Oddity

by Eli Brown

  The sentinel vermin saw her coming and lunged to meet her, opening its nightmare maw.

  They slammed into each other with a crash that sent the bridge swaying.

  The beast bellowed, slashing at Susanna with steel claws. Susanna returned the blows, knocking bits of junk off the beast with every punch. Clover and Nessa could do nothing but hang on as the battle swung the bridge.

  Then the vermin swallowed Susanna whole. It closed its mouth like an oven and shook its mane of pelts. It lifted its patchwork head and filled the sky with an earsplitting victory howl.

  “Susanna!” Clover screamed, rushing forward, but Nessa pulled her back.

  The giant vermin shuddered, wagging its miserable head.

  Then it burst open.

  Susanna was wrenching it apart from the inside. Its limbs scrambled as she kicked and tore, tangled in the wreckage of its gutworks. The bridge shifted, and the beast’s heavy machinery slid off the planks. As it went over, Susanna reached for a chain but missed her grip and went down with it.

  Clover watched the speck of the Doll’s body tumbling in the debris before disappearing into the depths below.

  “No!” Clover wailed as Nessa held her. “Susanna, please!” The mists had swallowed them completely. “I need you!” Clover cried.

  Nessa tugged her toward the mines. “We have to move! It isn’t safe.”

  The trumpet cascaded off the cliff walls. It was answered by drums. The war-makers were converging.

  Clover made one last precarious leap off the bridge onto solid rock. She knelt and peered into the gorge. The mists churned, but there was no sign of Susanna or the vermin.

  “We can’t just leave her.”

  “She’s gone,” Nessa said. “I’m sorry, Clover.”

  “But if she’s alive . . .” Clover trailed off as she reached into the medical bag and removed the tourniquet from its leather pouch. She dropped the pouch over the edge, hoping it was big enough for Susanna. “She’ll need something to rest in.”

  Clover stood on trembling legs. She turned toward the cave and forced herself to take a step, wiping tears from her cheeks with the palms of her hands.

  The sun sent a thin wafer of light only a few feet into the tunnel. Beyond that, the darkness was thick. The mildew smells of the earth rose out of the old mine.

  The whale oil lamp she found in the medical bag was battered and damp. It took the flint a long time to convince the wick, but it finally cast its beam into the rugged tunnel. Clover carried her father’s light into the darkness.

  The miners had carved the main tunnel at a steep descent, with side shafts branching off every fifty yards. Many of these intersections had collapsed, giving the mine a reputation as a widow-maker before it was abandoned altogether. Even the main tunnel had piles of rock that Clover and Nessa had to climb over.

  The lamp revealed shimmering streaks in the walls, and they knew they were looking at veins of raw silver. There were still riches in the unstable walls, as if left there to tempt the foolish. And now the witch’s vermin had given the entire mountainside a reputation for being haunted; it was no wonder the place was desolate.

  The tunnel veered down, making a spiral into the mountain’s belly. With every step, Clover’s lungs tightened. The darkness felt thick enough to stain her bones. Perhaps her mind was finally cracking under the strain, for she felt that this hole in the earth was part of her, that she was being pulled into the unknowable gravity of her own soul.

  “Don’t think of avalanches . . . or witches . . . or vermin,” Nessa whispered.

  The smell of rotten meat overtook the mildew. Rasping voices in the darkness made them stop in their tracks. As if emboldened by the smell, the vermin began to whisper in the darkness.

  “I told you. This is the frog.”

  “Careful, it has friends.”

  “The Seamstress will not like it to blunder in. Let’s chew its ankles and drag it the rest of the way.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Judging by the voices, there were at least half a dozen vermin, their shadows gathering to pounce.

  “Tooth!” Nessa shouted, throwing a glint of white into the darkness.

  The vermin scrambled after it.

  “I saw it first!”

  “Mine!”

  “Where is it?”

  Clover and Nessa hurried deeper into the mine.

  “You carry teeth with you?” Clover whispered.

  Nessa held up a small pouch. “They remind me of Uncle.”

  When they heard the vermin scuttling back toward them, Nessa threw another tooth deep into a side shaft, and the vermin disappeared again, chasing after the distant click. The girls pressed on, moving faster.

