The Luck Uglies

by Paul Durham

  Rye was about to climb the ladder to her pigeon coop to see if she had any messages. Rye and Folly had taught the pigeons to fly back and forth between their houses, and sometimes they wrote messages and tied them to the birds’ feet. But something stopped her in her tracks. Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. Someone was already on the roof.

  She stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder and pressed herself against the side of the house. She looked up again. The figure was in a cloak like hers. It was her mother. She was staring at the forest Beyond the Shale. She was perfectly still. It was like she was watching. Waiting for something.

  Abby didn’t seem to see her. Rye held her breath as she tiptoed back toward the house, slow and easy. Then there was a loud, terrible sound. Rye jumped and looked for a place to hide. The sound was far away but not far enough. It was a cross between the shriek of a wild animal and the wail of a baby. She looked up. Her mother had heard it too. Abby leaned forward ever so slightly, looking through the mist, but remained in place.

  The sound again. It felt like a thousand insects running up Rye’s spine. She scrambled inside as fast as she could and slammed the door behind her.

  4

  Scuttlebutt and Secret Rooms

  Rye and Quinn sat on the split rail fence in front of the O’Chanters’ house and watched the commotion on Mud Puddle Lane.

  “Have you ever seen anything like it?” Rye asked, carefully wrapping her arms and legs around the rail.

  “Not since they spotted that school of sharks in the river a few years back.”

  The village had woken up that morning to find the streets filled with wild turkeys. Hundreds of them, at least six flocks, had come out of the bogs during the night. Mud Puddle Lane buzzed with villagers. Armed with nets and axes, some using only their bare hands, they chased the lumbering, feathered creatures up and down the roads and alleys. Nobody on Mud Puddle Lane was about to let a free meal run away.

  The neighborhood rooks perched on a cottage roof and watched in disapproval, almost as if they were embarrassed by the whole unseemly affair.

  “You think anyone will catch one?” Quinn asked.

  “I’d think someone would. Sooner or later,” Rye said. She flipped herself upside down, now dangling by her arms and legs from the fence like an exotic pet she’d once seen by the docks. The sailor who owned it called it a sloth.

  “Should we try?”

  “My mother said not to bother. She left for the Willow’s Wares early this morning. Brought Lottie with her. She seemed a little distracted.”

  Rye wondered how many nights her mother had spent sitting up on their roof. Had the terrible wail from the bogs rattled her the same way it had Rye? Rye found it easy enough to push the sound out of her head this morning, with the light of day and the routine of her regular chores, but her mother’s nervous energy and the commotion in the streets had her thinking about the eerie noise again.

  “Did you hear anything strange outside last night?” Rye asked.

  “With my father’s snoring?” Quinn said. “I can’t even hear the roosters crow. Why, did you?”

  “I thought I heard something screaming. Or crying. Hard to say.”

  “It wasn’t Lottie?”

  “Not this time.”

  One of Rye’s neighbors leaped for a turkey and fell chestfirst in the mud. The big clumsy bird flapped its wings and landed on the man’s roof. Rye and Quinn laughed. Rye’s laughter broke her grip, her flailing legs found Quinn’s ribs, and they both crashed to the ground.

  “Are you okay?” Quinn said, rubbing his side.

  Rye rolled over and struggled to catch her breath. “Fine,” she wheezed.

  They both looked at each other, then back to the turkey chasers, and began laughing again.

  Rye’s laughter trailed off as she considered what might have inspired the turkeys to leave the bogs and take their chances with the villagers’ carving forks.

  “They’re hopeless,” Quinn said. “Let’s go read—I brought a surprise.”

  Paintings of mermaids, adventurers, and monsters covered a wall by the O’Chanters’ fireplace. As proud as Abby was of her daughters’ talent, she hung the girls’ paintings for another purpose. The artwork covered a hidden door that slid open if you pushed it just right. The door led to a few shallow steps and Abby O’Chanter’s secret workshop. At least Rye assumed it was secret, because her mother never mentioned it to her and she had never, ever seen her mother go in. Then again, Abby had never told Rye to stay out of the workshop, so technically Rye wasn’t breaking any House Rules. Regardless, Rye certainly wouldn’t be telling Lottie about it anytime soon; her sister ruined all the best hiding places.

