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The Grim Merchant
Loom shouldered her way through the thick Shira Hay crowds, ignoring the angry faces and indignant shouts as Deppash plowed his way through behind her. Behind even him, the kid’s freak horse stepped awkwardly through the crowds, to the stares and leers of many. It’s the only city in the biggest nation in the world, Loom thought, irritably. And it has the smallest streets in Albumere.
The fellow merchants peddling their wares eyed Loom. They were like hyenavultures, the whole lot of them: almost sycophantic in the presence of their betters, but jealous and territorial of others of their own kind.
They didn’t have anything to worry about from her, anyway. In their current state, her wares could not rival even the most meager peddler’s stock.
Loom swore as a scrawny cathound leaped over her feet. She eyed it for a moment, but ignored it. The amount of meat on that thing was not worth the effort of catching it. She shoved it out of the way with a leather boot, and the creature hissed at her before a snort from Deppash made it bound away.
“Men, women, beast!” shouted the closest peddler. He was holding a lacquered box of tabula high up for display- high enough, Loom noted, that none of the urchins could grab at it without significant effort on their parts. “Give me one chance to show my wares and you will be astounded by what you see! See here: a tiger from the Seat of Winter itself. Give me an open space and your attention and I promise you will be amazed!”
It was a familiar song, one that had taken some time to get used to but now rang of home. She wondered how the kid would appreciate them.
Loom shook her head, shooting a murderous glare at an indignant young couple as she shoved by. They passed without comment, ducking their heads when they saw her expression. Thinking about the kid and slaves in the same sentence rang a sour note, and made her stomach churn.
“Come all!” the peddler continued to shout, his voice fading in the squabbling noise floor of the Shira Hay bazaar. “Gentlemen who prefer anonymity, we may conduct business in private! I have beautiful springborn here from Da’atoa to Jhidnu, Hak Mat Do to Mont Don! I guarantee for the cheapest of prices that they will provide a night of unforgettable pleasure!”
Loom shut him out. Home it may have been, but she was beginning to remember how much she fucking hated home.
The street opened into a thankfully spacious plaza, the cobblestones ringed with the designs of the masons of the Twin Libraries. A stone fountain stood at its centerpiece, the fluting design graceful, yet bone dry. The dry season this year had been a harsh one, and even now there were whispers that the Ladies Summer and Spring were not gratified by the latest Sun Festival, which had been denounced by the electors as an archaic tradition.
Damn electors. Loom tugged hard on Deppash’s reins as they made their way across the plaza. She could see a few in the dark and smoky bar across the way, shouting and screaming, their ceremonial scarves and cloaks in disarray. Their “debate” would come to blows soon; the scholarly types of Shira Hay were well known for being loud, boisterous, and always willing to defend their point of view by any means necessary.
“Home at last,” Loom muttered, under her breath, and caught herself. Her attempts to become civilized had been strict and merciless, and civilized folk did not talk to themselves. It was a bad habit from her…inferior years.
The thoughts continued to bounce around Loom’s head, formless and shapeless without a voice to articulate them. Loom shoved those thoughts away, and looked around. She could never recognize the street where the old vipercrow lived. It was perfectly generic, just the way he liked it.
Loom spat into the dry fountain and walked on. A little red flag over the alley entrance, the Twin Libraries standing just to their right: that was how she remembered. By all the Ladies Four, she hated that fucking flag.
She wondered how Vhajja had fared while she was gone. He certainly wasn’t dead yet, that much Loom could tell. The old man was spiteful and would have hung on just to see her come back a failure.
It didn’t seem possible, but the alleyway was both empty and a tighter fit than the street before. The wagon scraped against both walls as they walked in, and Deppash moaned in distress.
“Hey, easy, Pash,” said Loom, tugging on his reins. “I’ll get you a treat once we’re home.”
The winter ox tossed his head in annoyance, but walked on, even as behind him the big guy got tangled in a line of laundry and shrieked in surprise as wet and dirty clothes flapped around it. Loom snorted. The thing was insultingly easy to spot and ate too much for its own good. The kid should have dumped it when he had the chance and gotten something better.
A puff of icy breath blew on Loom’s back. She looked back to see Deppash had paused, to pull out a sparse crop of weeds growing in the shade between the stones. His mouth slid sideways as he chewed, and he looked at Loom as if daring her to object. She sighed. She really couldn’t blame the kid for making the same mistake she had.
Eventually, Loom came upon the house. It had been months since she had been there, but it hadn’t changed at all. Then again, there wasn’t very far to go from rock bottom.
Shira Hay was not the wealthiest of Albumere’s twelve nations, nor was it the grandest of its thirteen great cities. It was small and weak, and its duarchs held very little sway in the conventions at the Seat of the King.
Yet, even that was no excuse for the sorry state the old house was in. Loom tried the door; it had somehow swollen with rot despite the fact that it was the driest summer Shira Hay had experienced in years. Splinters came off as she threw her shoulder against it, and she swore openly and loudly as she tried it again.
Ultimately, she gave up and went in through the single, broken window, if it could even be called that. She push at the frame leaning against the hole in the wall, and it flopped onto the floor on the other side with a glass tinkle. Loom opened the small fence leading to the smaller back lot, and ushered the animals in with an impatient wave of the hand.
She stopped Deppash when the wagon came close, though. She’d unhitch it later, but for now there was something in the back she needed to get.
It took a bit of rooting under the burned canvas to get the boy, who had been tucked neatly in-between the least soiled of the carpets. “Hey, lady!” shouted a voice, from outside. “Get a move on, will you?”
Loom emerged with the boy in her arms. The animals were blocking the road, and even though it was a small alley with nothing of import down it, someone else had still chosen that exact time to go in. “I’ve had a long day, asshole,” she yelled back. “If you could wait thirty fucking seconds, it’d be really fucking appreciated.”
Deppash plodded away into the backyard (well, it wasn’t so much a yard as the broken down ruin of the building adjacent, with a conveniently ox-shaped hole where the wall had once been), but the freak horse seemed hesitant to go into such an enclosed space.
“Oh, fuck off,” shouted the voice from the back. She couldn’t even see him for the freak horse’s girth. “What the hell are you doing bringing animals like this so far into the city, huh? Did you just come out of the hollow or something, bitch?”
“Get in there,” snarled Loom, pushing on the big guy’s haunch, and the freak horse nickered and ducked inside, its neck bent awkwardly to fit. She looked at the man waiting behind him. Thin arms, puffy cheeks. Fat. “You want to say that to my face?” Loom snarled.
The man met her eyes, and then shook his head. “Wasting my time anyway,” he muttered, flicking his hand in her face as he passed. Loom bristled. “Not even worth it.”
“Try a different way next time, fucker,” Loom snapped, and she hauled herself in through the window, careful not to bump the boy’s head as she made it through.
The interior was just as bad if not worse than the outside. Molded furniture, poor lighting, dirt and grime across the floor. The civilized world, as far as Loom was concerned.
She could see the candlelight before she saw the candle. Vhajja sat in his yellow sheets, reading some dusty book. Despite the fact that it was broad daylight outside, he had wooden boards across the windows and a tallow candle beside him. Old man liked ruining his eyes, Loom supposed.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t antagonize all of my neighbors the first thing you do on coming home,” said Vhajja. He looked up, and Loom was surprised despite herself. The man had seen better days. His sunken eyes and quaking hands gave him away, and his skin had taken a gray tone. Loom found herself wondering just how old the man was. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he was going on a hundred.
“If you didn’t want me to do it, you should have come out and stopped me,” she muttered, laying the boy down on the floor’s carpet. The boy did not stir, as his eyes stared blankly at the ceiling and fingers wrapped tight around his tabula. Not his tabula, Loom corrected herself- the girl’s. The one the stupid kid held onto without using. Selling the thing would have given him enough to money to get a real life started in the city, but instead he toted the thing around like a fancy bauble.
Vhajja’s eyes followed him, but the old man made no comment.
“Feh,” snorted Vhajja. “That’s the sort of consideration I get from you, ungrateful child.” He put his book aside. “Well?”
“Well, what?” asked Loom, sitting down on the floor and taking out her water skin. She wouldn’t have trusted the water in this place even if Vhajja had any.
Vhajja’s tone grew dark. “I’m a patient man, girl, but you are severely testing that patience. Don’t make me ask again.”
“The shipment’s trash,” Loom said, simply. “We’re going to need something else to trade with.”
With a disappointed snort, Vhajja leaned back into his musty pillows. He didn’t seem surprised. Loom eyed him. He still made no comment about the boy.
“You’re bruised,” said Vhajja. A simple observation, but said in a way that almost sounded accusatory.
Loom stretched her back and laid on the floor. The carpet was from western Shira Hay, near Alswell; Loom knew because she had traded for it herself. It was thick and plush, made for resting and comfort. She laid next to the boy, watching him. Loom had given him food and water as best she could, but the boy hadn’t moved for two days. It wasn’t like Loom to be in hysterics over the health of other people, especially a stranger wild child she barely knew, but she was starting to get worried.
“You’re bruised,” Vhajja repeated.
“Some fuckers jumped me on the way here.”
“Civilized people do not swear,” Vhajja snapped, a bit of his old fire flaring again. He snapped his book shut. “Be specific.”
“Some slavers jumped me on the way here,” Loom growled.
Vhajja sighed, looking with rheumy eyes towards the cracks of light in the boarded windows. “Are these slavers still with us?”
“Haha,” said Loom. “You’re funny.”
“Pity,” said Vhajja. “They might have been friends.”
“They were upstarts. You wouldn’t have known them, you’re too old.”
Vhajja raised an eyebrow. “Correction: they might have been taught by friends. You die or you go broke, but you never get out of the game.”
“Give them your condolences the next time you drink honeyed milk and old man’s tea together,” she grumbled, turning over. It had been a long journey, and for now she just wanted to rest. She didn’t need the vipercrow’s wheedling rattle to keep her up. “I’m certainly not going to apologize. They should’ve known better.”
