The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past

Chapter 14 - The Records Room

Binny was no expert on architecture, but intentionally or not, the person who’d designed this tangle of buildings and paths had created the most incredible skate park she had ever seen. She made a mental note to return here with her skateboard someday. Someday, that is, when she actually had a working skateboard, she reminded herself. 

“Caleb said they would have archives. Let’s find them.” With her instruction given, Binny started pedaling. 

“The buildings have names.” Penny offered as they got closer to the nearest one. But once they saw the names, that feature seemed less helpful than she’d originally hoped. “Orpheus.” 

“What’s an Orpheus?” Binny asked.

“Orpheus is a demigod.” Zach and Penny answered in unison – cracking each other up in the process.

“I knew that.” Binny said unconvincingly as the other two giggled. “But why does it say Orpheus on the building?”

The kids continued pedaling towards another building with another name on the side – “Heracles”. 

“Another demigod. They’ve named all their buildings that way.”

Swallowing her pride a little Binny asked, “What’s the difference between a demigod and a god?”

Zach answered without hesitation, “A demigod is what you get when a god and a human have a baby – a mortal being with god-like powers.” 

“That’s so cool.” Penny chimed in. 

“Not always. The demigods get their powers from the gods. But a lot of times the gods get angry at them for misusing their powers and end up killing them. Sometimes parents even kill their own children.” 

§

Three buildings and three demigods later the kids were no closer to finding the archive. “Doesn’t this place have some sort of a map? At the mall there’s a map of all the stores.” Binny complained.

“If they did, it would probably be a map of the Greek islands.” Zach snorted.

“What’s a home plate doing over there?” Penny pointed.

Just over the small rise of greenery, the kids found a circle of dirt. In the center of the circle was home plate. Batter’s boxes had been painted in the dirt on either side of the plate. A small bronze plaque was raised off to the side. Binny dropped her bike in the grass, wandered over to the plaque, and began to read aloud.

“On this spot batters swung at pitches in Sick’s Seattle Stadium. Opened on June 15, 1938, Sick’s Stadium was home to the Seattle Rainiers, the Seattle Pilots, and for a few weeks in the summer of 1946 the Seattle Steelheads of the West Coast Negro League. On September 6, 1976, the Rainiers beat the Portland Mavericks 2 to 0. It was the last time professional baseball was ever played at Sick’s Stadium.”

“We had a baseball stadium right in our backyard. And they tore it down for this? An office park?” Penny was incredulous.

“What are you children doing here?”

A thin woman in a white lab coat had marched up over the rise and was standing a few feet from the kids, surveying them and their bikes. In the upper left quadrant of her lab coat the name S. TRACE was embroidered. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun. This made her face look pinched and sharp. Her eyes appeared to bug out a little bit from behind her small studious glasses. She sounded not quite angry, but certainly annoyed and impatient for an answer to her question.

Zach and Penny started moving towards their bikes, getting the sense that it was time to leave this place. But as they still hadn’t found the archives, Binny had other ideas. “Oh, we’re here to visit my mom.”