They started from beneath a dual lantern lamppost and went on straight for as far as Elmer could see, each of them cuddling to the edge of the walkway of the train station he had just exited from.

His joy outweighed the slight discomfort that came from having his sister cradled on his back and his suitcase in his hand while he rushed toward the line of the parked steam cars. He jogged past the ladies and gentlemen that ambled through the walkway with a sense of decorum and aloof ambience with the most cheery smile he’d ever had taunting his face.

There were a few bumps here and there with the passersby, and it shuffled their decorum into a scamper, but a quick nod and an apology would suffice from Elmer just before they had anything to say after their gasps. His mind was firmly placed on the cars that the scrutinizing gazes upon him and his sister did little to grab his attention.

Panting, Elmer stopped his hurrying as he arrived before the first steam car on the line.

Now that he was here, it looked even more beautiful than when he had glimpsed it from the station’s entrance, and far more beautiful than when he had seen the labeled prototype in Mistress Eleanor’s used newspapers.

Without a doubt, the steam cars were the only things he could say competed with the meadows in Meadbray.

The sun’s fingers ran majestically over its golden engine cowling that watched Elmer the same as he watched it, both agape in awe.

Lanterns were erected to the sides of the cowling, and the pair were inlaid with intricate golden patterns over their silver coatings.

Behind the cowling was the driver’s seat as he had remembered it from the newspaper. It had a single glass frame in front of it, and there were golden, painted levers sprouting out from all over the floor of the car just before the seat.

There was one that sprouted out longer than its peers. It had the round shape of the four wheels of the car, only it was smaller and made of a metallic material not with the natural rubbers the car wheels were made out of.

Behind the passenger’s seat was something Elmer did not know about. It looked big and weighty, and it was coated in black, lacking the intricate golden patterns as the rest of the gear-like materials of the car—but, it did not look any less beautiful.

Elmer wanted to know what it was, and his curiosity drove him closer toward the car beneath the lamppost, inch by inch, until he was stopped.

“Hold it there, boy,” a man’s haughty voice rang Elmer out of his midday daze. “May I know what it is you seek here?”

The person was a driver, Elmer knew immediately due to the black tailcoat and top-hat he was wearing. But despite that, the man held him with a condescending gaze, one that Elmer would have minded if he was not taken into awe at the prospect of boarding a steam car.

“Uhm…” Elmer adjusted Mabel’s weight on his back. “What’s all that?” He gestured with his chin toward the black monstrosities protruding from behind the steam cars, and the driver turned around nimbly on his black pointed shoes, his white-gloved hands tucked behind his back.

“The boiler,” the driver said, then turned back deftly to face Elmer. “You do not know what a boiler is?” He now sized Elmer from the ivy cap that sat upon his sweaty head, and down to his brown cheap boots. “Country boy,” the driver scoffed in realization of Elmer’s origins, his nose wringing up to make the careworn face he had even worse. “Be off with you then. You’ve seen enough.” He shooed Elmer.

But Elmer shrugged off the driver’s attempts to chase him away.

“I’m heading to Tooth and Nails street. How much for a ride?”

The driver smacked his lips in repulse. “Tooth and Nails street? The Backwaters?” The driver scoffed again. “Are you stupid, country boy? You want me to ride you to the slums with a steam car?”

What’s so bad about the slums that you can’t go there with a steam car…?

Elmer kept his thoughts to himself and chose to ignore the driver’s questions.

“How much for a ride?” he asked again, his face doing nothing to hide his eagerness for a hurl in the steam car.

The driver raised an eyebrow, but despite his revolt at Elmer, he was still as diligent as he was meant to be.

“Four mints,” he told Elmer, outstretching one hand.

“Four… Four mints?!” Elmer blurted, forcing the passersby to glance at him with a similar expression of repugnance as the driver that stood before him.

They could look at him however they wanted, he had no care for them, but what the hell did this man just call as the price for a ride?

“That’s four hundred pence. You can’t be serious, mister.”

Four mints was more than enough to feed Elmer luxuriously for a week or two at Meadbray, and here it was the price of a ride? There was no way he would pay that.

