The Luck Uglies

THE O’CHANTERS’ cottage was the largest on Mud Puddle Lane, which is not to say that it was big or fancy, just that it had three rooms instead of two, and an attic Rye wasn’t allowed in any more, ever since the time she fell through the ceiling and nearly crushed her sister. It also had a secret workshop Rye wasn’t supposed to know about, but did.

Mud Puddle Lane was on the northernmost side of town, which made for a long walk to Market Street and The Willow’s Wares. It had a view of the salt bogs and, from the roof where Rye kept her pigeon coop, you could see the edge of Beyond the Shale, where towering, centuries-old pine trees swayed in the winds. Mud Puddle Lane was the one village street outside the town’s protective walls. An accident had destroyed its section of wall many years before and, for one reason or another, it was never rebuilt. Rye’s mother wasn’t a fan of walls anyway.

Many people wouldn’t appreciate a view of the bogs, and most would prefer to live as far away from the forest’s edge as possible. Mud Puddle Lane was known to be the first stop for any hungry beast that might crawl, slither or lurch from the trees. Bog Noblins were the most vile and malicious of the lot. Their jagged teeth and claws dripped with a disease, making their bites poisonous. Three heads taller than a full-grown man, with bulging, runny eyes and lice infested, red-orange hair in all the wrong places, they could bury themselves deep in the bogs and mudflats during the coldest days of winter and go months without eating. Unfortunately for Drowning, with spring came the hungry season.

Rye was too young to remember the last time a Bog Noblin ran loose in the village, but she’d heard the tales. It had begun with the disappearance of a few reclusive woodsmen and stray travellers – easily written off as a hungry bear or pack of wolves on the prowl. The livestock on remote farms went next, followed by the farmers themselves. Then the village children began to disappear. In some parts of town – all of them. None were ever seen again.

Luckily, that was all long ago. Nevertheless, once, after some implausible stories from her best friend, Folly Flood, Rye couldn’t help but ask, “Mama, what about Beyond the Shale? Shouldn’t we worry about monsters?”

To which Abby O’Chanter had replied, “Riley, have you ever seen a monster come out of the forest?”

“Well, no.”

“There you go,” Abby had said. Then, she’d added with a wink, “Besides, if one did, wouldn’t you rather be the first to see it coming?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Rye had said. And that had been the end of those worries.

Still, that night at supper, Rye wasn’t feeling particularly thrilled about where they lived, or anything else for that matter. She sat with her mother and her little sister Lottie at the big table by the fireplace, picking at the fleshy white meat in the cracked shells on her plate. Her place setting was remarkably tidy. Typically, when Rye was hungry, the table and floor looked like a pantry raided by squirrels.

“Sea bugs again?” Rye said. “I wish we could have something else.”

Sea bugs washed ashore in piles each morning. They were brown and grey until you threw them into a boiling pot, then they screamed, turned red and fought with each other to escape. Rye felt no gratitude towards the deranged person who had first strolled along the sand and eaten one.

“Cackle fruit!” exclaimed Lottie, banging her spoon on the table. Rye wondered if Lottie would outgrow the banging – and the yelling and fussing – when she turned three. That was coming soon, but not soon enough.

“Eggs are for morning,” Abby said. “Besides, something’s been troubling the hens. They haven’t laid all week.”

“Uh-oh,” said Lottie, bending her head over the big claw on her plate. As she pecked at it, her nest of red hair bounced and coarse strands flew out in all directions like a barn fire. Her hair was nothing like Rye’s, which was brown and chopped short above her shoulders, or their mother’s, which fell long, thick and black down her back.

“As for you,” Abby said, pointing a spoon at Rye, “be thankful we have sea bugs and bread. You know we can’t afford to eat beef or chicken every night.”

“Well, we could …” Rye mumbled.

“And what do you mean by that?”

Rye bit her lip. “Nothing.”

Abby always seemed to know when something was weighing on Rye’s mind. Rather than cuff her, or warn her not to talk back, Abby usually tried to help. It wasn’t easy being Rye. Abby seemed to know that.

“What is it, Riley? You’ve been upset all day.”

“It’s just … the Constable. He lied to us today. You knew he was making up laws and you didn’t say anything.”

Her mother nodded.

