

The Ishim Underground

Carrie Bailey

Published by PPM Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Carrie Bailey

ISBN: 9781311581044
THE ISHIM

UNDERGROUND

Peevish Penman Press

CHAPTER ONE

And that was how it ended. Not a single meteor. Though a few had hit the surface of the Earth with an inexplicable sense of cosmic vengeance. Eron counted backward on his fingers as he walked through the city square. It was in 2065 that the big rocks from the sky fell and knocked the Earth off its axis. That was four years before the start of the Second Global War, which started in a city called Europe.

Meteors 2065.

Meteors 2065.

Global War II 2069.

He repeated the numbers over and over.

Eron had rarely paid attention during his lessons on Apocalyptic Studies and now, the night before his recruitment exam, he was starting to regret it.

He needed to get home and get some sleep. Rounding the edge of a rugged brick cage in the middle of the city square, Eron was trying to remember the dates of the avian flu epidemics when he collided with an eager looking long haired boy about half his height.

He helped the newsboy back onto his bare feet, which were dirtier than a garbage miner's cart during the rainy season. The small boy seemed to be drowning in the cast off grey guardsman's tunic more than he was wearing it.

"Direct from the source," said the boy with the manufactured excitement of a weathered salesman. "Only a few minutes old. It's the most important news all year."

"I doubt it," Eron muttered as he walked away, unconsciously placing the toe of his boots in alignment with the edge of every other cobblestone.

"Malak sends the guard South!" the newsboy shouted after him, but Eron was already entering the alley that would take him back home.

He had no coinage to pay for whatever news the boy was peddling. It was a common misunderstanding. Eron wore the fine cloth and long robes typically reserved for a man of much higher status than he actually held. His mother, Thadine, was a textile merchant and he was uncommonly well dressed for being a broke young man who hadn't yet started his first job.

Once home, Eron cautiously pushed aside the heavy woolen banner that hung at the entrance to his mom's factory and tiptoed around the looms to their living quarters. Through the archway, he could see his older brother, Aden's pike leaning against the wooden table. He lifted the hem of his yellow robe and made a mad dash up the ladder to his bedroom before he could intercept him.

Enough warm street light filtered in through his window for Eron to see the modern calendar he'd etched on the wall. It measured the rotation of the Earth around the sun arbitrarily beginning two thousand five hundred and ninety-three years ago. With a shard of charcoal, he crossed out March 15, blew the dusty bits away and closed his eyes. If there was one date he could remember without using mathematics, it was 2093, the year his ancestor's cruise ship crashed on the island, the first year of the Liamic calendar. For all the citizen's of Auck, this was the year 500, a time to celebrate their survival. The fact that they were alive after the modern world disappeared in a blur of war and disease. But for Eron, it was even more important. It was the year he would join the Auckian City Guard. Tomorrow morning, he would take his entrance exam at the yellow recruitment tent and finally start his life as a scribe.

As if attached to spring loaded hinges, Eron's eyes flew open at the first glimpse of morning light. He rolled off his mat onto the cold brick floor and waited there a moment for his brain to catch up with his ambitions. He was a meticulously organized young man with a limited interest in current events or even previous events and honestly just remembering events in general seemed pretty inconvenient.

Eron liked reading about technology, specifically modern technology. And metals. It was his main passion. He had never missed a lesson on automobiles, computers or guns, which were amazing devices that could move things from one place to another using metal. Technology could take people from one place to another without walking. It could transmit ideas from one mind to another without speaking. Or advance life from the physical world to the afterworld of the gawds without germs. Combined with technology, the moderns could use metal to do almost anything.

Modern Technology was the only part of his exam Eron was confident he would pass. He could identify at least five types of metal. And could tell a drawing of a television from a computer. A skill only one or two Auckians had mastered. He even knew how modern people had used keyboards and could define a button although he had never seen one.

He lifted himself off the floor, fed Steel, his pet mouse and grabbed a fresh robe from the peg on his wall by the door. With barely enough room to turn around, he dressed and sorted the contents of his writing case removing a single extra vial of ink he was certain wouldn't be needed for the exam.

Thadine, his tall and elegant mother hummed an old tune while she served some boiled grains reheated from the night before adding a few stale nuts and dried fruits then drizzling a syrup made from a sugar beet. She had already plastered her face with the heavy white make up popular among Auckian women, but the ivory and indigo cover she normally used to wrap her hair tightly was still hanging in a loose bundle from sleeping in it and a few strands of her red hair escaped around her temples.

"You have to eat," she cooed dreamily at Eron who was trying to sneak down to the factory without being noticed. The workers were already at the looms and the familiar din of clanking wooden planks, rustling fibers and endless chatter saturated the cool morning air.

With low ceilings and poor ventilation, the smell of the vegetable dyes used to color the endless stockpiles of thread and fabric carried their unappetizing flavor into every room. Even the kitchen. But, knowing his mother's cooking, he believed the stench actually improved the meal. But, there was still the matter of texture, which no textile mill could mask.

Thadine glowed with pride as she placed the ceramic bowl in front of him. Her family had never sent a son to join the Yellow Guard as they were typically soldiers and merchants.

He prodded the grains with a wood spoon while Eron's older brother, Aden, jumped the last rung of the ladder on his way down to the kitchen, yawned, stretched his biceps, which flexed as forcefully the pistons his tutor had brought from the Archive for one of their lessons. And then, with what seemed like a single motion, scarfed the contents of both their bowls before starting to brush his long wavy brown hair with a goat horn comb. Like his mother, Aden's eyes were a murky blue, neither gray nor brown and both were fixed on him as he ate Eron's portion.

"May I go?" Eron asked.

His mother nodded.

The frosts of winter still froze the puddles that dotted the allies. As he trotted toward the center of the city, he made sure to step carefully and crack as much of the remaining as possible as though that would help it melt and hurry the warmer weather.

The crisp air carried the smell of people and livestock already mulling about in the streets, which all wafted together and mingled offensively with the smells from his mother's factory and the others in their part of town. Eron seemed to be the only person who never grew accustomed to it and held his nose closed like a tourist from one of the villages.

Despite the unusual density of the crowds as Eron made his way to the square and climbed the stone barrier that surrounded the corner market so he could see the brightly colored tips of the awnings on the farside of the commotion. Seperate recruitment tents had been erected to sign up prospective guardsmen to one of each of the three branches of the Auckian City Guard and were clearly identifiable by color. Red, Yellow and Green. Necessary, because neither red nor green guardsmen knew how to read.

Eron exhaled slowly and began to wrestle his way through to where the yellow tent stood. Along the main paths through the square, the painted vardos of the nomadic shepherds teemed with mutton, wool, lineaments and stuffed toy lambs with small eyes made from black stone.

Eron stopped to allow a herd of three-horned sheep pass. Though there was still a bit of dew on the ground, Green Guardsmen were already out dousing the street lights.

Nearly dawn.

All the vendors crowding the square would be gone by the time the Lambing Festival officially begin a few weeks later. Through the years, overzealous merchants had set up their booths earlier and earlier until the recruitment of new guardsmen and the celebration of the new flocks merged into a single event.

It made some sense. Often families with young men and woman who had just come of age would trade everything they had to spare for their new guardsmen. New robes. New spears. And they would have little left to spend on sheep-related products.

Dodging the sheep, Eron ducked and wove his way through a sea of drab robes and careless elbows, making his way toward the recruitment tents. But, his progress was halted as the crowds shuffled to standstill where they circled a brick cage in the center of the square just as the murky water of a creek at a tangled dam whirls its brambles and muck tirelessly against though never toward their intended destination.

He should have gotten up earlier.

"Tame the wastelands!" bellowed a densely bearded figure in thick leather armor.

Eron covered his ears. He knew the motto of the Red Guard by heart.

"Have you passed the recruitment tents?" he asked a woman from his mother's charity league.

"I saw your brother there," she said pointing him onward with a wealth of fabric dangling from her thin arm. "I bet he's been busy since making Captain."

Eron smiled insincerely and pushed his way to the signpost for the Auck Courier Service.

"Join the Renaissance!" cried a man in yellow robes.

Eron knew him. The grumpy old postmaster would probably have preferred to stay inside sending and receiving the endless stream of packages to and from the villages, but everyone had extra responsibilities on Recruitment Day.

Service in one of the three divisions of the Guard was the gateway to citizenship in the city. Everyone was involved. Two years of your life in exchange for the right to live within the protection of stone walls formed from repurposed bits of modern ruins, the Auck City walls. Citizenship meant security from the wastelands, the right to vote and everyone, even the villagers, wanted it.

"Start your career today!"screamed a middle aged guard with a disintegrating physique, trim beard and clean green overalls.

"Yes, thank-you," said Eron under his breath, avoiding eye contact with the man.

"Be a citizen of the greatest city in the world!"

The only city, Eron thought to himself, shaking his head.

Shouting slogans at young adults on Recruitment Day was traditional. It served no obvious purpose since Auckian children decided early in life which division they would join. Eron, having been incurably bookish as long as he could remember, had been tutored for years in preparation to join the Yellow Guard. Thadine had not been able to afford the most renowned tutor in the city, but anyone who could teach him to write provided him an advantage.

Please do not let them post me with the Golem, he whispered to the city gawds. Or in receiving at the Archive. Or doing record keeping in the shipyard. Or in a temple.

"Oh, I didn't mean that!" he said aloud. "I would be honored to serve you, any of you, of course."

But, the gawds knew your thoughts before you did and so piously, Eron abandoned his plea mid-prayer.

Then, finally passing the center of the square, he reached his hand toward the brick structure, a cage, which marked the heart of Auck City, Auckland and the known world. Though he couldn't see it with all the people milling about, it was always there, barely larger than a cart with openings on the surface where a black box within could be viewed. The black marble box contained a smaller box covered in black velvet, which was presented for viewing to the masses once each year. And under that rested the first carving of the Municipal Code.

Eron kept walking. Dozens of Auckians were holding out their hands, withdrawing them thoughtfully and kissing the tips of their fingers, over and over, whether or not they were close enough to view the relic. Apparently, the gawds gave you credit just for trying.

Eron muttered another prayer toward the box. He needed all the help he could get as he couldn't even remember the year the Archive was moved underground, which he would certainly be tested on.

"Which way is the yellow tent?" Eron asked a randon stranger.

"Just follow them," he said pointing at a group of young men in black robes with yellow bands on their upper arms. Guardsmen. Yellow ones. Good idea.

Despite his fears, Eron had little reason to doubt that the Yellow Guard would accept him. He had been preparing a speech on how to identify and classify modern metal artifacts. It was well researched. Anyway, he could read and write.

Any questions they asked would be to help them decide where to post him and as long as he was in the city, indoors, he'd be happy. A perfectly ordered desk where he could move papers from one side to the other. Comfortable clean robes. A steady supply of coffee. While there were important discoveries to be made in the garbage mines for people who could read the old modern texts they unearthed, Eron's ambitions were more pragmatic.

"Get over here!" said Achazya smiling grandly with his red cheeks ridding high so his tiny pale green eyes couldn't be seen. It was the man who had tutored Eron for the past three years. He took him in a headlock and pulled him toward the yellow tent. He was unusually passionate for an academic.

But, Achazya could make anyone feel that even the most obscure bit of information about the modern world was crucial to restoring order to humanity and generally unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos.

"Scrub, scrub, scrub," he laughed as Eron gasped for breath.

Scrub.

It was what Yellow Guard called the new recruits, because without exception, they spent their first weeks cleaning out cupboards, desk drawers, bookshelves and the thousands and thousands of drawers that held the card catalogs. And scrubing them.

Unlike the other tutors, Achazya had only the wispy facial hair of young man, held the yellow canvas tent flap open and dragged his captive inside. Almost all of Achazya's features were unremarkable. He had an average nose and averagely brownish hair. Even his excess weight wasn't significant enough to help identify him in a crowd. And only a few inches taller than Eron, Achazya stood at average height. In fact, he was average in almost all ways, if you didn't count the flexibility of his intellect.

"One of the best and brightest," his tutor boasted to the other guardsmen assembled around the interior of the yellow tent, sitting on their cushions set in a semi-circle.

No one responded.

While Achazya didn't stand out in an Auckian crowd, he was the only academic on the panel without gray hair and more than one seemed to resent him for that.

"You only had three," said a lean man in a black robe standing in the enterance behind him.

"As I said," beamed Achazya. "I reckon he's one of the top three applicants this year."

"Please put him out until its his turn," said a frail looking woman dryly.

A young girl with dark hair bound in a yellow scarf stood beside the tent entrance scowling. First in line, she had probably been waiting long before dawn. Achazya winked. Eron walked to end of the swelling queue of nervous new recruits. And waited.

"The courts," said the girl who was called first to exam.

"Archive," shouted the next, as he was leaving. He was a gangly man with rampant acne who seemed pleased with his post.

"Archive," another muttered.

"The Shipyard at the Bay of Maori Tears."

"The Mines of Taupo," said a girl wiping away a tear.

"Mines!" shouted the next girl running out of the tent victoriously pumping her fist in the air.

A grief stricken man with no left arm who was assigned to help the Postmaster received the unanimous sympathy of all the recruits still waiting their turn. Eron patted his back as he walked past.

Another recruit entered the yellow tent.

And another.

The sun had risen higher in the clear cloudless sky.

"Is that your brother?" shouted a Red Guardsman.

Aden was standing next to the man in front of the red tent beside them. As a Captain of the Red Guard, he was on the panel evaluating recruits in the red tent. Aden flashed his brother a toothy grin and elbowed his leather-clad companion.

"Who is that?" asked the girl in front of Eron, suddenly much more sociable than she'd been all morning.

Though his thick, wavy hair was tied back, there was still something about Aden's appearance that commanded everyone's attention. Maybe it was his ultra-masculine jaw and broad shoulders. Or it could have been the blinding shine on his iron pike and bronze helmet with the red brush of horse hair bristling from the point. Or his massive, perfectly aligned gleamingly white teeth.

"Him?" said Aden, deliberately misunderstanding the girl and pointing at Eron. "We pulled him off the street."

"Why?" asked the other Red Guard.

He was wearing a red bandana. The loose ends dangling down to his red sash around his waist. The ends of those reached his ankles which he had also tied with red bindings. Everything the Red Guardsmen wore that could be dyed red was dyed red. To represent blood. Warriors were not known for their subtlety.

"What do you mean why?" asked Aden casually.

All the recruits by the yellow tent had turned to listen to their conversation.

"Seems a cruelty to prolong its suffering," said the guard. "Should have left him there."

"Well, I thought he was a stray doe," said Aden.

"A doe?" asked the other guard.

"I love venison," said Aden theatrically smacking his lips. "I saw those long eyelashes and-"

The guard chuckled. The girl giggled. And Eron flushed as the laughter raged all around him.

It wasn't even a good joke, but all the recruits kept laughing as if they'd never heard such cutting wit.

He hated Aden.

Rage coursed through Eron's veins, traveling swiftly into his core and shaking his limbs as it filled his body. He took one step forward and then another.

"Look, he's coming over," said the guard.

Before Eron knew it, he was directly in front of the two men.

"Captain, where did you put the carrots?"

Then his brother spoke again.

And he said something, which really infuriated Eron and drove him into a blind rage. In one brief, insane instant, Eron stepped past Aden, entered the red tent and pulled out a bit of charcoal in front of the burly group of soldiers and new Red Guard recruits.

Floating on a wave of adrenaline, he signed his name on their roster.

He would prove himself to Aden one way or another.

The sight of Achazya's double chin jaw hitting the ground was deafening as he emerged a few moments later. New recruits and the assembled panels of both Red and Yellow Guardsmen starred silently as Eron was escorted away. Even Aden was lost for words.

The Auckian crowds parted at the sight of the polished pike held by the guard escorting Eron. He was led to a shed and tossed unceremoniously unto a bag of gravel covered in shovels.

He knew immediately that he'd gambled away his future like an alchemist mixing saltpeter and quicklime hoping to discover an easy way to make gold. Of course the Red Guard refused him. What had he been thinking?

