The Tower of Nero

“I’m so proud,” I said.

Will’s face turned the color of sunlight shining through a glass of cranberry juice. “Dad, I’m just glowing. I’m not graduating at the top of my class.”

“I’ll be proud when you do that, too,” I assured him.

“Anyway.” Nico’s lips quivered like he was trying not to giggle. “I’ll call the cavern-runners now. Everybody stay calm, okay?”

“Why are they called cavern-runners?” Rachel asked.

Nico held up his hand, indicating Wait or You’re about to find out.

He faced the darkness and shouted, “Troglodytes! I am Nico di Angelo, son of Hades! I have returned with four companions!”

Shuffling and clicking filled the cavern, as if Nico’s voice had dislodged a million bats. One moment, we were alone. The next moment, an army of troglodytes stood before us as if they’d materialized out of hyperspace. With unsettling certainty, I realized they had run here from wherever they’d been—yards away? miles away?—with speed that rivaled that of Hermes himself.

Nico’s warnings suddenly made sense to me. These creatures were so fast they could have killed us before we had time to draw a breath. If I’d had a weapon in hand, and if I’d raised it instinctively, accidentally…I would now be the grease spot formerly known as Lester formerly known as Apollo.

The troglodytes looked even stranger than the 1960s band that had appropriated their name. They were small humanoids, the tallest barely Meg’s height, with vaguely froglike features: wide thin mouths, recessed noses, and giant, brown, heavily lidded orbs for eyes. Their skin came in every shade from obsidian to chalk. Bits of stone and moss decorated their dark plaited hair. They wore a riot of clothing styles from modern jeans and T-shirts to 1920s business suits to Colonial-era frilly shirts and silk waistcoats.

The real showstopper, however, was their selection of hats, some piled three or four high on their heads: tricorns, bowlers, racing caps, top hats, hard hats, ski caps, and baseball caps.

The trogs looked like a group of rowdy schoolchildren who’d been set loose in a costume store, told to try on whatever they wanted, and then allowed to crawl through the mud in their new outfits.

“We see you, Nico di Angelo!” said a trog in a miniature George Washington costume. His speech was interspersed with clicks, screeches, and growls, so it actually sounded like “CLICK. We—grr—see you—SCREEE—Nico—CLICK—di Angelo—grr.”

George Washingtrog gave us a pointy-toothed grin. “Are these the sacrifices you promised? The trogs are hungry!”

MY LIFE DIDN’T FLASH BEFORE MY EYES, but I did find myself reviewing the past for anything I might have done to offend Nico di Angelo.

I imagined him saying Yes, these are the sacrifices!, then taking Will’s hand and skipping away into the darkness while Rachel, Meg, and I were devoured by an army of costumed, muddy miniature frogmen.

“These are not the sacrifices,” Nico said, allowing me to breathe again. “But I have brought you a better offering! I see you, O great Screech-Bling!”

Nico did not say screech, mind you. He screeched in a way that told me he’d been practicing Troglodytish. He had a lovely, ear-piercing accent.

The trogs leaned in, sniffing and waiting, while Nico held out his hand to Will like gimme.

Will reached into his bag. He pulled out the desiccated lizard and handed to Nico, who unwrapped it like a holy relic and held it aloft.

The crowd let out a collective gasp. “Oooh!”

Screech-Bling’s nostrils quivered. I thought his tricorn hat might pop off his head from excitement. “Is that a—GRR—five-lined skink—CLICK?”

“It is—GRR,” Nico said. “This was difficult to find, O Screech-Bling, Wearer of the Finest Hats.”

Screech-Bling licked his lips. He was drooling all over his cravat. “A rare gift indeed. We often find Italian wall lizards in our domain. Turtles. Wood frogs. Rat snakes. Occasionally, if we are very lucky, a pit viper.”

“Tasty!” shrieked a trog in the back. “Tasty pit vipers!”

Several other trogs screeched and growled in agreement.

“But a five-lined skink,” Screech-Bling said, “is a delicacy we seldom see.”

“My gift to you,” Nico said. “A peace offering in hope of friendship.”

Screech-Bling took the skink in his long-fingered, pointy-clawed hands. I assumed he would shove the reptile in his mouth and be done with it. That’s what any king or god would do, presented with his favorite delicacy.

Instead, he turned to his people and made a short speech in their own language. The trogs cheered and waved their chapeaus. A trog in a mud-splattered chef’s hat pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He knelt before Screech-Bling and accepted the skink.

The chieftain turned to us with a grin. “We will share this bounty! I, Screech-Bling, chief executive—CLICK—officer of the troglodytes, have decreed that a great soup shall be made, so that all shareholders may taste of the wondrous skink!”

More cheering from the troglodytes. Of course, I realized. If Screech-Bling modeled himself after George Washington, he would not be a king—he would be a chief executive.

“For this great gift,” he continued, “we will not kill and eat you, Nico di Angelo, even though you are Italian, and we wonder if you might taste as good as an Italian wall lizard!”

Nico bowed his head. “That is very kind.”

“We will also generously refrain from eating your companions”—a few of Screech-Bling’s shareholders muttered, “Aww, what?”—“though it is true that, like you, they do not wear hats, and no hatless species can be considered civilized.”

Rachel and Meg looked alarmed, probably because Screech-Bling was still drooling profusely as he talked about not eating us. Or perhaps they were thinking about all the great hats they could have worn if they’d only known.

Glow-in-the-dark Will gave us a reassuring nod and mouthed, It’s cool. Apparently, the giving of a gift, followed by the promise of not killing and eating your guests, was standard troglodyte diplomatic protocol.

“We see your generosity, O Screech-Bling!” Nico said. “I would propose a pact between us—an agreement that would produce many hats for us all, as well as reptiles, fine clothing, and rocks.”

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd. It seemed Nico had hit upon all four things on the troglodytes’ Christmas wish list.

Screech-Bling summoned forward a few senior trogs, who I guessed were his board of directors. One was the chef. The others wore the hats of a police officer, a firefighter, and a cowboy. After a short consultation, Screech-Bling faced us with another pointy-toothed grin.

“Very well!” he said. “We will take you to our corporate headquarters, where we will feast upon skink soup and—CLICK, GRR—talk more about these matters!”

We were surrounded by a throng of cheering, growling shareholders. With a total lack of regard for personal space, as one might expect from a tunnel-dwelling species, they picked us up and ran with us on their shoulders, sweeping us out of the cavern and into a maze of tunnels at a speed that would’ve put the tauri silvestres to shame.