Page 51

“J iminy Crickets, what do we gotta do to get rid of those dingbats?!” Sonia cried as she yanked her skirts back on. “How’d they figure it out?”

Navya was doubled over catching her breath, so Lulu cut in. “Morgan was getting all impatient, pacing the parlor like a cat in a cage, and he’s all ‘Where’s Frankie? Why aren’t they here yet?’ He starts talking about coming back to the theater, so I poured him five Shandies just to stall him, but then, outta nowhere, Frankie and his men actually do show up!”

“Agostinelli boss demand answers from Morgan,” continued Igor. “Is not understanding why Morgan tell him to go in other direction. Is accusing Morgan of being nechestnyy . Liar. Crooked. And then—”

“They solved it,” pushed out Madam Navya. “The men know you tricked them, Mr. Morgan thinks you are working for Mr. Reynolds, and they will be here any moment and find out that— Haye mere rabba , what happened to the tank?”

“We fixed it,” Matthias quipped.

“What are we waiting for, the Staten Island Ferry?” Emmett snapped. “Let’s scram already!”

Río and I could do nothing but watch while the company moved in a blur around us, Sonia throwing her clothes back on while the others covered the bows with the remnants of Lulu’s tarp. When Río was safely hidden, Matthias and Vera climbed into the driver’s seat and everyone else piled in next to the basin. Only Lulu stayed behind, snatching Timmy up before he could climb in himself.

“But Mama, I wanna go too!”

“Say bye-bye, Timmy,” she said, pulling her recalcitrant nene onto the seat of the wheelchair. “Mama’s gotta go light some candles for our friends to come home safe.”

Before she could roll Timmy away, I stopped her. “Lulu!”

“Yeah, Benny?”

“My cuatro ’s in the greenroom. Hold on to it for me, will you?”

“Your cuatro ?” I stared intently at her as Lulu’s expression wafted from confusion to understanding to, finally, a sad smile. Whatever she was thinking, she kept to herself, knowing I might not be ready for everyone to find out what I was trying to say without saying it.

“I’ll take good care of it,” she said, stoically clutching her chest. “I promise.”

“Thanks, Lulu. For everything.”

“You too, kid. Godspeed, Benny.”

Water splashed over the basin’s sides onto everyone’s legs as the wagon jerked forward and sent nearly everyone toppling off their seats, inciting a round of cusses like convicts in a paddy wagon.

“Y’all are louder than Hell’s bells,” Matthias barked. “If we live through this, remind me to teach you knuckleheads the meaning of ‘discreet’!”

Moments later, the lights filtered through the silk in brighter red. Río tucked his head against my chest. Maybe the extra jostling was to blame as the wagon traversed the uneven dirt path toward the rear gate of Luna Park, but his shaking seemed worse. “How long ’til we’re at Dreamland?” I asked.

“Can’t go faster than this,” Vera answered. “That trough ain’t tied to anything what can hold it.”

The street might as well have been a canyon for how long it took to cross. Tourists we couldn’t see bustled noisily around us in a hodgepodge of languages and moods and ages to either camouflage or expose us. I instantly recognized Officer Joey’s voice yelling, “Move along, you’re blocking the intersection!”

I held onto Río and tried to breathe. His hand found mine under the water and gripped it.

Navya scooted closer. She placed her fingers over our joined hands, where the water slapped at her shiny bangles, clinking them together like chimes. “Mr. Río,” she said quietly. “Do you know the Chenab?”

“Asikni,” he murmured.

The madam’s eyes shone with emotion. “Yes! The river of Heer and Ranjha. East to west, it flows for those whose love must overcome great challenge. Tonight, a tremendous wrong will be righted, and God will reward us all with your safe passage and long life. But you must stay strong. Both of you.”

As she said that last bit, she glanced at me. Like Lulu, she’d figured out what I hadn’t yet said aloud—that, whether or not we succeeded, I wasn’t returning to Luna Park.

“Dhanyavaad,” he whispered, and Navya’s entire face lit up in the dark at the sound of her native song on his tongue.

