The Trap (4 page)

S
kirrrrrriiiiiittt!” Mack yelled.

He jerked away from the food, away from the Skirrit in the trench coat. But another was right behind him and wrapped its insect stick arms around him. The first pulled a bladed weapon like a short, curved sword from beneath its coat and pointed it at Mack's chest.

A ripple went through the crowd of tourists as more and more realized that a couple of very big grasshoppers—grasshoppers not unlike the ones some of them were eating—were kidnapping a kid.

People ran. The vendors and cooks working the food stands ran. It took about four seconds for everyone to go from normal to complete panic, and then it was screaming and running and knocking over hot woks, and awning poles broken and ice bins spilled all over the sidewalk, and everywhere food: food flying and food dropping and food slithering because it was still alive.

A giant glass aquarium full of octopi shattered, and hundreds of confused octopi attached their suckers to legs and sandaled feet and bicycle tires.

That last part was actually kind of funny. If you ever get the chance, attach an octopus to a bicycle tire and ride around. You'll see.

Then the first flames appeared as hot wok met spilled oil.

“Back off, bugs!” Stefan roared.

He threw himself, fists pummeling, at the Skirrit that held Mack tight.

“He's got a . . .” Mack had wanted to yell,
He's got a knife
; but it wasn't exactly a knife and Mack didn't know quite what it was, so he ended up just yelling, “He's got a” followed by ellipses.

But Stefan had seen the blade. With sheer, brute force he lifted the Skirrit and Mack together in one armload, spun around, and slammed the first Skirrit straight into the outthrust blade of the second.

“Ayahgaaah!” the stabbed Skirrit cried.

His grip on Mack loosened. And loosened still more when Jarrah snatched up one of the confused octopi and hurled it into the Skirrit's face.

“Thanks,” Mack gasped.

But thanks were premature. There was still one Skirrit left.

He advanced on Mack with his nameless blade out and ready. “You die,” the Skirrit said. With blinding speed he switched the blade from one hand to the other and lunged. The blade hit—
shunk!
—a plastic tray held up as a shield by Stefan.

The blade went right through the plastic tray but stuck. Stefan twisted the tray, trying to yank the blade from the bug's hand.

And . . . yeah, that didn't work.

Instead the Skirrit pulled the blade free, took a step back to steady himself, stepped on the ice that had been spilled, did a comic little cartoon wobble, and landed on his face, hard.

Stefan was on him fast. He stomped on the bug's blade and with his other foot crushed the exoskeletal arm.

“Ayahgaaaaaahh!” the Skirrit cried.

Apparently that is the Skirrit cry of pain.

Stefan picked up the blade, smiled, and began to admire the weapon. Jarrah looked on, admiring both Stefan and the blade.

There came the sound of sirens approaching. At least one of the food stands was burning. Its red-and-white-striped awning sent flames shooting high into the night sky.

The crowd had backed away to a distance and were each and every one fumbling with cell phones to take pictures and video.

“I don't want to be a YouTube sensation twice in one day,” Mack said. “Let's get out of here.”

They turned their backs on the chaotic, burning, but still somehow cheerful market, and plunged through the crowds that were now rushing to see what all the yelling was about.

They practically stumbled into a mass of people on bicycles.

Short people on bicycles.

So short, especially in their stumpy legs, that they'd each strapped wooden blocks to their feet so they could reach the pedals.

Mack was just noticing this odd fact when he was smacked on the side of the head by a club shaped a bit like a bowling pin.

Tong Elves, he thought dreamily as his legs turned to jelly and he circled the drain of consciousness.

That's right: circled the drain of consciousness. You have a problem with that?

Mack barely avoided being completely flushed out of consciousness. He sank to his knees, and Jarrah hauled him back up.

The mob of Tong Elves on bikes shot past, braked, turned clumsily back, and came in a rush for a second pass.

“You got a magic spell for this?” Stefan asked.

“I miss Toaster Strudel,” Mack said.

Stefan and Jarrah correctly interpreted this remark as evidence that the blow to Mack's head might have scattered his wits a bit.

“Run!” Stefan said to Jarrah.

“Got that right!” Jarrah agreed.

