The Metropolitans Page 24

“No,” Kiku said, looking down at Trina van der Hoek and Gertrude Pillager clutching each other. “I’m tired of trying to fit in where I don’t belong. I’ll go with you.”

  A long forked tongue slid out of her mouth and flicked over her reptilian lips. “Hmmmm . . .” Belisent hummed, looking down at the troop of schoolgirls. “Are these the chill-drun who have been taunting you?”

  “Yes,” Kiku admitted.

  “Well, then, prove your loyalty to me by punishing them.”

  Kiku stared at Belisent and then down at her schoolmates. They stared back at her, goggle-eyed and terrified. This is what they expect of me, she thought angrily, that I really am a monster.

  “How?” Kiku asked.

  “You have more power than the others,” Belisent said. “You can do more than become invisible. You have all the power of the witch Morgaine.”

  Is that true? she asked the voice in her head.

  Yes, but . . .

  Kiku let the anger build inside her. It felt like electricity fizzing through her veins. All she had to do was let it go. She looked down at the girls huddled together. Trina van der Hoek, who had called her a squinty-eyed Jap, and Gertrude Pillager, who had spilled yellow paint all over her. But then she looked past them and saw Madge and Walt and Joe standing together on the dock, Walt dripping from his dunk in the harbor, Madge’s red hair flying wild in the wind, Joe staring at her with his steady eyes.

  Those girls may see you as a monster, but your friends don’t.

  And then she knew what she had to do.

  She let all the anger bubble to the surface—and turned it on Belisent. A wave of pure energy poured out of her and hit the monster. She saw the surprised look in both sets of eyes and then Belisent was falling back off the ferry. The girls on the boat clapped and cheered. Kiku felt something lift in her chest. But then Belisent righted herself in the air and lashed her tail at Kiku.

  “You’ll be sorry, girl,” she spat, and then she launched herself into the air and began flying toward Kiku’s friends.

  * * *

  Joe saw Belisent coming and pushed Madge and Walt to the ground. He felt the heat of the flames singe his hair and his back. When he looked up, he saw Belisent raking the ground with flames. Tourists jumped into the harbor to quench their burning clothes. She’ll kill them all, Joe thought, but then she was flying up, climbing toward the top of the statue. She could kill more people by destroying the statue.

  “We have to stop her!” Madge yelled, scrambling out from under Joe and getting to her feet.

  Walt grabbed Madge’s hand and ran toward the entrance to the statue.

  Joe got to his feet and looked around for Kiku. She had climbed down from the ferry and a couple of schoolgirls were clambering around her, hugging her and slapping her on the back, but she broke free and ran toward Joe.

  “Where are Madge and Walt?” she shouted.

  “They’ve gone into the statue,” he said. “to stop Belisent from destroying it.”

  Kiku looked up, shading her eyes to follow Belisent’s progress. The monster was winging past Liberty’s face, belching flames into the windows of the crown. Joe heard the screams of the tourists who had been caught in there. Men and women were leaping from the windows to get away from the flames.

  “No!” Kiku screamed as a man fell burning into the harbor. “We have to get up there and stop her.” Kiku began running toward the statue, but Joe stood staring at the harbor, where the man had plunged to his death. He was staring at all the ships and remembering something Billie had told him about the city. The great city at the mouth of the Hudson, he had called it, and then explained what made New York City so important.

  It has the best harbor. Ships come from all over the world and then all the goods they bring go up the Hudson River and then travel west on the Erie Canal to the rest of the country, and all the things made in the whole country are shipped back down to the harbor and out to the rest of the world.

  Joe could see it in his head: a great network of men and women and the things they would make—food and uniforms and guns and tanks—all traveling through New York Harbor and out to Europe where the war was being waged.

  But what if nothing moved through the harbor? What if it was plugged up like a bottle with a cork in it?

  Joe looked up at the statue of the proud woman. She reminded him of the powerful clanswomen who led his people, who appointed the chiefs and held the names of all the children in their baskets.