Eron's stomach churned as he sat in the dark and waited until one of the men who cleaned horse dung from the streets opened the door to check on him.

"Are you coming out?" said the stocky old man in green pants.

Eron shook his head.

"You have to come out sometime."

"Not the son of a Red Guardsman," mouthed Eron.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," said the man standing in the door. "You're a Green Guardsman now."

No sooner had Eron put his charcoal to the paper than the Red Guard had invoked their right to both accept him and transfer him to another branch of the city guard.

"My father was Ronen," he told the man solemnly, not listening.

"Rowen was a good Captain," said the man. "But, you must take after your mother."

"Not really," said Eron. "She's a lot taller than me, too."

"Listen, one day in the Red Guard and a gnat like you would be squashed," said the man. "You're just lucky they sent you to us. I doubt you could lift a pike and you're probably not going to be much better with a shovel, but at least you won't be depending on that shovel to defend your life out on the road when the highway men attack."

That much was true.

Eron could barely lift a pike or a shield separately and certainly couldn't hold up both at the same time. He put his face in his slender hands and wiped his face.

"The whole trajectory of my life has been derailed," he said miserably.

"Right," said the old man gruffly grabbing Eron's arm. "Whatever you say. I don't know what a trajectory is, but fortunately, I don't care."

Eron forced back a few tears. No longer destined to be a scribe, there would be no labeling and no cataloging. No desk. No writing. No studying various metals. He would not be allowed to join the Yellow Guard.

He was going to be a grunt.

"There's nothing wrong with being a grunt," said the hairy old man. "It's honest work."

Eron was surprised to hear the man call himself a grunt as they walked down the alley back to the square. He had always thought of the term as an insult.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"The Recruitment Ceremony," said the man in the green overalls. "I know the Green Guard wasn't your first choice, but you'll get used to it. Whatever you do up there when they call your name, don't look ungrateful and remember, we didn't have to take you either."

"Maybe you can transfer me to the Yellow Guard?" said Eron hopefully.

"I would if they'd take you," said the man. "But even that tutor of yours couldn't convince them. Said you were too emotional. Not a good quality for a scribe."

At the ceremony, they would announce his post to all the families, all the members of the guard, the villagers visiting for the Lambing Festival as well as each and every citizen of Auck City who had nothing better to do that day. Even nomads were allowed to attend.

"I wish I wasn't wearing this," sulked Eron picking bits of straw from his yellow robe. "And why didn't the Red Guard give me a chance?"

"Because you signed your name," said the green guardsman.

"You're supposed to sign your name," Eron sighed, rolling his eyes. "It's a roster."

The man stopped and looked at him as if his eyeball were an awl and Eron's brain, a freshly tanned sheet of leather. Eron cringed. The Green Guard worked with their hands. They were neither the strongest or the brightest, but they did the work that had to be done. Most of it involving dirt or some sort of filth. Eron did not want to be in the Green Guard, but the only thing worse was not being a citizen at all.

"Now that you're one of us," said the man, gripping his green suspenders with both thumbs, "We're going to have to return that little stamp of yours."

He held out his rough hand, dirty palm up.

Eron felt like a fool. He slapped his forehead and pulled his hand down over his rather prominent nose. Digging into his pocket, he produced a little wooden stem with a carving on one end, stained with ink. The Seal of the Yellow Guard. It had been issued to him from the Office of Literacy during his first year of study with Achazya. He put the stamp in the man's open palm.

"I did stamp it, didn't I?" said Eron sheepishly.

"That only made it worse," grumbled the man, "Your first mistake was writing your name out using letters. I wouldn't have done that and neither would any Red Guardsman I know. What's wrong with just marking the paper with a big 'X?' Why use all those other shapes?"

"I don't know," said Eron.

"I'll give this to the Archivists after the ceremony," said the man examining the stamp.

Eron nodded.

It was required by the Municipal Code of Auck City that all writing be stamped with the seal. Only the Yellow Guard or the young men and women training to become Yellow Guardsmen had permission to use it. And the Office of Literacy maintained the exclusive copyright on all the letters of the Auckian language. Permission was never given to the Greens, the Reds or anyone else.

"You know 'X' doesn't actually represent your name," Eron started to explain. "Scribes write your actual name next to the mark you make."

The man halted dead in his tracks.

"If you don't already know the man's name, how can you know it from the other shapes?" he challenged Eron. "A mark or a bunch of shapes, if you don't know the man, you don't know."

"The shapes make sounds," said Eron slowly. "The sounds put together speak the man's name."

"No, don't tell me," he said covering his ears. "You've broken enough laws for one day."

Eron shut his mouth tightly.

"Are you ready?" the Green Guardsman asked.

"No," said Eron.

"Listen Eron, just make this day the only day you ever break a law and you'll get through the next two years just fine."

Eron nodded and turned toward the crowded steps of the Auck Archive where the ceremonial horns were being sounded. Neatly assembled on the steps of the seven level ziggurat, the new recruits were waiting to be presented to the eager audience, which filled every available space in the square, spilling out into the alleys and far down the procession that led out of the city.

Almost yellow. Almost red. Then, finally, green. It was probably the first time a recruit had attempted to join all three branches of the guard in one single day. On his first day in the guard, he had already made Auckian history in the worst way possible.
CHAPTER TWO

Not long after the seasonal windstorms had died down later that same Spring, Eron leaned against a splintery wooden booth in a dimly lit coffee house wiping the sweat from his forehead with his dirty arms. The first signs of warm weather had surrendered early to the heat waves that would assault the nearly barren land for the next four months. And the air at his booth was made denser with the warmth from the kitchen. A gust of wind rattled the wooden panels that partially covered the entrance at the front of the building. They swung inward, but no one entered.

No, of course not.

Hardly anyone lived in the tired village where he was posted. On the farthest Eastern corner of the island, many weeks distance from the beautiful mosaics of Auck City, Dunedin was no more than a dozen rows of pillared houses covered in red volcanic mud. Eron knew from his pre-apocalyptic lectures that in modern times, the village had been on a separate island located in the South of the great floating circle Yellow Guardsmen called Earth. Dunedin had been greener back then, but the meteors of 2065 had changed everything. Now, the only good thing that could be said about the dry little village was that it was situated on the trail between the port city of Levelen and the village of Foveau. And that was only positive, because Foveau was an outpost even more remote than Dunedin where a less fortunate recruit had been sent.

Eron swatted a gnat from his right ear. He couldn't decide whether he felt more sorry for himself or the dead bug he wiped on the tablecloth. Or perhaps that other guard in Foveau.

He took a sip from his cup and sighed loudly into the empty room.

Outside the window, a cart rattled through the village gate. Although a new garbage mine had been built in the nearby hills that produced a steady stream of artifacts and raw materials, the carts rarely stopped in Dunedin. The goods they carried were eventually taken to the Auck Archive where they would be stored underground and catalogued.

Eron looked out the window anyway. A solid rectangular shape poked from under the tarp of the cart and he immediately fell into a fantasy that he was the Yellow Guardsman who discovered the first functional refrigerator still intact.

To make a refrigerator, the moderns had harnessed the power of lightening with long thin metal strings and made these boxes cold so they could produce ice, which was cold hard water that held its shape even in the summer heat. It would have been great to have one of those in Dunedin.

Eron said quick prayer to the gawd of sanitation and took another sip of his coffee. For a change in his nightly routine, he decided to think of something positive about being in Dunedin.

He was still alive.

He would eventually get to leave.

He would be a citizen.

Aden didn't live there.

Just after the Recruitment Day ceremony, the Green Guard had assigned him street sweeping duties for the Festival of Rotten Food. For two days after the Lambing Festival, Auckians threw decaying vegetable matter at each other as part of the process of cleaning out their cellars. And that was fine for Eron until Aden sent the new Red Guard recruits to practice ambush tactics on him while he was ankle deep in the sludge, washing the murals on the procession, the main road through Auck City. The recruits had caught him almost immediately and stuffed him in a barrel. A few hours later, another set of recruits released him during their search and rescue drills, but then they were intercepted by another squad of recruits who were studying advanced interrogation tactics.

Eron had tried to complain to his supervisors, but neither the Red nor the Green Guard were willing to hold his brother accountable for his innovative, but unorthodox training methods. Eventually, they chose to reprimand Eron for being absent from his street sweeping duties and put him on a carriage to Dunedin where at least where he and his brother wouldn't be bickering.

Eron starred deep into his coffee, examining the thick dark residue stuck to the inside of his cup.

"Problem-acation?" asked the matron of the coffee house trotting past his booth while drying a wooden tray with a brown tattered ball of cloth. The woman had what the villagers called a little character on her face, but Eron thought he had seen leather sofas that looked livelier and more supple than what was stretched across her boney cheeks.

"I'm fine, thank you," he said, loosening his grip on the cracked pottery, "May I have some more water?"

"What manner-isms," she cooed disappearing through the woolen banner that covered the kitchen door.

Despite the sweltering heat, the coffee matron served her beverages hot enough to kill the invisible germs that lived in kitchens. She returned and poured some steaming water from a jug into his cup splashing a little on the table, which the cloth soaked in. Eron took another sip and placed his tongue against the roof of his mouth where he felt the numb surface began to separate.

While passing his hand lazily through the steam rising from the almost entirely unpalatable beverage, he thought he could hear the weeds growing under the floorboards. Even watching one of those pointless ball games Aden played would have been better than sitting alone in the Dunedin coffee house. He picked up a stirring rod, lined it up next to a napkin and straightened three wooden spoons the matron had left on the table.

With a defeated groan, he slouched down in his sticky tunic and picked up one of his scrolls. Eron focused in on the second line of the parchment, which read, "We do 99% of the work for 100% of the people."

It was the official motto of the Green Guard. And though it was no longer legal for him to write, he had been granted permission to read whatever he wanted provided it had the official Seal of the Yellow Guard stamped on it.

Stretching out his sore right arm, he cracked his neck and continued to glaze over the Sanitation Policies for Auck City and its Surrounding Territories as if he was interested.

To ensure the continual cleanliness of the city and its territories by providing facilities for the personal evacuation of bodily fluids. To establish guard outposts and improve relations with village residents by providing sanitation technology and blah blah blah blah blah...

Why did the Yellow Guard write an eight foot long scroll of policy for the Green Guardsman who were almost without exception illiterate?

Through the window, red bands of a handsome sunset hovered low against the horizon. The coffee house would be closing soon.

The matron returned and set a tile under Eron's cup where darkly stained coffee rings from the bottom of his mug had soaked into the cloth.

"You should try to protect-icate my anti-tablecloth," she said with a deliberately exaggerated frown.

Eron cringed.

Nomads had a distinctive habit of taking a simple word and adding a random prefix or suffix for no obvious reason. Manners became manner-isms. Ponder became ponder-ize. Coffee became supra-coffee. And while it set Eron's teeth on edge each time he heard a villager using the nomadic embellishments, he'd certainly given up trying to correct them. After his early attempts to explain proper Auckian grammar, the farmers had quickly education-alized him about telling other people how to talk.

Dunedin. Such a quaint village.

Eron was about to offer the matron a small strip of copper for his drink when a fiery orange glow appeared on the wooden floor beams through the gap under the door. Growing smaller, it slowly crossed the dusty boards as the sound of footsteps creaked closer to the door. The coffee house doors swung on their hinges. A couple of Auckian guardsmen strolled in.

A guard with an eye patch held a torch above his metal helmet. The other, whose beard was shorn beneath his nose and chin, had a crossbow in one hand at his side. The man with the missing eye had less notable facial hair, but his mustache trailed down to the middle of his solid chest where the tendrils rested lazily across his studded leather armor.

Hands shaking, Eron attempted to sip his coffee while they surveyed the empty room. Eron averted his gaze to avoid looking directly into any one of their three beady eyes. As the men approached, the loose floor boards bolted beneath their weight and Eron's heart leaped from his chest leaving a hole from which all of his courage escaped.

"How long have you been here?" yelled the guard with the crossbow.

Fashioned from strips of leather woven across his torso and thicker strips hanging loosely from his hips like a skirt, the man wore armor typical for a Red Guardsman over the same gray drab guard-issued tunic Eron had on. But, Eron could clearly see the canary yellow stripes of cord stitched into the fabric on his upper arm indicating his position in the Yellow Guard. Bounty hunters.

Eron opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

As if breathing in unison, the guardsmen's chests heaved as a single unit. A flood of uncomfortable silence filled the air. In the kitchen, a colorful flightless bird called a takahe clucked. The matron scooted it out the back door.

"How long have you been here?" demanded the guardsman again, leaning toward Eron, enunciating every syllable.

Eron looked down at the single green cord on his tunic that indicated his own lowly rank.

"S-s-seven months," he said with some effort.

"In the cafe," whispered the matron loudly from behind the banner covering the kitchen door.

"A few hours," he corrected.

The guard with the torch and the missing eye raised an eyebrow and walked over to an empty booth. He lifted the cloth with his boot.

"We're tracking a man who ran out on his contract," said the other guard. "He's about your height, but longer hair."

"Longer hair," agreed the one eyed guard checking another table.

"The fugitive has a long pointy nose - a lot like yours. Dark eyes. Possibly, not as thin as you, but," he signaled to Eron, "if you could stand for me please?"

Outranked, out-piked and out-mustached, Eron obeyed. As if pulled by invisible strings, he instinctually lifted his arms and turned around like a marionette.

"He has fair skin," said the other guard with a lopsided squint.

The guard with crossbow and the interminable mustache motioned Eron to sit back down. He produced a drawing that had been tucked into his broad leather belt. Eron glanced at the image and took a mouthful of coffee, which he promptly choked on.

"I don't recognize the man," Eron said, but if he hadn't known better, he would have thought the picture was a drawing of him. Every detail was the same except the man's pale skin.

The guard set his crossbow against the tall edge of the booth and held the image next to Eron's face. Then, he gripped Eron's crown in one hand, pressing his greasy black hair with his thumbs, and titled Eron's head around to examine his ears.

"I honestly haven't seen anyone who looks like that," said Eron nervously.

"I have," said the guard.

The other guard lowered the torch nearer Eron's cheek, "His skin is too dark."

The man grunted and picked up his weapon.

Like the giant dogs that lived on the wastelands, a loogaroo, which had finished sniffing its prey, the guard turned and abruptly crossed the wooden planks kicking up dust as the floorboards slammed back into place. Eron sneezed. Then the bounty hunters questioned the matron briefly and left through the back exit at the rear of the kitchen.

He was still trembling when it all ended. Eron rubbed his nose and drew in another lungful of dust, sneezing again and again until his eyes begin to water.

Bounty hunters were known for their prudent application of psychology to achieve any end. Like everyone else in Auckland, Eron feared them. Responsible for tracking and capturing people who left the city in violation of the Municipal Code, they had discovered that the most effective use of psychology involved pikes. Once they had stuck a pike in the ground and fit it with a fugitive's severed head, the mental and emotional inner workings of the general population were naturally redirected toward good citizenship. And that subtlety of thought was why they operated within the Yellow Guard rather than the Red Guard.

As Eron started to roll his scrolls back into their leather case, a sound came from under the table where he was sitting.

Ah-choo!

Eron bolted upward.

Next to his right knee, a pasty hand emerged and set a waded fragment of linen on the seat of the booth. Eron compulsively took a sip from his coffee mug and starred at it as if it would go away the longer he looked.

"Are you alright?" shouted the matron. She pulled the kitchen banner aside and stuck her head out. "I don't suppose even an Auckian like you could ever get comfortable seeing that much sharpened metal."

Eron looked at the woman and then looked at the wad of linen again.

"Are you still there scribe?" she said sounding a bit more concerned.

The hand reemerged and set a coin on the bench next to the cloth.

"Nothing. It was a mouse," said Eron picking up the coin. "I'm- I'm alright."

She chuckled.

Eron looked over the markings on the coin. Too worn to decipher. Although people in Auckland did pound out little bits of metal collected from the garbage mines, their shape hardly mattered as all metal trades were weighed during sales.