“Why not?” Rye said. “You let him treat us like we’re stupid.”

“Me no stupid, me Lottie,” Lottie said. She made an angry face and pounded her fist on the table.

“Of course, Lottie,” Abby said and patted her red tuft.

Abby looked back at Rye. “The Laws of Longchance, Riley. You know that we – women, girls – we’re not supposed to know those things. We’re not supposed to know how to read or write.”

Unless you were a Daughter of Longchance, Rye thought, in which case none of those laws applied. Her mother had told her that there were other places where girls and women could do anything they wanted. Abby had grown up in one of those places. When Rye asked why they couldn’t move there, Abby told her it was complicated. When she asked again, Abby said there were worse things than not being allowed to read or write. The third time, Abby sent her down to catch the basement wirry under The Willow’s Wares.

“Those are stupid laws,” Rye grumbled now, her ears turning pink.

“They are stupid, old-fashioned, terrible laws that need to be changed,” Abby agreed. “And, as you know, I refuse to follow them—”

“L-O-T …” Lottie began, spelling her name. Abby pointed to her as if to say, see.

“But,” Abby said, “that does not mean we should flaunt it. No good can come of letting the Constable or anyone else like him know what we do and do not know.”

“But they took our coins.”

“It’s for Assessment, Riley. The fines are pooled for the good of the village,” Abby said, without conviction.

It seemed to Rye that the ‘good of the village’ seldom spilled over on to Mud Puddle Lane. They couldn’t even get street lamps after dark like every other part of town.

“It’s just a few silver shims, Riley. It could be much worse. Remember why the Constable came to the shop in the first place.”

Rye crossed her arms. Her mother had a point.

“Now, enough of this talk in front of your sister,” Abby said.

“Fine. But if I eat another bite of this sea bug I’m going to grow claws.”

Rye frowned at the ugly, beady-eyed head staring at her from her plate.

“So be it,” Abby said. “Give it to Shady.”

Nightshade Fur Bottom O’Chanter was the thick ball of black fur curled up by the fireplace. Everyone called him Shady for short. He slept so close to the fire that Rye worried an ember would jump from the flame and set his bushy tail alight. Rolled up like that, you might easily mistake him for a bear cub, but Shady was in fact a cat, the largest and furriest anyone had ever seen. His fur was such a thick, luxurious black that he shone like velvet, and he was as warm as a wool blanket when he curled up on the girls’ laps on a winter night. Shady didn’t know his own strength, and sometimes, when he got too excited, had a tendency to play a little rough. All the O’Chanters had the scars to prove it.

“Shady go outside?” Lottie asked.

Shady opened a big yellow eye at the sound of that, peeking out from his fur as if he understood what the littlest O’Chanter had said.

“No, no, Lottie,” Abby said, wagging a finger. “House Rule Number Two. Shady must never go outside.”

“Why? Cats go play,” Lottie said.

Which was true. Most cats roamed the streets and alleys of the village, skulking through the night, hunting all sorts of vermin.

“Too dangerous,” Abby said. “No, no.”

“No, no, no,” Lottie said, wagging a finger at Shady who, foiled again, stretched and slunk off into the shadows.

“That’s right, girls. Now, what’s the rule? Say it with me,” Abby said. And they did.

House Rule Number Two: He may run and he may hide, but Shady must never go outside.

“Good,” Abby said. “Shady, get your whiskers out of there.” She pushed his fluffy face away from her glass.

They all raised their drinks for the nightly toast.

“Welcome what tomorrow brings us,” Abby said.

Abby drank cranberry wine out of her favourite goblet. Rye and Lottie drank from smaller matching ones, leaving big goat milk moustaches over their lips.

Getting Lottie O’Chanter to bed each night was no easy task. It took a lot of screaming and temper tantrums, and that was just from their mother. Finally, Lottie pulled on her nightdress and clambered into the bed she shared with Rye in their small room at the back of the house. She would never agree to sleep if she knew Rye was staying up, so Rye had to change into her own nightdress, climb into bed, and pretend she was going to sleep too.

Abby leaned over and kissed each of her girls goodnight.

