The Ishim Underground

CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Eron was actually glad to see the two hairy women who frightened him about as much as a vicious looking takahe waddling by the river.

  And at least for the time, the golden coin was safe hidden in the most unsearchable place available to a desperate man. The ingenuity required to get it there even though he was bound with the dry rope fibers biting into his visible scars, was something he would never brag about, but it was impressive. Amit had seen him.

  Eron didn't waste time wondering why the hags hadn't searched him before they tied him up and gagged him with a length of cloth. They had wrongly assumed the coin was still with Amit who was scavenging for unwatched breakfasts on the fire pit grills and suspended pots.

  The old hags led the young men to a bolted door at the rear of an unusually cylindrical purple vardo where Ethel tied Amit to a spoke on one of the tall wooden wheels. The outline of a beefalo was etched into the door. The owner was probably a butcher, Eron surmised. Still tired and wet, he boarded the vehicle at Ethel’s urging with some difficulty. He tripped on the steps where a panel had broken free.

  Inside the cart held salted slabs of dark meat. Sage. Somewhere within the messy mixture of strong scents, he isolated that one single smell before his nose went numb and tried to focus on it. Sage was universally appreciated on meat. After salt and pepper and butter, if that counted, it was the best thing.

  Eron felt around with the tip of his foot until he located a pile of fur on the floorboards and landed recklessly upon it. There were only a few inches to spare above Eron’s head, but it was likely that Ethel couldn’t stand if she tried to straighten her crooked back, but it was doubtful that Eloise could raise herself to her full height either. Both of the women were taller than him. He hadn't really noticed before.

  Finally, Ethel decided to search him, emptying his bota and shaking the vials that held the tinctures.

  “Do you know what this is?” asked Ethel.

  Eron shook his head.

  “You’ve been taking it.”

  “I wubbed num on my chess oo gow air,” he lied, thinking an embarrassing story would be easier to believe.

  Ethel ungagged him.

  "What is it?" she demanded again. "And don't screamicate. You don't know what I can do with that knife of yours and your fingernails."

  "Hair tonic!" said Eron.

  Amit, with a ragged bit of cloth still tied through his mouth, shook his head in agreement. "Vere ve gowin?" he asked.

  “North,” said Eloise who standing at the vardo door. "Pict City. To the port."

  “Vatz veer veer gowin oo,” said Amit.

  “Only if you give us back that coin,” said Ethel who then smacked the child.

  "Hit him like that and you'll rearrangicate his spots," hissed Eloise.

  "That's what I mean to do. I'll knockiate them off," said Ethel. "And then smackify this one until he can't no more."

  "Come on," said Elosie, "I bet its sown into his bundle."

  The cart rocked as they squeezed through the door. The hags left them tied in the cavity of the vehicle while they searched their belongings. Eron rested his head against the wall. They waited.

  Dust circled dully in the air.

  There was garlic hanging from the curved beams of the cart’s wooden skeleton. Bundles of herbs, grains, beans and vegetables lined the floor. A plethora of tiny drawers lined the cabinets at the entrance, which were built into the carved wooden walls on either side of the first third of the cabin.

  “That sponge must have it,” Ethel spat at Eloise in the same bitter tone she used to say everything. They could see the hags through the open vardo door.

  “Boy, can we have your coin,” said Eloise gently. “The vendor will take us to Pict City. All of us. Even the spotted boy.”

  “My coin would afford enough for passage for ten people. Twenty. We should be able to buy this cart with it."

  "That would be true any other day,” grumbled Ethel examining an empty bottle of wine. "Not today."

  “You’re gold means all of our lives,” said Ethel. “We’re not renegotiomicationing.”

  “We haven’t negotiated anything, which means we can't renegotiate what hasn't already been decided,” said Eron. “And the coin isn’t gold.”

  “Quiet!” said Eloise raising her hand.

  "What do you mean it's not gold?" asked Eloise.

  “It's an alloy. A gold colored alloy,” Eron explained. "It's not a valuable metal. It's an artifact from the modern era. It derives its value from its rarity and significance to Auckian history."

