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  © 2016 Jordan Elizabeth

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  ISBN 978-1-62007-738-2 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-739-9 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-740-5 (hardcover)

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  For my father, Lawrence Stanley Mierek, who asked for a watch and has received a book instead.

  reen smoke snaked up the side of the tenement and drifted over the sill of an open window. A breeze blew the vapor into a column before it solidified into the shape of a stout, young hag. She shook her crimson curls away from her face and straightened the hood of her cloak to keep her kohl-lined, silver eyes shadowed.

  The scent of lavender clung to her robes, washing over the small room. Two brass-framed beds crowded the floor. Blankets covered sleeping children. A little boy wheezed against the head of his stuffed bear, drool dripping onto the wool.

  The hag squinted to see the goldenrod dream cloud above his head—a dream about seeing his father again. She frowned at the other bed, where a sleeping teenager lay with a threadbare blanket tugged around her chin. Even squinting, the hag couldn’t make out a dream cloud. The girl was too old to be of any use.

  The hag slithered to the boy’s bed and, from the folds of her cloak, drew out a rectangular box four inches long, with a circular indentation on one side. She set it on the floor to remove a vial and rag from her skirt pocket, the rough wool of the rag irritating her fingertips.

  “Do it, Simone,” the hag muttered to herself as she willed her hands not to tremble. “Make the Dark Mother happy.” She couldn’t fail at her first mission.

  Holding her breath, Simone dribbled three drops onto the rag, yanked the teddy bear away, and shoved the drugged cloth against the boy’s mouth. His eyes opened, his gasp muffled, and his body jerked. Simone stiffened.

  The girl moaned. Her mattress rustled as she rolled over to face the wall, brown curls shifting over her pillow.

  Simone’s heart thudded. By the seven Saints, she should’ve cast a sleeping spell over the girl. The Dark Mother preferred humans to think hags were harmless healers, not thieves who kidnapped children.

  The boy writhed, squeaks emerging from behind the rag. Simone pressed harder. She needed his breath in the wool to disguise and fuel the machine.

  The potion took hold and the boy collapsed. Simone’s thick lips curved over her broken teeth. She lifted a pocket watch from around her neck and positioned it into the crevice in the metal box. As the two pieces connected, a chime rang out. She set the box beside the limp little boy and draped the rag over it. Even though she should wait to make sure his breath stuck in the machine, she couldn’t risk waking the girl.

  The metal stretched to become his replica as if it were made of putty. With a second chime, the metal shimmered and dulled into the pale peach of his flesh, becoming an exact duplicate of the child.

  “Mine.” Simone hefted the little boy into her arms, leaving the duplication on the bed, and transformed to smoke before the chimes awoke the girl.

  Ring of magic, hear my cry.

  ine,” a voice breathed.

  A bell chimed near Edna’s ear and she swatted the air beside her head to make the noise leave. The chime sounded once more before fading. Light shimmered near the window, but when she turned her head, squinting in the darkness, the green glow vanished.

  Edna stiffened. “Harrison? You awake?”

  Her eight-year-old brother’s stuffed bear lay on the hardwood floor beside his bed. Beneath Harrison’s red blanket, his chest rose and fell with each breath. At least he wasn’t wheezing.

  The darkness didn’t stir in her veins, so it couldn’t be that. It never woke her in the night.

  Perhaps her father had returned early. She sighed; no, he wasn’t due back for a while yet.

  Edna sat up in bed to peer out the room’s only window. Through the glass panes, she saw the bricks of the tenement across the alley, with moonlight reflecting off a window below. A damp wind stirred the checkered curtains she’d sewn last year; Harrison must have opened their window.

  A chill would make his asthma worsen.

  Edna slid her feet out from beneath the blanket to the floor. Coldness seeped from the wood to permeate through her socks into her feet. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself and padded to her brother’s bed.

  “Harrison?” She pressed her hand over his forehead to find his head dry, rather than flushed with night sweat. Edna brushed his brown hair away from his ear. The strands felt more velvety than normal, almost like the skin of a leaf. His dark eyelashes fanned over his round cheeks, his lips rosier than usual.

  The ticking of a watch toyed with her, but they didn’t have such trinkets in the room. It must’ve been someone in the street, perhaps a hag selling enchanted baubles.

  Edna grasped the top of the window glass and pushed it down, extinguishing the spring breeze.

  Edna sloshed oatmeal into a chipped bowl and slid it to her brother. “Eat up and lick it clean.” Pity her mother didn’t have enough time to cook breakfast, but if Edna didn’t make it, her and her brother wouldn’t eat until noon. Maybe her cooking would improve with time. Maybe.

  She filled her own bowl, waiting for Harrison’s usual response: Not without molasses, I won’t.

  Harrison swirled his spoon through the oatmeal before taking a bite, staring at the porcelain bowl. Edna frowned; he never ate slowly.

  “Harry-boy, did you hear a bell last night?” Edna set the pot of oatmeal back on the hearth hook. “I could’ve sworn it woke me up. Maybe it was a dream.”

  He took another bite, his nostrils flaring. She’d been nice enough to make his breakfast. He didn’t have to ignore her.

