Of Metal and Wishes (5 page)

BY THE TIME
I get back to the clinic, Tercan is stirring. My father is by his side, murmuring soothing words the boy will never understand. The gentleness in my father’s voice is unmistakable, though, and Tercan relaxes a little, his bony shoulders slumping back to the table. He moans softly. So fragile, this boy. Broken by a ghost.

“He’s running a slight fever,” my father says. “He’ll need a course of antibiotics.”

“He won’t be able to afford them if he can’t work,” I say.

“He might die of infection if he doesn’t have them.” There’s no edge to my father’s voice, only fatigue. He’s sad about what’s happened. I don’t think he feels the same way about the Noor as the other people around here do. He hasn’t treated them differently than he does anyone else. And suddenly I know what he’s going to do, because he’s done it many times before—he’s going to pay for this boy’s medicine.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Because I challenged the Ghost, my father is going to spend more than a week’s worth of wages on medicine for a Noor boy who might not live out the season.

“We could sell some of my dresses,” I say. I have a closet full of gowns that I am now ashamed to wear for so many reasons, so as much as it hurts to give them up, it must be done. They’re worth something; I know what my mother’s clients paid her for dresses, and they were no finer than some of mine. My mother’s scent is still detectable in the jade green silk dress, the last one she made before she died. My vision blurs with tears. Would she be proud of me now?

No, I think she would be horrified.

My father lifts his head and searches my face, but then his eyes focus on something behind me. “Melik,” he says. “On break?”

I turn slowly to see Melik hovering in the doorway. His brow is furrowed, but his eyes are wide. “You . . . you’ll help him pay for this medicine?”

It’s all wrong. The way he’s looking at me, I know he thinks I’m good. “He needs it,” I say in a choked voice.

He’s opening his mouth to reply when my father says, “If this is your short break, Melik, you only have a few minutes. You can take him now, but make sure he keeps his foot elevated. He’s going to be in a lot of pain, so let him suck on these. Just long enough to relieve the pain, then take them from him.”

He hands Melik a paper sack containing some opium sticks, and issues several other instructions I hope Melik understands. As he listens to my father, his gaze keeps flicking in my direction, and it’s all I can do not to hide my face.

When my father is finished giving his orders, Melik calls into the hallway, and two other Noor boys come in. The one with the big mole in the center of his cheek is hesitant, but the other, the younger boy with rust-colored hair, looks around with unself-conscious curiosity.

“Sinan,” Melik says to him. “This is Dr. Guiren. And this is his daughter, Wen.” He nods at me, then gestures back to the boy. “This is my brother.”

Sinan’s deep blue eyes light on mine, and he tilts his head. “You had a different dress on earlier.”

Melik snaps at Sinan in that guttural language of theirs, and he answers back with a laugh before going to Tercan’s other side. Sinan and the boy with the mole, whose tan skin has turned ghastly pale, each take a leg. Melik wraps his arms around Tercan’s trunk and lifts his body, then gives me one last, questioning glance before he and the other boys disappear down the hallway.

I sink into my father’s chair. “How long do you think the company will let him stay?”

My father walks to the clinic door and watches the Noor for a few seconds before shutting it and turning to me. “Not long. I might be able to buy him a little time, maybe a week, but Mugo will be impatient to replace him.”

“Right,” I murmur. “Feasting season.”

“You did well tonight.” Father grabs his white antiseptic bottle and wets a cloth.

“Thanks.” But I didn’t do well. I did the worst thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, and someone else will be paying for it, maybe with
his
life. I get up to help clean. “Father . . . I wanted to ask you about the Ghost.”

My father stops in the middle of wiping down the exam table. “Did Hazzi scare you this morning?”

“Oh, no, he was kind. But he and everyone else think the Ghost is very powerful.” I wait, hoping my father will walk through the door I’ve opened. When he remains silent, I add, “People leave their best offerings at his altar, along with their prayers. They say he answers them.”

He chuckles. “People need to believe in something, especially here.”

It’s not what I expect him to say. He’s usually dismissive of this kind of superstition. “Have you ever done it? You know, made a wish?”

Father shakes his head. “My wishes are too big for the Ghost, I think.”

“But some aren’t?”

He starts wiping again. “Maybe not.”

I reach for the bottle to wet my cleaning rag. “Jima said he was a worker who died on the killing floor.”

“That is the myth,” he says, wringing out his rag in the sink.

“Do you believe in him, Father?”

He looks down at the floor. “No, of course not. I don’t believe in ghosts.” His voice is trembling, and I have no idea why.

My father opens his pocket watch and makes a small, distressed noise in his throat. “So late. I’ve had a long day, Wen. I’m going to bed. Would you mind finishing up?”

“No, I can do it.”

“Thank you.” Without glancing at me again, my father walks up the stairs to our living quarters.

I scrub the remains of Tercan’s surgery from my father’s examination table, sweep a pile of metal shavings from beneath the bookshelf, and load our cleaning machine with all the tools we used tonight. Above my head the floor creaks with my father’s footsteps, and I hear his voice, though I know he’s alone up there. I wonder if he’s imagining my mother is there with him, if he misses her as much as I do. When she was well, he came home to our cottage on the Hill, at the western end of the Ring, one weekend each month. He was like a friendly stranger to me, asking questions about my schooling while giving me a polite-but-distant smile. And now we see each other every day, and I don’t feel much closer to him. We don’t talk about my mother. We talk about few things that don’t have to do with his patients and his work.

