Translink Haiku #1

Asshat on skytrain
Has not grown past the schoolyard
Fine him, skytrain cop.

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We know the boy isn’t ours.

He looks the part – those big brown eyes, the curly black hair, the dimple. We can ignore the height of him as he grows, a height which hasn’t been seen on either side of the tree since, oh, we don’t know how long. We can ignore the way he looks at us, as if he feels we’re off but doesn’t know why.

But we raise him up, we call him ‘Edmund’. We love him. We keep him.

I don’t know if it’s wrong.

~

I birthed Edmund – the one who was – years ago, in the middle of the summer season. Ten months after Wulfric and I set up our house. I didn’t love him straightaways, but Wulfric did, because he was everything a baby should be. He slept peacefully all through the night, fed from me eagerly, cooed, gurgled, laughed. I learned to love him and my daughters with time, but it was hard going.

He grew fat and strong and smart anyway. He loved trailing behind Wulfric or I, trying to move as we did or do the same chores. He laughed as a baby and he did as a toddler, very easily. Oh, he cried too, but he wasn’t that given to tantrums. No more than any other child.

Eventually, I loved him so much that I took him into town, walking him about and showing him off. I must have annoyed many. It was in that time that I noticed the dimple and I showed that off too.

One morning, he disappeared.

We all slept in the same room, my husband, my children and I, and we did so with the window locked shut from the inside. I know I locked it the night before, after everyone else was abed. But when I awoke, it was with the sun shining on my face.

I sat up and I rubbed by eyes, puzzled. Wulfric snored yet and Ida and Bridget breathed softly, knees up to their chests. But no Edmund. His space on the bed was empty, his pillow fat and fluffed.

I’m proud that I didn’t scream. Instead, I shook Wulfric awake and I pointed his eyes to where Edmund should’ve been. Later, much later, he told me that he was proud he didn’t scream either. There’d been a new moon that night, as I remember.

~

Ida and Bridget were told that their big brother had gone on a trip and they were young enough to believe it. Not young enough to not ask when he was coming back and they asked it all the time. You’d think it would get hard to lie to them, but it became easier for me. Not so for Wulfric – every time they asked, he came close to weeping and so it went until the questions slowed and stopped. They forgot about Edmund, see.

In the meanwhile, we searched.

There are woods by our house, in between it and the town. Large woods, where a child could easily get lost and not be found. Or buried, as the case may be. Those we knew were told and those woods were searched completely.

It was I who found the bones, two weeks after the window opened. They were buried shallowly, underneath a tree and by a creek. But here is the odd thing about it: these bones, while they were Edmund’s size, didn’t have a speck of flesh to cling to them. After two weeks! And no marks of the teeth or knives that might have sheared it off.

There was another odd thing about it. The tiny bone fist clutched a ruby. Tightly. I had to pry the fingers open to get it out and when I freed it, I held it up to the sunlight. It glittered.

The body I buried again in the dirt where I found it, leaving a blue marker on top. No one would bother it that way. They’d just assume that someone searched there. I carried on, making a show of looking, the ruby weighing down my coat’s pocket.

~

You ask me now why I didn’t tell and that I can answer. I didn’t know the body was Edmund’s, not for certain; were he dead, the skeleton wouldn’t be so old. And there was Wulfric to think of. He loved the boy even more and had I just told all about it without knowing, he’d break. He needed himself whole and so did the rest of us. So we kept the search up, until the entire forest was covered with the blue markers.

We were told then to hold a wake and were told it more when the sheriffs of five towns looked and looked and found nothing. But we didn’t do as told. That would say that we’d given up and I didn’t know if Wulfric could. And every day that passed, I took that ruby out of my pocket and held it up to the sunlight and I never, ever let Wulfric see it. Or the daughters, for that matter.

A year passed by. The daughters forgot and Wulfric was still sad, but he could hide it better now. We went through most of the anniversary unmarked. The three of them even went to town together, to visit and have treats. While they did, I walked into the woods, ruby in my fist and basket on my arm. I think my mind was to pick fruits.

Instead, my footsteps carried me all the way to that tree by the creek, with a faded blue marker in the dirt between the roots. Things grew on the dirt now, like grass and flowers. I knelt down by it and with the ruby still in hand, I dug with my spare. I dug and dug and dug, to find nothing but more dirt. The ruby kept me from thinking that what I saw almost a year ago was an imagining, but only just.

I held it up, again. And for the space of a blink, the ruby seemed a sapphire, blue and bright, and I felt my hair fly in a wind that wasn’t there.

~

Nothing happened that day. Nothing happened that night. No one made note. Ah, but in the morning, I awoke – not to the unsought warmth of sunshine on my resting face, but to a scratching at the closed window. Like an animal’s claws.

I am curious but no fool. I armed myself and did not open that window. My toes crept on the floor, silent as they could, and my hand reached out, undoing the latch and locks. I did not blink with the light. My toes carried me past the threshold, around the corner.

There stood Edmund, scratching, scratching at the window, fixated on it. Was it Edmund? It looked like our boy. Taller, though. Much taller. He’d grown.

