The Ishim Underground

CHAPTER NINE

  The misfit pair, one scribe from the city and youth of the forest, headed down the road on the last day of their journey walking fast and straight to the cliff at the edge of Waimate Valley, which opened below them like a torn scroll. Even though they could see the smoke rising in the distance, there was still some distance to cross vertically. Eron thought the path down the side of the rock might just zigzag downward forever into the haze, but Amit scoffed unenthusiastically when he suggested it was possible. At least the passage was wide. And it had to be to accommodate some of the newer vardos.

  They saw more hebras as they neared the camp. The horselike creature with its yellow and white stripes and upright fringy mane trotted toward them clad with the oversized woven leather armor the Auckian Guard made for their horses. That was unusual. The hebra was rarely used as a stead. The left sleeve of the guardsman riding it was striped from top to bottom with red bands of fabric. He carried a long pike in his right hand, which drug along the ground, because the animal was shorter.

  “This detachment must be short on horses,” Eron said quietly to the wild boy. They were standing behind and in front of two groups of nomads. And although he knew he looked the part, not for a moment did Eron forget that he also looked like Gil. He kept his eyes downcast.

  “Elemenopee!” Amit shouted at the man.

  In total, nine days had passed that Eron and Amit were on the road studying the alphabet together, sleeping in lockers and not eating, but this was actually the first time he had legitimately wanted to kill the boy.

  “Shhh!” he hissed much to late.

  The hebra’s master pulled firmly on its reigns and the stocky creature obeyed. Its hooves clopped to a standstill directly beside Amit who grinned like a lamassu, a four legged creature said to have a human face and a sick sense of humor. Eron’s torso filled with nervous energy as if a flood gate had opened, but, after only a quick glance, the Red Guardsman moved on leading the weary looking hebra down the road, which had taken Eron and Amit so long to walk. The skinny spotted child toppled over and rolled in the dust behind Eron, clutching his stomach. Nothing about it was funny.

  Eron swung his bota at the boy. Amit sprung to his feet and lobbed a shower of gravel at Eron’s head. He was still smiling. One of the small rocks stuck Eron’s temple, but did no damage. But, fuming, Eron pulled Amit off the road and dragged him behind a pile of bricks that might have been shop at one time, they were certainly not as old as the modern ruins, but some of the foundation did appear to be cannibalized from older structures. To Eron’s surprise, the boy didn’t struggle with him or argue as he started a bitter tirade. He had never pushed anyone before, but it was too serious, he just needed Amit to understand.

  “Do you want me to get killed?” he screamed. Amit just leaned against the jagged brick wall and starred back at him, uncomprehending with the self-satisfied grin unchanged.

  Eron breathed heavily. He was going to wait for a response.

  Finally, Amit shook his head.

  “I was a guard,” Eron continued. He wasn’t yelling anymore. “Just like that man. Not exactly like him. I was a grunt not a warrior. But, a guardsman. I was born and raised in Auck City, I joined the guard about a year ago and I left. And I don’t want to be a dead was-a-guard.”

  “Where is your pike?” said Amit blankly.

  Eron ran his fingers through his hair. His sweating had glued all of his dark tendrils into one single sticky mass over the past week. His fingers were stuck only halfway through. “I gave it away,” he said. “I’m hiding from them.”

  “And they want to kill you for it?” said Amit raising an eyebrow.

  “They most certainly do,” said Eron softly. Somehow, saying it aloud made it seem more real and with Waimate within site, it was not a welcome feeling. He put his back against the crumbling brick and slid down, bending at the knee, until he collapsed in a heap beside the boy.

  “Why did you leave?” asked Amit no longer grinning at him.

  Eron thought for a moment. He needed to explain it in a way the boy would understand, “I look like the wrong man.”

  “Do they want to kill him, too?” asked the boy.

  “Actually, yes, they do,” said Eron. He couldn’t even guess whether Gil had managed to takeover his life. For all he knew, Gil had been discovered instantly and was dead.

