“We need to get closer,” Catalina said. “You should get a good look at the new Hemispheric Commissioner. They’re chosen from the Regional Manager ranks, and they rotate every year. This one’s brand-new, just appointed. This is his first conference.”
Finally Gran and Catalina were at the front of the crowd, pressed against the stage. Gran looked upward to see a vaulting dome that reminded him of his old church by the sea. It was carved from the stone, with a constellation of rough gemstones embedded. In the torchlight they sparkled red and gold and emerald green.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” Gran said.
“Well, you are,” Catalina replied.
Then Gran felt very grateful to Catalina. At school, when he was new and knew nothing, she had been the only one to care about him, to listen to him. Even that first day, when he had tried to walk through a wall, she had lifted him up. That small act of noticing him when no one else did, that brief act of caring—just one person seeing another’s struggle and bringing them to their feet again—it was the difference between a cold world of being forever apart, and a world where one could feel bound to another, obligated to kindness. He wanted to tell her all of this, but instead he just quietly said, “Thank you.”
Catalina smiled. “I was wondering when you were going to say that. You’re welcome.”
Then her attention was turned to the stage. A petite woman was walking from the wings to the microphone just a few feet away from where Gran and Catalina stood. A roar of applause started in the back of the room and swept forward.
“This is the outgoing Hemispheric Commissioner,” Catalina whispered.
“What’s her name?” Gran asked.
“That’s it. Hemispheric Commissioner. With the Regional Managers and Commissioners, that’s all we know. No first names, no real names. When they serve in those capacities, they’re anonymous.”
She was now just in front of Gran and Catalina. She looked about the age of Gran’s mother, though she was smaller than most adult women he’d encountered. In fact, she looked no taller than Gran and Catalina. She was wearing what Gran thought was a tuxedo, though he wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen a tuxedo on a woman before. She tapped the microphone and smiled.
“Attention, Lifters,” she said. Her eyes crinkled when she said that, and Gran knew he liked her. Those who smile with their eyes are surely the most likable of people.
“Welcome to the Hemispheric Conference!” she said.
The crowd roared again. Gran turned around to see that a thousand kids were holding up their Lifts. Catalina nudged him, and he saw that she was holding hers overhead too. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out his own Lift.
“Go on,” Catalina said.
Gran raised his arm. At first he was embarrassed. He never liked to make dramatic movements like this, especially with so many people around. Then, just when he was getting comfortable with this gesture of belonging and pride, another feeling seized him—the feeling that he might not be worthy.
As if reading his mind, Catalina leaned into him. “It’s okay. You belong here,” she said.
Finally Gran allowed himself to feel at one with everyone around him and everything they stood for. He allowed himself to feel awake and giddy and good.
“All right,” the Hemispheric Commissioner said after a time. “Lower your Lifts, please.”
The Lifters settled down, and the look on the Hemispheric Commissioner’s face grew somber.
“As most of you know, I was once like you. Lifters start young, and most of us grow too big to stay in the work. A Lifter, of course, should be nimble and strong and brave and clever, sure, but we also have to be small.”
The audience chuckled in appreciation of this essential fact.
“I was lucky enough to remain small into adulthood, which provided me the good fortune to remain a Lifter all my life. And I was lucky enough to rise to the rank of Regional Manager, and finally Hemispheric Commissioner. It has been the honor of my life to serve in this capacity. But every Commissioner’s tenure must come to an end, and I now have the pleasure of introducing my successor.”
A buzz overtook the crowd.
“He is, like me, a lifetime Lifter, and over the past few weeks, as we’ve exchanged information and expertise, he has become my friend. I can’t possibly express how much faith I have in his ability to lead us through what are undoubtedly troubling times. Without further ado, I hereby introduce, and bestow upon this Lifter the mantle of, Hemispheric Commissioner.”
The outgoing Hemispheric Commissioner bowed and walked toward a wing of the stage. The audience applauded wildly as her successor took the floor.
It was the Duke.
There is something unusual that happens to humans when they see someone—for example, their dentist or local librarian—in an entirely different or unexpected context—for example, at a wedding and doing the limbo. Their brains jam. Just as gears can jam, causing an engine to sputter and stall, your brain can get so crossed up that it temporarily stops functioning.
This is what happened to Gran.
He had traveled miles into the inner mantle of the Earth. He was with Catalina Catalan, who he knew from his life on the surface, but he did not expect to see anyone else from that life. Not his mother or father. Not Maisie. Not Mr. Plain or Ms. Hamid. And certainly not the Duke. The Duke’s domain was the storage room at Carousel Middle School. How could he have gotten here?
“That’s the Duke,” Gran said to Catalina.
“Who’s the Duke?” she asked.
“That guy walking onto the stage. He’s the Duke. He works at our school.”
Catalina looked befuddled. “The guy in the basement? Can’t be,” she said. “You’re nuts.” Then Catalina turned her attention to the man at the microphone, who Gran was certain was the Duke, but who Catalina saw only as the incoming Hemispheric Commissioner, meaning he was in charge of all Lifters in North and South America.
