Shards and Ashes

Miasma by Carrie Ryan

THERE WAS A time when men had cures for things like the disease that swept through Portlay that summer. That was before the cities grew sick and crumbled into themselves, before the waters rose and the swamps swallowed what was left of civilization.

For a while divers took to the waters trying to salvage scraps of the old world, but they always came to the surface sickened and weak. The mortality rate became alarmingly high, and eventually people stopped pining after what came before.

What they didn’t expect was that generations of toxic soup would eventually belch up diseases that wafted through the air like a stench with no way for a body to defend against it. And without medicine, civilization turned to darker ways of handling outbreaks of the fever: doctors with beaks like birds and their plague-eating beasts.

Once the beaked doctors were invited in to quash sickness in a town, their rule became absolute and their decisions unquestionable. They bred monsters who lived off disease, and then they starved them, sending them into the streets to sniff out their next meal.

If you had any money, you could pay off the doctors to pass by, or, if you were wealthy, you could pay for a private room at the hospital and a chance at recovery. Unless your tears ran red; by then it was too late. That meant the walls that held the inside bits of your body separate from one another had already begun to crumble and disintegrate. Your lungs had begun melting into your heart, and your stomach into your intestines, until you became nothing more than a jumbled mass of deteriorated cells barely held together by yellow-tinged flesh.

The moment you cried red, they took your body to the hidden tunnels underground and left you to the plague eaters.

Someone started a rumor that the plague hadn’t come to Portlay until the beaked doctors arrived—that they were the ones to unleash the fever in order to feed their monsters—but Frankie knew that wasn’t the case. She saw them come riding into town. She’d been hiding in the cemetery during the darkest hours of the night on a dare from her friends Cecily and Bardost. They’d told her that in the silences between the midnight chimes, you could hear the dead shift in their coffins, but Frankie didn’t believe them and aimed to prove them wrong.

Except that when the bells tolled the middle night, she did hear something. At first she was afraid it might be the dead, and her heart stormed against her rib cage. Then the noise resolved into the pattern of hooves and carriage wheels, and that was when she caught a glimpse of the first doctor.

Growing up, she’d been told stories about them—every kid in Portlay had heard: If you don’t eat your vegetables, your skin will grow green, and we’ll have to send you to the beaked doctors. Frankie had always imagined them as bent crones with long, sharp fingers, but that was not what she saw on the horse at all.

The first doctor was tall and straight, broad-shouldered with large hands cloaked in thick gloves. He wore black from head to foot, every possible hint of skin covered and covered again. But the face . . . that was exactly what Frankie had pictured: a bone-white mask with a long curved beak stretching an arm’s length beyond where his nose and mouth would be. Two holes were drilled in the tip of it, and a thin trail of gray smoke wafted from the holes to mix with the midnight mist.

It should have been impossible for the doctor to see any-thing through the thick black lenses of his goggles, but he turned his head as he passed the cemetery, and Frankie could feel his eyes on her. She should have ducked behind a headstone or raced back to the shadows of the trees, but she just stood there, bare toes curling against the fecund dirt of the dead.

Stacked neatly in the cart trailing behind the horse were groupings of cages draped in black cloth. Frankie thought the sight of the doctors would be enough to send her heart tripping hard for hours, but it was the cages that truly sent the fire of fear through her.

She’d never seen a plague eater before, and most people got quiet if the topic was ever mentioned. Some things were too terrifying for even whispers. A few years ago a kid down the block had found the skeleton of a ferret and tried to trick up the bones to look like the doctors’ pets, but it hadn’t fooled anyone for long, and he’d regretted it after the beating he’d gotten from his father.

Frankie found herself staring after the cages as the cart rolled toward the hospital in the center of town. She wondered if reality could ever be as horrid as her own imagination. There was a tiny part of her that wanted to sneak after the cart and lift one of those blankets and peek inside the cage. She just wanted to know what they were up against, something visible to aim her hate at.

But Frankie was smarter than that. Instead she faded back toward her home along the edge of the swamp, enjoying her last night of freedom out in the midnight air. If the beaked doctors were here, everything in Portlay was about to change.

A few hours later, the beaked doctors knocked on their door, and her mother let them in. As one of them entered their tiny shack of a house, he didn’t utter a word, just loosened the leash attached to his beast and let it approach each of them in turn: Frankie, Cathy, and their mother. The beast was smaller than Frankie had imagined, with a long, thin, ferret-like body covered in mangy patches of fur.

Its nose was narrow and pointed, barely concealing sharp teeth. Its forked tongue slithered out, raking against Frankie’s flesh before moving on to her sister. It let out hisses and growls—until it reached her mother. Then, it grew agitated and began to screech.

Frankie tried not to be mesmerized by the thing, this nightmare made flesh, but she couldn’t help it. Here was the threat that had always hovered unspoken over Portlay. They’d known that eventually the swamp would drain, and the miasma would run thick. They’d known the fevers would come, and with them the beaked doctors and plague eaters.

They should have been prepared. They weren’t. Frankie didn’t even realize her mother was sick and should have said she’d seen the beaked doctors riding into town, but she hadn’t wanted to get in trouble for sneaking out. And now the doctors were here, in her house, with their plague eaters howling.

Her mother tried to swat at the creature, but the gesture was useless. The beast had talon-like claws that it used to climb her body, ripping her skirt and tearing into the skin of her legs.

Cathy started wailing, and Frankie reached for a log from the pile by the fire, brandishing it like a weapon. The doctor swung to face her, long white beak breathing smoke, eyes empty disks of glass. He towered over her, larger than any human being had a right to be. With one swipe of his arm he could knock her unconscious. He raised his walking stick in a warning.

Her mother pulled out a ragged purse and dug through it for money—offering out everything they had. It wasn’t even a full day’s wages, as earlier they’d been to the market to buy food for the week. The doctor gazed down at her mother’s trembling palm, and Frankie held her breath, waiting.

“It isn’t enough,” the doctor pronounced. “Next time have more.”

Frankie froze. More doctors came in and bound her mother. “Take care of your sister,” she shouted as she was dragged away. Even though Frankie was the younger sister, she knew her mother was speaking to her. Cathy’s brain didn’t always work the way it should for a girl her age, and Frankie had learned early on how to be the older sister in responsibility if not in years.

The next statement came out muffled as one of the doctors shoved a rag into their mother’s mouth. “Remember I love you!”

And then she was gone.

The quarantine was instantaneous. Not that it took much work to shut down the little town. Portlay was squashed between the swamp and the sea—the only way in was either by ship or the rickety bridge leading out past rotting water and wilted trees. What was left of the mainland civilization was miles and miles away.

Most people knew it was suicide to try going through the swamp this time of year anyway—the miasma hung thick as fog, just waiting to lay waste to whatever crossed its path. Of course that didn’t bother the doctors. Their long, thin beaks were stuffed with incense and herbs; their clothing was doused with scented oils to keep the bad air at bay.

Once the doctors made it into town, they didn’t bother with gates or guards to seal off the entrance to Portlay. Instead they sent out the diggers to pull up the foundation for the first section of bridge. The men did as they were told, shirts off in the heat and backs glistening with sweat, as they stacked the old brick on a slice of dry land.

Three days later most of those men were crying red tears and being taken into the bowels of the hospital so that the people of Portlay wouldn’t realize just how many were dying on a daily basis. It was one thing for people to abstractly gauge the scope and breadth of the disease, but another for it to be so blatantly visible in the form of dead bodies piled outside for family members to claim. The numbers would incite a riot, and that would disrupt the order of things. How would the Oglethorpes’ gardens be maintained, and the Tybees’ tea be served, and the Musgroves’ linens be changed if the masses took to the street in protest?

