Dactyl Hill Squad Read online

  “Daniel has imagined the unimaginable and in doing so sends readers on a dino thrill ride. I have been talking about this book nonstop! The kids, the dinosaurs, the Civil War, this book is true fire. It is everything I didn’t even know I needed.” – Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

  “An extraordinary adventure full of heart and imagination that adults will enjoy reading just as much as kids! This is the story that would’ve made me fall in love with reading when I was a kid.” – Tomi Adeyemi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone

  “In this Tyrexcellent historical realignment – fast paced, but deceptively packed with amazing detail – Older’s uprising of sheroes and heroes grips, stomps, and soars from start to finish.” – Rita Williams-Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of One Crazy Summer

  “Dactyl Hill Squad is an engaging, lively adventure with a heroine I wish I were, in a world I didn’t want to leave.” – Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award-winning author of Sing, Unburied, Sing

  “This incredible story brings history to life with power, honesty, and fun.” – Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of Chains

  “A crackling fantasy adventure full of thrilling scenes.” – James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Battle Cry of Freedom

  “As a historian of New York City, I’m thrilled with Daniel José Older’s melding of the best of history and fantasy in Dactyl Hill Squad. I couldn’t put it down! it was wonderful to see familiar people, places, and events in fantastic but still humanly true circumstances. What a perfect way to introduce history to a new generation of readers – I can’t wait to share this book with my nephews. Thank you, Daniel José Older!” – Leslie Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery

  Praise for Dactyl Hill Squad

  Title Page

  Map

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One: Out the Door and Away

  Chapter Two: City of Whispers

  Chapter Three: Knuckleskull Checkpoint

  Chapter Four: A Letter from the Front

  Chapter Five: Fire at the Zanzibar

  Chapter Six: Brachy

  Chapter Seven: Ka-Blam!

  Chapter Eight: A Refuge in Ruins

  Chapter Nine: The Records Room

  Chapter Ten: Run!

  Chapter Eleven: The River Crossing

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve: Midnight at the Bochinche

  Chapter Thirteen: A Dapper Morning

  Chapter Fourteen: Rooftop Dactyls

  Chapter Fifteen: The Silo on the Edge of Town

  Chapter Sixteen: Updates and Rumblings

  Chapter Seventeen: A Squad Is Born

  Chapter Eighteen: Assignments, Warnings, and a Code

  Chapter Nineteen: Mission to Manhattan

  Chapter Twenty: Manhattan Skyline

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Not-So-Humble Abode of Mr. Harrison Weed

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Caught!

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Hedgehog, Granted

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Trouble and More Trouble

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Silo Jones

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Plotting & Planning, Planning & Plotting

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Out and Away over the Rooftops

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Piers & Pirates

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Out into the Blue

  Chapter Thirty: Battle for the Ocarrion

  Chapter Thirty-One: Sea Flight

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Chase Back to the Harbor

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Cry Havoc

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Stakeout

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Parapet Swoop

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Attack!

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Abre Camino

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Shake ’n’ Drop

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: A Journey Begins

  Author’s Note

  Dactyl Hill Squad Book Two Teaser

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “MARGARET!”

  Magdalys Roca sat on her bed in the girls’ bunk at the Colored Orphan Asylum and closed her eyes. Her day satchel was packed, her uniform was on, shoes buckled; she’d wrestled her hair into a tight bun the way the matrons insisted she do. The triceratops wagon was leaving any second for the theater, and the theater was just about the best place to be as far as Magdalys was concerned.

  But …

  “Margaret Rocheford, come here this instant!”

  She had sworn, sworn! to herself that she wouldn’t answer to that name anymore. She would answer to her real name, the way her brother Montez said it, the way her long-gone sisters had: Magdalys with that y drawn out long and sharp eeeees, like a melody.

  The matron’s footsteps clack-clacked up the marble hall, paused, and then turned with a squeak and headed away again.

