Page 38 of A Slipper in the Smoke
*
Elena spent the next morning in her garage, eager to be anywhere other than the Baroness’ apartment. The place was practically spotless now, in better shape than it had been in years, but nothing to do there was still infinitely better than nothing to do in the cold, icy apartment.
She thought about calling in on Snowdrop and the others, but she had nothing to report and didn’t feel that they were in that ‘please just drop in for a chat’ sort of place.
She didn’t have anyone like that. No one she could talk to without an excuse.
Shortly before she was due to set out, she was startled by a frantic banging on the door. She looked up to see Clover, out of breath. “Things are getting a bit…heatednear the square this morning,” he rushed. “Snowdrop said to let you know so that you could avoid it.”
“Oh, tell her I said—”
But the boy had already raced off.
Elena sighed, deciding she should probably head off before it got any worse. She could avoid the square if she went the back way. She gathered her belongings, locked the door, and turned the other way. Voices swelled in the distance, a discordant chant she couldn’t hear the words of.
Just noise, always noise.
A van had parked across the road, blocking her exit. She waited a few moments patiently, hoping it would move. It looked to be unloading quite the haul.
She glanced at the clocktower. She really needed to be heading off.
She’d chance the square. She could always sneak around it.
Sharpening her resolve, Elena headed towards the square. It was surging with people and placards, all the way to the gates of the nearby plant.
“Let us in!” people screamed. “You’ve nothing to fear if you’ve nothing to hide!”
Not one of the guards responded. They stood in front of the gates and around the square as still as statues, immovable as rock. Elena wondered how progressed the experiments at the palace might have become. Maybe the guards were secretly metal too, with faces of painted wax.
A young boy—no older than thirteen—lifted an apple into the air, and hurled it at one of them. It smacked against her helmet.
The guard fired into the crowd.
In a second, people were moving. Some towards the boy—he’d fallen, he was bleeding, but he wasn’t dead—while most split off away from the scene as the guards fired more bullets into the air. Elena barely had any time to move. Someone sprinted from behind her, upsetting her balance, sending her spiralling into a nearby cart. Fruit shot into the street.
All this because of an apple.
Gunfire and screams twisted through the air. The ground shook thunderously. Hundreds of people stormed across the square in a grim cloud of colour. Elena righted herself, moving for the side streets, trying to find somewhere to shelter until the worst of it had passed.
A thin, bony hand fastened around her wrist. Elena tried to jerk away, not thinking about who it was attached to, just imagining the hands of a guard, or a dread doctor, or her stepmother…
“It’s all right, girl,” said a warm, gravelly voice. “I’ve got you.”
Grandma.
Elena stopped fighting, allowing herself to be tugged into a doorway while the rest of the crowd ran screaming for cover.
“You keep your head down, girl,” said Grandma. “This’ll all blow over soon.”
The screams echoed for a long while after the gunfire had ended, and looking at the woman’s withered face, Elena wondered if any of this would ever be over.
*
She met Pip that night in the gardens. Though it had been several hours since she’d got caught up in the mayhem, the look of it hadn’t quite left her face. She could feel it on her like a brand, a stain for all to see, and when Pip turned the corner of the hedge, his smile vanished instantly.
“Something happened,” he said. “Tell me.”
“There was another incident in the outer ring this morning,” Elena told him, her voice whispery. “It was… a lot.”