For those who lived behind pruned hedges with properties wrapped in sweet-smelling gardens, the fever was nothing but a nuisance. Their houses stood tall on the tops of hills, well above the weight of miasma, so that the scant wind of summer could stir the air through rooms, dispelling any sour odor that might lead to illness.

Those families had ample stores of sweet-scented oils and incense and candles with smoke that smelled like irises and clouds. Their water ran through layers of filtration before being pumped into basins and sinks.

Frankie knew well the lengths the wealthiest in town went to avoid contact with illness and how vexed they became at any interruption to routine. And so the night after her mother was taken, she bent over the last of their candles fighting with needle and thread as she cut her mother’s Oglethorpe uniform to a size that would fit her own much smaller frame.

On the other side of the bed Cathy whimpered in her sleep, and Frankie noticed the sheen of sweat along the back of her neck and a flush to her face. For a long while she watched her sister sleep through eyes thick with tears.

She should have fought harder for their mother. She should have been better prepared. She’d failed their tiny family—what was left of it—and she refused to let that happen again. From now on there would be a tub of water always standing ready, and at the first hint of a beaked-doctor raid she’d shove her sister into it and coat her with rose powder to fend off the scent of sickness that seemed to be spawning inside her.

Frankie slipped from the bed and prodded at the fire, hoping the smoke could keep the bad air from the swamps at bay, if only for a little while.

Frankie had only been working at the Oglethorpe house for a few days when she sneaked off to the courtyard garden and plucked free a fresh bloom.

“I saw that.” The voice was male and much too close.

Frankie’s back stiffened. She felt the weight of rose petals in her pocket, and her hand itched to clasp tightly around them. But instead she kept still and silent, letting her chin dip forward in deference.

The owner of the voice drew near, polished leather boots crunching along the cracked oystershell path. In the distance a cannon blew, the enforcers of Portlay trying to clear miasma from the air.

Frankie expected the voice to demand an explanation and perhaps dismiss her on the spot, so she was surprised when long fingers wrapped softly around her wrist to draw her hand forward.

Everything inside her wanted to look up, to search out the expression on the man’s face, but she knew that the slightest hint of defiance, even a flash in her eyes, could get her dismissed. She couldn’t afford that.

She clutched the stem of the rose she’d just clipped and felt thorns break into her skin. Frankie refused to wince.

Gently, the man pried her fingers back until he could pluck the flower from her grasp. “My mother would be incensed if she found out,” the voice said.

So now Frankie’s fears were confirmed. He was part of the family, an Oglethorpe. Her lips began to tremble, and she bit at them furiously. She was in even more trouble than she could have thought.

Excuses ran through her mind. Not for the man standing in front of her—trying to beg her way out of this situation would be useless—but for her sister for when Frankie came home early with only final wages in her pocket.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Frankie murmured, trying to keep her voice even and subdued.

A silence stretched between them. The man still held his fingers around her wrist, and she became far too aware of the feel of his touch. His skin was so much softer than she’d ever imagined possible. Not like the thick calluses of her mother and sister or the blisters that peppered Frankie’s own palms.

“Why?”

At his question Frankie lifted her head, remembering too late to keep demure. She’d expected someone much older than the young man standing in front of her. By the ornamentation on his boots and the sharpness of the crease in his pants, Frankie had thought he must be a brother to the Mistress or perhaps a far-flung cousin. But this boy was hardly much older than she was.

His hair was oiled smooth and his skin scrubbed fresh. She could see where sandalwood powder dusted along the edges of his collar, giving him a crisp, heady smell that mingled with the roses surrounding them.

“Are you going to let me go if I answer?” Frankie asked.

He glanced down at where he gripped her, and his hand released her arm immediately, as if he was stunned to still be holding her.

“I meant, are you going to dismiss me?” she clarified, and just in case he misinterpreted that term as well, she added, “Fire me?”

He considered for a moment and then said, “If you lie.”

Already he wore the mantle of the Oglethorpe name easily along his shoulders, and Frankie wondered what it was about growing up in these houses that could make someone so sure of themselves so young. It was the exact opposite of how Frankie felt every moment of every day. She was always questioning, always wondering, as though her life were a hand-me-down pair of shoes that had previously conformed to someone else’s stride and never fit her own.

For a fleeting moment Frankie considered giving him the truth: her sister was ill, and she needed the rose petals to keep the stench of bad air at bay. But she couldn’t tell him that. If he knew where she went home to and where she came from every morning, he would tell his mother, and she’d call out the plague eaters, and before Frankie could make it home her sister would be gone.

And so she told him a part of a truth instead. “My mother was a maid here, and once, when I was little, she brought me to work.” Frankie’s eyes widened in panic as she realized how she’d misspoken, and she rushed to clarify. “I know she wasn’t supposed to, but my father had just . . .” She struggled for the right words.

“It’s okay,” the Oglethorpe boy said.

After a hesitation Frankie heaved a shaking breath and continued. “It was washday and I was supposed to stay quiet in the kitchens, but I followed one of the servants to deliver tea, and when she walked through the gardens I . . .” She struggled again for how to express the feeling of that morning and was stunned to feel tears burning at the corners of her eyes.

She dipped her chin back into her chest. “I’d never seen anything like that before. The pure beauty of roses speckled with dew waiting to be taken by the sun. That kind of thing doesn’t exist for people like me. And I guess I just wanted to remember what it was like to stand in the garden that morning, longing to cast off my clothes and roll across the lawn.”

Her cheeks blazed pink as she realized that perhaps she’d spoken too much, and when she risked a glance up at the Oglethorpe boy she noticed his face was a bit flushed as well.

She waited for him to say something, to demand a deeper truth, but he was silent as he seemed to consider her story.

One by one he plucked the petals from the rose he’d taken from her and placed them in the cupped palm of her hand. When he was done, he cast the thorny stem back into the thicket and curled her fingers closed.

“Don’t let my mother find out,” he told her. His touch lingered longer than necessary, his eyes darting around her face. Then he cleared his throat and strode away, his shiny boots crunching along the path.

Every day Frankie showed up to work at the Oglethorpe house, it was the same ritual: rough hands stripped her bare and pushed her toward a room with a large, overflowing tub. She was given five minutes on a good day but more like three when things got busy.

Frankie was never the first to arrive for work and so by the time it was her turn to wash, the water would have taken on a bit of murk and sheen. While the rooms upstairs were stocked with soft soaps subtly perfumed, the help were given a cup of gritty detergent that smelled of pine straw and licorice.

From the first day, Frankie learned to be quick and thorough scrubbing herself. If the house manager caught a whiff of unpleasant odor wafting from any employee, they’d be reprimanded and, on subsequent infractions, dismissed. The Mistress of Oglethorpe refused to allow a hint of miasma into her home, and since most of the servants lived in the neighborhoods along the swamp, she was diligent about every one of them going through a deep cleaning before being given entrance to the house.

Frankie found that if she washed quickly she could spend the last stolen seconds with her head dipped below water. It was this moment of the day she loved best: when her head slipped under the surface for as many heartbeats as she could bear, and the world fell silent and numb.

Underwater there were no beaked doctors or plague eaters, and she could forget about the night they came for her mother and the fever flush on her sister’s face in the evenings. She didn’t have to worry about the rumors that the doctors were taking healthy people from her neighborhood, somehow causing their monsters to alert on them even though they weren’t ill.

