Grimm's School for the Erratically Gifted: Chapter 9

The sun was already fading behind the Mothburn skyline as Edmund left the school grounds.

A distant part of him, quiet and nervous, tried to tell him that he wasn’t ready to return to the streets of Mothburn yet. He didn’t know exactly where he was going.

That wasn’t entirely true, was it? He knew where he was going, he just didn’t know where there was. He knew he could find it; he found his way around Grimm’s, Moulde Hall, and the empty coal mine of Haggard Hill. He could easily find his way through the streets of Mothburn. He understood needing to hide and creating safe-havens on dangerous streets. He knew about pride and the desire to walk with your head held high, even if everyone else thought you shouldn’t. He grasped criminality, having been adopted into a family for whom everyday criminal behavior was considered reflexive.

And the Downstreeters were criminal. Never mind stealing his luggage or swiping a spot of wax, to sneak into his room and try to steal his ideas? Swipe his discoveries? Put the dangerous and world-changing power of Edmund’s intelligence in their hands? The idea was terrifying.

Then there was the grave-digging. Obviously the Downstreeters were digging up bodies and selling them to Grimm’s: who else would engage in such depravity, except the depraved? Edmund needed to stop them before their criminality caused the Teapot Coterie to become even more concerned about Grimm’s as an institution.

As for how he was going to stop them, well…he’d think of something. He was Edmund Moulde; thinking was what he did best.

The shops were already closing. The lamplighters were out, their wooden ladders clacking and clattering as they stomped down cobble-stoned streets, nodding their wax-splattered top-hats with the air of true professionals; the confidence that comes from believing it is primarily through their dedication and professionalism that the city continues to run smoothly.

They didn’t notice Edmund as he flit between gutters and alleyways. Time and again he paused at the sound of a dropped can or mumbled oath, only to dart away again as the alerting noise faded into the night.

The shadows lengthened and the streets emptied of life, apart from stray cats and mice.

At long last, Edmund found what he was looking for. Not half a block away down a broad declining alleyway was an old sewer entrance, long since dried up and disused. The circular grate was visibly rusted shut, even from this far away, and any rot or mildew had long since faded into the musty smell of crumbling brick and mortar. A thick overhang of bricks and stone jutted out from above the gate, providing a scrap of protection from the elements.

A red glow flickered in front of the gate. From this distance, Edmund could see shapes sitting around it, a faint conversation drifting through the air.

“We talked wi’ the Baker,” said one voice, followed by a thick wad of phlegm being spat aside. “‘E knows what’s up.”

“Grand,” came a second voice, more familiar than the first. “Ye took our cut, aye?”

“Yeah,” the first voice spat again. “E’s good fir now.”

“An’ the Brewmaster?” Jolly sounded suspicious.

“Awww, Snagsby,” a third voice wheedled. “Yew knows I ‘ates the ol’ skinflint. ‘E tanned me ‘ide last time.”

“Ye dinna talk to ‘im?”

“Awww, Snagsby! ‘E said ’e’s not paying five pound. I tol’ yew…”

A yelp split the air. Jolly’s voice was tight over the snap of the flames. “We’re the Wayward Downstreeters, aye? An’ that means we get paid! Ye tell ‘im tomorrow or I snap yer legs!”

“Awww, Snagsby! ‘E tanned me ‘ide!”

“Am I the only one wi’ brains among ye lot? Ye go wit’ ‘at in ‘and, and ye ask nice. Ye tell ‘im ye don’t want to burn ‘is brewery down round ‘is ears, ye want to keep it safe!”

“Oh! Oooh! Snagsby! Can I burn ‘is brewery? Can I?”

“Listen ye gob! Bring back the coin, or I’ll ne’er let ye touch a match as long as ye live!”

“Aww, Snagsby!”

“Don’t worry; you come back wi’out coin, an’ that won’t be long…”

As he listened to their conversation, Edmund, in a sudden uncontrollable fit of un-Moulde-like behavior, began to wonder if he might have bit off more than he could chew.