“My condolences?” Vhajja wheezed as he laughed, the sound squeezing out of his chest as if through a thin tube. “My condolences? I think I’m going to brag about it the next time I see them. See the looks on their faces when I make a crack or two about their dear old dead students.” His smile revealed toothless gums. “What did they look like? What tabula did they have?”
“Three in the crew. One woman, two men. Some kind of cockatrice and a summer lion. Sound familiar at all?”
Vhajja pursed his lips. “Well, I-.”
“Oh, wait,” said Loom. “I just realized something.”
“Hm?”
“I don’t give a shit.” She rolled over and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the smell.
“Your cheek is not appreciated, girl.” Vhajja spat yellow phlegm. “After all these years, you still have the manners and respect of a wild plainschild. Have I taught you nothing?”
Loom exhaled through her nose, her cheeks red, doing her absolute best to tune Vhajja’s voice out. She didn’t have to put up with him like that. With what little strength he had left, what would the old man do?
There was silence, and then the click of a cane on the floor. Loom opened one eye in surprise, looking back at the bed to confirm. She hadn’t realized that Vhajja still had the strength to walk. Her heart quickened. Perhaps the old man still had some left in him.
He walked at a snail’s pace though, leaning heavily on both the wooden cane and the cracked adobe walls. Loom waited for him to approach, making no move to help or assist him. Vhajja didn’t seem surprised by that, either; she was his destination, anyway. The old man stood over her, back hunched, knees shaking, but eyes bright in the dim light.
“Get up,” he said, his voice like the steel of an Irontower sword. Chilly, sharp, and dangerous.
She did not move.
“Get up, girl,” Vhajja growled, “Or I will make you.”
Loom hauled herself to her feet, holding her arms open as if daring the old man to assault her. “I’m up,” said Loom, irritated. “You have something you want to say?”
“Look at your elders when you’re talking to them,” Vhajja said. “And don’t use that tone with me.”
Loom just rolled her eyes. Vhajja turned and hobbled away, bending to pick up a chipped clay pot and light a fire in the stove. Loom shifted her weight, watching.
She snorted and walked to his side to light the stove for him, before grabbing the pot from his hands and pouring from her own water skin into the kettle.
“Tea, I find,” said Vhajja, as he dug a musty old packet of tea leaves from one of his many pockets. “Helps with my digestion.”
“See if I fucking care,” growled Loom, in a sullen, low tone, not looking at him.
Vhajja sighed, leaning on his mamwaari as he squatted on the cushions around it. The low wooden table was covered with a thick blanket, which he tucked over his legs despite the sweltering heat. “You are more abrasive than usual, Loom, even though I find that difficult to believe. Would you like to tell me why?”
Loom said nothing, just stood and watched the fire burn under the kettle. She glanced over her shoulder, just in time to see Vhajja give the boy a cursory look.
“Did you get raped while I wasn’t looking?” said the old man.
Loom twitched. “That’s not funny.”
“Feh,” said Vhajja. “I thought some low humor would get past your low mood. Evidently I was mistaken.”
Loom did not grace him with a response.
“May I ask who he is?”
Loom rolled her shoulders, trying to work out a kink in her back. “Just someone I met on the road.”
“Just someone…I see.” As he should. Loom had heard him say those same words to his business friends so many years ago. “And his affliction?”
“Dunno,” said Loom.
“Don’t use filler words. Be specific when I ask you a question.”
“He came down with something two days back. Ran off for a bit and when I went looking for him I found him on the ground. Won’t let go of that tabula. I reckon that has something to do with it.” Loom checked the kettle. How long did it take to boil?
Vhajja prodded the boy with his staff. The boy did not look, move, or respond in any visible way. He just laid there, stiff, staring at the ceiling, his mouth slightly open, his hands frozen in place. “Is the tabula his?”
“No, it’s someone else’s.”
Vhajja looked at her, an eyebrow raised. “Someone?”
“She’s not with him,” said Loom, exasperated. “Stupid kid won’t summon her for some reason, hell if I know why. He has an animal of some kind, too. It’s waiting out back with Deppash. Speaking of which, I should go check on them.” She made for the back door.
“Stop,” said Vhajja. “The animals can wait.”
Loom’s steps slowed. She stopped.
“If you’re planning to use the boy instead, he won’t sell for much. If he truly has some sickness, you won’t be able to hide it from anyone who would give you-.”
“He’s not a slave,” snapped Loom. “He’s just…someone I met on the road.”
“You come home with nothing but wares that you can’t or won’t sell,” sneered Vhajja. “I should have known this would have been a waste of time.”
Loom stood in the doorway, anger bubbling inside of her. She clenched her hand and turned around. “I’ll find another way.”
“What other way? The medicine is expensive, and a healer’s touch more expensive still. The only way to get something of worth is to pay with something of worth, and you are clearly worthless.”
“Shut up,” Loom growled. She found herself moving towards the man with balled up fists, even though she knew it was a mistake. “I said I’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way,” said Vhajja. He did not look as Loom advanced on him.
“Then you will die.”
“And I will take you with me.”
Loom roared, and raised a fist to strike. It did not matter that the old man was frail and sick. She wanted to hurt him.
“STOP.”
Loom’s hand froze in the air. Tears of frustration ran down on her cheeks as, despite all of her greatest efforts, she found that she could not move.
The hum of a tabula was loud in the sudden quiet.
“I made you,” said Vhajja, his voice low and shaking. “I gave you everything. I gave you a home. I gave you an education. I gave you a name. I gave you your life. It is mine to take away.”
Vhajja stood, and the ease with which the man both maintained his hold on the tabula and summoned the strength to rise was extraordinary. It was a slaver’s strength, one that even age could not erode. “I gave you a chance to save me,” he said, through gritted teeth. His breathing was labored, tinged with a desperate fury. Loom could not see his face. “I gave you a chance to pay back your debts.”
Loom just stood. She could barely even breathe.
And then Vhajja’s voice grew sharp. “Move to the counter.”
Loom did as she was told.
“Open the drawer.”
Loom did as she was told.
“Take out the knife.”
Loom did as she was told.
“Put it to your throat.”
Every instinct inside her rebelling, every inch of her soul screaming for control, Loom did as she was told. The knife had been kept sharp. It glistened, tracing a thin red line against Loom’s neck.
Click, click, click, went the staff. The kettle whistled and screamed as it boiled. Loom felt Vhajja’s warm breath close to her ear, but was powerless to strike out against him.
“Enjoy it.”
And suddenly, the world was bliss. Loom felt warmth well up inside of her, a blessed peace, even as a fading voice screamed against it. She might have moaned from delight. This was happiness. This was joy. Nothing else could even compare.
The warmth vanished without warning, leaving Loom cold and empty and sickened by herself. “Never think to run, or hide, or fight back,” whispered Vhajja. “The moment my heart stops, I will make you cut your own throat. I will make you love it.” His wrinkled fingers traced her wet cheek. “Ah, me, you lost little girl. I’m not asking for much. Just a few more years, for all the years I gave you, and I may be tempted to change my mind.”
Click, click, click, went the staff. Loom felt Vhajja move away from her. She did not turn to look. She couldn’t.
“You will find a way to pay back your debts,” said Vhajja, hobbling back to his bed. “Or I will take away everything I have ever given you. You know me. I am a man of my word.” And the humming came to an abrupt stop.
The knife dropped to the floor with a clatter, just as Loom fell to her knees. She was free to move now, but did not. She just knelt, trying to hold back the tears.
Reap (Chapter 1 Part 8)
The boy tried to get up, but before he took even one step he felt lightning.
Pain like nothing he had ever felt coursed through him, and he was powerless to stop it. He seized up, twitching with violent spasms.
Suddenly the pain was gone. A sore aftershock remained, making his entire body one aching bruise.
And then the big guy screamed.
While before his friend had screamed in fear or in shock, this hoarse, animal sound was infinitely more horrible. The boy could barely stand, let alone help. His dizzy mind groped for rational thought. Where had the pain come from? What was happening? Did the slaver have another tabula-bound creature?
The slaver. The boy’s mind slogged through a bog of pain, reaching in the dark. The slaver. He was the source. He…
He had his tabula.
The boy charged, reaching out, but his whole body crumpled into itself as the pain surged back. He fell onto the ground, laboring just to breathe. His brain was shutting down, incapable of functioning any longer under such conditions.
His body had other plans. The boy moved like a puppet on strings, each one slowly being cut. He staggered forward blindly, an array of confusing and conflicting thoughts ricocheting through his head.
The slaver had hurt the big guy. The slaver had hurt his friend. And he didn’t have just their tabula in his hand, he had hers. He could hurt her just as badly. Worse, he could bring her here, and the boy still did not know how to send her back.
He couldn’t let that happen.
“What the fuck?!” the slaver shouted, as the boy’s hand found his throat. He beat him away, shouting, as the lion roared and leaped forward. The boy gasped. In a sudden blissful moment, the pain was gone. Had the slaver been too distracted? Had he let go?
And then darkness swallowed him.
It was worse than shadows, worse than blindness. It was empty. He stumbled backwards, chest heaving, not knowing anymore, too confused and too scared to move. The big guy, Loom, the wagon- it had all disappeared. He was alone in a dark space. Completely, utterly, totally alone.
He reached for his waist, for his most precious belongings, but of course they weren’t there. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He didn’t even have her face, anymore. There was no escape, no fantasy to believe in, no wild hope to entertain. The emptiness of Shira Hay yawned around him, moving ever so slightly that it could trick his mind into thinking that he was moving, even when he stood perfectly still. It was enough to drive anyone insane.
And then the emptiness broke, and the boy was back, back among the burning grass and the gloomy dusk and the pain. He tried to move, but found that he couldn’t. Nothing held him down, nothing restrained him; he just couldn’t, like the connection between his brain and the rest of his body had been severed.
“Hey, asshole!”
Who was that? Who was shouting?
“Get the fuck away from him!”
Loom. It was Loom.
She had a rock. It was almost funny.
