Return of the Forgotten

“Touching,” said Hope with a sniffle.

  “Yeah,” Pup agreed, blushing. “Too bad he didn’t give that speech before I dropped the hedgehog on him!”

  The peg-legged rat selected the least battered of the stowed life preservers and, under Wallabout’s direction, two others hauled it all the way to the ferry’s stern. There they dragged it out onto a low-slung platform hovering over the water, skimming the choppy surface.

  Another pi-rat appeared to hand Hope a shiny foil bag with colorful letters printed on it, then scampered off with an “arrgghh” of farewell.

  Hope read the words printed on the foil. “Buttered popcorn.”

  “Ah,” said Wallabout. “A treat from the snack bar. He must have scared it away from a human.”

  “What is it?” asked Pup.

  “Food,” the hedgehog explained. “For your voyage. Quite a thoughtful gesture, I’d say. I guess those pi-rats really aren’t the rough-and-tumble bandits I imagined them to be.”

  Pup was in full agreement with the commodore’s improved opinion of the pi-rat band. At the moment, however, Pup was more concerned with the unimpressive flotation device balanced on the edge of the ferry.

  “You really expect us to ride this thing?” he asked.

  “It’s the only way to get to Manhattan,” Wallabout assured him. “Unless you’d rather do the backstroke.”

  “It’ll be fun!” cried Hope, lifting her smiling face into the watery spray off the river. “An adventure!”

  “You two board the life preserver,” Wallabout instructed, “and I’ll shove you off. It’ll be rough at first, but just hold tight until you clear the wake. Then you should have smooth sailing all the way past South Street Seaport. Just watch out for seagulls.”

  “What are seagulls?” Pup asked.

  Wallabout declined to elaborate. Instead he plucked another quill from his back and handed it to Pup. “You might need this,” he said in a serious tone. “Gulls prefer fish to mice, but you never know.”

  Pup didn’t like the sound of that. He took the quill. “Thank you, Commodore,” he said, offering the hedgehog a crisp salute. “Thank you for everything.”

  Then he and Hope climbed onto the foam ring and held tight.

  “Good luck, mates,” cried Wallabout, giving the float a hearty shove.

  It slid into the river with a splash, bouncing and spinning across the ferry’s powerful wake. Pup gripped the circle until his claws were digging into it.

  “Wheeeeee!” cried Hope.

  After a few turbulent minutes, the life preserver found its way out of the roiling path of the ship and into calmer waters.

  “This is incredible!” said Hope, her whiskers whipping in the breeze as she gripped the bag of popcorn that was more than twice her size.

  Pup had to admit, there was something both relaxing and exciting about being on the water. He almost envied those pi-rats, spending their days just cruising the East River, with nothing to do but poke fun and frighten humans into giving up their popcorn. With a twinge of longing he watched the ferry disappear, enjoying the sensation of the float bobbing gently on the open river. But his peaceful respite didn’t last long.

  Now that the ferry was gone, the water had stilled considerably. Although they still rose and fell over the shallow crests of the chop, their little float was no longer covering much distance. Hope noticed it at the same time.

  “We’re not getting anywhere.”

  Pup frowned. “I see that.” But that wasn’t the only thing he saw. Out of the corner of his eye he sensed motion. Turning, he spied another boat—this one was shaped like a smile with two tall triangles rising out of its middle—slicing swiftly across the river.

  Headed right for them!

  “We need to get out of the path of that thing!” Pup screamed, dipping his paw into the water and slapping at it frantically. His thought was to push the water behind them, and propel the craft in the direction of Manhattan. But the river was immense and his paws were the size of sunflower seeds. Even as he splashed and paddled, he knew the effort was useless.

  Hope, meanwhile, was frowning at the tremendous boat coming closer by the second. “Fulton’s forge,” she said.

  “What? What does the bladesmith have to do with anything?”

  “The fire in his forge did something to the tent. It made it flutter. Billow. Brighton said it had something to do with hot air being lighter than cold air, but to me it just looked like breeze.”

