by Iva Viddal
“The Stranger pushed me!” Jess wailed.
“It was just a game,” Doctor Leech said, smiling at Nerma and the other children. “But why don’t you come with me, Jestra, and we’ll take care of your Purpose? We don’t want an infection.”
Jess took her hand, and together they walked away, the Doctor’s skirts swaying.
No one wanted to play anymore after that, so Nerma wandered back toward the dancefloor in search of October. A woman she’d never seen before, her arms and face covered in a downy brindle fur, tottered up to Nerma.
“Hallowed Maker, how I have been dying to meet the Stranger—and here you are!” The woman beamed.
A man with frightening double axes for arms approached. “Oh my, Pugglia! I believe you have found the famous Stranger. Gory night, Stranger. I hope—you—are—having—a ghastly—night.” He dragged out his words, as though Nerma not only lacked a Purpose but ears or a brain.
“Thank—you—very—much,” Nerma answered, smiling sweetly. She rolled her eyes as she turned away but was immediately cornered by two redheaded teenage girls in identical blood berry costumes. Like giant purple boils, their costumes pressed in on her, and from their sides emerged two pairs of slender arms that tapered into sharp gardening shears where hands would otherwise have been. Escape was impossible.
“We are not allowed to speak to you,” began the girl on her left, her eyes even rounder than her costume. “Because Mother says you’re terribly dangerous—”
“—but we couldn’t resist,” finished the one on her right.
“Father will scold us if he finds out,” said the first. “‘Strangers ought to be run out of town,’ he says—”
“—but mother disagrees. She says, ‘Strangers ought to be ‘put out of their misery—’”
“—but Flora and I think you’re terribly interesting. Flora says that you haven’t got a brain, but I say you’ve clearly got a brain—”
“—Verdura says you’ve clearly got a brain and it’s just a soul you haven’t got. It must feel so empty not having a Purpose—”
“—like a big empty watering can that can’t hold water. I don’t know what Flora and I would do if we didn’t have a Purpose to tell us who we were—”
“—although Verdura here would probably just flirt with Hexor if she had time in her day—”
“Flora, you keep your mouth shut or I’ll clip your hair, you—”
“You wouldn’t dare—”
“Oh, yes, I would so!”
Nerma heard no more of the girls’ breathless conversation, though, for she had spotted October over by the cemetery gates and quickly ducked beneath Flora’s shears to get away. She wound her way between headstones and hurried in his direction, but again she was blocked—this time by a headless torso in the outfit of a scullery maid.
“Gory eve, Stranger! I have been dying to speak to you since your first night here in our hallowed little town.” The voice came from above, and Nerma bent her neck. What she had taken for a person with no head was really the woman with a broom handle for a neck. It must have been six feet tall, and her head bobbled over Nerma in its little white cap.
“You—you have?” Nerma stuttered.
“What an odd way of speaking you have.” The woman giggled. “But silly me, I shouldn’t have expected you to sound like a real person.”
Nerma had had about enough of this nonsense.
“I am a real person!” Nerma shouted up at the bobbing head.
The woman pulled out a feather duster and began to fan her face, but her arm only reached halfway up her broom handle. “Oh my,” she gasped, “you even have feelings! How marvelous. I wonder, perhaps you might pay me a visit one day—I live just around the corner from Magg’s Meats. I would love to see if you and my dear Sarah get along. I have a feeling you could become bosom buddies.”
“Who is Sarah?” Nerma stood on her tiptoes. October was no longer by the gate, and she was growing more and more impatient to find him.
“Sarah is my pet gerbil, dear. She’s such a little darling. Sometimes I forget she has no Purpose, and it breaks my heart to think she’ll just fizzle away one day like a rotten pear.”
“You want me to be friends with a gerbil?” Nerma peered back up at the tall woman.
“Why, certainly! I’m so glad you’re willing to meet her. That would be simply marvelous. If a monster like you can speak nearly as well as a real person, perhaps you might be able to translate for my dear Sarah!” The women wiggled with glee, and her head swayed precariously.
