Cold Iron

by Michael Swanwick

  They edged uncomfortably closer.

  “Well. So how’d it go? Is Blugg dead?”

  Nobody answered.

  Now Rooster looked concerned. “Didn’t the gooly-doll work?”

  Dimity cleared her throat. “We haven’t tried it yet,” she admitted.

  “You pussies.” Rooster’s face had the gently luminous quality of the flesh of some fey mushrooms from the deep woods. The bandages were all crusty, for they hadn’t been changed in days. His eyelid sank almost closed, then opened again. “Why not?”

  “Dimity said—” Stilt began.

  “—that we should wait on you,” Jane said hastily. Dimity favored her with a quick glance that said as clear as words: Don’t think that will get you any favors. Her tail switched twice. “So we’d be certain to do it properly.”

  “That’s all right, then.” Rooster was not a subtle creature and had caught none of the undercurrents of the exchange. “That’s not half so bad as I’d expected.” He nodded to Stilt. “You hear that? We look after your interests, old buddy.”

  Stilt nodded and bobbed his head, eagerly, grotesquely happy, perfectly secure in his friend’s ability to protect him. In the face of such faith, Jane had no choice but to admit to herself that she no longer believed in Rooster’s plan. They were only children. Their simple magicks wouldn’t touch a grown-up like Blugg. Management must provide wards against such attacks as part of their benefits package; otherwise, overseers would be dropping dead every day. Most likely he wouldn’t even notice he had been attacked. She felt cold and stiff.

  “Get the candle, we’ll do the thing now,” Rooster said. Then, when Dimity did not immediately respond, “Come on, you cow! Get a fucking move on!”

  Grudgingly, the young hulder complied. She paused just long enough after wedging the candle between floorboards to make it seem she expected Rooster to charm it alight, thus emphasizing his weakness, then struck a lucifer match.

  Sulfur spat and flared.

  “Where’s the gooly-doll?” Rooster asked.

  Shame-faced, Skizzlecraw produced it. Rooster ran a thumb over the stomach to feel the sharp tips of the horn slivers poking through, then handed it to Stilt. “You do it,” he said.

  Automatically, Stilt glanced toward Dimity for her okay.

  Dimity tightened her lips, nodded.

  “Hush,” Rooster commanded.

  They were still. Outside could be heard overlay upon overlay of distant machine noises, friendly rumblings, groanings, and poundings. Directly beneath them, they could hear the regular creak-creak-creak, almost inaudible, of a rocker. Blugg was whistling the Elf King’s Tune, varying the speed and lilt of it as the rocker sped up and slowed down.

  “Now!” Rooster whispered.

  Stilt shoved the doll into the flame.

  It had been stitched from old nylons, and the cloth bubbled and blackened as the fire touched it. A horrid stench filled the air. Then the cotton stuffing went up with a small roar, and Stilt dropped the thing with a startled cry. He cringed back, sucking on his hand.

  The instant the flames touched the doll’s belly, Jane’s mouth went numb. She gasped. Her tongue felt swollen and prickly, as if it had been brushed by stinging nettles. Of course! There were still trace amounts of her saliva on the nail parings. A blind fraction of the curse was working on her.

  Maybe they could kill Blugg after all.

  Skizzlecraw began to cry. But Rooster ignored her. Hellfire malice dancing in his eyes, he sat bolt upright in his bed, fists clenched and head thrown back. “Yes!” he cried. “Yes! Die, damn you, die!” And while Smidgeon and Little Dick frantically beat out the flames to keep them from spreading, he laughed in triumph.

  At that instant, there came a pounding on the ceiling of the room below, and Blugg bellowed, “What’s that you brats are up to? By the Mother, I’m coming up there, and I’m bringing the strap!”

  They fell silent.

  A minute later, they heard his heavy tread coming up the stairs, and the lighter, more sprightly sound of leather tapping thigh.

  Rooster looked stricken. The children scurried for their beds, hoping against hope to be spared the general punishment, Jane among them. But she noticed that Thistle was smirking with satisfaction.

  Dimity was their leader now.

  3.

  Everybody blamed Jane.