Loom punched the slaver in the gut, knocking him over so that she could raise the stone in her other hand and beat down, once, twice, three times, until the boy heard bone split and saw red splatter onto the grass.
The summer lion roared, the fires of its mane swelling to nearly twice its own size. It snarled and leaped- and found itself on the receiving end of Deppash’s horns. Hot steam sizzled from the wounds in its gut as Deppash shook it free, and louder than the crackle of fire was the crackle of ice, slowly spreading over the punctures until the flesh was raw pink and white and frostbitten.
Deppash pawed the ground, snorting, as the lion moaned and died.
“Come on,” said Loom, trying to drag the boy to his feet, but his legs could not, or would not, support him. “Come on, kid, do you want to get burned alive?” She pressed his tabula, all three of them, into his chest. “You’ve got them, let’s go!”
The boy stuttered incoherent words, sweat beading down his forehead.
Loom slapped the boy across the face as the fires continued to spread around them. The lion may have died, but his fires certainly had not. They leaped from dry brush to dry brush greedily, burning hot, bright, and large. “You can do it, come on. Do it for her! Do it for the fucking girl in the fucking tabula! Do it for the freak horse, do it for your friend! By all the Ladies Four, damn it, do it for me.”
The boy’s eyes widened. He was not alone. Not anymore.
He stood with Loom’s help and staggered to the big guy’s side. The camelopard looked at him, nostrils flaring, but he seemed calm enough at least to ride. “Over and out, yeah?” the boy muttered, hugging his neck. “We get out of the fire.”
The camelopard might have nodded. It was hard to tell with all the shaking as he started to run.
The big guy did not leap over the fire; he galloped straight through, screaming at the top of his lungs, a desperate forward motion. The boy thought might have actually been dying as they burst through the inferno, but then they were clear, clothing and fur alike singed hot red. If it hadn’t been for the pain the slaver had brought on him, the boy might have felt it.
Deppash’s icy breath washed over them as they ran clear of the fire, and the wind and the cool night did the rest. The boy felt his breathing slow, and when it did his chest ached like nothing else. He slumped, and exhaustion claimed him.
He woke from his not quite sleep to the sound of Loom swearing. Somewhere in-between riding the big guy and getting here, wherever here was, he had fallen to the ground. He lay in the soft grass, waiting for the hurting to stop.
“Fucking bandits,” snarled Loom, stomping around the wagon. “Ruined my shit.”
The boy groaned. “Your carpets, yeah?”
Loom held a hand to the back of her neck, surveying the damage. “Yeah. My carpets. These won’t trade for shit.”
“We made it,” pointed out the boy, still waiting for the aches to go away. His head started to pound.
“Yeah,” snorted Loom. She stared at her carpets, stained with blood, torn from the fight, and blackened with soot. “Yeah, we fucking made it.”
“Why did they attack us?” asked the boy. “Why did-?”
“Kid,” said Loom. “Shut up.”
And the boy fell silent.
Loom slouched, her hand in her hands, and sighed heavily. “Fucking shit. Fucking dammit.”
She had been angry at him for not getting up, but now she seemed angry at him for just being there. The boy hugged the big guy close. It was only a day, the boy reminded himself. A day in four years did not make him an expert with people. He did not want to do anything wrong.
He huddled in the grass, rubbing his tabula with the edge of his new shirt, which Loom had given him. The fire had scorched the edges and blackened the soft fabric. It was still far nicer than his old rags, although they did just about as good a job at cleaning his tabula.
It was a nervous habit. The familiar action helped soothe the boy’s nerves, and its repetitiveness pushed his headache away. “You OK, big guy?” he asked, as he scrubbed the big guy’s tabula, inspecting it for damage. “He hurts you bad, yeah?”
The camelopard flicked an ear. He did not make a sound, just stared up at the sky, letting starlight wash over him.
“Don’t worry,” said the boy. “I check. No bleeding, no bruises. Hurts a lot but it doesn’t leave anything behind.” Except memories. And even though his collection of those was paltry, the boy wanted nothing to do with the pain of a few hours ago.
“I don’t get it,” the boy said. “We were strangers. Why’d he want to hurt us so bad? We don’t do anything to him. We never did.” He huddled close to his friend. He didn’t like the idea of a world full of strangers who hated him.
Loom was still taking full scope of the damage, pulling her carpets out of the back of the wagon, inspecting each of the weaves in turn. “Fuckers probably didn’t even want these,” she muttered, under her breath. “One slave would have been worth more than my entire fucking inventory.”
“Is not so bad, yeah?” ventured the boy. “They’re just carpets, yeah?”
“Just carpets,” echoed Loom, shaking her head as she inspected yet another, so burned that parts crumbled to soot in her hands. She tossed it aside with a scoff and glared into the night. “They’re my living, kid. This is what I do. Electors, baymerchants, posh people, they all trade for the carpets. Good deals, and I needed them. You understand? I needed these trades.”
The boy searched for words. Trade was unfamiliar territory, a concept that Loom had barely been able to explain to him. “You can get other carpets?” he suggested. “From the same place you got them before?”
“Traded supplies for them,” said Loom. “Even if I did my circuit with the weaving villages, I wouldn’t have anything to give them. I’d have to go back to Shira Hay, resupply, wait out the worst of the summer, travel back around…and by then I’d be out of time.”
“Well, maybe if you-.”
“Your fault,” said Loom. It was whispered, but in the quiet of the night it seemed to ring.
The boy stuttered to silence, hoping against hope that he had misheard. “What?”
“I knew there were bandits the closer you got to the city, I knew it,” she whispered, her head hanging down. The boy could not see Loom’s face beyond the veil of hair hanging around it. “The fucking race. We got carried away, made too much noise. And you and your fucking freak pet, you’re just too easy to spot.”
He didn’t know what to say.
Loom’s hand clenched and unclenched. She scraped her hands against her head, her entire body stiff. In the starlight, the boy just noticed how much blood had dried on her arms.
“I…I could….”
“Kid,” Loom whispered, and her voice broke. “I need to think. Just go away. Please.”
The boy backed away, and nodded. “OK,” he said. “OK, I go.”
And he clambered onto the big guy’s back, whispering encouragement into the camelopard’s ear even as he felt his own heart sinking. He looked at Loom, but she didn’t even notice as he began to ride away.
Perhaps it was better, for the both of them. People like them had spent far too much time alone to enjoy the company of others. The boy bit back tears. He wanted to be with people, he had wanted to think that he wouldn’t be alone anymore, but every experience in the past four years and especially this last day reinforced only one thing: people brought him hurt. The boy had survived for this long by avoiding things that hurt him. It was a hard instinct to shake.
He reached for his tabula, but just the thought of them made him draw back. He had been going to ask Loom how to use them. He had been going to ask Loom to help him find her. Who was going to help now?
Your fault. The words rung in the boy’s head, try as he might to forget them. Why was it that the bad memories always stuck? Why couldn’t he remember the warm grove, the shared meal, the exhilarating race?
The boy tugged the camelopard’s mane, and they came to a stop. They hadn’t gone far. No doubt he could have seen Loom and the wagon if he looked back, but he didn’t want to.
He did remember. And somehow, their parting made his sweet memories bitter.
“What’s the plan, big guy?” the boy asked, egging the camelopard to walk on. They moved at a measured stroll, a practiced pace to conserve energy. It wasn’t as if he knew which way to go. “What do we do now?”
The big guy said nothing. He never did. He just walked on. Maybe…
Maybe the camelopard was just a dumb beast, after all, his entire character dreamt up to keep him company, an imaginary friend that could never disappoint him.
The boy shook his head. It was a treacherous thought, one he did not even dare contemplate. He didn’t think he could handle the outside world if his own head worked to destroy him, too. Thinking that way brought the slaver’s emptiness just a step closer.
“Does he show it to you, too?” asked the boy, hugging the camelopard’s neck. It was warm and soft. “Do you see it?”
The camelopard grumbled. The boy could feel the vibrations, and looked up as he felt the big guy’s neck tilt under him. He had turned his head, bending back to give the boy a doleful gaze with his wide, black eyes.
“Yeah,” said the boy, and despite himself he smiled. He shouldn’t have when he was so miserable, but it was hard to stay that way with a creature as ridiculous as the big guy staring at him. The boy flicked one of the bone nubs on the camelopard’s head. “He doesn’t leave anything behind. He can’t hurt us.”
The big guy yawned, lips pulling back to reveal square teeth and a black tongue, before turning back and facing forward.
“It’s all in our head,” said the boy. “It shouldn’t matter if it’s in our head. It’s only…it’s only the real stuff that matters.” Even now, Loom became a memory. She wasn’t real anymore. She would slip away, like the rest of them. She didn’t matter.
The boy held his tabula close to his chest, and couldn’t help but feel that he was wrong.
“It can’t change anything,” he said, looking at the big guy, justifying himself. The big guy flicked a dismissive ear. “The stuff in our heads is fake. It’s all imaginary. It doesn’t…”
And he hugged his tabula even closer to himself. That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.
“Where to now, big guy?” he asked, changing the subject. With it came a palpable relief. It was good not to think about things that hurt him. If he avoided them, he would stay safe. “Where do you think we should go now? Want to go back to the grove? We see if we catch up with it, yeah?”
The big guy snorted, and shook his neck. Hair rippled in the boy’s face.
“Yike, don’t be like that,” said the boy. “You think we can’t? Trees are slow, big guy. You slower than a tree? I don’t think trees are faster than Deppash and Loom, and you sure beat-.”
The boy paused. The big guy stopped. It took several moments for the boy to compose himself.
He took a deep breath. “Yeah, maybe we don’t go after no trees. Think we find water? Think we find a river? A big, big river, just like the one she- we just find a big, big river, is what I say.”
The idea was appealing. The boy had never seen a big, big river. He was sure it would be wonderful. He knew there was one in the city, but at the moment the thought of the city didn’t appeal to him. There would be too many people, and all those people weren’t worth all the stuff in the world.
They were forced thoughts, thoughts that were trying perhaps a bit too hard to be true.