  Edna dropped into her chair extra hard to make the legs scrape the floor. Usually Harrison cringed when she did that and called her a noisy-body. Instead, he ate another spoonful, the corners of his mouth turning downward. Edna wound a curl around her finger and tugged. Had the breeze sickened him after all?

  Edna’s mother swept into the kitchen followed by a wave of cheap rose water, heeled boots clicking, and poured water from the pitcher into a glass. “Don’t forget it’s Friday.”

  Edna recognized her own features in her mother’s pert nose and long face, but her mother’s brown hair stayed smooth and glistening in a tight bun, whereas Edna’s curls frizzed. Sometimes, she wished she had her mother’s tall body, her every movement graceful, instead of being short and awkward, skinny as a pencil line. Her mother deserved to be more than one of the working class. Edna bit her lower lip. She did, too, but being a servant seemed to be the only option for a lower class girl who wasn’t pretty enough for the stage.

  “I remember. You’re late on Fridays now.” Edna peered at Harrison. He usually whined about not being able to watch his mother perform.

  Then their mother would remind him, “It’s not suitable for children.” She’d never told them what was inappropriate, but Edna had heard on the street that Music Hall ladies flashed their privates in certain shows. Edna knew her mother never acted that way, yet she needed the job, so Mrs. Mather never complained about what the others did.

  Instead of whining, Harrison scraped
the spoon around his emptied bowl. Edna heard that faint ticking again, but it faded before she could place it.

  “I boiled oatmeal,” she said.

  “I don’t have time to eat this morning.” Her mother’s orange skirt swished as she strolled to the table. The satin clashed with the room’s moldy walls. Since she worked as a singer at the Music Hall, the theater’s owner loaned his employees elegant outfits to wear around the city, hoping to intrigue passersby to purchase a ticket to the show. Whenever Edna went out with her mother, men whistled and called names, like harlot and alley whore, that made Edna’s cheeks flush.

  “Have a good day, Mum.” Edna glanced down at her blue lace gloves. Her mother had owned the fingerless gloves first, a midwinter present from the Music Hall four years ago, after a special performance where she’d sung solo. Edna stroked her thumb over the lace, worn smooth. Not a day passed that she didn’t wear them, keeping a piece of her mother with her, a tidbit of elegance on her work-roughened hands. As long as she wore them, perhaps someday she’d become a lady.

  She tapped Harrison with her foot under the table, but he kept scraping. Normally, he told their mother to smile all day, which would make her laugh. Then their mother would kiss his forehead.

  Edna studied his eyes, and although they didn’t appear bloodshot, they were too shiny. “Mum, something’s wrong with Harrison.”

  Their mother wrapped a silk shawl around her bare shoulders and pressed her cheek against his. “You’re cool. Edna, make sure he has plenty of tea tonight.”

  Harrison stopped scraping his bowl at his mother’s contact, but stared at the table.

  She patted the pearl necklace above her heart-shaped bodice. “Harry, you’ll be fine.”

  Edna watched her mother depart. Tonight, when her mother had extra time, she would consider Harrison. If their father sent his wages from the train company soon, they could afford medicinal drops from a hag.

  Odds bobs, how she hated hags. Their dark cloaks could hide curses, and their silver eyes, lacking pupils, irises, or whites, could see everything. Just because humans used them for their healing powers didn’t make hags trustworthy. People were too friendly with them.

  To calm her nerves, Edna twirled the glass prayer beads of her bracelet. Each of the seven orange beads represented a different Saint; they would protect her from the hags.

  Her father had given her the bracelet for her tenth birthday. “Even if I’m not around, I’m always with you, because I want to keep you safe.”

  Although the seven Saints would protect everyone who believed in them, the beads gave her a sense of wonderment, as though they made her special. With her father’s beads and her mother’s gloves, she’d always felt invincible, and as she’d aged, she’d clung to these items as talismans. The thoughts kept the darkness away. It was evil, that darkness. She could always feel it come on, crawling over her like lice. She’d had that once, lice. Mum had to get a cream from the hags to make them go away. That darkness possessed the same festering quality. It wouldn’t leave her, and when she didn’t feel it anymore, it returned so fast it stole her breath.

  Harrison didn’t leave the table until she did.

  “Come on,” Edna groaned, “let’s go.” She took her wool coat from the peg beside the door and when Harrison remained still, she tossed him his. He slid his arms through the sleeves and buttoned the front only after she did hers, like when he was an infant and she had to dress him. She’d been so relieved when he could finally do it himself; no more whining that she’d pinched his arm or bent his fingers.

  “Don’t forget your hat.” She yanked the felt cap over his ears and pushed his hands into his gloves. His brown hair poked out from the cap’s brim. “I don’t want you falling ill.” She nibbled on her broken fingernail. He’d start to pull away if she kept fussing, and she needed to monitor him in case he worsened.

  Her brother hadn’t been sick since becoming employed the year before, but he’d been a weak infant. Each time he took ill, the darkness came upon her stronger. “I need you, Harry-boy. Gotta stay well for us, you hear?”

