Cinnamon Moon

by Tess Hilmo

  And so we don’t.

  There are no Christmas trees to be found in the city but we string lace around the kitchen. Quinn teaches Ida the lyrics to an Irish holiday tune. She in turn teaches us that Tannenbaum means Christmas tree in German and all about how the first traditional Christmas tree was set up in Freiburg, Germany, in 1419 by the town bakers. As she tells it, they decorated the tree with fruit, nuts, and baked goods and set it outside of their shop. Then, when the holiday was over, they invited all the children in town to come together and eat the treats hidden in the tree’s branches.

  She seems so proud of that story.

  We eat roasted goose with apple stuffing, red cabbage, and Ida’s potato dumplings, which are delicious. After dinner is finished and the dishes are washed, Quinn says, “Time for presents,” and walks to the corner of the room where his fiddle is propped against a table. “It’s not much but…”

  “It’s perfect,” Ida says, not even knowing what he has planned. She pulls me over to sit on her couch. “Play for us.”

  Quinn tunes his strings—which always sounds like a screeching bird—and tucks his fiddle under his chin. “You may not know this song, Ida, but Ailis does. It was one of our father’s favorites.”

  Then he begins playing “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye.” It’s a jaunty marching song but the lyrics are terribly tragic—all about a soldier who comes back from war unrecognizable. Luckily, Quinn doesn’t sing the lyrics.

  When he finishes, Ida bounces up out of her seat, clapping.

  I give my brother a hug. “Thank you,” I whisper in his ear as I pull away.

  “I feel like they are here with us,” Quinn says, putting his fiddle into the case.

  “Of course they are,” Ida says. “They are with you always. Some evenings, when the house is too quiet, I talk out loud to my Gunther. I tell him about the work and the crazy people who have come into the shop and all about the spunky Irish girl who helps me keep our business going.” She reaches for two boxes on the floor next to her couch. “My turn for presents. One for you,” she says, handing a box to Quinn, “and one for you,” she says, handing the other to me.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I say. “I don’t have anything for you.”

  “An old woman such as myself has no need for more trinkets. You are young with so much life ahead of you. Take this and be happy.”

  Quinn opens his box and pulls out a soot-gray bowler.

  “A young man deserves a proper hat,” Ida says.

  “I love it!” Quinn puts it on and walks around the room with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out. I have to admit he looks good.

  “Now you,” Ida says to me.

  I open my box and pull out a bonnet made of crushed blue velvet and white lace. “Isn’t this the hat you were making for the mayor’s wife?”

  “So I told a lie, shoot me. Put it on, put it on.”

  I go over to the window, using the dark pane as a looking glass, and slide the hat over my wavy hair.

  Ida comes up behind me, putting her hands on my shoulders. I can see the reflection of her face in the window glass just slightly behind mine. “I will add a bit more to my to be verb list,” she says. “I am amazed, you are beautiful.”

  15

  Nettie has been gone for two weeks when Quinn and I find ourselves standing next to the buckeye tree, waiting for Sam. Earlier, he took Miss Franny by the hand, flashed a smile, and asked if Quinn and I could leave our chores to attend tonight’s celebration with him. Several businesses in Chicago are coming together to commemorate the rebuilding with a huge bonfire, which seems an ironic choice to me. Miss Franny wasn’t happy about his request and didn’t want to join us but she can’t say no to Sam.

  “He said he’d take care of a few things and then would try to meet us here,” Quinn says, which probably means Sam stopped by the pub. “But he also said we could go over without him if he was running late.”

  Icy wind swirls and cuts through the seams in my coat. My feet ache from standing on the frozen ground. The sun is fading behind dark clouds. Night is coming again.

  “I’m freezing and I bet he’s already over there,” I say, wrapping my arms across my middle.

  “Let’s go then,” Quinn says.

  We head over to the open field where swarms of people are already gathering.

