The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street

by Lauren Oliver

  Then there was her manuscript itself: every page drafted and redrafted painstakingly, crosshatched with corrections and amendments. She had been only weeks away from finishing her book when she set sail for South America, hoping to find definitive proof of a prehistoric, shape-shifting monster called the morpheus, and forever prove that the kingdom Animalia and kingdom Prodigia were just two branches on the same evolutionary tree.

  Her mother’s manuscript was weighted down by what looked to be an oval stone, but bone-colored, and imprinted with a complex pattern of fine veins that coiled up and down its surface. In Cordelia’s hand, it seemed to pulse with secret life, and she spent some time peering at it, forcing the pattern on its surface to take on a shape she knew. Finally, she slipped it into her pocket. She didn’t know why. But it felt like good luck.

  She reached out with a finger and followed the graceful slope of her mother’s handwriting across first one page, and then the next. The question of the origin of monsters is in fact really a question about the nature of categorization. . . . How do we define difference? How do we decide which traits unite, and which divide?

  Words leapt to her imagination—words that opened up to enfold everything on the planet that had ever grown, crawled, soared, budded, or squirmed—and in them she saw a vast unfolding cartography of life and more life, ever unfurling, like the green palm of a new leaf touched by spring sunlight.

  Cordelia turned back to the beginning, and to the Latin phrase her mother had inscribed beneath the title: Vince malum bono. Her father would know what it meant.

  Cordelia felt the sudden urge to cry. It was so quiet in the house without the monsters, and so still. Like a tomb.

  She stepped back from the desk and heard the crinkle of paper beneath her boot. Her mother’s wastepaper basket was overflowing, and had loosed several crumpled letters onto the carpet. Her mother, Cordelia thought, must have been sorting mail just before her departure. Curious, she sifted through the envelopes from the trash, and saw that they had come to her from all over the world. From individuals and from universities, from scientific journals, religious publications, and public societies with long and complicated titles, like the American Collective for the Promotion of Humanistic Principles. There were letters from Oxford University in England, from the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  But the content of their messages was largely the same: Elizabeth Clay’s work was an abomination. It was unscientific, or satanic. Monsters didn’t exist. Or they did, and they must be killed. They were an aberration of life, not an expression of it.

  She was a nut. She was deluded. She was demonic.

  But for some reason, it was the final letter—the one that she had stepped on—that bothered Cordelia the most, perhaps because it was written with such courtesy.

  Dear Elizabeth Clay,

  Every life has value.

  But some have more value than others.

  Sincerely,

  A Patriot

  Chapter 9

  The church bells were chiming midnight when Cordelia slipped outside to join Gregory in the yard. She found him struggling to keep hold of all three monsters, and so entangled by their leashes it was impossible to say who was pulling whom.

  “Ready?” he asked, after Cordelia had helped free him, and taken hold of both Icky and the dragon.

  “Ready,” she said. But just saying the word made her feel as if she’d swallowed a big fistful of wormroot.

  How did she expect to find her father? Where would they even begin?

  “So where do we start?” Gregory asked, as though reading her thoughts. “Should we just pick a direction and—Cabal, no! Cabal, stop! Drop it! Drop it!”

  Cabal had just made an abrupt lunge for an object halfway across the courtyard. Gregory stumbled forward, and Cordelia hurried to help. By the time she reached him, he had his mouth around something greenish-gray and soggy. She rapped his nose sharply and he yelped, dropping it.

  Cordelia reached down and picked up the sodden mass, now half-coated with zuppy drool. Immediately, she recognized the scales of a molting diggle, which Cabal had mistaken for something edible.

  That meant the monsters must have passed through the courtyard. Just beyond the gates, she saw a tuft of what looked like werewolf fur, quivering in the chink between paving stones. She stood up, her confidence restored. “This way,” she said. “And keep your eyes open.”

  “What are we looking for?” Gregory asked.

  “Signs,” she answered. Every creature, her father had taught her, left tracks. Even specters, which had no body, left faint chalky outlines on the surfaces they had touched.