  When Montez was there and he did say her name like the song she knew it to be, she didn’t really care what Miss Henrietta Von Marsh called her. But now he was gone too, gone six weeks and two days to be exact, and sure the other kids called her Magdalys (and Maggie, Mags, or Mag-D, depending on the day), but it wasn’t the same; it was a stumble not a song, and she certainly wouldn’t be responding to Margaret. And Rocheford even less. So Magdalys sat there, and she tried not to think of the show she would miss at the Zanzibar Savannah Theater.

  “The trike wagon will just leave without you, I suppose,” Von Marsh called out as the hallway double doors squeaked open. “Shame, really. I heard the Crunks are performing The Tempest tonight.” And then the doors slammed shut and the clack-clacking got quieter and quieter.

  The Tempest! It wasn’t Magdalys’s favorite Shakespeare play, but she’d read it (she’d read most of them) and she was instantly filled with wonder: How would Halsey and Cymbeline Crunk, the two lead actors of the only all-black Shakespearean company in New York, bring that story of exiled wizards and lovers and monsters to life? Who would play which role and how would they do the beast Caliban and what kinds of stage dinos would they use and how would the rowdy crowd react and …

  Dang it! Magdalys thought, jumping to her feet and grabbing her satchel. She wasn’t going to let Von Marsh’s stubbornness make her miss out on some good theater. She shoved open the door and blitzed down the brightly lit corridor, her footfalls echoing all around her.

  A bunch of kids were studying and playing board games in the first floor common area. “Whoa,” Bernadette and Syl yelled as Magdalys blew past. “Slow down, Speeds McGee!” Sweety Mae called after her. But Magdalys didn’t have time to stop and banter. She wasn’t going to make it, and then she’d be mad at herself all night, and her already bad mood would sink beneath the floorboards as she imagined all the fun Two Step and Mapper and Little Sabeen were having without her.

  “Careful now,” old Mr. Calloway called when Magdalys slammed open the front doors and rocketed down the big, fancy staircase. “I just mopped!” Magdalys slowed a bit so she wouldn’t slip and splatter herself all over the stone walking path ahead. Mr. Calloway had escaped a provisional farm in upstate New York long before Magdalys was born, and she tried to be as nice to him as she could.

  “Sorry, Mr. Calloway!” she called over her shoulder. “See you tomorrow!”

  “Alright!” Mr. Calloway called back.

  Up ahead, Varney, the orphanage’s huge old triceratops, grunted and stomped his feet. Great big folds of flesh hung down from his massive belly and dangled in dollops over each other along his four thick legs. The two horns poking out from his forehead were dull and his sleepy eyes had bags under them, but Varney still managed to make the supply ru
ns twice a week and take the kids on field trips to the theater now and then. In the orphanage library’s tattered edition of The Field Guide to North American Dinos, Pteros & Other Assorted -Sauria (which everyone just called the Dinoguide), Dr. Barlow Sloan described triceratopses as noble and docile beasts who wanted nothing more than to sit around chewing on grass and leaves all day, but were perfectly willing to ride into battle and march for weeks on end if called upon to do so by their masters.

  Magdalys always wished she could spend more time with Varney. Dinos were much better than humans, mostly. They didn’t make up names for you or judge you for how you wore your hair — they just lumbered around eating and pooping and carrying people places.

  But it was only a few years ago that New York had passed a law granting black citizens the right to dinoride, and white people in Manhattan still bristled and stared when they saw someone with brown skin astride those massive scaly backs. Magdalys had no idea why anyone would want to keep her from dinoriding just because of the color of her skin, but she knew the orphanage certainly wouldn’t let any of its wards near any dinos, except Varney, and him only every once in a while.

  So Magdalys mostly had to be content with watching the great beasts cavort along outside her window: The lamplighter’s iguanodons would pass first thing in the morning, extinguishing the lanterns as the day broke. Then the commuter brachys would stomp past, passengers cluttered on the saddles and hanging from straps along the side. By noon the streets would fill with stegosaurs lugging supplies and the duckbill riders in fancy dress clothes, heading off to important meetings, while microraptors scurried across the roads, carrying messages or making nuisances of themselves. Most of the trikes and raptors had been sent down south to fight the Confederates, but every once in a while she’d see one of those too. Magdalys could watch them out her window all day, but it wasn’t the same as being out there with the dinos.

