by Rysa Walker
It was as good a plan as any I could think of. “Even if they realize we aren’t part of the mayor’s group,” I said, “they can hardly evict us once the wheel starts spinning, right?”
“I don’ think the mayor would be too fussed,” Mick said. “He likes kids. Tried to get the fair bosses to let poor kids in Chicago see the exhibits for free, but they said no.”
“Buffalo Bill, though,” he added, nodding off toward the end of the Midway, “was differ’nt. See those tents over there? That’s his Wild West Show. He tol’ the mayor he’d do it—had a waif’s day where all the kids in the city got a free show, free candy, free ice cream. That was some day. ’Course,” he noted with a serious look, “they make a lot of money over there—I bet the fair bosses wish they’da let Bill’s show be part of the Midway. Said he was too ‘low class.’ But they got Indian shows at the Expo, too—just nowhere near as good as Buffalo Bill’s.”
He fell silent then, alternating between sitting on the bench and walking over to the corner of the building every thirty seconds or so to peer around the edge.
After the third or fourth trip to the corner, he sat down again and slid a bit closer. “There’s a big group down just pas’ the lemonade stand. It’s them. You can never mistake the mayor; he’s a big guy and he’s got this hat—well, you’ll see.”
I did see, about two minutes later, when a tall, rather portly man in a slouchy-looking black hat rounded the corner and approached the ticket booth. Mick was right—he wore a professional suit, complete with the typical waistcoat and pocket watch, but Carter Henry Harrison definitely had his own style. All of the men wore hats—a wide array of bowlers, straw boaters, and a few top hats in the mix—but Harrison’s hat had a slightly disreputable, cowboyish quality. It reminded me a bit of the fedora that Indiana Jones wore.
The mayor waved his hand toward the large delegation behind him and paused to hear something that one of the women was saying. Her hair was light brown with a few streaks of gray, and she wore a navy dress with a white lace bodice. She was an attractive lady, with wire-rimmed glasses, about my height and build. The mayor laughed heartily at whatever she had said and patted her on the arm before turning back to the crowd.
“If any of you are concerned, like Mrs. Salter here, let me assure you that the wheel is perfectly safe. The very first passenger was the inventor’s own wife, and no, Mr. Ferris wasn’t seeking to get rid of his good lady.”
There was a polite chuckle from the group, and then Harrison continued. “I will just need a moment to speak to this kind person to arrange our passage, and then”—he motioned dramatically toward the top of the wheel—“the sky is our only limit.”
Several of the women followed his arm upward with their eyes, and one of them, a plump middle-aged woman in a pale pink bonnet, gasped out loud. I don’t know if she had actually not looked at the wheel until that moment or if the reality had only just sunk in, but she wrenched her arm away from that of the friend next to her. “I’m sorry, Harriet. I know I said I would go up with you, but there is absolutely no way that I am stepping foot inside that steel monster.” She shuddered visibly and shook her head. “No. I’ll wait for you here.” She walked over to join a dozen or so women, and a couple men, who had gathered to watch their braver compatriots from the other side of the street. After a few seconds, her friend looked up at the wheel and, with a rather pained expression, decided that she, too, would remain on the ground.
Searching the crowd, I found Saul first, standing with a large cluster of men. A few seconds later, I spotted Katherine’s feather, directly behind the woman in the navy and white dress who had just been talking to the mayor. They were near the center of the group, which, with the exception of these two women, seemed to have mostly separated by sex, with the women congregating on one side of the platform and the men on the other. Several members of the women’s group were eyeing the two gender traitors, with tight-lipped expressions that made their disapproval quite clear.
I nudged Mick with my elbow. “That’s her. I’m not sure about the other woman she’s talking to. It might be the woman mayor they invited…” It seemed the most likely possibility, although I wouldn’t have described the vivacious woman as “a meek little mouse,” as Katherine had done.
