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Willow Locke, a teenage immigrant living in turn-of-the century Manhattan, must find the strength within her to protect her family from an insidious corporate plot to destroy the un...
Eitan Lostch stretched out into empty space. His inky silhouette devoured the stars. Gravity released him from its covetous touch. His foot fell short of the next rooftop and his arms flailed wildly. He caught a clothes line that broke with his weight and whipped his cheek as he fell. He landed with a gymnast's dismount on the steel balcony below, shattering terra-cotta planters, howling with triumph, covered with tattered laundry. He climbed back to the rooftop plateau, dislodging a brick that clattered down onto the steel grating. He had roused the tenement hive, and Yiddish curses trailed him as he ran through the dark. He snatched at Robert's sleeve, threatening his balance. He perched on the edge with his hands between his feet, scanning the dark labyrinth of the Bowery. Drunken shouts from the city's nocturnal denizens rose from the street to become entangled in the branching neurons of tenement laundry lines. Eitan thought he could hear his sister's voice carried up from below on a delicate autumn zephyr. Robert looked up at the gibbous moon with her diamond harvest of stars. "I know the way," said Robert. He backed away from the ledge, ran as fast as he could and leapt into the dark. Eitan's consciousness spread out before him and accelerated. He felt the slow drum of his feet on the roof, the motion of his arms, the coils of his legs, the width of the gap, the emptiness of space, the fear of gravity, the feeling of the wind. He landed clear on the other side. The rooftops unfolded before them. The moonlight seemed to illuminate a pathway. The light linked each rooftop to the next like gigantic geometric stepping stones; a giant's causeway. The ethereal avenue ran all the way to the undulant Hudson river. Eitan saw silhouetted figures moving against the silver backdrop of the next roof. They seemed flat, joined to the light trapezoid of the roof. He thought of the film he and Robert had snuck into, Edison's Frankenstein. The way the rectangle of light had swirled into motion and suddenly coalesced into rooms and figures. He thought of Frankenstein's monster, the body forming in the incubation chamber, the flesh climbing the skeleton, the image writhing with fire and hideous life. He recognized the boys on the roof by the way they walked. "The Dead Rabbits," said Eitan, pointing down to the row of silhouettes. "That's Jim. He's still limping from the last time we caught them." "Five of them and two of us," said Robert "We're in no position to scrap." "Stay down," said Eitan "Just listen then. Maybe they'll let something slip." The luminous moon cast a blanket of silence over the rooftops. Eitan saw the clothes hanging perfectly still on the spider web of lines between tenements and he knew that their voices would carry across the gap. The silhouetted figures gathered together and sat on the edge of the silver roof. They peered down into the bright street and their faces were illuminated from below by the cold lamplight. Yes, he could see them now. Harry, the leader. Jim, the captain. Tom. Pete. Bill. Eitan and Robert crouched in the shadow. "This is the big-time," said Harry "This is bigger than territory. Maybe we start losing our blocks to those Bowery rats if we do this." Eitan could see the look of disgust on Jim's face as Harry spoke. "What about honor?" Jim hissed. "Dead Rabbits ain't never lost a block." "Sometimes honor don't matter as much as you think," said Harry. "This is prestige. It's a long game. You wanna get those Bowery rats? This is how to get everyone- their families. It's bigger than anything we could pull off on our own. Yes we'll lose territory, but in the long game they'll lose everything." "What's the game?" asked Tom. "A list," said Harry, pulling typewritten pages from his jacket and distributing them. "The corporate man gave it over to me." "What? A setup?" asked Jim. "No," said Harry "Information. The names on this list, we watch them night and day. Every move they make. We keep track and report back to the corporation." "That's it?" asked Jim, incredulous. "No scraps?" "That's it." Said Harry. "It's got to be quiet. The corporate man pays in spades for the information. Can't be no scraps or they'll know they're being watched." "Who's on the list?" asked Jim. "Any of the rats?" "Just one," said Harry "Lostch." Eitan felt a frisson of terror at the mention of his name. He could see the vellum typewritten pages flash in the moonlight.
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