Grizelda

by Margaret Taylor

  All of a sudden a boy fell through the drain and landed on the stones below. Grizelda stifled a cry. The boy tried to leap to his feet and failed, instead scrabbling backwards like a crab with too-long, knobbly limbs. He had the nice, neat clothes of Lonnes’s well-to-do upper class, but they were rumpled now as if he had just been fighting for his life. He stared around him, eyes wide but unseeing, searching for something.

  Grizelda stepped forward into the light, and his look turned into one of terror as he pushed himself farther back. His hair flipped down into his face and he shoved it back with a frantic gesture.

  “Who–”

  Footsteps ran overhead, and two men shouted to each other. A trash can scraped across the pavement. The boy frantically waved his hands for silence and mouthed one word: gendarmes.

  Gendarmes. She knew what that was like. The two of them waited together, hardly daring to breathe. The feet had stopped; there were muffled snatches of a conversation between two, maybe three men. One of them raised his voice, the other made a submissive sound. Then the feet moved on.

  Grizelda waited there, for one, two, three minutes, just to be safe. When she couldn’t take it any more, she ran over to the boy to help him up.

  “Are you all right? What are they after you for?”

  But he refused her help. “What are you doing here? Where’s my hat gone? Ouch!” He banged his head on the tunnel ceiling. It knocked his hair loose and he pushed it back again.

  “Here!” Grizelda ran to get the cap, which had rolled off into the corner. She set it in his hands.

  He looked at her suspiciously. “You’re not going to turn me in, are you?”

  “No! I’m–“

  Now she’d done it, she realized. She’d broken her exile by speaking to him. And she couldn’t exactly tell him about the goblins, could she?

  “I’m hiding, too,” she finished lamely.

  They stood there, looking at each other, and for a moment Grizelda thought he might explain what was going on. She wondered if she should leave before she got into worse trouble. Then the boy shoved the cap down on his head and started clambering up the storm drain.

  “I gotta go now! Thanks! Bye!”

  “No.” She dragged him down, pulling him by his ankles. “You’ll just get caught.”

  “But I gotta go get Jamin! Let go!” He’d managed to get halfway out by this point, arms and body out on the street, legs still below the surface. He kicked mightily, but she refused to let go.

  “You can’t afford to be seen on the street,” she said.

  He slid back down. “What are you going to do about it?”

  What was she going to do about it? She was playing this by ear.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” she said. “Why are they chasing you?”

  “Some stuff Mom wrote. They’re okay, though, they got out, but– Oh, God, they’ve got Grandpa!” He lunged for the drain, but she still had a hold of his ankles and held him back. The boy sank to the ground.

  She knelt by him. “Are you okay?”

  “No. It’s just– Grandpa. He was still in the house, he–” He looked up at her. “I have this friend, his name is Jamin. I have to go tell him what’s happened. I have to go back up there.”

  “You can’t,” she said.

  Exile or no exile, she was going to do something about this. And maybe she had an idea.

  “Where does he live?”

  “In a flat above a warehouse. Near the Fish Market.”

  “I think … I think the sewers follow the same lines as the big streets.” She chewed her lip, working out the details. “Yes! You can get to Jamin underground! Follow me!” She ran off down the tunnel.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” He stumbled after her blindly. He hadn’t gotten a few yards before he hit his head on a pipe.

  “Ow! How can you see down here?” the boy said, rubbing his head.

  She’d taken her sight for granted, but this boy fresh from the surface was bumbling about like a bat in the daytime. She must have gotten used to the dark, going part goblin spending all this time underground.

  “It kind of helps that I’m short. Here, just step where I step.” Grizelda held out her hand.

  The boy took it and she took off, leading him on a chase through the underbelly of Lonnes. She had no trouble ducking the pipes and skirting the holes and streams, but the boy crashed along behind her like a wounded animal. She knew he couldn’t see a thing of her, so they communicated through her hand, her using the slightest of pressures to guide him one way or another. It was enough information for him to manage to stumble along, bent over, too big for these tunnels.