  “Heeyah!” Marietta Gilbert Smack called out, and Varney heaved forward, pulling the wagon hitched to his back into motion.

  No! Magdalys thought, sprinting through the big ornate gates enclosing the orphanage. A stitch opened up in her side. Wait!

  Varney stopped with a snort and sigh. He turned his big horned head and directed a single droopy eye at Magdalys. Magdalys skidded to a halt. Had Varney somehow … ? It couldn’t be. The old trike blinked once, then seemed to nod at her. Magdalys gasped.

  “Mags!” Two Step yelled.

  “Magdalys!” Little Sabeen squealed. “You made it!”

  “So you decided to accept your name after all, Margaret,” Henrietta Von Marsh said, a smug smile sliding across her face.

  “No.” Magdalys grabbed Two Step’s outstretched hand and heaved herself onto the wagon. “I decided to go to the theater with my friends.”

  “Hold the wagon, Marietta,” Von Marsh said with a withering scowl. She glared at Magdalys, who had made herself comfortable on the bench beside Two Step and Little Sabeen. “Young lady, when I call your name, I expect you to answer.”

  “I will answer,” Magdalys said. “When you call my real name.”

  “Your real name is Margaret. Period. Your” — she curled up her lips in distaste — “other name no longer applies.”

  Magdalys took a deep breath, willing herself not to unleash the volcano fire of rage she had bubbling up inside her. Can’t we just go, she thought, half hoping old Varney had somehow really heard her a few moments ago, half feeling like she was completely bonkers for even thinking that. Go …

  “That is a remnant of the life you left behind,” Von Marsh went on. “A life, I might add, that you don’t even remember. You’re in America now, not Cuba. And you will present yourself in American society as a proper little colored girl, as long as you are under my roof.”

  Varney grumbled like a tired old man and then heaved forward, pulling the wagon out of the driveway and onto Fifth Avenue. “Hold the trike, I said, Marietta!” Von Marsh hollered, nearly toppling from the sudden lurch of movement.

  “Good thing,” Magdalys muttered as they rumbled out into the early evening streets of Manhattan, “we’re not under your roof.”

  THE DINO LISTENED to me, Magdalys thought as Varney stomped along downtown toward the neighborhood everyone called the Raptor Claw, where the Zanzibar Savannah Theater was. He’d done just what she’d told him to. Twice! Magdalys had heard people talk about an ancient race of dinoriding warriors who could communicate with their steeds, but everyone knew that was all myth and rumor (Dr. Barlow Sloan, in particular, dedicated a whole side column of the Dinoguide to harrumphing the idea). And even if were true, it was ages ago, not today, in New York City. Certainly not some random orphan kid, right? It had to be coincidence.

  Still, the nagging feeling that something extraordinary had just happened persisted …

  “Watch this,” Two Step said, standing in the middle of the wobbling cart and lifting both his wide arms to the sky. “I got a new move!”

  “Oh, do sit down, young man,” Old Mother Virginia Brimworth chided. “If you fall and hurt yourself we’ll never hear the end of it from trustees.”

  Magdalys rolled her eyes. No one listened to Old Brimworth, and she usually got distracted so quickly after saying anything that it didn’t matter anyway. “Do it!” Magdalys called. On the bench across from her, Amaya was staring out into the city around them, a sullen frown painted across her face, brow furrowed. Amaya always looked kind of sullen, and she didn’t talk to too many people, but now there was something else: She looked alert.

  Two Step spun once, then slid all the way to one side of the cart and made his whole body undulate like a wave. Then he jumped, clapped twice over his head, and did the whole thing again.

  “Good heavens!” Old Brimworth grumbled.

