The Unadoptables

by Hana Tooke

  Fenna stood too and nodded in agreement.

  Lotta sighed, holding up a hand for Milou to pull her up. Then she nodded. “All right, I’m in.”

  * * *

  Lotta, Sem, and Fenna left to gather their belongings and some supplies. Milou took Egg’s hand and dragged him toward the office, carefully stepping over the matron’s body. The door to Gassbeek’s office opened with a creak that sent goose bumps up Milou’s arms.

  “Quiet!” Egg hissed behind her. “You’ll wake every dead dog in the neighborhood.”

  Milou pushed the door fully open. Egg edged around her, into the warm glow, where mere minutes ago, Gassbeek and Rotman had been plotting their nefarious deeds.

  She stepped in behind Egg. It was like walking into a wall of warmth. A large fire burned brightly in a huge fireplace made of marble and iron, above which hung a charcoal portrait of the matron in a gold-painted frame. A huge oak desk took up the entire center of the room, two elegant oil lamps on either end. And in the middle of the desk lay a thick, leather-bound book, with the words “LITTLE TULIP ORPHAN RECORDS” stamped across it in bold letters.

  “There it is!” Milou said, hurrying around the desk.

  “This stuff looks like it belongs in a mansion,” Egg said, loosening his shawl slightly. “Those lamps alone could have paid for new clothes for every one of us.”

  “Gassbeek was as crooked as a corkscrew,” Milou said, her lip curling in disgust. She looked at the well-stacked fire. “It’s so warm in here. And yet she left us to freeze.”

  “Let’s be quick,” Egg said, sitting down in the desk chair, his feet dangling high above the luxurious gray carpet.

  Milou opened the record book to the most recently written-on page, which showed the name of a girl who’d been adopted six months earlier. At the bottom of the adoption certificate, Gassbeek had signed her name in a scratchy scrawl.

  “Why isn’t the Fortuyn adoption from this morning listed in here?” Egg asked.

  “She was clearly too busy trying to find someone to sell us off to, to record it. Can you copy her signature?”

  Egg pulled out a blank sheet of paper from the desk, took a quill from the ink pot, and made a few practice squiggles.

  Milou looked between Egg’s paper and the record book. “Outstanding! I can’t tell the difference at all.”

  Egg gave her a bright smile and turned the page over to a blank form. His quill hovered over it. “Are you sure your parents will agree to this?”

  “Of course,” Milou said without hesitation. She placed her cat puppet on the desk in front of him and pointed at the label sewn into its foot. “Here. This is how you spell Bram Poppenmaker.”

  Egg gave her a small smile and began filling out the adoption certificate. He finished the final signature, blew on the ink, then tore off the top sheet, leaving the certificate’s imprint on the pink sheet below.

  “We are officially no longer orphans,” Milou said, her mouth stretched into a grin that nearly met her ears.

  “Well then, Milou Poppenmaker,” Egg said, returning her grin. “Shall we get out of here?”

  “Just a moment.” Milou snapped the record book closed, heaved it up, and stepped out into the hallway.

  She nudged the next door open. The matron’s bedroom was as luxurious as the rest of the Forbidden Quarters, but Milou didn’t pause to examine it. She skirted around the large four-poster bed, toward a more-familiar-looking woven laundry basket. Pulling dirty dresses and underskirts aside, she buried the record book at the bottom of the basket.

  “Just in case.” She grinned at Egg. “I reckon that’ll take the next matron a while to find!”

  The grandfather clock began to strike the ninth hour, the first dong rattling the ceiling. Milou and Egg were running up the spiral staircase as the second dong rang out. As the third strike ricocheted off the walls, they were over the red line and back in the cold gloom of the foyer, shivering as they ran. The others were already waiting.

  Sem had his wheat sack slung over his shoulder, Milou’s coffin wedged in his left armpit, and Egg’s coal bucket dangling from his long fingers. Lotta was clutching her tin toolbox and an armful of the matron’s fur coats. Fenna held her picnic basket.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” Lotta whispered, as the fourth dong rang. “Leaving the other orphans behind.”

