Page 16 of Red in Tooth and Claw

The gunslinger’s words stayed with me, chasing themselves around and around in my head until I was fair sick of them. They stuck with me while I ate, whispered in my ear when I tried to sleep, and downright shouted when I attended Cartwright’s sham of a funeral.

The thing was, I couldn’t rightly figure what I could do to discover the answer to Will’s question. I couldn’t exactly walk up and ask Miss Moon or Miss Lita, and there was no way that I could figure to casually work the question into conversation. Pass the oatmeal. Oh, and by the way, how many dead are outside these walls?

Not exactly subtle, and I’d drawn enough attention my way. The only people I could ask were Jesse and Dai Lo, and that presented its own problems. The only time I’d seen them both together was at meals, when we’d be overheard. Since Jesse and I hadn’t been cleared to hunt again yet, we were never alone together, either. Every time I tried to have a private conversation with either of them about what we’d seen in the cellar, or about deaths at the Settlement, we were interrupted or given more chores. All we could do was share nervous glances over the table, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one with an uneasy gut, jumping at the slightest noise.

A week passed before I was able to broach the subject. The weather had turned nasty. Icy rain dumped in buckets and wind slammed into the Settlement, sneaking through the cracks, biting at you just when you’d finally got warm. Everyone was fair miserable, the youngins especially.

Tonight we were piled in the dining area. The littles were down at one end, listening to a story the gunslinger was spinning about beanstalks and finding magic treasure. Miss Moon sat next to him, rapt, a contented smile on her face while she braided one of the little girls’ hair. Will paused and said something to her and she laughed. Will stared at her for a second, frozen, the moment dragging out.

“Then what happened?” one of the younger boys bellowed.

Will startled, flushing before diving back into the story.

I sat at one of the tables, mending one of my shirts. Wasn’t sure how I’d torn this one. Pops always said I was unreasonably hard on my clothes. For a second, my grief was so sharp I could have cut glass with it, and my hand shook, making me drop the needle.

Jesse didn’t notice—he was sketching, all his attention on his drawing. Dai Lo, however, seemed to have more than the normal set of eyes. I could have sworn she was focused on her work, but she reached over and picked up my needle, handing it to me without once glancing my way.

“It’s no use talking any more about it,” Dai Lo said, returning to the conversation we’d been having while everyone was distracted by the story. The room had a faint chatter to it— kids fidgeting, the gunslinger talking, the murmur of other adult voices. Enough so that no one would be able to hear us unless they were right on top of us. “We don’t have enough information to speculate on what we heard in the cellar. We’ll just have to keep our eyes and ears open, that’s all.”

“And avoid the haunted cellar,” Jesse said.

“It couldn’t have been a ghost,” I argued, not for the first time. “I smelled an animal, and ghosts don’t have a scent.”

“How do you know?” Jesse asked, finally looking up from his drawing. “You ever seen a ghost before?”

“No,” I said, irritated. “But I’m fairly certain they don’t smell.”

“As I said, we don’t have enough information,” Dai Lo repeated with a tone of finality. She was embroidering a handkerchief, her tidy stitches making delicate purple flowers blossom along the cloth.

“That’s very pretty,” I said, admiring her work. “Wouldn’t have thought embroidery to be your thing.”

That earned me a set of raised ebony brows. “Why not?”

I didn’t have a good answer, so I shrugged.

A smile tugged at her lips. “I like pretty things, and embroidery is soothing. Lets you think while it keeps your hands busy.” The smile grew. “Besides, you’d want a doctor with good stitching skills, wouldn’t you?”

“Not sure I want a doctor at all,” I grumbled.

She laughed softly.

I stuck my needle into my shirt, keeping it in place. How to ease into it? “How long you two been here, at the Settlement?”

Jesse looked up from his sketching briefly, his pencil still moving. “Four, maybe five months?”

Dai Lo’s needle flashed in the light. “In a week, it will be five.”

This surprised me. There was an ease to them being here, being with each other, that made me think they’d been here longer. Some of what I’d been thinking must have shown on my face.

“Jesse and I came to the Settlement together.” She tied off the thread she’d been using, switching out the purple for an emerald-green color. “We were at a more temporary situation before that.”

Not the answer I was hoping for. I wasn’t sure if they’d have the information I needed.

“People don’t come here as frequent as you may think,” Jesse said. He stopped drawing, taking a moment to assess it as he tapped the side of his pencil against the page. “Between us and you, I think we’ve only had two others come in. One of the youngins, Felicity, and an older boy, Alfred.”

I remembered seeing Felicity. She was one of the really young ones toddling about the place. I hadn’t met an Alfred, and I should have. The boys’ bunkhouse wasn’t that big. I cast my gaze around the room. “Which one’s Alfred?”

“He’s gone.” Dai Lo’s needle was flashing again, the movement almost hypnotizing.

“Family came to get him.” Jesse pulled out his eraser, removing a troublesome line.

A small crease formed between Dai Lo’s brows. “No, he ran away, didn’t he?”

Now they both stopped to stare at each other. Some sort of wordless communication flowed back and forth between them.

“I was told family came to get him,” Jesse said slowly.

“Maybe someone got confused, or the information became garbled. Like a game of messenger.” Even though she’d offered the excuse, Dai Lo didn’t seem convinced of it herself.

I was beginning to wonder if poor Alfred had really left, or if he was out there in a hole, much like Cartwright. Which even to me seemed like a bit of a leap. Then I had another thought. “Did either of you see Amos get picked up by his family?”