It was in those stolen moments that Frankie allowed herself to imagine a life different from the one she lived. Instead of dirt floors there would be carpets of woolen flowers; instead of plywood walls there would be rows of gilt frames boasting centuries of oil-captured ancestors. Instead of the sickly stench from the swamp there would be the gardens.

And in the gardens there would be the voice. There would be the touch of the boy who cupped his hand around hers, and he would pluck rose petals as he did before, but instead of dropping them into her palm he would brush them over her lips and eyelids and down along the ridge of her throat.

In her imaginings his touch would dip lower, but by this time Frankie’s lungs would be burning and no matter how hard she willed herself to stay below the surface, to keep the daydreams fresh and alive, her body would betray her and force her up for air.

Nothing was ever as acrid as that first lungful just as her lips broke free and the oil-slicked water sloshed around her chin and shoulders.

Even though she’d scrub her skin almost raw with rags, she could always remember the stench of the swamp that clung to everything in her neighborhood: decaying leaves piled upon dead animals and forgotten civilizations buried deep in dirt that had been damp for centuries, slowly churned over by worms and scavengers and steeped by rain that dripped from tree limbs casting everything in perpetual shade that never dried.

It was that smell that brought the fever, the minuscule bits of toxic rot floating in the air, drifting on currents and inhaled through nostrils and mouths to settle in lungs and leach into the bloodstream, touching death to what was left of life.

During her days at the Oglethorpe house, Frankie might smell pure and sweet, but it never lasted. At night the miasma of the swamp would seep into her pores and burrow under her hair as if to claim her and remind her that she was not, nor would she ever be, like the boy she had met in the garden of the Oglethorpe house.

Frankie was never supposed to step foot into the Mistress of Oglethorpe’s personal chambers, but one of the other maids was flushed and didn’t want to risk the chance of being seen and dismissed for the possibility of being sick. As a favor, Frankie offered to fill the rose water carafes and change out the incense burners in the family’s private suites.

She’d understood that the Mistress was out at tea most afternoons, and so Frankie chose that time to sneak up the back stairs and slip through the rooms, her goal to get through the task as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But when she made it to the Mistress’ bedchamber, she let out a soft gasp and could go no farther. The room was teeming with plants, their green leaves crisp and polished and unfurled against the sun streaming through triple sets of double windows. Tendrils and vines crawled up the posters on the bed and gripped the molding along the ceiling.

It was like living in a garden, down under the canopy where light turned green and raw. Frankie felt her lungs relaxing, even her skin delighting in the coolness of the room and the freshness of the air.

Tiny pinpricks of flowers dotted the foliage, and the scent of gardenias and tea olives was overwhelming, almost making Frankie drowsy with their headiness. She wanted to collapse on the bed with its thick down comforters and freshly pressed sheets and just spend the rest of eternity inhaling deeply.

But in the distance a cannon boomed, clearing the air along the lanes of the districts between the hills and the swamps, and the sound of it snapped Frankie out of her reverie. Reluctantly, she returned to her task, dribbling the fresh rose water as slowly as possible to prolong her exposure to the room.

If I could bring Cathy here, she thought to herself. The clean air would keep the sickness at bay and might even cure it. Frankie closed her eyes and allowed the thought to unfold in her mind. The sheer absurdity of it was enough to make Frankie’s heart pound thicker—which made her remember how, before the plague, she’d sneak out of the house and take wild dares like spending all night in the cemetery.

There had been a time when Frankie had been brave. But now she barely found the courage to linger in the Mistress’ bedchamber and dream.

Over the next few days Frankie invented a thousand excuses to go back to the family suites, but none of them came to fruition. She offered to take other maids’ duties on top of her own, to swap out chores—anything—but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t finagle a way upstairs.

She’d been relegated to the washhouses and kitchens, which meant she spent the day bathed in heat and sweat. And once one had enough sweat, that person wasn’t allowed inside the main house for fear of the stench.

Frankie felt she might go insane if she didn’t see that room again. The memory of those few moments breathing in the freshest air she’d ever imagined and being surrounded by the bright green of plants had become almost an obsession for her. A craving for it had burrowed deep under her skin.

The next morning she arrived early for duty, so early that the sky was still black and the water for the servant baths retained a bit of warmth. After she’d scrubbed the smell of the swamp from her skin, she grabbed a stack of fresh linens and shuffled them up the back stairs.

The only light came from the scented oil sconces along the walls, their flames turned dim, and Frankie kept herself to the shadows as she crept toward the Mistress’ chambers. The Mistress would be asleep still—Frankie knew this—but she just needed to peek into the room and inhale the freshness of flowers.

As she drew closer, the sound of the Mistress’ snoring filtered through the air. Frankie bit her lips, cursing the loudness of each inhalation she took. The door stood ajar, and for a long time Frankie stared at it, willing the courage to poke her head inside.

Just for a moment. Just to take one deep breath.

But then behind her she heard the rattle of feet pounding on stairs—not in the back passages but from the main rooms downstairs, which were reserved only for family and guests. There was nowhere in the long stretch of hallway for Frankie to hide, no alcove or shadow deep enough to conceal her.

She hadn’t expected anyone to be awake, and even if they were, it never occurred to her to realize that servants were always moving about and she wouldn’t be noticed as out of place. But she knew she was where she shouldn’t be, and that was the only thought that flashed through her mind.

If she was caught, she was fired. If she was fired, they lost the small amount of wages that she’d been using to pay off the beaked doctors who came to the door relentlessly every evening for Cathy.

Frankie panicked and she couldn’t think. The steps on the stairs were gaining ground too quickly—they were like thunder in Frankie’s ears—and she reacted, needing to escape.

She slipped through the cracked door, straight into the Mistress’ chamber. It was a stupid decision, she realized, but it was done, and she held her breath as she waited to hear if the Mistress’ snoring changed pace or rhythm.

The steps slowed as they ate up the ground along the hallway, and then they were passing the door, and from the bed behind her Frankie heard a pause and then a snort and a snuffle.

Frankie squeezed her eyes shut. If she was found now she wouldn’t just be let go, they’d likely call the enforcers on her and have her locked up for her ingratitude. Drops of sweat gathered at the small of her back and began to trickle down.

Frankie knew that terror sweat smelled the worst. She’d spent nights with it as her sister tossed and turned on the bed next to her.

“Is that you, Charles?” a muffled voice called out from the bed.

The footsteps moved closer to the door, a shadow passing in front of the gap.

He’s going to push the door open, and there’s nowhere for me to go, thought Frankie. She knew that the floor was crisscrossed with vines, and if she stepped wrong she could accidentally pull a pot from one of the shelves. Blood careened through her veins as sweat beaded across her forehead and along the seams of her uniform.

“It is, Mother. I’m home.” The figure shifted, and Frankie saw Charles for the first time. She tasted blood from biting her lip so tightly to keep back the gasp of recognition—it was the boy from the garden, the one who had dropped rose petals in her hands.

She had to remind herself that he’d never traced the contours of her face with them or dipped his lips to her own. Those thoughts had been just in her dreams, but seeing him standing there, the darkness making the edges of him hazy, they seemed almost real.

Charles started toward the door and Frankie shook her head, as if by that gesture alone she could stop him from coming. He paused and tilted his head, and for a terrifying moment Frankie was convinced she was caught.

“You’re later than usual,” the Mistress said, her voice still sleep scratched.

Frankie could swear Charles was staring straight at her. She thought of the night the beaked doctors rode into town and how one of them had turned to look at her, though it must have been too dark and the goggles over his eyes too thick for him to see her.

