by L. J. Hatton
“I have to try.”
“No!” Birdie cried. “I won’t go back!”
She tore off toward the main road.
“Birdie, wait!” Winnie called. “We can’t let her go alone.”
“She’s not alone,” Jermay said. “We’re going with her—all of us.”
“Get her to Bruno and Mother Jesek,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”
“Penn—”
“Keep them safe for me, Klok,” I continued.
“I protect Penelope,” he rat-tatted.
“You protect our family. They need you.”
“Penelope needs me.”
“You’re too big to hide.”
“I want to go with you.”
He was disturbingly difficult to argue with. His face was too earnest and his eyes too pleading. Somehow, he found a way to emphasize the “want,” even in writing.
“I’ll be okay—I’ve got Xerxes,” I told him.
“And me,” Winnie added. Xerxes poked his beak out over the top of the pack that rested on her shoulders, a glimmer of excitement in his glass eyes as he opened and closed his beak with a loud snap.
“Winnie!” Jermay shouted. “You’re supposed to help me talk her out of this.”
“You’ve got family waiting at the Hollow—I don’t. The Romas are as close as I’ve got.”
“You should go,” I told Jermay. “Catch Birdie before she’s out of sight. You’ll never find her if she gets it in her head to hide.” Mother Jesek often said that her little bird was part ghost, because if Birdie didn’t want to be seen, she wouldn’t be.
Klok beeped out one last note for me: “Nieva will say: Find Penelope and bring her home.”
“If Evie’s at the Hollow, then I’m happy to be found,” I said, and finally Klok clanged off.
I held my pinkie up for Jermay, but his hands stayed in rigid fists at his sides as he walked away. I watched him and Klok until I couldn’t see them anymore. He never looked back.
CHAPTER 8
Going into a town or village for The Show meant fanfare. We’d be decked out in our costumes, nailing up notices, while the inevitable line of children tried to wrangle tickets. Entering Inshore with Winnie was clandestine and claustrophobic. The night was no longer merely an absence of sun and heat; it had a personality, with habits I didn’t know.
I pulled out a fistful of fabric at the neck of my dress, trying to obscure my silhouette. Being female had been a danger for so long, I couldn’t make myself believe those rules had changed.
To make it worse, the hair on my arms twitched under the influence of a stray current. I cast a panicked look at the night sky, but the moon stayed fixed. It wasn’t responding to my nerves the way it had at the train. I let go of my dress and tried to relax.
“Control it, Penn,” Winnie warned as the nearest streetlights flared when we passed. “You’ll draw attention to us.”
Carnie 101, back to haunt me. Drawing attention was all I knew how to do. I was skilled at misdirection, not avoidance, but since I lost the train, none of my usual sleight of hand worked.
“Control it, or I’ll have to leave you here.” Winnie stopped in the shelter of an old shed with a broken door. She transferred her backpack to my shoulders, so Xerxes’ weight could remind me that he was with me.
Something sharp stung my earlobe, just before Xerxes butted the back of my head with his own. He’d nipped me with his beak, calling up memories of my father tugging my ear before a performance.
“Thanks,” I whispered. Xerxes dropped down in the pack. His forepaws kneaded into my back, trying to find a comfortable spot.
“We can’t go asking about wardens and unnoticeables,” Winnie said. “We’ll do best finding someplace where things are already being said and listening in.”
“Like where? This place is barely a town. It’s not like there’s a pancake house on every corner.”
“You’re such a train-head.” Winnie rolled her eyes. “Not everything comes with a sign you can read from the tracks.”
She left the deserted square, and I followed onto a side street with enough light to mean someone still had their place open, only it wasn’t what you’d call a restaurant. Mismatched tables and chairs had been set outside, creating a makeshift café. People who were near our age talked and laughed in small groups.
“A charity stop?”
“Friday always means free food.”
One table was a tangled mob wearing the colors of the local university. Elsewhere, people drifted in the spaces between, all gaunt faces and hollow eyes. A large sandwich board on the corner read “Hot Coffee ~ Sandwiches ~ Cookies.”
“You want news, this is the best place to get it.”
In this case, unincorporated meant Inshore was unregulated. While the nearest towns were in blackout during the night hours, here there was no one to enforce such ordinances. Animated creeper lights strolled the lane, toting lanterns on their spindly legs, while climbing lights like the ones we used to light tour exhibits at The Show converted over-door placards into makeshift lampposts.
We were only a few miles from the train’s destruction, but everything was different here. Victorian brass and copper had been replaced by chrome and silver. The designs were sleeker; the machinery quieter and styled from old black-and-white B movies. A guy at one of the tables we passed was hunched over a tablet that had been outfitted with retro-glass, so his display was holographic 3-D, but also monochrome. A stick-on magnet between his eyebrows held a pair of glasses on his face without the need for earpieces.
“There,” Winnie said, and started toward a young man in an apron who had emerged from the nearest building with a tray full of steaming coffee cups. We didn’t get very far before he was swarmed.