  Pup leaned away from the edge, shaking the river from his hands in a splatter. “And?”

  Hope pointed to the sky. “We’ve got breeze. And that boat is using it to wonderful effect. Just like Fulton’s tent. The wind is pushing against those big triangular sheets, and making them billow. The boat is traveling in the direction the wind is blowing. It’s pushing them.”

  The observation was spot on. “Quick!” said Pup. “We need something that will billow.”

  He looked around at the flat, paint-chipped surface of the life preserver, but there was nothing that might flutter in a stiff breeze. There was only the quill Wallabout had sacrificed for their defense against seagulls. Whatever they were.

  “I’ve got it!” cried Hope.

  When Pup saw her paws go to her waist, his eyes lit up. “Yes! Brilliant!”

  Hope made fast work of untying the blanket from where it was knotted around her midsection, while Pup shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun reflecting off the river for a better look at the boat. The fluttering triangles appeared to be secured to a tall post.

  “Here!” he said, snatching up the quill and sticking the pointy end into the life preserver so it stuck straight up.

  He didn’t have to tell Hope what to do—she was already tying the blanket to the quill, knotting it at the top and the bottom with plenty of slack between.

  “Okay, wind,” she invoked, delighted. “Do your best!”

  Sure enough, the little swatch of blanket caught the breeze, puffing itself outward, billowing, whipping, and carrying Pup and Hope safely out of the path of the approaching sailboat.

  Carrying them across the calm blue waters of the sun-splashed East River.

  Carrying them toward Manhattan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  DEV HAS FOUND A WAY to do something so mystical that even the great La Rocha himself scarcely could have imagined it; this vindictive traitor has managed to bring the illusion of daylight into the tunnels.

  I have never seen daylight, of course. But the way the glow emanates from the strange, bent-armed objects that hang high above our heads to flood the place with gilded brilliance, I am sure genuine daylight could not possibly be more beautiful than this.

  How sad that I must experience such a glorious sight while my arms and legs are bound and my back is pressed against the rough bricks of the station wall.

  Dev has tied us up—myself and the four royal heirs—with the reluctant help of two female mice we found waiting here. His sisters, Celeste and Hazel. They are plump and sweet-faced, with fur (like Devon’s) of a darkish-brown color. Not Mūs fur. It is clear to me now that Dev has only been pretending to be a member of the proud Mūs tribe.

  All a part of his malicious plan.

  And yet, from the argument I am overhearing between Dev and his sisters, I sense that neither of them has had any prior knowledge of his intended villainy. I gather that they have been living here in this opulent place for quite some time, and it seems, are as surprised by our arrival as we are.

  “This is madness, Dev,” scolds the sister called Celeste. “Impersonating a Mūs, killing a general! So this is what you’ve been doing all this time you’ve been absent from us, leaving us here to scrounge and scavenge and to endure the comings and goings of that slithering monster.”

  Hazel shares her sister’s disgust. “Kidnapping?” she huffs. “Torture? Revenge? You’re being completely irrational! Tell me, brother, what will any of that accomplish? It won’t bring Father or Ira back to us.”

>   “I know that,” says Dev, his voice brittle and cold. “But don’t you remember how it was in that hunting ground? Don’t you remember how Ira suffered? We could have saved him, but for a single arm’s length. Hers! Well, now I want to see Firren suffer, just as Ira did.” He presses his snout close to Hazel’s and grinds the words out through his teeth. “This is not about reason, sister. This is about retribution.”

  “Well, I refuse to go along with it,” Celeste informs him, folding her arms defiantly. “Count me out.”

  “And me,” says Hazel, stepping closer to her sister. A united front.

  For a moment, Dev just glowers, and then he erupts in a roar of anguish and fury. The station echoes with it; the sound of his frustration pounds back on itself from the shining wall tiles to the cracked glass of the elaborate skylights overhead.

  “How can my own siblings be so unreliable?” he bellows. “So weak! Just look at this place!” He flings his arms wide, indicating the undeniable beauty of City Hall station. “Our father wanted to claim it, not only for our comfort and enjoyment but for that of all rodents. It would have outshone Atlantia, that much is certain, and it would not have been built on lies and treachery. It would not have been a place of evil.”

