The Mark of the Dragonfly

by Jaleigh Johnson

  What she never told Micah or anyone else was that in the months after her father died, when she desperately needed coin that he was no longer able to provide, she’d tried to sell the watch to a stiff hip from Ardra. The trader brought the watch back a week later, claiming Piper had cheated him, that the thing didn’t work. Piper gave him his money back, though it had almost killed her to do it. A few days later, the watch inexplicably started ticking again. Twice more Piper tried to sell it, but both times the traders brought it back, angrily waving the broken thing in her face. Apparently, the watch had decided not to work for anyone but Piper. She’d never figured out why.

  Piper knew she should be proud of her talent, and she was, but it made her nervous the way people whispered about her when they thought she couldn’t hear. They claimed that there were many machines only Piper could fix, and that made some people angry, as if she were taking something away from them by being so good at her work. How could the best machinist in the scrap town be so young, with no training beyond her father’s guidance and her own tinkering? That was what they whispered. Even Micah looked at her strangely sometimes, as he was doing now, and Piper hated it.

  “It’s getting late—or early, I guess,” she said. “You’d better head home.” The storm was coming, and she had to be ready. She didn’t have time to worry about stupid rumors. Piper held open the sack for Micah to put the music box in it. “Look, promise me you won’t take less than twelve for that thing, and make sure you tell anyone who looks at it that it plays a pretty song. They’ll want to hear all about it.”

  The melody had dwindled to a few meek notes. Micah pressed his ear against the box. “But I don’t know anything about the song. It’s from another world.”

  Piper threw up her hands, but she was smiling. A little bit of the tension went out of her. “Of course you don’t know it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make something up, you dumb puppy. Tell them it’s probably an old song from a world of poets, a lover’s lament.”

  “Lover’s lemon?” Micah said dubiously.

  “Lament,” Piper said. “Didn’t you learn anything in the Consortium school? It means regret or something. Trust me, they’ll eat it up.” She shooed him toward the door. “Go on.”

  Micah ran when Piper pretended to kick him out with her oversized boot. “Thanks, Piper,” he said, grinning. “Mom and Dad are coming back tomorrow night. I’ll bring you some fish from their catch!”

  As soon as he disappeared around the corner, Piper shut the door, shed her nightdress, and put on trousers and a thick cotton shirt, adding another layer of socks to the ones she already wore so her father’s boots would fit tighter. Luckily—or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it—she’d always had big feet. She’d outgrown her own boots months ago. Her father’s coat, however, didn’t fit her at all. The tail dragged on the ground, and the sleeves bunched at her elbows. It hung loose on her and she was always catching it on things, tearing holes and leaving threads hanging out. The garment looked more like a dog’s shaggy coat than a jacket. She adored it.

  After she dressed, Piper checked the stove again and hauled water in from the well. She filled the teakettle and set it on the stove to boil. From a cupboard, she took a box of tea and measured out a small amount to add when the water was done. For the rest of her breakfast, she got out the loaf of bread she’d made the day before and tore off two large chunks.

  Every now and then, she threw an uneasy glance out the window. The green light in the sky grew brighter with each passing hour, and the smell of brimstone thickened in the air, mingling with the scent of woodsmoke from the stove. By her guess, the meteor storm would break just before dawn, which gave her a couple more hours to get ready and get to the shelter.

  She packed a satchel with cloths, heavy leather gloves, a pair of goggles to keep any lingering dust out of her eyes, and a couple of rice balls she’d bought from the market. She went over every item twice to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that she’d have to come back for later. As soon as the storm was over, she needed to be among the first out to the fields for the harvesting—Micah would slow her down—she had to be ready to run as soon as the green light faded from the sky.

  She felt a twinge of guilt for lying to him, but the truth was too depressing. The fastest scrappers did always snatch up most of the valuable stuff. It only took thirty minutes after a storm ended to be left with junk. That’s how good the scrap towns had gotten at scavenging the objects that fell from the sky. If you didn’t get a move on, there was no point digging through the craters. There was nothing valuable left.