“A woman mayor. If that don’ beat all.” Mick squinted a bit to try and get a better look, but both of the women were partially blocked from view by several of the men standing between us. “I’m gonna head over near Paulie, so you just slide into whichever wagon she goes an’ I’ll follow.”
I moved toward the gender line demarcating the two groups and pretended to be looking through my bag for something as the men’s group stepped aside and gallantly allowed the women to board first. I could pick out Katherine’s higher-pitched voice among the lower rumble of the men’s conversation. She was talking to the other woman, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying, and as they made no effort to join the women’s group, I hung back as well.
The door was closed on the first cart, and several women laughed and waved gloved fingers at the men in the delegation. I shifted toward the outside of the platform, near the back of the line. A few of the men gave disapproving looks to Katherine and her companion, and one gave a haughty sniff in my direction as well, as we moved toward the “men’s” car and began to board. It seemed Mick was right. They’d been looking forward to a quick smoke and weren’t too happy that they would now have to ask permission from the women on board.
I looked around the platform for Mick, hoping that he could sneak in next to my skirts, but it was soon clear that he had already boarded. Just as I stepped into the car, he let out a loud howl of pain and the woman in the navy blue dress burst from the back of car, dragging him by the ear. She was twisting hard, judging from the expression on Mick’s face, as she pushed her way toward the men who were still lined up to enter the wagon. “We have a little stowaway,” she said sternly, pulling up on his ear so that he had to stand on his tiptoes. “If you gentlemen could just step to one side, I’ll toss him out.”
I took a deep breath, hoping I wasn’t making a colossal mistake. “He’s not a stowaway, ma’am. I have his ticket right here.”
I held up two ticket stubs, and everyone turned to stare at me, including Katherine. Her eyes were fixed on my upraised wrist, specifically on the hourglass charm that she had given me on my birthday. I caught her eye for a brief moment and then turned back to the woman who had the death grip on Mick’s ear.
This was my first chance to get a close look at her and I had a sudden flash of recognition. The resemblance was still quite strong, although not as striking as it had been in the images on the stained-glass windows because she’d altered her hair color. And, up close, it was easier to tell that the eyes, now hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses, were a bluish-gray instead of green. I glanced down to look for the Cyrist symbol, but her hands were gloved, like my own had been until I managed to coat them in mud coming up the hill on the Wooded Island.
It was hardly the manner in which I’d expected to meet my long-lost aunt. I’d always envisioned her as the same age as my mother, so it was odd to meet this younger version. The gray streaks made her look a bit older to the casual observer, but now, on closer inspection, I doubted she was much beyond twenty-five. Her expression made it clear that she knew exactly who I was as well. Her eyes flashed briefly and then she slipped back into her character, a tiny, unpleasant smile inching across her face.
Mayor Harrison stepped forward. “Thank you, Mrs. Salter, but since the boy does have a ticket perhaps we should just…”
Prudence released Mick and pushed him toward me. “Funny,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she continued to stare at me. “I don’t remember you being part of this group.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I purchased the tickets this morning and we didn’t realize this cart was exclusively booked.” I nodded toward Mick. “He’s my assistant… I’m writing a story, for my… my newspaper.”
“That’s a lie,” I said vehemently. “That never happened, and you know it.”
It was, however, a common enough ruse that it rang true for most of the people in the compartment, and I could feel the atmosphere shift. A few of them had seemed sympathetic a moment earlier, but now even Mayor Harrison was looking at me with a hint of suspicion.
“Why didn’t you call for security then?” I asked. “If you thought we were doing something illegal—”
A soft voice from behind interrupted me. “What paper do you write for, miss?”
I turned toward Katherine with a panicked expression, and I stammered the first thing that came into my head: “The Roch… Rochester’s Worker’s Gazette. It’s just a small weekly. We write mostly on labor issues.”
