The Conductors

by Nicole Glover

  “Not the details.”

  “Did George tell you something?”

  “George told me nothing. I think he wanted to distract me. I asked a few questions, then he started talking about his daughter. It would have taken a thunderstorm to change the subject.”

  Benjy didn’t answer right away. “He was trying to distract you. There’s nothing to worry—the argument was about nothing you don’t know already.”

  “You found out about the dresses Charlie tricked me into making?”

  “Something else,” he said.

  They were interrupted before he could explain.

  “Henrietta!” Eunice called as she ran up to them. “You’re going to miss the race if you dally!”

  “Go,” Benjy urged. “A bit of fun won’t hurt anything.”

  “I shouldn’t,” Hetty began, but Eunice reached them and grabbed on to Hetty’s wrist.

  She beamed up at her. “Well, aren’t you coming?”

  Hetty opened her mouth to protest, and Benjy pushed her forward. “Yes, she is. Good luck to you both!”

  With no good reasons for further protest, Hetty let herself be hauled off into the crowd.

  Standing elbow to elbow with other overeager women mounted on bicycles, she noticed a few faces that were somewhat familiar—likely members of the Stars of Hope, the ladies’ bicycling group that always made sure to wear the most flamboyant hats as they rode.

  Hetty carefully mounted her bicycle, smoothing her skirts. Eunice followed, but less gracefully.

  Hoping that Eunice would stay safely in the back, Hetty asked, “How far will we have to travel without knocking into one another?”

  “That far.” Eunice pointed out in the distance. Clarence stood on the end of the field waving a bright yellow scarf. “We are to ride out to him and hopefully not into him.”

  “I do hope your husband knows a few spells to fly.”

  Cheers drowned out Eunice’s next words, as Isaac Baxter entered the crowd. He moved between the racers, smiling at a few and waving at others as he made his way to the front.

  “At my mark, we’ll begin!”

  Baxter threw his arm into the air. A phoenix burst from his fingertips, leaving behind a trail of bright blue flames.

  A few women screamed while others stared like Hetty did.

  Only the rattle of wheels brought Hetty back to her senses.

  Hetty pedaled forward, as fast as she could. She did want to win. Not just for the money, but because she disliked coming in last in anything. As she passed more of the other racers, she could see her desire becoming a reality. The hats of racing ladies came into view, the gap between them narrowing.

  Hetty sped onward, readying to overtake them—

  And then the ground burst into the air.

  Hetty veered her bicycle away from the initial blast, but the dust and swerving racers made it difficult. Yanking her bicycle handles, Hetty rolled off the path, shrieks filling her ears. Just as she was ready to come to a halt, a second explosion sent her flying in the opposite direction.

  She tried to stop the bicycle, but her shoes slipped along the slick grass. Quicker than she expected, quicker than she feared, the grass gave way to the river.

  Water suddenly surrounded Hetty. It pulled her into its icy depths. Bone-chilling cold took what air remained in her lungs. She flayed, struggling to reach the surface. But it was out of her grasp. Her skirts tangled with the bicycle and it pulled her under like a sinking stone.

  She was going to drown.

  The thought swirled in her head.

  It had taken just a few years for fate to catch up to her. This was how she was going to die. Water roaring in her ears, cold seeping to her bones, her view obscured, her sister slipping away from her . . .

  No. Not today.

  She was not going to die like this.

  Sweeping her free hand in the water, she ran her finger along the sigils stitched into the cloth band at her neck and focused every bit of her attention to separate herself from the river.

  Light from her magic flowed around her, and suddenly, instead of pulling her down, the water began rushing around in a swirling spiral. Hetty found herself rising out of the water, her skirt nearly ripping as the bicycle fell away beneath her. Hovering in the air, quite some distance from the river, Hetty caught sight of the world of dust and smoke below. The figures moving on the ground appeared much like ants. Their faces were hard to tell apart, but she spotted some she knew.

