From all sides people pressed around him, pawing his jacket, touching his hair, murmuring, “Just a coin, just a coin, lad,” and “Have a heart, spare a little.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. He had never seen such a sea of ragged and sad-looking people, walking bones, shadow-lives. It made his heart ache. “I have no money myself.” He hurried on, and silently said a prayer that the girl from the attic had not come this way.
He wondered if he should not, after all, return to the train station and continue north, as he had originally intended. But the idea of the girl tugged him on, just as she had drawn him back to that same street corner under her window, again and again, for months.
Then he left the people behind and came to an area at the far, far edges of Cloverstown. The buildings were long, low warehouses, and carts piled with goods came in and out, drawn by sad-looking animals whose ribs were showing. The air was so black and thick with grime that Will could taste it. Many of the warehouses were shuttered. In others, Will could make out thin, sad faces wavering behind cracked and dirt-encrusted windows, like pale flames. In others, service doors had been flung open to admit the carts and the animals, and Will could see men moving slowly in the vast, gloomy inner spaces.
He had, constantly, the prickly feeling of being watched, and he began to feel afraid without knowing exactly why. The warehouses became farther and farther apart, separated by long stretches of broken cobblestone and interspersed brown grasses. For a long time he passed no one. But still he felt eyes on him, and anxiety began to grow in the pit of his stomach—a gnawing, desperate feeling. It was not helped by the fact that his last meal had been the potato, nearly twenty-four hours earlier.
Will made a sudden resolution. He would ask the next person he came across for directions back to the train station. Then he would get on a train going north and forget all about the girl from the attic.
At that moment he was walking alongside an enormous building, built of black and moldering stone, and coated with white ash. It would have appeared to be abandoned, but for the black smoke churning from its four black chimneys. He thought he could detect the low murmur of conversation; and coming around the corner, he saw two men—both with filthy, knotted hair, and dirt-coated hands, and black and rotted teeth—standing in between several tarp-covered carts. Will could not see what the carts were holding. From the rectangular shapes outlined under the tarps, he thought boxes of some kind.
The men were deep in conversation, and arguing about something. Will did not like to interrupt them—they did not look particularly friendly—but he sucked in a deep breath and screwed up his courage and went closer.
As he approached, he could hear them better.
One of them was in the middle of jabbing his gnarled pointer finger into the middle of the other one’s chest. “I told you them round-saws was dangerous,” he was saying. “That’s the fourth boy what’s lost his arm messing around with one of those things, and it’s only been a month.”
The other man picked his teeth, unconcerned. “Hazards of the trade,” he drawled. “Saws is needed to cut wood. Wood is needed to make coffins.”
“Don’t tell me how to run my work,” the first one growled. “The problem is the boys. We’re running through ’em! We’re running out! Boys is losing limbs, fingers, toes. One of the boys had his head chopped off last month!”
“I can find you boys,” the second one said. “It shouldn’t be a problem to find you a boy.”
Will stopped, half-hidden behind a cart. He stood very, very still. His heart was beating loudly, and he willed it to be quiet.
“You better find me a boy!” cried the first one. “And right away, too, or it’s you what’s have to pay for the work I’m losing!”
Will began to back away, very carefully, from the two men, going as quickly as possible while still moving silently. He had no desire now to speak up—no desire at all. He was quite fond of his fingers, toes, limbs, and head; he did not particularly like the idea of losing them to a saw.
And then he stepped on a bit of broken glass. The glass went CRUNCH! very loudly under his boots.
Both men whipped their heads in his direction. Will dropped to a crouch behind one of the larger carts. This one was already hooked up to a donkey. The donkey sat, sadly pawing the dirt and nibbling at a single piece of frozen black grass.
“What was that?” growled the first man.
“Seems like we got ourselves a little spy,” said the second, and Will could hear him grinning. “Maybe a little boy, like? Wouldn’t that be nice? Suit yer needs just fine and dandy.”