“I don’t have such an amount.”

The driver smiled for the first time—a condescending smile.

“Look there.” He pointed to the other side of the street and Elmer followed his pointed finger.

There, across, stood boys dressed the same as he was. Newsie caps and ivy caps, patched vests and rumpled tunics, water soaked boots and cheap pants. That was the kind of dressing that filled the walkway on the other side of the one he stood on now.

His kind… he knew at once.

“Now shoo off, country boy. These rides are not for your type.” The man briefly perused Mabel, then turned around hastily and walked into a closer proximity of his steam car.

Elmer felt all the joy that had stormed his body when he had seen the steam cars vanish.

Not for my kind…? Elmer spit. Discriminating rich men…

Pouting, he trudged to the other side of the street with his sister over his back, and boarded the mode of transportation he could afford: A one-horse hackney carriage. Ten pence it was, and he had such an amount to pay.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

…

No one was on the streets of Tooth and Nails, but Elmer could feel all the eyes that were creeping upon his skin.

He turned around heavily but sharply and saw the figure of a person shuffling away from a window, hiding from his gaze, and they were neither the first nor the only one.

Was it that they’d never seen a person before?

Elmer had looked far and wide while he had traced his steps to apartment eight, and this place was basically a graveyard.

If not for the occasional shuffles within the apartment windows, he would have questioned if there were people actually living here.

It also looked like a place no one would want to stay at.

The walls of the terraced apartments lined up against one another were rotten with moss and dirt, and the roads and walkways were no exception. The whole area was filthy, and it had a slightly pungent smell—like the one of a sewer—that ran through the air.

It had not looked this way in Mistress Eleanor’s newspaper.

Backwaters, slums…

Elmer remembered the names he had heard earlier at the train station’s entrance, and he could now see why the driver had borne a repulsive feeling for the area.

Did he charge four mints because of that…? Elmer had a slight wonder hit him.

Suddenly, but finally, the wooden door Elmer stood restlessly before, responded to his constant knockings of earlier and opened up slightly with a creak.

“Who’s knocking?” He heard a voice, hoarse and shaky, but he could only see an eye, brown and tired, bulging out from behind the small opening.

Elmer cleared his throat after an exhale to calm himself from the abrupt shock the appearance of the eye had caused to him.

The person behind the door seemed shady—the whole area seemed shady—but he had no choice. He needed a place to stay before night fell, and by the look of the dimming sky, it did not seem so far away.

“I sent a letter beforehand,” Elmer said, “for the—”

“How-How did ya find me?! I have no more elixirs! I already told ya in my letters,” the man shouted fiercely, cutting Elmer off as the words poured out of his mouth extremely fast. “I’m not doing it anymore! Leave me alone, will ya?”

Elixirs…? Is this man crazy…?

Elmer’s brows narrowed into a frown as he almost took to his heels and ran away, but where could he run to? He knew nowhere else in this large city.

He glanced at the top of the door’s frame to confirm if he was actually at the right place. Eight was written boldly atop it. He was in the right place for sure. The man must have mistaken him for another person.

Elmer calmed himself again with a sigh.

“My name is Elmer Hills. I was the one who paid for room six,” Elmer told the shady man. “From the countryside?” he added with an upturned brow after a few moments of silence.

“Oh…” the man trailed off with a gasp, and Elmer smiled hoping the man had remembered. Then suddenly the door slammed shut, leaving Elmer in a profound daze at what had just happened.

Had he been scammed? He wondered. He had paid a whole mint for the room. A mint note! That was a hundred pence! More than half of the upkeep money he had received from the orphanage for both he and Mabel. No way would he let himself be scammed.

Elmer braced his left arm tightly around Mabel’s thigh while he freed the other to knock again, but before he could do that, the door creaked narrowly open and the shady man’s eye popped out again.

“Keys.” The man jangled a key-ring with a pair of keys at Elmer from behind the door. “Apartment ten. Ya know ya room, I don’t have to remind ya.”

His hand was meaty and full of splotches and rough hair, and they looked dirty the same as the keys, but Elmer took them regardless.