“Yike, big guy,” the boy muttered, lying against the big guy’s neck. “How long do you think it’s going to take to forget?”
The big guy turned and stared at him.
“I don’t want to wait another four years neither.”
The boy felt a rumble, the big guy no doubt sighing in agreement. But the rumbling continued even as the big guy walked on, showing no signs of heavy breathing, no change of pace or extra movement. The boy moved his arms from his chest, and saw that one of his tabula was quivering. It wasn’t his, or the big guy’s. It was the girl’s.
The boy’s entire world seemed to dim around him. He shouted at the big guy to stop, grabbing the tabula, fumbling with it with both hands. He looked at it from every angle. What was wrong? What had he done?
The shaking was becoming more violent, more extreme than ever before. This wasn’t just his tabula responding to a simple command, it was something else entirely.
It was breaking.
The boy shook his head, trying to figure out what to do. He squeezed the amber tight, as if he could somehow hold it together, but when a thin crack appeared along its surface he immediately eased the pressure for fear of breaking the already fragile disk. What could he do? What was there to do?
And so the boy did the only thing he had ever known how to do with the tabula, and he concentrated.
Perhaps it was the fatigue from his escape through the fire, or perhaps it was the disk’s unnatural behavior, but the weakness from pouring his energy into the tabula hit him harder than it ever had before. He felt like a sledgehammer had just been pounded into his chest. He collapsed, sliding off the big guy’s back and falling on the ground with a heavy thud. But he did not stop concentrating. At that moment, right then and there, the girl’s shattering tabula was the only thing that mattered.
The boy tried to draw in breath, but he couldn’t. It was as if his lungs were deflated, collapsing in on themselves. He held the tabula even tighter, his grip stiff but as gentle as it could possibly be. The camelopard ran circles around him, rearing and screaming in distress. The boy could barely make out his friend’s silhouette. His eyes were watering, yes, and his focus was elsewhere, yes, but there was something else. Like a black and red shadow, flickering over his face.
A bout of nausea overcame him. He fell onto his knees, retching onto the grass.
And then someone picked him up.
His first instinct was to run, but with all of his focus on the tabula he could barely tell where the ground was in relation his feet, let alone try to escape. “You’re easy to track,” snarled a voice, and the boy’s heart jumped. A slaver had survived, and tracked him down.
Except, it wasn’t a slaver. It was Loom.
“What the hell did you run off for? What’s wrong with you, kid?” snarled Loom, but as she took in his frozen expression, his stiff body, her expression turned to concern. “Kid? Kid, what’s wrong? Hey, freak horse, what’s wrong with him?”
The boy forced in a shuddering breath, all of his effort still focused on the tabula. It shone in his mind. Everything else was dark, and the amber disk, always cool to the touch, suddenly felt like hot coals, like a glowing ember in his hands.
Confusing imagery flashed through his head. He saw treetops, long talons, and then the night sky of Shira Hay again, and then different talons, belonging to a beast from an even more terrifying night so many years ago, and then a watery mixture of white and red and black that whirled and spun until it was a single bloody color.
“I’m not always going to be looking out for you,” muttered Loom, and the boy felt her pick him up in her arms. “By every single fucking Lady, how the hell did you survive out here so long without me?”
The boy writhed. He felt his arms grow weak, felt phantom scars all over his body.
The big guy followed him, bending down to rest his neck over the boy’s chest. It was meant to be affectionate.
The boy continued to pour every ounce of willpower he had into the disk. He would have given up long ago if not for the same simple fact that had pulled him out of that fire.
He was not alone. It gave him strength.
And right now, the girl needed it.
Reap (Chapter 1 Part 6)
The big guy danced and nickered, swinging his massive neck from side to side. The boy clung onto his back, just barely holding on. Both were jittery with pent-up energy.
The sun set slowly behind them, as Loom reared on her ox. “You’ve got no chance, kid! Give up! You’ve got no power, you won’t cover any ground before I get you!”
“Long legs, long stride,” the boy shouted back. “We’re fine, yeah? You and Pash have the problem! Big fat thing can’t beat us, no way, no how.”
“Your pet’s got a long something, kid, but it ain’t legs,” said Loom.
The camelopard bellowed, impatient, and the winter ox bellowed back. “No more talk!” said the boy. “Any longer and I can’t stay on.”
“Well, you got to stay on your beast if you want to win,” said Loom, bending low.
“Big guy wins without me, yeah? No need for me to slow him down.” The boy scratched his mane, even as the camelopard shook his head and stamped his feet on the ground. “Go big, big guy. Go big, yeah?”
“On my mark,” said Loom. “Mark…GO!”
The big guy pounded forward, legs a yellow blur across the golden grass. They made a stark silhouette against the red sun slipping into the horizon: the gawky beast and the boy standing on his back.
Any sane rider would have at least sat down for the race, but not this boy. He whooped and shouted, clinging for dear life onto the camelopard’s mane while he rode the beast’s undulating back and shoulders like he was a Da’atoan surfer, the wind flapping at his new shirt and pants.
Long legs, long neck, long stride: there was no denying that when the big guy moved fast, his entire body moved with him, stiff rods swinging around greased joints. The big guy’s neck swung like a pendulum, and it took all of the boy’s concentration just to hold on.
“To the wagon, big guy! Beat her to the wagon!” the boy shouted, over the wind and the pounding hooves. He doubted the big guy could hear him; he could barely hear himself.
The boy’s senses blurred. Hearing, sight, touch: there was nothing but raw speed, as he pummeled on without any regard for what was around or in front of him. It had never been this way before. There had always been a chase, some prey to catch or some predator to escape. Loom’s “race” made the boy’s heart pump even more. It made his hands shake, his fingers quiver, his soul tremble.
He liked it.
Loom raced towards him at equal speed, her ox trampling the grass to flattened paste. The boy squinted, trying to keep his eyes open in the rushing wind. Was that ice?
The two converged on the wagon, which Loom had left in the middle of the field. The boy had been wary to leave such a valuable thing alone, but Loom reasoned that if anyone or anything tried to hijack it, then they’d be racing towards it already.
“Faster, big guy, she’s getting close!” the boy shouted. He couldn’t believe the speed at which Loom travelled; Deppash did not so much run as slide, hurtling forward like a meteor, a massive weighty thing that fell horizontally.
The big guy roared even louder, and sparks seemed to fly. The boy tumbled back, gripping onto the camelopard’s haunches as it chased down the wagon; there would be no more standing up for him, not at these speeds.
The two collided at the center, careening past each other and sliding across the ground until they came to a stop. The boy fell and rolled at least ten body’s-width away from his original destination, but when he sat up he was grinning from ear to ear.
“We get there first!” he shouted. The camelopard brayed his agreement, even as the lanky beast tried to untangle its legs, neck, and tail.
“How could you tell? You were upside-down half the time,” said Loom. She put a hand on her ox to steady herself, gasping for breath, until Deppash summarily keeled over. The boy swore he felt the vibration through the ground.
“We get there first,” he repeated, clambering up onto the back of the wagon as if to bask in his victory. “We win!”
“No, you didn’t, I did,” said Loom, pushing him off. “I won’t let you tell people that a dumb kid beat me in a race. I’ll never hear the end of it.” She wiped her running nose with the back of her hand, her cheeks red and eyes watering. “Now will you stop jumping around? It’s uncomfortable enough as it is.”
The boy turned to make a smart comment, but before he could his knees collapsed under him and he sprawled face first in the dirt. He hadn’t even ran and he felt exhausted. “Yike,” he mumbled. “Yeah. I stop jumping. You help me stand now?”
Loom’s laughter was harsh, vindictive, and oddly comforting. “Glad to see that we burned the energy out of you. I want to cover a lot of ground tonight, but you can sleep on the carpets if you want.”
He yawned. He wasn’t about to turn down an offer to rest, but the idea of moving and sleeping at the same time made him reconsider. How would he know where he was when he woke up?
The boy rubbed his eyes and clambered to his feet. “I stay up, yeah?”
“Tough kid,” said Loom. There was a hint of approval in her voice. “Dumb, but tough.”
“Are all Shira Hay races like that?” asked the boy. While Deppash found his feet, the big guy lay prone. He didn’t seem like he was getting up anytime soon, which was a relief for the boy. Even a few more seconds of rest while they were still stationary was much appreciated.
“That’s the gist of it,” said Loom, nodding. “The more people you can get, the better. And sometimes the kids get off and do a little running themselves.” She snorted. “That’s the easy way out, of course.” She tapped Deppash’s tabula. “Running takes only your stamina. Riding by tabula will take everything you’ve got.”
The boy looked down. Running himself? Easy? It could have easily joined one of the most exhausting things the boy had done by choice, but the idea that sprinting that hard and that fast was the beginner level was somewhat daunting. The other option, the one using tabula, must have been infinitely more tiring.
He felt an odd desire to try it out.
“Is that what you did?” asked the boy. “Is that how Pash managed to move so fast?”
Loom clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Just know that you’ll be able to tell all the kids in the city that you’ve been in a Shira Hay race, and that’s good enough for most of them.”
“What else do kids do in the city?” asked the boy, watching the last few orange flares flicker away under the horizon. They had out-sped the setting sun: a little achievement, but one that made him proud nonetheless.
“Kids? I don’t know,” said Loom. “Run around and get under your fucking feet, I guess. Don’t worry about them, all they do is play adult games and lose. I wish I had my dice, I could show you Wwa Ta.”
“Wwa Ta?” The boy giggled, stretching out the curious word. “Wwa. Waawaaa.”
“You look like a fucking pigcow chewing cud,” she snorted. She shook her head. “What am I saying? Wwa Ta is a betting game. You won’t have a coin to your name to even buy in, so you can forget about that. But Kennya Noni, now, you could play that.”
“Kennya Noni?” So many new words. The boy had no idea there could be so many things in the world that had a name.
Loom gave him a solid whack on the shoulder.
“Ow!” The boy recoiled. Had he said something wrong?
