Sweep

by Jonathan Auxier

  “Charlie, what did you mean when you said you could hear the Sweep?” Charlie was nestled in her lap. She could feel his flickering warmth. It warded off the autumn chill.

  “Sometimes, I think I can hear him calling me.” He shifted. “It feels like maybe he is trying to tell me something. Tonight, I was very close, but . . . I couldn’t find him.” He sounded disappointed in himself.

  Nan stared out at the endless rooftops. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would you be able to hear . . . ?” She didn’t even know how to finish the question.

  Charlie seemed to understand what she was asking. “I think . . .” He paused for a long moment. “I think . . . there’s something he wants me to tell you.”

  Nan caught her breath. For five years, she had forced herself to believe that the Sweep hadn’t abandoned her, that he was coming back. And now Charlie was telling her he had a message. “What is it?” Her voice was shaking. “What does he want you to tell me?”

  Charlie turned himself to look at her. “I . . . I don’t know.” He lowered his eyes. “I am sorry.”

  Nan sighed. “That’s all right.” She squeezed him. “I’m sorry for losing you.”

  Charlie flinched as a firework popped somewhere close by.

  “It’s fine,” Nan said. “We’re safe up here.”

  A green rocket shrieked above the rooftops, illuminating the low clouds. It arced and fizzled and then scattered into flickering ash, drifting back into the dark streets below.

  “The sounds are painting the air,” Charlie said. “I like fireworks much more from up here.”

  Nan watched Charlie watching the display. “Me, too.”

  A silver light streaked up from afar and burst into a thousand glittering stars that crackled and drifted down.

  “Nan?” Charlie’s voice was small. “What is a monster?”

  He was recalling the word from the market. Even now, Nan could hear the screams of the crowd. “ ‘Monster’ is a word for something that frightens folks. Like a creature of some kind.”

  “Oh,” he said. And then, “Am I a monster?”

  Nan hesitated a long moment before answering. She thought about Crudd and Trundle and the cruel indifference of every person in the city who didn’t care if she lived or died. “I’ve met monsters before,” she said, resting her head atop his. “And you are not one of them.”

  KINDNESS

  The girl and her Sweep had been walking between towns along the shore. The air had turned cold—colder than it had any right to be at that time of year. There was a wind from the east—bitter and wet—pushing against their faces as they walked. The Sweep carried the girl in his arms, just as he had when she was much smaller. That way she could keep her face turned from the wind.

  The howling was so loud that the Sweep could not sing or speak to pass the time. The girl pressed her face against his neck, listening to his labored breaths as he trudged over the muddy path. She thought it sounded like the breathing of an old man.

  At last they came upon shelter. “Behold! A miracle,” the Sweep cried, and he dropped the girl, nearly falling with her. It was an abandoned smithy’s shed, open on all sides. The tools were rusted and useless. The foundation crumbled. But in the middle—a furnace with a tall stone chimney. Even in this wind, a fire could be lit inside this furnace. The girl and her Sweep got to their knees and cleared away the cobwebs. The girl noticed that the Sweep’s hands were shaking. They scraped the floor of the furnace until they had found enough bits of coal to burn.

  “Tonight we shall roast like a pair of plucked pheasants!” the Sweep said, rubbing his hands together. “We might as well put ourselves on spits and—” He fell into a rattling cough that lasted too long. When he took his handkerchief from his mouth, it was stained black. The girl watched and wondered if he had swallowed a shadow.

  The girl removed a match from her pocket and—shielding it from the wind—struck it on the side of the furnace. The flame glowed warm against her skin. She lowered the match to the coals.

  “Wait,” the Sweep said.

  He grabbed her wrist. His hand was so cold.

  The Sweep reached into the corner of the furnace and removed something small from the shadows. He held it up to the dying light of the match.

  It was a feather, small and downy.

  The girl looked at the feather, gripped tight between his thin fingers, fluttering in the wind. The match went out. “What does it mean?” the girl asked.

