by Iva Viddal
And then time was up.
“Step forward, whoever caused this fuss!” thundered Doctor Mapple. Old Worm emerged from the pack of bodies, her witch’s hat crooked over her proud, lumpy face.
“My apologies, sir.” She grinned, revealing wide gaps between her teeth. “William escaped from my pocket and had to be chased down.”
“And William is . . . ?” Doctor Leech raised a painted eyebrow.
“My pet mouse, ma’am.” Old Worm shrugged.
Doctor Leech sighed and Doctor Mapple grumbled. They returned their attention to the prisoner.
“Get the Stranger inside,” Mapple grumbled to his attendants, “up to the highest level. Where she can do no harm to anyone.”
October watched as Nerma disappeared into the dark building.
23
A Business Venture
Nerma spent the rest of the night and the following day fitfully, tossing and turning in the same creaking iron bed where she had spent her first hours in Small Hours. She slept in bouts and woke each time in confusion, the mustard yellow wallpaper of the Gold Room clamoring for her attention.
She dreamt terrible dreams, nightmares about rabid animals that chased and bit at her, dreams of spiders that toyed with her in their webs, and dreams of a Harmony Hill that had been taken over by two evil doctors. The next two days and nights were the same: dream and wake, dream and wake.
Three times a night, an attendant climbed to the top of the Sanatorium to deliver slop and take away her dirty dishes, but otherwise, Nerma was left with her own tortured thoughts. How had the pieces of Bardry’s severed Purpose gotten into her stew bowl? She racked her brain but couldn’t come up with any answers. And she didn’t know what to think about October. The look of anger she’d seen on his face, the way he had bound her so tightly in his webbing, the seriousness with which he marched her to the Sanatorium—these things told her that he had only been pretending to be her friend these past few days. Perhaps it had all been an act, part of his “training.”
And yet, hadn’t he said that he would rescue her? No, what he’d actually said was: We’ll get you. But what did that mean? Had he meant that someone would rescue her from the Sanatorium—or that someone would get her to avenge Bardry’s injuries? Or had she misheard him entirely?
Whatever October had meant, Nerma waited in vain, for no one came to her rescue.
A knock at the door woke her just after dusk on the third night, and she pulled herself upright as Doctor Leech entered the room.
“You have visitors,” she said. The Doctor’s eyes were cold, and her teeth looked green in the light of the nightglows.
The Doctor turned abruptly and left, and Bluff and Lure scuttled into the room. They grinned at Nerma.
“Wonderful news, girl,” Bluff announced. “You are free.”
“Free . . . ?” Nerma asked warily.
Lure nodded vigorously. “We have valiantly offered to take you—a violent and dangerous criminal, as you are well aware—off the hands of the kindly Doctors.”
“It’s a win-win situation, you see,” explained Bluff. His gold teeth clinked against each other when he spoke. “The Doctors win because they don’t have to manage the grisly business of handling a Purposeless Stranger—a criminal, no less. You win, because you are free to leave the Sanatorium—and you get to enjoy the great honor of being business partners with Bluff and Lure, Business Associates Deluxe. And we win because we get to make a neat little profit.”
Dollar signs flashed beneath Lure’s eyelids.
“I’d rather stay here, thank you.” Nerma folded her arms.
“Alas, I can imagine a soulless one like yourself would love to stay in the madhouse, but come with us, you shall. Now, up with you. We won’t waste a night of work or a penny of profit.” Lure clapped her hands greedily.
Nerma had no say in the matter and was ushered to the ground floor and out onto the street. The night was dry but cold, and she shivered as her new “business partners” escorted her through town to their second-story office, a dark and drab little room that held only two broken desks and a dead potted plant.
For the next hour, Nerma listened as Bluff and Lure discussed the best way to emphasize her “Strangerliness.” Lure believed that Nerma’s spoon should be removed from her head; Bluff believed it should stay.
“It will show the folks how desperate the Stranger is to fit in, you see, how utterly pathetic she is,” he said.