  “Brilliant!” Mapper yelled as Sabeen and Magdalys burst into applause.

  “Again,” Sabeen demanded. Amaya just stared at the old shacks and rowhouses of the darkening city around them. What was she watching for?

  Magdalys closed her eyes, tuned into the wagon wheels rumbling through muddy cobblestone streets beneath her, the rocking cart, Varney’s grunts and plodding footfalls, Sabeen and Mapper’s laughter as Two Step fell into another round of dancing.

  Something was different about the city on this warm July evening, and Magdalys couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  “What’s wrong?” Two Step asked, panting as he slid onto the bench beside her. A few lights flickered in the windows around them, but not many. Two Step was the one orphan Magdalys had come to think of as a friend. The others — she looked out for them when she could, especially Little Sabeen, and she had a good time with Bernadette and Syl, and Mapper sometimes. But the truth about orphan life was this: Nothing ever stayed the same. You made friends only to have them ripped away one bright morning with no reason given. They would just be gone. And if not all the sudden, they’d age out at seventeen and get shipped somewhere else anyway. And if they didn’t, in five more years Magdalys herself would. So why bother?

  Still, Two Step seemed to understand her without her ever having to speak, and that was the closest thing to friendship she could imagine. He had light brown skin and a big fro that he constantly argued with the matrons about, and a big belly that jiggled up and down when he laughed and big arms that felt safe when they wrapped around Magdalys for a hug. But he’d be gone one day too.

  Just like Magdalys’s sisters, Julissa and Celia.

  Just like Montez.

  “I don’t know,” Magdalys said, shivering against the sudden night breeze. “It’s …” She listened for a moment, tried to pick up something beyond the wagon wheels and clomping dino. Besides the far-off hoots of some sauropods, there was nothing. Nothing at all. “That’s it,” she whispered.

  “What?” Two Step said, squinting out into the darkness. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Exactly!” Magdalys said. On a normal summer night, Manhattan sizzled with hollers, guffaws, and arguments, a mi
llion tidbits of gossip that warbled and bassooned down alleyways and over rooftops, across bustling avenues and through dingy saloons, back out into the streets where they were chewed on until all the juice was extracted, and then discarded to make room for the next morsel. Farmers and fishmongers would be packing up for the night, cursing and haranguing each other by way of saying see you tomorrow, and various merchants would be standing outside their stores, waiting for that one last customer to round out the day’s sales. Dinos of all shapes and sizes should’ve been trundling down the throughway, skittering across intersections, hauling cargo along for a late delivery at some grocer or apothecary.

  Instead, a single iguanodon limped along the cobblestones, its hunchbacked rider reaching a long pole up to light the street lanterns one by one. Magdalys watched him as they passed. His hands were shaking, and he kept looking around like at any moment something might jump out of the shadows and devour him. Amaya was staring at him too, and then she turned her wide eyes to Magdalys, as if to confirm they’d both noticed the same thing. Magdalys nodded ever so slightly.

  “You think something’s about to happen?” Two Step asked, not bothering to pretend he wasn’t scared.

  Magdalys nodded, then shrugged. “Sure seems like it.” She liked that Two Step didn’t feel like he had to keep up some pretense of bravery around her. It seemed like this strange, almost silent city kept whispering something under its breath, just a notch too quiet to make out, and Magdalys had no idea what secrets the night was hiding.

  “A dactyl came with some grams today, children,” Von Marsh announced. She pulled a stack of envelopes from her purse. “Kyle Tannery.” Mapper hopped up, excited, and grabbed his letter, tearing it open before he’d even gotten back to the bench. “Sabeen Raymond.” Von Marsh handed the letter to Two Step, who passed it to Sabeen. “Amaya Trent.” Amaya didn’t move, just stared at the passing city. “Amaya? You don’t want your letter? It’s from the General, I believe.” Von Marsh adjusted her spectacles and tried to hold the envelope still amidst the bumping of the wagon. “Yes, the General.” She looked up.