“Mona, Mona,” Lottie said, thrusting forward the worn doll she slept with every night. Mona Monster was a little pink hobgoblin with red polka dots. Abby had stitched it herself and stuffed it with straw straight after Lottie was born. Mona and Lottie had been inseparable ever since.

Abby kissed Mona on her toothy pink lips. “Bedtime, Lottie.”

Lottie made Rye kiss Mona too.

“Now get some sleep,” Abby said. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

Lottie chomped her teeth and clutched the thin leather choker round her neck. A silver dragonfly charm and some runestones were strung on the black leather strand.

Lottie touched her finger to an identical choker round her mother’s neck. Abby smiled.

“Yes, I have one too,” Abby said.

Rye also wore a matching choker. They were usually well hidden under the clothes the O’Chanter girls wore during the day. Even Shady had a similar collar. The chokers were the subject of yet another House Rule.

House Rule Number Four: Worn under sun and under moon, never remove the O’Chanters’ rune.

“Cherish it with your heart,” Abby had told Rye many times. “It carries the luck of the O’Chanters and our ancestors. It will keep you safe when times are darkest.”

“Time for sleep,” Abby whispered now, gently folding Lottie’s arms round Mona Monster.

Abby leaned over and whispered in Riley’s ear, “I need to tend to some things outside. You listen for Lottie.”

“OK, Mama,” Rye said, and Abby blew out the beeswax candles. The room glowed from the light of the fireplace.

It took quite a bit of tossing and turning, a little foot in Rye’s belly and a round bottom in her face before Lottie finally fell asleep. Rye slipped from under the covers and went into the main room of their cottage, where she sat by the hearth on the sweet-smelling herbs and grasses that her mother spread over the floorboards to keep the insects away.

Shady settled in her lap and Rye rubbed his big ears, covered with tufts of fur inside and out. These quiet times – sitting alone when Lottie was sleeping and Abby was off catching up with one task or another – were the hardest for her. Abby had been taking care of the girls by herself for as long as Rye could remember. Rye had no memories of her father. Abby said he was a soldier for the Earl. Ten years ago he had marched off with the army into Beyond the Shale. For a few months there’d been messages and letters, and then, one day, they stopped. Abby never said more about it, but Rye was old enough to know what that meant.

Lottie was a different story. Nobody seemed to know who her father was. Nobody except their mother that is – and she wasn’t telling.

The girls and the shop were a lot for anyone to handle alone, and Rye worried about her mother. Abby had been spending a lot of time out of the house at night. Maybe the night air helped clear her head. Rye knew Abby didn’t like her venturing outdoors after dark, but Rye thought her mother might appreciate the company. She kissed Shady and placed him on the floor.

“You smell like wine,” she said, wiping his whiskers. “Stay here.”

She put on her cloak and pulled the hood over her head. She creaked the door open and peeked outside. In a neighbourhood of drab, grey houses, their shiny purple door always stood out. It was etched with a carving of a dragonfly that changed colour as the sun hit it at different times of the day. The dragonfly was black now, the street dark except for light from the thinnest sliver of moon.

“Stay here, Shady,” she said again and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare wake up Lottie.”

Rye carefully closed the door and slipped behind her house. Their goat and hens were asleep in their pens. In the distance, the bogs came to life as vapour rose off the water like ghosts. Her mother wasn’t back there either.

Rye was about to climb the ladder to her pigeon coop to see if she had any messages. Rye and Folly had taught the pigeons to fly back and forth between their houses and sometimes they wrote messages and tied them to the birds’ feet. But something stopped her in her tracks. Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. Someone was already on the roof.

She stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder and pressed herself against the side of the house. She looked up again. The figure was in a cloak like hers. It was her mother. She was staring at the forest Beyond the Shale. She was perfectly still. It was like she was watching … waiting for something.

Abby didn’t seem to see her. Rye held her breath as she tiptoed back towards the house, slow and easy. Then there was a loud, terrible sound. Rye jumped and looked for a place to hide. The sound was far away but not far enough. It was a cross between the shriek of a wild animal and the wail of a baby. She looked up. Her mother had heard it too. Abby leaned forward ever so slightly, looking through the mist, but remained in place.

The sound again. It felt like a thousand insects running up Rye’s spine. She scrambled inside as fast as she could and slammed the door behind her.

