The Trap Door Read online

  Maybe the only way Riq could be sure that his family history remained intact was to sabotage the mission — this one, at least.

  He glanced at the Infinity Ring’s satchel hanging from Sera’s belt. He looked from one sleeping eleven-year-old to the other. Could he figure out how to program the Ring without either of them waking up?

  But what would that solve? They’d just be furious at him for causing another unnecessary ripple, and they’d come back here anyway — they couldn’t go on to the next Break until this one was done. The SQuare was the only thing that held the information to get them to the next place. And it didn’t seem to want to give them anything about future Breaks until they’d fixed the Break they were in.

  Maybe if he told Dak and Sera what he suspected about his Remnants, and about this Break in particular, they’d understand.

  He laughed bitterly as he thought that through. “No way,” he said. The last thing he needed was two little kids pitying him, or worse, sacrificing the mission to save him. He couldn’t bear to have that hanging over him for the rest of his life.

  He studied the words again. They began to swim in front of him. He was tired, too. Just as he was about to nod off, a few words still in focus seemed to pop out at him. He sat up and looked at them once more, then began mouthing the words and counting on his fingers again. “That’s it!” he whispered.

  When he heard the chair scrape above the trap door, Riq shoved the SQuare into its pouch and slipped it inside Dak’s Quaker coat to hide it. Then he crept to the ladder, peering up.

  The lock turned and the trap door opened.

  Riq looked around wildly and hissed, “Sera!” He kicked Dak’s foot. “Dak!”

  They both nearly roused but fell asleep again as Mrs. Beeson’s face appeared above Riq. Her half glasses rested on the tip of her nose and threatened to give in to the pull of gravity. “I brought you some bread. Climb up here and get it, boy.”

  Riq pressed his lips together at the slur and set his jaw, determined not to lash out. They were hungry, it was 1850, and apparently Hester Beeson was used to bossing African-Americans around. He got that. With clenched teeth, he climbed the rungs, thinking briefly about fighting her and escaping, but he doubted he’d get very far with his skin color, and he couldn’t leave the others, anyway. But if he could just detain her, say, in a closet or something, he’d have time to wake up Sera and Dak, and they could all get away.

  He made that his plan. He climbed a few more rungs so that his upper body was out of the cellar, ready to spring up and surprise the woman.

  He reached up with both hands to take the bread. With one hand he grabbed it and with the other he clasped Mrs. Beeson’s wrist and rushed up the rest of the way, tossing the bread down into the cellar. Mrs. Beeson shrieked and hit him on the top of the head with her free hand, and then Riq felt four more hands on him, grabbing him under the arms and by the shirt collar — she was not alone. “Help!” he cried. He let his body go limp to throw his attackers off balance, but they were too strong. They held him fast, yanking his arms behind his back and throwing him forward to the floor.

  “There, now!” their shouts rang out. “Got you another one, eh, Mary? You’re going to make a fine piece of money in the morning for this one.”

  Riq twisted his head around. Mary? The lady had said her name was Hester Beeson, and she was the only woman here. Had anything she’d said to them been true?

  Riq saw the triumphant smile on her face and knew that she had been telling the truth about one thing. She’d been happy to see them. They’d walked right into her trap.

  Two burly men hauled him to his feet and a third tied his wrists together in front of him. He fought off his panic, remembering the clue. “Sera! Dak!” he yelled as loud as he could. “Every third! Every third! Every third!” He yelled it over and over until one man clamped a hand over his mouth. Riq bit down on the fleshy palm, hard, and when the hand pulled away, Riq had one last chance to scream, “Dak, Sera, listen to me! Every third WORD!” But then the bitten man reared back with his fist and punched Riq in the nose. All he saw after that were stars.

  IT WAS a blow to the face that woke Sera from a dead sleep, followed by the sounds of shouting men and pounding footsteps overhead. It took her a minute to remember where she was, and even longer to process that the thing that had hit her in the jaw was a loaf of bread, which now lay at her side. One of the shouting voices seemed familiar but nothing was computing properly in her brain.

