Of Metal and Wishes (15 page)

It hurts me, more than I can put into words. I don’t care what he’s done; if he leaves my world, I will mourn.

It’s a terribly vulnerable feeling, like cradling a robin’s egg close to my chest.

“Wen?” Bo’s voice comes from the air vent, a whisper in the night.

“I’m here.”

“You sound so tired. Are you all right?”

“A boy got hurt on the killing floor today. I just stitched him up.”

“He lived?”

“Yes. It could have been so much worse.”

He’s silent for a few seconds, and then he says, “It was a shame the machinery was switched on before he was safe.”

I don’t want to think about it anymore. Too many what-ifs and should-haves.

Maybe Bo senses my mood. “Did you notice anything different about your typewriter this morning?”

He’s obviously trying to cheer me up, and I do my best to let him. “Did you tame it for me? It went from being a wild beast to a purring kitty.”

His laugh is sweet and happy. “Yes. I saw you smiling.”

It feels like a hundred years ago. “You’ll have to tell me how you did that, but not tonight.”

“What do you need tonight?”

I need to know that Melik is all right, but Bo can’t give me that. “Tell me something about yourself.” I pull my blanket up over my legs and settle in.

“For six of the past seven years, on the night of First Holiday, I’ve sat on the roof, up by the smokestacks, and watched the fireworks.”

“You like fireworks?”

“I love them.”

“What did you do the year you didn’t watch?”

He lets out a breath. “I . . . ventured into the Ring. To see the sights.”

“Do you do that often?”

“Just that once. It was an interesting evening.” He pauses, and I wait, but then his tone turns light and joking. “The fireworks are safer.”

I laugh, dry and airless. “Tell me why you like them so much.”

I drift away to the sound of his voice telling me about the different kinds of ingredients used to make the colored fire that comes bursting forth when the fireworks explode. He knows so much about how things work, how to make and dismantle, how to build and destroy.

And just before I fall asleep completely, a terrible question occurs to me when I think about how shocked all the workers looked as the machinery sprang to life before Melik had a chance to climb down.

Did Bo try to destroy Melik?

I AM VERY EFFICIENT
at work today, even though I am low on sleep. I am determined to do things right so Mugo doesn’t keep me late. First Holiday is tonight, and the streets will begin to fill just after the dinner hour. Vie is so excited she can barely do her work. She keeps flitting over from Jipu’s office to bother me. She’s going to wear her purple velvet dress, the fanciest she has, which I don’t think is practical for traipsing around the muddy streets all night. I learned that lesson the year my mother let me wear a dress that made me feel like a walking jewel box—it was stained and ruined, and I never got to wear it again. Practical is not what’s on Vie’s mind, though. Turning Iyzu’s head is. She wants me to dress up too, and keeps asking what I’ll be wearing. She doesn’t think my brown work dress is up to snuff.

I’m dreading telling her I’ve already made other plans.

I’m going to have to do it at some point, but I keep putting it off. After lunch Mugo comes out of his office and gives me another stack of notes to transcribe. I’m learning so much about how this factory works. Jipu is more of a figurehead. He’s from a wealthy family, and his father was the boss before him. Mugo is the guy who keeps the slaughterhouse going. He hires new workers from the Ring or surrounding towns, and he transfers older or less productive workers to another factory to make room . . . though the transfer papers don’t ever list its exact location. He also cuts every possible corner. I’m surprised anyone’s willing to work here at all. The workers have received wage increases every year . . . but their expenses have gone up as well. Mugo is a details man, so he does it in tiny, barely noticeable ways. A service charge here, a penalty there. I suspect many of the workers haven’t even noticed that they aren’t bringing more home now than they did last year or the year before.

“You’re learning quickly,” Mugo says. He’s standing right behind me, and I have no idea how long he’s been there. I imagine him staring at the back of my neck, and it makes me itchy and squirmy, but I force my fingers to keep typing. He edges closer, so that his legs are touching the back of my chair. “I think it’s almost time that I teach you a few new skills.”

