by Devon Monk
Shard LeFel stepped into the room and Mr. Shunt scuttled in, latching the door tight behind him and throwing the room into complete darkness.
“Light, Mr. Shunt,” LeFel barked.
Mr. Shunt snapped his fingers, steel scraping flint, and caught fire to an oil-drenched wick of a lantern he plucked from the wall.
Mr. Shunt held that lantern high, the golden light washing over the room like a silken veil.
The room was spartan, shockingly so when compared with the other two carriages. Walls were lined with worktables, benches, drawers, crates, and shelves of iron and wood. Tools glittered, hung above the workbenches, tools that could pry, vise, weld, rivet. No curved edges, no rich trappings, no comforts here. This room was a place of extrapolation, of bending metal to the fevered dreams of the mind. A place of devising in a way most uncommon.
In each of three corners of the room stood a creature of bolt and gear and bone. Similar to Mr. Shunt, the creatures wore long woolen coats, layers of gray lace, tatters, and high collars and hats that covered their faces. They seemed nothing more than beggars hung to rot, but they were more. Much more.
They were Strange come into the Strangework bodies Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt had devised for them. Fueled by blood and glim, they did not move, did not breathe, did not make a sound as LeFel and Mr. Shunt moved about the room. They were still as death itself. Only their eyes betrayed their true state, burning through the darkness and following LeFel’s and Mr. Shunt’s every move.
The Strangework had sworn to stand guard to the one precious thing in the room.
In the exact center of the floor was a platform. And upon that platform lay a closed black door the size of a coffin. That door did not lead to the ground outside the train car. That door, when pried by a blood key and moonlight, would take him home, and remain open, a hidden opening to this world, rolling on the dead iron tracks across the land.
LeFel strode to the wall and hooked the crook of his cane into one of the lower cupboard doors, pulling it open. Just enough lamplight fell upon the contents to make out the shape. A wooden coffin. No larger than a small child. Just the size that would fit the blacksmith’s boy within.
LeFel rested his cane against the open cupboard door and drew the coffin out with both hands. He carried it a short ways to a worktable and placed it on top.
Mr. Shunt craned his long neck to better see over LeFel’s shoulder. Even the Strangework guards in the corners stirred in anticipation.
LeFel thumbed the latches and pushed open the lid.
Inside the coffin was a swaddled form, the size of a small child. LeFel removed the swaddling cloth away from the figure. Within the blanket was a gnarled, twisted piece of wood. The bark was papery as madrone, showing just peeks of pale wood beneath the peeling exterior. Three bones, perhaps each a joint of a human pinkie, were placed upon the wood, and all around it were gears, springs, levers, and wheels.
Once the blanket had been removed, LeFel spoke. “This, I will leave to you, Mr. Shunt. Prove to me again your worth.”
Mr. Shunt drifted forward to stand next to LeFel. “The pleasure will be mine.” He extended one long arm, spindly fingers wrapping around the chunk of wood.
LeFel smiled while Mr. Shunt worked a matter of devising he’d seen only the Strange attempt. By and by under Mr. Shunt’s quick fingers, the bark shed away from the heart of the wood. Leaving behind something soft, something malleable.
It took no time for Mr. Shunt to carve the wood into the likeness he wanted. Eyes, nose, mouth, curve of cheek, and hollow of neck. Arms, body, legs. It was fine work and LeFel savored the mastery of each slice, gouge, and cut.
Then when the carving was done, when it was clear even in the watery lamplight that a child lay within that coffin, Mr. Shunt dug in his pockets, and leaned forward to open several small drawers, withdrawing more gears, springs, and bolts, more bone, tendon, and bits of flesh floating in liquid-filled jars.
These he plied to the wood, hooking with steel, sewing with copper threads, running pulleys of sinew for joints, and bits of bone hammered in place like nails. For the Strange to walk this land heavy enough to leave footprints behind, they needed more than a doorway. They needed gears, blood, and flesh. Strangework.
