The Trap. Michael Grant

barely avoided being completely flushed out of consciousness. He sank to his knees, and Jarrah hauled him back up.

      The mob of Tong Elves on bikes shot past, braked, turned clumsily back, and came in a rush for a second pass.

      “You got a magic spell for this?” Stefan asked.

      “I miss Toaster Strudel,” Mack said.

      Stefan and Jarrah correctly interpreted this remark as evidence that the blow to Mack’s head might have scattered his wits a bit.

      “Run!” Stefan said to Jarrah.

      “Got that right!” Jarrah agreed.

      They each grabbed one of Mack’s arms and took off, half guiding, half dragging Mack, who was explaining why strawberry Toaster Strudel was the best, but sometimes he liked the apple.

      “I had a s’mores flavour Toaster Strudel once but…” Mack announced before losing his train of thought.

      The Tong Elves were just a few feet away. But they were awkward on their bikes. Stefan led Mack and Jarrah straight across their path, rushed into traffic, and dodged across the street through buses and taxis.

      The Tong Elves veered to follow.

      Wham! A bus reduced their number by two. The unlucky pair went flying through the air and landed in front of a taxi, which hit them again – wham! – and flipped them bike-over-heels into a light pole.

      “I like foosball,” Mack said. “But I’m not good at it.”

      “This way! We can’t outrun them on foot!” Stefan yelled, and he and Jarrah dragged Mack bouncing and scuffling down the sidewalk and into a rack of parked bicycles. The bikes were locked, but Stefan still had the Skirrit blade.

      Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

      And there were three unlocked bikes.

      “Can you ride a bike?” Jarrah asked Mack.

      Mack drew himself up with offended dignity and said, “I could be a Jonas brother.”

      “I think that’s a no,” Jarrah said.

      Stefan lifted Mack up and settled him on the handle-bars of a bike. With fluid strength Stefan swung a leg over, mounted the bike, held a drifting, ranting Mack in place with one hand, grabbed the handlebar with the other, and stomped on the pedal.

      Down the street, past the now partly flame-engulfed market they rode, with a mob of Tong Elves on bikes behind them.

      But then, just ahead, a pedicab.

      Small digression: a pedicab is defined on wordia.com as “noun, a pedal-operated tricycle, available for hire, with an attached seat for one or two passengers.”

      This particular pedicab had a wiry guy pedalling. And on the back it had a sort of cabin, bright turquoise with a red fringe and gold tassels.

      The pedicab was speeding right towards Mack and Stefan. As fast as the guy could pedal.

      And leaning out of the side of the cabin, with the naked blade of his cane-sword pointed forward like a knight with a jousting lance, was Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout.

      

      ABOUT NINETY YEARS AGO, GIVE OR TAKE…

      o long, son!” Paddy’s parents shouted as they waved to him from the quay. “We’ll…” They paused and looked at each other, each hoping the other would say, “We’ll miss you.”

      But in the end neither could quite pull it off. So they just repeated, “So long!”

      Paddy shipped out for America aboard HMS DiCaprio, a luxury transatlantic ship. At least it was luxury if you were in first class. But the DiCaprio had seven different classes of accommodation.

      In first class you lived like a king. A giant stateroom, a butler, a maid, two bathrooms, crystal chandeliers, gold doorknobs, lovely soft feather beds. The toilet paper was linen, and the linens were silk. In the bathroom there were three knobs: hot, cold and soup. The food served was so fresh you could actually meet the chickens who laid your eggs and the pigs who would become your bacon.

      But none of that mattered because Paddy was not in first class.

      In second class you were still doing pretty well, with a nice little stateroom. There was no soup nozzle in the room, and the toilet paper was just paper, but it was soft (two-ply). And second-class passengers were served pleasant and healthy meals in the cheerful second-class dining room. You didn’t get to actually chat with your pig or lamb or chicken or cow, but you could wave to them.

      But Paddy was not in second class.

      Third class was a little more rough-and-ready. You had to make your own bed, for one thing. And meals were all self-serve at the oat ’n’ swine buffet.

      SO, MAYBE I SHOULD EXPLAIN BECAUSE YOU MAY NOT KNOW VERY MUCH ABOUT GOLEMS. FIRST OF ALL, IT’S GOLEM, LIKE GO AND THEN LEM. NOT GOLLUM. I AM NOT GOLLUM. I DON’T WANTS IT, PRECIOUS. A GOLLUM IS 90 PER CENT HOBBIT AND 10 PER CENT EVIL. A GOLEM IS 90 PER CENT MUD, AND ANOTHER 7 PER CENT TWIGS, PINECONES, DEAD BEETLES, AND LINT. THE LAST 3 PER CENT IS FAITHFULNESS. WE ARE VERY FAITHFUL. I WILL ALWAYS FAITHFULLY TRY TO TAKE MACK’S PLACE WHILE HE’S AWAY. EVEN THOUGH IT MEANS I HAVE DETENTION BECAUSE OF THE WHOLE DISSOLVED-FEET SITUATION AND THE SCREAMING AND ALL.

      Nope, not third class, either.

      Fourth class was where most impoverished immigrants travelled. They cooked their own meals over open fires in massively overcrowded holds down in the sweaty bowels of the ship, where they dreamed of spotting the Statue of Liberty.

      Paddy was not in fourth class.

      Fifth-class passengers weren’t even given a place to spread out a blanket. Mostly they climbed into laundry bags and hung those bags from hooks. Thus they rocked back and forth all night, banging up against the steel bulkheads with each passing wave. They were kept awake by the mystery of how they could hang up a bag they were actually in. Their meals were served at the same time as the livestock kept for the first-class passengers’ dinners. In fact, it was the same food.

      Fifth class didn’t dream of spotting the Statue of Liberty because if they ever appeared on the open deck, they’d get a beat-down from beefy ship’s stewards. The only time they were allowed on deck was for gladiatorial games in which they were pitted against each other in pepper mill battles while first-class passengers bet on the outcome.

      Fifth class? Tough place. Unpleasant place.

      But Paddy was not in fifth class. He’d have loved to be fifth class.

      Sixth class meant you slept in the fifth-class bathrooms, or heads as they say on boats. You could sit on one of the toilets until someone needed to use it. This wasn’t a great way to spend ten days, which was how long it took the HMS DiCaprio to get across the ocean to New York.

      But Paddy wasn’t in sixth class.

      Paddy was in seventh class. And seventh class was a very bad class aboard the DiCaprio. Seventh-class passengers were allowed aboard the ship, but once aboard they were hunted by the packs of wild dogs that lived down in the bilges.

      The wild dogs were the offspring of escaped pets. You see, sometimes first-class passengers travelled with poodles or Chihuahuas or Pekingese. Over the years some of these animals had escaped their kennels and had bred and multiplied in the bowels of the great ship.

      Imagine, if you will, poodles bred with Chihuahuas and then hardened and made savage by the dog pack life in the dank, dark holds far, far from light.

      Nobody would want to go up against that kind of horror.

      The bilges of a ship are the lowest level. Down below the engines. Not even