The conveyor belt cranker’s lips were blue. The boy, feeding the boiler coals, coughs were the struggle sputters of a pipe clogged with rat corpses. Bel winced. They were sick. All the boys of Sir WinterBottom’s Smeltery were.   

Bel gripped the smooth-jawed pliers. One more silver-dusted link added to the chain. Another boy wheezed behind them.

***

Aborted coughs, blue lips. 

It’s what Bel rose to that morning. Their brother, Tiny, lay beside on the heap of straw.  More doll than boy. Like the trussed-up ones sitting behind the window glass of Nemo Jagger’s Toy Emporium. But Tiny couldn’t sit up. And his cheeks weren’t rosy with red paint. His eyes remained closed. A frightfully hot brow, like a small furnace raged in his skull, threatening to burn through and torch the entire block and beyond, not stopping till the Thames glowed like molten gold. 

The packet from the apothecary was empty. Mum boiled the leftover gristle from the swine hoof, but Tiny hadn’t swallowed a spoonful. If he remained in this condition…

Bel gathered their things and ran out. 

Mum’s cries wouldn’t summon them back. 

Tiny needed more medicine, better medicine. The expensive kind glittering on the top shelves of the apothecary shoppe, like Star-toppers on Christmas trees. 

***

Bel sold their braids to the wig maker. Their ribbons to the haberdasher. The dress of faded salmon too. The feel of their shorn skull excited Bel in ways they hadn’t anticipated. Even with the cold nipping ever-constantly at Bel’s naked dome and neck; at least they were no longer hidden. Headfirst, they felt bolder. Every step more like themselves. Even though the coins collected barely jingling in their pocket. It was a start. 

With a rope, Peter’s old trousers almost stayed up on their own.  Aided by Bel’s hips jutting out like two hooks now. This way, Bel could find work at Sir WinterBottom’s Smeltery and earn enough coppers to visit the apothecary. 

***

“Belle?” Sir WinterBottom asked suspiciously, finally looking up from the mountain range of orders burying his desk, “Like en Francais beauty?”

“Nah Bel,” They said, with fists on their hips, “Me mum likes the clang of ‘em at St. Paul’s Sir.”

The words fell out of Bel’s mouth faster than coppers from a Lord’s purse. They fit into their mouth like caramelized pears. Bel. It lashed off the tongue like a coachman cracking his whip. Bel. Tiny would’ve laughed if he’d been there. And he would if he could just hold on a bit longer. 

“Well that little foozler at workstation 11, perished last night. How selfish,” Sir WinterBottom brandished his fluffy quill like a lance, “Did he not realize the holiday rush is upon us? Pocket watches are en vogue! Gentlemen will need chains to dangle them from to flash at holiday parties and feasts!”

Bel nodded, staring out the window of Sir WinterBottom’s office, overlooking the lines of boys hunched over the moving belts and hissing machines. Bel’s fingers were already ice, but they wiggled their fingers like two spiders waltzing. 

“Well Sir, you may be looking at yer very own Christmas Miracle!”

***

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

Bel squinted adding another link to the chain. Almost long enough to fit around their wrist.  They wondered if Tiny had woken yet. The sun was already setting, splashing down from the line of loft windows, painting the boys and machines with the rosy gold glaze on an apple Charlotte. Bel’s stomach grumbled. Their eyes hurt and felt a headache’s grip. They’d lost the feelings in their fingers, ears and toes ages ago. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Bel looked up, imagining the ceaseless ticking of Sir WinterBottom’s pocket watch, warm and cushioned in the purpletine crushed velvet of his vest. His heels clacked on the gangway above their heads. Bel watched him take out the pocket watch with matching crushed velvety purpletine gloves. The silver-dusted chain sparkled down on them.

Bel imagined Tiny hanging from one of those chains. Dangling above the belching chimneys of Londontowne. Struggling to hold on, his legs kicked weakly at the air like a fishmonger’s prize. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

His body thrashing with each cough. His grip slipping.  

Bel’s vision blurred. The Smeltery disappeared. Even with a day’s wages from Sir WinterBottom’s purse combined with the coins from the hair, ribbons and dress- would that be enough?