Jesse shook his head. “I was laid up with my ankle.”

Dai Lo pursed her lips. “I didn’t see him leave. He was just here, then he wasn’t.” The crease between her brows was back.

Cold dread slushed through my veins. “So how do we know he left?”

“Of course he left. He’s not here, is he?” Jesse closed his sketchbook. “What’s this about?”

I told them what Will had told me, about Mary Ellen, about all of it, hoping maybe they’d be able to conjure up an idea where I’d had none. My hope was half repaid.

Dai Lo carefully finished up the vine twining around her purple flowers. “Let me make sure I’m correct. You’re trying to figure out if something is going on—something to do with unexplained deaths, like Cartwright’s.” She examined the room, making sure no one had sidled up to us in the last few minutes. “Perhaps something to do with what we heard in the cellar.”

“Yes.” I caught Miss Moon’s gaze on me, and I quickly picked up my mending again before she came over and found something to keep me busy. The Settlement subscribed to the belief that idle hands lent to mischief.

Dai Lo ran a finger over her embroidery, checking her stitching. “What you need to do is get up on the walkways.”

I carefully moved my own needle, trying to keep my stitches neat. Try as I might, I couldn’t see where she was going with this. “You mean up along the palisades?”

She dipped her head in a nod. “Up high, you can see irregularities.”

I waited, but she didn’t continue. She looked up at me, exasperated. “In the soil. The greenery.”

I glanced at Jesse, but he looked as confused as I was. Well, at least I wasn’t ignorant alone.

Dai Lo sighed. “When you dig a hole and then close it up, you’re going to see differences in the grass, right? Even if you keep the sod together and replace it?”

Now it was my turn to nod.

“That would leave irregularities in the soil. Plus, you’ve added fertilizer.”

“We did?” Jesse asked.

She smiled at him fondly. “Not the nicest thought to some, but I find it very comforting. When we die, we return to the soil. We enrich it. Grass will grow differently where a body has been buried.” She turned sharp eyes on me. “And I would be willing to bet those other bodies didn’t get a nice box, like Cartwright.”

“Don’t you think it’s weird that no one is asking questions or talking about any of these deaths?”

“Why would they?” Jesse said. “If they’ve been told that the person left? It’s what we all want, isn’t it? To have someone whisk us away from here?”

She flattened her neatly embroidered handkerchief onto the table. She’d done a fine job of it, turning the necessary scrap of cloth into something beautiful. “Faolan, what happened to you when you talked back?”

Since she knew full well what had happened to me, she was obviously driving at something. “I got the Box.”

She traced along the vine with the tip of her finger. “Yes, the Penitent Box. And what happened if you spoke there?”

I played along. “More time in the Box.”

“Would you willingly go back there?” Dai Lo asked, not looking at me.

“No,” I said softly. “I would not.”

She folded up the cloth and pulled out a fresh one, before digging into her sewing basket. “You’re almost grown, and you’re strong-willed. Can you imagine going into that box when you’re five or six?”

My stomach knotted. “No.”

Dai Lo pulled out a neat bundle of golden thread, the color of summer sunshine. She put it back into the basket, rummaging until she came back with a smaller bundle of red. “This place doesn’t encourage curiosity. It teaches obedience. You question, you end up in the Box. So the youngins won’t question.”

“Maybe,” I said, finishing up my mending and carefully tying off the thread.

Jesse reopened his sketchbook, his pencil once again gliding over the page. “All of that’s well and good, but how are we going to get up onto the palisades?”

I checked my handiwork, only to realize in my distraction that I’d sewn one part of the sleeve to the main part of the shirt. I sighed. “Dai Lo, you have a seam ripper?” She handed me the small metal tool with a smirk. I took it with the requisite chagrin.

“We don’t need to get up there.” I tore out my work with a few well-placed jerks of the seam ripper. “ You need to get up there.”

Jesse was wary now. “How do you mean?”

“I try to go? Dillard will be on me in a second. Dai Lo has no reason to be up there.” I tipped my chin at Jesse’s notebook. “But you, the budding artist? Who just wants a chance to sketch the Settlement in all of its glory, to better understand the work of His Benevolence?”

“That’s laying it on a little thick,” Jesse murmured.

I took up my needle again. “Lay it on as thick as you deem fit. Out of all of us, you would be the least remarked upon for going up. And unlike me, you’d be able to come back with something we could all see.” I reached over and tapped his journal. “You’ll not only see a bird’s-eye view of the land outside of the palisades, but you’ll be able to draw it so that we can see it, too.”

Dai Lo kept stitching, this handkerchief earning a red leaf border. “As plans go, it’s not the worst.”

Jesse huffed. “Well, excuse me if ‘not the worst’ isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. What if I end up in the Box?”

Dai Lo shrugged. “Be clever, and you won’t.”

He frowned at her, but she just laughed. “I have faith in your wits, my sweet.”

Jesse tilted his face down, but the tips of his ears were scarlet. He nudged his glasses back up with his knuckle, grumbling as he did, but I could tell he was basking in her affection all the same.

I was getting used to the pang of jealousy that dug into me. How nice it must be, to have a person just for you. Someone who looked at you with the faith that Jesse and Dai Lo did. To know that in the darkness, their hand would always find yours.

I had empty pockets and no one to call my own.

But at least I had friends. That wasn’t nothing.