“Oh, I know that paper,” she said, stepping forward to stand next to me. “Your editor wrote an excellent piece on the complexities of dealing with child labor a while back. There was a short excerpt in the Woman’s Journal just last month. Are you here to interview some of the younger workers at the Exposition?”
“Yes,” I said, giving her a grateful smile. Her ability to pick up the tiny thread that I had dropped and weave a plausible story was impressive. “Mick knows a lot of young workers here, and he’s been helping me. I thought I would take him on the Ferris wheel as an extra token of my appreciation.”
“I always dreamed ’bout ridin’ the big wheel,” Mick added, looking down at his shoes with a plaintive expression. “But me mom needs all the money I c’n make.” He glanced around at the others and then back at me. Those big brown eyes—with long black lashes that were going to make him a real heartbreaker in a few years—were all the more effective because they were still brimming with tears from the ear twist. “But it’s okay, Miss Kate. I don’ wanna make no trouble for you.”
Mick was a convincing little actor, and I could feel the mood in the car shifting again as several of the people around me relaxed. Some of the men were glaring at Prudence, although I noted that they were generally the same bunch that had been looking unhappily toward her and Katherine as we’d entered.
“Dora,” Katherine said, leaning forward, “don’t you think it’s possible you were mistaken this morning? Perhaps you misjudged the situation—it’s so hard to tell what’s going on when a place is teeming with so many people. I hardly think this young lady looks or sounds like a common thief…”
Mayor Harrison stepped in at that point. “Perhaps we could just ask you and your… young assistant… to take the next car? It seems like this was an innocent mistake, Mrs. Salter—and they do have tickets, as you can see.”
Prudence knew she had lost the vote and shot an annoyed look toward Katherine as she huffed toward the back of the car. I paused on the pretense of slipping the tickets into my purse and whispered out of the side of my mouth to Katherine. “I need to speak to you alone. Today. And that’s not Dora Salter.”
Her eyebrows rose the tiniest bit and she gave me a small nod as I turned toward the door of the compartment, pulling Mick with me. Several apologetic smiles later, we were outside, and the rest of the men in the mayoral group, including Saul, boarded the car we’d just vacated. It was clear from Saul’s face that Katherine hadn’t exaggerated his motion sickness—he was already pale and kept glancing at the cluster of more timid souls across the street as though he might bolt at any moment. Paulie closed the door and shifted the lever to move the remaining cars into position for boarding.
“Thanks anyway, Paulie,” Mick said as we entered the next car along with a throng of other passengers. We pushed toward the back of the car and Mick slumped against the side of the compartment, his face miserable.
“It’s okay, Mick,” I said. “I was only able to speak to her for a second, but she knows now that I need to talk to her later.”
He didn’t say anything and I bent down a bit to look him in the eye. “You did a good job. A really good job. I’m not sure they’d have believed us if you hadn’t chimed in…”
Mick shook his head. “It ain’ that, miss. I just got problems now.” He closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing his temples with his fingers in a circular sort of motion. It was a very adult gesture, and somehow very familiar, although I couldn’t quite place it.
I waited a moment to see if he would elaborate, but when he opened his eyes he just stared out the window at the gears of the giant wheel. A few seconds later we jerked upward again, after loading another group of passengers.
It tore at me to see a kid so young looking like the weight of the entire universe was on him. “So tell me about it. Maybe I can help.”
He looked even more miserable and then shrugged. “Me mom’s gonna be furious an’ you’re gonna hate me, and you prob’ly should. But I like you an’ I don’ really like her anymore.”
“Your mom?” I asked.
“No,” he said, clearly shocked at the thought. “No. I love me mom. It’s that witch what pulled me ear. I didn’t recognize her at firs’ on account of how she dyed her hair to look older an’ all, but it’s her. She’s me other boss.”
19
My jaw dropped. “Your boss? You mean, from the cabin? On the Wooded Island?”
