The Explorers’ Gate (20 page)

“How the heck did you figure that out?” asked Garrett.

“From that first thing Loki said, about the statue that moves during the day.”

“That would seem impossible,” said Willem. “Our excess life force only permeates the statuary
after
the sun has set.”

“This statue doesn't move on its own. People move it. Every year.”

Willem's brow wrinkled with confusion.

“It's the statue of Fred Lebow up near the Reservoir—the guy who started the New York City Marathon. He's posed to look like he's timing the runners sprinting across the finish line of a big race. Most of the year, he stands on a black block in a clump of bushes near the Reservoir. But, every November, they haul his statue down to a spot close to the marathon finish line.”

“He moves by day,” mumbled Willem.

“Exactly. It's a pretty obvious answer once, you know, you know it.”

Suddenly, we heard a rifle shot.

I checked my watch.

“That was Loki's starting gun! We need bicycles!”

I pointed to a small trailer.

“They rent bikes over there. If we could find three.”

“They all appear to be securely chained,” said Willem.

Garrett dashed through the trees. “I see something. You two can ride in the back. I'll peddle.”

Now
I
was confused. “What?”

“It's a pedicab!” Garrett hopped onto the driver's seat of a three-wheeled vehicle. It was bright yellow and looked like a rickshaw with a bicycle up front. Tourists hire pedicabs to haul them around the park.

Willem and I climbed into the two-seater chariot. Garrett started pumping pedals. We zoomed down a gentle slope, zipped out of the parking lot, and eased onto the East Drive.

Then came Cat Hill.

Six city blocks of steeply angled incline named after the statue of our panther friend,
Still Hunt
, whose statue was perched near the top of the hill on a rocky cliff.

We were slowing down.

We were also going to lose.

No matter how valiantly Garrett struggled, we weren't going to make it north fast enough. Loki would win the crown, become king, drain my mother, and execute my dad!

“Maybe we should turn around,” I said.

But then I heard the jangle of a dog collar and a familiar bark.

“Balto!” I shouted.

The sled dog bolted up to the front of the bike.

“Grab the reins!”

“Got 'em!” said Garret, clutching the thick leather strands trailing off Balto's harness. “Hang on, guys! We're about to go for a sleigh ride in a pedicab!”

Garrett whistled once and Balto took off, yanking us up Cat Hill in no time at all because he was a sled dog doing what he loved to do more than anything in the world: racing north on another rescue mission!

With Balto at the lead and Garrett pumping the pedals as hard as he could, we breezed up the East Drive in record time.

We passed the Great Lawn on our left, the Metropolitan Museum of Art on our right, crossed over the 86
^th
Street transverse road, and entered the longest straightaway in the park as we dashed northward alongside the Reservoir.

I could hear and see the geyser of water jetting up into the air off to the west. Dieter was undoubtedly still on duty, draining my mother's lake as thoroughly and efficiently as he could.

“The statue of Fred Lebow is about halfway up this stretch,” I shouted to Garrett. “Turn into the bridle path up there!”

“Got it!”

“Here!”

Balto bolted left and the pedicab tilted sideways as we rumbled off the paved roadway and skidded to a stop.

“There's the statue,” I said, bounding out of the back seat.

“Now where?” said Garrett, panting even harder than Balto.

I heard an eagle screech.

“Duck!” I shouted, shoving Willem to the ground because the most gruesome statue in the whole park had come to life: the two birds from a hideous monument called
Eagles and Prey
, a bronze sculpture at the north end of the Mall that, for whatever reason, depicts two humongous eagles killing a trapped goat.

This is why Loki wanted us to come up here to rescue my dad.

He wanted to turn us into goat-flavored eagle chow.

“Grab some rocks!” Garrett shouted.

Willem plucked up a tiny pebble and, using his ant-like strength, side-armed it at one of the eagles. The stone sizzled through the air and clipped off a few feathers.

Meanwhile, remembering how David whooped Goliath, I grabbed some spiky balls off the ground (the nutty fruit of some nearby sweet gum trees) and ripped a leather strap off Balto's harness so I could turn it into a slingshot.

