The Workhouse War

By Leigh Kimmel

An afternoon for sketching in peace – that was all Nadine Darby wanted. She thought she was taking a shortcut to get past an overgrown levee and gain a better view of the Mississippi for some landscape work. Instead she ended up somewhere else. A place called Elyssium, where the past walks alongside the present. Where you can see a modern car pull up and a Confederate Navy officer climb out, talking on a cellphone.

On the riverbank Nadine met a strange little man who told her he was an artist as well, and showed her his sketchbook to prove it. But no sooner had Nadine made her first friend than she discovered all was not well. She watched in helpless horror as a young man was pursued, arrested and beaten by thugs from an institution that goes by the official name of the City Orphanage, but is generally called the Workhouse by the inhabitants of Port of White Fleet.

Nadine can count herself fortunate that she fell into the company of a man who has little use for this organization. But his efforts to help her attain her artistic ambitions instead attract the attention she must avoid, and draws her into quarrels that have simmered for decades.

Can Nadine thread her way through the myriad perils of this world and save herself and her new-found friends? And even if she defeats the Workhouse, will it be at the cost of losing everything she's found here?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Starship Cat Press
• Release date: Apr 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215882825

Book preview

ONE

The crisp December air crackled with the promise of magic. Nadine Darby inhaled deep lungfuls, letting them energize her from the inside out. This would be her special secret. No use giving adults a chance to smile and tell her, There is no such thing as magic.

But there is, if only you know how to see it. Like in French class, she'd been reading an excerpt of Saint-Simon's memoirs. Halfway through, she was no longer translating into English, but thinking in French. As if a hand had drawn back a curtain in her mind, she saw Versailles, the glittering court of the Sun King. She could have painted it on the spot, so clear was the vision.

That was magic. Would the Wainwrights ever have such a moment of crystal clarity? They were poor indeed, if all their beloved money couldn't buy them the ability to see the wonder in a moment's discovery, the marvel of a few lines shaping a vista of beauty.

Nadine turned that idea over in her head. She had never thought of her foster parents as pitiful.

Her stomach clenched with hunger. Two more hours until supper, and two more weeks without lunch before she'd have the broken lamp paid for. She hadn't bothered asking Mrs. Wainwright for the money. Easier to pay it her own way than endure a ten-minute interrogation as to exactly why she'd been so close to the teacher's desk in the first place, followed by a lecture about how much it cost to feed and clothe careless and irresponsible teenagers.

In three more years she would be eighteen, out of the Tennessee child welfare system. Until then she would endure her assigned foster parents with the best cheer she could manage. Joys might be few and far between, but she would welcome them when they came.

Today Mr. Wainwright would be working late, while Mrs. Wainwright's weekly bridge club met until six. That gave Nadine two hours free after school. She couldn't throw away this chance to go down to the banks of the Mississippi and sketch the river traffic.

Her stomach growled again, hard. She pushed it from her mind by thinking of JMW Turner, England's greatest landscape painter and her personal hero. He wouldn't have let mere hunger keep him from sketching. Most likely he would have taken inspiration from his adversity. His painting Ship Going Down in a Snowstorm grew from riding out a storm at sea.

Ahead the brush thickened into a regular bramble. Nadine paused to scan it. She couldn't present the Wainwrights with a torn winter coat.

Still, she hated to lose even a few precious minutes backtracking. Could she find a shortcut to the riverfront?

After a few minutes' fruitless searching she found the metal scoop of a culvert opening, taller than herself. Nadine peered through at the glimmer of light from the far end. Only a trickle of water dampened the bottom.

Nadine contrasted it with the impassable hedge on either side, all the way to the top of the levee. She ducked inside. Her footsteps echoed in the confined dimness.

Before her the air shimmered and solidified into a golden image of a wavy-rayed sun. Nadine blinked but it remained, blocking her way. She pressed forward, intending to push it aside. For a moment it wavered, but it held fast.

A voice spoke in her head, You may pass. The sun-image vanished.

Nadine ran the last part of the way and gulped great lungfuls of fresh air, moist with the muddy smell of river water. Whew, that was close. I must've been breathing some kind of gas in there.

A flash of light caught her attention. At her feet shards of glass lay scattered like the fragments of that wretched lamp. At that thought her stomach growled again.

I won't let you beat me. Nadine spoke aloud to no one in particular. I'm going to make art out of my misfortune, just like Turner would. In the distance a towboat blew its whistle as if in reply.

