by Hana Tooke
Milou frowned. The woman he’d claimed would be their mother was a rat exterminator?
“Excellent,” Gassbeek squawked. “We have a deal then?”
“They were all quite pale and skinny. Working a ship like mine isn’t for the weak, Matron. It would not do if I had to throw them overboard before the journey is even over. I need them to last long enough to pay off the investment before I come back for more.”
Milou’s grip on her cat puppet tightened. She had been right about him, then. He wanted cheap, disposable workers, not heirs. A rat skittered past her toes and darted under a bookcase.
“When will you return?” Gassbeek asked. “I can ensure the next batch are fattened up a little.”
“I have a tight schedule this spring,” Rotman said. “I’ll return in August. But I must ask: the dark-haired girl, the one who looks like she should live in a graveyard. Is it likely she’ll give me much trouble? Her little performance just now makes me think she’s not one to listen to rules.”
“Milou?” the matron scoffed. “Don’t worry about her. As long as you have the others under your thumb, she’ll follow. Sentimental little brat, that one.”
“Then we have a deal, Matron. In return for a steady supply of orphans each year, I will provide you with coin and rid this place of vermin—both the rodent variety and the urchins you can’t shift.”
“I will need an hour to sort out the paperwork.” Gassbeek sounded supremely satisfied, Milou thought furiously. “Will that be long enough for you to retrieve Dolly?”
Milou had heard enough. She had an hour to tell the others what she’d learned and try to formulate a plan. She pushed away from the wall and turned back toward the stairs, coming to a sudden halt after just a few steps when she realized her friends had tiptoed down the hallway after her.
“Milou?” Sem said.
“Sem!” Milou hissed. “What are you doing here!”
“We came to get you—”
The sounds of scraping chairs and creaking floorboards were heard. The office door creaked open, and light and smoke spilled out into the hallway, a shadowy outline of Rotman stretching up the wall.
“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Rotman said, his booming voice filling the hall.
Milou realized they would never make it up the stairs without being seen or heard. The others seemed to come to the same conclusion. They stood, staring at each other in wide-eyed horror.
MILOU’S BOOK OF THEORIES
The Illness Theory
Perhaps my parents have an unfortunate medical condition that means they are temporarily unable to look after me? This could even be a phobia of some kind. Like a fear of babies and young children. Gassbeek’s fear of rodents turns her from an evil witch to a quivering wreck anytime she even hears a rat. And Egg has a phobia of earwax. Even saying the word “earwax” makes him tremble. Babies are a bit like earwax: sticky and weird-smelling.
My parents will just be waiting until they are well enough to look after me again. Or until I’m old enough not to give them nightmares.
SEVEN
ROTMAN STEPPED OUT OF Gassbeek’s office, preceded by a huge fog of pipe smoke. Milou shoved at her friends. The children moved quickly and silently. Fenna curled under the fancy chest of drawers, Egg tucked himself between the two bookcases, Sem and Lotta slid into the first doorway, and Milou buried herself in the thick fur jackets on the coat stand. Something small and hairy shuffled past her ankles.
Milou heard the matron’s click-clacks accompanied by the heavy thud-thud-thud of sealskin boots going past. She had never been as thankful for the deep and hungry shadows in the canal house as she was then. Still, her heart thumped painfully against her chest.
“I’ll have them ready and waiting,” Gassbeek crowed, her voice echoing down the stairwell.
“I can see myself out from here, Matron. You get started on that paperwork. I need it looking believable when it comes to sneaking them past the customs officials.”
“Don’t worry, my paperwork is always flawless.”
Click-creeeeak-clack-creeeeak.
Milou carefully made a peephole between the coats as Gassbeek’s footsteps retreated. She noticed a thin arm sticking out from underneath the dresser, reaching toward a little gray rat.
Fenna.
Click-creeeeak-clack-creeeeak.
Fenna grabbed the rat around its middle, but the beast twisted and sank its teeth into her hand. Fenna’s arm disappeared back under the dresser as the rat scurried up and over it, knocking into the vase and making it wobble.
The matron emerged from the stairwell and stopped, suspicious.
Milou adjusted her peephole. Gassbeek stood there, her face lost in shadow, out of reach of the flickering oil-lamp light.
Click.
Clack.
Click.
Clack.
Gassbeek approached the dresser and stilled the vase. Then she bent down, as if to look underneath. Milou quickly drummed her fingernails against the wall behind her. Gassbeek bolted upright. Milou added a small rat-like squeak.
With trembling fingers, the matron lifted the vase and held it over her head, weapon-like. Milou stopped drumming. She had hoped Gassbeek would simply run back to her office in fear. Closing her peephole, Milou pushed herself against the wall and held her breath. She tried to push herself further back, clutching her cat puppet to her chest as if it might quiet her pounding heart. Her head hit the wall with a small donk.
Click.
Clack.
Click.
The fur coats were wrenched away. Milou blinked up at the matron.
Gassbeek’s face contorted from fear to fury. “You!”
The matron reached out and grabbed the cat puppet. Milou tried to clutch it to her chest. They struggled, Gassbeek growing increasingly red-faced with fury as Milou refused to let the puppet go. Then, with a sickening ripping noise, the matron tore the cat’s head right off.
