The inspiration for this story began when I was writing Mercy, but since Mercy took so long to write I waited until the entire story was finished this time before posting chapters. This ficlet is complete and will be updated as chapters are edited.
Neocolai does not own Fantastic Beasts, or a niffler... Not sure which is more tragic...
Nothing ever happened in New York City. Sure, it was considered the land of opportunity: tourists dropped by every few weeks and immigrants flocked to the bustling enterprises, but nothing happened in New York. Leastwise, that's what Jacob Kowalski figured. Working in a canning factory day in and day out tended to dampen one's perspective of the homeland.
Not that life was all that bad, Jacob considered. He had a possible future (if he could just get that loan), he and Mildred would be married in a few months, and he earned enough at his job to keep a small apartment in the heart of the city. Things could be worse. He could be sitting out on the walks with an empty cap. He could be one of many unnamed faces buried in a shallow trench. Jacob had seen war. Really, his lot could be worse.
Still, he hoped to see himself get out of this dump and into a better place; one where he could bring some cheerfulness to the people around him. No one was unhappy walking out of a bakery - as long as the doughnuts were stocked, at least. Something special like that... it gave a person hope for a better future.
Jacob sure hoped that Mr. Bingley would understand. He'd heard a couple guys in fancy suits talking about "collateral." He hoped it wasn't required for a loan - he didn't even have enough investments to buy Mildred a decent engagement ring. All of that was supposed to come after the bakery's success.
Cracking his suitcase open, Jacob scanned the contents again. His future depended on the banker's generous and sympathetic nature - something he wasn't so sure about after hearing the two suits talking.
"Pardon me, Sir, but can you tell me where to find Makoosa?"
Startling at the business card thrust under his nose, Jacob looked sharply between the card and the kid holding it. Yep, a kid, probably no older than five or six, with tousled ginger curls and intent hazel eyes. He was decked in a bright blue coat that implied his family had a small fortune, but he wasn't old enough yet to flaunt it, given how he clung to a small briefcase with white-knuckled fingers. His other hand trembled as he proffered the card again and asked in a foreign, genteel accent, "Do you know where I can find Makoosa, Sir?"
Squinting at the gold-fonted business card, Jacob mouthed the acronym. M.A.C.U.S.A. Huh. Funny name for a business.
"Sorry, don't know 'em, kid," he answered.
Frustrated, the kid gripped his small case tighter and scanned the faces milling around the bank. He licked his lips anxiously and reread the card to himself.
"You lost?" Jacob wondered.
"M'not lost!" the boy said defensively. "Theseus said I could find him at Makoosa."
"Well, this is a bank," Jacob said dubiously. "You want someone to help you find your parents, kid?"
He didn't have a chance to hear the answer. It was his turn to be interviewed, and the bank's founder didn't like to be kept waiting. Jacob sure hoped the kid found what he was looking for in the meantime.
Shortly after Jacob trudged out of the bank, shoulders slumped in defeat, he spotted the kid again. The little blue coat was hopping from beggar to businessman, showing everyone his fancy card and inquiring in that gap-toothed lisp about "Makoosa." A young lady in a grey suit and cap was starting to peak an interest in the boy's quest. So was the surliest, most cantankerous woman born of Salem, who curdled every sense of goodwill in New York City.
"What's this, Child?" Mary Lou Barebone asked with tart sweetness, swiftly approaching her perception of a wayward lamb. She bent over the tiny wanderer like an owl examining a stunted rabbit. "Are you lost?"
"Theseus is coming for me," the boy said absolutely. "I'm sp'osed to find him here."
Glancing around the dawdling crowd, Mary Lou said, "Oh? And who is Theseus?"
"My brother," the kid said, stumbling over his 'R's'.
"And what is your name, Child?"
"Newt!" the boy exclaimed proudly, as though he had practiced it long and hard. "Newt'in Art-mus Fido Scm'man'er."
"Scammaner? That's a funny name," Mary Lou commented.
The woman in the grey coat was drawing closer. Jacob bristled, not liking her sudden interest. Of course, he wasn't sure hanging around Mary Lou Barebone was any better. That woman tended to drag kids off the streets and pull them into her cult faster than a person could say, "Burn the witches."
"Hey, maybe we should ask the cops if they know about this Macusa thing," Jacob interceded uneasily, just as Mary Lou announced,
"Well, until you find your brother, why don't you come home with me?"
"Theseus is looking for me," Newt said adamantly.
"He'll find you, don't worry," Mary Lou reassured. "There's lots of people here, you see? They know where to find me, and they know you'll be staying with me until your brother comes to fetch you. Isn't that right?" she asked the crowd.
A few sycophants bobbed their heads. Most people kept walking. After the depression, they just got used to stray kids wandering around. If someone was willing to feed the endless array of stragglers, all the more blessings be upon them.
