Authors: Alex Flinn
In a hotel, the important stuff happens at night. I don’t mean the sleeping. I mean all the stuff that makes the news—the drunks, the affairs, the first kisses on the beach, not to mention my meetings with Victoriana.
So, at one a.m., I head out to the swan house, not knowing what might happen at night.
The swans are all there, waiting. When they see me, they put their heads together and begin to warble. Even though I have on my earbuds, I can’t understand, so they must have their own swan language. When I get closer, one of them speaks.
“We have the information you need.”
“You know where the frog is?”
“Not exactly.” The swan looks down. “But we found someone who knows someone who may know the amphibian’s whereabouts.”
Oh, well, that sounds hopeful.
“You must come with me to meet him, at the port.”
“The Port of Miami?”
“No, the Port of Naples. Of course the Port of Miami.”
“It’s just . . .” I picture myself walking down the street, all the way to the Port of Miami, with a swan.
But with the cloak, I could be there in seconds. I consider telling the swan I’ll take him too. Then I remember Victoriana’s warning against letting anyone else use the cloak. “Sure, um, I’m going to take a cab, though. Maybe you could fly, and I’ll meet you there. Swans can fly, right?”
The swan gives me a look like,
duh,
and says, “I’m Harry, by the way, the swan you spoke to that first night. I’ll go with you. Meet me at the front entrance, and I’ll take you to the rendezvous point.”
Rendezvous point. Sounds like something from a spy movie.
“Sure,” I say. “I just have to go get something.”
“Not thinking of chickening out, are you?” He laughs. “Bird joke.”
“No. Not chicken. Just need money for the cab. I’ll be right there.” I look at Harry, who is slim, with black eyes close together. They all look pretty much alike. “Why don’t you get started, though. The cab will probably go faster than you can fly.”
The swan laughs. “I doubt it.”
“Why don’t we see?” I need to get the swans out of the way. “I’ll race you.”
Harry nods his head. “I accept your challenge.” And, with that, he’s waddling toward the door.
I start for my shop but glance through the front windows. I see Harry flapping his wings. Slowly, he rises above the cars, above the hotel, his white wings forming a heart against the black night.
I head back to the shoe shop and take out the cloak. I wrap it around me and wish to be on Biscayne Boulevard, a block north of the port so the swan won’t see me materialize.
And then, I’m there.
The port at night is scary. By day, there’s a steady traffic of cruise ship passengers and container trucks carrying cargo shipments. But when the sky darkens, they turn it over to the night. A few feet from me, a woman walks down Biscayne Boulevard. She doesn’t even notice my sudden appearance. Then a car pulls over and someone rolls down the window. She climbs in, and they roar away.
I start to walk, hearing the dull
thunk
of my sneakers against pavement. To my left is Biscayne Boulevard. To my right, nothing but dark water. Something moves, and I stop. Only the moon, glinting off the bay. A cloud rolls across it, and the night is dark. From a block away, I can see the light of a single flashlight inside the port. Drug dealers? What am I doing here?
Stupid. Drug dealers don’t carry flashlights. Probably a security guard. That doesn’t make me feel any better, though, because a security guard won’t let me in. Still, I trudge toward the entrance.
The cloak has landed me on the opposite side of the road from the port. So I fold it into my backpack and wait for a single car to pass. When the coast is clear, I begin to cross.
Out of the darkness, a roar. Then, a whoosh of exhaust and hot Miami air. I jump back onto the median just in time. A motorcycle. Its lights are off, and it almost hits me as it roars through the intersection, then makes a hard left into the port entrance. I can’t see the driver’s face, but I get a fleeting impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he played a robot in
The Terminator,
a tall, square man, clad in black leather, with short hair on his helmetless head.
I stand on the median, hearing his waning motor. My breath. My heartbeat. I shiver in the nighttime summer heat. I almost died. No, I didn’t. I got out of the way. It’s okay.
Across the street, the flashlight ray is gone. All dark. I listen for a long time before running across.
