Katherine spent the afternoon making charcoal. The problem with making charcoal was you had to gather the hickory branches from the deepest part of the woods and then climb for the bigger coconuts in the grove down by the shore and then stand there for hours plucking the splinters from your hands and feet and stoking the fire while the smoke spilled up all over you. If you did it long enough, you started to cough up little puffs of black smoke. And for all that, there wasn’t much money in it, even though everybody said Katherine’s coconut husk charcoal was the best. It burned hot and clean and it left no ash. What it left her was covered head to toe in soot each day, and with only a half a penny a basket from the blacksmiths in the village who used it to forge and from the riverfellas down at the waterfront who used it to filter water and from Dr. Peckinpaw who used it in his own brand of medicines for indigestion and bloating and gas.

It was hard work and it wasn’t much fun, but it wasn’t the worst job she’d ever had. When she was six, she joined up with the kids they called mudlarkers and picked through the trash heaps in the dumps at the waterfront, scavenging for salvage and trinkets. The only thing of any value she ever found was a brass ship’s bell she traded for a dozen chicken eggs, and a bamboo fishing pole she used to pull sixfingers and picklefish from the river. Why someone would throw away a perfectly good fishing pole, she couldn’t figure. At night, more often than not, she came home smelling like two wet skunks. She had to soak in a bath of tomato juice for an hour just to get the stink off.

That fall, she worked in the church house catching mice. A penny a mouse the pastor paid her. She caught seventy mice in seventeen weeks. Some of the mudlarkers joined her. They caught twenty-three more. By The Owl’s Hallowed Eve, there were still plenty of mice left to catch. But that was the day they took the pastor away.

In the winter of her seventh year, the nights were so unusually cold they said the words fell like ice cubes right out of your mouth and you couldn’t hear them until they thawed in the spring and all the lost chatter came up from the hedgerows. That year, she sold matchsticks from door to door for a penny apiece, until her fingers turned blue and icicles formed on the lashes of her eyes.

At eight, she tried selling rocks. The yellowish pebbles she found in the meadows and down along the banks of the zigzagging river. Strange little rocks. Like so many things on the island, they glowed in the dark. Like the foxfire fungus and the moss and the tiny mushrooms that glowed like embers of pale green fire smoldering on the undersides of rotting logs. Like the red algae that bloomed offshore at low tide. Like the fireflies that used to come out in the dusk in July. She thought the rocks might have some value and again she went from door to door in the village, now with a heavy basket of yellow rocks, but no one would buy them. Fool’s gold, they said. Dull and common. And who had money to spend on rocks?

At nine, Doctor Peckinpaw offered her a job plucking porcupines at his apothecary. He raised the porcupines in a pen in the back alley behind the shop and used the quills to administer his medicines and vitamin tonics. Every Saturday, Katherine plucked just as many quills as were needed for the week. By the end of the day, her arms were still covered in little red bumps and her fingers were covered in red-stained bandages that covered the quill pricks - it was delicate business getting the quills out. And the porcupines, mind you, were not very happy to give them away.

By Katherine’s tenth year, Peckinpaw began testing new concoctions. Elixirs and tonics. Balms and oils. For twice her plucking wage, she subjected herself to experiments with doses of witch hazel and lyme and the application to her legs and forearms of suckerbugs and freshwater leeches. The leeches were the worst. She had to go to the edge of the upper boglands and scoop them up herself by the jarful. No good medicines ever did come of it, except for one, which seemed to work on plantar warts and lice. Since it worked on an ailment that was found on one’s head, and it worked on an ailment which is found near one’s toes, the Doctor bottled it and sold it as Peter Peckinpaw’s Wonder Tonic, A Cure-All For What Ails You From Head to Toe.

The tonic sold well enough that Peckinpaw’s Apothecary expanded into acupuncture and he hired an apprentice. The apprentice was named Anna Crumb. She came from the far side of the island and used porcupine quills to puncture the skin and she practiced on Katherine to learn just where and where not to place the quills in a patient. When this went well it was rather relaxing for Katherine. But when it did not, she shuffled home at night with tears in her eyes, wincing with every step. Still, the pay was better than merely plucking the great porcupines, and better still than mudlarking or catching mice. She did this for most of that year, until one midafternoon in the heat of July when they finally came for Peckinpaw.