  "Spare the lecture," said Ethel. “I don’t read books,” she spat, seething with hellish impatience. “And I don’t care how supraold that coinage is. But, I know eco-monk-ics. I learnified everything about supply and demand from that old fool, Micah. Now, you listen to me you soggy little scribe. There’s a demand for retransport north. And the supply is disappearing down that road over there. Your coin or your life.”

  Eloise shuffled nearer and studied his face for an uncomfortable moment before she spoke again. “How were you proplanning to get to Pict City?”

  “Walking.”

  “And with the guard out pregathering up the strays?” she said leaning precariously over her own knees to get a closer look at his face. Eron could see the grayish film inside the woman’s pupils. Cataracts. She would be going blind soon. And her breath stank. He couldn't even look at the blacked bits still clinging to her red gums.

  She took the knife from his belt.

  “Give it over,” said Ethel easily challenging Eloise’s poor grip. “If he wants to walk. Let him walk.”

  But, the taller hag held on to the dull blade.

  “Let me talk to the driver,” said Eron. "And by the way, it’s eco NOM ics. Not ecomonkics. And if you had a fool for a teacher-”

  Ethel took immediately to his face with a beastly right hook.

  "Stop it! There isn't time," Eloise yelped. "Four lives is good value for one coin of any postage.”

  "Postage?" asked Eron.

  "Years, you educated-" Ethel started.

  An awkward silence fell as Eron considered Elosie's proposal. The taller of the hags was as pathetic in her pleading as the other was threatening, but as he studied the old women, he realized, he was being foolish. A cart. Passage. Maybe even food. And he'd save two women. One of whom would not be grateful, but the choice was obvious. He didn't have to bother with how they'd gotten around to helping him make it.

  “It’s in my-,” he tried to say "butt" or "butthole," but the words clung to his tongue refusing to be said. “Rectum.”

  “What’s a rectum?” asked Eloise.

  "A small cavity at the end of the intestine!" he blurted.

  Amit snickered.

  "Get on with it then," said Ethel.

  It took a while to convince the women to let him retreat privately to recover the coin. In the end, they held his bundle, his boots and Amit as collateral and tied the rope to his left ankle before they allowed him to shamefully retreat behind the cart. After he’d cleaned the coin properly on the grass, he rounded the vardo to find Amit being helped onto the platform by the driver, a younger man with a sparse beard wearing a black akubra. He had a stern look. His rustic gray overalls covered his dark tunic and he had single white shell necklace hanging around his neck that nearly reached to his navel. The man wore a red tunic much like the craftsmen from one of the villages. He didn't introduce himself.

  There were no negotiations, or possibly, the terms had already been decided. The man held out his hand and Eron nervously handed him the coin. The driver looked at it. Bit it. And grunted his approval.

  There probably wasn't a single nomad in the near vicinity who didn’t want to leave the waste that morning, hidden within a cart, but Eron was sure that few had coinage, if any.

  “They’re taking the Eastern Route,” said Eloise heaving her way into the vardo.

  Standing in the door beside the hag, a woman was h
olding the door open. “My husband insists you walk,” she said to Eron.

  Her downturned eyes and upturned nose were gracefully framed by dangling red locks wrapped in a white cloth bound closely to her head and secured with metal pins. For a nomad, any metal was a mark of wealth and the whiteness of her cloth further demonstrated her status. A consort. Not yet married, but more or less bound to her partner who she called her husband, but Eron could see that her hands hadn't been tattooed with his symbol. She was at least seven months pregnant.

  “I'm paying to walk,” he muttered to himself as the hags boarded the cart.

  There were a few disheveled looking nomads wandering on the road that morning as a gathering of guardsmen marched past the vardo in the direction of Waimate. Their pikes bobbed in the air, none of them clean. The hags, Eron, Amit and the vendor’s consort all took a sudden interest in the forest until they had passed. It was unlikely that they would stop someone on the road, but Eron sighed in relief just as audibly.