To my shame, I didn’t scream. But no matter the noise I didn’t make, he soon stopped the scratching and turned so slowly to face me. Everything could be seen on that face, as if he could choose from all the feelings in the world but hadn’t settled on the right one. Still fluxing, he stepped forward, one foot in front of the other, slowly, faster, faster, until he reached my knees and buried that face into them. He made no noise either, but I soon felt the wet of his tears through my bedclothes.

What else could anyone do? I knelt down and hugged the boy, letting him weep on my shoulder instead. Whatever weeping I had in me was long spent, but my hands shook and that’s how Wulfric found us later. I don’t know how long ‘later’ was.

~

‘Edmund’ took to life again easily. Too easily.

There should have been questions. There were none. Not from Ida and Bridget, who were expected to ask about this familiar stranger. Even if they remembered the Edmund who was, they would at least ask where he’d been. They never did.

Not from the townsfolk, who were grown and had to remember the scouring of the forest. They weren’t supposed to accept the Edmund of now with a smile and asking of the course of his day and week and had he been good to his mother and father? They were supposed to be astonished. They were supposed to ask how this miracle took hold. They never did.

It’s like he never died. Vanished. And where I once hid that ruby, I now hid a sapphire – just as large, just the same cut. I don’t know when it changed for good.

He’s still such a happy boy, charming everyone. The height could be a fluke. But when either I or Wulfric ask him where he went and what he saw, that smile and dimple are murdered. He trembles, violently. He mouths these words he can’t voice. Then he sobs, just as he did when he first reappeared, quietly, wetly. Press the matter, it just goes on longer. Don’t, it stops. The happy boy returns from the dead.

~

Not long that morning outside the window, I heard of another boy vanishing in the next town over.

His name was Hector, I heard say, and he was of Edmund’s age. Black hair. Brown eyes. Taller than his peers. I dutifully joined in the search and did not make speculation. That colouring was common in these parts and it could be a coincidence. I was still troubled then – why hadn’t anyone talked of the search for Edmund? Was it to spare poor Hector’s parents? I told myself that and that’s what Wulfric told me too. But still. It will not surprise you that Hector was not found.

Sometimes, I wondered if his mother found her own old grave with its own old bones. I don’t think so now and I’ll tell you why.

Six months later, Hector’s mother came to my town. I don’t know the reasons for the visit, but I was there that day and so was Edmund. He’d grown even more, taller and broader, so much that you’d think he’d fed off the sunshine in the manner of plants.
The general store was our destination, for odds and ends we couldn’t grow or make ourselves. A new axe head. Cotton cloth. Oranges. I purchased these and other things and Edmund insisted on carrying more than his fair half. If he found it too much, he never told, through words or other means. As we stepped out, we saw her and she saw us.

Her name is Clementine. A younger woman than I, prettier and more delicate. The last is being fixed. The east from where she comes is softer and each year here gives her a toughness that goes into her bones. She didn’t lose that with Hector. But now, she stood and stared at my Edmund. Edmund stared back.

Now, there was no rush of joy or grief, no exclamations, nothing so dramatic. Just stillness and confusion. Frightened me, it did. So I snapped my fingers to break it.
The stillness leaked out like a sigh. Clementine stopped, shook her head, furrowed her brow at me. She walked away. Edmund grinned and told me a joke he thought up, involving a dog. He couldn’t stop thinking about dogs lately and he’s never subtle.

Years came and went. But not quietly.

~

We smiled and grimaced when Edmund told us how much he liked to draw, oh, very much. Pencils cost, paper costs. Our house is a long ways from where such things are made. But he tried so much to please and did not fuss at all when we gave him a slate and chalk in place.

He went through much chalk, so much that he volunteered to do more and more chores, for us and others, to help pay for all that chalk. That was not the problem. But the things he drew, yes, that was the problem.

First, he drew Clementine. Over and over again, making a more perfect likeness each time. Inviting me to see how much he looked as her and how much he looked as me. I’d sneak behind him and ruffle his hair and he’d grin and erase it. Just as though it were nothing.

Second, he drew a man. Clementine’s husband? I couldn’t say. I’d ruffle his hair and he’d erase.

Third, he drew other women, other men. They were strangers to me, every one.

Fourth, he drew... things. Dark things. Goblins. Demons. Creatures of all sorts. Long, thin hands with claws like a wolf’s. Trees with faces in their knots with roots that strangling everything that lived. Ida and Bridget would see these and wail. Wulfric and I would hold our arms out to them as they wept and they’d shrink away, still shuddering.

The ruby went black when he drew. I carried it with me and I checked, always.

I stole the slate away. He stole it back. He drew in secret from then forwards.

~

On nights with a new moon, he’d sleep nearest to the window, back towards it. He held his arm over the bodies of his sisters and would not let them move ‘til morning.

On other nights, his worst sin was to steal their blankets away in the small hours.

~

Almost a fortnight ago, this occurred:

We all slept in the same room, my husband, my children and I, and we did so with the window locked shut from the inside. I know I locked it before I lay down, after everyone else was abed. But when I awoke, it was with the moon shining on my face.

I sat up and I rubbed by eyes, puzzled. Wulfric snored yet and Ida and Bridget breathed softly, knees up to their chests. But no Edmund. His space on the bed was empty, his pillow fat and fluffed. I screamed, but no one heard. Ida muttered nonsense in her sleep.