Towards the end of that summer, the Wonderful Leader posted fliers all over the island that offered ten cents a jar for every jar filled with fireflies. The jar had to have at least ten fireflies in it, and the Hobnail collectors at the manor gate counted them while you waited. Katherine went out all summer in the early evening when the fireflies came out and by September she’d filled forty jars. By the end of that summer, she’d had to go deeper and deeper into the woods, which was the only place fireflies were left to be found. She filled her forty jars. Some of the mudlarkers filled hundreds of jars. They took the jars to the guards at the collecting station outside Blackhollow Manor. Katherine stood in line and delivered a jar every night and returned home with a ten-cent piece that the collector at the gate withdrew from a big wooden penny chest, after counting them. The guards tried to short you every time. “Only nine in ‘is one!” the guard would say, and go to count nine pennies instead of handing her a ten-cent piece. “No, no, count them again, please!” Katherine would insist in her sternest tone. You had to watch those guards or they’d cheat you. By the end of the summer, it was harder and harder to find a firefly. And then one day at the end of September, someone caught the last one. After that, there weren’t any more fireflies on the island at all. What the leader did with them, no one knew.

After that, Katherine went back to making charcoal. Making charcoal wasn’t so bad, really. In fact, it was one of the better jobs to be had on the island.

In the evening, Katherine picked two peas from the vegetable garden - two small, square, beds planted beside a vine of cherry tomatoes that grew on a bamboo trellis behind the lava rock wall that ran along Collywobble Lane. And then she pulled up water from the little well that her father and Dr. Peckinpaw had dug in the dooryard over the long, hot summer before Katherine was born.

The well itself wasn’t much more than a crank and a rope and a deep hole in a circle of red bricks, but from it she pulled up hollowed-out calabash gourds filled with crystal clear water from an underground rivulet that ran deep beneath the land. Whenever she pulled up water, Katherine made wishes in the well, but not with pennies. Wishes were too expensive that way. Whatever Katherine wished for, she wished for with pebbles of fool’s gold, which she dropped into the deep, so far down she couldn’t hear the splash. She never really wished for too much – a chicken for dinner, a new pair of shoes… Though when she was feeling extravagant, she wished for a big house on the ocean with a dock for surf fishing and a boat of her own…but she figured whoever was down there granting wishes wasn’t the slightest bit fooled by the dull yellow rocks.

She wished anyway.

In the kitchen, Katherine made two pea soup, coughing little clouds of smoke as she slurped it from the bowl. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, the towel turned black with soot. She was clean now, and exhausted.

And at eleven o’clock, she went to bed.

But she couldn’t sleep. A fly flitted about in her room. Outside, a thin blanket of fog came and went, hiding and unhiding the silver moon, which hung framed in the bedroom window like a half penny in the night sky. Katherine closed one eye and pinched the moon between her finger and thumb and tried to pull the half penny to her. The fly landed on the window and crept across the glass. It crept between her thumb and finger and onto the moon.

“That’s my penny,” Katherine said, one eye still closed and holding the moon with the fly in her pinch. The slightest flicker came from the fly as it sat on the moon between her thumb and finger.

Just then, she heard her father open the cottage door and lock it behind him. She heard him slurp a bowl of one-pea soup. And then he opened the door to her room and peeked inside, holding a candle lantern.

The fly flitted away, up and onto a roof beam.

“Did you catch anything?” Katherine asked him.

Her father pushed open the door and placed the lantern on the table and sat on the side of her bed. “You should be sleeping,” her father said. “It’s late.”

Katherine looked toward him with her open eye as she held onto the moon. “What happened to the fireflies?” she asked.

“It’s late,” he said again. He leaned over and kissed her twice on the forehead. “Time for sleep.”

Katherine let go of the moon. “I remember catching them when I was little. And putting them in jars,” she said.

The fly flitted across the ceiling and landed on another roof beam.

Her father brushed her hair from her eyes. He looked at her strangely.

Katherine turned toward him. “They took Ms. Prufrock today,” she said.

Katherine’s father closed his eyes. His face tightened. When he opened his eyes, they were harder.

“I think it’s time I told you something,” her father said.

Katherine pushed herself up on her elbows. “What?”

Her father searched for the words. “Are you happy?”

Katherine frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you feel happy?” he said. “Do you think things will get better?”

She considered the question. “Happiness is selfishness,” Katherine said, reciting the words she’d been taught in school. “Forever Farflung.”