“That is the basic premise of Kennya Noni,” Loom said. She seemed unapologetic about punching the boy so hard. Perhaps she did not know her own strength. “It’s a fighting style, see? Gutter boys are always practicing it. The trick is to hit your opponent in the side, where they’re not expecting it, and then duck away and run fast. Well, faster.”
“Like racing?” asked the boy, cocking his head.
“Like racing,” said Loom, nodding. “I’m shit at it myself, but maybe you’ll see a Kennya Noni fight or two. It’s not so impressive if you’re not running with them, you’ll just see two scrawny men chase after each other in the street. The best ones go for the roofs, though, and that’s fucking spectacular. The electors hate them for it, but what can they do? You can’t catch a good Kennya Noni fighter.”
Roofs. The boy was still having trouble with that concept. Apparently they were a kind of elevated floor that people could also live under, except when they did that it was called a ceiling. It was difficult to wrap his head around. He would have to see it for himself.
“Maybe I’ll show you a move or two,” said Loom. She winced, though, as she straightened her back, and rolled her shoulder with a pained expression. “Not today, though. Later.”
The big guy had found it in himself to stand up. They both paused to watch.
“It’s like…timber,” said Loom, staring. “Falling backward.”
The boy didn’t ask what timber was, but he had to admit the process was spectacular.
“Are we far away from Shira Hay?”
“Two days of hard travel, I’d say,” said Loom. “Assuming nothing happens and we don’t get lost.”
“I thought you knew the way!”
“I thought you did, too,” said Loom dryly. “I do. Problem is, it’s a hard enough even if you do know what you’re looking for. See all this?” Loom gestured to the plains around her. “Damn hard to find your way through here. Everyone thinks Shira Hay is the biggest damn place in Albumere but the truth is they’re all just walking in fucking circles.”
“We’re not walking in circles, are we?” asked the boy, quickly.
“I have absolutely no idea,” said Loom, with a straight face. “And if we are, I’ll spend the next few months begging for the Lady Fall to put us back on the right path.”
They did not speak for several moments. The boy watched, as the sky turned dark and the first stars began to glimmer in the sky. The pale shadow of the moon, dim in the blaze of day, became a bright disk, hanging low. The boy’s hand traced his own disks in his belt.
“Is that all it takes?” he asked, after a moment.
“All what takes?” Loom had been lying on the side of the wagon, eyes closed and body limp: not quite asleep, but resting.
“All it takes to find the right path,” said the boy. “You just beg?”
“Well, no,” said Loom, shifting. She looked uncomfortable. “It’s got to be to the Ladies Four. It’s how civilized folk do it. It’s called praying.”
“What’s the difference?”
Another stretch of silence.
“Ask a fucking priest,” said Loom, gruffly. “Hell if I know.”
The boy cocked his head. “How would a priest know?”
“Look, kid, it’s not my fucking job to-.”
“You know so much about everything already. No priest knows more than you, yeah?” The boy looked up at Loom, genuinely curious.
As she looked down, her hair fell around her face. Loom looked suddenly old, her back slouched, her forehead wrinkled. She gave a sidelong glance to the boy. “Oh, fuck me,” she muttered, and slid off of the wagon, pacing around to the front to grab Deppash’s harness.
The boy stared at her until the tarp blocked his view, and then looked at the big guy, and smiled. “Hey, maybe I get a wagon for you when we at the city. That’d be good, yeah?”
A hot ball of spit in the boy’s face summarized the camelopard’s thoughts on wagons.
“OK, OK, no wagon,” said the boy. “Too big to steal anyway. Hey, big guy, you got any idea on how we take the stuff in Shira Hay?”
The camelopard chewed placidly. What he had found to chew, the boy had no idea, but the big guy showed a blissful apathy about “the stuff” or means of acquiring it.
“You look like a pigcow chewing cud, big guy,” said the boy, snickering. “A fucking pigcow,” he repeated, lowering his voice, and then checked over his shoulder just to make sure that Loom was still tying Deppash back into his harness.
The boy laughed, for no reason at all other than he wanted to. His toes curled in delight. “Yike, big guy, you remember how today started? I remember. I remember every little teeny tiny thing about today for the rest of my life.”
His hand drifted back to the disks around his belt. “I tell her about today when I find her. Loom’s so smart, she can help me, yeah? All the people in the world live in the city, she has to be in there somewhere.”
The boy pulled the girl’s tabula out. He could tell which ones they were just by touch at this point; having only three possessions for four years did that for him.
“How does she makes it work so fast?” asked the boy. “Show me,” he said, and the disk hummed for just a moment before the energy bled away. “Show me!” said the boy, louder, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Exhausted from his run, he could only make the disk shake slightly in his fingers before he ran out of energy.
How loud did she say the command? Did she even say it? The boy wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Maybe that was a secret of civilized folk that he could ask her. He poked his head around the wagon canvas. “Hey, Loom, can you-?”
A rough hand grabbed his mouth and grappled him to the ground. Reflexively, the boy lashed out and kicked, trying to yell out for the big guy’s help, before he realized that it was just Loom. His fist had nailed her in the cheek, and she reeled back, swearing.
“OW! Fuck! Shit!” she hissed, hands cradling her face. The boy squirmed back. Would she forgive him? Would he have to run? His heart pumped like he was racing again. He had only just met her today, but maybe she would forgive him…
Except when she looked up and glared, it wasn’t at him. Her gaze was focused on the distance, on the waving grass. The boy squinted. His first instinct was that it was a predator of some kind; he reached for the big guy, ready to leap onto his back and start running at a moment’s notice.
“Get back, kid,” snapped Loom, and the boy froze. “Don’t get up. Let them think we’re still in the wagon. We can surprise them.”
Them? And then the boy realized what- or, rather, who– they must be, with a sinking feeling in his gut.
This many people in one day was too much. He still didn’t have any rocks.
He saw with a little relief that Deppash wasn’t tied to his harness yet. Loom put a firm hand on the ox’s head, pushing him down so that his stiff ears and bright eyes did not alert the bandits or robbers or whatever they were.
The boy tried to do the same for the big guy, but the camelopard was just too tall to even try to hide. The big guy still looked at the world with half-hooded, lazy eyes, but the nervous flicks of his tail gave him away. He knew what was happening, but was doing his best to follow Loom’s instructions.
“Good guy,” the boy whispered, getting close to him, careful not to disturb the grass as he crept close to his friend. “Smart guy.”
The boy watched for the robbers’ approach. He hoped that they were as bad thieves as he was.
He held his breath. Perhaps Loom had just been paranoid. Maybe it was just some big cat or other animal, parting the grass as it moved. Perhaps they were safe.
And then the grass around them exploded.
A grown man dove out of the cover, a tabula thrumming in his hand. He wasn’t the only; two others on opposite ends of the wagon charged forward, all screaming. As the man roared, something leaped out of the grass, a mass that had no right to be there as it barreled out of nothingness.
The man hadn’t seen the boy; he was attacking the wagon. The thing from the grass though…
It sunk sharp claws into the camelopard’s side, too fast for the big guy to react. The boy screamed, pummeling his scrawny fists on the thing digging into his friend’s side.
The lion slipped off, not so much out of pain but annoyance. It had left long red gashes in the big guy’s side, and now turned its attention on the boy. The boy realized that he had just tried to attack a fully grown male lion with his bare hands.
“Yike,” he muttered, a little shocked. “That was stupid.”
And then the lion had knocked the air out of his lungs, pinning him to the ground. A claw traced lightly over the boy’s chest, and the lion growled, a low deep sound that rumbled through the boy’s entire body. A smoldering intelligence burned behind its yellow glare.
Through watering eyes, the boy saw the big guy raise his hooves. A well placed kick and-
And the lion’s mane burst into flame with a deafening whoosh, causing the big guy to stumble back, screaming hoarsely. The lion did not even spare the big guy a glance, still intent on the boy.
As the grass began to blacken and burn around them, as heated air billowed in his face, the boy took comfort in the fact that if the lion wanted to kill him, it would have done so already. Some comfort, anyway. It was hard to ignore the fact that the cloth wraps around his pinned feet were starting to smoke.
“There they were,” said a voice, over the crackle of the flames. “Pyrr, get off, he needs to be alive if I want to sell him.”
The lion snarled, but backed away, as the man stepped lightly out of the wagon.
“Don’t bother fighting, boy, your master’s already down. Just come quietly and I promise not to hurt y- ugh!” The slaver’s talk was interrupted as the boy ran headfirst into him. He didn’t even bother to punch or kick; he simply shot from the ground and slammed into the man’s gut with whatever part reached him first.
“Fucking-.” The man didn’t finish his swear, as a rock-hard hoof hit him in the head. His skull snapped back with a crack. The boy didn’t know if the man would get up after that. It didn’t matter. He had to run.
The big guy fell into stride beside him as the boy dashed away, but his progress was impeded by a sharp tug around his midsection. His belt! The boy turned around. The robber looked dead on his feet, but his hand was locked around the boy’s belt and there was a manic expression in his eyes.
The poorly tied knot came loose, and the boy tumbled forward, skinning his knees and elbows as he fell onto the dirt.
He heard a low chuckle, and his hands immediately went to his waist. The tabula- her tabula, where had it gone?
“Got you now, you little shit,” said the man, grinning.
Three amber disks glinted in his hand.
Reap (Chapter 1 Part 4)
“What the fuck are you eating? Your breath stinks, kid,” the woman said.
The boy dug away near the water while the camelopard browsed on a nearby tree. “It’s the bulb grass,” said the boy, hands reaching underground to pluck out the tuber. “I like it and the rest of me stinks just as bad anyway.”
“Bulb grass? That’s not grass, that’s a fucking onion.” The woman put her head in her hands and groaned. “There’s too much damage done here. Next thing you know you’re gonna forget what wheels are again.”
The boy stared blankly at the woman.
“The round things on the bottom of the cart.”
