Sweep

by Jonathan Auxier

  “Is this what you wanted me to see?” she said. “You’ve built a nest.”

  Cheep!

  A flutter sounded in her ears, and she saw a second robin circle her head and lower herself into the nest. Dent joined her. “Well, well,” Nan said. “This is exciting.”

  The female robin gave a protective cheep! Nan stepped closer and saw three small eggs beneath her body. They were light blue, speckled with flecks of brown.

  Dent lowered his head and blinked at Nan before getting back to the work of tending his nest. Nan could almost see the eggs shudder and twitch with anticipation. Very soon there would be a little peeping family, all safely held in Charlie’s strong arms.

  Nan watched the birds and thought of Miss Bloom’s riddle—the eternal question of birds and eggs. Her gaze moved to Charlie’s frozen face, which seemed to be watching them. “Even now, you’re a protector,” she said to him. “They’re lucky to have you.”

  Nan turned and looked out across the city, which gleamed against the bright morning sun—snow melting away to reveal a world newly born. Spring was coming.

  This change seemed all of a piece to Nan. After everything that had happened, Nan Sparrow was her own person—free to roam as she pleased. At first, she had tried sweeping chimneys with Toby’s mechanical brush, but she quickly discovered that chimneys no longer compelled her. (She did, however, make an exception to play Father Christmas for the boys at Miss Bloom’s school.)

  The chaplain of St. Florian’s Church, who had heard Nan singing on May Day, had offered to pay her a small amount to sing in his choir. And Miss Bloom had offered to hire her to help teach the boys. The friendly society even offered to send her out to give testimonials to other parishes about the hazards of child labor.

  But none of those things really appealed to her.

  Instead, she did odd jobs with Toby, fixing the junk that he found on his rambles. It turned out she was quite skillful at fixing things.

  Truthfully, she had been spending a lot of time with Toby. It turned out that he really did know every inch of the city. They spent long hours watching steamships come up the icy Thames. Listening to the haunting chimes of the great churches. Watching the carriages parade around Piccadilly Circus. Once they even threw acorns at the guards at Buckingham Palace.

  Nan knelt and set to work cleaning the icicles off Charlie’s arms. She didn’t like the idea of him being so cold. “Especially now that you have a family to watch over.” She worked slowly, humming softly to herself.

  Dent gave a startled cheep and flapped into the sky.

  A voice called from the ridge. “Hullo, Smudge!”

  Nan felt a small flutter in her stomach as she turned to behold Toby racing up the path. His cheeks were flushed red and his eyes were bright as jewels. He was breathing hard—either from the weight of his emporium or from the slope of the path.

  “Where have you been?” Nan asked as he came near.

  “Down by the river,” he said, still catching his breath. He heaved his emporium off his shoulder and set it on the ground. “Still can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.” He crawled into his bag and started digging for something at the very bottom. “It’s a lucky thing there’s still some snow on the ground, else I would have walked right past it!”

  “What is it?” Nan said, peering closer. “What’ve you got?” She wondered if it was another present for her. She had begun to rather enjoy getting presents from Toby.

  “Here it is!” He emerged from the bag a moment later holding his prize. He pressed something very small and very warm into her hand. “Just the thing.”

  Nan opened her hand and felt the air leave her lungs. For once in her life, she had to admit that Toby Squall had truly found just the thing. It was dark and warm and smelled faintly of ash. “It’s . . . Charlie,” she whispered.

  “A piece of him, at least.”

  Nan’s hands were shaking. She clasped the ember tight, feeling the warmth through her entire body. “But where did you find it?”

  “Really, we’ve Prospero to thank.” He pet the rat, whose head poked out from the edge of his coat pocket.

  Nan looked up. “It was his Christmas gift! I remember! He gave Prospero a little piece of himself to keep warm.”