Not only because of the brusque and cutthroat nature of the Downstreeter’s conversation, but also because Edmund was gradually becoming aware of the numerous other shapes that weren’t surrounding the tiny fire. They were huddled in the shadows and crouching on top of crates. They swatted at each other in mild listlessness and whispered to each other with cold tones. What he had thought was merely a gathering of ten was in fact twenty, maybe thirty.

If Edmund were more akin to the noble square-jawed heroes of the action pulps, he might have strode into the middle of the gang and thrashed them within an inch of their lives, proving once and for all that crime does not pay. If he had been an anti-heroic creature of the pennies-dreadful, he might have concocted a horrific poison or stalked the night like a ghost, claiming his vengeance neck by neck.

But Edmund was Edmund, and that meant he was twelve. Twelve was a hard age to enact extrajudicial revenge on the street gang that had stolen your luggage and chased you down a dark alley when you first arrived at school.

He wasn’t afraid, exactly, he simply realized that his original plan now seemed woefully insufficient.

Edmund had only just begun to consider what to do next when the world spun around his head. He found himself yanked into the air as two massive hands gripped his shoulders and a rock-like fist crashed into his stomach.

So sudden was Edmund’s change of fortune that he was still catching his breath as he was dropped onto the ground in front of Jolly.

“Caught a spy, Jolly,” a thick voice beamed with pride. “Found ‘im o’er there.”

Edmund shook both his head and the world back into place just as the fiery-haired vagabond gave a laugh. “Eh? A wee little lad out after ‘is bedtime, I see…’ere, ‘alf a moment…” Jolly stood up from his seat where he had been whittling with a long thin knife and a slim block of wood. His cruel stare became searching before recognition flared in his eyes. “Well, well, well! The wee jessie’s back, eh?”

A glance was all Edmund could spare; The fire was just a small pile of coal glowing in an iron skillet. The faint red light gave everything an oppressive air, and around the circle the shadows were growing. They were all staring at him, surprise and eager anticipation plain on their faces as they drew nearer. Edmund wasn’t among children, no matter their age.

“Well now,” Jolly spat into the fire with a hiss. “What brings ye down to our little home, eh? Have more for us to take from ye?”

Edmund took a quick breath. “You have my clothes.”

Jolly grinned as he ran his finger around the hem of his vest. Edmund’s vest. It had been one of his favorites. On the tall boy, it barely reached halfway down his rib-cage. It wasn’t a bad look, considering. “Aye, that I do. Ye can be sure we appreciate yer donation.”

Edmund followed Jolly’s glance to an open suitcase sitting on a pile of objects that had been treated too carelessly to be possessions, too carefully to be garbage. Merchandise, probably, or raw material for cobbling together.

“So, I see ye come to take it all back, eh?” Jolly stood up, stretching his neck and cracking his knuckles. “Weeeell, I suppose I kin oblige ye a quick lesson in property rights, aye? Vance? Wagger? ‘old ‘im.”

Two thick brutes gripped Edmund’s shoulders and arms as Jolly stepped forward. Edmund didn’t bother resisting. Slipping his knife into his belt, Jolly smiled his predator smile as he blew on his knuckles and wound up his fist.

“Please don’t,” Edmund said.

It hadn’t been a plea or cry, just a simple request, but it stopped Jolly’s fist like a brick wall. “Eh?” the boy grunted.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Edmund explained, as polite as if he was sharing tea with a peer.

“Oh?” Jolly’s confusion was short lived. “Well I don’t suppose ye have a good reason for me not poundin’ ye to a paste? Ye ‘ave something that’ll keep me from adding a few scars to yer lily-white face?”

Edmund’s brain worked faster than it ever had before. “I have a proposal,” he said at last.

“Oh, a proposal!” Jolly’s grin returned like a flash of lightning. “Well now, that’s different. Boys?”

The hamhocks on his shoulders pushed Edmund down on a rotten wooden crate. Jolly crouched down in front of him like a panther, his eyes gleaming in the dim glow of the hissing coals.

“G’wan,” Jolly sneered. “Propose.”

The chorus of chuckles were anything but calming. Instead, they promised a very pleasant time to come, though not necessarily for Edmund.