Eron bit the golden disk exactly as he saw Auckian vendors do during a transaction in the market. He squinted and thought about it for a bit, but he didn't know how a minted coin was supposed to taste.

It had a perfect shape. Round and flat.

Eron nervously opened the linen. It was a drawing of the table with two stickmen facing each other sitting underneath.

Whatever deviance the stranger had planned, it was greed that drove Eron's curiosity. The coin had to be a bribe. But for what? With a modern coin, even if it was a fake, he might be able to trade for a horse. And if it wasn't forged, he could easily buy five horses with it, not that he needed that many.

He craned his head under the low surface until he was nose to nose starring into the man's dark eyes.

"Hello handsome," said the fugitive.

Eron had only seen his likeness in polished metal and still water. Still, it didn't take more than that instant to recognize his own doppelgänger.

"But, my nose isn't that big," said Eron touching his face remembering what the guard said. And my voice is deeper, too, he thought.

"I'm sure you can pick cherries with it," said the man.

Silence.

"You know, hang the tip over a branch," the man continued. "Grab fruit with both hands?"

Eron didn't know what to say.

"Your tip for the day free of charge from Gil, the most famous entertainer on the island," said fugitive, currently the most wanted man in the small village of Dunedin.

Eron rubbed the coin firmly with his thumb and index finger. He had no time for the man's folksy cleverness.

"Right, what do you want from me?" he blurted while flipping the coin over.

"Your assistance," said the man who looked exactly like him.

He motioned Eron to join him under the table.

Were the bounty hunters were still in the village, Eron could expect a box of salt or maybe an extra ration of sugar beets as a reward for helping them capture him. It was tempting. Not five horses tempting, but less risky. Eron closed his eyes tight.

"Aren't you afraid I'll turn you into the guard?" he asked.

A puerile grin spread even farther across the man's already gleeful face. "The whole guard or just part of it? Would make a very popular act. I can see you're an idea man. How about this: do you know any good places to hide?"

"The coffee house is going to be closing any minute. I have to leave. I should be making my way home," Eron muttered.

It was just too dangerous to help him.

"I should be making my way to your home, too, then," said Gil pretending to yawn.

"Please," Eron whispered. "No games. Just tell me what you want."

"Honestly?" asked Gil.

Eron nodded.

"Only two things. A bed," said the man with the long nose. "And a woman."

"I see why they say actors are the lowest form of scribe," Eron said sneering.

"Says the village latrine digger," said Gil.

"Digging latrines is only one of my duties as the Regional Sanitation Specialist," Eron replied.

"And that outranks an actor?"

"I didn't mean it that way," said Eron, although he knew that was exactly the way it was.

A chart in The Guardsman Occupational Handbook classified actors as scribes, because they were allowed to write and copy the works they performed. They had to be part of the Yellow Guard even if the rest of the scribes didn't want anything to do with them. However, no actor ever advanced beyond the lowest rank, because their craft required too much emotional expression.

The Red Guard valued bravery and abhorred sloth. The Green Guard hierarchy rewarded experience and detested snobbery.

Eron had been conscripted to the third rung of the Green Guard, because at times he had helped repair the machines in his mother's factory. Thadine pulled a few strings for him. It was something she was good at though Eron couldn't have cared less. Like all the members of the Yellow Guard, he too, valued only the purest intellectual pursuit of knowledge.

"No worries," said Gil. "I'm not an actor."

"You just said you were," said Eron.

"Entertainer. I juggle," he corrected. "But, I'm really good at it. And I've got other talents, too."

Gil motioned as if he were going to start singing.

But, as Eron started to get up, the man grabbed the sleeve of his tunic. The fugitive's slender arm made bare takahe bones look meaty. Eron tried to pry the man's fingers from his tunic and was surprised at the strength of his grip. Though Gil's physique might have been about as threatening as a feather to a brick, he had astonishing might for such a small man. Eron didn't. Gil also had presence and he used that to his advantage as he caught Eron's gaze.

"I know you're going to help me," he said.

Eron pursed his lips and stole a glance toward the kitchen while the fugitive quietly opened his bindle and started rummaging through it. A few hollowed gourds fastened to the outside, had been dried, cut open and reattached with fasten leather hinges. Something nomads normally used to carry dried foods and spices.

"I have to go pay for my coffee," said Eron attempting get up again.

"Not with that," said Gil placing a hand over Eron's fist, which was still tightly closed around the coin.

Eron pulled his hand away. His right eye spasmed at the man's uncomfortably light touch.

This was certainly a dilemma.

Most modern artifacts were kept underground in the heavily guarded Auck Archive. And Eron had never owned anything that was made back when buildings had the power to scrape the sky. Although he never knew which of Achazya's stories were credible and which weren't, it was common knowledge that there had not been a mint on the island in 500 years. No mint. No coinage. So, he wanted the small round coin. Badly.

"Why didn't the skyscrapers leave any marks?" he thought aloud.

The juggler tilted his head to one side and looked sympathetically at Eron while Eron realized he'd been bought the moment he saw the artifact. Already bonded to it with the invisible chains of desire, he couldn't remember ever having wanted anything more than that modern coin.

Gil finally located a leather pouch and with a little convincing, Eron allowed him to put the coin in it. And he looped it around Eron's neck just as the gnarled dry feet of the matron passed beside the table. Then, Gil put a cap on his head and tucked in his dark hair. He winked.

"There it is!" the fugitive shouted as he crawled out from the table on his hands and knees. Eron tried to hold him back. Whatever Gil pretended to find, he put in his mouth.

The matron set her hand over her hefty sun-crinkled bosom in alarm and gasped, "I thought you'd gone already. I have to shut-ify before dark."

"That is abalone, isn't it?" Gil asked lifting the woman's hand from her chest so he could examine her bracelet. She giggled.

Eron bit his lip, breathed deeply and prayed to the gawd of undesirable emotions to take his sudden sense of doom and foreboding away.

"I have never tasted better coffee than you served tonight," said Gil yawning. "Don't you think I could have just one more cup, pre-gorgeous lady?"

"I'll have to relight the fire," she said sounding almost girlish. "But, just one more unless you're after something stronger."

She disappeared back into the kitchen humming.

Gil slid his pack from underneath the table and yanked on Eron's left leg with both arms.

"I'm coming. Let me go?" he said crawling out.

"Right," said Gil handing Eron a wad of the linen. "Stuff the lock."

Eron quickly pressed enough fabric into the latch so it could close, but not lock completely. Gil peered out the window into the empty streets. Then, Eron hid under the table again before matron returned with more coffee. She smelled strongly of fragrent oils freshly applied to her withered skin. She was also carrying medicinal wine and a roast dinner for the fugitive.

"I had some leftovers," she cooed.

Eron waited impatiently under the table while they ate. The juggler thanked her, kissed her goodnight and she climbed the stairs to the room above where she slept.

Evening.

The sky was washed in stars and a light bluish hue from the moon. It was gently coating the stones on the street when Gil finally decided to leave the coffee house. The grainy surfaces of the pillared buildings also reflected the soft glow. A man slept curled in a blanket by the gate, strategically positioned to be the first to beg new visitors who entered the village.

Outside, they could hear the matron snoring through an open window as they tiptoed down the porch. Having somehow bound his own hands together with the end of a fraying rope, Gil stopped at the edge of the coffee house walkway. In bitter silence, Eron took the dangling end. One good pull might have snapped the dry fibers of the cord apart, but it looked good. At least if they were caught, he could claim Gil was his prisoner.

"Where are we going?" he whispered to Gil.

"And why are you here?" said a raspy voice.

The transient sleeping by the gate stirred into an angry half-sitting position.

"Ignore him," said Eron who ran into the man on more than one unfortunate occassion.

"Excrement!" yelled the old man. "Either I'm drunk or you guys are twin Auckian sponges. How many filthy Auckians do we need? No, I'll answer that. Zero. Now we've got two. And you act like you belong here more than I do. I can't even even look at your stupid stripes. You ziggaurt climbing, face painting, stone worshiping-"

The man continued babbling as they walked softly down the main road.

"Where are we going?" Eron asked again once they were out of hearing range.

"To the weaver's house," Gil whispered.

"I live at the weavers," said Eron. He stopped immediately, taking care not to pull on the fragile rope.

"I know you live with the weaver," the thin man said, "You told me."

"No, I didn't," Eron said.

"Listen, this is a small village." Gill said. "One man walks in looking exactly like another and people talk. I look like you. You look like me. And they tell me they just saw you at the coffee shop by the West Gate. Are you so surprised I know you live with the weaver?"

"You aren't coming to the weaver's with me. We can hide you one of the pits and cover it with a tarp," said Eron. "And I'll come back for you in the morning."

"First place the guards would look," said Gil.

"If they come back," said Eron. "They might search the houses first."

But, he knew Gil was right. The weaver's was the safest place town. Even he can't find what he needed in his mess of looms and textiles.

"Alright then, let's just go back to yours," said Gil poking Eron's chest with a feminine flourish.

Eron pulled away.

"I'll do it for the coin," he sighed feeling it's smooth round shape through the bag with his free hand. "But, you have to be gone in the morning."

Although Eron would rather hide the juggler in a water barrel, a stable or even the local temple of the village gawd, all of those places would look more guilty if he were caught helping him. As long as he was at the weaver's, Gil looked like Eron's captive. It made an unfortunate sense all around.
CHAPTER THREE

A sharp wind whistled hollowly through the village street like a air passing over the neck of a bottle and was punctuated by a scattering of howls over the hills. The two identical men shuttered for warmth. Villagers in Dunedin typically retired to their pillared houses long before dusk. While on any given night, Auck City might be teaming with activity under the flickering light of the lampposts, in the all night coffee houses or behind the walls of the myriad socials clubs open to the usual urban schemers. But, nocturnal activity was not common in Dunedin, because the villagers lived in fear and respect for local predators.

Megafauna roamed the wastelands surrounding the villages. The loogaroo, a giant dog, and the panthera, a giant cat, stalked herds of purple beefalo and flocks of moa, a giant flightless bird. Many of the creatures were two or three times the height of the average man. But, they had an uneasy truce with the predators. The animals satisfied themselves by eating other animals and the people of the village satisfied themselves by habitually avoiding going out when it was dark. The exception being an occasional teenage boy who had something to prove. And eventhough the bricks of the village walls protected them, villagers tended to lock their doors while the sun still hung above the horizon. Out of respect or fear, Eron didn't know.

"Just one night," he whispered, tugging on Gil's rope. "And you're on your own if we get discovered."

"Into character fast, aren't we?" said the juggler. "You almost sounded like a guardsman."

"I am a guardsman," Eron hissed.

With Eron leading, they treaded quietly between the houses, all of which were cannibalized bits of older, modern buildings, chiseled and repurposed to construct single level homes by haphazardly filling in a square wooden frame. From one of the flat roof tops, a clay pot dropped and shattered on the stone road below.

A burst of adrenaline shot through Eron's veins. He pulled Gil into an alley where they crouched behind a pile of broken furniture covered in dead vines. Eron tried desperately to slow his startled breathing.

"I think I'm going to need you to loosen the rope a bit," said Gil. "I can feel the blood pooling around my wrists."

"I promised to help you, not trust you."

"Do you, um, do you enjoy this sort of bondage?" said Gil pulling at the fraying fibers.

Eron didn't respond.

"Why not let me go in front?" said the juggler.

"I think the person in charge is the one who knows where to go," Eron said. But, he had no idea how to transport a captive authentically. "The guard should be in the lead."

Gil nodded. They got up and Eron took the rope end.

"But," said Gil after a few paces. "Maybe a guard would want a captive walking in front so that he could keep his eye on him?"

There were at least twenty more doors between them and the weaver's house. Eron allowed Gil to pass.

"But, then again, he'd have a weapon to prod the prisoner along," said the entertainer snapping his fingers. "You should be in the lead."

Eron shuffled ahead again.

"Not that it matters if you have a weapon as long as you claim that you have one," said Gil. "And you guards always carry knives to threaten your captives with."

"You're the one who would know," said Eron wedging himself into the narrow space between two stucco walls that would lead them down an alley to the back entrance of the weaver's.

"You assume, because I'm a fugitive I know about being a captive?" said Gil indignantly. "It's my first time-"

Eron put his finger to his lips and scowled.

Gil reached out and pinched Eron's cheek.

Above the arch at the rear kitchen entrance, a mosaic of red, green, and blue tiles were pressed into the clay exterior and represented a takahe standing on three stones. Each Auckian family had a similar decoration that identified their homes like a family crest. Eron pushed the wool banner aside. Locks on the front doors. No doors on the back. Eron would never understand Dunedin architects.

Every home in the village had been built roughly the same. Same layout. Same size. Same building materials. All painted the same sandy reddish hue as everything else in the village although a little more or less yellow in some places. The builders didn't lack imagination. They lacked time and supplies.

Most of the buildings had a wall between the kitchen and the main area where the families worked and slept with a large imbedded fireplace open to both chambers, used for roasting and keeping the house warm. Eron checked the dome-shaped bread stove in the center of the kitchen for leftovers from the evening meal. Although supper was included in his rent, it was rarely waiting for him when he came in.

Then, while carefully circumventing a circular stone bench that surrounded the wide opening to the fireplace in the main area, Eron stubbed his toe. But, his muffled sob didn't appear to wake the scattered masses of blanket covered lumps. Eron could barely make out the dark hair of the weaver's children sticking out from their woolen covers, but none seemed to move. He knew there were at least eight in total, but during the day, they moved around so much and the neighbor's children so often added to their number that he could never be sure.

An eternity seemed to pass as they slowly traversed the main room feeling their way by touch to Eron's bed. It was brimming with looms holding various patterns of bright, unfinished textiles. Fortunately, the weaver and his consort slept in small room built on the flat rooftop above, supported by two rows of wooden pillars that had long since been burried by the weaver's abandoned projects.

Eron's landlord was a man known for breaking out in a mental rash of brilliant ideas and being equally prone to not completing them. The residue of his genius left a masterful mess between the kitchen, the hearth and the three banners hung from the beams near the entrance to make a private space for Eron in the middle of his chaos.

Each loom in the weaver's shop was formed by two tall sticks, pressed deeply into the ground, roughly a foot or so wider in distance across than the weaver himself. Long strings dangled from a cross stick set on top. Unlike the solid wooden looms in his mother's factory, there were no foot pedals to circumvent and no moving mechanisms to disturb. And in between the kaleidoscopic labyrinth of standing looms, stacks of fabric, threads and unused frames rested on the bare ground leaving almost no space to walk. Most nights, Eron would have brought a lamp from the kitchen, because the shop was as treacherous to navigate in the light as it was in the dark.

In his room, Eron had enough straw, old fabric and wool stuffed under a blanket that he could sleep comfortably. His belongings stood equidistant along the wall arranged from largest to smallest. Eron emptied his pockets and set the contents in order while Gil watched him complete his evening routine. He covered himself with a blanket and turned his back to the juggler who was still standing.

"Curse the guard," muttered Gil lowering himself onto the floor.

"The gawd of the guard can hear you," Eron warned."Everything the guard does, the gawd of the guard does better. He builds infrastructure, expands our territory, protects us." He yawned. "Punishes his enemies."

For a moment, he sounded just like his mother.

"I've never heard of infrastructure," said Gil. "And if I've lived this long without it, I doubt I need it."

"You have heard of infrastructure," said Eron. "You're just not familar with the word, because you're a nomad. It just means all the buildings and roads and systems needed to run a city.

"Eron, why did you join the Green Guard if you were such a know-it-all spongy scribe?" asked the fugitive as he gnawed on the cord around his wrist.

"It was a dare," Eron lied rolling over to face the man. "Now, go to sleep or I'll have to gag you, too."

"You'd like that!" said Gil putting his head on the edge of Eron's pad.

Eron's had already woken several times when he felt the warmth of the morning fire creep into his room. It was dawn. His head spun with a disconnected onslaught of vivid fragments of the night's dreams. After shaking the cobwebs still clinging to his sleepy mind, he dozed off again briefly before wrestling his body into a standing position.