  “The women can ride uphill," said the consort. "If it rains everyone can ride. Or if the guards pass again,” she added quickly. “Our horses can’t bear more than that.”

  Eron nodded.

  Something about the sadness in her expression and her forced softness appealed to him. It would be dangerous passage if only because the guard could turn any minute.

  Eron circled the slow moving vehicle where he could be seen for a while before climbing onto the step with his legs dangling over the ground as it passed under him. Rocks and dips. Bits of trees. Leaves. Puddles. He was jiggled by the motion of the cabin and the bumps, shakes, and clops of hooves as they headed west. At times, he got down and made an appearance walking along side the cart so the driver and his consort didn't check on him, but most of the time, he sat on the step.

  It was dusk before they reached the fork in the road where the Eastern Route begin and they could see the smooth passable stretch of road separate into the nearly impassable ascent to the Western Route, full of cats, ahead. There were more refugees taking the Western Road. It was direct. But, Aden said it would be safer and that make an unfortunate sense to Eron. The guard anticipated the nomads would take the Western Route, precisely because it was less passable. So, that's where they would set up their traps. And the nomads who had been allowed to pass would be caught never suspecting anything.

  “It makes some sense, Moen,” said the consort after Eron explained why they had to go on the Eastern Route.

  The driver conceded.

  When the starts appeared and the loogaroo howled on the hillsides, Eron and Amit slept under the vardo behind its massive wooden wheels covered in the driver's beefalo hides. Nightmares crept through Eron’s dreams like wounded animals. He saw his mother. His friends. His old tutor. And burning logs.

  Amit’s foot was in his back and his face was wet when he woke up. He could taste the salty coastal air passing over them. Eron crept toward the vardo door. Ethel and Eloise in all their hideous purple glory were curled up in fetal position, sleeping soundly under two heavy hides, snoring. He lifted a bag of dried beans and pulled it back to the warmth of his covering and closed the door behind him. He meant to use the bag as a pillow, but he couldn't seem to sleep again.

  “Remember, you’re here because of my woman.”

  The dark outline of the driver's boots were hardly visible beside the cart.

  “One meal a day and no stops.”

  “Thank you,” said Eron.

  The man went to relieve himself beside a tree. His lack of compassion sounded nearly as forced as his consort’s sweetness. Unlike the hags, neither of them were as cold or warm as they pretended to be. And Eron rather liked the driver for it.

  “And openate that door so that old woman’s germs get clear of my meat.”

  Eron crawled back out and lifted the wooden peg so the door swung loosely on its hinges.

  Dawn was bleeding its subtle hues into the night sky and though still groggy, Eron gave up on sleeping, and made his way to the fire being built by the driver. His consort was sitting on a stump next to the fire with a blackened clay bowl and quilted pad. She jumped to her feet when she saw Eron. Hair covering was an ambitious fashion for a nomad, but she'd taken it off to wash in a stream. While it was not a required obedience to the Municipal Code as it was for Auckian women, it lent her a civilized air of sophistication, Eron thought. Her wet tendrils were pale, almost yellow. She stepped quickly for not having shoes, grabbed her white cloth and bound her hair up tightly.

  Eron hadn't noticed before that the sleeve of her right arm was pinned against her shoulder. No right arm.

  "Don't you recognize me?” she said tearfully.

  Eron was stunned by her sudden emotion.

  "I told you not to pester him," said the man.

  "Gil?" she said weakly.

  His tired frame shook with anxiety. Eron stepped back and looked at the vendor, then starred silently at the ground and then glanced quickly again at the vendor. He couldn’t bear the unfortunate hope in the woman’s face.

  “Gil is s-safe,” he stuttered. “In Dunedin. I’m- I’m Eron. I’m not Gil. I'm sorry.”

  “You lookify the same,” said the woman sounding a bit relieved and embarrassed, “But, darker, now that I think about it. I thought it had been the sun.“ The woman’s surprise gave way and she smiled brightly, “But, this isn't one of your games, is it?”