What could he propose? He had options, of course, but none of them were exactly ideal. In fact, the best option he had at the moment was one of the more dangerous; hiring them. It defied all expectations of proper behavior for a Moulde.¹ If anyone ever found out…

Edmund swallowed, and adjusted his shirt to keep it from choking him. He could deal with that when it happened. At the moment, he had no better choice. “I’d like to propose a business deal,” he said.

“Oh aye?” Jolly’s eyes glittered.

“I can pay you. Coin if you like, or with anything you need.”

“Ah, like liquor?”

“Yes.”

“An’ fancy food, I’ll warrant? Maybe a roof o’er our ’eads?”

“If you like.”

“An’ clothing?” The glint in Jolly’s eye was growing brighter. “Like this vest? This vest that, by my recollection, was got by me wi’out any o’ yer largess? Ye think no one’s e’er come down from yer ivory tower before? Ye think we’ve been waitin’ for a shiny well-dressed scunner such as yer fine self to stroll into our little gutter and make everything better?”

Edmund could feel something slipping away, though he couldn’t quite grasp what. “This is not charity, this is a business proposal.”

“Oh, aye, a great businessman, me!” Jolly kicked at the fire, sending a spray of sparks into Edmund’s face to general gales of laughter. “Look at us! Why, I e’en has a vest!” He sniffed deeply at his rose, and strut about, striking pose after mocking pose as his fellows hooted and hollered. “By God, boys, this ’ere laddie’s goin’ to make us respectable!

Struggling to adjust his grasp of the conversation, Edmund cleared his throat. “In return, I’d like you to work for me.”

Scholars fiercely debate whether this moment provided the impetus for Edmund’s later seminal work; The Economic Necessity of Uncertainty in Markets, wherein is detailed his theory that negotiations only fail when one side believes that it understands the other. While this truth may never be known for certain, what Edmund knew was that he had made a powerful mistake.

The laughter vanished instantly, replaced by dark and dangerous muttering. Jolly broke his frozen pose to slowly turn and stare Edmund full in the face, his lanky form towering over Edmund. The glow of the coals behind him traced his flame in a burning red halo, like a demon from hell.

“Say that again,” he hissed.

“I’d rather not,” Edmund admitted, knowing it would not end well for him.

“Work for ye?” Jolly spat. “Now what on earth makes ye think we’d e’er bow ’n scrape to one o’ yer lot?”

“One of you snuck into my room,” Edmund said. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t being hit. “They searched my desk and stole some of my wax.”

“Ah!” Jolly sneered. “Clever clogs ‘as a sharp eye, does ’e?”

Perhaps, if Edmund had been braver, he might have taken this opportunity to ask Jolly why he had stolen a blob of Edmund’s wax. In so doing, he might have spared both him and Grimm’s a great deal of future strife.

Instead, Edmund looked away from the fury in Jolly’s eyes, his gaze falling on the slab of whittled wood in Jolly’s hand.

“And then they came back,” Edmund continued, “at least twice, looking for discoveries. I’m certain it was because one of my family hired one of you.”

“Oh ye think so, does ye?” Jolly stepped closer. “And what makes ye think it were us?”

Instead of speaking, Edmund reached into his pocket and pulled out the scrap of sleeve he had torn from his assailant.

Jolly snatched it up, and stared at it. Turning around, he scanned the gathered gang for a moment before pointing.

A boy stepped forward. He was the right size. He was the right shape. He moved in the right way. Edmund was certain even before Jolly grabbed the boy’s arm, yanking his sleeve down to match the scrap to the torn sleeve.

Jolly looked up at the boy. “Ye working for a toff?” His voice was low.

“I…I din’t know ’e were a toff. ‘E gave me a shillin’, an’—”

“‘E ‘ave a cane?”

“No, Jolly.”

“A monocle?”

“…Yeah, I suppose ’e —”

In a flash, the boy was on the ground, bleeding from a struck nose. “Damn fool! What I tell you about toffs?”

“But…ye said they ‘ad canes an’ top ‘ats,” came a voice from the crowd.