He grabbed a soft merino undershirt and a long sleeved tunic with the green guardsman stripe on the arm. His mother had shortened a few of his yellow tunics before he left so they wouldn't drag in the mud, but he rarely wore them. She also made him leather knickers with extra pockets and adjustable green suspenders. Still, he missed the longer tunics. If he hadn't been busy hiding a fugitive, he would have taken some time to wash his loincloths. Belting his tunic over his shorts, then rolling up his sleeves and tying them into place with the loose strings sewn on the arms, he then pulled a knit hat over his matted hair and stepped out of the partition that divided his room from the rest of the house.

Such an incredible mess. The forrest of looms woven with colorful alternating threads, weighted to the ground with stones or bits of bone, looked worse during the day. Eron missed his mother's tidy factory, but nothing as much as the shelving system she used to organize her inventory.

That morning, the weaver's consort wore a delicate blue skirt under a white tunic. Thadine would have approved and Eron never failed to tell her so. She was beautiful. Her dark hair was already wrapped tightly above her head in a white cloth and she was smiling as she fried eggs on the dome stove. The mother of the weaver's children had died a few years ago and though the weaver had never formally been bonded to the women who now ran his home, he knew he was fortunate. Many of the female villagers and nomads preferred leather pants and she was the perfect woman to advertise the more impractical, but ornate fashions he made that were considered frivilous to the people living in the Eastern Wastelands. It was certain the weaver would soon formalize their arrangement.

"They ate my dinner again," said Eron.

"I can refund you after the festival," she said offering him some breakfast.

"It's alright. It's just- I was thinking maybe we could catch the kids in action if we put some dye in a bowl of stew and left it out for them."

The woman furrowed her delicate brow.

"I must trust my kids and believe that they will eventually chose to do the right thing," she said taking a piece of dough in her hands and shaping it into flat bread. "If I don't believe in them, they might never learn to believe in themselves."

"I know you're right," Eron gushed although he disagreed completely with the her methods.

He went back got his tool basket from his room, hefted his wooden spade over his shoulder and slung over his shoulder the leather case that held his copy of Liam's Discourses Achazya had given him before he left Auck City. He would read it on his lunch break to help unwind.

Gil would have to stay in his room while he worked.

The discourses contained the definitive reasons for the apocalypse, the justification for the Municipal Code and a number of general essays on metaphysics. Light reading for Eron and he was going to need it.

He tried not to look at Gil as he wiped a smear of oil from his knife. The fugitive must have kicked over his little hand-sized clay lamp with the pinched lip that rested a shallow wick. It had spilled everywhere.

"There is a festival tonight," Eron whispered. "After work I'll come back and you can leave. Blend in with the crowd. I'll even get you a mask from the market. No one will notice."

Gil nodded.

Eron had no trouble finding a vendor selling skull masks on the side of the street in the clearing where the villagers had assembled bone fires to burn effigies of their dead relatives on his way home that afternoon. He nodded at a couple of burly nomads unloading bladders of medicinal wine from a wooden vardo and put the mask on. Many were already dressed for the Festival of the Dead.

Eron thought a lot about death that day. But, not his dead relatives. Not his father or great uncle or any of his neighbors in the city. His death. That was on his mind. All through the day, he was plagued by morbid visions of the bounty hunters finding him with Gil. In each one, he ended up lying in the pit he was digging with arrows sticking from his back looking like the spikes of a porcupine.

"Would you like to buy some Urigolds?" asked a tired looking nomadic vendor offering him a basket of wilted orange petals.

Traditionally, the petals were given to lovers to represent all the years they would spend together.

"I'm not married," he said.

"A trag-ifi-cation," said the vendor departing just in time to intercept another potential customer.

The golden red flowers, named after the modern scientist that genetically modified much of the Auckian flora and fauna almost five hundred years ago, decorated everything in the village. Heavy strands of the dark petals were drapped over doorways. At the coffee house, the matron was winding garlands in spirals around each beam on the porch. Eron didn't know how he was going to face her again.

He was extremely grateful to have had reason to buy the mask.

CHAPTER FOUR

Eron was startled by the sound of voices when he entered the weaver's house, which included the intimidating resonance of a deep bass he did not recognize. Although his dinner waited for him on the grill and the savory scent of warm sausages wafted under his nostrils, Eron's heart thumped aggressively against the wall of his chest when he heard Gil talking to the men. On the off chance that someone might lean over to stoke the fireplace, Eron crept alongside the counters through the kitchen and sought the most advantageous spot to eavesdrop.

"And if he isn't willing to leave?" rang the strange man in his bass voice.

"Build him a shoe rack," said Gil taking a bite of sausage.

"And how would that help?" said another man Eron didn't recognize immediately.

"If we offer to number each peg, he'll be powerless to resist," said the weaver already laughing at his own joke.

Eron fumed. The men were turning themselves toward the fire to warm their backsides while Gil juggled a handful of potatoes to their the rapt amusement. Next to him on the hearth sat a bowl of tan paste. Catching the last potato, the fugitive dropped his hand to the floor in a nose-touching-knee bow of epic proportions. Eron stepped back before their eyes met through the opening.

"This is only a prototype," said said the weaver holding up a leaf-patterned golden square from his hoard of half-finished masterpieces.

Absently spearing sausages from his clay bowl, Gil nodded his approval.

"You two can discuss fashion-alizing another time. There's not much you know about that young guard except that he can read and his mother is a weaver," said the deep bass voice. "Would anyone take him in if he refuses us?"

"I don't understand half of the things he talks about," said other stranger Eron now recognized as the owner of a small hardware store. "I doubt anyone else does either. He can't work. No one could afford to feed him that long."

"Micah," said Gil swallowing another mouthful. "Will take him in."

"It's settled then" said the weaver. "I'll pack his things before he gets back."

"But for two years?" said the man with the bass voice.

Eron didn't notice Gil standing beside him with his arms crossed until the fugitive cleared his throat. Gil smiled, reached up and ran his fingers over his shorter guardsman cut.

"Nice haircut," said Eron through clenched teeth. He didn't know what the men had planned for him, but it was sabotage.

"You noticed!" said Gil taking his arm. "Sausages, solider. Now. Come on."

Grease dripped down the hardware store owner's long white braided beard as Eron was pulled into the main room by the fugitive.

"I'll cooperate," said Eron bowing his head in defeat. "I'll leave Dunedin tonight. Just don't kill me here."

"Kill you?" said Gil grabbing Eron's cheeks. "I could kiss you," he said and planted a moist kiss on his nose.

"How long were you listening?" asked the weaver looking confused.

"Only a couple minutes. But it's long enough. That's a paste made from those urigolds, isn't it?" said Eron pointing to the bowl on the hearth.

"I added some red clay, too" said Gil.

"Gil must be someone important to you," said Eron calmly sitting down. "To all of you. That's how he knew where to find me last night. You watched me feeding pigeons for five minutes the day I arrived and then offered me a room, which you didn't have. And I thought it was because my mother was a weaver. But, we're the same," said Eron bitterly putting a finger in the paste. "Except the skin tone and the voice."

Eron watched as the architects of his demise silently starring at him.

Gil quietly handed Eron a sausage.

"And no, since you're asking, I don't want a shoe rack. Room and board with a man named Micah," Eron was shaking with either fear or anger or probably both. "You're taking my life away and helping me out the door, down the street, around the corner and into the mouth of a giant cat. You even get the coin back."

"You don't like it here," said the weaver defensively.

"It's my post," said Eron.

"They will hunt Gil every day until they find him," said the man with the bass voice.

"You're trying to tell me that if Gil and I switch places they will stop hunting him and look for me instead?" said Eron to the room full of guilty faces. "That doesn't even make sense."

The man with the deep voice was wearing a long black tunic that dragged across the dirt floor as he walked over to Eron and put his hand on his shoulder.

"We could have killed you as soon as Gil arrived. You don't belong here. The guard doesn't belong here. Dunedin is our home. You must understand."

"Why don't we send Eron back to Auck City to be with his family?" interrupted the old man from the hardware store.

"Because," said Eron pulling away. "I would be a deserter. It would shame my mother, my tutor, the high priestess and everyone I know. They'd ban me from the city for life."

"We've taken care of that," said the man with the deep voice. "You can hide at the Well with the monks. They have books. Return in two years to your city. No one will know."

Eron tried inconspicuously to wipe a tear from his cheek, but one landed in the ash beside him. The man looked confused.

"I understand," Eron said nervously, "That is. I understand that you aren't going to let me go. You want me to think that you're sending me away to somewhere I can study and read. You need me to go quietly from Dunedin to somewhere you can dispose of my body." Eron's voice broke and he was sobbing into his palms. But, he wasn't ashamed. He was certain. Death was around the corner lurking in the shadows of his near future like a black market vendor holding stolen goods and a desperate craving for medicinal wine.

"Nonsense," said the weaver shifting his weight awkwardly.

He seemed uncomfortable. Not guilt. But, Eron figured that and wiped his eyes as he mustered the strength enough to face him.

"One word from me and the guard would have all of your heads on pikes," Eron said. It wasn't a threat. He spoke gently. "There are no consequences for me if I do, see? So maybe one or two of you might believe me if I agree to go into hiding. For two years. But," he looked around. "Not all of you. At least one of you won't. "

The men looked at each other.

"One of you won't believe I'd sacrifice my position with the guard for someone I just met."

No one made eye contact.

"Probably, you," he said to the man with the bass voice.

It was logical. He had never met Eron. He had the sternest look about him. The kind of man who could sense a threat and act on it in an instant.

"I want-," he continued, "Just to say-"

"That's enough, Eron," said the weaver holding out his hand.

"I admit I thought of that," said the man with the bass voice strolling around the hearth.

Eron wasn't surprised. He had long nomadic braids and too many scars on his face to afford the luxury of being naive.

"But, the gawds would frown on killing you. So, I planned to threaten to kill your family if you broke your word."

"That's a good idea," said Eron, brightening suddenly.

The man was right.

"I agree," said Gil flippantly flashing his eyes widely. He offered Eron another sausage. "It sounds reasonable."

"But, we have to hurry," said Eron.

Under most circumstances, threatening family was a source of great distress for most normal people. However, even inside the walls of his city, Eron was not like most people. He was logical enough to recognize that any man whose life was threatened could be expected to kill. He didn't hold it against the man.

And there was one truth he knew better than any other. No one trusts a person they have already betrayed. People expect payback. In his thoughts, the laws of human behavior operated like the laws of nature, the only problem being how little he knew about either.

The paste they used to darken Gil's skin was primarily animal fat mixed with the dried urigold petals. The weaver rubbed it on the back of Gil's hand and compared it to Eron's skin. He added more ash to dull the tone, a touch of more of the red clay and tried again until he had a fair match.

In his room, the hardware store owner had already rolled Eron's belongings into his blanket when Eron came in. He had dumped all of Eron's things in a pile on the ground and taken no care to arrange them.

"Let me," Eron pleaded. "That is the wrong order. The lamp has to be wrapped in the shirt so it won't shatter if it lands on the ground."

"It will be all right in the end," said man.

Eron winced and started to wipe the paste residue from his hand onto the underside of his tunic.

"His clothes stay here with Gil," said the nomad coming into the room and unloading a pile of the weaver's belongings onto floor. "And feed that tunic to the fire," he said pointing to the one Eron was wearing.

Eron watched listlessly as the tattered shirt his mother had woven years ago crackled and licks of flame marched about the hearth while the owner of the hardware store set his poorly organized pack beside him.

"What about his hat?" said the weaver.

Eron held onto the yellow cap his tutor had given him.

"It's ugly and only an Auckian would wear it," said Gil who stood naked, covered in paste, drying his skin by the fire.

Eron threw the cap at him.

The weaver came down from the room up the stairs and opened Eron's pack as Gil put one of Eron's grey tunics with the green stripe on the arm. He looked just as unconvincing as a Green Guardsman as Eron had always felt. They tossed Gil's rags on the fire.

"Not those scrolls," said Eron taking the leather case from the weaver. "These discourses are contraband," Eron lied. He put the apocalyptic writings back on the roll and pulled the sanitation files out. "But, Gil can have these. It's the sanitation plans for the city and all the villages."

"You've done the moralistic thing," said the hardware man stopping to study Eron carefully. "I misjudged you before."

Eron smiled while the white haired man with age spots on his arm nodded and went into the kitchen.

"And I underestimated you," said Eron knowing the man would not hear him.

When everything had been prepared, they climbed the ladder to the small cozy room on second level, which was darker and smokier, but much warmer than the main floor. The room opened unto the rooftop where the weaver's laundry flapped in the wind and the scent of tomato plants permeated the cold air. Sparkling fireworks boomed in the village roads below where villagers were tossing effigies onto the ragging bone fires. A soft whistle from the next roof signaled for them to leave and a slender dark woman lowered a plank for them to cross.

Gil shoved a metal tube on a long cord into Eron's hand. "This will take you safely to Micah," he said. "Just don't block the holes and make sure it gets enough air."

"What is it?" asked Eron putting it around his neck beside the pouch that held the coin.

Gil winked and mouthed something to him he couldn't understand. Eron felt the smooth exterior of the object, a canister with a hinged lid and a few round dips and impressions on its surface. He thanked Gil who went back inside where the owner of the hardware store was waiting.

Eron followed the weaver to the next building where they saw the nomad with the bass voice gliding through the crowds below like a log floating down a turbulent stream. Their chaotic flight from the village was better choreographed than Eron expected. Although it seemed all the people celebrating below were oblivious to the two men crossing the rooftops directly overhead, Eron was shocked by the number of villagers organized to help them pass. Through potted gardens and around the smoking chimneys, they climbed cautiously until a massively bearded man with no possibility of ever seeing his feet stopped them. It was the baker.

The man usually sold stale loaves directly from his shop underfoot, but sometimes, when he could be bothered, he drove a cart of fresh bread to sell in the market.

"You can pay me next time you're in town," he said handing Eron a hard loaf of wheat bread.

As he shook Eron's hand, the men caught a glimpse of leather armor on the street. The ruddy complexion of the bounty hunter betrayed his intoxicated state, but the nomad had already sent a village girl to distract the man as they shuffled briskly onto the next rooftop, which belonged to the herbalist. From there, Eron could see the pit he had dug for the village latrine. It would have been a squat toilet surrounded by a private stall that was cleaned by pouring a pitcher of water into the basin.

A man with a light brown beard covering his thin face shuffled toward the weaver with a handful of glass vials.

"Give them to him," said the weaver.

"Thanks," said Eron putting them in his pockets and smiling weakly, "They don't have labels, do they?"

"There is more than one way to read. Three dots for the coffee," the slender man whispered in Eron's ear. "The white coffee."

With a distant expression, he went back into his house.

"That man has always been a bit strange," said the weaver.

"Is there anyone in the village who doesn't know we are up here?" asked Eron as the butcher met them on the next roof with a string of sausages.

A conga line bounced on the street below absorbing new members as it passed. Drums sounded over the slurred speech and laughter of villagers as they danced. The normalcy of the festival radiated with a surrealistic hue. Bounty hunters neglecting their duties. Villagers organized. Vendors giving a guardsman their wares for free. Eron was glad when they reached the outer wall.

"Amos will take you to spend the night with a shepherd. You can stay there until the morning," said the weaver who was unusually alert that night having briefly surfaced from the deep melancholy of the true artist.

Eron nodded.

The wall surrounding Dunedin stood the same height as the pillared building beside it. Graffiti had built up in layers on the inside of the defensive perimeter and in some places it was so cracked that it gave the impression of an organic growth like a fine coating of mold. The weaver held out his fist. Eron bumped it.

"Stay on the roads. Don't eat wild mushroom-izers. Go straight to the monks. And try not to sound so soggy," he said.

The top end of a ladder swayed toward the wall from outside. It landed against the edge and bounced a bit before settling. The nomad was waiting for Eron to climb down.

"How did he get out there already?" Eron whispered at the weaver, but the man had already gone inside.

Eron tested the dry and splintered edge of the ladder just as he had every plank he crossed. It had to support his weight.