My hand reached into the pocket of my bedclothes, groping for the ruby. It met with nothing. Without waking Wulfric – not saying there were no tries made – I slipped my boots on, lit a lantern, and left the cabin. Into the woods, to the tree with the blue marker by the creek.

Edmund kneeled there, bedclothes soiled all over with mud and dirt. A heap of the same piled by his side. His back was to me, so I didn’t see the ruby, but I knew he held it.

“There’s bones here,” he said.

There hadn’t been before.

“But there’s now and there were before there weren’t any and you know that.”

Don’t speak to your mother so harsh!

“Mother? I don’t know if you’re my mother or not. Maybe many are. Maybe many told me not to hog.”

I don’t understand.

“You’re not meant to. But I’m thinking you should return me soon. Let others have their turn.”

I don’t-!

“It’s either me or the daughters,” he said. “But some of us have to go.” He held his hand up, so I could see the ruby. It shone blue in the lantern light, like a sapphire.

We woke the next morning, sunshine creeping through the cracks of the shut window. He bid me good morning. Offered to make us all a breakfast. Could he remember last night? I didn’t think so.

~

But it’ll be the new moon soon enough, the time of backs to window. That’s when I choose, or he chooses for me. I don’t know how he can expect me to. I’ve lost him once and he’s more foolish than I raised him if he thinks a second time is easier.

He’s grown so much – the age where he’s not quite a man but thinks he’s one already. His height is a head more than Wulfric’s and he carries his sisters about under each arm. They laugh themselves hoarse and beg him to do it again. He works hard, is friendly to all. I remember when he – or a boy very like him – was a babe in my arms and I wasn’t much sure whether I liked being a mother at all yet. The remembered pictures are happier than the remembered thoughts.

There is still Ida and Bridget to think of. Not so agreeable, but more witty and not so uncanny. Ida plays with recipes. Bridget plays with words. They like to gather flowers and climb trees until they hurt themselves and skin their knees or elbows or cheeks.

I sit by the door, watching Wulfric haul in firewood. I know I should let him in, tell him of what’s to come, the choosing that must be done. But I stop with my mouth half open. He loves the daughters and he’d choose to keep Edmund.
Two days, two nights. That’s all I have left to raise him up, to call him ‘Edmund’. To love him. To keep him.

It feels wrong.

Strike in the Shining City: Chapter III

In which our heroine does her job.

I always rose at dawn, no matter how late I lay back.

This was my routine: disentangle myself from my husband’s limbs and the sheets, splash myself with cold water, dress, and sit at the kitchen desk to write my missive to Prime Minister Lark. (Word had it that government-threatening scandal had been uncovered back east and she might not be the PM much longer, but oh yes, surely this was an exaggeration.) This done, I’d look it over, rewrite as needed before stuffing it in an envelope, and only then enjoyed a cup of tea and hunk of buttered bread.

The routine that day differed in two respects. One, the amount of disentangling I had to do from my husband – even the marijuana wasn’t enough to convince me to let him keep a houseguest and so he had to resort to more mercenary methods. Two, said houseguest woke up before I did.

I assumed he still slept on the chesterfield. He waited until I sat at the desk before he said, “You’re going to help me, you know.”

I looked down at the paper, fresh except for the respectful greeting to Lark. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You’ll change your mind.”

With the tip of the fountain pen applied to paper, the meat of the letter could begin. No, I really didn’t think so.

~

Later in the morning, about a half hour before I headed off to keep the streets of Lafontaine safe once again, my husband dressed for work, i.e., he slicked his hair back in addition to wearing the same sort of outfit he usually did. The odd thing was, it was Friday. One of his two days off. Harkley busily shimmied into one of Frederick’s outfits at the same time and it fit pretty well, except for the legs being too short.

“Union meeting,” said Frederick by way of explanation. He gave his bowtie a final tug. “I’ll do the shopping after.”

I tapped my fingers on the kitchen table and glared. “Since when do teachers have a union?”

“Since today.” He smiled. “We’re meeting up with the metalworks people. I’m sure they’ll have plenty of advice for us.”

My tapping stopped, out of surprise, and Frederick had the good sense not to say anything more. The metalworkers were currently on strike. Harkley was gussying himself up to go meet with them, the teachers, and likely others. Ilon Harkley. First cause of Elgin’s general strike and others. Who slept under my roof and who’d do so for many nights to come.

I had the good sense not to ask anything more. The less I knew, the less I’d tell. Or let slip. It meant the same thing in the end.

~

But the day wore on, as it usually does, and it found me striding alongside my comrade in the dry, windy heat.

Detective Walden Horace was the type of person who aged beyond his years out of spite. I knew for a damned fact that at the time this story is set, he numbered no more than thirty-five years. And yet there he was, hair as white as a snowdrift and a number of wrinkles to testify to his world-weariness. And his voice! Like gravel! And I knew he was a detective and all, and I appreciate the irony of me writing this, but did he have to be so cynical about everything?

Aside from that, he was an all right guy. Even if he did have a tendency to make unwelcome observations to people who weren’t suspects or witnesses.

“Witnesses say that you were chasing someone last night,” he said mildly, opening the last button on his shirt that professionalism would allow and folding the collar of his coat further back.