  “Then, there is no problemacation,” said Amit getting up. “They want to kill all of us. Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

  “Alright,” said Eron. “But, if we are going to keep traveling together, you can’t shout letters at the guard.”

  “That guard didn’t know letters,” said Amit grinning widely again.

  Eron smiled, too. Finally, he got the joke. “We can’t take that risk again.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Amit mocking him with a weak salute typical of the Red Guard.

  “You don’t even need to read and write,” said Eron.

  “My father could read,” said Amit. “It’s in my blood.”

  “Impossible,” said Eron tossing a broken bit of brick at the boy’s feet. “He was probably just pretending. And reading is never in your blood. It’s learned.”

  Together, they reached the edge of the cliff and started the descent.

  The man on the hebra was not the only guard on the trail. Many smaller roads joined at the cliff, from the smaller communities nearby, and the steep road that zigzagged downward was densely clogged with horses and nomadic vardos coming and going. Fortunately, the two slender boys on foot passed more easily than the average traveler, sliding between the carts and the smooth wall of the cliff. At arm level, the cliffside bore the sleek markings of rock touched by many generations of human hands.

  At one point, an illegal cart from a garbage mine, carrying hefty chunks of steel and coal, rattled upward. Eron was shocked it did not draw the attention of the other Auckian Guards on the upward pass. With every bump the debris freed itself from the wooden box like baby birds flung from their mother’s nest. More than anything, Eron wanted to collect and examine at least one or two chunks of modern garbage, but he couldn’t bring himself to step a toe out of line while the guard were watching. Though the guardsmen were few and the nomads were many, he felt all eyes were on him as if everyone suspected, but didn’t know.

  As walked, the hazy yellow prairie below became more visible until Eron could even make out a flock of birds or some sort of dark animal that looked like a bunch of dark specks gathering together. Actually, they could even be people. On some of the steeper edges, a stone railing had been built, which Eron was too afraid to approach while Amit seemed impervious, dangling his limbs and regularly spitting over the side. There were even a few shops carved into the cliffside. Small, but adequately stocked with rice balls, nuts, stripes of dried meat. Anything to tempt the impatient traveler or the nomad recently returning from selling his inventory.

  Amit skidded down the path where there was a lull in traffic so he could gain enough velocity to run up the ramps at the corner. On every stretch of road, the path veered back upward to prevent rolling carts from going off the trail. It was not too many zigs away and zags facing the camp before Eron could make out individual streams of smoke rising into the sky, floating upward in ever widening ribbons, starting within the round walls of the nomadic village. Although the Specific Ocean barely registered on the white mists of the horizon beyond the camp, Eron could smell the clean coastal air.

  Waimate Camp was a wooden hexagon with a single road leading from one end to the other. In truth, there were more than six sides, but they were arranged in such a manner that gave the impression that the stockade was hexagonal. Achazya would probably have corrected him on that and insisted he refer to it as a dodecahedron or something like that. From their vantage on the cliffside, the roads leading west were clearly visible, but Amit and Eron were taking the detour that led away toward the camp for one reason.

  Food.

  The area around the camp was s
till called the waste, but there was no shortage of animal life. Many moa, tall birds, fast with long necks, ran the lengths of the streams within a day from the camp. If either of Eron or Amit had a bow or spear and time to spare, they would be eating very well.

  “How can they call it a nomadic camp?” said Eron, as they approached the gate, which was wide enough for three vardo to enter at a time. The structure was clearly permanent. Unmovable. Not nomadic at all.

  Two men who were taller lying down than standing guarded the entrance, or exit, depending on where you stood. The fat nomadic sentries sat on long benches with their bellies hanging between their knees.

  “And how can you be a nomad when if you can’t you can’t even get to the kitchen table at dinner time?” said Eron incredulously.

  Amit shushed him.

  “Tattoos?” droned the nomadic sentry on left side of the gate. The nomads passing in front of them waved their hands.

  “Tattoos?” he repeated to Eron and Amit.