  Eunice in the tangle of bicycles. Darlene and George staring, aghast, in the crowd. Clarence on the fringes. Benjy running toward the river.

  All this was the last thing she saw before the sigils keeping her in the air faded away and she crashed back into the water.

  SEA MONSTER

  Interlude

  April 1863

  GREAT DISMAL SWAMP, VIRGINIA

  WITH A CHILD CLINGING to her back and her pistol empty of all its bullets, Hetty returned to the village just as the sun started to set. She lost her scarf to the murky waters, so her braids brushed against her neck. Her trousers were damp to the knees, and there were new tears on her jacket, but her boots had done their job. They were dry and were holding together.

  Her way back had been guided by the little fox that darted from tree trunk to tree trunk, its blue-black coat shimmering with starlight. She was glad she had marked sigils on the trees when she had left earlier that afternoon, for as it grew darker, every­thing grew unfamiliar.

  At the entrance of the village the little fox faded away, but she wasn’t alone. From the nearest tree, a crow took flight and pierced the wards to leave a tear wide enough for her to walk through.

  The star-speckled crow looped around her once more before it flew into the village proper and slid through the walls of a cabin set on the outskirts of the village.

  Instead of following, Hetty walked toward Nanette’s cabin, which sat in a position of honor among the loose ring of homes. As she strode along the wooden walkway, doors from the other cabins lining the path sprang open and whispers fluttered past her.

  “She’s back!”

  “I bet she killed them!”

  “She’s alive?”

  “How did she get past the boundary charms?”

  “My son!”

  This last voice was the loudest.

  Olympia ran forward, stumbling across the beams to meet them, her arms outstretched for Hetty to hand over the child.

  The young mother pressed her child to her chest, her grip tightening as the child embraced her.

  “You brought him back.”

  “He wasn’t hard to find. He’s smart. He climbed the trees and stayed well out of the way.”

  “And the Grays?” Olympia whispered. “We heard gunshots. You weren’t hurt?”

  “They missed,” Hetty said, patting the empty pistol that swung from her belt. “I didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” the child said. “I won’t run off again.”

  “No, you won’t,” Olympia said, her voice too soft to be any stern rebuke. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

  Leaving mother and child alone, Hetty walked the rest of the way to Nanette’s cabin. It was the only door in the circle of cabins that had not opened, although the curtains dancing in the window told her that her arrival had not gone unnoticed.

  At the foot of the stairs, she stopped.

  “Old woman!” Hetty bellowed. “I did as you asked. I brought the child back alive and well! Enough of your games! My patience has ground into dust. Honor your words or suffer the consequences!”

  A force strong enough to be a gust of wind flung open the door. And in its wake, Nanette stood in the doorway with a pipe clenched between her teeth.

  Stark white hair and a heavily lined face were the only marks of her age. Her back was straight, and her body held enough wiry strength to match or better Hetty’s own. The leader of this hidden village, Nanette had first made a home here with her husband, he
r brother, and several others who chose uncertain protection of the swamp in their bid for freedom. Over the years her family grew into a village as others sought safety in the swamp’s borders—first from slavery, then from war.

  In the few days that Hetty had been here, she had collected stories of Nanette’s bravery, cunning, and skill that had kept the little village safe and its people free. The old woman was respected, but the stories Hetty heard went no further than that. Prodding for more stopped the flow of stories entirely.

  While Hetty could not deny there was no safer place for miles around, there was no freedom here. People who came to the village never left. And those who chose to leave were quickly dissuaded by any means necessary.

  Which was why the old woman was playing games as if this were a fairy tale, giving Hetty tricky and tedious tasks in exchange for help.

  It was a nice distraction at first. Answering riddles or sewing together nettles to make a fishing net was hardly a challenge for her. But once Hetty found herself climbing a rotting tree to retrieve an arrow stuck at the top and nearly plunged to her death, it stopped being amusing. Her latest task was finding the child, who the old woman claimed had run away. After a brief conversation with the child, Hetty knew a different story.