  Nessa rambled nervously. “After Uncle died, I thought I’d never enjoy music again. I was angry at the birds for singing. But then one morning after a storm, I heard them. They were wet and tired as I was, but they sang like they were bringing the sun up note by note. And I saw that it was a kind of bravery. To keep singing.”

  “Sing now, Nessa,” Clover begged.

  So Nessa sang an aria she had heard on the steps of the opera house. Her voice, sweet as malt syrup, filled the cavern. Neither of them understood the words, but the echoes resonated like a chorus, giving them courage.

  Then Clover’s light was swallowed up by a tremendous cavern. She lifted the lamp, but the room was so big she couldn’t see the ceiling. “These are the chambers that Susanna dug,” Clover whispered. It was as big as a barn and filled with heaps of junk.

  Clover took a closer look at the pile and saw a collection of butter churns and brooms, rolling pins, soup spoons. Hundreds of them, a hill of household implements. On the far wall was a doorway. They walked through it into another chamber. This one was filled with saddles and boots, bridles, and whips. The shadows shifted just beyond the light.

  Nessa threw a tooth into the pile, and they watched in horror as vermin swarmed over it, a mass of fur and debris tumbling over the junk. There were dozens of the creatures nearby now.

  The girls hurried into another chamber, which held silver spoons, candlesticks, forks, and knives. They ran through one chamber after another. One contained steel tools, plows, and wagon axles in rusting heaps. Another held a glittering pile of broken china, porcelain bowls, and bedpans.

  “Are they all oddities?” Nessa asked as they dashed past washtubs and scrub brushes.

  “Can’t be.”

  The carrion smell grew to a nauseating intensity, and Clover knew what she would find in the next chamber. The storage room was piled high with dead animals. Most of them were dried and flat, but some still lay in the process of putrefaction.

  Nessa retched.

  “It’s a vermin manufactory,” Clover said.

  They heard a familiar chant coming from deeper in the tunnel. They crept toward the voice, Clover’s heart hammering in her chest.

  First we chew, then we swallow.

  First we lead, then we follow.

  Grind it up, choke it down.

  First we float, then we drown . . .

  Behind them, the tunnel seethed with vermin, a hot wind of greedy whispers.

  “Do you have any more teeth?” Clover asked.

  Nessa lifted the bag to the light. Only a few remained. When the vermin surged toward them, she threw the bag into their writhing midst. The sound of the vermin fighting over the bag was like a storm in the trees.

  A soft glow lit the rock ahead. Clover blew out her light and entered the room.

  The tunnel opened onto a ledge above a room lit by dozens of lamps. The witch worked below.

  From above, the Seamstress looked almost harmless, a beetle grubbing in its tunnel. She dropped a handful of teeth into the Pestle and ground them. Her figure shimmered and twitched, as if seen through restless water.

  “Look!” Nessa whispered, pointing to the moving shadows in the corners of the workroom. “Hundreds of vermin!”

  “Hush!” Clover said, watching
the witch’s process.

  As the Seamstress ground the teeth, they became the blue Powder that had saved Clover’s life. But the work wasn’t done. She roasted the Powder over a small stove until it sizzled.

  “Now we burn,” whispered the vermin in a haunting chorus, “now we churn.”

  When the Powder had melted into a dark liquid, the Seamstress poured it into a Churn. Clover began to understand what she was watching. There were more stages to the process, but at the other end of the table was a spindle, and beside that a small basket full of blue Thread. This was the process that gave the vermin life.

  Clover couldn’t take her eyes off the basket. “Enough Thread to make a hundred Susannas,” she whispered.

  The Churn turned the liquid into a thick paste, which the Seamstress kneaded wearing a pair of calfskin Gloves. Then, removing the Gloves, she flattened it into a sheet with a Rolling Pin. The Seamstress cut this into ribbons with Shears, and all the while the vermin whispered, “Now we clot, now we knot.”

  Clover was too overwhelmed to note the last steps of the process, but in the end, the Seamstress had another half-inch of blue Thread that she twined onto the bundle.

