The Peculiars (2 page)

I remember Poppa’s quick laugh, the funny faces he made, the way he used to sing to me when I cried. And I remember the other things: flashes of anger that could sear me to the bone
.

“My husband is a short man with a quick wit and good business sense. He can be very charming.”

“Charming, is it?” The doctor raises caterpillar eyebrows. “And does he drink?”

Mother’s lips pleat into her face. I know that look. She won’t say another word
.

“Loyal.” He shook his head. “Silly woman. We’re talking about a genetic disorder. In mixed marriages—cases like these—we wait and see which traits are dominant.”

“Surely, environment can—”

“There is no question of nature versus nurture. Science shows very clearly that development is all in the genes. Mr. Mendel proved it with peas.” He tears a piece of paper from his pad. “Here are the other things you should watch for.”

• • •

And they had watched. Lena’s feet grew longer and the soles softer. Her hands spidered out like daddy longlegs. Her grandmother monitored her for wild thoughts, a keen interest in money, and for a temper she did her best to hide. And Lena had watched herself.

Lying in her bed at night, her heart pounding, she wondered if her thoughts were too wild, if goblin genes would overtake her while she slept. She imagined running away on a belching steam train or fording streams on the back of a fat elephant while its leathery trunk swung like a pendulum. In her dreams, Lena rose and fell with the swell of waves, captaining a ship, sea spray salting her hair. When she had these dreams, she knew that goblinishness was taking hold, growing from a seed buried deep inside her. No other girl could have such wild imaginings and, try as she might, she couldn’t tame them. And the truth was she didn’t try very hard.

Every morning she checked the mirror with dread, expecting a face she didn’t know. She wanted to be anybody other than her father’s child.

“Sit down, Lena. I have one last gift for you.”

Puzzled, I look at my mother. She had already given me the new Wilkie Collins novel I’d been wanting and a short green
velvet jacket. Now I notice her hands trembling, and the telltale flush of her face
.

“Best get it over with, Rose,” Nana Crane urges from her chair by the fire. “It’s past my bedtime, and I want to see what the fool had up his sleeve this time.”

“Your father left you a small inheritance and an envelope to be opened on your eighteenth birthday.” My mother places two envelopes side by side on the tea table next to the bone-handled letter opener. Poppa’s script, sharp and vertical, runs across the front of both envelopes. With my own hands trembling I slit open the larger of the two envelopes
.

Inside, there is a paper wrapped around a slim stack of crisp, new bills. Not a fortune, but enough. Enough to finance my plans
.

“Well, what will you do with it?” Nana Crane’s eyes glitter like a bird’s
.

“Go to Scree.” When I finally say the words aloud, I realize I have opened a box that cannot be closed again. I think of Pandora
.

“Oh, my dear!” Mother wails
.

And then louder and sharper, Nana Crane’s voice: “Of all the foolish nonsense! You will not set foot in that wild place.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I have to go.” I’m watching Mother’s face, knowing my words will hurt and hating myself for them
.

“Just like her father. It’s her goblin blood calling her home.” Nana Crane barks a dry laugh. “What’s in the other envelope?”

“I’m not going to open it yet.” The envelope is clenched in my hand. “I expect it’s a letter.” Better to read it in private, without
Nana Crane’s eyes on me, without Mother’s tears. I rewrap the bills in their paper and slip them back into the envelope
.

“No good will come of this.” And leaning on her cane, Nana Crane makes her way to bed
.

A log pops in the fire. I stay seated in the dim parlor with Mother, both envelopes buried now in the pocket of my skirt
.

“Scree’s the place where they send criminals. They say the forests are filled with hideous things. Why would you want to go to such an uncivilized place?” Her voice quavers
.

I count the furrows on her forehead. It’s the first time I’ve disobeyed her openly
.

“Because I have to know if Nana Crane is right, if I am part goblin. If there really are such things as Peculiars.” Now it’s my voice that stumbles. “I can’t keep living this way, wondering what I am, what I’ll become. Besides, it’s the kind of place Poppa might have gone. Maybe I’ll find him there.”

“I’ve reassured you over and over again: You’re a perfectly normal girl, despite your poor hands and feet.” She puts her arms around me to offer comfort the way she did when I was little. For a minute I lean into her warmth. Her voice drops to a whisper. “No matter what Nana Crane says, your father is not a Peculiar. He’s from the East, which explains some of his unusual ways . . . although it doesn’t excuse abandonment.”

For the first time I hear the strain of bitterness in my mother’s voice, the words stretched tight as a wire. “Don’t look for him, Lena. He’s not worth the risk.”

It’s almost dawn before I’m alone in my room. I rip open the envelope
.

Lena
,

It appears that I have no talent for ordinary life. I’m hoping you do and that you take after your mother. Things will go easier with you. There are many rumors you will hear told of me. Some of them may be true. I’ve left you something to help you get by. You’ll know what to do with it. Don’t let anyone tell you different
.

Your father,
Saul Mattacascar

I can’t help but notice that he had signed his full name, as if writing to a stranger
.

I tuck the envelope of money under my chemise in my dresser. Then I read the short letter once more, trying to decipher a hidden meaning. What was he? Did he know I’d break my mother’s heart? Each carefully formed letter was as sharp as the quills of a porcupine, bristling across the page. If I touched them, they would prick, draw blood
.