But there were ways of dealing with him. First, an understatement of the truth. “Bah, just some vagrant. He got away.” Second, a distraction. “But you’ll never believe what I found afterwards.” I told him of the chamber underneath Lark and Hammersmith. He never quite believed me about the intersection’s evening ritual, dismissing it as coincidence on the one time I dragged him out to see, but how could this fail to grab his attention?

“That’s interesting.” Oh, I could’ve punched him.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Don’t you want to see it?”

“It might’ve slipped your mind, but we’re in the middle of an investigation right now. It’ll have to wait,” he said. Then, in a quieter tone, “You haven’t told anyone else about this, have you?”

“Just my husband.” He swore and I gave him a light smack on the skull. And then we arrived at the apartment building.

The thing about a new, shiny, clean city is that it doesn’t keep that way without upkeep when it’s got a fair number of factories and one hell of a wind. Yes, sure, presumably, there having been a huge number of residences to lay claim to should’ve meant a great savings for the common folk, but that’s without taking into account property taxes. Which were high, no matter how you took care of your place. Which often wasn’t very well, if the property taxes (or the rent, if you were forced to it) bled you dry and you’d pay anything, anything to live in this wonderful city that feels more like home than home ever did.

This building filled up near the end of the time where residences were free to give away and you could tell why. Far from the city centre and the pillared, polished city hall. Near the train tracks, but far away from the station. The smell of stockyards, which was far worse than the factory smoke could ever be.
A tree, thin, scraggly and young, had snapped at the trunk, layed at rest through a park bench. The unmaintained yard was filled with wildflowers, which was the only charming thing about the place, aside from the building would have if it was given a good scrub down.

I took my place ahead of Horace – detectives are in shorter supply than constables – right hand on my sword hilt, left raised in a fist at the door with the looked-for number. I knocked. Shave and a haircut, two bits. “City Watch! Open up, if you please!” Then I counted to ten.

Several little crashes sounded on the other side of the door, like furniture, books, and other household stuff knocked over by an unbalanced body. On number seven, that body opened the door.

It was a ‘she’ – a shaking, unkempt, nervous wreck of a woman who smelt strongly of bad whiskey and with wide grey eyes that wouldn’t break contact with mine. She wore goggles. The same kind as Harkley’s and my old employer’s. A real chemist, then.

“Ms. Hero Toynbee, I presume?” I asked, not harshly, out of fear that she’d bolt like a rabbit. The woman nodded, jerkily, and choked out a noise that might have been a ‘yes’. “My name is Constable Calvin and I’m here with my colleague, Detective Horace. He’d like to ask you some questions.”

A near thing she didn’t bolt then. Her shaking became like a train’s vibrations, she pressed her upper teeth against her lower lip repeatedly, and her eyes kept flicking back and forth between Horace and I. She gulped once, loudly. Turning her back on us, she waved her bony hand in the air for us to follow her.

Debris, both salvageable and not, littered the hall. Nothing that could rot, thank gods, but other old things. Like a Montvert newspaper from five years ago. Dead flowers in a pot, the soil still moist. A mysterious box with a brass horn and a needle attached to an arm. Later in life, I’d realise that it was a prototypical phonograph. While Horace and I waded through with minimum damage, Toynbee kept walking into things, sending them tumbling.

Her sitting room wasn’t much better. Three chairs – she had us all sit in them, now keeping her eyes resolutely away from Horace and I – were crammed around a small table in one half of the room. A workbench took up the other half, covered with gadgets and doodads and who knows what. But no elixirs of any sort. She had the goggles, but not the hood... Oh, and there was the trapdoor in between the two. Odd place to get into the basement. But then, plenty of buildings in Lafontaine had their eccentricities. A window opening up into a hallway. A flight of stairs that stopped a foot short of the next floor. That sort of thing. Not all, not even most or half, but plenty.

“Ms. Toynbee,” said Horace, leaning forward with his hands in his lap, reminding me very much of my father when I did something to make him cross. I gave him a sharp look – was frightening the piss out of her really the right approach to use? – but if he noticed, he didn’t give indication of it. “Witnesses saw you enter Madam Clyde’s establishment last Friday, on the night of Clyde’s murder. They did not see you leave. We would like to know why and how.”

She reached for a whiskey bottle and an empty glass from a side table and attempted to pour the contents of one into the other, only to find the one was empty. She placed them back on the table, scrambling to keep the glass from falling when she placed it too close to the edge.

“If you’re looking for a murderer,” she said, trembling and small, with a slight accent that could’ve been Ursalian. “You’ll not find it here.”

“That may be so. What did you see that night, Ms. Toynbee, and how did you leave?”

“I knew this place was wrong. Felt all wrong, sounded too wrong.” Toynbee tried the bottle again, this time holding it right to her lips. It met with the same success as last time and she didn’t bother to replace it again. It just tumbled onto the floor with nary a crack.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I held up a finger to shush Horace.

Now, the fingernail chewing. This is an unkind observation, especially with Toynbee the way she was, but seeing people carry on that habit in front of me always made me want to smash their digits. I bit the corner of my lip to keep from saying anything.

She continued, “No place should’ve felt so nice. Not if I hadn’t even stepped outside of the train station. And I was headed somewhere, see, somewhere important...” Where? She shook her head. “Can’t even remember now. It’s all so fuzzy. Like I dreamed it all. Could’ve been born here, fully grown, two years ago on the platform. If I remember before at all, I remember... not being like this.”

