Oddity

by Eli Brown

  Now Nessa wanted to know: “How do you fight an endless army?”

  “How indeed?” Hannibal said. “You’ve pie on your face, child.”

  Nearing the Shepherd’s Crick forest, they passed a woodsman with a stack of logs on his teetering wagon. “Avoid those woods, children!” he hollered. “There’s a vermin lurking there!”

  “What kind of vermin?” Nessa asked.

  “The cursed kind!” The woodsman rolled toward Rose Rock as quickly as his mule would pull him. “What other kind is there?”

  “But which one is it?” Nessa shouted at the man’s back. “The Vulture? The Badger?”

  The woodsman only hurried on, eager to get to the safety of the town.

  “There are more of them every year . . .” Nessa rummaged through a storage box under the seat. “Sundry scraps cobbled together into infernal beasts. They spy on the living world and whisper to that old witch in the mountains.”

  “A plague,” Hannibal agreed. “Killing livestock, stealing oddities.”

  Nessa pulled a long hunting knife from beneath the seat. She pointed her chin bravely toward the trees. “Uncle used to say, ‘If you can’t face the day . . .’” But she trailed off. “On the bright side, I might get to cut a vermin today.”

  “Can’t we go around the forest?” Clover asked.

  “Do you want to add a week to our journey?”

  Clover didn’t.

  “Then this is the road for us,” Nessa said, clenching her teeth. “Don’t worry — they don’t usually kill people.”

  Clover’s pulse quickened as the wagon approached the towering alders. Visiting hunters told stories, but no one in Salamander Lake had ever seen a vermin. The village was hidden away in a pocket valley like an acorn under autumn leaves. No tax collector had ever found the village, and vermin hadn’t either. But those bandits had. Would they be followed by vermin? Suddenly Clover felt that she’d lived her whole life protected by a veil of her father’s silences. Now even that was gone.

  The trees leaned together so thickly that the road seemed for a moment like an underground cavern. Nessa jabbered nervously as they were enveloped by shadows. “My uncle could cut hair and pull teeth at the same time. But people really came for his songs. Some people let him pull teeth that weren’t even rotten, just to hear his voice.”

  Pale vines crept in loose spirals up the trunks of the passing trees. Tiny moon-colored flowers that Clover had never seen before bloomed between the ferns. They wavered in the darkness like the lingering glow left on the eye by a candle. It was so dark under the trees that an owl screeched nearby, cutting through the mesmerizing thrum of frogs and crickets.

  “For my ninth birthday,” Nessa prattled on, “Uncle traded all his bottles of tonic for a single balcony ticket. It was the last performance of Orpheus at Lucher Hall, and I had a bag of roasted peanuts on my lap, but I didn’t eat a single one — didn’t want nothing to interrupt the glory on that stage. I didn’t hardly blink, just sat there with tears on my cheeks. If you don’t cry at Orpheus, then you don’t have a heart. That’s a fact. Tragic beauty! It was Italian, but the story was clear: a love greater than death, and the arias, oh!” She sang a melody, and wound it back on itself into a haunting echo that stopped even the frogs and sent a shiver down Clover’s neck.

  “Hush, now!” Hannibal commanded. “We could be in for an ambush here.” He paced the roof of the wagon behind them, his claws tapping out a military tempo. “Perhaps we ought to find another route after all. This place smells like old blood.”

  “Too late for that,” Nessa said. “Road’s too narrow to turn the horses —”

  She was cut short by the sound of something skittering in the branches above. The travelers fell silent as they craned their necks, hoping that it was just some woodland fowl moving through the thicket.

  The road narrowed, and twice Clover took the reins as Nessa leaped down to push the wagon around a tight corner. At last they saw daylight glowing like a hearth ahead, and the horses picked up their pace.

  They were nearly out of the woods when they spotted the vermin perched like a gargoyle on a sunlit branch.

  Clover froze, her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from screaming.

  It moved like a squirrel, and parts of it were. But even from a distance it was clear that this creature was unnatural. Someone had stitched its stiff carcass together with pieces of an old saddle. It was, just as Nessa had said, an effigy made of this and that: the ribs showed through gaps in its skin, the belly had been stuffed with knots of rope and bits of punky wood. It hopped down the branch and turned its eyeless skull to watch them.