His fingers dance along my shoulder, and I freeze. They stroke at the boundary between the dress and my skin. His fingers smell of mushrooms and dark, damp places, and my stomach turns. “Oh, sir, I’m barely getting the hang of this typing. I’m not good at anything.”

My voice sounds so small, almost a whisper, and it chokes off as he begins stroking up and down my neck in the way that makes me want to cry. I lean away slightly, but his fingers stick to my skin like they’re glued there. I want to run, but he would hunt me down, I’m sure. Like those big cats in the southern forest.

He leans down and breathes his onion breath into my ear. “You’re such a little girl, Wen, aren’t you? Just a little girl.” His lips graze my hair, and I shudder.

A thunderous crash from Mugo’s office shakes the floor.

Mugo shouts a curse, and I turn to see him running back to his office. I rise from my seat and follow, wondering what on earth could have happened. I turn the corner to see him gaping at the wreckage. His enormous shelving system has collapsed, sending an entire wall of files and accounting books and knickknacks and papers crashing to the floor. It looks like a typhoon has swept through the place. The dusty air glitters with metal shavings as they flutter to the ground like the whirling seeds of elder trees.

Mugo’s hands are in his thinning hair, and little growling noises are coming from his throat. “C-c-clean this up!” he shrieks at me.

He vacates the office and leaves me alone for the rest of the day. I am so very thankful, because I have just been handed another day of reprieve from these things he wants to teach me that I don’t want to learn.

I clean the mess with a song in my heart, and when it is the end of my workday, I escape as quickly as I can, leaving a note that I’ll be in early tomorrow to finish. Walking out of his office is like shedding a skin; I feel lighter and more powerful. I have a mission today, and I don’t have much time.

I have to sell more dresses and make it to the apothecary before he closes for First Holiday. I need to get antibiotics for Melik. I have no idea what foulness was on the meat hook that speared him, but I’m quite sure it will make him very sick unless he has this precious medicine. My legs are like machine pistons as I climb the Hill, select two more of my finest dresses, sell them at cut rate to Khan the tailor, and jog to the apothecary’s shop.

The sun is dipping low, a dim yellow ball in the haze of gray smoke on the horizon. The streets are beginning to fill with vendors from the countryside, ready to sell their wares to the people of the Ring. After I wheedle a large bottle of antibiotics from the apothecary, using nearly all my money and what little charm I have, I still have enough to purchase a meat bun from a hunched man with gnarled hands who seems to have the most popular cart on the street. Prizes in hand, I head back to the factory compound, my heart already starting to speed.

I don’t recognize Jima at first. She steps out from one of the pink-light salons and pulls a hooded overcoat around her, but then raises her head and waves when she sees me. “Wen!”

“Jima?” She’s so pale, and her cheeks are terribly sunken, although it’s been less than two weeks since I last saw her. “What are you doing here?”

Her face twists a bit. “My family wouldn’t let me come home, so I live here now.” She looks up at the top floor of the salon, which leaves me with an uncomfortable twinge in my stomach.

“Why wouldn’t your family let you come back?”

Jima looks at me like I am a child. Then she rubs her stomach and looks down at it sadly. “Because they believe I’m an easy girl with loose morals who opens her legs for anyone.”

Now I’m confused, because if she’s living above the salon, chances are that is exactly what Jima has become. My thoughts must be written all over my face, because Jima pinches my arm with a hard look on her face. “Onya told me you’re Mugo’s secretary now, so don’t look at me like that. If you’re not careful, you’ll be in my shoes soon enough.”

She sniffs and brushes past me, sinking into the crowd before I can summon the words to call her back and apologize. With my thoughts in chaos, I trudge to the factory compound and wave to the guard, who wishes me a happy First Holiday and blows me a kiss. Everyone is a bit crazy on First Holiday.