When I finally reach the other side, I see a white cross in the sky. A cloud? No, it’s Harry. He lands closer to the entrance than I am and inclines his neck as if to say,
Told you
, then gestures for me to follow him.
We just walk through. I’d worried about that, about whether there would be a guard or a gate. But we get through unseen, and for a second, I think it’s too easy. Someone should have stopped us. Why didn’t they, unless it’s a setup?
Crazy.
The cruise ship terminals are dark and locked for the night. But I can hear banging from the Seaboard Marine terminal, where guys are loading containers of cargo. I think that’s where we’re going, but we pass it, heading to the farthest pitch-black cruise ship terminal. As we get farther from the work noise, I can hear things scurrying on the pavement below. No, not things. Rats. What do they say about rats on a ship? Rats leaving a sinking ship? Finally, we enter an alleyway so small that my shoulders touch walls on both sides.
“Are we hiding from someone?” I ask the swan’s white outline, suddenly remembering the motorcycle guy. But the swan only hisses in reply. Then, he lets out a whistle.
Suddenly, the alley is alive with the noises of hundreds of scurrying feet. I feel something against my ankle. A tail. I shudder. From the ground, I hear a small voice, like someone talking, but I can’t understand. And yet, I know it’s words, not random squeaking.
“What?” I say.
Harry bats me with his wing until I understand that I’m supposed to lean down. I do, taking care not to let my hand brush what I know is a rodent and am met with a pair of gleaming black eyes in the darkness.
“You the guy looking for the frog?” a small voice says.
I nod, then realize no one can see me, so I say, “Yes.”
“He was here,” the voice says. “Two weeks ago. I seen him hoppin’ around like a idiot.”
“You saw him?” My stomach jumps like there’s a frog inside. “How do you know it was him, and not just some other frog?”
Silence for a moment.
“I known he was a prince on account-a he was goin’ around tellin’ everyone he was a prince. He was sayin’ things like, ‘I’m unaccustomed to consorting with vermin.’ Vermin! Can you believe dat?”
He pauses long enough for me to realize the question wasn’t rhetorical. I say, “No. You, vermin? Of course not! How could he say that?”
“Thank you. Anyway, he was not what you’d call well liked, so no one was too upset when he got shipped out.”
“Shipped out?” The alley is hot with no breeze. It smells like palmetto bugs, and I begin to feel dizzy.
“Yeah, they stuck him on a container truck from Seaboard, heading for the Keys.”
I know all this from Victoriana, but maybe the rat knows more. “And?”
“Like I said, he wasn’t missed.” The rat’s voice is tiny, and I lean farther down to hear it. “Good ribbons to bad rubbish and all that. So I di’n think anything more about it ’til last week, when some folks started snoopin’ around.”
I know this too. “Big guys? With a bloodhound?”
“Nah, not them goofballs. Ah, they was here for like ten minutes, sniffing. That dog didn’t even try and talk to the other animals here. Real snotty, like. If they’d really been lookin’, he woulda talked to us. That’s what bloodhounds is famous for.”
“Talking to animals? I thought they just sniffed.”
“Ah, that’s what people think on account-a bloodhounds have them goofy noses. But in actuality, they’re experts on interrogation. That’s how they find their man.”
Who knew? “But this one didn’t do that?”
“Didn’t even try. It was like they didn’t tink da frog was here. Or maybe they didn’t
want
to find him. But a few days later, some other guys showed up, guys with accents.
Dogs
with accents, German shepherds. They talked to everyone, and that’s when I got interested.”
Accents. I remember Victoriana’s voice. And her guards. She must have sent someone different the second time, and he did a better job.
“So what happened after you got interested?”
“After I got interested, I was interested. Interested enough to do some investigating myself about where that container went.”
“And where did it go?”
“Key Largo, full of goods for the Underwater Hotel, which is good news for you.”
“Good news? Why’s that good news?” Key Largo is the closest key, but it’s also one of the longest and most populated. The frog could be anywhere.
“Good news ’cause right next to the Underwater Hotel is a bar called Sally’s, rough place, rough crowd. The animals what hangs there is rough too, probably on account of some of the rough garbage theys eats. They’d probably eat that snooty-pants prince in frog skin alive too.”