  “Look at that!” Quinn says, pointing to a pile of wood at least fifteen feet high.

  “I hope they have firemen around. And water.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  We push our way through the mob to the front. Someone bumps into me from behind and I grab on to Quinn’s arm.

  “Stay close,” I say.

  He hears me but takes off anyway, saying, “There’s Sam.”

  Everyone looks the same to me—men and women in dark coats and hats, scarves wrapped up around their chins. Children clinging to their parents’ coat pockets or sleeves.

  “Wait!” I copy the children and grab Quinn’s coat, being pulled along as he zigzags through the masses, over to the other side of the wood piled up for the bonfire.

  “Hiya, Sam,” Quinn says when we meet up.

  “Hiya back,” Sam says, grinning wide and smacking Quinn on the shoulder.

  “We waited for you at the tree,” I say, aggravated.

  “But you found me after all, didn’t you?” Sam says. Then he turns to Quinn. “Where’s your fiddle?”

  “I left it at the boardinghouse.”

  “Too bad,” Sam says. “Crowds this big can be a real payday for a kid with talent like yours.”

  “I don’t want to work tonight.”

  Just then, some guy walks up to a podium that is built onto a mini-stage next to the woodpile. His collar is winter white, starched heavily and pushing up his sagging neck. “People! People!” he shouts into the crowd. After a minute, the group quiets down and listens. “We are coming together as a city, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. As our great Mayor Medill says, this new Chicago will be mightier than ever before!”

  The crowd goes wild.

  “All right, all right, people!” the man shouts, lifting his arms up high and then lowering them slowly, like he is pushing down the volume. “It is time to start our celebration.”

  A loudmouth from the crowd yells out, “Then go get Mrs. O’Leary and her cow. They’re good at lighting fires!”

  The crowd laughs and pushes one another and murmurs about the reckless Mrs. O’Leary and her awful cow.

  “Idiots,” I say, but mostly to myself because I know I am outnumbered.

  Somewhere around the edges of the woodpile, lines of fire climb up and, within seconds, a bonfire is raging.

  “To our Chicago!” the man at the podium shouts, again throwing both arms up high over his head.

  People cheer, breaking into dance as musicians begin to play. Sam swings his arm into mine and twirls around in a dance, his eyes shining from the firelight. Then he takes Quinn’s hand and begins threading through the crowd, knees high and head moving from side to side. It is a dance of joy and unity.

  “Let go, Ailis,” Sam says when he wraps back around and sees me standing still. “Just let go and dance!”

  And, despite myself, I take his hand, lift my knees, and dance with the rest of Chicago. I flap my arms out like a bird, and jump little sprite jumps. I give myself completely to the celebration.

  Sam, Quinn, and I dance for over two hours, until the bonfire dwindles to a mass of embers and the firemen step in to wet everything down.

  “Let’s go over there,” Sam says, pointing to a row of rocks along the side of a building.

  We sit a minute to catch our breath and watch as everyone separates into their own lives once again.

  “That was fun,” Quinn says through broken breaths.

  Sam nods.

  I pull my coat tighter. The sweat along my back makes me cold now that I have stopped dancing. “Maybe we should go.”

  “In a minute,” Sam says. “I
heard about a rat exterminating company today that uses children to do some of the work. It’s called Absolute Exterminators and is owned by a guy named Rold Blume.”

  That makes Lady June’s name June Blume. “Do they have Nettie?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but word has it they’ve got some brute filching children off the streets.”

  “Charlie,” I say, guessing.

  “Ronnie at the pub told me this creep’s getting twenty bucks a head. He even said the guy would give me a cut if I came up with a kid or two.” He must see my expression because he quickly adds, “Don’t worry, I’m not interested in that kind of dough.”

  “Twenty dollars is nothing for a person’s life.”

  “It’s enough for this guy.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn says, “because it’s not his life he’s selling off.”

  Sam picks up a pebble and tosses it across the road. “He’s a chump.”

