Goblin Secrets

Scene I

ROWNIE WAS HUNGRY. This was usually true. Hunger was a constant background noise buzzing in the back of his head and the bottom of his stomach. But yesterday he had spent more effort than usual, running toward goblins and away from Grubs, and now he needed some of it back.

He let his legs take him in search of food. He found some outside the tin-roofed house of Mary Mullusk, a pale woman who thought that her family was trying to poison her. She rarely took more than one bite of anything before she threw it out her window. Rownie got there just in time to catch a green apple as it came sailing across the street.

“I wouldn’t eat that,” Miss Mullusk called to him. She sounded calm for someone who believed herself surrounded by poisoners. “It’s a tainted thing.”

Rownie bit into the apple, smiled, and shrugged. It tasted fine. It tasted perfect. She shook her head and left the window. He waited to see if she would toss away any other tainted things, but she didn’t.

It started to rain. Rownie tightened his coat and breathed in rain smells of dusty mud and wet stone. He tried to clear his head. He was still tired and still alone. It was worse than how he felt on days when Graba moved her shack without warning anyone first or telling them where she intended to go. Rownie knew where the shack was this time, but he couldn’t go back there. It was no longer home.

He missed Rowan. But he didn’t know where Rowan might be, and he didn’t know where to start looking.

The heavy rain faded to a drizzle. Each misty droplet seemed to hang perfectly still, as though someone had shouted “Stop!” at the rain, and the rain had listened. Rownie moved through the hovering drops.

He decided to start with the alehouse in Broken Wall, where he had last seen his brother, to find out if anyone there knew anything at all. This was what you were supposed to do when you lost something—go to the last place you remembered seeing it, even if it had been a couple of months ago. He also had another reason to find the alehouse. We play at the Broken Wall tomorrow, the old goblin had said. She had offered him welcome. Rownie could be a part of the goblin troupe. He could be a giant again. He could help them put on plays. Or he could slave away for thousands of years in goblinish underground cities, if that’s what they really wanted him for.

Broken Wall was the name of the alehouse, and also the name of the neighborhood. It was a part of Southside where most of the buildings had been pieced together with stone from the old city wall—or else carved into the larger, solid blocks of the old city wall. It was a long walk to get there, and it took Rownie most of the day. He didn’t hurry. He didn’t run. His legs were still sore, and he had only scrounged up a single apple. Hunger was still there, buzzing in the middle of him.

When he got to the alehouse, he found goblins in the outside yard. Thomas stood on the roof of their wagon. He was shouting and waving his big black hat.

“I will write you into our next play!” Thomas roared. “I will sculpt your face into grotesque caricatures and paste them onto small, ugly puppets!” The alehouse windows and doors were all shut. No one seemed to be listening to the old goblin, but he continued to roar invective at the walls. “I’ll pen your name into immortal verse, and for a thousand years it will be synonymous with ridicule and scorn!”

Rownie stood at the corner of the building and wondered what the fuss was about. He was glad to see a familiar face—even one with a long nose and pointy ears—but he didn’t want to stand between a cursing goblin and the object of his ire. He didn’t want one of the curses to fly off course and hit him by accident.

“Excuse me,” said someone behind him.

He moved out of the way. A small, slight goblin passed him with two arms full of costumes. She wore the sort of dress a lady might wear, but with the skirts hitched up over her shoulder and a soldier costume visible underneath. Her short hair was rain-wet and spiky.

A mask fell from the top of the costume pile as she went by. Rownie caught it before it hit the ground. The mask was feathered, and it sported a long, curved beak. It looked unsettling. Rownie held it so that the empty eyes weren’t looking up at him, and he followed the walking pile of costumes.

“You dropped this,” he started to say, but the goblin didn’t hear him. She was already shouting up at Thomas.

“Haven’t we put enough of our enemies into immortal verse already?” she asked. “Do we really need to humiliate a stupid alewife and her very stupid husband for the next thousand years? Really? We’ve already named villains after the players who stole Semele’s script book, and that farmer who set his dogs after us, and the alderman with the funny nose. I can’t remember what he did to deserve it. What did that alderman do to deserve an eternity of scorn?”

Thomas ignored her. He may not have heard her. “I will curse this place!” he shouted. “Your ale will turn! Your bread will be maggot-ridden! I will visit humiliations upon you in verse!”

The small goblin climbed the stairs at the back of the wagon, pushed open a door with her foot, and went inside. The door shut behind her.

Rownie knocked on the door. “You dropped this,” he said to the door, but it didn’t open.

“May the River take you!” Thomas raged above. “May the floods take your household and drown your bones! I will have our artificer build a pair of gearworked ravens, and they will croak your vile name outside your bedroom window, every night, at irregular intervals! You will never sleep again!” He lowered his voice then, but only a little. “Does anyone remember his name?”

“Cob,” said someone else. “My father’s name is Cob.”

It was a young-sounding voice. Rownie looked around the side of the wagon to see who it belonged to.

A dark-haired girl stood in one of the alehouse doorways. She carried a basket in front of her.

Thomas climbed down from the wagon roof and stood before the girl. The rain picked up, and water poured down all sides of his hat.

“Cob,” he repeated. “That is an easy syllable for a gearworked raven to remember and croak at him. What brings you out in the rain, Cob’s daughter?”

“I’m just sorry he tossed you out,” the girl said. “You should have some payment for the show, so I brought you some bread.” She lifted the basket she held. “It’s fresh. It doesn’t have maggots in it, not unless your curses work very fast.” She gave him the basket.

“I withdraw my curses on your household,” the old goblin said. He hummed a tune, making his words into a song and a charm, stronger than just a saying. “I may yet carve a grotesque mask in your father’s likeness, but I withdraw each curse. May the flood pass your doorstep and leave dry your boots.”

“Thank you,” the girl said. “The dancers were all perfect. Please tell them.”

“I will,” he said. “But to whom should I attribute this critique? I have not yet caught your name, young lady.”

“I’m Kaile,” she said.

Thomas took off his hat and bowed. “Thank you, Kaile, for the tribute of your compliments and the bounty of your family’s bakery.” Then he rummaged around in his hat and produced a small, gray flute. “This token is yours, I think.”

Kaile took the flute. Then someone bellowed at her from the alehouse door, and the girl hurried back inside. The door slammed behind her.

Thomas seemed to diminish where he stood. He returned to the wagon with his head down, and almost bumped hat-first into Rownie.

Rownie meant to say something like, Excuse me, sir, but one of the other players dropped this. I saved it from getting very muddy and probably stepped on. Instead he just said, “Here,” and handed over the bird mask.

The goblin took it from him and dropped it in the basket with the bread. “Much obliged,” he said gruffly. He did not sound obliged, not even a little. He sounded disgruntled and tired. Then he looked more closely at Rownie. “I know you,” he said. “You played a giant for us, and not badly—but you vanished afterward.”

“Sorry,” Rownie said. “My grandmother was angry.”

“I see,” said Thomas. “Well, would you consider . . .” The goblin paused. Then he shoved Rownie underneath the wagon.

Rownie slipped in the mud and slid to a stop. He was not happy about being shoved. He almost shouted something about that unhappiness. Then he heard Guard-boots marching, and saw the boots stand between the wagon and the road. Rownie decided it would be better to be quiet.

One pair of boots stepped forward.

“I have heard noise complaints,” the Captain announced. Rownie knew his voice. He remembered his voice from the alehouse, from the proclamation he gave while standing on a table. “Have you heard anything about a raving goblin throwing curses?”

“I have not,” Thomas said, “though I am impressed that the Captain of the Guard himself investigates such a minor concern. Your attention to even the most trivial duties is commendable, and I am very glad to see you. The proprietors of this alehouse have stiffed us payment for performing here, and I wish to register my own complaint.”

“Noted,” said the Captain, though he did not sound like he had actually taken note. “I am also given to understand that goblins put a mask on an unChanged child yesterday, in front of a crowd of witnesses. Goblins have masked an unChanged citizen of Zombay.”

“That would be a terrible thing,” Thomas said, gravely and seriously. “I am deeply stricken that anyone would think simple Tamlin performers, such as ourselves, could be capable of such an irresponsible deed.”

The Captain took a step forward. Rownie shuffled back a bit, underneath the wagon.

“The Lord Mayor would be very interested in the whereabouts of any unChanged actor,” the Captain said. “Even a child, even someone who has only worn a mask once. In exchange for such information, the Lord Mayor could provide you with a special license to perform within the proper limits of the city.”

“That is very generous,” said Thomas. “Very generous. We would, of course, be delighted to help the Lord Mayor with his interests.”

Rownie braced himself for more running. He knew how to get away from the Guard. He knew how to zig and zag in Southside streets and escape from those who only ever marched in straight lines. His legs hated the thought of running again, but he braced himself anyway. He would run if he had to. He would make himself run.

Thomas went on. “If we hear the slightest rumors about unChanged actors, we will of course find you immediately.”

Rownie took a breath. He had been holding it. He hadn’t noticed. He wouldn’t have to run. The old goblin wasn’t about to turn him in.

“Do so,” said the Captain. “I have further business here, but my officers will happily escort you to a proscribed area at this time.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Thomas, with politeness and courtesy. “Certainly.”

The Guard-boots made precise turns, and surrounded them. Rownie heard Thomas climb up into the driving seat. A gearworked mule unfolded itself at the front of the wagon. Rownie could see coal glowing red in its belly.

They use coal, he thought, horrified.

The mule began to trot. Rownie’s hiding place was moving, and now he had nowhere to go. There were Guard-boots in every direction he looked.

A hatch opened in the wagon floor above him. Several pairs of hands reached down, caught him, and pulled him inside.

Scene II

GEARWORKS CLANKED. Wooden wheels clacked. The wagon lurched forward, and the hatch in the floor fell shut. Rownie rolled away from the hatch and the grasping hands. They let go of him.

He looked up. The first thing he saw was the dragon.

