Sweep

by Jonathan Auxier

  “Charlie!” she called when she reached the turret window. “I got worms!”

  Charlie poked his head out of the Nothing Room door. “Did you bring the stretchy ones? Dent likes the stretchy ones best.”

  Nan gave him the box. “They’re slimy and gross—that’s all I know.” Charlie went to close the door, but Nan caught it. “May I come in and see the garden?”

  Charlie shifted slightly. He drew his stone thumb across the lid of the box. “It’s . . . not finished yet.” He stepped back from the door, limping slightly.

  Nan stepped into the Nothing Room. What she saw made her gasp.

  Charlie said, “Do you like it?”

  Nan had no words. In just a few days, the attic had been utterly transformed. There were flowering bushes along the walls and soft moss on the floor. Ivy crept along the rafters. There were even three sapling trees—nearly as tall as the roof. Dent hopped happily from a mossy stump to the branch of a bush. Cheep!

  “You grew all of this?” Nan reached for his arm.

  Charlie moved away. “Yes.” He shuffled over to Dent and opened the lid of the box. The bird cheeped again and hopped close. He thrust his beak into the mass and pulled out an unlucky worm. Charlie watched him for a moment and then turned away. He didn’t like seeing things die. Not even worms.

  “That’s not a good enough answer,” Nan said. “Folks don’t just grow gardens in attics. It’s not natural.” Gardens are, of course, quite natural. But she had a point.

  Charlie shrugged. “I woke it up. In my Charlie way”

  “Show me,” Nan said. “Please?”

  Charlie nodded and moved to a corner of the room. Nan noticed something strange about the way he moved. His steps seemed heavier, more uncertain. She watched him dig through a pile of old sticks and leaves. He found a single acorn in the pile. “I will show you.”

  He held the acorn in his open hands and closed his eyes. Nan felt a shift in the air—as if she were suddenly inside a warm chimney. There was a smell of crackling embers. Charlie’s hands began to smolder, just as they had done with Dent’s egg. His hands turned red and then white. The acorn was glowing, too.

  And then it began to grow.

  Nan watched as the top of the acorn popped off. A tiny sprig pushed its way out of the shell and stretched up into the air. Green leaves sprouted from the end of the sprig, stretching into branches. The branches stretched higher and higher. The acorn was completely gone now. Twisting roots spilled out over Charlie’s open hands until they touched the floor.

  The tree grew taller still. Branches upon branches upon branches. Its trunk was thick as Charlie’s body now and went all the way to the floor. He kept his hands on either side of the trunk as it stretched up to the rafters. A canopy of green leaves filled the attic. Nan could hear a groaning sound as they strained against the roof and then—

  Crack! the tree broke through.

  “Stop!” Nan cried.

  Charlie pulled his hands away from the trunk. He opened his eyes and blinked at the tree standing before him. “This one is very big.” He sounded a little frightened.

  Dent was hopping excitedly around the base of the tree, flapping his wings. Cheep! Cheep!

  The highest branch had broken through the roof, and warm sunlight shone down through the leaves. Nan looked at the tree, which had not been there a moment before. “You made all this grow?” She looked at Dent. “Just like you made him grow?”

  Charlie nodded. “Are you very upset with me?”

  “Upset?” Nan’s face broke into a smile. “It’s incredible!”

  She reached out to touch Charlie’s hand, but he pulled back.

  “What’s wrong?” Nan said.

  “I don’t want to say.” He was holding one hand behind his back. It was the same hand whose thumb Nan had grazed the week before.

  Nan stepped closer. “Show me.”

  Charlie nodded and held out his right hand. It looked different from the rest of him. And not just the thumb. The whole hand was lighter in color, a sort of ashy gray that went almost to the bend in his arm. Nan touched his fingers, and they felt cold. They did not bend. They did not crumble. It was like touching a statue.

  “What’s happened to it?” Nan said.

  Charlie pulled his hand away. He stared down at it. “I don’t know.”

  “Will it change back?”