“I say we take it off,” Lure said. “Think how terrifying she’d look without it. It would really give folks the willies.” She tugged at the spoon, but the webbing held fast.
“Don’t yank the head off!” Bluff whined. “No one will pay to see a headless Stranger.”
Lure gave up and examined Nerma’s plain black dress.
Bluff believed she should wear “Stranger clothes,” which he described as being “something like an orangutan’s fur but also like the fizz from a tepid brew on a foggy morning.”
Nerma had no idea what this might mean, but she was glad when Lure pointed out that new clothes would be an extra expense. In the end, it was decided that Nerma would tour the town—and later the world at large—in her black dress and with her spoon still firmly attached to her head.
“It’s a pity about the face, though,” Lure muttered, pinching Nerma’s chin between her thumb and index finger. “If you’d been born prettier, you’d be a marvelously ghastly Stranger.”
Nerma huffed.
They ignored her and argued over whether or not she should be paraded through town in a cage or on a leash. Eventually, a compromise was reached; Nerma would have to endure neither. Instead, she would simply walk between the business associates with the instructions to “stay close and sound stupid.”
When they finally made it down to the street, though, Bluff and Lure thought better of this and procured a wooden wagon from a child in the neighborhood. Finally, with Nerma bundled under a blanket in the rickety wagon, Bluff & Lure’s Freak Show commenced its tour.
“Come one, come all, to see the Treacherous Stranger!” the partners called out as the wagon wheels whined against the stone ground. “Come see the Infamous Girl Without a Soul! But beware! She bites!”
A few shutters were pulled back, and more than one curtain twitched in the windows above them, but the streets remained still. Now and then, a villager passed by on the way to work, but none paid attention to the awkward girl or her swaggering “partners.”
Lure suggested that they head to the Midnight Market, and Bluff approved. When they saw the large gathering of villagers there, they rubbed their hands greedily, and Lure’s eyes whirled. Their shouts echoed off the high walls of the marketplace:
“Small Hours’ own Witch here!”
“A glimpse for a penny!”
“Ask a question for a dime!”
Bluff paused to hiss at Nerma, “Pull the blanket over your head! We don’t want ‘em seein’ the wares before they pay!”
Nerma gladly complied. Beneath the thin fabric of the blanket, she was no longer on display but could still see the market square.
Bluff and Lure continued to holler for customers, but none came forward.
“Hey, kid!” Bluff called out to a young boy. “Don’t you want to see the Stranger? Only a penny—special price just for you!”
The boy shrugged. “Nah, I seen her at the Gala. No one cares anymore, anyway. Everyone’s talking about the bandit now.”
“The bandit?” Bluff asked, but the boy skipped off.
Lure dragged the wagon in the direction the boy had gone, weaving between cart stands and around clusters of chattering townspeople. They reached the raised stage at the end of the marketplace. In its center, a pillory had been assembled, the kind Nerma had seen in drawings of medieval punishments. Two poles rose from the platform and supported a wooden rectangle. Into this rectangle, three holes had been cut—two on either side and one larger one in the middle—and from this center emerged October’s he
ad. His hands, balled into fists, projected from the other two holes.
Nerma gasped beneath her blanket.
Bluff tutted. “A bandit indeed.” He whistled to himself.
“My, oh my, the Maker saw fit to make this a good day for the likes of us, Bluff.” Lure tittered.
They pulled the wagon up to the stage’s edge, and Nerma lifted the blanket from her face. October’s glasses were missing, but he spotted her immediately, and the shadow of a smile crossed his face.
“I am sorry, Nerma,” he said as loudly as he dared. The marketplace was noisy, and nosy ears were everywhere. “I was able to find them, but I wasn’t able to get you. They caught me.”
“Find what? Who?” Nerma mouthed.
“Ron made a map that shows where to look for—”
“Boy!” A voice came from above, so loud it hurt Nerma’s ears. “No speaking, boy!” Nerma looked up to see a face with a megaphone-mouth glaring down at them from a window.
