Cogling (9 page)

Ike scowled. “I’m going for a walk.”

A man in the seat behind hers coughed. Edna’s heartbeat increased as Ike stood, stretching his long limbs. “You’re not really going to leave me? You’re taking me to Harrison.”

“Be right back.” Turning sideways, Ike maneuvered his frame from the row into the walkway, barely wide enough for a grown man to fit.

“That your brother?” the woman with the baby asked.

“Goodness, no, he’s…” Edna bit her lower lip. Should they pretend to be a couple? “Ike’s my cousin.”

“Nice you’re travelin’ together.” As her baby cried, the woman tipped back her head and sighed.

Edna craned her neck to spot Ike. The train hurtled forward with a roar, accompanied by random clanks. Each time the locomotive swayed on its tracks, she closed her eyes to still the nausea in her belly.

“Trains are safe,” she whispered. “Father makes them that way when he lays down the tracks.” The jumble of voices made the veins in her head pound. Standing, Edna gripped the back of her seat and edged around the woman’s legs.

“May you go to a good home,” Edna whispered to the baby before stumbling into the walkway. Her legs wobbled and she gulped. People sat in their seats, either rigid or slumped, Edna the only person up. Maybe the rigid folk waited for the train to derail, and the slumped folk didn’t care. She was certainly one of the rigid. If she had to suffer through the hard seat, worry about the train, and stress over Harrison, then her guide would do it next to her.

“Ike?” she called.

Steeling her nerves, she wandered to the door at the end of the car. Opening it led to a walkway between her car and the next. Wind whistled through cracks, making her shudder. Edna darted across the covered space to the next door, slamming shut the one she’d left behind. She stepped into another car identical to hers. A fresh barrage of voices assaulted her ears.

“Ike?”

No one looked at her. She moved to the next car, where the hot air hung thick with cigar smoke that burned her throat. She coughed into her handkerchief. This car contained rectangular tables between benches facing each other, where men sat drinking from foamy mugs. They wore suits or button-up shirts, their hats slung over their knees.

Edna squinted through the smoke at the first table. Men hunched over playing cards with a pile of coins between them. The brass circles glistened; more money than she’d ever had, and she’d thought the savings can at home was a fortune. There had to be at least twenty brittins’ worth here.

A man bared his teeth, then nodded in her direction. “Lookee here, boys.”

Her body froze, but her pulse raced. Breath caught in her throat. “I’m… I’m looking for my cousin.”

The man at the end of the bench grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm. She tried to yank away, but he tightened his grip. “See these pretty little fingers, just right for some fancy stitches.”

An image flashed through her mind, in which she bent over a table, hand-sewing gloves like the pair she wore.

“You know the boss don’t care how tiny the fingers are so long as the stitches are neat.” A man threw two shillings onto the gambling pile.

“Where are your parents, girl?” The man holding her turned her hand to inspect her palm and tugged on the glove’s frilly cuff.

A squeak emerged from her mouth. She coughed as the smoke tickled her throat. How dare he touch her?

“She’s an orphan,” another man at the table said. “Anyone can see that.”

“My parents are just down the aisle and my father’s on his way here. There he is.” She waved at a table farther away, hoping one of the players would look menacing enough to make her captor release.

The man holding her wrist tugged her toward him. She stumbled into his chest, the thick stench of tobacco rising from his shirt. “I’ll find you a real nice home.”

Metal clamped onto her wrist. Edna craned her neck to see the brass cuff he’d slid over her skin. “You put a prison cuff on me?” It would link him to her with an invisible wave until he released the cuff at a workhouse, a brass cuff with a chain no one could see.

“Just a pretty bauble for a pretty girl.”

“I’ve seen these before! Take it off..”

Ike leapt off a bench at a table down the car and jogged toward her. He grabbed her free hand to yank her away from the man. A cry of relief burst from her throat and she almost hugged him before catching herself.

“There you are, sis. Why didn’t you stay back at the seat with Pa?” Leaning close to her ear, he whispered, “Walk. Now.” Sweat beaded his brow, his pupils the size of newspaper periods.

“Look what he did to me!” She held up the prison cuff while the criminal swore.

The darkness danced through her veins and the cuff snapped before it clattered to the floor in two pieces. It couldn’t have been her; had to be the man realizing his mistake.

Ike reached for her and three playing cards fell from his sleeve to drift like feathers.

“By the seven Saints,” Ike swore.

“Hey,” a man yelled from Ike’s table. “He cheated us!”

“
Go
.” Ike grabbed her hand, interlacing their fingers as he bolted. Behind them, men pounded to their feet, shouts bouncing off the walls.

Ike kicked open the door and pulled her through. He shoved his shoulder against the next door, dragging her down the hallway. People looked up, gasping. Doors banged behind them. Footsteps followed.