  Dak sat up, too. “What the —” He looked around. “Where’s Riq?”

  Tears swam in Sera’s eyes — the unavoidable, just-got-hit-in-the-face kind of tears. “I heard him yelling. Did he escape without us?” She struggled to her feet, gingerly moving her jaw from side to side to see if the crusty loaf had done any serious damage. “He said he wasn’t staying here, but I didn’t think he’d ditch us.”

  “Did he take off?” Dak said. He got to his feet. “What a jerk! Why would he do that? I’m so telling Brint and Mari.”

  They could hear heavy boots pounding the floor above them and muffled noises. There was a flurry of activity and one last shout from Riq. “Dak, Sera, listen to me! Every third WORD!” The front door slammed.

  It didn’t sound like an escape; it sounded like an abduction. Sera and Dak scrabbled over to the ladder. Sera jumped up first and climbed as fast as she could. She reached for the opening.

  Just then the trap door slammed down on Sera’s fingers and she yanked them away, squealing in pain as the lock clicked. Furious, Sera pounded her fist on the wooden door above her, and she and Dak shouted. “Hey, you big bully! Open up! What are you doing? Let us out of here! What have you done to our friend?”

  The only sound they heard in response was that of the rug and the chair being dragged over the trap door, followed by dainty footsteps walking away. “Ugh!” Sera slammed her hand into the ceiling one last time, furious and disgusted. Now her hand hurt, too, and her fingertips pulsed with pain. She looked up at the backside of the lock. From this side, the lock mechanism had a partial, unfinished cover over it. Sera tried to maneuver her pinkie into the narrow space so that she could push the lock open, but her pinkie was too thick and it wouldn’t bend the right way. Sera glanced around the sparse cellar, having little hope for anything that could help them out of this jam.

  Dak jumped down off the lower rung to the floor of the cellar, and Sera climbed down the ladder.

  “Do you still have the lock pick we got from King Louis?” Dak asked.

  “Wrong type of lock,” Sera said. “That technology’s developed a lot since 1792.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “First thing first,” Sera said gravely. She gave Dak the hairy eyeball and put her hands on his shoulders. “I’m going to ask you this question very seriously, so don’t mess it up. Ready?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Dak said, squirming a little.

  “Okay, here goes.” She moistened her lips and said, “Do. You. Have. The SQuare? Because I don’t.”

  Dak’s eyes widened. The look of fear on his face told Sera he wasn’t goofing around. “Riq had it. . . .” His voice trailed off as he whipped his head around to look about the room.

  “Oh, please, not again,” muttered Sera. She went to the pile of wet clothing and started tossing it around the room, searching.

  “Careful,” Dak said, swooping in to grab a bottle of soda that Sera had thrown aside. “That’s one of the first carbonated beverages ever made. It’s an irreplaceable souvenir.”

  Sera pawed her way through the supply shelves, barely pausing to throw him a dirty look. “Did you steal that from the President’s House?”

  “I saved it!” Dak insisted. “Don’t you remember the invasion?”

  “Dak, focus! Did you check your pockets?” Sera said, her voice pitching higher as they ran out of places to look. She went over to him and started giving him a pat down, and she wasn’t gentle.

  “Easy!” Dak cried.

&n
bsp; “Hey!” Sera exclaimed when she smacked him in the chest and hit something solid. “What’s this in your jacket?” She stepped back so he could find out for himself.

  Dak pulled back the lapel of his jacket and found the inside pocket. “Wow,” he said, looking inside it. “You could fit a whole can of SQueez Cheez in here.” He reached in and pulled out the familiar leather pouch.

  Sera smiled weakly in relief. “Whew,” she said. “You big jerk! You scared me. How could you forget that you put it there?”

  “I didn’t put it there. Riq must have. Before they —” Dak bit his lip. “Yeah. That was pretty smart of him.”

  Sera squinched her eyes shut. It made her sore jaw hurt a little. “And he threw us the bread so we could eat something.”