“An’ monocles!” Jolly shouted back. “Canes, ‘ats, and monocles. All of ’em. An’ we don’t work for toffs!” He looked down at the boy’s bleeding nose. “An’ it seems some o’ ye need reminding.”

With a snap of Jolly’s fingers, two large Downstreeters grabbed the hapless unfortunate, and dragged him off towards the sewer-pipe. His moans echoed through the alley.

“That’s enough,” Jolly said after a few moments. “I ken ’e’s a quick learner, aye? As are ye all?”

A chorus of aye’s from the surrounding gang filled the alleyway. Jolly gave a nod, before turning to Edmund. “Now…anythin’ else ye be wantin’ to propose?”

Scholars agree this question was most likely rhetorical, but Edmund did not yet know what he learned about Jolly later, and so assumed Jolly did not know the term.

“I would like to know who hired him,” Edmund gestured at the whimpering boy.

Jolly spread his arms in amazement, looking around at his crew. “Bless me for a shilling, is the boy simple?”

“I also want you to stop digging up graves,” he said, the only other thing he needed.

“Oh ye do?” Jolly shook his head. “I’m no surprised. Do ye no ken why we do our grave-diggin’?”

Edmund shook his head.

“People, even well-to-do folks such as ye’self,” he gestured with his thumb, “die. They do it all the time, aye? And I gets to thinkin’,” Jolly spread his arms wide, “about the waste o’ it all. Lace an’ hats an’ gold an’ jewelry? What’re the rich folk doin’, buryin’ it in the ground? It’s waste, is what it is, cold-hearted waste. The poor dinna care, the rich dinna mind, an’ a whole mess o’ Economy gets buried under the soil to rot. So what do I do? I provide. An’ there’s fine bodies, with kidneys an’ muscles, butchers who need cheap soup bones, an’ meat for the kennels —”

“Students who want to do autopsies,” Edmund supplied.

Jolly turned back to Edmund, his wandering gaze suddenly sharp again. “We no work for any fancy-pants upper-twit stuffed-n-starched numpty-noggined gout-sufferin’ syphallitic simple-minded gully-jays!” A rousing cheer echoed around the alley as boys and girls alike stamped their feet and hollered in agreement.

Edmund blinked. “Then who provides the bodies to Grimm’s?”

Silence descended like a guillotine, severing the revelry from the Downstreeters’ lips. The air grew thick as Edmund saw the uncomfortable shifting of the shadows around him.

Were they afraid?

Jolly noted the change in the air as well. “Nobody. That’s who. There ain’t nothing out there that digs up bodies ‘cept us!”

“I seen it.”

Jolly raised his eyes to the goon gripping Edmund’s left shoulder. It sounded like the same voice from the first time Edmund met Jolly; the unfortunate who couldn’t seem to keep from asking the wrong question at the wrong time.

“I have.” The unfortunate rumbled again. “‘aunts the graveyard, it do. Seen it last week when I were walkin’ by the —”

“Shut it!” Jolly snapped.

“I saw it too,” the thug on Edmund’s right shoulder spoke up. “’t’s a ghostly shadow ’tis. It were diggin’ in the graveyard, an’ when I got there it were gone, an’ when I looked at the grave where it were diggin’, the ground weren’t even mussed up!”

“It ain’t no ‘uman, s’trewth,” another street-urchin spoke. “I seen it. ‘As a beak like a crow, an’ wings, an —”

“It were a new grave too, flowers still fresh an’ e’erythin’.”

“The Raven Resurrectionist they calls it.”

“They say the ghost is whats doin’ the rippin’ in town,” another voice piped up. “Cuts up the bodies an’ lets ’em rot a bit in the ground an’ digs ’em up to eat so it —”

With the speed of a snake, Jolly grabbed a bottle from the hand of a nearby Downstreeter and hurtled it at the wall over Edmund’s head. The toughs ducked away from the flying glass, releasing Edmund’s shoulders as they did.

Now free, Edmund could have run, ducking and rolling between the thugs grasping hands. He decided not to; this was fascinating.

