* * *
The next morning, she found a note tacked to Henry’s door in handwriting that matched the scrawling she remembered from his walls and books.
Dangerous work today. You will be contacted when needed. Signed, The Mysterious Mr. Murdoch.
She knocked anyway, but there was no answer.
Turning in a huff, she walked directly away from the wagon, out toward the wild moors. Far off in the distance, the dirty smear of London pierced the sky like a jagged, rotten tooth, surrounded by a fug of smoke. It felt good, turning her back on that eyesore and keeping her eyes on the far horizon of endless grasses and low, blessedly blue skies.
“D-d-don’t go too far, my lady,” Vil called from somewhere within the safety of the caravan, and she waved a hand in furious dismissal.
Henry couldn’t tell her what to do, much less his nervous minion. There wasn’t a bludbunny in sight, and the sun was high and warm. She had never been in such a wide, open place, and after looking around the caravan for gawkers, she lifted her skirts and ran under the line of lanterns and out onto the moors with a delectable twitch of rebellion. The heels of her boots sank into the earth, the grasses parted with a joyful whisper, and she felt, for the first time in her life, the rush of fresh air against her face. Before she knew it, she was skipping like the schoolgirl she had never been, whooping and laughing with uncharacteristic frivolity.
She pushed herself to gallop up a hill. There, at the top, she felt cradled between the sky and the earth. The cool breeze licking her cheeks thrilled her, and she took great, deep, hungry gulps of air, wishing to take it all in. So many years of being trapped in a state of suspended animation like her butterflies, trapped between the pages of books. Her nerves felt alive, her eyes full and wide. It was delicious, the wildness of the countryside. If she never entered the dark, high gates of a city again, she would be a happy creature.
Did Henry ever do this? If being trapped in London was bad, being trapped in a caravan wagon couldn’t be much better. Of course, today, he deserved it. The chuff of the man—turning her away after what had passed between them the other night! And there was still so much work to do. But the fresh air was a miracle, the sunshine a balm to her tortured nerves. No wonder everyone seemed so sickly and weak in the city. With the factories and the air scrubbers, every puff of air had already been breathed twenty times over by someone else. But here, everything felt new.
Imogen was at the top of the hill now, a mountain all to herself with the caravan twinkling far below. With a loud laugh she would never have uttered near another living soul, she threw herself down the hill, rolling over and over through the high, green grass. Her skirts tangled almost immediately, her corset banging painfully against her ribs with every revolution. Her hat came askew and caught where it buttoned to the collar around her neck. She didn’t care. The entire childhood she had missed, the playgrounds and ponies and toys and wide-eyed wonder—in that moment, she gave herself over to the stifled child inside.
Right until she knocked into something big and hard. It shifted away, and she sat up, dizzy, trying to figure out what sort of boulder was warm and hairy and capable of grunting.
And snarling.
With a little shriek and a hand to her forehead, she forced her eyes to focus on the gray blob just a few feet away. It wasn’t a boulder, although it did resemble one. It was a badger.
Stretching out flat, it opened its mouth to hiss with pointy, blood-streaked teeth.
Oh, sweet galloping gravy.
Of course. She’d fetched up against a bludbadger.
As a scientist, she’d studied all of the indigenous creatures of Sangland. She knew, for example, that this rank-smelling fellow was part of the weasel family and that his species name was Meles meles sanguinis, as all of the omnivorous badgers had been turned to blood drinkers several hundred years ago. She also knew that he was a relative of the ferocious honey badger and that a group of badgers was called a cete or a clan.
More important, she knew that a cete of bludbadgers could kill a human and reduce him or her to a pile of nibbled bones in the work of a few short minutes.
All of that knowledge zipped through her brain in a second, as long as it took for her to stop seeing dizzy stars and start noticing the pretty play of stripes on the murderous creature’s back. Its nose wiggled, and it growled again, darting toward her stocking-clad leg in a sharp feint that made her startle and jerk backward. Her boots caught on her skirt, and the bludbadger almost seemed to smile, its black lips drawing back over too-sharp teeth and its tongue darting out to lick its wet nose hungrily.
Imogen struggled to her feet, cursing the layers of clothes that, in theory, should have protected her from the noses and teeth of blud creatures. Had she stayed on top of the hill like a reasonable person and not thrown her body humpity-bumpity down the slope, it might have never even smelled her. But now that she’d nearly bowled it over, the burly creature would be on her in moments, if she didn’t think quickly. And if it got her to the ground again, she would be dead.
