by Eli Brown
“Have you tried a bath?” Clover said.
“This ain’t no joke!” Willit shouted. “I am telling you how the world works. I am telling you about the misery of man.”
“The misery of a murderer is nothing I care about,” Clover said.
“Well, you are going to fix it for me.” Willit mounted his horse. “Auburn may want you, but there’s another who wants you more. You’re the belle of the ball, and everyone wants a dance.”
Before Clover could ask what he meant, Bolete climbed into the driver’s seat of the wagon beside Digger and gave the reins a flip. The wagon creaked as they followed Willit, the road sloping toward a shady vesper-pine forest. The blanket of pine needles crackled under the wheels.
Only a few minutes later, Willit slowed, his horse munching at a thatch of grass as he loaded the Pistol. “I’ll say this much, though,” he muttered, scratching his ear with the butt of the gun. “I do not appreciate being drooled upon.” He pointed the appalling weapon at the sky and hesitated, an uncertain scowl on his face. Then he fired. Everyone had been waiting for it, but the blast made them all flinch. “That is one thing I do not appreciate,” he said, holstering the Pistol.
“Who is that for?” Bolete demanded. “Not Smalt?”
“It’s for that consarn dog.”
“Well, a dog is only as good as its owner,” Bolete said. “It can hardly help how it was raised.”
“Don’t start weeping into your silk kerchief, Bolete. I only hobbled the sloppy cur.”
Clover imagined the bullet darting into the sky before cutting a sharp curve toward Smalt’s unsuspecting hound.
“Smalt won’t take kindly to you taking bites out of his dog,” Bolete said.
“Maybe next time Smalt will steer clear of me and mine.” Willit heeled his horse and darted ahead.
Bolete nodded approvingly and elbowed Digger. “That right there is why he’s boss. Willit’s always thinking of the future. He’s got a mind for the grand scheme of things.”
When they caught up with Willit again, the poacher was staring hard at deep shadows cast by a boulder.
“What now, boss?” Bolete said, pulling the wagon to a stop.
Something moved in the shadows, then hissed. The horses snorted and wagged their heads.
“What is it?” Digger asked.
“Can’t you smell it?” Bolete whispered. “If it smells dead but don’t act dead, it can only be one thing: vermin.”
“Who’s there?” Willit shouted.
The voice that came from the shadows was parched as pebbles in a skillet. “Why have you summoned my mistress?”
The vermin lowered its head into the light, scratching at the ground with a broad paw. It had once been a badger. The patches of fur that weren’t clotted with blood were thickly striped. Its lips had dried into a permanent snarl, revealing savage upper fangs and a lower jaw made from a bent saw. Its rib cage had been replaced by a dented teakettle.
Seeing it, the horses hitched to the wagon reared onto their hind legs, wheezing. Bolete and Digger tried to keep them calm with cooing and clicks of the tongue, but the horses backed into the wagon, shoving it onto a rocky slope. The heavy load lurched and leaned. Crates shifted around Clover, kept in place only by straining leather straps and a slim margin of gravity.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Willit told the vermin. “I want to talk to the Seamstress. She knows me.”
“She knows you for a thief,” the hideous thing hissed.
“I ain’t denying that,” Willit said, scratching the back of his neck. “But I have what she wants. Tell her to come get it. If she removes the curse, she can have it.”
“Mistress wants nothing from you.”
The horses squealed, tugging their bits bloody and knocking their heads together. The vermin paced hungrily toward them, seeming to enjoy their terror. The dirt beneath was muddy with urine, and the horses leaned hard against their harnesses. The wagon lurched and then tilted as they pushed it farther into the roadside boulders. As it leaned, Clover pushed her weight against the slats of her cage, trying to tip it.
“I have the frog,” Willit said. “I have Clover Elkin.”
“Impossible,” said the vermin.
“See for yourself,” Willit answered.
The Badger crept toward the back of the wagon and rose on its hind legs to look at Clover with empty eye sockets. She could see its frightful design clearly. The beast had been forged in a fit of rage. Its back legs were fastened to the spine with hammered forks, and the sticky hide was secured around the internal clutter with fencing wire.