  Eron shook his head, noticing that the beefalo vendor wasn't too pleased to be discussing his doppelganger. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to convince her. Eron could read. Gil could not. He wrote his name in the dirt with a stick.

  “Even given the preopportunity, I doubt Gil would have the patience to learn letters,” said the vendor.

  Eron flashed him an ironic grin, but the consort, who was obviously fond of the entertainer, didn't seem find any humor in the vendor's comment.

  "We don't even know if that is writing," she said sharply.

  Eron offered to help mix water into the grainy porridge she was cooking. She refused.

  It was a matter of honor for the nomadic women to control the fire. Eron had learned that at the lockers, but he thought, with the hair covering, she might be different. It was decidedly not so.

  With too many women from too many families, the highwayman served the travelers not by only protecting them, but keeping order and peace between the women who would fight over the right to stir the pot for each and every evening meal.

  It was very likely that they would have the same meal every day until they reached the bay and the port in Pict City, which was located just across the waters from the D.O.T. according to shepherd's map. Eron didn't need the map to tell him the geography of the main cities and the roads the guard used. He had studied it all in Auckian geography, but there was more information on it than the official records contained.

  "How can you look so much like Gil?" she asked leaning over the fire and sprinkling precious salt into the gummy bubbling oats in her pot. The overcast sky was letting a light drizzle through and sizzled on the hot rocks. "You must be his brother."

  "I didn't meet him until a week ago," said Eron. "I can't explain it."

  "But, he is obviously your suprarelative," said the vendor.

  Oatmeal, beefalo and salt were served while the hags and Amit continued sleeping.

  While they were eating, Eron learned that woman was called Elishiva. She was very interested in his story. Although he had considered taking an alias, he worried that the gawds might punish him. So, he started with Dunedin, but backtracked to Auck City even mentioning the first time he remembered seeing Thadine. Eventually, the disappointment drained from the woman's face. A good story, even a sad one, could do that for anyone.

  “The whole island is coated with slave raiders,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m glad he was not in Waimate.” Elishiva took their horse's reigns and walked the two scraggily brown beasts to the stream.

  Maybe because he liked
the two vendors or maybe because he was bored, Eron chose to walk rather than ride. They only saw one guardsman and he simply passed beside the purple vardo and continued treading slowly forward. He even lifted his helmet to acknowledge Elishiva. The only complaint Eron had about the guard was that he splattered more mud than was necessary.

  There was, in fact, mud on the wheels, their boots, their pants and speckles of brown on their faces, so much so that everyone, but the hags who wouldn't leave the vardo, looked like Amit. At one point, they stopped and attached a dingy awning to the side of the cart to avoid a downpour. There was porridge left over from the morning, which the consort reheated as they waited. And for the second time that day, he ate fresh read meat. Not pemmican. Though the vendors did offer some to him for in between meals. Eron thanked them, but he had already wrapped a piece of beefalo in a scrap of hide.

  Eron took three hot bowls to the cabin balanced on quilted holders over his arms. Tiny droplets pounded rings onto the puddles that lined the road as he walked. There were not as many lockers and concrete fire pits on the Western Route. With the vardo, they just pulled over to the side of the road wherever there was room against the damp brush. Eron was already feeling happier, because they had left the waste behind.

  The wastelands were overwhelmingly brown and yellow. And that was not the Auckland he knew. His Auckland was lush and green. Finally, Eron was beginning to feel closer to home even if that meant more rain, he was glad for it.

  Just as he was considering how to open the door to the vardo, he saw two glossy eyes peeking out from the dark leaves at the edge of the road. A soft nose appeared. It was massive. Eron dropped the bowls as the largest cat he had ever seen parted the bushes. It's eyes, like watery plates, were fixed on him.

  He couldn't move.

  Much larger than human hands, the panthera’s the formidable claws stabbed the earth as its paw spread to hold its weight with each step. And the creature sauntered toward him nonchalantly in a manner that conveyed absolute ownership of every in its path. It walked like a cat and its white fur, drenched and wretched, flattened against its body in some places, which only revealed the mass and size of the muscles under it.