A guard stepped forward and ordered Bluff and Lure to sell their “goods” elsewhere. Grudgingly, they threw the blanket back over Nerma’s head and pulled her to the opposite end of the marketplace. Nerma watched as October disappeared between the moving throngs of people. She tried to stand up, but a rough hand pushed her head back down.
She knew this wasn’t the moment for escape, but she worried about October.
Throughout the night, Bluff and Lure continued to shout at disinterested passersby, occasionally moving to a new spot or trying out new lines. Two villagers agreed to pay a penny each after Bluff promised to show them the “ferocious baby of a mermaid and dragon,” but the customers demanded their money back when they saw Nerma, bored and ordinary with her dull spoon.
Toward morning, the two redheaded girls from the Gala, Verdura and Flora, approached the wagon. They asked if they could pay a dime to ask the creature a question, and Lure hungrily accepted the coin before lifting the blanket.
The girls’ eyes lit up.
“It really is the Stranger! To think, she was a Witch the whole time! Father was right—”
“—and Mother, too, but I still say that even a vicious creature like this shouldn’t be put out of its misery—”
“Oh no, Flora, that’s simply too ghastly! Too humane!”
“Too forgiving! Too ugly!”
Bluff cleared his throat. “Ask the question, ladies.”
“Well, Flora here was wondering—”
“I was not, Verdura! You’re the one who said, ‘I bet the Stranger didn’t even—’”
“Fine, I’ll ask her then!” The girl turned her green eyes to Nerma, who was waiting irritably. “Stranger,” Verdura asked, “if you could have any Purpose in the whole world, what would it be?”
The girls batted their eyelashes excitedly.
“Um, I—I don’t know,” Nerma said, and the girls gasped in shock.
“You see, Flora, I told you it was that bad! Imagine not even knowing—”
“Hallowed Maker, the horror of it! I simply can’t, simply won’t imagine it, Verdy.”
The girls hurried off, their shears snipping at the air.
Bluff and Lure spent the final hour before dawn calling to would-be customers and grumbling at each other, but Nerma spent the time in contemplation beneath her blanket.
What would her Purpose be, if she had a choice? Certainly not this spoon. But certainly not gardening shears, either, or a broom handle for a neck—or a tail, or fur, or a mouth in the shape of a megaphone.
Would it be better to have an invisible Purpose, like the psychic and kinetic powers of the Diviners? Nerma didn’t think so.
Not that there was anything wrong with any of those Purposes; on the contrary, they were often very useful, and everyone is Small Hours was certainly one of a kind, unique. And yet . . . were they really, truly unique if they all focused so intently on their Purposes?
Nerma brooded and returned to the original question. What Purpose would she choose? She thought about October’s Purpose. Being able to spin spider’s webs and climb walls gave him such incredible freedom. He could climb anywhere he wanted, make a bed anywhere he wanted—
And yet, he had no freedom.
Nerma knew that October hadn’t wanted to chase Bardry through the Tunnels of Entanglement. He had clearly felt terrible guilt for turning the poor man over to the Doctors. His training—and his obedience to the doctors—was something that he hated.
Nerma decided that she didn’t want a Purpose if it meant that others could use it for their benefit. Clearly, though, not having a Purpose hadn’t gotten her very far, only as far as Bluff and Lure’s Freak Show wagon would carry her.
What was it the Oracle had said? Nerma tried to remember, but just then the wagon creaked into motion and began to clunk across the cobblestones again, jarring both her teeth and her thoughts.
24
The Wardrobe
The truth was, no one was entirely sure that October was a bandit—which, he thought, was a rather dramatic word to use for a boy who had been caught sipping tea at a kitchen table.
His neck ached terribly, but he smiled to himself as he replayed the exciting events of the night before last.
It had started in agony. He had been pacing his apartment, racked by guilt and consumed with concern for Nerma, when Ted and Ron had arrived at his door with a bag of cinnamon tongue-fritters.
“You should sit down,” Ted said when he saw the tormented look on October’s face.