  Hazel reaches out a tentative paw to place on Dev’s outstretched arm. “And what sort of place is it now, brother? With words like ‘retribution’ and ‘suffering’ ringing off the very walls.”

  Dev’s reply is an icy glare.

  Now Celeste lifts her chin defiantly. “I won’t allow you to do this, Devon.”

  “And how do you propose to stop me?”

  “By boarding the very next silver beast that slinks around that bend,” she announces, “and going to warn Firren.”

  “And these children . . . ,” Hazel adds. “They are innocent. They weren’t even in that hunting ground.” She starts toward the children and me, reaching out with trembling paws as though preparing to untie us.

  For her trouble, she receives a punishing blow to the back of her skull with the pommel of her brother’s sword. I stifle the scream that rises from my throat, because seeing this action brings it all back to me in a flash even brighter than the false daylight that burns from above:

  My disguise falls away . . . the startled expression on his face . . . he reaches for his sword . . . the heavy handle is swooping in the direction of my head . . . the metal pommel finds its mark . . .

  Blending with my recollection is the sight of Hazel flying forward from the force of the attack, landing with a bone-bruising thud mere inches away from me on the hard surface of the platform.

  Celeste gasps. “How dare you!” She makes to charge her brother. But he is ready for her. He wields his sword.

  “I would not do that if I were you,” he warns with a sinister smile.

  With a grunt of helplessness Celeste changes her course and hastens to her sister’s side.

  “I would never do that to you,” Raz whispers to Brighton, who is tied beside him. His eyes go pointedly to her glasses. “Even in a blind rage, I could never make such a spectacle of myself as to knock you off your feet.”

  From behind her shattered eyeglasses, Brighton blinks, then nods.

  Raz turns his teary eyes to the others. “I couldn’t hurt any of you!” he promises. “I would never take a chance on severing our family ties like that.”

  At this statement of loyalty, I see Fiske and Go-go exchange glances, and then they, too, nod to Raz.

  Meanwhile, Hazel is not responding to Celeste’s worried whispers. I fear the damage is irreversible. Celeste realizes it as well. She lifts her face and gives her brother a look of pure abhorrence. “You mourn one dead sibling, but think nothing of killing another?”

  His mouth twitches. “She’s probably just stunned” is his dispassionate diagnosis.

  Celeste presses her ear to Hazel’s chest but gives no report. Dev points his sword at her, then motions to us. “You may join the royal brats,” he says evenly.

  Wisely, Celeste does as she’s told, crumbling to the hard floor beside me. In no time, Dev has wrapped her arms and legs in twine.

  He is so busy securing the knots that he does not hear what I hear. A soft shuffling; it is the ghost of a sound, really, almost not a sound at all. Footsteps—times eight—scurrying somewhere above my head.

  The noise ceases and I am left wondering if I only imagined it.

  Then Dev turns to me and his dull, black eyes bore into mine. “So, pretty maid, what do you think your illustrious La Rocha would have to say about all this?”

  Before I can answer, Fiske pipes up. “La Rocha would say that there is nowhere for the wicked to hide, for sooner or later evil will be found out.”

  “Well, I’m banking on later,” Dev drawls. “After I’ve had my revenge on Firren.”

  Suddenly Brighton cries out dramatically and drops her head to her chest in despair. The action causes her eyeglasses to slip from her face and into her lap. Strangely, she does not lament over the loss of them. In fact, it is almost as if she’s knocked them off her snout on purpose.

  “Oh no!” Fiske shouts. “Look! There’s a big ugly feline headed down those steps!”

  Alarmed, Dev spins in the direction of the broad staircase, weapon raised. Both Celeste and I brace ourselves for a feline attack, until we realize there is no cat approaching.

  Fiske laughs. “Ha ha. Made ya look!”