  Outside, Piper heard doors opening and closing up and down the street and footsteps passing by her house. A few people called out her name as they passed by her door to make sure she was awake and moving. She didn’t know who they were exactly—she never opened the door when they called to her—but they’d been doing it since the day her dad left the kingdom to go south to work in the machine factory in Noveen, and they’d kept doing it after he died. Piper wondered if her dad had asked them to look out for her while he was away. They never offered to share food with her—generosity only went so far in a scrap town—but she appreciated the little show of friendship, especially in a town where most people never bothered to learn their neighbors’ names.

  Many of the scrappers were nomads by nature, and superstitious. If they didn’t have any luck scavenging in their first few months in a scrap town, they moved on to the next one. They were always sure that all they needed was a change of scenery for a change in luck. As a result, there were always empty houses around town as scrappers cleared out and squatters moved in. Piper figured they all eventually ended up back where they started, with no better luck than when they’d begun.

  Her satchel packed, Piper poured the hot tea through a strainer into her favorite fat yellow mug. Curls of cinnamon-laced steam rose in the air. After an impatient minute waiting for the tea to cool, she drank it down, burning her tongue as usual. The scent was amazing, but the flavor was weak. She needed fresh leaves, but it was too much of a luxury to buy them when she still had a little bit left in the box. When she’d finished the bread and drained her second cup, she left her mug on the table next to the machine parts and went out to join the other scrappers on their way to the shelter.

  Frigid night wind burned against her face. Piper pulled her dad’s thick coat around her and hugged herself to hold in the warmth. Nearly Thirdmonth, she thought disgustedly, and winter still held the northern towns in a death grip. The shelter would be a little warmer with the heat of all the bodies, but Piper didn’t like the idea of so many people crammed together in a hole.

  In the distance, on the southern edge of town, green moonlight illuminated the sweeping, snow-covered roof of the Trade Consortium pavilion, the immense structure overshadowing the scrub-pine houses of the townspeople. Made of sturdier oak and pika wood shipped by rail from Ardra’s lumberyards, the pavilion housed the weekly trade markets sponsored by the Consortium. Behind it were the trade offices and multistory dwellings for Consortium representatives. The columned pavilion separated the two parts of the town like bars. Piper looked toward the center of town and saw Arno Weir standing next to an open metal door set into the ground.

  He saw her approach and pulled his lips back in a gap-toothed smile. “There’s my little machinist! Have you finished working on my steam engine yet?” As he spoke, he crossed her name off a list he clutched in his left hand.

  The population of the town was constantly changing, so it was hard to keep track of people and make sure they got to the shelter, but Weir knew everyone. He ran a general store out of his house and could tell you—for a price—which were the fairest traders at the market. If the town had been big enough to have a mayor, Weir would have been it. He was also one of Piper’s best customers.

  “It’s going to take me another week,” Piper told him, “and it’s going to cost you double.” That engine was a clunky little beast, more trouble than
it was probably worth, but Piper loved a challenge. Not that she’d ever admit that to Weir. If he thought she was having too much fun tinkering with the machines, he’d try to make her work for free. Piper never worked for free.

  Weir clicked his tongue and put on a morose expression. “You trying to cheat me again, Piper? What would your father say?”

  “He’d tell you you’re a bad actor,” Piper said. “You forgot to say it was a smaller model—the ones used on short-range, semi-rigid supply gliders. Those things are twitchy—don’t work right half the time—and you know it. You also conveniently forgot to mention that there were sarnun stretch coils all over it.”

  “No, no, no, I didn’t see anything like that—”

  Piper crossed her arms and smothered a grin. She couldn’t help it. She loved a good bargaining match, and she also enjoyed making Weir squirm. “Come on, Weir, you know this isn’t my first dance. You stripped the coils off, but the chemicals leave traces everywhere. You can’t miss them. They smell like dog vomit.”

