فصل 21

Chapter 21

“Shawn,” Todd yelled over the deafening sound of pounding feet and screeching animals from behind us, “your bow.” “You want me to shoot them?” Shawn gasped, his face bright red as he fought to keep up with Todd’s long strides.

“Hand me your bow!” Todd yelled again, and this time Shawn understood. He quickly unhooked it from its place on his back and handed it to Todd. Todd stopped running and spun around, his hand already drawing the bowstring back. He released it with a sharp twang, and I heard a scream as one of the animals went down. I skidded to a stop and reached back for my own arrow, but in my exhaustion and panic, I dropped it. Todd released two more in rapid fire before I finally managed to get one to the string and released. It flew harmlessly into the trees, missing my target by a good five feet.

I grabbed for another, but before my fingers could close over it, there was a sharp twang from behind me and one of the dinosaurs dropped. Seconds later another fell, and then another. A few of the smaller ones stopped pursuing us altogether, choosing to rip into their fallen comrades instead. I didn’t have time to turn around to see who our savior was. I aimed and released and saw one of the medium-sized dinosaurs stagger, the shaft buried deep in its shoulder before another through the eye dropped it. A minute later it was over. I stood in shock between Todd and Shawn, my chest heaving as we took in the forest floor, littered with the bodies of dead and dying dinosaurs.

“Ivan?” Todd called, turning to scan the woods behind us. “Is that you?”

“Ivan?” I repeated, confused. “How do you know it’s Ivan?”

Todd waved at me to be quiet, turning to squint into the surrounding trees. “It’s Todd Birch,” he called out. “The son of Jacob Birch of the Oaks? We met a few times when I was a kid.” “The Birch brat” came a voice from behind us. “Yes, I remember. And you’re still a kid, although quite a bit taller than the last time I saw you. Never grew into that nose, though. Unfortunate.” I whirled and found myself face-to-face with a wiry old man. He peered up at us with cornflower-blue eyes set deep in a forest of wrinkles. His white hair was cropped close to his head, while his beard seemed to have a mind of its own and reached almost to his belly. Two massive bows were strapped across his back with thick leather belts. But the most striking thing about him was that he was missing part of his right arm. It ended only an inch or two after his elbow joint. Attached to the stump was a complicated knot of leather cording that held what looked like a bizarre metal fork on its end.

“Ivan!” Todd grinned as he thrust out his hand to shake the old man’s. “It’s been a long time. You just saved our lives!” The old man shook Todd’s hand as he inspected him before glancing over Todd’s shoulder at us. His eyes met mine and an odd expression crossed his face. I looked behind myself, certain there must be a three-headed dinosaur or something equally strange creeping up on me to get that kind of look. But there was nothing there, and when I looked back, Ivan was still staring at me, his mouth open slightly in surprise. Not sure how exactly to handle this, I squirmed and looked down. He finally blinked and turned his attention back to Todd. I ran a hand self-consciously through the curls that had sprung loose from their ponytail to hang in a clumpy tangle around my shoulders. I’d known I was a mess, but I didn’t think I was that bad.

Ivan frowned at Todd as he released his hand. “I am assuming that your father’s absence means he’s dead?” The bluntness of his question shocked me. I must have visibly winced, because Ivan’s eyes flicked to me again, searching, before turning back to Todd.

Todd nodded. “Almost three years now. Died on a trading mission.”

“Bloody shame. He was a good man.”

“Thank you, sir,” Todd said with a sad smile.

“I also assumed he’d trained you better. How did you end up with this nasty crew on your tail?” he asked. He strode over to inspect the closest fallen dinosaur. It was one of the smaller ones, roughly fifteen feet in length, with feathered, flightless wings that now stuck out at odd angles. Ivan walked right up to the creature and used his boot to untangle one of its legs. He pulled a knife out of a sheath on his arm and began sawing away at one of the thick curved claws on the creature’s back foot. Faster than I would have thought possible, he’d cut all of the claws off, putting them into a leather pouch slung across his chest. He moved from dinosaur to dinosaur, sawing off a claw here or using massive pliers to pry out a tooth there. Twice he pulled out an arrow and shot straight into the eye or chest of one of the dinosaurs before approaching it. I realized that the metal fork attached to his bad arm was used to brace the bow so he could draw and fire the arrow with his good hand. It was ingenious, and obviously ridiculously effective. I watched in slack-jawed amazement until Todd elbowed me in the ribs, and I followed him to collect some of the usable arrows that lay scattered on the ground. Shawn came to, but he was too busy gaping at Ivan to pick anything up.

“What’s he doing?” Shawn whispered as I pulled one of my arrows out of a nearby tree.

