Dead Iron

by Devon Monk

  “Sit down,” Sheriff Wilke hollered over the crowd. “Take a seat. Make room for your neighbor.”

  “Out of the way,” Mr. Gregor bellowed from the door. Rose knew the blacksmith’s voice, though she had never heard that mix of anger and panic in his tone. And just like snowmelt before the fire, the crowd receded, leaving a clear path between the pews for Mr. Gregor and his wife. Little Mrs. Gregor bobbed down that aisle, one hand pressed over her mouth, holding back the sound of her sobs, the other clutching up the hem of her skirt to keep from tripping.

  Mr. Gregor stormed down the aisle behind her, his hands curled as if he wished the weight of a hammer and vise lay within them.

  “Where is my son?” he demanded.

  “He’s here, right here.” Sheriff Wilke pointed to the pew. Mrs. Gregor was already pulling Elbert up into her arms and sobbing over him.

  Elbert fussed and then cried softly, clinging to the fabric of his mother’s dress.

  Mr. Gregor glared at the men on the stage, the sheriff, the rich dandy, and his servant, Mr. Shunt. “Who found him? Who had him? Where was he?”

  Shard LeFel stepped forward and it was like every candle in the room leaned his way, every eye locked on him, every head bowed to hear his words.

  “I found him, Mr. Gregor.” Shard LeFel’s voice was like hot wine, and there were folk in the pews who sighed at the sound of it. “And not a moment too soon.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “He’ll be telling us all now, Mr. Gregor,” the sheriff said. “Take your family home, if you want—get that poor boy in bed. We’ll take care of matters here on out.”

  “I’ll stand and stay,” Mr. Gregor said.

  The blacksmith glanced down at his son, who looked up at him with tearful eyes before burying his face once again in the crook of his mother’s neck. Mr. Gregor placed his hand gently on his child’s head, and the boy turned his face away. Elbert’s eyes were dazed, and Rose shook her head, her heart catching when she thought of what he must have been through.

  Then the little boy looked at her. Saw her there, in the shadows. And smiled.

  Rose pressed her hand over her chest, as if the boy’s eyes had shot an arrow. A cold and fearful sensation crawled over her skin. That little boy was not Elbert. He might look like Elbert; he might cry like Elbert. But that boy had more of the Strange to him than Rose had ever seen in a child.

  She pressed herself up against the stairwell wall, wishing there were more than just shadows between them.

  The sheriff took a few steps away from Mr. Gregor so he could catch everyone’s attention. “Listen up, folks. Mr. LeFel has something to tell us all.”

  The townspeople had filled the church to the brim, every pew taken, and every wall with people standing along it, right up to stuffing up the aisles. Rose saw more people gathered than she’d seen at the last county fair. Must be nearly three hundred tucked up tight in the room that wasn’t built to hold more than a hundred, most.

  “Mr. LeFel?” Sheriff Wilke gave the rail man the floor.

  LeFel glided up to take his place behind the podium. When he smiled, it looked like an apology.

  “Good people of Hallelujah, I bring you most distressing news.”

  Before he could continue, the church doors opened, and a fresh breeze sliced through the thick air, drawing the candle flames straight up on their wicks again.

  “Hear there’s been a ruckus,” Alun Madder said as he sauntered in, his brothers, Bryn and Cadoc, shoulder to shoulder with him.

  They all clapped their gloved hands together and rubbed them like they were scrubbing warmth up out of a campfire.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” Alun asked.

  Everyone in the church turned at the brothers’ entrance. Except Rose. She watched LeFel’s face screw into a dark visage of hatred. The kind of hatred that made a man carve another man’s heart out and spit in the hole left behind.

  Rose unconsciously clutched the locket beneath the thin cloth of her dress.

  At that small movement, Mr. LeFel looked up away from the Madders, his eyes searching the shadows where she stood until he spotted her there. He was startled to find her watching him; that was clear. And the smile he gave her was no comfort. It was a warning.

  “Settle in, and quiet down, Mr. Madder,” Sheriff Wilke said. “All of you. Mr. LeFel has the podium.”