  Dak nodded. “I guess he’s not so bad.”

  Sera looked at her friend, the guy who had been her bestie since before she could remember, and smiled. “Like I’ve been telling you. He’s not bad at all. He’s a really decent guy. Now,” she said, taking a deep, determined breath, “how are we going to find him?”

  “I DON’T know if you caught this,” Dak said, feeling kind of terrible about Riq getting captured and dragged away while they slept, “but Riq was yelling something besides help.”

  “‘Every third word,’” Sera said. “Yeah, I heard it. What does it mean?”

  “I’m guessing he figured out the clue — it was a word puzzle.” Dak pulled the SQuare out of the pouch, reentered the password (“Password”) because it had timed out, and then the clue appeared again. “See, it’s a telegram. STOP means to end the sentence.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just use a period?”

  “The word stop is understood around the world. Plus, when telegrams were sent, each punctuation mark cost the same price as a full word, but it was a lot easier to misplace a dot than a whole word, so people ix-nayed the unctuation-pay.” He looked up with a grin. “Hey! I guess I know two languages after all. I can’t wait to tell Riq when we find him.” He glanced at Sera and said in a more serious voice, “Because we will find him.” He showed the telegram to Sera.

  Seek the fire not for your lantern candle oil or wood STOP Friends are friends after time STOP Tomorrows a mostly fair day STOP Visit and enjoy post breakfast STOP Office worries will wait STOP And then you can follow festivities including the eating and drinking STOP

  Sincerely

  Gourdon

  Sera read it a few times. “It would make more sense with punctuation.”

  “That’s not the point. It’s a code. What it actually says isn’t really what it’s trying to say.”

  “Yeah, I get it, Sherlock.” Sera squinted at the words. “Okay, so, every third word — is that with or without the STOPs?”

  Dak shrugged.

  “Figuring it’s with, then this says: Fire your oil stop friends stop mostly stop enjoy stop will and can . . .” She shook her head. “This is stupid.”

  “So take the stops out.”

  “Fire your oil friends after — wait, so do I skip the word stop only if it’s the word I land on?”

  “No idea. Historian here, not a know-it-all linguist.”

  Sera glared at Dak.

  “Yeah . . . I said that without thinking, didn’t I,” Dak said. “I’ll keep the linguist jokes to myself for now. Sorry.”

  “There’s always a first time. Every day, with you.” She struggled with the telegram for a while.

  Dak took a hunk of bread and started eating. “Could really use some cheese.” He handed the loaf to Sera and she ripped a chunk off, too, nibbling at it as she worked the clue.

  “Ohh!” she said after a while, her mouth full. “We have to start with the first word and then do every third after that. He didn’t say that.”

  “Shame on him for not explaining it better while being tackled and captured.”

  She chewed and swallowed. “How does this sound?” She read it once to herself, and then she read it out loud, guessing where the punctuation went. “Seek not lantern or Friends. After tomorrow’s fair, visit post office!” Sera looked up excitedly, and then turned back to finish it. “Wait, then follow the drinking Gourdon.”

  Dak smirked. “‘Seek not lantern or Friends.’ Ahh-hahaha. Now you tell us.”

  “We should have figured out the clue first before coming here.” Sera frowned. “It’s my fault.”

  Dak put his hand on Sera’s shoulder. “Girl-dude, it’s fine. Under the circumstances, we would have drowned or frozen to death before we figured it out.”

  Sera went back over the words once more, memorizing them. “‘After tomorrow’s fair.’ So we need to find the fair tomorrow.”

  “Then we’ll go to the post office, stand around for a while, and follow some drunk guy named Gourdon.”

  “I guess.”

  “That should be interesting. I hope he doesn’t ralph his guts out,” Dak said.

  “I hope he does. Did you know you can find out a lot about the human digestive system by studying —”

  “Uhm, I kind of can’t believe this, but you just grossed me out.”

  “Anyway, we’ll get to that part of the clue eventually, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If we don’t get out of here, we’ll never find the fair. Or Riq, for that matter.”