  "Moen," Eron whispered.

  The panthera lifted its head while Eron quickly prayed that it would eat the horses.

  It sniffed with its heavy whiskers twitching on its powerful muzzle. Eron crouched slowly down to make himself seem smaller and hopefully less tasty. But, the panthera was nearly as tall as the vardo. Its white coat glistened where it hadn't matted and its pointed pink ears defied the wind like little kites as they pricked toward the sound of the driver moving around.

  The cat's ivory tail swished in the air above them and a horrible rumble grew loudly in its belly. Moen stood in his tracks while the creature hissed, opening its mouth to reveal a dark gateway to oblivion.

  It was then that Eron realized that its milky eyes, much like Eloise's, couldn't fix themselves on anything in their clouded field of vision. They were gray. Risking everything, he ducked under the cart. His heart beat into mud under him. Improperly hung in its skull, the creature's eyes seemed to move independent of its body. No doubt the animal could still hear and smell him, but it it could have seen him, it would have pounced. Instead the animal turned toward the fire.

  The cat pawed and at the unattended pot and stuck its prickly tongue out, which coiled back, as if it were thinking with its stomach. The horses reared and snorted, but were stuck fast in their harnesses. Hearing them, the cat crouched with half its body under the awning.

  “Where is that breakfast?” cried Eloise swinging open the cabin door.

  MEOWAAARRRRRRR!

  It happened so fast that Eron's mind was unable to hold the details together. On its hind legs, it gripped the old woman in its paws and the rest was a blur of white fur and red blood. Eron closed his eyes as it started to walk back into the forest with Eloise's body hanging limply in its teeth.

  Eron heard the vendor's boots splashing violently. And he gripped the muddy grass and started to cry, but when he opened his eyes, the cat lay dead with a pike through its neck. Blood gushing from its jugular. The vendor’s arms were crimson. Trembling, Eron ran to where Eloise had dropped.

  “What is a spongy little Auckian like you doing out here anyway?” she breathed, smiling at him. She stank like a foundry.

  Eron dropped to his knees.

  Achyza had always said that people who are about to die suffer amnesia. The mind and the body disconnect for a moment. And that was why he never needed to fear a violent death. Falling from a building, everything would go black. Any impact. Any cut. Nothing would be felt. By the grace of the gawds, the mind could protect itself.

  But, if a person survived a violent attack, they would quickly recover their mind and die slowly. There was a time in the modern era when they could replace a heart and tailor new skin to cover damage. The moderns had pills made from anything and everything. No one had to die until they wanted to. In his time, an infected scratch could be lethal.

  Eloise was dying.

  She raised a bushy eyebrow at him. “You’re awful quietized and complicated,” she coughed up a stream of blood. "But, you're a good boy."

  In the aftermath of the attack, the vendors wasted no time cutting into the dead carcass of the panthera. Cat furs were valuable, but the larger, the better. The blind white panthera was larger than any he had seen and whole, its pelt was worth more than the coinage.

  Sobbing, Ethel burst out of the vardo and pushed Eron away from the old hag. She mopped the blood from the woman's face. Not knowing what to do, Eron started to wipe the blood from the vardo as Ethel held the woman’s face with her skirt and rocked her head in her lap. He didn't want to tell her that it would kill Eloise sooner, but even that, would be a kindness.

  "Amit?" Eron shouted.

  He grew white. He hadn't seen the boy since before the cat appeared. Eron looked around frantically. The boy poked his head out of the cart and took another bite an apple he found rolling around in the cabin. Every muscle in Eron's body untensed.

  The vendors would take the hide, a claw or two and some of the meat. Other nomads and the birds could have the rest. It was too much to carry.

  “Every wayward boy,” spat Ethel bitterly onto the mud dropping the woman. She stood up and looked at Eron. “Every boy reminditizes you of your nephew. You let them keep their soggy bindles. And you share food!”