They each grabbed one of Mack's arms and took off, half guiding, half dragging Mack, who was explaining why strawberry Toaster Strudel was the best, but sometimes he liked the apple.

“I had a s'mores flavor Toaster Strudel once but . . . ,” Mack announced before losing his train of thought.

The Tong Elves were just a few feet away. But they were awkward on their bikes. Stefan led Mack and Jarrah straight across their path, rushed into traffic, and dodged across the street through buses and taxis.

The Tong Elves veered to follow.

Wham!
A bus reduced their number by two. The unlucky pair went flying through the air and landed in front of a taxi, which hit them again—
wham!
—and flipped them bike-over-heels into a light pole.

“I like foosball,” Mack said. “But I'm not good at it.”

“This way! We can't outrun them on foot!” Stefan yelled, and he and Jarrah dragged Mack bouncing and scuffling down the sidewalk and into a rack of parked bicycles. The bikes were locked, but Stefan still had the Skirrit blade.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

And there were three unlocked bikes.

“Can you ride a bike?” Jarrah asked Mack.

Mack drew himself up with offended dignity and said, “I could be a Jonas brother.”

“I think that's a no,” Jarrah said.

Stefan lifted Mack up and settled him on the handlebars of a bike. With fluid strength Stefan swung a leg over, mounted the bike, held a drifting, ranting Mack in place with one hand, grabbed the handlebar with the other, and stomped on the pedal.

Down the street, past the now partly flame-engulfed market they rode, with a mob of Tong Elves on bikes behind them.

But then, just ahead, a pedicab.

Small digression: a pedicab is defined on wordia.com as “noun, a pedal-operated tricycle, available for hire, with an attached seat for one or two passengers.”

This particular pedicab had a wiry guy pedaling. And on the back it had a sort of cabin, bright turquoise with a red fringe and gold tassels.

The pedicab was speeding right toward Mack and Stefan. As fast as the guy could pedal.

And leaning out of the side of the cabin, with the naked blade of his cane-sword pointed forward like a knight with a jousting lance, was Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout.

ABOUT NINETY YEARS AGO, GIVE OR TAKE . . .

S
o long, son!” Paddy's parents shouted as they waved to him from the quay. “We'll . . .” They paused and looked at each other, each hoping the other would say, “We'll miss you.”

But in the end neither could quite pull it off. So they just repeated, “So long!”

Paddy shipped out for America aboard HMS
DiCaprio
, a luxury transatlantic ship. At least it was luxury if you were in first class. But the
DiCaprio
had seven different classes of accommodation.

In first class you lived like a king. A giant stateroom, a butler, a maid, two bathrooms, crystal chandeliers, gold doorknobs, lovely soft feather beds. The toilet paper was linen, and the linens were silk. In the bathroom there were three knobs: hot, cold, and soup. The food served was so fresh you could actually meet the chickens who laid your eggs and the pigs who would become your bacon.

But none of that mattered because Paddy was not in first class.

In second class you were still doing pretty well, with a nice little stateroom. There was no soup nozzle in the room, and the toilet paper was just paper, but it was soft (two-ply). And second-class passengers were served pleasant and healthy meals in the cheerful second-class dining room. You didn't get to actually chat with your pig or lamb or chicken or cow, but you could wave to them.

But Paddy was not in second class.

Third class was a little more rough-and-ready. You had to make your own bed, for one thing. And meals were all self-serve at the oat 'n' swine buffet.

Nope, not third class, either.

Fourth class was where most impoverished emigrants traveled. They cooked their own meals over open fires in massively overcrowded holds down in the sweaty bowels of the ship, where they dreamed of spotting the Statue of Liberty.

Paddy was not in fourth class.

Fifth-class passengers weren't even given a place to spread out a blanket. Mostly they climbed into laundry bags and hung those bags from hooks. Thus they rocked back and forth all night, banging up against the steel bulkheads with each passing wave. They were kept awake by the mystery of how they could hang up a bag they were actually in. Their meals were served at the same time as the livestock kept for the first-class passengers' dinners were fed. In fact, it was the same food.

