The Dragon's Tooth

eight. 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 passed. “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 grass, 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 passed 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 accumulation.

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 glass 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 button. 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, passing 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?”

“Nobody 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 scum-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 scum 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 scum 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 carcass 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.

“At the top it says ‘Infestation Quarantine.’ ” She stood on her toes. “And it’s stamped ‘July 11, 1927.’ There’s something else written here, but I can’t read it.” Dropping back to her heels, she stepped away from the door. “You try.”

Cyrus leaned forward and cocked his head. “Ulip Spitters? No. Whip Spitters? Whip Spiders!” He looked at his sister. “The place was infested with Whip Spiders?”

Antigone crossed her arms. “I am not going in there. I don’t know what a Whip Spider is, and I don’t want to.”

“Oh, please,” Cyrus said. “This is from more than eighty years ago. And the door’s locked anyway.” He grabbed the iron strap and gave it a rattle. The ring in the stone wall shook. Dust dribbled to the wet floor. “Huh. Maybe …” Grabbing the door handle with one hand and the wall ring with the other, Cyrus tugged. The ring slid out so easily that Cyrus staggered back into the stairs as the door swung open. The hinges were silent. The motion was fluid.

Sucking air between her teeth, Antigone peered through the doorway.

“That was too easy.” Cyrus picked himself up. “Careful, Tigs. Somebody wanted it to look locked.”

“Which means what?” Antigone stepped into the dark. “There’s something in here worth finding?”

She felt around the edges of the doorway until she found what she was looking for. A button clicked, and six more large lightbulbs buzzed and sputtered.

The room was sprawling. The ceiling was low but pocked with vaults. Squat columns were scattered throughout. All the stone had been painted white, but large portions dangled off in leprous flakes. The floor was dusty white linoleum, savagely peeling at the seams. White triple-stacked metal bunks were scattered against the many walls.

And there were many walls — angled out, angled in. Cyrus couldn’t even guess at how many there were. A lot.

Strangest of all, a network of suspended plank pathways began just inside the door and ran throughout the room at least a foot above the floor. All of the planks were dangling from the ceiling by ropes and chains. None of them were dusty.

Cyrus tested the first plank with his foot. It swung slightly.

“What are they for?” Antigone asked.

“Walking?” Cyrus said. “I don’t know.”

Antigone looked down. Beneath the plank, painted in black on the linoleum, there was a triangle of lightning bolts around the same black stylized ship they’d seen on some of the boys’ white shirts.

“Weird,” she said.

Cyrus moved out onto the plank and it sagged gently. “There are all sorts of exercise posters on the walls, too. At least, I think that’s what those are.” He pointed. “The same two guys in short ties and high pants over and over again. Wrestling. Kicking each other in the head.”

“Cyrus,” said Antigone. “Cyrus …”

Cyrus reached a Y on his plank road. He went left.

“Cyrus! Turn around!”

Surprised, Cyrus turned. Just behind him, a strange-looking boy was standing at the first Y in the planks. He was wearing a tight white tank top tucked into a pair of army-green, much-too-large, much-too-pocketed fatigues, cinched around his waist with a rope. His paper-pale arms were knotted with muscle and tied with blue popping veins. His short hair was the color of dust and unevenly cropped around his skull. His face was smooth and young and unsunned, but somehow it didn’t match his eyes.

Cyrus stared into the boy’s eyes, and the boy’s eyes stared into his. What Cyrus saw, he didn’t know. What he felt was layer upon layer of ancient. The boy’s faint green irises looked like they had been beaten and polished more than the smoothest river rock, like they could see by nothing more than starlight — and they no longer cared to see at all.

Cyrus stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “I’m Cyrus.”

The boy looked at his extended hand.

He took it, and Cyrus shivered at the chill in his grip.

“Nolan,” the boy said, and he turned and swayed deeper into the room on the plank paths.

Cyrus looked back at his sister, questioning.

“Go,” she mouthed silently, pointing after Nolan. She was already hurrying forward.

“I think he’s the one Skelton was talking about when he was dying,” Cyrus whispered.

The two of them stopped, watching Nolan disappear around a pillar.

Antigone looked at her brother. “What do you mean? Skelton just said something about beekeepers.”

“Right. And then he said, ‘Trust Nolan.’ ”

Antigone’s eyebrows shot together. She tucked back her hair. “He did not. He said no one, not Nolan. And why would you trust anyone somebody named Billy Bones told you to trust.” She shifted her weight, and the plank swung beneath them. Antigone scanned the pillared room. “I’m not trusting some weird kid who lives down here.”

Nolan’s voice drifted around the columns. “I knew Skelton. Perhaps he trusted me. I never trusted him.”

Antigone blushed. Cyrus bit his lower lip.

“Come,” Nolan said. “Voices move oddly in the Polygon.”

Cyrus followed the planks deeper into the room, with Antigone close behind him.

“It’s not that you don’t look trustworthy,” Antigone said loudly.

“I know how I look.” Nolan’s voice was quiet but all around them. “Stay to the right.”

The suspended paths reached a large junction. Six routes splayed in different directions, winding around pillars and between rusty beds, disappearing around corners.

Cyrus paused. “Tigs, can you hear water?”

“Yes, you can,” said Nolan. “Pass through the showers.”

“Um, excuse me?” said Antigone. “Wouldn’t this be faster if we just walked on the floor?”

“No,” Nolan said. “The floor is not safe.”

Cyrus and Antigone bounced forward into an area with no paint. The floor was still linoleum, at least where it hadn’t been torn up, but the pillars and walls and ceiling were all dark, moist stone.

“What’s not safe about it?” Cyrus asked. “What are we talking about?”

A chuckle reached them, doubling and tripling off the angled walls, and then reaching them again. “The Whip Spiders. Why do you think I have this place to myself?”

“They’re still here?” Antigone scanned the floor. “That was over eighty years ago.”

“It was,” Nolan said. “Whip Spiders can hatch many young in eighty years. Stay on the paths.”

The sound of water grew louder, until Cyrus and Antigone rounded a corner and stood looking at the showers.

Two miniature aqueducts ran from wall to wall above head height. Stone spouts lined both sides of both aqueducts, spilling water to the floor in four falling curtains. On the floor, the water collected in a central trough and drained through a hole in the wall. Where the plank path passed beneath the showers, the spouts had been plugged with wine corks.

Cyrus and Antigone moved carefully through, catching only a few drips on their shoulders as they did.

They had reached the end, or at least one of several ends, of the room. The plank pathway led straight into a dark, jagged hole in the wall.

Nolan leaned out of it, slowly stretching his arms against both sides. “Come in, if you’re going to.” He yawned and ducked back inside. “Or don’t.”

Cyrus hesitated, looking around. A leggy shape flashed out of a corner, clattering toward him across the grimy floor. Antigone grabbed his arm as the thing disappeared under the plank beneath them.

“Right,” said Cyrus. “Well, we’re not staying out here.”