“Enough!” Jolly shouted at the assembled Downstreeters. “There’s no ghost!”

“But the rippin’—” the unfortunate began, willfully ignoring the ample lessons surrounding him.

“It’s no Ripper!” Jolly snapped. “An’ if it were, it ain’t takin’ any o’ us!”

“Took Moly,” a voice from the crowd mumbled. “And Pencila last month, and two o’ the —”

“No Downstreeter!” Jolly spun, shoving a finger at the crowd. “An’ it never will, an’ I’ll be ‘appy to beat it into anyone who thinks otherwise!”

No one took him up on the offer. Edmund watched as Jolly matching the gaze of anyone who dared to look at him. He believes it, but he doesn’t know it. He’s afraid.

“We can help each other,” Edmund tried, one last desperate time.

Jolly spat into the burning coals. “We’re no like a street-laborer waitin’ for a call. We’re no here to provide ye service for coin nor comfort. We’re no out-o-work bums to jump at yer snap-o-the-fingers. We’re here to pick up the pieces ye toss out yer window wi’out a second thought. We’re here scraping a living together from yer garbage. And now ye want to step down off yer pedestal and pay to get some o’ it back? ‘cause we dinna deserve it?”

Edmund felt his body clench at the look in Jolly’s eyes, as he spit into his hands and rubbed them together.

“Well, ye’ve been so kind to offer,” he raised his fist again, “I suppose I canno’ let ye leave wi’out a little something in return.”

---

With exacting care, Edmund sat down at his desk. For a moment he simply sat, listening to the sounds of the evening: the distant call of night birds, the sound of the air drifting through the arrow-slits in the thick stone walls of Grimm’s.

It helped distract him from the pain. It hurt to breathe.

Edmund had never been beaten before. Oh, the spy had thrown him into to the wall, cousin Pinsnip had once kicked him hard in the head, and he’d felt various kinds of pain even before that; but never like this. Never from so many directions, from so many sources. Each blow was a different agony. The broad crushing of a shoe-heel, the sharp pointed jab of a fist, the blunt cutting of a steel-toe; the ache and throb of every cut and bruise radiated through him with every wheeze.

Edmund had memorized most of the books on medicine and human anatomy. He knew the name of every bone they struck, every muscle that ached. He knew blood and bile were rushing about his limbs and torso to create bruises, seal cuts, and repair tissue. In a week, maybe more, the only mark of his beating would be in his memory.

Everyone fears a bruise, Junapa took his knight. Conquer this fear…

With the mute stoicism of a doctor, Edmund pulled a tiny mirror out of his desk drawer. His eyes were dark and sunken. One cheek was cut, the other scraped and red. A small trickle of dried blood leaked from his puffy nose. His hair looked like a bird’s nest. He tried to pat it down only to pull his hand back when he felt the throbbing lump.

He hadn’t made a sound as they beat him. He knew there was no one about who would come to his aid, and cries of pain would only encourage his assailants. He wanted to feel pride in his silence, but the pain was too great for him to feel anything else.

When the beating had finished and the Downstreeters had thrown him out of their alley, Jolly had spared him one final moment.

“Ye want a war,” Jolly’s voice rang in Edmund’s ears, “ye tell them jammy scunners they’ll get one! War’s brewin’! We’re commin’ for ye!”

Edmund stared at the spot on his forehead where Jolly’s spit had landed. Every wound was a lesson, and Edmund had learned how to learn.

Without taking his eyes off the mirror, Edmund pulled out his notebook and pencil. Flipping to a blank page, he began to describe every wound on his body; size, location, and color. After a moment’s thought, he gently poked and prodded each one, adding a description, measurement, and analysis of pain to his list. When he was finished with his face, he moved on to his torso, then his arms, then legs.

Being British, Edmund knew one of the greatest dangers in the world was uncertainty. The more he knew about pain, the more prepared he could be. The less he would fear.

“We’re commin’ for ye!”

After Edmund had filled two more pages in his book,² he gingerly lay down on his bed, the notebook and pencil next to his hand. Taking a deep and painful breath, he closed his eyes, his mind lost in the leaden doldrums of thought.