The light from one of the oil sconces on the wall flickered over Charles’ face, making his cheekbones look sharp and his chin pointed. He was dressed all in black so that his head with its closely cropped hair seemed to float in the air. It was clear he’d been gone for quite a while, and Frankie wondered where he’d been all night and with whom.

She had no idea how people like him lived.

“Something smells off,” the Mistress’ voice took on a hard edge. Frankie dared a sniff. She reeked, her nervous body pouring sweat. If the Mistress could smell Frankie from the other side of a room washed in the sweetness of gardenias, then there was no way Charles couldn’t smell her as well.

Frankie kept her eyes pinned on his face, waiting for his features to shift to anger and for him to call her out.

“Did you wash afterward?” the Mistress asked.

A flash of disgust rolled over Charles’ face, and he moved away from the doorway. “As always, Mother,” he responded as his steps pounded down the hallway.

The Mistress shifted in her bed, and Frankie feared she’d light a candle or call for her maid. But instead the Mistress huffed a sigh and settled back into snoring, giving Frankie the opportunity to flee. She ducked her head and slipped out of the room, her movements no longer demure as she raced toward the servants’ stairs and made her way down to the kitchens.

For the rest of the day Frankie kept herself enveloped in the steam of the laundry, not caring that her hands became a raw red from the boiling water or that sweat drenched her uniform. She needed to get the stink of fear from her pores.

It was late afternoon headed toward dusk by the time Frankie finally made it home that day. Her mouth felt dry, and the blisters on her hands were cracked and weeping. Cathy had already drawn the bath for the evening, and she urged Frankie to go first. Usually Frankie would protest, but tonight her limbs felt weak from the strain of the morning, and she let her sister pull her free of the Oglethorpe uniform and settle her in the tub.

Even though the night was overwhelmingly hot and still, they set a small fire burning in the hope that the smoke would drive away the bad air. Periodically they’d hear their neighbors discharging rifles or setting off crudely made fireworks, the tart brightness of gunpowder a poor substitute for the power of the cannon’s roar farther from the swamps.

The knock on the door that night came earlier than it ever had in the past, and Frankie cursed as she splashed her way from the tub. Cathy’s fingers fumbled with her skirt as she tried to quickly undress so they could switch places. It was always more difficult for the plague eaters to sense the fever on someone immersed in water, and it’s what had kept the creatures at bay for the past several nights as Frankie tried to pull together more money to pay the beaked doctors off.

“Go,” Frankie hissed at her sister, and finally she just shoved Cathy, fully clothed, into the water, not caring as waves sloshed over the edges of the tub and sent rivulets toward the fire that set the embers to hissing.

There was another knock, and Frankie didn’t have time to dress, so she grabbed a dingy sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her body twice before opening the door.

“Oh.” It was the only word she could say.

She’d been expecting the towering black-draped doctors, their masks gleaming in the darkness as sweet-smelling smoke drifted from the tips of their beaks. Instead she found Charles Oglethorpe standing on the threshold.

It took a moment of her staring before her brain kicked in. “You shouldn’t be here.” She pressed her hand against his chest and pushed. He deftly sidestepped her and twisted so that he came behind her and entered the tiny shack.

Cathy sat in the tub, shoulders hunched and knees tucked up under her chin. The edges of her clothes drifted along the surface of the water in swirling patterns.

Frankie recovered herself and followed him inside, closing the door behind her. The man living next door—too close—set off a series of shots, but Charles didn’t even wince or seem to notice, he was so intently examining their little hovel before ultimately turning his eyes on Frankie.

The sheet draped around Frankie was thin, and already the dampness of her body had seeped through, making it almost transparent. She began to blush, every inch of her skin heating.

She suddenly saw her life through Charles’ eyes, then, and this made it all worse. He was used to heavy silver cutlery, thickly piled rugs, and painted plaster walls bordered by heavy trim. Here there was a dirt floor going to mud where the bathwater sloshed out and a hole in the roof to let smoke filter into the sky. Embarrassed tears pricked Frankie’s eyes, which made her mad. Making her even angrier was the sight of her sister huddled in the water, her only clean set of clothes now drenched and unwearable.

Frankie raised her chin—something she’d never be allowed to do anywhere on Oglethorpe property—but this was her house and her domain. “Why are you here?”

Charles’ eyes skimmed around the room again, and he walked toward the bed shoved into the far corner; not even a scrap of cloth hung from the ceiling to afford any privacy. This made Frankie stiffen because it was such an intimate part of her life. This was where she lay down at night, where she dreamed (often of him), and where she was most vulnerable.

For a fleeting moment she remembered him this morning and how he’d come home so late and his mother had asked if he’d washed. She wondered if this was something he did every evening—follow a girl home, stare at her bed, and maybe spend the night with her before returning to his proper life.

Bile churned in her stomach. This wasn’t what she wanted to think of him. He’d been kind to her, once, and maybe even twice if he’d known she was hiding in his mother’s room this morning.

Maybe he thought it was time for her to repay that kindness. Her eyes flicked toward Cathy. She would do anything to keep her sister safe and alive. Anything to keep the plague eaters from crawling over her skin and braying that the illness nestled inside her.

Cathy had been sick for two weeks now, almost three. No one had ever survived the plague that long, and this alone gave Frankie hope. If she could keep piling fresh flowers around her and keep the miasma from the swamps from creeping into the house, Cathy stood a chance.

“What do you want?” Frankie asked Charles again, trying to keep her voice icy sharp.

Charles leaned over and rested his hand on the blanket draped across the bed. Frankie swallowed, wondering where she could send Cathy to be safe while whatever Charles wanted to happen here tonight took place.

And then Charles was on one knee reaching toward the floor. When he straightened, he held a wilted rose petal between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger.

“From the Oglethorpe garden?” he asked.

Frankie’s stomach tensed. She’d been surreptitiously taking more flowers from the property, always making sure she wasn’t seen. She wanted to explain, to say that she had no choice when her sister’s health was at stake, but she bit the insides of her cheeks instead.

He walked around the room toward Frankie, whose skin was pricked with goose bumps as the bathwater dried along her arms. Cathy shifted in her tub, sending little ripples to shush over the rim, but other than that she made no noise. Even though Cathy was her older sister, Frankie had been the one to step into her mother’s shoes after she was carried off. It didn’t take much for Cathy to defer to her.

As Charles drew closer, Frankie saw, now, that he’d collected an entire handful of shriveled flowers from the floor. He didn’t stop at a respectable distance but instead came nearer than necessary before letting the petals drift from his fingers. Several of them clung to the damp patches of Frankie’s sheet, one pressing against the edge of her right breast. She inhaled sharply as her eyes were drawn to the bright splotch of color, and then she spun around abruptly once she realized that Charles’ gaze was focused there as well.

Cathy started to stand from the tub, but Frankie cut her eyes to her, telling her to stay put. The beaked doctors could still come at any minute.

“What do you want?” It was the only thing Frankie could bring herself to say.

But Charles said nothing, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she saw him staring at her sister. Cathy’s eyes grew wide, and Frankie rushed to stand between them.

“She’s sick,” Charles stated.

Frankie made no move to confirm it but she knew she couldn’t deny it. Why else would her sister be sitting fully clothed in the bath? “It’s none of your business,” she ultimately answered.

“My mother would disagree,” he replied.

“I’m not sick, and I’m the one who works there.” Frankie crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hide the rose petal and the thinness of the sheet covering her. “That’s all that matters. The health of my sister is irrelevant.”

He raised an eyebrow, and Frankie chewed harder on the inside of her cheek.