Tiny was running out of time. 

All of them were. Death was around every corner, lounging in every alley. Dancing to the cacophony of coughs. Jigging to melody of gasps and moans as everyone drowned in their own phlegm. 

Who could afford more time? 

Bel wiped at their wet cheeks. An idea rumbled in their guts deafening the growl of hunger, blowing it out to sea. Winter’s endless chill melted away. 

Who could afford more time? 

A slight smile tugged at Bel’s lips.

Lord Humbugger could. 

***

“His door knocker, is the head of a beast.” Bel’s father had once said during a dinner of sardines and burnt crusts, regaling them with tales of his boss, their benefactor, “In the brightest of brass about the size of large pot! God Bless the man and his garish whims!”

God bless him indeed… Bel thought.  The wages from the Smeltery would probably not cover a cure for Tiny, but it wouldn’t matter. A chunk of brass from Lord Humbugger’s knocker could be sold to Old Joe. That would be enough. 

Bel had eyed a fallen chisel when a boy had collapsed with it in hand. Bel had jumped at the opportunity. They’d lifted the pale boy to his feet and slid the chisel into their own shoe. Peter’s hand-me-downs always had some wiggle room. A perfect place to slip a tool. 

The hammer had been a bit more of a challenge; but when the two hammerers discovered a pregnant mouse with a bit of food couched in her mouth; Bel pounced on the tool as the boys pounced on the skittish, weary creature. 

By the time Sir WinterBottom blew the whistle, Bel knew what they had to do. Bel didn’t even grumble like the others when Sir WinterBottom docked their pay for letting them out early for the holiday. The two pence tinkled softly in Bel’s pocket as they raced out onto the blackened snow tinted green by the lamps now lit. 

At the gates, the children were assailed by a group of dour carolers in black robes and white habits. Nuns with pinched lips and drooping cheeks wailed on about virgin births and angelic conceptions. And while some of the boys had already wrestled each other down into the snow, others had started building arsenals of snowballs to throw at the pallid choir. Bel ran past all. Pushing their sore body forward. Shaking out their numbed hands and wrists. 

Something like spit or rain splattered on Bel’s cheeks. They turned still running, “Oy what the-?”

Doused even more, like a pungent sauce- their tongue tasted funny, now musky. They’d been huffing and puffing with mouth open wide. A mistake in these parts of Londontowne. One had to dodge the hail of emptying chamber pots from above and pyramids of horse dung from below. 

Bel saw the culprit. Standing in front of the nuns, a lone priest shook his golden scepter. It ended in a bulbous orb spitting holy water at the youth who ran past. 

Bel spit the bitter taste from their mouth but journeyed onward. The priest’s offering hadn’t even the strength to wash the silver dust from their palms. Bel chuffed at the lack of divine power. No prayers were going to save Tiny. Bel had tried when he’d first gotten ill. No answers. No miracles. The deaf heavens sparkled above. Indifferent to those without tithing gold and estates. 

Bel ran through the muddy streets till they turned cobblestone. As Bel crossed over, the air began to smell of cinnamon and roasted chestnuts. Perfumes and sweet liquors.  Carriages with bells merrily jingling passed. Slurred laughs and songs from groups of friends off to parties with their arms full of ribboned packages. Houses, like tier-frosted cakes posed on either side of the wide avenues.  Windows framed in lace and bright with candles, teased glimpses of drawing rooms bursting with Christmas trees and garlands of sugar plums strung. Long tables of figgy puddings and custards in crystal bowls.  Pheasant and ruffled grouse. Boars head and spiced tarts. 

An ache spread as Bel’s belly dreamt- an anger throbbed. If they’d lived in chambers like those, Tiny would sleep on a bed of goose feathers, drinking broths and fuschine powders till well again. He’d run through hallways echoing with space. Sliding down the banisters like a squirrel decked out in holly. 

Bel grit their teeth. The fog was a cloak. But even here, it felt different. As if made of Father Christmas’ warmth and joviality- not of wailing babes and hedge-rangers fighting with stumbling sailors. No beggar wheezed into her penny whistle.  

