Edgeland

by Jake Halpern

  Brave. Alec puffed out his chest, but it only seemed to emphasize how small he was. He returned to his usual slouch. It didn’t matter—he was thrilled. In his entire life, no one had ever called him brave—except perhaps his mother, on the day she’d shipped him off to Edgeland.

  Isidro reached into his sealskin and took out a flask that glimmered with rubies and sapphires. Alec eyed the flask in wonder. The furriers truly were rich. And soon some of those riches would belong to House Aron. Isidro took a swig, then smacked his lips and returned the flask to his coat.

  “I never much cared for this part of the world,” said Isidro, glancing over the boat’s stern. It was an imposing ship, with over a dozen sails and several levels, including a main deck, a quarterdeck, and a gun deck. Sealskin-clad deckhands moved about silently. “The daylight fades too quickly here, and you rub shoulders with Shadows.” He shuddered. “Give me the Polar North’s fourteen years of sun and a stiff wind at my back.”

  Alec often heard statements like that from Suns who’d never actually met any Shadows. In general, Suns believed that truth and goodness flourished only in the daylight, while Shadows thought that sunlight—and even torchlight—encouraged vanity and greed. Darkness brought humility, they said. It was a never-ending debate everywhere, but especially on Edgeland.

  Isidro glanced at Alec, as if suddenly remembering that he was still there. “Yours is a famous house,” he remarked. “In my youth, I knew a song about House Aron, something about an ember shining away the night …”

  “That’s right,” said Alec. “Ember Aron founded the house—she was a great scholar.”

  “Never cared much for books,” said Isidro with a shrug. “Spent my life hunting for gems.”

  I know the type, thought Alec. My father would sooner use a book to start a campfire than to read.

  Isidro paused, looking off to sea, then turned to address Alec. “I have thirty-five dead men, one woman, and a child here,” Isidro said. “All in ice. We have scows, so we’ll only need House Aron to do the blessings and send the bodies into the Drain.” The furriers only visited Edgeland once every fourteen years. In the interim, anyone who died was preserved in ice, so they could have a proper funeral and be sent into the Drain at a later time.

  “The sun’s going down,” said Alec. “Are your dead still frozen solid?”

  Isidro frowned. “They’re thawing fast now that we’ve come south. We’ll need to go over before sunset.” He paused to glance at the setting sun. “Perhaps ten hours left. Can you do it?”

  “We will do it,” replied Alec.

  “You should know that I am the Elder Furrier,” said Isidro.

  Alec paused before responding. The Elder Furrier escorted their people into the next life. Isidro would go over the Drain with the others. It was an ancient tradition, rarely observed in modern times. I’m expected to help him commit suicide. This is the polite life that my parents wanted for me?

  “You’ll need poison,” said Alec finally.

  “Yes, yes,” replied Isidro. He tugged at his white beard. “So, Alec the Ghost-Child”—he paused to laugh—“lead us to your pier.”

  Alec ran to the bow and stared off toward Edgeland. The closest shore was lined with warehouses that stored the dead. Farther inland, on a great hill, was the Mount, where the temples stood. Alec focused on the island’s biggest pier, filled with Suns enjoying their last hours of light. He strained his eyes and found who he was looking for.

  Ellie, his assistant, waited for him near the end of the pier. Alec reached into his jacket and pulled out a pocket mirror, which he aimed at the setting sun. Once it produced a bead of light, he carefully rotated the mirror so the light shone onto the pier.

  “Come on, Ellie, look up,” Alec whispered.

  Ellie was tall and fair-eyed, with freckles sprayed across her cheeks. Her waist-length red hair hadn’t been dyed since the winter solstice—nearly a year ago—and blond roots were showing. At ten years old, she was still a whiff. In Edgeland, it was said that whiffs carried the “stench of birth,” which could easily taint the dead. For these reasons, those younger than twelve were required to have their hair dyed red so they could be easily identified. Whiffs were also supposed to stay indoors, but today, Ellie had a special task.

  Ellie worshiped Alec, who had also started as an apprentice. Like her, Alec came from a devout and wealthy Sun family. If she did well, she might follow in his footsteps.

