Chapter 3 - The Dragon Tram
“Leaving: Smithersfield. Next Stop: Wheelhouse Uncommons.”
The squeaky voice of an engineer rattled through a sequence of bronze pipes and accordion tubes - running like clotheslines along the tram cars - before sallying forth from the cone-horns overhead. The announced Leaving-point little served the lost traveler, since the message only ever came after the tram had begun its paddling, forward motion. Nor was the Next Stop of much aid to riders of the dragon-engine-driven conveyance. The passengers had no say in the tram’s course. No, the main purpose of the squeaky announcements was a kind of revitalizing beating. They swooped over the heads of the masses, who would otherwise have sat through the churning starts and stops of The Dragon Tram without consciousness; blankly staring through weary, half-lidded eyes; letting occasional strings of drool join the muddy grime of the car floor.
Mr. Grey, in contrast to his fellow travelers, never wore an inattentive face; that being one of many expressions he didn’t go in for. Most often he sat with his head angled slightly down, his eyes staring uncompromisingly at the window. The glass usually held enough rivulets of slime and mottled splotches to keep the rare glances of fellow passengers from reflecting on its opaque surface.
But today, circumstance prevented Mr. Grey’s pouring of countenance into his favorite spot of dull glass. Some busybody had taken fancy and rubbed a rustic farmyard landscape into the pane. The glass was clear in the places their fingers had wiped. One round spot meant to represent a huge star afforded Mr. Grey a crystal view. Through it he saw an uncomfortable reflection of himself, the distracting reflections of his fellow transports, and - rolling past - the grim streets of Starharbor.
The engineer with the squeaky voice called out Wheelhouse Uncommons through the brass horns. Three stops to go. Mr. Grey looked around. With no safe spot to rest his glance away from that of others, he waited anxiously. He looked forward to hastening out the sliding tram doors, gliding down some dark city streets, and interring himself in the comfortable solitude of home.
Mr. Grey’s hasty glance along the tram car showed no familiar faces. There was a jaundiced old woman plucking petals from a carnation bouquet and letting them mingle with the grime and grating of the tram floor. There was a stoop dweller pestering a suit-robed businesswoman near the front for treasure. Otherwise, the passengers sat quietly in their seats, inanimate. Mr. Grey had seen Ms. Maysey boarding another car when he’d reached the station. She hadn’t seen him. She and every mouse on her head had worn the same ground-down look of fatigue as every other tram rider. Mr. Grey had taken advantage of her distraction. He’d redirected his steps, and picked a different car.
Mr. Grey felt reasonably safe from any sudden conversational affliction. As an additional precaution, however, he donned his grey earmuffs, and scrunched himself into the corner by the grimy glass. He poured his attention through the abnormally-translucent window.
The Dragon Tram paddled slowly through a shallow canal of tar-like jelly which flooded every street in Starharbor. It propelled itself on dozens of rotating, water wheel axles, churning up gloopy sprays past Mr. Grey’s view. Sometimes the jelly spattered on the elevated sidewalk, where it adhered to a half frozen sleet of the same substance. Pedestrian traffic sometimes grumbled objections at the Tram when the jelly doused them in their walks. These same persons were often people who lived on such streets, and already fouled with a crusty, dark layer of filth. One convenience of the inky aspic was that it washed out, entirely, other stenches which might otherwise have pervaded the city. On the streets of Starharbor, there was only the jelly’s smell of rotting meat.
The Tram had already rolled beyond the city district of the Regional Justice Center. That region of town was unique from most; densely packed with towering skyscrapers and stilt homes, rising high over the fumes and grime of the street. In that part of town, sprawling wheelhouses schemed people out of their hard-worked treasure, with flashing flamelight signs, and promises of dragon hoards. In that part of the city, the streets were comparatively clean; the odors, comparatively pleasant; the background din, contrastingly jovial.
But now, the Tram wriggled through the rest of Starharbor. As he sat with eyes to the glass Mr. Grey confronted - reflected on the dirty, hastily wiped sun in the Dragon Tram window - the true face of the city: a sprawling, polluted rookery. He saw ramshackle huts, mimicking the rats infesting them by huddling together in dense, urban clusters. Sometimes the light of a glowbug jar shone through the cracks in the window boards of these houses. More often they were dark, cold, and forlorn.
Stretching his ears past the splashing and growling of the Dragon Tram, Mr. Grey listened to the industries of the poor. Stoop dwellers, the street-living kin of the one asking for handouts in Mr. Grey’s car, cheered ritualistically each time a sidewalk vent belched a cloud of warm sewer air. Wheelmen catcalled passersby and seduced them into their establishments; rundown Wheelhouses, very distantly related to the affluent attraction of the Justice Center district. Gangs of street wolves barked antagonisms at members of every class until they scattered at the approaching trumpets blown by city bouncers in their high-wheeled carriages. And beyond all these distinct frustrations there was another, newer noise. Something like a grumble, an undercurrent of rising discontent. Not yet audible, but gathering mass from the echoes of the echoes of the suffering.
When he attended his nose, Mr. Grey smelled, obviously, rotting meat.
