Darkwood (9 page)

The basket at her waist grew heavier. Her fingers ached from gripping the pick. One by one the men on either side of her called to be brought up. When Annie finally looked up, rolling her neck to ease the ache, she saw that only one man was left on the cliff face with her. He worked about twenty feet above her, hanging lopsided from the weight of his basket.

“Number Five, up!” he called, his voice cracking with weariness. Chopper stuck his head over the top of the cliff.

“Keep working, Number Five. You were below quota last shift.”

“Sir, respectfully, sir, I'm awful heavy. My rope looks bad, sir.”

Chopper didn't answer. His head disappeared from sight.

The cliff was silent for several long minutes, except for the sound of the man's pick. Annie's basket was full, and she was about to call for someone to take her up when she heard the man above her cry out. His basket, groaning with stone, had pulled him nearly perpendicular to the rock face. As Annie watched in horror, the fibers of his rope began to stretch and snap, one by one.

“Five, up! Five, up!” the man shrieked, but it was too late. The last fiber of rope, frail as a human hair, snapped. The man hung suspended in the still air for one long, impossible moment, his mouth opening and closing, opening and closing. Then he fell, the basket bearing him down like a drowning man to the bottom of the ocean. He screamed as he fell, a long, high wail. Instead of fading away, the scream rose, spiraling up the gorge. Annie pressed her hands against her ears. She felt a sharp tug at her waist as they reeled her up. The scream went on and on.

Cold. Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. But at last the screaming had stopped.

“Don't take it so hard, now. These things happen from time to time.” Hauler set down the bucket. “We have a fellow who collects the fallen stone from the gorge,” he added, as if that would help. He took a rag from his pants pocket and moved to pat her sopping hair.

“Get away from me.”

“Now, now. You want a friend in me. You really do. I'm all the children's favorite.”

Annie met his eyes. “Where?”

Hauler jerked his thumb toward the long, windowless building she had seen when she first arrived at camp.

“Why?”

“Why? Four solid walls! Real beds! It's a nice place, the orphanage. Nice and warm. You see what the men make do with?” His thumb shifted to indicate the rows of limp canvas tents. “Stacked like cordwood in there, when the real weather comes.”

“I meant why haven't I seen any children? Where do they work?”

“They work right here, of course.” Hauler handed her a blanket. He tipped his head to the side, regarding her. Then he smiled slowly, and Annie realized she had made a bad mistake, thinking him stupid.

“The children work at night,” Hauler said.

At first the beds appeared to be empty, blankets flung across them or heaped at the head. Then one of the blankets stirred
and revealed a small hand, and Annie realized the beds were full of sleeping children.

Before he left her, Hauler had told her she could sleep through the first night shift.

“You had a nice take for a first timer. Chopper will be pleased.” He pointed through the open door. “You can sleep there, middle bunk. Tell everyone to shove back one. We're a bit tight, but the babies can share.” Then he had patted her shoulder and pushed her through the door. “Night-night.”

The construction of the orphanage could not have been simpler: two long walls, two short walls, a low-pitched roof. A door in the west wall that opened onto the path to the cliff. A door in the east wall that opened onto the privy. Three tiers of beds lined up along the south wall. No windows. No hearth. No lanterns. No light.

If a cow wanders into the yard, be quick to shut the gate
.

She stood there stupidly until a bell clanged outside the door, startling her. The children all rose at once, as though they had not been sleeping at all, but waiting. The tallest child, a girl, slept closest to the door. She reached for a coiled rope hanging by her bed. Even in the dark, she moved with the confidence of long routine, but Annie could see her hands trembling as she uncoiled the rope. She tied one end to her wrist and passed the rope to the child behind her, who looped the rope around his wrist and passed it on, until the rope reached the smallest child. The boy, no more than
three or four, struggled to make a knot, and Annie, unthinking, stepped forward to help him.

“Who is it? Who's there?”

“Is it the Chopper?”

“What's happening?”

The children buzzed with fear, knocking against each other in the dark. Annie kept still.

“Step out!” called out the tallest. “Step, step, step!”

At once they fell silent and marched behind her to the door. The girl rapped on it three times and it swung open. Torchlight flared through the opening and Annie felt rather than heard the faint
whoosh
of the children's collective relief. They marched out the door and the man holding the torch shut the door behind them.