“Greetings, fellow Lifters,” the man said, and now Gran was sure he was the Duke. He had the Duke’s same faint accent, his same excited tone of voice.
Gran looked at Catalina. Her face was frozen, her mouth hanging open.
“As most of you know,” the Duke continued, “we’re in the middle of a period of unprecedented Hollows activity. I know it from my own territory. There, things have been tough. Much Hollows activity—more than I’ve seen in my lifetime. Luckily, we have some extremely hardworking and innovative Lifters covering my municipality…” And here the Duke looked down at Gran and Catalina and winked.
Gran was shocked. Catalina almost fainted.
“But we must be on the highest alert,” the Duke continued. “Things are falling down, and we must be there to hold them up.”
The crowd cheered. Gran, afraid of offending the Duke, who was now his boss and the leader of a thousand Lifters, cheered, too. Catalina, meanwhile, remained frozen.
“He was the Regional Manager all along,” she said, as if in a trance. “I know the voice. But I never met him. We don’t meet the RMs.”
As the Duke continued, both Gran and Catalina drifted off mentally as they tried to put the facts together. It was complicated but not impossible, Gran thought. Of course the Duke might have been a Lifter—his size made him perfect for the role. And of course Catalina wouldn’t have known him—she only knew him through his phone calls. Gran had met him another way, not knowing he was the RM; indeed, Gran had met the Duke before he had any inkling about the Lifters one way or another. But then, when the Duke had given him the Earth balls, the Duke must have known why—he knew what Gran was doing. He’d been on the phone with Catalina that day, that night. He’d probably been aware of Gran’s work with her all the while!
“Now I get it,” Gran said.
Catalina hadn’t moved. Gran pulled on her sleeve.
“It’s not that hard to believe,” he said.
“I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots,” she said. “I’m usually so smart, but
here I was so stupid.”
Gran didn’t mind hearing Catalina take herself down a notch. It was not an everyday thing for her. She continued staring ahead, her mouth silently moving, still working it all out in her mind.
“We should be listening to the speech,” Gran said.
Finally Catalina left her reverie, and they turned their attention back to the Duke, aka the Hemispheric Commissioner. The rest of the crowd was enthralled. Gran was astonished that the eccentric man hidden in the storage closet at school could command the attention—the rapt devotion—of thousands of loyal Lifters.
“The work ahead is difficult and without end,” he said. His voice was becoming more commanding with every sentence. “Who among you feels daunted?” he bellowed.
No one raised a hand. No one made a sound.
“The work ahead will tire us and will frustrate us, and victories will be brief and quickly reversed. Who among you is unwilling?”
No one raised a hand. No one made a sound.
“The work we do will be frightening. And dangerous. And dirty. Who among you is afraid?”
No one raised a hand. No one made a sound.
“Good,” the Duke said. “Because I believe in you. I believe you can keep the world upright. Or do I have the wrong group of people here? Are we not Lifters?”
“We are Lifters!” the crowd shouted.
“Again,” the Duke yelled. “Are we not Lifters?”
“We are Lifters!” they roared.
There was revelry. There were strategy meetings. There were exchanges of ideas. Comparisons of Lifts. There was talk of Gran’s innovation with the Earth balls, and how that method might be used to fight the Hollows elsewhere. Most of all, there were stories about battles, from Nova Scotia to Tierra del Fuego, against the Hollows.
“This is the third one of these I’ve been to,” Catalina said. “But this is the biggest by far. A lot of new faces.”
The ranks of the Lifters had been growing. This was a popular topic among the thousands of Lifters at the conference. In most regions, they were recruiting new Lifters. And in some places, Lifters were coming out of nowhere. With more activity from the Hollows, more Lifters were needed, and they had to be trained quickly.
“Like you,” Catalina said to Gran.
Gran lost track of time. There were parties, there was dancing, and finally everyone was so exhausted they slept where they’d been standing—in the same great hall. They slept overlapping, using legs and stomachs as pillows, and when Gran woke up, he was sure he’d never known such belonging and such purpose.
“Grant,” a voice whispered. “Catalina.”
Gran looked up to see the Duke standing over them.
“Follow me,” the Duke whispered.
Gran and Catalina stood up and followed the Duke out of the hall, stepping over hundreds of sleeping Lifters as they did. The Duke led Gran and Catalina down a dim hallway and into a room that looked almost exactly like the Duke’s office in the storage room at Carousel Middle School. There was the same sort of couch, the same sort of coffee table, the same kind of file cabinet, and in it, the same kind of turntable. The Duke set a record spinning and dropped the needle. Cuban music emerged.
“I like to have things a certain way,” the Duke said. “You hungry?” he asked, and retrieved a sandwich from another file cabinet. He took a great bite and sat down.
“I can’t believe I never realized it was you,” Catalina said.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you guys much,” he said. “But I’m sure you can understand why secrecy is important to this whole operation.”
There were a hundred questions Gran and Catalina wanted to ask, but Gran could only think of one.
“A few days ago, Catalina said something about erasing my memory. Can you guys actually do that?”
