North! Or Be Eaten

by Andrew Peterson

  The river of Dugtowners seemed to grow in speed and size and hostility. The burrow where he desperately hoped the rest of his family waited suddenly seemed impossibly far away, as unreachable a destination as the moon itself.

  Why would Tink—Janner refused to think of him as Kalmar—do such a thing? He knew his little brother was uncomfortable with the idea of being king, but Janner was unprepared for this.

  Perhaps this was Tink’s way of proving himself to his older brother. Janner remembered the many times he had thought the worst of Tink, only to be proven wrong. It was true he had been hard on his younger brother, probably too hard. But this?

  Fine, he thought bitterly. Let him find his own way to the burrow.

  Janner steeled his nerves, rubbed his hands together, put his head down, and joined the mad flow of traffic on Riverside Road.

  He tripped, hopped, and ducked, straining to read the street signs over countless heads as he passed. Ronchy said if he took a left at Crempshaw Way, then a right on Tilling Street, he would eventually merge with Riverside again. He said it was the best way to bypass the busiest and most dangerous stretch, where the Fangs were ferried across the Blapp to Torrboro.

  Janner looked for Tink, craning his neck in every direction as he bustled along, but saw no trace. It would have been hard to find anyone in such chaos, especially someone as small and quick as Tink. Janner began planning the many things he would scream at his little brother once they were safe in the burrow again.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the glimpse of a street sign: CREMPSHAW WAY. A crow perched at the top of the pole. Janner zipped between fishermen, seamstresses, and donkeys harnessed to carts laden with fish meat, until he stood with his hands on his knees, winded, only a few doors past Crempshaw Way.

  The door behind him swung open, and out came four Fangs of Dang. They laughed and staggered down the step to the sidewalk where Janner stood. He froze and stared at his feet. The Fangs burped and cackled past, then disappeared into the crowd. Janner darted past a store that sold fishnets, then around the corner to Crempshaw Way. Crempshaw stretched upward from the river and into the heart of Dugtown.

  Angry as he was at Tink, Janner hoped to catch up to him here. He told himself he was mainly worried for Tink’s safety, but he was just as worried for his own. He tried not to imagine what might happen if he were to lose his way in this maze of streets.

  A woman with a kind face carried a basket down the street toward Janner.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?” he said timidly. “I’m looking for my brother. Have you seen a little boy, a little shorter than I am…?”

  She regarded him sadly, then passed without a word and turned into the rush of Riverside Road. The same was true of everyone who saw him. They looked at him with great sorrow, said nothing, and moved on.

  Janner followed Crempshaw past several cross streets, dirt roads lined with plain gray houses much like the one where they had emerged the previous night, until, muttering thanks to Ronchy McHiggins and his good directions, Janner finally saw the word TILLING on a street sign.

  The road stretched away in both directions, another gray lane littered with clucking chickens, shards of pottery, and old broken boards. The street boasted no houses, only deserted storefronts with broken windows, the doors long since stolen and used elsewhere. Behind Janner, men and women moved up and down Crempshaw in forlorn silence, but Tilling stood empty as a graveyard. Janner was glad it was still morning, because he wasn’t sure he would have the courage to walk such a dead street in the dark of night.

  He passed empty building after empty building, looking back with longing at Crempshaw, where at least he wasn’t alone. When the dead street curved to the right and concealed Crempshaw completely, he called in a voice barely above a whisper, “Tink?”

  There was no echo. The empty windows and doorways seemed to swallow the sound. Broken glass cracked beneath his feet. Rats scurried in the walls of the old buildings. Crows cursed and fussed on perches in the windows of the upper rooms and on the rails of crooked balconies.

  “Tink!” he called again, louder.

  Janner imagined eyes watching him from the shadows, eyes attached to trolls or Fangs or Stranders waiting for the right moment to burst onto the street and seize him.

  So he did what any normal twelve-year-old boy would do: he ran as fast as he could.