“His job,” Todd said.

I glanced over at Shawn and saw that he looked a little green. I didn’t blame him; Ivan was ruthless. Five minutes later, he rejoined us, his only remaining hand liberally coated in blood.

Before I could open my mouth to introduce myself and ask Ivan about my dad, we heard a long, whistling roar come from the forest behind us. Shawn jumped, but Ivan simply glanced back at the trees before turning to us. He pulled a small bottle out of his bag and yanked the cork out with his mouth before pouring it over the blood on his hand. A sharp alcohol smell met my nose.

“I presume you are expecting hospitality and lodging for the night,” he said grouchily as he recorked the bottle and put it back in his bag. The missing hand didn’t seem to slow him down in the slightest. When we nodded, he huffed into his beard and, without another word, turned around and shuffled silently into the woods. I looked at Todd, but he just shrugged.

“Don’t stand there like a bunch of slack-jawed idiots,” Ivan called from the gloom of the trees. “Get the lead out. I don’t feel like being eaten today.” “Why can he make jokes about being eaten?” Shawn whispered in my ear.

I shot him a look. “I don’t think he’s joking.”

“No talking until we get out of this section of the woods,” Ivan said sharply. “My house is a ten-mile hike from here, and this area is swarming with lizard beasties.” “Lizard beasties?” Shawn whispered skeptically as Ivan turned around and started walking. Todd just shook his head in warning, and we dutifully jogged after Ivan’s retreating figure. Ivan led us quickly through the trees to a small stream. Without ceremony, he stomped into the middle of it, and we followed, splashing up it for the next twenty minutes. My feet went numb in the icy water, and I couldn’t decide if it was an improvement over the aching pain of blisters.

Hiking in silence was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I had so many questions swarming around in my head, and the one-armed figure hurrying ahead of me might have the answers. But every time I opened my mouth to speak, Todd gave me a look that made it clear that would be a mistake. Ivan’s walking pace was only slightly slower than Todd’s brisk jog, and soon I found myself breathing too hard to talk, let alone start the conversation about my dad. Every now and then Ivan would glance back at us. He seemed to be sizing me up, and it made me nervous. But then again, he might just be wondering why Shawn and I were huffing and puffing so loudly. I bit my lip, and told myself to be patient. I contented myself with trying to figure out how in the world my dad would have met someone like Ivan. And then I had a thought that made my heart squeeze painfully. What if this wasn’t the right Ivan? The more I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed that my dad would have ever met the no-nonsense dinosaur hunter who killed with such deadly precision. If he was the wrong Ivan, then I’d wasted valuable time traveling to find him.

Finally, after endless hours of silent hiking, Todd broke the silence. “We appreciate you letting us stay with you tonight,” he said conversationally. “This is Sky and Shawn, by the way.” “Sky,” Ivan scoffed. “An idiotic compound name. They were always naming their children things like Grass or Seaweed or Daisy or some such nonsense. Like naming their children after the outside world will make up for the fact that they’ll never see it.” I’d never really thought about my name, but now that I did, his theory made sense. I’d had a boy named Leaf in my class, and two girls named after flowers.

I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I didn’t notice the enormous concrete structure until we were almost inside it. I stopped to gape up at this giant relic of what used to be. It stood over ten stories tall, with broken-out windows. Moss and vines covered almost every surface of the concrete-and-iron structure. It was called a skyscraper. Or was it? How tall did a building have to be to be considered a skyscraper? Either way, it was the biggest building I’d ever seen. There were pictures of whole skylines full of buildings like this in my history books. This one, however, sat alone.

Ivan stopped at the door and motioned at us impatiently to follow him into the crumbling wreck. I glanced at it dubiously. It didn’t seem exceptionally stable. Metal skeleton showed through where the concrete had long ago crumbled away, and it was leaning to the left. The boys dutifully filed inside, but I hesitated. Moments later a roar and an animal scream came from the darkness behind me, and I scurried inside the musty-smelling building.

“Took you long enough,” Ivan grumbled as he shut the door and slid a large board across to secure it.

“You think that will keep out a hungry dinosaur?” Shawn asked skeptically. I wanted to smack him for being rude, but truthfully I was thinking the same thing.

“No,” Ivan said. “But it keeps the raccoons out. I hate those furry little buggers. Got to replace the blasted thing every other week because some oversized lizard decides he wants to come a-visiting.” “Well, that’s just great,” Shawn mumbled darkly as Ivan led us across the deserted first floor of the building to a large metal staircase in the middle of the room. I looked around with interest, taking in the tree roots that had worked their way up through the tile floor, and the mounds of dirt and debris piled haphazardly. A hundred years of nature being left to its own devices had practically erased all traces of the occupants that once lived or worked here. I was snapped from my musings by the staircase Ivan was climbing. It seemed to disappear into the floor, and I stared at it in confusion.

