“This boy got something of yours?” he asked.
“No, he’s a friend. Put him down.” She scanned the crowd for any sign of the men chasing them. “We should go,” she told Solo. She squeezed his leg once more. “I want to go home.”
Solo rubbed her head. “And that’s just where we’re heading.”
29
Elise let Solo carry her bag and her book while she clutched Puppy. They made their way through the crowds, out of the bizarre, and back to the stairwell. Shaw trailed after them, even after Solo told the boy to get back to his family. And as Elise and Solo made their way down the stairwell to find the others, she kept glancing back to catch sight of Shaw in his brown coveralls, peeking from around the central post or through the rails of a landing higher up. She thought about telling Solo that he was still there, but she didn’t.
A few levels below the bizarre, a porter caught up to them and delivered a message. Jewel was heading down and looking for them. She had half the porters hunting for Elise. And Elise never knew that she’d been missing.
Solo made her drink from his canteen while they waited at the next landing. She then poured a small puddle into his old and wrinkled hands, and Puppy took grateful sips. It took what felt like forever for Jewel to arrive, but when she did, it was in a thunder of hurrying boots. The landing shook. Jewel was all sweaty and out of breath, but Solo didn’t seem to care. The two of them hugged, and Elise wondered if they’d ever let go. People came and went from the landing and gave them funny looks as they passed. Jewel was smiling and crying both when they finally released each other. She said something to Solo, and it was his turn to cry. Both of them looked at Elise, and she could see that it was secrets or something bad. Jewel picked her up next and kissed her on the cheek and hugged her until it was hard to breathe.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she told Elise. But Elise didn’t know what was wrong.
“I got Puppy back,” she said. And then she remembered that Jewel didn’t know about her new pet. She looked down to see Puppy peeing on Jewel’s boot, which must be like saying hello.
“A dog,” Jewel said. She squeezed Elise’s shoulder. “You can’t keep her. Dogs are dangerous.”
“She’s not dangerous!”
Puppy chewed on Elise’s hand. Elise pulled away and rubbed Puppy’s head.
“Did you get her from the bazaar? Is that where you went?” Jewel looked to Solo, who nodded. Jewel took a deep breath. “You can’t take things that don’t belong to you. If you got it from a vendor, it’ll have to go back.”
“Puppy came from the Deep,” Elise said. She bent down and wrapped her arms around the dog. “He came from Mechanical. We can take him back there. But not to the bizarre. I’m sorry I took him.” She squeezed Puppy and thought about the man holding up the red meat with the white ribs. Jewel turned to Solo again.
“It didn’t come from the bazaar,” he confirmed. “She plucked it from a box down in Mechanical.”
“Fine. We’ll straighten this out later. We need to catch up with the others.”
Elise could tell that all of them were tired, including her and Puppy, but they set out anyway. The adults seemed eager to get down, and after seeing the bizarre Elise felt the same way. She told Jewel she wanted to go home, and Jewel said that’s where they were heading. “We ought to make things how they used to be,” Elise told them both.
For some reason that made Jewel laugh. “You’re too young to be nostalgic,” she said.
Elise asked what nostalgic meant, and Jewel said, “It’s where you think the past was better than it really was, only because the present sucks so bad.”
“I get nostalgic a lot,” Elise declared.
And Jewel and Solo both laughed at that. But then they looked sad after. Elise caught them looking at each other like this a lot, and Jewel kept wiping at her eyes. Finally, Elise asked them what was wrong.
They stopped in the middle of the stairway and told her. Told her about Marcus, who had slipped over the rails when that crazy crowd had knocked her down and Puppy had gotten away. Marcus had fallen and died. Elise looked at the rails beside her and didn’t see how Marcus could slip over rails so high. She didn’t understand how it had happened, but she knew it was like when their parents had gone off and never came back. It was like that. Marcus would never come laughing through the Wilds again. She wiped her face and felt awful for Miles, who wasn’t a twin anymore.
“Is that why we’re going home?” she asked.
“It’s one of the reasons,” Jewel said. “I never should’ve brought you here.”
Elise nodded. There was no arguing with that. Except she had Puppy now, and Puppy had come from here. And no matter what she told Jewel, Elise wasn’t giving him back.