“They’re coming,” Edna pressed her prayer beads to her lips.
Seven Saints, save us.

Ike was supposed to help her rescue Harrison, not get them thrown into prison. There had to be a way to convince the men they were harmless.

As he ran, weaving between bodies and satchels left in the aisle, Ike grabbed a top hat off a man’s head and a shawl from a woman, tossing the mess of gray wool at Edna. The owners yelped.

Edna caught the tasseled end before he propelled her through the next set of doors to their car. He shoved her into the seats and yanked the shawl over her head.

Edna let him press her face into his chest, covering her more with the shawl. Her nose fit between his biceps; she hadn’t guessed hm to be that muscled. He shoved the top hat over his head and slumped forward.

“Pretend to be asleep,” he hissed.

“But…” Edna’s voice trailed off as their pursuers ran through the car. How did one pretend to sleep? She closed her eyes, drawing deep breaths through her nose, forcing her stiff body to relax.

“Where’s that cracksman?” one of the men chasing them demanded.

“I don’t see him, keep looking,” another said. Ike stiffened. She held her breath.

As the door opened to the next car, the woman with the crying baby poked Edna’s back. “You want to tell me what that’s all about before they come back through an’ I hand you two over?”

“Ma’am,” Ike said without looking up, “they were trying to take Edna away and put her in one of the orphan workhouses.”

Edna burrowed deeper against him, rubbing her prayer beads. Rumors spread throughout Moser City how children around Edna’s age, too old for the orphanage yet too young for marriage, were locked into workhouses. Within the whitewashed walls, no one left once they entered. The woman clicked her tongue. “So many folks movin’ to the city from the countryside for factory work and still some folk forcin’ it off on others.”

“They think by pulling her away, I cheated them,” Ike added.

A shiver crept over Edna’s skin, but the evil held back. Ike lied too smoothly.

The door at the end of the car swung open and the men clamored back through. “Anyone seen the little thief and his brat?”

The woman with the baby pointed down the car. “That way.”

The men ran on.

“Thanks,” Ike said after they’d departed. “I wish there was something to give you…”

“Thanks are good enough.” The woman bounced her baby on her knee.

Edna whispered to Ike, “You cheated at cards. You could’ve ruined our mission.”

“We need money.”

She pressed her lips into a line to keep from gaping. “I thought you were penniless. How’d you get to gamble at all?”

He winked–winked–as if they played a game. “Don’t worry about it, luv. Didn’t I tell you to wait for me? Everything better still be in our bag.”

Edna bit back a retort. If she angered him, he might abandon her.

“At the next stop, we’d better get off. They’ll check the car and we’ve got a better chance of getting away if we blend in with the crowd.”

She straightened away from him. “Our tickets—”

“We gotta figure something else out before you’re whisked to a workhouse an’ I’m in a ditch with my skull cracked open.”

Edna grimaced. It couldn’t be as bad as that. “The police—”

“Don’t give a fig about us who don’t have money for bribes.”

Her pulse raced again. “So we get off at the next station. Then what?”

Ike shrugged. “Go to sleep. We have another hour, I reckon. I’ll watch over you for now.”

The baby quieted as the woman sang a lullaby, enfolding Edna in its melody. Her head bobbed, and she imagined her mother singing her and Harrison to sleep.

“Bloody rats all in a hat,

Upon which Victor Viper sat.

Little feet with little shoes,

Little people with little hues.

Flames and smoke all leaping high,

Upon which we all might die.”

Knitting needles burned Harrison’s hand. Magic sizzled along the metal, wearing away his fingertips. His skin shone with a silver sheen; no longer pale peach, he’d grayed.

Tears had dried on his cheeks, the sobs fading earlier when the numbness took hold. He glanced at the other children in the wide room around him. They hunched over stools with clacking knitting needles, scarves sprawling across their knees, growing from the balls of glittery yarn in their laps. When the materials ran out, the hag in the doorway removed the scarf and handed the child a new ball. As the scarves grew brighter, the children turned grayer. Shimmers slipped off their skin into their projects, and stray wisps floated upwards to catch in the nets hanging from the ceiling.

“Keep going.” A hag wandered through the room, leaning against a cane. “Keep dreaming of your freedom. Keep giving us your dreams.” Her cackle sent the hairs on his arms upright.

Beyond the hag in the doorway, he saw a larger room of children weaving at looms.

Harrison hadn’t known how to knit until the hag with the cane shoved needles and yarn into his hand. No one had listened when he’d begged to return home. None of the other children had spoken to him, although he’d screamed for help.

Words no longer came to his mouth no matter how much he desired to talk.

What did the hags want from him? Could he escape from them? Harrison fought for a tear, but his eyes remained dry.

Here we meet, here we see.

hank the Saints we don’t have to put up with that train’s sway and growl anymore.”