The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [98]
The door was stout, and near the top, higher than Jack could jump, was a small window inset with iron bars.
There was just enough ambient light out in the corridor for him to see once his eyes had adjusted, but only just. And it was far too little to tell if he still retained his second shadow.
“Hello?” Jack called, hesitant. “Is anyone there?”
An unexpected answer came drifting through the small window.
It was a song. A child’s rhyme, sung by a child’s voice.
Ring a ring o’roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
Jack shuddered. It was the song made up by children during the time of the plague in London. It was an older version than the one he himself had known as a child—the first time he was a child—but authentic. “A-tishoo! A-tishoo!” told him so. Sneezing was a common symptom of plague victims—before they fell down dead by the thousands.
He called out again. “I’m Jack. Who are you? Who’s there?”
The singing stopped abruptly. Then, hesitantly, a girl’s voice answered. “Abby. Abby Tornado. Why be you here, Jack?”
“A giant golden Clockwork captured me,” Jack replied. “And when I woke up, I was in this room.”
“A golden Clockwork?” said another voice, a boy this time. “I should have liked to seen that, I should. I were only taken by a common-variety Clockwork, neh?”
“Are you the Lost Boys?” Jack asked. “Is this where you were taken?”
“Some of us are, and some of us aren’t,” said Abby Tornado. “There be lots an’ lots o’ children here. Some of us be from Haven, and some from elsewheres.”
“I’m from a place called Prydain,” said the boy. “An’ I want to go home.”
Prydain. In the Archipelago of Dreams. Jack had found some of the missing children, at least.
“Why were you brought here?” said Jack. “What is this place?”
“It was supposed to be a great game,” the boy explained. “That’s all it was—just a game.
“A boy like us, but who wore a golden coat and the head and horns of a ram, came to us and told us that if we played a game with him, we would be taken to a place called Pleasure Island, where we’d never have to go to bed, and we could eat cakes and sweets, and no one would tell us what to do, because there are no grown-ups on Pleasure Island, none at all.”
“What was the game he asked you to play?”
“We were to sneak out of our beds after dark,” said the boy, “and were to go to the docks. Then, as the clocks struck midnight, we set the ships on fire.”
“Why would you do that?” Jack exclaimed.
The boy hesitated, then answered in a voice that said he was uncertain himself. “I—I don’t know. The music told us to, so we did. And after we set the fires, we waited for the King of Crickets to pick us up in his Dragonships, and they were supposed to take us to Pleasure Island, but they brung us here instead.”
A chill settled over Jack. The King of Crickets. Orpheus. That explained a great deal.
“Did the ships bring all the children here?”
“No,” said the boy. “Some of us he kept on the ships, and some of us he left here.”
“No one has been back for days,” Abby Tornado said. “We’re all hungry. You didn’t bring any food, did you?” she asked hopefully.
“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “I didn’t.”
“Oh,” said Abby. “Well, do you want to play a game?”
“I don’t know many games,” Jack admitted.
“I want to play Olly Olly Oxen-Free,” said the boy. Then, in a smaller voice, he added, “I want to go home.”
“Be brave,” said Abby Tornado. “Olly Olly Oxen-Free.”
“Olly Olly Oxen-Free,” the boy replied, as did another, and another girl, then another boy, and more, until the sound was a quiet hum of children that echoed throughout the corridors of their dark, dank prison.
It began as a game, Jack said to himself, but it’s become a means of survival for them, hasn’t it? And for me, too, it seems.
Olly Olly Oxen-Free.
Kilroy the ferryman took the companions to the next island, called Falun, which stood in the fourth district.
The ferryman was not verbose, but he answered any questions they asked, simply and without hesitation.
The children, Kilroy said, were most likely being taken