Cogling (10 page)

Edna staggered when she touched the solid ground of the station and Ike pulled her closer to his side. People crushed them from all directions, exiting and entering.

Edna wrinkled her nose against the barrage of engineered garlic and unwashed bodies. “Just like getting on the trolley back home.” Home, with Harrison. She’d trade all to live a penniless, frozen life with him where they stuck together always, where she wouldn’t have to look farther than her right or left to see him.

“Keep the shawl over your head,” Ike said.

“I’ve never worn something stolen before.” She stared at the ground underfoot where dust clung to her skirt and boots.

“
I
stole it, you didn’t. Don’t let it weigh down your conscience.”

“I’m an accomplice. That doesn’t make it better.” Scowling, she glanced at her bag clasped under his arm. Since their luggage was heavy and they had to move fast, he carried it. “Don’t make off with my stuff. I’ve got all the money. You won’t get far with my clothes.”

Ike snorted as he edged her into the station. A large sign erected over the open door read
Kincaid,
with a clock hanging beneath it. Benches surrounded a pot-bellied stove, with faded maps nailed to the whitewashed walls. A man stood at the gated window, paying for a ticket. Calico patches decorated the back of his overalls. The other occupant, a girl, sat in the back staring at her lap.

Ike thrust the bag into Edna’s arms. “Take a seat while I talk to the ticket seller, and try to figure out where we go from here. Keep your head down so we aren’t recognized.”

“We wouldn’t have to worry if you weren’t a cheat and a thief.” Edna glared at him until he fell into line behind the man at the window. Of the millions who lived in Moser City, she had to find
him
to help her. Harrison was going to laugh when he discovered she relied on a thief.

The floorboards creaked beneath her boots as she walked to the back of the station. Grime clung to the cracks in the wood and nails poked up. The girl, around eight years in age, lifted her head to glance at Edna through the fan of her dark lashes. Sighing, she looked back down at a book clasped in her hands. The corners of the pages curled around the faded print.

“Hello.” Edna sat at the other end of the bench. “I got a brother around your age. His name’s Harrison.” He would’ve done something silly, such as poke the girl’s shoulder and cross his eyes to make her laugh.

When she got him back, she would take him for a train ride anywhere he wanted to go.

“You talk funny.” The girl rubbed her pert nose. “Your words don’t sound like mine.”

“I have an accent. Huh.” Edna opened her mouth to tell the girl she came from Moser City, but the men from the train might know that.

Sitting in a train station wouldn’t bring her closer to her brother. Edna tapped her heels against the floor; there had to be something to do other than wait. “Have you ever heard of coglings?”

“That have to do with clocks?”

Sort of, if the pocket watch counted. “It’s…a tale about the hags in the swamps.”

The girl bared her yellow teeth. “Those filthy things. Best thing the king could do would be to burn the lot of them. That’s what you gotta do with hags. Burn ‘em up.”

“Have you heard that hags steal children, leave changelings in their place? That’s what a cogling is.”

“Don’t doubt it’d be something they’d do.” She snorted. “My name’s Annie, by the by.”

“I’m… Eddie.” She used the nickname Harrison gave her when he was a baby.

“That’s a boy’s name.”

“It’s short for something longer.” Edna glanced at Ike where he spoke to the ticket seller, waving his arms.

“That your man?” Annie scratched her knee through a hole in her gray stockings.

An image of Ike kissing her, his eyes closed and his breath sweetened with mint, sent Edna cringing. Her mind shouldn’t even entertain that thought. “He’s my cousin. We’re heading for… up toward the swamp. To visit family.” Edna wound a curl around her finger to look nonchalant.

Annie widened her eyes. “Only hags and ogres go there.”

“Wilman City’s just outside the swamp,” Edna said.

Annie shrugged. “Dad’s heading out to Strathmore tomorrow to sell furniture if you want a ride.”

Edna’s heart sank as Ike walked toward her, his face blotchy and mouth twisted into a scowl. They didn’t need any more problems.

“Those idiots.” He slumped beside Edna, lowering his voice. “They won’t refund our tickets and the next train isn’t due here for three days. We’ll have to hire a carriage.”

“I told your cousin you two can hitch a ride with my dad tomorrow for Strathmore,” Annie said.

“We don’t got a lot of money.” Ike stood.

“Father will let you ride along if you work around his shop tonight and tomorrow,” Annie said. “He gives rides just so long as he’s already heading there.”

Ike tapped his foot. “I’ll help out in his shop, sure thing, but what about… her?” He nodded at Edna.

“Eddie,” she whispered, refraining from a grin. Annie’s friendly manner had come in handy.

“What about Eddie?” Ike asked.

“Mum can use help around the house. We’ll go see Father.” Annie slid the book into the front pocket of her coat.

“Where’s your pa?” Ike swung the bag from Edna’s lap under his arm. His dark hair hung stiff around his shoulders.

“He’s unloading at the store and then we’re heading home. I help him pick up the things and then I come read. It’s warm here.” She pointed at the coal stove, the station’s heating source. Back in the city, steam pipes kept rooms warm. “Father’s got Jimmy to help with the unloading, anyway. He’s our tomtar.”