  The Sweep crawled into the mouth of the furnace. He picked the girl up and put her on his shoulders—pushing her up into the stone flue. The girl saw something high in darkness, half lit by the moon. It was a nest. And nestled within it were three baby birds. They opened and shut their mouths, making the most pitiful cries.

  cheep!

  cheep!

  cheep!

  The girl was horrified. She had not heard the cries over the howling of the wind. She had almost burned the birds alive. She had dislodged her share of empty nests before and knew what to do. But when she reached up to clear the nest, the Sweep told her to stop. He told her if they touched the nest, then the parent birds would abandon it, and the babies would starve.

  He let the girl down from his shoulders. “It seems tonight we will have no fire.” And then he lowered his head and said something she had never heard him say before. “I’m sorry.”

  He scuttled the coals with his boot and picked up the girl and their brushes. She could feel his arms shivering as wind howled around them.

  They continued walking into the night.

  PERFECT

  “What am I?”

  Nan was taking a bath when Charlie appeared in the doorway. “I know I am not a monster,” he said. “But I am also not a human bean. What am I?”

  “You’re a thing made of soot,” she said, wiping soap from her eyes. “Also, you aren’t supposed to come in without knocking.”

  “Oh, yes,” Charlie said. “You are doing privacy.”

  Nan had only recently told Charlie about privacy. Privacy was what she “did” when she went to the toilet or had a bath. But sometimes Charlie forgot.

  “I will go to the Books Room,” Charlie said, rolling back into the hall. “And I will read about what I am.” Charlie couldn’t read, so Nan wasn’t sure what he would find.

  Nan finished her bath and dressed herself. She found Charlie in the captain’s study. Books and loose soot were scattered across the floor. She watched as Charlie rolled himself across the room at full speed and slammed himself into the bookcase—Whump! The case shuddered, and a few books fell to the floor.

  “That looks painful,” Nan said.

  “I am having . . . trouble reaching . . . the books.” He was out of breath from the whumping.

  “I’m not sure these are the sorts of books that will help.” Nan knelt and picked up a book on cloud formations. She looked at Charlie, nearly the size of Trundle’s gruel pot, and wondered if he would ever stop growing. Just that morning he had asked her to hold him up to the turret window so he could watch the “scratchers” (squirrels). But when she tried to pick him up, she had tumbled backward and dropped him down four flights of curved stairs.

  “I think it’s time we give you a body,” she said.

  “I already have a body.” Charlie rolled himself around in a proud little circle.

  Nan returned the books to their shelf. “I mean a proper body with legs and arms so you can do things for yourself. You wait around all day for me to come home so I can fetch things for you or move you to high places. You’re growing bigger anyway—so we might as well have a say in things.”

  Charlie considered this. “I think I would like that very much. What sort of body should I have?”

  Nan thought about what sort of body might be useful. “You should definitely have a tail. And lots of legs. I’m thinking six or seven at least. And horns.” She briefly considered wings but thought they might be too hard to manage.

  “Can I have . . . finge
rs?” Charlie asked after much thought.

  Fingers did not sound like much fun to Nan. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have claws?”

  The next day, instead of selling her loose soot to Horace Nobbs, Nan brought it home. She emptied her sootbag on the cellar floor. The captain’s cellar reminded her of Crudd’s coal bin, only it was larger and didn’t smell like unwashed children.

  Charlie looked at the pile, which was many times larger than himself. “I . . . I’m not sure how to start.”

  “I found this in the study.” Nan held up a large book with gold letters on the spine that said The Illustrated Book of Beasts. “This is called a ‘bestiary,’ ” she explained. “It’s a great big list of all the different kinds of monsters.”

  “But I am not a monster,” Charlie said.

  “Of course not.” She opened the book. “You’re more of a creature. A creature is anything that’s not a proper person.”