There was a copse just a short jog away, some small saplings and older stumps nestled in a tangle of bushes. She ran for it, holding her skirts around her knees and paying no mind to the hat and the unbecomingly loose hair flapping around at her back. There was no one there to see her, which was ultimately the problem. She cast her eyes around the ground for a branch or a rock but found nothing. The trees weren’t tall enough to climb, had she even known how to go about climbing a tree. Cursing herself for foolishly walking away from the caravan without so much as a hatpin, she scrambled up onto a stump and unbuttoned her hat in one desperate rip.
“Back off, Meles,” she shouted, “or I’ll beat you to death with my hat!”
The bludbadger advanced on her, low to the ground and growling. It would have been ridiculous had it not been so deadly, waddling on thick legs and wagging its stubby gray tail. Imogen was panting now, her heart heavy and fast in her ears and her vision still dancing with dizziness from rolling down the hill. She had read once that the blud creatures had evolved faster than humans, that many innocent and foolish people had died because their eyes told them a squirrel or rabbit was sweet and innocent and possibly edible. And in that blink of a smile, the opportunistic creatures would latch onto their necks and rip open their jugulars. Imogen wouldn’t be one of those people, not if she could help it.
She went into a crouch on the stump, bouncing on the balls of her feet, the energy shooting down her fingertips. The badger put a fat paw on the wood and wrinkled its nose at her, and she shrieked and aimed a kick at its nose. When the badger squealed and stumbled backward in surprise, she shouted, “Ha! Try it again!”
The bludbadger circled her stump, and she pivoted with it, always facing it. Its eyes looked deeply stupid, but that, too, could have been part of the farce. She began to think she could win in a fight against the strange creature, and she decided on a frontal assault. She was just about to leap off the stump and dig her pointy-heeled boots into its striped back when something rustled and grunted from the bushes in the heart of the copse. Her badger made a squealy growl, and an answering squealy growl sounded from the bushes, and she fought the lump in her throat. So it had a cete, then.
“Fine. I’ll take you on, too, you ugly beast!” she shouted. “I’ll stomp on your ugly husband, and then I’ll stomp on you, and when your nasty little kits eat me, I hope one of them chokes on my pinky bone!”
The words rasped and caught in her throat. She had always held her tongue when she wanted to answer cruel words from her father or her professors or her fellow students. Even Beauregard. Again and again, she’d swallowed her feelings. If shouting them out at a bludbadger was her last chance at venting her fury to the heavens, then she would, by God, go down shouting.
The badger turned to squawk at the copse, and she clumsily kicked it again. The odious thing growled and snapped at her, and in a sudden fit of invention, she swiftly untied her boot, wiggled her foot out, and held the pointy, earth-caked heel out like a weapon. The stump was uneven and cold under her stocking, and the badger’s nose wiggled delightedly at the toe poking from a hole in the sodden gray cloth.
“Back, manky beast!” She brought the heel down on its nose, and it lunged for her just as its twin in ugliness waddled out of the copse at an alarming pace for such an ungainly creature. Soon they were both leaning against her stump and slashing at her with teeth that would have been more appropriate on a timber wolf. She grew frantic and flurried, smacking at them again and again, shouting and twirling around as they growled and squealed and jumped at her. In her heart of hearts and in her scientific mind, she was certain the creatures were just waiting for her to get tired and give up so they could eat her at their lazy leisure.
The larger one finally made a ferocious lunge and broke the flesh of her ankle, shredding through her stocking in a white-hot gash. With its teeth firm around her skin and pressing hard on the bone, she shrieked in fury and drove the point of her boot heel into its eye. It screamed and dove away, pawing frantically at its face, and she stared at the blood-gored leather point, amazed at her own ferocity. That is, until the smaller bludbadger unleashed a ferocious, unbadgerly howl and leaped onto the stump with her.
She kicked it, and it had the temerity to grab onto her boot with fat paws tipped with sharper claws than she had anticipated. Imogen jumped, shrieking, shaking her foot and beating the badger with the boot. It grabbed a mouthful of fabric and ripped a hole in her skirt. In that moment, when the gentle breeze of the moors struck her leg in tandem with sharp teeth, she finally understood that she was going to die, out on the moors, alone, in a very undignified and ridiculous way. Pummeling the badger with her shoe, her nerves hot with the pain of bruised bone and sliced skin, she screamed at the sky.
The other badger came back, angrier than ever and splattering blud from a dangling eyeball, and the boot was ripped from her hand. She couldn’t tell what was happening, only that there was gray fur and stripes and dark blood and pain all up and down her legs, and her gloved fists fell again and again on unyielding backs. They knocked her to the ground, and the only thing that kept her throat from being ripped out was the annoyingly thick collar of her blouse, finally serving its purpose.