  Ethel had an angry crease between her bulging eyes that never relaxed. As she leaned over her companion's body, her chest rattled and her features contorted inward toward her nose. She was even uglier in pain. And though she was crying to Eloise, she was glaring at Eron. Ethel tried to wipe the blood from Eloise’s round belly, but a fresh stream of blood poured from gash uncovered by her efforts.

  “You're killed,” said Ethel growing pale as if she hadn't seen the tear on the woman's foot.

  “Couldn’t be anti-helped,” said Eloise weakly.

  "I'll get something to make you comfortable," she said setting Eloise's head down.

  Ethel plucked the apple from Amit’s hand as she walked past, licked it and handed it back. Amit sneered before dropping his fruit into the puddle below the cart door. He reached over and wiped his hands on Eron's tunic.

  Eron just starred at the old woman who was calmly dying before his eyes. He had a few strong urges to go to her side before Ethel returned. So, waited and he watched. He knew nothing about skinned cats or tending to the wounded. He sat helplessly next to Amit and waited.

  And eventually, the sun set.

  The vendors were already cutting flesh from the cat's side by dusk and scraping its hide. Disassembled, the awning was being used to help stretch the hide over the vardo. There had been no point in cleaning its sides. Despite Ethel's protests, Amit and Eron helped the distraught and desperate hag to lift Eloise's body into the vendor's cabin. Where Ethel began to howl.

  Eloise wasn't ab
le to speak anymore.

  “Go away or I'll cut you!” wailed Ethel when Elishiva finally finished her duties and tried to comfort the old woman.

  The vendors tied bundles of meat onto the roof of their vehicle and they all departed down the road even as the night sky opened above them. The soft red soil of the Eastern Route sunk easily after a rainfall, but the ruts from where the carts had worn deep groves were dry enough. In some places, the holes had been filled with a layer of pebbles tossed and rounded sometime before in sea. Bark and twigs were often wedged into groves where the wheels of a cart had been caught. Between the moonlight and break in rainfall, it didn't matter how tired they felt. It was time to push on.

  At night, trees still cast their shadows on across their path. Birds whizzed and whirred their tunes all around and although some were capable of flight, the majority were grounded. Wide beaks and long legs made them good at sneaking up on insects, but their heavy bodies prevented them from running from their predators. And while the nomads and the villagers occasionally culled their population, to the larger beasts they were hardly a mouthful.

  He even heard what he thought was an owl.

  As he walked, some of the truths Eron thought he knew about himself started to unravel. He had no time to think since the burning of Waimate. He was not Aden’s brother anymore. This was new. He was not Thadine’s son. That hurt as much as the fact that she never told him so. His father was not Rowan, a celebrated captain of the Red Guard, who died when he was too young to remember. But, if there was one thing, he knew for certain, he was Eron of Auck City, scribe.

  Except. His name might not even be Eron. It was too much. And he wasn't a scribe, he was a Green Guardsman. No, actually, that was the best change, he was not a Green Guardsman.

  The first time that night that Ethel left to use the little girl’s hastily dug hole in the ground, Eron climbed in the back of the vardo.

  “Do you believe in the Ishim?” he asked Eloise. He didn't know what he wanted to say.

  He was scared. And that scared him. Not because there was anything to be afraid of, but because for the past day and night he'd been numb. It had always been his habit to talk to old people when he was scared. They were wise. And considering the situation, right now was the wisest Eloise would ever be.

  The hag was breathing slowly.

  “My brother and his friends once lowered me into a well when I told them my tutor thought the head archivist was an Ishim,” he continued.

  “They appearimicate like us,” said Eloise.

  “I think I met one at Waimate,” confided Eron. “And I saw my brother. He told me I was adopted.”

  Something about saying the words aloud made them more real.

  “Brothers,” said Eloise absently. "Always say that."

  She patted his arm, but there was no strength left in the tall woman.

  “I think I hate my brother,” said Eron.

  “That's how love works," she said. “One day you want to bring them the moon. The next day you want to prodrop the moon on their head.”