  “Well,” Dak said, “nobody said fixing history would be easy. I guess this means we go to Plan B.”

  RIQ HAD broken his nose once before, in elementary school when he took a dodgeball to the face at close range from some crazy dude named Matt who was actually aiming for a girl. And now it was definitely broken again. He knew for sure because he could literally see the skin of his nose puffing up in front of and around his eyes. And then, of course, there was all the blood. And the pain. As the three men had dragged him out the front door and into the storm, tossing him in the back of a wagon and chaining him there, all he could do was try to ignore the pain and keep his nose protected.

  But, even injured, he was a Hystorian. And he was a good one. So he also kept track of where the wagon was taking him in case he had a chance to escape. He tried loosening the rope around his wrists and tugging at the chain that held him in the wagon, but they were both stuck tight.

  After an hour’s ride in the dark, they came to a stop. The men got off the wagon seat and went into a house, leaving Riq alone. He yanked and tugged at the chain, bracing his feet against the side of the wagon and pulling with all his might, but it wouldn’t budge. At least the activity helped keep him warm — once again he was soaked through from rain. He wished for the coat he’d left behind with Sera.

  Ten minutes later, the men came out.

  Riq could sit up just far enough to see over the side. The men were leading a woman and a young boy to the wagon. They came along quietly enough, but Riq heard the cries of a baby as they approached. With surprise, he realized the woman held an infant in her arms.

  At his mother’s urging, the boy crawled up into the wagon, and she followed. Riq reached out his bound hands as best he could to help the little guy keep his balance in the gusty wind, as the woman climbed aboard with the baby. She held her head high and set her lips as the men chained one of her wrists to the wagon on the side opposite Riq. She did her best to shield her baby from the weather.

  Riq looked at the boy, who appeared to be about five or six and was scowling into the pelting rain. “If you lie down here against the side, you’ll stay dry,” Riq said. “The wind blows the rain sideways and this will protect you. See? It’s cozy.”

  The boy looked at his mother, who nodded. He scooted to Riq’s side but stayed as far away from him as possible.

  When the wagon lurched and moved again, the wheels bounced on the uneven, rain-soaked ground, which sent piercing pain through Riq’s skull. He leaned forward. “Ma’am,” Riq said, “forgive me for asking, and I apologize for my appearance, but do you know where they’re taking us?”

  The woman gave Riq a long look, sizing him up. “Are you a freedman?”


  Riq hesitated. He knew the term, and while technically it wasn’t accurate, he said, “Yes.”

  “So they got you with the new law?”

  “Um,” Riq said, “which one would that be?”

  The woman pursed her lips. “You’ve never heard of the Bloodhound Law?”

  Riq shook his head. “No, ma’am. I don’t know of it.”

  “It passed a few months back. Used to be, the North was a safe haven for former slaves. But now free blacks can be picked up off the street in any state in the nation and sold back south. No trial. Nothing. So everybody’s hunting.”

  Riq tried not to gape. “That’s . . . barbaric.”

  “It’s far from justice, but it’s the law,” the woman said. “And it gets worse. Anyone accused of helping a runaway slave is in violation of the law and has to face all sorts of trouble. It’s gotten so a person can’t know who to trust.”

  “Were . . . were you just captured?” Riq asked.

  ”No. Ms. Brodess has decided to sell us. We’re all being auctioned.” She gave him a hard look.

  “We — meaning you three?”

  She shook her head, and her words were heavy. “We. Meaning we in this wagon. Tomorrow. Once they get you, they don’t waste time.”

  Riq’s lips parted in shock, then clamped shut in fury. He swallowed hard, the anger burning and turning to dry ashes in his throat as a flood of hopelessness washed through him. He closed his eyelids and slumped against the side of the wagon, rain pelting like tiny stones to the back of his head. A hot tear slipped from the corner of his eye before he could stop it.

  “SO, WHAT exactly is Plan B?” Sera asked. She’d wandered over to the supply shelves and was picking through them, examining each item curiously.