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- Swamp Dogs
Swamp Dogs
A short story by
Michelle Wynne
Copyright © 2014 by Michelle Wynne
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
Swamp Dogs
Killian came back today.
I saw him walking the mines with the Bluecoats and I didn’t even recognize him. Not at first. I saw only the fine coat and the clean boots and the circle of guards and a black buzz filled my head, a hate so choking I couldn’t hardly breathe. Then he came closer—and I knew it was Killian. Even after all they’d done to him, I knew it was Killian.
~.~.~
Me and Killian, we known each other ever since we was little, since before we was big enough to form proper memories. We had a special way of talking and hearing, a little language all our own that we both knew before we had learnt a proper language. Before we ever met face to face, we spent hours listening and talking in that special rhythm of not-words that we had, wading in that stream of knowing without seeing, hearing without speaking.
Mum called it the Gift.
For a long time that confused me, because when other people used the word “gift” it meant good things like candy or toys, or a getting a whole chicken drumstick to yourself on your birthday. When Mum used it, her face was pale and unhappy and I could hear the fear in her voice like the twang and squeak of a wire gone taut and pulled to the breaking point.
We could never let anyone know we had the Gift, Mum said, or they’d come and take it away. That made plenty of sense to me. Out here in the Swamp, there was nothing you could have that can’t be taken away again.
Either it’s the Bluecoats coming round on their patrols telling us they’re just here to keep the peace among us or it’s the union gangs saying they’re here to protect us against the Bluecoats. With so many people looking out for us it’s a wonder how we still manage to keep on dying.
Sometimes it ain’t even a person that comes and takes from you. Sometimes it’s the Swamp itself that comes sneaking into your shack at night all soft and silent to steal your breath away, bit by little bitty bit, til one day you run out of breaths and you just keel over and when they bury you, your corpse is oh-so-light cause there ain’t nothing left inside. The Swamp had taken it all.
That’s what happened with Mum. After so many years, I can’t remember her voice or the color of her eyes no more, but I’ll never forget the smell at her funeral, the chemical stink as the flames exploded across the pyre with a soft pop and a whoosh. Even in the heart of the Swamp, standing ankle deep in runoff from the refinery, the fumes from that poisoned fire made our eyes water and people shuffled nervously in place, anxious to leave. It was a short funeral. The body went up like dried kindling. I can’t remember if I cried.
The Bluecoats have some fancy name for it—McPherson’s Disease, after the fancy doctor who discovered it. I guess in their world it’s a good thing to have your name be attached to a disease that kills people. You never hear them naming cures after nobody. But then I guess we wouldn’t hear about it. Not many cures make it down to the Swamp.
Even after mum was gone, we knew to keep our mouths shut about the Gift.
But that didn’t mean we didn’t use it.
~.~.~
We was hardly out of diapers when we did our first run. Old Jack laughed in our faces when we offered.
He was the boss of one of the smaller union gangs, a thin, frail looking guy with honest-to-god glasses, like some accountant from the market district. If you look close, and you ain’t an idiot, that first impression of frailty fades away quick and you see the way Jack moves, sure and deadly like an alley cat, no wasted swagger. If the rumors are true, he’s got half a dozen knives on his person at any given time, and knows of a dozen more ways to gut a man.
There were others we could have gone to, men with less impressive credentials, but Jack was local. He’d grown up on the same street as my Da.
When I made my offer, Jack’s flashed yellow teeth at me.
“Hire a pair of puppies t’do a grown man’s job? Do I look like a fool to ye?”
Killian squirmed beside me, his uncertainty shooting a sour fear through me that turned my knees wobbly. I gritted my teeth and jutted my chin out, willing myself to see it through. Better to die a quick death in the streets than a slow death of starving.
“We’re fast. Faster’n any of your men, I reckon.” Jack rolled his eyes and started to turn away, and I blurted, before I could think enough to regret it: “And we’ll do it for cheap.”
That got the old bastard’s attention. He narrowed his eyes at me, leaned a massive arm against the scarred bartop. “How cheap?”
The noise in bar fizzled out. One of the roughs stood up, the cold, fishy stink of his nervousness washing over us.
“Hold now, Jack. That pup you’re talking to is Ash Kincaid—John Kincaid’s lad. He’ll strip your hide if he hears.”
“I ain’t inclined to tell him,” Old Jack drawled, his eyes going hard at the man. A cold moment passed between them, and then the man turned away in disgust.
Jack turned back to me, looking me over like a matron inspecting cabbages on market day.
“Kincaid’s lad, are ye?”
“You know my da?”
