by Jill Cooper
I was trapped there. Which meant I was dead. Death awaited me in Effletown.
“Tarnish Rose,” a whisper from the shadows called out to me, “this way.”
Peering around, I stared in the direction that the voice had come from. I hurried between two buildings and slipped into an alley. An old man in a robe reduced to rags met me and as I got closer he backed up. He beckoned me forward. “I have somewhere you can hide.”
I swallowed my fear as he reached over and plucked a bit of onion from my hair. “Please, I’d be forever grateful.”
“Not as grateful as we are for you. Come. Come quickly.” He quickened his step through the alley. The space growing so tight I had to turn sideways just to fit. When we came through the other side, we ran up a set of old steel steps to a door covered in tattered posters. No words were written on them. Instead there were symbols and I knew what they meant.
This man was one of the forgotten. A man cast out by society. With any luck, the hunters wouldn’t think to look for me here, and for a while I could hide in isolation as one of them.
A cast off.
****
The cramped quarters made Diana’s home seem roomy. Merely one room with bedding on one side of the floor and a simple wood stove for making meager meals on a counter covered in wooden plates and bowls. A tea kettle, hung above the fireplace suspended from a metal rung, whistled as I stepped through the door.
Six adults lived here, each older than the last, except for a middle-aged woman missing part of her left arm who walked with a limp as she greeted me. A kerchief tied back her hair, her clothes patch-worked and stitched together by hand.
“Tea?” she asked and hobbled past me to grab a cup and a saucer.
“I won’t stay long.” I took a deep breath as I watched her pour hot water into her cup. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
The old men gathered on the beds laughed and the man who brought me there joined in. “My dear girl, you realize what we are?” he asked.
I nodded. “I saw the symbols on the door. Regardless of who you are, I won’t take advantage of your kindness.”
“We are those unwelcome.” A balding man struggled to his feet, gripping the wall to do so. I reached for his hand to steady him. “But you are different.” He looked at me as one of his eyes threatened to bulge from his head. “Most out there treat us as lepers. We get scraps of food. No rations. The ministers won’t save us if we died in the street.”
“Yet you touch us, yet you’d help us, wouldn’t you, Tarnish?” The woman handed me a teacup and saucer and I thanked her before blowing the hot steam away from the cup.
I stiffened and sat to attention. “How do you know who I am?”
The old man cackled. “We see everything because no one sees us. You’ve been here before, collecting your special…wares.” His eyes twinkled as he said it and I had to admit, it appeared more life blazed there than I had seen in most of the young.
“We can no longer help society,” the woman said, “but we can help you. The hunters will not come here. No more than the ministers will. For now, you’re safe. Until the hunt for you is called off.”
I bit my lip and gazed up at the window. A thin white sheet was pulled in front but even so, off in the distance I could make out the shape of a gray tower—the ones every city had—where the hunters lived. Above it, the sky churned and roiled like the sea in a grey and white whirlpool. I didn’t know if the tumultuous sky brought the hunters or the other way around.
The people within the room followed my gaze and the old man beside me extended his hand. “When I was your age, they called me Ralph.”
I shook his hand. “You can call me Tarnish Rose.”
“But not your real name. If only I had been as smart as you,” Ralph said and led me over to an empty chair. “Mary, we’ll have one more for dinner.”
“I won’t take your food. I know how sparse it must be.” Besides, my gut churned with anxiety because of what my father would think if I didn’t arrive home in time for bed. I had been gone too long as it was and now I was missing one curfew too many.
“You’ll stay,” Mary said with a force that took me by surprise as she pressed her lips together. “I never get guests anymore. You’ll stay, please. It’ll make me happy. Remember when we used to be happy, Ralph? Remember when we had children?”
Mary wiped at her eyes as she headed away and her sadness lingered with us. I gazed after her and as I sat, Ralph poked my knee with his cane. “They aren’t allowed to visit us either, by the law of the ministers. They are to continue on and forget we exist. Such is all things when you get old.”