  “What can we do?” I ask.

  Sam cranes his neck, looking across the road to the bonfire area. “Ronnie thinks the company is bunking these kids in a burned-out five-story over on Monroe Street. If they’re working tonight, we might get lucky and see something.”

  We head over to the building on Monroe Street, which used to be a grand hotel called the Monroe. Now it’s charred brick walls with squares of tin blocking the window openings.

  “People live there?” Quinn asks.

  “People live wherever they can nowadays,” Sam says.

  I think of the man Quinn and I saw living in the piano crate.

  Sam points at three shadows slinking out from around the corner of the building. I start to go over but Sam puts his hand on my shoulder. “Hold on,” he whispers. An older boy comes out behind those three shadows and begins trailing them. “The overseer.”

  “How are we gonna ask those kids about Nettie if they’re being watched?” I say.

  Sam crosses his arms and rocks back on his heels. “That’s a good question.”

  “And I don’t get why they’re even taking children in the first place,” I add. “There are so many people out of work right now, why don’t they hire adults?”

  “Free labor is better than paid labor any day of the week,” Sam says. “Plus, children are small and can go into areas a grown man can’t.”

  “What kind of areas?” I ask.

  “Rickety top floors of burned buildings. Skinny sewer pipes. Chimneys—just about anywhere a rat likes to hide.”

  Thinking of Nettie in places like that makes me queasy.

  “Do you really think she could be in that building?” Quinn asks.

  “Hard to say for sure,” Sam says. “The truth is, we don’t know if Charlie took Nettie.”

  “I bet he did,” I say.

  “There’s no real evidence of it,” Sam says. “All we know is that Absolute Exterminators is using children to do their dirty work and that some of those children are being kept here at the Monroe. Nettie could be anywhere, really. And with anyone.”

  I know Sam is right. “Should we knock on the door?”

  “No,” Sam says. “It’s best to hang back and watch how things work. If we go up to the door we could get pulled into trouble. Let’s take our time and be smart. It can be dangerous if we’re not thoughtful about our actions—both for Nettie and for the two of you.”

  Quinn shoves his fists into his pockets and turns his chin up to the cold night sky. His breath is a stream of white as he says, “She’s just a little girl.”

  “Which is what makes her a perfect target,” Sam says.

  So we sit in the night and watch for shifting shadows or movement around the hotel.

  After a while, Quinn leans his head on Sam’s shoulder and yawns. “Let’s go home and try again tomorrow,” he says.

  “Not so fast,” Sam says in a low whisper as he points down the road where three more children are just leaving the hotel.

  Two are boys, maybe eight or nine years old.

  The third child is Nettie.

  16

  We slink behind piles of brick and bits of building—keeping an eye on Nettie and trailing the overseer. He is an older teenage boy who follows the three children through the streets and down to a sewer station by the river. When they get there, he gives Nettie and each boy a pouch full of something as well as an empty potato sack. He pulls three lines of rope from the pack on his back, tying one around each child’s waist. Then he hands one of the boys a lantern, lifts the manhole cover in the street, and lowers them into the sewer.

  “They’re all alone down there,” I say.

  “They have the overseer, but he’s just a kid, too,” Sam points out. “Follow me, there’s another one of these manholes around the corner.”

  I am wearing a green-and-red plaid dress of Ida’s. When she gave it to me, she told me about her mother making it for her sixteenth birthday in Germany. “Turn away,” I say, stepping into the remains of a building and crouching down behind a wall. “I can’t ruin this dress.”

  Quinn’s eyes are as wide as wheels. “You’re not going into the sewer naked, are you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll keep my underthings on. And I’ll have my coat, which is long enough. Now turn away and keep an eye out.” I slip out of the dress, tuck it carefully in a corner, and button my coat. It is shorter than I realized.

  Sam whistles when I come out into the light of the street lamp. “Nice knees,” he teases.