Sleep would help. He needed to organize his thoughts. There was a puzzle here, there were connections he was missing. A picture or a poem was forming, and he could hear some of the rhymes, see some of the outlines…

As he descended into unconsciousness, he heard the croak of a raven echo across the rooftops of Mothburn.

---

Was this what it felt like to be dead?

It was, in point of fact, the second time Edmund had wondered this in twenty-four hours.

The first time had been after awakening the next morning to the still-fresh agonies of Jolly’s beating. In fact, his body ached worse than the night before. The thought had been an ironic one, as while he had never actually been dead, he knew enough about the biochemical processes that he was certain there would be less pain.

But it had been a success, his sojourn into the streets of Mothburn. A painful one, yes, but Jolly had punished his subordinate, so Edmund would now no longer need to worry about any sabotage or espionage as he crafted his great Discovery.

This was all spelled out quite clearly in the notes he had written to himself during his sleep. As he turned the page, he realized there was still a singular key to his plans: A being of impropriety and danger that had, until now, loomed silently in the background of his life, brought to the forefront only through the constant ripples of its actions. Images, poetic phrases, and esoteric diagrams belied a subconscious possessed with a singular mind; Who was the Raven Ressurectionist?

It was a ghost. A Ripper. A grave-digger. A bogey of the night. Jolly and his gang were frightened of it, the Teapots knew of it, and its presence tainted the pristine pedigree of Grimm’s. Edmund wasn’t positive he knew why he was looking for the Raven Ressurectionist, but his notes had been quite explicit: his subconscious was working on a great Discovery, and the Raven Ressurectionist could help.

After all, he was certain it was working with Fairly Carver. If the Downstreeters weren’t supplying Fairly with his corpses, then who else could it be? And if Fairly thought working with the Raven Ressurectionist was a good idea, then surely Edmund could get some use out of it?

The first step in getting the help the Raven Ressurectionist, then, was to find it.

Edmund had been poisoned and subsequently found the bagged corpse on Thursday. The simple-minded might assume a kind of regular schedule, wherein the bodies were deposited in the ice-house every Thursday, or perhaps every other, or even every second Thursday of the month.

Edmund, on the other hand, was well experienced with the more exotic and labyrinthian schedules of Grimm’s classes, and so knew that there was no way to know for sure when a new corpse would arrive without careful and regular observation.

His plan, therefore, was perhaps an overly simplistic one. He knocked on Fairly Carver’s door.

Fairly opened on Edmund’s third knock. “Right, I’m here, ain’t I?” the sharp-faced boy snapped. He glanced down, and a look of disdain leaked across his face. “Disturbing my sleep, aren’t you. Bloody early, isn’t it.”

“It was the best time in my schedule.” Edmund crossed his arms.

“You look a mess, don’t you.”

“I have a question.”

“Against the rules, isn’t it.” Fairly sneered with vicious delight. “Not supposed to give you any help at all, am I. You’re supposed to figure it all out on your own, aren’t you. Got in a fight, did you?”

“I wasn’t supposed to help you with the body, then? The one from the ice-room?”

Instantly, the look of resigned disgust vanished from Fairly’s face. With energy born from subversive terror, he grabbed Edmund by the arm and yanked him into his room — a copy of Edmund’s own, if slightly larger

“Want to get me expelled, do you?” he hissed, his eyes darting around the empty room. “Bloody against the rules, isn’t it! Not supposed to have bodies in the school, are we. The Secure Entombment act of 1723 says its only legal to study corpses that were condemned to death and dissection by a judge, isn’t it.”

“And the corpses you’ve been studying aren’t?”

“I don’t bloody know, do I!” Fairly snapped. “Bloody doubt it, don’t I. There haven’t been that many criminals punished with dissection, were there.”

“When do you get your cadavers?” Edmund asked, moving his hands behind his back. “I’d like to know the precise schedule.”

“I suppose if I don’t tell you,” the faint sneer struggled to re-assert itself on Fairly’s face, “then you’ll go and have a chat with Aquinas, won’t you?”

