The Luck Uglies Read Free Page A

whispered to Mrs. O’Chanter too loudly.
    â€œRiley,” Mrs. O’Chanter scolded under her breath.
    Rye fumed. “This is—”
    â€œRiley,” Mrs. O’Chanter interrupted, “why don’t you go clean up in back until I finish.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œRiley, now.”
    Rye heard the finality in Mrs. O’Chanter’s voice, so she turned and marched toward the storeroom. She gave Boil and the soldiers a glare as she passed through the curtain in the doorway. As soon as she had made it through, she quickly turned and peeled back a corner.
    Normally, Mrs. O’Chanter only sent Rye to the storeroom when she was about to do something she thought Rye shouldn’t see. Maybe she would loudly chastise the Constable and soldiers, letting everyone on Market Street know what they were up to. Rye hoped she would chase them out of the store. Even though it was against the Laws of Longchance, Rye knew that Mrs. O’Chanter kept a sharp boot knife strapped to her thigh under her dress. She called it Fair Warning. Rye had watched her chase away a gang of thieves once—one of them had almost lost a thumb. That was a lot of fun.
    Instead, she heard Mrs. O’Chanter say, “Of course, Constable Boil.”
    Rye frowned as Mrs. O’Chanter untied the blue ribbon and handed it to the Constable. She removed the pins, too, and her dark hair fell past her shoulders as Boil pressed the ribbon into his pocket. Mrs. O’Chanter unlocked a small chest and emptied a pouch of bronze bits into his hand.
    Rye pulled away from the curtain and slumped down in a corner. She crossed her arms and her ears went scarlet with anger.
    Even after all these years, it seemed her mother could still surprise her.

3
    The O’Chanters of Mud Puddle Lane

    T he O’Chanters’ cottage was the largest on Mud Puddle Lane, which is not to say that it was big or fancy, just that it had three rooms instead of two, and an attic Rye wasn’t allowed in anymore, ever since the time she fell through the ceiling and nearly crushed her sister. It also had a secret workshop Rye wasn’t supposed to know about, but did.
    Mud Puddle Lane was on the northernmost side of town, which made for a long walk to Market Street and the Willow’s Wares. It had a view of the salt bogs and, from the roof where Rye kept her pigeon coop, you could see the edge of Beyond the Shale, where towering centuries-old pine trees swayed in the winds. Mud Puddle Lane was the one village street outside of the town’s protective walls. An accident had destroyed its section of wall many years before and, for one reason or another, it was never rebuilt. Rye’s mother wasn’t a fan of walls anyway.
    Many people wouldn’t appreciate a view of the bogs, and most would prefer to live as far away from the forest’s edge as possible. Mud Puddle Lane was known to be the first stop for any hungry beast that might crawl, slither, or lurch from the trees, Bog Noblins being the most vile and malicious of the lot. Their jagged teeth and claws dripped with disease, making their bites poisonous. Three heads taller than a full-grown man, with bulging, runny eyes and lice-infested, red-orange hair in all the wrong places, they could bury themselves deep in the bogs and mudflats during the coldest days of winter and go months without eating. Unfortunately for Drowning, with spring came the hungry season.
    Rye was too young to remember the last time a Bog Noblin had run loose in the village, but she’d heard the tales. It had begun with the disappearance of a few reclusive woodsmen and stray travelers—easily written off as a hungry bear or pack of wolves on the prowl. The livestock on remote farms went next, followed by the farmers themselves. Then the village children began to disappear. In some parts of town—all of them. None were ever seen again.
    Luckily, that was all long ago. Nevertheless, once, after