“I wish we could be here for the great unveiling,” said Prue. “I’m sure the party will be spectacular.”
“OH, IT WILL,” said Gwendolyn. “WITHIN REASON. WE CAN ONLY AFFORD SO MUCH CELEBRATION THESE DAYS.” She paused, as if scanning the middle distance from the balustrade she stood on, just below Prue’s eye level. “BUT YOU HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO ATTEND TO.”
“Yep,” said Prue.
“I TRUST YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING.” Gwendolyn turned to face the area of the city where Esben, towering over his fellow engineers, was holding up the suspension cables of the bridge, while the moles at his feet were busily erecting the twin towers that would support the roadway.
“We have a plan,” said Prue. “I think.”
It was only later, the following day, after Esben and Prue had bid farewell to the moles, that they started to reckon with the great tangle that was this master plan. They’d just arrived at the long, dark passage that would lead to what the moles called the Overworld, under the guidance of Gwendolyn.
“I’d prefer not to do that again,” said Esben, finishing a long harangue about violence and his particular squeamishness toward it. His attack on Darla, it turned out, had been the only time he’d ever used his hooks to harm another soul; they’d been designed by the moles to help him and those around him, not to hurt them.
“Right,” responded Prue, her hands running absently along the ancient brickwork that lined the tunnel walls. “I’d prefer you didn’t do that again too.” Still, the idea of parading Esben, the exiled machinist, around South Wood brought concerns for their safety—not just from those elements who were supposedly out to revive Alexei for their own gain, but perhaps the old allies of the Dowager herself, who might not take kindly to this scofflaw returning to freedom.
“PERHAPS HE SHOULD WEAR A DISGUISE,” put in Gwendolyn. The diminutive mole was leading the way, some few feet in front of them, navigating the endless forks and intersections that interrupted their path like it was no more than a casual morning commute.
Prue craned her head over her shoulder to take in the towering form of the brown bear, illuminated behind her by Esben’s lantern light, and tried to imagine a mustache or a hobo costume rendering the creature unrecognizable. “I don’t know if that would work so much.”
“I could put on an accent,” suggested the bear. “Something foreign.” He then began a string of sentences in what might’ve been the most bizarre and unrecognizable attempts at a dialect that Prue had ever heard; one part German and another part southern belle, the bear’s voice seemed to straddle continents, and Prue erupted into laughter before he’d even finished his display.
“What?” Esben himself was stifling a laugh. “It’s transatlantic.”
“WHAT IS TRANSATLANTIC?”
“Do you even know what the Atlantic is?” Prue asked Esben.
“Yes,” said Esben, playing affronted. “It’s in the Outside. Somewhere.” He paused, thinking, reviewing geography. “Ships sail on it.”
“Not going to work,” said Prue.
“BUT IF HE IS OUT IN THE OPEN, HE WILL BE FOUND,” said Gwendolyn.
“That’s the trick,” said Prue, chewing on her lip in thought. “The tree said others would be trying to rebuild Alexei for their own devices. We have to keep Esben safe from them.”
“AND TO WALTZ HIM AROUND THE OVERWORLD WOULD BE AKIN TO SIMPLY FLASHING THE WORLD YOUR POKER HAND.” Gwendolyn turned and smiled at Prue, clearly proud of her Overworldian analogy; she was a well-traveled and worldly mole, this Sibyl.
“Right, Gwendolyn,” said Prue. “We need to keep those cards hidden.”
“Until we find Carol,” put in Esben.
“Yep,” said Prue.
“Then let’s keep them hidden,” said the bear. “I’ll find some out-of-the-way place to hide myself while you run reconnaissance in South Wood.”
Prue thought about the idea for a moment before saying, “And you won’t mind? I’m not sure how long it’ll take me. Hopefully I’ll get some help once I get to the Mansion.”
“Will I mind?” asked the bear. “Camping in the woods? Prue, my friend, I wouldn’t hesitate to remind you that I am, in fact, a bear. After all.”