  She reminded him of his own Tóta, who had given him his name—

  But now the proud woman was shaking. Belisent was gripping the lady’s torch and was rocking her back and forth, loosening the statue from its base. She was trying to topple her into the harbor, where she would crash into the big ships that surrounded her. Who knew how much destruction it would cause, how many lives would be lost, and what damage it might do to the harbor itself? It would take years to clean up the mess, and in the meantime the war would rage on in Europe. Joe remembered the visions he’d had when he’d touched the gas canister—the millions who would be herded into gas chambers to die, the millions more who would die if the war went on.

  He looked back at Kiku. “Yes,” he said, “we have to stop her even if it’s the last thing we do.”

  * * *

  The last time Madge had visited the statue, it had taken an hour to climb the crowded stairs, but now they were racing up the stairs, taking two at a time. As she ran, Madge found herself picturing the green-robed woman they were inside. She remembered what her mother had said the day she’d brought her to Battery Park to see the statue: Always remember you come from women who know their own minds, and that you’re just as strong.

  But then her mother had died, and she’d wondered how strong she, or any of them, could be if a little thing like a blood clot could strike them down. And suddenly she didn’t feel very strong anymore. She slowed, slumped against the wall.

  “What’s wrong?” Walt asked.

  “I-I need to rest a moment.”

  Walt stared at her and then looked up as Joe and Kiku came running up the stairs.

  “She’s headed to the torch,” Joe shouted. “She’s going to topple the statue and take out the whole harbor.”

  “That will cripple the US’s war effort,” Walt said, his face pale as he looked down at Madge. “We have to go back down and then up the stairs to the torch.”

  “Go on without me,” she said.

  Walt looked aghast at her but then turned to follow Joe and Kiku. Madge couldn’t look at him anymore, so she turned to look out one of the crown’s windows. She could see the harbor spreading out far below. It would be very, very far to fall if Belisent was able to topple the statue. She leaned for a moment against the cool curved metal wall, her forehead pressed against the inside of the statue’s forehead.

  Please let me be strong, she said to herself. And then aloud, “Please let me be the girl my mother thought I was.”

  The coolness of the metal felt good, like her mother’s hand on her brow when she had a fever. And then she did feel a hand on her brow. She opened her eyes and saw Miss Lake, only she was wearing a long gown and her hair was longer. “You are strongest when you’re together,” she told Madge. “When you lead the others, they give you their strength and you give them yours.” Then she vanished.

  Madge lifted her head and looked up at the torch. Belisent was perched on it, rocking it back and forth. The whole statue was trembling. She could feel it beginning to rock on its foundation. If she let her friends face Belisent alone, they would all die.

  “No,” she said aloud, “I won’t let that happen.”

  She raced back down and then up the stairs to the torch, feeling strong now, feeling like herself. The Amazing Magical Madge, ring-a-levio leader and jacks champion of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. When she reached the top, she saw that Walt and
Joe and Kiku were standing at the door leading out onto the balcony that encircled the torch. There was a sign that said CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC on the door and heavy chains. Walt was trying to pull the chains apart. Madge laid her hand on his and took Kiku’s hand and Kiku grabbed Joe’s hand. Instantly, Walt was able to pull the chains apart. They burst out onto the narrow walkway. Belisent was hanging on to the torch, her claws sunk into its base, her tail wrapped twice around the balcony to steady her grip. When she saw them in the doorway, her tail-head laughed while the beast-head hissed fire. Madge smelled burning hair and heard Kiku yelp.

  Madge edged past her friends. She tried not to look down at the harbor where the tiny boats looked like the toys the twins played with in their bath. Each of those ships carried thousands of men, men who were ready to fight for their country. How much damage would the statue do as it fell in the crowded harbor? How many ships would it take out? How many lives would it end? All of that was unfathomable to Madge, but she knew that watching the Lady fall would be like watching her mother fall all over again. Tears stung her eyes and were whipped by the cold biting wind.

  “What can we do?” Kiku shouted over the roar of the wind.

  “Let’s rush her!” Walt cried.

  “If we all do it together, maybe we can unbalance her long enough to take her down to the water,” Joe said.

  And take us all down with her, Madge thought. She looked at her friends and saw that they were ready to do it. They would give up their own lives to save the spirit of the city. That’s what they had always done—sacrificed themselves. And suddenly it made her angry. Not this time! There has to be another way—

  “Hey,” Madge said, “remember when we all brought Boris to life?”