 As Bel rounded Cornhill, the fog grew colder, like a wet burlap sack thrown around the youth.  Bel had to fight for breath. They stopped and shivered. Bel found themselves in front of a large shadow. They blinked to make the outline of a house. It stuck out, a tooth rotted, in a pearly smile. Not wreathed nor lit. It seemed to suck at the very light of the neighboring houses. It leaned towards the street like a dead tree ready to collapse. 

But at its center. On the blackest of doors, the face of the beast gleamed. Even the gloam couldn’t mask its brilliance. Large slitted eyes, daring the passerby to approach. A whiskered muzzle wrinkled up revealing gargantuan fangs. Cast mid-snarl. A wreathe of luxurious hair etched, plumed out around the beast’s furred face- betraying its savagery. Hanging from its jaw, a large brass ring like a halo ripped away from a cherub’s head. 

Even its nose chipped off would fetch a pretty shilling or two. Drawing the chisel and hammer from their shoes, Bel approached. The ring itself would only require a few well-placed knicks to dislodge. 

Bel looked both ways. 

This particular fog clutched at the lamp lights till they became the dimmest and most distant of stars.  Passersby hurled themselves through like cannonballs, trying to breach this shadowy patch as fast as possible or lest be lost forever. No sounds. The carols and bells, muted. 

Alone. 

Bel placed the chisel on the bridge of the beast’s nose. They raised their hammer high over their head, snarling back, flashing their eyeteeth. Scrunching up their nose, this shiny creature of poured brass, mounted to a rich man’s door was an affront. Bel felt a roar rising in their throat. 

Tiny is going to live.

A large crash startled Bel. It had come from above, within the walls of Lord Humbugger’s home. It had sounded like hundreds and hundreds of pocket watch chains clattering to the Smeltery floor. 

Bel heard the howling cries of an old man. Terrified. Excitement rose in Bel’s chest, blooming on their cheeks. Tingling the lobes of their ears. There was an even louder clattering, like a horde of steamer trunks dragged across the floor. 

More cries from Lord Humbugger. 

And Bel’s joy turned to fear, what could frighten a twisted vulture? Was he being torn limb from limb? Had he finally tortured the wrong employee? Had someone come to collect justice? Seizing it from the man’s pickled guts?

Bel had to see. Their heart ticked down the moments. They slid the tools back into their shoes, tightening the laces.

The clanking of metal continued above, the rattling of chains like those binding the great ships to shore. Bel shimmied up the drainpipe to the edge of the second story. The fog was thicker up there and Bel almost felt like they could walk out onto it like a carpet. They blinked the thought away, the day was too bewitching and there was no need to sink into the allure of illusion. 

Bel squinted trying to see through the frosted window. There was a lone candle flickering close to the floorboards. A massive canopy bed, the cowering form of quaking folds of maroon robe and calfskin slippers. A long silken night cap quivered, like a serpent caught.  Lord Humbugger himself. 

And beyond? Bel breathed onto the window and rubbed at the glass with their sleeve. Standing before an unlit fireplace, a glowing creature made of starlight flashed its many limbs whipping them around in all directions. Clanking and clattering thundered from the bedroom. The glass trembled with the monster’s shrieks. 

Bel almost leaned back into the fog, but they knew there was no one there to catch them. They turned away from the window.  Dizzy, their silvery palms slick. They clutched at the bricks. Bile rising, nostrils flared clawing for air. They stood on the ledge, back plastered to the wall with a cold sweat, gasping. 

What the devil had come for Scrooge?  He was a miser, a tyrant. Making everyone’s life a hell on earth, abusing Bel’s father, starving their family out, slowly killing Tiny, but what had come to feast on his sour flesh? Bel didn’t want to find out. Lord Humbugger would make a piss poor meal and whatever was in there, would not be satiated. It would need more. Bel had sensed its hunger from its cries. A desperation in its shrill. 

Bel slowed their breathing, inching their way across the ledge to the drainpipe. As they crouched to descend, the window flew open. The panes of glass shattered. Thick navy curtains billowed out like sails. The creature leapt into the sky. 

