Twig

by wildbow

  Taking Root 1.1

  How does it go? The first lesson, something even the uninitiated know. For life to flourish on the most basic level, it requires four elements. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen.

  We were doing fine on that count. The air around us was stale, but it was still oxygen. Water ran around and below us, flowing over our bare feet, redirected from gutters to the building’s inside.

  What had once been a barn had been made into a warehouse, then abandoned partway through a third set of changes. A floor of old wooden slats reached only halfway down the length of the old building, what had once been a hayloft. If we stood on the edge, we could look down at the floor below to see uneven floorboards on top of compacted dirt. The original barn’s door was still there, mounted on rollers. I leaned over to get a better look. I could see a table, some scattered papers, books, and a blackboard. The only light was that which came in through windows. A scattered set placed on the upper floor, and more well above head height on the lower one.

  Aside from the four of us, one other thing occupied the hayloft. It was hard to make out in the dim light that filtered in through the window, like an eel in dark water, and if it weren’t for the fact that we’d seen it approach, we might not have noticed it at all. Sleek, four-legged, and tall enough I couldn’t have reached its shoulder if I stood on my toes, it was wound around the pillar as a snake might be. Unlike a snake, though, it had four long limbs, each with four long digits, tipped with claws. Head flowed into neck, which flowed into shoulder and body without a without prominent ridge, bump, bone or muscle to interrupt the sequence.

  It uncoiled, setting a claw on the floor, and the old floorboards didn’t elicit an audible creak. Large as it was, it managed to distribute weight too evenly, and used its tail to suspend some of its weight.

  It didn’t walk, but slinked, each foot falling in front of the last as it passed within three feet of us. Its wide mouth parted, showing just a hint of narrow white teeth.

  There was no cover, nothing to hide us from it.

  I saw its nostrils flare. It opened its mouth to taste the air with a flick of a thin tongue.

  The way things looked, we were very close to doing the opposite of ‘flourishing’.

  It was hard to put into words, but my thoughts connected with that thought, and it was funny.

  I grinned, and flakes of wax fell from my face at the movement. I watched the thing continue onward, toward the back of the hayloft, head turning as it sniffed the surroundings. It unwound its long tail from the wooden pillar that held up the one end of the overhanging hayloft, and it moved with a slow carefulness.

  I stared at its eye, and saw how it didn’t move as the head swept from one side to the next, the slit of the iris barely changing in response as the faint light from the window swept over its head.

  “It’s blind,” I whispered.

  The movements of the creature came to a halt. It froze, nostrils wide.

  Gordon, just to my left, put out a hand, covering my mouth. He was tense, lines on his neck standing out. Trying to put on a brave face, as our leader. Gordon, strong, handsome, likeable, talented. A veneer covered his face, as it did all of us, almost clear, cracked and white at the corners of his lips where he’d changed his expression, coming away in flakes at his hairline, where his hair was covered by the same substance.

  The creature turned, and as it did its tail moved around until it touched the outside edge of the makeshift gutter that we were all standing in, fine emerald scales rasping against wood.

  When Gordon whispered his response, I could barely hear him utter, “It’s not deaf.”

  I nodded, and he pulled his hand away.

  I had a glimpse of the girls. Helen and Lillian. As different as night and day. Lillian was bent over, hood up and over her head, hiding her face, hands clutching the straps of her bag, white knuckled. Terrified, and rightly so. The coating on her face was flaking badly.

  In contrast, Helen’s face didn’t betray a flicker of emotion. Her golden hair, normally well cared for, cultivated into tight rolls, was damp and falling out of place. Water ran down her face, splashing in through the side of the window where the makeshift gutter came in, and the droplets didn’t provoke one flinch or batted eyelash. She could have been a statue, and she’d kept her face still enough that the wax that covered it hadn’t broken, which only helped the effect.

  Still and silent, we watched as the creature moved to the far corner of the hayloft.

  It snapped, and the four curved fangs were the only ones that were any wider than a pencil, visible for only an instant before the head disappeared into detritus piled in the corner. A furred form struggled before the creature could raise its head. No swallowing, per se. Gravity did the work, as teeth parted and the prey fell down its long throat.

  A second bite let it collect another, small and young enough it couldn’t even struggle. Tiny morsels.

  “Kitties,” Lillian whispered, horror overtaking fear in her expression.

  Mama kitty shouldn’t have had her babies in the same building as the monster, I thought. Wallace’s law at work.

  Gordon nudged me. He pointed.

  The window.

  I nodded.

  The makeshift gutter was little more than a trough, with little care given for the leaks here and there, and it fed into wooden barrels at the edge of the upper floor, with more channels and troughs leading into sub-chambers and tanks below. It had been running long enough for debris and grime to accumulate, a combination of silt and scum collecting at the very bottom to make it treacherous. Our progress was slow, and I had to remind myself that anything faster threatened to make noise, or risked a fall.

  As if to follow the thought, Lillian’s foot skidded on the bottom of the trough, and she tipped forward, straight into Helen’s arms. The creature stopped its slow consumption of the cat’s litter.

  We were frozen, waiting, while the creature sniffed the air.