And so it was settled. Esben would be secreted away in the trees, safe from those who might thwart their quest, while Prue hunted out the whereabouts of the bear’s old machining partner.
After several days of walking, the unusual traveling party (a mole, a human, and a bear; each more than double their neighbor in size) arrived at a workaday iron ladder, which Gwendolyn gestured to with her tiny paw. “HERE IT IS,” she said. “THE PATH TO THE OVERWORLD.”
They bid their farewells to the Sibyl, promising another visit once their task had been completed, and wished her luck on her city’s reconstruction. Then Esben and Prue began the long climb up the ladder, which ended after some distance at the bottom side of a manhole cover. It was slightly ajar, and a shaft of light poured into the dark chamber.
Prue, at the top, squinted at the light. With one arm braced against the ladder, she pushed at the cover, widening the sliver of daylight. She caught a whiff of the forest air, and it rushed into her lungs as she breathed deeply. After so many days breathing stale air in the dark vacuum of the Underwood, it was brisk and refreshing. Esben was just below her, and he nudged her shoe with his hook, saying, “What do you see?”
“Light,” said Prue. “Lots of it.” She heaved again at the iron disc and grunted under the weight. “I can’t quite . . . ,” she started.
“Here,” said the bear at her feet. “Let me.”
A bit of acrobatic reorganization occurred as the twelve-year-old girl shifted to one side of the ladder to let the one-ton brown bear overtake her. The bear, with the slightest flick of his arms, threw the manhole cover aside, and the long chamber was filled with light and air.
The bear breathed deep. “That’s more like it,” he said.
“Is it clear?” asked Prue.
The bear crept his snout a few inches above the lip of the hole. “Seems like.”
They crawled into the sunlight, finding themselves in a deep, dappled forest. Light fell in ribbons between the branches, newly bedecked in the buds of spring. Shadows were everywhere, though compared to the dun of the underground tunnels and chambers, it was as if they’d stepped into the sun itself.
“Any idea where we are?” asked the bear. A simple dirt path cleaved its way through the dense forest; having climbed from the manhole, they found themselves standing to one side of this road.
“You’re the Woodian here,” said Prue. “I don’t have a clue.”
They’d not stood there long before a quiet jingle could be heard in the distance.
“Shhh,” said Esben. “I think something’s coming.”
Prue frantically waved her arms at the bear. “Get hidden!”
Esben, flustered, was about to leap behind an obliging shield of evergreen huckleberries when a badger appeared from around a corner, towing a bright spangling rickshaw. When he arrived at where Prue and Esben stood, he came up short and stared at them. A little radio sitting in the plush red seat of the rickshaw blared some frenetic sitar music, and the purple baubles dangling in a fringe around the canopy almost seemed to dance to the beat.
“Of course,” whispered Prue to herself.
The badger stared confusedly at the mysterious girl and the hook-handed bear in the knitted cap. He looked down at the open manhole. “Did you both just climb out of there?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said, smiling. “Do you know where we are?”
The badger looked shell-shocked. He answered, “Just this side of South Wood.” He paused, looking back at the manhole. Then back at Prue. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“Maybe,” said Prue. “Don’t suppose you could give me a ride into town.”
The badger swallowed loudly, eyeing the bear’s twin hooks. “Just you? What about your bear friend?”
“I don’
t actually exist,” said Esben, improvising.
The badger raised his eyebrow.
“Right,” said Prue. She then turned to Esben. “I think this is where we part ways. This seems like as good a spot as any for a hiding place. Lots of cover, middle of nowhere. And you’ll have the manhole for a quick escape if you need to.”
“Got it,” said Esben.
She handed him her shoulder bag. “Take this. I’ll be back with more supplies. That should hold you for a few days. Just keep your head down, right?”
“Will do,” said the bear. He then looked over at the badger. “What about that one? Think he’ll keep quiet about me? How do we keep him from talking?”
The badger seemed to visually startle; the color had drained from his black-and-white-furred face.
“Leave it to me,” said Prue. Walking back over to the badger, she stood in front of him with her feet planted wide and her hands on her hips. She looked down at the brooch the badger was wearing: a single bicycle gear.