I am crossing through the compound’s square when I see Vie coming toward me, wearing her best purple dress, which hugs her plump, curvy figure. She’s flanked by Iyzu and Lati. My
date
. I duck my head and scoot across the square, but Vie is already calling my name. She catches hold of the back of my overcoat a second later.

“Wen! What’s wrong with you? We went down to the clinic, but you weren’t there. Are you ready to go?”

I bite my lip and look up at Lati, who is eyeing me like I’m a meat bun he’s just purchased off a cart. “I can’t go tonight. My father’s out of town and I have to tend to his patients.”

Lati frowns. “His patients? But the men are all over the flu. Jipu was telling me everyone was back at work today except for that Noor . . .” His expression changes from puzzlement to anger.

Vie looks up the path toward the old, ramshackle Noor dorms. “You cannot be serious, Wen.”

“You can’t go in there,” Iyzu says. “They’ll rip your dress off and use you up while you scream.” He sounds almost eager, like he wishes he could watch.

I stare at him. “No, they won’t. I’ve been there many times, and all they care about is taking care of one another and doing their work.”

Lati and Iyzu look at me like I’ve announced that I work at a pink-light salon. I can only imagine what they’re thinking. I’m betting I’ll hear about it in the cafeteria tomorrow.

Vie puts her hands on her hips. “Yes, they are such gentlemen. Like the one who tripped you and raised your skirts. Like that rust-haired one who dared to speak to you in front of the whole cafeteria. Why would you help him?”

I cannot seem to hide my thoughts today; they are on my face for all to see. Vie’s eyes go wide. “Oh, no. No. You’re coming with me.” She reaches for my arm.

I back away. “No, I’m not. He needs me, and I’m going.”

Lati snatches my bag from my shoulder. “With this? What’s in here, anyway?” His thick fingers plunge into my satchel and come out holding the glass bottle of antibiotics.

Everything in me goes still and hard. Melik’s life is in that bottle. I cannot allow this stupid boy to take it. “Give that back,” I say quietly.

“So you can give it to the Noor? They’re pigs, and this is meant for people.” He has a weird, cruel smile on his face as he shakes the bottle a bit. I realize his good-natured face hides an ugly, twisted boy underneath.

“They’re not pigs, and that is my property. Give it back.” My face is hot with anger. I wish I were eight feet tall and just as wide. I want to crush this boy.

He tosses the bottle to Iyzu, who bobbles it in his hands playfully. When I lunge for it, he holds it up over my head.

“Guys,” Vie says, and I can tell she feels uncomfortable, but she doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t tell them to give it back.

“Oh, man, this is good,” Lati says. I whirl around to see him eating the meat bun he’s pulled from my bag. “Was this for him too?”

“I’ll tell,” I say through gritted teeth. “Give it back or I’ll tell.”

Iyzu leans forward, and I do not miss the menace in his posture. “And who, exactly, would you tell? Your father is just the doctor. He has no authority.”

“Mugo.” I’m shaking now, my arms, legs, fists. I know what this means, this threat of telling Mugo. It means I would owe him, and that I would have to let him do things to me to make up for his troubles. So I’m hoping this threat doesn’t get back to him, and that these idiots are scared of him.

Lati stops midchew, the bun gripped in his meaty fist. The juice is dripping between his fingers. I think he
is
scared of Mugo. But Iyzu isn’t intimidated. Not at all. He laughs. “Underboss Mugo hates the Noor as much as we do.”

He tosses the bottle up, high enough for it to disappear into the night sky, and then laughs as I weave back and forth, trying to spot it. He shoves me lightly out of the way and raises his hands to catch it, but grasps empty air as another hand snatches the bottle from space.

“This is hers,” Sinan says, tilting his head in my direction. He hands the bottle to me.

For a moment I am terribly afraid for him, this skinny young boy who seems to have no fear except when it comes to his brother’s safety. The only thing he has on Lati and Iyzu is height—but they are both twice as wide as he is. They could kill him, and he doesn’t even look scared.

Then I see why. We are surrounded.