“Next stop, Dreamland,” Matthias hissed over his shoulder. “You ready, Sonia?”

“Abso-tively.”

The wagon rocked to a stop. Sonia leaned back against the sideboard to draw a calming breath before hauling her skirts off her seat and around Emmett to leave. With a foot out of the bed, she cast a crooked smile back over her shoulder.

“Good luck, you crazy kiddos.”

And she was off.

“We’re waiting here ’til we’ve got the all clear,” said Vera.

“Benigno...” Río’s head lolled against my shoulder.

I caught his cheek with one hand and felt my stomach drop when I realized he wasn’t shivering anymore. His hair was drying, the copper waves beginning to curl. I scooped water onto his forehead. “ Quédate conmigo . We’re almost there.”

His eyes were open just a crack, revealing a blue so bright it seemed to glow against his gray skin.

“Benigno... it is time I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“How beautiful you are.”

I shook my head. “Tell me later.”

“No, now .”

The fist he’d been holding to his chest opened. In his gray palm lay a small calico scallop shell upon which he’d etched a picture of an ocean breaker with a large circle carved out behind it. Held up to the light, it would look like the moon.

“When I look at you... I see the earthen reefs where I played as a child,” he murmured between strained breaths. “When you hold me... I feel the shallows warm around me. I have collected your smiles, your laughter, your songs like precious pearls. When I was alone, I held them close”—his voice caught in his throat—“to guard against my nightmares.”

“ Por favor, no hables así— ”

“And your eyes.” He touched my chin meekly. “Never have I seen such eyes as yours. Dark as the night... Kind as your namesake...” His voice was quiet, private. “Benigno, eres hermoso . Keep this shell... that you might never forget it.”

I stared at him. Like Morgan, Río had the power to speak realities into being—but unlike Morgan, there were no crafty illusions, no self-serving manipulations in the words Río chose.

I took the shell and kissed it. “If you think I am beautiful, then it must be so,” I said in Spanish.

Careful not to jostle him, I reached behind my head with one hand to unhook my necklace, brought the chain around Río’s neck, and redid the clasp.

“Your San Cristóbal ?”

I nodded. “You’re going to live. This way, the patron saint of travelers will always be with you,” I said. “And so will I.”

Río’s soft smile opened a window in my heart to let the light in. He pressed closer to me as if granting me permission to resume running my wet palm across his burning forehead with my wrinkled fingertips.

A sniffle made me look up to find Eli wiping tears. “What the hell is taking so long?” he demanded.

“Morgan and the men in suits will soon be finding us,” rumbled Igor worriedly. “I regret, I have no arms.”

Navya looked skyward in a bid to heaven for patience. “You mean, you are not armed .”

“It’s jake, Igor.” Emmett held up Lefty’s gun. “I got the arms right here.”

“I’ll tell you who’s got an arm,” came Matthias’s voice from behind me. “Sonia’s got Georgie’s!”

“Attagirl,” Vera said.

The reins cracked, and the wagon rolled on. I tried not to fixate on Vera’s smeared mustache or Matthias’s complete lack of disguise, silently begging God to make everyone within a five-yard radius of our wagon temporarily blind as the light outside grew brighter, the music louder. Eventually the sounds of Surf Avenue waned behind us. We’d made it through Dreamland’s gate.

“Keep left of the towers,” called up Emmett. “When you see the Canals of Venice ride, cut through to Sixth Street—”

Emmett never finished delivering his directions before the crack of a gunshot flared nearby, followed by a voice that crushed our collective bravado in only three words.

“ Where is it?! ”

Frankie’s husky roar drove through the din of carnival music and frightened shouting like an Italian battering ram. “I’m gonna smell ya out, ya thieving little skunk! Where is the merman? ”

“Time to dance,” Matthias said.

Another crack—the reins, this time—launched the wagon forward at a speed that left everyone clinging to the side panels for dear life, their spare feet shoved against the basin so Río and I wouldn’t skid out the back of the wagon. Frankie’s shouts faded behind us.

“Ya great eejit, you just gave us away!” Vera yelled.