  As Ellie paced back and forth, she was careful to keep away from a nearby group of lower-class servants. A few of them, who appeared to be of marrying age, were washing clothes against the coarse sand of the beach, while others yanked lampreys from the rocks.

  “Killed ol’ Fat Freddy with a poke of a knife,” said one of the chambermaids. She smacked her fist against her belly to mimic the blow. “Killed ’im and left him for dead right on the Ramparts path—in plain view. They say it was a grayling girl wit’ scarred arms and a shaved head who done it. But they’ll find ’er. Half the island’s lookin’. They’re already startin’ to search the descenders.”

  “Witchery,” said a silver-haired servant as she pinched off the head of a lamprey and crammed the wriggling body into her mouth. “Ain’t that obvious? A lone grayling couldn’t kill a big fat man like that on ’er own. Musta used black magic to get the job done.”

  “Th’ Shadows will be out fer blood,” said the chambermaid. “I heard people in their neighborhoods are already takin’ up steel.”

  “Th’ fat priest deserved it,” cackled the old woman, but she was immediately shushed by the chambermaid, who whispered and pointed at Ellie.

  “What’s a whiff doing out here?” the chambermaid called.

  Ellie’s face went red. “I have special permission.”

  “Special permission,” echoed the old woman, taking a step closer to Ellie. “Why, you are a special whiff—ain’t ya?” She glanced at the others to make sure they were watching and then did an elaborate, fumbling curtsy. The others guffawed.

  One of the younger women stopped laughing and gasped. Ellie glanced down and saw a round speck of light dancing on her tunic. Startled, she lifted her eyes to the sea. The yellow sails of a furrier ship were just off Needle Island, and the light was coming from the ship’s bow. The young chambermaid scampered backward toward an iron bucket that sat near the edge of the pier. It was filled with fearstones: gray and white pebbles meant to symbolize a person’s darkest terrors. The woman picked up a pebble, muttered at it for several seconds, then threw it into the water—drowning it.

  Ellie turned to the woman happily. “There’s no need for that,” she announced. “It’s nothing to be afraid of. Something wonderful has happened!” Without waiting for their reaction, Ellie bowed and started running down the pier.

  Alec. It’s him. He’s done it!

  At the end of the pier, she turned up a narrow alleyway, directly to the back door of House Aron. Several people were gathered there, including grizzled old Butros, the house watchman, and Sami Aron himself.

  “What are you doing outside, whiff?” demanded Butros. He rested a palm on the flintlock horse pistol fixed to his belt. “Haven’t you heard about Fat Freddy’s murder? There’s bound to be trouble from th’ Shadows. What makes you think you can—”

  “Enough,” interrupted Sami Aron, running a hand across his bald head. “Let her speak. You’re Alec’s assistant, are you not?”

  Ellie nodded.

  “Do you bring news?” asked Sami Aron. His large eyes seemed to bore into her. “What has become of Alec’s plan?”

  “A furrier boat is coming,” gasped Ellie, who was still trying to catch her breath. “Alec is with them. They’ll be at our pier soon.”

  “How soon?” asked Sami Aron, leaning toward Ellie.

  “Thirty minutes,” said Ellie. “Maybe less.”

  “We must hurry,” said Sami Aron quietly, almost to himself. No one moved. He turned to Butros. “Get my mourner’s cloak, call the Blind, and
get the whole House down to the pier—at once. Everything must be perfect!”

  Butros turned to go, but Sami Aron grabbed him by the shoulder. “Get as many Blind as you can. Their dead will be frozen, and whatever we do, we cannot let those bodies thaw.”

  Wren leaned on the ferry railing and watched as the stone warehouses of Edgeland appeared in the distance. The ocean breeze was pleasant against her face. Usually she picked pockets on the ferry, but today she didn’t dare. Right now, she considered herself lucky to be alive.

  After encountering Fat Freddy’s body, she’d run along the Ramparts for almost two miles before reaching another ferry landing. Then she washed the blood off her cloak as best she could, put on the black wig and hat that she always carried with her, and shuffled onto the boat. It was one of the older ferries and moved very slowly, taking almost four hours to make the journey that faster boats made in just one. At least it was an uneventful ride. She was nearly home. And with that gold dinar in her pocket, it wouldn’t be home much longer.