  He leapt over piles of garbage and weaved between the bricks and rotten barrels that littered the road, aching to reach the far end of Tilling Street where Ronchy had promised it emptied onto Riverside Road again. He no longer cared how much noise he made. If someone or something heard him puff by, they would have to be fast indeed to catch him, frightened as he was.

  But the road came to an abrupt end. Janner skidded to a halt before a stone wall as high and flat as the old brick buildings on either side. There was no way out other than the way he’d come.

  Why would Ronchy send him this way? He had seemed so kind, so helpful, and the little man had been certain this was the safest, shortest route to the east side of Dugtown.

  Janner turned his back to the wall so he could see the street down which he had just run. Nothing moved. That was good. If anything had been lurking in the shadows, it would have attacked by now. In the distance, Janner heard the muted sounds of a busy street. If he could just get over the wall, he could find his way to Riverside Road without having to brave the creepy emptiness of Tilling Street again.

  He crept to the alley between the two nearest buildings, but the rear was blocked by another wall. After inspecting a few more alleyways, he discovered that the wall stretched seamlessly behind every building on either side of the street. He was at the very end of what would make an excellent trap.

  What worried him most, even more than Ronchy’s faulty directions, was that Tink wasn’t here either.

  Janner sighed. Some Throne Warden he was turning out to be. He had to find Tink, and he couldn’t do that cowering at the end of Tilling Street.

  He took a deep breath and ran back the way he had come, not out of fear for himself this time but because he was desperate to find his little brother.

  Halfway back, he heard voices. Without a second thought, Janner ducked through the doorway of the nearest building. The floor was covered with dust and bits of broken glass. The rear of the building was draped in shadows, and against the right wall, a rickety wooden stairway rose past the ceiling. The voices drew nearer. Janner sneaked behind the stairway and peeked through the space between two steps.

  Three men appeared in the road. Their long hair was matted and black, and they wore dark clothes and spoke with such thick Dugtowner accents that Janner had difficulty understanding what they said. He heard the word “forks,” which sounded more like “farrrks.” The men’s eyes shifted in a way that reminded him of thwaps in the garden back home. More than once, he was sure one of the scraggly men looked directly at him, but each time the man’s eyes moved on, untroubled.

  It was so quiet in the decrepit building that Janner could hear his own heart beating. A spider skittered across the step to kill a fly caught in its web, and he heard that too. The dead hush of Tilling Street made every tiny sound conspicuous, from the crunch of dirt beneath Janner’s boot to the harsh voices of the men outside. So after only a few moments in his hiding place, Janner became aware of another sound, very near.

  Somewhere just behind him, in the deeper shadows, something was breathing.

  He closed his eyes and begged the Maker to let it be his imagination. Slowly, very slowly, he turned and saw, in the corner of the hollow beneath the stair, the unmistakable glint of two eyes watching him.

  Janner was unable to move. If a gargan rockroach or a toothy cow had appeared before him, he wouldn’t have been more afraid. Whoever—or whatever—it was stared at him with such malicious satisfaction that Janner felt like the fly in the spider’s web.

  The figure lunged.

  35

  The Hags and the Ragmen

&nbs
p; Dirty hands clawed at Janner’s neck and face. Hot, rank breath choked him.

  An old hag with gray-brown locks of matted hair, bloodshot eyes, and one very long black tooth, reached from the dark.

  Janner shrieked. The old woman recoiled and clapped her dirty hands over her ears just long enough for him to slip away.

  The men outside saw him burst through the door, his face as white as the moon, screaming so long and loud that beggars and hags emerged from every broken building on the street. When they saw Janner, every ragged soul on Tilling Street lurched or loped or bounded after the screaming boy.

  The barren street seemed to stretch forever. Crempshaw must lie directly ahead, but Tilling curved and curved endlessly. Had he really come this far? Janner risked a look behind him. What he saw produced in his legs a speed that rivaled even Tink.