"You still owe me for dinner," said Eron under his breath as he lowered himself on downward just as an icy drop of water found its way down the neck of his tunic.

He pressed his foot onto the hard dry earth where he was confronted by a foreboding sense of emptiness in the gaping darkness outside the village. Amos, the nomad, with the bass voice didn't move. No silver light flooded the bare terrain that surrounded them. The overcast sky darkened the night, but even so, Eron locked gazes with an iridescent flash of color from the man's irises. His heart beat faster than the drums behind the wall.

"I will kill your family if you go to the guard," said the man. "But, it doesn't mean that I don't respect what you have done here tonight."

Eron nodded. Then, blasted by the swirling dust, which stung his skin, he closed his eyes and rested his arms on the cloth bundle strapped to his back listening to rippling howl of the loogaroo in the hills.
CHAPTER FIVE

Insects chirped at each other while gusts of wind brushed through the grass. The wild calls of the loogaroo hit Eron's ears like siren who reached for the ladder, but he knew he couldn't go back to Dunedin. Eron followed the nomad through the night ascending a dark trail toward a hut perched on the hillside as their shadows flickering around them in the light of lamp Amos had lit. The outline of an old man with hideously bent spine waited in the doorway to welcome them into his sparsely furnished home.

"Remarkable," said the man holding the wooden door open. "Just like Gil."

Wrapped in a dark shawl and seeming to stoop lower with each step, the shepherd hobbled into the kitchen. With thicker walls and lower ceilings, the hut resembled the pillared buildings in the village though it seemed significantly older. The shepherd returned with three small steaming cups of what Eron suspected might be coffee, but the liquid had an alcoholic bite and the bitter taste of fresh herbs. It was medicinal wine or a close approximation.

"To the guard," said the man lifting his cup. His smile exposed a long row of white teeth imbedded haphazardly in his short red gums.

"The guard will know Gil isn't Auckian as soon as he opens his mouth," Eron said grimacing at the scent of old man's concoction.

"You didn't see the impression he did before you arrived," said boomed Amos. "Sounded just like a scribe. Might I borrow another spade, please?" he said switching to a mockingly nasal falsetto. "I must dig a hole where people can relieve themselves for the glory of the Auckian Empire."

The old man snorted over his drink while Eron managed only a skeletal smile. Fumbling with the bulk of leather that held the coin around his neck, the only thing that really bothered him at that moment was how poorly his belongings had been packed. He unrolled his bundle on ground and started to line up the tunics.

"What are you doing?" said Amos as he drained the dredges of his cup.

"Stop that," said the old man leaning over him.

"We left in a hurry," explained Eron, but Amos had pried the oil lamp from his hand before Eron could wrap it more securely in one of his undershirts. While Amos pushed the contents of Eron's bundle against the mud wall, the shepherd handed Eron his cup. It was still full.

"Drink," said the shepherd.

"I don't," Eron started to say. "I"m not sure. I... I don't really drink."

"Don't drink?" roared Amos refilling his cup from a tin kettle that had been resting in the coals of the dying fire.

Embarrassed, Eron downed the contents of his cup faster than a barefoot farmer runs to the kindling shed on a winter morning. He watched the two older men huddled together over the empty fireplace sipping from their cups, which were only slightly larger than one of his mother's thimbles.

"I wonder if we smell alike?" Eron said starring at the bottom of his tiny clay cup. The shepherd reached unsteadily for the bottle and refilled it.

"The guard would have had Gil weeks ago if they knew how he smelled," Amos bellowed.

Eron nodded and took a sip, but spat the contents out in the ashes as fast as he could.

"Vinegar?" he said.

"And salt," said the shepherd wheezing. "Wrong bottle."

"That's a cleaning solution for the grill," laughed Amos.

Most medicinal wines in Auck City were made from fruit. The process was simple. Fruit was collected in large clay pots covered with rain water that had been filtered through charcoal. Sugar beets were boiled and the syrup was added. The mixture fermented through the winter. Unless it was contaminated or the wine gawd punished the makers by turning it to vinegar, the sweet sticky liquid was bottled with herb tinctures and sat until needed. Some winemakers aimed for a palatable flavor. Others potency. And some extolled the health benefits of careful cultivation of right proportions and of the best plants. Poppies, willow bark and coca leaves were commonly added for pain relief. Valerian for sleep. Daimana for relaxation and happiness.

"What's in this?" Eron asked gagging on the residue at the bottom of his fourth refill while the old man pried the wax off another bottle. "It tastes strong."

"Everything," said the old man. "Con-purified distillation."

"He has machine in the stable that his grandfather built," said Amos. "I don't know what it does, but it works."

Eron lifted his hand to his face. It looked a bit smaller than he remembered it being a minute or two before.

"If Gil is going to be me, but I... I can't be Gil," he said slowly, processing the situation through in his head as he spoke. "Who am I supposed to be?"

"We haven't schem-atitized that far," said Amos walking over to Eron and standing uncomfortably close. "But, you can't be yourself."

Eron twisted his foot into the dirt floor. "My tutor said I should always be myself," he muttered.

His foot seemed to move effortlessly as if his toes weren't fully touching the ground regardless of how hard he pressed them. He took another small sip of the drink.

"Where does Micah live?" Eron started patting a circle into the loose ground.

"The D.O.T.," said Amos gesturing to the West. "On the other side of Pict Bay. That's where you'll find Micah."

"What D.O.T.?" said the old man.

Amos shot the older man a steady glare who backed down and grabbed the bottle to refill the men's empty cups.

"I would go with you if I were younger," said Amos. "It's a sort of campsite. You'll be safe there."

"I'm still young," said the shepherd pounding his boney chest.

"How old are you?" said Eron smiling.

"No idea anymore," he said sitting down on a dusty rectangular chest.

"To Eron," cried Amos throwing back another mug.

A bit of the shepherd's medicinal wine splashed on the ground as he threw his toast into the air. The three men stumbled into the kitchen and set their cups on the wooden counter. The old man's wrinkly hand shook as he refilled them in a line spilling half of what was poured through the slats. Eron looked around for a cloth, but there were none. He wiped the spill with his finger and stuck it in his mouth while leaning heavily on the edge of the counter.

"I'm going to tame the wastelands!" shouted Eron suddenly remembering the motto of the Red Guard.

"You'll get to Micah's cave in a week," said Amos. "I don't think the road there needs any taming. At least, not until the end of it."

"Caves," said the old man throwing back the contents of his cup and slurring a bit, but not as much as he was drooling. "Should have seen me in my supra-prime."

"I never left really the caves," said Amos with a misty far away look in the large man's dark eyes.

Eron was touched even though he wasn't sure what Amos or the shepherd were talking about. He drank another cup.

"You shaved. You saved a man's wife," said the old man in a sudden burst of emotion. "Life."

Eron finished his mug and went for another finding it a shame that the counter had began to move in a clockwise rotation. He tried to hold it down, but it got away from him and he slid to the floor. Amos pulled him up.

"You don't know me," he grumbled. "My life ended when I- hiccup -Auck City. It will take an act of the gawds to get me back."

"You don't think it is worth it?" said Amos. "Slavery is no life for anyone."

"We don't have slaves," said Eron.

"They forced him," said the old man slamming his fist on the counter. "Think they can make us work!" cried the toothless shepherd.

The old man's kitchen counter was lined with pots, empty and laid wherever the man finished using them. Eron started stacking similar pots together, but stopped when he realized they were all brown and roughly the same size and shape.

"Indefinite contracts," said Amos eying the bottom of his cup. "That is slavery."

The air had grown fuzzy and had an uncommon texture like shorn wool. At that moment, Eron changed his mind about distillation and started licking the inside of his mug. It tasted bad, but in a good way.

"Those guards have been taking men from the roads," said Amos. "From their homes.

"The nomads have homes?" asked Eron confused.

"No," said Amos shaking his head. He paused for a moment to think. "Yes, from their homes!"

"I don't believe," said Eron.

"But, we are all slaves to something," slurred the Amos shaking the last drip from his bottle.

The old shepherd chuckled a dry raspy laugh and shuffled to his pantry cabinet, which was full of flasks, "No more 493."

Eron collapsed and found himself face to thorax with a giant weta, a hard green insect with powerful hind legs built for long jumps. It was larger than a mouse.

"Greetings weta-man," said Eron reached out to shake its leg. "Would you like drink?"

"Are you alright down there?" asked Amos.

"I am making new friends," said Eron. "Take me to your leader."

"I am my own leader," said Eron in a high pitch, setting his head against the cool dirt floor.

If anything else happened that night, Eron never remembered.  
Eron woke inside the root cellar the next morning bearing many turnip shaped bruises even though a gray cat hide had been placed thoughtfully under him. The dust smelled damp and fertile. It was dark. The root cellar opened through a small trap door under the kitchen counter and extended out from the shack in long diagonal slabs that tapered toward the ground. His feet were wedged into the far end. As he sat up and pushed the door, his head thundered like a butter churn filled with sand.

"Amos always brings trouble when he supra-visits. Never bread. Never wine. Just trouble," said the old man grumpily as Eron crawled out onto the floor where the man grabbed him by the arm. His grasp was surprisingly strong.

Eron wondered if he'd crawled in the root cellar voluntarily.

"Eat this," said shepherd handing Eron a bowl of carrots, tomatoes, dried raisins and sesame seeds covered in an off-white paste. The olfactory force of the meal repelled him. The chunky paste was clearly as rancid as it was unrecognizable.

"Eat!" shouted the shepherd.

Eron tried to press a spoonful to his lips, but they would not open.

Scowling, the man picked up a knee heigh stick that leaned against the wall of his kitchen and smacked Eron on the shoulder.

Stunned, Eron stepped back. With wild, deeply veined bulging eyes and a pocketed nose as red as a cherry red, the man was a terrifying sight in full daylight.

"I have food," said Eron. "I'll have something on the road. My stomach hasn't settled yet. Where's Amos?"

"Outside," said the shepherd mashing Eron's meal with a pestle.

Eron held his head in one hand and trotted into the blistering sun outside. The brightness of the clear sky gouged at his eye sockets and he swore to the gawds he would never even look at a bottle of wine as long as they took the pain away.

The shepherd's stable, like all of the structures near the hut, were in desperate need of repair. Eron wondered if it was his strategy to keep the panthera from realizing anyone lived there. At the open doors, Amos stood brushing a dark horse with a sagging gut. Eron stepped over a mess of vomit on the ground just as the old man brushed past him with a bowl oats, which he had added to Eron's breakfast.

"Eat!" shouted old man with his stick in hand.

Eron flinched and so did the horse.

Bits of twigs were sticking out from Amos's dark braids and the bags under his eyes seemed to more responsive to the forces of gravity. The big man handed Eron a scrap of parchment with a drawing of two winged Lammasu. The outline of the creatures revealed the bodies of the purple beefalo, the wings of giant moa and grotesquely perched upon their hunched shoulders were oversized human heads.

Lammasu.

There was nothing human about them.

"Turn it over," said Amos as the old shepherd engaged in a battle of wits with the dark horse deftly maneuvering the dish of oats under its nose no matter how fast the poor beast tried to dodge his efforts.

On the other side, a few dozen nomadic symbols were scratched carelessly beside a map of the Auckian road systems. Dunedin village. Waimate camp. The Den of Thieves. Auck City. It was a relatively new drawing to include the nomadic camp.

"This is taken from the official map that Malak plans to release for the mid-millennium?" asked Eron incredulously. "Are these the only the cities with walls?"

Amos nodded. He was hitching a rickety cart with wooden wheels to the horse who now bore a smug grin. The oats were untouched and the shepherd had gone back to his hut.

"There is a wall around Waimate?" said Eron incredulously. "Why do the nomads have walls?"

"They built them," said Amos absently while stroking the horse's bristly hair where he'd just brushed. "The stockade has stood for three years."

When Eron arrived in Dunedin, he had travelled seven days across the island by carriage without glimpsing a settlement inhabited by nomads. He saw the people on the roads, but they differed little from when they entered the city or the villages. Only, there were more of them.

The old man returned with an armload of provisions which he shoved at Eron. A stomach-shaped leather bota, a sort of undignified water bottle made from an internal organ of a sheep, was the largest of the gifts and it reeked of medicinal wine.

"You've already been very generous" said Eron tucking the map into a hidden pocket in the rim of his knickers.

"You're going to want something to carry water in," said Amos. "And that pemmican will last longer than your sausages."

Eron slung the braided arm strap over his shoulder.

"Pemmican is not food," said Eron.

"Food enough," said the shepherd spitting.

The nomads mixed a tasteless buffalo fat with bits of dried flesh to make the preserved blocks they called pemmican. Although in the wee hours of the morning Eron often raided the weaver's pantry for anything he could chew, he would rather go hungry than eat something that looked and tasted like soap.

"Don't fill that from standing water," said Amos pointing to the bota.

Eron nodded and went back into the hut and for his bundle. Outside the doorway, he poured its contents the dewy grass. On his gray cloak, he spread an extra tunic from the weaver, a linen undershirt, a pair of leather knickers and three loin cloths. At least they hadn't taken those. He placed the leather wrapped scrolls in the center and rolled the tinctures in his socks. From the villagers, he had collected sausages, cheese, a pair of green gloves, a lens and some oatmeal soap, which looked identical to the shepherd's pemmican.

"Where's my bread?" Eron asked the shepherd.

"No time," said the old man.

Eron rolled everything together tightly into a cylindrical shape and secured it with two leather straps. The shepherd slung a bovine horn on a leather strap around Eron's shoulder. Undoubtedly, it contained a festering ember from the fire packed in moss. Even the Auckian Guard used fire horns on the road.

"Fire and water," said Eron holding up the horn and the bota with a smile. "Now I am ready."

"Not enough bulk," said the shepherd to Amos who had driven the cart down the grassy ruts to the front of the hut.

"I reckon the pads of his feet are even softer than the underbelly of a lamb," laughed Amos. "And he probably couldn't catch-ify a fish with a fish."

"Dead in a day," said the shepherd shaking his head. "If you give a man a fish, you can feed him for a day. If you give this boy a fish, he'll starve trying to read it."

They chuckled mightily at their own wit.

"You could give him Glue," said Amos shrugging. "She's a tired old nag, but if she didn't make it all the way to the D.O.T., he could always eat her."

"Glue? That's your horse's name? Villagers are so irreverent," muttered Eron sympathetically.

Glue snorted.

"When we reach-icate the road. It should take you seven days to get to Waimate," said Amos slowly surveying Eron's meek stature. "Maybe longer. Get in."

Eron climbed into the cart. The old man covered him with straw.

"Why don't you take me as far as Waimate?" said Eron quickly remembering what the old man said the night before. "You could ride Glue back."

"Hrmph!"

Eron heard the crack of the old man's stick on Glue's hide. The cart creaked and bounced on the rocky path away from the old man's hut. Eron tried to find a comfortable position in the hay, but everywhere he turned, the dry scratchy bits poked through his tunic. He reached down and clawed his leg fiercely. And then his torso. And then behind his ears.

The wooden wheels of the cart turned slowly as they descended a graceful slope. After a few minutes, the sounds of wood rolling over the rocks, the clopping of Glue's hooves and the rattling boards of the cart were joined by a set of muffled voices, which quickly faded. After another few moments of itchy agony, the cart stopped. They turned left and pulled to the side of the road.

Eron started to push the straw away.

"Whoa there! Stay down," bellowed Amos as if he were talking to the horse.

Some people passed, greeting Amos as they walked, which meant one good thing to Eron. They were not the bounty hunters. When they'd gone, Amos dismounted and Eron burst out of the hay.

"Stay off the road at night and try not to be too soggy," said Amos in his deep bass.

Eron thanked him.

"Thank-you for what?" said Amos. "Gil is family. We'd do anything to protect him."

"I know," said Eron. "I was thanking you for not killing me."

Amos smiled.

"I'll probably be dead by nightfall," Eron sighed looking at the open road in front of him.

Behind them, Dunedin was barely visible and the metal lattice of the main gate blurred seamlessly with the long white walls. For the first time in a full cycle of the moon, he was breathing fresh air devoid of all human activities and certainly not enjoying it.