“Yeah,” he said, his dark eyes imploring. “I’m sorry, Miss Kate. I shoulda tol’ you, but I’m not s’posed to tell anybody, ever. Even me dad agreed wi’ that part. And I was doin’ the same as you, watchin’ out for when those two showed up, so I thought maybe it would be okay, y’know, to join forces.”
“And exactly why were you watching for them, Mick?” I asked. “What were you supposed to do?”
“I…” He shook his head and let out a long breath. “You won’ b’lieve me, Miss Kate. There’s this book? It belonged to me dad. It sends her a message. Me granddad give it to him, before he died, along with this round thing that glows. It lights up the space around it with words ’n’ stuff when you touch it. They make all them inventions in the Expo look like cheap toys.”
Apparently Saul had figured out a way to use the diaries that Connor and Katherine had missed. The boy glanced up at me, but I kept my face composed and nodded for him to continue.
“Well, I’d just finished doin’ that—sendin’ her a message—when I looked aroun’ an’ there you were comin’ up the hill. An’ then I saw the letter you dropped, an’…” He trailed off, and the gears roared loudly as the wheel, with its last passenger on board, began to rotate, lifting us high above the Midway.
“Is your boss the lady from the church that you were talking about?” I asked. “The one who wants your mom to move back to the church farm?”
He nodded but didn’t say anything, so I pressed a bit further. “Why don’t you trust her, Mick?”
“Because me dad didn’,” he said fiercely. “Tha’s why we left. The church brought us over—they paid our way on the boat all the way from Irelan’—so I think they ’spected us to work longer and for me to keep takin’ their Cyrist classes, but me dad said we’d find another way to pay ’em back. There was a lot of arguin’ when we left, an’ me dad said we were done wi’ that lot. He got a job on the construction, and me mom found work and some odd jobs for me. Ever’thin’ was okay again, once we left.
“Then when the fair was all built, money was real tight.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and continued in a voice so low that I had to lean in to hear him over the excited chatter of the crowd as we climbed higher into the sky. “Sister Pru, she found us here and she said she forgave me dad for leavin�
� the farm an’ for all the bad stuff he’d said ’bout the Cyrists. She pulled some strings t’get him on wi’ the firemen—an’ I tol’ you how that turned out.”
His mouth twisted bitterly. “Me mom says she couldna known me dad would get killed an’ I know here,” he said, tapping his head, “that me mom is right. But here,” he added, tapping his chest, “says she did know an’ she foun’ a good way to shut me dad up.”
His lower lip trembled, and I gritted my teeth in anger. I couldn’t say for certain whether Prudence had known that the Cold Storage Building would go up in flames and his father would be killed, but she’d certainly had the opportunity to know.
“I know it’s stupid, but it’s what I feel, an’ I wish I didn’ hafta work for her. Although,” he said with a weak laugh, “I guess maybe now I won’ hafta work for her. But oh, me mom is gonna be madder’n bloody hell.”
It clicked then, with his last two words, and I realized why I’d had the touch of déjà vu earlier when he rubbed his temples. I probably would have recognized those eyes earlier, but when I had seen them before—both through the medallion and on the Metro—they had burned with a type of passion that the little boy in front of me wouldn’t understand for several years.
He mistook my stunned expression for disapproval. “Sorry, Miss Kate. I ain’ ’sposed to say that. One more thing me mom would be mad about if she knew I was cursin’, ’specially in front of a lady.”
I smiled at him. “No, it’s okay, really. I told you, I’m not prissy.” He didn’t look convinced, so I leaned in and whispered, “Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell.”
His mouth twitched and then he finally looked me in the eyes as a smile broke free.
I breathed in deeply and tried to decide what to do. My stomach lurched as I glanced downward at the now miniscule buildings below us, but it was hardly noticeable since my insides were already clenched in a tight knot. How much should I tell him? How much could I tell him without causing even more upheaval in the timeline? What if something I did now was the key to him being there to warn me on the Metro? Or if something I did now kept him from being there on the Metro? Bloody hell was right.