  “What will you do with all that Thread?” Clover shouted down at the Seamstress.

  “Quiet!” Nessa hissed as the witch peered up at them.

  “What’s this?” the Seamstress croaked. “Visitors? And no calling card? Nevertheless, bring them in. We don’t keep guests waiting.”

  Like a sudden windstorm, the vermin swarmed over Clover and Nessa, lifting them up, pushing them forward.

  “I already gave you all the teeth!” Nessa screamed at them.

  Sweetwater lashed out, but the creatures, like Susanna, were immune to her poison.

  The horde carried the girls down into the workshop, teeth and claws tugging, threatening to tear them apart. Clover and Nessa were pressed against the cavern wall, pinned by twitching abominations.

  The Hound opened its maw and dropped several teeth at the feet of the Seamstress.

  “They had a bag of them,” the Hound muttered proudly.

  Up close, Clover saw that the Seamstress was actually two women, impossibly sharing the same space. Glimpsed though kaleidoscopic shards of light, one was pale as a tallow candle, her hair matted into a thick bundle that hung over her shoulders like a beaver tail. The other was bald and covered with scars, her dried flesh stitched together with whips of leather, some patches replaced with animal hide. These splintered reflections of the witch, one bloodless, one wild-eyed as a hermit, stood on the same two feet, moved and spoke as one.

  “What is all the Thread for?” Clover repeated, her eyes straining to focus on the shifting figure. “You have too many vermin already.”

  “Don’t provoke the witch,” Nessa pleaded. “Please, Clover . . .”

  “But we are already provoked.” The Seamstress crooked a finger, and the vermin dragged Clover toward the worktable. They pressed her face onto a heap of putrid fur. “How did you defeat my pet at the bridge? You must be quite strong, or clever, or quick . . .”

  “There are people coming to steal all of that Thread,” Clover said. “They want to create an army of undead soldiers.”

  “Is it true?” The Seamstress turned to the Hound, who nodded.

  “Yes, mistress. Riders approach from east and west.”

  “Come to take our Thread? And the bridge is unguarded? But that won’t do. We’ll need a better pet, no? Yes. Something clever. Something quick,” the Seamstress muttered to herself, her voice cracking in twain, sometimes only hoarse, sometimes the brittle whisper of dry bones. “A dead squirrel, a sunbaked raccoon. We’ve done our best with the sources at hand. But it is never enough.” She caressed Clover’s cheek with a gnarled finger, then picked up a knife and started sharpening it.

  Clover tried to pull away, but the vermin held her against the table, their claws digging into her flesh. The Seamstress brought the blade close to Clover’s neck.

  “You don’t need us,” Clover gasped, choking back her fear. “Your vermin do everything you ask —”

  The Seamstress hissed, “Not everything! They bring us teeth, pelts, oddities. But they can’t find the one thing we want. Now we must do better. And here you are. Brave, aren’t you, to have come this far? Clever and quick?” The witch’s voice changed. “Must we kill her, the poor thing?”

  The Seamstress was arguing with herself, her mind as shattered as her body. Which was the true Miniver?

  Her mood swung like a flag in a storm, and suddenly the witch was smiling again. It was a toothless grin that told Clover exactly where she’d gotten her first Thread. “You’ll only be dead for the time it takes us to put you back together!” she said to Clover. “We’ll have to borrow your skin, and probably remove your skull as well. Quite the insult, I’m afraid, but strictly necessary. Look away, now. This will only hurt for a moment.”

  Sweetwater surged down Clover’s arm, hissing and rattling her tail.

  The witch flinched. “Kill it!”

  “Don’t touch her!” Clover screamed, but the vermin yanked Sweetwater away, dragging the writhing serpent to another skinning table.

  Clover became instantly ill, feeling the blood draining from her face. Her feet went numb.

  While the vermin stretched the snake out for slaughter, the Seamstress peered at Clover. “Oh, but look how she shivers! Do we have no mercy?” one voice begged. The corpse voice snapped a response, “We’re giving her immortality! Don’t fuss. There is work to do, and so much to work with. Bones, teeth, skin . . . a bounty!”

  Clover struggled not to faint. “You gave me my bones, Mother,” she said. “My skin and teeth too. Do you really want them back?”