Anxiously the woman in the grey coat lurched forward. "Mrs. Barebone," she said furtively, "I really think - "
"Tut, tut!" Mary Lou cooed. "He'll be safer with my children than out on the streets. Credence, take Newton's hand. We're going home."
"You can't just - !" Helplessly the woman looked around for someone to advocate her. She bit her lip, as though contemplating something dicey and possibly illegal, then seemed to think better of it. Instead she kept in line with the crowd, craning to watch Mary Lou lead her gaggle away, with one more gosling in tow.
Jacob knew it wasn't his business, but he felt like someone should have intervened. Sending the kid home with Mary Lou Barebone... Not that she was a bad woman, he really didn't know that much about the Barebones, but still... he felt unsettled, like he'd just watched them clap a bluebird in a rusty cage.
He wasn't so good at imagining stuff, but the mental picture was so strong that he swung on his heel and tramped down the bank steps, head down low. The encounter had left a grim pall on an already despondent morning. He was starting to wish he hadn't come to the bank in the first place.
That poor kid.
Mildred didn't stick around long. Once she learned that the bakery had fallen through, none of Jacob's promises could convince her to wait a few more months. Jacob had thought their love had been for richer or poorer, but now he realized that their level of devotion had been compromised of his generosity and her acceptance. Mildred had never reciprocated his affection.
The thought left him numb and empty. He had lost his bakery and his future wife, and yet neither had truly been his own. They were sawdust dreams; featherlight and useless to the world.
Jacob tried not to think on it the next morning as he packed his briefcase. He wondered if he should start picking up extra shifts again. The work would do him good. One didn't have to think long and hard in a canning factory. He would make up the lost hours from yesterday, maybe put aside a little extra in his savings cup, and try not to think about what could have been.
It seemed ironic, or perhaps Fate would have her way, that Jacob passed by the square on his way to work. The Barebone children were there, in their plain, woolen coats and scuffed shoes. The little blue coat stood out among them like a brilliant butterfly in a gravel path.
Jacob stopped, perplexed at his own hesitancy. The boy was in a decent place - Jacob knew that the kids in Mary Lou's court were dressed and fed - and he was standing out in public where any family members could easily find him, but the picture seemed wrong. Newt held a small, crumpled stack of pamphlets in his fist, his expression that of unhappy bewilderment. His eyes flicked around as Mary Lou rallied her small band of spectators, as though he wanted to say something but thought better of it. One cheek had a faint, unnatural blush that rankled Jacob, although he wasn't sure what made it stand out to him. It was a chilly morning, after all.
Chastity held Newt's free hand in a firm grip. For such a small boy it was a marvel that he wasn't wriggling with impatience. But then, all of Mary Lou's children were unusually well behaved.
"Witches are among us!" Mary Lou carried on, her voice peeling that fabled lecture which most of the regular crowds had memorized by now. "Take heed, and beware, my friends!"
Jacob's attention was pulled back to the newest member of Mary Lou's small force. Newt was avidly biting his lip - a nervous habit he had never exhibited when he was searching for a missing brother the day before. His bright, inquisitive fearlessness had been dampened like a kitten stuck under a drainpipe.
Vaguely recalling that he needed to keep walking if he wasn't going to be late, Jacob reluctantly turned away. The kid would be fine. None of Mary Lou's children went hungry, and besides, his brother was actively looking for him.
No one would leave a kiddo like that alone in New York City, after all.
Would they?
He didn't see Newt the next day.
Or the day after that.
A week after the kid first showed up in the bank, the Barebones appeared on the square again. Funny, Jacob had never taken much notice of them before. Now he honed in on that band of ragamuffins, looking for the telltale coat.
Newt wasn't wearing it.
The peacock attire had been replaced by a worn brown jacket, suitable for crisp fall mornings and little orphan boys. As if Mary Lou had already proclaimed that no family was coming to reclaim her newest convert. Disgruntled, Jacob glanced around the square, wondering if anyone else noticed the change - or even cared. Businessmen and secretaries brushed past him. A mother of three yapped for her children to keep up. Who would even bother to take note of one more curly-haired pup?
Shaking his head, Jacob turned back to the kid. There was a definite shyness that he hadn't seen when Newt was holding on to Chastity. Grubby, bandaged fingers twisted a sizable stack of pamphlets, but the boy wasn't handing them out. He stared at his scuffed shoes, marring them further by dragging them across the pavement. His curls had been flattened and neatly combed back. The tidiness offset his glum pout.
For a second Jacob contemplated how the boy resembled Credence. The hunched shoulders and quivering, broody silence... But then Jacob shook his head. Broody did not describe little Newt. The kid was more like an anxious sparrow trying not to burst into song.
That truly was a sad comparison.