“Oh.” Well, that doesn’t sound good.
“But there’s this fox there. He’s a good guy, and he sorta runs things down there. He’s one of us used-to-bes.”
“Used-to-bes?”
“That’s what we call ourselves, ‘used-to-be humans.’ Anyway, this fox was a fisherman down on the MacArthur Causeway until one day, he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“That’s the story with all us used-to-bes. We’re the mysterious disappearances, the unsolved mysteries. Cold cases. Everyone assumes we’re down in the river with cement overshoes or else ran off. But the truth’s way weirder.”
Used-to-bes. I think about it, imagining all the animals I once thought were just animals, who had actually been human until, one day, they disappeared without a trace. Probably their families stopped looking for them. God, it made you not want to take a shower in front of the cat! “Can all used-to-bes get transformed back?” My thighs hurt from leaning down so long.
“Yeah, but it’s harder for some than others. Some of us have pretty much given up. Anyway, the fox’s name is Todd, and he’s friendly. If you talk to ’im nice, he’ll pro’lly help you out. Tell him Cornelius sent you.”
“Cornelius?”
“Fancy name for a rat, right? I used to be a senator. Just be careful not to talk to the fox in front of anyone else. I don’t know who those guys were that was looking for the frog, but they looked scary.”
Suddenly there’s a sound close by. Footsteps. A night watchman, maybe. I try to squeeze closer in between the two walls, but there’s nowhere to go. The rat scurries off, and I lean, frozen, feeling the ache in my thighs but unable to take a single step. I’m hot and pained and dead. Deaddeaddeaddead. The footsteps come closer, closer.
I wait a minute, then two, to see if they come back.
Finally Harry whispers, “I think he’s gone.” The first words he’s said since we got here.
“Yeah,” I whisper back. “That was close. We should go.” I have the information I need, even though it sounds impossible. Sally’s. A fox named Todd. Cornelius sent me.
Since Harry’s behind me, he moves out first, and I follow. But as I get close enough to see the lights from Seaboard Marine, I hear a familiar roar. A motorcycle! I feel a whoosh of air, then hear a boom and see a flash of white light. A gunshot! Harry’s on the ground behind me.
“Harry!” I can’t stop myself from screaming his name. I dive to the ground beside him.
“Got him!” a voice says.
Then, a second voice. A woman. “
Nein.
There is someone with him.”
Oh no. I know what I have to do. I unzip my backpack and pull out the cloak. “Stay with me, Harry,” I whisper.
“No,” the swan whispers. “It is time for my swan song. Save yourself. Run!”
The motorcycle’s wheels shriek in a circle. I fumble with the cloak, finally wrapping it around both of us. “Hang in there, boy! Don’t start singing yet!” I clutch at the swan, feeling the smoothness of its white feathers, the warm stickiness of blood. I hear the motorcycle roar again, coming toward me in the same whoosh of air.
I wish I was back at the hotel,
I think.
And then, there’s a flash.
I recognize sounds first. Car horns. People yelling. Crashing waves from the beach. The crackle of neon. I’m on South Beach. In a cloak. Holding a bleeding once-human swan.
I lift my head to see if anyone’s watching us, but no. It’s the usual South Beach oblivion, people zombified by lights and the liquor. Still, I unwrap the bloody cloak and hide it inside my backpack, then look down at Harry.
He blinks at me. “How . . . how are we here?”
“Shh.” I glance at the stain spreading across his snow-white breast. “We’re here. I’ll get someone to help.”
“But . . .” He moves his beak, but no sound comes out.
“Hold that thought,” I say. “Don’t die on me.”
Zipping my backpack as I go, I run into the empty lobby. I can’t handle the idea that this guy might die as a swan. I’m even more worried that he might turn human after death.
The night clerk is gone, and I glance first left, then right, seeing no one.
“Help!” I yell. “Outside! Someone’s shot a swan!”