“Aye, I know ‘im. Knew yer mum, too. A fine woman, god rest her soul. You take after him more’n her. You’re the spitting image of him, now that I look at ye.”
I bristled at that. He noticed and laughed, but he slid a waxed envelope across the bar to me.
“Deliver it before nightfall and there’s a frog in it for ye.”
Killian’s excitement hopped through my blood. We traded dreams with each other, fast as cards: the burnished copper of a frog coin, a bulging bag of grains, a basket of bread, steaming meat pies. I snatched the envelope and shoved it down my shirt.
Jack’s lips twitched at the corners. “Even the union dogs won’t gut a littling, but that don’t mean they won’t give ye the beating of yer life. Have a care not to run into them, little pup.” He turned away from us and motioned for a fresh mug.
“I know how to avoid them,” I said. Behind me, Killian signaled his support and agreement. It was an invisible thing for all around us, but for me it was as solid as his hand slipped into mine. We were in it together.
Jack smiled at me over the rim of his mug. “Aye, Kincaid’s lad. I bet you do.”
~.~.~
They say everything changes when you turn thirteen. That’s when you’re good for prenticing with the guilds, or the mines and refinery if you ain’t lucky. Thirteen is the union gang’s magic number, that unseen line that separates the littlings from the swamp dogs.
By the time we were twelve, we’d done dozens of runs for Jack and the other bosses. We was good at them, never got caught, which meant we didn’t have to work on the cheap no more. It was good money, better than what Da got at the mines or what Killian’s mum got in the refineries. Enough for us to put a little bit away. Sometimes.
One morning that summer when I was stopping by to pick Killian up for our daily runs, I found him sitting on an upturned water bucket in front of his house, watching the door intently.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Killian looked at me and pressed a finger to his lips. From inside, I heard the tinkle of breaking glass and female voices raised in anger. Killian shook his head at m
e and I could feel the tremor of his unhappiness rippling out of him like a ripe stench. He glanced over solemnly at me and I saw in my head, as clearly as if he’d reached over and passed me a painting, the image of the Taxman with his black hair and pale blue eyes.
“He’s coming next week,” Killian said.
I nodded, and thought of the loose brick in the wall of our house where me and Da had hidden our meager stack of coins for the Taxman.
“You ain’t got enough?” I asked.
Killian shook his head slowly, his unhappiness building up and spreading from him like heat from a fire.
“Mum was laid up all last month from her fall at the refinery, and we had to pay the doctor. I thought maybe the extra runs we did would make up for it, but...”
He trailed off and looked towards the door, his body hunched into tight lines of misery.
I thought again of the loose brick in the wall, of Da in the mines and of the runs we was going to do later on today.
“I got two frogs you could have,” I said, not without some reluctance when I thought of the meals we could get with two frogs. I immediately felt ashamed of myself, and quickly added: “Three frogs, if we get good runs today.”
Killian cast me a weak but grateful smile. “It’s not enough. And you need to worry about your own visit from the Taxman.”
I was going to insist that he take the money when the door suddenly opened and Cinda, Killian’s older sister, stormed outside. Her eyes were red and wet, and her bottom lip was split and swollen. We heard a bump and a heavy shuffle come from the house, and the shadow of Killian’s mum filled the doorway. She was pale, her forehead beaded with sweat, and she leaned against the doorframe for support, but her eyes on Cinda were hard and bright.
“If you take one step inside that place, girl, don’t you even think of ever coming back to this house again,” Killian’s mum panted.
Cinda whirled to face her mum. “I already told you, it’s just a dishwashing job. I ain’t going there to be no dollymop, so you can quit your yelling.”
“You silly, stupid little girl. You really think you can walk into a place like that and be safe just cause somebody told you they’re only hiring you to wash dishes? You think if some drunk Bluecoat has you pinned up against a wall you can just say ‘oh no sir, I’m only here to do the dishes’ he’s going to apologize and let you go on your merry way?”
Cinda flushed even brighter. “I can take care of myself.”
Killian’s mum let out a harsh bark of laugher. “Like you did last night? Look at your face. If Morgan hadn’t been there—”
“That was one time—and an accident! I’ll be more careful from now on.”
Her mum’s expression softened a little and her voice became pleading. “You are still young yet, my poppet. You don’t understand what a harsh place the world can be to a young and pretty girl.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” Cinda demanded. “Work at the oxygen refinery like you? I don’t want that for myself.”
Both Killian and his mum flinched at Cinda’s words.