The fire-breathing puppet hung down from ropes tied to the ceiling, and it pitched as the wagon moved along uneven streets. The wheels went over a bump, and the dragon lurched down at Rownie, as though trying to bite his face. Lantern light glinted on sharp, brass teeth.

He knew it was a puppet. He could see that most of it was plaster and paper on a wooden frame. But he couldn’t help flattening himself against the floor and throwing up his arms around his face.

He lowered his hands when nothing happened. The dragon puppet swayed above him. That was all it did.

Four goblins also stood above him.

One was the tall, bald goblin who had juggled fire. He looked at Rownie like he couldn’t quite decide what Rownie was. Another wore rough clothes stained with grease and sawdust. She had long, dark hair pulled behind her head and tied with a string—though most of it had escaped the string. The third was the one who had carried a pile of costumes through the rain a few moments ago, and wore more than one set of costumes herself. She had spiky hair. She gave a little wave with one hand.

The fourth was Semele, who had offered him tea underneath the stage, and offered him welcome.

All of them had pointed ears and very large eyes—though Semele squinted with her large eyes through small spectacles. Their faces were freckled with greens and browns.

“Hello, Rownie,” said Semele. “I am glad that you found us again, yes.”

Rownie was not entirely glad that he had found them again. He felt nervous and unsettled. He sat up, and looked around, and was not reassured. Props and masks and musical instruments rattled in crates and made strange noises as they knocked against each other. Lantern light cast oddly shaped shadows, and the shadows rocked back and forth as the wagon moved. Everything around him was unsettling. It smelled like old clothes and paper.

“Hello,” Rownie said, quietly and cautiously.

The tall, bald goblin said nothing. The one with the work-stained clothes also said nothing.

“They never say anything,” said the goblin with spiky hair. Her voice was high, and her words jumped around like grasshoppers. “Patch never says very much, anyway. He’s Patch. The tall one. She’s Nonny. She really doesn’t ever say anything. I’m Essa. We shared a stage last night, when I played Jack and you were trying to keep a giant mask from slipping off your head.”

Rownie meant to protest that the giant mask had been in no danger at all of slipping off his head, and that he had worn it very well, thank you—but instead he said something else.

“You use coal.” He did not mean to say that, but it bothered him enough to make his mouth say it without permission. He knew what made automatons move. He knew where coal came from. “The gearworked mule runs on coal.”

“Fish-heart coal!” Essa protested. “We only use fish hearts to make Horace go. It takes several dozen to get a decent blaze going, but the fishmongers down by the docks sell them in bulk, and they work almost as well as the stuff made out of . . . larger hearts.”

“Really?” Rownie asked. He didn’t know fish hearts were flammable.

“Really,” said Essa.

“Who’s Horace?” Rownie asked.

“Horace is the mule,” Essa told him.

“It is?” Patch asked. Nonny also looked confused. This was clearly news to them as well.

“Yes,” Essa said. “I named it today. It needs a name, and I think it looks like a Horace.”

Semele shushed everyone. “I am thinking that we should speak softly now. The Guard are marching alongside us, and the walls are not thick. Please sit down, yes.”

Everyone sat down, except for Rownie, who was already sitting on the floor.

Patch stared at the wall in a dour and gloomy sort of way, as though he expected the Guard to arrest them regardless of what they said or did.

Nonny sat on a crate and patiently began to fold a piece of paper into different shapes. She made it crane-shaped, and then lizard-shaped, and then gear-shaped. Rownie recognized the writing on the paper. It was a copy of the notice advertising Tamlin Theatre, the one he had seen on the bridge.

Essa sat down, started fidgeting, stood up again, and climbed one of the cabinets nailed to the wagon wall. There she hung upside down by her knees and hummed a tune to herself.

Semele took off her spectacles, wiped them with a rag, and put them on again.

The wagon stopped. Essa stopped humming. Everyone listened.

Outside, Thomas shouted something brief.

“Is he calling for help?” Essa whispered. It was a very loud whisper. “I think maybe he just called for help.” She reached into an open crate and carefully unsheathed a stage sword. “I couldn’t really hear him, though. He might have said ‘Bang, fallen dromedary.’ It kind of sounded like that. What sort of signal do you think that is?”

“I do not think he spoke of dromedaries,” said Semele. “I am thinking that he said ‘The Changed call for sanctuary,’ which signifies that we are at the litchfield gates.”

Essa groaned. Patch sighed. Nonny folded the piece of paper into a mask shape.

“Do we really need to sleep in the litchfield?” Essa asked. “The best thing about coming home to Zombay is having a better place to stay than litchfields or crossroads or crossroads inside litchfields.”

Semele shook her head. “The Guard marched us here,” she said. “It is not safe to go home and show them where home is.”

Rownie understood very little of the conversation, though he listened carefully. He sifted words through his head like fine dust through his hands, and he caught what he could. As the youngest he was used to piecing together his understanding from snatches of overheard conversations, and the rest he set carefully aside on the shelf in the back of his mind.

Metal shrieked against metal somewhere outside. Rownie didn’t know what the noise was. He didn’t think it was Graba’s leg. He didn’t think so. It sounded like a gate fighting against its own hinges.

The wagon started up again, and this time there was no sound of accompanying Guard-boots. It rode over an even rougher surface than the Southside streets, and everyone inside braced themselves against the walls and floor. They went over an especially violent bump, and Rownie bit the tip of his tongue when the impact knocked his teeth together. It hurt, but he didn’t cry out. He tensed up his face with the effort of not crying out.

The wagon finally rolled to a stop. A small hatch in the front wall opened.

“We’re here,” Thomas said through the hatch.

“Where’s here?” Essa asked, but he had already shut it again.

The whole wagon jittered while the gearworked mule folded back in on itself. Semele opened the door in the back wall and went outside. The others followed her. Rownie came last, but Essa stopped him in the doorway. She was still holding the sword.

“The Guard might be out there,” she said in her loud whisper, “and they’ll be unhappy with us if they see you, because Thomas said, ‘Nope, officer, we don’t have any idea where that mask-wearing boy might be, and he certainly isn’t hiding underneath our very own wagon.’ So keep hiding for just a second.”

She peered outside and looked unhappy. She whispered curses under her breath. They were decent curses, spoken with a decent rhythm. “May the Guard Captain grow hideous ear hairs, and may his glass eyes both turn the wrong way around.”

“Are they out there?” Rownie asked. “The Guard?”

“No,” Essa told him, “but the graves are. We’re in the litchfield.” She left the wagon.

Rownie took a good-sized breath. He knew that Graba sometimes sent Grubs to run errands in the litchfield and collect the sorts of things that grow in grave-dirt. Blotches always came back with stories about fighting off ghouls. Rownie was sure that Blotches had made up the fights, but Blotches might not have made up the ghouls.

Rownie tried to feel like a giant. He adjusted his brother’s coat on his shoulders and went outside.

Scene III

THE WAGON STOOD IN AN OPEN stretch of grass, surrounded by graves. The gravestones were all worn and crooked, like teeth badly cared for. A single tree twisted its branches through the air nearby. Rownie could see crypts, mausoleums, and monuments packed close together near the gate, at the other end of the field where important people were buried. It looked like a small and separate city unto itself.

The rain had stopped. The clouds had broken up, and now they moved quickly. The sun was low in the sky. The air smelled like fresh mud.

“We’re spending the night here?” Rownie asked the others. Old ropes dangled from the gnarled and unfriendly looking tree. It was a hangman’s tree.

“We are, yes,” said Semele. “Tamlin cannot stay anywhere overnight within the proper city limits. Most of us, along with other sorts of Changed, camp far outside the city entirely—but we can also sleep in places that are not actually considered to be places. This is a place where living people come to visit dead people, so it will work very well as somewhere in-between and not exactly one thing or another thing.”

“Oh,” said Rownie. “What’s a Tamlin?”

“It is a more polite word than ‘goblin,’” said Semele.

“Oh,” said Rownie. “I heard that the sun will burn you up if you stay too long in one place.”

“Not so,” said Semele, “though we would become sunburned.”

The goblins began to bustle. They set up clotheslines and hung wet costumes up to dry. They built a fire and used it to boil a kettle of water. Rownie kept out of their way. He watched, and he wondered whether this was in any way a safe place to be. Not that he was accustomed to safety, but at least he knew the ways that Grubs and Graba were dangerous—or he used to believe that he knew. He thought about Grubs squinting at him with Graba’s look and calling to him with Graba’s voice. He remembered how little he actually knew about them, or their dangers.

After their bustling, the goblins all gathered together. Semele poured tea. Thomas brought out the bread basket.

“Let us see what sort of supper we can make from the materials at hand,” he said. “We have dried things and pickled things—preserved for emergencies against our starvation—and we have bread that young Kaile offered us at the Broken Wall, which was very kind of her. However, the whole of our provisions will make an unbecoming meal for artists of our stature and accomplishment.”

“Ate wild rat last winter,” said Patch.

“That was unbecoming also,” said Thomas.

“I kind of liked rat,” said Essa.

Thomas made a harrumphing noise. He took the basket around to each member of the troupe. The gentleman’s cane he carried stuck into the muddy ground a little as he walked, and he had to pull it free with every step.

“The bread also comes with a complimentary review of our performance,” Thomas said. “The girl especially enjoyed The Seven Dancers.”

“Oh good,” Essa said, “though we really should change that name. There’s only one of me.”

“You imply the others well enough,” Thomas said.

The basket came to Rownie, and Rownie cautiously reached in. He took a bread roll. His hand brushed against the bird mask that was still there.

He was, of course, hungry. The unpoisoned apple from the morning seemed like days and weeks ago. But he wondered what the dried and pickled things were. Maybe goblins ate moths and flowers. Maybe they ate children’s toes.

Did you eat what they gave you? Graba had asked him. Did you drink what they offered? He wondered what would happen to him if he did.