  “Never mind my knees.”

  Quinn and I follow Sam to the other manhole cover.

  “This connects to the same sewer tunnel,” Sam says. “Two of us can go down but one needs to stay up here as a lookout.”

  “I’ll go,” Quinn and I both say at the same time.

  Sam shakes his head as he lifts the heavy steel cover from the manhole. “I’m not about to send you two down there alone. Who knows what you’d find? I’m going. The question is, which of you will stay here to give us a hand up when it’s time to come out?”

  “You’re stronger to help lift us out,” I say to Quinn.

  He must see how much I want this because he says, “Go, already.”

  I look into the sewer. A steamy, foul-smelling mist rises up in my face. “It’s pitch-black.”

  “Luckily,” Sam says, “I thought we might be exploring tonight and came prepared.” He pulls two thick candles from his coat pocket, shimmies up the lamppost on the corner, lifts the glass, lights both of the candles, which he holds in one hand, and slides back down to the street. It is quite a feat.

  “I’ll go first,” I say, thinking of my coat-dress and Sam being below, possibly looking up.

  “There’s not a ladder. You’ll have to hang and then drop down. I can’t guarantee you’ll drop onto a platform, though that’s what is usually below each of these manholes.”

  “How do you know so much about the sewer?” Quinn asks.

  Sam grins. “They make a good getaway if you’re in a bind.”

  “Hang and then drop,” I say. “Okay.” I sit on the rim of the hole and turn onto my belly. The stink is putrid and thick. I never knew you could taste a smell, but this is the kind of stench that lines your tongue and makes you want to gag.

  “Now drop,” Sam says from above.

  I hear a light scratching of claws below. My heart starts pounding. “There’s something down here.”

  “I know,” Sam says. “Rats.”

  “And Nettie,” Quinn adds.

  I let go and drop down onto a platform. “I need a candle,” I whisper up to them.

  Sam ties a string around a lit candle and slowly lowers it to me. Then he lowers the second candle the same way. As soon as I hold the candles up, shadows skitter away, farther down the tunnel.

  “They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them,” Sam says, jumping down next to me. He takes one of the candles.

  “So what if there are rats down here?” I ask. “Why do they have to catch them?”

  “They breed
in the sewers, but they’re curious creatures and like to wander up into shops and homes above, where they can steal a crust of bread or a crumble of tart,” Sam says. I remember Mr. Frankel teaching us how a group of rats is called a mischief and guess Sam is right. “Businesses are struggling,” Sam says. “A rat infestation is enough to close down a pub or hotel.” He lifts his candle up. “Walk along these ledges at the sides. They will lead us to larger platforms every so often. Pay attention and be careful not to fall in.”

  The ledges, as he calls them, are made of brick and are only about ten inches wide. They run along each side of the tunnel, just above the river of sludge and slime that goes down the middle. We walk on them like we are walking a tightrope, one foot in front of the other.

  “How come it’s not freezing in here like it is on the street?”

  “What comes out of a body is warm,” Sam says. “Put enough of that together…”

  “Oh.” I don’t require more details.

  Looking ahead, I can see the glow of a lantern floating in the air in the distance.

  Sam turns his head back to me. “Remember, we will be directly below Nettie’s overseer. We don’t want to get her in trouble.”

  I nod, though I know he can’t see me.

  “Haallooo,” Sam says as we come upon the next platform. One of the boys is holding up the lantern and the other boy is pouring small piles of white powder where the brick ledge meets the tunnel wall. Likely poison, I guess. “Just passing through.” Sam directs those words up the hole above the boy, to the overseer.

  I am about to ask where Nettie is when she pops her head out of a skinny pipe in the wall. “I got three of them,” she says, pulling her arm out. Three dead rats hang by their tails in her hand.

  “Did you put more medicine down?” the lantern boy asks. Now that I am closer I can see he is much older than I originally thought. Small, but older.