  He shook his head. “I do not think so.” He massaged his stone elbow. “I did not mean to give it so much.” He was looking at the tree.

  Nan stared at the flowers, the moss, the tree, Dent. “You made all this life . . .” They were all pieces of Charlie. She remembered how Charlie had said he had saved her after the Devil’s Nudge. Had he given a part of himself to heal her burns? “If you keep making things grow, what would happen?”

  He looked at her. “I think I would have nothing left.”

  At these words, Nan felt a chill. “Charlie . . .” She clasped his hands—one cold, one warm. “You have to promise me you will stop making your garden.”

  Charlie nodded. “I promise.”

  Nan held him tighter. “You have to promise me, no matter what happens, that you will never give away any piece of yourself. No matter how much you want to.”

  Charlie looked at her. For a moment, his face was filled with sadness. He drew his hands away from her.

  “I cannot promise that.”

  PASSOVER

  It was the first week of April, and the cherry blossoms had begun to bloom.

  After such a bitter winter, the whole city seemed determined to live every moment out of doors. Everywhere Nan walked, she could smell fresh flowers and fried kippers. Old women sold painted eggs on the corners. Bakers pushed carts full of steaming wares, singing—

  Hot cross buns!

  Hot cross buns!

  One a penny, two a penny—

  Hot cross buns!

  Nan cut through Russell Square, which was abuzz with Easter preparations. Farmers had put out boxes of spring chicks to sell as pets to children. She always wondered what happened to those pet chicks once they grew bigger and became ugly. She wondered if they even lived that long.

  With the holiday fast approaching, the girls in Miss Mayhew’s Seminary had all gone home to their families. This meant Nan was able to spend a day at the school with Miss Bloom. “It’s strange not to be sneaking through chimneys or windows,” she said as Miss Bloom met her at the door.

  The woman took Nan up to her room on the third floor. “This day is different from all other days. I’ve prepared a bit of a picnic for us.” Laid out on the writing table were bowls of chicken soup and several pieces of very flat bread. In the middle sat a larger platter with little dishes arranged in a circle.

  “What is this?” Nan sniffed a shallow bowl of apple relish. It smelled like cinnamon.

  “It is called charoset,” Miss Bloom said. “Or at least an approximation. When I was a little girl, my mother would prepare it to remember Pesach—Passover.”

  Miss Bloom pointed to each of the things on the plate and explained that they were all part of a holy meal called a “seder.” “The Jewish people eat these things to remember when God delivered us from slavery in Egypt.” Whenever Miss Bloom talked about these traditions, she usually spoke as though they did not apply to her.

  But not today.

  “Why do they call it Passover?” Nan asked, nibbling the corner of a very flat biscuit.

  “Before the Jews escaped from Egypt, God sent an angel of death to the city. The angel visited the homes of the Egyptians and killed every firstborn child as they slept. It was punishment for the wickedness of their parents. The angel passed over the homes of the Jews and spared their children.”

  “That’s horrible,” Nan said. She imagined it happening—not as some story but as a real event. She imagined parents waking to the screams of dying children. She imagined blood. “Those children didn’t deserve that.”

  “Children seldom deserve what befalls th
em. But there was grace in the slaughter. It was in the wake of this horror that the Jews were able to escape to freedom.” Miss Bloom shook her head. “I despised that story as a girl. It haunts me still.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in religion.”

  “It is not exactly a question of belief,” Miss Bloom said. “But for the first time in many years, I am finding myself wanting to remember.” She looked at Nan. “Your question about golems has made me recall my own life at your age. It has made me realize that there are worse fates for a girl than feeling stifled by her family.” She ran her hand along the edge of the plate.

  Nan felt once again the desire to tell Miss Bloom about Charlie. Especially the things she had learned about him recently. Even now, the thought of his cold-stone hand filled her with a gnawing dread.

  Miss Bloom took a fork and cut into a boiled egg. “I suppose I am remembering Passover as a way to remind myself that the struggle for freedom is as old as time. That there are always others who yet need to be delivered.”

  “You mean like climbers.”

