The lack of crowds made Nim stand out. Every time she neared a stall, the owners scowled and moved their wares away. It was getting more difficult to steal: all the tattercoats were having trouble. In desperation, Sage had broken into the home of a wealthy duke and stolen enough to feed everyone. But when she’d gone back to steal more the following week, she had found the house bolted up, and even the windows had bars on them.
Nim was starting to fear she would go without dinner when she noticed a trail of food on the cobbles. She followed the food with her eyes. It led to a woman whose grocery bag had split. Nim scooped up the items.
“Excuse me,” she called.
The woman turned and scowled.
“What do you want?” she said. She didn’t like talking to tattercoats. She didn’t even like looking at them.
“You dropped these.” Nim held out the groceries. “There’s a hole in your bag.”
“Oh.” The woman stopped scowling. “Thank you.” She took the food off Nim and hurried down the road.
“She could have at least given me something in thanks,” Nim mumbled to Nibbles. “Or invited me to sleep in front of her fire for the night.”
Luckily, Nim had expected this and kept a little treat for herself. She reached beneath her coat and pulled out a large sausage which she’d stuck under her stockings. “There’s enough here to share with everyone.”
Nibbles had followed the sausage out from beneath Nim’s coat. He twitched his whiskers and licked his lips. He loved sausage.
“All right,” Nim said. “You can have a little bit now.” She peeled back the oiled paper which protected the meat and tore off a piece. Nibbles gobbled it right up.
Nim was just tearing off some for herself when someone tried to snatch the whole sausage.
“Hey! Get off, Blink,” Nim said. She pushed his hand away. Instead of trying to grab the sausage again, he looked down at the ground.
“Please, Nim,” he said. “Can I have a piece? It doesn’t have to be big. I just need something. I haven’t eaten for days.”
Nim would have thought it was a trick, only she could tell it wasn’t. Beneath his bright green coat, Blink looked pale and thin. The eight coats he wore swamped his small frame. His legs were so weak he could barely stand.
“Fine. Here you go.” Nim gave Blink the piece of sausage meant for herself.
Blink stuffed the sausage in his mouth and chewed slowly.
“Thank you,” he said. Instead of asking for more, he turned and walked away. He was almost gone when Nim called him back.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“To my chimney.”
Nim had no idea where Blink’s chimney was, but she feared no chimney in the city would be warm enough to keep him alive. Not when he was this weak. Even though she was angry that Blink had stolen Snot’s coat and then Otto’s, Nim couldn’t let him die for it.
“Come on.” She nodded towards the opposite end of the square. “You can stay with us tonight.”
“Us? You mean, with the tattercoats?” Blink said.
Nim nodded. “We’ve got a warm place to stay. You won’t be cold in there.”
When Blink reached the secret entrance to Frau Ferber’s cellar he didn’t seem to realize where they were. He just followed Nim inside. When he emerged from the tunnel it took several minutes for the other tattercoats to notice him in the dimly lit space. When they did, they were not pleased.
“Look, it’s Blink,” someone hissed.
“What’s he doing here?” hissed a few more.
“Look,” Nim said as loud as she dared. “None of us like Blink, not after what he did to Snot. But we can’t just leave him out in the cold to die.”
“Yes, we can,” one of the tattercoats said. “That’s what he did to Snot.”
Some of the tattercoats pushed Blink back towards the tunnel. Nim stepped between them.
“Let him stay,” she said, “or you won’t get any of this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the remaining sausage.
The smell of fatty and herby meat filled the cellar. The tattercoats fell silent as Nim broke the food apart. They were quiet as they ate, but once the food was gone, they began to argue again. Eventually, Sage grew tired of the disagreements and cut them off.
“Blink isn’t a tattercoat any more,” Sage said. “But he’s still a boy who needs somewhere safe to stay during the coldstorm. We’ve all lost someone in one of those.”
Nim bowed her head. She had lost two.
“Now, everyone lie down and tuck your coats around you. I’ll tell you a story to help you sleep.”
At the offer of a story, the tattercoats quickly settled. Besides, none of them truly wanted Blink to die in the cold. They were just angry with him, and that made them say and do things they didn’t really mean.
When all the tattercoats had fallen silent, Sage began her story. During a coldstorm, she knew exactly which one to tell.
Once there lived seven giants who were taller than the tallest tree in Hodeldorf Forest. But even though they were far taller than the tallest man, they were still children, and like all good children they did as their parents bid. Well, at least they tried to.
“You are free to roam all through these woods,” their father told them on their fifth birthday, “but don’t ever roam into the city. The people who live there fear things they don’t understand, and they might hurt you.”
The seven little giants listened to their father and never left the edge of the woods.
On their sixth birthday, their mother issued a new warning. “You are free to roam all through these woods, but don’t ever roam into a witch’s den. Though the witches are smaller than you, they are far more powerful than us.”
The seven little giants listened to their mother and never ventured into a witch’s den, no matter how welcoming it looked.
Their seventh birthday came and their father said, “You are free to look at all the trees and the creatures in these woods, but don’t ever look at the sun. The sun is so bright that if you look at it for even just a moment you will be blinded for ever.”