“A monster? Me? I am not—"
The woman waved a hand through the air. “Oh, you know what I mean. Monster, Stranger, Witch—they’re all the same thing. Oh! Clementine!” she shouted across the lawn. “Wait for me, Clemmy! I must tell you about the fascinating conversation I’ve been having with the little Stranger!”
The woman shuffled off, her head bouncing like a balloon.
Nerma hiked her costume bowl up with both hands and marched in the direction she had last seen October. Nothing was going to stop her from finding him now. Not nosy villagers or crooked Doctors or—
Two felt hats bobbed into view, and beneath them Bluff and Lure chortled. Nerma turned away, but the two business associates (“D-LUX”) deftly backed her into the smooth face of a marble obelisk. A cufflinked arm barred her exit.
“What do you want?” Nerma barked.
Bluff tutted softly. “My, my, no need to be rude. We only want to see if the Stranger has had second thoughts about joining our little business venture.” His teeth flashed gold.
Lure winked. “We seen how popular the Stranger is here in Small Hours. Imagine the profits we would all share if we was traveling the world with the Famous Stranger—”
“—the World Famous Stranger—”
“—the Girl Without a Soul.” Lure’s eyes whirled and two dollar signs appeared in their centers.
“No.” Nerma tried to squirm away, but her costume was wedged against the obelisk. “Let me go!” she demanded, straining to see past the duo’s shoulders.
At last, she spotted October. “Oct—” she started to call out, but the expression on his face made her freeze.
October’s eyes were fixed on the stage, his mouth agape in a look of horror.
Nerma turned to follow his gaze, and suddenly the Gala was transformed into a scene of chaos as the sky exploded with a bolt of lightning. For a moment, the cemetery was bathed in a white-electric glow that washed out all color and illuminated a terrible sight upon the stage. The people of Small Hours began to scream.
21
The Second Chase
Cries rippled through Soul’s End Cemetery like an ocean wave of terror. All eyes had turned toward the raised stage at the center of the Gala where a man now stood. A man whom Nerma immediately recognized from the Tunnels of Entanglement.
Something about him had changed.
A cry rose up from the crowd of onlookers. “His Purpose!”
Nerma realized then why the man no longer looked the same. His bowstring and guitar picks were gone, as though they had been cut from his body. In their place were thick white bandages.
“My Purpose has been . . . taken.” The man’s voice shook feebly, but it carried across the hushed cemetery.
Another flash of lighting illuminated his sunken cheeks and tortured eyes.
As the first raindrops fell, Doctor Mapple joined the man on stage and gripped his remaining elbow. “People of Small Hours!” the Doctor intoned, scanning the crowd below him. “Do not panic! I will speak to Bardry and find out what has happened.”
Doctor Mapple leaned over the broken man and whispered in his ear, his hand tight around Bardry’s arm.
Meanwhile, pockets of whispers blossomed throughout the graveyard as villagers worried over the horror of a lost Purpose. Mothers and fathers sought out their children and bade them to keep close by. Nerma watched as a large group made its way silently out though the cemetery gates. S
he recognized Vedea, Stewart, and several other Diviners among them.
Gasps erupted from the villagers, and Nerma turned her gaze back to the stage. Doctor Mapple was no longer speaking to Bardry, and now the injured man was pointing his bandaged hand into the crowd. Nerma realized with alarm that he was pointing directly at her.
Doctor Mapple nodded and called for his attendants to escort Bardry to the Sanatorium. They gripped him by his shoulders as lightning again lit the world from above.
“No, no!” Bardry cried out. “It’s—” But his voice was drowned out by thunder. The attendants tipped the poor man’s wooden body on its back and bore him swiftly from the stage, through the maze of headstones, and out the cemetery gates.
Cries went up throughout the cemetery.
“Oh, Hallowed Maker!”
“Maker, watch over his Purpose!”
“Poor, dear Mr. Bardry!”
“He was pointing at the Stranger!”
“At her, over there!”
“The Witch did it! I seen her!”