  Egg took his coal bucket from Sem. Milou gathered her own coffin basket into her arms.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Sem said.

  The fifth dong echoed across the marble floor.

  Fenna lifted the lid of her picnic basket, revealing a bundle of mostly moldy vegetables.

  Lotta handed out three of the matron’s coats. Fenna and Egg huddled into one, and Sem had one to himself, leaving Lotta and Milou to share the last one.

  “That’s it then,” Milou said. “We’re ready. Let’s go.” The certificate of adoption was tucked into her breast pocket, and she held a hand over it. She took one last look around the foyer, as the sixth dong chimed. “Ready?”

  The others nodded eagerly, and they hurried to the front door as the seventh dong rattled the room.

  This was it; they were finally escaping. Milou was going to find her parents.

  Sem’s hand clasped around the door handle as the eighth dong struck.

  Milou heard a loud whinny from outside, and her ear tips were assaulted by a pinch so sharp she cried out. “Sem, don’t—”

  But Sem had already yanked the door wide open, letting in a cloud of oily smoke.

  A large, ring-bedecked hand wafted the smoke away, and a mustachioed face grinned down at them.

  “Ah, kindjes,” Rotman said. “I see you’re all packed and ready.”

  TEN

  THE CHILDREN STOOD THERE, staring up at the merchant in silent horror, as the ninth and final dong echoed around them. Milou clasped the pocket watch as her Sense prickled frantically at her scalp and neck.

  The merchant’s gold-toothed smile tightened. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  A wave of icy shivers, colder even than the winter air blowing in from outside, ran down Milou’s spine and urged her forward. She nudged Sem aside and glared up at Rotman.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Rotman’s mustachio twitched.

  “No,” Milou growled. Then, more bitingly: “No!”

  She grabbed the edge of the door and began heaving it closed, but it crunched on something before she could close it fully. On the other side of it, Rotman roared in pain. Milou looked down to see the merchant’s sealskin boot half-inside, wedged at the ankle. He pushed at the door, knocking Milou backward into Sem.

  “You little—”

  Hands appeared from behind her, reaching out to push the door back. The five of them pressed forward. Milou kicked at Rotman’s foot until, finally, the sealskin boot was pulled away. The heavy front door closed with a thunderous thunk, rattling the windows and shutters to the side of it.

  Sem slid the bolt across, and they all took a step back.

  Rotman pummeled the door. “Open up!”

  Milou peered out the side window at him. He looked nothing short of murderous as he battered his fists against the door. Window shutters opened on the house across the road. Then more followed. Realizing he was being watched, Rotman stopped banging the door and straightened his tailcoat. He shot Milou a furious glare. Adjusting her coffin basket on her hip, Milou closed the shutter, looking helplessly to the others.

  “There’s no other way out,” Sem said. “We’re trapped.”

  The doorbell dinged-donged.

  “The bucket winch!” Lotta said, spinning on her heels and dragging Milou toward the staircase with her.

  Ding-dong-ding-dong.

  They hurried up the steep stairs, baskets, bucket, wheat sack, and toolbox bumping and clunking as they ran
. Milou grabbed the staircase railing as she and Lotta skidded around the corner and thundered up the next set of stairs. The laundry room was lit by a thin column of moonlight streaming in through a broken plank in the window shutters. It was a narrow squeeze past the tubs and tables to the small window.

  “It’ll probably take two at a time,” Lotta said, opening the window with an earsplitting screech. The laundry bucket was suspended on the other side, swaying in the icy wind that blasted in at them. “Egg and Fenna, you first.”

  Egg peered eagerly over the window ledge. He held a hand out to Fenna. “Ready?”

  The doorbell ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-donged.

  Rotman was going to wake the other orphans at this rate. Not that they would be brave enough to go investigate. They didn’t know the matron was dead and wouldn’t answer the door.

  Fenna climbed up next to Egg. The suspended basket swayed, and the rope groaned. They climbed into the bucket together. It was a tight squeeze, especially with a picnic hamper and coal bucket in there too.

  “Ready?” Lotta said, then she began turning the crank handle.