“That’s right,” Edmund nodded. “One of us is going to keep quiet. The question is, which one?”

Fairly’s frustration didn’t change his answer. As fortune, providence, or some unholy alliance between the two would have it, the next drop was going to happen that very night.

By then, thankfully, Edmund’s aches had subsided. It only stung a little whenever he flexed a certain muscle or moved a certain joint, uncomfortable enough that resting between the large ice-blocks in the kitchen’s ice-house was a far more alluring idea for Edmund than it might have been for anyone else. After his studies and classes, when his ever-wound watch read eleven o’ clock in the evening, he crept down to the kitchens, picked his way into the ice-house, and crawled between two thick hay-covered bricks of ice to wait.

And wait he did.

As has detailed in several scholarly works, Matron Moulde kept the great boiler of Moulde Hall empty during the winter, except in extreme circumstances. As such, Edmund had experience with intense cold. Sandwiched between two large blocks of ice, while uncomfortable, was not unfamiliar, and to keep himself warm he indulged in his regular past-time of shivering.

It was here that his brain drifted for a second time to the question: Is this what being dead is like? Was this how a tomb felt, cold and pitch-black, the air drifting like cobwebs? Perhaps this was how it felt to be dead. Not dying, which Edmund had always assumed involved lots of screaming, but actual death. Once the vital essence had left the body, this was all that was left. The cold, the dark, the loneliness.

Time passed, and Edmund’s limbs transitioned between the spectrum of cold, aching, cramped, and numb with predictable speed. Even the shivering did little to help. He breathed on his fingers in case some warmth remained in his breath. He couldn’t even check how long he had been waiting on his ever-wound watch, his fingers were so numb.

Just as he could bare it no longer, a tiny scraping sound followed by the rustle of cold dry hay caught his ear. Moving only his eyes, he looked across the room at the bottom shelf of ice. From the darkness, a faint halo of light was filtering around from behind one of the ice-blocks.

The light grew as the large block was slowly moved away from the wall, the hay falling on all sides like long yellow snowflakes. A moment later, a candle-stick followed. Edmund didn’t move as a dark shadow followed the candle, slipping into the room from behind the block of ice.

The shadow had a wide-brimmed black leather hat. It had a long black leather overcoat and gloves. It unfolded from the tunnel like a spider, and when it raised its head Edmund could see it wore a long leather plague-mask, its beak long and gently curved. Faint candlelight flickered off of two brass goggles and a row of brass buttons that ran the full length of the overcoat.

The Raven Resurrectionist stood tall in the gloom.

The mask darted back and forth, glancing around before dipping back into the tunnel and pulling out a large sagging bag. Dragging it across the floor, the figure moved to the same place Edmund had found the other bag, and leaned it against the wall.

It was here that Edmund realized he had a choice. He could continue hiding, hoping the figure would take off its mask and mutter to itself, or give something away before vanishing into the tunnel again; or, he could put his pains and efforts to good use.

Deciding in a moment, he ignored his body’s numbness and slid from between the ice blocks.

“Hello there,” he said.

The sharp jerk of the beak was all Edmund needed to know the figure was well and truly shocked to see him standing behind it.

“My name is —”

His stomach collapsed as a leather fist pounded him in the stomach. He doubled over, gasping for breath, as the figure shot past him, ignoring the candle on the floor and diving for the tunnel.

Thankfully, as noted before, Edmund had already begun his study of pain as relates to physical abuse, and so was prepared for the sharp pain and dull ache that followed “a sudden and unexpected blow to the stomach of an object no larger than a fist, covered by thick fabric or leather.” Being prepared for it, he was up again before the figure could reach the passage.

“Wait,” he struggled to breathe. The figure shoved Edmund hard to the ground, following up with a good kick to his back.

Edmund was up again in seconds, but the raven was just as fast. The ice-block was already moving back into place, the Resurrectionist gripping onto a pewter handle that had been stuck into it. Desperate to not lose his quarry, Edmund staggered to the block and pulled.

“I just want to talk,” he panted.

