The Dragon Lantern by Gratz Alan

Author:Gratz, Alan [Gratz, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781466838512
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

Dr. Kenda threw a lever, and the tubes connected to the amber that held the bird girl began to hum. “I’m not sure this is going to work,” he said. “This technology—it’s far in advance of anything I’ve ever seen or worked with before.”

Not for the first time, Archie wished Hachi and Fergus were there with him. Fergus would know exactly how to get the bird girl out of her translucent blue prison, and Hachi would know how to deal with her when she awoke.

If she awoke.

“I still don’t think she’s alive in there,” Jesse James said. He and Mr. Rivets were the only others in the room.

“We have to try,” Archie said.

A large metal box with pipes flowing in and out of it clicked on, and a lightbulb came on above the blue amber.

“Lektricity,” Mr. Rivets said.

Archie nodded. Whatever this was, whatever the Septemberists had been doing here, it wasn’t good.

Another machine kicked on, and another, and two more lights glowed above the girl in the hard resin.

“I would step back at this point,” Dr. Kenda told everyone.

The blue amber began to quiver, then ripple, and then all at once it vaporized, becoming a thin blue mist that was immediately sucked up by the tubes. The girl fell facedown onto the floor, suddenly free of the resin, and the machine clicked off.

The bird girl was perhaps fourteen years old, and was beautiful and horrible at the same time. The top part of her was mostly human and all elegant. She was Illini, with light brown skin, dark black hair, and a thin face with a long, sharp nose it was hard not to think of as a beak. Out of the back of her brown beaded shirt sprouted wings—long, folded wings with jet black feathers like a crow.

It was the bottom half of her that made Archie want to look away. Where her human legs should have been were two bird legs—rough, scaly things bent backwards at the knee. At the bottom of each, instead of feet, the bird girl had leathery talons, with four black claws on each. She reminded Archie of the Manglespawn—the awful children of humans and Mangleborn.

The bird girl’s wings fluttered, and everyone in the room took a step back. She was alive! She tried to push herself up with her hands, but she was weak from her time in the amber. Mr. Rivets quickly moved to help her, and Archie joined him.

“Where—?” she asked. “What’s—?”

“You’ve just been released from amber, miss,” Mr. Rivets said. “You may be disoriented.”

She looked around at them, blinking. “Where’s—where’s Henry? Where’s Dr. Echohawk?”

“I’m sorry—none of those people are around anymore,” Archie said. “Whatever this place was, all the people who ran it are gone.”

“No—Henry was ambered with me,” the bird girl said. She moved quickly across the room, her grotesque bird legs making her bob like a chicken. She pulled away a dusty sheet, revealing another large block of blue amber underneath it.

Frozen inside this one was the rotten

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