“Nice gear,” said Prue.
“I’m a patriot,” said the badger, still very clearly uncomfortable.
“That’s what I like to hear,” said Prue. “You’ll keep your mouth shut about this bear, right?”
The badger swallowed loudly. “I suppose I could. But I don’t want to get wrapped up in anything illegal—I’m an honest badger, making an honest living here.”
“How about if I said you were under instruction of the Bicycle Maiden?” asked Prue.
The badger blanched. “You?”
Prue nodded.
The handles of the rickshaw fell from the badger’s grasp, and he dropped to his knees. “I can’t believe it!” he said, his voice breaking with excitement. “I knew it was you! The moment you showed up. I knew it!” Tears had appeared in his eyes. “What are you doing back in the Wood?”
“I’m here to fix things,” said Prue. She said the words with certainty, with purpose. The feeling of power flooded over her; she reveled in it. She felt like she was, at long last, standing on solid ground. She knew now what to do.
They knew the drill; they’d been practicing it for weeks. The fire in the tin drum was immediately smothered; their store of foodstuffs covered by the waxed canvas tarp. Without a word, Michael appeared by the trapdoor in the worn wooden floor and began ushering the children—the youngest first—down the ladder into the building’s dark subbasement. Rachel pulled up the rear, ushering the stragglers quickly toward the hole in the floor, all the while casting a careful eye over her shoulder at the rumblings on the outside.
Cynthia came dashing down the staircase and arrived breathless at Michael’s side. “A whole mess of ’em!” she said, petrified. “They were all coming out of nowhere, like they’d just appeared. Tons of ’em. Never seen so many in one place!”
She was referring, of course, to the stevedores, the beanie-clad shock troopers of the Industrial Wastes. Bending to the whim and will of Brad Wigman, Chief Titan of the Quintet, they were tasked to investigate, root out, and put down any insurrection or uprising inside the boundaries of their empire. The Unadoptables had managed to elude the stevedores so far, staying quiet in their hidden home in this Forgotten Place—until now.
“Get in!” hissed Michael, and the girl promptly disappeared down the hole. Michael nodded to Rachel, who began to take her first steps down the ladder when a noise startled them both.
The iron lattice of one of the ground-level windows had been forcibly kicked apart, and through the obliging hole climbed a very haggard and desperate-looking man. He was not a stevedore: Notably absent were the de rigueur maroon beanie and coveralls. Instead, he was dressed entirely in black: black slacks, black shoes, black turtleneck. On his head was perched a prim black beret. His eyes widened when he saw the two kids, standing frozen above the open trapdoor.
“Help me!” he said in a rasped whisper.
Rachel looked up at Michael; Michael’s face went blank.
The man ran up to them, his face lined with anguish. “You’ve got to hide me! They’re coming!”
The sound of a multitude of heavy-booted footsteps could be heard just outside the warehouse walls; bulky silhouettes could be seen darting about through the dirty windows. There was no time to ask questions.
“Get in,” said Michael. Rachel hurried down the steps and the man followed, clambering down the ladder rungs above her.
Michael had just hopped into the hole, the trapdoor slamming down behind him, when the doors of the warehouse were broken in and the sound of the footsteps—perhaps dozens—came thundering into the room.
The three of them froze in the narrow stairwell, terrified to make a move lest they give away their hiding place. A pair of boots landed heavily on the trapdoor; they shuffled as their owner pivoted, searching the room. Rachel, at the bottom rung of the stepladder, turned to the huddled mass of kids behind her and raised her finger to her lips in a frantic mime: shhhhh.
“Where’d he go?” shouted a voice from through the floor. More boot steps sounded; the stevedores were wandering the length and breadth of the warehouse, searching for their prey.
“Dunno. Swear to God he came in ’ere. Saw ’im with my own eyes.”
“Well, find ’im then.”
“What is this place, anyway?”
“Aw, some old warehouse, from the old days. These ain’t been used since the days of the Sextet.”