Another door opened farther down the street, and another guy emerged carrying a tray, but his was full of food. Most of the people who had flocked to the first tray rushed the second. Winnie and I were the only ones left.
“Is there anything to spare?” I asked the guy with the coffee. He was the definition of mundane, basically a brown-skinned, brown-eyed, brown-haired paper doll printed in 3-D.
He looked up and met my eye, then did the same with Winnie. Whoever he was, he made a habit of noticing people, and that could prove problematic.
“You’re new,” he said.
“Only around here,” Winnie said bitterly. “If there’s not enough for strangers, we’ll go somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry,” the guy said. “I didn’t mean to run you off.” He put the last four mugs of coffee on a table. “Sit down.”
He tucked the tray under the table and took a seat himself.
“Might as well,” I told Winnie, though it was obvious he’d made a bad impression. “Got nowhere else to be.”
“You don’t have to be afraid here,” he said. “Most folks call me C. B., for Coffee Bean.”
He slid one of the mugs across the table to me. I’d never liked the taste of coffee, but I liked the smell, and the warm mug felt good in my hands.
Winnie sat, and C. B. slid her a cup, too. The Asian guy who’d been handing out sandwiches joined us with a cheerful “New people! What’s your name, sister?”
You’re not my brother, I wanted to say. That kind of casual familiarity creeped me out.
“This one they call Rye, on account of the sandwiches,” C. B. said, grinning. “He also answers to Idiot.”
“We’re Jenny,” Winnie told them.
“Both of you?”
“It’s a common name.”
One of the creeper lights skittered onto our table. It danced around the edges while I drummed my fingers, and the creeper imitated my pattern with its feet.
“Never seen one do that before,” Rye said. He beat out a rhythm with his hands, but the
creeper had lost interest. It took a roll around the table.
Those machines were a sight tied so strongly to the life I’d just lost that I could feel tears forming. I reached up to wipe my eyes.
“You okay?” C. B. asked.
“She’s been acting off since we saw that black smoke,” Winnie said, cutting me off before I could answer. “Now she mostly stares and cries.”
I shifted my feet uncomfortably. I’d been numb since I woke up near the river, and had done plenty of staring, but I wasn’t sure about the crying.
“No mystery in the smoke, sister, just a derailed train,” Rye said.
“I’ve told her the smoke was nothing, but—” Winnie was interrupted when another creeper light joined the first, so they twirled in an awkward ballet—vying for attention, like untrained puppies. The climbing lantern from the nearest placard dropped down from its post to watch.
Retro-glass guy had his tablet held toward us now, taking a video that he’d probably post online. If the warden was running a face-recognition search, we were already found.
Another pair of spidery creepers tripped toward our table. C. B. and Rye shared a look; Winnie glared at me as though I’d summoned them on purpose.
I turned my mug in my hands, absently tracing a looped image etched into the side. When I realized what it was, I nearly threw the coffee across the table. I glanced at Winnie’s mug and saw the same design—an ankh formed from a DNA helix.
“Where do you get this stuff?” I asked. C. B. and Rye were watching us, probably wondering why a couple of wandering kids hadn’t devoured the free meal already.
“Our sponsor donates it every week,” C. B. said.
“Which sponsor?”
“A generous one. Why?”
Good question. Why would the Wardens’ Commission supply food to random strangers? That wasn’t part of their job, so what did they get out of it?
More importantly, what did they put in it?
“We should keep moving.” Winnie brushed the creepers from the table and gestured back toward the road. “Thanks for the eats.” She stuffed a cookie into her pocket, because hungry girls wouldn’t leave food behind.
When we stood, others were watching us, and more of them were filming us. It wasn’t surprising considering nearly every lantern in the alley had migrated to our end.
“Stop! Shoo!” I waved my hands at the lights, and they scattered back to where they’d been before we arrived.
“Hey!” retro-glass guy yelped. “My screen went dark.”
He started shaking his tablet, like that would help.
“How’d you do that, sister?” Rye asked.
“I didn’t do anything. I just—”
I was tripping over excuses when a commotion drew his attention to the other end of the street.
“Not again,” C. B. grumbled as the noise came closer.
More teens, marching in lines of three across. The ones in front were wearing rubber masks shaped like the Greys—what people thought aliens looked like before the Medusae came and showed us that they didn’t have triangular heads or giant black eyes. The teens had foam hands with long fingers and were wearing shirts emblazoned with the tricolored cloverleaf, only the leaves were made of words from the Brick Street rhyme.
Displays like this weren’t uncommon near the anniversary, but this one was certainly an unwelcome surprise. They marched right through the café to the cheers of the group from the university. Everyone at that table had removed their sweatshirts to display more cloverleaves.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Flash mob,” Rye whispered. “They film themselves to get attention. We’ve been the target of choice for the last three months. Don’t know why.”
I did. The Commission was using them for something; they were using the people, while pretending to help, and these guys had figured it out.
“Get out of here,” C. B said, trying to intercept one of the “aliens.”
“I thought everyone was welcome,” the alien spoke back, voice muffled by his mask.