  It returned to its meal.

  We made our way out, everyone but me flipping up their hoods to ward off the rain. I let the droplets fall where they would, on hair that refused to be bound down beneath a thick layer of waterproofing wax.

  There was no ledge outside the window, only the real gutter. Bigger and more solid, if still treacherous with seasons of accumulated grime. The roof loomed above us, more up than over, as barn roofs were wont to be. Red leaves collected here and there.

  “I stay,” Helen murmured.

  There was no questioning it, no argument. We couldn’t afford to make the noise, and it made a degree of sense.

  “I’ll go first,” I volunteered, craning my head a bit to see the way down. Being the sort of building it was, the barn-turned-warehouse-turned-something-else was tall, with a long way to the bottom. The gutter pointed groundward at the corner, fixed to the brick exterior at regular points by lengths of metal. It worked as a ladder, but not one that was fun to use. The ‘rungs’ were too far apart, too close to the wall.

  Someone grabbed my arm. I thought it would be Gordon or Helen, as they had the personalities to be arm-grabbers. It wasn’t.

  “You go second,” Lillian whispered to me. “I know you well enough to know that If you go before me you’ll look up my skirt.”

  “Me?” I tried to sound innocent.

  Gordon jabbed me. His expression was no-nonsense, his green eyes a steely grey beneath his hood, absorbing the colors of the clouds above. His mouth was a grim line.

  “Okay,” I conceded.

  “I’ll take your bag,” Gordon whispered. Again, there was no argument. Lillian handed over the backpack, loaded down with tools and supplies.

  She accepted Gordon’s support in getting down to the downspout, and began her slow descent.

  I fidgeted. My eye trave
led over our surroundings, buildings scattered like they’d been blown around by strong winds and planted where they lay. Older structures had a charm to them, simplicity and a character that came with age and gentle wear and tear. The oldest and the newest buildings had been shored up by strategic plant growth, branches weaving into and through damaged sections, growing to complement masonry, around bricks and supports. The very newest growths had a characteristic red tint to the leaves. The rest were dead, left to petrify.

  The Academy loomed above it all, those same elements taken to an extreme. It had been an old collection of buildings once. A rush to grow and meet surging demand had led to a lot of the same haphazard growth.

  It all had an odor. There were smells that became second nature, and there were smells that were ingrained in the psyche as bad smells. Ones that spoke of death, of long sickness, and of violence. Rendered fat, decay, and blood. Each were heavy on the air.

  Ironic, that things so overgrown and reeking of decay were the parts of the city charged with progress.

  You’d think the rain would wash away the smell.

  I checked. Lillian had moved down one rung. I shifted my weight from one foot to the next, annoyed.

  She wasn’t one of us. She was new. Allowances had to be made.

  It wasn’t the first time I had told myself any of those things. I’d heard it from Gordon. It didn’t make it any less annoying.

  I bent down, peering over the edge of the gutter to the road below. I could see the windows, the boxes further down.

  “Sy,” Gordon hissed the words, “What are you doing?”

  Gripping the ledge, I swung myself over.

  I let go, and enjoyed both the moment of utter terror and Lillian’s gasp of horror, before my fingers caught hold of the window frame below.

  My right foot slipped on the damp windowsill, scraping peeling paint off and away before I brought it back up to the sill. Water and paint flakes sprayed below.

  When I looked up, Gordon’s head was poking over the edge, looking down at me.

  He moved his head, and I could hear him speak, very patiently, to Lillian, “Keep going. Don’t mind him.”

  Peering in the window, I could see the interior, the lower floor. The desk, the notes on the experiment. Another table was heavy with lines of bottles, vials, jugs, and yet more papers, scattered. Rain poured down on me, tracing its way down the back of my neck, beneath my shirt. The waxed and waterproof cowl and short cloak had kept my shirt dry, and I shivered at the sensation.

  I tested the window, and was utterly surprised to find it latched. I drew a key from my pocket, trying to fit it into the gap, hoping to lift the latch, but it proved too thick.

  The key went back in place. I removed my hands from the windowsill one at a time, to dry them in my armpits and then reposition my grip.

  Gripping the windowsill, I strained my body, reaching down and to the right. The doorframe that bounded the large sliding door was just out of reach…

  Holding the windowsill with my left hand, reaching with my right leg, I touched the frame with my big toe. I found a grip, and I used it to better position myself. Fingers dug into the space between bricks, where water had worn away mortar, and I heaved myself over, using my toes and only my toes to perch on the top of the doorway.

  Were it any other door, I wouldn’t have fussed, but I was still just high enough off the ground to have cause to worry. This had been a barn, and this door was the type that let wagons or draft horses inside.

  I paused on top of the door, cleaning my hands of wet and grit.

  “Watching you do that is making me nervous,” Lillian said, looking down at me. She’d progressed two more ‘rungs’. She was the shortest of us, next to me, it didn’t make it easier for her.

  I flashed her a grin, and more of the waterproofing wax that I’d caked onto my face cracked.

  I worked my way down to a crouch, still on top of the door, then slid down, draping my front against the door itself. I let myself drop the rest of the way, landing bare-footed in mud.