  “Oh, yes,” Charlie said. “I am not a proper person.”

  Nan turned the page. “What about this?” She showed him a picture of a winged cow with a snake’s behind.

  Charlie jumped back in fright. “I do not want to be that thing.”

  Nan shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She continued browsing until she came upon something called a “questing beast.” It had the body of a lion mixed with a leopard and a snake and something called a “hart,” which she took to be a kind of stag. That looked just about right to her.

  “Hold still,” she said to Charlie. “This might hurt.”

  Nan took a handful of soot and mashed it against Charlie’s side.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “I told you it would hurt.” Nan pinched the end to make it sharp. She was trying to make an antler.

  Nan had thought that making Charlie a body would be like making a snowman. It was a bit like that, only the soot didn’t hold together and Charlie kept wiggling. It also took an enormous amount of soot. After several hours, all she had to show for her work was a little stump on one side of Charlie’s face. The stump was pointing off at the wrong angle, and it stopped him from being able to roll properly.

  “It is a very nice antler,” Charlie said. But Nan could tell he was just being polite.

  “Tomorrow I’ll make you one on the other side to balance you out,” she said. She had already started to lose enthusiasm for the project. “At this rate, it will take months to finish all of you. Maybe we should cut back on a few of the legs?”

  Charlie shifted his weight back and forth, as though trying and failing to get comfortable. “I wonder,” he said in his smallest voice, “if I might try making me by myself?”

  Nan looked at him. He was watching her with a fearful expression. “You don’t like the antler?”

  “It is very nice to be a questing beast,” he replied. “But I think I would like to be a something else.” His voice was full of fragile hope.

  Nan knelt and touched Charlie’s head. The end of the antler crumbled under her touch. “You couldn’t do any worse than me,” she said.

  Charlie asked for privacy. Nan understood—even if it did make her a little sad. She left him with The Illustrated Book of Beasts. “Just in case,” she said.

  For the next week Charlie remained in the cellar, hard at work on his new body. Every so often he would call up for more soot. Nan swept chimneys as fast as she could during the day, selling only enough soot to keep herself fed. She found herself missing Charlie’s company in the evening. She hoped he would finish soon.

  Nan did not see Charlie in all that time. He asked that she dump the loose soot down the stairs, along with the occasional bucket of water. She tried her best to catch a glimpse of him in the shadows, but it was too dark. Once she heard him moving down there. He sounded frustrated. “Are you sure you don’t want some help?” she called down.

  “D-d-don’t come in!” he shouted.

  And so she was forced to wait and wonder. Charlie had the chance to become any sort of thing he wanted. Nan looked at her own skinny legs and stained fingers and thought about how she might change herself, if she could. But she didn’t want to change. Not the way other girls her age changed. She did not want to “blossom.” She would rather be a skinny weed than a stupid flower.

  At long last Charlie finished himself. “You can come down now,” he called up from below.

  Nan was busy trying to get a model ship called the H.M.S. Scop out of a giant bottle. She dropped the bottle and raced down to the cellar.

  She found the space dark but for a shaft of light from the high grated window. The Illustrated Book of Beasts lay open on the floor, just where she had left it the previous week.

  “Charlie?” Nan said, peering down the unlit stairs. “Where are you?”

  “I’m over here.” Charlie was in the corner, hidden by shadows.

  Nan could tell he was much larger now. Larger than her, even. “Let’s have a look,” she said.

  “Promise me you won’t laugh,” Charlie said.

  “I can’t promise that,” Nan said. “But if I do, I’ll try my best to make it a nice laugh.”

  She saw him nod. He stepped out from the shadows. His steps were uneven. He was still learning to walk. “I didn’t get all the parts right.”

  Nan put her hands over her mouth. “Oh, Charlie . . .”

  Charlie’s face was just as Nan knew it, only larger. He had the same fearful eyes. The same crooked mouth.