  Toby nodded. “I was walking along the old bank when I came across this one patch—right where Prospero and I used to make our camp. And there, right in the middle of the snow, I saw this great fat dandelion pushing up to the sky, petals and all. I started digging and there it was—just where he’d left it.”

  Toby had done it. He’d found the last flickering bit of Charlie. It was small, barely a sliver, but it was something.

  “What should I do with it?” said Nan.

  Toby scratched the back of his neck the way he did when he was afraid of being teased. “There’s no replacing Charlie, but . . . I sort of wondered if we could maybe try to make another one?” He tapped his boot against the side of his emporium. “We could mix in a few ingredients and see what happens.” He shrugged. “We could raise him together.”

  Nan looked at the little flickering speck in her hands. She tried to imagine it coming alive—with eyes and a voice and a mind of its own.

  She looked up at the figure of Charlie kneeling before her. Her dear, sweet, simple Charlie. She blinked as tears welled in her eyes. These tears felt different somehow. Sad, yes, but also overflowing with every drop of love she had ever known.

  She knelt down and wiped the snow from the ground. She dug her bare hands into the slushy earth. She took the ember and pressed it into the hole and then covered it again.

  “I think this belongs to you,” she whispered, and pressed the soil down.

  Nan could feel the change almost instantly. The snow beneath her boots melted to reveal black soil. And there, pushing up from the earth, were little shoots of green grass.

  Nan stood with Toby and watched as the patch of cemetery around them came alive—vines and grass and blossoms unfolding and stretching up toward the sun.

  “Would you look at that!” Toby said. “Flowers in February. Wonder what the old grave keeper will make of it.”

  Nan shrugged. “He’ll think it’s a miracle. And he’ll be right.”

  She turned and adjusted her coat against the cold, which didn’t feel as cold as it had before. She passed Toby and started back down the path. To whatever life awaited her. And as she walked, she hummed softly—

  With brush and pail and soot and song!

  A sweep brings luck all season long!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  STORY SOUP

  How does one create a story? In the case of Sweep, the answer is slowly. It took over fifteen years to find the ingredients for Nan and Charlie’s story. Let me tell you about them:

  A CLAY GOLEM FIGURINE

  This figurine came from a gift shop in Prague. When I was nineteen, my father was invited to teach a course at a seminary in the Czech Republic. He took me along with him. At the time, I had only a dim notion of golems, gleaned from a handful of fantasy stories. I had no idea about their connection to the city or their Jewish heritage. Four hundred years ago, the story goes, Rabbi Loew created a golem to protect the Jews of Prague. The creature has since become a mascot for the city—appearing on posters and T-shirts and statues. I became fascinated with golems, reading everything I could find. For years after, I would play a game in which I attempted to draw golems made from unusual substances: barbed wire, newspapers, sugar, eyeglasses, pudding, and yes, soot.

  A BATTERED COPY OF THE WATER BABIES

  Ten years ago, my wife, Mary, handed me a copy of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, a text she was writing about for her doctoral thesis. “Wait until you read about climbing boys,” she told me. “It’s horrifying.” This particular edition was beautifully illustrated. It was part of a university library collection and was slated for destruction at the end of the semester. I tell you with utmost pride that my wife rescued (stole) the book from t
he stacks, and it holds a special place on our bookshelves to this day.

  The Water Babies is one of the earliest books from the “Golden Age” of children’s literature. It tells the story of an abused climbing boy who finds himself caught in a chimney fire (lit by his master). In his frenzy to escape, he is transported to an aquatic wonderland full of talking fish, fairies, and wordplay that never quite lives up to the promise of the book’s early chapters. Prior to that, my only experience with chimney sweeps came from Mary Poppins. Could sweeping chimneys really have been that horrible? A little research revealed to me that it was actually much worse.