“I gave us a chance,” Matthias fired back. “Why can’t these donkeys go any faster?”

“They weren’t counting on no race! And they’re hauling the whole bloody company!”

A second bullet ricocheted close to the wagon. Dust and pebbles rained on the silk over our heads amidst a chorus of screams from outside.

“Find somewhere to let everyone off,” I called up. “Frankie won’t chase them if they don’t have Río!”

“Where exactly is ‘somewhere’?” Matthias called back.

“Take the access road behind the Fighting Flames attraction,” shouted Emmett. “We’ll lose the goons and get a straight shot to the bathhouse!”

Vera stuck her head in. “Everyone who ain’t Porto Rican or a merman better get ready to make for the trees!”

“Is best if you hold tight to my neck, yes?” Igor said urgently to Navya, who instantaneously dropped all her old reservations about sitting on his shoulders to climb onto his back.

As we pulled onto gravel, the light dimmed and the wheels crunched to a halt. “Last stop!” hollered Matthias.

“Wait,” I shouted, and everyone froze mid-exit. “ I made you do this, all right? No one at Dreamland’s gonna take the fall, and you know it. You have to blame me!”

“Mr. Benny—” protested Navya.

“The Menagerie can still survive!” I cried. “They’ll jail you or kill you if you don’t say I put you up to this. You know I’m right!”

It was Tití who’d taught me the value of brief farewells. She was awful at it, always drawing out the ends of conversations in case there was some tontería she’d forgotten to share that would only emerge if she held onto your ear a little longer. At the end of her life, she’d held on the same way, leaving only after she had passed on every last worry, hope, and expectation for me—a lifetime of counsel funneled into the space between slowing heartbeats.

It took all I had not to do the same. I wanted them to know everything. How much I loved and admired them. How they’d become my family when I thought my only family had died of tuberculosis in Puerto Rico. Between the heat and humidity and terror that had crowded out the air in my lungs, my throat had become too small a gap for all my feelings to pass through at once.

“Promise me!” I shouted.

“All right,” Emmett said with a grim smile as Eli said, “We promise.”

“We will meet again,” added the madam, “in this life, or the next.”

“ Zhivy búdem—ne pomrem , Mr. Benny,” rumbled Igor. “All will be well.”

The wagon bed pitched and swayed as bodies large and small escaped into the humid night air, their fast footsteps against the gravel soon disappearing. So much water had sloshed out of the basin in our rush to dodge the Agostinellis that Río was barely submerged anymore. I scooped the remaining dregs onto his chest and face while the wagon rocked back into motion.

A handful had just gone into his hair when he suddenly jerked to life in my arms and tried to sit up.

“I hear them,” he rasped, staring wildly at nothing. “Benigno, can you hear them?”

There was nothing to hear but pipe organs and Matthias and Vera shouting about directions. “Hear what?”

When Río’s face spun around to meet mine, his pupils were gone leaving two cobalt pools in their place. He groped for me, making a fist in my damp clothes. “They call...”

“ Amor , you need to save your stren—”

“ You ,” he gasped. “They are calling you ! Benigno... what are you?”

Tití Luz had hallucinated just like this at the end. The worst night of her fever, she swore she heard voices and saw the dead. I gathered him back in my arms and tried to calm him.

Frankie’s voice snarled in the distance. “That’s them! Don’t let ’em escape!”

More gunshots rang out, followed by a scream so pained it instantly unlocked a vision in my mind of a roaring river and a pewter sky.

“ Vera! ”

With a tooth-grinding RRRRIIIPPP , the silk dragged over the ribs of metal that sheltered us, exposing Río and me to the night. Matthias vaulted off the driver’s seat, scooped up Vera who was cursing fit to summon demons, and laid her gently next to us. Blood bloomed dark and red on the leg of her coveralls.

“It’s just a bloody scratch,” she grunted. “I can still drive—”

“Shut your fire-breathing piehole,” he said and leapt over our heads into the driver’s seat.

And there—trapped in a Dreamland access road—Frankie fired the bullet that would change Coney Island forever.