“It’s why you needed the roses.” Charles’ words came out as a statement rather than a question. His eyes flicked past Frankie’s shoulder to where a chipped cup contained a struggling gardenia cutting, and another sprouted one bud from a tea olive. Barely enough to sweeten the air.

“Why are you here?” This time Frankie’s voice finally cracked. All she could see in her future was getting fired from the Oglethorpe house and losing her wages, which meant that when beaked doctors knocked on her door she couldn’t pay them off, and they’d let their plague eaters scurry across the floor with sharp muddy paws that would pierce her sister’s skin as they climbed up her flesh and howled about her sickness.

Charles reached out and took Frankie’s elbow and tugged her toward him. Now all she could picture was what would happen next. How he would use this knowledge about her—this weakness—to have his way with her. She hated that she’d once believed the best of him when he so clearly only deserved the worst.

“Don’t make her watch,” she begged him in a whisper. “Please.” Her voice was desperate.

He hesitated, his eyes searching her. She couldn’t help it when she glanced at the bed and then back at him.

Realization dawned on him, and he dropped her arm as though it were on fire. He took a large step away from her and then another. “What do you think of me?”

Frankie could come up with no answer that wouldn’t offend him and get her fired, so she kept her mouth pressed tightly shut. Charles glanced again at Cathy, whose chin trembled against the surface of the water, sending out patterns of tiny ripples.

He reached for Frankie again and pulled her to the door and out onto the street. Already she could smell the hint of incense that led the procession of the beaked doctors. She heard the howl of a plague eater and then wailing as a family was wrenched apart.

How long until they took Cathy?

“I’ll do anything to keep this job . . . Charles.” She forced herself to say his name, to make this personal, but it felt wrong the way it fell from her mouth. If she were on his property, he would be Master Oglethorpe, but never Charles. Just as his mother was Mistress and never Camellia.

“If she’s sick, they’re going to take her eventually,” he said when the door closed shut behind them.

“I know.” It was all Frankie could muster.

“How you’ve kept her hidden this long I don’t know.”

He already had so many of her secrets to lord over her, another didn’t matter. “Most of them accept bribes. Even small ones.”

His head shook. “They won’t for much longer. Their sweeps are becoming more aggressive, taking more people. Things have gotten worse; even the families from the hills are looking for a way out.”

This revelation shocked Frankie. It had never occurred to her that the wealthy families with their gardens and filtered water and soft breezes would be so worried about the plague that they’d abandon their property. It would take only hours for those left along the edges of the swamp to fight their way in and take the estates over in the families’ absence.

“But I haven’t seen anything . . . packing or preparations,” Frankie said. “There hasn’t even been a rumor.”

“They’re afraid that if the servants know, then their plans will go wrong. If the help sees us leaving, what’s to stop full-bore panic? And if there’s panic, the enforcers will lock down the harbor even tighter than it is now, and then no one will escape. As it is, they think only one more ship will be able to rush the blockade to freedom.”

Frankie leaned her head back against the side of her shack, trying to find the stars through the hazy mist drifting from the swamp. “Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?” she finally asked.

Next door her neighbor set off another round of fireworks, and the air filled with spent gunpowder. How this type of smell didn’t cause sickness while the one from the swamp did, Frankie never understood.

Charles took a long time to answer. “I was there that morning when you came to Oglethorpe with your mom and you sneaked into the garden.”

Frankie twisted her head toward him. She didn’t remember him at all.

“My tutor sent me out to draw something in nature, but I couldn’t find anything interesting. I’d spent hours staring around, looking for something exciting, but nothing caught my attention. And then you came sneaking down the path, and you had this look on your face like you’d suddenly found a kind of heaven. I could tell, everything was a wonder to you. You took none of it for granted, even the flowers that had wilted and aged.”

Frankie sank back into her memories, trying to remember him, but she could recall nothing.

“I drew you,” Charles said simply. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper folded several times over. With careful movements, he began to unfold it. “I couldn’t bear to show it to my tutor. It felt too personal.”

He handed the page to Frankie, and she swallowed twice before taking it. She noticed how her hand trembled as she shifted for better light. Sketched in pencil across the page was her, hands on her knees as she bent so close to a daffodil bud that the fringy edges of it caused her nose to crinkle.

This moment she remembered. The brightness of the yellow, the crispness of the scent. She’d even picked that flower, and the sap from the stem had pulled into long saliva-like strands that draped over her fingers.

Charles kept talking. “I’d never thought to find something so simple as a flower quite as mesmerizing as you seemed to. You took delight in things I’d always dismissed.”

Her cheeks were hot under his scrutiny, and she remembered again about the thinness of the sheet draped across her body and how she wore nothing underneath.

“I never knew who you were,” he continued. “I waited in the garden for you to come back so I could talk to you. I thought you had to be a daughter of one of my mother’s friends, but I never saw you again. I was so young, but I think . . .” He hesitated. “I think I fancied myself in love with you.”

Frankie’s heart soared until Charles let out a kind of laugh as if the very notion of him caring for her was ridiculous. The blood that only a heartbeat before had sung through her veins froze, and she struggled to keep her shoulders from sagging.

She pushed the sketch back toward him. The creases crossing it were frayed, the pencil faded along the well-worn lines. “I’m sorry.” Frankie had no idea why she said those words. She’d done nothing wrong, and yet still she felt somehow inadequate.

She despised being embarrassed about where she lived and the life she’d been born into—one she had no control over. She wanted to shout at him that she was a hard worker and a smart girl and none of her surroundings were her fault. She was trying—damn it—as hard as she could to hold her life together, and she didn’t need his scorn.

“You know who I am now.” She kept her voice stiff. “Not the wealthy heiress to some fortune with a house on the hill and a cottage out along a stretch of sand somewhere down the coast.” She hated how her lip trembled. “I’m a servant in your mother’s house, as my mother was before me and her mother before her. And the only garden I own can be contained in two broken teacups.”

Charles said nothing. A cannon roared in the distance as she stared at him and let him stare back. The scent of incense had grown stronger. Soon doctors would knock on her door, and she only had two days’ wages to offer them to pass without stepping inside.

She waited for Charles to say something, to tell her it didn’t matter where she came from, but those were words reserved for dreams, not reality. She could see the beaked doctors down the street, and she was sure, now, that they never traversed the neighborhoods on the hill but rather spent their time in the communities along the swamp.

First in the procession came a thin boy shuffling slowly with a silver censer that he waved back and forth in intricate patterns, filling the air around them with smoky blue incense to ward off the miasma.

Behind him came the doctors in their sweeping black cloaks, their long white masks piercing the night in front of them. Their goggles made them appear as though they had no eyes and therefore no souls. In their gloved hands they wound leather leashes that barely restrained plague eaters scrabbling toward the hovels they passed.

The creatures were hideous, a perversion of nature, with their long mangy bodies and their forked tongues licking the air, tasting for fever. They grunted as they walked, the talons of their many toes digging into the cracked dirt of the road.

Frankie needed to be inside preparing Cathy. By this time the water in the tub would be cold, and Frankie had to dump rose powder over her head and dunk her under to mask the scent of illness.

This was her life, here with the swamp and the bad air and the sickness. Charles belonged on the hill with its freshly scented breezes. She was stupid to have ever dreamed about them. She’d given him enough time to respond to what she’d said to him—to deny the truth of it—and still he was silent, and it hurt because she hated to lose the idea of him to reality.

He was just a boy in a big house with a lovely winding garden. Nothing more.

“Go.” The word she spoke was simple and effective. He paused, only a moment, and then nodded before striding off. She was surprised, at first, to see him heading toward the procession of beaked doctors, but then she remembered that he had nothing to fear from them.