  Finally, Grizelda stopped.

  “I think we’re under the Fish Market now,” she said.

  The boy poked his head out a nearby drain for a quick look around, then pulled it back in, excited. “It’s over there! I can see Jamin’s flat from here!”

  “Then run, before somebody sees you!” She urged him on.

  “Hold on.” He dropped back down. “Did you say you were in trouble with the gendarmes, too?”

  “I … You’re not going to turn me in, are you?” She realized as she said it that she was echoing his own words.

  “My name’s Toby Dunnag.” He held out his hand to shake.

  “I’m just Grizelda,” confused that he should suddenly be friendly when she had all but admitted she was wanted.

  “I’m with this organization,” Toby said. “I think they’d really like to meet you. We think the Committees of Public Safety have gone too far.” His eyes sparkled. “We’re revolutionaries.”

  It was painful just to look at him. She started to back away. “I don’t dare. I’ve already done too much, talking to you here.”

  “We meet under the Trebuchet, on Rue de Calle. Every Monday night.”

  “I can’t.” Oh, if only she’d never heard the word exile. “I’m following these rules, but I can’t explain them to you. I’m sorry.”

  The boy called Toby gave her a look that she couldn’t quite read. Disappointment mixed with something else. She couldn’t bear to look at it. She turned away and melted into the shadows.

  She retraced her steps back to the goblin city, dejected. Around her, the last shreds of the pig iron riot were dissipating. Clusters of angry goblins hung around in the streets here and there, yelling at other clusters, while the city police urged them to go home. Grizelda didn’t pay them much attention.

  Somebody wanted to do something about the Committees of Public Safety. They were making people disappear in the middle of the night while they said they were protecting Corvain from the Auks and sorcerers. And she could do nothing to help. She felt guilty even breaking the rules this time – hadn’t the goblins saved her life by hiding her from Promontory?

  And then another, bleaker thought. The Committee had been right to drag her away. Traitor to the Republic.

  She went through the laundry antechamber without even looking up. Crome had returned while she was gone, and when she got to the work floor, he gave her a stare, long and hard, but he didn’t say anything. Deciding it might be best not to say anything back, she plopped herself down at her workbench and resumed her work.

  After his fruitless meeting with the officer in charge of personnel, Mant went to bother Mrs. Ursinus. She was the woman in charge of the female prisoners’ belongings. Probably not very helpful for tracking down a disappeared prisoner, but he was getting desperate. Nobody in this prison seemed to know what they were doing. And the longer he took, the greater his chances somebody would find out this Grizelda girl was missing and cost him his job.

  He walked up to Mrs. Ursinus’s desk without ceremony and said, “ I need to see what you confiscated from a Grizelda on November the 20th.”

  She looked up at him with an odd expression. Mrs. Ursinus was the only employee of the prison who scared him almost as much as Lieutenant Calding. There wasn’t hostility in her look, not exactly. In fact, there wasn’t much of anyt
hing. She was too calm. She looked him in the eye, like none of his other subordinates dared.

  Without giving him a hint as to what she was thinking, she said, “All right, Warden,” and went into the back room.

  She came out a little while later with an envelope, which she set on the table. Instead of handing it over to Mant, she opened the envelope in front of him, drawing out a pair of scissors.

  “She didn’t have anything else on her?”

  “No, Warden.” There was that same, steady look.

  Well, he might as well give it a shot. “There’s a possibility that her denunciation papers drifted in here. Could you go into the back room and look for them?”

  “We’re not in charge of denunciations, sir.” And was that a hint of defiance in those eyes? No, he was imagining things, creeping himself out over nothing.

  Like that time Calding wanted to use torture on the girl, remember? The same one who was gone missing now. That weird light in Calding’s expression…

  Mant forced himself to focus. “I know that,” he said. “But the people who are supposed to be in charge of denunciations don’t have it.”