She swung her backpack to the ground. Her hands slid between the schoolbooks to find the slim leather-bound sketchbook in its hiding place near the bottom. She flipped through the pages in search of a blank one. How much longer would it last? What would she do when she filled the last bit of white space?

No use worrying about it now—more important to make good use of her time. Nadine retrieved her pencil. With a few quick lines she laid out the stones and fragments of glass. Satisfied with her composition, she used the side of the lead to add lights and darks. Here and there she erased a tiny bit for a highlight. The neck of the bottle, which had remained intact, had the most complex lines. She had to get the perspective of all the curves just right or it'd look warped.

It looked like a rum bottle. Nadine recalled some trouble at the Fowlers' over a rum bottle. Pop Fowler had thought she was trying to sneak a drink. Only when she'd shown him her sketchbook had he believed her. After that he'd constantly kidded her about being the little artist. At first she hadn't minded the ribbing, but it had gotten old by the time she got reassigned to the Ordmunds.

Finished, Nadine closed her sketchbook and bent to retrieve her backpack. It had tipped over and spilled books everywhere. Nadine grabbed her textbooks, the library copy of Oliver Twist for her term paper in English, the crumbling three-ringed binder with the Peter Pan cover, and the tattered paperback of Mr. Midshipman Hornblower she'd forgotten to give back when Department of Children's Services reassigned her to the Wainwrights in the chaos after the Ordmund boy's accident.

When she had everything in her backpack, Nadine scanned the area for a suitable place for some sustained landscape drawing. About a dozen feet from the culvert opening, she located a fair-sized rock with a flat top. When she sat down, the chill crept through her thin jeans, but she gritted her teeth and set to work on a panoramic view of the river. Being within walking distance of the Mississippi was one tiny upside to Memphis DCS sending her to the Wainwrights.

What a sorry couple they were. She'd been right to pity them. Someone must've told them DCS would pay them money to take in foster children. Charles Dickens would've had a field day writing about them. Could even the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future awaken a spirit of genuine charity in their hearts?

Nadine sketched the broad shapes of the river and its banks, and the buildings half-hidden in haze on the far bank. A few curving lines indicated the double-level steel bridge downstream—I-55 or I-40, she wasn't sure which. She decided not to include any of the barges, or the two paddlewheel riverboats, likely floating casinos.

A suitable composition established, she worked in details, from the buoys that marked the main channel to the bits of whiteness in the shallows where the water ran over sandbars just below the surface. Several ducks bobbed along in the reeds where water met land. Should she work them in? No—better to do a study of them on another page.

Overhead a huge commercial jet rose into the cloud layer, high enough to make its engines a distant rumble. Nadine paused to watch how the details blurred out as it bored deeper into the obscuring mist. She needed only a few touches of pencil to suggest the airplane in her picture. That small change made the overcast sky a bit softer, less like a ceiling of beaten lead hard enough to break the top branches of the trees.

Nadine studied her drawing. Was there anything more she should add, or was it time to stop before she overworked it?

A sudden motion caught her eye. A broad-winged brown bird rose from the river, the silvery tail of a fish flopping in its beak.

That's a brown pelican. Memories came back of trips downriver to visit Uncle Hank in New Orleans. I wonder how one of those got all the way up to Memphis. Maybe on a barge going back north?

Nadine tracked the pelican until it flew behind a nearby magnolia. Under the tree a short, stout man watched with an intent expression. He leaned his shoulder against the magnolia's trunk and jotted something in a small book. His battered top hat and long overcoat with the full cape made him resembled someone out of a Dickens novel. Nadine tried to remember where she'd seen anything about a local theater putting on an adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

He looked up from his book and walked over to her. 'Ullo. I see you're something of an artist.

Nadine's hands reflexively slammed her sketchbook shut and groped for her backpack. Her mind sorted out his accent. Surely that couldn't be an act.

Eh? The little man's lips curled upward in a smile. The gaze of his steel-gray eyes was tender rather than judgmental. Ye needn't be afraid of me. I'm an artist myself.

Nadine forced herself to breathe slowly, until she could speak. Uh, sir? You are? The little man seemed strangely familiar, but Nadine remained wary. How about you show me your sketchbook first and I'll show you mine.

The little man hesitated and Nadine wondered if she'd angered him. He flipped through the book, small enough to fit in his palm, and opened it to a page on which delicate pencil lines traced a complex of buildings and wharves along a waterfront. Steel cranes loaded and unloaded ships tied up at the various piers, while trucks moved between them and the warehouses.