  I couldn’t get the smile off my face as I passed beneath the drain pipe, making a point of looking up at Lillian, who was making a point of her own in turn, glaring down at me, very clearly annoyed.

  “You had an audience,” a soft voice stated.

  I turned.

  Amid empty crates and a door that had been taken off its hinges, jumbled together as trash and detritus, I could make out the fifth member of our contingent. Jamie had a book in his lap, our collected boots and shoes neatly organized around him, and he had company. A black-skinned boy with a hood and cloak far too large for him, tattered enough that it had probably been a hand-me-down for the last person to own it. His eyes were wide.

  “I thought you were keeping lookout,” I said.

  “I was.”

  “The whole point of being lookout is that you tell us if there’s trouble.”

  “Is he trouble?” Jamie asked.

  “I’m no trouble,” the boy’s words flowed right off the back of Jamie’s, without a heartbeat of hesitation. “The trouble is inside.”

  “The snake thing,” I said.

  “You saw it?” he asked. His eyes went wider. “Then you should know if you’re going to steal something, you shouldn’t steal from there.”

  “We’re not stealing,” I said. “We’re just looking.”

  The boy didn’t respond. He watched Lillian’s glacially slow descent.

  I met Jamie’s eyes. If it weren’t for Helen, who was a special case, I might have called Jamie the quiet one. He wore eyeglasses, though there were all sorts of ways to fix or replace bad eyes, and his hair was long beneath his hood. Not out of any style or affectation. He simply never liked how it looked when it was short. His face was narrow, his eyes large as he shifted his gaze to look from me to Lillian. His hands held firm to a book that sat across his knees.

  “Helen?” he asked.

  “Stayed upstairs.”

  A nod.

  I wanted him to figure out how to deal with our bystander, given how he’d failed to warn us about the boy in the first place, but Jamie was silent.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Mine?”

  “I know his,” I said, striving to not sound as annoyed at the question as I felt. I pointed at Jamie to make myself as clear as possible.

  “Thomas. My friends call me Thom.”

  “Did you hear about the crying man of Butcher’s Row?”

  “Sly,” Jamie said, suddenly paying attention to the issue. The name was a warning.

  But Thom gave an answer, “That stitched that went crazy. Remembered things.”

  “That’s the one. Do you remember Mother Hen?”

  Thom nodded. “That nurse who—the babies.”

  He looked rather uneasy now.

  “That’s right,” I said, doing my best to sound calm, reassuring. “The nurse. Yes. Both got caught, right? Everything got tied up neatly?”

  “Yeah,” Thom said. He couldn’t meet my eyes, so he focused on Lillian instead. “The authorities from the Academy got them.”

  “Exactly, Thom,” I said. “But who told the authorities?”

  His eyes moved. To me, then Jamie, to Lillian, and then the barn-turned-warehouse.

  I was nodding before the word came out of his mouth. “You.”

  “You’re clever,” I praised him.

  “Why?”

  I made the universal gesture for money, rubbing thumb against two fingers.

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  The gears were shifting in his head. Processing, calculating.

  “I’ve heard things,” he said.

  “I bet.”

  “Useful things.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said.

  “I can get money for it? For telling people?”

  “If you know who to tell, and how to sell it,” I said.

  His expression changed, a frown. Disappointment. />
  Tick, tick, turn turn. The gears in his head were still moving.

  He wasn’t dumb, even if he wasn’t much of an actor. Then again, he was only ten or so.

  I could guess what he was going to ask, and I knew I might lose him if I turned him down too many times.

  My mind ticked over possibilities. What I needed, what I had to do.

  Before he could venture a question, I interrupted him. “You want in?”

  “In?” he asked. Now he was wary.

  I reached beneath my cloak, and I fished out a coinpurse. Two fingers reached in, and came out fully extended, two dollars in coins pressed between the tips.

  The wariness subsided.

  “I’ll give you this on good faith. Eight whole dollars if you follow through. I need you to do something for me.”

  He reached for and claimed the money without any hesitation.

  “You said you had friends?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “On top of the grocer’s place. Corner of Oxbow and Halls. Wait there. Take turns keeping an eye out. You’re looking for a black coach, led by two stitched horses, heading toward the Academy. You’ll know they’re stitched because they’re wearing raincoats. Won’t be more than two hours’ wait.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “There’s a rain barrel up there. They’re going to have to stop to wait for the way to clear before they can carry on their way. What you’re going to do is tip over the barrel. Send water off the edge of the roof, onto the horses if you can. Might want to prop some things up around the barrel, to make sure it happens.”

  He frowned a bit.

  “Ten dollars, all in all, for you and your friends, for one afternoon’s work. Pretty good deal. Don’t think you can do it?”

  “I can do it,” Thom said.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “I can do it,” he said, voice firm.

  I studied him, head to toe, taking it all in.

  Reaching beneath my cloak, I collected a note from a pocket. I pressed it into his hands.

  He looked down at the money, stunned.

  “If you don’t follow through, you won’t get a deal like this again,” I said. “Think hard before you try cheating me. A big part of what we do is find people.”

  Mute, he nodded.