Otto Tattercoat and the Forest of Lost Things

by Matilda Woods

  Frau Ferber smiled and looked back down at the ledger.

  “I’m awfully sorry, Otto, but you’ve failed to make the counting: over four hundred jars off. You’ll have to pick up the pace next week.”

  Frau Ferber nodded to Heinz, who led Otto downstairs.

  At first Otto was all alone on the factory floor. He would have opened a window and jumped out into the night if he could have. But he knew that would be pointless. The bars on the window were even thicker than Heinz and Helmut’s truncheons.

  As the minutes passed Otto feared he would face the punishment alone, so it was almost a relief when he heard a set of footsteps coming down the stairs. His heart fell when he saw who the footsteps belonged to. Gunter had also failed the counting.

  “I don’t understand,” Otto said. “How did you fail?”

  “It’s my hands,” Gunter said. “They’re getting too big. Soon, they won’t be able to fit inside the jars.”

  “What happens then?” Otto asked.

  “I’m out,” Gunter said sadly.

  “Isn’t that good?”

  “I don’t mean out on the streets,” Gunter said. “Out somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “No one knows. Once your hands are too big you disappear – and never come back. Some say Frau Ferber sells us for a profit: one nickel for each ounce. Some say she melts us down into boot polish. And some say she dumps us in the woods for the wolves to eat.”

  At the mention of the woods, Otto shivered. He could still remember the eerie feeling he had felt when he first arrived in Hodeldorf: the feeling that the trees around the city were full of evil things that were watching him. He tried not to let his fear show.

  “Which one do you think it is?” he asked.

  Gunter shrugged. “No idea. All I know for sure is this. Once your hands get too big you’re called into Frau Ferber’s office and you’re never seen again.”

  At that moment, Helmut and Heinz entered the room.

  “They supervise every punishment,” Gunter whispered. “That’s why they hate us slacking during the day. It means they miss out on a night in bed too.”

  Heinz fetched two buckets from the table.

  “Eighty-two,” he said to Gunter as he handed him one of the buckets.

  “Four hundred and twenty-five,” he said to Otto as he handed him the other.

  “Huh?” Otto said.

  “That’s how many jars you need to fill before you can go to bed. You’ve got to reach the quota.”

  “But that’ll take all night.”

  “Then you better learn to fill the jars a little quicker during the day.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gunter whispered to Otto as they went over to the vat of boot polish. “I should be finished in a couple of hours. Then I can help you.”

  “Won’t you get in trouble?”

  “By who? Those two?” He nodded to Heinz and Helmut, who were sitting at the far table. “They’ll fall asleep within the first hour. If we work quickly we might even get an hour or two of sleep before we have to start working tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Gunter,” Otto said, taken aback by this boy’s willingness to help him.

  They began filling the jars. For the first two hours, their hands moved swiftly. Gunter finished his jars and started to help Otto, but by midnight, they were both slowing down.

  “We’ll take turns,” Gunter said. “You sleep for an hour while I keep working. Then we’ll switch.”

  Otto gratefully rested his head on the table, and within minutes he was fast asleep. When Gunter shook him awake, weak sunlight filtered through the window.

  “What time is it?” Otto asked with a yawn.

  “Almost seven.” Gunter yawned as well.

  “You didn’t wake me.” A sick feeling washed over Otto. “Did you fall asleep too?”

  Gunter shook his head. “I finished filling the jars.”

  Otto looked at the table. Over five hundred labelled jars were stacked neatly in front of him.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” he said to the older boy. “You didn’t get any sleep.”

  “You needed it more than me. Besides, that’s what we do in the factory. We help each other out.”

  For the first time since arriving at the factory, Otto felt almost grateful to be there. Sure, he was always starving. Sure, he was always tired. And, sure, he was always dirty. But he’d met Gunter here, and lots of other kind children too. He felt like he’d found a group of people he belonged with. He only wished they weren’t locked inside a horrible factory. If they had been free on the streets, and if he had his mother back, he would be happy.