Annie walked over to the bunk Hauler had told her to take. The blanket was still warm. She walked on to the very last row of beds, where the youngest children slept. She hadn't seen anyone climb down from the top bunk. Maybe she could sleep there.

But the bed wasn't empty. A boy lay still, his face very white. He kept his lips pinched together as though trying not to cry out. Annie wanted to say something to make him less afraid, but what could she say?
Don't worry, I can see in the dark
? His eyes rolled this way and that, trying and trying to see. The white hands clutching the edge of the blanket looked like the hands of someone very old. A thick scar covered one knuckle. The index finger of the left hand. Annie felt something flicker in her chest. He'd been holding the
stick in that hand, whittling with the right when the knife slipped. Her own hand shaking, Annie touched the scar. The boy gasped.

“Gregor?”

Gregor's skin had always been lighter than Annie's, but now the contrast was like snow against wood. Lying side by side on the bed, his feet came only to her calves. She might have circled his ankle with her hand.

“Gregor, have you been sick a long time?”

He hesitated. “When I heard you before, before I knew it was you, I thought they'd sent Smirch to get me. He's the one tosses you over when you run out.”

“Run out?”

“Run out, wear down. Most of us don't leave here. You might go live in the tents when you get old enough, the boys, anyway. Or work the kiln. The girls go somewhere different, laundry or making blankets. I don't know.” He took a shallow breath. “But most just run out. And then … someone will be sick, and in bed a few days. If they don't get better, one day you come off shift and they're gone and you don't know what happened. Meg—the tallest—Meg says Smirch throws you over.” He frowned. “But I think they told her to say that.”

“Why do they have children work? There are so many men.”

“To fit the gaps.”

“I don't understand.”

He turned his head toward her. His breath smelled sour-sweet.

“Do you know why white stone is worth so much more than the rest? It's so deep in the rock. The sun and rain are what color the stone. It takes the men days to cut into where the white stone is. But there are gaps in the rock.” Gregor held his hands up, the palms close together. “We can fit sideways.”

She thought of the man they'd strip-searched, with his big hands and feet. Gregor's hands were big for his body, too. Her throat hurt.

“Do they try to keep you small?”

Gregor didn't say anything for a minute. “Even the gaps are chipping out now. Mostly just the really narrow ones left.” He moved his hands so the palms nearly touched. “That's what the babies are here for.”

“How do you—,” Annie began, but Gregor shook his head. “My turn.”

Annie's heart gave a hard thump. “You want to know—” “—how you can see in the dark.”

It felt so strange to hear him say the words. But comforting, too, as though this was just another thing in nature to puzzle over. How does a mole see underground? How does a dregfish see in the mud of the river bottom? How does a hawk see a mouse from a hundred feet in the air?

“I don't know,” Annie said. “It just happened. I think it's getting stronger. I think I can see more and more.” It was true. From where she lay, she could see a letter scratched in the wood of the opposite wall: “M.” She squinted. The rest of the letters were there too, growing fainter as the carver ran out of energy: “-o-t-h-e-r.”

“When did it start?”

She told him about the garden and the chicken coop and Chopper's trick ladder. He nodded, familiar with the story. “You spent the night in the pit?”

“That's when it first happened. Well, that's when I first noticed,” she amended.

“You're lucky it was then.”

Annie hadn't really thought about what it would have been like to be underground and unable to see.

“Like being buried alive,” Gregor said.

“But not you.”

“No. About half are runaways or lost. They catch some with the garden. It's the only road out of Dour County, you know. The rest are sold. Like me.”

“At least you weren't so stupid as I was.”

Gregor laughed. Annie liked the sound of it.

“Everyone says the pit is the worst of all. Worse than this.” He flapped his hand to indicate the room, the dark.

Annie was thinking of the names from Aunt Prim's list.

“You said Meg is here—Meg Winters? And Cowley? They're all here?”

“Cowley's dead. But yes, Meg, and Walter, and all the rest,
and ones after me.” He gave a funny smile. “Everyone the kinderstalk ate.”

“Even Phoebe Tamburlaine? She must be old by now.”

He shook his head. “No one's ever seen her, even the ones who've been here the longest. Maybe they really did eat her.”