Published at 21st of February 2024 11:03 pm

Chapter 35 Boy In Dungaree

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The sun, which was sneaking away quicker this time around compared to previous days, rained down its waning golden glow from where it had gone to hide behind the blue clouds. The sight of that would have worked to enrich any person with vigor a tad as that spelled the time for a ride back home. But for Elmer, at the moment, it was different. It bothered him.

He had placed himself languidly at his normal spot on the edge of the alleyway opposite the train station, plowing his eyes through the filled streets as the people about it hurried toward their intended destinations—homes, or pubs and bars, or any other place—before night fully came. But he—he remained seated. He was exhausted.

Three days had passed since he’d visited Hanky, and as well chanced upon the bookstore, and ever since then he’d used his nights to translate the words of the journal he had gotten from Dickinson.

It was going fairly well. One incomplete page in three days was good progress, right? If only he was not always falling asleep out of exhaustion, he would have done more.

While during his days he worked outside the train station, gathering whatever pence he could make. And even though he was earning so little—and he knew nothing would change that as long as he kept carrying people’s luggage—he kept returning, all for one purpose: to meet Patsy.

Though, unfortunately for him, he’d been coming ever since Monday, and even now that Thursday's curtain was slowly coming to a close, he still had not caught a whiff of her presence.

Had she been held up in something? What had happened to her? Those were the concerned questions that had been rampaging in Elmer’s head all through the day, and they did not seem to be stopping any time soon.

He had to find her. Aside from Eli Atkinson, who he had no idea on how to contact, she was the only person he could think of to help him at the moment. There were things he suspected she knew about earning a large sum of money, and he needed her assistance to dip his hands into those things.

At this point, with what he’d already done, he was basically a criminal already, so he did not care about stacking up more and more of his crimes if it would lead him closer to his goal.

Well, those crimes he thought about would only come to be possible if he was able to meet Patsy, which was seemingly becoming a fleeting dream.

Was he at fault for why she had just up and disappeared? It was likely. He really shouldn’t have asked her about those things that day.

Elmer sighed and leaned backward on the wall, shutting his eyes weakened from tiredness soon after.

What else could he possibly do to get the sum of money he needed before the allotted time if he could not find her?

Elmer’s mind sank for a while. Then, a nostalgic sensation filled his body. His thoughts cleared and the somewhat heavy burden he had been feeling on his chest lifted.

There came a few echoes of soft throbs in his ears, and as soon as they faded away, different sounds made their way in.

Through the darkness beneath his eyelids he heard the pounding of his heart, a beat at a time, slow and steady. He heard the soft breaths and whinnies of horses, and as well the clatters of carriage wheels—some distant, some close.

He heard the indistinct chatters of people. The steady hiss of smoke pumping out from the exhaust pipes of steam cars. The sounds of shoe heels making contact with the ground. The shouts of the train station officials as they chased after pickpockets. The twitters of birds up in the sky as they themselves retreated to their nests for the day.

And just like last time, the sounds filled him with ease, and he found himself falling deeper and deeper into the darkness he had plunged himself in. Each one of those sounds fading the more he fell. Until there was nothing more. Just him in the middle of something akin to a bleak, depthless and width-less void.

He could not tell if he was awake or asleep—if his eyes were open or closed. All he could tell was that he was at peace, and again, that he wanted to remain here in the darkness. It was warm and it filled him with love.

But the fact that he had experienced this uncanny sensation once before set off something in him, and he suddenly had his mind, which had been cleared of all burdens, plagued with a new one—one of skepticism.

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Bar last Saturday night when he had fallen asleep unwillingly, he had never once experienced this feeling before. It had been new to him then. So what was it, and why had he suddenly begun to feel such a way whenever he had a moment of relaxation?

He rolled about in the darkness for a while before coming to an abrupt stop as he had a thought.

Did the sensation have something to do with him becoming an Ascender?

All of a sudden his eyes snapped open as the point of a boot swept into his thigh, and that action brought into his view the same scenery of the alleyway, but now dimmed into the darkness of night. The flickers of the gas lamps lining the streets did what little they could to brighten the area, but most of it failed to make it into the alley.

He had fallen asleep—again.

“Get up,” the croaky voice of a person said, and Elmer looked up to see a middle-aged man covered in a patched worn-out coat with hands dipped into its pockets. “You’ll be the only one left once I leave, and unless you want to sleep behind bars tonight, I suggest you do too.” The man shuddered and quickly walked out of the alleyway, swerving to the left and escaping Elmer’s following gaze.

Elmer glanced about and saw the alley’s emptiness—as the man had implied it was. The Main Street still had a few carriages trodding past, but the number of people about them could be counted on one palm, and they were each already vanishing as well. It was probably near 11:00 P.M. if it was already this scanty.

Elmer had not learnt about the emperor’s night curfew until when he had stayed late on Monday while hoping to meet Patsy. And then he had wondered why she had not mentioned something of such importance to him when they had gone to the mansion.

He did not have the energy to worry about that at the moment though, so he let it slip his mind.

Letting out a deep yawn, he pushed himself up to his feet. He could not even close his eyes anymore for just a few seconds of rest now, this was what it would get him.

With a shake of his head, Elmer rested his back on the wall and blended into the darkness of the alleyway, hoping to relax a bit before he got a move on.

He looked up at the dark sky filled with little white dots which depicted the stars, and found himself thinking of nothing. But that changed shortly after as he recalled the meadow of Meadbray.

He missed it.

Lying in the grass beside Mabel while staring up at the stars in the sky. They were always so pretty when he looked at them from there. But here, in this city, they seemed so sad and empty—almost like he was.

Unexpectedly, Elmer's ears opened to allow a soft whoosh into them. And at that moment a small brown bag soared past his eyes, catching his attention and eliciting a sharp but silent inhale from him as its blur slowed down midway through his gaze before dropping to the ground beside him.

“Stop!”

He heard a shout, prompting him to turn sharply to the walkway perpendicular to the alley he was in, and catch sight of the erratic fidgets of a boy dressed in a dungaree with a flat cap on his head.

The boy glanced into the alleyway and out and into it again before shaking his head and running off.

“Stop, you rat! Stop right there!”

Elmer heard again and immediately glimpsed a person in a trench coat speed through the walkway in something of a hot pursuit while pressing down on their half top hat with a hand.

He was about to rush out of the alleyway to get a better view of what was going on when his mind reminded him of the bag that had swept past his eyes. He halted his steps before they had even started and turned over his shoulders to peek at the bag.

His throat suddenly felt dry and he used a lump of spit to cure that feeling. He turned around and bent over to pick up the bag from its handle.

It weighed quite a bit, not enough to be the superior and pull his hand down, but just enough that he knew his luggage filled with clothes most likely paled in comparison.

If a small bag like this could be heavier than his luggage—even though that too was kind of small—then what could possibly be inside?

Elmer’s curious senses tingled, and despite his constant shaking of his head to disapprove of his wants, it still remained.

I shouldn’t be doing this… He told himself.

Opening someone else’s property seemed harder to Elmer than trying to do whatever he had been planning to do with Patsy—if he had found her, of course. But still, even though he tried hard to force himself not to, his hands had a mind of their own.

He held the bag up with one hand and unfastened the buckles with the other. When they all came undone, he grabbed the bag from the side and pushed it open with a deep breath in and out. But he saw nothing. It was dark.

Elmer blinked and glanced about the alleyway in some sort of sneaky manner, before he shuffled out of the wall’s shadow and pushed himself into the tiny rays of light spilling into the alley. It was then that his heartbeat raced and his mind went blank while his mouth fell open.

His eyes had found what filled the bag. It was bundles of money.

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