  9

  OTTO’S TICKET OUT OF THE FACTORY

  The weeks passed in Frau Ferber’s factory. Otto got the hang of filling the jars with polish and managed to pass the next three weekly countings. Gunter wasn’t so lucky. He failed two and was forced to stay up filling jars for eight hours. By the time he was finished his hands were bleeding and throbbing with pain.

  “I can barely feel my fingers at all,” he said to Otto while they waited for another weekly counting. “And they’ve swollen up as well. Soon, they’re going to be too big, and I’ll be called into Frau Ferber’s office and never seen again.”

  “They don’t look too big to me,” Otto lied. He’d managed to fill almost as many jars as Frida that week. It had been a hard task; his hands were also swollen from the effort of pushing them in and out of the jars.

  “Do you really think so?” Gunter asked hopefully. He held his hands out beside Otto’s. They were almost the same size.

  When Otto was called into Frau Ferber’s office he barely heard her say he had passed the weekly counting. His mind was on something else. When Helmut began to lead him from the room, he walked the other way.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Frau Ferber said when Otto approached her desk.

  “I wanted to know if you’ve had any luck finding my mother,” Otto said.

  Frau Ferber smirked. “It would be a miracle if I had.”

  “How come?” Otto asked.

  “Because I haven’t been looking for her.” Frau Ferber’s smirk turned into a smile. Several of her teeth were missing, or perhaps it only looked that way because they were black like everything else in the factory.

  “Well, if you’re not going to find my mother, I’d like to leave.” Otto tried to sound brave, but he had a feeling he just sounded silly.

  “Is that so?” Frau Ferber said.

  “It is.”

  The smile that had touched the edges of Frau Ferber’s mouth disappeared. She stood up and said, “You’re not a very smart lad, are you? Since you don’t seem to understand what’s happening, let me explain it to you. Your mother is either dead or she’s abandoned you. Either way, she’s not coming back, and she doesn’t want you to find her. You’re still a boy, and you have no one else in this world to look after you and keep you safe. That’s why you’re going to stay here in my factory and work for me.”

  “But I don’t want to,” Otto said.

  “Lots of children don’t want to eat their vegetables, boy. But they do because their parents tell them to.”

  “You’re not my parent.”

  “I’m the closest thing you’ve got to a parent now. And as your parent I’m telling you to go to bed. It’s getting late and you’ve got an early start in the morning.”

  “But I don’t want to be here any more,” Otto said, fighting back the tears that were prickling his eyes. He moved closer to Frau Ferber. The next time he spoke, his voice was loud. “I want to leave.”

  “Where would you go?” Frau Ferber asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. Why can’t you just let me go? You let Bertha leave.”

  “That’s because she found someone to replace her. That’s how things work at my factory. No one leaves without first organizing a replacement.”

  “So if I trick someone into taking my place, I can leave too?”

 
“Of course. But you’re only allowed out one day per year. And I’m afraid that day is on your birthday. So you’ll have to wait before you can go out there.” She nodded to the window. It was so grimy you could barely see through the glass.

  “Well,” Otto said, “it just so happens that my birthday’s tomorrow.”

  Frau Ferber raised a sceptical eyebrow.

  “Is that so?”

  Otto nodded. “I’m turning twelve,” he lied. He needed to get out of the factory; he needed to start searching for his mother again. The factory was sealed so tightly he knew the only way out was if Frau Ferber let him. “So, can I go?”

  Frau Ferber thought about this for several seconds. Then she shrugged and said, “It makes no difference to me. You have all of tomorrow to find your replacement. But if you don’t find anyone, you’ll have to wait a full year before you can try again. And don’t go getting any ideas,” she warned. “You can’t just run away and disappear. Heinz and Helmut will follow you, and if you try anything you shouldn’t you’ll be sleeping in the cellar with the rats. There are thousands down there. They’re so hungry I’ve heard they eat each other. They’ve even eaten one of the children. I bet they’d enjoy eating you too.”

