This little girl was cold and gone, a splash of blood on her dress around the hole where her stomach should be. There were no tomorrows left for his daughter. And now there were no tomorrows left for this child.
Cedar swallowed hard and placed her gently next to a woman missing the top half of her skull. He didn’t know if it was her mother. He hoped it might be.
“I’m going off for more wood,” Rose said. “Mrs. Lindson is going to stay with Bryn Madder to help mind the fire and boiler. Are you all right?”
In the firelight Rose looked softer. Lovely as an angel come to comfort. Cedar knew she had no reason to tell him what everyone was doing.
She must have seen him standing there, frozen with grief and memories, the dead girl in his arms. Her words had tethered him back to the night, eased the beast, and shaken the memory’s hold.
Rose was a practical woman. And kind.
“I’ll come along with you,” he said.
“No need, Mr. Hunt. There’s a good stack just behind that house over there. One or two more loads and Mr. Madder says he’ll have enough for the digging matic to start working.”
Cedar glanced over at Mae, who was working next to Bryn Madder. They had built a fire that could likely be seen for twenty miles.
The boiler was now attached by long metal tubes to the pump device, and Bryn was wrenching wheels onto the base of the thing. It looked like a railroad handcart, with a lumpy brass teakettle the size of a pony bolted to it and a wooden shovel attached by long handles to the front, controlled by pulleys and ropes. Probably a mining matic the brothers had devised.
“I’d prefer to come with you,” Cedar said.
Rose inhaled as if to say more, then stopped. She glanced at the dead girl in the pile, then at his hands and coat, which were both bloody enough, the rain couldn’t wash them clean.
Finally, she looked at his eyes. Likely seeing the sorrow he could not hide.
“Of course, Mr. Hunt,” she said softly. “I’d appreciate your company.”
He walked with her to a lean-to that had been built to keep the worst of the weather off the wood stacked up against a house. There wasn’t enough room in that small shed for two, so he waited outside.
“Enough firewood here to keep a person warm till next summer,” Rose said as she bent beneath the roof eve and piled several pieces into her arms.
“That’s true,” Cedar said distractedly. The night wind brought with it the sound of crying, the soft weeping of a child. A child close by.
“Have you looked in the house across the way there for bodies?” he asked.
“Not yet. I thought after I gathered the wood, I’d help out finding people.”
“I’m going to look inside,” Cedar said.
“I’ll come with you if you wait,” Rose called back.
He didn’t wait. He strode up to the back door of the house and tried the latch.
The door opened onto the kitchen. A woman lay on the floor. She was missing both of her arms. Silent. Dead.
In the far corner of the room huddled a child. He’d guess her to be maybe eight or ten years old. Still in her nightgown, bareheaded, barefoot, her cheek tipped onto her bent knees, her hands gently clasping her ankles.
She didn’t move. But a soft, wheezing cry drifted from the corner of the room. Cedar put his hand on the doorjamb. No song of the Strange came to him. He took a cautious step into the room.
“Child?” he said quietly.
The girl still didn’t stir. But the wheezy sob continued.
Cedar crossed the kitchen, carefully stepping around the mother, and knelt in front of the girl.
“There, now,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.” He placed his hand on her shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t startle her.
At his touch, the song of the Strange shot through him like greased lightning, cracking in his skull and stabbing straight through his feet to fuse him to the earth.
The Strange hadn’t just touched this girl, they had infested her.
He could feel a tremble, a ticking beneath his fingers.
The girl was not a girl. Or at least not anymore. Now she was a hollowed-out shell. A doll with clockwork innards that ticked, ticked, ticked, slowly winding down while leather bellows wheezed out the last of the air it had been pumping into her lungs.
The Strange had made her. Or remade her.
The girl fell sideways. A metal key stuck out of her back. A small key made of tin that ground to a stop like a music box striking the last tine.
“Mr. Hunt?” It was Rose, come into the room.
“Rose!” Cedar called. “Don’t!”
But it was too late. The key stopped moving. Touching the girl had sprung the Strange trap. He’d set off some kind of trigger set deep within her. A trigger that sparked a short fuse.