“I told her we would save her. I feel like I’m losing my mind,” October said. His hair was a wild mess, and he hadn’t eaten since Nerma was taken to the Sanatorium. Ron forced him to sit at the table and take a fritter. October set it aside. “She thought I was her friend.” He groaned. “I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate Mapple and Leech—or myself. I am a terrible friend.” He pressed his forehead into the table’s surface.
“You are a good friend, Oct,” Ted reassured him.
Ron was busy, pulling the shutters closed and checking to make sure the door was locked. He turned to October. “Ted’s right. You are Nerma’s friend, and we’re going to help you prove it. You still got that map on you?”
Ted lifted his head and nodded. From his shirt pocket he pulled the sheet of parchment Ron had given him at the Gala. He unfolded it and spread it across the table. Drawn upon it in neat black lines was the layout of the Doctors’ quarters, including the Sanatorium tower where Nerma was held. Ron claimed to have been inside once, although he wouldn’t admit when or how he came to be there—or how he happened to know every foot of the building’s floorplan. October suspected that it had to do with Ron’s shady past.
With a green finger, Ron jabbed at a spot on the map. “Here is where they’re keeping Nerma. They call it the Gold Room, and it’s the top floor of the tower. The only way to get there is by taking the stairs—unless you happen to be able to climb walls.” Ron clapped October on the back. “Here—” he jabbed at another mark “—is where I think Mapple may be keeping his—his souvenirs, let’s call them.”
October studied the map carefully. This second spot was in a wing of the house that couldn’t be reached by window. The front door appeared to be the nearest entrance.
Ron continued. “Mapple has a large wardrobe in this room. It’s behind his study, and he keeps the thing locked tight. I have no idea where he keeps the key. However—” Ron gestured toward Ted, who held up his bladed fingers and wiggled them. “—I happen to have a friend who is a fantastic locksmith.” He raised a bushy green eyebrow and grinned.
October nodded, thinking aloud. “Or I could simply climb up the Sanatorium tower and go through a window. I could get Nerma first, then sneak downstairs with her and search through Mapple’s things.”
Again, Ted wiggled his sharp fingers. “You need a locksmith,” he said.
October nodded again. “So, Ted gets us in the front door and breaks into the wardrobe—and then we head upstairs and break Nerma out of her room. W
e can do this. I think.”
“You think you can?” Ron pretended to take offense. “I know you can.”
The friends waited until night had passed and the sun was high in the sky, when the Doctors were sure to be asleep. The day was gray but bright, and they kept to the shadows as they made their way to the Doctors’ front stoop.
At first, the plan unfolded perfectly. Ted’s nimble blade-fingers unbolted the door without a hiccup. He and October ducked into the silent sitting room where Nerma had first met the Doctors. Ron stayed just beyond the entrance outside, hidden but ready to provide distraction at the first sign of danger.
Both Ted and October had been in the Doctors’ building as patients for minor illnesses, but neither had ever entered in the light of day. Without the deep shadows and flickering candlelight of nighttime, everything looked eerily bright and clear.
Together, they climbed a narrow set of stairs and emerged into a section of the building neither of them had ever seen before, the Doctors’ living quarters. It was darker here, but sunlight still seeped into the gloom and made the hairs on the back of October’s neck stand up. This was the wing Ron had pointed to on the map, but everything looked different in real life. On the floorplan map, this hallway was a simple set of lines, but here the walls were lined with heavy frames, dark sconces, and thick bookcases that made the passage feel closed in and airless.
October counted the doorways. At the fourth door on the left, he paused and looked back at Ted, who nodded. It was the correct door. Ted inserted his blades into the slits in the doorframe, wiggled them this way and that, and—click—the door popped open. Here was Doctor Mapple’s private study. The room was dark, but October’s eyes could make out a cluttered desk and a wide leather chair. Beyond these, another doorway was outlined against a wall.
Ted carefully shut the door behind them, and October pulled a candle from his pockets. He lit it and held it close to the rear door for Ted. It too was locked, but again Ted’s long fingers had no trouble unlocking it, and the door creaked open.