  “Consequences!” Nanette’s voice held a mirth as fabricated as her smile. “What have I done for you to be angry about? I only offered you help.”

  “Not willingly. My friend is dying, yet you force me to complete these pointless tasks to get medicine. He’ll never recover enough for us to leave without your help.”

  “Recovery is slow for ills like his,” Nanette said, not taking the bait Hetty had tossed at her feet. She merely tapped her pipe against her chin. “But if you insist on leaving, I will prepare something a bit stronger. Come inside.”

  Left with no choice, Hetty stomped into the cabin, not caring if the muck from her boots was left behind.

  Dried herbs dangled from the ceiling, leaving the air musky as the scents mixed together. An oil lamp flickered in the corner and the protections sewn into the scarf at Hetty’s neck wiggled before settling.

  Nanette didn’t seem to notice as she pulled herbs from the ceiling. She bent over a small table, grinding them up with mortar and pestle, the pipe between her teeth trembling as she worked. “Why do you want to leave? North, south, or west, you’ll run into nothing but trouble. From your scars, you’ve been doing naught but that.” Nanette’s free hand went to her own neck. The ringed scars she had there were striking, but not as prominent as Hetty’s. “Stay. You’ll be safe here.”

  “There’s no safety to be found in this place.”

  “We look after our own,” the old woman insisted. “Your friend’s skills are needed, if he’s as good of a blacksmith as you claim. And you—you got wits worthy of ten. Stop running, Miss Sparrow. Stay here and be free.”

  “There is no freedom here,” Hetty said. “They’re all stuck in a trap of your creation! They can’t leave this swamp.”

  “Why would they want to? They won’t find freedom anywhere.” Nanette dumped the herbs into a sachet. “The president who so kindly freed us plans to deport us to the Caribbean or Africa, first chance he can get. He only got support for his fancy proclamation because the North doesn’t want us folks taking their jobs and making our homes next door to them. Out west there’s nothing but stolen land, weeping with blood and sorrows. And the South is as antsy as a cow standing on an anthill. Whatever happens ain’t going to be good for us, no matter who wins this bloody war. Living here might not seem like much freedom to you, but us folk have no place to live peacefully.” Nanette thrust the medicine at Hetty. “We belong nowhere. Our past is stolen, our present is lost, and our future hangs in the balance. That won’t change for a long, long time. This country thrived with our people in chains. You think it’ll take just a few years to change all that?”

  Nanette thrust these words in Hetty’s face. With skill and grim satisfaction that spoke of doing this time and time again with the listeners nearly always conceding. Hetty wasn’t the first person to have this lecture, but unlike the others, she had the privilege of being in the company of others who debated every point of this argument backwards and forward. Nanette hadn’t said anything wrong, but not everything she said was right.

  She looked Nanette square in the eye. “Change happens when you face it directly. Hiding away will do nothing.”

  “There’s no safety out there.”

  “I never expected it in the first place.”

  Hetty left the cabin without permission to leave, not even turning when Nanette called back to her.

  The villagers were readying for the evening’s dinner. Occupied with the task, no one spoke to her, but a few nodded as she went past. None would interact with her with Nanette’s watchful eyes on them. Which was for the best. Hetty had enough of wading through lies.

  At the cabin they had been given use of, she hesitated outside the door before opening it.

  The heat from inside nearly knocked her back. A sweltering wave pressed forward, drying her clothes so quickly that steam rose from them. She almost stayed outside, but she forced herself in all the same.

  “I got the medicine,” Hetty called, blinking to adjust her eyes to the light.

  “Is it tainted like all the others?” Benjy stood above a cauldron, impervious to the heat like any master blacksmith, though the bandage looped around his chest was damp with sweat. Above him, Aries bounced around the cabin, containing the heat and perhaps doing its best to keep the cabin from catching fire as Benjy poured liquid metal into a round mold.

