by Juman Malouf
Through the sheets of rain, Sonja glimpsed gargoyles plunging out of brick facades, stained-glass windows blackened by soot, and rusted metal signs swinging from the different shop windows.
An intricate system of tracks wove between the buildings like an endless roller coaster. Thousands of pedal-cars crowded the rusted rails, above and below, forming a cacophony of honking and skidding.
“I can’t hear a thing,” complained Sonja, covering her ears. She almost felt paralyzed among the blaring sounds, flickering lights, and constant traffic. The Outskirts seemed like a sanctuary compared with this.
“You get used to it,” Moritz assured her. “Wolf Boy and I lived here before Staghart found us. We were Scrummagers.”
“Scrummagers?” Charlotte said, surprised.
Moritz nodded. “It was better than rotting in an orphanage. We ran away and joined the Rain City Troop.”
“I always wondered how Scrummagers became Scrummagers,” Sonja murmured.
“You must know the city well, then,” said Charlotte. “Any idea where the School for the Gifted is?” She pulled out the crumpled-up letter and read Jack Cross’ address out loud: “Three Hundred and Thirty-Three Bishop’s Row.”
Moritz nodded. “The Lower Depths. That’s where we’re meeting Alexandria.”
Sonja frowned. They were alone with untrustworthy Changelings in the middle of a strange city without proper documents, hoping to find their way into the Land Where the Plants Reign (a place they had thought was fictional until the day before), where Uncle Tell was, supposedly, meeting them to see if a speaking parrot knew where Kats von Stralen and the Contessa were hiding their kidnapped adoptive mother! How could Charlotte’s ridiculous brain still be thinking about that ridiculous boy?
They walked through an enormous archway. Blank, stone faces carved into columns stared down at them as they entered an expansive, bustling station. Signs were posted on the walls with arrows pointing in every direction: PEDAL-CAR RENTAL this way, PEDAL-BUS DEPOT that way, LOST AND FOUND upstairs.
Hundreds of people waited in lines, stood at booths, and hurried by with suitcases. Enforcers checked papers at every corner.
“I tell you, my documents were right here!” A frightened woman rummaged through her pockets. “Someone must have stolen them!”
The twins stayed close to the Changelings, hidden in the crowd. They ducked behind a column and sneaked into a short corridor. At the end was a door labeled EMERGENCY EXIT. Wolf Boy pushed it open, and the rain blew in. They stepped out onto a rickety fire escape hanging from the brick facade. Sonja peered over the railing.
The stairs zigzagged five thousand feet down into the city.
“This—doesn’t—look—safe!” stammered Sonja. She had been scared of heights ever since she had fallen off the tightrope years and years earlier. Her fingers twitched uncontrollably.
Wolf Boy wrapped his fur cloak tightly around his body. “Let’s go.”
“It’s not so bad, Sonja,” Charlotte said softly. “Just don’t look down.”
With one hand on the railing and the other in her sister’s, Sonja carefully descended the wet steps. They passed rows of dripping windows and looked in at maids ironing, secretaries typing, and a bald man fixing his toupee. Sonja had always wanted to visit a city, but this was not what she had imagined. She thought it would mean freedom from Enforcers; families living in cozy apartments; culture, music, and art in every nook and cranny. She wanted to play in great concert halls like Kanazi Kooks and eat in fancy restaurants among the clouds. That was the city in her mind, not this tangle of chaos.
Wolf Boy pointed to a busy sidewalk bridging between two buildings. “We can get a pedal-bus down there.”
The bridge was jam-packed with shops and people in hooded raincoats, goggles, and hats. A woman carrying six shopping bags knocked the twins out of the way.
“You’ve got to use your elbows,” demonstrated Moritz, jabbing his arms out sideways, “or you’ll get trampled.”
Charlotte and Sonja copied him, but they could not get the hang of pushing people out of the way. Instead, for the next few minutes, they were shoved back and forth through the crowd.
