As I walked along the now quiet forest path, I calmed, and certain things I had been told long ago entered my head. I have found that these sorts of thoughts come to me at the oddest moments.
The first one was the most unusual, at least for me.
The most bitterly awful place of all is one that Wugmorts don’t know is as wrong as wrong can possibly be.
That’s what my grandfather told me before he suffered his Event and was gone forever. I was very young when my grandfather said those words, and I have to admit I wasn’t sure what he was talking about at the time. I’m not exactly sure now.
My grandfather had also talked to me about shooting stars.
He said, Every time you glimpse one making its haphazard way across the sky, a change is coming for some Wugmort.
It was a strange idea for a place like Wormwood, which never seemed to change.
I turned the corner on the path, and there was Stacks. We called it that because it had so many chimney stacks. Brick piled on top of brick far into the sky. I had no idea what Stacks’ original use was. It was an unfathomably large and extremely ugly building, but for some reason, I liked it.
A shrivelled Wug stood at the immense double doors with his little ink stamp. His name was Dis Fidus. I wasn’t sure how old Dis Fidus was, but he must have been close to a hundred.
I walked up to him and held out my hand. The top of it was discoloured by the accumulated blue ink of two sessions labouring here. I could only imagine what it would look like in ten or twenty sessions’ time.
Fidus gripped my hand with his skeletal one and then stamped my skin. I had no idea why he did this when my hand was already covered in ink. And things that make no sense trouble me no end. Because, I suspected strongly, it made sense to someone.
I walked into Stacks.
‘I like my charges to be here earlier than three slivers before second light, Vega,’ said a voice.
Julius Domitar was big and puffy like a plump frog, and his skin possessed a similarly pasty green hue. He was the most self-important Wug in Wormwood – and the competition for that title was a keen one. When he said he liked his ‘charges’ to be here earlier than three slivers, he really meant me. I was still the only female at Stacks.
He stood there in his little office, at his little tilt-top desk, holding his long ink stick and scowling. His desk was covered with bottles of inks and rolls of scrolls.
‘Three slivers early is still early,’ I said and kept walking.
‘There are many worse off than your lot, Vega,’ he replied. ‘Don’t forget that.’
I hurried on to the main work floor of Stacks. The kilns had long since been fired up. The huge furnaces set in one corner were never turned off. They gave the room a warm, humid feel, even on the coldest lights. The muscle-bound Dactyls pounded away on their metals with hammer and tongs, producing a sound like Steeples’ bells. The Cutters sliced through wood and metal while the Mixers ran their enormous tubs of congesting ingredients.
The Wugs here were just like me: ordinary and hardworking – simply trying to get by. And we would be doing this exact same work for the rest of our lives.
I went to my locker and put on my work clothes – trousers, a heavy leather apron, gloves and goggles – then headed to my workstation.
Some of my work was dangerous. Many who worked here had missing fingers, eyes, teeth and even limbs. I would rather not join their lot. I liked the parts I had just fine. They were just the right number and matched in the main.
I passed by the broad stone stairs with their marble balustrades leading to the upper floor of Stacks. They were quite elegant for this place, which made me think, not for the first time, that Stacks hadn’t always been a factory. I smiled weakly at the Wugmort who stood guard there.
His name was Ladon-Tosh, and I had never heard him speak. Over his shoulder he carried a long-barrelled morta. He also had a sword in a sheath and a knife in a small leather casing on his wide black belt. His sole task was to prevent access to the second floor of Stacks. With long, coal-black hair, a scarred face, a hooked nose, and eyes that seemed dead, Ladon-Tosh was scary enough even without the weapons. With them, he was terrifying in all respects.
One time, long before I came to work at Stacks, some gonk had tried to make it past Ladon-Tosh and up the stairs. It was said that Ladon-Tosh stabbed him with the knife, shot him with the morta, cut off his head with the sword, and then threw his remains into one of the blazing furnaces. I’m not sure I believed all that, but I wasn’t sure enough to test it.
For that reason, I was always unfailingly polite to Ladon-Tosh.
When I first started working here, there was a Wugmort named Quentin Herms, who had helped me. As I stood next to my station for the very first time, Quentin had hurried over and greeted me. He was a family friend and had always been very kind towards me.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I’d said with a touch of desperation.
‘I know you showed artistic ability at Learning,’ he had said. ‘Or else they would not have sent you here to be a Finisher. But don’t worry – I will train you.’
And he did. Each light, I had come in with a smile, but only because Quentin was there. I had picked up things quickly until my skills rivalled his.
I recalled all this now because Quentin Herms was the Wug I had seen rushing headlong into the Quag with the canines and Council after him.
My only friend here was gone, and I wondered mightily why.