Frankie turned back to the door and took a deep breath before plastering a smile on her face for her sister. She would not fail her family again.

Once Cathy had been dunked under several times and coated liberally with sweet-smelling powder, the two sisters sat and waited for the doctors to knock on the door as Cathy’s bathwater grew cold. Frankie perched on a stool by the tub, holding her sister’s damp hand in her own. Neither of them spoke as they heard and smelled the procession grow closer.

But the knock didn’t come that night, and Frankie let out a long breath of relief. Tomorrow when they came, she’d have three days’ worth of wages for them. She hoped it would be enough.

The next day Frankie paid more attention to the goings-on around her as she performed her duties at the Oglethorpe house. Now that Charles had told her of the family’s plan to escape Portlay, she could sense the nervous thread of energy vibrating through the rooms, the harshness of the Mistress’ voice as she made demands for certain linens to be folded more carefully or her favorite dresses to be pressed.

There was a quietness to the servants as well; the maids moved about with tense lines of worry around their mouths, and Frankie couldn’t determine whether they were caused by fear of the fever or fear of when they would all be forced to find employment elsewhere.

And that’s when Frankie realized the enormity of the situation. If the Oglethorpes left, there would be no need for her, and she’d be fired without any kind of notice. She’d been walking through the garden when the understanding overwhelmed her, and her feet fell still as she struggled to breathe.

For the first time she ignored the beauty surrounding her and the crisp sweetness of the air because all she could think of was Cathy. A sense of panic began to claw its way through Frankie, and her mind scrambled for a solution. She could sneak in after the family left and dig up the roses and plant them in the dirt of her home. That would keep the illness from advancing through her sister, but it wouldn’t keep the beaked doctors from knocking on the door and demanding their bribe.

Frankie’s legs felt weak, and she allowed herself to sit on a nearby bench. On any other day such action would lead to a severe reprimand, but what did that matter if Charles was telling the truth? And he had been—she could see it in the small details of the house, the tiny preparations for the family to flee.

A flicker of movement caught her eye, and Frankie raised her face, scanning the rows of blank windows surrounding the courtyard garden. Most days the curtains were drawn to keep the sun from heating the rooms during the long summer mornings, but today one was open along a third-story corridor.

Charles stood, watching her, his hand cupped around the sill. Frankie thought she saw one of his fingers twitch, and she couldn’t tell if it was a greeting or merely a muscle spasm. It didn’t matter. She was sitting when she should be working, raising her chin toward family when she should be bowing.

She stumbled to her feet quickly, the stack of linens she’d set in her lap fluttering to the ground. Instantly she dropped to her knees, pulling the fabric into a pile and gathering it in her arms before scurrying toward the kitchen. She was happy to have an excuse to hide her face from him.

That night when the knock on the door came, Frankie felt confident that Cathy was scrubbed bright and clean and that the three days’ worth of wages she’d scrounged would be enough to keep the beaked doctors at bay.

Her heart still pounded as she cracked open the door, but the flood of terror that accompanied this ritual most evenings was set to simmer rather than boil. Still, the sight of the doctor looming outside, the long, slender beak of his mask protruding from a cloud of thick incense smoke, caused her breath to hitch.

The plague eater strained at the leash by the doctor’s side, a low hissing growl causing its body to vibrate.

Frankie clutched the wages in her hand and held them out, but the doctor only glanced at her offering for a moment before pushing her aside.

“Wait.” Her voice sounded high-pitched and afraid. The doctor’s robes swept around him as he strode toward the center of their tiny shack. As on every other night, Cathy sat in her bath, knees drawn up to her chin and eyes wide. The tips of her hair floated around her, shielding her nakedness from view.

Frankie moved between the doctor and her sister and held out her hand again, but the beaked man ignored her. Instead he focused on her sister while the beast by his side lunged and struggled against its harness.

“She’s not sick,” Frankie insisted. “Neither of us is.” She watched in horror as the doctor gave slack to the plague eater’s leash and the creature ran once around her, merely hissing, before moving toward the tub. It rose on its hind legs, stretching its long body tall, but still it couldn’t reach over the lip of the basin.

“No,” Frankie cried out, attempting to grab the leash, but the doctor held out a thick walking stick, pressing her against the wall. This couldn’t be happening. Outside other beaked doctors milled. The boy with the censer swung it in ever larger arcs, filling the air with such acrid smoke that Frankie felt she couldn’t draw a proper breath.

She became frantic, tears blurring her eyes as the doctor pointed toward Cathy and ordered, “Out,” in a muffled voice. Frankie tried to stop him again, but he was stronger and kept her at bay.

He had the courtesy of turning his head away when Cathy rose from the water and shuffled toward her clothes, not even taking the time to dry herself before pulling them on. She looked so frail bent over herself as she dragged on her skirt.

Frankie wondered why the doctor bothered to show any courtesy at all before sending her to her death.

“Please,” Frankie whispered, but she wasn’t sure if the doctor could hear her through the layers of cloth and leather protecting him from the stench of the swamps.

Once Cathy was dressed, the doctor let loose the plague eater again, and the creature lunged hungrily forward. Frankie moaned, but Cathy was silent as the beast licked its tongue along the flesh of her leg, leaving a trail of saliva that glistened in the low light of the fire.

The thing’s nose twitched, and it pawed at Cathy’s foot, causing her to wince as sharp talons scratched her skin. It still hadn’t howled, and for a moment Frankie let her held breath seep from her lungs. Perhaps her sister was clean enough for the plague eater not to alert on her. Maybe the scent of the rose water would throw the beast off, and the beaked doctor would leave their house, and her older sister would be safe.

But before the dream could fully crystallize, the creature began to whuff, sucking and snorting, and then its lips pulled back from razor-sharp teeth, and it began to howl and growl. Before it could take a bite, the doctor yanked hard at the leash, causing the beast to twist and grapple as it toppled through the air. It landed with a hiss, its ears pinned back and body held low to the ground, growling.

Frankie’s eyes darted around the room, looking for a weapon. She was still desperately searching for a way out when the doctor reached for Cathy.

“No!” Frankie screamed, and she lunged. Her fingers were like claws when she attacked the man, but her efforts were useless. His body was too well protected for her to do any damage, and he didn’t even bother to fight back.

Another doctor swept through the door just then, pulling her away from his companion. The first doctor raised his walking stick, preparing to bring it across her back, but the new doctor raised a gloved hand, holding him off.

His other hand clamped around her bare arm, and she felt something off about the touch. When he pulled away, she looked down to find a trail of slickness smeared over her shoulder and oozing toward her elbow. Then the plague eater, which had been huddling on the ground, leaped to attention and struck toward her.

Frankie backed frantically into the corner. “I’m not sick!” she cried out. But the beast was more agile than she was. Already its talons bit into her as it climbed her body, tongue darting toward the slick on her arm.

She’d heard about the rumors—of doctors starting to take the healthy as well as the infected—but she hadn’t been willing to believe them. Now she had no choice. This new doctor had done something to her—wiped something that caused the plague eater to alert. Even more doctors streamed into the house, the lot of them indistinguishable in their midnight robes and beaked masks.

“You can’t!” Frankie shouted. “You can’t!”

Her brain wasn’t fast enough to come up with something else to say, something that would stop the men binding her wrists and stuffing a gag into her mouth. They tied a rope between the sisters and dragged them from their home.

Frankie was horrified and angry, so enraged she couldn’t think or react. She saw tears in her sister’s eyes, saw the way her body shook, and she wanted to tell Cathy that she was sorry, but her mouth was stuffed with cloth.

