Tina Connolly - Copperhead

“Argh,” said Helen. She did not know how she had gotten in a mess that involved standing on a street corner with an addled sister and a drunk child, late for an appointment in the dwarvven slums with a citywide curfew about to fall any moment. In that moment it seemed just more proof of her inability to make good decisions, for who else would find themselves like this? The one good thing was that surely there was nothing else to go wrong right now.

“It’s snowing!” said Tam.

Really. Snowing?

“It’s like cotton,” Jane said dreamily.

“It’s like bug guts. White floaty bug guts.” Tam hiccuped. “I’m going to make snow pterodickle—pterodackle—snow man-eating butterflies.”

“I am, too,” said Jane.

“No, no, and no,” said Helen firmly, and she got one hand on each of them before they plopped down on the as-yet-unsnowy-but-certainly-muddy ground. “We are going to find Rook. We are going on the trolley.”

“Chugga chugga choo choo,” said Tam.

“That’s a train,” said Helen, reflecting that it was hard to tell which part was drunk and which was small child. It was not something she’d ever expected to have to puzzle out. “Come on.”

She tugged them both along through the falling snow. The wind was wet and the snow fell in big fat flakes that occupied both her charges, although her wrists grew sore from keeping a tight hold on them as they attempted to chase and eat snowflakes.

“The snow’s like polka dots against the sky,” said Jane.

“Doka pots,” said Tam. “Pots pots pots.”

“Your scarf is dragging,” Helen told Jane. “Hold your bug jar with two hands, Tam.”

“Then you’d be holding it,” he said gleefully, because of course she was still holding one hand.

Grant me patience and a nice hot bath, thought Helen. “Just be careful. It’s glass.”

“Glass pots. Pots pots pots.”

They rounded a corner and there was the trolley station. “Thank goodness,” muttered Helen. There was a wait for the next trolley, in which time the sky got darker and darker and the snow got fiercer. By the time the trolley finally pulled up it was undeniably dusk, and here were two women with fey faces out against the rules. Not to mention a small drunk child, who, though he was male, still probably fell on the needs-curfew side of the curfew law. Helen hustled them onto the trolley, thinking that she had been without her iron mask all this time and hadn’t even noticed. It was funny what a single-minded purpose and two lunatics would do for knocking worries right out of your head.

She hurried them on and sat them down on either side of her, knocking wet clumps of collecting snow from everybody’s coats and cardigans and explorer hats. You could still look nice when you were on the run.

Jane clutched her carpetbag, and Tam hung on to Helen’s coat pocket. He peered around, studying the passengers as if they were an unusual species of ant. Helen put a hand on both of theirs and tried to relax her shoulders and neck.

The trolley was wet from the snow and crowded from the bodies crammed into it. The crowds eased around Helen at every stop until she realized that there were very few people left in the spots designated for humans. But there were still people hurrying home. They spilled out from the back of the trolley—the dwarvven . Helen had not realized how many of them were in the city. She had not thought much of them at all until the last couple days. But now she saw them in the soot-coated greys and browns of the new factories and she thought they were surely too worn out to be a danger to anyone, regardless of what Copperhead relentlessly repeated about dwarvven unrest, dwarvven uprisings. She studied the notices around the trolley as if looking for clues to how far Copperhead had progressed. Again she saw: YOUR EYES ARE OUR EYES! And, over the door near the dwarvven end of the trolley: BE CIVIL, BE COURTEOUS, BE A CREDIT TO YOUR RACE.

Tam’s attention was caught as well by the short people at the end of the car. He looked at them through his binoculars, then turned round eyes on Helen. “They’re not even stuffed. They’re real dwarves.”

“The word is dwarvven, ” said Helen in a low voice, “and hush.”

“Father says dwarf,” Tam said positively. “When he shot one he gave me a whole terrarium for not telling. But that dwarf was dead. I never got to see a live one.”

Helen felt a peculiar mixture of horror and mortification. “Tam, tell me later,” she said. She was grateful that although the pitch of his small voice carried, the words were slurred and did not. He was looking green around the gills and she found herself hoping he would pass out rather than incite a riot on the trolley.

“No, I can’t tell you,” he said. “I promised not to tell, and Father always knows what I say and do. You can’t lie to Father. Only for him. Like about the dead dwarf. Dead dead red dead head head dead…”

Thankfully, the trolley came to its final stop and Helen rose. “Here we are,” she said, and pulled Jane and Tam along with her out of the trolley car onto the cold snowy street. The passengers slowly streamed off, parting around the three of them. “My bag,” said Jane, and before Helen could stop her she turned and vanished back into the trolley.

“Jane,” said Helen, and started after her, but then Tam, who apparently didn’t feel so well after the trolley ride, turned and started emptying his stomach into the wet snow of a nearby bush.

Helen wanted to scream. She put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulders, waiting for him to finish.

She had rescued the boy, but now what? She was not cut out for this sort of responsibility. And what should she do with this new information from Tam? Would anyone take the word of a drunk child over a man with the ear of the Prime Minister? Well, get the boy to safety first. Push the rest of those thoughts aside for later.

Shouts rose and Helen raised her head, looking around for Jane. As if in a dream everything seemed to quiet and slow, the open screaming faces, the shouts, the running. Men, women, dwarvven, running, running, running. The fire and smoke behind them, on the trolley, in a long slow build.

In slow motion Helen saw the trolley slide off the tracks and skid toward her.

Then nothing.

“Helen. Helen.”

Jane was shaking her and she didn’t want to get out of bed. No, she was dreaming. Jane hadn’t lived with her in almost a year. But this was not that time, it was another time. This was at home, in the little shack of a home they shared after the war, after no Charlie. Mother was ill, had been ill for a while, and now here it was in the wee small hours and Jane was shaking Helen to say she was leaving. That fey blight on Jane’s face writhed and curled as Jane’s words tumbled from her lips and Helen thought like a lost thing inside, don’t leave me here to watch Mother die. Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me.…

“Helen!”

The sound of her name came through a great many layers of cotton. She opened eyes to find Rook bending over her. His lively hazel eyes were dark with concern as he worked over her arm.

“Thank goodness,” he said, and she had to carefully sift through the ringing cotton to pick out the words. Their eyes met, and she had the funny thought that she was home again, as in that dream. Then the wicked light flashed in them, and he said, “On second thought, perhaps you don’t want to know what I did to your dress.”

Helen looked down to see a strip taken from the peacock blue hem. “Aaaand now it’s the right length for me,” she said dryly. A dress for Frye, a drink for Alberta, a jar of slugs for Tam—her debts were mounting.