  Alun’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t see you there, Mr. LeFel,” he said without a hint of apology in his voice. “Must be the rising moonlight so bright it struck me blind. Carry on. Carry on. And do take your time.” He and his brothers folded thick arms over their wide chests and simultaneously leaned against the church doors, blocking the way out.

  Mr. LeFel licked his lips and glared at them. “As I was saying, I have dire news for us all.”

  He glanced out over the people gathered. There was that aristocratic air about him. It hooked up each and every eye and mind, and not a soul seemed able to lean away. When he flicked that gaze at Rose, she put her hand back on the gun in her pocket and glared at him.

  He scowled, looked back at the Madders, then once again looked at her. But this time there was surprise, and some kind of new understanding, in his expression.

  “Mr. LeFel?” the sheriff prompted.

  LeFel finally turned his attention back to his breathless audience.

  Rose’s heart thumped hard. In LeFel’s look was the same cold creeping she’d sensed in the boy. But she felt the sure pressure of someone else looking at her. She glanced down the stairs. Alun Madder was indeed watching her. He smiled . . . and nodded.

  She didn’t know that it should, but it seemed a reassuring gesture. She didn’t know if he saw the hatred in Shard LeFel. She didn’t know if he saw the Strangeness of him and his man. But all the same, she was glad to see there was at least one—no, three other people in the room who weren’t caught under Mr. LeFel’s thrall.

  “I was out,” Shard LeFel crooned, “taking an evening constitutional, and by and by I wandered past the widow Lindson’s property. I heard a terrible crying—a child wailing—and beyond that, I heard a woman singing. But not any church song. It was a witch’s tune.” He paused a moment, letting his words steep.

  “I didn’t want to believe it myself.” He shook his head, and more than one head shook along with him. “But when I stepped up close to look in the window, I saw Mrs. Jeb Lindson, working her magic—the devil’s magic—on this poor boy.”

  He nodded again, and this time all the folk nodded with him.

  “Nonsense.” Alun’s voice cut across the silence like a fire across the plain. “Do you have any proof at all? Anything that would cast that poor woman as a witch?”

  Shard LeFel’s head snapped up and Rose saw the devil himself behind those eyes. No, worse than the devil; she saw the Strange. “Of course,” Shard LeFel growled. Then, regaining his composure, “Of course I have proof. Mrs. Gregor, if you would just pull up your son’s shirt, you’ll see the mark, the cursed spell, she left there on his back.”

  Rose couldn’t see Mrs. Gregor’s face from her place on the stairs, but she heard her gasp as she drew up Elbert’s shirt.

  Rose instead watched Sheriff Wilke’s reaction, since he could easily see the boy’s back. He frowned and shook his head.

  “It’s a pentagram.” Mrs. Gregor stood up with Elbert in her arms. She turned toward Mr. Gregor. In doing so, she revealed the boy’s back to the room.

  Very clearly, the mark of a star standing on one point was scratched into his back.

  “Mae Lindson has done harm to this boy,” Shard LeFel said. “And that’s all the proof needed. She is a witch.”

  “Witch,” Mr. Shunt repeated from the shadows.

  “Witch,” the people in the church echoed, inhaled, exhaled, back and forth to one another, the word building and growing, breathing stronger at each repetition until it seemed as if the very walls vibrated with it.

  Until another word was born in its place
: “Burn. Burn her.”

  Rose couldn’t believe her ears. In just as much as a heartbeat, the entire town had gone mad. Regardless of if Mrs. Lindson was a witch or not, this was a civilized age. People didn’t go around burning people just because one man stood up and called them a witch.

  Her heart was pounding and every instinct told her to run, to flee, to get away from these people before they turned on her and called her something worth burning.

  But Mae was her friend. She had to do something. Anything to help her. To stop this. Which meant she had to stand up against Mr. Shard LeFel.

  And an entire town of people with murder in their eyes.

  Rose pulled her shoulders back and walked down the stairs, her boots making too much noise for such a quiet room. Her knees shook and her hands went slick with sweat.

  “You’re wrong,” she said, blunt as that.

  Mr. LeFel looked over at her, hatred twisting his face into a mockery of a smile. He opened his mouth to speak, but Rose spoke first.