  He had no neck to speak of. His head came out from his shoulders like a knoll. His body was uneven at the edges. He had two arms and legs like a person, but his legs were different sizes—even when standing straight, he looked as though he might fall over.

  Nan stared at him, her hands still on her mouth. “Charlie . . . you’re enormous.” The thought that this was the same Charlie whom she had carried in her pocket only weeks before was too much to contemplate.

  Charlie brought his hands together, twining his lumpy fingers—three on each hand. “You don’t like it.” It was strange to hear such a small voice from such a large creature.

  Nan shook her head. She stepped closer to him. “Charlie . . .” She placed her hands on his chest, which was at her eye level. His chest was warm and crumbly. She wrapped both arms around him in a hug. Her fingers just barely touched on the other side. “You’re perfect.”

  OBSOLESCENCE

  Even though Charlie now had a body, the question remained. What was he? Nan thought that if she knew what sort of creature Charlie was, she might better understand why the Sweep had left him for her.

  She spent the next day immersed in The Illustrated Book of Beasts, carefully studying each entry for hints about what sort of creature Charlie might be. He remained close by, ready to answer any questions that arose.

  “Do you suppose your bite is venomous?” she called.

  “I have no teeth,” Charlie answered from inside the fireplace. He was making little puffs of smoke go up the chimney. Nan wasn’t sure how someone as big as Charlie could still fit into the chimney, but he seemed to manage.

  She turned to the next page. “You don’t levitate under a full moon, do you?”

  “I do not think I do that thing,” Charlie replied. “But I can make my smoke go in shapes!” He moved his arms and formed some smoke into a ball. “Maybe I can teach you?”

  “No time for games,” Nan said, turning back to the book. “I’m working.”

  It was late into the afternoon before Nan had a breakthrough. “Charlie!” she cried, leaping from the floor. “I found it!”

  Charlie brushed the ashes from his feet and ran to meet her. “What did you find?”

  Nan pointed to an entry on a page right near the middle. “You tell me.” She showed him a drawing on the page. It was a large, misshapen creature with dark eyes and huge shoulders.

  “It’s a Charlie,” Charlie said.

  Nan nodded. “It looks just like you . . . only it’s made of some sort of stone.”

  Charlie touched his ow
n belly, which crumbled and sprinkled to the floor. “What am I called?”

  “The book says it’s a ‘golem.’ ” She read the entry aloud.

  Golem: Fabled monster in the Jewish tradition, a homunculus crafted from mud or clay and animated through Kabalistic ritual. Freq. in reference to a mindless servant or beast of burden, designed for obsolescence. (ref. Psalm 139:16)

  Nan very nearly read the word “monster” aloud but changed it to “creature” just in time. “What do you think?” she said.

  Charlie looked at the book, his brow creased. “The golem is made of mud or clay,” he said at last. “I am made of soot.”

  “Soot’s pretty close to clay. It only means you’re a different kind of golem. A soot golem.”

  “Soot golem.” Charlie tried on the words. “What are obsolessons?”

  “No idea,” Nan said. “But now that we know what you’re called, we’ll have an easier time learning more. I might know someone who could tell us about golems. I could ask him if you wanted.”

  Charlie pressed his fingers together. “I suppose that would be fine.”

  Nan could tell he didn’t mean it. “I was just trying to help.” She closed the book. “If you didn’t want to know the answer, you shouldn’t have asked the question.”

  Charlie nodded vaguely. “A soot golem may be a very nice creature,” he said slowly. “But I think I would rather be just Charlie.”

  Nan stared into his dark, unblinking eyes. She thought of all the times grown-up folks had called her “sweep” or “boy” or even meaner things. It made her feel as if they couldn’t see her as her own person. Which, of course, they couldn’t.

  Charlie made another wispy smoke shape. “Are you very angry with me?”

  Nan put the book aside and placed her hands on either side of his face. She stood on her toes and pressed her nose against the place where his nose might be.