Her father nodded, but he looked at her with a mixture of patience and concern. He looked up at the fly creeping along the roof beam. After a long moment, he said. “Do you know how a fly lands on the ceiling, Katherine?”

“That’s a funny question,” Katherine said.

“Take that one there. It’s quite a trick to be flying along perfectly right-side-up, and then suddenly… whump… you’re upside-down on the ceiling. How do you suppose it gets upside down?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it,” Katherine said.

She thought about it.

“Maybe they’re always flying upside down, and we just don’t notice,” Katherine said and laughed. “But, then, if that were true, then how would they land on the floor?” She laughed again and her father smiled, but his smile quickly faded away.

“I suppose they do a little somersault,” Katherine decided. It was either that or the fly had to do a little twist to get itself upside-down just before it landed, like a corkscrew or a barrel roll.

“That’s right,” her father said, smiling and brushing her hair with his fingers. “They fly up to the ceiling and stick their front feet out and then flip themselves. When I was your age, we learned these things in school. Different things. Things they don’t teach anymore.”

“Like what?”

He looked down at her. “There’s so much more to the world, Katherine. So much more than working, and the Leaders, and…” his voice trailed off as they heard the familiar sound of horseshoes clattering up Collywobble Lane and cartwheels rolling over crushed pebbles. Her father went to the window. Under the moonlight, out of what was left of the fog, came a jail wagon toward the cottage. His face tightened. He looked at Katherine. He was suddenly very nervous.

“They’re coming,” he said.

“Who’s coming?” Katherine asked.

“Katherine, listen to me. This is important.” He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned close to her.

“What is it, father?”

“Don’t forget: Never distinguish yourself in any way,” he said quickly.

“What?”

“Be average. As average as you can be.” His words were rushed, as he turned to her. “Do you understand? Be slightly below average, if you can. But don’t be obvious about it.”

“Father?”

He went back to the window and Katherine rose from her bed and joined him. She saw the wagon stop at the end of the walk.

“There’s so much to say, Katherine. But there’s no time. I’d hoped they wouldn’t come this soon.”

He took the candle lantern and went out of the room and into the kitchen, Katherine following right behind him. He started moving their sparse furniture around the living room. He pulled the rug to the center of the room and moved an end table to the corner of the rug, talking quickly as Katherine watched him.

“Just remember this one thing, it’s the most important thing of all. If anyone ever asks you how a fly lands on the ceiling, the answer is that it sticks and flips, you’re right about that. But don’t say stick and flip. Say ‘barrel roll.’” He felt around underneath the end table and removed a false panel. A book fell to the floor.

“What’s that?” Katherine asked, having never seen the book or known about the hidden compartment in the end table.

“Focus. What do you say if someone asks how a fly lands on the ceiling?” He picked the book up and flipped through it quickly, tearing out several pages. He then tore them into pieces. He looked around the room, then strode to the fireplace. He tossed the book and the torn pages into the low fire.

“Barrel roll?” Katherine looked over at him.

“Barrel roll,” he agreed, poking at the fire with the iron poker, pushing the book as far back as possible and almost burying it under the charcoal. The edges of the book smoked and started to burn. Satisfied, he nodded and turned back to her.

“Practice with me. How does a fly land on the ceiling?”

“Barrel roll.” She answered quietly, feeling her curiosity and worry jumble up inside her.

“Are you sure it doesn’t stick and tumble?”

“I don’t know,” Katherine said, shaking her head in worry.

He walked over and held her shoulders, looking into her eyes. “If you’re ever asked, say this: ‘Yes, you’re quite right. It sticks and tumbles after all.’”

“Yes, you’re quite right, it sticks and tumbles after all…”

“Good… don’t forget.”

“Father, I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry. There’s no time.”

“Who’s coming?”

And then, just past midnight, there was a knock at the door. Katherine’s father glanced at her. She felt like her heart stopped for a moment. “I love you. You’ll be okay. Stay here,” he said and took the candle with him and went to the front door. Katherine watched from the window as two men, one large and one small, stood shoulder-to-shoulder out on the walk. A third figure, tall and thin and wearing a long black frock coat and top hat went walking in the other direction, out into the fog that blanketed the field. He leaned on a white umbrella, which he used to poke at the rocks on the ground. She startled-it was the same man from that day at school!

