by Mira Bartók
Arthur’s refusal to leave caused a slight tear in the fabric of their friendship. Trinket seemed quiet and moody at times, which was completely uncharacteristic of her usual ebullient self. But she refused to give up and began plotting their escape anyway. She worked on her plan night and day, always refining it, shaping it into something magnificent and bold. By the end of the month, she knew exactly what they had to do.
May burst forth in all its glory, and the groundlings, though they couldn’t see the Outside, could feel it explode with life. On Sundays during recess, they were lured to the far end of the courtyard by the scent of lilacs floating over the Wall. The poor creatures just stood there, sniffing the air, a euphoric look upon their faces. Some had no idea what the scent was, but the effect on them was powerful. It caused a pang in their hearts, filling them with an insatiable longing — especially Arthur, who could not only smell the lilacs on the other side of the Wall but could also hear bees sipping nectar from the blossoms. He could hear birds singing in trees far from the white birch, and within those trees he heard the rising of sap, heard it rush upward like a stream trickles over rocks and little stones. The air was his library, and it was rich with sound. And when he caught these sounds, or “songs,” as he called them to himself, he could hear his blood rise to his heart like sap, and he imagined himself a tree, his arms its branches, full of singing birds.
And still, Trinket could not persuade her friend to leave. At the mere mention of it, he’d look away, clear his throat, and say, “I’m sorry, Trinket. I just can’t.”
One day, they were working side by side at the end of a long conveyor belt in the vast, windowless Widget Room. Against the steel-plated wall behind them was a huge pile of beetle widgets, discarded for not being up to the standards of the foreman, Mr. Bonegrubber. The pile looked like a mountain of dead bugs, as if an exterminator had just paid the Home a visit.
Unlike the other rooms at the orphanage, the Widget Room was hot and clammy, and not pleasantly hot either. The groundlings were forced to endure long shifts with scorching steam blasting in their faces, making it difficult to see or hear.
The sign above Trinket and Arthur read WIDGET QUALITY CONTROL. It was their job that day to inspect the beetles that the rest of the line had swiftly assembled before the shiny black bugs traveled into the mouth of the Monster.
The Monster was what the groundlings called the massive steam-powered machine that swallowed thousands of widgets every day. The Monster itself looked like a gigantic plate-metal version of the tiny black bugs it devoured.
This machine, whose gaping mouth the orphans lived in fear of — for what if one of them fell onto the conveyor belt and was sucked into that dark tunnel of doom? — sat in the middle of the room. It was the only room in which one could not hear the clocks, for the sound of the Monster was relentless and excruciatingly loud.
The groundlings worked at breakneck speed to keep up with the Monster as it hissed, screeched, snorted, and belched. Every five minutes, it let out a screaming whistle and a blast of steam. When it was full to the hilt with beetles, its mouth clamped shut with an earsplitting bang that made Arthur jump no matter how many times it happened. Then it started to shake as usual. Above its “mouth” were two glass globes that glowed bright red. These “eyes” turned from red to greenish white, and the machine made a horrible crackling sound. Sparks flew from the eyes and a bulbous globe on top of the machine, falling on the groundlings like hot embers.
Even though this happened on a regular basis, it never ceased to frighten most of the groundlings. All of them, including Trinket and Arthur, turned at that moment toward it, like people who can’t stop looking at a lightning storm when the safest thing to do is run for cover. But where could the little groundlings go? At that moment, whatever covered their bodies — fur, feathers, or scales — stood up on end as a fierce jolt of electromagnetic energy zapped into the belly of the beast and reverberated throughout the room.
With another loud blast of steam and a blaring whistle, the mouth opened again and from the other end of the Monster (its backside, so to speak) a metallic net appeared. In it were hundreds of beetles, quivering like tiny black fish pulled from the sea. Except for a strange white-green glow emanating from their eyes, the beetles looked exactly the same as before, but now they were electromagnetically charged.
Arthur wondered if they were toys for children in the Great White City. If so, what kind of child would ever want to play with them?