  They started off. A heavy yellow fog hung like a curtain in the air and transformed people—and, Cordelia hoped, monsters—into silhouettes. She had never risked venturing outside with a monster, much less three of them. Her father had made it clear, again and again, that it would only put them all in danger.

  Things had only gotten worse since the Hard Times: the specter of hunger was scarier than a real specter ever could be, and fear bred cruelty. If people like Henry Haddock thought that only certain kinds of people belonged in Boston, what would they think about dragons and zuppies and filches? If newspaper editorials proposed shipping immigrants back across the ocean, where would they propose the monsters be shipped?

  And now, Cordelia couldn’t shake those ugly words from her head: Every life has value. But some have more value than others. She hoped the darkness would give them cover, at least for a little while.

  At the corner of Mt. Vernon Street, Cordelia spotted another tuft of bristly gray fur, this time caught in the iron slats of the fence that surrounded Howser Bank & Trust. They hurried on, Cordelia pausing every few seconds to give the filch, who was lagging, a sharp tug. Several blocks later, Gregory gave a cry. There was a large fang embedded in the dirt near Walnut Street, in front of a dressmaker’s that had gone out of business. Cordelia thought it might have come from the carbuncle, which had long been suffering from a toothache.

  Cabal proved to be enormously helpful. Cordelia’s father had once told her that zuppies made great hunters, and Gregory let Cabal off the leash once it was obvious he wasn’t going to run away. Cabal kept his nose to the ground, searching for smells, and twice turned up evidence of the monsters that neither Cordelia nor Gregory had noticed.

  He unearthed a bit of yellow dungaroo claw from a pile of rubbish at the corner of Joy and Beacon Streets; he found a black-tipped feather of the hufflebottom concealed in a tuft of brown grass in the empty Boston Common, not far from the Frog Pond, sheeted over with thin ice.

  “We must be getting closer,” Gregory said excitedly.

  But on the other side of the Common, the tracks went cold. Cabal sniffed the ground in circles, tail twitching, growing increasingly frustrated. They walked all the way to the harbor before doubling back: there were no signs that the monsters had passed this way, and the wharves, teeming with activity at all hours of the night, were a good place to get caught.

  Instead, they went south on Tremont. At the corner of Boylston, Cabal turned up a tuft of fur that might have come from a squelch—and might have come from someone’s dog. Still, Cordelia pocketed it, and they went on in that direction.

  The dragon was so sleepy that Cordelia had to lift him in her arms, and burned a bit of her jacket sleeve when he began to snore. And Icky had obviously had enough. The filch plunked itself down at every occasion, refused to be moved, and hissed when Gregory tried to bribe it with wormroot.

  They had reached Chinatown, a part of Boston that Cordelia knew only vaguely. The low-lying tidal flat had been built on top of an old landfill to accommodate the city’s expansion, and an influx of immigrants had given the area its nickname.

  Cluttered with commercial buildings and old warehouses, it was a home and also a prison: landlords wouldn’t rent to immigrants in other neighborhoods, and stores wouldn’t serve them. The same year Cordelia was born, the Chinese
Exclusion Act had made prejudice the law of the country.

  People fear difference, her father had always told her. But that didn’t explain why they hated it too.

  She had ventured to this side of the city only twice, to visit Mr. Hyung, who fashioned and repaired her father’s delicate bridles, or to take tea with the proprietor of Hei La Moon, whose basement Cordelia’s father had once exorcised of a ghoul. At night, the wind chased trash through the cavernous streets and carried the scent of rotting fish and seawater from the wharves nearby.

  Up ahead, she could see the looming outlines of the old train station, in disuse since the newer station had been built on Utica Street. Here, the streets were rutted with dirt and leaves and piles of things that Cordelia didn’t care to identify. The few buildings were narrow and mangy-looking, with broken windows and flaking paint, and had the same sad, abandoned look as starving alley cats. Every so often, Cordelia heard a rustling in the dark—and whether it was the motion of someone unseen, or the wind through dried leaves, she couldn’t say.