  Clover’s scalp tingled with revulsion.

  Then, with a sudden leap, it landed on a branch that hung directly over the wagon.

  “Law and lye!” Nessa cursed.

  “Don’t stop,” Clover shouted. Her heart was stuck in her throat, but she was determined to get to New Manchester.

  The horses groaned and shook their spooked heads as Nessa gave the reins a snap. Clover got a good look at the vermin as they passed under it. A knot of sky-blue thread had been sewn into the hide of its neck.

  The Squirrel returned her stare, cocking its morbid gaze right at Clover. It clung to the branch with feet made of rusted baling wire.

  “Steady on,” Hannibal intoned. “Steady!”

  Then, just as they were nearly out of danger, the creature bounded down and landed on the back of the wagon.

  Hannibal leaped at it, spurs first, shouting, “Away, fiend!” His injured wing failed to carry him, and he tumbled off the wagon with a squawk. He righted himself on the ground and raced ahead, but the vermin was entirely focused on Clover. Its wire feet scritched against the roof of the wagon while the assorted components of its body ground together in a harsh whisper. It came quickly, the whispers growing louder, clotting into words:

  “First we chew . . . Then we swallow . . .”

  “Off my wagon!” Nessa shouted. She turned and stabbed the creature, pinning its pelt to the wood. It squirmed with bloodless violence and yanked itself free. The knife clattered to the floorboards as the vermin seized Nessa’s forearm with tooth and claw. Nessa bellowed like a bull. The wagon veered, threatening to crash into the trees, but Nessa managed to hold the reins as the Squirrel dug in.

  Swallowing her terror, Clover grabbed the beast with both hands and ripped it from Nessa’s arm. As it writhed, she felt uncanny organs grinding under the matted fur. Clover smashed it hard against the dashboard and flung it far into the trees, where it tumbled into darkness.

  Nessa threw her knife after the abomination, bellowing, “Off my wagon!” Scrambling for more ammunition, she threw first one boot, then the other. “Off!” But the vermin had disappeared in the underbrush. She cracked the reins, making the horses bolt. The wagon burst out of the forest with such speed that the travelers nearly careened into a ditch, the wheels shuddering beneath them.

  Hannibal leaped up as they shot past, and Clover caught him.

  Nessa’s rage was veering toward a wild-eyed triumph. “We gave it a good thrashing, didn’t we?” she wheezed.

  “You gave it your best shot,” Hannibal said, “along with your shoes. Chins up, it was a brave effort. I would like to say we came away victorious, but judging by that wound on your arm, we’ll have to be content with a stalemate.”

  Clover had been eyeing it too, a grimy gash, doomed to infection. She opened her father’s bag, looking for the jar of cleansing powder, but the cork had failed in the lake. The medicine was a useless slime.

  She looked back at the dark woods. “Stop the wagon.”

  “Why?”

  “I said stop!”

  Clover leaped down and ran back toward a cluster of oaks. She forced herself to approach the tree line, knowing that the vermin could be waiting in the shadows. She heard a whisper, so faint she thought she might be imagining it. “First we chew . . .” Then she spotted what she needed: a mop of gray fibers hanging fro
m a dead branch. She grabbed a handful of the lichen before sprinting back to the wagon.

  As they rode on, Clover crushed the brittle lichen in her fist. “This is tree beard,” she said, adding a few drops of water from Nessa’s canteen. She spread the paste on Nessa’s wound before wrapping it with the last of her father’s gauze. “To keep the rot away.”

  “Is it bad?” Nessa winced as Clover pulled the bandage taut.

  “It will heal before you know it,” Clover said, remembering her father’s knack for putting patients at ease. “You were in the middle of telling us about the Orpheus play.”

  “Not a play. An opera.” Nessa brightened, glad for the distraction. “Orpheus loses his beloved when the devil sends a snake to bite her. She’s truly dead and sitting in hell, but Orpheus loves her so much, he follows her there and sings such songs that even hell itself can’t bear the heartbreak.”

  “It does sound like something lovely,” Clover said.

  Nessa gave Clover a crooked smile. “Best birthday gift a girl ever received.”

