I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)

36 Cal

The next time Minnie fell away, Cal found himself in the oldest part of the city, not far from Tarn Alley.

He jogged across a small bridge. Beneath his jacket, his sweaty shirt pressed against his back like a clammy hand, like Minnie’s presence close behind him. It was the nightmare of his early days in the city all over again.

“I’m going to Delta Mouth. You can’t stop me.”

There was a slow-moving knot of people on the street, clumped together beside the canal. The morning fog had not burned away and at a distance he could only tell that there were Ibai among the onlookers by the green and blue of their clothing. But he was already at the mouth of Tarn Alley. It wasn’t far to Reuben’s shop. Reuben would help him. Reuben would quiet Minnie’s insistent voice, which still murmured in his ear, enumerating all the reasons why she could not be his wife, would not waste another day of her life on the dusty streets of Halen.

The crowd was gathered around one of the benches set beside the canal. A woman lay on her back, loose limbed and with a haze of dark curls haloing her dusky face.

“You never listen to what I want,” Minnie said petulantly as Cal slipped through the onlookers. He worked his way up to stand between a heavyset Ibai matron with her hair bound tightly to her head beneath a navy blue scarf, and an old man so wrinkled and shrunken that it was impossible to tell if he had any other defining features. The old man grimaced and scrabbled at the heavy muffler around his neck as Minnie settled beside Cal.

In front of him, on the bench, was Emiliana. Her face had taken on a grayish hue; her full lips seemed almost black. In sharp contrast to Minnie’s voice, Emiliana was still and silent. Cal had not felt the chill that Minnie carried but now it clamped down on him.

“Is she dead?” he asked.

The woman standing beside him gave him a look that was half pity, half indignation. “Yes.” The word slipped out from her thin lips quickly, like a watermelon seed. “Poor thing.”

The wet shirt on his back was icy now. Cal fought to suppress a shudder of cold unease and clamped his lips closed to keep from retching. There was no surprise, only a confirmation of the fear he had been carrying with him since Helen had woken him in the early morning.

“Oh, Emiliana,” he said softly.

The woman looked at him sharply. “You know her?”

“She works for me,” Cal said. “I’ve been looking for her all morning.”

“Works for you?” Heads were turning towards him. “What happened to her?”

“Dapper Jack,” Cal said. “And Jimmy Primrose.” Around him, the faces turned inward. Eyes dropped to the ground or shifted to something just over someone else’s shoulder. Suddenly no one was looking at Emiliana’s body.

Beside him, Minnie said smugly, “I’ll be so rich and fancy that you’ll have to buy a new suit of clothes just to walk down the street I live on.”

The people shuffled back nervously as Cal gathered Emiliana’s body into his arms. She was wearing a thin coat which fell open to reveal a blue dress as he lifted her up.

“Where are you taking her?” asked the Ibai matron who had first spoken to him. “She should be with her own kind.” You’re not Ibai, was the unspoken accusation. You did something to draw her into your conflict of Pels and Plainsmen.

“To Reuben’s,” Cal said. “I’m taking her to Reuben.”

This placated the woman somewhat and she stepped back. The other Ibaians in the crowd nodded their heads with some sort of approval while the few Plainsmen shrugged their shoulders. Cal hefted Emiliana’s weight and one of her arms flopped out, hanging down at an odd angle. The matron tucked it back into place and then followed him a little ways down the street. “Only a few things left Reuben could do for her,” she said.

“Saints be merciful,” Cal said. “I wish I had found her sooner.”

“Saints be merciful,” the woman said. She reached out to smooth a tangle of hair away from Emiliana’s face.

They walked down the narrow streets of Tarn Alley. Cal kept his head down. At least the light fog still clinging to the city limited the options for the passersby to see him coming from a long ways off and stop to stare. Emiliana’s body had not yet stiffened, but she was obviously cool to the touch and he felt his own body heat leaching away.

She was smaller than Minnie. He had carried Minnie’s broken body much further, but he had been younger then, and gripped by a frantic strength born of panic. Now the gray sky was caving in on him, the slick cobblestones under his feet threatened to throw him down, and Minnie—

“I’m leaving. There isn’t anything here for me.”

Cal stopped for a moment and closed his eyes. He breathed in until his lungs were full to bursting, then let the air out in a long sigh.

“Reuben’s just around the corner,” the woman said.

“I know.” When he opened his eyes, Minnie was directly in front of him.

“Go away,” he mouthed at her.

“I’m going to Delta Mouth,” she said. “You can’t stop me.”

“You should have stayed at home,” Cal said softly. “Both of you.” He gritted his teeth and stepped forward, passing through Minnie. There was the turquoise building with the fish above the door; the Ibai matron had gone ahead to knock and did not appear to have noticed Cal conversing with his ghost and the corpse in his arms.

The door opened and the matron stepped aside to let Cal maneuver through the frame. Reuben looked at his burden with dark, mournful eyes. “This must be Emmy Jane Neely,” he said, and Cal could only nod.