Jesse James and the Dragon's Egg

Soup, Secrets, and Passages

Two things happened.

First: Al started shooting sparks out of his mouth. For the longest time, the kids had wondered what the hard little nodule at the roof of his mouth was. Brad thought it was a deformed tooth and honestly, that was probably the best guess. They had all but forgotten about it until this morning when Al was lying on one of the beds and a bright blue spark popped out of his mouth. He screamed and fell backwards off the bed, scared Brad who ran out of the room, pulled down a small end table, which in turn toppled not one, not two, but three life-size marble statues. Life-size marble statues, as it turns out, were not designed to topple.

This brings us to the second thing. Brad had been taking a shower when Al scared him. Streaking, as it also turns out, is very frowned upon in Mattu Khan.

The kids were now on restrictions, and already stir crazy was setting in. Brad, however, had an idea. He had become close chums with a particularly braggy boy in the kitchen. The boy had told him all about how he had traveled to another world by airship, explored a jungle, visited a city of the dead and fought the last monster in the universe. And those were the things that were easy to believe. He had also told Brad about the passages.

It turns out, according to the boy, that Mattu Khan was riddled with secret passages. To prove his point, he took Brad to a discrete closet in the back of the kitchen and pushed against the wall. There was a rusty click, and the wall moved. It pushed in about an inch, then slid sideways out of view. Debris obstructed both directions and the passage went nowhere, but it was secret, and it was a passage.

"I'm telling you, they are all over this place!"

"Man, you don't know that." Lamar was lounging in one of the chairs, picking at the cracked upholstery. "That was probably just another closet."

"Dude, seriously? A closet in a closet? Even you don't believe that."

"I'll tell you what I believe." John walked over to the wall next to the fireplace. "I believe I'm bored. And if pushing on a couple of walls helps, well, I'm pushin on some walls." He put both hands on the wall and pushed.

It moved. It sunk in, only moved about a tenth of an inch, but it moved.

"Whoa!"

"Oh, come on! That doesn't mean anything. This place is like a thousand years old. You're lucky that wall didn't fall down."

John was still heaving on the wall, it wasn't budging any farther. "Come on, man!" He grunted. "Gimme some help here!"

By now Jesse, Jake and Kate were interested too. They had gathered around John, and all were trying to help push the wall. "Lamar, give us a hand, man." Jesse grunted as he put everything he was worth into the push.

"Fine." The big boy sighed and stood. This was going to be a useless effort, and he was probably going to break something else in the process. But at least it was something to do.

Everyone stood back. Lamar dusted off his hands and put them and a shoulder against the old wood paneling.

He sighed. "This is pointle..."

The wall moved. With a grinding, crunching sound, it sank in almost a full inch.

"Jesus! It moved!"

Everybody was beside themselves.

"Do it again!" Jesse pushed Lamar.

Lamar planted his feet, put his big shoulder into the section of wall and pushed for all he was worth. At first, nothing happened. Lamar could hear the wood paneling creaking ever so slightly, but it gave no sign of giving way further. Then, just as Lamar had decided to give up, there was a rusty click and a quick cloud of dust and the little section of wall moved in another half an inch. There was a grooved track in the floor which the section fit neatly into. A mild application of force and the section slid silently away, revealing a hidden corridor.