They passed around pieces of salted riverfish instead of children’s toes, and a few dried fruits instead of dried insects, and they sipped Semele’s tea from wooden mugs while Thomas strummed a song on a battered bandore. The bread was still warm from the Broken Wall bakery, and it was tasty enough to make him want to crawl inside a bed-sized loaf and fall asleep. The riverfish was salty and chewy and excellent. The tea was lemony and sweet.

Rownie was impressed that the goblins shared food more freely than anyone in Graba’s household ever did, and he resisted the urge to sneak some dried fruit into his only pocket. He could feel himself relax. His legs no longer prepared themselves to start running at any given moment. He stopped looking around for ghouls or the Guard. He let his toes warm up by the fire.

Then Thomas leaned toward Rownie. The old goblin did not pause in his playing, but he no longer seemed to be paying much attention to the song either.

“Tell me, young sir: Where in all the vastness of Zombay would your brother hide?”

Rownie coughed on a mouthful of tea, and spit most of it out again. Lemony droplets sizzled in the cook fire.

“Pardon the abrupt rudeness of my question,” Thomas said, “but we have been looking for Rowan with some concern. We had taught him the language of masks, and he spoke it very well—better than anyone else in that amateur and unChanged troupe of his. Then we left Zombay for an important piece of business, far downstream. We returned to find his troupe arrested and undone, and Rowan himself escaped but missing. The Broken Wall is the very last place he was known to perform. Do you have any notion where he might be hiding now?”

The circle of goblins all stared at Rownie with their large, bright-flecked eyes. Rownie tried not to cough again. The world had just changed shape, and he didn’t recognize the new shape it was in.

“You know my brother?” he asked.

“Yes, indeed,” said Thomas. “A fine fellow, and a respectful student, though he also had a sense of mischief appropriate to our profession.”

Rownie had as much trouble swallowing this as he had just had swallowing tea. He knew that his brother’s life and world were larger than Graba’s shack, but he didn’t enjoy the thought that he knew so very little about it, or that these goblins might know Rowan better than he did.

“I don’t think I should help anybody find him if he doesn’t want to be found,” Rownie said. “Thanks for the supper. Thanks for hiding me away from the Captain. But . . .” There was no polite way to ask this, so he did not ask politely. “Why should I trust you?”

Semele smiled. Nonny, of course, said nothing.

“Because we’re nice?” Essa suggested.

Patch shrugged and looked dour. “Probably shouldn’t,” he said.

Thomas let out a sigh. It made his beard flare out in all directions. He stopped strumming the bandore and set it aside. “Because I swear to you, by the stage itself, by every tale and character I have ever breathed life into while treading the boards, by every single mask I have ever worn and offered the use of my voice, that we will not harm your brother, and that by finding him we can prevent harm from coming down upon a great many other people—ourselves included. I swear it by blood and by flood and by fire, and I swear it by the stage.”

“Wow,” said Essa.

Rownie was also impressed, but he still wasn’t convinced. “Actors are liars,” he said. “You pretend. It’s kind of your job.”

“No,” said Semele. “We are always using masks and a lack of facts to find the truth and nudge it into becoming more true.” She picked up a pebble from the ground, wiped it off with her sleeve, and held it out to Rownie. “Here. This is more properly a way to say hello to the dead, who are stone silent themselves and therefore accustomed to a pebblish way of speaking. I do not think that Rowan is dead, but he is lost and therefore silent, and I know that this was his way of saying hello to your mother. So I will use it to say hello to you, yes—from him, and also from me.”

Rownie took the offered pebble. It was greenish gray and egg-shaped. “Hello,” he said.

“Welcome to our troupe,” said Semele. “You may stay and perform with us. We will teach you the language of masks—though we must go about that carefully, yes, since maskcraft is more likely to bring about arrest and imprisonment than it once was. We must also go carefully because your former household will be hunting for you. You are still welcome. In exchange, please be helping us to find your brother before the floods come.”

Rownie put the pebble into the only pocket of his coat. “He might be on the bridge,” he said quietly. “I look for him there, and sometimes I see someone who looks like him, though it isn’t ever really him. But maybe he’s there.”

“We have also searched the sanctuary of the Fiddleway,” Thomas said, “and we also have not found him. But we will keep searching. We are grateful for any help you can provide.”

“What do you mean, his former household will be hunting for him?” Essa asked. “We have to worry about old Chicken Legs? Again?”

“Yes,” said Semele. “Please be cautious around pigeons. Tell me if you see them. Tell me if you dream of them, and shout if you wake up from such a dream.”

“Pigeons aren’t very clever,” said Essa. “I mean, I knew an owl who could use doorknobs, and a pair of crows who played harpsichord together. They had terrible voices, but were really just fantastic at the harpsichord. But pigeons are so dumb and mangy-looking. Do we really have to worry about them?”

“Yes,” said Semele. “Tell me if you dream of them.”

“Speaking of dreams,” said Thomas, “it is time we all went to our rest. We have a long walk before the show and the search tomorrow. Choose your masks for the morning walk, and then to bed. Here, Rownie. This one will be yours.” He took off his hat, reached in, and removed a mask shaped like a fox’s face. It had furry fox ears and a long fox nose, with whiskers.

Rownie took the mask and looked it over. It smiled with small, sharp teeth. Its fur was short, and coarse when his thumb rubbed it in the wrong direction. He smoothed the fur back again.

“You will also wear gloves and a hat,” Thomas told him, “in order to hide your un-Tamlinish features. The Guard would be very unhappy with us for teaching maskcraft to an unChanged child. In this way you may hide with us, in full view and in daylight, and seem to be Tamlin yourself. Now, everyone to their rest. I’ll see to the cleaning up. Rownie, find yourself a spare hammock in the wagon and keep the fox nearby while you sleep.” The old goblin poured the rest of the kettle’s contents over the fire. It hissed, sputtered, and steamed.

“Good night,” said Semele.

The rest of the troupe mumbled their good nights. Rownie stood. He felt the fox teeth with his fingertips. He wondered if he would really be able to sleep in a litchfield, surrounded by graves and goblins and possibly ghouls, with a hangman’s rope dangling in the tree branches and bird-dreams perched in the air, waiting to be dreamed. Then he yawned and followed Essa, Patch, and Nonny into the wagon. He carried the fox mask in one hand. With his other hand he checked to make sure the pebblish hello still sat safe in his pocket.

Scene IV

SEVERAL HAMMOCKS STRETCHED across the inside of the wagon, like sailors’ bedding on a barge. Rownie found an empty one, set the mask underneath it, and figured out how to climb in. It took him three tries to manage. He had never slept in a hammock before.

He didn’t think it would be possible to sleep. The bedding was unfamiliar. Straw and rope were both itchy, but in different ways, and he was accustomed to straw and not rope. But he had walked a long way when the day began and had eaten as good and filling a meal as he had ever tasted when the day was over. These two things together summoned sleep, and Rownie let it carry him off.

He dreamed that the city was also his face. The Fiddleway Bridge was the bridge of his nose, and it tickled as traffic walked across it from Northside to Southside, and from Southside to Northside. He woke up and flicked a bug away from his nose. He suspected that a Grub might have put it there, as a joke. Then he remembered that he was no longer in the company of Grubs. He opened his eyes.

Semele stood beside his hammock. She squinted at him. Dusty sunlight poured in through open window hatches in the wagon walls.

“Pigeons?” she asked.

Rownie blinked. He was only half sure where he was, and he wasn’t sure at all what she meant.

“Did you dream of pigeons?” Semele asked.

Rownie shook his head. “No pigeons.”

“Well, that is a good thing, yes.”

Rownie tried to sit up. It wasn’t easy, and he had to brace himself with both arms to manage. He didn’t know how to get out of a hammock. Finally, he flipped the thing upside down and tumbled forth.

“Has the boy injured himself?” Thomas asked from elsewhere in the wagon. “Is he fragile? Is he dead? Have we lost our little fledgling actor already?”

Essa peered down at Rownie from among the ropes and rafters. “He’s not dead,” she reported. “Not unless he’s the sort of dead who gets up and goes walking afterward.”

“Good then,” said Thomas.

Rownie got to his feet, embarrassed. Then he checked to make sure that he hadn’t crushed the fox mask as he fell. The fox grinned, undamaged.

Semele showed him where breakfast was—a bit of bread and dried fruit, left over from supper the night before, and some runny egg yolk to mix with the bread.

The others were already awake. Most of them held masks in their hands. Patch had a half mask with a sinister-looking brow. Essa had two: one of a lady and another that looked heroic. Semele held a mask dyed bluish gray. It had high, sharp cheekbones and long, white hair. She sat on a crate and rubbed egg whites into the hair.

“That’ll make the hair stick out in all directions,” Essa explained. “She’s playing the ghost, and she needs the ghost hair to flow as though moved by wind between worlds, so she shellacs it with egg whites first.”

“I should have been doing this last night, yes,” Semele said. She lifted the mask to regard her handiwork, and then added more transparent goop to the hair. “It will be droopy by the time we are finished with the walking.”

Rownie wondered what “the walking” was, so he asked. “What walking?”

Thomas tapped the floor of the wagon with his cane, and he smiled a sly smile. “Rownie, we will now accomplish a very great mystery of our profession, something ancient and grand. We will mask ourselves and walk through the streets of Zombay, to the site of our performance. We will each walk alone, by several routes, and in this way we will find our audience. Those who take notice of you as you pass, those who follow to see where you will lead—without attempting to, say, arrest you—they are our audience. We will each of us lead them down to the docks and upstream to the very last pier of the Floating Market. Nonny will ride on ahead and meet us there with the stage itself. Do you know the way?”

Rownie nodded, because he did.

“Do you know several ways?” Thomas pressed him. “Will you lose yourself, once separated from the rest of us?”

“No,” Rownie said. “I won’t get lost. I don’t get lost.” He didn’t always know where home was. Home used to be a shack that moved all over Southside, according to Graba’s whim. But he always knew where he was in Zombay.