Bolete struggled to keep the horses from toppling the wagon.
“Want I should shoot it?” Digger asked.
“No!” Willit shouted.
The vermin cocked its brutal head and asked Clover, “Are you she?”
Clover was trembling as much as the horses, her palms sweaty against the slats of the cage, but she forced herself to speak bravely. “I am Clover Elkin.”
“Hush, girl!” Hannibal hissed. “If the Seamstress did that to a badger, what will she do to you?”
Willit said, “You see? From her own mouth the girl admits it. Go and tell the Seamstress. Smalt came this close to taking her. He has all the pieces, but Auburn is the one who has put the puzzle together, and it’s only a matter of time. Don’t you see? The Seamstress will want to get the frog from me. She won’t like Auburn’s terms.”
“If you are lying, the Seamstress will grind your teeth and hang your pelt to dry —”
“Enough! I know the witch’s wrath! Get gone and tell her what I have.”
The Badger sniffed the air, as if memorizing Clover’s odor, then turned and shuffled toward the shadows. The grinding sound of bone on metal disappeared into the forest.
“I thought we were selling the girl to the senator,” Digger moaned. “I don’t want nothing to do with no Seamstress.”
Bolete turned on Digger. “Then jump on down and walk home, you tender kitten! You bar rag! Don’t nobody want nothing to do with a witch, but if Willit says we got to, we got to!”
Digger struggled with the horses’ tangled lines, muttering, “This won’t come to nothing good.”
The horses strained against their lines, eager to get away from the place. As they picked up speed, Clover felt she was tumbling slowly into her own grave. She didn’t know which was worse, being burned for no reason by the senator or having her skin hung to dry by the Seamstress.
Her knuckles white against the slats of her cage, she searched desperately for a way out. Then she saw the cigar box pressed between two crates that had shifted. Now it was held in place only by a slim leather strap.
“Hannibal,” she whispered, “can you reach that?”
Hannibal squeezed his head through the gaps in the wicker and stretched his neck toward the cigar box, the sliver of his tongue quivering with effort. Finally, he managed to get the end of the strap in his beak, but he couldn’t budge the tether.
“That’s enough of that!” Bolete drew his knife and turned around to reach back into her cage. He slid the long blade between the slats until it rested against Clover’s throat. She froze, feeling her own pulse beating against the steel.
“I ain’t supposed to kill you,” Bolete whispered. “But I will shuck your ears from your skull like oysters. I will cut a pocket in you big enough to hide a pickled egg if you two don’t stop whispering.”
Hannibal gave one final tug, and the cigar box slipped under the strap and tumbled down. It bounced once on the boards before dropping to the road below. They heard it crunch under a wheel.
“Infernal confoundery!” Bolete hollered. “I am going to beat you till you talk backward! Digger, stop the —”
But before Digger could pull the reins, the wagon came to a violent stop on its own. Something powerful had seized a back wheel. The horses squealed at the sudden strain.
Clover knew that Susanna, the Doll, was out of her box and had a hold on
the wagon. It pitched like a ship at sea, then tilted up at an extreme angle. Agate’s collection slipped and tumbled in an avalanche of crates.
Bolete fell forward into the reins, and his knife took a bite out of Clover’s ear before he vanished. The crates crashed and scattered as the wagon began to rock. Hannibal crowed, and Digger leaped into the nearby bushes for safety. Clover hung on to the slats of the cage as the forest swung upside-down, until finally the wagon landed on top of her. The cage shattered, and Clover found her cheek pressed against pine mulch.
She kicked at the splintered wood and pulled herself out from under the heap, slats scraping her shins as she emerged. Without the cage shielding her, she would have been crushed.
The forest swam. She was faintly aware of the chaos around her as she scrambled toward the trees. One of the horses lay pinned under the wagon, kicking its front legs and gasping for air. Somewhere nearby, Bolete was hollering obscenities.