  “It’s no use,” Gregory panted out. He had long ago taken over Icky’s leash; now he strained and tugged, as Icky held on to a gas lamp and let out a howl of rage. “We’ll have to stop for the night.”

  “We can’t stop now,” Cordelia said, even though her eyes felt grainy with exhaustion and her fingers were numb from the cold. “You said yourself we were getting close.”

  “That was hours ago,” Gregory said. “We don’t even know if we’re going the right way. Besides,” he added, “it’ll be light in just a few hours.”

  He was right, of course. As soon as the sun rose and bullied away all the fog, the streets would be unsafe for travel.

  But Cordelia didn’t care if he was right. She cared only that Gregory was ready to give up so soon. She imagined time like a train: every hour that passed whipped her father farther and farther out of sight.

  “Fine.” Cordelia wrenched Icky’s leash away from Gregory. “Give up, if you want to. But I’m going on. I don’t need you, anyway.” She turned around and began stalking off toward the train station, too angry to care that she had no idea whether she was going in the right direction. If she stopped moving, even for a minute, she, too, might be tempted to give up.

  “Cordelia!” Gregory shouted. She didn’t turn around. Her heart was pounding. Icky whined and tried to resist, but Cordelia was too angry to care about him, either, and yanked him sharply forward. Half of her was hoping that Gregory would leave her alone. The other half was praying he wouldn’t. “Cordelia, wait!”

  She heard his footsteps pounding after her. Then he had caught up.

  “Listen to me.” He got in front of her, so she had no choice but to stop. Cabal, sensing a disagreement, began to run around their feet, barking agitatedly. “I told you I would help and I meant it. But we have to be smart. Your father could be anywhere. You said so yourself. We don’t even know if he’s still in Massachusetts. We don’t even know if he’s still in America.”

  “You’re just making up excuses,” Cordelia fired back, letting the anger grow in her stomach, coaxing it higher like a flame to warm her. Cabal barked even louder and began pawing at her rubber boots. She nudged him aside with a foot; he immediately started barking again. “You’re just scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” Gregory said. Two splotchy bits of color had risen in his cheeks. Cabal’s barking had reached a frenzied pitch. “But I’m not crazy, either.”

  Cordelia pushed him. She didn’t mean to push him hard, but she did. Gregory stumbled backward and landed on his butt with a loud squelch in a pile of mulchy leaves. His hat tumbled off his head.

  Cordelia froze. She had the sudden urge to laugh, but the look on Gregory’s face made her heart shrivel up to the size of an ice cube. He looked as if he was trying to make flames materialize from his eyeballs.

  Slowly, Gregory got to his feet, still glaring. Without saying a word, he reached down, snatched up his hat, and jammed it on his head, ignoring the fact that it was now coated with mud.

  Then he turned and strode off.

  Now it was Cordelia’s turn to call after him. “Gregory!” The farther he got, the more afraid she became. “Come on, Gregory. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  She took a step forward, but Cabal clamped down on her ankle. Cordelia yelped. A low growl worked its way out of the zuppy’s throat.

  Cordelia frowned. “What is your problem?” She reached down to push Cabal away and caught sight of something small and shiny, glinting in the crevice between two paving stones. A brass button, engraved with a miniature of a wolf howling at the moon.

  Cordelia’s breath whooshed out of her lungs. She hooked one finger in the crevice, pushing the button up and into her palm. Cabal had gone silent. She realized now what he’d been trying to show her.

  Her hand was shaking. The button felt warm in her palm. “Gregory!” she cried out.

  “What?” he said sharply, whirling around. When he saw her face, his expression softened. “What is it?” he asked, coming closer.

  “This is my father’s button,” she said, showing him. “It must have fallen off his jacket. It was loose—I was supposed to fix it. I forgot.” She felt the sudden urge to cry. What if she never saw her father’s jacket again? What if she never saw him stuff his pipe, and sit back by the stove, eyes closed, plucking at his ancient fiddle?

  Cyrex familiaris, she recited to herself. The common garden gnome. Lives in burrows underground and makes its diet on the roots of plants. “He must have come this way,” she said. “Don’t you see? We’re still on the right path.”