“Good place to hide out in.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure.”
“C’mon, keep lookin’ for ’im.”
Rachel glanced up at the man between her and Michael; he was staring into open space, a look of abject horror on his face. His hands, held firmly at his sides, were trembling, and his breath came in quiet, quick pulses of his chest.
“I see a bunch of old cans here, like old soup cans,” said one of the stevedores.
“Some hobo livin’ ’ere or somethin’?”
“Nah. Ain’t nobody livin’ out ’ere. We’da seen ’em comin’ and goin’. Plus, them dogs’d get ’em before we ever did.”
A voice came from some distance off; the other voices quieted to listen. “Let’s move it! ’E must’ve gotten past us. We got other places to check.”
One of the voices above the trapdoor grumbled audibly. “Boss ain’t gonna be happy ’bout this.”
“Well, we tell ’em the dogs got to ’im. Nothin’ left to bring back.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
Another symphony of footsteps rang out above the Unadoptables’ heads, and before long, the room descended back to its usual silence.
The subbasement, a modest concrete box that smelled of damp moss, barely contained the seventy-five anxious children, and when Michael signaled the all clear, the room burst abuzz with frantic voices. The black-bereted man on the middle of the stepladder, his attention drawn for the first time away from what was happening above him, followed the sound of the kids’ voices, a stunned look coming over his face.
“W-who are you?” he stammered.
“Good question,” said Michael. “Maybe I’d ask you the same thing.”
The man looked down at Rachel, who was staring at him intently. “We’ve been here for two months. That was the first time any stevedore set foot in this place,” she said. She pushed him, jostling his foot on his ladder rung. “Not. Remotely. Cool.”
The man fidgeted nervously. “It’s a little, I don’t know, stifling in here. Is the coast clear? Can we climb out now?”
“One second,” said Michael. He propped open the trapdoor, gave a quick survey of the warehouse, and climbed out, letting the door fall back closed behind him. He returned some short moments later with a long spool of rope, which he tossed casually down to Rachel. “Tie him up,” he instructed. “Then we’ll climb out of here.”
After the last Unadoptable had been ushered from the hidden room below the warehouse floor and the last child had been given an opportunity to walk by the hog-tied form of their intruder, bound as he wa
s to a rickety wooden chair, the room grew quiet as the interrogation began. A young girl was standing off to the side, wearing the man’s black beret and entertaining the crowd with a kind of jackbooted dance; a boy sat at the man’s side, holding the machete Excalibur and doing his best to sneer menacingly. The man in the chair wore a very chagrined expression as Michael, standing in front of him, began to pepper him with questions.
“Who are you?” the boy said. “And what were you doing all the way out here?”
“Listen,” the man said. “I’m not a threat to you guys. I’m on your side!”
“Quiet,” said Michael. “Answer the question.”
The man took a deep breath and said: “Name’s Nico. Nico Posholsky.” He glanced at the children, as if weighing the discretion of saying the next words. “I’m part of the Chapeaux Noirs.”
“The what?” asked Elsie, who’d pushed up to the front of the crowd and was standing at her sister’s side. She looked at her neighbors, saying, “What did he say?”
“I think it’s Polish,” said one of the Unadoptables.
“It’s French,” corrected Rachel, who’d taken first-year French in high school.
“Aaaaaah,” sighed the impressed crowd.
“It means black cake,” Rachel continued, smiling knowingly.
“Hats,” said the man in the chair. “It means black hats.”
“Whatever,” said Rachel. “It’s a weird name for a . . . what is it, exactly?”
Swallowing his annoyance, Nico Posholsky said, “We’re a radical anarcho-syndicalist collective. Saboteurs. Our one aim is to free the proletariat from the yoke of the industrialist state.”
Elsie looked to her sister, her brow knitted. “Is that French?”
“That might be English,” said her sister.
Michael, being the oldest boy of the group, nodded knowingly, though it was unclear whether he’d been able to unpack the man’s language any better than the other kids. “Fair enough. But what are you doing here? Why were the stevedores after you?” he asked.