As Edmund had not yet undergone the studies that led to his ground-breaking thesis on Friction, Ice, and the Incompatibility thereof, he was caught off guard when the figure gave a hard shove on the handle, and the ice block shot from Edmund’s grasp to collide with his stomach.

Whether by fortune or design, the ice-block chose this very moment to crumble around the handle, breaking free when the figure pulled again. Leaving the block for a lost cause, the shadow turned down the tunnel and crawled away into the darkness.

The ice-block to the stomach felt just as painful as he expected “a blow following a previous blow of similar shape, location, and force, at a duration of no more than half-a-minute” to feel, so Edmund was well prepared to climb around the ice-block and crawl into the secret passageway.

He only had to crawl a few feet before he felt the passage open up to where he could stand without hitting his head. Without light to guide him, he was forced to stagger and stumble a bit; but years of practice in the tiny passages between the walls of Moulde Hall had given him a steady tread and calloused shins. He ran as quick as he dared down the darkened tunnel, chasing the faint sound of escape.

Then there was a corner. Then there was the bright star-lit darkness of midnight.

Edmund burst out of the passage into a darkened alleyway. He was somewhere in the city of Mothburn, he could tell, but where exactly was a mystery. Glancing around, he saw the flicker of a black leather coat and a broad brimmed hat vanish around the corner at the entry to the alley.

Filing the secret passageway as “an item for later inspection and timely interest,” Edmund gave chase.

He never thought of himself as a fast runner, having never had the opportunity to run very far, but he did think of himself as a Moulde, and that meant he ducked as he reached the end of the alley.

The whistling sound of a wood plank spun over his head. Edmund threw himself to the side and was rewarded with both the soft smell of worn and dirty leather and a grunt of surprise from the ambushing Raven as he collided with it.

The wood plank clattered to the ground, and Edmund pulled back as the Raven lashed out with its fists. Ducking to the side again, Edmund reached up from beneath the blows and grabbed at the long pointed mask.

With a yank, the mask and hat fell away. A long shock of dirty red hair tumbled like a shower of fire. Two blazing eyes burned their way into Edmund’s. A strong mouth twisted into a sneer of defiance. Two fists rose up in front of a crooked nose, a nose that had been broken in a fight seven years ago.

In one of the few surviving diary entries from later in his life, Edmund wrote: Memories are devilish things. They lie in wait like hidden vultures, always ready to swoop down with silent wings to sink their sharp talons into your mind, breaking your chain of thought, ripping away chunks of time and awareness that might have been better spent on the present, the task at hand. Instead, these chunks of time must now be devoted to pasts hidden, feelings buried, pains ignored, and old faces long since considered irrelevant.

A single memory came upon Edmund like a steam-train.

“Leeta.”

It wasn’t a question. Her face had barely changed.

Edmund was lucky; he recognized the flash in Leeta’s eye. He had seen it once before in the eyes of his cousin Pinsnip, moments before he tried to lock Edmund away in a tomb, forever. Leeta’s fist sailed over Edmund’s head.

But Edmund had never fought a real street-urchin,³ and no sooner had he straightened again then Leeta’s foot connected with his chest, knocking him to the ground. The momentum pushed Leeta into a spin, and she broke into a run down the street.

“Fuck you, arse-mouth!” she shouted as she ran.

“Wait!” Edmund called as he picked himself up, but he was too late. By the time he had reached the end of the street, her escape was masked by the directionless echoes of her running footsteps. It was impossible to tell where she was.

As Edmund looked around for some sign, some clue, the steps faded. She was gone.

Leeta.

Edmund brushed off his jacket, giving his mind time to race. They had not been friends, any more so than any one had ever been Edmund’s friend. They had never talked, never touched, barely even looked at each other. She had simply always been there. She had never stayed adopted for longer than a month; at least, not until the Wickes.⁴ She was familiar.

Edmund rubbed his chest where her foot had connected. At the orphanage, she had been a fighter. Some of the older kids had tried to push her around when she first arrived. They only tried once.

She came back. She always came back. Why hadn’t she come back to the orphanage after the Wickes adopted her? Where had she been?

The world spun in Edmund’s head.

Leeta was back.

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