He wondered if Graba had already picked up the shack and moved it elsewhere. She probably had. It might be very far away, up in the hills of the southernmost part of the city. It might be very close. She might have leaned it up against the litchfield wall, near the gate, just outside. She might have moved it anywhere.

“Good,” said Thomas. “Remember, Rownie—and all the rest of you—that what we do is important. This is a mystery of our craft. Carry yourselves with appropriate poise.”

“This is what we always do whenever we forget to put up posters,” Essa whispered to Rownie. “Nobody would know about the show, otherwise.”

Thomas pretended not to hear her, even though her whispering voice still carried. The old goblin took off his big black hat and pulled from it a mask with a high forehead and an iron crown. This was for himself. He also took out a smaller hat and a pair of gloves, and gave both to Rownie.

“Put these on,” he said, “and the fox mask with them. You might also leave that tattered coat behind.”

Rownie refused to take off his coat, but he put on the hat, the gloves, and the mask. The fox face smelled leathery, and it pressed oddly on the skin of his face. His nose itched. Then he stopped focusing on the mask, and looked through it. He saw his surroundings through fox eyes.

“Don’t slouch,” Thomas told him. “Not at all. Foxes are small, smaller than you are, but they do not slouch. Neither do actors. Stand and move with purpose. Move the way the mask would prefer you to move.”

Rownie wasn’t sure how the mask wanted to move, but he tried to stand up straight.

“Good,” said Thomas.

The mask slipped down Rownie’s face a bit. He tried to straighten it. Then he tried to ask whether he had it on properly, but Thomas shushed him.

“Don’t speak while masked,” the old goblin said. “Not if you can possibly help it.”

Rownie took off the fox face. “Why not?” he asked. “I had lines to say when I was playing a giant.”

“You did,” said Thomas. “You delivered them with a certain amount of untrained talent—and that is why.”

Rownie blinked. He didn’t understand, and he wasn’t willing to shelve his lack of understanding this time. “I shouldn’t talk while masked . . . because I’m good at it?”

“Quite right,” said Thomas. “As with a charm or a chant, the world might change to fit the shape of your words. Your own belief becomes contagious. Others catch it. You believed yourself a giant when you spoke as a giant, and so you became one. Your audience regarded you as one. They knew better, but they believed it anyway.”

“I got taller?” Rownie asked.

“Everyone thought so,” said Thomas, “so please don’t declaim anything at all while wearing another face—most especially anything about yourself. Don’t say any lines Semele did not write for you. And remember, always remember, that curses and charms have consequences. You set yourself apart from the world by changing the shape of it.”

Essa put on both of her masks, one on top of the other. “The morning’s wasting away,” she said, trying to sound patient but not succeeding.

“Quite right,” said Thomas. “Mask yourselves, everyone. And pay careful attention for any glimpse or news of young Rowan. Apart from the Fiddleway, the docks are the second best place in the city to hide.”

Semele gave the egged hair of her own mask one final tug, and then put it on. Thomas and Patch did the same with their own. Rownie peered through fox eyes again. He tied the string above his ears and behind his head.

“Be on your several ways,” said Semele.

“Break your face, everybody!” said Essa. She said it with so much hope and cheer that Rownie was sure he must have heard her wrong.

They left the wagon. The sun was up and bright. It had already burned away most of the morning fog.

Nonny waved from the driving bench, and then set off. The rest followed on foot, through the litchfield and through the gates. Rownie looked around for Graba’s shack. He did not see it. Maybe she had taken it up into the hills. Maybe she was nowhere nearby.

The troupe separated, moving down different streets and alleys to the east and south. Semele took Rownie’s gloved hand before he could choose his own way.

“Take care,” she said behind the high cheekbones and waving hair of her ghost face. “If anyone puts a hand to you, run. It will mean that they know you are not Tamlin. UnChanged folk do not touch Tamlin, as a rule. They seem to believe that it would give them freckles. You will be mistaken for Tamlin, and this should keep you safe, yes. But take care. While masked you will also be vulnerable to changes.”

Rownie held the old Tamlin’s hand, to show that he wasn’t afraid of freckles—but he wasn’t at all sure what she meant by vulnerability to change. “Is that bad?” he asked.

“It all depends,” Semele said. She seemed to be smiling under the ghost face, but of course he couldn’t tell.

She turned and went her own way. Rownie chose his.

All roads to the docks ran downhill. They wound and switchbacked across a steep ravine wall, with Southside above and the River below. Some of these streets were so steep and narrow that they had to be climbed rather than walked on. Stairs had been cut into the stone or built with driftwood logs lashed together over the precarious slope.

Rownie took these staircases on his own way down to the Floating Market. He remembered dockside errands he had run for Graba—mostly picking things up or bringing things down, and usually without ever knowing what the things were that he had carried. Pick up a small package from a barge woman missing her left ear, Graba might say. Bring it back to me, now—but never be peeking inside it, and make sure it’s her left ear that’s missing.

Rownie and Rowan used to run the dockside errands together. Rowan would usually have a spare coin or two, earned by singing on the Fiddleway or doing odd jobs for the stone movers near Broken Wall. He would use it to buy each of them some breakfast—a greasy fish pastry or a strange piece of fruit from foreign places—and then the brothers would eat their breakfast while sitting on some unused stretch of pier, dangling their legs over the side and watching the barges sail by.

Sometimes they made up stories about where the barges had come from, and where they might be going. Sometimes they imagined how fights against pirate fleets would unfold all around them, upstream and downstream, up and down the pylons of the Fiddleway Bridge, up and down the piers and the switchbacking streets behind them. Sometimes Rowan had enough to buy an extra fish pastry, and they would split the third one. He always gave his younger brother the larger piece.

Three pigeons watched fox-masked Rownie from a rooftop, and then turned away and pecked for seeds in the thatch. Rownie wondered if they were Graba’s pigeons. He wondered if Graba had sent any Grubs on riverside errands today, to bring back fish heads or strange packages, or maybe to keep watch for him—or to keep watch for Rowan.

Rownie looked over his shoulder to see if Grubs were following. He saw others following him instead.

A small crowd of curious people had been pulled into his wake, diverted from wherever else they had intended to go and whatever they had intended to do. Some were old and some young. Some wore more expensive clothes and others less. They followed from a safe distance, watching him, wanting to see where he would go and what he might do.

It was working. Rownie carried an audience with him.

Not everyone noticed as he went by with poise and purpose in his mask. Some went about their business and were not at all distracted by a fox face. Their eyes missed him somehow. Their attention slipped around him. He was something strange, something that should not really be there, so passersby who were not his audience passed him by and assumed that he was not there if he was not supposed to be.

Rownie walked in daylight with a fox face over his own, and some people couldn’t see him at all. He was hiding and proclaiming himself, both at once. He didn’t know how this could possibly work, and he didn’t want to think about it too much in case it stopped working, so he just kept moving. He let the fox mask show him how to move.

The audience was larger now. He could tell by the noise they made, all packed together into the narrow, winding staircase. Rownie glanced behind him to see just how many there were.

He saw Grubs. He saw Stubble and Blotches and Greasy, all a part of the crowd that followed him. Stubble smirked.

The Grubs broke the charm. Before that moment, Rownie had been Rownie, and also a fox, and something that was neither one, and something that was both together. Now he was only one thing. The mask made it difficult to see, and he stumbled on a crooked stair. He tried to hurry without falling down the stairs entirely and rolling all the way to the docks, bloody and bruised.

The audience behind him thinned, no longer interested in whatever the masked performer might do next, or where he might be headed. The charm was broken. The Grubs had broken it with a look and a smirk, without even trying.

By the time Rownie reached the Floating Market, only Grubs followed him.

Scene V

A METAL LATTICE COVERED the whole of the docks. Each dome and arch of latticework held small openings for glass windows. The windows kept the rain out and let the sunlight through—unless the glass had fallen out, in which case it let through both sunlight and rain. The whole place smelled of fish, riverweed, and tar. Bustling noise and blunt, heavy smells rose up from the Floating Market and into the streets and alleyways of the ravine wall. Rownie could hear it, and smell it, before he finally turned one last switchbacking corner and saw it in front of him. Then he broke into a run. Grubs followed.

Narrow piers lashed to floating barrels jutted out from the shore and into the River. Small barges and rafts had been tied along each pier, packed close together, and each one was also a market stall. The Floating Market was a bigger, louder, and messier place than Market Square in Northside. Here mongers shouted, chanted, and sang about what they had to sell.

“Hammocks, comfortable hammocks woven from the finest braided squidskin!”

“Sugarcane and sea salt, good for charms and cooking!”

Rownie pushed into the crowds surrounding the downstream piers. He ran underneath the winch to the Baker’s Cage, which was dunking some poor baker in the River for selling bread loaves that were too small or too large or too stale. Rownie forced his feet to learn how to move across the uneven surface that pitched and rolled with the River. He ducked and dodged between people. No one touched him or blocked his way, even when they failed to notice him otherwise. He hoped to lose the Grubs in the bustle and the noise before circling back and rejoining the goblins.

The fox mask felt heavy on his face, a brightly painted thing that shouted “Here I am! Here! Right here!”—but he couldn’t remove it without showing off his own unChanged face beneath.

Fruit and fishmongers announced their wares to either side of him as he ran. The hard accents of upstream folk mixed and mingled with softer downstream syllables.

“Oceanfish! Riverfish! Dried and salted dustfish!”

“Rare pears and quinces! Figs and citrons from the shore!”

A meager fruit stall and a stack of barrels stood at the very end of the downstream pier, beneath an open stretch of iron lattice that had long ago lost its glass. The lone fruitmonger displayed baskets of sad-looking apples on a countertop, and didn’t bother to announce them with a shout or a chant. He glanced at Rownie and then away again, uninterested.

Rownie turned around. The Grubs still followed him, unhurried. They had no reason to hurry. He had no other direction to run. He could face the Grubs or throw himself into the River—and the currents were very strong. No one ever crossed the whole River by swimming.