  At his request, Amit held his hand up and spread his fingers. It wasn’t really a wave. More of a gesture. The fat man leaned forward with one foot resting on his stool. He supported the rest of his weight with an Auckian Guard issued pike.

  “One more chance,” he said to Amit who nodded in reply. “Tattoos?” he said yawning at Eron.

  “He wouldn’t even fit in a locker,” Eron whispered to Amit. “What kind of nomad can’t fit in a locker? Or a vardo?”

  Amit rolled his golden eyes and squinted. His freckles bunched. “Spread your fingers.”

  Eron obeyed.

  The slack jawed sentry nodded just as the other one on the other side called ‘tattoos’ at the next group, “Now get out of the supraway.”

  “I wasn’t-“ Eron started as they passed under the raised the wood bars, precariously held in place with fraying rope.

  “Don’t waste my time, stickman!” the sentry bellowed.

  Amit pulled on his arm and dragged Eron away from the sentry, but as soon as they were beyond reach he stuck out his tongue. And the sentry stood up on his feet - something Eron had not been entirely convinced he could do. The man’s belly jiggled wildly and he gave a vicious growl that shook his jowls, but Amit was already disappearing into the camp. Eron took off after the boy.

  Rather than head directly into the city, Amit pushed along the inside the wall down a worn path that meandered between the tall logs of the stockade and a labyrinth of bright canvas and animal skins. Waimate tents were not the simple structures that they seemed from a distance. With wooden frames buried deeply into the ground and covered with animal skins, the homes of the nomads were considerably more permanent than the structures used for Auckian festivals, which were recycled each year. Some of the tents opened wide enough on either side to see through and it seemed to Eron that the camp was denser with support beams than their were trees in the shallow glens that dotted the waste. The canvas tents, made from a thinner, brighter material than the skins of the megafauna, cast kaleidoscopic glow in their interiors where woven rugs covered the ground and nomads gathered in circles, resting on their folded legs.

  A smorgasbord of spicy scents mingled in the air. Eron was equally intrigued and repelled by the unfamiliar breeze of olfactory confusion. He stopped following Amit only momentarily to watch a woman in one of the storage tents, collecting dried lavender from her celling using a hook on the end of a long shaft. There was a grill over the fire and something was charred and delicious looking. But, sensing he had lingered too long at her door, the lady turned suddenly barring her teeth and hissing like a panthera. Embarrassed, Eron ran.

  And as he shuffled against the stockade to avoid the steady stream of raggedly garbed nomads, another intense aroma of spicy roast assaulted his nostrils. His tastebuds cried. Meat. It was the same, but different after a few days fasting.

  “I want some,” Eron whispered privately to the gawd of the kitchen. And abandoning any sense of pride or self-restraint he approached the tent riffling through his pockets. He doubted any of the nomads wanted soap, but maybe they would trade for just one juicy bite.

  “Hurrify yourself!” said Amit who reappeared beside him out of nowhere like a freckled daytime phantom.

  Eron controlled the overflow of saliva in his mouth and weakness in his gut and followed the boy up a ladder onto the platform of the stockade, packed densely with merchants and their wares spread out on blankets, stocked with a little bit of everything that someone might be conned into buying. The perimeter of the city consisted of nothing more than pointed logs secured deeply into the ground in two equidistant rows about the height of the average man with boards to walk on in between them. The outer row was higher than the inner row, which rose only knee high. Some of the wares on the platform, like hardware and weaponry, were obviously stolen from the Auck Guard. But, the vendors there were also selling fresh goods like pelts, dried herbs and seeds from the far Southern forests.

  “Why don’t those lardpots at the gate search the carts?” Eron started to ask Amit as he stumbled over a pile of broken tool handles.

  The boy shrugged.

  “And why did he want to see my fingers?” Eron continued somewhat lamely.

  But, Amit turned and spread the fingers on his left hand so Eron could see and understand. A dark blue dot had been tattooed in between his index and middle finger and another between the pale creases where his middle finger and his ring finger joined.