“Willem? Garrett?” I shouted, twirling my strap even faster to build up momentum, “Aim for the biggest one's left wing! I'll take out the right. On three!”

I figured, if we timed our shots, clipped the wings with a double whammy, we could stun the eagles into forgetting how to fly.

“One, two, three!”

Our missiles hit in perfect sync. The first eagle crashed to the ground in a heap of ruffled feathers.

“Reload!” I shouted, cradling more spiky balls in my sling.

“On three!” said Willem, tossing a stone the size of a cinderblock up and down as if it were a peanut.

“One, two, three!” shouted Garrett.

The three of us simultaneously launched our second shots. Big Bird number two crash-landed on top of his bronze brother.

Fangs flared and snarling, Balto held the two stunned birds at bay.

I think both eagles were so terrified they pooped in their tail feathers.

“This way!”

I dashed back to the statue of Fred LeBow.

“Okay—what were Loki's other clues?” I asked rhetorically.

“Your father's prison,” said Willem, “is ‘situated between a sit-down and a leg-up.'”

I turned to my left and saw two picnic tables with attached benches. “The sit-down!”

“Way to go!” said Garrett. “But what's a leg-up?”

“There!” I said, pointing to a set of marble steps just north of the picnic table. “This is the bridle path. And that's an old-fashioned two-step block for mounting a horse!”

“A leg-up!” said Garrett.

“Exactly! Okay, between the sit-down and the leg-up …”

“Is a big concrete cube.” Garrett pointed to a cement blockhouse maybe six feet tall, wide, and deep.

“It's either an electrical transformer box,” I said, “or the entrance to an underground prison cell!”

We examined the steel panel mounted on the front.

“I think these are what they call security bolts,” I said, feeling the nubby bumps at the corners. “My dad says you need a special tool to loosen them.”

“Hey, you guys,” said Garrett. “This looks like a keyhole!”

I rubbed my fingers over the angled notch in the door.

“Okay—we need to find an old-fashioned key with teeth cut into the shape of a hexagon.”

“We must find the crown!” exclaimed Willem.

“I know, but we need to find this key, too!”

“They are one and the same.”

“What?”

“Years ago, as a peace offering, my father gave his brother three of the royal crown's seven diamond-encrusted prongs. Each of the jeweled pieces is topped with a sparkling six-sided star.”

“A hexagon!”

“Precisely. All three were, undoubtedly, reclaimed by the Witte Wieven's emissaries when my father passed away so they might be restored to their original positions inside the band of the crown.”

“But,” I said, “Loki had already turned one into the key for his prison cell.”

“Guys,” said Garrett, “we really,
really
need to find that crown!”

“It's in the Grand Army Plaza!” I said. “Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue—right across from the Plaza Hotel.”

We climbed back into our pedicab.

Garrett wrapped Balto's reins around the handlebars. The intrepid sled dog took off like a shot. Garrett's knees were pumping up and down like pistons to keep pace.

Willem, who was bouncing up and down beside me on the bench seat every time the chariot wheels hit a pothole, had an astonished look on his face.

“Amazing! However did you figure out the crown's hiding place?”

Since we had a ways to go, I broke it down.

“From the soldier's clue. PAST WHERE PENNIES BECOME ARCTIC FOXES—that's the Central Park Zoo, where you can put a penny in a machine, crank a handle, and turn it into a squished souvenir stamped with all sorts of zoo animals, including the arctic fox. WHERE SCHOLARS ENTER YOU MUST EXIT—that's the Scholars' Gate, at Fifth Avenue and 60
^th
. It's just beyond the zoo.”

“So,” said Willem, “one must leave the park to retrieve the crown?”

“Yeah. A little ways.”

“Ah! No wonder the Witte Wieven insisted we have human help.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember what Sergeant Shaw said? Tonight no kabouter or magical creature can leave the park. Tonight, Balto and I must remain inside the perimeter wall.”

“No problem. Garrett and I will go get it; you and Balto can wait at the gate.”

“Excellent. And the ‘street that smells of a barn?'”

“That's 59
^th
Street—where all the horse-drawn carriages wait to take people on rides around the park. The horses do their ‘business' while they wait. The gutters smell extremely, uh, earthy.”

