by M. E. Breen
Annie walked over to the bunk Hauler had told her to take. The blanket was still warm. She walked on to the very last row of beds, where the youngest children slept. She hadn’t seen anyone climb down from the top bunk. Maybe she could sleep there.
But the bed wasn’t empty. A boy lay still, his face very white. He kept his lips pinched together as though trying not to cry out. Annie wanted to say something to make him less afraid, but what could she say? Don’t worry, I can see in the dark? His eyes rolled this way and that, trying and trying to see. The white hands clutching the edge of the blanket looked like the hands of someone very old. A thick scar covered one knuckle. The index finger of the left hand. Annie felt something flicker in her chest. He’d been holding the stick in that hand, whittling with the right when the knife slipped. Her own hand shaking, Annie touched the scar. The boy gasped.
“Gregor?”
Chapter 5
Gregor’s skin had always been lighter than Annie’s, but now the contrast was like snow against wood. Lying side by side on the bed, his feet came only to her calves. She might have circled his ankle with her hand.
“Gregor, have you been sick a long time?”
He hesitated. “When I heard you before, before I knew it was you, I thought they’d sent Smirch to get me. He’s the one tosses you over when you run out.”
“Run out?”
“Run out, wear down. Most of us don’t leave here. You might go live in the tents when you get old enough, the boys, anyway. Or work the kiln. The girls go somewhere different, laundry or making blankets. I don’t know.” He took a shallow breath. “But most just run out. And then … someone will be sick, and in bed a few days. If they don’t get better, one day you come off shift and they’re gone and you don’t know what happened. Meg—the tallest—Meg says Smirch throws you over.” He frowned. “But I think they told her to say that.”
“Why do they have children work? There are so many men.”
“To fit the gaps.”
“I don’t understand.”
He turned his head toward her. His breath smelled sour-sweet.
“Do you know why white stone is worth so much more than the rest? It’s so deep in the rock. The sun and rain are what color the stone. It takes the men days to cut into where the white stone is. But there are gaps in the rock.” Gregor held his hands up, the palms close together. “We can fit sideways.”
She thought of the man they’d strip-searched, with his big hands and feet. Gregor’s hands were big for his body, too. Her throat hurt.
“Do they try to keep you small?”
Gregor didn’t say anything for a minute. “Even the gaps are chipping out now. Mostly just the really narrow ones left.” He moved his hands so the palms nearly touched. “That’s what the babies are here for.”
“How do you—,” Annie began, but Gregor shook his head. “My turn.”
Annie’s heart gave a hard thump. “You want to know—” “—how you can see in the dark.”
It felt so strange to hear him say the words. But comforting, too, as though this was just another thing in nature to puzzle over. How does a mole see underground? How does a dregfish see in the mud of the river bottom? How does a hawk see a mouse from a hundred feet in the air?
“I don’t know,” Annie said. “It just happened. I think it’s getting stronger. I think I can see more and more.” It was true. From where she lay, she could see a letter scratched in the wood of the opposite wall: “M.” She squinted. The rest of the letters were there too, growing fainter as the carver ran out of energy: “-o-t-h-e-r.”
“When did it start?”
She told him about the garden and the chicken coop and Chopper’s trick ladder. He nodded, familiar with the story. “You spent the night in the pit?”
“That’s when it first happened. Well, that’s when I first noticed,” she amended.
“You’re lucky it was then.”
Annie hadn’t really thought about what it would have been like to be underground and unable to see.
“Like being buried alive,” Gregor said.
“But not you.”
“No. About half are runaways or lost. They catch some with the garden. It’s the only road out of Dour County, you know. The rest are sold. Like me.”
“At least you weren’t so stupid as I was.”
Gregor laughed. Annie liked the sound of it.
“Everyone says the pit is the worst of all. Worse than this.” He flapped his hand to indicate the room, the dark.
Annie was thinking of the names from Aunt Prim’s list.
“You said Meg is here—Meg Winters? And Cowley? They’re all here?”