“Oh. Right.” The boy turned back to his meal. He gave the bulb grass—onion, he mentally corrected himself—a cursory wash before biting in. It was sweet and sharp and wonderful, and with food in his mouth and shade over his head, the boy didn’t care much about wheels.
“You’re fucking hopeless.” The woman rose to her feet. “Why are you still here? I told you to leave me alone.”
“Only water on the way, yeah? We go same way, we drink same water.”
“I told you about the water. You wouldn’t even know about it if it wasn’t for me!”
The boy shrugged, taking another bite. “Doesn’t change that this the only water on the way. Same way, same water. No big.”
The woman slumped across from him, dabbling her bare feet in the watering hole. The boy did the same. Despite the woman’s yelling, it was nice under the grove. Patches of trees like these were rare in the grasslands: not because of their scarcity, but because they never seemed to stay in one place. Perhaps that was the long grass’s work, always twisting and turning and being deceitful.
It was peaceful. Overhead, the big guy chewed on leaves while the ox systematically mowed down all the grass around the tree. They seemed to be getting along better than their owners.
The woman wrinkled her nose. “Hey, kid, I got a name for you. Stink.”
Self-consciously, the boy looked at himself. He dabbled his hands, which he had wrapped with the remains of his shirt, in the water, and gave himself a few short, hard scrubs with the now damp rags. “I clean myself up. I smell better. No stink, yeah?”
“You still stink,” said the woman, flatly.
“I don’t like Stink. Stink isn’t a good name.” The boy shook his head. “And you still don’t tell me your name. You have a name? Is it a good name?”
“Civilized folk call me Loom. Loom the carpet merchant.” The woman looked in his eyes for some kind of reaction, but the boy’s face did not even twitch. “Ah, fuck it, you’re too stupid to get it.”
The boy thought about the name for a moment. Loom. It had a way of stretching out the lips. “I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s a stinky name.”
“What other names have you heard? That’s right, none. It’s the only name you’ve ever fucking known,” said the woman, more annoyed than indignant.
The boy held up his index finger. “I know one sun. Very hot. I know one camelopard. Very tall. I know one world. Very big. And now I know one name. Very stinky.”
“Well, guess what, in the real world you don’t get to choose your own name,” the woman, Loom, said, as she laid back onto the ground with a grunt. She rested, with her hands behind her head, staring up at the azure sky. “And since you’re not meeting nobody out here, it’s my job to give you a name, and I guarantee it’ll be at least as shitty as mine.”
“Shitty’s fine,” said the boy. “But not stinky.”
“Kid, do you even understand what shit is?”
There was a pause, as the boy pondered the question. “No,” he said, finally. “But I want a name that is shitty not stinky.”
“Well, that’s difficult,” said Loom. She scratched her nose and closed her eyes, but kept talking. “The two are close.”
“Close is not always.” The boy scrubbed his cheeks with his wet palms and rose. He watched Loom out of the corner of his eye as he walked to the two beasts. The camelopard had his head buried in the charred remains of a lightning-struck tree, staining his snout with soot.
“What’s he doing?” asked Loom, looking up.
“He eats the burned bits,” said the boy. “He likes them.”
“Shit’s bad for his stomach. Make him spit it out.”
“Naw, I can’t do that. Big guy does what he likes, yeah?” The camelopard ignored him, which the boy took as a yes.
Loom grunted. “Then both of you’s is dumb as fuck.”
The boy rubbed the camelopard around the neck, and the creature swished his tail. “Hey, big guy, want a name like his? Pash?”
The ox raised his head at the mention of his name, but seeing that nothing else was forthcoming returned to his meal.
“Deppash was the name of the duarch who saw Shira Hay through the Time of Broken Chains,” said Loom, from the side of the pool. “It’s a very scholarly name with honor and tradition behind it.”
The boy looked to the camelopard. “Sounds stupid, yeah?”
The camelopard nodded in agreement, although that may have just been him moving on to more verdant branches.
“Yeah. You just the big guy, big guy.”
The big guy seemed content with that.
With a grunt, the boy sat down beside the big guy at the base of the tree. The oasis refuges scattered throughout the grasslands were always a welcome respite; the wide thorntrees provided ample shade from the high sun, and water was always a commodity in a place so dry and so hot. The boy would have stayed put and lived in one all his life if he could have.
But there was a reason why they were called the walking groves, even if no one knew the precise method behind it. Staring up at the tall, stiff tree, the boy had a hard time imagining that it could move at all. Yet, time and time again, whenever the boy found one of the life-giving groves, it disappeared by morning, even the watering holes and the dead leaves on the ground.
Sometimes he would stare out at the grass and wonder if perhaps he was the one who had moved: if the waving grass had somehow just carried him away, like a gentle breeze, while he was asleep. Staring out at the ceaseless undulations, it seemed just plausible enough to believe.
“You remember the first one of these we ended up in?” said the boy, scratching the big guy’s side. “The one that brought us here?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Loom stir.
“Big tree. I came first, just popped up in the empty bit.” The boy wrinkled his nose, reaching back through his foggy mind. “Trees all around us, all bent in, like they were…like they were bowing or something to the big tree in the middle.”
“The hollow,” said Loom.
The boy jumped. He had spent so long talking to himself, and to the big guy, that he had forgotten that other people could listen in, let alone respond.
“It’s called a hollow,” she repeated.
“What is?”
“The big tree. And the empty bit in the middle, I suppose.” The boy saw for a brief moment a look of consternation on Loom’s face. “It’s a bit confusing, but that’s what city folk call them. Hollows. Hell, even wild men call them that. Hollows have hollows, see? It’s easy to remember.”
The boy edged a little bit closer forward, eager for more. After all those years talking to himself, just listening felt like something strange, exotic, exciting.
“Some people call them holy hollows. Think of them as little gods. They worship them and leave behind little trinkets for them.” Loom coughed. “Some people, anyway. Not civilized folk. Wild men that never heard of the Ladies Four.”
“…Who are the Ladies Four?”
“Ah, forgot who I’m talking to. Stupid fucking kid.” Loom opened her arms to the sky. “They’re the true goddesses. Makers of Albumere, divine watchers of the above, players of the game of worlds, all that bullshit.”
The boy chewed his lip. “Is the bullshit good or bad?”
“It’s…” Loom struggled to speak for several seconds. “Fuck it. Forget about it.”
The boy shook his head vigorously. “I don’t want to forget anything.”
“It’s a figure of speech, Summer burn it. You trying to piss me off or are you really that dumb?” Loom looked angry, although the boy was quickly learning that anger seemed to be her default state of existence. “Point is, the hollows are just a bunch of fucking trees. Don’t bother with them.”
The boy nodded even if he did not understand. The tree- the hollow- had brought him here to the land of grass. It had power, and from what the boy could remember of gods that made it worthy of worship. These Ladies had never appeared for him. They had not given him food or water or shade or the disks in his belt. He decided that trees made better gods, although he did not say it aloud. It would have made Loom angry.
He had other questions, though. “What is Albumere?”
“This is bullshit. Now I know you’re fucking with me…” Loom grumbled.
The boy’s eyes went wide. Loom had entered a rare talkative mood; he felt as if he had just scared off his next meal with a too loud step. “No!” he cried. “There is none of the fucking with you!”
Loom sighed and sat up. She seemed resigned to accept that she wasn’t getting any rest anytime soon, and glared at the boy for it. There was disgust in her eyes, but oddly pity, too. Empathy. Perhaps a touch of recognition, although that the boy was probably misinterpreting. He did not have much experience reading other people’s eyes.
“Don’t say that word.”
“The bullshit word or the fucking word?”
“Both of them.”
“But you say them all the time!”
“That’s cause I’m not a dumb fucking kid, you dumb fucking kid,” Loom said. “And to answer your question, so you don’t look like a complete idiot when we reach Shira Hay, Albumere is this.” She gestured all around her.
The boy looked at the trees. “This?” he asked, skeptically.
Loom followed his gaze. “No, no, bigger than that.”
“That?” the boy asked, pointing out towards grasslands beyond.
“Bigger.”
Bigger than the grasslands? The mere thought was inconceivable. The boy had spent four years walking them, and not even once had the horizon ever been broken by anything more than just…grass.
The boy scratched his chin. “Albumere is…the world?”
“And a little more than that, if you believe what the electors have to say,” said Loom. “Me, I don’t bother with it too much.”
While Loom seemed nonchalant, even bored, the boy’s mind buzzed. A world beyond the grass. He had given it thought, yes, but it had always existed as an abstraction, like a world beyond the sky. He reached into his belt, and took out the girl’s disk, wiping it with his thumb.
Four years searching, but he had never even come close to the golden vision in the disk…
He had resolved to find her. That much had long ago passed from a promise to simple fact. It would happen, and the boy did not even consider that it wouldn’t. But now he began to wonder, truly wonder: how big was Albumere? How long would he have to search?
Loom craned her head. “What’s that you got there?”
The boy jumped, and tried to hide the disk away. People were watching him now, too. He would have to be more careful about his disks with Loom, in case she tried to take them. Although…
A part of him wanted to show her what he had. It wanted to show off, to the first and only person who cared enough to listen.
“They’re my disks,” he said, pulling out his other two. “I found them in the hollow.”
The merchant took them one at a time, cradling them in her palms with care that the boy had not thought possible from her. She flipped through them, her critical eyes examining. The first, she held between her fingers, and muttered, “Show me.”
The disk vibrated to life faster than it ever had for the boy. His eyes widened, and he looked up at the woman in awe. Loom hadn’t even twitched, whereas whenever the boy did it he was covered in sweat and his sides ached. How had she done that?
The disk reflected an oddly pastoral scene. With a start, the boy realized he was looking at himself; it was difficult to see the fractured images at the wrong angle, but he could make out his silhouette, sitting next to Loom. He glanced up, wondering if he could catch the eye of the disk as it stared at him, but the air around him was void and empty.
Loom slid the boy’s disk to her other hand, and pressed the next one. “Show me.” This time the image was from above, looking down at the big guy’s placid face as he chewed on a leaf. Loom slid that one aside as well.