  I turn to chastise him with a glare—for we do not need to anger this madmouse any more than he already is—just in time to catch a glimpse of the tip of Brighton’s pink tail flicking forward from behind Raz’s back . . . and also to see that the spectacles have disappeared from her lap.

  There is a slight crunching noise that sounds like breaking glass.

  Now beside me I feel Raz squirming, ever so gently. If our shoulders were not grazing, I would not even realize he was moving. I have no idea what this resourceful prince is up to, but instinctively I know I must keep Dev’s focus elsewhere, so that he does not notice what Verrazano is about. Because it is clear that these clever children—bless their royal little hearts—are up to something.

  “You cannot expect to keep this place to yourself for long,” I say loudly. “It is far too beautiful. The humans are bound to come back and reclaim it.”

  “Humans are fools. Things of beauty and value amuse them for only so long before they move on to something they think is more beautiful and valuable. This place has been abandoned for nearly three quarters of a century.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “My father told me. He heard it from his father, who heard it from his father. Our clan lived in the basement of an important upland palace called City Hall, just up those stairs. All of New York, the greatest city in the world, was governed from that building. My father understood politics. He listened to the plans and policies of the great men and women who walked those hallowed halls, and that was when his dream began. He wanted to create a proud and powerful city for himself.”

  “Like Atlantia,” Gowanus ventures.

  “Better than Atlantia!” Devon snarls. “Bigger and safer and open to any rodent, whoever chose to live there. At the time we were just pups, Celeste, Hazel, Ira, and I. Our mother, who hailed from a grassy place in Brooklyn called Marine Park, had just days before fallen prey to a spring trap left by the rodent-hating City Hall custodial staff. We were still in mourning when our father took us from that big, important building down here into the tunnels. You see, he had heard from a rodent who’d wandered up from below about a great and prosperous civilization, governed by a rat named Titus. My father’s plan was to approach this emperor Titus to ask for his cooperation in colonizing this long-forgotten, splendid, and magnificent wonderland.”

  He swings his sword in a wide arc, to indicate all of City Hall, from floor to ceiling. My eyes follow the blade of their own accord, and when my head tilts back to gaze up at the ornate arched ceiling, I bite back a gasp.

  Because t
he bent-armed light machines are not the only eerie things I see suspended from above. I look away, then, just to be sure I am not imagining what I think I’ve seen, I look back upward.

  And eight piercing eyes look back at me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “SPLENDID AND MAGNIFICENT” INDEED!

  From the hitch on the back of the 6 train, Hopper gaped at the unexpected and spectacular sight that was City Hall station.

  “Look at this place,” said Zucker. “It’s better than my old man’s palace.”

  Hopper certainly did not disagree. If anything, the description Dev had given of City Hall (as relayed to the Chosen One and the others by Wyona) had been a serious understatement. The station into which they rolled now surpassed “splendid” at first glance and became more and more “magnificent” the longer one looked. As their train slowed to round the curve, Hopper snapped out of his awestruck daze. He thought he heard voices ahead, but they were small and muffled by the rumble of the slow-moving beast.

  “This is us,” he said, preparing to jump.

  “Aw, man,” muttered Zucker. “I really hate this part.”

  “Tuck and roll,” Hopper advised.

  “Yeah, kid. Right.”

  Zucker took Firren’s hand and leaped from the train, with Hopper soaring through the atmosphere behind them. The three of them landed hard on the concrete slab of the subway platform, skidding, toppling, and tumbling over themselves until they hit the wall.

  “Did I mention I hate this part?” snarled Zucker, standing and brushing off his purple tunic.

  But Firren was already on her feet, sword drawn, creeping quietly in the direction of a broad staircase. She held up a paw to shush them as Hopper and Zucker followed her, pressing themselves against the bottom edge of the wall.

  Now a voice came rippling toward them, a voice rising and falling with passion, amplified to a hollow boom by the acoustics of the near-empty station.

  It was the lunatic Devon, ranting once again.

  Inching along the curvature of the wall, Hopper could see that the incensed mouse was pacing the platform with his sword raised. He was barking out his speech as though he were some great, wise orator, lecturing before a rapt audience.