  Milou watched as the bucket descended with a creeak-clunk-creeak-clunk. She let out a long breath when they touched the ice and began to climb out.

  Lotta’s arms spun quickly, the winch crank squealing as she wound it back up again. Milou slipped out of the coat they shared, her skin erupting into a million goose bumps.

  Sem peered nervously over the edge. “But the canal—”

  “It’s frozen, Sem,” Lotta said impatiently. “If it can hold a hundred ice-skating families, it can hold five children. Now shush your face and get in the bucket.”

  Sem climbed into the laundry bucket, and Milou followed quickly behind, careful to keep her eyes only on the round bucket as she climbed in, ignoring the height and the biting wind that stabbed like icy daggers at her exposed skin. The bucket swayed from side to side, and Sem wrapped half of his stolen fur coat around Milou’s shoulders. Lotta passed them the coffin basket and wheat sack, then piled her toolbox into Milou’s arms.

  “See you in a minute,” Lotta said.

  “What about you?” Milou asked, suddenly fearful. “You can’t operate the crank and lower yourself down.”

  Lotta gave her a wry smile. “I’ll need you to unlatch the bucket and then attach the hook, nice and taut, to the railing on the other side of the canal. Okay?”

  “But how—”

  With a sudden, grinding squeal, the bucket began to lower them down onto the canal. Sem’s arms tightened around Milou so much she could barely breathe, but before she could wriggle enough to get room to tell him off, the bucket hit the ice with a scratchy thud.

  They scrambled out, Sem’s limbs tangling with hers, and unhooked the bucket.

  “I hope she has a plan,” Milou rasped, the cold night air catching in her throat.

  The four of them slipped and slid across the width of the frozen canal. Fenna climbed up the stone bank first, pulling Egg over the iron railing. Milou gave her the hook, and she clicked it onto the topmost rail.

  “I’ll help you up,” Sem said.

  But Milou shook her head. “Lotta—”

  Lotta was a dark silhouette in the laundry-room window. Milou watched in awe-filled horror as Lotta reached up toward the taut line of rope, her hands wrapped in something Milou couldn’t quite make out. Then she leapt into the air.

  A scream lodged in the back of Milou’s throat, but she swallowed it down again.

  Lotta knew what she was doing. Lotta always knew what she was doing.

  Lotta’s cloak billowed out around her as she slid down the rope and glided over the canal like some sort of nightmarish wraith. Milou’s swallowed scream came back up as a delighted giggle. Lotta was spectacular. She hurtled down toward them at a dizzying speed, and just as her maniacally grinning face came into view, she let go and dropped to the ice. She landed, tangled in a mass of skirts and fur coat, with an oof.

  “Stupid dresses,” she huffed as she straightened herself out. “So impractical.”

  Milou and Sem slid over to her and pulled her up.

  “Are you all right?” Milou asked.

  Lotta stood on shaky legs, her pigtails in disarray and a wet rag in her left hand. She nodded and threw the rag aside. A few streets away, a whistle blew, then another.

  “Rotman stopped ringing the doorbell,” she said, her face turning serious. “We need to run.”

  ELEVEN

  SEM BOOSTED MILOU ONTO the pavement, then pulled himself up after her. Together they hoisted Lotta up and over the railing. Frost glistened on the cobblestones, and the street was deserted and quiet, except for a wind that whistled over the canal and through the tiny gaps between the towering houses. The air was sharp, stinging Milou’s lungs as she took deep, ragged breaths. The cold enveloped every inch of her, clinging to her cheeks like tiny claws of ice. It made her jaw ache and her shoulders squeeze up toward her ears.

  She wriggled deep into Lotta’s fur coat.

  The five of them stood at the canal edge, staring up at the towering form of the orphanage just across from them.

  “We’re free,” Sem said, his voice a disbelieving whisper.

  Milou hoisted her coffin basket onto her hip and used her other hand to tuck the pocket watch under her collar. “Not quite yet. Which way next, Egg?”

  Egg had his pillowcase map held out in front of him and Fenna, his brown eyes glinting as surveyed it. Then he folded it, tucked it back into his coal bucket, and nodded toward a bridge at the other end of the street. “That way.”