Time seemed to slow as it carved a smoking path through the thick air toward Matthias. I shouted his name, but it was as if his self-preserving instincts had shoved him out of the way. The bullet soared past his shoulder toward a cluster of barrels that lined the fence—the ones Georgie had carted in through the gates of Creation —and it didn’t take me a split second to recall a very specific detail about the contents they held.

Tar is flammable.

Heat exploded up my neck as they ignited. The horses reared, pitched hard to the side, and the wagon listed, nearly spilling us onto the gravel. I followed Matthias’s frenzied gaze to find the Agostinellis staggering backward, shielding their eyes.

“We gotta get outta here!” I cried.

Back in the wagon bed, Matthias helped Vera to her feet and swung her onto the ground, returning in an instant to lift Río’s body off me. Vera limped into a veritable wall of black smoke to settle the terrified mares; the picket fence was already ablaze.

Then something happened that hadn’t in any of the days New York had been baking in deadly heat: A breeze blew inland from the ocean. It fanned the flames, sending sparks into our faces, advancing the fire along the fence until the flying embers landed like seeds to set new walls on fire. Dreamland’s most famous scenic railway attraction—Hell Gate—was about to become a reality around us.

“Ain’t nowhere left to go,” shouted Frankie, his gun apparently reloaded and pointed at us. “Give us what’s ours, and maybe we won’t scatter your diced remains across Brooklyn.”

I looked helplessly at Matthias and Vera and instantly wished I hadn’t. Their faces had gone paralytic with fear.

A loud POP made us all jump, the Agostinellis included. They ducked and spun in the direction of the sound.

“ Get going, numbnuts! ” Emmett hollered from behind a storage shed, Lefty’s gun in his hand. He pointed it over the mobsters’ heads and, with a bright flash and another pop , scattered them like foulmouthed marbles, pistols flashing as they fired blindly back over their shoulders.

With the world’s fastest prayer for Emmett’s safety, I clambered out of the basin, splashing water across the wagon bed. Río’s pupilless eyes still gazed at nothing, his head rolling as I hoisted him over my shoulder like a fallen soldier. My legs immediately started vibrating under me from the sheer weight of him.

“Jesus, Benny, lemme take him,” Matthias insisted.

“No. Take Vera and make a break for it,” I yelled, “before this whole place lights up like the sun.”

He helped us onto the gravel. “Ain’t no way—”

More popping—electric lamps and bulbs were exploding from the heat, inevitably lighting more fires as they went out one by one.

“ Please ,” I gasped. “We both know it’s gotta be me. Matthias, they need you .”

The strongman’s lips formed a thin line. For a moment, I thought he might force my hand. But then he reached down and arranged Río’s silk-wrapped tail across my body and around my other shoulder.

“I don’t care if it’s a postcard, a telegram, or a goddamned message in a bottle, you find a way to tell me you two made it out alive. And Benny...”

His large hand wrapped around my bicep and squeezed.

“I believe you can lift two thousand pounds.”

He pointed me toward a gap in the wall, and I bolted. No money. No cuatro . No plan beyond returning Río to the sea.

The fire routed me back onto the Dreamland promenade where I staggered into bedlam and tried to weave upstream past scrambling laborers, ride operators, and animal trainers dragging elephants and ponies by their leashes and chains. No one noticed me or the limp form over my shoulder; they were too occupied with the business of trying to escape with their lives through the only streetside exit in this stupid, grandote shit of an amusement park.

My throat and lungs were quickly lining with ash, leaving my breath too quick and too thin, like I was sucking in air through a clogged spigot from a place deep underground. I hid my mouth and nose in the crook of my elbow and tried to get my bearings. To my left, the Fighting Flames ride had already been swallowed up by the eponymous element, but if I could find the Sixth Street promenade, then I could make it to the bathing pavilion and out the other side to the beach.

“Hold your breath, Río.”

I ran.

“Hey!” yelled a voice I didn’t recognize and therefore didn’t heed. “You’re heading straight for the fire, you idiot!”