  “We don’t keep the denunciations,” she reiterated. “Where would I look?”

  “I don’t know. Just look.”

  She shrugged and went into the back room. She was gone a long time. Mant stood there and waited, shifting his weight, trying to ease his feet that were getting sore. Finally, she came back with a paper in her hand.

  “We do have this concerning a Grizelda. Will it help?”

  “Let me have it.”

  She stopped a minute, then gave it to him. He eagerly unfolded the paper and scanned it for its contents. Praise the Republic, something had gone right. Yes, this would help, it was the denunciation itself! He thanked her hastily and left. As soon as he was out in the hallway, he opened it again and began to read.

  My name is Meaven Godey. I am of sound mind as I tell this and I am a law-abiding citizen of the Republic of Lonnes. On Friday, November 17, I walked into Hesslehamer’s Charity Workshop intending to buy some thread…

  As he read on, the words in front of him filled him with more and more horror. Good God, she really was a sorceress.

  Chapter 15

  When the workbell finally rang, Grizelda got up and prepared to go as usual. Her foot hit something crinkly. It was the packet from the Chairman. She’d hidden it there under her bench when she came in. She stole a quick glance at Crome – he wasn’t looking. She took it up to her room quickly and threw it under the covers.

  She forgot about it for a while as she ate a hurried dinner in the cafeteria, avoiding the hate-filled stares of the goblins. Her mind was more on that boy she’d met in the sewers. If only she could join him and his revolutionaries! Plus, she had to worry about the possibility there would be another riot. So far, peace still held, but the goblins’ glares seemed to be even worse than usual.

  The spy was still there. He hovered about two blocks behind her as she walked home.

  When she went up to her room, not exchanging any friendly conversation with Crome as she passed him, the squarish lump in her covers was still there, waiting for her. She sat down on her mattress and pulled back the wrappings again. Roc’s egg blue on one side and bleached-bone white on the other. This was wrong. This was what got her into trouble in the first place, and got all the girls at the shop in trouble because of her. Traitor to the Republic. She should never even have ducked into that commissary in the first place.

  But this paper was perfect. Better than anything she had ever had at the shop. She bit her lip. Up here in her room, there was nobody there to see her betray the revolution. Be one of the Auks’ helpers. Freak.

  Decided, she took up a sheet and folded it, made a few careful snips with her scissors. It unfolded into a snowflake. It felt so good to be working again, creating something with her hands more important than darned socks. She took out another sheet, cut it up in just the right places, and made a paper chain. After a moment’s hesitation, she took out a third sheet and began to fold it.

  Under her fingers working swift and precise, a form started to emerge: that of a tiny foal, perfectly realistic from its hooves up to the creases that made its ears. She set it down on the ground and waited. For a moment it just lay there. Then it began to move.

  The foal shook its head as if emerging from a nap and looked around. Slowly, tentatively, it stretched its legs out and tried to get them under itself. After a few tries, it succeeded in getting up. The first few steps were wobbly, but it gained confidence, and before long it was prancing across the paint-chipped floor.

  Grizelda realized what she’d done, then guiltily snatched it up and tore it in half.

  The first thing Grizelda noticed when she stepped outside the next morning was that about half of the goblins were wearing green armbands. Some of them were walking, but mostly they stood around self-consciously in clumps, holding themselves in such a way that the green strips of cloth knotted around their upper arms were as prominent as possible. The bandless goblins had to push past them in the street to get anywhere.

  She had gotten up determined to go seek out Lenk first thing and ask him some questions. There were so many things she needed answers about – the shadowy figure she kept seeing following her, the disturbance in the Union Hall about pig iron prices and the resulting riot. That boy she’d met in the sewers was on her mind, too, but she didn’t dare ask him about that. Now she hesitated. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if these bands were connected with some new way the goblins were going to make life hell for her.