A shifting of grey drew Jacob's attention to another observer. The lady in the grey coat and hat was hovering again. She caught Jacob's eye and he glimpsed despair before she turned up her coat collar, obviously trying to avoid notice. Who was she hiding from?
"Here. Here."
Paper tapped at against Jacob's elbow. He looked down to see a little girl with looped braids prodding him with one of the pamphlets.
"Oh, uh... yeah." On impulse Jacob accepted it, and the child grinned. What did Mary Lou teach those kids to make them so darn cheerful about her cult?
"My momma, your momma, witches gonna die," the girl sang softly to herself, skipping up to the next hapless loiterer. She passed by Newt and Jacob saw a quick spasm crossing the boy's face.
The kid looked frozen to the cobblestones. His pamphlets drooped in his trembling hands, until Credence nudged his elbow and tugged out one paper, indicating that Newt should pass them along.
Ash stole the color in the boy's cheeks.
Credence sighed. "Just pass them out, Newton," Jacob heard him murmur. "She'll hold supper again if you don't."
And right then Jacob realized he should've known all along that something was terribly wrong with the Barebone household.
He waited until Mary Barebone personally attended the square again. Once she had finished her speech, Jacob approached from the thinning crowd.
"You've attended many of our meetings, Friend," Mary Lou said as she caught his eye. "Are you seeking answers?"
Jacob fumbled. "I... actually, I'm just wondering about the kid," he said awkwardly.
Mary Lou searched her goslings until she tracked Jacob's attention to Newt. "Do you mean our Newton?" she asked. Her smile turned benign. "Well, you needn't worry over our littlest one. He is sheltered in our fold, far away from the treacherous wolves."
"Uh..." Baffled, Jacob clarified, "I mean, didn't his family come looking for him?"
Mary Lou's expression was stone. "We do not speak of those heretics. Those thieves in the graveyard. Those wolves among the sheep."
"Yeah, you mentioned wolves," Jacob commented, scratching behind his ear.
"They do not deserve this child," Mary Lou said, her voice rising in intensity. "They filled his vulnerable mind with black magic and sorcery. His proclaimed brother was a practitioner of the dark arts! I would not surrender any child to their wicked paths."
From the sudden perk in Newt's stance as he craned to peek around Credence, the boy didn't seem to think his brother was all that wicked.
"Ah, come on," Jacob said with a sheepish chuckle. "There ain't no such thing as sorcerers." He looked around, hoping someone would catch on and back him up.
Mary Lou's expression closed in disdain. "You don't think I know how to care for special children," she declared.
"I think you're pulling a bad judgment," Jacob said, astounded by his own boldness. "Somebody's gotta be missing that kid."
"Well, Mister..."
"Kowalski," Jacob filled in.
"Kowalski," Mary Lou said contemplatively. "Well, that simply isn't your call to make, now is it?"
A few words, and the most cantankerous woman in New York City had just swept his argument under the rug and wiped her hands clean. The few listeners glared at Jacob and shook their heads. Gawking, Jacob watched them tuck their hats and hurry away. Did nobody think this was wrong?
"Is there anything else?" Mary Lou said acidly.
"No, Ma'am," Jacob said with equal coolness.
So nobody was backing him. Fine. He wasn't finished with Mary Lou Barebone yet.
Somebody had to help that poor kid.
Nightfall in New York City was never truly dark. Even the back alleys had one or two lamp posts. Jacob hadn't played burglar since he was two feet tall, but old skills had stayed with him. It took a darn good bit of sneaking to filch a pinch of sugar under his grandmother's watchful eye.
Tonight he was risking his life in what he hoped the cops wouldn't write up as professional kidnapping. But then, who plucked a foreign kid off the streets and called that "charitable adoption?" Crime control in New York City was seriously messed up.
Jacob crossed himself and whispered a quick prayer, all the same.
He needn't have worried about the whole breaking and entering bit, however. He was standing a few houses down from the Barebone cottage, rubbing his clammy hands and wondering what idiot notion had dragged him here in the middle of the night, when the window shutters creaked and a small body slipped out.
Furtively the tiny shadow looked around before heaving something over the windowsill. He wrapped his arms around it and ducked as Mary Lou's voice drifted from the upstairs.
"Newton? Newton Barebone, you come when I call you!"
"Newt!" Jacob hissed hardly believing his good fortune. He stepped halfway into the lamp light and beckoned. "Come on, kid! Over here!"
There was a moment of hesitancy, as though choosing between two possible evils, before Newt scurried over to the less dreadful sort. His small case was clasped against his chest and the familiar blue coat was draped over one arm. Shushing, Jacob tucked the boy behind him and gestured up the road, following quickly behind.
It wasn't kidnapping, technically. He was just helping the boy abscond from a terrible woman.
By his sainted grandmother and all of his aunts, what was he getting himself into?