With a broad, misshapen thumb that ended in a nail like an eagle's claw, he turned the page. Here was a close study of a single ship, executed in those same fine gray lines. There was something strangely familiar about his technique and composition.

Neat. Nadine reopened her own sketchbook. The cover fell open to the flyleaf where her grandmother had written in the neat handwriting she'd had until her last illness, To Nadine Darby from Grandma Ellen.

The little man nodded and perched himself on the rock beside Nadine as she leafed through the pages. Seeing her drawings of the old home sent a clench of grief through her guts, but she pushed onward. There was the stark pen work she'd done of the waiting room at the hospital, between fits of wading through her grandmother's copy of Ruskin's Modern Painters. Part of the time Nadine had actually tried to draw all the medical equipment that had dragged out her grandmother's death in a vain effort to stave it off, but most of the time she'd simply scribbled out her own helplessness and fear in patterns of jagged lines.

Nadine gulped and blinked back the tears, but she made herself keep turning pages, moving on to drawings from her time with the Fowlers and then the Ordmunds. There was the cartoon she'd drawn of Mrs. Ordmund while they were at the emergency room with Peter after he'd pulled that pan of soup down on himself. It shocked Nadine a little to realize just how mean it looked now.

Beside her, her companion nodded. Hmmm. Is she why you're so afraid of me asking if you're an artist?

Nadine shook her head. No, sir, that's Mrs. Ordmund, my last foster mother. She actually thought my art was kinda cool, until the night her boy got hurt. She left the pan with the handle hanging over the edge, and I was trying to move it when Peter grabbed it, so she thought I dumped it on him. After that I got sent to the Wainwrights with a notation in my permanent record.

She turned to a drawing of Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright, both pursing their lips in disapproval. They're the ones who keep hounding me to make myself useful instead of sitting on my lazy butt scribbling, and how all artists are unstable and come to bad ends. Nadine stopped. I'm sorry, that's self-pity. You asked to see my sketchbook, not listen to me blather about all my problems.

The little man smiled. You needn't apologize, Nadine. Not every artist is blessed with parents like my daddy.

Nadine tensed. How did you know my name?

He spread his hands in a placating gesture.  It was right there in the front of your sketchbook. Didn't you want me to use it?

Sorry, sir. I guess it just startled me, especially since I don't even know your name. Nadine studied him, wondering if she should ask more directly.

He frowned and ran his fingers through his curly sidewhiskers. The children call me Puggy, so that can do for a name.

Nadine considered that, then decided not to remark upon the absurd appellation. If that was what he wanted to be called, she'd simply accept it. He seemed harmless enough.

In the distance a clock chimed the hour. Nadine tensed and wondered if she had lost track of the time so badly that it was already six and the Wainwrights would get home to find her absent. A quick look at her watch confirmed that it was only five.

The bells continued to toll not just six, but seven and eight, all the way to twelve. Nadine tapped her watch, but the numbers in the window stubbornly remained 5:00.

Puggy reached into his overcoat and produced a tarnished silver watch. He flipped open the cover to show both hands together at XII. Tis noon.

Nadine moistened her lips and looked back at her own watch, which changed to 5:01. Um, this sure isn't the Memphis I know.

Memphis? Puggy raised his eyebrows.

Yeah, Memphis, Tennessee. Y'know, Graceland....

Ahh, in America. Upriver of Nawlins. The Louisiana pronunciation of New Orleans sounded oddly out of place in his Cockney speech. No, this city is Port of White Fleet.

Nadine gazed back at the river. Then that's not the Mississippi either.

No, that's the White River. Runs eight thousand miles from Lake Lhune in the Dreamcatcher Mountains to White Fleet Harbor. I've painted a good bit of it myself. I's the first man up to Lake Lhune, and I did seven watercolors of it with water taken straight from the lake. One of these days you'll have to see my painting of the First Cataract, where the White River first falls out of Lake Lhune...

Nadine gave him a slow nod. None of those names sounded familiar, and she'd thought she had a fairly decent grasp of geography. "Eight thousand miles? Did I hear you right, or do you mean 'a thousand'?"

No, you heard me right. Eight thousand miles.

Where on earth is there an eight-thousand-mile river? Nadine looked squarely into his eyes.

Puggy shook his head. Ye're not on Earth anymore, m'dear. This is Elysium.