As Clover crawled away from the wreck, she spotted Hannibal’s cage in the dust. She tugged the bottom out to find him alive and wild-eyed. He rolled upright and jumped swiftly toward the forest ahead of her, shouting, “That’s it, Nurse Elkin! Run!”
Clover tried, but her feet were numb, and she pitched onto her belly. In the distance she heard Willit shouting, “What is happening back there?”
Meanwhile, the overturned wagon shuddered as if a bear were waking from hibernation beneath the planks. The poachers were all shooting at it, and pine needles rained down around them. Then, even louder than the gunshots, there was a wail of wrenched steel as little Susanna broke the axle from the wagon bed.
Clover got to her feet again and was making a wobbly dash toward the cover of the trees when a wagon wheel flew past her head, ricocheting off the trunk in front of her. She ducked just in time to escape decapitation.
Peering over her shoulder, Clover caught a glimpse of the Doll; the yarn mouth buckled in rage as Susanna pulled the heavy beam of the bed free, picking the wagon apart piece by piece.
The poachers had taken shelter behind trees and boulders. They leaned out only far enough to aim their rifles at the rattling wagon.
Willit was shouting, “Never shoot at oddities! That’s our fortune, you idiots!”
“But she’s tearing it all to hell!” Bolete screamed.
“You’re hitting everything but the Doll. Here, let me do it.” Willit drew his infamous Pistol, the gun that could not miss, and shot Susanna through the belly.
From behind a tree, Clover watched Susanna stop short and place a hand on the hole, where cotton wadding poked out. Digger approached with a sword drawn, ready to finish her.
Susanna charged. When Digger turned to run, she caught his boot and tripped him. Seizing him by the belt, she swung him like a sack of oats. He screamed as he sailed into the canopy above.
Rifles crackled. Some of the bullets sizzled past Clover and smacked into the trees around her. She hunkered behind a boulder, panting and covering her head with her hands. She could see wretched Digger twenty feet above. He hung from one trouser leg in the branches, his twisted sword having fallen from his hand.
Beneath the thunder of gunfire, Clover heard a voice calling her name. Hannibal was in the trees somewhere nearby, like a seraph guiding her to safety. She rose to her feet and tried to follow his directions.
“Stay low, brave girl!” Hannibal shouted. “Run. Now duck!”
Clover went low as a jagged piece of the wagon cut through the air above her.
“Up now and run! Left. Go left!” Hannibal shouted. “There is a rifle near the horses. No, leave it be; someone else got it.”
She followed his instructions blindly, tripping sometimes over fallen branches.
“Take cover there!”
Clover dove to the ground behind a log. She could see the area around the wagon cloaked in the blue haze of gun smoke. Susanna continued to hurl debris into the trees.
Willit shouted, “Where’s the girl? Find Clover!”
But the poachers were still firing at the wagon.
Something moved past the log Clover had hidden behind. The Badger vermin lifted its mummified head over the wood and croaked, “Don’t go wandering off, frog.”
Clover screamed and leaped up, sprinting madly as Hannibal warned, “Not yet! They’ll see you!”
But Clover needed to leave that savage grin far behind. She was relieved to spot Hannibal ahead, hopping from branch to branch.
“Look out!” Hannibal shouted. “He’s upon you!”
One of the poachers caught Clover by the hair and yanked her off her feet. He dragged her back toward the road, hollering, “I’ve got her! I’ve got the —”
A crate slammed into the poacher with the force of a cannonball, plastering him against a tree.
In her tantrum, Susanna was throwing everything she could get her tiny hands on. She’d pulled the wagon apart like an overcooked turkey and was now scattering debris throughout the forest. Clover covered her ears as she ran again. A bullet tore a branch off a tree nearby, and she veered blindly in another direction.
As the forest blurred past, she saw the Badger leap on a poacher that had gotten in its way. The man went down screaming.
Then Willit appeared in front of her, sudden as a sneeze. He was holding a Match that had just gone out, and he was twitching with rage. Clover remembered how he had appeared on the riverbank, the Matches giving him the power to jump from place to place.