  Tilling Street was anything but dead. It crawled with men and women even more broken and forgotten than the buildings where they lived, and they were doing their best to keep Janner from getting away.

  Finally, just ahead, he saw a horse and wagon descending the hill toward Riverside Road. Crempshaw!

  But between him and the other road gathered more beggars and hags. Janner thought for a moment of lowering his head and barreling through the people just as Podo had shouldered down the door in the alley the night before, but there were too many.

  A man in rags limped from a doorway on the left, and Janner did the only thing he could. He ran straight for the man, clenched his jaw, shut his eyes, and slammed into him.

  The man flew backward and landed on his back. Janner tumbled over him, found his feet, and sped into the old building. He found the stairs and took them two at a time, trying to ignore the cries just behind him as the throng pursued.

  The top of the stairs opened onto a landing with three doorways. Rags, blankets, wads of paper, and hunks of charred wood littered the floor and poured from each bedroom. It was hard to believe anyone would choose such a place to live, but then, these buildings had once housed businesses, offices, workshops, homes. Had it only been since the Fangs arrived that things had gotten so bad? Who were these people?

  Janner froze on the landing, unsure which way to go. What had he been thinking, coming upstairs? He felt like the fly in the spider’s web again, struggling in vain against the predator at his heels. The stairs had been a mistake. Maybe he had time to go back down and find another way out of the building—

  “We hear you, child,” came a wrecked voice at the foot of the stair. “And there is no way out. We will have you. We must.”

  Janner ran into the room to his left, slipping on the junk that covered the floor. In the middle of the right wall was a window, and he climbed out and crouched on the sill. Below lay an alley, and across from Janner stood another building with another window. The hags and beggars would see him any moment. To the right, the alley was blocked by the towering stone wall. His only hope was to leap across to the other window before they thought to look down the alley.

  Behind him a voice called, “We hear you, child. Run no more.”

  Janner steadied himself, trying to imagine flying across the alley to grab the opposite windowsill, but he knew it was impossible without a running start.

  “Caw.”

  He looked up and saw a crow studying him from a gutter that sagged from the roofline, just low enough that he might be able to reach it if he stood. There were plenty of loose bricks for footholds, so if the gutter held, he might be able to get to the roof.

  He stretched to his full height, holding with one hand to the inside of the window and reaching with his other to the broken gutter. His legs trembled. If the situation had been different, and he and Tink had discovered this wall on a lazy summer day, they might have wasted hours climbing it. Janner kept that image at the front of his mind as he reached. The wall could be climbed. He had to do it. They were coming.

  The tips of his fingers brushed the gutter just as a voice said from the top of the stair, “We hear you, child. We will have you.”

  Janner lunged. He caught the gutter with both hands and swung away from the window, his feet scraping at the brick wall for purchase. The toe of his boot found a cleft where a brick had fallen away. He held the gutter with one hand and reached for a seam in the wall, ignoring the pain in his hands and the shouts now coming from the alley below him.

  Arms sprouted from the window where he had just been, clawing at the air, and faces frowled at him with all the venom of the Fangs of Dang.

  “Come here, child!” they hissed.

  Janner pulled himself up a brick at a time, higher and higher, until the roof hung directly over his head and he found a steady hold, far enough away from the window that he could rest for a moment. The alley below was a mass of dirty, angry faces, and the window a clot of the same, as if the building had grown arms and heads. He was surprised to find that he felt pity for these poor souls. What had driven them to this?

  He gritted his teeth, found a handhold on the roofline, and dangled. The crowd below gasped and muttered hungrily. It was oddly comforting to know that if he fell, the mob would catch him. They might carry him away and roast him over a fire later, but at the moment that seemed better than splatting on the brick street like a totato.

  He swung a leg up, scooted forward, and rolled onto his back, panting.

  As much as he would’ve liked to lie there for hours, he was out of time. The gutter creaked as dirty hands began to climb just as Janner had. He ran across loose shingles to the peak of the roof, vaulted over the wall that had trapped him, and landed on the building on the opposite side.