The stoop dweller in his car had begged halfway down its length when Mr. Grey heard the engineer’s voice through the horns. “Entering: Wheelhouse Uncommons. Next Stop: Milliners Street.” Two stops away. Mr. Grey expected the dweller would reach him before his stop. He thought that if he made himself unapproachable enough, he might still escape conversation.
Wheelhouse Uncommons squatted at variance with its name, as the burgs of cities often do; both in terms of the quality of Wheelhouse establishments, and their number. Wheelhouses and their victims lounged like blooming mold across the length of the sidewalk. Other vulturesque establishments shoved themselves into the free plots that remained. Some of the signs were for the dusk-eyed professionals who hired themselves out as treasure hunters. Reclaimers of lost fortunes, they called themselves: ‘Starharbor Findery and Wealthmaking’, ‘Blackjaw and Slake: Finders for Hire’, ‘The Gold Company: Finders at Law’. Every few blocks Mr. Grey picked out a street enchanter playing music on a hand carved whistle or cobbled set of pans. These performers offered minor enchantments, produced with treasures they collected, and pocketed any surplus. In all fairness to this last class of person, they were usually kind-hearted enchanters. They were only trying to scratch out a bare living. In the whole sample of Wheelhouse Uncommons, these were a rare breed.
The streets began tottering past once more. The dark jelly leapt up with renewed churning from the waterwheels. The brass horns trumpeted the same message as before, with the single change of the word, Entering to Leaving.
For a tock, Mr. Grey thought he saw the bright, dragon engine robe of Jodee Coats moving on the sidewalk in the opposite direction of his own dragon-pulled car. When he leaned forward in his seat for a better view through the grimy window-sun, Mr. Grey saw it was only a tasteless caricature of a Wheelhouse hostess in flamelights of hot amber and ruby.
Mr. Grey relaxed, unconsciously, back into his seat.
A voice attacked Mr. Grey at his unwatched flank the moment he dropped his guard.
“Treasure for a gob, Big Man?”
Mr. Grey turned, thinking it impossible the voice had addressed him with the title, ‘Big Man’. But no, there hunched the stoop dweller. He had slunk slowly all the way down the rows of tram benches. Now the dweller leered toward Mr. Grey where he sat in the rear of the car. His bright, careworn eyes skulked, perched beneath a bald head - so dry and wrinkled as to appear chitinous - and above a robe crusted with street jelly.
The dweller’s weary eyes met the alert, grey ones. There was nothing for it. Mr. Grey removed his earmuffs. He said, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that?” to buy himself an acclimating tock.
“Treasure m’boy.”
“Oh… yes. Let me see.” Mr. Grey pulled a treasure purse from a deep inner pocket of his robe. His purse was a simple linen bag, about the size of a cantaloupe, and of the expected grey. He undid the drawstring. He tried angling the opening so that the stoop dweller couldn’t look inside. He tried this subtly, so as not to give offense.
To counter the concealing maneuvering, the stoop dweller flung himself into the adjacent seat. He leaned in so near that Mr. Grey could see the matted hairs covering his cheeks and the backs of his hands. The dweller set his face next to Mr. Grey’s and peered down into the purse. Mr. Grey, instinctually and obligingly, stretched it wider.
Inside the purse, the loose treasure Mr. Grey carried on a day-to-day basis formed a modest hoard. There were a great many shiny pebbles, some feathers, half a dozen nuts and bolts, and one novelty spoon. An ordinary amount of pocket treasure, with the exception of the nuts and bolts. Fasteners had nearly tripled their market-value in the last quarter.
The stoop dweller edged a grimy hand toward the open sack. He stopped when he saw Mr. Grey’s face. Mr. Grey mounted enough stoicism on his stony face to check the stoop dweller’s advance. The stoop dweller instead set both hands on his lap. He leaned his flat, carapaced head against the hard seat, and set his feet bouncing on the floor in time with an off-key tune he began whistling.
The stoop dweller glanced at Mr. Grey in a knowing way, and winked several times with alternating eyes. He said, “Don’t care it m’boy. I’m ground n’ addled n’ only half-a-brain if it comes to grasping.” Mr. Grey recognized this speech as Starharbor’s most urban dialect. He spent several tocks translating it into, “My apologies, Sir. An existence of destitution has left me without all my faculties at hand, and I often strain to control my baser urges and impulses, particularly in the case of legerdemain.”
For the remainder of the conversation, this story will provide Mr. Grey’s translations of the stoop dweller’s words, where those translations are available.
“I’m sorry to hear it, Mr…?”
The stoop-dweller coughed, and laughed, and slapped his thighs alternately. “That’s moonshiney! You’re rosy n’ wormless, you are.” The dweller went still, caught his breath and added, “Bugwitch is me and hold yer honors.” Mr. Grey understood all this to mean, “I like you, you’re a decent fellow. My name is Mr. Bugwitch, but I prefer if you call me by my last name only, without appending ‘Mister’ before it.” This last communication irritated Mr. Grey. He felt he’d dealt with enough improper modes of address for one day.