  Rye and Quinn sat at the heavy wooden table that nearly filled the small sunken room, careful not to disturb the tools, beads, and half-finished jewelry. Shady was curled up in a big black ball underneath it. Rye wouldn’t have been inclined to let Shady back there either. But if it hadn’t been for him, Rye would never have known about it in the first place. One day she had seen Shady sniffing the floor and pawing at Lottie’s sketch of Mona Monster in a princess dress. Then, right before her eyes, he disappeared into the wall as if it had swallowed him up. It was amazing what kinds of surprises your own house could hold.

  Rye and Quinn huddled around a lantern and a thick book—Tam’s Tome of Drowning Mouth Fibs, Volume II. Quinn said that the angry poet had collected Tam’s Tome after Rye had dropped it, but he’d been forced to stash it in a chimney before climbing down to answer the Constable’s questions. Quinn had taken it upon himself to save Tam’s Tome from nesting birds and chimney fires. Rye was impressed. That was more along the lines of something she or Folly might try.

  “What do you think the poet will do when he finds out it’s missing?” Quinn asked.

  “No idea,” Rye said. “He didn’t get a good look at us, so he can’t just come knocking on our doors. It wouldn’t be safe to report it missing, so I doubt he’ll risk telling anyone.”

  “Probably not,” Quinn said, chewing his lip.

  “We should keep it safe,” Rye said. And read as much of it as we can, she thought.

  “I guess so . . . ,” Quinn said.

  “Good,” Rye said, before Quinn could change his mind. “We’ll keep it at your house,” she added quickly.

  Quinn and his father lived just three cottages down from the O’Chanters. Their walls were already bursting with Quinn’s stacks of books and his father’s cluttered assortment of weapons that could crush your bones or separate you from your limbs. Angus Quartermast was a blacksmith with hammer-forged arms and a brow that seemed permanently furrowed, but he always had kind words for Rye and her mother. Quinn had lost his own mother to the Shivers years before and neither Quinn nor his father had turned out to be much of a housekeeper. At the Quartermasts’ house, there was always a fine line between hidden and lost.

  Quinn, unlike his father, was still so skinny that he had to use a rope belt to hold up his pants. He had a tendency to forget things, like his lunch, or the shopping list, or sometimes his way home. But Quinn was also kind, and he was Rye’s second best friend in the whole world. Three times a week, he brought over a book and helped her with her reading.

  Now, with time to examine Tam’s Tome more carefully, they noticed that many of its pages were burned, torn, or missing completely, and its binding was covered in soot. Its contents, however, were like no book they had ever seen. Page after page was hand scrawled in letters of varying sizes. Throughout the book, the text was packed so tightly that the thin slivers of parchment not covered by ink seemed to form phantom images all their own. Rye tried to make them out but it was like spotting faces in storm clouds—lose your focus for just a moment and they were gone.

  “We should see if there’s anything about cries from the bogs,” Rye said, and by we she meant Quinn. She was still learning to wrestle with ordinary-sized letters.

  Quinn sighed as he squinted to read the actual words. “This
is going to take some time.”

  Fortunately, the maze of prose was occasionally broken up by the most detailed and lifelike drawings Rye had ever seen, and Rye and Quinn also spent their time studying the illustrations. There were portraits of people she didn’t recognize and maps of places she had never been. Creatures, both whimsical and menacing, seemed to leap off the page.

  One image, however, plunged them both into silence. It was vaguely human, its orange hair hanging in long knotted ropes from a skull that looked to have been broken and carelessly reassembled. Sickly skin clung to its ribs and hung in loose folds from its face. Cold eyes conveyed anger and sadness, and there was something both ancient and childlike in its expression. Dwarfed in its bony fingers was a child’s tattered rag doll; around its neck was a string of small shriveled feet. A Bog Noblin!

  Rye shuddered and turned the page quickly, pressing her hand against the opposite side as if the awful image might claw its way out. Quinn didn’t object.