  A trickle of blood escaped from the corner of her mouth as she started coughing. Panicking, Eron tore the cabin apart searching for the vial with the liquid that healed his wrist, but it wasn't in his bundle. He packed and repacked his bundle three times. He lined up everything that was left. He searched the pads and every corner and crevasse inside the vardo.

  “Amit!” he screamed with all the wind he could muster.

  But, the wild boy was neither near the vardo nor within hearing range. However, Ethel came running. She held the woman’s withered hand.

  “I’ve always remembered,” said Ethel, “the way your braided rug felt under my toes. But, my memory is so worn out that now, its just like that old cloth.”

  Eloise drew a final breath with a heavy strain.

  "Don't go," said Ethel.

  At dawn, the vendors stopped to dispose of her body. No gawds were called to lead Eloise to another dimension by any high priestess as would have happened had she died in Auck City. It was entirely without ceremony. Just a shallow grave. No marker.

  The forrest was too quiet.

  Eron tossed a stone and flock of small dark birds rose. Then, he wandered for a while and found a boulder among some sparsely distributed ferns and starred up at the over-hanging canopy. He tore a blade from one of the plants and slide his fingers across the spores along the underside then ripped it up slowly, piece by piece.

  Ethel had gone before he got back to the cart and the vendors were arguing loudly outside it. Eron heard her pleading. She said something about him and Amit being boys. And Moen hit the side of the cart where the hide was drying. Eron walked the rest of the way down the slope from Eloise's grave where they could see him approach. Amit was sitting on the driver's seat with his bindle already packed.

  “Your’e getting off here,” Moen said. His face was red.

  “We paid you well for four people," said Eron. "And there’s quite a few more days.” No more nice scribe, he thought, trying to give himself courage.

  The woman looked defiantly at her husband as Moen stormed away.

  “He heard you say that you’d met an Ishim,” Elisheva said quietly. “I’ve tried to reason with him, but he thinks you’re cursed. You can write. You seem younger than you look. You had that coin. You travel with a feral child. You speak like an Auckian. We were attacked by a ghost cat. And you’re a bit feminine.”

  Feminine. Right.

  Something unfamiliar, but powerful welled up inside him. He climbed up the ladder onto the driver's platform and after overpowering Amit, took canister from his pocket. But, that wasn't the only thing the boy was keeping. After emptying the boy's pocket, Eron retrieved the vial from the floor board. He shot Amit a vicious glare.

  “Two more days?” said Eron bitterly.

  “No!” said Amit reaching for the metal canister.

  Although Amit was quick and nimble, Eron was stronger. He held it tightly as the boy tried to pry it from his clenched fist. Amit sealed his two spotted hands over Eron’s and tried to regain control. As they wrestled, Eron found the soft spot inside Amit’s elbow and pinched it. Amit yelped and let go. Practical anatomy had been one of his favorite classes.

  “Your lessons are over,” said Eron fuming.

  “Beefalo dung,” said Amit.

  “I can't help you,” said Moen’s consort. “He won’t reconsiderish it. You can't be here when he gets back. He hates the Ishim. Really hates them.”

  “What about my coin?” said Eron.

  “He has it,” she said. “I can give you supplies.”

  She beckoned them into the cabin. Eron went first and the wild boy quickly followed.

  “Make yourself a bindle,” said Eron pointing to the drawers.

  “Give me the canister,” said Amit sternly.

  “It’s not yours,” said Eron.

  “Give me the canister,” he repeated.

  "And the vial?" sneered Eron. "This might have saved that old lady."

  "We need it more," he said crossing his spotted arms.

  Eron thrust the empty tube into the boy’s hand.

  Together, they took meat, string, spices, two furs, a tanned hide, black clay mugs, a tunic for Amit, a belt for Eron and a slingshot. Elisheva tried to send them away with some dried beans, because Eron refused, because neither he nor Amit really had a clue how to cook them.

  "Take great care," she cried after them.

  "We've made it this far," said Eron.

  And they started up the hill just as Moen was walking silently and shamefully back down it.