As I stared into his wrinkled face, the thought of that happening one day to my own parents—my family—sickened me. His skin sagged so much, it was hard to believe there were any bones left in his face at all.
“Why continue at all then? Why keep trying, why keep surviving?” I asked.
Ralph laughed. “Some could ask the same of you. Why do you do what you do? What’s your end game with these…things you collect?”
I didn’t know the answer, though I wish I did. “I don’t know. I just know I…should. I have to do what it is that I do.”
“It’s a calling,” said a man I hadn’t noticed before. He stepped out from the shadows, arms crossed. Long ago, he must’ve lost an eye because he wore a black patch. “Your heart leads you to it and there you’ll meet your destruction.”
I held my breath as he continued past me and Ralph waved his cane at him. “Pay him no mind! He’s a doomsayer. Not a positive bone in his body.”
“Maybe he’s right,” I said with a shrug. Even still, I don’t think I could have changed what I was or what I did because I needed those books more than they even needed me. It didn’t make much sense, but that was all I had.
I needed those stories.
“Someone has to read them, and I think I’m all that’s left.”
Ralph gave me a gummy no-tooth smile and I saw the joy in his eyes. “Would you read to us? After dinner?”
Mary stopped her bustling in the kitchen area and peered over at us. “Oh, please. Just a little bit? It’d be such a treat! We haven’t had a treat like that in years.”
“In exchange,” Ralph leaned in close to me and I smelled his breath; putrid as though something inside of his mouth were dying, “I’ll tell you my stories, about my time beyond the barrier. Beyond civilization.”
My eyes widened and I shook his hand. “Deal.”
****
Slog; it’s a meal my mother sometimes served us before we received that month’s rations and food was scarce.
Oats and stale bread steeped in hot water until it soaked up, puffy and water-logged. Then roasted in the oven with whatever fruits and sugar that was available. My favorite was honey as it hid the fact what we were eating, but here the cast didn’t even have white sugar. The consistency of the slog was like glue, and the gray color wasn’t appetizing, but when hungry you eat what you have.
My belly rumbled, and I didn’t want to be rude so I did my part to finish the small helping I was given and gave them my whole-hearted thanks. After dinner, I read them a part of the book I carried; their expressions lit with happiness as I read about Dorothy and Kansas. None of us could picture what the world would’ve been like for Dorothy or her family.
Freedom? The ability to roam and go where you wanted at any time? The only reason I could was because I had the pass of a merchant, but the ministers kept us safe from those beyond the barrier in the Uncharted Lands where the uncivilized and violent lived. That price for our safety and protection was our freedom.
If we didn’t want to listen to their rules, well, the barren wasteland beyond the barrier was harsh and would eat us for lunch. There was a reason, we were told, that the barrier existed.
With the dishes cleaned up, I sat with Ralph and listened intently as he told me his story. I leaned on my elbow as he gestured with wide arms. “The Unforgiving Land, have you s
een them?” His eyes came alive with mischief as he asked.
I shook my head, too terrified to answer. I could never go to the places he spoke of. To do so was suicide.
“I did. More than once and it was glorious.”
His words seemed crazy , but he looked happy, his face so much younger than it had been only a few seconds before. “How did you get there? Did the ministers spot you?”
“No, no.” Ralph shook his head. “I took an underground cavern for protection and it sparkled with color. There, I was in a place between the Unforgiving Lands and the barrier.”
“What did you see there?”
“Jewels. Colors we don’t have here. And creatures,” Ralph sighed and looked whimsical. “Trolls and fairies. Orcs and pixies. The cavern spread out and there was a sign. I couldn’t read it, but they could. This fairy named Belle told me what it said.”
Fairies and trolls? He had to be joking. But what if he wasn’t? What if those things were just as real as I was? “What did the sign say?”
“Forsake your beliefs and enter the realm of the make-believe. That’s where I was. In Imagination. That’s what they call it.”