But I just held onto Río, my knees aching with the effort of trying not to shake him too roughly. His hair was completely dry now, the long copper waves flying up in the heat and sticking to my sweaty neck. A temperature more blistering than anything I’d ever felt as an ironworker licked at my bare feet. It had taken only minutes for Dreamland to become a monstrous crucible, and I was carrying Río through it.

The closer we got to the water, the more lucid he seemed to get. His tail shuddered and squeezed around my shoulder.

“ Y-Ya estamos llegando ...” The words disappeared in a fit of coughs. My windpipe was scalded; the pain went all the way down. “We’re... we’re almost... there.”

All our worries about witnesses seemed ridiculous now. Anyone within a mile of the beach would have only one thing to look at: Dreamland’s skyline devoured by fire. My feet stepped off the rough promenade stairs and sank into the soft sand where I fell to one knee and lowered Río into my arms.

“Río,” I gasped. “ ?Estás bien? ”

His pupils had reopened. A dry hiss issued from his parched lips, and his hand went weakly to his throat. The smoke had stolen what was left of his voice.

“I know. Nos vamos. ” I gripped him behind his back and below his fin, then stood back up, teetering on the uneven powder under my raw feet.

The inferno was behind us, leaving me trudging through a firelit reinvention of my dreams; the same rolling waves, the same shade of night, except the distance to the water could’ve been miles. My chest seemed to feel heavier with every stinging footstep that led to being parted from Río forever, and though we’d somehow avoided getting singed, my limbs burned with exertion.

Maybe I was desperate for the distraction, but it got me thinking about the burn that started all this. “I never told you,” I said in a soot-stripped voice, “what your mother d-did for me—the night she told me to s-save you.”

Río lifted his dry, tired eyes to my face.

“I had a bandaged-up b-burn on my hand. She’d g-grabbed it. Got it all wet. Damn near b-blacked out from the pain—”

My foot sank too deep and, grunting, I caught myself before we both spilled onto the beach. I forced my eyes seaward. Just a few more yards.

“Thought she’d done it to h-hurt me. But that night, I took off the b-bandage, and the burn was g-gone. That’s when I knew... I had to find you.” Despite the impossibility of any water left in me for tears, one ran onto my cheek. “Wish I could’ve h-healed you like she healed m-me, Río. She saved my life w-when she told me to save yours.”

I felt Río’s fingers searching for a grip on my shirt. I looked down to find his lips moving around silent words, his pink-rimmed eyes alert and wide. He looked like he was trying hard to say something but couldn’t reach a place to touch me so he could say it in my mind.

“It’s all right,” I breathed. “Look. We’re here.”

My scalded soles met ocean water, and the sting was followed by almost instant relief. A few steps farther in, where the water was high enough to lap at my thighs and drag at my toes, Río tipped his chin toward me and wrapped his trembling fingers around San Cristóbal . The moment his fin grazed the water, his free hand grabbed my shoulder.

He was shaking his head. He didn’t want to go.

Gritting my teeth, I lowered myself unsteadily onto one knee, submerging Río in the shallows up to his chin. Navya’s garments lifted off his body like crimson clouds.

“I’ll f-find you again,” I whispered through tears. “Steal a boat from the pier every night if I h-have to. Río—you gotta let go.”

Traces of his stubbornness reappeared as his eyes flitted from the ocean and back to me.

Suddenly, another wave rode inland that seemed to wash the indecision out of him. His grip loosened. He laid back into the waves, leaving me to watch breathlessly as he closed his eyes and sank below the surface.

It was if I’d laid him in a tomb. I placed my hand on his to send the only words that mattered into his mind. But no sooner had I touched him than the wave pulled back toward the open water it came from.

It pulled Río with it.

“Wait—”

I lunged for him, but a sudden breaker plowed into me, and I fell back. I couldn’t even get a foothold before another wave lifted me up like a bundle of seaweed and deposited me on the sand, empty-handed but for a wide ream of red silk.

Coughing and spitting salt water, I clambered onto my hands and knees and whispered Río’s true name to the wind.

Unexpectedly, the wind carried my name back to me.

“BENNY!”

Sonia?

Then Morgan’s derringer fired.