  “Do they really?” Weir said, dropping his innocent expression. “I mean—Aw, darn it, Piper!”

  “Look, you know I like a good chemical accelerant as much as the next girl, but if you add too many seasonings, it spoils the soup,” Piper said. And really, it was shameful to muck up a perfectly good machine with chemicals and embellishments to make it go faster and run longer than it ought to. Why couldn’t people learn to be more respectful? “More time, more money, or I can bring the engine back tomorrow and we’ll call the deal off,” she said.

  “Not so hasty!” Weir cried, putting extra mournfulness in his tone. Piper rolled her eyes. “How can I argue with you? You’re magic with the machines. I’ll give you twenty extra and another week. Fair?”

  Piper nodded curtly. Normally she would have held out for more, but she wanted to shut him up. The last thing she needed was Weir praising her—loudly—in public about her talents. Just like Micah and that stupid watch. There wasn’t anything special about being a good machinist. Keeping her customers happy kept food in her belly, so she had to be good at her work. That was all there was to it.

  “Move on,” said a deep voice behind Piper. “You’re holding up the line.”

  “Sorry,” Piper said, glancing over her shoulder. A guard wearing the blue livery of the Trade Consortium frowned at her. The frown emphasized his long mustache and saggy cheeks. A hound-dog look. He wore a revolver at his belt—you didn’t see many of those in the north, where iron was scarce—and a crossbow on his back.

  The Trade Consortium was an independent organization sanctioned by the Merrow Kingdom to keep order in the scrap towns by settling disputes. They also hired men to make sure the scrappers didn’t fight each other over what they took from the harvesting fields. The more scrappers who harvested, the more goods there were to trade at the markets, and the Consortium took a cut of every sale. In return, they made sure each town had a couple of healers—if you had the coin to afford them—a school for the youngest children, and decent roads, and when fights did break out, the Consortium came down hard and stopped them. Those attentions stabilized the towns and helped them thrive as much as they could, but still poverty reigned and a perpetual feeling of despair hovered over the harvesting fields like the poisonous dust. Order was good, but it didn’t make daily living any easier.

  Piper passed Arno Weir and entered the shelter. The townspeople trooped single file down a set of earthen stairs into the dark. Being in the shelter had always felt to Piper like being buried alive. She’d never been able to stop the crawly feeling that came over her skin when she was in the shelter with the earth above her head. Forcing down the flutter of nerves in her stomach, she followed the crowd.

  Gathering like this was the closest the town ever got to an official function outside market days. She assumed all the scrap towns had shelters similar to this one, though she’d never been to any of the others. The problem was people built their houses closer and closer to the harvesting fields every year, so close that sometimes the meteors flew wide and demolished them like piles of matchsticks. The Consortium warned people against doing this, not only because of the meteors but also because of the dust, but they didn’t care enough to try to stop them. If only people would hold themselves back, just a little, not be so eager to get killed, there’d be no need to gather everybody underground.

  Piper heard Arno Weir’s heavy boot tread on the stairs. “Looks like that’s all of us,” he said, and the metal door clanged shut, making Piper jump. Candle lanterns filled the cramped space, illuminating the haggard, wind-burned faces of the townspeople. Smoke and the odor of unwashed bodies quickly soured the air.

  This last part of the night—the waiting—was the worst. Everyone was quiet for a while, but as soon as the crashes and booms of the first meteors sounded outside, it started. Mothers juggled their children, and the youngest ones started to cry because they were tired and hungry and didn’t like being underground in the stink and smoke any more than Piper did. Men fidgeted, stomped their feet for warmth, while some chewed their smelly sarnun tobacco and remarked to nobody in particular that it sounded like there were more meteors than usual.

  “Be a good harvest this time, wait and see,” Weir said. He removed a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly.