Joy hit Nadine like a jolt of pure power. She'd always enjoyed stories like Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz in which kids went to other worlds. More than once she'd dreamed of having adventures of her own, even played them out before she got too old for make-believe play. But actually having one—that had been too much to hope for.

But there were too many differences for her to ignore—the pelican, the five-hour time shift. She recalled the wavy-rayed sun—that must have been the gate, or its keeper.

A thought nagged at her. She'd always disliked the way those world-traveling stories always ended with the kids going straight back to Earth. Was that just a rule of fiction structure like the ones about plot and character they talked about in lit class, or was it a real rule about world-traveling?

Puggy chuckled and lightly patted the back of Nadine's hand. What a wretched host I've been. How about a bite to eat?

He pulled back his overcoat. From the pocket of an equally antiquated frock coat he pulled a package wrapped in brown paper. Tis nothing special, but it'll fill ye up.

The scent of fresh-baked bread tickled Nadine's nose. She quickly squelched the grief-laden memories that brought back.

Under Puggy's small hands the paper crackled back to reveal a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese. Saliva welled up under Nadine's tongue, and her stomach reminded her how long it had been since her meager breakfast. She swallowed hard as her hunger warred with an upbringing that told her she must not take food from strangers. Yet she couldn't shake the notion that she knew Puggy, that she had known him for many years.

Puggy did not wait for her to express interest, but broke the loaf and pressed one half into her hand. Here, no need to be shy.

The last shreds of Nadine's self-control collapsed. She barely remembered to thank Puggy before biting in.

His lips twitched into a smile. I thought you looked hungry. He performed a similar division on the cheese and handed her a portion, then reached back into his pocket to extract an insulated bottle.

Ah, m'dragon's sent me some of her favorite coffee. Says it'll keep me warm in this cold weather, although for myself I'd prefer a nip of rum. Laughing at his own joke, he opened the bottle to let a thread of steam escape into the chill air.

The smell of coffee brought back more painful memories, some of her grandmother's kitchen, but too many of Mr. Wainwright getting ready to go to the office. All the same, a hot drink would be welcome right now. She hadn't realized how cold she'd gotten until the promise of warmth stood before her.

Puggy extended the bottle. I hope you don't mind drinking from the same cup as me, but I didn't expect to be sharing my lunch. He punctuated the remark with a long, crooning laugh.

No problem if you don't mind. Nadine accepted the proffered bottle. Even the heat seeping through the insulation was enough to warm her chilled hands.

The coffee was rich and strong, with a hint of nuts and chocolate. Nadine took a long pull, then realized she mustn't take more than her share. She quickly handed it back to Puggy.

Y'said something about foster parents. Ye don't live with your own family?

Nadine shook her head. My folks died when I was a baby, so I lived with my grandmother until she died last year... When she noticed the tears forming at the corners of Puggy's eyes, she paused. You don't have to feel bad. Grandma was eighty-two, and she had a full life. She taught art in school for thirty years even when the school board tried to ax it. She raised my dad by herself after Grandpa died, and then she raised me.

Puggy shook his head. No, not for her, for you, left all alone with strangers...

Nadine bit her lip. I guess I shouldn't have been complaining about the Wainwrights. Other than their not liking art, they're really not that bad. They don't have ants in their pantry, and they're not like that first foster home, where the kids made me eat out of the dog dish.

Puggy's ruddy face darkened and his hands tightened into fists. He snarled through his teeth, "What was wrong with them? Did they enjoy hurting people?"

Nadine gestured to calm him. "It wasn't that bad. They were ten and eleven. It was a dumb prank."

Puggy relaxed, although his expression remained grim. Still, it's the sort of thing I'd expect of the Workhouse.

Workhouse? Nadine recalled her earlier thoughts that Puggy looked like he'd stepped out of a Dickens novel.

Puggy let a long breath escape through his gritted teeth. It's what people call the City Orphanage. A hundred children or more, packed in a building like a factory that's run by a pack of crooks. No fun, no play, just toil for their masters. Hmpf!

Seagulls screeched overhead and the distant toot of a tugboat whistle echoed across the river. From the nearby brush came a crash. Out burst a young man, legs pumping and arms flailing. He took no notice of Nadine or Puggy, but ran headlong through the dry weeds along the riverbank.

More crashing came from the brush upslope. The branches parted and two men burst out after him, thick black truncheons in their clenched fists.

Damnation! Puggy scrambled off the rock. Hide!