Stubble-Grub sneered as they drew closer. It was an ordinary sneer, just the sort of expression he would usually make. It was not Graba’s look. Rownie didn’t see Graba in his face, peering out through his eyes, wearing him like a mask.

Rownie did wear a mask. He stood like a fox, wily and proud. “You will not catch me,” he said, and as he said it he knew that it was true.

He jumped onto a barrel, and from the barrel to the fishmonger’s barge, where he kicked the rope and set the barge to drifting. Then he ran across the deck and jumped into the open air between the piers. His coat billowed behind him like a sail. He caught the railing of a barge across the way, and hoisted himself aboard.

The River took hold of the fruitmonger’s barge, and it drifted downstream. The monger cursed and paddled with a single oar, both furiously, but his curses were clumsy and unlikely to stick.

All three Grubs rushed to the open place where the barge used to be, and glared at the watery distance between them and Rownie.

Rownie took a bow. Then he slipped off the mask and stuffed it in his shirt. He walked calmly around to the front of the barge he had leaped to. The skipper here seemed to be fully preoccupied with selling fish-meat pastries that steamed and smelled delicious, and paid no notice when Rownie climbed down the barge moorings, just as though he had every right to be climbing down barge moorings. He rejoined the crowd and went looking for the goblin stage.

Rownie slipped between people. He moved quickly, but he did not run. He didn’t want to look hurried. He didn’t want to look like much of anything.

This was a fancier part of the Floating Market, a pier with the glass awning still intact above it. Those who gathered here sold more fragile things, like bolts of fabric and delicate gearwork—things that needed to be kept out of the weather. One barge displayed strange animals in gold cages. Soap makers invited passersby to smell their wares. A tall man with pale, deep-set eyes sold trinkets carved out of bone. Another barge-stall showed off small and cunning devices that did useless things beautifully.

Rownie glanced up at every face he passed, to see if anyone looked like his brother. He paid particular attention to people with beards, in case Rowan had painted or pasted on a fake beard to hide beneath. He looked at the barge crews on each deck, in case Rowan had signed up with a crew in order to escape Zombay and the Captain of the Guard. Rownie wondered if his brother would really set sail without him. He flinched away from the thought.

On the farthest edge of the upstream pier, just underneath the Fiddleway Bridge, a simple raft had been tethered. The goblin wagon floated there, lashed onto the raft.

Patch stood in front of the wagon, still wearing his half mask, with his arms folded in front of him. The goblin stared down a thin and scraggly looking man with a fishhook charm around his neck. The man was shouting, and an audience had gathered around the argument. Rownie slipped into their midst.

“This is my pier!” the man shouted in a scraggly sounding voice. “I put on my show here!”

Patch raised one eyebrow, high enough to appear on his forehead above the mask he wore (which had its own eyebrows). “Show?”

“Yes, show!” the man said, pointing at Patch with one finger as though trying to knock him over with it. “A respectable show, with no masks! I can swallow a fish for four pennies, and I’ll swallow any other sort of scuttling creature for five. Can you do that, goblin? Bet you can’t manage that.”

The man had a bucket with him. Small things scuttled around inside the bucket. Patch reached in, took a handful, and showed the crowd a bite-sized crab, a snail, and a wriggling bait fish. He tossed the crab in the air, and then the snail, and then the bait fish. He juggled them all. Then he added two juggling knives, and their blades flashed in the sunlight. He caught the crab and the snail and the fish in his mouth and swallowed all three while catching a knife in each hand.

The crowd cheered. Rownie clapped. The scraggly man took a step forward, furious—but then he eyed the knives Patch casually held. He stepped back, snatched up his bucket, and stormed away.

Patch took a bow. The wagon wall behind him came smoothly down and became the platform of a stage. He somersaulted backward, landed on the platform, and started up a new juggling act while the other goblins started to arrive. Semele and Essa brought their own collected audience members to the crowd, and then slipped backstage through the wagon door.

Rownie wondered how best to follow when Thomas arrived and came to stand beside him. The old goblin carried himself in such a way as to be nearly unnoticeable, even while wearing a mask, even underneath his huge black hat.

“You’ve unmasked yourself,” he said, his voice flat and unimpressed. “You have also neglected to bring an audience with you.”

“I brought Grubs with me,” Rownie whispered back. Thomas gave him a very blank look. “Children that Graba collects,” Rownie clarified. “She probably sent them.”

Thomas made a growling, grumbling noise in the back of his throat. “Excellent,” he said, though he clearly did not think that this was excellent. “Please tell Semele once you make your way backstage, which you must do with a certain amount of stealth. Get behind those crates over there, put your mask back on—you haven’t lost it, have you?—and then sneak underneath the stage. Knock three times on the wagon floor, and Nonny will let you in. You will assist her with backstage business for the rest of the show.”

This was disappointing. “I don’t get to be part of the play?” Rownie asked.

“You will certainly be part of the play,” Thomas told him, adjusting his hat. “The part that goes on backstage. It is not as though you’ve had time or opportunity to learn lines, or even learn how to read. Your apprenticeship has only just begun.”

“I can read,” Rownie said, quietly.

“Don’t worry,” said Thomas, “I do understand that reading is hardly a common skill—”

“I can read,” Rownie said again.

“—and not one we could possibly expect you to already know.”

“I can read!” Rownie shouted.

A tall sailor with several braids poked Rownie’s arm. “Shut it and watch the show,” she said. “The goblin’s juggling fire.”

“Ah,” Thomas whispered, taken aback. “I see. Excellent. One less thing to have to teach you. Now please stop shouting and get under the wagon without being seen.”

“Did you find out anything about Rowan?” Rownie asked.

“I have not,” said Thomas, “though I have made many discreet inquiries known to observant people. Now please hurry backstage. The proper play is about to begin.”

Rownie hurried. He hid behind crates, slipped his mask on, and then snuck underneath the stage. Hopefully, if anyone saw him sneaking, they would mistake him for a goblin. Maybe this was how goblins Changed. Maybe, if enough people already believed that a child was goblinish, then the goblinishness became real and true. Rownie reached under his mask see if his ears had become pointy. They had not. Only the fox ears were pointy.

He knocked three times on the wagon floor. A hatch opened. He climbed up and through.

Scene VI

BACKSTAGE WAS CHAOS DISTILLED into a very small space. Nonny did several things at once with ropes, levers, and various contraptions. Essa jumped up and down and hummed to herself for no particular reason that Rownie could see. Semele sat quietly in a corner with her eyes closed, but she still looked tensed and filled with potential force, like a coiled spring or a stone perched on top of a hill and preparing to start an avalanche.

Essa noticed Rownie. “You’re here!” she said. “Good, because we’re about to start. Patch just stopped juggling, and Thomas is out there giving the prologue for The Iron Emperor. I don’t know why we call it that—the Emperor doesn’t even show up until the last act, so it really isn’t a good name for the play. We should call it something else. Try to think of something, okay? But meanwhile you should stay out of sight and pull whatever ropes Nonny tells you to pull. Not that she’ll actually tell you anything. Pull whatever ropes Nonny points to. Okay, good. Break your face.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Rownie tried to ask her, but she had already slipped through the curtain and begun lamenting the woes of an ancient kingdom.

Rownie took off the hat and gloves, and set the fox mask aside. He approached Semele. He tried not to let the floorboards creak underneath him, but they creaked anyway.

“Some of Graba’s grandchildren are here,” he told her in a whisper. “On the docks. A few of them. Might not be in the audience yet, but they’ll probably find it.”

Semele’s pale mask turned to look at him. “Thank you, Rownie,” she said. “I will make the fourth wall stronger, then. This is certainly a tricky thing to be doing over water, but I will do it, yes.”

She began to chant to herself. Then Nonny tapped Rownie’s shoulder with her foot (her hands were both busy with a complicated crank and a set of bellows) and pointed her toes at a rope. Rownie pulled the rope.

The dragon puppet gnashed its teeth behind him.

Rownie dropped the rope, waved his hands in the air, and then stared down the dragon puppet to prove that he wasn’t afraid of it. The painted dragon eyes looked back at him.

Nonny glared. Wrong rope, the glare said. She pointed more forcefully with the tip of her toe. Rownie pulled the next rope and felt the wagon shift under his feet. Flat, painted walls and towers unfolded to either side of the stage. The platform became a city.

“The moon is full,” Essa said onstage, looking up. It was night onstage, even though the sun was shining above them. Essa said it, so it became true, and everyone believed it.

The Iron Emperor was a ghost story. Rownie caught glimpses of the play around the curtain edge, between pulling whatever ropes and levers Nonny directed him to pull.

Essa played both the Princess and the Rightful Heir. Patch played the Wrongful Heir—unless both the Princess and the Rightful Heir needed to be onstage at the same time, in which case Patch and Essa swapped masks.

Semele was the ghost of the old Queen, and she made her entrances in bursts of blue smoke and blue fire. This was always impressive, even backstage, even when Rownie could see Semele crouched out of sight beforehand.

Nonny set off the smoke and fire herself. She clearly didn’t trust Rownie with any of the combustible effects. This was fine with Rownie. He worked the bellows on the music box instead. It played mournful, keening notes for Semele’s ghostly entrances, after the bursts of blue fire and smoke.

Rownie heard gasps of fear and surprise, as though it really were midnight and not the middle of the day with sunlight bright and cheerful, as though Semele really were a spirit of the dead with hair moving in the wind between worlds and not just wearing a mask with egg whites making the hair stick out in all directions. Semele’s high, commanding voice combined with music and smoke, and all of them together changed the shape of things.

Then everything went wrong.

First the music box broke. It broke loudly. It was supposed to give a long, mournful note, and instead it squawked like a peacock falling off a wall. This did not sound ghostly or mysterious. It did not sound like the wind between the worlds.