She was more than the sum of the crimes of her father. Or so Lena had told herself every time Nana Crane got that gleam in her eye, rattled her knitting needles, and reminded her of Father’s indiscretions, of which there seemed to be no end. She was still telling it to herself now, at eighteen, in the Pullman car of a passenger train where, beyond the blue brocade curtains, the arms of trees waved her on through billows of steam. A pot of tea
steeped on the table, a familiar comfort for an unfamiliar journey.

Lena was the last passenger in her car. The rest—mostly businessmen in their starched collars and bowler hats, and harried parents taking sticky-faced children to autumn festivals in the country—had disembarked at the various small towns strung along the rail line. She recited their names: Middleborough, Tropolis, Banbury Station. Only three stops left before the end of the line, three stops that would take several hours. Finally, Lena could stretch out her legs, which she had kept tucked under the seat until the last passenger left, and loosen the laces of her handmade boots. How she hated them! Good alligator hide, the cobbler had assured her, never wore out.

The scenery had become progressively wilder as the train made its way north from one town to the next. Each pair of towns had been farther apart than the last two, with small forests and hummocky fields in between. For the first hour she had stared out the window, never turning to the novel on her lap. She had always lived in the City. Open fields and forests were as foreign as brocade curtains and the cut crystal lamp swaying above her head. She pulled off her gloves and flexed her fingers. When she was younger, her mother had cut the fingertips from regular gloves so that they would fit her hands.

As the train slowed, the walnut-paneled door slid open and the conductor strolled in. “Approaching Northerdam,
miss,” he said around the ends of his blond waxed mustache. “And I’ve brought some biscuits for your tea.”

He shot a second glance at her gloveless hands. Almost everyone did. But to his credit, he made no comment, merely nodded and passed on to the next car.

LENA REMOVED A MAP FROM THE LINING OF HER DRAWSTRING
purse and smoothed it across the marble-topped table. She had traced her route with a thick black pen months earlier. Three more towns to the borders of Scree, where the train line ended—and most roads did too. Knob Knoster, the first stop on her own journey, was the last town, a mere outpost that jutted into the sea on a knob-shaped projection of land. She had circled the name and then drew a line north. Not thirty miles beyond the town was the border of Scree behind its hedge of forest and shale. No one knew much about what went on beyond the borderland, other than the government’s official statements: an undeveloped land, rich in natural resources, home to small numbers of indigenous Peculiar people. Lena had read every report she could find in the library.

“Scree’s been declared
terra nullius
.”

Lena jumped. She had been so absorbed in her map that she hadn’t heard the conductor enter the car again.

“A ‘land belonging to no one.’ Just got it over the telegraph last night.”

He paused to look over her shoulder at the map.

“Excuse me if I’m interfering.” His mustache twitched. “But the government has sent in the military to colonize the land and keep order. Most of it is now officially a penal colony. No one’s there but misfits, political enemies, and aliens.” He considered a minute. “And a few profiteers. Of course, there’s the indigenous folks, but I don’t know what they’re considered. Superstitious people say Peculiars live there.”

Lena worked hard to keep her face blank at the mention of Peculiars.

“There are not even any reliable roads. Can’t see why a young woman would be interested in a place like that.” He refilled the water in her teapot.

Lena quickly refolded the map. Her hands were trembling. “I am traveling to Knob Knoster to see my mother’s cousin.”

The conductor wiped the spout of the silver serving pot with a white towel. “Beg pardon, miss. It’s just that your map shows Scree and—”

“And I am a student of geography. The land interests me.” Lena turned her face to the window.

“Yes, miss. Let me know if you need anything else, miss.”

Lena heard him leave, but she did not turn her head. A lone woman traveling to Scree for any purpose was sure to
draw attention and arouse suspicion. No woman in her right mind would consider such a notion. Nana Crane had made sure Lena understood that. Tales of murders and enchantments, unrest and unsavory politics filtered their way beyond the borders and into the City. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had heard a story about Scree and its inhabitants. And Lena, thanks to her grandmother, had heard them all.

The train slowed to rest in a valley after lumbering up Jackson Grade and then racing down to Northerdam. It belched great sighs of steam in satisfaction. Lena drained the last of the tea from her cup. Nana Crane would have insisted on reading the leaves, and Lena purposefully gave them a poke with an index finger to rearrange her fate. She flexed her fingers; they were sore. They often were. The doctor had said it was the extra knuckle. The walnut door slid open again, and, without looking up, Lena sighed, then politely asked for more biscuits.

“I’m afraid I haven’t brought any with me.” It was not the voice of the blond conductor. It was a younger voice, but a man’s voice all the same. She looked up slowly as she slipped her hands into the folds of her skirt.

“Jimson Quiggley, without any biscuits.” He removed his hat. His curly black hair immediately sprang out, glad to escape the confines of such a hat. “May I—that is, unless you don’t want company?”

She didn’t want company. She had been relieved when everyone left. Why was this man—well, he was really not
much older than she was—getting on the train so near the end of the line? She could hardly ask him. She smiled thinly.

“Of course. Lena Mattacascar.” She nodded. She was not about to offer her hand to this stranger in a cheap suit. Despite being strictly middle class, Lena’s mother and Nana Crane had been very particular about the cut and quality of cloth in Lena’s few traveling garments.

“That’s good. I walked through the cars until I found someone to sit with. It’s better than traveling alone. Did you know there are only a few stodgy sorts left in the front?” He spoke quickly, all in one breath. Lena found it annoying.

“Not many people travel this far north.” She wanted to put her map back in her purse, but to do that she would have to remove her ungloved hands from the fabric of her skirt.