"You let Gil take your place without fighting or arguing or begging or doing something that would have made me need to kill you," said Amos. "You surprised me, Eron."

"It was logical," he sighed.

"Whatever it was," said Amos, raising a thick hand to signal the permanency of his departure, "keep doing it."

Eron adjusted his bundle before taking his first three steps to what felt like oblivion. The flat land that comprised the wastelands outside the village glowed vibrantly with patches of green foliage and tall grasses, but the overall effect was lost on the dizzying sea of yellow dust. The waste, as the nomads called it, was green when he arrived in the spring, but as the rains subsided, the grasses not located near an immediate source of water, died. A creek in the distance wound through the dust like green snake.

On the road, heat rose in invisible waves ahead and behind. A few leafy trees sparsely dotted bare land. To the South, a quiet blue mountain range was tucked far beyond the cloudy blue sky and although Eron would be taking what was called, the Coastal Road, there was no sign of the Specific Ocean and there wouldn't be for many days.

Eron's sandals scraped along the road. He was alone. Until a group of nomads carrying bundles of bulging cloth loosely tied to the ends of long sticks, resting on their shoulders, passed him going the other way. Their stares made him uncomfortable. He tried kept a steady pace, but there were too many straps on his shoulders and cords around his neck. A bota, a fire horn, his bundle, the coin and Gil's metal tube dangled over the navy colored tunic the weaver had given him.

Eron kicked a few pebbles as men on horses trotted past. Two vardos, covered wooden carts, followed in quick succession. The entire exterior of the vehicles were neatly carved and stained red with the nomadic symbols of spirals and circles, lines and crude animal shapes. Not all the nomads could afford the mobile wooden homes. Some ran their trades from them. Others just carried their families from one settlement to another. But, all were designed with a unique and intricate craftsmanship valued by Auckian citizens. In desperate times, some nomads traded their homes to the merchants in the city who refitted them for cooking. The attractive designs tended to outweigh the obvious fire hazards in the vendor's minds.

Five older women in blue violet tunics caked with mud around the hem waddled together behind the vardos. Eron looked down and tried not to stare at their blue facial tattoos. Not all nomadic women decorated their lower lips in swirling designs, but when they did, Eron found the effect unnerving.

Eron kept his head down and took out the map. It was marked with the regional flora, but Eron couldn't decipher the shepherd's handwritten symbols and he found it nearly impossible to believe anything was still blooming on the waste in early summer. While a growth of mushrooms could mean death or dinner, there was no way he could tell which one it was.

He had no choice, but to just start walking.

Unlike the villagers, the endless masses of travelers were a brightly colored people. Eron had never noticed the differences before, but then again, he had never really cared to pay attention. Bleeding fabrics. Bits of old guard uniforms. It seemed as long as the fabric held together, the nomads wore it - no matter the size or fitting. And when the clothes they had surrendered to wear and tear, they just reassembled them into patchwork, cut a new garment and worn them again.

Most of the nomadic consorts, the attached women, often traveling with their children, wore skirts, although unlike the women of Auck City, they tended to wear their hair loose. Auckian women didn't do that. Eron tried not stare. The women who travelled alone tended to dress like the men. They didn't look as attractive, but it was much more practical for hunting. And Eron had to assume they did that since many of them carried bows and animal pellets. Braids, tattoos and earrings were more plentiful among the men. But, like their drab counterparts in the villages, they never seemed to have a scrap of metal between them.

Even though it was summer on the waste, leathers and furs from cat hide, dog hide or beefalo hide were still worn, though not the heavier skins nomads wore in the winter.

After only a few hours, the sun had moved noticeably higher and the traffic began to dwindle, but he still passed a few people every once in a while.

For Eron, it was the bone jewelry he found most unnerving. While the people in the city traded for the leather boots, pants and moccasins the nomads made, there was little market for anything that too closely resembled a body part. Teeth. Not something usually worn in Auck City.

Following shortly after a particularly large band of nomads, a sleek black coach drove past in the his direction. He sighed and nearly broke into an audible whine. On his way to Dunedin, Eron had taken a coach paid for by the Guard. He ignored life on the road during his initial journey by keeping his nose deeply buried in his scrolls. But, now on foot, he was forced to take in every weary detail. Starring at the ground was an option, but he knew he couldn't look like an easy target for the thieves. Thumbing the coin around his neck, Eron considered flagging down the next coach.

One foot in front of the other, he walked, giving into daydreams, but still making progress.

When the sun reached its zenith, Eron sought refuge from the blistering anger of the sun gawd in a dark grove of trees. His eyes adjusted to the light and slowly the olive tones clouding his vision faded.

It was time to repack.

Just before his eyes adjusted, he found a patch of ground where beams of light shot through the canopy of leaves above in bright spots. Wiping his brow, he laid out his stuff for the second time that day. Charcoal and stones were scattered in the dirt where the weathered edge of modern ruins peeked though the earth forming part of a broken fire ring. A tiny cascade of dust from a high branch passed through a beam of light. Although he couldn't see the source of the noise, his imagination drew him into a frantic panic and starring motionlessly at the multi-colored undersides of the canopy, he thought he caught a glint of two glowing orbs. A pair of eyes in the branches. Small or faraway. He didn't know.

Eron grabbed a rock and threw it into the thick of the branches.

Leaves fell.

Silence.

He waited for his heart to calm.

Examining the lens given to him by a young widow on one of the village rooftops, he listened for movement in the grove. Barely scuffed, the lens could be combined with another lens to create a spyglass, but he also knew alone, it could concentrate the sun's heat to make a fire. With tinder, he could create a flame anywhere on a sunny day. Too bad Micah lived in a cave. Eron grabbed a twig, held under the light, and moved the glowing spot until it was as bright as possible. A wisp of smoke rose from the bark. It worked.

And as Eron was putting the lens back in one of his socks, a pair of soft elbows slipped around him like a squishy vice gripping his torso from behind. They had come from nowhere.

His scream was interrupted by a blunt force to his left temple.

A foul faced nomadic woman stood in front of him. She hit him again and blasted a warm gust of breath that smelled like dead animal directly up his nostrils and smiled so wide Eron could see the white film coating her tongue. The fragments of teeth that clung inside her mouth resembled stalactites. Haphazardly covered in a pungent smelling full-length purple tunic patched together from different scraps of cloth of varying ages and densities, the aging assailant looked as much like a purple buffalo as she smelled.

This is it, he thought.

As a gust of wind raised the hair on his neck, Eron steeled himself to accepted his fate by cringing. In a matter of moments, he would most likely be dead at the hands of an overweight middle aged woman.

CHAPTER SIX

Face to face with one road hag, Eron's skin tingled against a gust of wind, which contrasted sharply with the sweaty embrace of other the unknown captor standing behind him.

"What's that?" said the person holding him.

It was the raspy voice of another women. Two women. Rather than wait for a reply, she put her rough hand over Eron's mouth.

"If you scream-ation, I'll cut off your favorite body parts."

Eron furrowed his brow, confused for more than one reason.

"Your fingers," she said. "Five of the six things boys like best."

The foul looking creature facing him dug her thumb into the soft spot at the bend of his arm and snorted eagerly as she applied more pressure until Eron released his grip and he dropped the lens.

"Do we need this?" she said grimacing as she crouched to retrieve it from the dried leaves where it landed.

"I don't know what it is," said the other. She was strong although soft and burly. Her voice reflected both qualities.

Eron's head was still throbbing with a brutal hangover.

The woman held the glass lens to the sun. "Scratched," she said and tossed it back on the ground.

Eron tried to object, but the sound he made was muffled by the woman's meaty fingers.

"He's rather feisty. I anti-bet you would like to take a swing at me," said the woman. "Eloise, let him go."

With a reluctant groan, Eloise uncovered his mouth, "Be quick, Ethel."

"I wouldn't hit a woman," Eron said. Although he hardly thought the two beastly creatures qualified as such.

"Couldn't hit," corrected the woman. She planted a swift jab in his stomach using the firm pointed tip of her hand. He made a noise like a sick dog.

"I thought people got nicer when they got older," he moaned.

The woman, Ethel, was wrinkled and hunched. She had matted black hair and wispy strands on her jowls. Her dark eyes were barely visible under the heavy weight of her lids, which were framed by one bushy eye brow. Eron considered immediately that she may be the ugliest woman Eron he had ever seen.

"Where are you going?" asked the woman holding him.

"Auck City," he lied.

"Back to the hive," spat Ethel.

"Auck City?" said the woman with the strong arms. "You're a long way from home."

Eron could tell that she was taller than him by at least a foot, but struggled anyway, straining his back and lifted his feet off the ground until they pointed straight in front of him at waist height. But, the woman neither stumbled nor loosened her crustacean grip. At least he wasn't making it easy for her to hold him. The hag yanked him to the base of a tree while Eron dug his heels into the ground. He scraped two lines into the dark soil and leafy debris.

"What do you want?" Eron shouted loud enough that someone might hear him, but not so loud that the hags could reasonably claim that was what he intended.

The nomadic women exchanged confused glances before throwing their heads back in a manic, but somewhat feminine gurgling peal of laughter. The one who had been holding him pressed him against the bark. Her softer features were almost grandmotherly. She had more chin hair, but significantly less eyebrow. Her years on the road under the burning sun and nights in the bitterly cold winter, had taken an obvious toll. She was close to the grave, but still kept her hair neatly braided. Even her rags had more form than those of the other woman though they were likely cut from the same purple cloth.

Ethel started wrapping a rope across Eron's chest as Eloise held him.

"You are dumber than a sackable of potatoes," said the taller hag. "Stretch his arms around the bark then bind them. Don't waste our rope."

She pulled Eron's arms as far as they would go, cut off the excess rope and gagged him with a scrap of resist-dyed blue cloth. Eron recognized the dye technique of the gag from his mother's workshop. It was made with candle wax. Though a bit tattered, it was obviously skilled work, far more expensive than the hags would be able to afford, though they seemed unaware of its value. As Eron tried to gum his way through the gag, the women descended on his bundle like birds on a carcass. Eron's wrists looked and felt like baked plums. Little, if any, blood circulated through them.

"Take it all," he mumbled defiantly.

"You heard what he said," said Ethel with her eyes bulging in their sockets.

"No, that's unethical!" said the other hag who turning over each of Eron's scrolls before tossing the pages on the ground in a pile.

"We can use paper to start fires," Ethel said brightly. "I needed a new bota, too."

Munching on a bit of his pemmican, she got up to search Eron's pockets and slipped the bota off his shoulder along with the metal tube and the pouch that held the coin. The hag padded him down from head to toe.

"We're going to have to draw lots for this one, Elle."

"Is it wine?" asked Eloise.

Ethel took a stole a brief glance toward her companion who was preoccupied having bitten off a chuck of the oatmeal soap and was trying to rub the taste off her tongue. Ethel slipped the coin around her neck and glared at Eron while Eloise had the stoppers off the herbal tinctures and were sniffing them. The potency of a tincture made with soaking herbs in alcohol could last years longer than drying the same plants and could be dripped directly into a sick person's mouth, mixed in food or drink or even applied to the skin in some cases. Some were strong enough to kill in the wrong dose. It was not unheard of for herbalists to experiment with snake venom, which had healing properties when ingested. But, when absorbed in the bloodstream through open sores in the mouth, they were lethal. The hag put the stopper back and tossed it on the scrolls.

"It's a good strong distillation," said Ethel sniffing the rim of the bota. "This little container-mation is empty," she said with Gil's metal tube open in her hand. "It's metal, but there's nothing more than cobwebs."

"What!" said Eron, lurching forward, but the rope only cut deeper into his wrists. Although he hadn't opened it, he assumed it carried something. Why would Gil tell him an empty metal tube would help him find Micah?

"Keep it," said Eloise.

With Eron's guard-issued knife, she sliced through the cheese brick as far as it reached then pulled it apart with her grimy hands and tossed half on to the pile with the scrolls.

"Ethel, give him our bota," Eloise growled. "You know the code."

The uglier of the two hags drained a little wine from Eron's bota and took the sad looking leather pouch she wore and threw it on the ground. While they were busy, Eron attempted to push his arms father back so that the rope would no longer settle on the raw parts of his skin, but they were bound so tightly, it didn't budge. The air around him seemed to be growing brighter and the ground started to spin.

"Waimate?"

Eron couldn't hear the woman speaking to him.

"Waimate."

He didn't understand. His head dropped and Eloise rushed like a mother beefalo to her side and loosened his bindings. He slumped down the rough of the truck and leaned his head against it.

"If you tell us your next stop, we can help you better," chided Eloise in a warm tone. She was rubbing his arms and hands to draw the blood through them again.

Although Eron heard the clopping of hooves, the rattling of pans and the creaking sound of wood jostling from the road as a cart passed, he made no sound, but pleaded with his eyes.

"Ethel, I'm taking out the gag," said Eloise. "This one won't give us any pre-trouble."

"I'm ready if he does," said Ethel taking another sip from Eron's bota.

"What's a bindle?" he asked weakly. The pulsing force of pain in his head was making it harder for him to speak.

""Even if you are a rich Auckian dishrag, we'll bundle up the things you need for your journey and be on our way," said Eloise. "No worries."

"We are all Auckians," said Eron fighting the surreal feeling that he was going float away.

"I'm no Aucklander!" said Ethel.

"You were born in Auckland," whispered Eron. "Everyone here comes from this island. There is nothing else, but Auckland. Therefore, we are all Aucklanders."

"Listen," said Eloise. "I come from Zealand. You come from Auckland."

Before the apocalypse, the island had different names. Eron read about them in Liam's discourses. Zealand and Aotearoa were two of the old names used before it was resettled. While some of the Auckian citizens knew the land had been called Aotearoa, the name Zealand was all but forgotten except among the scribes.

"How do you know about Zealand?" said Eron.

"I said Zion," said Eloise. "Are you alright?"

Confused, Eron shook his head. "What do you want?" he said exasperated.

"We're robbing you," said Eloise. "Haven't you ever been robbed before?"

Again Eron shook his head.

"Soggy as bread in soup," muttered Ethel.

"No worries," said the hag leaving his side. "We won't take everything. Nothing you need to get to Waimate."

"I need everything," said Eron. "My food. My clothes," said Eron. "And I need my coin."

"What coin?" said Eloise.

Ethel shot him a menacing glare.

"I guess I already traded it," said Eron bitterly.

"You get what you need to go where you're going," said Eloise.

"That sounds completely legitimate," groaned Eron. "Totally ethical. Entirely moral. Great. Really. Great. Thanks."

"You're welcome," said Eloise putting his guard issued knife in her bindle.

"I don't suppose you know a man named Micah. He's a sort of monk."

"Micah?" cackled Ethel. "A man?"

"He's a sort of monk?" cried Eloise tearing up with laughter.

"A sponge like him going to the D.O.T.?" said Ethel heaving and doubling over.

"What is the D.O.T?" demanded Eron. He was feeling more coherent, but rather than fading away, the painful hangover seemed to grow stronger as the sun climbed higher.

They looked at him and snickered again.

"Can you give me a sip from the bota?" he pleaded desperately.

"No," said Ethel.

"Ugly old baggy beefalo woman,' he whispered under his breath, but before he finished insulting her, Eloise was holding up one of the vials.

"Open up," she said and pulling the stopper, she used the thin glass rod on the underside, coated with the brown sticky medicine, to administer the concoction directly on to his tongue.

"What is it?" he said with the taste unpleasantly coating the inside of his mouth.

"Mostly poppies from the smell of it," she said stoppering it up again. She looked at the bottle. "I guess you must need it." She sighed, putting it in his pocket. "I don't know the other one, so you can keep that, too."

Eventually, the women had packed away most of the cheese, pemmican and the sausages. And though Ethel didn't want it, Eloise took the lens. When they finished, the women tied up the lamp and the knife, which they had decided to take in their bindles. Ethel still had the coin around her neck, but had generously offered Gil's empty tube to Eloise to carry. Most of their possessions, the nomads carried in sack of cloth tied to the end of a long stick, which they slung over their shoulder. Eron had never been told it was a bindle, but he had seen them many times before both in the city and on the road.