Nonny glared at Rownie. Rownie shrugged. He hadn’t done anything wrong. At least he didn’t think that he’d done anything wrong. Nonny pushed the unhappy music box aside, and the play went on.

They changed the scenery from city towers to the open sea. The sea was a blanket, gray and gauzy, and the two of them held opposite ends and flapped it up and down to make waves.

Then the waves caught fire.

One of the blue firecrackers went off, suddenly and all by itself. The sparks landed on the gauzy blanket, and the blanket burst into flames. Rownie and Nonny both dropped it.

Essa grabbed the sword of the Wrongful Heir away from Patch, poked it through the burning blanket, and flung it away from the stage and out over the River.

Then the pigeons came.

Birds swooped down from all sides, snatched up the burning blanket, and kept it airborne. The fire spread and changed color from pale blue to an angry orange. It spread to the birds themselves. Pigeon feathers burned with greasy flame, and still they flapped their wings and flew above the audience with the burning sea-blanket between them.

The birds screamed and died and fell. The blanket broke into pieces, and fell. Fire came down on the audience. It came down on the nearby barge-stalls of the Floating Market. People screamed and pushed each other. Some fell splashing off the pier in their haste to get away from burning things. The awning of a barge-stall caught fire.

One pigeon smacked onto the stage and smoldered there. Essa flicked it away with the sword. The dead bird hissed and steamed where it struck the River.

Thomas took off his mask and looked sadly at their former audience. “The show is done, I think,” he said to the rest of the troupe. “We had better hoist anchor before the crowd gets organized enough to have us lynched and drowned.”

Semele came backstage. “Take us upstream, Nonny.”

Patch and Essa untied the moorings that held the wagon-raft to the pier. Nonny cobbled together some wire and springs, stuck four oars through it, and tied the whole contraption to the back of the raft. The oars spun around and pushed the wagon-raft upstream, away from the pier. They passed beneath the Fiddleway and over the spot where Rownie always dropped pebbles, where Rowan had taught him to drop pebbles for their mother. He felt for the pebble in his only coat pocket, the one Semele had given him in the litchfield, the one that was Rowan’s hello. He thought about dropping it over the side to say hello to the mother he did not remember. Instead he kept the pebble in his pocket.

The screams and shouting of the Floating Market faded behind them. Rownie saw Stubble-Grub stand apart from the crowd. Vass stood with him.

“This was for me,” he said. “The show was cursed, because of me.”

Semele stood beside him. “This was for the both of us,” she said in a voice that she probably meant to be comforting. “These curses were fashioned for you and me both.”

Scene VII

THE WAGON-RAFT SPUTTERED UPSTREAM. Rownie sat on the edge of the roof, dangled his feet over the side, and watched the River go by. The city was out of sight already. The Fiddleway Bridge disappeared behind a bend. Rownie could not remember any place other than Zombay, and now he could no longer see it.

Nonny stood in the back and steered the raft by poking her paddle contraption with a pole.

Patch and Essa sat beside Rownie and dangled fishing lines in the water. They hadn’t caught anything. Nonny’s paddles scared all the fish away.

Semele sat up front, in the driving bench. Thomas sat with her, invisible beneath a big, black hat pulled low. Rownie didn’t think the old goblin could see anything other than the inside of his hat, but then he pointed forward with his cane and shouted directions.

“There are rocks ahead! Nonny, kindly steer us to starboard. Otherwise we are going to crash and sink and return the River’s own face to the watery floor of its home. Then nothing could possibly prevent floodwaters from tearing down all of Zombay—which would suit my mood just fine, actually, so go ahead and steer for those rocks if it pleases you to do so.”

Nonny steered around the rocks.

“What’s he talking about?” Rownie whispered.

“The floods are coming,” said Essa. “I mean, the floods are always coming, but they happen to be coming in a soon-and-immediate kind of way. Listen. I bet you can hear it.”

Rownie listened to the River. He had heard it every day of his life, underneath and around all other noise. He knew its voice—and the timbre of its voice had changed. It spoke low and angry as the water flowed.

“There,” said Essa. “You noticed.”

“Maybe this is what it usually sounds like so far upstream,” said Rownie.

“Nope,” said Essa. “This is what it usually sounds like before a flood comes howling down the canyon. We should probably have warned more people on the docks. We didn’t have very much time, I suppose, before our performance exploded, but I meant to tell a few skippers that they should maybe send their crew and cargo ashore, and up into the hills. Even a little bit of flooding will make things messy at the docks, and we’re in for more than a little bit.”

“I have already told such barge captains as will listen to Tamlin warnings,” said Semele from the front bench. “They will spread the news. But we may yet be able to speak for the city, and thereby save Zombay from drowning.”

“I am not presently inclined to bet on our success,” said Thomas from under his hat. “There are more rocks ahead, Nonny. You may hit them if you’d like. Otherwise, steer to port.”

Nonny steered to port.

Very little of this conversation made any sense to Rownie, but he didn’t bother to ask clarifying questions. He felt surrounded by gloom and wished he had a big, black hat of his own to pull down over his face.

Graba had cursed the troupe and all of their doings. Grubs would follow wherever they went. Burning birds would fly screaming down at them until the stage and wagon caught fire, and they all burned with it—unless the River rose up in a flood before Graba had the chance to burn them. Bad things were coming—in water or in fire or both at once.

Semele pointed to a spot on the southern side of the ravine. “There,” she said. “That is the place we should be aiming for, yes.”

Nonny steered them to where Semele had pointed. She tossed a grappling hook, grappled riverside tree roots with it, and roped the raft to shore. Then she stopped the spinning paddle contraption and climbed inside the wagon. The raft drifted at the end of its tether.

Rownie looked around. The place did not seem in any way special. “Why this spot?” he asked.

“This is our climbing place,” Essa told him. “We need to get up to street level, to drive back into town.”

Rownie looked up. The ravine was steep and very high. It did not look climbable. “We’re going to climb that?”

“No, no, no, no,” Essa said. “Definitely not. Nonny is going to climb and let down a rope, and then hoist the wagon back up to shore with a winch and crane.” She made it sound like a very easy thing to do. “The winch and crane are both already up there. Smugglers use them to carry things into Zombay without having to go through the dock wardens, but they haven’t used it very much lately. I don’t think so, at least. Hopefully there are no smugglers trying to use it right now.”

Nonny came up through a hatch in the wagon roof. She had several tools in the loops of her belt. Without saying good-bye—or anything else—she stepped nimbly across the rope between the wagon and the shore, and started climbing.

“Shouldn’t take too terribly long,” Essa said. Her fishing line tugged, and she started jumping up and down. “Hey, I got something! Fresh dinner, everybody! Fresh dinner!”

Essa hauled a mass of green tangles onto the raft. It landed with a splat.

“Hmm,” she said. “Never mind. We could make a riverweed stew, I suppose, but the only time I’ve ever known a riverweed stew to taste good was when we left out the actual weeds, so I should probably just toss them back in.”

No one else said anything.

Essa climbed quietly down to the edge of the raft and kicked her catch of weeds into the River. The green tangle sank out of sight. “I remember making wishes on riverfish, as a little girl,” she said, “though I don’t remember what the wishes were. And I was just as little as I am now, I guess. We don’t get any taller, not even if we live for a thousand years.”

“Do you usually live for a thousand years?” Rownie asked.

“No,” said Essa. “Usually someone accuses us of child-thieving or butter-thieving or button-thieving or whatever a very long time before we get to be a thousand, and then they come for us with torches. Semele’s the only one I’ve known who’s anywhere near that old.”

“Oh,” Rownie said. He looked up. He couldn’t tell if Nonny had reached the top of the ravine yet. Then two coils of rope came sailing down and smacked against the wagon, so he figured that she probably had.

Patch and Essa tied the ropes to the axle beside each wheel, and then untied the wagon from the raft. Essa gave a long, high whistle. The ropes began to pull. The wagon lifted, suspended in the air. Something shifted inside it and made a crashing noise.

“I’ll try to salvage our belongings,” said Thomas from inside his hat. “Essa, some help would be very much appreciated.” He opened a hatch and let himself in. Essa followed.

“I will go in as well,” said Semele. “Be careful, both of you.”

Rownie and Patch watched the raft and River drop farther away beneath them.

“We’re just going to leave the raft?” Rownie asked.

“Nonny’ll build another one next time,” Patch said. He gave up fishing and used his pole to push at the side of the cliff whenever the swinging, swaying wagon got too close to it.

Afternoon ended and became evening. The sun was going down. Colors of the dying day bounced up from the River, reflected. The River surface looked very far away now, but the top of the cliff seemed no closer.

Rownie looked at Patch sideways. He had something he wanted to ask, but he thought that it might be a rude question, and he didn’t know what words to use. Finally he just asked.

“How did you Change?”

Patch did not answer. He went on keeping the wagon clear of the cliff with his fishing pole.

Rownie waited. He waited for so long that he figured Patch would never answer.

“Used to have brothers,” Patch finally said. “Lots. More than the family needed. Some left home to be soldiers. One left to study. Still too many. I was youngest, so Father took me to the wagons for Changing. Then he put me in the barn. Good luck to keep something Changed in the barn. A guardian. A thing to keep other monsters away. Stayed there a long time, keeping the sheep safe.”

“How long?” Rownie asked.

“Don’t remember,” said Patch. “Years all blurred together. Left after a while. Joined a show. Not a good one. Did the Weasel Dance. Drop a dozen angry weasels in your pants and jump around while they fight. Crowds love it. Wore thick leather underneath to keep skin on my legs. Still uncomfortable. Weasels died in every show. All I got to eat, after. Semele’s shows are better. So’s the company. So’s the food.”

Rownie agreed. He was glad he didn’t have to do the Weasel Dance to keep himself fed—though a nightly meal of weasels would be better than no meal at all, and supper was rare in Graba’s household. Meals with the troupe were very much better.

He heard Graba’s voice in his head and memory. Did you eat what they gave you? Did you drink what they offered?