“Escalator,” he called from above us. “An old-fashioned transportation device to bring people from one floor to the next. Our ancestors were lazy. And probably fat.” The staircase had a thick layer of dirt and debris everywhere except in the middle, where it was obvious that Ivan traveled frequently. I bent down to feel one of the treads and my fingers met ribbed metal. Strange, I thought, thinking of all the ways the compound could use metal like this. Shawn was obviously having the same thought, because I saw him stop at the second floor, where a large metal panel had fallen off the side of the staircase to reveal wires and gears.

Before I could stop him, he’d yanked two rusty circles of metal out and thrust them in his bag.

“What are you doing?” I said, glancing nervously up to where Ivan climbed ahead of us.

“This is the kind of pulley Todd needs back at the tree house,” Shawn said excitedly.

“This is Ivan’s house,” I pointed out. “Will you stop pulling it apart?”

“Right. Sorry,” Shawn said as we hurried to catch up with Todd and Ivan, who were now an entire staircase ahead of us. I didn’t have long to look at each of the floors as we passed, but I caught glimpses of rusted shelves and tipped-over metal racks covered in years’ worth of dust and dirt. The higher we climbed, the less wrecked the floors were, and I saw Shawn eyeing some of the things we passed with interest. I grabbed his arm to stop him from digging at the different bits of old-world technology we glimpsed half-hidden under collapsed ceiling tiles.

“But that was a laptop,” Shawn whined quietly so only I could hear as he gazed longingly back at the floor we’d just left. “Ivan obviously isn’t using it.” “You are impossible sometimes,” I grunted, not loosening my grip on his arm. I’d lost count of how many floors we’d climbed, and the blisters on my feet were screaming. “What floor do you live on?” I called ahead to Ivan, working hard to keep the whining tone out of my own voice.

“Top,” he grunted. “I’d have to be dumb as a stump to live on the bottom.” Breathing hard, the four of us finally scaled the final set of stairs. At the top, I discovered that the last ten steps had been removed. This forced us to pull ourselves onto the top floor of the building using a thick rope similar to the ones Todd had used at the tree house. I watched in amazement as Ivan managed the task with only one arm.

As my head emerged onto the top floor, I blinked in wonder at this strange little man’s house. The space was cavernous, spanning the entire length of the building. Unlike the other floors, where inches of dust, broken ceiling panels, and remnants of desks and machinery lay in haphazard piles, this floor was swept clean, revealing shiny white tiles. The only light came from the wall closest to me, and I gaped in amazement when I saw that it was made of unbroken glass. I stepped closer to look out over the treetops. We were much higher than we’d been the night before, and the forest seemed to go on and on in every direction.

Metal screeched behind me, and I jumped. Turning, I saw Ivan, assisted by Todd, drop a thick metal plate down on the hole in the floor. The rope we’d used to climb was coiled neatly at their feet. Ivan walked around to all four corners, sliding metal bolts into place to lock the panel down.

“This,” Ivan grunted as he forced the last bolt home, “is what keeps the lizard beasties from making us their dinner.” “Has one ever made it up this high?” Shawn asked.

“They’ve made it up,” Ivan said sourly, waving his missing appendage. I swallowed hard and looked over at Todd. He shrugged and grinned. Finished with the bolts, Ivan hobbled around his home, lighting lanterns. As pools of flickering light flooded the space, it became clear that Ivan did all of his living in one corner where a small bed, table, and stove stood. The rest of the empty space was cast into impenetrable shadows by the fading light from outside. But even though Ivan’s house was interesting, my eyes were drawn back to the spectacular view showcased through the floor-to-ceiling window. The sun, fat and red, dipped down and disappeared behind the trees, leaving waves of pink and orange in its wake. I just couldn’t get over how beautiful things were up here, especially sunsets. And I’d missed hundreds upon hundreds of them. I felt like something had been stolen from me. Brushing the thought away, I turned back to the rest of the group. While I’d stared out the window, they’d made themselves at home at Ivan’s worn wooden table. I glanced behind me, into the shadowy darkness of the rest of the skyscraper, and shivered. After living in tunnels, all this echoing openness made me nervous.

“You’re probably hungry,” Ivan grumbled as he set a large pot on his stove and stoked the fire beneath it. Hungry was an understatement. My insides felt hollow and I realized I hadn’t eaten since the night before.

“We have provisions,” Todd said, and he produced the large hunks of leftover raptor meat and handed it to him. Ivan sniffed it before chopping it into chunks and tossing it in the pot.