“Cowley’s dead. But yes, Meg, and Walter, and all the rest, and ones after me.” He gave a funny smile. “Everyone the kinderstalk ate.”
“Even Phoebe Tamburlaine? She must be old by now.”
He shook his head. “No one’s ever seen her, even the ones who’ve been here the longest. Maybe they really did eat her.”
Aunt Prim had never shown much interest in the children on her list, except for Phoebe Tamburlaine, the first.
“You know she only talks about Phoebe to scare you, right? To make you behave?” Page said to her one day.
“You mean it never happened?”
“I don’t know. Something happened, but the version you heard probably isn’t true. People like to exaggerate. Especially people like Aunt P.”
“Oh.” Annie had felt strangely disappointed.
Page smiled, and patted the mattress next to her. “Do you want me to tell you the version I know?”
Phoebe Tamburlaine lived with her parents and six siblings on a farm close to town. One day when she was behaving very badly, her mother shut her outdoors to learn a lesson. The sky was bright. The sun was hot. Phoebe’s shadow moved around her body as the sun moved in the sky. “Mama?” Phoebe called, but her mother didn’t listen, or didn’t hear. Night fell. “Mama!” Her screams, if she had time to scream at all, were drowned by the frenzied howls of the kinderstalk. When her mother ventured outside the next morning she saw the dirt in the yard all pocked with paw prints; of her daughter there was nothing left but a tattered shoe and a single sock, flecked with blood.
“Beware the kinderstalk, Annie! Bewaaare!” Then Page had pounced on her and tickled her until she shrieked.
Annie sat up. “Gregor, we can leave this place. They don’t know I can see, and I have some terrible-looking stuff from Grandmother Hoop. We could give it to a guard, or—”
“Grandmother Hoop? What did she say it was for?”
“She said, ‘for the heart and for the belly.’
“Don’t waste it. She cured my dad once. He was sick, awful sick. It was green powder and she mixed it with whisky. ‘Tastes like frogs!’ he said. But he got better, Annie. He got better quick.”
“We won’t use it on the guards then. But we have to plan. Tomorrow night I’ll have to work, and if Smirch really …”
“Rest first, just a bit. Then plan.”
With his eyes closed, she could see the prominence of the brow bones, the veins at his temple like distant rivers.
“Yes. Rest,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”
Annie was just wondering if Gregor had fallen asleep when he spoke again, so softly she had to strain to hear.
“Darling, what do you wish for?”
“What? Gregor, are you …”
“Darling, what do you wish for? The dark is drawing near.”
“Gregor!”
He nudged an elbow into her ribs, barely a touch.
She laughed. “Start again from the beginning. I’ll be the child.”
“Darling, what do you wish for? The dark is drawing near.”
“A ribbon, Mother, a ribbon, to tie back my hair.”
“Darling, what do you wish for? The dark is drawing near.”
“A key, Mother, a key, to lock up my heart.”
“Darling, what do you wish for? The dark is dra
wing near.”
“A light, Mother, a light, to find you when you’re far.”
“Darling, what do you wish for? Tell me what you fear.”
“The dark, Mother, the dark, the dark wood is what I fear.”
When she knew he was asleep, Annie slipped from the bunk, careful first to cover him with both blankets.
No one had bothered to lock the door. And why would they? The children had no torches or lanterns of their own. They had no weapons. The dark imprisoned the children more securely than the highest, thickest wall. Annie shuddered, partly with the excitement of how easy it would be to escape, and partly with a new and dreadful sense of how important it was to keep her secret.
Where would she take Gregor to get well? To Grandmother Hoop? Would she help them? What about his own parents?