Slyly, I smiled and put a hand on my hip. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“It’s the truth. Every word of it. I got drunk on pixie ale, strong stuff the little buggers, and met the Orc king. They led me through to the Unforgiving Lands. It isn’t what the ministers say. They want us all to forget about it, because there, they live free.”
Free? I scoffed at the idea. “But they’re unprotected and wild. No one gives them their food. No one provides law and order.”
“And the ministers here do?” Ralph shook his head. “Tyranny isn’t law. You are not safe, Tarnish Rose. You’re not living the protected life of a citizen. You’re being oppressed.”
I fell quiet as his words sunk in and I bit my lip—perhaps Ralph had been deemed a forgotten for more than just his age or usefulness. Back in the day, he must’ve been an upriser and how wonderful that must’ve been to hear his words.
“You know it, too, don’t you?” Ralph’s narrow eyes studied mine. “You wouldn’t keep those books if you believed everything you just said.”
He was right, but in a lot of ways, I was afraid. So terribly afraid. “What else did you learn from these creatures in Imagination? Can you draw me a map on how to find them?”
“One better.” Ralph stood up and hobbled along to a wooden shelf against the wall. Beneath a stack of plates and trinkets was a rolled-up parchment. “For you.”
I unrolled the paper and gazed it curious. Then I turned it over. “It’s blank, Ralph. Well, you really had me going…”
Ralph waved his hands to get me to be quiet. “The map will be there when you need it. Only someone such as you can reveal the hidden image. Someone who can use magic.”
My heart caught in my throat as I rolled the parchment back up. “I don’t even know what that word means, but I’m pretty sure that I can’t.”
Ralph grinned. “I’m sure you can. Curator. Librarian. Prophet. Many words have been used to describe who you are, but I think it doesn’t matter what we call you. All that matters is you’re here.”
I didn’t know what he was saying or where he was getting his stories. He was nothing more than a crazy old man. “You’ve lost your mind. I know you don’t mean any harm but stories like this are going to get you hurt.” I tried to hand him back the parchment, but Ralph held his hands up.
“It’s a gift for you. It’s yours. She made it for you.”
“Who?” I asked. And the question lingered between us. “Ralph.” My voice turned sterner than I’d intended it to be, but his reluctance to answer a question made me impatient.
“You seek the answer even though you don’t believe me? You seek knowledge and stories, everything I was told about you in Imagination. Not your name, but your family heritage. I know who you are.”
“You’re crazy. There’s no way you can…”
“Taylor,” he whispered. “You are, aren’t you? You’re a Taylor.”
How could he know that? What he said wasn’t possible. I stood and when he wouldn’t take the parchment back, I slid my hood up and headed for the door. “Thanks for everything,” I said as Mary quickly hobbled toward me.
“Tarnish, don’t listen to Ralph! He’s just a crazy old coot. Come back and sit by the fire, I promise you, everything will be fine.”
He might’ve been crazy but if he knew me and who I was, he could link me to the books and that would put my family in danger. “I have to go,” I said and ripped myself away.
Mary grabbed my robe. “They’re still out there! You’ll get caught and turned to ash!”
I pulled the door open, a rush of fear crushing my chest. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take my chances.”
Chapter Three
Tarnish Rose
The hunter picked up my scent and our game of cat and mouse resumed as if it had never stopped.
I raced up the hill. Beyond that, the light’s of the train station beckoned. Below me in the valley, headlights gleam against the hillside as a train barreled down the tracks.
I jumped off the hill and ran down the steep terrain, holding my arms out for balance. I sprinted fast toward the tracks. The hunter screamed and changed direction to catch up.
He’s right where I needed him to be.
The train’s horn blew, metal grating against metal as it struggled to stop. I leaped on the tracks. It was so close that the lights blinded me. I dropped and rolled away. My cheek took the brunt of my fall and I sprang up to my feet, sprinting beside the train.
Glancing behind, I saw that the hunter wasn’t so lucky. He might not have been struck as I had planned, but now the twenty-car-long train put distance between us. Not exactly safe, but it was better than nothing.