“There is something oddly familiar about that guy,” Shawn whispered to me. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Really?” I asked. “I was just thinking that there was no way in the world my dad would ever know a guy like this.” “I’m amazed you haven’t been grilling him about your dad,” Shawn said. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I will.” I frowned. “There just hasn’t really been a chance. And he’s a little . . .” I trailed off as I watched Ivan scowling down at the stew he was stirring.

“Terrifying?” Shawn finished for me.

“I was going to say intimidating.” Ivan’s eyes flicked to me with that same penetrating look, and I gulped. “But terrifying works.” “So, Ivan, you are obviously still in the dinosaur trade,” Todd said. “Why haven’t you been by the Oaks in years?” Ivan glanced at Todd. “I’m semi-retired.”

“What do you mean by semi-retired?” I asked tentatively as I sat down at his battered table. My eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness of the room, and I noticed large shadowed shapes against the far walls.

“It means I only trade when it suits me. I don’t drag these old bones of mine around the woods anymore from village to village. And I no longer have to deal with every idiot who thinks they know how to haggle.” “Oh,” I said dumbly, looking to Todd for some guidance on how to communicate with this odd character.

“What have you and your mom been doing to get by without your father?” Ivan asked.

“We manage,” Todd said stiffly, then frowned. “Well. We did until these two came along.”

I stared down at the rough wooden surface of Ivan’s table and wished I could disappear.

“What do you mean?” Ivan asked sharply.

Todd glanced at me, and I saw that anger still sparkled in his eyes. “I found Sky and Shawn about two minutes before they were about to get eaten. After I saved them, I brought them back to the Oaks. Next thing you know, the Noah’s guys showed up and took the entire village away in these big black flying machines called . . .” He trailed off, looking at Shawn.

“Helicopters,” Shawn supplied.

“Right.” Todd nodded. “Helicopters.”

“We were followed,” I jumped in. Todd was making us sound really bad. “I’m not sure how the marines tracked Shawn and me, but they did.” When Ivan’s head snapped to stare out his window, as though he were expecting one of the Noah’s black helicopters to come bursting through the glass, I quickly added, “We got rid of everything we brought from the compound. There is no way we have a tracker on us now.” Ivan relaxed, but only a fraction.

“What I really want to know,” he said, peering into his simmering pot, “is why the daughter of Jack Mundy is sitting in my home.” I jumped at the sound of my dad’s name, my eyes snapping up to meet his twinkling blue ones.

“So you are the Ivan my dad mentioned in his note,” I breathed, not daring to hope. “How did you know him? Have you seen him? Do you know why he left the compound?” “What is your father doing sending you topside with nothing but this compound boy and the Birch brat?” Ivan asked as he began ladling food into bowls that he thrust into our hands unceremoniously “I prefer Todd, if it’s all the same to you,” Todd said.

Ivan raised an eyebrow at him.

“But Birch brat has a certain ring to it,” Todd said meekly.

“He asked me to do something for him,” I said. “Shawn came along to help me, and we met Todd.”

“Why didn’t he do this ‘something’ he asked you to do himself?” Ivan asked.

“Because he disappeared five years ago,” I said, my stomach sinking in disappointment. “So you don’t know anything about my dad? He didn’t come here?” “Why would he come here?” Ivan asked.

I felt myself deflate. I’d been so excited about finding Ivan, so sure he’d have answers.

Ivan sat down at the table across from me and leaned back, tugging at his beard. “Why don’t you tell me how you came to be sitting at my kitchen table? Don’t leave out any details, even if you think they are insignificant.” I took a deep breath, and nodded. “I was seven the night my dad disappeared,” I began, telling him the same story I’d told Jett, Emily, and Todd only two nights before. But this time, I didn’t conveniently leave out what my compass contained. Ivan listened in stony silence, never taking his eyes off me. Getting looked at like that made me nervous, so I told most of the story staring at the dinged wood of Ivan’s table.

“So do you know anything about the note, or the plug, or the map?” I asked, finally looking up.

“No, I don’t.” Ivan shook his head, making his long beard swish like the hairy pendulum of a clock. “I haven’t seen your father in eleven years.” I wrinkled my nose in confusion. Ivan wasn’t making any sense. “Then how did you know I was his daughter?” He looked up at me with level blue eyes. “Because you’re a dead ringer for your mother.”

I about choked. “What?”

“Your mother,” Ivan repeated as though I hadn’t heard him. “I thought I was seeing a ghost walking through the woods this evening.” “Wait. You knew my mom too?” The hope that had died moments before flared back to life.

“I’d say so,” Ivan said, taking a big bite of his stew. “Seeing as she was my daughter.”