“Blood?” LeFel asked as he watched Mr. Shunt’s devising.
Mr. Shunt turned his head to stare at LeFel, eyes wide and red. “Yours, perhaps?” he whispered.
LeFel scowled at Mr. Shunt’s naked desire. “You forget yourself, Strange,” he said. “My blood is not in our contract.”
“Yes, lord,” Mr. Shunt said. “Of course, lord.” He bowed, but his eyes did not lower. “What blood pleases you?”
“The dreamer’s will do.” He withdrew the small vial of the boy’s blood he had taken earlier.
Mr. Shunt smiled, his teeth a ragged line of ivory blades. He took the vial, twisted the cork free with his teeth, and dripped the blood over the gears and flesh and heart of the wooden child, liquid splattering like a dark stain.
Then Mr. Shunt pulled a tiny vial of glim from his cuff pocket. The glim glowed like a green star upon his palm. This, he placed delicately into the slit in the child’s chest, resting it carefully among copper wires and springs. He unstitched a thread from his own face, and sewed the glim up tight. He spoke a litany of words, old words, snake soft, clucking and catching in rhythm as each stitch joined flesh and fiber and cog.
When Mr. Shunt was done, he bit the string in two, setting the glim-fed gears into motion.
At the snap of thread, the creature in the coffin shuddered, then opened its eyes.
The Strangework in the corners of the room inhaled, and that smallest movement shifted the tubes that bound them at ankles and wrists to the doorway itself.
The stock, the changeling, the Strange, looked exactly like the blacksmith’s boy, looked just like the little dreamer. Except when it smiled. Then its eyes were as old as the gravewood and flesh of which it was made.
LeFel picked up his cane. “To catch the witch, we must catch her heart.” He considered the changeling with a critical eye. “The boy should show some hardships, wandering for days in the wilds; don’t you agree, Mr. Shunt?”
“Indeed,” Mr. Shunt breathed. He dragged thumbs across the boy’s cheek, leaving behind a bruising welt.
The Strangework laughed. “More,” it said.
Mr. Shunt tugged at its hair, nicked its ear, tore the shirt it appeared to be wearing—a shirt that looked exactly like the shirt the blacksmith’s boy wore. The more Mr. Shunt nipped and scraped, cut and clipped, the more the changeling laughed.
“Enough,” LeFel finally said. Then, to the boy, “You will lure the witch from her home.”
The changeling nodded, somber as an undertaker.
“Bring the witch to where Mr. Shunt waits for her.”
The changeling nodded again, then hopped out of the coffin, landing spryly on his feet.
That was no child standing in the middle of the floor. Even though it was the perfect image of the boy, from tousled hair to scuffed feet.
“See that she thinks you the lost child. Weep for her, laugh for her. Fear for her,” LeFel said. “And do not fail me.”
LeFel turned to Mr. Shunt. “You will take the dog with you to catch up the witch. I will not have this night end without the witch at my feet.”
Mr. Shunt bowed again and clicked his tongue. The changeling skipped up beside him. Mr. Shunt glided toward the door, the changeling at his heels, tearing holes in its shirtsleeves, pinching its own arms while it hummed a soft song to itself.
And then the Strange and the flesh and gear boy were out the door and gone.
Shard LeFel carefully placed all the shavings that had fallen from the making of the boy, all the splinters of bone, wood, and metal, into the swaddling, then tied it in a tight knot. This dark devising was best not to be left where even a stray breeze could stir it. He closed the coffin, set the latches, and returned the whole thing to the cupboard.
He would be home.
Soon. So soon he could taste the need for it on the back of his throat.
He lifted his finger away from the door and instead pulled a silk kerchief out of his cuff. He wiped the kerchief over his lips, again and again, trying to blot up the hunger, the need.