  Otto hoped Frau Ferber was joking. But he had a feeling she wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave the factory after all?

  The following morning, while all the other children filled up their buckets with boot polish under the watchful gaze of Frau Ferber, Otto was led to the front door. Helmut and Heinz stood on either side of him.

  “Remember what Mother said,” Heinz warned. “If you try to run away it’ll be straight down to the cellar for you. The last person who went down there was never seen again.”

  Otto gulped and stepped outside. He knew the only way to escape Frau Ferber’s factory was to find someone to take his place. And he had a very good idea who that someone would be.

  Otto walked the streets of Hodeldorf on the lookout for two people. He was searching for a girl in a tatty coat who owned a thieving rat and a boy in a fine green coat that used to belong to him. If they hadn’t robbed him, none of this would have happened.

  Otto tried to make the most of his time outside the factory. He hadn’t felt the sun in a whole month. The fresh air made him feel clean. It was awfully cold though: far colder than inside the factory.

  At first Otto only saw adults as he walked the streets of the city. He knew Frau Ferber wouldn’t want one of them; their hands would be too large to fit inside the boot polish jars.

  It was nearing noon when Otto spotted his first child of the day: a small boy dressed in a tatty coat. Before Otto had a chance to say hello, the boy spotted Otto’s black hands and ran off down the road.

  Lunchtime came and went. Otto’s body had grown numb from the cold and a deep hunger gnawed at his stomach. It felt like his body was trying to eat itself just to stay alive. Long shadows fell across the city. Otto searched every face in the main square but couldn’t find the two he sought.

  “Tick. Tock,” Heinz said. The brothers had been keeping back until now, watching Otto from afar. “Time’s running out.”

  “You’re never going to find anyone,” Helmut added. He was eating an apple. He crunched it right in Otto’s face, so juice splattered across his cheeks. Otto was so hungry he almost licked it off. “You’re the first person who’s volunteered to go to the factory in ten years. No one else is going to be that stupid.”

  The two of them laughed and stepped back amongst the crowd. Otto ignored them and continued his search.

  Despite spending the rest of the afternoon checking every corner of the main square, Otto still couldn’t find the two people he sought. Night fell. It was almost time to head back to the factory. Knowing that once he stepped inside those walls he wouldn’t get a chance to step back out for a year, Otto grew desperate.

  “Excuse me,” he called. He reached out for a girl who was passing by with her parents. They were several metres in front of her and didn’t see their daughter turn.

  “Can I help you?” the girl asked. She looked alarmed by how dirty he was but didn’t move away.

  “You can,” Otto said. “You see…” He tried to search for the right words to get her to go to the factory. Before he could find them the girl realized the stain on his arm wasn’t just from dirt.

  “Mother! Father!” she called. She raced away from Otto and back to her parents.

  “Hello, there,” Otto said to two boys hurrying past the bakery. They were both younger than him. Maybe if he brought two boys back he could choose someone else to leave the factory as well. But his plans were ruined. The boys saw his stained hands before he’d finished his greeting and raced off into the crowd.

  When Otto spotted another boy wandering by himself, he shoved his hands into his pockets before calling out.

  “Hi,” he said, as cheerfully as he could.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the boy asked with a scowl.

  “What do you mean?” Otto said, being careful to keep his hands hidden.

  “Why are you so happy? What do you want?”

  “Nothing, not really,” Otto said. “Well, I was wondering if you wanted to go for a walk with me.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Erm …” Otto couldn’t think of an answer.

  The boy shook his head and began to walk away.

  Otto realized it was time to give up. Even if his hands were hidden, people wouldn’t follow him. Besides, by now most of the people in the city had gone to bed. He turned to go as well and tripped over a small girl standing in the street.

  “Sorry,” he said, helping the girl back up. She didn’t flinch when she saw his blackened hands. She must have been too young to know what they meant.

  “That’s OK.”