Bel cried out as they felt untethered. They slipped. No drainage pipe beneath them, only the fog and ground. They looked up to the creature traveling above. Bel blinked. It wasn’t the whipping arms of a leviathan, but chains. Not of pocket watches, but thick like the ones of a prisoner. They wrapped around the waist and arms of a translucent man in high-waist coat and knickers.  Cash boxes. Dozens of them, hanging from the chains.  

Bel didn’t think. They grabbed hold of a drooping chain and were pulled higher into the air. Like a dangerous current, Bel felt tugged farther and farther away from all that they’d known. Londontowne lay below like a greeting card mashed beneath a tosher’s heel. 

The jangling of the cash boxes jingled in Bel’s ears. Even one of them would carry more shillings than any chunk of brass knocker would fetch for. Bel climbed the chains like ropes, a cashbox clanked, and attached a few links above. 

Bel whooped as the cold night air rushed up their pants and sleeves. Bel gripped the cashbox to their chest, their legs wrapped in the chains. 

“Hold on Tiny, your medicine is coming,” Bel whispered to themself, “And I bet I can get your cure and more with all these coins! Maybe some toys and a ham!”

The soaring man turned, hearing Bel. They smiled up at him, but he did not return it. 

Startled, he cried out, “Ho!  What’s this! What are you doing young man?”

Bel had no time to correct him. And how would they have? They weren’t a Belinda, which always made them think of a frilly bonnet on a lordess, as their parents had christened them. Nor were they quite a Solomon, Dick, or Ned. 

Bel felt right. Elusive, like falling snow, landing softly, fluffy, or sometimes sleeting down hard like wasp stings, blowing with a gale’s force and slowly turning into a flurried whisper. Melting, transforming into water to join the Thames and drift out to a large sea. Clear, unmuddied, translucent like this Sir in his finely tailored high-waist coat and knickers. 

His translucent pigtail whipping in the winds. His wig flapping like a rock dove about to take flight. 

The gentleman turned back and began to descend. Bel felt their belly rise and a queasiness slosh their guts. Londontowne was fast approaching. Like a dream of falling, Bel watched as a snowy rooftop rushed up to meet them. Bel landed with a thump into a pile of snow on a rooftop lined in an iron-wrought fence. They’d dropped the cashbox in the process. Losing contact with the specter. 

“Hopefully they think it’s just Father Christmas come early… although… they wouldn’t be able to see me.” The gentleman said again, brushing at his clothes and making thunderous noises as his chains clanked against each other. The cash boxes colliding. If he hadn’t just flown or been translucent, he seemed like a perfectly, ordinary, crotchety gentleman adorned in garlands of chains, Bel thought.

“Or they shouldn’t!” He continued, “Can you see me?! I haven’t been seen in… in years!”

Bel watched the man rest his face in his hands. His near-invisible lacey sleeves rustled in the high winds.

He looked back up at Bel, “What were you doing riding my chains?”

“I uh…”  Bel laughed; they had just flown through the air gripping a translucent gentleman’s chains in pursuit of his cash boxes. Tiny would never believe this! 

The gentleman had flown so fast and far that Bel surmised they were just a few blocks from home now. Bel eyed the chains, they appeared to be made of glowing ice or blown glass. Or something else, ethereal? Preternatural?  How much would a single link fetch, Bel wondered, “You jingled like a Cash box.”

The gentleman stood up straighter, adjusting his vest and rebuttoning his high-waist coat, “Alas, my urchin of ill-fate and unfortunate height; these cash boxes are fused shut with the weight of all I had and didn’t give whilst alive. And so, I must wander the streets, poorhouse after workhouse after orphanage, lugging all of them, never to be able to distribute my- “

With an unholy clank, Bel had popped off a single link. They replaced their chisel and hammer into their shoes. 

“By Jove!” The specter said, “How did you do that? I’ve been trying to unburden myself for years!” 

Bel shrugged holding the single link in their hand, it shimmered in the moonlight. Heavy as a wheelbarrow of coal. 

“It was forged in the fires of angels. Fallen or not, I have no clue, but if you have the power to…” The specter’s face twisted in deep concentration.

“How much do you think one of ‘em links is worth?” Bel asked.

“Young pod snapper…”

“It’s Bel.”