A pedal-bus pulled up to the platform. A sign on its side read THE LOWER DEPTHS.
“That’s our ride,” signaled Wolf Boy.
The Changelings charged toward the vehicle, bumping people roughly as they went and apologizing left and right. For an instant, Sonja thought she saw Wolf Boy reach into a man’s coat pocket.
“Ticketsss,” drawled a conductor standing at the door of the bus. He held a torn umbrella in one hand and a hole-punch in the other.
“Here you go.” Wolf Boy produced four tickets. The conductor stamped them and gestured for the children to go through.
The bus was filled with silent passengers. The walls were plastered with peeling advertisements. A monotone voice on the radio listed accidents that had taken place that day. They heard shouting outside:
“Someone took my ticket!”
“Mine, too!”
“I had two tickets in my purse!”
Wolf Boy walked down the aisle with the stamped tickets in his hand.
“Did you steal those?” accused Sonja.
“Of course,” said Wolf Boy.
Sonja’s face turned bright red. “City property, I understand! You can’t steal from other people! How would you feel if I did that to you?”
They squeezed past a well-dressed man reading a plastic-covered newspaper. Behind him, a teenaged girl in a polka-dotted rain coat powdered her nose. Next to her, an old woman stared anxiously at the Changelings and clutched her purse. Wolf Boy grabbed Sonja by the wrist and pulled her into the back row.
“You’ve probably never starved or sat cold nights shivering in the rain,” he hissed. “Well, Moritz and I have. We learned how to survive, and that’s what we’re trying to—oh, just keep your mouth shut, and do what you’re told.”
He let go of her and collapsed into a seat. He looked out the window with his shoulders hunched over. Sonja’s eyes welled up. She stuck her fingernails into her arm so she would not cry.
The front door slammed shut, and a horn sounded. The driver released the brake. He started to pedal.
Sonja slid over to the other side as the bus descended through the city. The seats were cold and wet. She rubbed her fingers on the fogged-up glass and looked out. There was an accident below. A young woman had crashed into the back of another pedal-car and was sprawled out on the tracks.
The more time Sonja spent here, the more she hated it. Tatty used to tell them about her years in Block City working at a tattoo parlor. On her days off, she would walk to the farthest edge of the city just to catch a glimpse of a little patch of sky. She must have felt as empty as Sonja did now.
Moritz leaned over. “I know you don’t approve”—he hesitated—“but I swiped these off a shopper.” He handed them two brown doughnuts. “They’re gravy flavored.”
“Thank you,” Sonja said gratefully. Her stomach rumbled. The only thing she had eaten in hours was a worm. The doughnut was dry and tasteless and smelled like old shoes, but it was food. Well, sort of.
The bus rolled past a platform lined with canned-food shops, a salon specializing in electric hairpieces, and a bank with two armed guards at the door. There was a huge billboard promoting a Kanazi Kooks concert. Sonja pressed her nose to the window. His face looked blurry through the fogged-up glass. Perhaps it was a sign not to give up. Perhaps he would help them somehow. He had once been an Outskirts kid, too, after all. And hadn’t he smiled at them at the auditions?
“Look!” Charlotte pointed to another billboard. This one was of a man in military uniform with a thick mustache and a stern brow standing next to a woman with slick black hair under the words UNITE THE CITIES.
Sonja recognized her white gloves and her diamo
nds. “The Contessa,” she muttered.
The bus stopped with a jolt. A pedal-copter hovered down in front of them, shining a light through the windows. The passengers inside murmured to each other anxiously. The twins overheard a man whisper, “Documents check.”
“We’d better get out of here,” said Wolf Boy. “Moritz?”
Moritz quickly examined the rear window. He jiggled the knob. A bolt slid sideways. The glass opened a few inches. He jammed his hand out the gap and started unscrewing a latch.
The pedal-copter landed. Two Enforcers stepped out onto the tracks. The bus door zipped open.
“Hurry!” begged Sonja, wringing her hands. “They’re coming!”