  “Mae Lindson isn’t a witch. She’s a kind and helpful woman who hasn’t done more than mind her own business and weave blankets for this town. She’s a lace maker, a wife, and nothing more.”

  “Don’t mind the girl,” Sheriff Wilke said. “She doesn’t understand these things.”

  “I understand you are all talking about killing an innocent woman,” Rose said.

  An angry murmur rose up in the room, and Rose caught more than one voice saying “mad,” “wild,” “crazy.”

  Shard LeFel waited a moment, letting the voices hush against the rafters. Then he spoke. “You have seen what this ‘lace maker’ has done to the boy, Miss Small. She has left him with the devil’s mark, taken his blood. Would likely have killed him. She is a witch. And that is the proof.”

  “That,” Rose said, “isn’t the Gregors’ boy. I don’t know what gears and steam you have cobbled together, but that boy isn’t Elbert. It’s a monster.”

  A startled cry rose up from the women of the town and the men’s deep grumbling rolled beneath it. This time it did not quiet, but instead grew.

  “I swear to you,” Rose said, “that it’s some Strange thing left in Elbert’s place. Some Strange matic.”

  “Rose!” her mother called out sharply. “This is no time for your fool mouth.” She stood up from where she had been sitting near the front of the room and stormed toward Rose.

  “It’s the truth. That’s not Elbert.” Instead of retreating, Rose walked down the crowded outer aisle, getting more than one surreptitious prod and elbow. But she didn’t care. She only needed to make one person believe her. She marched over to Mr. Gregor.

  The sheriff stepped in her way, keeping her from coming any closer to Mr. Gregor, or the boy.

  “You believe me, don’t you, Mr. Gregor?” Rose asked. “I tell you true—that’s not your boy. I’d know Elbert. I’d know him like my own brother.”

  Mr. Gregor shook his head, his expression a mix of shame and pity. “That’s enough, Rose. Go on, now. Do as your mother says. You should go home.”

  “I’m not wrong.” She searched his face, searched his expression, for the man who had always smiled at her curiosity and applauded her strong spirit. Looked for the man who had always believed in her. “I’m not crazy, I promise you so.”

  “Go on, Rose,” he said tightly. “This business isn’t for . . . people like you.”

  Rose felt like he had just dunked her in a trough of cold water. He didn’t believe her. He thought she was insane. Wild. Foolish.

  She might believe the whole town could be blinded by a stranger’s words, but not Mr. Gregor. He had always been kind and helpful to her, and wasn’t afraid to speak against a crowd with calm words and reason. But not today. Today she meant nothing to him.

  Sheriff Wilke put his hand on her arm. “Mrs. Small,” he said. “Please see your daughter home.”

  “Rose Small,” her mother said. “Come here this instant.”

  Rose knew a losing fight when she saw one. There wasn’t a single chance anyone else in this town would believe her. They were set on burning an innocent woman alive for a crime she didn’t commit. Rose might not be able to change their minds, but that didn’t mean she was going to stand aside and do nothing.

  Rose shook off Sheriff Wilke’s hand and started walking. But not toward her mother. She was headed toward Mr. Shard LeFel. “I know what you’re doing, Mr. LeFel.” She was close enough she could smell the lavender and spice of his expensive perfume. “And I know what you are—what you and your man are. Strange. Come to blight this land.”

  LeFel’s eyebrows raised again. And his man, Mr. Shunt, lowered his head, until his eyes burned from beneath deeper shadow.

  “I am quite sure you are mistaken, Miss Small,” LeFel murmured. “I am here with only the highest regard for this town and these people. I am bringing to Hallelujah all the riches and future the rail and steam can offer.”

  “You are a liar.”

  Mr. LeFel’s hand shot out so fast, Rose didn’t even see him move. He caught her wrist in his grip, and squeezed down tight.

  The entire room seemed to go distant and fuzzy. No one moved. Seemed like no one breathed.

  “Mind your tongue,” Shard LeFel growled. “Lest you lose it altogether.” He squeezed down so hard, she couldn’t feel her fingers. She slipped her left hand into her apron, fumbling for her gun.

