Milford - The Boneshaker

In her cupped hand she held a model of a bicycle and rider. She could see tiny gears.... But try as she might, she could see no place to wind it.

CLARION BOOKS

3 Park Avenue

New York, New York 10016

Text Copyright 2010 by Kate Milford

Illustrations copyright 2010 by Andrea Offermann

All rights reserved.

The illustrations were executed in pen and ink.

The sibyls dialogue on pp. is taken from Mesmeric Revelation by Edgar Allan Poe.

Cover design by Sharismar Rodriguez

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Milford, Kate.

The Boneshaker / by Kate Milford ; [illustrations by Andrea Offermann],
p. cm.

Summary: When Jake Limberleg brings his traveling medicine show to a small Missouri town in 1913, thirteen-year-old Natalie senses that something is wrong and, after investigating, learns that her love of automata and other machines make her the only one who can set things right.

[1. SupernaturalFiction. 2. AutomataFiction. 3. Bicycles and bicyclingFiction. 4. Medicine showsFiction. 5. DemonologyFiction. 6. MissouriHistory20th centuryFiction.] I. Offermann, Andrea, ill. II. Title.

PZ7.M594845Bon 2010
[Fic]dc22 2009045350

ISBN 978-0-547-24187-6 hardcover

ISBN 978-0-547-55004-6 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-48743-4
v4.0917

This book is for Mom, Dad, Phil, Buddy, Stephanie, Tom, Alexa, Jason, Amy, Susie, Walt, and most of all, for Nathan

S TRANGE THINGS can happen at a crossroads.

It might look like nothing but a place where two dusty roads meet, but a crossroads can be something more. A crossroads can be something special, a compass with arms reaching to places you might never find the way to again; places that might exist, or might have existed once, or might exist someday, depending on whether or not you decide to look for them.

But whatever else it might be, a crossroads is a place where you choose.

The town of Arcane sat very near one such place, a shallow bowl of waving grass and scrubby trees where two highways met alongside the remnants of a dried-up river. On one of those highways you could go all the way from Los Angeles, California, to Washington, D.C. A fellow could leave his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and visit family all the way north in Canada by way of the other. They were well-traveled roads, but there were great stretches of America along them where nothing much had yet been built, so Arcane and the other little towns that had sprung up here and there had hotels and saloons, dry-goods general stores, and water pumps and stables for the travelers passing through.

A hundred years ago, there had been a town there where the roads met, but now it was only a deserted shell of bare foundations and uneasy walls that leaned at odd angles under collapsing roofs. The founders of Arcane had started from scratch a little ways down the east-west road, and the new town had grown up stronger and bigger than the husk they now called the Old Village. But (maybe because of the nearness to that eerie, half-crumbled ghost town) travelers didnt stop off in Arcane for long. Folks bought their cans of gasoline or shoes for their horses or had a wheel replaced, but if they thought they could make it to the next town, even if the wheel bumped or the horse limped a little, they would try. People didnt like to stop in Arcane if they could help it, even if they werent sure why. Even the drifter with the carpetbag and the old tin lantern slung on a pole over his shoulder wasnt likely to linger for more than a meal and a nights rest before starting another long march. Although, with this particular drifter, it would be hard to say for certain.

My kind of town, he muttered to no one in particular as he paused where the two roads met to survey the tumble-down remains of a general store. Despite the glaring sun overhead, the lantern glowed dimly through a pattern of holes punched in the sides. It gave a quiet jangle as he turned to watch the progress of a little twist of swirling dust crossing his path.

With his free hand he yanked the felt hat off his head and wiped sweat from his forehead before shucking out of his long leather coat. He pulled a watch from his pocketa rather nicer watch than one would expect a drifter to carryand flipped it open. He glanced down the eastbound road, away from the town of Arcane, and made a noise of impatience before adjusting the carpetbag and the lantern and continuing on. He had a roustabouts lean muscle, and although life on the road usually put years on a man quicker than life in town, under the sweat and smudges of dirt his face looked young. Only his eyes, light green like old glass and lined with wrinkles from squinting against the sun, gave any impression of age.

The drifter smiled as he strode toward Arcane, but the smile was odd and awkward, and even he walked a little faster on his way out of the Old Village than he had on the way in.

The people who lived in Arcane were just like anyone else. They went to work, kept kitchen gardens and cats and dogs, and had jobs and children and houses with broken screen doors or squeaky porch steps. The children waited all year for summer holidays, then for winter holidays and presents, then for summer again. There were bullies and victims, rich kids and poor ones, like there are anywhere.

But strange things can happen at a crossroads, and even if you were a perfectly normal child in a crossroads town youd grow up hearing stories, maybe even see one of those odd happenings yourself. For instance, by the time she was thirteen years old Natalie Minks knew all those strange stories by heart. She knew the one about how the Old Village became an abandoned shell, and all the tales of that ancient forest to the southwest of Arcane, in which strange things had walked long ago. She even knew why Mrs. Corusk, who kept a little farm at the north edge of town, insisted on living by candlelight when most everybody else had had electricity since before Natalie was born.

It was hard sometimes to tell which stories were true and which ones werent, but if Natalie was sure of anything, it was that in Arcane, you couldnt be sure of anything at all.

Except maybe my family, Natalie thought as her father slammed his finger in the big barn doors the way he always did when he came into his shop. Her family never seemed to change.

Found it, he announced, waving a wrench over his head with his uninjured hand.

Natalie reached for a bicycle tire hanging on the wall and used it to pull herself up onto one of his workbenches. How fars the trip?

About a hundred and ten miles. Her father sucked in a breath. Natalie, be

A socket wrench on the bench launched itself from under her foot and skittered across the floorno wonder her dad was always tripping over things in here. Natalie grabbed the tire again to keep from stepping on her fathers collection of radio parts, only to have it spring away from the wall in her hand. Her arms windmilled.