“Soon,” he breathed. He turned and hooked the lantern with his cane, then slipped out of the carriage, locking the door, and his only way home, behind him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cedar ran. The night coursed by him, through him. His claws punctured dirt, tearing, rending the earth with each stride. The mountain thrummed with life, with movement, with living things that should be dying things. The need to kill rolled over him in a hot wave.
No. He had to find the boy. Cedar pulled against the beast, against instinct that leaned a hand over his throat.
The beast whispered: Track. Kill. Devour.
Cedar focused on the boy. Clung to that one goal to drown out the blood need. Repeated it like he was repenting a sin. Track the boy. Hunt the boy. Find the boy.
The beast twisted against his hold. Snarled at his thoughts, his litany. It was all Cedar could do to think through the hunger, to remember a need that was not bent by fang and claw.
Save the boy.
He followed jagged jackrabbit trails through the brush across the fields. The boy was not here. Not on this mountain. Not in these hills, nowhere near enough for the wind to bring him his scent.
Town. The tuning fork slapped against his chest as he ran, a single pure tone humming in beat with his footfalls, music only his keen ears could hear. The Strange were here. Not near, but close enough the tuning fork whispered of their presence.
Kill.
Cedar stumbled as the blood need pressed against his hold.
No, he thought, taking back control. He would find the boy.
The wind rose as night deepened, dragging cold fingers through his thick fur and prickling against his skin. He shivered at the invitation, the freedom, the rightness of the night around him. No chains to hold him down. No locks to keep him caged. He could run forever and belong only to the night.
The boy, Cedar thought.
He was at the edge of the town now, and slowed. The press of humans living too near one another wove a thick blanket of odors. Softly, carefully, through patches of shadow and moonlight, he crept into town.
The blacksmith’s shop beneath the water clock tower was dark and stank of coal. He didn’t like coming so near the shop and tower. The slosh of water, ratchet and clatter of gears, stink of oil and grime, were too much. There were too many smells, too many noises to hide the sound of killing things, of footsteps, of bullets slid into chambers, of breath caught before a finger squeezed a trigger.
This was no place to hunt. This was a place to be killed.
Cedar stopped, fighting his dual nature.
Instinct said run.
Reason held strong to one thing only: Find the boy.
Cedar reined in his fear and made his way along the edge of a split-wood fence, then the side of the street to the Gregors’ shop. The stink of ash and metal and grease stung his nose and fouled all other scents. He took two cautious sniffs, then crept around the back of the shop.
He could smell the sweat and booze of the blacksmith here, the second sugary scent of his wife, and other people he needn’t name. His mouth watered. The overwhelming need for blood washed through his veins, took over his thoughts.
Cedar held against it, though he knew he could not hold for long. He sniffed the ground, working his way closer to the house. The beast was gaining strength the longer he denied the hunger. Quickly. He needed to find Elbert’s trail quickly.
The boy’s scent was strongest here, though still faint. The child had been gone too long, his scent rubbed away by other living things.
Cedar stood on his back legs, paws on the lower windowsill, nose at the wall.
The silver tuning fork swung forward and rapped the wood.
The single sweet note soured with the song of the Strange, too loud in the night, too loud in his ears, twisting in harmonies that made him want to growl.
The song was thick in the air. The Strange had been here. He sniffed for the Strange’s scent and found it, an oily earthiness and rot, and beneath that, the faintest scent of the boy.
The Strange had taken the boy, covered the boy’s scent, carried the boy. And he knew which way they had gone.
Cedar dropped back to all fours and turned, muscles bunched to run, to howl, to hunt. To kill.
A figure across the street paused. “Mr. Hunt?” a voice called softly.
Cedar froze. Man and beast warred. Man won.
“Mr. Hunt?” The figure across the street came closer.
He knew that voice. Knew that figure. Miss Rose Small.
But how did she know it was him? Maybe she was teched in the head, and thought all wild animals were people from the town. Even if that were so, what would be the chance that she would call him by name? What was the chance she would know he was behind the wolf’s eyes?