The well-dressed man watched them over his newspaper, curious.
The window snapped open. Moritz and Wolf Boy squeezed out and motioned for the twins to follow. Sonja looked back as the Enforcers stepped on board. One of them called out to the passengers, “Identification.”
The twins scrambled out the window and climbed onto the Changelings’ shoulders. A pedal-car waiting behind the bus started honking frantically. A woman wearing oversized rain goggles leaned out and shrieked, “They’re getting away!”
“What now?” cried Charlotte.
Traffic whizzed by from the opposite direction. A pedal-car towing a cart slammed to a stop, then swerved to pass them. Wolf Boy gave Moritz a signal, and the Changelings threw the twins into the passing cart and tumbled in after them. By the time the girls realized what was happening, they were bouncing along at full speed, squeezed between stacks of crates and bumbling boxes.
Sonja whipped her head around and glared at the Changelings. “A little warning might be nice!”
“Sonja, do you have any friends whatsoever?” returned Wolf Boy.
“That’s none of your business.”
“If you do, which I’m guessing you don’t, I’d like to give them a medal for putting up with you.”
Moritz tried to hide a laugh with his hand. Charlotte smiled against her will. Sonja’s face tensed. “Is that supposed to be a witty remark?”
The pedal-car took a sharp turn. They peeked out and saw an electric gate sliding open. There was a dark, gloomy building on the other side. Black smoke billowed out of its tall chimney stacks. A bronze swan with outspread wings hung over its doors. It clutched a sign in its claws: UNITED CITIES FACTORIES.
The pedal-car drove across a concrete yard and into a large loading dock. Just as they stopped to park, the children jumped out and dashed into the dark. They opened the first door they came to and looked inside. There was a long, low vestibule lined with raincoats on hooks and shiny black boots in a row.
“What—is—this place?” stammered Charlotte.
“A factory of some sort,” whispered Wolf Boy.
They heard footsteps approaching through the garage. They ducked inside, opened the next door, and slipped through it. They stopped and stared with their mouths open. They stood at the end of a vast room filled with a thousand children crouched over humming sewing machines.
Women in starched, navy-blue uniforms walked up and down aisles, shouting and slapping the workers’ hands with rubber batons. All the windows were boarded up, and dim lamps hung low, emitting a greenish light. Leaky pipes dripped into plastic buckets scattered around the floor.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sonja said, backing away.
Just then, a brawny, blond guard with her hair pulled tightly into a bun appeared in front of them with her arms crossed against her chest. “Where do you think you’re going? Break’s not for another twenty minutes. Put your smocks on and get to work!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Factory
BEFORE THEY REALIZED WHAT WAS HAPPENING, CHARLOTTE and Sonja were pulled in one direction, and Wolf Boy and Moritz were shoved in another. “The older boys to the chopping and dicing sector!” A baton whacked Wolf Boy in the head as he looked back at the twins. Two female guards kicked him and Moritz through a pair of swinging doors.
The blond guard dragged the girls across the room between tables of pale, sickly children in stain-spattered aprons who watched from the corners of their eyes. Some of their hands trembled like Sonja’s. The guard shoved the twins into two empty seats. “If I see you wandering around again, you’ll be sent to the mistress.”
Sonja looked bewildered. Charlotte started to explain: “I think we’re in the wrong—”
“Open your mouth again, and I’ll smack the words right out of you. Got it?”
Charlotte nodded feebly and slumped back down. The guard stormed off. The other children around the table stared—except for a brown-haired boy who kept his head down.
Charlotte studied his fidgeting hands. His fingers were long and thin. His hair was thick and brown and curly. Charlotte’s jaw dropped. She gasped. She gripped the edge of the table.
Was it possible?
Charlotte hurriedly wiped her face and straightened her eyebrows. She gave the musical note a quick polish. She said to Sonja, “You’ve worn the locket for two days in a row now, and I need some good luck. Hand it over.”