  “What mischief are you up to, my little rat?”

  Wren whirled around and saw Crown, a pudgy, red-cheeked smuggler with crooked teeth and a jovial smile. He wore a splendid Sun tunic of pure-spun white wool intertwined with gold thread.

  Occasionally, he hired Wren to do small jobs—stealing a key or letters. It was unclear whether Crown was a Sun or a Shadow. Like Wren, he switched between the two. Most people wouldn’t dare put on the cloaks of the other religion, but Wren and Crown weren’t like other people. They believed in only one thing: survival.

  “You scared me!” Wren exclaimed, forcing a smile.

  “Got any goodies for me?” Crown asked.

  “Maybe,” replied Wren. She paused and drew a little closer to him. “Do you have any boats leaving Edgeland soon? I might have enough for a sea voyage.”

  “There’s always room for you,” said Crown. He frowned. “I do have expenses, though.” Wren knew what this meant—he was about to negotiate. “You’ve got no papers, I expect. Every day, there are more people to bribe. But there is a smuggler’s ship at the Incense Merchants’ Pier, if you can pay. It leaves at dawn—bound for the Desert Lands. What’s that town you want to go to?”

  “Ankora,” Wren replied. “I’d pay a pretty price, so long as I can leave at dawn.”

  “You must have found something very valuable,” Crown said, raising an eyebrow. “Come by in a few hours and show me what you’ve gotten your grubby little hands on.” He grinned and turned away, wobbling with the sway of the boat.

  Wren took a deep breath and felt the air curl its way into her lungs, imagining that she was already on her way to Ankora, a vast city of almost a million people. She pictured herself walking down the narrow streets, spice merchants sitting on either side, hawking vials of pepper, ginger, turmeric, and star anise. She’d start her search there for the bearded man.

  A year after she arrived at House Aron—when she was nine years old—the bearded man had visited the Edgeland bone houses, politely asking for a young orphan girl named “In Bryll.”

  He spoke with a thick southland accent, in which he swallowed the wr and e in her first name. Few people knew Wren’s last name, and the bearded man was turned away. It was weeks later that Butros, the house watchman at House Aron, mentioned the encounter. He remembered little about the visitor, other than his beard and the fact that he claimed to hail from the city of Ankora.

  The news was electrifying for Wren. She felt certain that the bearded man was her father, Isaac. He’d left when Wren was six—signed on as third mate on a whaling ship bound for the Polar North. The ship was supposed to be gone for ten months, but two years after its departure, it still hadn’t returned. “He’ll come back,” her mother, Alinka, promised. In fact, Alinka kept on promising this right until the day that she died. And then, well … Wren was officially an orphan.

  When Butros told her of the visit from the “bearded man,” Wren’s hopes soared. She searched every nook and cranny on the island, hoping to find him. This wasn’t easy to do because whiffs weren’t allowed outdoors. She found a wig and dressed as a body washer, wearing a hooded cloak and heeled boots—all of which made her look much older. The watchmen at a few other bone houses remembered the bearded man. “Yes,” recalled one. “He had a birthmark on his right cheek.” That confirmed it. Her father had a crescent-shaped birthmark above his beard. It was him. But it didn’t matter: By then, he’d already vanished.

  As the ferry approached the dock on Edgeland, Wren could smell the island’s scent—a mix of incense, vinegar, and decaying flesh.

  Several excited voices began speaking at once.

  “Smoke—do you see it?” someone called. “It’s a sign—it looks like a serpent in the sky—a drowned serpent.”

  Wren looked down the main deck of the ferry, where a group of aged Suns stood, wearing the homespun clothing of the northern regions. They were pointing to the highest part of the island—the Mount—a flat expanse occupied by several large temples. Several thin lines of smoke had begun to rise from this area.

  Wren gripped the railing and leaned forward. Sometimes Suns lit small fires around the Mount in order to demonstrate the power of light. It was a bad sign. Tensions were running high. Wren guessed that word was already out about Fat Freddy. News must have traveled on the faster ferry.

  When the ferry docked, Wren hurried down the gangplank toward a nearby maze of rickety wooden shacks. The “Shakes” is what they called this mud-splattered marketplace where the island’s poor came to buy, sell, and rob one another. It was also the name they gave to the hovels they lived in, which rattled and shook in even the lightest wind.