Rose had a handful of bolts and wires and washers. As she stepped into a pool of moonlight, the hunger pushed over him again, dragging against his reasonable mind.
Kill.
She sucked in a quick breath, her hand flying up to touch the locket around her neck, the cogs and gears and wires chiming to the ground. “Are you quite well?”
Sweet blood, sweet bones, flesh to tear, heart to pierce.
Cedar pulled against the beast’s need, struggling to keep control.
Rose Small did not look like Rose Small.
To his man’s eyes, she was the woman he had seen just yesterday. But through the wolf’s eyes and the veil of the curse that brought both minds together, Miss Small was a woman filled with a glim light. It was as if she contained sunshine and summer, and all the stars glinting in the sky.
There was something of the Strange about her. Even the tuning fork hummed softly, not the sour song of the Strange in the windowsill, but a song much like he had heard back in the Madders’ mine.
Miss Rose Small was not wholly human, a condition he reckoned she had not yet discovered.
She stepped out of the moonlight, and took to looking like herself again. She was bundled up in a long coat, but her bonnet was pushed back off her head. She’d obviously been out in the night, strolling the streets, ducking beneath limbs and crevasses to collect up nails and bits of wire. He wondered what she did with those bits and bobs, wondered if she devised matic and tickers and other such trinkets.
“Do you need assistance, Mr. Hunt? A doctor, perhaps?” She didn’t come any closer, though she wasn’t far enough away to be safe from him.
He inhaled the scent of her. His hold slipped slightly, and the beast within him whispered, Kill.
Cedar pushed against the beast.
She did not smell like the Holder the Madders wanted him to find. She did not smell like the Strange who had taken the boy, and she did not smell like the boy. Standing here was doing nothing more than wasting moonlight.
Find the boy. Cedar took a step backward, two. Three.
Miss Small nodded, just that easily accepting him as a wolf. “I see that you have things to do and a need to be doing them. I don’t want to keep you, Mr. Hunt. Good night to you.”
Kill, the beast in him whispered again.
Cedar silenced the voice with one word: Hunt. Before the moon set and dawn burned the beast out of his bones.
He ran, out into the fields. Not following the boy’s trail yet, looking instead for blood and meat to
sate the beast’s hunger and give him back his reasoning mind. And he found it, in a calf who had staggered away from its mother, too frightened to cry out before Cedar lost control over the beast, and tore out the animal’s heart.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mae Lindson heard a child sobbing outside her door, but did not want to unlock the shutter to see if her ears were telling her true. There was as much of a chance the Strange was outside her door, tricking her to think a child was outside. And equal odds that the Strange wanted to lure her into the night away from the protections of her cottage.
The door latch shook, rattled by feeble hands. The crying was right on the other side of her door, close as lips to the keyhole.
No words. Just sobbing.
Mae hesitated. She had spent the last few hours working spells on the bullets and shells, working protections on the Colt and the shotgun. She didn’t know if a magic blessing would do any good on bullets. Didn’t know if it would work against the Strange.
She held the Colt in one hand, the shotgun—not yet charged—in the other, one more precious shell set in its chamber. She fingered the switch on the stock of the shotgun, and the weapon hummed. When the humming reached the inaudible tone, and the needle on the gauge pressed tight to the right, indicating the weapon was fully charged, she unlatched the door. She did not break the threshold, but stood there, shotgun at her shoulder, ready to fire.
On her doorstep stood a child, dirty, bloody, and bruised. His nightshirt was torn, and his feet were bare. But his hair was wild and red—just like his father’s—and he had brown eyes wide with tears that tracked a line through the dirt and welts on his cheeks.
The wooden trinkets and toys along the walls stirred. The breeze brushed through them, their song soft and uncertain.
“Elbert?” she said.
The boy swayed on his feet, obviously exhausted. He held out his hands like a baby reaching up for his mama.
Mae looked out past him. Nothing moved in the night. No sign of the man, or anything else chasing the child.