The knocking grew louder. “Maxwell McLarky?” came a voice from behind the door.

Katherine’s father drew a deep breath and opened the door. The two men stood in the doorway. Hobnails. The same two Hobnails Katherine had seen on the Middle Road earlier in the day.

“Can I help you?” Maxwell said.

“I’m Mr. Krupp,” the smaller man said as he stepped past Maxwell and into the cottage. “This is Mr. Suggs.” He nodded up at the bigger man who had to lower his head beneath the doorjamb as he entered. “By the order of the Objectively Wonderful Leader, you are being placed under arrest.”

“On what charge?” Maxwell asked, looking past them at the man in the field who was down on one knee picking at rocks. Krupp looked down at the paper. He turned it over and looked at the other side.

“Doesn’t say,” he said.

He handed it to Suggs, who looked at it and shrugged.

“You’re arresting me without charges?”

“Probably subversion,” Krupp said.

“Could be consorting with pirates,” Suggs said as he hiked up his belt. “Or dragontail fighting.”

“Probably subversion,” Krupp said again. “Usually is.”

Suggs nodded as he twirled his moustache between his fingers.

“Aiding the resistance, most likely,” Krupp said. His eyes were set deep in his skull and didn’t blink as he looked around the cottage. “Undermining the authority of the Leader. Fraternizing with the enemy. Aiding and abetting subversives. Spying for Farther-flung. That sort of thing,”

Suggs nodded again in agreement.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Maxwell said.

“We’ll let the administrators decide that,” Krupp said. Suggs pulled a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and locked them over Maxwell’s wrists. He moved surprisingly quickly for a big man.

“Where are you taking me?” Maxwell said.

The man looked at his paper. “Looks like it’s off to Heable Deeps with you. Now let’s go, nice and quiet, if you please. No need to make this difficult. It’s been a long night. You’re the last one on the list.”

The words sent a chill through Katherine as she stood in the hallway. The stories she’d heard of Heable Deeps made her blood run cold.

“What about my daughter?” Maxwell said.

Krupp looked down once again at the yellow paper, then looked at Suggs. They exchanged blank stares. “Doesn’t say,” he said as he flipped the paper over and examined the back. “But,” he said, casting a quick glance at Katherine veiled in the shadows of the hallway, “she looks old enough to care of herself.”

Maxwell slumped forward. “Give me a moment with her alone. To say goodbye.”

“Too late for goodbyes,” said Krupp as Suggs’ big hand landed on his shoulder and pushed him toward the door.

“Father!” Katherine cried. Maxwell broke free and stepped back to her quickly and held his cuffed hands to her chin. He looked her in the eyes and curled her hair over her ear and kissed her on the side of the head.

“Look under the rug,” he whispered into her ear.

Before he could say any more, Krupp pulled him by the elbow and he looked over his shoulder and mouthed a few desperate words, but Katherine couldn’t understand them.

Katherine felt warm tears on her cheeks. Suggs dropped the yellow letter to the floor, and they pushed Maxwell out of the house.

“Father…” Katherine said. She meant for him to hear it, but it came as a whisper. She felt, for a moment, like she was in a dream where she had no voice and could make no sound. She hurriedly followed them out, standing in the dooryard in her nightshirt, the cold wind blowing the fog through her as she watched Mr. Krupp and Mr. Suggs push her father up the walk and into the back of the jail wagon. The man in the black frock coat came out of the field under the light of the half-moon, leaning with each slow step on the umbrella he used for a cane. He stepped up into the front of the wagon, and they drove off into the darkness.

She watched after them in shocked silence, swaying slightly on the spot. What just happened? She turned back to the doorway and saw the yellow paper on the ground. She picked it up, her tears falling onto it and smudging the print. She struggled to read:

EVICTION NOTICE:

By order of our Objectively Wonderful Leader, you must remove yourself from this property within 7 days. Questions or concerns? Visit the Department of Administration for Rigmarole & Malarkey

#1 Avenue of the Mollycoddles.

Thank you for your cooperation. All hail the Objectively Wonderful Leader.

Sincerely,

Equivia Null, Quartermaster

Quarter Malarkey & The Upper Bogs

Island of Farflung

She stood there, with the yellow eviction notice in her hand, for some time. Worry prickled at her stomach. She felt a knot pulling tight in her chest. She chewed each of her fingernails to the nub.

And then she looked under the rug.