Nadine struggled to ignore the dampness of the ground seeping through the cloth under her knees. Puggy had done better, squatting on his short legs so his butt rested on his heels and only the skirts of his overcoat touched soil.

The young man got within a dozen feet of the river's edge when he tripped and fell headlong. He pulled himself to his knees in an effort to resume his flight, but his pursuers closed the distance with a few long strides.

Please, no! He raised an arm as a shield against the coming blows.

The truncheons arced downward. *WHUCK!* *WHUCK!*

Nadine cringed at the hollow thuds of rubber smacking against flesh and the cries of pain that grew more shrill and wordless the longer the beating continued. Tears of sympathy burned hot in the corners of her eyes and she blinked hard to keep them from falling, to keep her vision clear in case she had to act fast.

One of the men screamed at him in words so vulgar that Nadine's face flushed hot just hearing them. Tears formed at the corners of Puggy's eyes and he tightened his lips into a thin line. He gave her a slow shake of his head.

From the other direction came the sound of footsteps through the brush, slow and deliberate. The branches parted and out stepped a tall man in a tricorn hat and a long black cloak.

Enough! The newcomer's voice resounded with authority.

For a moment the first two hesitated. They lowered their truncheons and turned to him.

The newcomer gestured with a brass-handled walking stick. Just how many times did you hit him?

Jus 'nuff to larn 'im a lesson.

Oh, I see. The wind blew Tricorn Hat's cloak back to reveal a handsome blue frock coat and tan knee-breeches, before he pulled it closed. Perhaps you would like to explain how he was knocked unconscious.

Prolly jus' playin' possum. The thug hawked and spat. Never did a boy no harm to give 'im a few licks.

Tricorn Hat's lips twitched. You do realize that every day he misses work recovering from your needless brutality is a day he earns no money for the City Orphanage. Not to mention dealing with the press if we have to take him to the hospital. Foxmorton is concerned about that chap from Silver Springs nosing about the Orphanage with airs of being the next Woodstein.

The second thug made a rude noise. "Why're you coddling all these Untermenschen? You ought to just clean them all out like we did back in Germany..."

Do you both want a quick ticket to Tartarus? One word to Louis— Tricorn Hat snapped his fingers in the air. The wogs are our inferiors, tis true, but it is beneath us to hate them. So long as they remember their places, it is our duty to guide and protect them. Should they forget, we correct them with pity and love, not hate.

Yeah, right. Nadine didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until all three men turned to look in their direction. Tricorn Hat gestured for the other two to hold.

You two take our runaway back to the Orphanage. I shall see to our spies.

Puggy grabbed Nadine's sleeve and said something very rapidly, his Cockney accent unintelligible. Nadine didn't need words to understand. She grabbed her backpack and hurried beside him.

TWO

Elysium might be another world, but it was definitely no trouble-free paradise. Nadine's legs already ached from the strain of climbing the steep bank while pushing through the crackly undergrowth. Her dread of tearing her winter coat shrank to insignificance after watching those thugs beat a kid to a pulp for trying to run away from the local child welfare authorities.

Back in Memphis, foster parents aren't even allowed to give swats.

Burrs found their way into Nadine's socks and bit at her ankles, but she could spare no time to pick them out. She itched with envy at Puggy's canvas-sided boots, until his feet skidded on a patch of mashed grass that her sneakers handled easily.

They broke through to mown lawn and a sidewalk. The flat surface came as a welcome change after forcing through brambles. Here she didn't have to worry about holes that might twist an ankle and leave her defenseless. Just thinking of that kid made her shudder.

Someone else bolted out of the brush. For a terrified moment Nadine thought it might be their pursuer. No, this man was bareheaded and wore no cloak, but rather a tweed coat and trousers. His long beard fluttered in the breeze. Might he be the wizard who'd summoned her to this world, fleeing now that his plans had gone awry?

The ground-eating strides of his long legs carried him to a gray car parked along the road. He wagged something at the door and jumped in. The starter produced a metallic screech that set Nadine's teeth on edge. On the second attempt it caught and the car roared alive to speed away in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

Puggy gave another snort. Wonder who that was.

That makes two of us. Nadine watched the gray car disappear around a corner. We sure could've used a ride.

He's gone. We run. Puggy hurried Nadine across the empty street and ducked through a gap in a hedge.

Ahead stood a handsome stone house behind an iron fence. Puggy did not stop at the gate, but led her right on by. He spurned the other houses as well, although