Free Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs

slithering voice just loud enough for us to hear. “Actual population seven thousand two hundred and six, official population zero. The city fathers, in their wisdom, refuse even to acknowledge its existence. The charming body of water in whose current we’re currently drifting is called Fever Ditch, and the factory waste, night soil, andanimal carcasses which flow perpetually into it are the source not only of its bewitching odor but also of disease outbreaks so regular you could set your watch to them and so spectacular that this entire area has been dubbed ‘the Capital of Cholera.’
    â€œAnd yet …” He raised a black-draped arm toward a young girl lowering a bucket into the water. “For many of these unfortunate souls, it serves as both sewer and spring.”
    â€œShe isn’t going to
drink
that!” Emma said, horrified.
    â€œIn a few days, once the heavy particles settle, she’ll skim the clearest liquid from the top.”
    Emma recoiled. “No …”
    â€œYes. Terrible shame,” Sharon said casually, then continued rattling off facts as if reciting from a book. “The citizenry’s primary occupations are rubbish picking and luring strangers into the Acre to cosh them on the head and rob them. For amusement, they ingest whatever flammable liquids are at hand and sing badly at the top of their lungs. The area’s main exports are smelted iron slag, bone meal, and misery. Notable landmarks include—”
    â€œIt isn’t funny,” Emma interrupted.
    â€œPardon me?”
    â€œI said, it isn’t funny! These people are suffering, and you’re making jokes about it!”
    I am not making jokes,” Sharon replied imperiously. “I’m providing you with valuable information that may save your life. But if you’d rather plunge into this jungle cocooned in ignorance …”
    â€œWe wouldn’t,” I said. “She’s very sorry. Please keep going.”
    Emma shot me a disapproving look, and I disapproved right back at her. This was no time to take a stand on political correctness, even if Sharon sounded a bit heartless.
    â€œKeep your voices down, for Hades’ sake,” Sharon said irritably. “Now, as I was saying. Notable landmarks include St. Rutledge’s Foundlings’ Prison, a forward-thinking institution which jails orphans before they’ve had the opportunity to commitany crimes, thereby saving society enormous cost and trouble; St. Barnabus’s Asylum for Lunatics, Mountebanks, and the Criminally Mischievous, which operates on a voluntary, outpatient basis and is nearly always empty; and Smoking Street, which has been in flames for eighty-seven years due to an underground fire no one’s bothered to extinguish. Ah,” he said, pointing to a blackened clearing between houses on the bank. “Here’s one end of it, which, as you can see, is burnt to a crisp.”
    Several men were at work in the clearing, hammering on a wooden frame—rebuilding one of the houses, I assumed—and when they saw us passing they stopped to shout hello to Sharon, who gave just a token wave back, as if slightly embarrassed.
    â€œFriends of yours?” I asked.
    â€œDistant relations,” he muttered. “Gallows rigging is our family trade …”
    â€œ
What
rigging?” said Emma.
    Before he could answer, the men had resumed work, singing loudly as they swung their hammers: “Hark to the clinking of hammers! Hark to the driving of nails! What fun to build a gallows, the cure for all that ails!”
    If I hadn’t been so horrified, I might’ve broken out laughing.
    * * *
    We coursed steadily down Fever Ditch. Like hands closing around us, it seemed to narrow with every stroke of Sharon’s staff, sometimes so dramatically that the footbridges crossing it became unnecessary; you could practically leap across the water from roof to roof,