  Nan tried a bit of something Miss Bloom had called maror but quickly spit it back onto her spoon. “How is Newt? Is he happy living with Lady Wilde?”

  Miss Bloom looked at her with something like alarm. “William . . . is still climbing. I assumed you knew.”

  Nan shook her head. “I didn’t.” She had been so caught up with worry about Charlie and Dent that she hadn’t thought to check up on him. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. And that’s the exact problem.” Miss Bloom sat back and released a long breath. “Lady Wilde’s solicitor was discreet—he posed as a carpenter looking for an apprentice. But somehow Mister Crudd discovered his true intentions. Now he is demanding an extortionate—a very large sum of money for the boy.”

  Nan caught her breath. “Can’t the friendly society do something? Can’t they force Crudd to give him up?” She thought of how bad Newt had looked the last time they met. She wasn’t sure how much longer he could survive the work.

  Miss Bloom gave a disconsolate shrug. “There are legal measures, yes, but courts are slow. And Mister Crudd has a legitimate claim on the boy in the form of an indentured service contract that was signed by William’s guardian.”

  Nan knew the contract that Miss Bloom was talking about. She had signed one herself long ago. “Crudd won’t let him go.” She sipped her drink, which was sweet and dark. “You don’t know him—what he’s willing to do.” She could still remember his hand on her neck, forcing her toward the blazing hearth.

  “We are trying our best, and that is all we can do.” Miss Bloom sighed. “But so long as Mister Crudd holds that contract, we are helpless.”

  Nan set down her cup. “I have to go.”

  SIX CROWNS

  Nan knew if she could find and destroy Newt’s contract, then Crudd would lose his claim on the boy. She supposed she could sneak into Crudd’s house and look for it, but she hadn’t the faintest idea where it was hidden. Not to mention the fact that Crudd wanted her dead.

  Nan needed an accomplice.

  More than that, she needed an apprentice.

  Nan knew Roger hated her, but she also knew he hated Crudd even more. Roger had spent his entire life trying to earn the love of a man who paid out only scorn. She hoped this hatred would be great enough to convince him to betray Crudd. And if that didn’t work, the promise of a reward from Lady Wilde might do the trick.

  First she needed to get him alone. Nan had lived with Roger for five years, and in that time she had learned of one mysterious habit. Two nights a year—on Christmas and Easter—Roger snuck out of the coal bin without a word. None of the boys ever knew where he went or why. The one time Whittles tried asking, Roger had bloodied his nose.

  Nan caught sight of Roger as he slipped out from Crudd’s front door. She followed him past the Matchstick and across London Bridge, keeping herself hidden behind the few carriages and pedestrians rushing to get home for Easter.

  The factories in Southwark were dark, their smokestacks black against the setting sun. Roger cut a path eastward toward Lambeth, Nan trailing at a distance. The twisting streets were muddy and unlit, but the boy moved quickly without getting lost. It was clear he had traveled this way many times before.

  The houses here were all built on top of one another and very narrow. Nan thought they might be called “humble”—which was what people said when a place was poor but not dangerous.

  The street was quiet. The sun had set. Most people were home, celebrating Easter with family. Nan could smell roast lamb and steamed oysters somewhere close by.

  She spied Roger in the shadows of a narrow alley. He was staring at a house directly across the way, his hands jammed deep in his pockets. He was staring so intently that he didn’t even notice when she walked up behind him.

  “Taking up housebreaking?” she said. “I’d pick a better neighborhood.”

  Roger gave a twitch of alarm. She saw that his face was red around the eyes. “I was wondering when you’d turn up.” He sniffed, wiping his nose. “S’pose you’re here to do to me the same thing you did to Crudd? You and your pet monster?”

  Nan shifted back. “Crudd told you about Charlie?”

  “You named it Charlie?” He gave a humorless snort. “Crudd said a burning monster tried to murder him. Everyone else just laughed, but not me. Why would he lie? It only makes him look a fool. Plus, I saw proof. On the day you threw that snowball from the Foundling Hospital, I went up on the roof. You were long gone. But I saw footprints bigger than any man’s.” He peered into the alley behind her. “Is it here now?” He sounded as if he might rather enjoy being murdered by a monster.