So, maybe I should explain because you may not know very much about golems. First of all, it's golem, like go and then lem. Not Gollum. I am not Gollum. I don't wants it, precious. A Gollum is 90 percent hobbit and 10 percent evil. A golem is 90 percent mud, and another 7 percent twigs, pinecones, dead beetles, and lint. The last 3 percent is faithfulness. We are very faithful. I will always faithfully try to take Mack's place while he's away. Even though it means I have detention because of the whole dissolved-feet situation and the screaming and all.

Fifth class didn't dream of spotting the Statue of Liberty because if they ever appeared on the open deck, they'd get a beat-down from beefy ship's stewards. The only time they were allowed on deck was for gladiatorial games in which they were pitted against each other in pepper mill battles while first-class passengers bet on the outcome.

Fifth class? Tough place. Unpleasant place.

But Paddy was not in fifth class. He'd have loved to be fifth class.

Sixth class meant you slept in the fifth-class bathrooms, or heads as they say on boats. You could sit on one of the toilets until someone needed to use it. This wasn't a great way to spend ten days, which was how long it took the HMS
DiCaprio
to get across the ocean to New York.

But Paddy wasn't in sixth class.

Paddy was in seventh class. And seventh class was a very bad class aboard the
DiCaprio
. Seventh-class passengers were allowed aboard the ship, but once aboard they were hunted by the packs of wild dogs that lived down in the bilges.

The wild dogs were the offspring of escaped pets. You see, sometimes first-class passengers traveled with poodles or Chihuahuas or Pekingese. Over the years some of these animals had escaped their kennels and had bred and multiplied in the bowels of the great ship.

Imagine, if you will, poodles bred with Chihuahuas and then hardened and made savage by the dog pack life in the dank, dark holds far, far from light.

Nobody would want to go up against that kind of horror.

The bilges of a ship are the lowest level. Down below the engines. Not even the basement of the ship, more like if the ship had a basement but someone dug out a pit below that.

Anyway, the bilges were where all the water that seeped into the ship collected. Rainwater, sea spray, mop water, overflowing toilet water, spilled coffee water, seasickness results, you name it. It was about up to Paddy's thighs. It smelled like a toilet.

For food, the seventh-class passengers had to trap and kill one of the many alligators that slithered through the dank, cold, oily, poo-smelling water.

So basically it was bad. Very bad. As bad as flying coach out of O'Hare.

But Paddy was a tough kid. On his first night in the bilges he earned the respect of the wild dog pack by biting the pack's leader on the ear and gnawing away for so long that forever after that dog was known as Rex “One Ear” Plantagenet.

On his second night Paddy killed and ate an alligator.

By the time he left the
DiCaprio
—seventh-class passengers didn't walk down the gangplank; they were tossed into the water and left to swim ashore—he not only had a belly full of tasty alligator sushi, he had a nice pair of homemade alligator boots and a matching alligator vest.

Which was frankly disturbing to the first New Yorkers who saw him, what with Paddy having had no facilities for drying or even properly cleaning alligator skin. So his alligator boots had bits of alligator intestine trailing behind.

On the plus side, no one asked him for spare change.

Paddy went straight from the dock to the headquarters of the Toomany Society, which was housed in Toomany Hall. The Toomany Society offered help to newly arrived immigrants.

“What do you do for a living?” the woman at the desk asked.

“I used to grow oats.”

“That'll be really useful here in New York. We have so many vast fields of oats.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Paddy asked.

“Actually, no. I mean, this isn't New York like it might be in the future, say, the far-off twenty-first century. This is New York in the early twentieth century. And believe it or not, we still have farms here. A hardworking oater can eke out a miserable existence working sixteen backbreaking hours a day, seven days a week in harsh conditions. You'll marry a dance hall girl, spawn ill-mannered brats, grow old before your time, and die of some miserable disease, possibly consumption. But hey, it's a living.”

“What are my other choices?” Paddy asked.

The woman shrugged. “You're not fit for anything but oat farming or banking—and you don't have the wardrobe for banking. And then, there's always crime.”

“Tell me about this ‘crime' of which you speak.”

“Well, hmm . . . I suppose you'd join a criminal gang, extort money from shopkeepers, rob banks, dress in flashy clothes, and mostly sit around all day drinking with other criminals in between acts of mayhem.”

Paddy pointed a jaunty finger at her and said, “Bingo.”