Neither of us asked her what she meant by ‘like this’. “And there’s the tunnels.”

I’m sure my heart skipped. “Tunnels?” I asked.

The way her mouth looked when our gazes locked again could’ve been a smile, could’ve been the start of a snarl. “All underneath us. Not like sewers. There’s no smell, no smell at all. Just tunnels and rooms and locked doors.” I tried not to look too keen. But she dashed my hopes straightaways. “There’s no way to open those. Not that I found.”

“And there’s other things,” she said.

“What other things?” Horace asked.

But she stared away again, hugging herself, rocking back and forth. “I went to the brothel because I can’t find it anymore, not since coming to this city, and I was so lonely, but the tunnels, they go everywhere, even under the brothel, but I walked the streets instead, but somehow they must’ve followed me, and I didn’t kill the madam, but it means the same thing in the end, doesn’t it, and...” She broke down into a dry sobbing, her head at an angle.

Her eyes were now on that peculiar area between the chairs and the workbench.
I felt my mouth open and sound come out. “Ms. Toynbee. What’s under that trapdoor?”

~

Elsewhere in the city, a ginger-haired scoundrel addressed a crowd from behind a podium in a crowded hall. His fist punched the air. Cameras flashed. And the hall kept filling up to a point where even the most unflappable fire marshal would sweat.

Ilon Harkley made his Lafontaine debut.

Strike in the Shining City: Chapter II

In which our heroine receives sound exercise and is thoroughly mystified.

Ilon Harkley was a ginger-haired scoundrel.

Wherever he went, strikes and sedition were sure to follow. He snuck into communities – invariably those belonging to the working class – extolled the virtues of unionisation, pushed the workers to do so, distributed inflammatory pamphlets, and made merry hell for those who owned or managed the mines, the factories, the city services, etc. A city or township could shut down for weeks at a time as a result of his influence.

They’d recently run him out of Englin – ‘they’ being the watch and militia under the direction of the civil authorities – with rumours that he’d been shot in the escape. Rumours also said that he was headed east. Towards Lafontaine.

But weeks went by, more than enough time for Harkley to make the journey several times over, with not a whisper of pamphlets or unlawful gatherings. And as the citizenry decided not to oblige us by not committing any crimes and no one was about to give us the funds to hire more constables, well... We stopped being so diligent. We stopped checking every train, every cart, coming into the city. Which I suppose was what he was waiting for.

I was the one to discover him.

It’d been a long day. I’d been backing up Inspector Horace as he made his inquiries about the suspicious death of a brothel owner, drussed up in my uniform in the stifling heat brought by the Chinook, sweating and aching in my feet. To switch out for my civvies at the watch house at the end of the shift was a special sort of gratifying – taking so much pleasure from walking in the night air with rolled up shirtsleeves had to be breaking a law somewhere.

I’d even let my hair down. It was that sort of night.

But I stopped when I reached the corner of Lark and Hammersmith.

Outwardly, there was nothing that special about that intersection. Just a selection of shops and groceries, with flats to fill out the edges. The people living and working there went about their business as normal. The crime rate wasn’t unusual in either direction. The neighbourhood wasn't poor nor rich.

Here’s the thing: this was the exact geographic centre of Lafontaine, a fact easily checked by the large, detailed, and crisp map hanging in the watch house’s lobby. And for ten minutes after ten, every night, not one body could be seen on the streets. Except for me. It was on my route home, see, so I’d plenty of chances to see the pattern.

Plenty of chances to remember my duty, too.

I reached the corner at just the right time. Men, women, children, entirely naturally, just found that their business took them indoors or away and decided to let the cobbles cool. Ten o’clock sharp, the street cleared completely. I hunkered by bakery and took out my pocket watch.

But wait. Someone still walked outside!

Wearing the traditional hood of a master chemist and a long grey jacket, goggles on his brow, he walked with a self-conscious confidence. Hard to see his features clearly, given the light and the hood, but he was tall, lanky, and there was something wrong with his arm.

Rumours did say that Harkley got shot in the arm.

“Nice night for a walk, isn’t it?” I called out, waving at him.

“Too true, too true,” he said, not quite turning his face to me. “Is it usually this quiet?”

I shook my head. “Not so. Come here and wait. You’ll see.”

So he did. He settled in beside me, a small shaft of light from the bakery’s shuttered windows falling on his shoulders. He tried to speak a couple of times, but I shushed him. We stood and waited. And as the second hand made its final path along the circumference and the minute hand pushed to the ‘II’...

A door opened. Another. Another. People wandered off and around, naturally, and without any sense that anything odd occurred.

Then the man finally met my gaze, eyes wide. I grinned in triumph. I’d finally had a chance to prove my observation to someone else. And I’d finally seen his face up close. Oh, he was Harkley, all right. Those freckles were unmistakeable. Hell, the eyes!

“How on earth...” But he spotted my free hand moving – to bring out the cuffs, see – and the bastard broke out in a run.

“Godsdamnit!” I swore, tying the sleeves of my uniform jacket around my waist as my legs pumped after him. The chase began.

And, oh, could that scoundrel run.

Down Hammersmith we ran, dodging those with genuine business and the occasional drunk alike, but we didn’t stay there long. Two blocks, turn. Three blocks, turn. So on and so on. Ah, but you know what the great thing is about chasing someone who’s unfamiliar with the city? He doesn’t know where the hell he’s going.