  Hannibal watched the procedure. “Never fear, young charlatan. Nurse Elkin knows her craft.”

  After that scare, it felt good to do something useful. Making the assured knots that would keep the poultice secure, Clover felt a deeper appreciation of her father’s dedication. With beasts lurking in the shadows, simply mending a wound felt like a priceless skill. But splinting wings and bandaging arms couldn’t bring her father back. Some things remained broken.

  “How does the Seamstress make those creatures?” Clover asked.

  “She’s a witch.” Nessa sniffed. “She does what she pleases.”

  With the sun heavy as a fall pear in the west, the travelers rattled to a stop at a roadside well near an abandoned farmstead. Nessa watered the horses, and Clover walked around the sloping meadow until she found a private spot to pee. She couldn’t shake the image of the vermin savaging Nessa’s arm. But the beast had been headed for Clover before Nessa intervened. Why?

  The fright had left her shaky, and her stomach grumbled for real food. The pie had been delicious, but she’d eaten nothing else since the soggy raisin buns. Her body ached for something substantial. On her way back to the wagon, she found a cluster of edible mushrooms. She was brushing the mulch off the top of a speckled cap when Nessa hollered, “You’re not eating that, are you?” Nessa was setting a string of small traps in the high grass.

  “It’s saltcap,” Clover said uncertainly. “It might taste like snot, but food is food.”

  “But those are blue alders,” Nessa said, pointing to the tree behind Clover. “Don’t you have those where you come from?”

  Clover noted the slender leaves rustling in the overripe light. Half a dozen ruby-crested flycatchers spiraled the trunk, looking for spiders. Their heads flashed like precious stones against the ash-colored bark. In fact, Clover had never seen this tree anywhere around Salamander Lake.

  “When saltcap grows under a blue alder, they’ll make you puke till your toes curl,” Nessa said.

  Clover dropped the mushroom and wiped her hands on her shirt. “Oh.”

  “On the other hand, we might find some ramps.” Nessa wandered away with her eyes focused on the ground.

  Clover had seen people who’d eaten the wrong mushrooms. Her father could rarely help them. The world was full of hidden poisons, secret threats.

  Pulling her father’s bag from the wagon, she peered inside.

  She searched the bag with revived hope. The vial of clove oil shone in the light. It was the most expensive thing in her father’s bag. Clover let a priceless drop fall on her tongue, numbing it with the nearly unbearable perfume. But that was what oil of clove was expected to do.

  Clover dumped the tools out in the grass, suddenly struck with the idea that the bag itself might be odd.

  She put her head inside, hoping to see fox fire, or to hear her father’s ghost again, or . . . Nothing but musty darkness. She yanked the bag down hard over her head and screamed into the leather, “Show me!”

  When she pulled her head out, Hannibal was watching her warily from a rotten stump where he was digging up grubs.

  Clover crumpled the bag in her fists, ready to smash it onto the ground. But something inside the supple leather resisted, unyielding, like a kneecap under the skin. Clover ran her fingers along the inner seam and found a hidden pocket. Then, as if it wanted to be held — something heavy fell into her open hand.

  Clover withdrew a pocket watch she had never seen before. It was open-faced, silver, with a chain and a winding dial at the top. The longer she stared at it, the more fascinated she became. Was this the necessary oddity, the hope her father had entrusted her with?

  The inscription on the back, almost erased by time, read Celeritate functa. Clover’s medical Latin told her this could mean “Act quickly” or maybe “Be on time.”

  Behind the cracked crystal stood stately roman numerals. The manufacturer’s name was faded, but even with the silver tarnished storm-cloud blue, the object was breathtaking.

  The silver warmed in her hand until it felt like a part of her, an organ of unknown function. And, as with the Ice Hook, Clover felt she was closer to her mother just for touching the thing.

  She had an idea what the Watch might do. If a Wineglass could hold an ocean of wine, if an Ice Hook could hold winter’s chilled heart in its mute steel, then might a Watch whisper to time itself?

  There had been no mention of it in the journals. But Clover had seen only a fraction of those publications, and anyway, such a powerful tool would have to be kept secret, even from experts: . . . the locations of specific oddities have been omitted.”