For several months the seven giants did as they were told. But as it neared their eighth birthday one of them grew curious. It wasn’t enough to see the trees around him or the ground beneath his feet. He wanted to see what was above. So, one day while his brothers and sisters were playing in the woods, he walked to a space between the trees where the light from the sun filtered through. He stood in the warm rays and looked up.
True to his father’s warning, when the little giant looked at the sun, the light was so bright it blinded him. For the rest of his life – three hundred years – he never saw anything again. But despite living in darkness for three centuries, he didn’t regret looking at the sun because when he had, he’d seen something wonderful.
When the giant had looked up into the sky, he had seen a group of creatures – like jewelled snakes – flying through the air and breathing fire into the sun. No one had ever been brave enough to look at the sun before, so he was the first to see the creatures. As the first to spot them, the giant had the honour of naming them. He called the creatures sundragons because they made the world warm and bright.
Years after the blind giant died the world started to grow cold and dark. The light of the sun grew weak. Soon, giants and people could look up without going blind, and when they did they only saw the sky. Either the blind giant had lied or the sundragons had disappeared.
“But I’ll tell you this,” Sage said to all the children gathered in the cellar. “If we could find a sundragon – even one – I bet this coldstorm would pass and the city of Hodeldorf would grow warm once more.”
As much as Nim wanted to believe the story, she knew it wasn’t true. Hodeldorf had been cold since she was born and it would be cold until she died. There was no magical creature that was going to save the city. They would have to save themselves.
That night, as they slept in the unusual warmth of Frau
Ferber’s cellar, the usual dreams of the tattercoats were interrupted. Instead of Nim dreaming of her lost parents, Otto dreaming of finding his mother and Roe dreaming that her own mother had chosen her over her special drink, they all dreamt of the same thing. They dreamt that in the morning when they awoke and stepped out into the cold, a sundragon soared past and made the world warm. It grew so hot they took off their tatty coats and never had to wear them again.
19
A LEAD
“I think the cold’s easing off,” Frau Ferber said as she stared out the window of her study. It was early in the morning and the sun was just rising over the city. The coldstorm had lain like a curse over Hodeldorf for two weeks. Now, some of the chill had left. “Tell me again what you heard.”
“Some of the children were talking again last night,” Helmut said. “They were saying Otto wasn’t eaten by rats. They said he escaped.”
“Well, he can’t have. No one escapes my factory.”
“It is a bit strange that the rats ate even his clothes,” Heinz mused.
“What are you trying to say?” his mother asked.
Heinz wished he hadn’t said anything, but realized his mother would be even more angry if he didn’t answer her question. “Just that they might be right.”
Frau Ferber thought for several moments. “I don’t want the children thinking he escaped. We can’t have their little minds filling with hope. We have to squash it down, or they’ll try to escape too. We’ll have a mutiny on our hands.”
Heinz and Helmut nodded.
“No more sending them to the cellar as punishment,” Frau Ferber said. “Fetch extra locks for the doors and bars for the windows, and increase the daily quota to three hundred and fifty. We’ll reduce their dinners by half as well. If we punish them enough, their hope will disappear and they’ll just focus on filling the jars.”
Frau Ferber smiled at the thought of the money she would save on food. Her smile fell away when she noticed a child dart down the alley below.
“That’s not one of our children, is it?” she asked her sons.
Heinz and Helmut hurried over to the window.
“I don’t think so,” Heinz said.
“Where did he come from?” Frau Ferber asked. The only building in the alley was the back end of her factory.
In answer to her question, a second child appeared in the alley. He had just climbed out of the brick wall below. He looked left and then right before darting after the first child.
“That’s near the cellar,” Frau Ferber said. She looked at the child who had just sneaked out. “Do you recognize him?”
Her sons squinted down at the boy running down the alley. He was wearing a navy coat.
“That’s Otto,” Helmut said. “The children were right. The rats didn’t get him after all.”
Frau Ferber let out a low growl. Another child emerged from her factory. It was a girl in a grey coat.
“She looks familiar,” Frau Ferber said. She must have escaped years ago. She probably helped the boy escape too.
“Should we go and get them?” Heinz asked.
Frau Ferber wanted to snatch the lot of them up and lock them in her factory. That would teach them a lesson. But she knew now wasn’t the time. “It’s too bright. It’ll be easier to snatch them if we wait until it’s dark.”
Unaware they were being watched from above, Nim and Otto planned their day. With the coldstorm lifting they could soon return to their chimney. Most of the tattercoats had already left, but a few were making the most of the warmth and planned to stay a little longer.
“Let’s get some practice in,” Nim said to Otto as they left the factory. “When I’m finished with you, you’ll be the best tattercoat in all of Hodeldorf.”
Despite Nim’s high hopes, Otto quickly proved her wrong. Forget the best tattercoat in Hodeldorf. Otto was the worst. He spent the first hour complaining about how he didn’t want to steal anything. Then, when he finally agreed to do so, he was caught before he’d taken anything. He’d looked at the storekeeper with so much guilt the man knew exactly what Otto was up to. He whacked him out of the store with the hard end of a broom.
