Legacy of the Claw (3 page)

AFTER THREE MINOR DERAILINGS, a variety of prepackaged sandwiches from the dining area, and another restless night listening to Roger's snoring, Bailey was so glad to hear the loudspeaker's tinny
“FairMOUNT”
call that he cheered. He wasn't alone—Hal and his brother, Taylor, and Taylor's gang of rowdy friends all sent up a celebratory whoop, and Roger audibly thanked Nature they had arrived.

The rigimotive turned a corner around the base of a steep mountainside, and the boys could see the towering cliff on top of which the academy was perched, overlooking the wide Fluvian river. At the base of the cliff was a giant wooden waterwheel that created electro-current for the whole school. Here, where the river grew narrower, the water was forced through the wheel, which churned and sputtered and sent sprays of mist up the side of the cliff.

“How do we get up there?” Hal asked his uncle.

Roger groaned. “You can see the tracks, can't you?”

Bailey squinted. The late afternoon sun glared off the wet cliff face, but Bailey could see a thin set of tracks snaking their way straight up the side of the cliff—directly to the Fairmount buildings.

“Whoa” was all he could muster.

“Seat belts on. Secure packages please,”
came the voice from the loudspeaker.

“Here we go,” said Roger with the enthusiasm of a slug about to encounter a trail of salt. Dillweed burrowed under the seat once more, bracing himself against Roger's legs. “No matter how many times I make this trip, it never gets any easier .… ”

As the rigimotive passed the waterwheel, a spray of river water splattered the windows. Then, a resounding creak, a screech of the wheels, a
whoosh
of the dirigible above, and suddenly the rigimotive and all its passengers were jolted back into their seats as the car came to a halt just inches in front of the face of the cliff.

“What's happening?” Bailey asked Roger, who looked a little ill.

“They're harnessing the front wheels to the tracks,” he said matter-of-factly. “And they'd better do it right, by Nature  … ”

Bailey and Hal exchanged a worried look. Clanks and thuds echoed through the windows from the rock wall in front of them. The yells of the conductors were muffled, but soon Bailey heard what sounded like an order to go. With a jolt, the rigimotive car was shaken—not forward, but
up
. Bailey jumped in his seat. Roger held his handkerchief in front of his face and closed his eyes.

The rigimotive clanked its way straight up the side of the cliff. Every two or three jolts, the second car—where Bailey, Hal, and Roger were sitting—would seem to lean back, as if the weight were too much, and Bailey's heart would pound until the dirigible's steady ascent pulled the car right. Bailey could see at once why Roger was so nervous—and many of the other passengers too. Everyone on two legs in the rigimotive car had their hands clenched around their seat bottoms, and the family of raccoons that had spent a sleepless two nights in the aisle were skittering up and down between the seats anxiously. Someone's hawk was flying wildly, attacking the windows as if it could get out.

Roger had turned from ghostly pale to a sort of yellowish-green. Thankfully, after only a few minutes, the rigimotive made another grand creaking sound and righted itself, sliding back onto horizontal tracks at the top of the cliff.

They had made it.

Bailey's stomach made another leap, this time into his throat. Fairmount Academy's gleaming ivy-covered marble buildings were pink and orange in the early evening sun, and already a small crowd of students and teachers were gathered near the rigimotive platform to meet them. Bailey had never seen so many different kinds of animals in his life. Most of his schoolmates in the Lowlands were kin to farm or house animals. But here, the platform was packed with lizards and monkeys and large birds as well as sheep and guinea pigs. A pelican perched on the roof of the station, looking protectively at a man with a long nose standing below on the platform, checking off a list as trunks were unloaded onto the platform. Some men hoisted the larger luggage and suitcases from the first floor of the rigimotive onto a cart, where a pair of donkeys waited patiently to take them to the dorms.

Bailey and Hal hurried down the stairs with Roger trailing behind them. Once outside, they followed the crowd of arriving students off of the platform and through the small station, where bags were being organized and returning students were shouting, hugging, and exchanging high fives. Rabbits, deer, and even one or two bears circled the station yard and scampered up the path to the main campus. The path itself was lined with impressive hedges trimmed to look like a menagerie of forest creatures.