“Oh, sorry about that,” the Duke said. “I was just spitballing. I don’t know how to do that. But I saw it in a movie once.”
Gran felt great relief, and though he had ninety-nine more questions, it was time for the Duke to ask one of his own.
“Grant, can I see your Lift?”
Gran handed him the brass C.
The Duke laughed with delight. “I had a feeling. You know what this is, don’t you?”
“A Lift,” Gran said.
“Yes, but do you know what it was originally?”
Gran shrugged. “My great-great-grandfather made it.”
“Was he a blacksmith?” the Duke asked.
“I think so,” Gran said.
“So you understand?” the Duke asked.
Gran didn’t understand.
“This is a horseshoe!” the Duke said. “But not a regular horseshoe. This was a special one. It wasn’t made for a real horse, but a carousel horse. It’s no wonder it worked as a Lift. Lifts should have personal meaning to the user. They should have history, because history is power. Do you understand?”
Now Gran understood.
“My Lift is just a handle I found near the old factory,” Catalina said. She seemed dejected, as if her Lift’s history couldn’t possibly match that of Gran’s.
“Catalina!” the Duke roared, a big open smile lighting up his face. “I can’t believe you didn’t know what you were holding! You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t know,” she said flatly.
“That isn’t just some handle. That’s the handle that opened the front door of the factory! The door a thousand workers passed through—ten thousand visitors. They had tours there every weekend, and kids and dignitaries and everyone in between came through! Can you imagine? It was so beautiful. So many of us who worked there stayed on Saturdays just to see it. To show the people how we did what we did. It was a joyous day.”
Catalina’s face softened. She almost smiled.
“And that beautiful piece of metal in your hand opened the door, every day for decades. Everyone who ever set foot in the factory touched that handle first. It was the way into the best thing that ever happened to this town.”
Finally Catalina’s mouth turned upward. Her teeth emerged. She grinned like she’d never grinned before.
“Have you had a good time down here?” the Duke asked them both.
Gran said he had.
“I remember my first HC,” the Duke said. “Back then it was only a few hundred of us. But it was important to see each other. There’s great strength that comes from knowing you’re not alone in the fight.” He turned to Catalina. “Don’t you agree?”
Catalina nodded solemnly.
The Duke continued. “And there’s something about knowing that the battles continue all over the world. Not just in this hemisphere, by the way. Sometime soon you’ll attend the World Gathering, and there you’ll see everyone—a global force never before assembled in the history of the world. I think you’ll like that.”
All Gran could say was “Yes.”
“But listen, you two. I want you to remember something very crucial to all this. Though you’re here among Lifters from everywhere—from Winnipeg and Wyoming and Oaxaca and Peru—your work will always be where you live. In Carousel. Do you understand that?”
“I do,” Catalina said.
Gran felt something drop into his shoe. It seemed like his stomach. He hadn’t thought of home in days.
“Will you come back?” Catalina asked the Duke.
“Of course,” the Duke said. “My home’s still in Carousel. I’ll follow you in a few days. You keep things safe in the meantime, okay?”
Gran and Catalina said they would. But Gran’s mind was preoccupied.
“Speaking of home,” the Duke said, as if reading his thoughts, “when was the last time you checked in with your parents? Do they know where you are?”
“Why did you get so weird all of a sudden in there?” Catalina asked.
They had left the Duke’s office and were standing outside his door.
“How do I get back to Carousel?” Gran asked.
“You have to tak
e the stairs,” Catalina said. “There’s going to be an elevator, but it’s not ready yet. Are you telling me your parents have no idea where you are?”
“No. Do yours?”
“My mom thinks I’m staying at a friend’s house. She had to work double shifts, so I said I’d be at Katie Cabinet’s house.”
“Who’s Katie Cabinet?” Gran asked. He was sure there was no such person at their school.
“I made her up,” Catalina said. “My mom has no idea who goes to our school.”
Normally Gran would have laughed, but his mind was darting around his skull like a squirrel caught in a sack. “How long have we been gone?” he asked. “And did you say I had to take the stairs? Five miles of stairs?”
“They’re working on a better system, but it’s not like you can just install an elevator to the inner mantle of the Earth overnight.”
“Where are they?”
“The stairs?”
“No, the Pope. Yes, the stairs.”
Catalina led him through a series of hallways until they met the entrance to a stairway that looked in every way like the kind of stairs you’d use to get to or from an underground parking garage.
“You staying?” he asked Catalina.
“For another day, yes,” she said. “There’s still a lot I have to learn.”
Gran poked his head into the stairwell. “You’ve done this before. How long will it take?”
It took him a while. Most of the day. Actually, all of the day. The trip was exhausting and lonely, and all the while, Gran thought of his mother, how worried she would be. He’d been gone more than a day. She would have called his father. They would have called the police.
Gran tried to take his mind off all that. He counted the steps, and after fifteen thousand he gave up. By the time he reached the door where he and Catalina had begun their descent, he was sure he’d climbed at least thirty thousand, but wouldn’t have been surprised if it was twice that.