  “Three of these and the Waimate Communal doesn’t let you in.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got caught.”

  “Caught doing what?” said Eron.

  But, Amit wasn’t listening. He was stuffing bits of dried fruits from a distracted vendor into his pockets. “Better than cutting off fingers like they used to,” the boy muttered.

  They sauntered down the platform shoulder to shoulder until Eron spied what appeared to be a mystic eye panthera hide and ran toward it like it was running water on the waste. Eron had a neighbor who had bought a fur almost exactly like it from a short-haired panthera that had two circled spots on either side of its body. As he ran his hand against the pelt, the nomadic vendor slapped it away with a stick. A new fur was a luxury for any household and it was obvious from the hunger in his eyes that he couldn’t afford it.

  “How do you know I don’t want to buy?” he spat at the heavily bearded man, but he didn’t wait for an answer he knew he wouldn’t like.

  An alchemist with heaps of black Auckian pottery filled with various ores and organic poisons, including the was also selling ‘auck fire,’ an explosive powder. Next to alchemist were dyes in open sacks, dried flowers, gourds, and scented oils.

  “Amnesia flowers!” bellowed the hefty woman with scraggly hair and jagged teeth.

  “They never work,” muttered Amit.

  Beans of every variety were scattered on the walkway, spilled and trailing away down the planks that barely seemed adequate for holding all the vendors and the other people crowded on the cusp of the stockade. But there was coffee, and though not prepared, the smell was intoxicating. Eron breathed deeply, forgetting himself for the briefest moment.

  “Where is the cooked food?” he said.

  “In the center,” Amit replied, nodding over the ridge of sharpened posts toward the middle of the camp where the densest streams of smoke congregated over the tops of the colored tents.

  “And why aren’t we there?” said Eron tugging the boy’s tunic.

  “I need something to trade first.” The boy’s pockets were already bulging with stolen goods.

  Following listlessly behind the boy who stood a foot or more below the average adult nomad, Eron pushed arm and shoulder aside to keep up. He didn’t want to lose Amit before they found food. But, when they neared a wider stretch of the platform, he caught the slightest glimpse of a very delicate ankle and immediately lost interest in everything else. It was supple and tender. A delicate line of copper threads and green be
ads dangled dangerously low around what Eron thought might be the most perfect foot he had ever seen. The feet of most nomads had more cracks than a clay mug dropped on stone and their faces were dirtier and more leathery than the bottom end of his bota. He had often tried to suppress his disgust. In Auck, steam baths and washing with oils and skin brushing were common ways to stay looking young. Nomads, it seemed, didn’t care.

  Radiant sunlight reflected from pristine skin of a young woman met Eron’s eyes with a painful longing. He had never seen bare shoulders. Auckian women kept their necks covered at all times. And her cascading auburn curls completed the dreamy vision as she careened through the crowds with the grace of what he could only image would suit an Ishim. The girl had a long and slender neck. His gut sank.

  Skin. Female skin. He had never seen so much.

  Auckian women bond their hair in long light stretches of fabric that left everything to men’s imagination. And as soon as the women were old enough to hold a paint brush, they covered their faces in white plaster and painted their lips black. Over their tunics, they wore loose robes. For Auckian males, like Amit, women were a mystery. And while he’d heard many things about them he didn’t like, as he watched the nomadic girl examining spool of navy thread, couldn’t remember what any of them were.

  She was compellingly distinct from any woman in Auck. And when she smiled, he melted instantly.

  Until a spotted hand waving in front of his face broke the trance inflicted by the young woman.

  “Recognizimicate anyone?” Amit asked looking around just as the young woman disappeared.

  No. He didn’t really love her, but it was the closest thing Eron had ever experienced.

  “There,” said the boy pushing Eron’s left shoulder and pointing to the platform exit beside them where two scraggly beasts huddled together as a painful reminder of the tragedy that all young women eventually become. It was Ethel and Eloise.