“Yeah,” said the alien beside him. “Play nice, or we’ll zap you with our powers.” He shot C. B. in the face with a water pistol.
“We’ve already had to move the canteen twice because of you, and I won’t do it again. Leave!” Rye snapped.
“I came to eat, and I won’t leave until I’ve been served.” The first alien plopped into a chair and propped his feet on the table, waving his foam hand dismissively. “Brains, if you please. Human. Don’t bother cooking them.”
“You’re going to scare off the people who really need this place.”
If I hadn’t seen the coffee cup, I would have believed C. B. was sincere.
“No one needs what you’re offering.” The second alien climbed up onto the table and removed his foam head. Underneath, he was mundane like the rest of them, but he was furious.
One of the cloverleaves handed him a tablet and a microphone, and he began to shout about how people were blinded to the truth of the world. He declared C. B. and Rye to be Commission puppets. He spoke of the anniversary, then held up one of the coffee mugs and demanded to know what the wardens wanted with the local homeless.
“We’re trying to help, brother,” Rye said, but the unmasked alien kept shouting.
A girl shouted the Brick Street rhyme over him; others turned it into a round.
Remember the brick street.
Remember the dead.
The main speaker started calling out names, and as he did, the people with him held up enlarged pictures of the homeless, each marked with a name. All missing. All regulars at C. B. and Rye’s charity stop.
Someone at the university table reached into a bag. She slung her hand at C. B., and a sticky toy jellyfish slid down his shirt, leaving a slime trail. That triggered the others at the table, and everyone who had been marching. One of the toys landed square on my head. Another stuck to Winnie’s neck.
The university group jumped up and started taking pictures, hooting and laughing. C. B. grabbed the seated alien’s head and tried to pull it off, while Rye tried to drag the speaker off the table. Most of the crowd fled.
They had the right idea. Unincorporated or not, this kind of commotion would draw the police. I grabbed Winnie’s arm and ran.
The walk back up the incline toward the shed felt longer than our descent. Coiling fog rose off the night’s frost. It wrapped around my ankles, stealing what little warmth was left in my body as it curled toward my knees. After life aboard the train, a town was a filthy thing. Even the streetlamps cast dirty color to pollute the night.
Lights flickered along the bridge—ghosts or fairies keeping watch in somber silence. Never once, in all my years with The Show, had I truly understood the fear that piqued in those who followed me into the Caravan of Wonder, but I felt it there.
People like me . . . we were jokes. Maybe the guy with the list of missing people had a good reason for what he was doing, but for the rest, it was nothing but an excuse to cause mayhem.
They wouldn’t have kept laughing if they’d seen the Celestine emerge, and the disturbing part was that I didn’t hold her back to keep from obliterating the charity stop or the street behind it. I did it because I knew the fake aliens were filming, and I would have been seen.
There was a part of me, a very dark and terrifying part, that wanted to show them exactly what they were mocking. I was ashamed to admit it was getting harder to tamp that part down.
Xerxes poked his head out of my pack, resting it on my shoulder. I reached for Bijou, wrapped heavy and warm around my arm, and patted him.
Winnie and I stopped at the shed, kicking the nailed-up boards on the broken door until we found one loose enough to pry up and slip through.
“Not exactly a sleeper car, but it’ll do till morning,” she said. “It’
s not safe on the street if that lot draws police. We can head off at first light and follow the riverbank until we’ve got no choice but to go into the water.”
We settled in among a pile of musty canvas bags, pretending not to hear the scritch and squeak of nesting rats, but didn’t turn off our lantern. It was small, and not warm, but we’d both lived with The Show long enough to take comfort in illusion.
I imagined the clatter of wheels outside was the sound of the train laying track. The wind meant speed, and the promise of a new town up ahead; we were only cold because Squint was repairing furnaces. My sisters were down the corridor, as always.
Eventually, I must have bought the lie, because I was woken when someone else’s hands rattled the boards across the door. My eyes met Winnie’s; I hit the switch to turn the lantern off.
A brighter light bobbed beyond the door.
“Gimme a go,” a man ordered. “I’ll get us in.”
There was a shuffling of feet as a second man replaced the first. Either he was stronger or more stubborn, because soon cracking wood and popping nails had me and Winnie scooting into the shadows with the rats. The boards gave way, and two large shapes backed in through the door.
“Must’ve warped in the weather,” one said.
The other one turned. He swung his torch high and wide, flooding the tiny building with light. Winnie and I held on to each other, shaking in a way that had nothing to do with damp or chill.
“Lookie here, Bull.” The man with the torch smiled. Bull turned slowly, then straightened with a startle as his buddy said, “We hit the mother lode.”
CHAPTER 9
“Back away.” Winnie stood up, facing the two men.
“No need to worry, dolly, ol’ Tuck ain’t gonna hurt you.”
Tuck was the most strangely shaped person I’d ever seen. He had thin legs and wiry arms, but he was all bloated around the middle. He looked like a spider in a hand-me-down coat.
“Are you deaf?” Winnie snapped. She stood taller and straighter, her eyes fixed on them. “Turn around and leave!”