“No!” Milou watched in horror as Gassbeek threw the puppet’s head aside and raised the vase above her head, ready to strike.
Milou’s eyes squeezed closed.
Gassbeek let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Not a scream of fury, Milou realized, but a scream of utter terror.
Milou’s eyes snapped open again.
Gassbeek was staring at the wall next to her, eyes like full moons. Her shrill scream continued. A movement by the dresser caught Milou’s eyes. Fenna’s little gray rat was standing atop it, directly in front of the oil lamp. Milou turned to look at the wall beside her, to where the rat’s shadow stretched across the wall: a huge twitching nose with whiskers as long as swords. It opened its mouth, teeth like daggers. And raised its paws, claws like scythes.
Gassbeek’s scream suddenly cut short. The vase dropped from her hands and rolled across the floor. The matron fell forward, crashing into the wall. She clutched her throat, gasping, croaking, dragging her nails down her throat, and then clutching at her chest.
Milou took a step toward her, heart hammering.
Gassbeek slid down the wall and landed with a thud on the floor. The hallway fell silent, except for her gurgling, the same sound water makes as it disappears down a clogged drain. A death rattle, Milou thought. The gurgling stopped abruptly, Gassbeek’s hand fell slackly to her side, and she stared blankly up at the ceiling.
She didn’t move again.
MILOU’S BOOK OF THEORIES
The Unthinkable Theory
What if I truly am an orphan? A proper orphan, I mean. Perhaps the only way my parents would have ever given me up was if they were dead.
Until the other theories are disproven, however, this theory is not worth even thinking about.
Dead parents don’t climb roofs.
Dead parents don’t leave clues.
Dead parents don’t come back.
EIGHT
THE MATRON LAY, LIMBS splayed awkwardly like a discarded marionette, on the polished wood floor of the Forbidden Quarters. Her eyes stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, her neck twisted to the side and her mouth was open in a silent scream.
Milou clutched the headless body of her cat puppet over her sputtering heart. A door creaked open beside her, then stopped with a thunk as it hit the matron’s supine body. Lotta peeked out, looked down, and gave a yelp. Sem’s head emerged from the doorway above her. Egg appeared from between the bookcases, and, one bony limb at a time, Fenna crawled out from under the dresser, clutching her rat-bitten hand. The five of them stared down at Gassbeek.
“Is she dead?” Sem asked finally, looking to Lotta. “Check her to see if she’s alive.”
“No.” Lotta hiccupped loudly. “I don’t want to touch her. You touch her.”
Sem paled. “I’m not touching her!”
Fenna shook her head as she stared at Gassbeek.
“Neither am I,” Egg added. “She looks dead. Milou, you touch her. You like dead things.”
“I don’t like real dead things. I . . . oh, fine.”
Milou knelt beside the matron, extended a hand, then hesitated. She really didn’t want to touch the matron either. Instead, she waved a hand in front of the matron’s face, but Gassbeek didn’t blink. Milou stood and quickly backed away, the others following suit.
“Can someone really be frightened to death?” Egg asked.
They all looked to Lotta, who merely shrugged. “I’m a scientist, not a doctor.”
The little gray rat emerged, darting over the matron’s dress and off toward the office’s open door. Milou thought she saw the matron’s foot twitch, but when she looked again, Gassbeek was lifeless. Fenna made as if to chase the rat, took one step closer to the matron, then shook her head and hurried back to huddle between Lotta and Sem, who both wrapped an arm around her.
Lotta hiccuped once more, then turned to Milou. “What did Rotman mean about believable paperwork and sneaking us past the dockyard’s customs officials?”
“He and Gassbeek struck a deal,” Milou said, quietly and flatly. “He pays her to make all records of us disappear, then he’ll work us until we’re broken or dead. And in August he’ll come back for a fresh group of orphans.”
They all stared at her.
Lotta shook her head in disbelief. “But that’s against the law.”
“Since when has Gassbeek cared about any laws but her own?” Sem said quietly, staring around at the opulent hallway, then down to the lifeless form at their feet.
“I should have known. A girl would never be allowed to engineer a ship,” Lotta huffed. “He’d no doubt have me doing his laundry. We should have listened to you, Milou.”
Wordlessly, Milou reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand.
“Well, we can’t stay here,” Egg said. “The authorities might think we killed her.”
“We can’t just run,” Lotta said. “The Kinderbureau will send a new matron. Perhaps we could explain . . .”
Sem shook his head. “You really think they’ll believe us? We can’t take that chance. Egg’s right, we need to leave.”
“But we’ve got nowhere to go.”
No one spoke, and the silence hung heavy in the still-oily air.
Milou held her puppet’s body tight, then went to pick up its head. As she leaned forward, something small but heavy fell from the puppet’s open neck, landing between her feet with a soft thud. The tips of her ears turned icy cold, and she sucked in a short, sharp breath.
A round piece of silver glinted in the lamplight, and Milou sank to her knees in front of it.
“Milou?” Egg dropped down on one side beside her, Fenna on the other. Milou’s throat felt too tight to get words out. With trembling hands, she put her puppet aside and picked up the glimmering item.