  Still no one in the church spoke. Still no one moved.

  Except the Madder brothers.

  Rose could hear them push away from the door as if they were one man. She felt the vibration of their steps as they marched down the aisle, their boots heavy as the mountains falling from the heavens.

  “Let go of the girl, LeFel,” Alun said low and clear, coming closer and closer, “or we’ll have ourselves a go at you.”

  The brothers were smiling, eyes mad and drunken bright. They each brandished weapons in their hands: hammer, ax, and gun.

  Shard LeFel’s gaze shifted between each of the brothers.

  “Might be a good night for someone to die,” Cadoc said. He pulled a pocket watch out of his vest and pressed the winding stem down, sending the watch ticking.

  Shard LeFel eyed the pocket watch, then let go of her wrist. “You are a waste of my time, poor Rose,” he said. “And so too your kind.”

  Kind? Rose looked back to the Madders. Their expressions were unreadable. Was she somehow like them?

  But as soon as the watch had begun ticking, the townsfolk seemed to wake up out of their sleep and the room came back sharp again, though not a person appeared to notice they’d lost a minute or two.

  The Madder brothers stood shoulder to shoulder in the center aisle. They moved apart just enough to make a place for Rose to stand between them. She hurried to do so and walked with them back to the doors of the church.

  “Think he broke your wrist?” the second brother, Bryn, asked as they walked forward behind Alun. Cadoc walked backward, watching LeFel.

  “No,” Rose said as she rubbed at her hand to get the blood moving in it. “It’s fine.”

  They were at the back pews now, and all the room was riled up again, mumbling and chattering, repeating the words “bewitched” and “deviser” and, most frightening of all, “burn her too.”

  Her mother stood behind the last pew, face stoked red as a baker’s oven. She pointed at the door. “Get on home, Rose Small. Lock yourself in your room. You make me sorry I’ve ever called you my own. No wonder your mother left you to die.”

  Rose opened her mouth, closed it around nothing but air. She had no words, not apology or anger, though both raged a wild storm in her. A deep, silent sob of betrayal twisted at her heart.

  “Get home before I throw you out for good,” her mother said.

  Alun Madder smiled at Rose’s mother and tugged his beard. “Maybe the girl’s old enough not to belong to anyone anymore, Mrs. Small.”

  “You have no place preaching to me, Mr. Madder,” she said
. “You and your dirty brothers don’t belong in this town.”

  The Madders laughed, but Rose kept on walking, head up, arms straight at her sides, wooden as a doll. Her eyes burned with tears.

  She pushed open the door and hit the fresh night air like she was running from a fire. She wasn’t running home. No, she’d never go back to that house. Never go back to those people. She didn’t belong there. She had never belonged there, and her mother had just put words to the truth they’d both been denying all her life.

  There wasn’t a lock or latch that could keep her in this town a moment longer.

  And there wasn’t anyone, or anything, that was going to keep her from helping her friend.

  She ran straight down Main Street, the bits of metal and wood in her pockets jingling with each step. She had to get to Mae’s farm. Had to get there in time to warn her. Had to get there faster than the townspeople’s torches.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cedar Hunt was halfway back to Mae Lindson’s house, having made his way to the Madders’ mine. He’d found the brothers gone, his clothes and guns wrapped up tidy as a parcel near their front door. Didn’t know where his horse was, either somewhere in the brothers’ mountain or maybe set loose. Didn’t take the time to track it down.

  He’d promised Mae Lindson they would face the Strange together, but more than once he’d found himself blacking out in the saddle on his way back to her house, the wound stealing his strength and his senses away. Now he was on foot, pacing, waiting for the curse, the change, to slip over him.

  The deep-belly warmth of the wolf stirring in him eased the pain in his side some. Maybe, he thought as he unbuttoned his shirt and folded it atop the mule’s saddle, the change would heal the wound. It would help; he was sure of that.

  The moon, shaded to the waning, pushed up at the horizon’s edge as Cedar pulled off his boots, pants, and belt. He secured his clothing alongside the borrowed clothes and weapons, then drank down the last of the water from the canteen and secured it too.