I run back toward my shop, meaning to use the phone, to call 911, and tell them . . . I don’t know what. I expect to see no one, but instead, I find Meg. She takes in my panting face and bloodied shirt. “What is it?”
“Outside on Collins. Someone’s shot a swan!” I can’t explain to her that it’s not a swan, but a man. “Call nine-one-one.”
I start back to the lobby, confident she’ll do it. But Meg stops me with a hand on my arm. “You call. I’ll go to him . . . it. I’m calmer.” She pushes me aside and darts past me.
I’m alone, alone and faced with the impossible knowledge that someone shot at me. Someone knew I was at the port and why. Someone wants to stop me from finding Prince Philippe, maybe enough to kill over it.
When I return to the lobby, the swans are awake, staring out the windows. They see me and swarm around, all speaking at once. I push through them and out the door. Meg cradles Harry in her arms, and for an instant, I’m sure he’s dead. But then, he raises his head and stares at me. Meg is applying pressure with a dish towel, though red still pools on the street. I hear a siren. It winds to a stop. Then, running steps.
“Where’s the victim?” It’s a paramedic.
I gesture toward Harry. The guy looks at Meg. “You hurt, miss?”
“Not her,” I say. “The bird.”
“A swan? I don’t resuscitate birds. I’m a trained professional. You need to call those Miami Animal Rescue guys on TV maybe.”
“But he’s dying!”
“Actually, he’s doing fine.” Meg removes the towel from the swan’s breast, and I see that the bloody spot on his white feathers seems smaller, barely a scrape. “Just a flesh wound.”
“But . . . it was huge.” I gape at it, then at Meg.
“I applied pressure.” To the paramedic, Meg says, “Look, it’s still bleeding. Do you think you could give me a bandage or something so I can put it in a cab to the animal hospital? The manager really does like these swans, and people will freak if they see blood.”
“But . . .” I gesture at the puddle on the ground. “He was bleeding to death.”
“He was probably just in shock,” the paramedic says.
I think, not for the first time, that Meg is like the type of shoe we never repair, a Bass Weejun or Birkenstock sandal, the sort of shoe that’s comfortable and lasts forever.
The paramedic finally gives Meg some bandages, and that’s when the police show up.
“There was a shooting here?” The officer looks around.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “This guy on a motorcycle. He shot a swan.”
“This is about a swan?”
“Yeah, a swan.”
“A swan?”
“That’s illegal, isn’t it? Can you go hunting on Collins Avenue that I don’t know about?”
The officer looks at her partner, who has just shown up. The partner shakes his head. “Most of the squad’s at the port. Someone heard gunshots.”
“Did they see the guy who did it?”
“Some of the dock workers saw a blond guy with black clothes.”
“That’s the guy who shot the swan! He would have shot me if the swan hadn’t been in front of me.”
I look at Harry. It’s true. I could be. Someone was aiming at me. The paramedic has bandaged Harry’s wound, and apparently, Meg has sweet-talked him into carrying the swan to a cab on a stretcher. I don’t even know why Meg’s here so early, but I’m glad she is.
“I could give you a description,” I say. “It might be related.”
I know it is, and the guy may still be after me.
* * *
After the cops leave, I return to the shop. The cloak is there, all bloody. It saved my life. I wash the blood off, then put the cloak on. I wish myself home.
At home, I pack a backpack with a few changes of clothing, a small tent, and a sleeping bag. Then, I find Mom at the shoe repair. “I have to leave right away,” I tell her.
I don’t tell her about the shooting. I have to get down to the Keys, the fox, before anyone else does. “Tell Meg I’m sorry I didn’t get to say good-bye.”
“Wait!” Mom stops me, grabbing my wrist. “The night manager says someone shot a swan in the lobby. Do you know something?”
I lie. “No. Really?” I know she’ll find out the truth, but by the time she does, I’ll be gone without even a place to charge my cell phone.
“What if it’s dangerous?” she asks.
I lie again. “There’s no danger. Probably some psycho bird-hater.”
And then I leave, taking Meg’s opal ring, the cloak, and what I can carry on my back.
I thought my life was boring. It isn’t anymore.