“She tried to break Jestra’s Purpose! We all saw it!” Children shouted in agreement.
“She took his Purpose! Bit it all off with her teeth, I bet!”
“She’s a Witch! The Witch from the story!”
This last cry came from the little girl from the Midnight Market, the one who had been frightened by the performers’ ghastly tale. Flames shot from her nose but then fizzled out in the falling rain.
“Mama, Mama!” she screamed. “She’s taking away my Purpose, too!”
Through all of this, Nerma crouched between Bluff, Lure, and the giant obelisk. Now, fearing that she was in grave danger, she ran straight at Lure, butting him with her head. A sharp pain erupted in the middle of her forehead where her spoon struck him, but she kept moving.
“Get the girl!” she heard Doctor Mapple shout. “Someone, grab the Stranger! She is a danger to us all!”
Nerma scampered around the obelisk and down a slope, darting between leaning headstones and scrambling over raised tree roots.
A bolt of lightning tore through the air ahead, and thunder rattled her teeth as rain began to bucket down on the cemetery, blinding her and weighing her costume down immediately.
She skirted the mob of villagers and waddled toward the wide cemetery gates, her stew bowl swinging wildly against her legs. She felt the back of it snag on something and feared that she had been caught, so she drove furiously forward until it pulled free.
“Close the gates!” A voice shouted far behind her, and she saw that two women had already begun to swing the big iron gates toward each other. She dodged around a tree, nearly ran into a marble bust, and slipped through the gates just in time.
Or so she thought—for this time, the back of her costume was really and truly caught, its back wedged firmly between the thick bars of the gate. She yanked at the edge of the bowl as the crush of villagers reached for her through the black iron bars, snarling and spitting accusations at her.
Nerma pulled and twisted at the cloth, but her hands were slippery in the streaming rainwater, and it wouldn’t budge.
The throng of villagers pressed against the gate in frustration, but then someone shouted, “Everyone, back up! We must open the gate!” A riotous shuffle ensued just a few feet away from Nerma as scores of furious villagers slipped and tripped over each other. At last, though, the area around the gate began to clear, and as the women heaved at the gates, they began to creak open.
Nerma was ready, though, and as soon as she felt the tension on her costume give, she ran for her life.
Unfortunately for her, the cobblestones—normally covered in a thin layer of muck and lichen—had become extraordinarily slick with the rain, and Nerma slipped only a few feet from the gate. Rather than simply falling, however, she slid into a raised curb and tipped head-over-bowl before rolling down the alley on the curved edges of her costume.
Like a hula hoop gone out of control, she rolled and wobbled, wobbled and rolled, until at last she smacked right into the base of a fountain. Dizzy, she looked up into the wizened face of October’s grandfather, the eighty-eighth Count of Wightworth. He gazed down at her with oxidized disdain.
Hands pulled Nerma upright and then refused to let go.
The chase was over.
Rain poured down upon her face, and she squinted her eyes at the people of Small Hours as they swarmed and bristled between the crooked alley walls. They glared at her but kept their distance.
A sugary voice sang out from within their midst. “Let us through now! All will be set right! Just clear the way, please. Thank you!”
Doctor Leech emerged from the crowd, Doctor Mapple at her heels. A third person followed in their wake.
Nerma’s heart dropped when she saw who this third person was. His face was a mask of fury, as though a bottomless well of malice and regret had opened within him and was now boiling just below its surface. It was the face of a friend-turned-foe.
From behind his murky eyeglasses, October glared at Nerma.
22
Spilled Stew
October followed Leech and Mapple through the mob of enraged villagers. With every footstep, his shoes stuck to the slime left behind by the Leech’s tail.
Ted and Ron watched from the back of the crowd. October avoided their eyes.
His training had prepared him for this scenario, but he had never imagined it would occur, never in a thousand years.
October knew that his actions over the next few minutes and hours might divide the town in two. He had no choice, though. He must follow through, even if it meant someone got hurt.
As he and the Doctors moved through the steaming mob, he could see Nerma up ahead in the alleyway. Her costume hung limp and wet from her body, a lifeless shell.