  “My coin,” whispered Eron forgetting the girl with the auburn hair. Anger boiled in his chest. A strange anger. A sort of confused fury, not quite like anger he felt for Gil, but not entirely not like it either. He felt much more pity for the hags, but not enough to let them get away from him again.

  “They might have already spent it,” said Amit following after him as he charged forward.

  “We can take what they bought,” said Eron.

  Excited by the lapse in Eron’s typically timid nature, Amit circled him like dog anticipating a treat. He flew down the wooden ladder to the camp below. Another time, he might have stopped to gawk at the smoky tents, completely devoid of anything that resembled furniture. But as the hags slipped into the residential corridors, Eron single mindedly picked up the pace through the immobile gatherings of people socializing beside the open tent flaps.

  “Pardon me,” said Eron out of habit, as he went by. “Excuse me. Thank you. Sorry.”

  Amit shoved past and ducked elbows deftly just as he had branches and brambles on the waste.

  Around a corner, a man in a wide brimmed hat with multiple braids in his beard collided with Eron, knocking his nose inward. He tumbled over. When he looked up from the muddy grass where he’d landed, Amit was gone.

  “Pick it up!” shouted the man pointing to where his grease stained bundle lie open in the brown muck. He squinted at Eron who lifted himself and the navy bundle off the ground before they were trampled by anyone.

  “And you say?” the man heaved.

  “Thank you?” Eron said, lacking the comprehension necessary to remove himself from the situation.

  The heavy wrinkles, behind his eyes and just above the hair cheek bones, rose upward like the puckering of fabric to be sewn in his mother’s factory.

  He ran. Without looking back, he dashed quickly, head down, hoping to catch up with Amit. But, Eron jumped a fire pit in a small clearing between the tents with too much momentum and hit the ground rolling, straining his wrist. From his bent position on the dry earth, he saw nothing spotted and nothing hag-like. He’d lost them all.

  Old beefalo woman aren’t that fast. It made no sense. He must have taken a wrong turn, but he was too uncertain to consider backtracking now. Defeated, Eron sat down to rub his injuries. Both of his scrawny legs were marvelously bruised during the past week. He pulled his leather boots off and carried them down the corridor and wandered aimlessly toward the nearest clearing where the smoke rose above. Food carts.

  There were just too many directions to search, but Eron pushed his way to a well where nomads were busily filling pots and botas with water and passing them to their companions. He took enough to wash his feet. The cold tingled on his honey colored skin and stung where he was blistered and raw. He wiped his forehead and wetted the back of his neck so it could evaporate.

  The one nice thing to be said about being closer to the food carts was that the spices overpowered the smell body odor. But, even there, Amit was still nowhere to be seen. The many traveler’s dirty heads would have towered over him and the boy had a habit of crawling around and ducking between people’s legs when it suited him, which made it doubly unlikely he would be seen.

  And neither could Eron spy the two hags. Their distinct purple rags should have been easy to spot. After running a few circles around the well and venturing into a few of the corridors between the tents, he decided that was it. Time to eat. Coin or no coin. Boy or no boy.

  In almost no time, Eron bartered the oatmeal soap to a young mother for an equal-sized chunk of congealed barley stew and thumb sized bit of pemmican. The flavor filled of the meal filled his mouth and radiated all across his face in waves of exquisite flavor heating him to his toes. He closed his mind to the world around him and just chewed.

  It was bliss.

  The mother had been speaking, unnoticed by Eron, until she tapped his shoulder and smiled at one corner of her mouth. She pointed toward a corridor that winding to the left.

  “Did you see him?” she asked.

  Eron shook his head and licked the inside of the gourd she sold the stew in.

  “Your spotted friend?” she said. “I thought that might be him, but I don’t see-“

  Eron looked where she was pointing, but nothing. No one. No spots.

  Food. That was the only thing that held his attention. The stew, what little there had been, was gone. Of course, the pemmican barely counted. It might last forever, but even when it was fresh, it tasted like it had been dug up in a garbage mine. He sniffed the small piece. He had intended to save it just incase.