  Immediately after the doll’s sacrifice, Jane came down with a light fever. Stilt stopped speaking altogether for three days. Skizzlecraw’s hands and face blotched up with a rash. She turned sullen as well, but that was so in keeping with her prior character that it was little remarked by the other children. It was obvious to all that the curse was puissant, and an explanation was needed for why Blugg had not been hurt by it.

  Dimity told them all, and Thistle backed her up, that Jane had lost her nerve in Blugg’s office and come out without the nail parings. In her weakened state, Jane did a poor job of defending herself. And the shadow-boy was so bewildered and confused by the argument that he was of no help whatsoever.

  Rooster knew the truth, of course; he had felt the parings with his own fingers. But he said nothing. After his moment of triumph, he had suffered a physical relapse and fallen back into silence and dead-eyed suspicion. So Jane was left totally friendless.

  Her isolation was heightened by the new position Blugg had secured for her. Jane had to wear a day-glo orange vest to mark her as a messenger. It had two panels, front and back, that fit over her head, and was cinched at the waist by four ties of black plasticized cloth. She felt awkward wearing it, and exposed.

  The work was easy, but unfamiliar. For her training period she trailed after Blugg as he made his rounds, and kept her mouth shut. “This is the meter house,” he’d grunt, or “Here’s where you get the emery powder, small bags only, and be sure to keep the yellow copy of the order slip.” Jane was astonished to discover how much less Blugg had to do than his charges; his work seemed to her an aimless wandering process that consisted largely of long, incomprehensible conversations half-business and half-gossip. Sometimes he played dominoes with a squattie man in Purchasing, the two of them hunched motionless over a plank, peering suspiciously at each other and cheating when they could.

  “Wash your face,” he told her one lunchbreak. “Your hands too, and scrub under the nails. You have to make a good impression.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Never you mind why! What business is it of yours why? You just do as you’re told.” Blugg followed her into the lavatory, and stood over her as she washed, making sure she lathered up with the brown soap, and at one point rubbing out a stain on the side of her ear with his own spittle.

  They walked through a cold drizzle to a small office near the main gate. Blugg knocked, and they entered.

  Inside, an elegantly lean elf-wife dressed in black sat smoking a cigarette and staring out the window. She turned her head when they entered, all powder and high cheekbones. Without any particular emphasis she said, “Is this she?”

  “It’s her,” Blugg agreed.

  The elf-wife stood. She was a good head and a half taller than Blugg. Heels clicking briskly, she strode to Jane and pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger. She turned Jane’s head one way, then the other, frowning critically.

  “She’s an obedient thing,” Blugg said wheedlingly. “Does exactly what she’s told, snap of your fingers, doesn’t have to be spoken to twice.”

  Jane stared up into the elf-wife’s eyes. They were cold things, like grey chips of ice, and the flesh around them broke into complex structures of wrinkles, hinting at years and decades that had not been visible from across the room. Jane had a sudden vision of the flesh as nothing more than a thin mask stretched over the woman’s skull.

  Recognition of a kind sparked in those lustreless eyes. “Are you afraid of me?”

  Jane shook her head fearfully.

  “You should be.” The elf-wife’s breath smelled of candied sweets and nicotine. Two lon
g pearls dangled from her ears, half as long as her forefinger, and carved into blunt-headed serpentine shapes. Her fingertips tightened on Jane’s chin, until tears involuntarily filled her eyes.

  At last those fingers freed Jane. “I’ll give it some thought,” she said. She waved a hand toward the door. “You may leave.”

  Outside, Blugg was in an inexplicably gleeful mood. “Do you know who that was?” he all but chortled. Not waiting for an answer, he said, “That was a Greenleaf. A Greenleaf!”

  Jane forgot about the encounter almost immediately. It was but one odd incident out of many.

  It was not long before Rooster was back at work. The demons in the joinery shop made a little cart for him to use until he was strong enough to walk, and Jane and Stilt would lead the daily procession to and from work, each pulling at one handle of the cart.

  One evening as they were marched back to the dormitory, they were stopped by the main gate while the shifts changed. They waited in the shadow of the monstrous black Time Clock while a flood of workers shambled, limped and hopped by. The swing shift was letting out, and all the nonresident laborers were lined up before the Time Clock. They punched their cards, kissed the Goddess stone, and trudged off.

