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Decision Point (ARC)

Page 14

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt


  A rainbow reflected off the shape of a wing. It was a fairy.

  All the pieces fell into place. The light, the dark. The prisms.

  The garden. The secrets. The warnings. The rainbows. Fairies

  loved green and growing things. They loved colors and light.

  They had souls that shone like beacons. This fairy had no

  business being anywhere near Shadow Street, but for better or

  worse she had come, and met her end here.

  This wasn’t just any wraith. This was his mother.

  And, just like that, Sun once again had something to live for.

  New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess,

  a fairy godmother, and a geek. She's known for screwing up the

  alphabet, scolding vampire hunters, turning garden gnomes into

  mad scientists, and making sense out of fairy tales. Alethea is the

  co-author of Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter Companion , and

  penned the AlphaOops series of picture books. Her short fiction,

  essays, and poetry have appeared in a myriad of anthologies and

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  magazines. She has done multiple collaborations with Eisner

  winning artist J.K. Lee, including The Wonderland Alphabet and

  Diary of a Mad Scientist Garden Gnome . Her YA fairy tale novel,

  Enchanted , won the Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award in

  2012, was nominated for the Audie Award in 2013, and was

  selected for World Book Night in 2014. Both Enchanted and its

  sequel, Hero , were nominated for the Andre Norton Award. Tales

  of Arilland, a short story collection set in the same fairy tale world, won a second Gelett Burgess Award in 2015. Born in

  Burlington, Vermont, Alethea currently lives and writes on the

  Space Coast of Florida. She makes the best baklava you've ever

  tasted and sleeps with a teddy bear named Charlie.You can find

  Princess Alethea online at: www.aletheakontis.com .

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  At St. Agatha’s Home for the Rehabilitation of Crippled

  Children, residents find themselves serving their own Fagin right

  out of Dickens’ Oliver , a tough taskmaster they call Old Grinder.

  But instead of hoping for his eighteenth birthday and escape, a

  boy named Sian looks for a way out—maybe even one that can

  improve life for them all, in Cory Doctorow’s inspiring

  steampunk tale …

  C L O C K W O R K F A G I N

  By Cory Doctorow

  Monty Goldfarb walked into St Agatha’s like he owned the

  place, a superior look on the half of his face that was still intact,

  a spring in his step despite his steel left leg. And it wasn’t long

  before he did own the place, taken it over by simple murder and

  cunning artifice. It wasn’t long before he was my best friend and

  my master, too, and the master of all St Agatha’s, and didn’t he

  preside over a golden era in the history of that miserable place?

  I’ve lived in St Agatha’s for six years, since I was 11 years

  old, when a reciprocating gear in the Muddy York Hall of

  Computing took off my right arm at the elbow. My Da had sent

  me off to Muddy York when Ma died of the consumption. He’d

  sold me into service of the Computers and I’d thrived in the big

  city, hadn’t cried, not even once, not even when Master Saunders

  beat me for playing kick-the-can with the other boys when I was

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  meant to be polishing the brass. I didn’t cry when I lost my arm,

  nor when the barber-surgeon clamped me off and burned my

  stump with his medicinal tar.

  I’ve seen every kind of boy and girl come to St Aggie’s—

  swaggering, scared, tough, meek. The burned ones are often the

  hardest to read, inscrutable beneath their scars. Old Grinder don’t

  care, though, not one bit. Angry or scared, burned and hobbling

  or swaggering and full of beans, the first thing he does when new

  meat turns up on his doorstep is tenderize it a little. That means

  a good long session with the belt—and Grinder doesn’t care

  where the strap lands, whole skin or fresh scars, it’s all the same

  to him—and then a night or two down the hole, where there’s no

  light and no warmth and nothing for company except for the big

  hairy Muddy York rats who’ll come and nibble at whatever’s left

  of you if you manage to fall asleep. It’s the blood, see, it draws

  them out.

  So there we all was, that first night when Monty Goldfarb

  turned up, dropped off by a pair of sour-faced Sisters in white

  capes who turned their noses up at the smell of the horse-

  droppings as they stepped out of their coal-fired banger and

  handed Monty over to Grinder, who smiled and dry-washed his

  hairy hands and promised, “Oh, aye, sisters, I shall look after this

  poor crippled birdie like he was my own get. We’ll be great

  friends, won’t we, Monty?” Monty actually laughed when

  Grinder said that, like he’d already winkled it out.

  As soon as the boiler on the sisters’ car had its head of steam

  up and they were clanking away, Grinder took Monty inside,

  leading him past the parlour where we all sat, quiet as mice,

  eyeless or armless, shy a leg or half a face, or even a scalp (as

  was little Gertie Shine-Pate, whose hair got caught in the mighty

  rollers of one of the pressing engines down at the logic mill in

  Cabbagetown).