  What the hell. Even as hungry as he was, he knew the soap probably did taste better. Waxy meat with berry flavoring. For pemmican, it wasn’t bad. Probably something in the preparation. Never before had so small a piece of food been savored so long.

  After his small meal, Eron wandered as the great golden orb in the sky began descending from its zenith. He was tired, drenched in sweat and ready to rest.

  After a few wrong turns and having not come across any sign of Amit or the hags, Eron shuffled back to the center of the camp where he noticed the tips of random guardsman’s pikes and the conical outline of the helmets of Red Guardsman floating over the tops of the endless milling sea of nomads. It hadn’t surprised him at first. They had seen some many coming and going from the gate. But, here were many seemingly combing the crowds.

  It was curious.

  Eron picked a bobbing helmet and as stealthily as possible pursued it. Pretending to examine the vendors wares, stretching while venturing ever closer, he tried to look inconspicuous. The guard was not too large. She had only five stripes on her left arm.

  One stripe was awarded for each year of service or a significant act of merit. Aden had seven. Three for service and four for scoring crucial goals against the Green Guardsmen in the annual ball tournament. Eron followed the female guard around a corner.

  “Halt!” she cried turning to face him.

  Bo. The only female captain of the Red Guard. Ever.

  Why didn’t he co
nsider it might be someone he knew?

  She had military hair and a sharply pointed chin. Bo was not promoted for her athletic prowess as much as her ability to intimidate both her superiors and her subordinates. Bo had been Eron’s neighbor since they were both young enough to open a mud coffee stand using her mothers best mugs and the darkest dirt they could find.

  “Oh, hi Bo! Nice pelts,” said Eron looking at the goods under the nearest canopy. “The weather here is a bit chillier than I was expecting.”

  And for a moment, he thought he was funny. Until he saw her expression. Pulling Eron aside, Bo lectured him maternally about safety protocol.

  “…And how did you get permission to travel?” she hissed.

  “Supplies,” Eron said nervously.

  “They don’t have shovels in your village?” said Bo.

  “Auck fire. I figured our sanitation projects would go faster with an explosive. But, it’s good to see you here though, honestly, but I need to find the company I came with and I really have to be going.”

  Bo raised eyebrow.

  A tremor shook Eron from elbows to knees.

  “Does your brother know you’re here?”

  “I’ve been in Dunedin more than a month digging—working. Revolutionizing sanitation,” Eron corrected. Face to face with another Auckian, he felt all the pride he had lost wriggle back into his ego to assert itself, albeit a bit lamely. It was embarrassing.

  “He’s by the entrance,” said Bo, leaning on her pike. Her soft black curls dangled under her helmet. She was a handsome woman, but older than Eron and closer to Aden’s age.

  “I don’t have to tell him every time I lift a spade or travel out of town for supplies.”

  “Captain!” came a voice from behind them.

  Captain Bo turned around.

  As she was momentarily distracted, Eron dashed through the flaps of an open tent, upsetting a breastfeeding mother whose lap he landed on. She scowled, but was too occupied with the infant in her arms to yell at him. Her tent exited into another tent where three families were eating their dinners. Eron hopped over their stony fire pit, briskly passed through a corridor and pushed open a door to a temple. It was a properly constructed building with walls made from stone. But, as the door swung open, Eron knocked over a pedestal holding a wide and shallow dish of blood.

  Ritual sacrifice. There was a lot of that in Auck City. About twenty nomads in the shadowy interior of the temple ignored him as they chanted absently though a few furrowed brows told a different story. With no exit on the other side of the stone structure, Eron sat down and tried to mimic the men’s rhythmic swaying and mouth the words they spoke. As soon as he was confident that Bo had to have moved on, he stood and left, scoffing at the blood spill he had made at the door.

  Nomadic gawds were ridiculous. You can’t just make up any gawds you want and kill living creatures to appease them. Eron thanked the gawd of Auck City that he had not been born a nomad.