Do you know that the maddening thing is? That makes him utterly unpredictable.

Suddenly, being seen by the public was no longer anathema to him. He pulled down his hood and called out cheerfully to passersby, waving, giving out compliments like he was a charity. They stood clear. Not because they didn’t wish to interfere, I gathered, but because they were baffled. Did they recognise him? Probably not, at that speed.

He pivoted on his heel, dashing down an alleyway and leaping over a wooden fence with frustrating grace. I managed it myself. I smacked my shin on the way, but I managed it. Only to find myself faced with a chicken coop, and flying feathers as Harkley wreaked merry turmoil within.

Chickens! If I didn’t know better, I’d think the nickelodeon producers of years to come owed me royalties. I narrowly avoided taking one in the face, but kept moving so that the feathered ones wouldn’t avenge themselves on my ankles. Out through to the other side, up over the fence! Dodge the gardens, leap, oh look, another alley. And the back door to a pub.

I tell you, that poor cook did not deserve us interrupting his rhythm like that. Or toppling his pot of soup.

Nor did the bartender deserve us bursting out behind him before scaling the bar and spilling half a dozen of innocent pints. There were so many curses laid upon us then that I wonder if every bad thing that’s happened to me since then wasn’t due to the forces of justice summoned by that red-faced bartender.

Here is where bystanders finally caught wise and tried to block him. Or us, let’s face it. Before, the chase was just inexplicable to their brethren, but damnit, the beer that’d been wasted! Lesser souls died for lesser offenses.

A woman with massive biceps and a leather apron with a worrying smell made a grab for my neck, her dirty fingernails scraping my neck as I dodged. Another fist, a man’s fist, came at me from side my body was leaning. I twisted back in response and tripped onto my ass.

My assailants’ hands reached for my shirt. I spiralled about, barely missing them, and managed to trip them over in turn with my own legs. Victory! I shimmied away, pushing myself up as I heard a fight break out between the two of them behind me.

I hammered my way through the rest of the crowd, reaching the door shortly behind Harkley, but not shortly enough. Whatever. I kept the chase up. And up. And up. Even I, an old hat at this, wanted a chance to take a breather.

But first, there were more barrels and pedestrians and carts to dodge around, and piles of horse apples to step in to hilarious effect.

It was that sort of a chase.

~

But it came full circle, eventually.

We were back on Lark and Hammersmith. His chest moved hugely in and out, his bad arm close to his side. I inched towards him, expecting him to bolt at any moment. And the bastard looked down. Again.

A bloody open manhole lay just beside him and without the slightest hesitation, he jumped in. “Idiot!” I yelled, clambering in after him. “Does he want to break his legs?” Although that didn’t stop me from leaping the last few feet myself.

I landed on the stones with a thud. But Harkley just stood there, back towards me. I reached out to him, only to stop when I saw where we were.

It wasn’t the sewers.

We were in a room, a large one, perfectly round with four doors placed in the four cardinal directions. It was illuminated by a pale blue light, the source of which I couldn’t see no matter where I turned. No stench, either. It smelled sterile.

Of course, when you’re in a large, mysterious room with four doors, you must absolutely try to open them. I don’t care how many years have passed – I know I’d do the same thing now as then. Metal doors, too, with knobs in their precise middle, keyholes to the right, with no other embellishment.

But they were all locked. But they had to open somehow. Hmmm.

So distracted I was, that I didn’t even register Harkley’s boots finding purchase on the ladder steps and moving up, up, away. Only after I exhausted the then-available methods of defeating the locks – forcing the door, picking the lock, knocking – did I notice he was gone.

I cursed, mightily. I could’ve sworn that the air tinged bluer for the briefest moment in time.

~

Defeated, I clambered back up to the surface, got my bearings, and turned to home. What would I tell Captain Copeler tomorrow? What should I tell? And who moved that wretched manhole cover? Should I salute or throttle them? The downing of a pint in a pub – the very pub where I had that talk with Lark, as it happens – didn’t offer up any additional wisdom. Nor did the second. All my mind could do was berate my body for not bothering to check under the intersection beforehand.

My course resumed.

~

Two men sat at the kitchen table, illuminated by oil lamp.

One of them was my husband, Frederick. The very image of the gentleman scholar he appeared, which was good, because that’s what he was. Neatly pressed trousers, waistcoat and shirt, buttoned up to the last button, topped with a tweed jacket with patches on the elbow. (Madness, in that weather.) Neatly parted black hair with the faintest smidgen of wave. Neatly groomed moustache, coming up to curls at its points. I loved that moustache. But then, I also loved cheap beer and patriotism in my youth.

A black bow completed the outfit, neatly tied. Honestly, everything about him was neat.

The second was Ilon Harkley. Hood and goggles gone, revealing a shock of red hair, grey jacket draped on the back of the chair. His remaining clothes still had the dust of the road on them, not to mention the sweat of the run. There were the freckles, there were the mad brown eyes, there was the rest of the face – frankly, a rather average one. I don’t think he could’ve got anyone to follow him were the eyes blue or green – they’d be too spooked.