She furrowed her eyebrows as she pinched the third one, though. “You’ve been holding out on me?”
The boy shook his head, wondering what Loom meant.
“You got another tabula, you got another beast. Show me.” And the disk vibrated, and the girl was there. The boy stared. She was in a copse of trees, walking. She looked happy, and unconsciously the boy began to smile. He wondered if her trees ever walked away. He would ask when he gave the disk back.
For a moment, Loom stared at it, not understanding. “How long you had this?” she asked, holding up the girl’s disk.
“As long as the other two, yeah?”
Loom stared at the disk again. “And you never bothered to summon her?”
Despite himself, the boy remembered. Claws raking his face, harsh screaming, pain. “No,” he said, looking away. “I find her, I give it back. I don’t bring her here. Not here, not this place.”
“Give it…?” Loom trailed off. She shook her head. “Dumb kid. Extra set of hands, extra set of eyes. Would have helped, is all I’m saying. If you were worried about an extra mouth, you could have dumped her anytime you wanted to. Dumb as fuck. Who you gonna sell it to, anyway? You don’t meet anybody out here.”
Suddenly, the boy did not feel like sharing his disks with Loom anymore. He reached for them and tugged, but Loom’s grip was firm.
Their eyes met, and for a moment the boy felt his guts twist as he realized he would not be able to get those disks back no matter how hard he fought. But then Loom’s expression softened, and she let go.
“I’m gonna tell you something right now, kid,” she said. “And if you listen to one thing I ever say, listen to this, OK? Never give someone your tabula.”
The boy clutched his disks- tabula- close to his chest.
“Anyone who holds your tabula holds you, do you understand? You can’t hide from them because they’ll see you. You can’t run from them because they’ll bring you back. You can’t fight them because they can hurt you. And you can’t rebel from them because they will make you obey.” Loom looked him directly in the eye, earnest, not angry. “There’s one thing that people like us got that civilized folk never had: we’re free. Hold onto that freedom. Guard it. At the end of the day, it’s all you get.”
The boy nodded.
Loom leaned back, her intensity gone. She looked aside, searching for something else to say. “You’re not as dumb as you act,” she said. “Grabbing three tabula out of your hollow, that’s smart. Most kids only grab theirs, but then again most kids don’t make it.”
“Four,” the boy muttered.
“What’s that?”
“I got four when I left the hollow.”
A pause, and then a nod of understanding. “You lost one, huh? It happens. You move on.”
The boy frowned. Despite walking from place to place all his life, moving on was something he had never quite been able to do.
Loom coughed. “If you fetch a couple more sweet onions, I could put together a decent meal. We could share it, eat in the wagon while we wait out the heat.”
Behind him, the camelopard gave the boy an encouraging prod with a hoof. Numbly, the boy bent down to inspect the plants growing around the pool. The onions had been the first food he had when he arrived in the grasslands; they held a special place in his heart, and his stomach.
Hands squelching in the mud, the boy couldn’t help but stare as Loom brought out a bronze pot to boil water. Now, that would have been useful. It looked like it could carry so many things! And if Loom would let him handle it, he could see if it fit on his head…
The more the boy stared, the more amazed he was. His jaw hung openly, and he could not seem to tear his eyes away from the spectacle. How had they possibly shaped the metal in such a way? How was it so shiny?
“Are you rich?” asked the boy, as Loom dipped the pot into the water.
She snorted. “Hardly.”
“Do they have a lot of those in the city?”
“Tons. They’re a touch more expensive than the old clay pots, but I like these since they’re durable. One carpet could fetch me about three of them if I traded to the right person.” Loom noticed the boy’s expression. “Don’t gawk like that in the city, kid, people will notice how stupid you are. They’ll take advantage of you.”
“Does it have a name, this city?”
“Shira Hay,” said Loom. “Well, technically Shira Hay is the name of the city and the name of the lands around it.” She pointed around her. “All this.”
“But less than all this,” said the boy, opening his scrawny arms wide as he had when indicating Albumere, and smiling even wider.
Loom looked like she was about to laugh at that one, but she restrained herself to just a smile as she said, “Yes, less than all that.”
“So it is like a hollow inside the hollow, yeah? Shira Hay in the Shira Hay?”
Loom nodded. “At least you’ve got a good memory, dumb kid.”
The boy squirmed, not knowing what to say, and turned back to his work. He had almost forgotten that he was supposed to be gathering food now. After several minutes of labor, he had managed to uproot one of the vegetables, firm and cool. “Can you tell me about Shira Hay?” he asked, as he proffered it to Loom.
She took it with a single nod of thanks. “Shira Hay is next to a river called Gammon. Have you seen it?”
The boy’s face twisted as he tried to remember. “I think I see a river once. Lot of water going one way, yeah?”
“If you thought you saw a river, then it wasn’t the Gammon. It splits the whole city right in two. You want to cross it, you take the Rassay Bridge. The thing’s fucking massive. If you thought a shit old pot was impressive, the Ladies will drop you dead when you see Rassay.” Loom’s face brightened. “The Twin Libraries stand on both sides of the bridge. They’re chock full of books- I bet you’ve never even seen a book- but it’s full of them, full of people writing them, full of people reading them. The electors- those are the scholars- they’re all across the city, wearing their scarves and their cloaks. They study on the Rassay sometimes; whole classes of them, like flocks of birds, shouting and teaching and debating. And then, when you get to the outskirts of the city…”
Loom sighed. “I talk too much. I ain’t spoiling it for you. You should see it for yourself.”
The boy’s face fell as Loom turned away. “No, please! Tell me more!”
She shook her head. “No, kid, I’m no good with words. You just wait and take it all in without me ruining it for you.”
He was hungry, though, for more. Gammon and Rassay flickered like phantoms in his mind; he could not even begin to imagine the breadth of the river, or how many books the libraries allegedly contained. His appetite whet, the boy starved for details. “Please?” he begged. “Just a little more about the libraries, then, or the electors, yeah?” He crawled forward on his knees, muddy hands clasped together.
Loom snorted and shoved him away. “Relax, kid. You’ll see them when we- when you– get there.”
There was a pause, as the boy backed away and the little fire bubbled underneath the pot.
Then Loom said, “Tell you what. I’ll show you around Shira Hay, the full tour. But after that, you leave me alone, you hear me?”
The boy smiled. It was a start.
Reap (Chapter 1 Part 2)
The boy kicked as hard as he could, indiscriminately aiming at the shadowed silhouette under the blankets. His free hand scrambled for something to use as a weapon, anything at all, but found nothing.
He saw red. The boy bounced off the rolls of cloth, his head pounding from the impact as the silhouette pulled back a fist for another swing.
The boy scrambled out of the way, but he could not avoid the other hand that grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. The boy hammered his tiny fists on the hand that held him, but its grip was iron.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Another sharp crack, and the boy could hardly see anything but red and white. His head rolled on his shoulders, dazed. “You gonna give me an answer?”
Gasping for breath, the boy coughed and opened his mouth.
And sunk his teeth as deep as possible into the hand that held him.
There was a harsh scream, but he could barely hear anything over his own strangled chokes as the grip tightened around his throat. The boy sucked in air through his nostrils even as he bit down harder.
There was another sharp jolt. The two of them tumbled forward as the cart came to a sharp halt, although still the boy could not struggle free. His combatant seemed unperturbed, not even short of breath.
Both of them jumped when the cart began to tip over, though. All of its contents tumbled to the side, but even amid the scraping and banging the boy could register the bass bellow of the camelopard outside.
Canvas split, and then the boy was blinking in the sunlight, gasping for air. His shirt had torn clean in two in the fall, but neck red, chest bare, at least the boy could breathe.
“Good work, big guy,” the boy gasped. He looked around. “Big guy?”
The camelopard fell like timber snapping, a long, slow, but inevitable descent to the earth. The winter ox tossed its head, frost steaming in the air from its nostrils, hooves pawing the ground as it prepared to charge again.
“No!” The boy scrambled to his feet, not knowing what he was doing, but knowing he had to do something. A hand caught his tangled, grubby hair, and he yelled as it pulled at his head.
“Dumb kid,” the woman from the caravan snorted, tossing him on the ground. She wiped blood from a scratch on her face. “You’re going to fucking fight an ox, that’s what you going to do?”
“No, no, stop!” screamed the boy, flailing wildly as he tried to reach his friend. He rose to run to the camelopard’s side, but a heavy boot stopped him from getting up. “Let me go, let me go!”
“Relax, would you?” The woman whistled. “Deppash, back up.”
The winter ox snorted, but did not move. It kept its horns trained on the camelopard while he struggled to find his feet. With a contemptuous kick, the woman lifted her boot off the boy’s chest and turned to survey the damage.
“By the Ladies Summer and Fall, you broke my fucking tarp.” The woman ran a hand through her hair. She looked travel-worn, haggard, but clean. Far cleaner than him, anyway. “Come on, kid, get my carpets before they get any dirtier.”
The boy sat sullenly, glaring at the woman.
“Get my fucking carpets or your buddy’s insides are gonna turn into his fucking outsides, you hear me?”
The boy climbed to his feet and edged a little closer to the woman.
“And help me flip this thing back up, we got your buddy to thank for that, too.” The woman walked around to the front, untying the harnesses. “Deppash, over here, you pull and we push.” The winter ox strolled over languidly, giving the boy a dismissive flick of the ear.
The boy made eye contact with the camelopard, and took a step backward…
“If you so much as try to run away, I will hunt you down, reach down your throat, and rip out your stomach,” said the woman without looking up, as she re-tied the harnesses to the side of the cart.
The boy gave it consideration anyway, if only for a brief moment. He had never had his stomach torn out before and was sure that he could put it back given enough time, but it sounded painful.
He edged around the cart, eying the woman carefully. Finally, though, he bent down and dug his fingers under the cart, trying to get a good grip. The woman likewise moved around to the other end, glowering.
There was a moment’s pause, and without sound the woman and the ox began to force the cart up. The boy struggled to join, his heels digging into the ground, but his contribution seemed paltry.