  “What?” Kiku said, looking at her as if she were crazy. “You did that.”

  “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t do it alone. We were all holding hands.” She reached out and grabbed Kiku’s hand.

  “But it didn’t work when we held hands before,” Kiku said as she took Joe’s hand.

  “We have to remember what we were thinking about in the Great Hall,” Madge said. “Remember? You asked us all to picture ourselves floating, so I thought about walking into the ocean holding my parents’ hands. What did you think about, Walt?” She took Walt’s hand as she asked.

  “I was riding the carousel before the war,” Walt said.

  “I was in my favorite painting, floating in the clouds,” Kiku said.

  “I was remembering how alone I’d felt when I first came to the city,” Joe said as he grabbed Walt’s hand, “and then how good it felt that I wasn’t anymore.” The second their circle was complete, Madge felt a pulse of power. “Keep thinking all that,” she said. Then she looked down into the face of Lady Liberty. “Please,” she whispered. “Help us.”

  Through her tear-blurred eyes, she thought she saw those grave, serious eyes stir.

  They were stirring. They blinked and then looked up at Madge.

  The eyes were no longer the blank metal of tarnished copper; they were the blue of the Lady of the Lake’s eyes, of her mother’s eyes. They regarded Madge first with studied calm, but then the giant brow creased with anger. Suddenly the balcony shuddered violently and plunged downward. Had Belisent finally toppled the statue? Kiku and Joe screamed and clung to the railing. Joe was shouting something in Madge’s ear, urging her to go back inside the torch, but Madge couldn’t take her eyes off the Lady’s. She was no longer standing on the top of the Statue of Liberty; she was in the kitchen of the tenement apartment on Fifth Avenue and Seventy-Third Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She could smell the oatmeal cooking and see the back of her mother’s head as she leaned over the pot to stir it. It was the moment before her mother fell to the floor. The moment she always came back to, wishing she could make it different—

  And now she could.

  Her mother turned and said, her blue eyes locked on Madge’s, “I know.”

  Madge blinked, and she was back on the torch, clinging to the frail balcony. Liberty had lowered her arm so that the torch was level with her eyes. She looked at Madge, those eyes full of the same knowing as her mother’s eyes, then she switched her gaze to Belisent, who was trying to get her claws unhooked from the base and her tail unwrapped from the balcony. The tail-head got stuck, though, between the railings, where it began to scream piteously.

  “Please don’t hurt me! I was only trying to protect my son. You’re a mother—surely you can understand!” But even as the tail-head was pleading, Madge saw that the beast-head was opening its mouth wide to devour them.

  The Lady saw it, too. She pursed her lips, as if about to shush her, and blew. The stream of air, smelling of copper and saltwater, rushed past Madge, hit Belisent full on, and ignited the torch. Belisent, unable to free herself from the torch, went up in flames. She struggled to get free, claws skittering against metal, both heads shrieking. When she finally got herself free, her wings were too damaged to fly.

  She began to fall.

  Madge saw the terror in the monster’s eyes and, before she could think about it, reached out her hand. “Grab on!” she shouted. She was leaning over the railing, but the others held on to her so she wouldn’t fall. She could feel the power they had together. Enough power to save a monster from itself. For a moment she thought Belisent would grab her hand. The beast-head’s eyes locked on hers imploringly. It stretched out a claw, but then the tail-head lashed forward and bit its own claw, hissing, “We don’t need anyone else!”

  And that’s how it fell, twisted in a knot of its own making.

  Kiku, Walt, and Joe watched to see if she would come back up, but Madge turned back to the Lady. A tear had fallen from her wide somber eye, streaking her pale-green cheek. Madge dug a handkerchief out of her pocket and reached up to wipe it away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, repeating the words she’d told her mother.

  The Lady didn’t speak, but in her eyes Madge saw all the love she had seen in her mother’s eyes, and knew it had always been there, and that the piece of herself that had broken that day had finally healed.