“The next bit has to do with Simón Bolívar and that bunch, right?” shouted Garrett from his bicycle seat. “The three horsemen of Central Park South!”

“Right,” I said. “THOUGH THE LARGEST HORSES THERE BE FORGED OF BRONZE is a reference to the three equestrian statues of the Liberators on 59
^th
Street plus the guy on a horse we're looking for.”

“Who would that be?” asked Willem.

“General William Tecumseh Sherman. He was born on February 8, 1820 and died on February 14, 1891 …”

“He ‘died six days after he was born.'”

“Yep. Plus, Sherman was the general who led the march to the sea to end the Civil War. ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah' comes from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the Union Army's marching song. Oh, that bit about ‘from Georgia?'”

“Yes?”

“If you look at the statue real close—which, you know, is something I do, sometimes—you'll notice the right rear horse hoof is crushing a Georgia pine branch because Georgia is the state where Sherman and his marchers did the most damage.”

“What about the running shoes walking?” asked Garrett, puffing out the words between pedal pumps.

“Yes,” said Willem, “is the horse wearing sneakers?”

“No. The winged Goddess of Victory is on the statue too,
walking
in front of Sherman and his horse, pointing the way toward glory, carrying a palm frond. In Greek mythology, her name was
Nike
.”

“Like the running shoes!”

“Exactly!”

“Wow!” said Garrett. “Nikki Van Wyck, you're a genius!”

“To the Grand Army Plaza!” cried Willem.

Balto barked and, somehow, ran even faster.

We were tearing down Cat Hill much more swiftly than we had climbed up it. In the distance, I could barely make out the awnings and umbrellas of the Boathouse Café, the spot where we had found the “frozen lake.”

“THOUGH THE LARGEST HORSES THERE BE FORGED OF BRONZE,” I heard the Screaming Soldier proclaim.

“They're getting the final clue right now!” I said. “Hurry, Garrett!”

He forced his legs to pedal even harder.

We reached the bottom of Cat Hill.

A gunshot rang out!

Metal pinged against metal.

Balto yelped.

The cart began to slow.

I whipped around to my left and saw the statue of the Pilgrim on the north side of 72
^nd
Street Cross Drive. The muzzle of his flintlock musket was billowing smoke.

Our pedicab was barely moving.

“Balto's been hit!” shouted Garrett.

“Stop!” I said to Garrett. “Pull over!”

“We can't,” said Garrett. “If we stop, Loki will win.”

The mighty sled dog whimpered.

“Balto is hurt, Garrett. We need to take care of him.”

“But …”

“He helped us. Now it's our turn to help him.”

We coasted to a stop. I jumped out of the back seat. Willem hopped out after me.

Balto crumpled to the ground.

“I'll keep going!” said Garrett. “I'll ride this thing down to the crown and meet you guys back at Bethesda Terrace!”

“Great!” I said. “Hurry!”

Garrett and the passenger-less pedicab sped up the next hill. He would go grab the crown; Willem and I would take care of Balto.

“He's dinged up pretty badly,” I said, examining the dent in his hind flank while cradling his head in my lap. Balto was breathing hard. Trying to be brave.

Willem grew furious. He strode into the road and glared at the Pilgrim (who maybe ought to change his name to the Sniper).

“Why did you do this, villainous knave?” he shouted at the statue of the haughty, buckle-shoed Puritan. “Would you have Loki be your new king?”

“Verily! For Loki sweareth he wouldst outlaw sledding upon the snow!”

“What?”

“Pilgrim Hill is one of the most popular sledding spots in the park,” I said as I gently raised Balto's heavy head off my lap so I could examine his wound more closely.

“Every winter,” the Pilgrim bellowed, “the vile street urchins do slide down the frosted knoll, screaming and giggling whilst I attempt to slumber here upon my pedestal in peace. King Loki hath sworn he shalt deal with the vile jackanapes most sternly!”

“Indeed I will!” cried Loki as he triumphantly galloped out of the darkness with King Jagiello and his horse. Jonas Blauvelt, looking queasy, was squeezed into the saddle between Jagiello and Loki.