  Piper gritted her teeth to keep from screaming. Scrappers with mouths bigger than their brains—their talk was always the same. Everyone had a story of a friend of a friend of a friend who’d made a fortune in the fields after a huge storm. Piper knew it for trash. It was never a better harvest. Nobody ever found a trinket that made them rich, got them out of the scrap town and into a fancy mansion. Every person gathered in that hole had been born in a scrap town, and they’d probably die in one too.

  But not Piper.

  She had vowed it on the day she learned her dad was never coming back from the factory. Once she had enough money for a train ticket, she was leaving for Ardra. It was the capital of the Merrow Kingdom, the seat of the royal family, and the best place for someone with Piper’s skills. She’d find a machinist’s shop, a small one, and hire on for repair work for as long as they needed her. If Ardra didn’t suit her, she’d just keep traveling until she found the right place.

  No matter what happened, Piper had sworn—to herself and to her dad—she’d never work in a factory down south, and she wouldn’t live out her life in a scrap town. She wanted to see more of the world than this one tiny, frigid corner.

  Absorbed in her thoughts, she almost didn’t hear the alarmed cry that rang out from the back of the shelter. Jory, Micah’s older brother, ran up to her, his lantern swinging wildly in the darkness. “Where’s Micah?”

  A cold knot of dread settled in Piper’s stomach. “Isn’t he with you?” The boy wouldn’t be that stupid—not after she’d promised to help him … would he?

  “He said he was coming to the shelter with you.” Jory swung his lantern around, as if he could root out Micah from one of the dark corners. The shifting light reflected off the faces of the townspeople, many of whom had turned to watch the disturbance.

  “Weir, didn’t you check his name off the list?” one of them said.

  The merchant strode forward, glancing at his papers by the light of Jory’s lantern. “Yes, here it is—name’s checked off. He must have slipped away after I counted him.” He fixed Jory with a look of deep concern. “I’m so sorry, boy. So careless of me.”

  Piper knew better than that—and so did everyone else in the shelter. Weir’s sharp eyes never missed anything that went on in town, and he’d never “accidentally” let someone slip past him, especially if it meant that person might find something valuable in the fields before he had his chance to scavenge—unless that person had promised him a cut in exchange for his looking the other way. She couldn’t prove it, though, so she kept quiet and instead turned to Jory.

  “He probably went back home for something and got caught by the storm,” she lied. The t
ruth would only make Jory panic. “You run and see, and I’ll go to my house to make sure he didn’t stop there.”

  “You can’t leave,” Weir protested. “You know the rules.”

  “We’re not going to scavenge,” Jory said angrily. “I just want to find my brother.”

  “It doesn’t matter where you go,” Weir said. “If you’re outside the shelter during a storm, the Consortium will treat it as a crime. You’ll be imprisoned.”

  “But what if Micah gets hurt?” Jory shouted.

  They were wasting time, Piper thought, worry twisting her gut. Minute by minute, the storm grew stronger, and Micah was out in it. Micah, the boy she’d known since he was a toddler. He used to be afraid of the shelter when he was small. He would cry in his mother’s arms until Piper made faces at him and got him giggling. And some days, especially lately, Micah was the only one who could make Piper laugh. They took care of each other.

  Micah’s parents and Jory had looked after Piper when her dad went south to the factory so Piper didn’t have to live in one of the worker dormitories. Rumors circulated that they were horrible, with workers sleeping ten to a room in hammocks strung together like sausages. They’d spared Piper that, and had continued to watch over her after her dad died.

  Piper made a silent decision—and tried to ignore the voice in her head screaming that she was every kind of crazy for defying the Consortium.

  “You know, I’ve never seen the inside of a Consortium prison,” she remarked. “Think the food’s any good?” Before anyone could react, she turned and pounded up the shelter stairs. Jory started to follow, but Weir and two other men grabbed him and held him back. Ignoring the townspeople’s shouts, Piper threw aside the metal bar that secured the door and shoved it open. Hands reached for her, but she scrambled away and burst out into the cold night air, slamming the door behind her.