Carrying the pumpkin above her head, Tilly looked like a single, solitary ant trying to abscond with an oversized slice of cake. Booger found the arrangement especially humorous, pointing out the similarity between Tilly and the aforementioned insect countless times as the two walked down the dusty dirt road that lead to Coleville—at least, until Tilly threatened to drop the pumpkin on her. Then, curiously, the dog was all out of commentary.
"You wanna stop for a spell?" Booger's question came sometime later and with a yawn. She was always ten or fifteen feet ahead under the guise of scouting for dangerous ankle-breaking ruts left by the wagons and buggies that came before them, but more often found herself investigating interesting smells from the surrounding fields. "Reckon it's gotta be three or four in the morning now."
The determined pace of the early miles had dwindled as the hours dragged on. Tilly's arms first trembled under the prolonged strain, then developed a shooting ache that raced from her wrists to her shoulder blades, down her spine and back again. Finally, she had went totally and mercifully numb, legs seemingly moving under their own power in the velvet black of night.
But the moon was big and bright propped up on the peaks of Semsi Mountain, and the air had cooled to a welcome crispness that Tilly knew meant the long summer would soon be over. The world was giving her as much kindness as it could for the task she had ahead, and for that, she was grateful.
"Can't hardly be that late." Tilly blew out her cheeks and came to a stop. She'd grown so accustomed to the crunch of gravel beneath her feet that its sudden absence felt all-encompassing. The suggestion was awful tempting. The fields around her seemed to spin as she closed her eyes to collect her thoughts. "If I rest now, I dunno if I'll ever get back up again. Best to wait 'til we get there."
"Maybe I could turn into something big and push it."
"It's flat on the bottom. You hit any kind of rock poking out of the ground and tear a hole in Mr. Tubbington and Sprout'll have both our hides." Tilly's footsteps resumed. "This is why it's important for you to pay attention to that encyclopedia I've been reading."
Booger's ear flopped over as they continued on. "That big book on critters? I thought you bought it as a sleep-aid. Page or two of that is better than a nip of moonshine for a nightcap."
"Can't turn into something you don't know exists, now can you? Thought you might find a thing or two that could be useful to change into at some point. Something strong." Tilly grunted as she shifted her grip slightly. "With hands or claws or somesuch to hold things."
"Hmph." Booger's still slightly swollen snout shot into the air with indignation. "Hands are overrated anyhow."
"I don't know, they're fair-useful when you're hauling a two-ton pumpkin around."
"You know what else got hands? A raccoon." The dog trotted ahead, glancing over her shoulder. "And they eat trash."
A bead of cold sweat trickled from beneath Tilly's kerchief but she didn't dare sweep it away, shivering as it rolled down the back of her neck. "I'll remind you that you live off of table scraps. Ain't much better."
"One of these days," Booger said, head whipping back to give her owner the cold shoulder, "I'm gonna turn into a big old wolf and eet you up, that's what I'll do."
Tilly smiled. "Well, when it happens, let's hope it goes better for you than the bumblebee did."
"Oh, you're right," the dog muttered, wandering into a tobacco field to lick her metaphorical wounds. "I'd clamp my mouth shut and you'd have one of them sharp pokey things too, 'cept yours would be a sewing needle."
As they drew closer to town proper, the small homesteads tucked into the hillsides gave way to the mansions and their thousand-acre farms. Barbed wire was exchanged for immaculate whitewashed fences that protected fields already picked clean for the harvest by tractors and hired hands. Feeling the last of her second wind (though truthfully, it was more like her fourth or fifth) rapidly leaving her, Tilly pressed on, though she did linger at the curling wrought-iron gates of one particular estate. Her breath caught as she admired the tall columns and many gleaming windows of the Cole manor house, still illuminated by dozens of candles in the blue of early morning.