They passed a lighted marijuana joint back and forth, taking long, relaxed puffs in turn. The scene looked so positively serene that I longed to ruin it with damage and noise – but we lived on the first floor of a three floor house. There was no way the ‘neighbours’ wouldn’t hear.

“You boys having fun?” I asked as I moved into the light of the kitchen, hands very much on hips.

“Oh!” said Harkley. “She’s the one who chased me.”

Frederick smiled, sweetly. “So we can save the trouble of introductions then?”

“Hard to catch a name, when you’re outrunning a madwoman with handcuffs. I think you’d better give them.”

He gestured to me with a flourish. “This is my handsome wife, Jane Calvin. Jane, this is Ilon Harkley. You may have heard of him.”

Harkley presented the joint to me. “Please to make your acquaintance. Want a puff?”

What else could I do but take him up on it? Think of the neighbours!

Update

New chapter will have to wait until tomorrow, possibly Tuesday.

I tried, hard, and it wasn't working. It was a limp, soggy mess. Fortunately, I had a helpful conversation (hi, Becca-rae!) and I've got a clear vision of what the chapter should be now.

So I'll get a good night's sleep and write tomorrow, in between my other engagements. It's better this way. Trust me. You don't want to read what I had.

Strike in the Shining City: Chapter I

Audio version available here.

In which the most inexplicable of all cities is introduced and a Prime Minister makes time for a citizen.

Lafontaine, like all of the great cities, wasn’t built in a day. It was built in a night.

On March 31st, it was just a waystation by the great railway, smack in the middle of the great prairie. An inn, a telegraph post, a road leading north to where the tribes and homesteaders were. On April 1st, everything changed. Buildings, hundreds of them, sprung up overnight – flats, houses, stores, factories, even a fine pillared place to be the government seat. All empty. All new.

Here’s the strangest thing: no one found it creepy or off-putting. Sure, those who stayed at the inn woke up more than a mite confused, but this new city gave such a big welcoming, warm feeling that anything darker than that didn’t cross their minds. “Come,” it seemed to say. “Stay a bit. Stake out your place. Tell others and fill me up – there’s plenty of room for all.”

So they sent off their telegrams and got on with the business of settling down. When more trains came, as they’re inclined to do when they’ve got the rails, a whole lot of their passengers – and crew! – thought it just wasn’t worth it to go the other half across the country. This city was nice. Why not stay there? On and on it went, with a full hundred thousand staking their way in – by that point, you had cities east and west in a fret. And more to the point, the federal government.

I lived in the capital when the news hit and I’ll tell you, Gullenburgh went nuts. Not so much a panic, nor a celebration, but plenty of clogging up the streets, whispering to each other whatever scrap of information or rumour they heard. The dailies put out special editions, made entirely up of speculation, which were only a shred more accurate than what was threading its way through the people’s ears by word of mouth.

Oh, and there was Parliament. Prime Minister Lark declared that no one was going home until this was all sorted out and what measures should be taken. She put out invitations for someone, anyone from this nouveaux city to come and let them all know what happened, firsthand – but they were all declined, politely as could be managed through the medium of telegram.

A militia was called up – the Princess Aggies, as the unit was commonly called – packed onto a train, and sent west to look into the matter. Attached was the Prime Minister’s own car, occupied by herself, her secretary, reporters from each of Gullenburgh’s three dailies, and no one else. She wouldn’t even take a bodyguard, or perhaps the Princess Aggies were meant to take on that role.

No other MPs. She’d purposefully made sure she didn’t even need to have a member of the Opposition alongside, for after a few days filled up with sweaty, irritable politicians, even the airy House of Parliament seemed rank. They agreed to give her every power to go to the new city and deal with it in however way she saw fit.

It took just three days to get there, but that was enough. The settlers, organised by those who set themselves up as a makeshift municipal authority, built a grandstand and had gifts and honeyed words ready for the Prime Minister the moment she arrived. The foremost of both was the proposition to name the city ‘Larksville’ in her honour – an honour which she gracefully declined. “Perhaps you can revisit the proposal in some decades’ time when I am both dead and buried,” she said, with the famous sparkle in her eye. But for now, the thought of it was too gauche, even for her.

So they named it ‘Lafontaine’, in honour of the great reformer. As someone both dead and buried, she was deemed a very good namesake indeed. Lark stayed for a week, talked a lot, drank a lot, organised even more. Then, after practically forging every one of the nuts and bolts of the actual governance of the city, left for the east once again. Not even Lafontaine’s pull could keep her from the House of Commons for ever or long.

~

You might wonder what happened with the militia, given that there weren’t great mobs for them to take down after all. They didn’t go with the Prime Minister. Instead, at her request, the Princess Aggies stayed behind and became the seed of the municipal police force. Thus, between Lark and a sizable percentage of the militia, you’ve got the first people to visit Lafontaine and not have any burning desire to stay there.

You might also wonder, rightfully, how I can say this with any certainty. There could well have been people prior to the naming who didn’t really care for the city, granted, but if there hadn’t, it definitely started with the Princess Aggies. And I can say that for certain because I was a soldier in the unit – Jane Calvin, militia volunteer in my days off, chemist’s assistant in my days on, and raring to head back to Gullenburgh.