I ran down the line, and as the train slowed down I hopped into train car sixteen. Huffing, I slid down against the wall and gave myself a minute to catch my breath. I straightened my legs out in front of me. The pain in my feet throbbed and the aches in my leg pulsed.
This time, I’d barely gotten away. I had to stop pushing myself so far. Next time, I might not make it.
My hand rested on top of my messenger bag, and on my treasure. It’s all that mattered. When I was with the books, I felt right. I wanted to be right.
I didn’t have long—if I didn’t work fast they’d catch me. Taking off my black robe, I folded it up small and hid my book in the fabric before stuffing it back into my bag. Beneath all that, I hid the blank parchment paper Ralph had given me. I don’t know why I hadn’t thrown it away. Or why I’d kept it.
With my robe off, I looked like a simple merchant’s daughter once again. A pair of fitted pants, a blue jacket, and a white blouse.
Respectable. Something the ministers couldn’t find fault with.
The train cars are connected by a series of doors. I slid between them, until I ended up in a sitting car. There, a train conductor in gray jacket, pants, and a matching cap was making his rounds.
When I got to him, he scowled. “Funny there, I don’t remember seeing you about before.”
Around my neck, I wore my merchant credentials. By ruling law, no one could leave their home without their credentials, no matter what it was they said.
When he pressed his lips together, his mustache bustled out. “Abby Turner, then? Daughter of Robert Turner, the merchant of Rottenwood?”
I nodded meekly, meanwhile a storm raged in my belly. “One and the same, good sir.”
“Long way from home for an underaged personage.” He scowled again, his eyes swallowed up by his bushy brow.
“As a merchant’s daughter, I frequently travel alone. The family requires it for survival, sir.”
“You do have impeccable manners for sixteen.”
I bowed slightly. “I thank you. Can I get that in writing to show my mother?”
My idea of a joke fell on deaf ears. His face didn’t even fl
icker with a smile. “Well then,” his arm gestured wide to an empty row of seats, “have your pick. Merchants are far and few between these days.” I saw what he meant, most of the rows were empty, except for a spattering of warm bodies asleep in the chairs.
Maybe the rumors were true and the world was running out of supplies, rations. I slipped into a seat with an open window, so I promptly closed it. Outside, the rolling hills were dull and gray. The grass appeared burnt and almost nothing grew anymore. Except maybe for grain, potatoes, and the occasional onion.
I chose my seat not for the view, but so I could keep an eye out for the hunters. The coast looked clear, so I rested my head against the glass and took a slow, long breath. I stifled a yawn and wondered if I could afford a nap.
A voice interrupted my calm and brought me back to reality with force. “I'm afraid, miss, we’re going to have to check your bag for wares.”
The conductor was back and behind him stood an angry looking woman in a black suit with an ill fitted hat. I feigned a pleasant smile. “Well, I'm a merchant's daughter. I'm supposed to have wares. I was sent on errands by my father, Mr. Taylor—.”
The conductor gave me a penetrating stare. The clamped hands behind his back suddenly reached for my bag.
Well, that wasn’t good. I snatched it from his grasp. “I beg your pardon, sir!”
“That's not the type of wares we’re looking for. Illegal contraband. There are reports in the area of some sort of hunter situation. Word came down from the ministers that we’re to check every lady boarding the train.”
I didn't flinch. Instead, held my nose firmly in the air. “Do I look like the sort of person that would be carrying illegal contraband? I’m a merchant’s daughter, as you know.”
The conductor sighed. “If you could please, Miss Taylor, show me the merchandise in your bag then I can move on and we can drop this horrid topic once and for all.”
I grinned pleasantly but not too overtly. “As you wish.” I opened my messenger bag beside me on the seat and without looking I fished out the bags of herbs and vials of healing ointments that I had collected on my journey. I handed them over to him and he was unimpressed as he sniffed and touched the merchandise.