“Pardon me Bel, Marley is what they used to call me.”

Marley clanked, approaching to cup Bel’s open hands in his own, “Your hands are covered in silver!”

Bel shrugged, eyes remaining on the freed link.

“And you’ve got a smell…” Marely continued, “I am repulsed yet drawn towards you… its sewage and…”

Marley’s arms shot up above his head like a dancing bear’s, “Frankincense!”

Bel looked up at him and couldn’t help but smile at the ludicrous display.  Marley’s chains hung like curtains of iron from his flapping arms, cashboxes dangling. His preternatural strength like a dockman’s to wave about in such a fashion.

“It’s holy water, Bel! 

Bel’s eyes went wide. That jollocky priest at the gates of Sir WinterBottom’s Smeltery! He’d doused Bel in his holy offerings. 

“That must be why you can see me. Touch me!”

“So, are you saying because I’ve got silver on me hands and drenched in the priest’s holy water, that’s the reason I can see you?”

“It’s the first time anyone save my partner has, which took quite an effort and multiple tries and prayers to unknown winged and horned bureaucrats of this Purgatorio-“

Bel cut in. There was no time for festive revelations or a gentleman’s flimflammery. Tiny lay sick, and possibly slipping closer and closer into this after-existence Lord Humbugger’s partner haunted, “So are you saying that no one but me and Lord Humbugger could even see you and these links?”

A dead end with a dead man’s weight in Bel’s hands. The link now glimmered menacingly. Like a chandelier hanging high in the sky, dripping burning wax onto Bel’s cheeks. No amount of reaching towards the heavens could make it obtainable. If no one else could see this link, how would Bel be able to sell it? Perhaps it had been hubris to even follow the sound of the jangling chains and cash box into the night air. 

Marley stopped his dancing. Bel felt the man’s hand rest upon their shoulder. No weight, but warmth and static come after a lightning storm.  

“Please do not cry…  With even one link gone, I feel so much lighter, and I feel like I could even go to olde Fezziwig’s and dance a mighty jig… Imagine if you removed more of them for me!”

“A pox on your revels!” Bel said pushing through the specter; walking towards the edge of the roof, “Me brutha is dying while you rich even in death can dance, jingling coins unspent, ungiven…”

 Bel looked past the slanting shingles and blanket of smog, to the streets below brimming with people, carriages, and wagons milling about like pieces of debris caught in the Thames. Bel could hear cartwheels crunching the snow, the jingling of bells, voices rising in the night. 

Would Tiny ever wake to traverse those roads again, join in the chorus?

“I should’ve known. I couldn’t place you at first,” Marley approached, his chains clanking across the roof, “but those grey, mousey eyes, that tiny, pointed chin and little upturned nosed. You’re a Cratchit. I didn’t recognize you, thinking you may be Peter, Martha, or Belinda.”

“Bel…” They corrected again. They were beginning to think that specters lost their hearing and sense when they lost their bodies.”

“I’ve looked in on you and your family plenty. And your dear brother… little Timothy… err… Tiny Tim.”

Bel held their breath, their tears icing over like stilled streams.

“There is a chance young Cratchit. Hope. Tis the whole purpose of my return this eve! I came back to warn Ebenezer of his malfeasance. His time draws near and he has one last chance.  Christmas is a time of miracles. Of redemption and transformation.”

“Transformation,” Bel echoed, fingers uncurling from hardened fists. They felt an explosion of heat, a combustion in their heart, as if a lamplighter’s long pole had thrust between their ribs. The warmth spread like a fiery wave, till Bel’s entire body tingled.  Like a pocket watch set ablaze, Bel’s gears whirred and spun with pure, crystalline, light beneath their skin.

“And together” Marley smiled, “We can certainly tip the scales in young Timothy’s favor.”

Bel looked up and the stars behind Marley’s translucent face glittered. Sparkling like gems, they winked down. Bel felt their radiance, their love. All was going to be well from this Winter’s eve forth. Whichever blizzards, or squalls came a’ roaring, Bel would walk through them with a newfound courage and peace. Tiny would be saved. 

“I’ve seen your skill with a chisel,” Marley said, “how do you think you’d do with a scythe?”

---