“I have burned too many of these chasing after you, kid,” he said. “And now you’ve gone and ruined a whole haul of oddities.” He dropped the blackened Match and pulled the Pistol from his belt. With his other hand he reached for his purse of bullets.
“You go on and run,” he said, scratching his neck with the barrel of the gun. “Now that I’ve got a bead on you, I am going to take my time putting a bullet through your leg. Don’t worry; I’ll only take the kneecap off — won’t hit nothing vital.”
But Clover didn’t run. Through a torrent of terror, she waited until Willit held the bullets in his hand.
“Go on, now. Give a little run,” Willit said. “It feels like a waste if you just stand there.”
Still Clover held her ground, trembling, trying not to imagine what a bullet through the knee would feel like. Willit opened the back of the Pistol to load it.
Then, just as he tugged the mouth of the purse open, Clover lunged past him, snatching it as she went. She kept running as fast as her aching legs would carry her, clutching the bullets to her chest.
Willit filled the air with curses, making a mad dash after her. But Clover was faster, and after a few quick turns, she’d lost him in the trees.
Another crate came sailing through the air in an arc. It exploded just feet away, releasing a heap of debris: twisted ladles, splayed books, candleholders. A small iron box popped open, and a red-hot coal tumbled out. Immediately, the pine needles beneath it began to smolder. The smoke gathered in a disturbing cloud above the oddity.
Clover stared, transfixed, as the Ember blackened the ground. She watched as smoke rose, watched as white tendrils twined together in the air like spun wool.
The vapors bundled into a ghostly, long-legged shape. Sparks illuminated the smoke from inside like lightning in a thundercloud, and Clover saw long, dark bones knitting together in the maelstrom.
Hannibal hollered, “That’s not something you want to linger over, is it? Don’t you know the Heron when you see it?”
His voice freed Clover from her shock, and she dashed away. When she looked back, the plume had grown darker. A long neck with a dagger-like head emerged. The braided smoke took the shape of a large fisher bird.
Light crackled at the tip of its beak, and in a flash, a bright-blue flame rolled down the neck, igniting the smoke as it went until a fiery Heron lit the forest with an eerie glow. It was no bigger than a marsh egret, but, even yards away, Clover felt the heat on her face as the Heron stretched its luminous neck over the Ember. It snatched up the
glowing coal and gobbled it down. The faint shadow of the Ember spun in the Heron’s belly. The only solid thing in the beast, it became a smoldering heart, barely visible behind the glowing feathers. Then the Heron cocked its hungry head toward Clover.
Clover knew this oddity had killed hundreds during the Louisiana War. The journal said it had burned an entire forest to ash. Of all the dangers around her, it would be fire that killed her after all. Her nightmares were finding her one by one.
Clover ran from her greatest fear. With a predator’s instinct, the Heron ran after her, branding the ground behind it with seared tracks. Clover tried to duck behind trees, but the Heron was always close, lowering its head and making leaping strides.
She couldn’t outrun it. Clover had no choice but to turn and make a stand. She grabbed a sturdy stick and pivoted to fight. She took a strong swing, screaming as she aimed for the shadow of the Ember in the furnace of its belly. She missed and swung again, but this time the Heron snatched at the branch. The wood turned to ash where the white-hot beak cut through it, and Clover’s weapon fell to pieces.
A poacher emerged from the trees behind the Heron, lifting his rifle. The Heron turned on him and pounced, its inferno wings enveloping his torso.
His screams didn’t last long. Clover made a mad, sinuous path between the trunks. Finally she collapsed, panting, under an ancient crab apple tree festooned with mistletoe and thick hanging lichen. Clover hunkered in the den under the branches, her heart a furious drum.
The Heron stalked through the trees nearby, casting a light on the forest like a harvest moon. The air around it wobbled with heat as the bird paced, peering between trees and nudging the damp heaps of leaves. Fire itself was hunting Clover.
She remembered nothing from the journal about how to stop it. When it finished with her, it would burn the entire countryside, then the world.
“You were right about oddities, Father,” Clover whispered. “I’m so sorry. You were right.”
The Badger’s voice replied, “If you run again, I’ll rip the tendons from your ankles.”