  His hands were steady, but Hetty watched all the same, concerned he was not as fully recovered as he claimed.

  When the mold was placed on the table to cool, Hetty waved about the medicine that Nanette had grudgingly given her.

  “It’s different from the rest,” Hetty said, opening it up. “She reached for different herbs this time.”

  Benjy lowered the heat on his makeshift forge and walked toward her, sniffing the air above the cloth.

  He coughed and drew back. “It’s less this time, but there’s Weeper’s Delight in there. She puts it in everything.”

  “It can’t be in everything!”

  “It is. How do you think she convinced people to stay?” Benjy pulled another casing out of the fire. “It grabs ahold of you and won’t let go. And it does it so quietly. My mother started taking it after my sister was sold. It dulled her words, and softened her feelings toward the world. When it stopped working she had to take more and more, until one day she went to sleep and didn’t wake up. I’ll die first before I let a bit of it cross my lips.”

  “Well, don’t get shot again.”

  “Not my fault,” he retorted, though he rubbed his hand along the bandage.

  They had taken a ship down to Virginia, following the latest lead on Esther. Travel by sea was even more perilous than by land, but they risked it to gain time. Other than a queasy day crammed into a smuggling nook, the gamble seemed to have paid off. They arrived on the coast with time to spare, and made the trek inland. But not far into their travels, they ran into a pack of deserters fleeing the fighting.

  In the chaos of the encounter, a bullet had grazed Benjy’s side. He refused to let Hetty look at it—it was just a scratch he had said, a fiction he kept repeating until he stumbled and fell into the murky swamp water and came out of it feverish and delirious.

  The fighting had drawn the people of the hidden village to them. Nanette had generously offered medicine and shelter, which Hetty took without question. But Benjy had smelled the Weeper’s Delight and had enough awareness left in him to violently refuse.

  Hetty might have forced him to take it in the end if she hadn’t remembered something Esther had told her of healing—that fire could purify even the vilest of sickness.

  The only fire at hand was a candle in their lantern. Hetty popped it out and set the lit tip against his wound. Her efforts nearly got
her set on fire. Benjy pushed and shoved her hands away until he fainted from the pain.

  She passed the night fearing she had only hastened his death, but the next morning Benjy awoke cross and complaining to such a degree that she’d burst into tears at the sound.

  That was a few days ago, and now the least of their problems.

  “We’re leaving tonight, aren’t we?” Benjy asked. “We’re out of food. And the crone’s starting to get suspicious.”

  “She’s been that way the whole time.” Hetty looked over his makeshift forge and the cooling items next to it. “Did you really need my best sewing needle for this?”

  “It needed to be straight. I’ll make you a new one . . . dozens if you like.”

  “I don’t need dozens. One would be enough.” Hetty pointed. “What is this?”

  “A compass—it points to your heart’s desire.”

  The pointed end of the needle jutted toward her as he spoke. Hetty lifted her hand away, glaring at him.

  “North,” Benjy said blandly. “Where else do you think it would point?”

  “Very funny,” she growled. “Next time you fall into a river, I’m not diving in after you.”

  “Good, I have no plans to do that again.” He held up the compass, studying it for flaws. “Shall we leave tonight? We can still catch up to your sister.”

  As Hetty made to answer, there was a knock on the door.

  Benjy blew out the fire in the cauldron, the star sigils fluttering away with enough speed that they brought cool air with them. He collapsed onto a nearby pallet as Hetty pushed their packs aside. Glancing to make sure he appeared still enough to be mistaken for asleep, Hetty moved carefully toward the door.

  When she opened it, Olympia stood there, holding her son. “You’re not hungry, are you?” she asked before Hetty could speak.

  “I—”

  “You don’t want dinner? I understand.” The woman stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. “Everyone is eating right now. Later someone will bring you what is left. But it will be a while. There are people asking questions of Nanette that she’d avoided in the past, and it will be some time before you are remembered.”