From the Archives
26: Archive, or “The Caster Con”
The Tournament of Champions—a semi-regular competition among casters from all walks of life possessing all sorts of cryptid loyalties—has produced some illustrious names in our secret community. We’ve had at least two challengers who went on to become high-profile political figures, a street magician of some note, and a modern-day Hollywood actress with an impressive social media following who recently let slip a reference to her favored cryptid.
The scene that follows, however, does not feature a particularly well-known caster but instead underscores a bit of Champion’s Trophy trivia that is worthy of a callout: the Champion’s Trophy itself has never once been photographed or drawn in any manner, by collective agreement of our entire caster culture and community. The reasons for this are myriad but the one most often cited is that it can be difficult to explain what the cup is an award for.
Some of us believe it’s simply for surviving.
Only 976 tales to go.
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
Archive says this aloud to Diana as she bandages the blistered burn on his shin. They normally would be kneeling in the shadow of the abandoned hospital if the fog hadn’t become so dense. It’s so thick, they can no longer see the New York City skyline from this little island—and the Bronx shore is less than a quarter of a mile away. The old growth that’s reclaimed the hospital could be hiding anything or anyone.
“You make that up?” she asks.
“No,” he says, “Michael Jordan said it.”
“Is he one of the casters here?”
“Are you kidding me? You think the most famous basketball player in the world would be trying to win the Champion’s Trophy?”
Diana pulls the bandage tighter than necessary, and he winces. She says, “I don’t follow basketball. It doesn’t matter. Are we on the right side of the hospital?”
“Everything matters to somebody. And no, not yet. But we’re almost there.”
She take out her spellbook and flips to the right card in it. “You’re going to have a hard time walking. We should use my Ziz now to fly us the rest of the way.”
“No, no. Nia’s probably still nearby—I’m not in a hurry to get burned by her stupid lava bear again. And there’s no way she’ll miss a massive red bird with passengers passing overhead.”
“I would think she’d expect that from Air casters.”
He says, “Well, I don’t need to be airlifted out just yet. Besides, it might not be only her we’re watching out for—she might have her teammate with her. I met him at the challengers’ dinner last month.”
“The Chinese guy. I think he’s already out.”
“Really, is that right? Who put him out?”
“I don’t know. I think he quit after Jackson backstabbed their alliance. Of course, he backstabbed Nia in order to make that alliance with Jackson, so…”
She trails off. Neither of them says anything else as Archive tests his weight on his injured leg. Diana still has her spellbook open.
“You wouldn’t backstab me, would you?” she says.
“No, of course not. But if I were going to, I’d still give you the same answer, wouldn’t I?”
She laughs. “Right. I guess I just wanted to tell you that I’m getting paranoid. I’ve only held the trophy for about two hours. That’s not going be anywhere near enough to win. And frankly, I have no idea who has it now. I’d guess Jackson, since he’s such a backstabber.”
“I think I’ve held it less than that.” Archive is moving now, and Diana is following him around the perimeter of the old hospital. “The fact is, I’m not going to win.”
She watches the thick trees just feet away, but they’re already becoming blurs in the fog. “It’s still afternoon, but it looks like its dusk.”
“The judges will start lifting the fog soon—by tomorrow morning, at the beginning day three. That’s how we’ll know it’s almost over.”
“Or dawn. Dusk or dawn.” She helps him over a mound of crumbled rubble that used to be a wall. She looks up at disintegrating structure. “Wasn’t somebody famous in this hospital?”
Archive says, “Mary Mellon. She was called Typhoid Mary. She infected a bunch of people when she was a cook, so they brought her here, but they let her leave after a couple of years if she promised not to cook anymore. She promised, and then she did it anyway, and a bunch more people got sick. So, they sent her here for the rest of her life.”
“What? Why would they hold our tournament on an island where we could all catch typhoid? That’s not right.”
“Typhoid Mary was here over a hundred years ago,” he says. “There hasn’t been a major outbreak in over ten years, and even that was in Africa. Besides, there are vaccinations for it now. It just ensures no one who’s not in the know about casters will get caught up in the tournament. So, you can gear down.”
“Why would you talk to me like that? Don’t talk to me like that. ‘Gear down.’ I’m not a racecar.”
“Sorry. It’s just a saying.”
She says, “Well, it’s not one I’ve ever heard. So, don’t say it anymore. Not to me anyway. Say it to Nia, if she comes back with her lava bear and her phoenix.”
“Oh crap. She has a phoenix, too?”
“Well, she is a fire caster.” Diana shrugs. “That’s why I brought plenty of Vaseline.”
Archive says, “I was ready for poison ivy, not being set on fire.”
They reach the far wall, and when they round the corner, there’s a sizable courtyard between buildings. Archive ventures a few feet into it. “There’s a service entrance back here, where the bricks are all broken. We’re not going into the hospital itself, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“How do you remember all of this stuff about the island and the hospital and the tournament?”
He smiles at her and taps his temple. “That’s why they call me Archive. Eidetic memory. It’s kind of like photographic memory. They’ll tell you it doesn’t exist in adults because of language development and abstract thinking, but here I am.”
“I guess so. Here you are.”
Archive suddenly falls as if his burned leg has given out beneath him, and he reaches for her as she tries to help him. He pulls her down with him, just as a jet of flames passes through where they had been standing. They are not hurt, but they are singed.
“Run,” he says, getting back to his feet.
A second blast of fire blackens the old hospital bricks as they move.