“No breaking, no fighting,” the man listed a bunch of rules to Elmer. “Ya break, ya pay or ya repair. Toilet and bathroom’s on the first floor. It’s first to wake, first to use. Wake up first or second if ya want to get hot water from the shower. It only comes out twice a day, after that ya can’t use the shower no more until the next.”

Elmer’s face tightened slightly.

The orphanage always had hot water running from the shower… he complained to himself.

The man continued at the expense of Elmer’s quibbling thoughts.

“Wake up third, then ya get warm water to use, but ya’ll have to fetch it into the bathtub from the sink ya’self. And if ya wake up last, then ya use the coldest water known to man. There’s a tap at the head of the tub, so ya should have no problems filling it up.” The man fell silent for a split second before abruptly asking, “Who’s that?” Elmer could see nothing but an eye, but he could feel the gesture of the man toward Mabel.

“My sister.” Elmer smiled, and the eye watched him skeptically for a moment before the man behind the door muttered something indistinctly.

After which, he said, “Clean her up before ya dispose of the body, and throw her somewhere far away, preferably a river. I don’t want no mutton shunter taking me in for no damn questioning any longer. I’ve had enough.”

Elmer’s face squeezed immediately, but before he could say anything, the door slammed shut on him again, this time without any signs of reopening.

He’s crazy… Elmer decided. Then he adjusted Mabel and picked up his bag before walking about for a bit as he searched for apartment ten, all the while the people hiding behind their apartment windows still watching him.

There was no use trying to figure this place out. The first and only thing he could do now was for him to get settled down in his new home.

It did not take much longer before he found the apartment he was to reside in. He climbed the doorsteps and came face to face with the bland wooden door of the building complex, which was flanked by two wall lanterns.

With a creak he pushed it open and his nose cried out to him in response, so much that he almost closed the door and ran away, but he held himself back. The smell that came out from the apartment had him in a chokehold.

He peeked a glance at Mabel and when she did not react, he let out a deep breath and steeled himself before going into the apartment.

The whole vicinity gave a stench like that of rotten flesh mixed in with the stale waters of a gutter or sewer. Elmer wanted to puke, his stomach was giving way to bile gradually—a large amount.

But instead he held his nose and hurried up the long stairs, taking no breaks to listen to the constant creaking of the wood beneath his feet, or to find out where exactly the smell was coming from and if there were people within this building. The latter he had little to no concern for though—at least for now.

Luckily for him, the higher he went the less the choking smell, and when he finally arrived at the top floor, all traces of the rotting, musty stench were a thing of the past.

But unluckily for him, the little run up the stairs he had just undergone made him more exhausted. His tiredness had jumped up so significantly that he almost let Mabel down for a bit to relax. But he held on; he could not put his little sister on such filthy floors. It was just for a little bit more, then they could both rest.

In his great panting, Elmer glimpsed a door just ahead of him with the number six carved into its wood. His room, he told himself, and with a sigh of relief, he made his way inside.

He was glad. So glad. It did not stink.

The room was plain, and its wall looked cold.

To the right of the door was the only bed in the room on top of a small iron bed-frame, and beside it stood a tiny wooden table where a candle holder and a box of matches perched upon it. While on the opposite side was carved a single-hung window, the only one in the room.

Elmer looked around, but he could see nothing else. He dropped his bag, and after, waddled to the bed where he lay Mabel down, allowing her eyes to wander up and gaze at the wooden ceiling.

Then he gently sat down on the edge of the bed beside her and stroked her hair.

“I’m sorry,” Elmer intoned after a sigh. “I know how much you loved those steam cars, and I couldn’t get us a ride in it.” He brushed her bangs away from her forehead gently, then neatly arranged them back. “But don’t you worry. We’re in the city now. I’ll make plenty of money and get into the Church of Time’s college, then I’ll be able to help you and treat you to everything this place has to offer, including those steam cars. Is that okay?”

She said nothing still.

Elmer retracted his hand from his sister’s hair and put a forefinger beneath her nose. “Still breathing,” he muttered, then exhaled calmly. “She’s still breathing.”