Sonja stared at her sister. She reluctantly unfastened the locket and gave it to Charlotte, who quickly clasped it around her neck.
Charlotte cleared her throat.
“Jack Cross,” she said.
The boy looked up. He had rings around his eyes and a furrowed brow, and his cheerful smile had disappeared, but there he was, in the flesh.
Charlotte wanted to jump out of her seat and holler for joy. In all of Rain City, she had found him. It was destiny.
Sonja shook her head. “Oh, no.”
Charlotte grabbed Jack Cross’ hand. “Did you get my letter? I tried to warn you! Did he steal your Talent?” She looked around and lowered her voice. “Is that why you’re here?”
Jack Cross stared at her blankly.
“Don’t you remember me?” asked Charlotte. She pulled at her sweater and showed him the musical note. “You left me your pin!”
Jack Cross reached for the metal object, but then dropped his hand. He turned away without a word.
Charlotte’s mouth quivered. She felt as though her heart might break. Was it possible Jack Cross had forgotten her?
“Morning delivery!” a voice interrupted. A boy rolled a metal trolley to a stop.
“Don’t just stand there!” barked a guard with a widow’s peak. She stood at the far end of the table. “Pass them out!”
The boy cursed under his breath. He reached into his trolley and lifted out what looked to be the head of an animal. He dumped one of them onto the table in front of each child.
Charlotte stared at the grisly object through cloudy eyes. The sharp peroxide smell stung her nose.
“What—is it?” stammered Sonja. Her face was a little greenish.
“We’re making stuffed animals for Richers,” whispered a girl sitting beside her.
“Quiet down over there!” roared the guard. “Where do you think you are? A birthday party?”
Charlotte looked across the table at Jack Cross again. He sat staring into space. Something was very wrong with him. Whether he remembered her or not, she had to help him. Charlotte wiped her eyes and examined the head sitting in front of her. On closer inspection, she saw that the head was in fact a metal cage covered with white fur. It had holes for the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
Charlotte looked down into a metal bowl in the middle of the table. An assorted selection of eyeballs stared up at her. She screamed and leapt to her feet.
She felt a thwack across her back, and her chest slammed down against the table. “Get to work, or you’ll be sent to the mistress!” Charlotte had never been hit by an adult before. It sent a shock through her body.
“Are you okay?” whispered Sonja.
Charlotte nodded feebly. Her back ached. She fel
t dizzy. All around them children were sticking eyeballs into sockets, hammering teeth into mouths, and sewing together hunks of fur. Before Charlotte could figure out what to do next, a bell rang.
All the children stood up at once.
The guard with the widow’s peak rapped the table with her baton. “Fifteen minutes lunch break!”
Charlotte hurried to keep up with Jack Cross. Sonja hurried to keep up with Charlotte.
“I can’t believe you’re chasing that boy,” hissed Sonja. “We don’t have time for romance right now. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making stuffed animals for Richers. We have to find the Changelings and go.”
They entered a long, narrow room filled with crowded tables of children greedily shoving food into their mouths.
“I don’t see how we’re supposed to do that,” whispered Charlotte. They joined the end of a lunch line. She watched Jack Cross get his lunch and sit down. “Too many guards everywhere.”
A tray was shoved into their hands. A tiny cup of processed meat and a box of beige water were slammed on top of it.
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Sonja snapped back.
“Well, one of them just smacked me. Sort of puts things into perspective.”
“It’s something else, or should I say someone else.”
Charlotte groaned. Sonja was impossible. Jealous. Didn’t she understand Jack Cross needed their help? She walked over to his table and sat down between the other children. Sonja squeezed in beside her.
“I’ll trade you a cherry-flavored lip gloss for two gum balls,” said a boy with a shaved head.
Before the twins could answer, a shadow crossed the boy’s face. He averted his gaze. Charlotte turned to see a guard standing over them. The woman looked the table up and down, slapping her baton into her hand. Finally, she moved away, and the children started whispering again.