Devon Monk - Cold Copper

Copper. It was a foundry or a mine refinery. Cedar frowned. The scent of the Holder tinged the air, then was gone.

“Copper mining,” Cedar said as several people in the street pushed the faulty steam wagon out of the way. “Do you know much about it, Miss Dupuis?”

She shook her head. “Why do you ask?”

Cedar wrapped his fingers around the copper in his pocket again. “I can taste it on the air. Copper. All these cables and wires powered by electricity. There appears to be a foundry or refinery beyond the town.”

“Lead is mined near here,” Miss Dupuis said. “And, of course, coal. But copper?” She shook her head.

“Rivers, rails, the sky…and resources.” Cedar rubbed at the back of his neck, unable to dislodge a restlessness growing in his bones. Fear peppered his lips with sweat. There was something he wasn’t seeing here. Some dangerous thing.

The driver found a way around the broken-down cart and got their carriage going again.

Yes, the Strange were near. But it was more than that.

“How long before you think the mayor will just hang the Madders?” he asked.

Miss Dupuis looked back out the window as the city rolled past. “Most trials don’t last longer than a day.”

There wasn’t much time, then. He’d promised the Madders he’d look for the Holder, and Mae insisted he do so. For the day, and if his reasonable mind remained for the night, he would hunt the Holder. And then he would get them all out of this town before Mayor Vosbrough decided to hang not just the Madders, but all of their companions as well.

The carriage finally came to a stop outside the church and Cedar stepped down first, offering his hand to Mae and then Miss Dupuis. The driver and footman didn’t even say so much as a word to them as the carriage turned around and left them standing in the spitting snow.

As the women walked to the church, Cedar lingered behind. Pain stabbed his neck, like teeth biting deep. He pressed his fingertips there, blinking hard to try to clear his vision.

Where the coach had been moments before stood a Strange.

It was made of bits of snow and ice swirling in one place, pulled together to form a manlike shape, easily Cedar’s height, the head overlarge, with no mouth and two huge holes where its eyes should be, showing the forest behind it. It lifted one hand, snowy palm upward beseechingly.

The beast within him coiled to spring, to tear at the creature with empty eyes.

Cedar snarled, reached for his gun.

“Please…” the Strange said in a voice made of the brittle ice cracking. “Help…”

“Cedar, what is it?” Mae’s voice.

He blinked.

The Strange was gone.

Snow still fell, without eyes, without voice, without shape, onto the ground, then was whisked by the wind up to the treetops.

“Cedar?” she asked again.

He glanced down the road after the carriage, then at the bushes and the building. Nothing. There was not even the smell of the Strange in the air.

“Strange,” he said.

She looked in the direction he was staring. “Is it still there?”

“No.”

“But you did see one?”

“Yes. The same one from last night. It had the same empty eyes.”

Mae scanned the trees again, then turned and walked with him toward the stairs. “Would a bullet have killed it?” she asked quietly. She knew the answer as well as he did.

“No.”

They entered the kitchen, and were wrapped in the warm smell of woodsmoke and pine.

He pulled his hat off and dragged his hand through his hair. “It spoke.”

“The Strange?” Mae said. “We’ve heard them speak before. Mr. Shunt did more than just speak. He walked this world in a body and passed among us like a man. The evils he did…” Her voice trailed off and Cedar knew the horrors of her memories. He’d been there too. He’d watched Mr. Shunt butcher and kill.

He’d almost died tearing Mr. Shunt apart with his bare hands.

“Yes,” Cedar said. “Shunt spoke. But he was the only Strange I’d known to do so. This one outside just said two words: ‘Please help.’”

Mae picked up mugs from the sink and filled them with hot water and a few mint leaves. “The Strange are wicked. They delight in playing on our sympathies.”

Cedar nodded, taking the cup she offered and sitting at the table. Mae had fallen for a Strange that made itself look like a little lost child. So yes, she was correct in thinking the Strange enjoyed that kind of game. But this Strange had seemed sad. Hopeless.

Strange weren’t human. They didn’t have feelings, not human feelings.

Cedar rubbed at his neck again, at the pain there. He still ached from the trail, muscles already tired though the day had barely begun.

On top of that, the beast within him turned, pushing for control. It wanted to hunt and kill the Strange. But Cedar suddenly, for the first time in all his years killing Strange, felt a pang of empathy.

Father Kyne walked into the kitchen. “Are you not well, Mr. Hunt?”

“Well enough,” Cedar said. “Do you know what this is?” Cedar placed the copper piece with the broken kite string on the table.

Kyne took a step back, his hands slightly out to the side as if Cedar had just deposited a snake on his kitchen table.

“Copper,” he breathed. “Cold copper.”

“Cold?”

“It is cursed metal. All who touch it go mad. Then they die.”

Cedar picked it back up.

“Don’t,” Mae said.

“I’m already cursed.” Cedar balanced the triangle in the center of his palm. “And my mind appears to be whole. This looks like kite string or a line a child would use to fish. It fell from the mayor’s coach.”

“People drop things in cities,” Mae said. “Children drop things.”

“It could just be a bit of trash, but when I picked it up, I could tell the Strange had touched it. Tell me about cold copper, Father.”

The minister hesitated, then nodded. He sat at the table, placing his hands loosely in his lap. “There is a mine north of town. Not a coal mine, not a lead mine. It is the place we do not speak of. Not even the men and children who work there speak of it. From that pit into hell, they bring up cold copper.”

“And it’s cursed?” Cedar asked again.

“Damned.”

“How?”

He shook his head. “It steals souls. It is the devil’s work.”

“What is cold copper used for? Trinkets for curses?”

“No. Cold copper is used for the devil’s devices. There is something alive beneath this city. That is what is whispered. Something that feeds on cold copper. But no one knows. Some say there are mines beneath the city. Mines where the devil makes matics that drink down men’s lives and steal the children away.”

“Have you seen them? The mines? The devices?”

He shook his head again. “But I have heard them screaming in the night.”

“The devices?”

“Yes. On the full moon, all doors are locked, all windows shut. No one is on the street except the mayor’s men, who patrol. All through the night, the sounds of screaming pour through the cracks in the ground.”

Cedar was silent. It seemed far-fetched that a demon or devil lived beneath the city. Still, he wouldn’t rule it out. He’d certainly run across enough people in his time who didn’t believe in the Strange, didn’t believe in witchcraft, didn’t believe in the Pawnee curse he carried. And each of those things was as real as the cold, cold copper in his hand.

“When did the children disappear?” he asked. “Was it during the full moon?”

“No. Not just then. But in the nights, other nights, the children who were tied to their beds were gone. Ropes unknotted, coats and boots left behind.”

“People tie their children to their beds?” Mae asked.