  Gregory stared down at the shiny button in her palm. He said nothing. For a second, Cordelia was afraid he would turn around again and keep walking, leaving her alone in the dark.

  Instead he said, “We can camp in the station. I’ve done it hundreds of times. We’ll pick up the trail as soon as it’s safe to travel again.”

  He spoke in a funny voice, as if he were all grown up. Cordelia was so grateful she could have hugged him. Instead she just nodded, tucked the button into her pocket, and followed Gregory as he took up the filch’s leash.

  The rail station crouched ahead of them like a vast and ancient monster, silhouetted by the moon. Gregory steered them toward a side entrance, fortunately unlocked. Inside, it was completely dark, and filled with a faint howling, as if the wind were whipping down unseen tunnels. But it was dry, at least. Cordelia removed the lantern from her bag and coaxed the wick to light. Still, it cast only a dim circle of light on the sprawling stone floor, trod to smoothness by many generations of feet. Even Cabal was being uncharacteristically quiet, padding silently behind her, his eyes glowing like two points of flame.

  “Smell that?” Gregory whispered. Cordelia realized she’d been holding her breath. “Coal and boot polish. Smells like change, doesn’t it? Like saying goodbye.”

  “Do you really spend the night here?” Cordelia asked. “All by yourself?”

  “Of course not,” Gregory said scornfully. “I always have Cabal with me, don’t I? But I don’t mind being alone,” he went on thoughtfully. “It’s other people that get you in trouble. Can’t ever trust what they’re saying.”

  “Not everyone is a liar,” Cordelia said, a little offended.

  “Oh, half the time they don’t mean to be,” Gregory said breezily. “Like Mrs. Gooding at the Gooding Home. She took me in back in New York, where I’m from. Said she’d found me a home in Boston with a good family to take care of me like I was one of their own. The Wellingtons, their name was. I was going to go to school, and learn to read and write and do arhythmic.” (Arithmetic, Cordelia assumed he meant.) “And I bet she believed it, too. I bet she thought all the other orphans packed onto those northbound trains were heading to Wellingtons of their own.”

  Cordelia had heard of orphan trains. But it had never occurred to her that Gregory might have traveled on one himself. For some reason it was her mother who came to mind, belched fro
m the belly of a vast steamship into a wilderness of strange growth and animal cries. Her mother, alone, on the hunt for a different kind of orphan: a fragment of a solitary, shape-shifting specimen, looking to be named, looking for a place it belonged.

  “The Wellingtons never came for you?” Cordelia asked.

  Gregory laughed. But it was a funny kind of laugh, closer to Cabal’s bark. “Oh, they came,” he said. “But it wasn’t a child they were after. At least, it wasn’t a child to care for. What they wanted was a whipping boy. Had me sleeping with the dogs in the horse stables, and I’ll tell you they treated those hounds better than me by a mile. At least they got fed on the regular. I had to earn my bread and water.” He said it matter-of-factly, which somehow made it worse. “Even the horses felt sorry for me. I took Mr. Wellington’s whip more than they did.”

  Cordelia felt a hard squeeze of sorrow and regret. “How did you escape?” she asked.

  “Snuck off with the other stiffs when the meat wagon came for old Mrs. Wellington,” he said. “I figured what was one body more or less for the counting?”

  “I’m sorry, Gregory,” was all Cordelia could think of to say.

  He only shrugged. “That’s old history. I look out for myself now. Well, Cabal and I look out for each other. Isn’t that right, boy?” Cabal yipped twice, as if in agreement, and butted Gregory’s ankles. “I can trust Cabal, see? He doesn’t even know any words.”

  A little way down the hall, they spotted an old waiting room. Gregory leaned a shoulder into the door to open it. Milky moonlight filtered in from a shattered window set high in the wall, illuminating rows of old chairs with ripped-up seat cushions and rusted metal legs. Yellowed newspapers and dried leaves crackled under their feet. Cordelia could see her breath when she exhaled.