Annie considered these questions with half a mind; the other half she focused on two objectives: stay clear of the roving circles of torchlight that would reveal her to the men working the night shift and find a weapon. A club or a knife would do, but what she really needed was a pistol. They wouldn’t keep them anywhere near the miners’ tents. She skirted those, her ears, which seemed sharp tonight, picking up snores, a hacking cough, someone trying to swallow sobs. Her nose, too, was hard at work: wood smoke from the kiln; the usual men-smells of sweat and feet; damp wool; something burnt lingering from dinner; and that tinny sweetness that hung over everything here. Chopper smelled of it, Hauler smelled of it, even Gregor. The fruit she’d stolen from Chopper’s garden had tasted of it, she realized, and had the funny sensation of feeling her mouth water and her stomach turn at the same time.
Annie stopped when she reached the tents where Gibbet’s men slept. These were in better condition than those of the miners. They had wooden sides and stilts to keep them above the frost and mud. A lantern was lit in one of them and she could see two men in profile, one sitting, the other standing in front of him. The standing man was unwinding a piece of cloth from around the sitting man’s head. She crept closer.
“Hurts!” said a muffled voice.
“Hold still, this will be the worst of it. There.”
“How’s it look?”
No answer.
“It looks bad?”
“It looks bad, Pip.”
“Will I lose my eye?” the seated man asked in a small voice.
“Might do. Can’t say. A scar though, definite.”
“Like Chopper?”
The standing man chuckled. “Just like that, Pip. Terrify the orphans, for certain.”
“Why’d he do it, Rube? It was just a slip. Just a little slip.”
“You never call him that. Never. Not until he really is.”
“King?” Pip whispered.
“Quiet! You want me to take your tongue, too?”
“Sorry, Rube. Sorry. But Rube?”
“What?”
“Where does he go all the time? What does he do?”
“He stays at Chopper’s farm, you know that. Or sometimes”—here Rube’s voice changed, and Annie could not tell if it was contempt, or surprise, or something else he was trying to suppress—“I heard sometimes he stays with his mother.”
“But what does he do?”
“Sit still. I’m going to wrap you back up.”
They were quiet for a few minutes except for an occasional whimper from Pip. Annie had just decided to continue her search for weapons when Rube spoke.
“They’ll have a job for you, I think. A bad job.”
“What?” Pip’s voice was muffled again.
“A new chipper in today. Strong, and Hauler says Chopper caught her on the ladder in full dark, so either brave or dumb. We hope dumb.” He chuckled. “Anyway, the beds are getting tight. And there’s a runout.”
“Aw, not that, Rube. I’m not the man for that.”
“You’re not the man for anything if you don’t show them you know how to keep quiet. Tough and quiet, like I always tell you, Pip. Tough and quiet.”
A pause.
“How do I do it?”
“However you like, just so there’s no trace.”
“When?”
“The runout’s in there now, all alone. Or maybe the new one is with him, but that’s no matter. Just do it before the rest get off shift. And before Hauler wakes up. He doesn’t like to know.”
“Gregor! Gregor, wake up.”
Again and again she had to remind herself, as he stumbled and clung to her, that he was sick, that he couldn’t see. But she wanted to shake him, to yell at him, hurry, hurry, hurry.
“Annie, stop. I can’t. I can’t.”
He was panting, his arm around her neck, hers gripping his waist. She could feel his ribs through his back.
“Boots?” she asked.
“No boots. All burnt.”
“Never mind.”
Somehow, she got him through the door, a few feet down the path toward the cliff. Lights bobbed along the cliff top. Would the children carry lanterns? Would they chip blind?
She was nearly carrying him now. A wagon. If they could get to a wagon … there must be horses stabled somewhere. Think, Annie, think.
“Gregor, take this. Take a sip.”
“From Grandmother Hoop?” he gasped.
“Yes.” She closed his fingers around the vial.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
“No, my kiddies. I’m afraid, no.”
Smirch stood with his hands on his hips and his head cocked to one side. His mouth was smug. A moment later Pip appeared, his head swaddled in bandages, and behind him a man Annie guessed to be Rube, holding a torch.
“You two take the runout. I’ll take the girl. Bold as brass, this one.” He shook his head. “Chopper liked you.”