Out in the streets there were others bound and gagged, and most of them stood with blank stares, some of them with faint red trails down their cheeks, evidence that the fever had raged too close to death for recovery.

Frankie didn’t understand why they weren’t fighting. Why her neighbors were hiding behind curtains and doors and weren’t trying to stop the doctors from taking them away. But of course last night and the night before that for weeks, Frankie and Cathy had been the ones hiding, not taking the risk to defend the people who’d once been friends.

The boy with the censer led them through the streets, and the ranks of the bound sick grew, and Frankie still couldn’t figure out a way to escape. Beaked doctors surrounded them, their hidden eyes watching for any attempt to break free of the ranks. Soon they’d finish their rounds and they’d start the long walk to the hospital. That would be the end for Frankie and her sister.

They certainly didn’t have money to purchase a private or even a public room for treatment. They’d be shunted toward the basement where, rumor had it, fever victims were piled in old tunnels and left as food for the plague eaters.

Frankie worked one hand free enough to find her sister’s fingers and grip them tight. She didn’t want to think about what came next.

All too soon the doctors began to shuffle them toward the road along the coast that led to the hospital. They moved slowly, some of the sick unable to walk quickly, and everyone else unwilling to hasten their fate.

Frankie pulled her sister to the back of the group, hoping to find a chance to slip through, but they were too closely guarded. And then something that felt like a stick slapped against her shin, tripping her. Her arms were bound, and she couldn’t control her fall. Because Cathy was tied to her, she stumbled as well, and they collapsed together in a pile.

When Frankie looked up, one of the doctors hovered over her, the tip of his smoking beak mere inches from her face. She wanted to slap at him, but could only glare, which was small comfort.

The man reached for her, his grip painfully tight as he jerked her to standing. His treatment of Cathy was a little more gentle, for which Frankie was grateful, but not enough that she didn’t fight the moment he turned from her. Frankie felt her toe connect with something that felt weapon-like, and she saw the doctor’s walking stick rolling across the ground.

She knelt, pretending to be dizzy after the fall, and reached for the staff. The rest of the group had already traveled a distance away, leaving Frankie, Cathy, and the doctor to catch up.

When Frankie rose, she was already swinging, and the beaked doctor couldn’t have seen it coming because he did nothing to defend himself. The stick cracked loud against his head, causing him to stagger.

But he didn’t fall. Cathy and Frankie barely made it far before they heard the scrabble of talons chasing after them, and the horrible huffing and hissing of the plague eater as it closed in. The doctor had dropped the leash, either in the confusion of the scuffle or from being hit or just to track them down.

The creature was faster than either of the girls, and it caught them easily. Frankie still gripped the walking stick, and she beat at the thing, but it seemed immune to her efforts, coming after them again and again.

Then the doctor was there. A thin crack ran across his goggles, and the long, slender beak was broken open. Smoke poured out, wreathing his head in a cloud of incense that caused Frankie’s eyes to water and lungs to constrict.

He stepped on the plague eater’s leash, then jerked the creature back under control before reaching for the rope tied between Frankie and Cathy. Tears trailed down her sister’s face, and Frankie could tell from the curve of her shoulders that she was close to giving up.

She wanted to pull Cathy into a hug and whisper into her ear. She was used to being the strong one, but sometimes it was overwhelming to carry everything for the family.

And she’d failed too many times already. Oh so many times.

It took Frankie longer than it should have to realize that the doctor wasn’t dragging them after the departing flock toward the hospital but rather toward narrow alleys weaving along the edge of the docks.

Ever since the quarantine had been enacted, most of the buildings around the port had become abandoned, the warehouses slowly emptying of goods and no ships allowed in to replenish them.

Frankie wondered if the man was taking them somewhere to punish them for acting out and striking him. Horrid images of the doctor tying her to a post in an empty room and just letting the plague eater have its desired meal flickered through her thoughts. She tried not to imagine what the teeth would feel like as the beast gnawed on her skin. She knew the doctors kept them hungry so they’d alert on the ill. How hungry would this creature be? Enough to kill her and her sister quickly?

The doctor stopped them next to a full water barrel in the darkest bowels of a narrow street. The few windows along the building towering over them were dark, several of them broken, and Frankie knew that even if she weren’t gagged, she could scream all she’d want and no one would come to their rescue.

At their feet the plague eater hissed and lunged, and Frankie could tell that the doctor kept it restrained with effort. Slowly he pulled the leash tighter and tighter until the beast was forced to climb up his thick black robes. Once it was within reach, the doctor grabbed it and slammed it into the barrel’s murky depths.

Water sloshed over the edges, splashing against Frankie’s legs. Even as he held the plague eater under, the doctor didn’t shift his attention from the two sisters, his body tensed and ready as if to chase after them if they tried to escape.

Frankie was mesmerized by the sight of the drowning animal. The beast thrashed, and the doctor grunted with effort. Every now and again bits of the creature would break the surface, the long pink tail whipping against the doctor’s arm as it fought for life.

It took a long time. Frankie never realized just how hard something would fight for life. But eventually the water grew still. The doctor continued to keep his hand buried underwater just to make sure. The smoke from his beak began to disperse, and for a moment Frankie thought she could see the edge of his chin. She realized his mouth was open as he panted from the recent struggle.

She’d been easing Cathy along the wall, putting distance between them as she tried to figure out a way to escape. As if he could read her mind, the doctor stepped closer. He reached for her hands. Frankie punched at him, but he deflected the blow. She kept struggling, and the doctor pushed his body against hers, pinning her to the wall so she couldn’t fight him.

When the rush of sensation began stinging her fingers, she realized what he was doing: setting her free. And then he moved and unwound the rope from her sister as well.

Frankie ripped the gag from her mouth and then pulled her sister into her arms, feeling Cathy sob against her. Her relief was short-lived when the doctor put a hand on her shoulder as if to usher them farther down the alley toward the wharf.

Frankie pulled away, keeping her sister tucked safely behind her. She couldn’t see past his goggles, and so she couldn’t meet his eyes. He held his arms by his side, gloved fingers splayed open to show he meant no harm. It didn’t matter. Frankie began to step back from him, putting more distance between them.

“Wait,” the doctor said, his voice muffled by the mask and the billow of smoke that accompanied every exhalation.

Frankie continued to draw away. The doctor fumbled with his robes, finding a slit and then reaching into the pocket of his black pants. When he pulled his hand free, Frankie could only say, “Oh,” as the doctor held out a palm full of rose petals.

Nestled among the damp, wilted petals sat two large, gleaming coins, more money than Frankie’s family had likely ever seen since arriving in Portlay generations ago.

“The last ship leaves soon,” the doctor said as he gestured toward the wharf. “It’s docked out in the harbor.” Frankie glanced over her shoulder, but she saw nothing except water reflecting back the thin gleam of stars.

“She’s running black sails,” the doctor added, and now that she knew what to look for, Frankie saw a spot of sea with no reflections, as though something great and hulking were sucking in all the light. A small boat slipped between it and the shore.

When she turned back to the doctor, he was by her side, and she watched him as he talked, seeking out the familiarity now. “These”—he pressed the coins into Frankie’s hand—“are for the last two spots on board.”

“Charles?” His name felt just as strange on Frankie’s lips tonight as it had the evening before. But she recognized his voice now, and the way he held his shoulders straight and the shape of his mouth and chin.

She couldn’t believe how well she knew these tiny details of him.

“You’re one of them?” She had no claim on him, yet she felt betrayed all the same. That he was someone rounding people up and sending them to their deaths or taking bribes for them to have just one more day with their families disgusted her.