  33

  AULD LANG SYNE

  AFTERWARD, A FEW dozen sightseers claimed to have seen the Statue of Liberty swat a fire-breathing, two-headed dragon into the harbor, but these reports were dismissed by the newspapers as hysterics caused by a county fair stunt pilot who had gotten lost. Private First Class Tony DeAngelo, on board a ship bound for Europe, though, always maintained that he had seen the Statue of Liberty move her arm.

  “Look, boys!” he cried to his fellow crewmates on deck. “The Lady’s waving us good-bye!” He wrote to his new wife, Jean, about it, but the censor removed the line as he had been ordered to by his superior in the Military Intelligence Division. Jean McGuckin DeAngelo would have dismissed the idea of a moving statue as so much malarkey anyway, as she did all of her niece’s attempts to explain why she’d missed three days of school. As she told that sweet old fellow Dr. Bean on Christmas Day at his swank mansion up in Riverdale, “I guess I’d better take a firmer hand with Madge from here on out.”

  “Oh,” Dr. Bean replied, “I don’t think Madge will give you any more trouble.” He pointed to where Madge sat with Frankie and the twins under the Christmas tree. She was helping set up a toy castle that Frankie had found under the tree “from Santa.” Walt, that nice boy from Brooklyn whom Madge had struck up a friendship with, was helping the twins line up a bunch of toy knights and explaining how a catapult worked. Madge looked happier than she had since before her mother died. And why not? Things were finally looking up for the poor girl. A week ago, Madge’s father had shown up at the apartment. His clothes were old and worn and smelly, but they didn’t smell of liquor, and his eyes were clear. He told Madge and Jean he hadn’t had a drink since the night he’d met Madge in Central Park (she’d have to talk to Madge about wandering around the park at night!). He said he’d found
a job as a night security guard at the Metropolitan Museum and rented a little apartment up in Washington Heights. He’d applied to get back custody of Frankie and the twins. Would Madge want to come live with them?

  “Boy would I!” Madge had cried. Then she had looked sheepishly at Jean. “Not that it hasn’t been swell staying here, Aunt Jean.”

  Her niece had looked so much like her sister in that moment that she’d had to pretend she spotted a crumb on the counter until she was able to tell her that it was all right by her if she went to live with her father and brothers. Now she turned to Dr. Bean and said, “You know, I think you’re right. Madge has done a lot of growing up in the last few weeks.”

  * * *

  Joe also felt happier than he had since . . . well, since he’d left his home to go to the Mush Hole.

  “I went home to talk to my parents and grandmother about it and they said they wanted us to go to Fieldston,” he told Madge. “Miss Lake says the school is very different from the Mush Hole. We can speak our own language—in fact, there’s a teacher there who wants us to help with a class on Mohawk culture—we can go home for holidays, our parents can visit, and . . .” Joe looked over Madge’s head to where Kiku and Jeanette were seated at the piano, paging through sheet music.

  “You’ll be near your new friends,” Madge said, grinning. “I hear Kiku’s father has been cleared of any suspicion.” Mr. Akiyama was sitting on the couch, arguing with her father about the Dodgers’ chances to win the World Series.

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “They’ll be allowed to stay in their home, but her mother’s still stuck in Japan. It’s not going to be easy for her while the country’s at war.”

  “No,” Madge said, “I don’t suppose it’s going to be easy for anyone for the next few years. . . .” She paused and pointed to the doorway where Dr. Bean and Miss Lake were standing, waving at them. “I think they want us to come with them. I bet they’re going to give us our presents! I’ll let Walt know. Why don’t you go tell Kiku?” As Joe watched Madge leave, he looked around the room—at Madge’s aunt Jean, whose eyes were rimmed with red, at Walt’s cousin Ralph in a new army uniform, and finally at Walt, who was supervising an attack on the toy castle walls. He was just a boy playing with toy soldiers, but suddenly Joe felt cold, as if a draft had blown through the cheery firelit room. If the war went on five more years, he and Walt would be old enough to enlist! And somehow he didn’t imagine Walt would wait that long. His folks were still in France. That was the one trick Dr. Bean hadn’t been able to pull off. The new Walt—the one who’d faced down Mordred and Belisent and risked his life to save the city—wouldn’t be content to wait around to save them. Joe knew he himself wouldn’t.