Mr. Grey pulled a handful of shiny pebbles off the modest pile at the bottom of his bag. He considered it an appropriate beggar’s stipend. Bugwitch, unexpectedly, waved him off. Mr. Grey said, “I’d feel wrong leaving you with nothing…”
“Never mind. Mines a way I’m able for. Your own ogles speak to a skull full of cares.” Mr. Grey translated this to, “You may disregard the treasure. I’m used to my lot in existence, and I can see you have your own worries.”
“I’m sure my daily concerns don’t measure against your hardships.”
“Ahhh, it’s a tatty nonfiction you’re turning pages of. They’ve bleachwashed my walls in tram syrup till the homeowners’ association wouldn’t bellyache me being installed in the neighborhood. Beggin’ and pleadin’ for what wouldn’t buy a coal bean on holiday would afford me a scenic view of rimy shruggin’ on the best of days, n’ a toeful or a tongueload on the worst. My marrows been tooken into schemes of not existing on some of the chewiest nights, and its only by way of some healthy shakes that I argued ‘em out of it.” Mr. Grey couldn’t figure out exactly what Bugwitch had said, but the tone and language implied a rough lot for the stoop dweller.
All through his lamentation, Bugwitch leaned in closer and closer to Mr. Grey. The dweller did, however, keep his hands on the tattered robe covering his thighs. Mr. Grey scrunched himself against the begrimed window and its murky landscape. Eventually he found no room left for retreat. He glanced through the glass at the slowly passing sidewalk and the gloopy jelly flying through the air. The thought flashed in Mr. Grey’s mind, only for a moment, of jerking the window up and leaping.
When Bugwitch finally paused, Mr. Grey said, “If existence is that terrible for you, I reallytruly must give you some treasure.”
“Unlawful,” said Bugwitch. Mr. Grey took this as another refusal of the gift, though Bugwitch - who’d been raised by the tender hand of Starharbor’s street life - might have meant the opposite. Bugwitch leaned in still closer. He winked next to Mr. Grey’s eye, and breathed against Mr. Grey’s cheek. “But yer a minded boy, n’ I see you’ve got a fettle for bothers ready to deploy,” which meant, “You’re lucky that you’re a clever fellow, which I can see because you have the solution to your own problems in hand.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yer fastenings m’boy! Them as is kismet’s marks.” Mr. Grey understood that Bugwitch meant, “The nuts and bolts in your treasure sack can solve any problems you might have!”
“Oh, those pieces of metal couldn’t much change my fortune.” Mr. Grey said this while flicking his eyes at everything except the too-close face of Bugwitch. He didn’t see the delightful shine which bloomed in the pits of that man’s eyes.
The tram lurched in the tar jelly. Bugwitch used the opportunity to drop a hand on Mr. Grey’s shoulder, and shouted into his ear. “Japes! Why, securities as those’d make a fresh fella out of a old one!” Mr. Grey didn’t think this needed translating.
Poor Mr. Grey. The nuts and bolts were a gift from his work anniversary. He hadn’t lied; the ‘fastenings’ wouldn’t make or break his fortunes. But neither were nuts and bolts small change. Next to grand treasures like carafes, or famous last words, nuts and bolts sat as the pinnacle denomination in the current market. One could buy a spectacular enchantment with a few nuts and bolts; or many ordinary enchantments; or a nice meal, more than just beans. Bugwitch’s pungent proximity, and the frustrations with Ms. Maysey and Jodee Coats, distracted Mr. Grey. He’d let slip to the stoop dweller that those nuts and bolts weren’t so significant to him. Short of refusal, which he felt was hollow and rude, Mr. Grey saw no path to walk besides the one his words had inadvertently set him to.
Mr. Grey said, “You could make better use of these fasteners.”
It wasn’t enough, however, for the beggar to have Mr. Grey hand the treasure over. Bugwitch refused Mr. Grey’s offer; with that air of refusing which conveys the opposite desire. His exact words needn’t be given in their confused entirety. Suffice to say, Bugwitch played his advantage to a sweeping victory. He used his close proximity, and his disingenuous rejections, and the injustices he’d suffered under the Starharbor authority - Mr. Grey’s own employer - to their fullest effect. Bugwitch didn’t simply convince Mr. Grey to give the whole pile lying in his treasure purse; Mr. Grey, in the end, begged the dweller to take it.
The deed done, Bugwitch finally leaned back from Mr. Grey. He dropped the nuts, bolts, feathers, pebbles, and the novelty spoon into his own purse. They met other treasures with a series of clinks. The stoop dweller said, “You’re a goodun, n’ I hope yer fortunes work out.”
Mr. Grey’s stoic posture drooped. He said, “I can only wait and watch. It’s been a weary day, I tell you.”
Mr. Grey was about to go on. In Bugwitch, Mr. Grey saw an ear to lean on, now that they’d finished their transaction. Just then the brass horn above them declared, “Entering: Milliners Street. Next Stop: Briar Chafing.”
Bugwitch stood. He turned to Mr. Grey and bowed shortly, affording a view of his grimy bald head. He said, “My stop… In riper hills we’ll ogle together. Till then, good gloaming to you,” which was his own peculiar farewell.
Bugwitch disembarked at the station, and left Mr. Grey waiting alone.