Nevertheless, the woman gave him a satisfied nod when the cart at last landed flat, rocking from the impact. She brushed her hands on her hips and took one of the dirty carpets up on her shoulder, holding it with only one arm.
The boy glared at her. He had barely been able to drag the thing an inch inside the cart, and here she was flipping a box full of them and picking them up like they were grass stalks between her fingertips.
“Carpets aren’t going to pick themselves up,” grunted the woman. “Butterbugs are going to get in them if you don’t hurry up.”
The boy dragged his feet as he walked, and gave the closest carpet a non-committal tug. Only two or three had fallen out of the tear in the canvas; the rest had simply piled up on one side and had rolled back when they tipped the cart back up.
“By the Lady Summer and Fall, it’s a mess in there,” snorted the woman, as she pulled back the covering.
“S’ry,” mumbled the boy.
“What you just say, kid?”
“Sorry I broke your box.”
The boy stared at the ground, but after several seconds of silence he looked up. The woman was staring at him, and suddenly he felt very self-conscious about his skinny chest, his ragged clothes (or what was left of them), and the dirt on his face and hands.
He avoided eye contact with the carpet woman, but when he did look at her face he saw that her features had softened slightly.
It lasted only a moment. “Stupid kid,” she said. “It’s a wagon. A caravan. A fucking coach to the city for all I care, but it’s not a box.”
The boy turned away, his face twisted in anger. He had tried to apologize, hadn’t he? Dimly, he felt like that was the right thing to do.
A warm, moist snout nuzzled him in the side. The camelopard pulled back its long neck, hobbling slightly as he stood, and met the boy’s eyes.
Shoulders slumped, the boy gave the carpet another ineffectual tug, even as the woman began to pick up a second one. “Sorry I broke your wag-on.”
“It’s pronounced w- hrmph, never mind.”
The woman stomped away, as the boy dragged the carpet in the dirt behind her. In all probability he was getting it dirtier trying to help; he didn’t know why the woman insisted on his assistance.
“You’re a dumb kid,” the woman said, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Don’t know anything at all. Don’t know a fucking thing.”
“I know some things.” The boy stopped to lean on his knees, breathing heavily.
There was no answer.
He looked up, annoyed. “I know some things!” he shouted, trying to get her attention.
“What things?”
The boy paused. “I know about grass.”
The woman didn’t laugh, but there was something like a wheezy snicker from the ox at the front of the cart. “What about grass?” the woman said, rolling her eyes.
“I know about…” The boy pursed his lips, as he set to pulling on the carpet again. “Long grass, short grass, tall grass, brown grass, green grass, white grass, blue grass, grass with bulbs, grass with seeds, grass with bits, grass that sticks, grass that bites, grass that cuts…”
“I get it.”
“Grass that only grows in the rain, grass that only grows in the summer, grass that only grows in the dark, grass you can weave, grass you can eat, grass you can’t eat, grass that makes you sick, grass that makes nice beds, grass that don’t make nice beds, sweet grass, fat grass, underground grass…”
“I fucking get it.”
Somewhere in his list the boy had managed to drag the carpet back to the wagon. With one short, sharp heave, the carpet merchant hauled the load into the caravan. She put her hands on her hips, surveying her work, looking to double-check if anything else had fallen out of the cart. The boy turned to look, too. Nothing had.
When he turned back, it was to a fist swinging into his face.
The boy had lost count of the number of times he had been hit in the head in the last hour. He skid on the ground and groaned, blinking the stars from his eyes.
“That’s for trying to steal my shit, stupid kid,” growled the merchant. She hopped onto the back rim of the wagon, bouncing as the caravan jostled away. “Don’t steal. Or, hell, be a better thief.”
The boy rubbed his bruised cheek, watching the cart go. The wagon, caravan, coach to the city.
City.
Cities meant people. Despite the fact that his injuries, his wounds, and his bruised ego were all the result of people, the boy climbed onto the camelopard’s back and urged him to follow the person.
The boy made no attempt to hide this time. His fingers brushed his belt. The three disks were tucked safely away, his ragged pants were still hanging on, and his now ruined shirt was wrapped as a kind of pseudo-turban around his forehead. Without the shirt to buffer them, the disks scratched hard and cool against his skin. There wasn’t very much he could do about it.
All his worldly possessions prepared, the boy rode away.
“It’s because they’ve got stuff, yeah? People got stuff,” said the boy, wrapping his legs around the camelopard’s neck. “You should have seen her stuff, big guy. Should have felt it. It was nice. I bet they got stuff a hundred times better in the city, yeah?”
The camelopard’s head hung low. He made a tired groan, flicking his ears in a vain effort to fan his face.
“And water. I bet they get a lot of water in the city.”
The camelopard snarled, not satisfied.
“I bet she got water, too. With all that nice stuff like that, I bet she got water.” The boy looked around the camelopard’s neck. He could see the wagon clearly, rolling away. He could even see the carpet merchant sitting at the end of the cart, dangling her legs in the shade cast by the tarp. It wasn’t stretched as tightly now, with a tear in the middle.
The woman turned her head and met the boy’s eyes directly. “Look, it’s the dumb grass kid. What the fuck do you want? If you’re begging I don’t have anything to give you.”
The boy coughed, his throat dry. He talked often and frequently to his companion, true, but for some reason it was different with the woman. The difference wasn’t even in the fact that she could respond; the big guy responded just as often and frequently. It wasn’t the judgment, either. The camelopard’s baleful eyes had given the boy plenty of time to feel shame and rethink his life.
It was her face.
The boy did not remember any faces. He wasn’t even sure of what his own face looked like. There had only been one face in his life for four years, and that had been on the other side of the disk. Having more than one face in his life made it confusing and not entirely pleasant.
“We go to the city!” the boy shouted.
“The fuck we are,” said the woman. “You and your freak horse are going to attract every bandit for miles!”
Four years and two bandits didn’t seem like such a bad record, but the boy wasn’t sure how to say that. Instinctively, he looked away, but forced himself to meet the woman’s eyes as he spoke. “Not we we. Big guy and me. We go to the city.” The boy waved his hands in the air, suddenly ineloquent. “Separate.”
“We’re not separate if I can still see you,” said the woman, sliding as the ox clambered over a set of particularly large rocks.
“We go to the city,” repeated the boy, his features resolute. “This is the way to the city, yeah?”
“This is one way,” said the carpet merchant. “This is my way.”
“Now this is our way.” The boy folded his arms. “You try to make me go away and I reach down your throat and pull out your stomachs.”
The woman looked like she was about to swear again, but before she could speak she had broken down laughing, burying her face in her hands. “Oh, burn it all, Lady Summer. You got a name, kid?”
The boy shook his head.
“I should call you Grass or something, dumb kid. What do you call the freak horse?”
“The big guy don’t have a name. He don’t remember it. It’s in camelopard,” said the boy. The heat was not so noticeable, now, but his mouth was still dry with thirst. Perhaps there was a watering hole or a river on the path.
“The fuck is a camelopard? The long necked freak horse?”
The boy brushed the camelopard’s mane, and pursed his lips. “His neck is normal size, yeah?”
“Camelopard.” The woman had a similar expression of consternation on her face. “There’re camelbeavers in Da’atoa, camelturkeys in Hak Mat Do, and camel-fucking-hamsters in the Seat of the King. But camelopard? I don’t see it.”
“I remember it,” repeated the boy, insistently. “Camelopard.” Where the name came from and why it was there were unknown, but the boy hoarded memories like they were gold and loathed for anyone to say that they were false.
“Have you ever heard anyone else call it that?”
There’s been no one else. The boy didn’t say that. It seemed strange to say it out loud, like he would acknowledge some ugly truth. “I don’t need anyone else to say anything to know it’s true.”
“The electors at the Libraries would die of horror if they heard that,” said the woman. “They think truth is a democracy. How else do you know if you’re right?”
“I know a lot of things no one ever told me,” insisted the boy. “I know that the sun is hot and that water is cold. I know you should never let a prairie vole see you before you kill it, but that if you follow it back to its burrow there’s more inside and they got nowhere to run. I know that the big guy is my friend and he never told me that. I know I’m me.”
The caravan rolled away slowly, and the big guy followed at a leisurely pace. The woman did not say a word; she just put her elbow on her knees and her chin on her hand.
The boy hopped up and down on the camelopard’s back. His feet wiggled with anticipation. “Is the city a long way away?” the boy shouted, scratching the back of his neck. “Why you aren’t you going fast?”
“Moving slow, saving energy. It’s a long walk.”
“Oh.” That sounded familiar.
“Look, what the hell are you still doing here, kid?” The woman stood up, balancing without care on the edge of the rickety cart as it bumped and rolled along. “Get out, leave this place.”
“That’s what I try to do.” The boy squirmed. “But I get lost, yeah? So I go this way. Our way, your way.”
The sun was high and hot, but the woman did not move inside. She seemed torn, fingers drumming a pattern on her arms as she glared at the boy.
“How old are you? How long you been out here, huh?”
The boy sniffed. He remembered, but didn’t want to admit his age to the woman. Someone who was eight years old should have had more inside his head.
The woman massaged the bridge of her nose. “Yeah. Long enough.” She didn’t say anything else, just looked to the sky with her brow furrowed and her jaw set.
The boy traced the third disk in his belt, sighing. He hoped the girl wasn’t like the woman. There wasn’t anything wrong with the woman, it was just…the boy had imagined the girl whose face he had in his pocket differently.
They marched on and on, through grass gold-brown, waving ever so slightly. That woman’s face bothered him. There were deep lines in it, white hairs starting to grow around her forehead.
And yet, despite her age, when the boy looked into her face he felt like he was looking into his own.
The boy shifted, trying to interpret her silence. Maybe the fact that she wasn’t talking meant she didn’t mind him following her. “So I go with you to the city now, yeah?”
“No, fuck off.”
And the two walked on, arguing, not quite as alone as they had been an hour ago.
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