  “Are you lost?” Otto asked.

  The girl nodded. “I was meant to hold my father’s hand, but I let go and now I can’t find him. Could you help me?”

  Otto couldn’t believe his luck. It would be easy to take this girl back to Frau Ferber and trade her for his freedom. But at the very instant he knew this, he also knew he couldn’t do it. It would be wrong.

  “Go back to the main square and ask one of the stall owners. They should be able to help.”

  The girl thanked him and hurried off into the darkening night.

  “You’re even dumber than I thought,” Heinz said as they walked back to the factory. “You had your ticket out of here, and you let it go.”

  “Now you’re stuck inside for another year at least,” Helmut added.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it, Otto thought as he trudged along the streets. While he’d been looking for Nim and Blink, he’d also been looking for someone else.

  Otto had been searching the crowd for a woman with a red coat and an elm basket. But his mother wasn’t there. Maybe Frau Ferber was right. Not about his mother abandoning him; he knew she would never do that. She loved him more than anyone else in this world. She used to tell him that every night before he went to sleep. But he was worried that maybe something horrible had happened to her: something so horrible that she was no longer alive. And if that was the case, maybe Frau Ferber was right – maybe she was the closest thing to a parent he had left in this world.

  This thought alone was enough to bring Otto to tears. He tried to hide them as he walked back to the factory. But Heinz and Helmut saw them fall. The sight only made them tease him more, and they didn’t let up all the way back to the factory.

  10

  THE FACE IN THE WINDOW

  Nim was on a mission. She needed to steal something, and it was going to be difficult. Luckily, she knew just the thief for the job.

  “Now this is important,” Nim said to Nibbles as they sat on the roof of the Vidlers’ house. It was early in the morning and the air was at its coldest. Nim’s breath left her mouth in puffs of white. The fires blazing in the homes below were only coals at this time of day, so the smoke
that usually shrouded the city was gone. Nim could see all the way to Hodeldorf woods. “I need you to steal something very specific. It’s something I’ve never stolen before because I’ve never needed it. But I think I need it now.”

  Despite being a rat, Nibbles seemed to understand. At the mention of the word “important” he stopped nibbling on Nim’s coat and listened very closely. His eyes didn’t leave Nim’s face as she explained the plan.

  “We need to steal a pen,” she said. Her old one had fallen through a hole in her coat pocket the day before. She needed a new one so she could continue her lessons with Sage.

  This mission was difficult. Pens were usually kept in pockets. This meant Nibbles would have to sneak into someone’s coat or trousers and get a pen without being seen, without being felt and, most importantly for Nibbles, without being squashed.

  “Do you think you’re up for it?” Nim asked.

  Nibbles twitched his whiskers back and forth, as if weighing the pros and cons. Then he nodded.

  “That’s my Nibbles,” Nim said. “Up for every challenge.” She opened her coat pocket and Nibbles dived inside. Then they set off.

  The best place for stealing in Hodeldorf was the main square. When they arrived, the crowd was thin. Nim carefully stole an old, bruised pear from a fruit cart and shared it with Nibbles while they waited.

  Finally, she spotted a rather grand-looking man in a black coat and matching top hat. “He looks the type to own a pen,” Nim said, nodding to the man. “Don’t you think?”

  Before Nim had finished her sentence, Nibbles was off and after the prize. He scurried along the cobbles, darted between hundreds of feet, jumped on to the man’s coat and slipped underneath.

  The man’s coat moved up and down as if his own hand was searching for something. This continued for several seconds before Nibbles poked his head back out. His paw appeared a moment later. It was wrapped around a gold chain with a pen fastened to the end. But as Nibbles tried to pull the clasp free, the man began to yell.

  “Argh!” he cried. “It’s a rat: a blasted, dirty, gutter-living rat!” He slammed his fist down on his chest. He was quick, but not as quick as Nibbles; by the time the man touched his coat, Nibbles was already back on Nim’s shoulder.