RYE AND QUINN sat on the split-rail fence in front of the O’Chanters’ house and watched the commotion on Mud Puddle Lane.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Rye asked, carefully wrapping her arms and legs round the rail.

“Not since they spotted that school of sharks in the river a few years back.”

The village had woken up that morning to find the streets filled with wild turkeys. Hundreds of them, at least six flocks, had come out of the bogs during the night. Mud Puddle Lane buzzed with villagers. Armed with nets and axes, some using only their bare hands, they chased the lumbering, feathered creatures up and down the roads and alleys. Nobody on Mud Puddle Lane was about to let a free meal run away.

The neighbourhood rooks perched on a cottage roof and watched in disapproval, almost as if they were embarrassed by the whole unseemly affair.

“Do you think anyone will catch one?” Quinn asked.

“I’d think someone will. Sooner or later,” Rye said. She flipped herself upside down, now dangling by her arms and legs from the fence like an exotic pet she’d once seen by the docks. The sailor who owned it called it a sloth.

“Shall we try?”

“My mother said not to bother. She left for The Willow’s Wares early this morning. Brought Lottie with her. She seemed a little distracted.”

Rye wondered how many nights her mother had spent sitting up on their roof. Had the terrible wail from the bogs rattled her the same way it had Rye? Rye found it easy enough to push the sound out of her head this morning, with the light of day and the routine of her regular chores, but her mother’s nervous energy and the commotion in the streets had her thinking about the eerie noise again.

“Did you hear anything strange outside last night?” Rye asked.

“With my father’s snoring?” Quinn said. “I can’t even hear the roosters crow. Why, did you?”

“I thought I heard something screaming. Or crying. Hard to say.”

“It wasn’t Lottie?”

“Not this time.”

One of Rye’s neighbours leaped for a turkey and fell chestfirst in the mud. The big, clumsy bird flapped its wings and landed on the man’s roof. Rye and Quinn laughed. Rye’s laughter broke her grip, her flailing legs found Quinn’s ribs, and they both crashed to the ground.

“Are you OK?” Quinn said, rubbing his side.

Rye rolled over and struggled to catch her breath. “Fine,” she wheezed.

They both looked at each other, then back to the turkey chasers, and began laughing again.

Rye’s laughter trailed off as she considered what might have inspired the turkeys to leave the bogs and take their chances with the villagers’ carving forks.

“They’re hopeless,” Quinn said. “Let’s go and read – I brought a surprise.”

Paintings of mermaids, adventurers and monsters covered a wall by the O’Chanters’ fireplace. As proud as Abby was of her daughters’ talent, she hung the girls’ paintings for another purpose. The artwork covered a hidden door that slid open if you pushed it in the right way. The door led to a few shallow steps and Abby O’Chanter’s secret workshop. At least Rye assumed it was secret, because her mother never mentioned it to her and she had never, ever, seen her mother go in. Then again, Abby had never told Rye to stay out of the workshop, so technically Rye wasn’t breaking any House Rules. Regardless, Rye certainly wouldn’t be telling Lottie about it any time soon; her sister ruined all the best hiding places.

Rye and Quinn sat at the heavy wooden table that nearly filled the small, sunken room, careful not to disturb the tools, beads and half-finished jewellery. Shady was curled up in a big black ball underneath it. If it hadn’t been for him, Rye would never have known about the workshop in the first place. One day she had seen Shady sniffing the floor and pawing at Lottie’s sketch of Mona Monster in a princess dress. Then, right in front of her eyes, he disappeared into the wall as if it had swallowed him up. It was amazing what kinds of surprises your own house could hold.

Rye and Quinn huddled round a lantern and a thick book – Tam’s Tome of Drowning Mouth Fibs, Volume II. Quinn said that the angry poet had collected Tam’s Tome after Rye had dropped it, but he’d been forced to stash it in a chimney before climbing down to answer the Constable’s questions. Quinn had taken it upon himself to save Tam’s Tome from nesting birds and chimney fires. Rye was impressed. That was like something she or Folly might try.

“What do you think the poet will do when he finds out it’s missing?” Quinn asked.

“No idea,” Rye said. “He didn’t get a good look at us, so he can’t just come knocking on our doors. It wouldn’t be safe to report it missing, so I doubt he’ll risk telling anyone.”