  Wren began to relax once she was slopping down the Shakes’s muddy lanes, amidst the throngs of bedraggled old women and stray dogs. There were also quite a few graylings—begging for scraps of food and looking for coins to steal. Wren tried hard not to look like a grayling. She kept her cloak clean and always washed her face and hands, even if the rest of her was dirty, because those were the parts of her body people were most likely to see.

  Wren passed the fruit stalls, the incense kiosks, and the hut where the old man made funeral kites from pigs’ intestines. The Shakes was one of the few places where Suns and Shadows mingled—the Rule of Light didn’t mean much here.

  Wren walked to the end of a lane, then across a dust-covered field toward a one-room hut. There was a reason it stood by itself. It was next to a foul-smelling marsh, making it a perfect place for those who wished to be left alone. Wren ducked through the small front door of the hut.

  “Look what the dead dragged in,” said an old man in a tattered white tunic. As always, he was slouching in a rickety chair and chewing a piece of marsh grass. “You look like hell.”

  “Thanks, Irv. So do you.” Wren removed her hat and black wig, revealing a closely shorn head and chestnut-colored eyes that rested above high cheekbones. She was the same age as Alec, but the strain on her face made her look older.

  Irv’s place was simple. The only ornament on the walls was a small painting of the great Shadow prophet, Shade, who appeared serious and brooding. Shade was a contemporary of Ember Aron, and had lived and died centuries ago. He had founded several of the Shadow bone houses. For his part, Irv wasn’t especially religious, but he was a Shadow and a painting of Shade was a good-luck talisman.

  Irv’s shack was essentially a storage shed: floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with dirty paper bags. Each bag contained four so-called bricks of life—the dietary staple of those who lived in the Shakes. The bricks were made of baked flour, grass, clay, and a sprinkling of sugar. If you ate too many bricks, you’d die—the clay would poison you. If you didn’t eat enough bricks, you would also die—of starvation. And this conundrum summarized the sort of world in which Wren lived.

  Wren walked to a blanket hanging in the far corner and pulled it up, revealing a wide tube that led down into the descenders, a network of old, forgotten tunnels and pipes below
Edgeland. She peered in and saw torchlight flickering below, then turned back to Irv and flipped him one of the coppers she’d taken from the Ramparts.

  “This settles us for the week, right?”

  He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “What happened to your sandals?”

  Wren looked down. They were smeared with Fat Freddy’s blood. “Walking through the Shakes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Must’ve stepped in some pig guts.”

  “Let me know if you see anything down there,” said Irv.

  “See anything?” Wren frowned. “Should I be expecting company?”

  The old man shrugged. “Someone killed a Shadow priest—what’s his name, big fat fella—Freddy? Then they started fightin’ on the Mount again.” Irv glanced at the picture of Shade on the wall, as if nervous about sharing this information in the prophet’s presence.

  “I saw the smoke,” Wren replied.

  “It’s not just that,” Irv continued. “They say a grayling killed Fat Freddy.” He saw her worried face and nodded sympathetically. “I know, it’s unfair. Graylings are always the first ones they blame. They’ll probably fight on the Mount for a few hours, and that’ll be the end of it. Still, be careful down there. They’re lookin’ for an excuse to clear out the descenders and kill thievin’ graylings.”

  Wren fell silent. She looked at the picture of Shade and the bricks of life. At that moment, she hated Edgeland more than ever.

  “I don’t know why they even bother,” continued Irv. “You know what they say about graylings: They never grow old because they—”

  “All die young,” finished Wren.

  “Yup,” said Irv. “It’s hard scrappin’ for food and livin’ belowground, but you know that. It’s a mean life. Never did see a grayling live to be fully grown.” He sighed heavily. “Yes sir, people sure do hate your lot.”

  “But why?” pressed Wren. “Why do they hate us so much?”

  Irv rocked back in his chair. “Well, ya got the stink of birth on you, like all whiffs do. Only it’s worse because, on top of that, graylings are troublemakers—like you—who got kicked out of their bone houses. And let’s be honest, most of ya are thieves.” He cackled. “I like troublemakers, but I’m not like most folks.”