When Otto tried to steal from someone’s pocket, he didn’t have much luck either. He grabbed the woman’s leg instead and the lady beat him away as well. At the end of four hours, he was bruised and battered and had yet to steal a thing.
Nim sighed and shook her head. “Even Nibbles is a better thief than you. Look.”
Nim whistled, and Nibbles took off. He dived into a woman’s bag and a moment later returned with two nickels tucked under his furry arm.
“See?” Nim said. “In less than a minute, Nibbles stole more than you’ve managed in weeks.”
They used the money to buy three bowls of pork knuckle soup. They were just slurping up the broth when another tattercoat raced over.
“Otto,” Skid said. He was out of breath but didn’t stop to catch it. “I think I’ve found someone who saw your mother.”
“It would have been almost three months ago” the man said. He was a woodcutter. “I was coming back from cutting wood in the forest when she was heading out. Had on a fine red coat, if I remember correctly, and carried a basket made of elm. Said her name was Marta.”
“That’s her!” Otto said. “She wove the basket herself. What did she say?”
“I asked where she was going. It’s not every day you see a lady heading out into the forest alone, and when there’s a full moon and all. She said she was going to collect herbs for her son. I warned her not to go. I said the woods around Hodeldorf are dangerous: things happen in there, things that can’t happen anywhere else. But she didn’t listen.”
“What kind of things?” Otto asked.
“There are things in those woods that don’t live anywhere else. Creatures who look like you and me but aren’t like us at all. They play tricks with your mind and make you do things you don’t want to do. Things like wolves who are as smart as humans and music that forces you to follow it wherever it leads.”
“But they’re not real,” Otto said. “They’re just stories, aren’t they?” If things like that really did exist, his mother was in a lot of trouble.
“Something was real enough to take my father,” the woodcutter said. “Fifty years ago, he and seven other woodcutters went missing in the woods and were never seen again. Half the city went in search of them. A suspect was eventually found. He was caged and led back through the trees. But before they reached the city he escaped. Rumours are, someone let him go. Some believe he’s still out in the wood today. Whatever happened, I don’t want it to happen to me. That’s why we woodcutters only chop trees on the edge of the forest. If we went in any deeper, we might never come back out.”
For the first time in a long time, Otto shivered from something other than the cold.
“I think this could be good,” Otto said that evening as he and Nim walked back to the factory.
“Good?” Nim couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Did you hear anything the woodcutter said?”
“Well, it’s not good that all those awful things have happened. But this is why we couldn’t find her. We’ve been looking in the wrong place. She isn’t in the city. She’s out there.”
Otto pointed past the city walls to the thick woods that rose beyond. The trees stood like giant sentinels against the darkening sky.
“We have to go there,” he said. “We have to go in and find her.”
“But we can’t.” Nim couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You heard what the woodcutter said. The woods are dangerous. When people go in there they disappear and never come out.”
“But we have to. My mother is clearly in trouble. She would never just leave me – something must have happened and now she can’t get back. I have to find her and help her.”
Nim sighed and shook her head.
“No one could have survived the coldstorm in the woods. If your mother was in there she would have died from
the cold, just like my parents. I’m sorry, Otto. If your mother went into those woods she isn’t ever coming out.”
Otto was worried Nim was right. But even though he feared the worst, he still hoped for the best. It was like Skid said: he was lucky to have a mother. He needed to do everything he could to get her back. If Nim wasn’t going to help him, he’d have to do it by himself.
Otto stopped walking and turned around.
“Where are you going?” Nim asked.
“To the woods.”
“Don’t be silly,” Nim said. “You’ll never survive out there.”
“But I’ve got to try,” Otto said. “I have to try and find her. Will you come with me?”
Nim looked at the giant trees which made up Hodeldorf woods. A shiver raced down her spine. She was scared: more scared of the woods than anything – even Frau Ferber’s factory. She had never left the city before.
“I’m sorry, Otto. I can’t.”
“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”
Otto turned from Nim and ran off into the darkening night. Within seconds he was gone.
“I’m sure he’ll be back tonight,” Nim said to Nibbles as they hurried through the streets of the city. It felt a lot less safe when they were walking alone. “He’ll realize it was a bad idea and turn around.”
The lights of the boot polish factory appeared up ahead. Nim turned into the alley that led to the cellar. She was so focused on Otto that she failed to see two boys standing in the shadows. She was just kneeling to open the grate when someone grabbed her from behind.
20
TWO TRUE TATTERCOATS
When Nim was first grabbed and then knocked to the ground she thought she was being robbed. But when she saw the faces of the two boys behind her she realized something far worse was about to happen.
“Leave me alone!” Nim yelled as Heinz leant down and grabbed her arm.
Nibbles raced out of Nim’s pocket and bit the boy’s hand.
Heinz whacked his truncheon down, but Nibbles was quick; he’d already scampered away. Instead of hitting the dirty rat, he pounded his own fingers. A new wave of yells joined Nim’s.
Otto Tattercoat and the Forest of Lost Things Page 9