“Looks like everything's well in hand, boys, so if you don't mind, I have a parcel to drop off before the rigi moves on without me!” said Roger, clapping them both on the back. From the looks of the chaos in the station, Bailey wasn't sure
anything
was in hand at all.

“Ah, to be young,” Roger bellowed, mopping his face with his ever-present handkerchief. “Don't get yourselves into too much trouble, boys. If I hear of any misbehavior”—he pointed a meaty finger at Hal, who, wide-eyed, looked like the last boy in the kingdom who'd ever dream of breaking a rule—“I'll send you home to your mother in the blink of a badger's eye.” With that, Roger ruffled Hal's hair and was off, back into the crowd. Hal waved halfheartedly, then turned to Bailey.

“He says it all the time,” he said, smiling, “but I don't
think
he means it.”

“What did he mean, a parcel?” asked Bailey.

Hal shrugged. “He's always got orders coming in for his herbs and plants and things. Probably an order from a Botany professor.”

Outside the station, the crowd was even thicker and the chaos even less contained. Several sheepdogs ran circles around groups of confused students as the teachers tried unsuccessfully to corral students and their animal counterparts into lines according to year.

“Year Ones over here!” Bailey heard someone shout, but he couldn't see where the shout had come from, since as soon as he turned, a deer ran through the crowd, and a group of older girls went chasing after it,
ooh
ing and
ahh
ing.

Bailey turned and saw Taylor approaching with his friends from the rigimotive and some other tall, broad-shouldered boys. They were followed by their kin, a mixed group of cats, dogs, and even a long-eared jackrabbit that made Bailey suddenly a little homesick.

“Hey, little brother!” Taylor said, too loudly, as he clapped Hal—too hard—on the shoulder. Hal stumbled forward, nearly losing his glasses. “We were just talking about you.”

“I bet,” mumbled Hal.

“I was trying to tell my friends about Bailey's adventure on the way here, but I just can't get the details right.” Taylor grinned at Bailey. “Please tell the story for us, Bailey.”

Bailey remembered the reaction from those around him on the rigimotive: the laughter, the whispers.

“I don't want to talk about it,” he said. He tried to push through the group, but Taylor held out a hand to stop him.

“Come on,” said Taylor, his voice changing into something almost resembling sincerity. “It's such a great story. Just tell us what it was like out there, on the platform. That was pretty crazy of you, little man.”

Bailey shrugged. “I was curious.”

“You weren't scared?” asked Taylor. Bailey looked around the assembled group of students. They were all watching him carefully.

“Not really,” he said, and he realized it was true. He really hadn't been scared. He'd felt excited.

The other boys began to whisper.

“Not even when you saw the ghost?” asked Taylor loudly. There was a snort from the crowd, then several bursts of laughter.

Bailey frowned.

“I didn't say it was a ghost.”

“You said it was white and it glowed—what else, Walker? Did it float and say
Boo
?”

“You don't know what I saw,” Bailey said. “You weren't there.”

“What did I tell you?” Taylor began to laugh too, and he and one of his friends slapped hands.

“I'm guessing you're Animas Weasel,” said a broad-shouldered boy with a flat, wide forehead, as though he'd fallen on his face once too many times running in Scavage matches. “You can always tell a liar by the smell of Weasel!”

“Who knows
what
your Animas is, though?” Taylor added. “I don't see any of your kin around. Not on the rigi, not here. I guess not even your own kin want to be around you  … ”

Bailey felt his face heat up.

“Leave him alone, Taylor,” said Hal.

“Leave him alone!”
Taylor mimicked Hal's voice.
“I'll protect you, Bailey!”

“Bark off, I mean it!” said Hal.

Taylor was still smiling, but there was a flash of anger in his eyes when he looked at Bailey. “You're just lucky we came along to pull you in from the platform, or who knows? The
bats
might have nibbled on your fingers. And you know what they say about bats—they carry all kinds of diseases.”

Hal lunged for his brother, but Taylor sent him tumbling backward onto the lawn with a single push.

“Hal!” Bailey went to help Hal to his feet.

