The Golden City

25

Alice Chen decided that she was still the Warrior Princess of Skellig Columba. Through no fault of her own, she had been taken prisoner by the Queen of Darkness and was being transported to the City of Doom.

She held this vision in her mind for about ten minutes, and then the tea cart rattled down the corridor outside. Alice opened her eyes and found herself still sitting a train compartment while Sister Joan read a leather-bound breviary. Although Sister Joan was dressed in black, she was definitely not the Queen of Darkness. Instead she was a fat nun with spectacles who cooked delicious scones and got all weepy when someone read a news story about a brave dog that saved his family from a house fire.

And Alice knew she wasn’t any kind of princess. According to the nuns, she was a disobedient little girl who had been given chance after chance to behave in a decent manner. It was bad enough that Sister Bridget found her leaping across the cliffs, but when Alice was marched back to the convent, the butcher knife had fallen out of her belt. That evening she had waited upstairs in the sleeping room while the nuns prayed for Alice ’s soul and discussed the problem in hushed voices. Finally, it was decided: Alice would be taken to Tyburn Convent in London where the Benedictine nuns would watch her for awhile. After inquiries were made, Alice would be sent to a Catholic girl’s school-probably one called St. Ann ’s in Wales.

“This will be better, dear.” Sister Ruth explained. “You need to be around girls your own age.”

“Field hockey!” Sister Faustina said with her big booming voice. “Field hockey and proper games! No more jumping around with knives!”

It was easy for the Tabula to monitor air travel, so Sister Joan and Alice rode local buses across Ireland and caught the ferryboat from Dublin to Holyhead. Now they were on a train to London, and Maya would meet them at the station.

Sister Joan had packed the geometry textbook in Alice ’s knapsack. If Alice wandered around the train and bothered the conductors, she would have to read the chapter on right angles as punishment. Sitting by the window, she stared at the little Welsh towns and tried to pronounce their names. Penmaenmawr. Abergele and Pensarn. Thick clouds covered the sky, but the Welsh were outside plowing fields and hanging up laundry. Alice saw a farmer shoveling feed into a trough for a mother pig and her babies. The pigs were white with black spots-not like the pink ones she had seen in America.

Crewe was the last stop before London. So far, they had been alone in the compartment, but a crowd of people got on the train, and Alice watched them pass down the outside corridor. As they train lurched forward and left the station, a stout woman in her sixties with dyed black hair pulled open the sliding door and checked the seat numbers. “Sorry to bother you. But we have a reservation for two seats.”

“Do we need to move?” Sister Joan asked politely.

“Heavens no. You got on earlier-so you get the windows.” The stout woman stepped back into the corridor and spoke like she was calling her dog. “Here, Malcolm! No, it’s here!”

A pudgy man wearing a tweed suit appeared in the doorway. He was pushing a large black suitcase on wheels. Alice decided to call the two intruders “Mr. and Mrs. Fire Plug” because they reminded her of city fire hydrants-short and stocky, with flushed red faces.

The woman entered the compartment first, followed by her husband. He puffed and groaned and finally got the big suitcase up in the overhead rack. Then he sat down beside Alice and beamed at Sister Joan.

“You two traveling to London?”

“It’s the only stop left,” Alice snapped.

“Why, yes. You’re right about that. But, of course, there are connections.” Mr. Fire Plug pronounced this last word with a great deal of satisfaction.

“We’re going on,” explained Mrs. Fire Plug. “We’ll see my sister in London, and then fly on to the Costa Brava where our daughter has an apartment.”

“Sun and fun,” said Mr. Fire Plug. “But not too much sun or I’ll look like a raspberry.”

When the conductor came in to take tickets, Alice leaned forward and whispered to Sister Joan. “Let’s go to the dining car and get some tea.”

The nun rolled her eyes. “We could have done that four stops ago. No tea for you, young lady. We’re almost in London.”

Alice left the compartment a few minutes later to go to the toilet. She locked the sliding door and tried to imitate Mr. Fire Plug’s Welsh accent. “Too much sun and I’ll look like a raspberry…”

Alice detested anyone who smiled too much or laughed too loudly. Back on the island, Sister Ruth had taught her a wonderful new word: gravitas. Maya had gravitas-a certain dignity and seriousness that made you want to imitate her.

Back in the compartment, the Fire Plugs and Sister Joan were talking about gardening. Sister Ruth once said that the British were a godless people, but they got a holy look on their faces when they talked about bean poles and trellised vines.

“A good mulch pile is like money in the bank,” intoned Mr. Fire Plug. “Spread it everywhere and you don’t need fertilizer.”

“I add my kitchen waste-egg shells and carrot peels,” Mrs. Fire Plug said. “But no meat scraps or the pile attracts rats.”

The three adults agreed that the best way to fight slugs was to drown them in a pie tin filled with stale beer. Alice ignored the conversation and gazed out the window. As they approached the outskirts of London, factories and apartment buildings were beginning to appear. It felt like all the empty spaces were disappearing; the buildings were squeezing together and crushing the little slivers of green.

“I am sorry,” Mr. Fire Plug said. “But we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Malcolm and this is my wife, Viv.”

“Of course, sometimes I call my husband ‘Mush’-which is short for mushroom,” Mrs. Fire Plug explained. “Malcolm once tried to grow truffles in the backyard, but it didn’t work,”

“Wrong trees. Got to have oak trees.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Sister Joan and this is-”

“Sarah,” Alice said. “Sarah Bradley.”

“ London! London!” a voice shouted, and then the conductor hurried past the compartment.

“Well, here we are,” Mr. Fire Plug said. “Here we are indeed…”

He glanced at his wife, and Alice suddenly felt strange. Something was wrong about these people. She and Joan should jump up and run away.

“A pleasure to meet you two,” Mrs. Spark Plug said.

Sister Joan smiled sweetly. “Yes. Have a lovely time in Spain.”

“We might need a porter,” Mr. Spark Plug announced. “Viv brought everything but the kitchen sink.”

He stood up to get the large suitcase, groaning and struggling as he lowered it down. But this time, Alice was close enough to see his face. The bag wasn’t really that heavy. He was only pretending.

Desperate, Alice reached out and grabbed Joan’s hand. But the nun smiled and gave her a little squeeze. “Yes, dear. I know. It’s been a long journey…”

Why were adults so foolish? Why couldn’t they see? Alice watched as Mrs. Fire Plug stood up and reached into her purse. She took out a small blue device that looked like a plastic squirt gun. Before anyone could react, she grabbed Sister Joan’s shoulder, pressed the device against the nun’s neck, and pulled the trigger.

Joan collapsed. Alice tried to get away, but the big suitcase was blocking the door. “No you don’t!” Mr. Fire Plug said, grabbing her arm. Alice pulled out her stick and jabbed it at his throat. He swore loudly as the stick snapped in two.

“You’re a nasty little creature, aren’t you?” He glanced at his wife. “Use the pink one, dear. The blue one was for the nun.”

Mrs. Spark Plug grabbed Alice ’s hair and held the child against her large bosom. She took a pink plastic gun out of her purse and pressed it against Alice ’s neck.

Alice felt a sharp pain and then drowsiness. She wanted to fight like Maya, but her legs gave way and she slumped onto the floor. Before the darkness came, she heard Mr. Fire Plug talking to his wife.

“I still think you were wrong about the egg shells in the mulch pile, dear. That’s what attracted the rats.”