  “What did you call us?” The Seamstress stared. “Where are your manners?”

  “I learned my manners from Constantine Elkin.”

  A stunned silence filled the chamber. Even the vermin holding Sweetwater stopped to watch.

  “That,” the Seamstress said, cocking her head as if hearing a distant, tiny thread of music, “is a name we know.”

  “You should. You married him.”

  The Seamstress froze, and the vermin, sensing a change, loosened their grip. Sweetwater wriggled free and darted back to Clover. As the snake wound up toward her shoulders, Clover felt her strength returning. She stood and shook the stunned vermin off.

  “I’m here, Mother. It’s Clover. Before vermin, before Susanna, you made me. I’ve come for answers.”

  “Impossible,” the Seamstress whispered. “Our Clover is just a baby, barely walking.”

  “That was twelve years ago,” Clover said. “I grew up.”

  “So long? Could it be?” Miniver searched Clover’s face with milky eyes. “But Constantine died that night . . .”

  “Father was shot by poachers just days ago.”

  “I thought we lost him in the fire . . .” Miniver faltered, her features collapsing in grief and confusion. Her face broke like a thrown plate, sorrow and anger merging in an inhuman mask. The Seamstress howled like a trapped beast. Her voice split into dissonance, and for a moment, Clover could hear both parts of her, one alive and bewildered, one dead and remembering every pain. Miniver wobbled and nearly collapsed. Clover caught her and was surprised how weightless the woman was — as if she were nothing but a bundle of chicken bones and yarn.

  Touching her mother, Clover felt both the brittle leather of her stitched body and the soft sags of living skin, the cracks in reality grinding together like a poorly set bone. Pity flooded Clover’s heart.

  “Poor Constantine,” Miniver whispered. “He hated a commotion . . . Is it really you? Seeing you is like water for our parched heart.”

  “We didn’t die in that fire,” Clover said. “We survived.”

  “We have made such a mess of things,” Miniver whimpered. “A terrible mess.”

  “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “How can we tell?” Miniver wavered. Then she
pulled the calfskin Gloves off the worktable and put one on her left hand. She gave the other to Clover. “Here,” she said. “See for yourself.”

  The Glove was tacky and had holes worn through the fingertips. If Clover had ever seen the Gloves mentioned in the journals, she could not remember what they did. Behind her, Nessa had taken an oil lamp from the table and was trying to shoo vermin into the shadows with it.

  Clover took a deep breath, pulled on the Glove, and was no longer in the mine.

  Clover found herself in a quiet room lit by the rose tones of a stained-glass window. The window contained the rabbit in the egg, the logo of the Society, backlit by the street lamps of New Manchester.

  Miniver Elkin was young and lovely even in the dingy apron she wore over her blouse. She was kneeling near a brass cage. Clover saw it all as a dream, but she knew this was the past as it had happened.

  On the tables behind Miniver was a bewilderment of items arranged like a chemist’s workshop. A Quill tied to a swinging Pendulum drew an erratic scrawl on the paper below. A Horseshoe was lashed to a Music Box with leather straps. In a steel pot, a red-hot Ember lay beneath the surface of boiling water. It was the Heron’s Heart. A brass-colored Frog swam happily in the boiling fluid as if it were a cool spring pond. Though it was submerged, the Ember still burned. Though it was boiled, the Frog still lived. This was the wonder of Miniver Elkin’s study.

  A full-length looking glass was draped by a sheet, and nearby sat a crib. In that crib, baby Clover chewed on a wooden spoon, occasionally pointing at her mother through the slats.

  Constantine came in, handsome as a young cat, jet hair and velvet-trimmed coat. He said, “By my count, you haven’t slept in three days.”

  “I’ll sleep when I finish this experiment,” Miniver answered, pulling a languid rabbit from the brass cage.

  “You could make a mistake,” Constantine said. “It isn’t safe.”

  “My oddities and your plagues — we both take our risks.” Miniver held the rabbit up so her husband could see its plump belly. “You praise the surgeons and chemists, but none of them do what I have done. This rabbit is alive. You can’t deny it.”