  I knew at once that I wanted to write my own story about climbers—one that stayed inside chimneys straight through to the end. It did not take long for me to realize that the soot golems I had been doodling for years belonged in this story. And thus, Nan and Charlie were born. After countless false starts, I wrote the first chapter almost exactly as it appears in the final book. With “The Girl and Her Sweep,” I knew at once that I had finally found my story—that it was not just about a girl and her monster, but also about a parent losing a child. As exciting as this discovery was, it was also daunting. At the time, I had no children of my own. My own childhood had been safe and idyllic. How could I possibly write about such things with the wisdom and honesty they required? I resolved to put the story away until I was able to tell it right.

  A SWADDLING CLOTH

  In the ensuing years, Mary and I had three daughters. People often ask if becoming a parent has informed my writing. “I bet they give you lots of material!” they joke. This is true, but not in the way people mean: My children have taught me what it means to love unconditionally. Our youngest child, Hazel Sparrow, has proven the most crucial piece of the puzzle. She was born with Down Syndrome and a severe congenital heart defect that required open-heart surgery and countless medical interventions. At any other point in history, Hazel would likely not have lived to see her first birthday. She is now a healthy two-year-old. I wouldn’t wish the experience on any parent. But as with much suffering, wisdom followed. I had to make the choice to love someone who I knew could very likely break my heart beyond repair. It was living through this experience that made me finally able to tell Nan’s story.

  A TUCSON PUBLIC LIBRARY CARD

  Writing is an act of séance—it’s a chance to summon up the ghosts of authors past and have a chat. In the case of Sweep, I was trying to have a conversation with a number of writers I first discovered when I was Nan’s age—books I brought home from the Tucson Public Library in the summer between third and fourth grade. These are the stories I read over and over again while writing Sweep. In many ways, they proved to be my most essential research. I learned about the girl and her Sweep from Roald Dahl’s Danny, the Champion of the World. The House of One Hundred Chimneys was discovered inside the magical attic of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess. I learned about Nan and Charlie’s friendship from Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad All Year. And finally, I learned about saying goodbye from E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.

  So many people have helped bring Nan’s story to life. Thank you to Jim Armstrong, Tamar Brazis, Courtney Code, Joe Regal, and Evangelos Vasilakis for tirelessly helping me shape the text. Thank you to Chad Beckerman, Dadu Shin, and Shawn Dahl for making the book beautiful. Thank you to Jenny Choy and Hallie Patterson for sending it out into the world.

  And thank you to the scores of readers who provided insight, encouragement, and crucial feedback: Sally Alexander, Katherine Ayres, Clare Beams, Lauren Burdette, Caroline Carlson, Rebecca Cole, Erica Finkel, Michael Galchinsky, Adam Gidwitz, Lee McClain, Colleen McKenna, Kenneth Oppel, Avigail Oren, Jackie Robb, Laurel Snyder, Thomas Sweterlitsch, Benny Zelkowicz, and, as always, Mary Burke.

  You have all saved me.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  “What is the difference between a story and a lie?” This was the central question of my book The Night Gardener. When writing a historical book, the question becomes even more urgent.

  Sweep is a tangled knot of fantasy and fact. Many of the locations and characters are real; a few are made up. Agnes Marshall, Isaac Ware, Lord Shaftesbury, William Blake, and the Green Man are all real. Children really did live as mudlarks. Sweeps really did use children as climbers. I am by no means an expert on Victorian London. After more than ten years of research, all I’ve really learned is how little I know. Doubtless, I’ve made a few historical errors. Easter and Passover did not overlap in 1875. In other places, where facts were impossible to verify, I was forced to guess. I still have no idea what a firework cost in 1874.