  He gave us a jaunty wave as Grinder led him away, and I’m

  ashamed to say that none of us had the stuff to wave back at him,

  or even to shout a warning. Grinder had done his work on us, too

  true, and turned us from kids into cowards.

  Presently, we heard the whistle and slap of the strap, but

  instead of screams of agony, we heard howls of defiance, and

  yes, even laughter!

  “Is that the best you have, you greasy old sack of suet? Put

  some arm into it!”

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  And then: “Oh, dearie me, you must be tiring of your work.

  See how the sweat runs down your face, how your tongue doth

  protrude from your stinking gob. Oh please, dear master, tell me

  your pathetic old ticker isn’t about to pack it in, I don’t know

  what I’d do if you dropped dead here on the floor before me!”

  And then: “Your chest heaves like a bellows. Is this what

  passes for a beating round here? Oh, when I get the strap, old

  man, I will show you how we beat a man in Montreal, you may

  count on it my sweet.”

  The way he carried on, you’d think he was enjoying the

  beating, and I had a picture of him leaping to and fro, avoiding

  the strap with the curious, skipping jump of a one-legged boy,

  but when Grinder led him past the parlour again, he looked half

  dead. The good side of his face was a pulpy mess, and his one

  eye was near swollen shut, and he walked with even more of a

  limp than he’d had coming in. But he grinned at us again, and

  spat a tooth on the threadbare rug that we were made to sweep

  three times a day, a tooth that left a trail of blood behind it on the

  spl
intery floor.

  We heard the thud as Monty was tossed down onto the hole’s

  dirt floor, and then the labored breathing as Grinder locked him

  in, and then the singing, loud and distinct, from under the

  floorboards: “Come gather ye good children, good news to you

  I’ll tell, ‘bout how the Grinder bastard will roast and rot in Hell—

  ” There was more, apparently improvised (later, I’d hear Monty

  improvise many and many a song, using some hymn or popular

  song for a tune beneath his bawdy and obscene lyrics), and we

  all strove to keep the smiles from our face as Grinder stamped

  back into his rooms, shooting us dagger-looks as he passed by

  the open door.

  And that was the day that Monty came to St Agatha’s Home

  for the Rehabilitation of Crippled Children.

  *

  I remember my first night in the hole, a time that seemed to

  stretch into infinity, a darkness so deep I thought that perhaps I’d

  gone blind. And most of all, I remember the sound of the cellar

  door loosening, the bar being shifted, the ancient hinges

  squeaking, the blinding light stabbing into me from above, and

  the silhouette of old Grinder, holding out one of his hairy, long-

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  fingered hands for me to catch hold of, like an angel come to

  rescue me from the pits of Hades. Grinder pulled me out of the

  hole like a man pulling up a carrot, with a gesture practiced on

  many other children over the years, and I near wept from

  gratitude. I’d soiled my trousers, and I couldn’t hardly see, nor

  speak from my dry throat, and every sound and sight was

  magnified a thousandfold and I put my face in his great coat,

  there in the horrible smell of the man and the muscle beneath like

  a side of beef, and I cried like he was my old Mam come to get

  me out of a fever-bed.

  I remember this, and I ain’t proud of it, and I never spoke of

  it to any of the other St Aggie’s children, nor did they speak of it

  to me. I was broken then, and I was old Grinder’s boy, and when

  he turned me out later that day with a begging bowl, sent me

  down to the distillery and off to the ports to approach the navvies

  and the lobsterbacks for a ha’penny or a groat or a tuppence, I

  went out like a grateful doggie, and never once thought of putting

  any of Grinder’s money by in a secret place for my own

  spending.

  Of course, over time I did get less doggy and more wolf about

  the Grinder, dreamt of tearing out his throat with my teeth, and

  Grinder always seemed to know when the doggy was going,

  because bung, you’d be back in the hole before you had a chance

  to chance old Grinder. A day or two downstairs would bring the

  doggie back out, especially if Grinder tenderized you some with

  his strap before he heaved you down the stairs. I’d seen big boys

  and rough girls come to St Aggie’s, hard as boots, and come out

  of Grinder’s hole so good doggy that they practically licked his

  boots for him. Grinder understood children, I give you that. Give

  us a mean, hard father of a man, a man who doles out punishment

  and protection like old Jehovah from the Sisters’ hymnals, and

  we line up to take his orders.

  But Grinder didn’t understand Monty Goldfarb.

  I’d just come down to lay the long tables for breakfast—it

  was my turn that day—when I heard Grinder shoot the lock to

  his door and then the sound of his callouses rasping on the

  polished brass knob. As his door swung open, I heard the music-

  box playing its tune, Grinder’s favorite, a Scottish hymn that the

  music box sung in Gaelic, its weird horsegut voice-box making

  the auld words even weirder, like the eldritch crooning of some

  crone in a street-play.