  Cautiously, she shut the laundry door behind her. The green-banded goblins didn’t look like they were making any moves. She adopted her usual eye-avoiding, businesslike shuffle and hoped matters would stay that way.

  Then she saw a familiar figure down the street from her, walking quickly. Overjoyed, she went running after him.

  “Mechanic Lenk!”

  The figure slowed, seeming somewhat unwilling to let her catch up to him.

  “Mechanic Lenk, I’m so glad I found you,” she said, out of breath. “I’ve got so many things to ask you. What are these bands? What do they mean?”

  He was standing awkwardly, she realized, facing sort of sideways to her, and looking highly uncomfortable.

  “Mechanic Lenk?”

  “It means they’re Strikers,” he managed.

  “Strikers?”

  “Goblins voting for Miner Nelin.”

  He shifted position, and Grizelda saw why he had been standing so oddly. There was a green band tied to his left arm, just above the elbow. She stepped back with a cry of dismay.

  Oh, Lenk, too?

  “Mechanic, you helped me!”

  “Grizelda, it’s complicated.” He stepped forward, made a gesture that was supposed to mean conciliation. She stepped back.

  “There are things like poverty and exploitation and the price of pig iron. Cooperation between the Unions. You’ve got to understand. We’re suffering under Chairman Grendel because he won’t do anything.”

  “No, I don’t understand!” She was almost shouting, the fact that she was out in the street where all the goblins could listen totally forgotten. “Miner Nelin’s such a horrible person!”

  “But he’s … right,” Mechanic Lenk said, sounding miserable.

  The ratriders noticed the change in her mood when she went to work that day. Geddy and Kricker were there, sitting on the top of the sewing machine, hidden from the goblin workers by the perennial clouds of steam that filled the laundry room’s air. Tunya was not there. She had long since declared she didn’t want anything to do with “that silly ogre girl” and stopped coming to visit.

  Grizelda wouldn’t talk to them, even after Geddy had tried repeatedly to make conversation. Geddy and Kricker exchanged concerned looks over her head, but she didn’t feel up to doing anything about it. She was just too bewildered by all the events that had happened recently and wanted to fall i
nto the nice, safe routine of her work for a while and not think.

  Finally Geddy said, “All right, Grizelda, what’s going on?”

  The remark startled her. What was going on? Where should she start?

  “Geddy, Kricker, I’m so scared,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” Geddy said. Kricker leaned in closer to listen.

  She took a furtive look around the work floor first. It was becoming a habit. “Somebody’s following me and I don’t know why,” she began. “I don’t know what it is he wants. I see him on the street, always a little behind me. I don’t like the way the other goblins are looking at me. There’s been a riot about pig iron.” She had an urge to drop her head in her hands, but she couldn’t do that out here on the work floor. It turned into a quick duck and a rub of her forehead. “Yesterday I almost broke my exile.”

  Actually, she really did break her exile, but she wasn’t going to go into that just yet.

  “Grizelda! What were you doing? That’s not safe!”

  She was pretty sure she was going to get a headache. “Honestly, Geddy, I won’t do it again. I was trying to get away from the riot, and then there was this strange boy … I don’t really want to talk about it, not here.” She rubbed her head again.

  “I’ll help.”

  Kricker was sitting forward earnestly. Grizelda and Geddy both looked at him in astonishment.

  “When you’re out walking, I’ll shadow you on my rat.” He was looking more serious now than Grizelda could ever recall seeing him.

  Ordinarily, it would have been amusing to think that Kricker, who was about six inches tall, was going to provide her an armed guard. Yet with everything that was going on, the idea was sounding really attractive to her.

  “Kricker, I think I’ll take you up on that.”

  That night, a strange sound woke Grizelda up, something like a small, hard impact on the door of her room. She lay, eyes open in the dark, waiting for it to come again. For a while nothing happened.