Not realizing that Eron used the leather straps to carry his own bundle, Eloise used his knife to cut a branch from one of the bushes. She stripped the fresh young leaves and blunted the ends before tying his cloak together with his scrolls and everything left inside.

"Have you used a staff before?" asked the hag.

"I have straps," said Eron.

"I don't know that weapon."

Eloise slid the cloak from the stick and swung it around her back and caught the end with her other hand. She cried out and thrust the stick into a bush beside Eron. The force of the blow knocked the branches loose. Methodically, Eloise brought the stick back to her chest and spun it around her large body with an imperceptible vigor.

"I'm glad I didn't have to fight you," said Eron in stunned respect.

"Maybe next time," she said tying the cloak back on the end of the staff. "I've been anti-practicing for years. Helps with the thieving."

If Aden had been there to witness his humiliation of being robbed by two women, much older than their mother, Eron may have decided never to return to Auck City.

Eloise had pitied him. Ethel not so much. Eloise squeezed the last of the medicinal wine from his bota, which the uglier of the two road hags had almost completely drained. Although no one observing her would have been no wiser for it. If anything, Ethel looked more sober. Before they left, Eloise ripped some moss from Eron's tree and held it up for him and showed him how to pack an ember into the hollow sheep's horn, which the shepherd had given him.

"May the road gawds carry you safely to your anti-destination," said Eloise as she retied his gag.

"Fank ou, Eluweeze" Eron spit through the damp cloth.

Ethel grunted and leered at him.

"You can call me Auntie," said Eloise patting his head.

And hunched over, they waddled up the slope back to the main road, snorting and grunting just like the purple buffalo they so perfectly resembled.

I'm going to die here, he thought. Alone. No coin. Eron banged the back of his head against the tree bark until he saw many tiny points of light swirling around in front of his eyes. He squeezed out a few tears, but felt no emotion. His head was swimming with waking poppy-induced daydreams.

A tui bird whistling, whirring and buzzing its midmorning song dropped from the branches. It picked at the white cheese left on his pile. Eron kicked dirt at it and the bird flew. He pulled on the rope. It was no use. Eloise had left enough slack for him to move, but not enough to bring his hands together.

"Heelb!" he cried through his gag.

Silence.

Only the birds fluttered through the leaves above.

The road was empty.

Face the situation like a man. That's what he had to do. And from somewhere deep inside him, a place Eron didn't know existed, he found the courage to sit still and think logically. And his first conclusion was that he would likely die from dehydration, which meant crying was counterproductive. As he sat there, considering his options, the canopy of broad leaves began to rustle wildly. Eron tried to fight his imagination. Whatever was moving had weight and caused yellowing leaves to drop. A trickle of dirt fell to the ground. It had to be a panthera. Loogaroo did not climb trees. Desperately, Eron pulled on his hands twisting the rope behind his back, which stung fiercely even though the pain was dulled by the medicine. The creature sprang from the branches and Eron shut his eyes tightly, pressing himself tightly against the tree and tensing every muscle in his body. He braced himself for the worst possible fate he could imagine. Teeth. Whatever pain would come, it would not last long. Whether it went for his neck or his bowels, he was as good as dead already.

Time to pray. That was the only logical thing to do. But, nothing happened.

Eron looked around and saw a dark mass hovering over his newly fashioned bindle, but his fraying nerves blurred his vision and he couldn't make out the nature of the shape. It was not large enough to be a cat. A white light swept into the corners of his mind and his world faded into the temporary oblivion of unconsciousness.

For a fractured moment, just as he woke again, Eron thought he was home. And then, assuming he was home, believed he must be dead. His head didn't hurt as much. But, if it were so, and he was dead, then the afterlife looked exactly like the shady grove coated with the fragments of light from kaleidoscopic canopy of leaves above. He felt his stomach turn, but it only made him aware that insides were still intact. He felt his neck.

His hands were free.

The rope was broken.

"I'm a spirit?" he said touching his limbs, but they felt solid enough.

And then, there were freckles.

Eron screamed.

He had never seen so many spots on a face before. It was a human face with freckles. So many freckles. With long strawberry blond hair, filthy and utterly unpleasant to look at, the creature he had thought was going to take his life was actually so slender and feral looking, he could hardly threaten a piece of bread if he said he was going to eat it. The boy was very dirty and wasn't so much as wearing the holy green tunic draped over his protruding collar bones as he was drowning in it. Eron had never seen so many spots. His eyes were a sort of golden color, which reminded Eron of birds sold in the Auck City market.

The wild-looking boy held up Gil's metal tube.

"Teach me to read," he said starring intently inside the little cylinder. He blew in it.

"Give that to me," Eron said. "Where did you find it? I thought the hags took it with them."

Standing up, Eron realized it was somewhat later in the day than he had initially thought. The sun had moved. He leaned against the trunk of the tree where he had been tied for support while the wild boy grab a piece of his parchment and lied down in the grass, setting the scroll across his face.

"What do you think you're doing?" said Eron

"Letting them soak in," said the boy, lifting the paper. He flashed Eron a toothy grin.

"Give me that tube," said Eron holding out his hand.

The freckled boy bounced up, leaving a crumpled imprint in the leaves and green blades where he had been lying. Up a tree, he disappeared faster than a panthera that had been chewing coffee beans.

"It's mine!" said Eron. "I. I need it."

The boy dangled the cord with the tube tied on its end directly in front of Eron's face. Eron grabbed for it, but the boy pulled it away. Eron stood and waited as the boy lowered it slowly again.

"Give it back to me," said Eron. He wasn't going to play the boy's game again.

"Mine until you teach-ify me to read," said the boy sternly.

"Who are you?" said Eron.

Then the boy jumped down again and circled Eron looking doubtful.

"Who are you?" said the boy.

"Eron of Auck City," said Eron.

After a little obvious deliberation, he spit into his hand and held it out for Eron.

"I'm not touching that."

"Eron of Auck City," said the freckled boy.

He grabbed another sheet of Liam's Discourses and held it above his head as if preparing to tear it down the center.

"Alright!" Eron yelled

The boy dropped the parchment and rushed to him. He spit unto his grimy palm, the only part of his body not covered in spots. Not sparing any vigor in shaking the purple and red mess that was Eron's right hand, he grinned and looped Gil's tube around his thin neck.

"What's your name?" asked Eron.

"Eron of Auck City."

"Your name," said Eron.

"Likes to talk."

"Just tell me your name," said Eron. Although his headache was gone, it had been replaced by a poppy juice haze.

"I don't have one," said the boy.

A feral child. Not that Eron could muster any concern in his muddled condition for the strange youth, but he had always wondered what life was like for an orphan left to roam the waste. There were stories of children that had been raised by loogaroo. No one believed them, naturally, but from time to time, young Auckians ranging from seven to twenty did form gangs. Some had run away from home. Some were neglected. Others had been lost by otherwise well meaning parents. They were a constant nuisance and few survived to adulthood.

Eron had seen wild men captured and executed. People without citizenship and no ties to the villages or nomadic communities had no status. But, a solitary child on the waste was a different matter.

"Uh, thanks," said Eron awkwardly.

"For what?" said the boy startled by Eron's sudden change in demeanor.

"For untying me," he said. "Were - were you raised by the loogaroo?"

The boy screwed up his face in distaste and threw a rock at Eron.

Obviously not.

Eron crouched down and studied the child. Something about him didn't quite sit right in his mind. Almost without exception nomads were distantly related to each other and operated as a collective with beliefs and customs that differed from the citizens of Auck. Only the elite nomads, the highway men, traveled alone, but even they had ties to the community and were well regarded. It was obvious from the boy's appearance that no one cared for this scraggly creature.

"Why don't you have a name?" asked Eron.

The boy shrugged.

"Listen, I'm going to call you Amit, okay?" said Eron. "If you're coming with me, I have to be able to call you something. Amit is a good name."

"Simple!" shouted the wild boy, sparing no glee in his expression.

Amit was the name of one of Eron's classmates who also had a spattering of freckles although they didn't compare to the wild boys mess of brown spots. The boy had so many freckles that even his freckles were freckled. And he was pale, as if all the pigment normally afforded a man had been used up to form them. Underneath all the grime, something about the child reminded Eron of the archivists that attended the House of Malak, the prime administrator of Auck City.

Malak ruled the city from the ziggurat, which had been built over the underground archives, and rarely made appearances in public. But, all the citizens were familiar with the family that worked for him. His head archivists could always be recognized in a crowd, not only because they wore elaborate orange robes to indicate their status as members of both the Red and Yellow Guard, but also because the only thing brighter than their robes was their matching shock of red hair. But, Amit's matted and greasy hair was the color of straw.

Eron picked at the bits of skin that had gathered at the edges of his sores. Taking a gamble, he uncorked one of the vials, lifted out the glass rod and dripped brown goo on his pink wounds. It stung. He unstoppered the other bottle and applied it to the other wrist, which burned with the force of a thousand suns.

"That's enough experimenting," he said to Amit who was eating his cheese.

Eron shooed the boy from scattered pile, which had been ground into the dust by the careless trampling of the boy's weathered heals. He crossed his legs and methodically began to sort what remained of his belongings. Eron spread out his dark grey cloak on the dirt and smoothed the bulges in the sleeves brushing away the twigs that clung to the rough weave. On top of it, he laid a indigo tunic with gray stitching about the sleeves and collar, his ochre woolen knickers and three burgundy loin cloths, all of which needed to be cleaned or he would have wrapped the vials in them. Instead, he used a spare linen to secure the tinctures

The boy just watched quietly, lying on one of the tree branches, dangling his scrawny scabby legs downward. Closing his eyes, he allowed the warmth of the afternoon sun wash over his lids and thanked the gawds. He still had the shepherd's map, which he tucked into an interior pocket of his leather knickers where he should have keeping the coin. He grabbed the soap.

"If you're traveling with me," he said, rubbing the surface where the bits of grain pocked through the lard. It was effectively exfoliating though he preferred to wash salt and oil. "You're going to need to wash."

Amit hovered over Eron's shoulder eyeing the small gray block with interest.

"Here," he said tossing it at the boy. "You can have it."

The wild boy scurried away up the tree like a squirrel and sniffed the soap. Looking back at Eron bit it. Hard. And then gagged just as fiercely as he spat the chunk on the ground below.

"What is it?" the boy cried wrinkling his spotted nose in an expression of confusion and disgust.

"Oh, something like pemmican," said Eron holding back a smirk. "You don't eat that part. It has a waxy coating, but it looks the same as the inside."

Amit tried another bite, gagged and threw the bar at Eron's head.

The boy just watched quietly, lying on one of the tree branches, dangling his scrawny scabby legs down over either side like limp noodles on a spoon swaying in the warm breeze.

"How do you know I really need that tube?" asked Eron.

The boy opened a single golden eye and looked at him, but said nothing.

"How do you know the hags didn't take what was inside?"

The boy closed his eye and relaxed as if Eron were not even there.

"Is there anything in it?" asked Eron who had finished repacking.

The boy said nothing.

"Is there anything in that tube," said Eron impatiently.

"A spider."

He thought for a moment. "Then why should I want it back?"

"You just do," said the wild boy.

The sun was even lower on the horizon by the time the two boys were marching down the road to Waimate. Officially, it wasn't legal for Eron to teach the boy how to read. But, abandoning the guard wasn't either. Eron had always wondered if the Auckian anti-literacy rules had been written onto the stone in the city square that held the Municipal Code or if they were a later addition. No one had ever read the engravings on the block except the Yellow Guards tasked with interpreting them.

Breaking the law.

As they walked together, Eron sang the alphabet song. Amit copied. Eron repeated. Amit wandered. The wild boy meandered on and off the trail again quietly humming the letters in the wrong order and sometimes inventing new ones.

All around the road, the expansive waste stretched into the distance until broken by the bluish points of the Southern Alps far to the West. Nothing on the road felt familiar to Eron. He had hardly looked out the carriage window on the way there and for some reason each step left him feeling farther away from Auck even though he was certain they were headed in the right direction. Stone mile markers, the handy work of Green Guardsmen, measured their progress. Two miles and his feet hurt already.

"Have you ever been robbed?" Eron asked.

The boy was tossing pebbles between the wheels of the carts as they passed by. The open road was not as empty as it had been during midday.

"What would they take?" said the boy.

Amit had a bindle. A small one, which he swung around in Eron's face. It was barely more than a handkerchief tied to the end of a stick and if it was actually empty that would not have surprised anyone who saw him.

"Simple," Eron said.

No shoes. One oversized green tunic. An empty bindle. And a plethora of freckles. At least, Eron wasn't alone.

"Elemenopee!" shouted the boy galloping wildly ahead, kicking up dust.

Eron coughed and did a few quick mental calculations. At one sausage and a slice of cheese per day for two people and if the tiny brick of pemmican staves of hunger for another day, together with the boy, Eron had enough supplies to travel for three days. Without the coin, he couldn't hope to barter for food or passage north.

I'm going to starve, he thought.

It would take at least seven days to reach the nomadic camp.
CHAPTER SEVEN

For Eron, who had never lived outside city or village walls, life on the road had only been fuel for his daydreams. During the few times he visited his aunt outside Auck City in Ponsonby Forrest, Aden and he would chase each other around pretending to thieves and Guards. Eron was always the thief. In the city, young Auckians often told stories about thieves and highway men that drank blood and lived in caves with Ishim, a race of beings made from mist. Some claimed to have encountered them while traveling, but these little more than ghost stories to the people they told. A few older Yellow Guardsmen shared rumors that the Ishim controlled the wastelands. Others believed the entire city had fallen to their subversive influence, but even the mention of their name was usually discarded as being linked to a conspiracy too large to entertain. Eron never believed in them.

The nomads, however, were very real and so were the highwaymen that wore the distinctive hebra-stripped akubras and eye patches. Apparently all of them lost an eye in some barbaric ritual. Unlike the nomads, highwaymen rode alone, robbed indiscriminately and never engaged in trade with Auckians. There were other differences between the highwaymen and the common nomads. The people of the road favored bright clothing and spicy food while the highwaymen preferred leather, feathers, beads carved from the bones of their victims and purportedly, blood stains were also en vogue. At least, that was what Achazya said.

At dusk, Eron saw the first silhouette of a man on a horse with the distinct outline of a triangular hat and he wasted no time ducking behind one of the concrete boxes clustered along the side of the road. Against his chest, he clutched a pointed stone. The box was shorter than he was tall and surrounded with footprints in the dust where the structure met the ground.

"Just let me live one more day," he breathed so all the gawds could hear him.

Amit followed Eron, skipping along the trail away from the road.

"Get down!" he hissed at the wild boy.

But, even as the rider approached, Amit ignored him and walked toward a ring of concrete in the center of the scattered boxes.

Eron closed his eyes and waited. His horse snorted as the man dismounted. The scuffling sound the boots was followed by a cascade of rocks rolling down the path toward him. And drawing one strong solid breath, Eron griped the handle of his stone blade and lifted it above his head with both hands. He couldn't hide while Amit was in danger. And if he lingered too long in the shadows, the opportunity to surprise the highwayman would pass. With all the courage he could muster, he roared with the fury of a tortured soul far from home and leapt from behind the box. Planting his feet steadily apart in front of the man, he sought a vulnerable patch in the man's leather apron.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!!!" Eron continued to cry.

Only a single loogaroo responded with a deafening howl.

With his horse's reins in one hand, the strange man waited. Eron didn't move. Amit rushed to the highwayman's side. Confused, Eron lowered the stone.

The three of them looked back and forth at each other and the horse cocked its head to the side and studied Eron with one large dark eye.

"Awkward," said the highwayman. "Would you put that down?"

"Classic," laughed Amit.

He towered at least two heads above Eron. The man's skin was darker than his hair and a gold tooth shone vividly in his smile. Over a dark tunic, his apron of woven leather split at the hip into two panels that protected his legs. On each hand, he wore two gold rings. Around his neck hung a glass vile.

