and got her hands under Horace’s arms. “Help me. We have to get him to a doctor.”

In the end, Antigone rode up first. Cyrus followed, his feet balancing on the outside of the wire cage, his hugging arms pinning Horace to the cable.

He had only begun to rise when the light clicked off, controlled by some kind of timer. The sound of the water faded beneath him. In the narrow shaft, the squeaking of the cages blended and echoed with the lawyer’s rasping breath.

“Hold on, Horace,” Cyrus whispered. “Wherever it is that we’re going, we’re getting closer. Hold on.”

The cable bounced and shook. Above him, dimly silhouetted, Antigone’s legs disappeared as she hopped out of her cage.

“Hey!” Her voice roared down the hole. “They turn quick, so you won’t have much time.”

Cyrus hooked his arms through the lawyer’s armpits and flexed his legs, ready to lift.

His head rose into a musty room, lit only through cracks. He shoved the little lawyer at his sister, watched her stagger back into a wall, and then jumped, clipping his head on the ceiling before his cage vanished through the roof.

Antigone was coughing under the weight, sinking to the floor. Cyrus walked straight to the tallest crack of light, a seam between two doors. They were locked, but they were also thin and old, and they bent a little with pressure from his shoulder.

He backed up.

“Try one of Skelton’s keys,” said Antigone. “Is there a keyhole?”

“Nope.” Cyrus threw himself against the doors. Wood popped, but he bounced back. “I can break it.”

“You mean a rib? Maybe your shoulder?” Antigone adjusted her grip, propping Horace in front of her.

“There’s just one little bolt,” said Cyrus. “And it’s set in old wood.” He paused. What was he hearing? Voices. Shouting. “You hear that?” he asked.

Antigone nodded. “They don’t sound happy.”

This time, Cyrus used his foot. The wood splintered, and the two doors wobbled open onto a world of emerald and sunlight.

A butter-smooth lawn stretched away from the doorway. Dangling Horace between them, gripping his arms tight around their shoulders, Cyrus and Antigone staggered into the light and looked around.

They had emerged from a small building on one side of the lawn. In front of them, an enormous obelisk rose from a circular fountain. Well beyond that, the lawn ended in an iron fence. Beyond the fence, narrow roads were lined with gray stone buildings and townhouses.

Cyrus and Antigone were standing on a fine gravel path, separated from the grass with a clean, sharp cut in the turf. The path curved through the lawn until it met a much larger path and became stairs. The stairs grew into a looming forest of grooved columns guarding lean towers and railed balconies, porticoes and paned windows the size of the Archer’s swimming pool, glistening in the sun. The place was a fluid behemoth of stone crowned with blue sky and a towering choir of statues. It was a museum, a palace — a hulking glory large enough to hold several of both. Two long mezzanined wings bent forward off the central structure, embracing the lawn on opposite sides.

Cyrus pulled his eyes away from the building. On one end of the lawn, a group of lean people were running in tight, synchronized formation, dressed in matching white shirts and very short shorts, changing stride and direction, accelerating and slowing as a man yelped orders from the front. But the real shouting was coming from the other end of the lawn.

Between the fountain and the stairs to the main building, a small group of adults stood with clipboards watching five sweating teenagers pedal furiously on a bizarre contraption of bicycles attached to five oversize spinning, umbrellalike propellers.

“It’s like …,” Antigone began. “I don’t know.”

Cyrus didn’t know, either. While he watched, the contraption inched off the ground and thumped back down. The adults made notes.

“Dig!” a pedaler shouted. “Dig, dig, dig!”