  Nan shook her head. “It . . . Charlie isn’t a monster.” The last thing she needed was Roger to be afraid for his life. “He was just trying to protect me from Crudd. He gets confused easily. He’s like a child.”

  “Some child.” Roger snorted again. “Did you see what it did to Crudd’s face?”

  Nan remembered the night Charlie rescued her. She remembered the odor of burned flesh. She remembered blood on the snow. “Is it bad?”

  “It’s worse than bad. I don’t know what your ‘Charlie’ did to him, but Crudd’s ugly as a pail of cat sick. And anyone who asks or stares too long gets a hiding to remember. There’s no customers. No weddings. Even Trundle moved on.”

  “Is that what you’re doing out here?” Nan said. “Moving on? Looking for a new master?”

  Roger pushed his hands deeper in his pockets. “Why I’m here is none of your business.”

  Nan shrugged. “You’re probably right.” She glanced at the house across the way—the house Roger had been watching. The windows were lit. Inside a man and woman were settling in for supper at a square table. The home looked very poor, but it was clean and cozy. There were Easter decorations cut from newspapers on the window. The man set down wooden plates. He kissed the heavyset woman as she placed a steaming crock of stew in the middle of the table. “Who are they?” Nan asked.

  Roger made a scoffing sound. “You don’t see the resemblance?”

  She looked from the window to Roger. Her eyes widened as she made the connection. “They’re . . . your parents.”

  He gave a bitter smile. “They were, at least.”

  All these years Nan had thought Roger was an orphan, like the rest of them. But no. He had parents. Living not four miles off. “I don’t understand.”

  “Ain’t much to understand, is there?” He turned back toward the window. “They were poor. Stuck with a child they couldn’t feed. It was a cold winter. We were one bad day from being put out in the streets. I remember them fighting about food—about not having any.” He swallowed. “And that’s when Crudd showed up.”

  Nan looked at Roger’s face and understood at once what he was telling her. “They sold you.”

  “The answer to their prayers.” Roger shook his head. He pushed a pebble through the mud with the side of his foot. “I still r
emember it. This tall man in nice clothes at the door. His boots were so shiny. I thought he must be a lord or a prince. He takes out his purse and counts out six crowns. I see them fall right into my father’s hands. I remember being so excited to see the money, I begged Father to let me hold one.”

  “Oh, Roger . . .”

  “He wouldn’t even look at me. None of them would.” Roger shook his head, and Nan saw fresh tears filling his eyes. “Crudd just picked me up under one arm and carried me away. They didn’t even say goodbye.” He closed his eyes.

  Nan stared at him. She wanted to hold him, to say or do something, tell him that she knew what it felt like to be abandoned. But she couldn’t. However much heartbreak the Sweep had caused, it was nothing like this.

  She heard a voice from the house. The woman—Roger’s mother—called for supper. There were shrieks of delight as three small children stampeded into the room and pushed and fought to take seats at the table, which had been set for five. They all sat down and prayed before eating.

  “And now look at them,” Roger said, wiping his cheeks. “A family.”

  Nan felt like her heart had sunk to the pit of her stomach. “Every Christmas and Easter . . . you come here to watch them.”

  Roger nodded his head. “It’s a family tradition.”

  Nan thought of what Miss Bloom had told her about the angel of death—choosing some children to live and others to die. Crudd was like that angel. He could have knocked on any door in the city. But he chose Roger’s.

  “Do they know?” Nan stepped closer to him. “Do your parents know you’re still alive?”

  Roger looked at her as though she were daft. “I doubt they remember I ever lived at all. And if they did know, I’m sure they wouldn’t like it. They’ve got all the family they want.” He spit into the mud. “So, is that it? You came all this way just to mock me?”

  Nan shook her head. “Newt needs your help. Crudd won’t let him go, and he’s . . . Newt’s not like us. He can’t survive.”