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  Grinder’s heavy tramp receded down the hall, to the cellar

  door. The doors creaked open and I felt a shiver down in my

  stomach and down below that, in my stones, as I remembered my

  times in the pit. There was the thunder of his heavy boots on the

  steps, then his cruel laughter as he beheld Monty.

  “Oh, my darling, is this how they take their punishment in

  Montreal? ‘Tis no wonder the Frenchies lost their wars to the

  Upper Canadians, with such weak little mice as you to fight for

  them.”

  They came back up the stairs: Grinder’s jaunty tromp,

  Monty’s dragging, beaten limp. Down the hall they came, and I

  heard poor Monty reaching out to steady himself, brushing the

  framed drawings of Grinder’s horrible ancestors as he went, and

  I flinched with each squeak of a picture knocked askew, for

  disturbing Grinder’s forebears was a beating offence at St

  Aggie’s. But Grinder must have been feeling charitable, for he

  did not pause to whip beaten Monty that morning.

  And so they came into the dining hall, and I did not raise my

  head, but beheld them from the corners of my eyes, taking cutlery

  from the basket hung over the hook at my right elbow and laying

  it down neat and precise on the splintery tables.

  Each table had three hard loaves on it, charity bread donated

  from Muddy York’s bakeries to us poor crippled kiddees, day-

  old and more than a day-old, and tough as stone. Before each loaf

  was a knife as long as a man’s forearm, sharp as a butcher’s, and

  the head child at each table was responsible for slicing the bread

  using that knife each day (children who were shy an arm or two

  were exempted from this duty, for which I was thankful, since

  those children were always accused of favoring some child with

  a thicker slice, and fights were common).

  Monty was leaning heavily on Grinder, his head down and

  his steps like those of an old, old man, first a click of his steel

  foot, then a dragging from his remaining leg. But as they passed

  the head of the furthest table, Monty sprang from Grinder’s side,

  took up the knife, and with a sure, steady hand—a movement so

  spry I knew he’d been shamming from the moment Grinder

  opened up the cellar door—he plunged the knife into Grinder’s

  barrel-chest, just over his heart, and shoved it home, giving it a

  hard twist.

  He stepped back to consider his handiwork. Grinder was

  standing perfectly still, his face pale beneath his whiskers, and

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  his mouth was working, and I could almost hear the words he

  was trying to get out, words I’d heard so many times before: Oh,

  my lovely, you are a naughty one, but Grinder will beat the devil

  out of you, purify you with rod and fire, have no fear—

  But no sound escaped Grinder’s furious lips. Monty put his

  hands on his hips and watched him with the critical eye of a

  bricklayer or a machinist surveying his work. Then, calmly, he

  put his good right hand on Grinder’s chest, just to one side of the

  knife handle. He said, “Oh, no, Mr Grindersworth, th
is is how

  we take our punishment in Montreal.” Then he gave the smallest

  of pushes and Grinder went over like a chimney that’s been hit

  by a wrecking ball.

  He turned then, and regarded me full on, the good side of his

  face alive with mischief, the mess on the other side a wreck of

  burned skin. He winked his good eye at me and said, “Now, he

  was a proper pile of filth and muck, wasn’t he? World’s a better

  place now, I daresay.” He wiped his hand on his filthy trousers—

  grimed with the brown dirt of the cellar—and held it out to me.

  “Montague Goldfarb, machinist’s boy and prentice artificer, late

  of old Montreal. Montreal Monty, if you please,” he said.

  I tried to say something—anything—and realized that I’d

  bitten the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste the blood. I

  was so dicombobulated that I held out my abbreviated right arm

  to him, hook and cutlery basket and all, something I hadn’t done

  since I’d first lost the limb. Truth told, I was a little tender and

  shy about my mutilation, and didn’t like to think about it, and I

  especially couldn’t bear to see whole people shying back from

  me as though I were some kind of monster. But Monty just

  reached out, calm as you like, and took my hook with his cunning

  fingers—fingers so long they seemed to have an extra joint—and

  shook my hook as though it were a whole hand.

  “Sorry, mate, I didn’t catch your name.”

  I tried to speak again, and this time I found my voice. “Sian

  O’Leary,” I said. “Antrim Town, then Hamilton, and then here.”

  I wondered what else to say. “Third-grade Computerman’s boy,

  once upon a time.”

  “Oh, that’s fine,” he said. “Skilled tradesmen’s helpers are

  what we want around here. You know the lads and lasses round

  here, Sian, are there more like you? Children who can make

  things, should they be called upon?”

  I nodded. It was queer to be holding this calm conversation

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  over the cooling body of Grinder, who now smelt of the ordure

  his slack bowels had loosed into his fine trousers. But it was also

 

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