  Stilt stared yearningly through the gate. Visible beyond were only the parking lot and the dusty curve of an asphalt road, but he stared as if they were a vision of the Western Isles. Blugg came up behind him, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  Stilt looked up.

  Blugg’s wide mouth twisted into what might almost have been a smile. He plucked a tiny feather from the base of Stilt’s neck and held it up to his squinting vision. “Haughhmm.” He put the feather in his mouth and slowly, savoringly, let it melt on his tongue. “About time you were sent to the infirmary, innit?” he rumbled. “Jane! Remind me come morning to send this one to the Doc for—”

  It was not at all certain that Stilt understood what was being said. But something within him broke. With a high, despairing cry, Stilt dropped the cart handle and ran.

  Blugg swore and started to lumber after the boy. But fat as he was, he was no match for the small, lithe figure. Slack-jawed workers turned as Stilt darted by. Their motions were slow in contrast, like those of flies caught in sap already hardening toward amber. Jane clutched the sides of her skirt with both hands in an agony of dread.

  “Don’t do it, Stilt!” Rooster screamed. He sat bolt upright in his cart, face waxy and white. “Come back!”

  But Stilt was beyond listening. Arms out to either side, he ran down the road. The creatures of the swing shift stood frozen, gaping dully after him. He ran past the Time Clock, and through the gate.

  He was outside.

  As he ran, his arms appeared to thicken and lift. His whole body was changing, in fact, his neck elongating, spine curving forward, legs atrophying as thin as pencils.

  “He’s growing older,” one of the little ones whispered in flat astonishment.

  “Stupid!” Dimity snapped. “What do you think a Time Clock is for?”

  It was true. With every step away from the Time Clock, Stilt put on days, weeks, months. He was a child no more. He ran through his adolescent phase and coloration in no time at all. He was an adult now.

  Then he was in the air and flying. For one wondrous instant, it was just as Jane had imagined it would be. He flapped his new wings wildly, straining upward, and surprised laughter fell from his mouth.

  He was glorious.

  The wall around the factory grounds hid him briefly as he rose. He reappeared overtop of the gate, headed east and dwindling. Then Stilt faltered, and lurched in the sky. His wild flappings grew weaker and less effective. His brown-and-russet coloring greyed. A feather drifted down from his wings. Then another. One after another, until they were as thick as flakes in a snowstorm.

  Stilt fell.

  On the way back to the dormitory, everyone was silent. Even Blugg, though white with rage, could find no words to express himself; he kept punching the air with impotent little jabs of his fist. Rooster’s face was like stone.

  Crawling back into her bed that night, Jane was surprised to find Rooster waiting for her, back against the wall, legs folded beneath him. A flash of alarm as harsh as an electric shock seized her. But before she could say anything, he shivered spasmodically and in a dry, toneless whisper said, “Something bad is happening to you.” He swayed. “Something . . . bad.”

  “Come on,” she said, forcing solicitude into her voice. “You’ve got to get back to bed.” She took his arm, shocked by how light he was, how little resistance he gave her, and led him to his own cot. Eased him down, and pulled up the blanket. Touching him was not so repulsive as she had thought it would be.

  “No. You’ve got to . . . For the first time he opened his eye. It had no white. The pupil had swollen larger than his lid, opening a black, lightless hole completely out of the universe. She released his arm in fear. “Stilt . . . wasn’t . . . the only one growing up. I have the sight. Not much, but a touch of it.”

  He shuddered again. The awen was upon him, moving about under his skin, threatening to splinter his bones from within. His slender frame writhed with the force of it, like an engine under too much strain.

  Mastering her fear, Jane climbed in under the blanket, letting it engulf them both in its tentlike folds. She hugged Rooster to her. His flesh was cold as a corpse.

  “You were in my dreams,” he croaked. “I saw you.”

  “Hush.”

  “I lost my best friend,” he said. “Not you too.” His voice was fading now. His head thrashed to one side, then the other, as if trying to capture a fugitive thought. “We have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Whip inflation now. Good fences make good neighbors.”