  Still, I did pick up a few things in my studies. Below are some basic facts about Nan’s world—a jumping-off point for teachers, librarians, or the historically curious:

  ON GOLEMS

  The golem has always been a capacious vessel—able to bear whatever meaning the storyteller brings to it. Modern readers might recognize golems from video games and fantasy literature, or perhaps from novels like Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. For most of history, however, the golem has been an obscure creature. In the nineteenth century, the first written stories of golems began to appear (including one by Jacob Grimm in 1808). Early golem tales depicted them as mindless servants who end up wreaking havoc—not unlike the magic brooms in Goethe’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

  As the golem gained popularity in the middle of the century, he became more heroic—less servant than protector. The most famous of these protectors is the Golem of Prague. As with so much Jewish history, the golem’s tale is closely tied to anti-Semitism. In 1580, Jews in Prague were suffering under a vicious campaign of “blood libel”—Christians were accusing Jews of performing evil rituals and then attacking them in response. According to legend, the persecution became so great that Rabbi Loew created a golem to patrol the Jewish ghetto and protect his community from harm. The story has many versions, all of which end in the golem being destroyed when his work is done. Just as Miss Bloom tells Nan: For the golem, there is no happy ending.

  Today, the golem has become Prague’s unofficial mascot. His bulky figure watches over every corner of the city. Readers interested in learning more need look no further than Isaac Bashevis Singer’s excellent The Golem or the Caldecott Medal–winning Golem by David Wisniewski, whose incredible cut-paper illustrations haunt my dreams still.

  ON SWEEPS

  Whenever I tell people about this story, the first question they have is about chimney sweeps: Was it really that bad? Truthfully, it was worse. Children were routinely rented, bought, or even kidnapped by master sweeps. (Some historians have argued that “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” is actually a story of a sweep kidnapping climbers.) By some estimates, the average life span of a climber was just five years. As Nan herself discovers, this was not for want of technology: Designs for a mechanical brush had been publicly available for nearly a century. It was, in fact, homeowners who resisted the mechanical brush most fiercely—claiming that the brushes did not do as thorough a job as young climbers.

  May Day is a real holiday that continues to this day in the form of International Workers’ Day. Every year, chimney sweeps dance with the Green Man throughout villages across the UK. The protest march depicted at the end of Nan’s story did not occur, though the events coincide with the general arc of history. Reformers and friendly societies spent more than a century trying to ban climbing until finally a boy named George Brewster suffered a horrific death on the job. The ensuing scandal changed the tide of public opinion and led to the passing of the Chimney Sweepers Act 1875—at long last marking the end of climbing across England. This act proved a bellwether for child labor reform in other industries, paving the way for changes throughout the industrialized world. Every person today who grew up with free education and worker protections owes a debt to these children. Nan’s struggle perhaps feels like a relic from the barbaric past, yet today over 160 million children worldwid
e are forced into child labor. The battle is far from won.

  Those looking to learn more about the fascinating world of chimney sweeps would do well to read historian Benita Cullingford’s incredible and exhaustive book, British Chimney Sweeps. For those wanting a firsthand account of climbing, I urge you to pick up George Elson’s funny and horrifying autobiography, The Last of the Climbing Boys. For younger readers, I would recommend James Cross Giblin’s Chimney Sweeps: Yesterday and Today.

  VICTORIAN LONDON

  Victorian London has been the backdrop for some of history’s most thrilling stories—from Sherlock Holmes to Oliver Twist to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The century was a time of enormous paradox: The Industrial Revolution turned London into a city of unimaginable wealth, while simultaneously casting countless people into desperate poverty. Climbers like Nan would have been some of the few people to witness both extremes of London life.

  As the century progressed, the most abused workers began to make their voices heard. Labor demonstrations became a fixture across England (including some bloody revolts on Bonfire Night). Writers like Charles Dickens began to call for change to the way the poor were perceived and treated. Friendly societies, journalists, and reform groups joined the fight. Perhaps the most significant of these voices was Henry Mayhew. Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor was the first large-scale study of London’s poorest populations. As a reporter, he traveled to the slums and actually talked to the people whom most others worked so hard to ignore—capturing their voices and sharing them with the larger world. Mayhew’s book is astonishing and unflinching. He has entire chapters on climbers and mudlarks and a dozen more of the filthiest jobs you can imagine (I defy you to read about “toshers” and not squirm).