“What is it?” Sem asked, and he and Lotta crouched in front of her.
Milou swallowed. They all leaned in.
It was roughly the same diameter as a guilder coin, and the thickness of Milou’s pinky finger. The surface was tarnished silver, inlaid with a neat line of tiny crystals, shimmering like stars, around which curled a golden crescent moon. There was a loop at the top, with a thin chain running through it, and at the bottom, the smallest clasp she had ever seen. Milou lifted the lid and found an intricate clock face, each roman numeral sitting below a tiny golden star. In the middle was a painted-blue disk, only partially visible from behind a cutout in the clock face, displaying the sun and moon cycle.
The pocket watch’s gears had long since fallen silent, and the hands were completely still.
“Well, that explains the puppet’s supposed heartbeat,” Lotta said. “I told you there is always a logical explanation.”
Milou turned the watch over in her hand, revealing a delicate inscription, so small she had to lean right in to read it:
Beneath the stars I found you.
52:284040, 4:784040
Under the moon I lost you.
The icy chill spread from her ears down her neck to her shoulders as she read the inscription again.
I found you.
The chill grew seemingly heavier, colder, pricklier.
I lost you.
The first two lines had been engraved in neat type, but the final line had been scratched on.
“Geographical coordinates,” Egg said, almost reverently, pointing at the numbers between the writing.
Coordinates.
Milou’s breath hitched inward once more.
I lost you.
Milou ran her fingers shakily over the coordinates. Things that were lost could be found again—if you knew where to look.
“I’m leaving,” she said, the words finally bursting from her lips. Four shocked expressions settled on her. “This is a message from my parents—and before you say anything, this isn’t one of my wild theories. This is proof. I’m going to find them. And I want you to come with me. Let’s leave this place together and never look back.”
“Milou,” Lotta said softly, despairingly, “we need papers. The only plausible way out is adoption, and no one except that horrid merchant wants to take us.”
Milou uncurled the watch’s chain and slipped it over her head, a plan already blossoming in her mind. Her Sense prickled her ears in encouragement.
“Then we’ll just have to adopt ourselves.”
NINE
AS THE OIL LAMP flickered, the rats scratched, and Gassbeek lay lifelessly still, Milou, bright eyed and tingly eared, faced her friends and began to explain.
“It’s simple, really,” she said, her head swirling as if she’d just spun in a thousand circles. “And so obvious. We know Bram Poppenmaker, my father, made this puppet. Which means, most likely, he or my mother made this watch. They must have hidden it because they knew an orphanage matron might steal it, and they were definitely right about that. My point is, it’s a proper clue. On its own, the puppet was useless at telling me how I could find them, but together—”
“Milou!” Lotta said, exasperated.
“Yes?”
“You still haven’t explained how you plan to get us out.”
Milou shook herself, trying to stop the maelstrom in her mind. “It’s easy. We write ourselves an adoption certificate, using my father’s name, and then we just leave.”
Egg frowned. “And go where, exactly?”
Milou held up the pocket watch and pointed toward the numbers etched on the back of it. “Here, of course!”
“But where do those coordinates lead?” Sem asked.
“Gouda knows,” Lotta said. “It could be anywhere in the world. Milou, we need a proper plan. Rotman will be back soon. I suggest we go back up to the dormitory and prete
nd to be asleep. In the morning, we can act as if—”
“Actually,” Egg said, eyes agleam, “those coordinates are within a hundred-kilometer radius of the city.” He held Milou’s pocket watch up for them to see. “Amsterdam sits just over fifty-two longitude, and just under five latitude. It took me seven attempts and twice as many canings to get that information out of Gassbeek when I started making my map. I didn’t think she’d ever tell me, but I guess she wanted to shut me up—anyway, it was worth it. But we’d need a much more detailed map than mine to find the exact location of these coordinates.” Egg’s smile widened. “Just as well I know where we can find one.”
Milou hugged him.
“Wait,” Lotta said. “Even if we do find this location, there’s no guarantee that it’ll lead us anywhere useful.”
Milou was about to argue—to point out that her parents wouldn’t have left her coordinates that led nowhere—but stopped herself just in time.
Lotta needed logic in order to be convinced, not optimism.
“If we stay, we’ll be in trouble no matter what we do,” Milou said softly. “If we leave, there’s a chance—maybe just a small one, but a chance—that we can be rid of this place, rid of the chores, rid of the lineups—forever.”
They all looked at Gassbeek.
The grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour.
Sem got to his feet. “We need to decide now. Milou’s right. We’ll never have a chance like this again.” Milou beamed at him, but her smile faltered slightly as he shook his head gently. “I’m not coming just to help you find your birth family, Milou. You know how I feel about the people who discarded us here. I’m agreeing because it’s the only chance we’ll ever get to leave this place on our own terms.”
Milou swallowed hard. “I understand.”
Egg stood too. “I’ve never belonged here,” he said, glaring at the matron. “None of us have. There’s nothing but pain here.”
He and Sem looked expectantly at the girls.
“We do this together, or not at all,” Sem said. “I’m not leaving any of us behind.”