The two Doctors stopped in front of him, and Doctor Mapple kicked at something on the ground. It was a paper radish from Nerma’s costume. Strewn across the cobblestones was a giant’s meal of wilting papier mâché vegetables. Fish eyeballs clogged the gutters and watched in silence.
Among the potatoes, onions, and carrots of the spilled stew, however, October saw other objects. He inched closer to see.
“What is this?” Doctor Mapple queried. With the tip of a shiny shoe, he nudged at something on the cobblestones.
October recognized it. It was Bardry’s bowstring.
Doctor Leech’s gasp echoed throughout the narrow square.
It was then that he saw Bardry’s guitar picks. They lay black and lifeless at Nerma’s feet, five little arrows targeting an outlaw.
Somehow, it seemed, Bardry’s bowstring and guitar picks—the man’s Purpose, his livelihood, his soul—had been in Nerma’s giant bowl.
“But how . . . ?” October whispered to himself, aghast.
“She is a Witch!” Doctor Leech hissed. “She took the musician’s Purpose! The pieces were in her costume!”
“Webber!” Doctor Mapple’s voice boiled in the damp air. “Arrest this Stranger!”
A ripple of excited murmurs flared up behind October’s back. The people of Small Hours were hungry for justice.
“Stranger, you have hereby been charged with bodily injure unto a human. Moreover, you have been charged with theft of Purpose!” The Doctor’s indictment rumbled through the crowded alleyways and over the rooftops of Small Hours. All over the village, crows took flight, their wings beating against the rain.
Doctor Leech smiled savagely. “Webber, be a dear, please, and bind this Witch. Take her to the Sanatorium where she will await trial and punishment.” Her sweet voice dripped from the walls like syrup.
October swallowed. He stepped forward.
The crowd hummed its encouragement.
He readied his thumbs and willed Nerma to look him in the eye, but her chin was upon her chest, and she wouldn’t lift her eyes from the ground.
Two strings of webbing flew from his hands and twined around his friend. She flinched but still didn’t look up.
/> He circled Nerma and worked carefully, making sure that her arms were bound tightly to her sides with his sticky spider’s web. He spun yards of thick rope and wound it around her middle. Then he stepped back.
The villagers sighed in shared relief, and the doctors beamed at him.
“Well done, Oscuridad.” Doctor Mapple tipped his hat at October, and rainwater trickled down the man’s round belly. “Finish up. My attendants will assist you.”
The Doctors’ attendants had returned from escorting Bardry away just a short time earlier, and they were ready to escort yet another patient—or criminal—to the Sanatorium.
It turned out that Nerma needed little persuasion, though, and she willingly followed October through the winding village lanes. The Doctors were close on their heels, and October began to fear that there would be no opportunity to speak privately with Nerma. Once or twice, he turned his head to look back at her, but she kept her head bowed and her eyes down. Her spoon seemed to point at him accusingly, its curved end glinting in the dim lantern light.
At last, they reached the small square before the Doctors’ quarters. Above the door, their sign dripped dirty water onto the stones below. The village mob had followed at a distance, its bubbling agitation barely contained. Perhaps, October thought, Nerma would be safer indoors, but he knew that he must speak to her before she was taken into the Sanatorium.
There was no time for talking, however, for Doctor Leech instructed October to hand the prisoner over to an attendant. He placed the rope in the man’s outstretched tentacle, and hope seeped from his body like bat’s milk from a broken jug.
He had lost his chance to talk to her.
Or so he thought, for a moment.
Someone shouted from the alleyway, and suddenly a tumultuous churning seemed to spin the crowd of villagers inside-out. Voices hollered, squawked, and yipped at whatever was causing the ruckus in their midst. October looked back at the mob and caught a glimpse of wet green fur and the sagging tip of a witch’s hat at the center of the commotion.
With a jolt of hope, he understood that this was his chance. He rushed to Nerma’s side and had just enough time to whisper, “We’ll get you. But if something goes wrong, look down and you’ll see—”