  The weaver, Amos, and the others had probably not considered that Eron might run into someone he knew. He certainly hadn’t. Who could he pretend to be? Gil? A third person who looks just like them both? Of course, he was headed to hide in somewhere secluded. Maybe he should have been traveling in disguise. He never thought of that.

  There had been too much to consider when normally he would have made a list of all the things he needed before he even went as far as the market.

  Outside Eron spotted an unusual grey tent that looked ignored. The flaps were neither tied open nor shut. He poked his head inside. It was empty. Eron laid down on beside the sand-filled cushions and slept.

  Someone tapping a staff against his head. Yes, that was what woke him.

  “My servant is out,” said a gravely serious voice. It was a woman. He squeezed his eyes tightly to prepare them for opening. “I assure you I can protect myself just fine if you’re here to steal from me.”

  The woman primarily consisted of a thick gray mane filled with glass beads, wood beads, bone beads and even bits of metal. Her body was slight and almost disappeared under all the hair. But, her eyes were lined with kohl, a dark pigment, that made her seem somewhat more dangerous than a frail old woman might normally be.

  “I thought the tent,” Eron said, wrestling himself into a sitting position, “was empty.”

  She didn’t look healthy. A bit frightening like something found decaying on the side of the road for a day or so. The woman’s hair rattled as she approached him and gripped his chin. She turned his tan face from side.

  “Back already?” she said with an unsettlingly wry smile.

  “I’ve never been here,” said Eron.

  Great. A crazy woman.

  “I don’t read minds anymore,” the woman said, confirming Eron’s suspicion. She released his face. “Cards read? Dream interpretation? A potion? Coffee? Just why are you here?”

  “Nothing, but I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee if you were offering,” Eron said. “I have very little to trade and no coin.”

  Normally, Eron would only drink beans from the Auck City Roasters, but even the sludge served in Dunedin was tolerable when nothing else could be found. No coffee was the worst.

  “I don’t have coffee anymore,” she said.

  Eron stood up. He had no time for nonsense with a crazy hag.

  “I am not,” she snapped. “But yes, go look for your friends. Leave. Find the spotted boy. Go on. Forget speaking to the crazy hag.”

  “Are you an Ishim?” Eron breathed. The woman, it seemed, was reading his mind.

  “Not quite,” she said.

  In the unlit fire pit between them, a flame burst brightly into existence, crackling and radiating enough unwelcome heat to convince Eron it was real.

  Eron’s chest heaved.

  She shuffled around the tent gathering things from bags and boxes.

  Eron closed his eyes. The lids were heavy. The floor felt closer and closer.

  Thud!

  “You want to find a boy with...“ she closed her eyes and concentrated. “...spots. A boy with spots?”

  “Amit is,” Eron mumbled. “He’s my companion.”

  “Not much of a companion,” the woman scoffed.

  Laying face to the ground, he nodded. There was a soothing fuzziness to the air about the room, which tingled against the skin on his face. The smoke that was filling the room was sweet, dreamy, intoxicating and pink. Pink. He hadn’t opened his eyes. It just felt pink.

  He was getting sleepy. Very sleepy. His brain felt like a wad of cotton. Cotton, he thought to himself, looked like three-horned sheep without any horns at all.

  “How profound,” came the voice of the old woman. It echoed.

  Eron wanted to scratch his chin, but his arm was too heavy. He was okay with that. Like a limp rag, he lowered it back onto the ground and let all the tension in his body release.

  “I can trust you?” he asked.

  Happiness. The pink cotton-ness of it all was utter bliss. As if he’d walked into the first warm day of spring on the mustard fields west of the Auck City docks.

  “Tell me your last dream,” she said soothingly echoing in his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “They always evaporate with the morning dew. Once forgotten. Never remembered.”

  “Profound and poetic,” said the woman with the beaded hair tinkling as she knelt beside him.

  The woman was strange and familiar at the same time. Comfortable.

  “No, I was at the factory,” he mumbled. “Some fireflies. I dreamed…”

  “You will have a lot of good ideas and succeed after a hard struggle.”