Mr. Bonegrubber, or just “Bonegrubber,” as the orphans called him, was marching around the room, barking at the groundlings, “Go faster, faster! Put yer backs innit, varmints!” as they frantically assembled beetle after beetle after beetle and pushed them down the line.
He was a squat, bowlegged man with a large lumpy head like a cabbage. In the harsh light of the Widget Room, the top of his head seemed to glow a pale green. He ate only cabbage soup and peas, and spent so much time indoors — for, as he put it, “The Outside’s only for thems that’s wild and uncivilized like” — that his face, so long concealed from the sun, had taken on the color of an old turnip. His demeanor also resembled that of a cruciferous vegetable: bitter and exceptionally gassy.
Every fifteen minutes, Bonegrubber made his rounds, breathing down the necks of the workers, growling at them to speed up. After each round, he retreated to his office to have a few swigs from the large brown bottle he kept in his top desk drawer. After a couple hours of this, his march turned into more of a wobble, and his “Faster, faster” sounded more like “Fashter, fashter.”
No one worked faster than Trinket. She was so agile with her beak and feet, and worked so quickly, that sometimes she looked like a small brown blur.
“How do you do that?” whispered Arthur. “You don’t even have hands.”
“As if hands were so important,” she said, and poked his arm. Arthur stifled a laugh.
A bit later, when Bonegrubber was fully “in his cups,” Trinket tried to broach the subject of escape once again. The sound in the room was unbearable but was the perfect thing for hatching secret plans with a friend, if only Trinket could persuade that friend to join her.
She was perched on a high stool next to him. Arthur stood leaning against the conveyor belt, working as quickly as he could, but he was tired. They had already been there for three hours and had five more to go. “This way, no one can listen in,” she began. “Now, Arthur, hear me out. . . .”
“I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to t-talk about it.”
She glanced at him and said nothing. They continued working, Arthur picking up beetles to examine them for flaws, then pushing them along the conveyor belt toward the Monster’s mouth, Trinket doing the same with her beak.
The warning whistle blew, which meant the Monster was stuffed to the gills again. It had swelled up so much, it looked like the nuts and bolts holding it together were going to pop. The ground beneath them began to shake, and Arthur felt like a wall of sound was surging toward him like a sea loosed from a dam.
He covered his ear with one hand and cupped his other over Trinket’s small brown head.
“Thanks,” she said, after the shaking had stopped. Then she nudged him with her beak and said, “Arthur, please — you’re the best listener in the world, but you won’t listen to me. Can’t you hear me just this once?”
Arthur stared down at the pile of beetles before him. All of a sudden he felt terrible. She was right. He had made up his own Golden Rule of Silence. He was just as bad as Miss Carbunkle. And so this time, he listened.
They pretended to be concentrating hard on their work while Trinket explained the plan — how Arthur would escape through the hole behind the rubble while she created some kind of diversion. Then she would escape too, but another way altogether. She was rather vague about that part, though.
“It’s too dangerous,” said Arthur, shaking his head. “I probably won’t fit through the hole. Second, you still haven’t told me how
you’d get out, and third, we’d most certainly get caught.”
“I don’t think so,” said Trinket, puffing up her feathers and hopping a little on her stool. “Not with my plan, we won’t.”
“But — but what about the Wig’s g-goggles? She can see a mile away. Trinket, why can’t you just leave things as they are? It’s so much nicer now that you’re here. And besides, when we come of age, she’ll have to let us go.”
Bonegrubber emerged from his office, unsteady on his feet. He made his rounds, shouting random insults at the groundlings, then retreated to his office once again.
“Arthur, don’t you see?” said Trinket.
“See what?”
She pointed with her beak to a group of older groundlings. “Grumblers,” the others called them — orphans who had been there since birth and were now nearly eighteen. They barely spoke, and when they did, they made a grumbling sound like tired old men.
“They’ve been here so long, they don’t even flinch,” said Trinket.
“We won’t be here forever,” said Arthur. “Come on.”