  She examined the Watch in the fading light.

  There were two fine dials side by side. One would wind the clock, giving it life. The other would turn the hands, setting the time. Clover was terrified to touch either. What good could come from meddling with time? But what if she could go back and stop those bandits on the bridge? Clover could save her father. Was that what he wanted her to do? For that matter, she might fix every mistake, keep the Ice Hook out of the lake, put it back where she’d found it and good riddance.

  Of course the Watch “held hope,” as her father said. If it was possible to manipulate time, one could hope for anything. The hands hadn’t moved. They were stuck at eight o’clock and twenty-two minutes — a tight-lipped frown on the moon-pale face.

  If it truly had the power to change the path of history, her father would have used it on the bridge. This thought was followed by a shock: perhaps he had used it. Had Constantine, knowing murder awaited, repeated that terrible moment until he figured out a way to save Clover? She imagined him, bleeding on the bridge, twisting the dial of the Pocket Watch with his last effort. How many times had he lived through the horror before he found an escape for her?

  Clover finally knew what she was protecting. “As soon as I learn how to use it,” she swore, “I will put everything back in order.”

  Nessa returned with a fistful of ramps in one hand and a mop of miner’s lettuce in the other. Her pockets bulged with chestnuts. From the wagon, she produced hunks of bread and cheese and a small skillet. They set up camp in the lee of the creaking barn. As the first stars appeared, a cloud of bats tumbled out of the loft and bled into the sky.

  Nessa kindled a campfire, and Clover examined Hannibal’s injured wing, retying the splint and giving him a beak full of tree beard for good measure. They ate Nessa’s greens raw as the chestnuts and wild onions roasted in the skillet. The nuts were a little green too, but cooking softened their bitterness. They took turns cracking them with the silver-plated surgical pincers. Clover ate the chestnuts as quickly as they were shelled, but Nessa took the time to press each into a nugget of cheese and wrap it with a whip of roasted onion.

  “See that?” Nessa spread her hands as if she’d won an argument. “It’s like Uncle used to say, ‘a feast in the humblest meal.’”

  Hannibal, who’d been pecking
his cheese to bite-size crumbs, shook his comb out of his eyes. “This uncle of yours had a philosopher’s tongue.”

  Nessa nodded proudly. “Capricious Branagan was a genuine genius. He could shave a chin smooth as a china pitcher. He had a story for every star and a song for every crossroads!” She began to hum a sweet aria between bites, a sound so lovely that Clover and Hannibal stopped eating to listen.

  Clover was far from home in the company of some very peculiar characters. The hunger and shock of the past days had frayed her thoughts. But she had found the Pocket Watch at last, and something about this singing girl made her smile. “We’re grateful, Nessa,” Clover said. “For the ride and for the food. For the music too.”

  Nessa flexed her bandaged arm. “Uncle was killed by a vermin,” she said suddenly.

  “Oh, Nessa!” Clover gasped.

  “It was a filthy little Sparrow made of a bent tin cup. It lit on the horses and spooked them. The wagon rolled into a ravine. Uncle cracked his head and never woke up. I’ve been selling Bleakerman’s on my own ever since.”

  For a moment, there was a river of grief in her eyes, a reflection of Clover’s own drowning heart. Clover was about to give Nessa a hug when something snapped in the grass nearby. They all jumped to their feet, but it was only a mouse caught in Nessa’s trap.

  Clover followed Nessa to the side of the wagon to feed the Sweetwater rattlesnake. Hannibal stayed near the fire, grumbling, “That thing is a menace.” Clover held the lantern while Nessa opened the wagon shutters. The snake was nearly as thick as Clover’s wrist, its ash-colored tongue darting irritably at its glass prison.

  Nessa opened the lid carefully and dropped the wounded mouse in. A few seconds later, it was nothing but a bulge in the sinuous belly. “It looks to be a genuine Sweetwater viper,” Clover said to Nessa.

  “Of course she’s genuine! She could kill a stampede of buffalo before breakfast. She’s a monster, but she’s the only part of the medicine show that works anymore. Uncle could make the talk, songs, and jokes that swept the customers into a glorious swoon. But now this snake is the only thing that makes them pay.”