Killian’s mum turned her face away, letting the curtain of her thinning hair fall across the wreckage of skin on her face. She had once been a great beauty, before the acid mists of the refinery got to her. All the grown ups in the Swamp, even my own Da, remembered Natale Oberon’s legendary beauty, but they always spoke of her in the past tense, in the hushed, stunned tone of a man recalling an encounter with some exotic, mythical creature now gone extinct.
“Oh!” Cinda’s fingers flew to her mouth, as if she thought she could stuff the words back inside. She took a step towards her mother, her face twisting with regret. “Oh mum, no, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I take it back.”
“Never mind it,” Killian’s mum said brusquely, turning to go back inside the house. “You was only saying what’s true.”
“No, mum,” Cinda whispered miserably.
“I know working the refinery ain’t pretty work. I had dreams too when I were your age, and they didn’t ever involve workin’ no mine or refinery, but it’s honest work, and it let me raise you and Killian after your da passed, and I ain’t sorry for that. Not one bit.” Killian’s mum sighed and sagged against the doorway. “Maybe if he was alive he could talk some sense into you. You always was his little pet.”
Cinda wrung her skirts in her fists, seemingly caught between remorse and rebellion. “Oh mum, it really isn’t what you think. I have friends who work at the Flower Palace washing dishes and doing laundry, and it’s all they do. It really is honest, respectable work.”
She sounded earnest enough, but Killian and I both caught a whiff of the anxiety underneath her words, a faint, sharp feeling that you could neither pin down nor completely ignore, like the smell of old blood after a cold rain.
“You can’t work in the swamp without getting splattered with mud,” Killian’s mum said, her lips pressed in a thin white line.
“I’m sorry that I can’t make you understand,” Cinda said finally. Her voice quivered with emotion, but her eyes were firm and resolved. “We can’t go on like this, don’t you see? And what will happen to Killian next year?”
Killian, who had been watching this exchange in silent misery, looked up at the mention of his name. “I can take care of myself. I can take care of all of us, like I have been.”
“No you can’t,” Cinda said sharply, pinning even me with her eyes. “This foolishness has gone on long enough.”
“Foolishness?” I said. “We bring in good money.”
“You’re not littlings anymore, Ash. The gangs have humored you running through their streets cause you was too small to punish, but next year will be different. We can’t lose you and Killian, too. Not for a few coins.”
“But there’s nothing else,” Killian whispered, looking at me.
“You’re smart,” Cinda said fiercely. “Smarter than any of us. Too smart to waste in the Swamp.”
She shot me an apologetic look, but I only shrugged.
Killian was smart. He took to words and numbers like a fish took to water. The sisters from the temple liked him best out of all us mudpups, and sought him out on their weekly charity visits to the Swamp. They gave him books and pamphlets to keep and study. Me, they generally stayed clear of. I used to be their little pet, on account of the letters and numbers my mum taught me before she passed, but the sisters haven’t taken kindly to me ever since I nicked some coins from their purses. I don’t feel bad about it—I needed it more than them. I miss the books though.
For all his book smarts, Killian was content to stay in the Swamp. He was okay with a future of backbreaking work in the mines, breathing in the toxic mist generated by the oxygen refineries and slogging through the poisonous mud that was a byproduct of our factories, so long as his family could make it through another tax day.
Me, I couldn’t wait to get out. I’d like to get off Terra-7, go offworlding like the Imperials do and see all those terraformed planets that were sucking the oxygens out of our lungs, but I’d be content with just leaving the Swamp for the market district or even one of the big cities beyond. It wasn’t a far distance. The Swamp was small, no more than twenty square miles, but it was like its own world, its own planet—not many could get past its gravitational pull. I was determined to, even if it meant leaving Killian.
“What are you saying?” Killian cried in a voice that was almost a wail. “Where else would I go?”
“We could ‘prentice you out to one of the artificers in the market district,” Killian’s mum said eagerly. “I’ve been saving some money.”
Killian gaped at her. “Saving some money? But the Taxman is coming, and you two were arguing about money when you already got—”
“We ain’t touching any of your ‘prenticing money,” Cinda said firmly, and behind her, Killian’s mum nodded with approval.
“This is crazy!” Killian shouted, close to tears. “I don’t want this. I want you to pay the Taxman an
d stop arguing, and stop putting money we don’t have away for some ridiculous dream that ain’t never gonna happen. Mudpups stay in the Swamp. Even if you save up all the money in the world, ain’t no artificer in Terra-7 gonna take up a mudpup for an apprentice.”
Killian’s mum shrugged. “So they say, but everybody changes their tune with a heavy purse in their hand.”
Swamp Dogs: A Story Story Page 1