  Immediately, the air changed. He couldn’t be sure if it was his imagination, but the air felt cooler and carried more sound. The clamor of the crowd on the other side of the wall was muted and distant. Janner wanted to rest but forced himself to keep going until the horror behind him was behind him for good.

  He crept to the edge and looked down. Another alleyway cluttered with debris, but here the buildings were closer—close enough that Janner was sure he could jump across. Before he could talk himself out of it, he trotted to the apex of the roof, turned, and ran for the edge.

  When he landed on the other roof, a grin broke across his face. He scrambled to the other side, found another narrow alley, and jumped again.

  Janner leapt from rooftop to rooftop, as spry as a squirrel, smiling with triumph with every landing and wishing Tink were there to see it.

  As soon as he thought of Tink, though, the smile vanished. If he had been snagged by one of the crazed hags, surely there would have been some disturbance on Tilling Street, but Janner had found it as quiet as a tomb.

  So then where was he?

  At last Janner stopped running. The sun was high, the air was hot, and fishy smells choked the air. He might be lost, but he knew he was close to the river, and the river would be easy to find—he just had to go downhill and away from the wall between him and Tilling Street.

  But first he had to find a way off the rooftop. He hadn’t seen any trapdoors or skylights or ladders. The walls of the buildings surrounding him were smoother than those of Tilling Street, so he couldn’t climb down that way.

  Then he noticed a gutter pipe running down to the alley. It looked sturdy enough for a twelve-year-old, he thought. He just had to swing over and climb down, but now that there were no crazy people at his heels, Janner found it exceedingly difficult to muster the courage to do so. He sat with his legs dangling from the roof, imagining the simple act of leaning over, grabbing the gutter pipe, and scooting off the roof. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  A ruckus started in the street in front of the building. He crept to the other side of the roof, lay on his belly, and peeked down at the street. It wasn’t much different from Tilling Street, in that old two-story brick buildings faced the cobbled lane, but here the windows were intact, the walkways were relatively clean, and ordinary folk strolled and pushed carts and conversed with one another. It see
med safe enough. Then he saw the cause of the commotion.

  A Fang stood guard in front of one of the buildings across the street. It sneered at passersby, who lowered their heads and walked on. Another Fang banged on the door.

  “Open up!” it growled.

  When no one answered, the Fang kicked the door from its hinges, and the two of them slithered inside. The Dugtowners passed by as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

  Directly below, Janner heard voices.

  “What’s the fuss about?” asked one man.

  “Might be the Florid Sword. Heard he was about last night.”

  “I heard that too,” said a woman’s voice. “But I also heard there’s some family the Fangs want to find.”

  “Aye. Migg Landers told me yesterday they were from Anniera or some such nonsense.”

  “Anniera? Pah!”

  “I’m just repeatin’ what he said.”

  “Say, where is old Migg? Ain’t seen him today.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Well, I hope they find the family sooner than late. Things are bad enough around here without the Florid Sword up to his mischief.”

  “And the Annierans.”

  “Pah!”

  “I’m only sayin’ what I heard.”

  “Uh-oh. They’re coming back out,” the woman said.

  The two Fangs emerged and moved on to the next building, where the banging commenced again.

  Janner scooted back from the edge. He had to get out of Dugtown. He had to get to the burrow. He prayed Tink would be there when he arrived.

  The gutter pipe. There was no other way down.

  With a sigh, Janner tiptoed back to the edge of the roof near the wall, scooted off, and shimmied down to the street before he could talk himself out of it. He squinted up at the roofline where he had been, impressed with himself.

  Then something came between him and the noonday sun. A silhouette of someone’s head and shoulders hovered where he had just been. Janner heard a dry chuckle, like the sound of a crackling fire, and in one motion, the silhouette leapt for the gutter, slid down, and landed nearly on top of him.