It wasn’t my erstwhile employment that I missed. My employer – a chemist by the name of Erdin whom I don’t care whether I offend here – was a skinflint, stringing me along for years with promises that he’d train me up to be a full-fledged chemist myself. If anything, Lafontaine offered a guilt-free way of detaching myself from that blackguard without offending my stupid sense of loyalty. I never imagined myself being a constable, but one never imagines a lot of things that life coughs up.

No, my objections formed on two grounds: one, I love Gullenburgh, dirty and old as it is. But here’s the thing, it’s the hub of the country. If a decision’s made, affecting the whole of it, you hear it there first. If you don’t like that decision, you can find whoever made it in a pub – or a soda shop, if the poor soul’s an abstainer – and give them an earful. And frankly, I like the oldness of it. I’ve been across the ocean in my vagabond youth, hoofed it all over the Estelian continent, and so many of the cities over here on Deralea seem so new and gleaming in comparison. My heart finds it suspicious, like those cities are unfinished. I don’t get that feeling so much in Gullenburgh, even with its mere three centuries.

Two, my husband. He had a proper job, he loved Gullenburgh as much as I did, and I thought it unfair to drag him over the hills and plains without so much as a ‘by your leave’. Further, I’d only had him a year by then and wasn’t sick of him yet.

But that mattered little. Why? Because Stonild Lark, before she left Lafontaine, took me out for a drink. Or rather, drinks – Lark had an infamous reputation in the capital for how much she enjoyed the sauce. Don’t wonder how pubs and taverns and breweries set up shop so quickly. Farmers and settlers from every direction within a reasonable distance were happy to charge the inflated prices for the initial stores, enterprising souls bought up those stores to sell them for even more highly inflated prices, and breweries followed suit to drive the prices back down. As the week wore on, their first batches were released into the wild, nearly undrinkable but not quite.

We made our pleasantries, rushed through our first pints, and ordered our second. Lark, ever magnanimous even though I wasn’t a loyal Grey voter, shelled out for all of them.

“You don’t like it here,” she started, after we’d taken our first sips. “But I need you to stay here. I’ll convince you to do so, but first, you must tell me why you don’t wish me to do so.”

I recounted all that I told you and she listened, every word. “Lafontaine? It’s the very definition of new and gleaming. It’s unsettling, the whole place. Everyone I’ve talked to outside the militia doesn’t get that. Yes, I know, it’s wonderful living where there’s no rats or vermin scampering about, but isn’t it weird?”

“My line about not being dead and buried was complete hogwash,” she said. “You seem smart; you must realise that.” Truthfully, I hadn’t, but my pride didn’t let me admit it to someone who was effectively my liege, whether there was a queen ruling in far off Spira or no. She placed her stein on the table and peered at the pale liquid inside with distaste – a sight that would’ve astonished everyone in Gullenburgh. “I won’t have my name attached to a place like this, not while I don’t know what it’s about.”

“A city that appears overnight can disappear overnight,” I said.

“One of many possibilities, yes. And its mere existence... Ms. Calvin, do you have any idea what effect this will have on the tribal treaties for this area?” My brain scrambled for the words, coming up empty, but time spent up. Lark twitched her nose. “Neither I. And there’s the fact that we’re so close to the Abelian border, the effect on grain shipments – what farmer with a lick of sense would send her crop to Gullenburgh with Lafontaine so close? So many damnable considerations.”

She continued. “But you must stay. All of you. What they’ve set up to keep order is laughable. There’ve been murders already, mostly the result of scuffles over bloody real estate, that have had only token investigations. Robberies, certainly – there’s no proper infrastructure set up yet to bring supplies in and you’ve drank the unhappy results of inflation. And to be perfectly frank, I need eyes and ears that aren’t here because they’ve decided that this is a veritable promised land. Hence the need for the Princess Aggies. You came here for duty, not infatuation, and you’ll stay for duty.”

“And...” Here came the coup de grace. “For a far better wage than you’ve been earning under that chemist and a fat bonus. Even adjusting for inflation.”

Naturally, I went through the motions of asking for the exact sum and for her to name all the other benefits I’d receive – healthcare, housing and moving compensation, regularly scheduled raises, etc. – topping it off with a spirited bout of haggling, even as she sighed over me bleeding the public coffers dry. “I’ll think it over and give you an answer in the morning,” I said, but we both knew that she had my number.

All she demanded in exchange for giving me a career was a weekly written report, along with telegrams in case of emergencies. Ah, poor Frederick, you didn’t have a chance! I knew he’d come, but I knew there’d be sore conversations afterwards. And the money was too good for me to care overmuch.

We parted on good terms, the Prime Minister and I, to the point where I could have had the audacity to claim her friendship after that evening. I knew I wasn’t unique amongst the Aggies – “I’ll be and have been having the same chat with your fellows, you know,” she told me flat out – but that mattered little.

I slept heavily that night, as I always do, but woke up with the dawn. I breakfasted, jogged around the makeshift ‘barracks’ the citizenry whipped up for us, washed as best I could, dressed. I went to the telegraph office to break the bad news to my husband. Then I proceeded to the newly-minted hotel at which Prime Minister Lark was sleeping and gave her my decision personally. Her clothes were the same as last night, only more rumpled, and black circles rimmed her eyes, but she grinned as though I were presenting her with a full and sealed bottle of finest brandy.

That is how I became Constable Calvin of the Lafontaine Watch. And in the years to come, I damned well earned my wage.