Suddenly, there was the loud clinking of machinery. A puff of foul-smelling smoke split the group apart, and a rickety motorbuggy came to a crashing halt in front of Taylor and his friends.

The contraption looked as if a stiff wind could blow it apart. Gears and bolts and other mismatched pieces were hammered against one another as the motorbuggy's steam engine kept puffing away. The man inside—at least, Bailey
thought
it was a man—reached up with his ridiculously oversized gloves and removed a pair of bug-eyed driving goggles.

His face, except for the part where the goggles had been, was coated with coal dust. Even his thin black mustache was dusty. He had a young face, but Bailey saw tired lines under the man's eyes. A red fox sat perched next to him on the seat of a sidecar, wearing a homemade pair of miniature goggles of her own, her red fur tinged in places with grease and black coal. The clutch and steering wheel were ornate and shiny—as if they were polished often. Whoever this man was, he truly loved his sputtering, handwrought motorbuggy.

“Taylor Quindley!” the coal-dusted person barked. “What are you and your teammates doing here, harassing young persons?”

Instantly, Taylor's attitude shifted. He shoved his hands in his pockets and muttered an apology, and the group quickly dispersed.

Bailey pulled Hal to his feet. The person in the motorbuggy was wrestling with a set of assorted knobs, trying to get the unsteady thing started again.

“I, um  …  you  …  thanks,” Hal managed to say. Bailey noticed the top of a metal flask sticking out of the man's vest pocket.

“Don't thank me,” the man said, without looking up. “I have three pastimes in life: machines, music, and making people squirm. You might be next.”

“Are you Mr. Loren?” Hal asked, stepping forward with a hand outstretched. “I'm—”

“I don't use that name, and so I can only conclude that you're new around here.” The teacher scowled. “It's Tremelo, but don't go thinking that a first-name basis makes us ‘pals.' That goes for both of you.”

With that, the motorbuggy roared into clinking, clanging action, and several students scrambled to get out of its way. The fox in the sidecar yipped at Bailey as it passed. Bailey gaped. His heart started beating loudly—he'd just encountered the very professor he'd meant to find.

“
That's
Tremelo Loren?” Bailey asked Hal. “I didn't think he'd be so”—he struggled to find the right word—“dusty.”

Hal cleaned his glasses on his shirt; they had been knocked in the dirt when he'd fallen.

“You've heard of Tremelo?” Hal asked.

Bailey nodded. “I read something about him, that he's a trainer—he can make people's bond with their kin stronger.”

Hal squinted through his glasses, confused. “Really? I thought he just teaches Basic Tinkering—mechanics and stuff. Taylor says he's a useless teacher. Then again, my brother isn't exactly the most reliable source. I mean, just look at that motorbuggy; it's impressive for having built it himself.”

In the distance, the motorbuggy let out a rich belch of smoke as it backfired, scattering a group of girls and their goat kin. The goats took off toward some shrubbery at the edge of the grounds.

“Don't let those creatures near my berries!” called a red-faced woman with two buck-toothed groundhogs riding on her shoulders. “I
just
pruned them!” She hurried after the fleeing goats as the girls laughed.

“So,” Bailey said to Hal. “What now?”

Just then, a short, squat woman in a tweed suit hustled toward them.

“Are you new, boys?” she asked, as the wombat clinging to her head removed a hairpin from her messy bun.

“Um  …  yes?” Bailey answered, watching the wombat chew on a piece of the woman's hair.

“Excellent. Welcome to Fairmount. Here you go.” She shoved a map into Bailey's hands. “You've just come from  …  ?” the harried woman asked them.

“The Golden Lowlands,” Bailey answered.

“Excellent—I don't suppose either of you know a”—she stopped to scan a clipboard held in her tightly clenched hand—“Bailey Walker, would you?”

Bailey gulped.

“That's me,” he said, through a mouth as dry as sand.

The woman looked relieved enough to hug him.

“Thank Nature. We've been looking for you—you're to come with me. And your friend?”

“Hal Quindley,” Hal offered.

The woman checked her list again. Her wombat eyed Bailey as if he were a piece of especially ripe fruit.