  "I went into a street. An alley. Following. It was night."

  "Yes, you have important decisions to make,” said the woman sounding almost impatient.

  Eron was still thinking, but it was getting more difficult. In a sudden burst of orange, he saw a cat. Or maybe he sensed one. It was all so confused.

  “The cat in the
middle of the street,” he said. “Waiting.”

  Tame and good natured, it barely fit between the buildings having to wedge itself in between the stone walls.

  “Freedom,” said the woman. “Orange signifies freedom.”

  “From the latrines,” he laughed. The sound carried over and over in his mind over as the trance thickened.

  There was shriek. It seemed to come from far away.

  “How are you getting to the D.O.T.?” she asked quickly.

  “How do you-?” Eron started to respond, but he couldn’t complete the thought let alone speak it aloud.

  “You must protect the tube,” she said with her piercing blue eyes boring into his awareness. Her long strands of gray hair floated in the air beside her. “And it’s contents.”

  “There is nothing in it,” he said, closing his eyes again.

  And then it was over. His mind was clear. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

  "How without cat's claws did you do that?” cried Eron sitting up. “You-you drugged me against my will!”

  There was no response.

  Looking around the empty room, Eron said, “I’m going call the guards.”

  But, he stopped on that last idea and reconsidered. She was gone.

  And anyway, he’d probably dreamed her.

  “FIRE!”

  A shout from outside tore through the tent. Many voices clamored all repeating the same word, but drowning each other out in the gathering ruckus. Shadows passed against the thin walls of the gray tent and glimpses of colorful rags streaming through the corridor peeked through the gap in the tent’s opening.

  “FIRE!”

  They were rushing. And the form of someone falling hit bundled the fabric near the exit.

  Eron had been drooling. Drooling and dreaming. The interior of the tent was empty. A dream of having his dreams interpreted. That was all that had happened, but he didn’t have time to muse over the metaphysical ramifications.

  He needed to find Amit. The boy needed him or he needed the boy. He wasn’t sure. It was just the first thought that came into his head. He couldn’t leave without Amit or whatever the kid’s real name was.

  Outside a delicate roar blazed mildly beyond the crowds of nomads crying louder and louder, shouting and stomping. Feet pounded the ground desperately as black streams covered the orange sun.

  Eron secured his bundle in a panic. A bright explosion cut through the sky near the platform near the entrance. The Auck fire. The girl. The hags. Bo. Aden.

  Eron’s legs were numbed by the weight of his fear. Coughing and disoriented he charged forward with the men and women carrying children and their meager belongings away from the encroaching blaze. Some of the tents had started to burn. The fire seemed to be everywhere at once.

  The crowd pushed past nomads dragging sacks of filled with various wares. Women ran carrying screaming babies while others held the shoes and clothes for children they couldn’t find. Bundles and bindles were strewn along the streets.

  They ran faster. The cries of Waimate were deafening. The body of an old man lie face down on the ground in the muck. Dead. And the people were stepping on him.

  Vardos without drivers were tipped and the hot tongues of the flames reached for the stream of bodies.

  As the crowd neared the gate, Eron could see Red Guardsman forming a line. The nomads queued like a pool of water filling the space in front of them, but still keeping a distance just beyond the reach of their pikes. A guard with broken teeth stepped forward and grabbed a nomad’s tunic. With one yank, he pulled the man to the ground.

  With seven stripes on his arm, the guard bound the man, tying his legs together as he held the man’s face pressed into the dirt with his knee. A woman in a red skirt came forward, but disappeared as soon as she caught another guard’s eye.

  “Curse Malak!”

  The nomads were resisting, but Eron could not believe what he was witnessing. Red Guardsman wrestled man, woman and child into submission with their ropes. One by one, they fell and were piled like the pelts of beefalo after a hunt.

  The surviving nomads scattered. Some fled to climb the stockade. Hurdling himself over sacks and around the terrified masses, Eron followed the others back toward the blazing maze of tents and smoke.