His silence was his answer as he stood wearing the beaked mask and black robes.

“How?” she asked. She didn’t know if she meant how did he become a doctor or how could he stand himself.

“Sometimes you have to do things you don’t like in order to make a change in the world,” he said. “Becoming one of them was the only way I could find to help you.” He curled her fingers around the coins. “The ship will take you past the quarantine, somewhere safe.”

This didn’t make sense to Frankie. “What about your coin? Your spot?”

Charles cupped his hand over hers and she felt the warmth of him through the soft leather gloves. “You have it.”

She didn’t realize that he’d been pushing her and Cathy forward until she heard the gentle lap of the sea against the pier, smelled the tangy freshness of salt water. “But you’re coming, right?”

“That boat”—he pointed to the narrow craft halfway between the larger ship and shore—“will only wait one minute when it reaches the dock. If you’re not there, it will leave you.”

Frankie noticed other people hovering in the darkness, tucked into the shadows cast by the empty warehouses. A few were already sneaking toward the pier, dark shawls wrapped tightly over their heads and faces. Cathy watched it all with wide eyes, but Frankie’s attention was focused on Charles.

“Why? Why would you ever give up your chance to escape? Why let us go instead?”

More and more people swelled from the darkness, beginning to race for the tiny boat. She heard a few of them whispering to one another, but one voice began to rise above the rest.

“Charles?” It came out as a hiss, and Frankie recognized Mistress Oglethorpe standing regally thin with her sharp nose. Her eyes scanned the crowd, searching. “Charles?” she called again, a sound laced with the beginnings of panic.

Frankie’s stomach grew heavy. She wanted to leave so desperately, and her sister needed to be somewhere with softer, sweeter air, but she wasn’t sure she could actually take Charles’ place on the ship.

She began to shake her head, her throat tightening as she forced herself to decline his offer. “I can’t. It’s not right.” The panic surrounding the wharf made her heart beat faster, the blood scour through her veins.

Charles gripped her shoulders with both hands. “Your sister’s ill,” he told her. “You can keep her alive if you leave. But she’ll never make it here. The plague’s getting worse—more people are falling sick, and the city’s going to start cracking down hard on anyone who shows the slightest symptoms. This is the only chance she’ll have.”

The boat slid against the dock with a thud that vibrated through the damp wood. Around them the air filled with the tension of so many hopes pulling tight and frayed. People began leaping aboard, all trace of order abandoned with the fear that any moment they’d be caught.

“Charles!” Mistress Oglethorpe wasn’t even bothering to keep her voice quiet as she called for her son. Someone tried to herd her toward the boat, but she broke free. “My son’s supposed to be here,” she said. “He’s not here. Charles!”

Her hysteria over her missing son was so clear that it physically hurt Frankie. She knew what it was to love something beyond yourself like that, to risk anything for their safety. “You take Cathy, and I’ll stay,” she said, pushing her sister toward Charles.

The boat was growing full, only a few stragglers left. One of them had to physically force Mistress Oglethorpe to board, his hand cupped over her mouth to keep her from screaming and giving away their position. In the distance a cannon roared, and Frankie heard shouting.

Suddenly a bright light swept across the wharf, eliciting a few muffled cries of alarm from the boat. Two men dipped oars into the water, ready to push back for the ship waiting farther out in the bay. Not too far away whistles began to blow, a siren amping up to roar.

Any minute the wharf would teem with enforcers and beaked doctors and anyone else tasked with maintaining the quarantine.

“Go,” Frankie urged Charles, but he pushed her and her sister closer to the boat.

“If the enforcers catch either of you here, you’ll go straight to the bowels of the hospital. Trust me,” he said. Charles pried Frankie’s fingers open until he’d pulled free one of the two coins. He thrust it at Cathy and shoved her hard enough that she teetered on the edge of the dock before tumbling toward the boat. Her arms pinwheeled, and she would have hit the water if one of the oarsmen hadn’t risen to catch her and eased her on board.

“Then what about you?” Frankie asked. “You’ll get in just as much trouble.”

“I’m only a beaked doctor trying to keep the peace.” He grabbed her shoulders. “I was attacked trying to keep you from escaping. There’s nothing they can do to me.”

Frankie’s throat was tight, her eyes raw. Charles tugged off one of his gloves and held his soft hand to cup her cheek. Frankie reached up, tentatively, and began to pull the mask from his face.

At first she felt him stiffen, resist, but then he allowed her to free him and trail her fingers along the raw bruises where the straps had bitten into his skin.

Lights began to blaze in the warehouses, and the oarsmen started to pull the boat away from the pier. But Mistress Oglethorpe must have seen that it was her son standing there because she cried out for him and lunged toward the dock, holding the boat in place.

Men tried to break her grip, but she kicked them away. “Charles!” she cried out. “Jump! Come on, Charles!”

Frankie felt his hands tense on her shoulders and knew that in one heartbeat or two he would shove her toward the boat just as he did with Cathy. “What will happen to you?” Her voice was a broken little noise in the dark night.

He touched his lips to hers, just barely grazing her mouth. “The plague will pass, and you’ll come back and you’ll walk up to the house on the hill, and I’ll be in the garden waiting for you.” He pressed the kiss deeper, as though he could breathe hope into her, and then broke free. She tried to hold on to him as he pushed, but he was too strong.

“I promise,” he added as she fell backward toward her sister’s waiting arms.

Men wrestled Mistress Oglethorpe toward the center of the boat as she screamed for her son. Oars lit against the water, no longer caring about stealth or not creating a wake. All along the sides of the craft, people dug their arms against the surface, adding any momentum they could to escape the rush of enforcers crowding their way onto the wharf.

The ship with black sails was already under way when the little boat with the last of her cargo caught up at the mouth of the harbor. The escapees climbed rope ladders and huddled on the deck, where they stared into the dark unknown, some of their faces gleaming with tears at all they were leaving behind.

Frankie stood with her sister at the back of the ship, the wake from the rudder dissipating back toward the fading lights of Portlay. The night air felt fresh and full, and Frankie inhaled it deeply, letting it seep into her lungs and clear out any lingering miasma from the swamp.

She could hear that Cathy’s breathing came easier as well, her cheeks flushed not with fever but with the crispness of clean air. She didn’t know if the sickness would ever fully leave Cathy, but for now they were safe.

Frankie looked down at where she clutched the rose petals Charles had tucked in her palm as a promise. Already the color was fading, the scent only a lingering memory. She imagined Charles going back into the town with the ranks of the beaked doctors and saving those few people he could, either by finding a way to smuggle them free or giving them another day with their families before being dragged away. She wondered if he’d spend his afternoons surrounded by the flowers, thinking of her.

She closed her eyes and pictured the gardens covered in snow, ice clinging to the bare vines and dripping in frozen daggers from trees. Her feet would leave a trail as she made her way up the hill to the Oglethorpe house, everything around her silent and still. The house would be empty—any servants who survived the plague would be allowed home to care for the families that remained.

Frankie would push open the trellis gate and maybe it would creak on its hinges from disuse. And there he’d be, sitting on the bench, waiting for her. She’d bring him a fresh hothouse flower from wherever Cathy and she settled after escaping, and she’d let him trail it over her lips and down along her neck.

He’d plant her a garden in her room and another in Cathy’s room, and from then on they’d live out their lives surrounded by blooms and beauty.

As the last glow of Portlay faded on the horizon, Frankie breathed in the fresh smell of the sea and clutched the rose petals tight in her hand. Her sister was safe, they were both free, and for a moment Frankie allowed herself to believe in dreams once more.