“Aside from all that, how on earth did you get it in your head that a Mycer girl could help you with that frightful machine? I mean, if you could chain me up and toss me screaming in there? I've just got to hear that.”
“I mumle-dumle-loo …” “Look at me, all right?”
Calabus did, then glanced away at once. “I had this dream. You were down there-helping me with things.”
“I was not. That was somebody else.”
“It was you, all right. You did some-some stuff I don't know how to do …”
“What-what kind of stuff?” Somehow, these words scared Letitia more than anything else the man had said.
“I don't know, all right? Things …”
Calabus looked anxious, miserable and full of dread. It was all he could do just to get the words out.
“You already said it, girl. It doesn't make sense, but it's real. It's a Telling Dream, I'm certain of that. I've had dreams of every sort, you won't believe what goes through my head. This one, though, was real. You'd best be nice to me. We're going to be friends. You want something to eat? I'll have Squeen William cook you something up.”
“I'd rather eat dirt. I'd rather eat a bush.”
“Up to you, girl.” Calabus pulled himself up with a long and painful sigh. “I'll run down and see if he's caught that slippery lizard yet.”
“You heard what I said. You harm her in any fashion, and you'll regret it, old man.”
Calabus grinned. He looked past her at the storm outside.
“Even if your man gets back-which I don't guess he will-that pesky boy of mine's got a nasty surprise waiting for him at the door. You and me'll talk some more after that …”
29
The storm caught up with Finn an alley past the Mycer seer's door. He ran for cover quickly, under the arches by a shop called SHIRT. He thought he knew what they sold there. He'd been in town long enough to guess. Maybe there was one called FROCK nearby, where he could get something for Letitia to wear.
If there really was a shop, if there really was a FROCK.
If it was day now instead of dark.
If it wasn't raining hens and frogs.
If there weren't any Foxers or Hooters on the prowl.
Maybe the storm was a piece of luck. Even villains of the very worst sort would likely stay home on such a frightful night.
Finn wrapped his cloak about him and ran into a fierce, punishing rain that came at him in chilling and penetrating gusts, and nearly swept him off his feet. A rain that moaned and howled, a rain that stung his cheeks, a rain hard as peppercorns, hard as little daggers, hard as little stones. A rain, Finn decided, that could drown a man standing if he dared to raise his nose.
He didn't have a plan, at least not one that made sense. He didn't know east, he didn't know west. He knew, though, the town had to end. When it did, he could walk in a circle till he found the Nuccis' house. The place wasn't all that big. The odds were one in four he was, at that very moment, headed the right way.
Even as these thoughts crossed his mind, as his boots began to slosh and the rain began to trickle down his neck, the houses and the shops began to thin. Ahead lay lone and shadowy remains, dark skeletal structures, blurred and indistinct, warped and distorted by the unremitting gusts from overhead.
Finn ducked beneath his chill and sodden cloak, dashing through the storm to the cover of a nearly roofless frame, the sad and darkened bones of some hapless farmer's barn.
It was very little shelter, but better than being drowned. Maybe he could take his boots off, pour the water out, let his socks dry.
“So where am I, then?” he asked himself aloud. He remembered, roughly, how far the Nuccis were from town. The ruined barn seemed near enough. If he knew which way to go, to the left or to the right …
Finn turned swiftly, suddenly alert, suddenly aware. Someone, something, was in there with him in the barn! Nothing he could see, nothing he could touch, but the overwhelming presence was something he could feel.
For a moment, he froze, stood perfectly still. Hand on his weapon, eyes on the dark. Saw them as they slowly, silently appeared, saw them of a sudden, saw them growing near, figures made of vapor, vague and indistinct. And with this spectral vision came the chill, musty odors of days unremembered, lives lost and spent …
“Oh, it's you fellows, then,” Finn said, with a great sigh of relief. “You had me there a minute, I'm somewhat jumpy tonight.”
“Food for the departed, sir?” said a voice like winter, like gravel in a can.
“I've got this basket,” Finn said. “I'm afraid it's not as full as it used to be.”
“Good enough it is, we're grateful as can be.”
Finn set the basket on the ground and stepped back. There were five of them, five or maybe ten, phantoms, chill apparitions frail as smoke. They gathered round the basket, drawing out the essence, the dream of oatcakes, the vision of leeks. They hummed off-key as they fed, wraiths with old memories of bread. Some people said you shouldn't eat anything sniffed by those who'd passed on, but Finn knew this wasn't so.
He'd been so absorbed in his troubles with the living, he'd given little thought to the dead. There would be a Coldtown here, of course, like anyplace else …
“I'll bet you don't remember me at all, Master Finn. It's been quite a spell.”
“I'm not certain,” Finn said, peering at the ghostly shape that had suddenly appeared, trying to recall. Shades had feelings, he knew, like anyone else.
“I waved at you from the ship,” the figure said. “I thought you waved back.”
“Now, I do remember that,” Finn said, recalling the phantom schooner he'd seen from the Madeline Rose.
“And I know who you are. It's Captain Pynch, yes? Kettles and Pots, Captain, what are you doing here?”
A wispy smile told Finn the fellow was greatly pleased.
“I'm here to see a dear departed aunt who crossed some time ago. It's not a very lovely town. Not like the one we know. Still, in my condition, it matters little anymore. Death and corruption's not all it's cut out to be, Master Finn. It's a worrisome thing at best. And not all the living are as tolerant as you, sir, not by a mile they're not.”
Finn would never say it, of course, but Pynch looked even worse than he had when they'd seen one another before, not long after the officer's tragic death, back on Garpenny Street. The parts he had lost were missing still- the arm and the foot, the eye and both ears. His ghastly flesh was a pale and tattered gray.
Only a shade of himself, so to speak, Finn thought. A soldier without a purple vest, without crimson pantaloons. A warrior stripped of crested helm, and a dashing plume of tangerine.
So, too, were the others in his group-so wan and indistinct there was little way to tell what any might have been.
“I have found no consolation in this foul circumstance,” the captain said. “I miss the war, I do, the bracing thrill of combat in the air. I was with the Royal Balloonist Fusiliers, as you recall.”
“I do indeed,” Finn said.
“And how is the lovely Letitia Louise? I took quite a fancy to the lass back then.”
“Yes, I know you did.”
“Didn't take offense? You, I mean, Master Finn.”
“Not at all,” Finn said, though in truth, the captain's attentions had annoyed him at the time.
“She used to give me tea.”
“I recall that as well.”
“And spicecakes, too,” Pynch said with a spectral sigh, a chill and fetid breath that nearly brought Finn to his knees.
Moments before, a wraith had detached itself from the crew above Finn's basket. Now, he stood just behind Pynch.