They duck under a broken archway and into a dimly lit tunnel as a huge bird seemingly comprised of flaming feathers ricochets off the jumbled pathway and back into the sky, out of sight again.
“I told you she has a phoenix,” Diana says.
“I didn’t doubt you.”
Archive turns and rushes through a tangle of vines and ivy that hang down like a curtain over a jagged break in the tunnel’s wall. Diana follows him. In a few steps, they are under a canopy of overgrowth that shields what was likely once an entrance ramp to the hospital. They have emerged far enough away from where they entered the tunnel that the phoenix is no longer in sight, though they can still hear it and smell the burnt plant life it is obliterating.
As Archive takes his spellbook out of his backpack, Diana stares at him but recovers her own spellbook in response. Her expression is unreadable.
“Don’t do this,” she says. “I don’t want this fight. We need to stick together.”
Archive tips his book toward her so she can see its cards. “We are sticking together. I’m not going to win—I didn’t come here so I could win, in fact. I came here so my team could win.”
He touches a card and a compact armadillo-like creature with short clawed limbs appears between them. Its tiny eyes flit between the two casters. Archive makes a whistling noise, and the creature finally focuses on him. He points to a spot in the soil near the entrance ramp. The creature begins to dig there.
“It’s a wunk,” Archive says to Diana. “I mapped it just off the Badlands Loop in South Dakota.”
The wunk digs as Diana sticks her head back in between the strands of ivy and glances down the length of the tunnel. She returns to Archive. “She’s down there.”
“Who?”
“Nia. And her phoenix.”
“How about the lava bear?”
“I didn’t see it.”
Archive says, “Oh, good. I was worried for a second there.”
The wunk has retreated from the hole it’s dug, and Archive strokes its head and ears before it disappears back into the card he called it from. Then he reaches down into the hole and pulls out a sizable golden trophy. He empties dirt from it and brushes off its surface as Diana kneels next to him.
“When did you bury the Champion’s Trophy?” she says. “And why?”
“I didn’t,” he says, “and that’s why. Look here.”
He turns it so she can see the time calculator on it that shows how long each contestant has retained possession of the trophy during the tournament. The numbers are dimmed, unreadable.
“It’s broken?” she says.
“No,” Archive says. “It’s fake.”
He takes off his backpack again, returning his spellbook and removing an item wrapped in a gray cloth. He unwraps it, revealing a second Champion’s Trophy. This one has accurate possession readings on its calculator. Archive’s number is the only one recording and ticking at the moment; he’s at three hours, thirty minutes, and change.
Diana reaches out and touches it. “How did you make this? There aren’t any drawings, any pictures—”
“They had it on that display at the challengers’ dinner,” Archive says. “I took a good long look at it. And then my memory and a 3D printer was all it took. Then I had a month to get around the local prohibitions on visiting the island by applying to the New York Parks Department for permission to continue my research on the black-crowned night heron.”
When Diana remains silent, he adds, “I’m not doing research, of course. I just needed to get here long enough to bury the fake trophy. I’ve never even seen a black-crowned night heron, but I read all about it. Once. That was more than enough to make me an expert.”
He hands her the Champion’s Trophy. His own time counter stops at three hours thirty-two minutes, and hers begins, starting at two hours seven minutes.
“Nia’s held the Cup about nine hours,” he tells her. “Watch out for Caitlin Cardoza, too—she’s one of the Water casters. She’s got some decent time holding onto it.”
“But I have less time than you,” Diana says, though she accepts the trophy. A wave of warmth crashes through the tunnel nearby and makes the ivy curtain flutter. The heat reaches both of them. “How is this going to work?”
“Nia knew I had the real cup,” he says, gesturing back toward the tunnel—on the other side of the ivy curtain, the tunnel begins to glow brighter. He holds up the trophy he crafted. “And I’ll make sure she sees this one. She’ll keep coming for me, and so will some of the others. I’ll lure them away, and you find somewhere to hide out until this is done.”
Diana stares at him a moment longer, saying nothing but with her mouth open as if to speak. Then the vines and ivy explode into fire as something large approaches, and Archive flees. He holds the false Champion’s Trophy behind his head as he runs, as if using it to shield himself from the heat coming up behind him. He disappears into the overgrowth and the undergrowth and the old world growth.
Diana goes the opposite direction.
The two don’t meet again while the tournament rages on.
Until he leaves the island, Archive doesn’t hear who wins, though he knows with certainty it wasn’t Nia. By the time all is said and done, she has lost her phoenix in one of the battles with another caster, and she leads two other casters—including the caster Riptide Jackson of the alleged backstabbing fame—to pursue Archive across the island to an old lighthouse. When they finally corner him there, he surrenders the fake trophy. Even if it were real, there’s not enough time left in the tournament for any of them to hold the Champion’s Trophy long enough to win.
Spiteful, they hurt him just the same.
The tournament judges, always watchful, arrange for Archive to be taken from the island and its crumbling hospital ruins to another island—Staten—and a fully functional hospital, where he’ll be treated for what doctors call dry drowning (courtesy Jackson) and third-degree burns (courtesy Nia’s lava bear in a second attack).
So, he is airlifted from the island.
Later, he cannot be sure if it was a helicopter or a cryptid that transported him. He only knows that when he wakes up sometime the following day, Diana Rosari, looking far worse for the wear, is standing at the foot of his hospital bed. She smiles at him.
“So,” he says, “what happened?”
And Diana simply says, “Teamwork and intelligence.”
He nods. “Congratulations.”