“You don’t understand,” said Trinket. “We’re never going to leave. And if we do, it’ll be because she sent us somewhere awful. Haven’t you noticed that over the last couple months, some of the orphans have gone missing?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But what? Explain that.”
“Well,” said Arthur, “they must have been taken in by some family, right? At least I . . . I hope so. And anyway — the older ones, well, they probably just . . . just went somewhere to, I don’t know. To work, I suppose. And . . . and when we grow up, we’ll go somewhere too — w-won’t we?” His voice trailed off. He had never really thought about where they would go after they came of age. “I mean,” he continued, “you never see anyone over eighteen, do you? There. That proves it.”
“Arthur, that doesn’t prove a thing,” insisted Trinket. “For all we know, the Wig turns the old Grumblers into slaves or . . . or maybe she even kills them!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, what about the little ones? Five of them disappeared out of the blue last week. They broke some stupid rules and what happened? I’m sure she snatched them and they’re locked up forever somewhere. Rats are probably eating their toes off as we speak. We can’t stay. We simply can’t.”
Arthur stared out across the room. All around him were rows upon rows of groundlings, standing on their tired feet, assembling beetle after beetle, snapping bodies and legs and antennae together. He imagined doing this for the rest of his life. Then he imagined being locked in a cell somewhere with rats making a meal of his feet. A shudder ran through him, from the tip of his ear to his toes. He stopped suddenly, dropping the beetle he had just picked up to inspect.
Because he had halted the flow of production, the widgets in front of him immediately began to pile up. He shoved the mound toward the Monster’s mouth without examining them and hoped no one would notice. The whistle and steam blew, and he covered his ear and Trinket’s head once again.
He thought about how Trinket was a bird groundling, even though she couldn’t fly, and how she should be free, like the birds in the trees over the Wall. He thought about the sound of sap running through the trees. And he thought of something else, which caused a single tear to trickle down his face. It was the song he had heard long ago, from a time before he bore an unlucky number around his neck. The song that still glowed like a diamond in the deep red pocket of his heart.
“Arthur,” whispered Trinket. “There’s something else you should know. I didn’t have a chance to tell you earlier.”
“What?”
“17 Tintagel Road.”
“What?”
“It’s where you were born, Arthur. You were born eleven years ago on December twenty-fifth, at 17 Tintagel Road in Lumentown. I’m so sorry, Arthur, but your birth name wasn’t in the file. Your family name wasn’t either. Just the address and the date. But at least now you know where and when you were born. So do you want to find the place or not?”
That night, Arthur tossed and turned in his bed. He couldn’t stop thinking about the extraordinary thing Trinket had said earlier. She had told him how, with the help of Nesbit and Snook, she had broken into Miss Carbunkle’s office the night before. And how she had spent hours searching through Miss Carbunkle’s files until she found his birthplace. She felt like it was the only way she could persuade him to go. She had taken a huge risk for him. What if she had gotten caught? Miss Carbunkle had been sleeping right above her. He shuddered to think about what could have happened.
As he lay there thinking about all of this, he heard a strange conversation starting up behind the wall. He could hear two congenial rats, different than the ones in the dining hall. He listened intently as they spoke:
RAT ONE: Hullo, mate! What brings you to this neck a the woods? Movin’ up in the world, ain’t we? Nothin’ like improvin’ oneself, I always say.
RAT TWO: Right you are — that’s the ticket. Movin’ up. Rubbin’ noses with the hoity-toities, I am!
The two rats broke into unbridled squeals of laughter.
RAT TWO: Me an’ the wife an’ little ’uns couldn’t bear it no more down in that cellar with all the goin’s on, the knockin’ and the bangin’ about. Up to somethin’, that one is.
RAT ONE: The big ’un with the nesty whatsit on her head?
RAT TWO: The very same. Buildin’ more a them big monsters, she is. The wife and wee bairns can’t sleep, you see. Thems like t’other ’un but three times big as can be. They say there’s more a-comin’ too! Buildin’ a regular ol’ factory, she is.