The largest and most prosperous of the tobacco barons was old Mr. King Cole. A farmer-turned-entrepreneur in his autumnal years, he'd taken it upon himself to open up a cigarette factory in the small village of Stone Cross—called such for its staurolite-rich soil—when Tilly was barely out of swaddling clothes. The opening of the factory had brought with it so much commerce and so many jobs that the people had elected to change the name of the village, now a town, to Coleville, after their financial savior.
Tilly's family did not care much for Mr. Cole. It seemed wrong to buy the tobacco wholesale from the poor farmers of the tri-county area only to sell it back to them at twice the cost and three times the addiction.
There was also the interesting coincidence that Mama's illness came just a few short years after the dedication of the cigarette factory; just long enough that the smog belched from the smokestacks used to power the machinery therein could poison the air and the clouds and return to the earth as sour rain. In the end, there was no real damning evidence to this theory, though Tilly noticed that Mama only went into town when she absolutely had to anymore, sending both her daughters out on errands in her stead.
Still, Mr. Cole had a very pretty home, and Tilly wasn't so ate up with pride that she refused to dream. She imagined herself and Sprout sitting on the wraparound porch drinking lemonade while Booger dozed in the shade and Mama was waited on by no less than a dozen servants. There was even a rumor that Mr. Cole was getting electricity installed in his mansion soon—and he already had indoor plumbing, though Tilly had no idea how that worked.
"Don't tell me you're stopping now—we're almost there." Booger's voice dragged her back to reality as she called from further down the ever-widening road.
Startled into motion, Tilly ducked her head and resting the pumpkin across her back as she readjusted for the final stretch of the trip. The brief pause was enough to chase the numbness from her limbs and the heavy ache of exhaustion was rapidly returning. "Sorry. Lack of sleep is catching up to me. Coming."
Within the hour, they arrived at the edge of Coleville, a disarray of crumbling cobblestone and a scattering of two storey, boxish buildings covered in ageing pastel paint and striped awnings. There was a long-standing saying that Coleville rolled up the sidewalk from the hours of 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., and while it was terribly funny there was more than a kernel of truth to it. The town slept, the roads eerily vacant, and even the excitement of the first day of the county fair could not rouse it from its slumber.
The half-finished profile of the ferris wheel rising above the steeples and rooftops drew her through side streets like a moth to a flame until Tilly found herself at the vacant field that always housed the county fair. The perimeter was marked by official barricades, courtesy of Royal Entertainment, LTD., and a myriad of discarded beer bottles and cigarette butts. Beyond that, there was the skeleton of the Jack-be-Nimble—a rollercoaster that Sprout rode each and every year—along with a row of carnival games that lead to the judging tent for the pumpkin contest.
Tilly had never seen such a welcome sight.
Finding a spot beneath a nearby maple tree, Tilly practically cried as she set down Mr. Tubbington at last. She felt wrung out, arms and legs trembling from lack of sleep or food, she wasn't sure which, as she sank down onto the ground beside the massive gourd.
"What're you doing?" Booger asked. Her head dipped to sniff at an empty beer bottle before recoiling with a nose wrinkled in disgust.
Tugging her kerchief down over her eyes, Tilly weaseled in the dirt until her back was braced against the tree. "Getting some shut-eye."
"Just—out here?" The dog whined with concern. "What if somebody steals the pumpkin?"
Tilly folded up one side of the kerchief to give Booger a flat look. "I'd like to see them try."
The dog considered that a moment. "Fair enough. I probably ought to stand guard, though, just in case they get any bright ideas."
Though she had the best of intentions, Booger was likely the worst guard dog anybody had ever seen. She padded up to the maple and laid down, head braced on Tilly's thigh, and was out like a light before her owner could even protest. Tilly sighed, smiled and shook her head, scritching the dog behind the ear as she drifted off to a dreamless sleep herself.
It felt as though Tilly had only been unconscious for a few minutes when she felt someone kicking at the soles of her boots.
"Listen, girly, you might have had a rough night, but you're about to have a rough day if you don't wake up," an unfamiliar voice said.