  They had made it only a few steps when Milou’s ears prickled urgently. A chill blew over her forehead. A mere moment later, they heard wheels scraping on nearby cobbles and a whip cracking.

  She tugged Lotta toward a narrow gap between two houses, nudging the others ahead of her. Rotman’s carriage rattled around the corner just as Milou pushed herself into the darkened alleyway. The horse snorted, its hoofbeats slowing. Peering carefully around the wall, Milou watched as Pieter pulled the carriage to a stop next to the railing, where the bucket winch’s rope was still hooked.

  The door opened, emitting a puff of smoke, and Rotman stepped out. He limped up to the railing, reaching out to touch the rope, which led right to the still-open laundry-room window. He looked up and down the street, the moonlight casting a silvery glow over his furious expression.

  Milou ducked her head back into the shadows, her heart galloping.

  “He knows we’ve left,” she whispered. “And he’s blocking our route.”

  “We’ll just have to go the long way around then,” Egg whispered back. He tucked his pillowcase map back under his arm. “Follow me.”

  They hurried through the narrow alley, huddled closely together in their fur coats. Egg paused at the end of the alleyway, and they all strained their ears. A cart passed by, its wheels squeaking with each rotation.

  “That wasn’t him,” Egg whispered softly. He leaned forward. “I think it’s clear now.”

  Milou felt a little tingle at the base of her spine. “Go. Quick.”

  They darted across the street, their boots tapping a hurried rhythm, and into the next alley. They walked quickly and in single file, like ducklings following a mother duck, with Egg at the front, over bridge after bridge, each canal a frozen sheet of glimmering ice. The canal houses had always reminded Milou of Sem: tall, gangly, peculiarly proportioned, yet full of character and charm. But she realized that looking down at Amsterdam from the dormitory window was one thing. To be walking its streets for the first time in her life was something else entirely. From down on the ground, the pointed, jagged roofs loomed like gaping jaws. Milou felt as if they were being swallowed up by the city. The canals all looked identical, as did the bridges. It was as if they were running around in circles, trapped in a maze, but Egg led them with
confidence, turning his pillowcase map this way and that.

  After a short but heart-galloping while, Egg came to a sudden halt. His face was lost in the shadows, but Milou heard his sharp intake of breath.

  “We’re here,” he said, pointing to a canal house across the street. “Kerkstraat 189.”

  Much like the Little Tulip, Kerkstraat 189 was built of black bricks, its windows painted white in contrast. An octagonal sign dangled from a wrought-iron bar sticking out above the door. Milou squinted up at it.

  BRAAKENSIEK EN ZOON

  LITHOGRAPHER AND DEALER OF MAPS

  “I heard one of our neighbors talk about this place a few months ago,” Egg said. “It took me weeks to find. I had to climb across four other rooftops to spot it and add it to my map. Look.”

  There, in the ground-floor window, were several large maps.

  Tingles danced across Milou’s ear tips, and a giggle escaped her lips. She and Egg shared a delighted smile. They checked that the street was empty, then emerged from the alley and huddled in front of the window. Egg’s expression was nothing short of reverential.

  “Is that really what Nederland looks like?” Milou asked, pointing to one of the maps. “It looks a bit like a rabbit’s head.”

  “That’s just the northern province,” Egg said, setting his coal bucket by his feet. “Here, we want this one.”

  He pointed to a map of Amsterdam, running his fingers over the glass as he surveyed it. Finally, he jammed his finger on a point southwest of the city. “That’s it right there. We can follow the Amstel River down here for a few kilometers, then head west. If I copy this section of the map, I can probably get us fairly near Milou’s coordinates.”

  “Fairly near?” Milou asked, clasping the pocket watch tightly. “How are we going to find the exact spot?”

  Lotta stepped up beside Egg. She tapped her forefinger against the bottom corner of the map. “Using this scale.” Then she tapped a point near the coordinates, at a tiny junction. “Egg just needs to get us to the start of this road here. I can get us to the exact spot.”