RAT ONE: Well, I never! Ain’t the world changin’ fast? You just pay it no mind, you hear me? That’s human business, that is, not ours. Now then, when you get all settled like, you stop by an’ the wife’ll fix you up a nice plate, she will. Door’s always open for ye. Don’t even have to knock.
Arthur sat staring into darkness, holding his toy mouse and blue bundle for comfort. It was a cold, moonless night. He thought over and over about the rat’s ominous words: Buildin’ more a them big monsters, she is. . . . They say there’s more a-comin’ too! Buildin’ a regular ol’ factory . . .
Hadn’t he heard strange sounds coming from below for a while now? Banging and hammering and all sorts of things being knocked about? But he had brushed them away. He had been so chained to his way of thinking that he hadn’t seen what was so clearly before his eyes now. Miss Carbunkle had no plans to free them when they came of age. Why should she? She had plenty of work for them here.
And somewhere out there was 17 Tintagel Road. He whispered it out loud — “Tintagel Road.” It sounded like magic.
As quietly as he could, he crept to where Trinket was sleeping and shook her gently. “Wake up!” he whispered. “Trinket — you’re right. We have to leave. I know we do. So what do we do next?”
OUTSIDE THE WALL, May was a hush of doves and morning dew. It was ladybirds in bright air, harebells and foxgloves blooming in the loam. It was lambs playing skip and chase in the meadows beyond the hill. May was the broad blue lift of sky above the coppice and the heath, and above the road to the Great White City of Lumentown.
And May, in all her splendor, was calling two young orphans to take flight.
Trinket had instructed Arthur to prepare a bundle of provisions for their journey. He stuffed what food he could find or barter for inside his scratchy old blanket, along with his only possessions: the blue scrap of cloth, the gold key, and Merlyn, his clockwork mouse. He tied the bundle around his waist with a piece of cord and hid it inside his threadbare coat.
That Sunday, at the beginning of recess, Arthur stood in a corner below his favorite gargoyle and waited for Trinket’s sign. She had said she’d hide somewhere after roll call, then slip into the courtyard at recess. “I can’t be seen until the last minute. You’ll understand better when it’s time. It’s a surprise!” She’d give him the signal by creating
a distraction, at which point he would sneak behind the pile of rocks and climb inside the hole, which he secretly thought of as the Hole I Definitely Will Get Stuck In. She promised to meet him on the Outside, at the exit to the tunnel.
“Trust me!” she said. “It’s going to be brilliant!” Then she hopped up and down for a while, peeping excitedly, saying, “I can’t wait, I can’t wait!” until Arthur calmed her down by ruffling the feathers on her soft, fluffy head.
In the courtyard, it was business as usual. Miss Carbunkle and Mr. Sneezeweed paced back and forth near the entrance to Kestrel Hall, keeping an eye out for troublemakers. Wire and his gang loitered in the center, giving one another a good shove once in a while out of boredom. And the small, gentle groundlings of the Home played their small, gentle groundling games as far as possible from Wire and the rest.
It was business as usual, that is, until Trinket slipped by Sneezeweed and the headmistress unnoticed — except, of course, by her friend, who was waiting beneath the shadow of a sad, droopy-eyed gargoyle.
When Arthur saw what his crazy, courageous companion was wearing, he broke into a huge smile. She had told him she had invented a “secret weapon,” but her new suit was so extraordinary, so unique, he could scarcely believe his eyes. I think this might actually work, he said to himself as he watched Trinket sneak up on the group of bullies in the middle of the yard.
While Mug was boasting to his pals about hiding a dead mouse in some first year’s pillow, Trinket jabbed him in the foot with her beak and dashed out of sight.
“What’d you do that for?” said Mug to Orlick, who was standing next to him.
“Do what?” said Orlick.
Trinket poked Mug again, then Orlick, then Mug again, then skittered away to jab the rest of their gang.
“You poked me with a stick, you did!”
“Did not!”
“Did so!”
And so on.
Trinket flitted about, stabbing at this one and that one, until every one of Wire’s associates thought another was at fault. Wire stood off to the side and watched with amusement as pandemonium ensued.