“Probably not,” Quinn said, chewing his lip.

“We should keep it safe,” Rye said. And read as much of it as we can, she thought.

“I guess so …” Quinn said.

“Good,” Rye said, before he could change his mind. “We’ll keep it at your house,” she added quickly.

Quinn and his father lived just three cottages down from the O’Chanters. Their walls were already bursting with Quinn’s books and his father’s cluttered assortment of weapons that could crush your bones or separate you from your limbs. Angus Quartermast was a blacksmith with hammer-forged arms and a brow that seemed permanently furrowed, but he always had kind words for Rye and her mother. Quinn had lost his own mother to the Shivers years before and neither Quinn nor his father had turned out to be much of a housekeeper. At the Quartermasts’ house, there was always a fine line between hidden and lost.

Quinn, unlike his father, was still so skinny that he had to use a rope belt to hold up his trousers. He had a tendency to forget things, like his lunch, or the shopping list, or sometimes his way home. But Quinn was also kind, and he was one of Rye’s best friends in the whole world. Three times a week, he brought over a book and helped her with her reading.

Now, with time to examine Tam’s Tome more carefully, they noticed that many of its pages were burned, torn or missing completely, and its binding was covered in soot. Its contents, however, were like no book they had ever seen. Page after page was hand-scrawled in letters of varying sizes. Throughout the book, the text was packed so tightly that the thin slivers of parchment not covered by ink seemed to form phantom images all their own. Rye tried to make them out, but it was like spotting faces in storm clouds – lose your focus for just a moment and they were gone.

“We should see if there’s anything about cries from the bogs,” Rye said, and by ‘we’ she meant Quinn. She was still learning to wrestle with ordinary-sized letters.

Quinn sighed as he squinted to read the actual words. “This is going to take some time.”

Fortunately, the maze of prose was occasionally broken up by the most detailed and lifelike drawings Rye had ever seen, and Rye and Quinn spent their time studying the illustrations. There were portraits of people she didn’t recognise and maps of places she had never been. Creatures, both whimsical and menacing, seemed to leap off the page.

One image, however, plunged them both into silence. It was vaguely human, its orange hair hanging in long, knotted ropes from a skull that looked to have been broken and carelessly reassembled. Sickly skin clung to its ribs and hung in loose folds from its face. Cold eyes conveyed anger and sadness, and there was something both ancient and childlike in its expression. Dwarfed in its bony fingers was a child’s tattered rag doll; around its neck was a string of small, shrivelled feet. A Bog Noblin!

Rye shuddered and turned the page quickly, pressing her hand against the opposite side, as if the awful image might claw its way out. Quinn didn’t object.

They had been leafing through Tam’s Tome for much of the morning when Shady’s ears perked up and he lifted his furry mane. Someone was coming. Rye and Quinn cast wary looks at Shady, then each other. Quinn hunched forward and tried to shield Tam’s Tome under his arms.

The secret door opened. Rosy cheeks and big blue eyes beamed in the lantern light.

“Folly,” Rye said with relief, “where have you been? There are some amazing things in this book.”

“It’s been a crazy day,” Folly said, pulling up a chair. “Did you know turkeys have taken over your street?”

“They came out of the bogs last night,” Quinn said.

“It’s really busy at the inn,” Folly said. “I had to help my mum get ready for tonight’s Black Moon Party – got to hang Wirry Scares on the street.”

Folly’s family owned the Dead Fish Inn, the most notorious tavern in the Shambles. It was rumoured that, with enough grommets, you could buy anything at the Dead Fish. The Floods lived on the third floor over the guest rooms – Folly being the youngest of nine children, the rest of them boys. Her brothers were said to be the toughest in the village, which was good, because patrons of the Dead Fish were infamous for fighting, carousing and causing all sorts of commotion. Rye envied Folly. The Dead Fish was far more exciting than Mud Puddle Lane, and all the wild turkeys in the world couldn’t change that.

Folly slapped her hands on the table. “You’ll never guess what I heard over breakfast.”

As usual, she didn’t wait for them to guess.

“Two men came into the Inn this morning. They weren’t villagers. They looked dirty and tired, and they had weapons. Lots of them. They said they hadn’t slept in days.”