  They had been leafing through Tam’s Tome for much of the morning when Shady’s ears perked up and he lifted his furry mane. Someone was coming. Rye and Quinn cast wary looks at Shady, then each other. Quinn hunched forward and tried to shield Tam’s Tome under his arms.

  The secret door opened. Rosy cheeks and big blue eyes beamed in the lantern light.

  “Folly,” Rye said with relief, “where have you been? There are some amazing things in this book.”

  “It’s been a crazy day,” Folly said, pulling up a chair. “Did you know turkeys have taken over your street?”

  “They came out of the bogs last night,” Quinn said.

  “It’s really busy at the inn,” Folly said. “I had to help my mum get ready for tonight’s Black Moon Party—got to hang Wirry Scares on the street.”

  Folly’s family owned the Dead Fish Inn, the most notorious tavern in the Shambles. It was rumored that, with enough grommets, you could buy anything at the Dead Fish. The Floods lived on the third floor over the guest rooms—Folly was the youngest of nine children, the rest of them boys. Her brothers were said to be the toughest in the village, which was good, because patrons of the Dead Fish were infamous for fighting, carousing, and causing all sorts of commotion. Rye envied Folly. The Dead Fish was far more exciting than Mud Puddle Lane, and all the wild turkeys in the world couldn’t change that.

  Folly slapped her hands on the table. “You’ll never guess what I heard over breakfast.”

  As usual, she didn’t wait for them to guess.

  “Two men came into the inn this morning. They weren’t villagers. They looked dirty and tired, and they had weapons. Lots of them. They said they hadn’t slept in days.”

  Rye’s and Quinn’s ears perked up.

  “I heard them telling my father that they’d just come in from Beyond the Shale. While they were there they saw . . .” Folly paused, the words stuck in her throat.

  “They saw what?” Rye asked.

  “What was it?” said Quinn.

  “A Bog Noblin!” Folly gasped, with a heaping of alarm and a smidge of excitement.

  “You’re just having a go with us,” Rye said. “They’re extinct.”

  “It’s true.”

  “In the forest?” Quinn asked.

  “No,” Folly said. “Out there.”

  She tilted her head in the direction they all knew the bogs to be. Rye and Quinn looked at each other in disbelief.

  “Guys,” Folly said, her tone serious. “I heard . . . here on Mud Puddle Lane . . . it got . . . bad.”

  “Stop it, Folly,” Rye said. “That’s bogwash. You’re just trying to get us in a twist.”

  But Rye knew Folly wasn’t teasing them. She heard the concern in Folly’s voice. Quinn now wore his worry on his face. He flipped the pages of Tam’s Tome and pointed to the open page. The Bog Noblin with the necklace of feet stared back. The tattered doll in its claws suddenly had new meaning.

  Quinn frowned like he’d swallowed a damp mouse.

  “Ugh. He’s a knotty-looking one, isn’t he?” Folly said.

  The drawing made Rye’s stomach hurt. She closed the book.

  “It’s just tavern talk, Folly,” she said matter-of-factly. “There’s no such thing as Bog Noblins anymore.”

  The three friends were quiet. Quinn squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.

  “You’ll still come to the party tonight, won’t you?” Folly asked Rye finally.

  Rye had always wanted to go to a Black Moon Party. She’d heard that villagers roamed the streets in garish clothes, carousing until sunrise. Of course, these days the Laws of Longchance brought curfews, fines, and floggings, which put a damper on celebrations of the first new moon each month. And there was also that pesky O’Chanters’ House Rule Number Three.

  HOUSE RULE NUMBER 3: Lock your door with the Black Moon’s rise, don’t come out until morning shines.

  “Maybe,” Rye said. “I’ll have to wait for my mother to leave the house.”

  Her mother had arranged some sort of Black Moon sale at the Willow’s Wares for special customers that night. She’d told Rye she’d need her to watch Lottie and Shady after they had gone to bed, but that she would be home as quickly as she could. If her mother was breaking the House Rule, so could Rye.

  “You have to,” Folly implored. “This is no ordinary Black Moon Party. I heard—”

  Rye and Quinn prepared for another tall tale.