  “Hush, hush.” She held him close, sharing her warmth and refusing to listen until eventually the awen left him. He lay panting and exhausted, grey-faced, cold, and sweating. Quietly, then, Jane stole back to her own bed.

  One day Jane was let off work early. Blugg took her back to his room, a typical troll’s den of black oak furniture and awkward ceramics of sentimental scenes. Puck stealing apples. The abduction of Europa. He stood her in the center of the room and inhaled deeply, noisily. His piggish little eyes looked pleased.

  “At least you’re not bleeding.” He gestured toward a half-open door. “There’s a tub in the next room. And soap. Take your time cleaning yourself.”

  It was small and dark next door and smelled warmly of ammonia and body gas. There was a bar of creamy white soap that smelled of lilacs resting on the lip of a zinc trough. Jane undressed and, seizing the soap in both hands like a sword, stepped into the steamy water.

  She bathed slowly, thinking of napalm cannons, cannisters of elf-blight, and laser-guided ATS missiles. Contemplating the dragon’s weapons systems made the voice stronger, strong enough that she could sense it, weak as a tickle, even when she wasn’t physically touching the book.

  She fell into a dreamlike trance, the water warm against her naked skin, the dragon’s voice almost real, stroking the bar of floral soap slowly up and down her body. The wiring diagrams floated before her like a mandala.

  The dragon seemed to be insisting that she not let Blugg touch her.

  Jane didn’t respond. She knew that the voice’s admonitions, whether real or a projection of her own fears, were useless. Blugg would touch her as he wished. He was bigger than she, and would do whatever he wanted with her. It was the way things were.

  Her silence brought up a burst of outrage, and she seemed to feel the dragon dwindling in the western sky and she herself left behind, a prisoner, alone and unchanging, stuck here forever. In that adrenal burst of anger were undercurrents of what could only have been fear.

  Jane had been gently lathering the brush of downy hair that had recently sprouted between her legs. Now she released the soap, and it bobbed to the surface. She turned her head sideways to look at it, one eye underwater and one eye not. She pretended it was a boat, a galleon
that would take her far, far away. The water rocked up and down in time with her breath. All the world seemed to float in her vision.

  The floor creaked under approaching footsteps. She heard it as a chord of sound, the solider grumble and squeak coming from the ear out of the water and its watery twin from the one under. She felt Blugg’s bulk at the back of her neck, and closed her eyes. The light dimmed as his shadow touched her.

  “That’s enough.” She stared up into a crazily-skewed smile. “Rinse yourself, dry yourself off, and get dressed. We’ve got a date at the Castle.”

  The Castle was an anomalous brick mansion located just off the center of the plant grounds. Older than the factory buildings that had arisen to surround and intimidate it, it had all the stylishness of a biscuit box turned on its side. Its trim and brickwork were hidden under industrial grime and black stains reached down the walls like tear tracks from its eaves.

  The thin elf-wife answered the door with a disapproving frown, and waved Jane inside. “You may return in two hours,” she said, and shut the door in Blugg’s face.

  Wordlessly, she turned and walked away.

  Jane had no choice but to follow.

  The mansion was much larger inside than out. She was led down a narrow gallery in whose high dimness chandeliers hung like giant luminescent jellyfish, then up a set of stairs, and through a series of rooms. The house appointments were everywhere valuable but nowhere absolutely clean. The damask silk settees were frayed, and the lace curtains were brittle as old spiderwebs. The taint of cigarettes and furniture polish clung to the textured walls, echoing a thousand yesterdays that differed from each other not at all.

  Through one doorway Jane saw a sitting room where all the furniture rested comfortably on the ceiling. Shelves of knicknacks and oil portraits hung upside down on the walls, and through the windows a grey drizzle fell up. The elf-wife frowned. “Not for us,” she said, and shut the door firmly.

  At last they came to rest in an unused bedroom, the four-poster’s ancient hangings beginning to rip at the rings, a nightstand candle gone grey with dust and canting genteelly to one side. From a closet shelf, the elf-wife removed a large cardboard box. Tissue paper crackled.