No time to think. I grab at the cloak, but it’s caught on a branch. The one-eyed giant is walking faster now. I smell a powerful nasty odor, like rotten eggs, skunk spray, and human feces. The stench alone would kill a deer. The ground shakes. I tug at the cloak. It holds fast. Above me, Meg’s yelling, “I’m coming down! I’ll distract him!”
“No!” The scream rips at me as I pull. Footsteps boom. I tug harder. Please, please don’t come down, Meg. The giant is so close I can see it has full lips the color and texture of a dog’s paw pad, and very sharp teeth. I yank the cloak. It gives way with a rip just as the closer giant reaches toward me. I wrap the tattered fabric around my shoulders. “I wish I was in the tree with Meg.”
And then, I’m beside her. She didn’t come down.
“You’re safe!” she says, and I can see she’s been crying. But the giants have seen us. The one-eyed giant has reached the tree. He pushes it, making it swing harder than any wind. The smell is so overpowering that even when I breathe through my mouth, I can taste it. I lose my grip on Meg and grab the branch. The giant butts his head against the tree.
Now the other giant’s there too. We’re doomed. I try to spread the cloak around both of us, but a gust of wind takes it off Meg’s shoulders.
“Just wish yourself away,” Meg says. “At least one of us should live.”
“Not an option.”
The second giant rams the tree. I know any second, they’ll start acting together, shaking it back and forth. One might even crawl on the other’s back and climb toward us.
But something else happens. The one-eyed giant sees the other giant. He lets out a roar and runs toward him. They both hit the tree, and it sways back and forth. By then, they’re on the ground, fighting each other like two kids tussling over the last cookie. They roll away from the tree, and in that second, I’m able to wrap the tiniest scrap of cloak around both our shoulders. Over the giants’ roars, I wish to be the first place I can think of.
And then, I’m there.
Chapter 31
“Where are we?” Meg looks around. “I feel like I’ve been here, but . . .”
I grab the cloak from around our shoulders and start to fold it before anyone sees it. It smells much better here. “We’re in Penn Station.”
“Penn Station?”
“New York City? When you went last year, you told me people were all over this place like PETA members at a fur convention, so I figured it might be a place where they wouldn’t notice two kids crash-landing dressed as the Phantom of the Opera.”
And truly, they don’t notice. A professor type in a tan jacket seems to stare right at us, then turns and buries his face in a newspaper. A gangsta-looking guy does a double take, then turns away, saying into his cell phone, “I gotta call you back. I don’t feel so good,” and rubs his eyes. A guy toting a bass knocks into me. I start to say, “Excuse me,” but he yells at me in another language.
I turn to Meg. “Guess I was right. We need to kill some time before tonight. So maybe we should see the sights. Like, go to the Statue of Liberty. My great-grandparents came in through Ellis Island.”
Meg accepts this pretty readily. “Should we take the subway or use the cloak?”
In an instant, we’re in the statue’s torch. It’s not open to the public, so it’s empty, and we stare down. From the torch, we can see the top of the statue’s crown, the bridge of her nose, and down her pretty green size-two-thousand dress to the star of the pedestal.
“Look,” I say to Meg. “The book in her hand has a date on it. July, then some Roman numerals . . .” I squint to see them.
“July fourth, seventeen seventy-six,” Meg says. “The date of the Declaration of Independence.”
A moment later, she points at the bay. “You can see the shadows of the clouds. They look like continents.”
I grip the railing and lean down. Meg’s right. They do look like continents.
“We were in Europe today,” I say. “And now we’re in New York. How surreal is that?”
“Real surreal,” she agrees.
I could be with Victoriana, traveling with her and seeing these things. She’s probably seen it all, done it all, been everywhere.
Meg grabs my hand. “This is so exciting, Johnny. Thank you for letting me come.”
I feel suddenly dizzy at the height. But I grip Meg’s hand, and she squeezes back. I feel better. “I’m glad you’re here.” And I am.
After we’ve had our fill, we switch to the pedestal. As in the train station, people see us when we land, but as before, they sort of don’t. A kid crashes into us. “Hey, I didn’t see you.” His mother yells at him to be careful, completely oblivious.
I wonder if people at home would react the same way, if I would. Have I ever seen anything strange and unusual—and magical—but just ignored it because I didn’t believe what my eyes were telling me? I’ve been hearing stories about giants and yeti and Sasquatch all my life, but who believed them? Maybe it’s all real—the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, everything. Maybe the crazy people are the only ones who know the truth. If human beings can transform into swans, what can’t happen?
“Are you glad you know that magic is real?” Meg says, reading my thoughts.
“I am,” I say, “even though people would think I was on drugs if I told them.”
She shrugs. “I wouldn’t, even if I wasn’t here.” And I know it’s true. She’d believe me because she’s my best friend.
After we look up my great-grandparents on the monument at the Ellis Island Museum, we go to the Museum of Natural History and find the dinosaurs. Then, it’s off to the Central Park Zoo.
It’s there that Meg asks me about the earphones. “I didn’t know you had those things. Can you talk to this guy?” She points to the polar bear in his environment.
“No.” I hesitate. “I mean, maybe. It only works on animals who used to be human.”
“Are there a lot of those?”
“More than you’d think.” I tell her about the swans in the lobby, the rat at the Port of Miami, and the fox.
“No way. The swans? Seriously?”
“Totally serious.”
She takes the earbuds from me and leans forward. “Hey! Hellooo! Mr. Bear?”
The bear swims slowly around, and Meg adds, “Maybe after this is over, we’ll go to the North Pole together. We should see the bears while they’re still there.”
I nod, even though I know it won’t happen. I’ll be with Victoriana.
We wander around awhile longer, looking at animals, trying to talk to them (none talk back), and eating zoo food until finally they announce they’re closing.
I look at my watch. Six. “There’s still time. I don’t want to go back too early.”
“I hear New York pizza’s good. And then, maybe the top of the Empire State Building.”
An hour later, we’re there. We don’t use the cloak. I wanted to feel what it’s like to be in the elevator, zooming up 102 floors. We can see Central Park on one side, all the way to New Jersey on the other.