I wish I could talk to him about what I’ve done, but I don’t want him to know. I am alone in this, as I am alone in so much else. It is a crushing feeling with no corners and no edges. Endless and uncontainable. The Ghost seems to understand this feeling. Maybe it is the reason he accepts offerings and answers prayers. Maybe it is why he broke Tercan. Maybe it’s why I challenged him to prove he is real in the first place. I bow my head and press the back of my hand to my mouth to hold in my sob as I remember Melik’s agonized expression while he watched his friend suffer, as I think of Tercan and his ruined future. I deserve this loneliness now.

I sink to the floor and wrap my arms around myself, holding all my sorrow inside. If I make a sound, my father might hear, and that would never do. I clench my teeth and clamp my lips shut and tremble from the effort. I wait and wait and wait, until my father’s voice upstairs falls silent, until I can open my mouth without sobbing. Then, leaving my cleaning only half done, I trudge up to my sleeping pallet, hoping to dream of our cottage on the Hill and wake in my old bed with the scent of my mother’s perfume in the air.

I rise a few hours later, eat a breakfast of stale bread, and finish cleaning because I don’t want my father to have to do it. I scrub the floors, the sink, the counters, making sure no sign of Tercan remains. Then I sweep the metal shavings from the base of the walls yet again. In one little pile I find a square company coin with a hole in the center, the same kind I offered to the Ghost as a reward for destroying a life. I shiver as I put it in my pocket.

My father comes down the stairs as the shift whistle blows. I put my hands over my ears and wait it out, closing my eyes and hearing the lilt of my mother’s voice as she sings to me about a field full of citron, where a boy and girl meet and kiss and dream of a life together.

My father taps me on the shoulder and I lower my hands. He gives me a gentle smile. “Sleep all right?”

No.
I lay awake and listened to the strange, soft sounds that come from the air vents. Sometimes, I swear, it sounds like the factory is crying. Or keening softly, like pleas from something long since buried deep. It always comes at night, this whirring, whining, mournful sound, and I lie there, trying to figure out what it could be. Maybe it’s the Ghost. “Yes, thanks. Did you?”

He nods. “I need to talk to you about the medicine for Tercan. Were you serious when you said you’d be willing to sell one of your dresses?”

“I was. If you think he needs the medicine, I want to help.”

He watches me carefully, like he’s trying to figure me out. “That’s very generous of you, Wen. And I certainly appreciate it. Your new work dress—” He pauses when he sees the look of horror on my face. “No, dear, don’t feel bad. You needed to get it. You couldn’t go on wearing those embroidered dresses. It’s just, these two expenses coming at once. It would be . . . difficult.”

Of course it would be. But despite that, my father would still do it. He would do it even if it meant borrowing from the company against his future income. I wonder how often he’s done that, how much he actually owes. He must be in debt, after the way he talked about it yesterday.

“I’ll go to the cottage today,” I say. “My fanciest dresses are there. They’re worth the most.” A lump has risen in my throat, and I’m having trouble getting my words around it.

My father begins rearranging the little steel basins stacked on the wire shelves over the washbasin. With his eyes focused on his hands and their meaningless work, he says, “I appreciate it.” He pauses for a moment. “And once again, I’m proud of you.”

His words hurt so much I almost blurt out my secret right there. But I don’t want him to have to share this burden with me. He’s already carrying so much. So I smile gratefully at him. Then I bow my head, jam my hand into my pocket, and rub my thumb over the square coin until it aches.

The morning passes quickly. Several workers come in with minor complaints, and it’s clear the season of sickness has begun. It always does, as soon as the chill wind from the north begins to blow. My father listens carefully to the quiet symphony inside his patients’ bodies, then tells me what to do. I pass out inhaler sticks of dried thorn-apple leaves for breathing troubles, ginger and horehound sucking drops for the coughs, a tonic laced with opium for a sore throat. One fellow accuses me of trying to kill him when I dose him with a mixture of honey, vinegar, and cayenne pepper to relieve his chest congestion, but my father steps in and assures him that when the burning stops, he’ll be able to breathe again.

I am more than ready for my lunch break and scoot down to the cafeteria as soon as my father nods that I can go. I want to know if Jima got her wish granted, and if any of the others’ wishes got granted too. I’m so distracted that I don’t see Underboss Mugo until I crash into him as he walks out of his office.

“Watch where you’re going!” he snaps, then clears his throat and hitches an oily grin onto his face when he sees it’s me. “Ah, Wen. I’m sorry. You caught me by surprise.” He slides a hand over his thinning, greasy black hair.

I curtsy and step to the side, afraid to meet his eyes. My father said I should never invite Mugo’s attentions, and here I am, nearly knocking him down in the hallway. “Please forgive me, Underboss, I wasn’t being careful. Have a good day.”

His skinny fingers encircle my upper arm, and I want to rip myself away, but that would be a bad idea. Like running from one of the wildcats that live in the woods at the southern edge of the Ring, which fills them with the thrill of the hunt, the possibility of a kill. “Wen, I know this has been a sad time for you, but I hope you’re settling in here?”

His breath smells like onions, and my stomach clenches. “Thank you, sir. I’m grateful I’ve been offered a home.”

He smiles, thin lips curling back like a snarl. One of his top teeth is chipped. “How old are you now?”