They left the station and followed Annie through the town on wooden sidewalks. Horse-drawn carriages rattled by on the cobblestone street, with a few locomobiles. Two boys tossed an airship toy, steam chugging from its miniature engine, the propeller in back whirling.

“The storekeeper’s tomtar makes those.” Annie pointed at the toy. “He’s really crafty.”

“Harrison would love that,” Edna said. He only had his stuffed bear, a hand-me-down from her younger years. “I shouldv’e gotten him a new toy. I should’ve done a lot for him. He was my responsibility. I… I failed him.”

“Shh,” Ike hissed. “We’ll get him.”

The general store, a two-story building with a wrap-around porch, had a wagon parked in front. A tomtar wearing a brown sack hefted a barrel off the buckboard. Sweat beaded his black lips and slid through the wrinkles in his leathery skin. Without a hat, sunburn flaked on his bald spots.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Annie called. “Tomtar!”

The tomtar didn’t respond, its gaze focused on the task at hand.

Upon reaching the wagon, she grabbed his scarf. “I’ve been talking to you, tomtar!”

He blinked at her through rheumy eyes.

“Where’s my father?”

Annie’s sharp tone made Edna wince. Tomtars had hearts and minds; they didn’t deserve to be yelled at. She chewed on her fingernail to keep from scolding Annie.

“Inside, miss.” Jimmy shuffled his bird feet through the dirt.

“Stay here while I go ask him,” Annie sang as she skipped past Jimmy into the store.

“Let me help you.” Edna held out her arms for an edge of the barrel. The tomtar shook his square head and turned his back to her. She sighed, folding her arms as she studied the town.

Two-story buildings bordered the narrow street. Each house was painted white, each office and store a brick structure. A motorcar rumbled by. The man driving watched them from his good eye, a patch over his right one. The good eye, though, swam with liquid, the white marred with veins.

“I don’t like this village,” Ike whispered.

Edna shivered. “Annie’s help’s a miracle.”

Down the street, a bell clanged

“I have a feeling the sooner we’re out of here, the better for everything.”

She lowered her voice. “Do you still want to go with Annie’s family? They do treat Jimmy awful.”

“That doesn’t say too much. He’s a tomtar—their slave.”

She gnawed her lip. “If you think we should leave, do we go? You got us this far, even if it has been rock-strewn.”

Annie bounded from the store, swinging her arms. “This is Father.”

A tall man followed with his hands in the pockets of his denim overalls. A straw hat hung over his face, whiskers poking from his chin. “My daughter said you need a ride to Strathmore.” His gaze brushed over them. “You’re willing to work?”

“Yes, sir.” Ike nodded. “What kind of work d’you have in mind?”

“Just a bit of carrying. Follow me out back.” The man headed around the store. Annie grinned before following him. Edna glanced at Ike, smiling when he grabbed her arm. They
would
reach Harrison. Ike’s feeling must’ve passed after he met the man.

As they ventured around the shop, the air adopted a fish odor.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a fish market back here,” Edna muttered. “It reeks.”

Ike chuckled. “We’re near the river.”

That shouldn’t make such a difference. As she turned toward him, he grunted.

“Ike?” Something clamped around her throat, sending up a barrier between her and breath, and unconsciousness crept over her.

Here you are so here I be.

dna’s nose tickled and she opened her eyes. “Ike, what happened?” A hard floor pressed into the back of her head. The veins in her temple throbbed. Edna rolled onto her front and propped herself up to relieve the pressure building in her skull. Firelight from wall sconces illuminated the room, where clothes in a multitude of colors hung from metal hooks on the peeling walls; the only furniture a table near the door.

She’d never seen this room before. Could she be hallucinating? Edna rubbed her forehead.
I was in the alley. Shouldn’t be here.
“Ike?”

Edna pushed onto her knees and grabbed the table to pull herself up. She wobbled as the room spun. Squeezing her eyes shut, she counted to ten before drawing a deep breath that rattled in her lungs. The air stank of cheap perfume and mold. The four walls closed in to suffocate her; a tomb, a cell.

Staggering to the door, she tried the knob; locked. She fell against it with her fists, banging as she screamed. “Help! Somebody, lemme out!”

The rough wood sawed her hands and caught in her lace gloves, but she ignored the pain. The gloves could be fixed later, but escaping couldn’t wait. No time could be wasted when Harrison needed her.

The darkness exploded in her fast; if she let it, it would take control. “Stop it, stay down.” Edna pictured her brother, his smile when his front tooth had been missing and he would stick his tongue through the gap. Despite her racing heartbeat, the evil receded back toward her core.

A key ground in the lock before the door opened outward, and she stumbled against a plump bosom. Hands grabbed her shoulders to push her backwards and she stared into the white-painted face of a broad woman wearing a black dress with skinny straps. Her beige corset laced over a maroon apron. Edna opened her mouth to ask who she was, but the words caught in her throat and she licked her lips to wet them.

“The boy woke up ages ago,” the woman said. “Thought maybe they choked you a bit too much.”

Edna tugged on her brown curls. “What?” The words didn’t process. She hadn’t choked.