He checked his ears again to see if they had grown any pointier.

“How did the Change actually happen?” he asked, hoping for details. He wanted to know if he was Changing. He needed to know whether or not it would be a good thing if he did. “Was it from eating charmed food or something?”

Patch shook his head. “Can’t remember. Too long ago. Sorry.”

The sun set. The sky grew dusky and dim. The top of the ravine actually did seem closer now, and the view was just as wide and expansive as the one from the Fiddleway.

Something moved over Rownie’s head, and he heard pigeons. He felt the tips of wing feathers brush against his face as a pigeon dove between him and Patch.

It circled back around and dove again. Patch smacked it aside with his fishing pole. It screamed at him, indignant. More birds joined it with answering cries, and the air became a furious, screaming mess of wings and sharp feet. At least none of them are on fire, Rownie thought as he ducked beneath another dive-bombing pigeon. He tried to get the hatch open, to take shelter inside.

In one sudden moment, three birds flew at Patch’s face and knocked him off the wagon. He fell down and farther down.

Rownie crawled to the edge. He saw a splash far below them. That was all he saw.

Scene VIII

NONNY STOOD AT THE EDGE of the cliff and brandished a sling. She shot at the attacking birds until there were no more birds to shoot. Then the winch finished its work, and the crane hoisted the wagon up onto the ground.

Once they had untied the wagon, Nonny looped one foot through the dangling rope and hoisted herself back over the River, over the edge of the cliff.

“Find him,” said Semele. “Take the raft we left behind. We will meet you at home, yes.”

Nonny nodded, tugged on the rope, and plummeted down.

“He’ll be okay, won’t he?” Rownie asked.

“Patch can’t swim,” Essa said. She didn’t say anything after that.

Rownie remembered the sight of Patch falling. Rownie watched him fall, and then watched again, and felt like he was falling with him.

In silence the troupe unfolded the gearworked mule and set off along Riverside Road, back toward the city. Rownie put his gloves and hat back on, to hide how unChanged he was.

They did not get very far.

At a crossroads, underneath the long shadow of a manor house and a few smaller shacks, a fallen tree blocked the road to Zombay. Children played a circle game near the tree, singing, “Tamlin, tinker man, beggar man, thief!” all together, all in one voice, and the one tagged “thief” had to chase the tagger around and around and around before the circle closed.

Rownie knew the game. He had played it before. He had run around the circle while Grubs sang the song. Curse thrower, charm monger, Change maker, thief! False face, fox face, clock face, thief!

The children stopped singing and stared at the wagon.

Rownie sat on the driving bench between Thomas and Essa. He peered out from underneath his own small hat and checked the faces of the children to make sure that none of them were Grubs. They weren’t Grubs. They wouldn’t be, this far outside the city.

“Can we go around?” Essa asked.

“No,” said Thomas. “We cannot go around. The crossing road leads to nowhere important in either direction.”

The old goblin climbed down from the bench and waved his cane angrily at the fallen tree.

“Why has no one in the village removed this roadblock? Why is no one doing so now? It is disrespectful to travelers to leave such a task until morning.”

The oldest and tallest of the local children came forward. “This is a town,” he said. “It’s not a village.” He said it with pride and disdain.

“Uh-oh,” Essa whispered.

“What is your name, boy?” Thomas asked, planting his cane firmly on the ground and leaning forward.

“Jansin,” the local boy said. He said it as though Thomas should recognize it, as though anyone and everyone should know who he was.

“This is not a town, young Jansin,” Thomas said. “This is a crossroads with a fancy house nearby, and I flattered the place to call it a village. And you should not, incidentally, be singing and cavorting at a crossroads. You might disturb the graves of innumerable scoundrels, buried here so that they can never find their way home to take up haunting. It is unwise to show disrespect to the dead—or to travelers, who have very far to go. Please fetch someone to help remove this tree.”

Jansin crossed his arms. He did not move otherwise. The other children gathered behind him.

“Why should we care about the crossroads-dead if they were all criminals?” he asked. “Why should we care about travelers if they’re only goblins?”

“This is not good,” Essa whispered. “Rownie, get ready to do something. I’m not sure what, but something. Probably grab Thomas and toss him in the back, so we can ride as fast as we can in some random direction.”

Thomas drew himself up to his full height. The top of his hat almost reached the boy’s shoulder. “Go on and wake the dead beneath you, if it pleases you to do so, but argue with me no further. My companions and I are weary and in grief.”

Jansin marched up to the wagon and pounded on the side with one hand. “You’ve got masks painted here,” he said. “So you’re players, then. Goblin players. Put on a show for us.”

The other smaller children cheered. “A show, a show!”

“We will not,” Thomas said. “We are weary, and we have far to go tonight.”

The boy tossed a coin to the ground. It was a large coin, and it looked to be silver.

Thomas stood over the silver, but he did not pick it up.

“Are you a merchant’s boy?” he asked. “No. You could not be. No one from a merchant’s household would throw wealth around so carelessly.”

“My family owns the biggest coalmaker shops in the city,” Jansin said. He said it with challenge, as though daring anyone to tell him that coalmaking was a dirty business.

“Ah,” said Thomas. “A buyer and seller of hearts. One who believes that any heart can therefore be bought or sold. Well, coal-boy, we do play for coin, and almost any coin—but not for yours.” He used the tip of his walking cane to flick the silver away. It rolled and wobbled back to Jansin. The boy scooped it up off the ground, flush-faced and angry. He threw it, hard, and knocked the hat from Thomas’s head.

“Oh, this is bad,” Essa said. “This is very bad.” She tightened her grip on the reins. “I wonder if Horace could jump over that tree? He’s never jumped before, but we could try it.”

Rownie climbed down from the wagon on the opposite side, out of sight. He ditched his hat and gloves and circled around behind the crowd of children. Their attention was elsewhere. No one saw him in the dusk light. No one noticed Rownie standing behind them, just barely among them. No one noticed that he was unfamiliar.

Thomas, meanwhile, picked up his own huge hat, dusted it carefully, and set it back on his head. Then he unsheathed a thin sword from the length of his cane and held it such that the tip of the blade almost touched the tip of Jansin’s nose.

“I will have an apology from you,” Thomas said. His voice was calm, quiet, and cold.

Jansin glared, clearly afraid, clearly unwilling to take a step backward. The old goblin held his sword steady.

Everyone waited to see what would happen next.

Then a small hatch opened in the side of the wagon with a bang and a snap. Oil lamps burned in bright colors around it. Cheerful music played from one of the music boxes inside.

An intricate wooden puppet in gentleman’s clothes popped through the open hatch.

“Welcome!” the puppet said in a voice that was almost Semele’s. “Welcome, one and everyone! The evening’s entertainment will now begin!”

The crowd of children pushed forward to gather near the puppet stage.

Thomas sheathed his sword and stood aside with a mutter and a grumble. “Unhitch the mule, Essa,” he said. “Help me tie it to that tree. The metal beast had better be strong enough to move it aside.”

Jansin smiled, smug. He had demanded a show from them, and now he had gotten his way.

Rownie looked for the silver coin. He couldn’t help but look for it. He had never even seen silver before. He didn’t find it—one of the other smaller children must have picked it up first. Rownie gave up and pushed through the crowd to stand behind Jansin. The older boy might still be inclined to pick a fight, and if he fought the rest would fight with him.

The show began.

“I hope there’s blood and guts in it!” one of the children said, hopping up and down on her toes with excitement.

An elegant lady puppet took the stage. Semele’s voice sang a story behind it.

Rownie tried to watch the puppet show and Jansin at the same time. It wasn’t easy, and he was distracted by other puppet shows in his head and memory. Rowan used to make shadow puppets against the walls of Graba’s shack—when he still lived in Graba’s shack. He could make shadows of sailing ships and animals, horses and goats and scampering molekeys. He could make silhouettes of people in tall hats or long gowns. Even the loudest and the rudest Grubs would watch and listen. Rownie always held the candle—a dangerous thing to hold over the straw-covered floor, but he was careful. His favorite shadow puppet was the bird, because that was the only one he could manage to make himself, with thumbs hooked together and fingers making feathers. Rowan had promised to teach Rownie how to twist his hands into other puppet shapes, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

The audience of children laughed at something on the little stage. Rownie shook his head, trying to shake out the shadows, and paid better attention.

Semele’s voice sang a story about the lady puppet, who lived alone with a witchworked mirror. The mirror on the stage wasn’t actually a mirror. It was just an empty picture frame with another puppet behind it. The Lady looked inside, and the matching puppet behind the frame mirrored her movements perfectly for as long as the Lady was watching—and then waved at the audience whenever the Lady looked away.

The mirror had been witchworked to show the Lady a young and childish reflection early in the day and an ancient reflection in the evening. The Lady learned how to reach into the mirror in the mornings and yank her own reflection through the frame and onto the floor. She did this several times, morning after morning, until many child puppets bustled around the stage with her.

Rownie wondered how Semele could possibly move them all at once. She was the only one in the wagon, so she had to be the only puppeteer, but each of the several puppets moved as though directed by a living hand. It was easy to believe that they were alive themselves, even though Rownie could see that each was a thing made of cloth and wood, carved and painted.

In the story, the Lady kept all of these mirror children as slaves and servants.

All the little puppets bustled offstage again. The Lady stood alone and put both wooden hands beneath her wooden chin. She looked harsh—mostly because of the way her sharp eyebrows were painted on. Then she shivered, her small arms wrapped around her puppet frame. The windows of her chamber grew dark and gray. Rain pattered against the back of the small stage. One of the young reflections came in with a broom, and the lady puppet loomed over her.

The next part of the show was unsettling to see. The Lady reached into the chest of her smaller self and removed something red. The little puppet fell over. There was no stage blood, or any other gruesome special effect, but Rownie still felt uncomfortable. He shifted his weight between one foot and the other. Some of the more squeamish local children squeaked.