Annie tightened her arm around Gregor. Rube nodded at Pip, who took a step toward them. Smirch put his hand on her shoulder.
If Annie had had time to think, she wouldn’t have done it. Of course she wouldn’t have done it, something so strange. But she didn’t think. She bit Smirch’s hand, bit him so hard that blood spurted into her mouth and he screamed a thin scream of real pain.
Then, a blur. Running, Gregor running with her, a surge of hope—they were free!—and then a feeling of being cut in two, cold air where his body had touched hers. A pair of strong hands grabbed her under the arms, wrenching her upward. It was a mistake, lifting her like that. It left her feet free to kick, her hands free to punch and claw. Whoever was holding her let go, and she turned, frantic.
“Gregor!”
Something heavy and salt-smelling closed around her throat. “Too fresh,” said a voice in her ear.
“Don’t,” she gasped.
He eased up, just a bit. “Don’t what?” “Don’t let them toss him over. Don’t.”
Hauler stilled. “We’ll see.”
Then he flexed the arm around her throat, and a darkness fell that she could not see through.
Chapter 6
She woke in the pit on Chopper’s farm. Her throat hurt. Her feet were cold. No boots. No Gregor. No cats.
She remembered certain things, like remembering a dream: jostling cart wheels, raised voices, the brightness of sunlight, a man’s voice, “Kill her … Gibbet … wait … unusual,” then a hand pinching her jaw and an awful sweetness filling her mouth. She could taste it still, the same sweetness that flavored everything here—the fruit she had stolen, the water Chopper had given her—but much stronger. The stiffness in her limbs told her she had been unconscious for many hours.
It took a moment to register that she was not alone in the pit. There was a rat. Her first thought was food. But then, as she watched, the rat sallied past her with a bit of old melon rind in its teeth, reached the side of pit, and disappeared.
Before, the pit had been shaped something like a teardrop: round on the sides and narrowed at the top, where the door was. Standing in the middle with her arms stretched out, her fingers had not quite reached any of the walls. Now she could flatten her pal
m against the side where the rat had disappeared. She crouched down. Bits of straw edged the rat hole. This was a wall, a mud wall. Someone had built this wall, and recently. Annie wiggled her fingers into the hole and tugged. A clump of dirt fell away.
Annie kicked the wall. Smirch. Kicked it again. Chopper. Kick. Pip. Kick. Rube. A very hard couple of kicks. Gibbet. Uncle Jock. She hesitated, foot raised. Should she kick Hauler?
Past the rubble of wall a room appeared, the mirror image of the pit. Except this room was full of ringstone: stone banked like snow against the walls, stone laid inches thick along the ground. Annie dropped to her knees. There were coins, too, some in the lesser currency of Howland, some she did not recognize. Big reddish coins stamped with the image of a bird. Heavy gray coins covered in strange symbols. Smooth, milky green coins that looked like buttons. She put one of each kind of foreign coin in her pocket, along with a handful of ringstone. A handful of white stone. It made her feel sick.
But now: a trail of rat droppings led her from the room into a low tunnel. She crawled a few yards and then dropped to her belly. The dirt around her smelled damp and alive, as though freshly turned over. Roots tickled her scalp. Then, as quickly as it had narrowed, the tunnel broadened, high and wide enough that a grown man could walk upright. From time to time she’d pass a burnt match or drops of hardened wax. After a mile or so the tunnel began to slope downward, so steeply in places she had to scoot on her backside. She’d come two miles at least. How long had it taken them to dig such a tunnel? Maybe not so very long, if you had arms like Hauler’s.
Gradually she became aware of a strange sound, a sort of muted roar. The tunnel turned a sharp corner and she felt cold, delicious wind in her face. She had reached the river.
The air was still, tasting of night. A wooden dock led from the mouth of the tunnel to a muddy beach. A pair of rowboats had been tied to the dock. One held shovels and buckets, the other a few cooking utensils and a bag of oat flour.