  “—that there’s going to be a secret meeting about . . .” She looked over her shoulder as if someone might be listening. “The Luck Uglies,” she mouthed.

  “Luck Uglies” was a name whispered around the docks and darkest taverns, places where men played fast and loose with the laws and their lips. Calling someone a “cockle-knocker” or a “shad” might get a child’s tongue tamed with a horse brush. But “Luck Uglies” uttered in the wrong company could earn you a week in the stocks. Of course, like all children, Rye had heard Luck Ugly stories—usually around a fire after dark, or at a graveyard’s edge as the salt mist crept over the tombs—but never from her mother. Folly’s older brothers told one about a Luck Ugly who sharpened his teeth into fangs with a grindstone and fed on village vagrants after dark. Quinn’s father once told him that he’d better eat his cabbage or the Luck Uglies would come to take his dog while he slept.

  It was the Luck Uglies who, ten years before, had finished off the last of the Bog Noblins shortly before disappearing themselves. Neither group had been particularly missed.

  “Luck Uglies?” Rye repeated quietly.

  Folly nodded with great enthusiasm. “Maybe it has something to do with the Bog Noblin.”

  Quinn rolled his eyes. “When is the meeting to discuss witches and sea monsters?” he asked with an uneasy chuckle.

  “I’m coming,” Rye said, making up her mind. Talk of Bog Noblins and Luck Uglies, real or imagined, was too good to miss.

  “What about you, Quinn?” Folly asked.

  “I don’t think my father would like that.”

  “Parents aren’t supposed to like what we do,” Folly said. “That’s their job.”

  Quinn bit his lip and thought hard, but shook his head.

  “Are you sure?” Rye asked him. “We could go over together.”

  She hoped for the company. She’d never been to the Shambles after dark, but she’d heard . . . things. The Shambles was the one part of town where the Laws of Longchance weren’t enforced—the one place where the Earl’s soldiers dared not tread. Nobody really lived there except the transient shadow brokers who were lying low, biding time, or hatching plans, and people like the Floods, who profited from them.

  “I don’t think so,” Quinn said.

  “What’s wrong, Quinn?” Folly said. “Are you afraid the Luck Uglies might get you?”

  “No,” Quinn said quickly. “There’s no such thing as Luck Uglies anymore, right, Rye?”

  “Right,” Rye mumbled, not sounding particularly convincing.

  “Sure there’s not,”
Folly said. “Just like there are no more Bog Noblins.” She squinted and eyed Rye and Quinn carefully. “You’re positive you haven’t seen anything out in those bogs?”

  “Nothing,” Quinn said, his eyes wide. “Have you, Rye?”

  Rye shook her head. She hadn’t seen anything. But she was sure she had heard something last night. A sound like nothing she had ever heard before.

  5

  Black Moon Rising

  That night, Lottie went down without a fuss. Rye couldn’t have been more surprised.

  Lottie snuggled up with Mona Monster and began snoring fitfully under the covers as soon as Abby blew out the candles. Rye didn’t even need to lie down with her. Abby stoked the fire in the girls’ fireplace and they both slipped quietly from the room.

  Shady, on the other hand, was not in a restful mood. He paced the house like a caged bugbear, pawing at the floor and yowling. He climbed up their legs with his long claws. Finally, Abby locked him in her own bedroom.

  When Abby returned from her room, she was already dressed in her heavy cloak, ready to leave.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” Abby said.

  Rye watched her mother throw a thick pack over her shoulder. Abby had washed her face and tied her hair in a neat ponytail. Rye held back a smile—Abby had used another blue hair ribbon. Rye thought her mother was quite beautiful despite her old age—she was almost thirty-one. The way folks around the village looked at Abby, they must have thought so too.

  “Whose shoes are these?” Abby asked.

  “Quinn’s,” Rye said.

  “How does someone forget his shoes?”

  Abby didn’t wait for an answer. Rye could see in her mother’s body the same anxious energy that was setting Shady on edge tonight.

  “Now, Riley, I need you to listen for Lottie, understand? If she wakes up, you take good care of her.”

  “Yes, Mama.”