The Lady put the heart into her fireplace, where it gave off a warm glow. She rubbed her hands together, enjoying the warmth. Then she placed a single metal gear inside the girl’s chest. The little puppet stood up again—stiff and straight—and began sweeping the edge of the stage.

This was monstrous. Everyone knew what coal was and where it came from and what it was for. Everyone knew that automatons couldn’t move without a lump of coal in their metal innards—or, in Horace’s case, several tiny lumps of fish-heart coal. That was bad enough. To heat your house on a rainy day with coal, when any piece of wood would do just as well, was a monstrous thing.

Rownie noticed that Jansin didn’t squeak or flinch or turn away. Instead he drew himself up to stand more stiffly, and clenched his fist a few times.

The little puppet reached through the picture frame and pulled out a twin.

The puppets made more and more of themselves. Then the Lady returned with several slave-selves behind her.

They all fought. Puppets flew everywhere, tossed back and forth. When the fight was over, only three of them still stood—two rebel girls and the Lady. One of the girls pinned the Lady’s arms behind her. The other girl reached into the lady’s puppet chest and took out her large heart. They tossed the heart into the fireplace, where it burned briefly, and then went out. All the other little stage lights dimmed with it.

Rownie noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that Essa and Thomas were quietly returning the mule to its wagon hitch. The dead tree had been hauled aside. The road was clear.

Semele’s song came to an end.

There was silence. Then the little crowd began to cheer. “Blood and guts! Blood and guts!” said the smallest one, jumping up and down and clapping both hands together.

Jansin did not cheer or clap.

“My family takes hearts,” he said. He did not shout, but his voice carried. It silenced the applause around him. “We take hearts from traitors and criminals and people who deserve it. We make them into coal. We should rip out your goblin hearts, but they probably wouldn’t even burn.”

Jansin took one step forward, and then Rownie kicked him hard in the back of the knee. Nobody deserves to be made into coal, he thought, but didn’t bother saying so aloud.

The older boy went down. Rownie ran. He pushed other children out of his way and took Essa’s hand as he reached the driving bench. She pulled him up. The puppet stage closed with a snap. Thomas cracked the reins, hard, and the mule launched itself into a gallop.

Their former audience shouted and threw stones, but the wild and angry noise soon faded behind them. After that Rownie heard nothing but the rattle of the wagon and the thud of Horace’s hooves against the road, and he saw nothing behind them but trees.

Scene IX

SEMELE CLIMBED THROUGH a hatch in the front of the wagon. The whole troupe sat together on the driving bench.

“Slow down, yes,” she said. “We are well away, and it is becoming dark and dangerous to ride so very fast. I will drive, I am thinking.”

Thomas handed over the reins, but not without protest. “You can hardly see,” he said. “You aren’t even wearing your spectacles. How is it any less dangerous to let you drive?”

“This road is a very old road,” Semele said, unconcerned. “I can drive along it well enough from memory.” She slowed the mule down and steered it around a turning. “Please be letting me know if any new and unusual obstacles present themselves.”

Thomas tugged his hat down over his face. “You should have let me give that insolent prig a warning cut. It would have been shallow.”

Essa made noises of frustration and disgust. “Sure. Perfect. Good idea. Shed a few drops of blood from a rich kid, at a crossroads, at night. Give that rumor legs and let it run around for a bit, and by the time we get back to the city, every single person will think that we ritually murder innocent children at crossroads in order to raise up an army of dead criminals with which to conquer all of Zombay. People already think we’re child-thieves, so we really should try to avoid attacking any children. Even if they deserve it.”

“We are child-thieves,” said Thomas from underneath his hat.

“Only for very excellent reasons,” said Semele. “And we are the children that we steal.”

“Also, I don’t really mind,” said Rownie.

“While we are sharing recriminations,” Thomas went on, “it was not, perhaps, the brightest notion to further antagonize that hotheaded coalmaker with a personal history about making coal and how very despicable the practice is.”

“Hush yourself,” said Semele. “The most useful thing for the both of you to be doing would be to make supper. It has been several hours since we ate. Rownie can stay here and keep watch for any more fallen trees in our way.”

“I lost my hat,” Rownie admitted. “I should probably get inside.”

“Do not be worrying,” Semele told him. “There is no one else on the road. Also, it is dark, and I think there will be a rising fog tonight. It would take very good eyes to see through all of this, and spot you for someone unChanged who keeps Tamlin company.”

Essa and Thomas went below, grumbling. Rownie could hear further grumbling inside the wagon, though he couldn’t hear what either one of them said.

He watched the road, a long and winding stretch of packed dirt surrounded by trees with twisting branches and roots. A fog did rise up, slowly covering the ground until the world itself seemed made out of fog, with only the wagon real and solid in it. Rownie couldn’t see well enough to spot fallen trees, or any other roadblocks, so he just crossed his toes and hoped there were none. Semele still managed to keep the wheels on the road.

“That was quick thinking and quick doing,” Semele told him. “I could see you in the audience, from spy-holes in the puppet stage.”

“I just kicked him,” Rownie said. “That’s all.”

“That is not all,” Semele said. “You put yourself where you needed to be, and you had the foresight to do so. This was very well done.”

Rownie savored the praise. He didn’t get praise very often, so he was not entirely sure what to do with it. It made his face feel warmer in the foggy air. He didn’t savor that warmth for very long, though. In his memory he saw Patch fall again, and again he felt as though he were also falling. He opened his eyes, and stared at the fog.

Something itched at the back of his mind.

“Graba has a lot of birds,” he said. “All over the city, and even outside the city. We were a good ways upriver when her birds attacked us.”

“Yes,” said Semele. “Not all pigeons are hers, even in Zombay, but she does use very many of them.”

“She’s looking for Rowan too,” said Rownie. “She was always asking about him, before.”

“She would be, yes,” said Semele.

“So why hasn’t Graba found him? She keeps finding us. She keeps sending birds after us. She must be looking for Rowan, and her pigeons are pretty much everywhere, but Rowan’s been gone for months. Why hasn’t she found him?”

“I do not know,” said Semele. She said it gently.

“Maybe he isn’t here to be found,” Rownie said. He didn’t like saying that. He felt like he might make it true by saying it out loud. Maybe if he kept quiet, he could keep it from being true—but he couldn’t keep quiet. “Maybe Rowan left the city already, without me. Or maybe he’s dead.”

“I am thinking that he is not dead,” said Semele. “I wish that I knew where he was, and that I could tell you where. I do not know, but I am thinking he is alive.”

“How can you tell?” Rownie asked, not yet allowing himself to be comforted.

Semele thought for a time before answering. “Your adoptive grandmother, she is very good at finding things. She is also very good at knowing when she should not bother looking. If she is still looking, then he is still somewhere to be found.”

She steered them around another curve. Rownie stared at the fog ahead with less anxiety, beginning to trust Semele to know the road.

He thought about Rowan, hiding somewhere in the fog, somewhere even Graba’s many pigeons couldn’t spot.

Rowan used to disappear for days. Sometimes he would put a new troupe together, and try to rehearse, but this rarely went well. They’re too afraid of masks to put one on, he complained once, while tossing several hellos over the side of the Fiddleway. They’re just willing to do a little play-reading, late at night, with the windows down and the shutters drawn, and someone playing a fiddle in the next room to cover the noise. What are they so afraid of?

The Guard, Rownie said.

But what are the Guard so afraid of?

Rownie wasn’t sure. Pirates? he suggested.

Rowan laughed. No, I mean, why would a little pretending in front of a crowd . . . Never mind. I just wish the rest of my troupe had more courage.

I’m not scared, Rownie said. Can I be in the next show?

Not this one, Rowan told him. There’s no role good enough for you in this one. And I’ll need you to be the one friendly face in the audience—if we ever get to stand in front of an audience.

Rownie was disappointed, and Rowan noticed.

Let me hear the speech I gave you, the older brother said. You’ve been practicing?

I’ve been practicing, said Rownie.

He tried to remember that speech now, while he sat on the wagon bench with Semele. The first line came back to him—I know my way, and I can guess at yours—but he couldn’t think of the next one.

Another thought itched at the back of his mind, on the shelf of things not yet understood.

“Thomas called the puppet show a personal history,” he said. “Whose history?”

“Only mine,” said Semele. “Our selves are rough and unrehearsed tales we tell the world. Hold on to something, yes, because there is an old tree root in the road ahead. There used to be, at least, and I am thinking it is probably still there.”

The wagon wheels hit the root. Rownie’s teeth clacked together. Thomas and Essa gave squawks of protest from inside.

“So what happened to the girls, later?” Rownie asked, trying to ignore the pain in his teeth. “The ones in the story? The ones who survived?”

“They never did agree on which one was first and which was a reflection of a reflection,” Semele said. “One of them Changed and became Tamlin. The other learned witchwork, and she never, ever forgave the first for her Changing.”

“Oh,” said Rownie. “Oh.” He had several thousand questions now. He asked the one he had asked Patch. “How did you Change? What happened?”

Semele hummed to herself. She seemed to be examining her own words before letting them loose.

“A Change is one big step sideways,” she said, “in exchange for all of the small steps you might otherwise have taken. Yes. In most ways you stop changing, after a Change.”

This was not much of a clarification. “But how does it happen?” Rownie persisted. “Is it happening to me?”

“No, Rownie,” Semele told him. “We will not ever work a Change unwilling, on you or anyone. It is not happening to you, and will not happen unless you choose it. And we do need the assistance of someone both masked and unChanged.”

Rownie didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed. He was not sure that he wanted his eyes to grow huge, his ears to grow long, and his skin to grow mottled with a thousand green freckles. But he did want to be something else, something other than he had been, and he thought that maybe monsters were safe from each other.

Essa opened the hatch behind them to offer up plates of vegetable pastries. The pastries smelled heavily spiced, and good. Suddenly supper became very much more important to Rownie than anything left on the shelf in the back of his mind. They all ate together, driving through the fog down Riverside Road.