  If he was coming down with another ear infection, he should stay in bed, but the family needed his wages. She wished they could have kept him home another year, but the king decreed every capable lower class citizen worked from the age of seven to help support their family and reduce the amount of beggars. Edna had been lucky to find him employment with her instead of in a factory where a machine might have bitten off his fingers.

  She pulled him through the door, then locked it behind them. Instead of racing her down the narrow flight of stairs from their attic apartment, Harrison shuffled two steps behind. Edna gave up waiting for him and hurried, weaving around a drunkard slumped outside a door and a woman struggling with a wooden bucket of water from the communal washroom.

  She grabbed Harrison’s gloved hand as she hurried him down the stoop. “Speed up. If you drag too far behind, you might get lost.”

  Tall buildings cast shadows over the cobbled street as she tugged her leaden brother. Beggars picked through garbage in the alleys. Men dressed in suits headed for their offices with pinched expressions on their lowered faces. Children selling roses, herring, and rags screamed their wares from beneath lampposts, begging with bloodshot eyes. A woman holding a baby held out a tin cup. “Give a penny, miss?”

  Edna stared at the chipped stone of the sidewalk. I have nothing to give. She ached for the homeless of Moser City, always wondering what it would be like if her family ended up like that. Would people spare a few cents, or allow them to starve? Only the beggars looked at her and her brother, but she kept their money in her vest pocket, hidden by her buttoned coat.

  Signs hung over stores and factories. Morning light reflected off the windows in the towering buildings, their sills carved with cherub faces. Stone gargoyles protruded from the eaves of the structures. Moss crept across the bricks and drab doors. She counted eight stories in one building, ten in the next, to keep her mind off Harrison’s sudden onset of introversion. Worrying wouldn’t make him healthier. Maybe soon, he’d snap awake and move along faster.

  A crimson steamwagon with yellow sunbursts painted on the sides waited outside an alley. A young man stood in the open back, bells decorating his emerald cap and jacket. A group gathered in the street around him, locomobiles forced to go around. A driver shook his fist at the disturbance.

  “Look, a storyteller.” Edna grinned at her brother. “Let’s listen. You’ll like it, even if I have to make you.” She elbowed his arm and winked.

  “Listen well,” the storyteller boomed. “When Ebel the Restless ventured over the mountains, he gazed upon a valley of streams and trees. Birds flew to branches rich with fruit. Deer grazed in meadows lush with wildflowers. Ebel the Reckless smiled; he’d found a home to settle.”

  Edna rocked on her heels, savoring the familiar story. What she wouldn’t do to enjoy Ebel’s freedom and be able to gaze out at the possibilities of uncharted land.

  “His followers were pleased with the game in the forests and the fish in the rivers,” the storyteller continued. “With plenty of sustenance, they were content to begin a civilization. First came the homes, then the farms. Ebel built a castle in the north. Shops arose as people spread out. A trade route expanded along the Aubrey River to the ocean in the south. Ebel’s closest friends became nobles. The rest became servants, unable to rise unless they married someone with noble blood.”

  Edna shivered. Servants like her and Harrison. They should get to work, but a few more minutes wouldn’t make them too late. The story might make Harrison feel better.

  “Some humans wanted to see what else lay in the new world.” The storyteller spread his hands. “Ebel’s oldest son gathered his friends. They kept walking east until they came to a swamp and decided to see if they could survive there. They couldn’t see the magic sparkling in the mist until it began to change them.”

  Edna hugged Harrison against her front. If she loved the first pa
rt of the story, she loathed this part, where humans became something altogether horrid.

  “I’d never let it happen to you,” she whispered to her brother.

  “The men grew taller, thicker”—the storyteller lifted his hand overhead as an example of the mutants’ heights—“they lost their hair and their arms lengthened. The women developed silver eyes, without pupils or irises. The scent of lavender clung to their skin. As their bodies connected with nature, they developed a sense for spells. They could create almost anything from nature. Magic, they called it.

  “They returned to King Ebel, eager to share their findings, but the humans shunned them.

  “‘Ogres’, they spat at the men.

  “‘Hags’, they growled at the women.

  “Enraged, the ogres and hags attacked. They became the rulers and the humans their slaves. After five years, the humans rebelled. They burned the ogres and hags with fire, and laughed as their bodies became ash.

  “Most survivors fled back to the swamp, but the humans decided to use the hags’ abilities for healing. Although the magic in the swamp mutated their bodies, it also gave them the power to manipulate nature and dreams into spells. They could transform a dream into a gift of beauty and create a powder to save a man when his heart stops.

  “Some hags moved to the humans’ towns and cities. Although the humans used them, the hags were never considered peers. They sold medicine and blessings, and they swore revenge.”

  Edna clapped as the storyteller bowed on his makeshift stage. The wagon swayed from his movement, the metal wheels clanking against the road. She would never be able to talk with his grace and fluidity.

  “Bravo!” a man in the audience called.

  Edna rubbed her little brother’s shoulder, but he remained stiff, as though he hadn’t heard the story. Normally any tale kept him enraptured. Her pulse sped up. What else could she do to make him respond?

  “That is how our glorious kingdom of Novpril began.” The storyteller waved his cap, the bells jingling along the brim. “Any requests for my next story?”