Eron tossed his stone aside and dropped to his knees, but neither the man, nor the boy said anything as they walked past him. Eron stood and walked sheepishly after them. The highway man gathered some twigs and brush, which he threw in the middle of the concrete ring. About the same length across as Eron's arm span, the rim was wide enough for Amit to sit on, but once a fire was lit, he would have to move. When the highwayman began to roll a stick on the underside of a section of bark, Eron got the courage to offer him the fire horn.

Fortunately, the ember still smoldered in the dusty olive moss.

On the horizon, a brilliant sunset swelled. A single star embedded in a wispy fuchsia cloud came into view as the invisible breeze high above carried the cover away. The air filled with the early signs of night and the scent of burning wood as the man loaded larger branches onto the meager flames. By the time the sky had erupted into a flurry of distant points of light and darkness, the crackling wood was shooting its own orange sparks in a stream above their heads.

"When I first saw you," said the man warming his hands. "I thought you were someone else."

It wasn't cold enough to need the fire for warmth. Eron starred into the flames hoping they'd been built to keep the predatory megafauna, the panthera and the loogaroo away.

"But, I don't think so," continued the highwayman walking around the circular fire pit. "The man I know is familiar with the roads. You are not."

But, their conversation was interrupted by a group of nomads joining the small party. Without a vardo or horses, they travelled light. In their bindles, they had food, which they deposited next to the highwayman.

"Do you have anything to add?" he said hacking at the carcass of a takahe with a very large sharp knife that he kept fastened to his apron.

Eron watched him deftly work the blade against the dead bird's bones.

"He means you," growled one of the nomads who had a heavy brow ridge and a short green tunic. He wore his hair loose, but tied some of his pale strands around his temples together in the back with a strip of leather. To Eron, it looked almost feminine.

"He means me what?" said Eron looking at the new arrivals.

"If you can't add to the stew," said a man holding a small child on his lap. "You can't eat here."

"And not that one," said the man with long blond hair pointing at Amit. "I recognize him. He has no name."

"Rubbish!" said Amit hiding behind the highwayman.

The man's consort had arranged a worn swatch of leather in a hollowed log and filled it with water from two grimy botas. She was mixing a paste from the bird fat and a bit of flour, when the nomad turned his attention to the wild boy.

"Since when do you think you can come here?" he said sternly as other man used two sticks to drop a few porous rocks from the fire into the leather pot they had fashioned.

"I'm Amit," said Amit proudly pulling a bag of salt from his bindle, which as far as Eron could tell, might have been the only thing in it.

"I've seenieated the child many times," said the highwayman twisting a branch in the fire until more sparks rose. "No one has ever turned him away from the lockers."

The nomad lurched toward Amit and grabbed for the unsuccessfully to take his salt. Amit ran to the other side of the pit and tossed the salt, which landed on the highwayman's leather pants. The nomad threw a small stone at Amit and his toddler started to wail, but only a loogaroo and the haunting echo of it's hollow cry responded while the wild boy darted back behind one of the boxes and watched the man carefully with his wide catlike stare.

"You don't belong here either," said another nomad darkly. His reddish brown face was blotchy and pocketed. He wore a patchwork tunic with ragged edges.

Nervously, Eron plucked a leaf from a bush growing between the box and the fire ring.

"You don't belong here," repeated the man setting down his child. He stood in front of Eron, but as Eron cowered, the highway man took off his hat and four dark braids tumbled out.

Slowly, he stood.

"What is the difference between a man who belongs here and one that doesn't?" he asked the two men.

In total, there were five nomads. Two women. Two men. And one frightened little boy.

"Everything," said the man siting back down and clenching his fists. He was shorter and wider than the highwayman, but no less intimidating. What he lacked in height, he made up in density.

"The boy said his name was Amit," said the highwayman gesturing toward the box where Amit hid. "Who gave you that name?"

"I named him," said Eron. "I don't know understand what is happening here, but I don't want any problems. I've got sausages and Amit and I will find another locker."

"That's suicide," scoffed the less aggressive nomadic man.

"You stay," said the highwayman starring the other nomad down. "Amit, come here and meet the others."

With the flames reflecting in his eyes, the light haired nomad stood, watched them and then turned and spat on the ground.

"Do you not know what the Auckian Guard did at Grey Camp last week?" he challenged the highwayman. "You and I both know THAT is how an Auckian talks. And that is a boy named by that Auckian." He said pointing aggressively them both as if he could shoot bullets from the tip of his finger by shear force of will. "They are not supra-welcome on this road or in these lockers and they will not share THIS meal," he said pointing to the stew the women were preparing. He looked at a tree and smiled wildly. "I say if anyone of the people finds an Auckian on the road, we disembowl them. Tie their insides to a tree and make them dance."

"That's a graphic suggestion," said the highwayman.

"It's nothing compared to what they're willing to do to us," he said.

"I lost my aunt," his consort whispered, but the nomad silenced her before she could continue.

"Only Auckian guards come this far East. How did THIS Auckian sponge get on the road?" asked the man pointing again.

The highwayman nodded and turned to Eron, "How long did you live in the city?"

"I think I was born there," said Eron, one second before he realized that right then was a great time to lie.

"GUARD!" shouted nomad as his rage flooded his eyes.

"Wait," said the man in the akubra, an effective sunshield with one side rim pinned against the top. He held out both hands in a somewhat calming gesture. "Neither of these boys have violated the code. It doesn't matter how angry you feel."

"Would you spare a panthera if you knew it would come back to kill your family?" demanded the nomad.

The camp erupted in a spattering of abuse and poorly formed arguments. Everyone had something to say and Eron was at the center of the confusion, but he wasn't listening. Eron watched Amit slink away into the brush and climb a tree where he could watch the rukus with limited involvement. Although he wanted to follow the boy, he was petrified by his own fear.

Then just as the angry nomad aimed an elbow at Eron's jaw, but stopping short of contact, his partner stuck out her foot and the man landed across one of the boulders used for sitting on. She was in every way a pitiful sight. Thin with dark circles under her eyes, the woman had all the signs of someone carrying a burden beyond her means and she seethed with bitterness as she stood over her husband.

"We don't like you," she said to Eron.

The highwayman gently placed both hands on the upper part of the woman's arms, which were covered by a black knit shawl typically worn by widows or those enduring bereavement, and she remained still in his grasp as the light-haired nomad gathered himself up again. The other couple waited, but said and did nothing.

"You think I'll marry you now?" the man said to the mother of his child. "You pre-think any man will want you? You're a waste of life."

"Enough," said the highwayman. "By the code, you can leave."

"By the code," repeated the other couple in unison.

Eron shuttered as if he had witnessed something private that he should not have seen, but he was even more stunned when the man grabbed his bindle and marched up the path to the road alone.

His consort collapsed into sobs with her face in both hands. The other woman, whose dark curly hair swirled about her like the hide of a beefalo, spooned some of the stew into some hollow gourds and set it on the concrete ring in front of the woman. Eron did not know what to do. After all the nomads were served, the woman dried her eyes and nodded to the other who spooned enough for two extra servings.

Amit dropped from the tree.

After eating their meal in silence, Eron looked around the daunting space beyond the camp. A void of darkness. An endless sea of black. And yet above it, the sky opened deeply where the stars were suspended and gave no light to ground below. Somehow he thought it would be lighter.

""Shouldn't we be going," Eron whispered to Amit.

"Before the stew?" asked the wild boy.

"Even if the fire is kept going all night, we need some kind of shelter," said Eron trying a mouthful of the stew.

All stew had the same flavor to him.

"Balls," said Amit stuffing his face until his cheeks could hold no more.

"I'm serious," said Eron.

The nomadic woman was nursing her toddler. Eron was startled that she had spoken to him. He had never seen a woman's breast and as hard as he tried, he could not take his eyes off the faint texture of a vein running from under her tunic toward her nipple.

"Is this your first night?"

Eron avoided looking directly in the woman's eyes. He didn't know how to respond.

"Have you never been on the road before?" she asked.

"I slept in a carriage on the way over," said Eron. There was a brief awkward silence before he got the courage to open his mouth again. "How do you survive? Don't the loogaroo? The panthera? Don't they..."

"I uberpromise you a dry safe place to recover through the night," laughed the highwayman.

"Where?" said Eron.

The man held back a smile, but Amit and the nomads had less self-control.

"The lockers," said the nomadic woman laughing.

She pointed to the box behind her and as if Eron just passed one of Achzya's more taxing examinations, he slumped over in suddenly flooded with release. He wasn't aware of the tension he was carrying until it was gone. The boxes. It was too obvious. Where the ground dipped on the outer edge, a board covered an entrance. They were shelter.

"I thought you didn't like me," said Eron taking the sausages from his bundle. He handed them to the highwayman who skewered them and leaned their casings against the flame close enough for them to visibly sweat their juices.

"It's nothing more than a wall," said the woman putting her breast away. "Any powerite your people think it gives you is an illusion." Seeing his bewildered expression, she continued. "Auck City. Your wall. It means nothing to me. I'm flesh. You're flesh. When we die, we both return to dust. We're all dust in the end."

"And your contracts, too," said the man in the patchwork tunic. "Paper. That's what you'll never pre-understand."

Eron held out his empty gourd and accepted one of the cooked sausages from the highwayman. The nomads thanked him, but somehow, he couldn't help feeling they resented his generosity more than they appreciated it.

"What is that?" said the highwayman suddenly as he was stepping over Eron's gray bundle. He hadn't noticed the scroll case sticking out and a minor tremor shook his limbs.

"He can read," Amit blurt out.

In the quiet moments that the nomads starred at him, Eron could hear the wind rustling the leaves above and snapping bits of wood in the fire seemed deafening.

"Is it true?" asked the mother whose child was now sleeping soundly against her chest under the shawl.

Eron watched at the highwayman. He picked up the leather case, untied the strings and unrolled it. A few fragments of charcoal slid out and landed in the shadow of the pit where light of the fire did not reach. He handed the skin with Liam's Discourse to Eron, exposed only far enough to see the final lines.

"Um," said Eron. It was hard to see, but he'd read it so many times before. "This. This is Liam's f-final writings. He w-wrote something he was going to call The Anthem for Tomorrow on the night Seth murdered him." As everyone in Auckland knew the stories of their founders, little explanation was required.

An Anthem for Tomorrow

Though the days are ending,

We stand upon the shore.

Though our lives are now behind us,

We are free forevermore.

Nothing ends, which is remembered.

As the dusk precedes the dawn.

Those who fought for justice,

Are now dead within the ground.

Those still waiting for equality,

Will never make another sound.

Nothing ends, which is remembered.

In the silence before the dawn.

What is lost is not forgotten,

Though the rivers are flowing red.

It is written in our blood.

That we recall the honored dead.

Nothing ends, which is remembered.

In the darkness before dawn.

All tears shed in darkness,

Will dry upon the ground.

And with liberty is all around us,

We hear the beauty of her sound.

Nothing ends, which is remembered.

As we watch and wait for dawn.

We will build a new tomorrow,

Upon our forsaken Earth.

Only yesterday reminds us,

Of their death and our rebirth.

Nothing ends, which is remembered.

As we stand here at the dawn.

What the brave do just by living,

To raise their heads to meet the sun.

Is the choice we make together,

It happens one by one.

Nothing ends, which is remembered.

In the beauty of the dawn.

What you need to build tomorrow,

Is the strength to seize today.

"I don't think he finished it," said Eron rolling up the scroll.

"How do you know was reading?" asked the woman who had been quiet all evening. "He could know it and just lookify at the paper."

"He's reading," said the highwayman. "I've seen it done before. You can tell by the way his eyes move."

"How do you make the symbols talk like that?" said the departed man's consort.

"Show me?" said the man in the patchwork sitting next to Eron and grabbing the corner of the scroll.

"The wind is picking up," said the highwayman interrupting them. "It's time we all got below."

Relived, Eron stuffed the scroll back into this cloak and gather it up over his shoulder carrying the leather straps in one hand as the highwayman started throwing dirt on what remained of the fire. He marveled at the influence the man seemed to have over the nomads. Quietly, one by one, they picked up their bindles and stole away quietly into a locker. Eron shivered as he followed Amit to the opening of one of the concrete boxes.

"We won't fit," he told the boy seeing the entrance.

The locker, as the nomads called them, stood waist high with an opening in the base facing the slope of the hill. Amit moved a wooden slab and motioned Eron inside. The entrance was too narrow for the loogaroo or panthera, but large enough for any man. The dank dark space within the locker carried the rancid flavor of herbs and sweat. Eron lowered himself in, underestimating the drop, and fell to the ground, landing hard on his rear. He stood comfortably and reached out to feel the walls as his eyes adjusted to the dim. The texture of the walls was gummy. Without a place to wipe his hand, Eron waited for Amit to crawl inside and then patted him aggressively on the back until the moisture was gone.

"I owe you one," said Eron.

The light of the crescent moon filtered through two pipes on the ceiling that allowed the night air to ventilate the empty chamber. Although Eron had seen the boxes dotting the roads on the carriage ride to Dunedin, he had never imagined their purpose. He thought the villagers might have used them for storage or possibly, the nomads kept them to trap smaller animals. As he settled into a far corner on the hard ground, the highwayman set the cover over the opening and it was dark again.

Eron's carriage didn't stop at the nomadic camps when they traveled from Auck City to Dunedin earlier in the spring. Eron thought the bedbug infested straw pads of the inns where he and the soft spoken driver slept were the worst accommodations to be found on the island. Amit was fast asleep and wasn't bothered as Eron turned and repositioned himself for the twentieth time. If there was one positive thing to be said about the lockers, it was that they had a slight advantage over the shepherd's root cellar - no roots.

"Are you awake?" said Eron. He was lying flat on his back with hands crossed over his abdomen.

Silence.

"It reeks in here," said Eron loudly but, the boy didn't stir. "Goodnight," he whispered. "I hope you said your prayers."

He looked at the slumbering lump in the other corner.

"We're going to need it."
CHAPTER EIGHT

The pungent scent of dried leaves left by a previous occupant filled the locker as Eron was trying pitifully to keep his eyes shut not that that mattered in the darkness. He passed his hands over something. And then another something. It felt rugged metal, too straight and cold to be tree bark. A sort of drying rack. Whatever had remained on the bar crumbled at his touch.

Eron didn't recall when he finally drifted into a set of dreams he wasn't going to remember, but by morning, there was enough light filtering in through the ventilation shafts that he could see the stairs he missed the night before and protruding from the locker wall were the now obviously iron bars. Wilted tobacco leaves or what was left of them. And only inches from Amit's bare feet lie a large pile of bones. It was human, which Eron could see clearly though the little flesh that remained and the jaw bone that hung unnaturally, as though the skeleton had been punched a few times... postmortem.

After it was dead.

Died. Right there.

In the corner of the small concrete box.

He screamed.

Amit mumbled.

Eron continued screaming.

"What is your problemation?" grumbled the boy lifting his flaxen head like a swiftly rising cloud of tangled wool.

Without stopping to answer, Eron blasted his way up the stairs leaving his cloak and everything else behind. He tripped. With his face planted on the ground outside, he was panting heavily and his chest heaved up and down against the hard earth.

Yes, he had just run from a dead man. No doubt Amit would soon be out in the clear fresh air laughing at him, but it was prove of one thing. He had instincts. Wherever they had come from, they'd overridden his logic in vain attempt to save him.

As predicted, the wild boy poked his spotted head through the opening to the locker fixing his golden eyes on Eron. "I'm taking the head," he said with the same expression he used to announce he'd passed gas.

"I forbid you to take the head," said Eron picking himself up and surveying the dust on his trousers and trying to sound in control.

"Ill selling it to a fortune teller," came the hollow echo through the ventilation shaft. "There's a lot of them at Waimate."

"Leave it."

Amit hissed.

"It's civilized to show respect for the dead," Eron shouted at the locker. It was still quite dark as he stood to dust himself. If only he had an excuse to lie there a little longer. The trampled ground outside had seemed much more comfortable than the pebbled ground inside the box.

"That's not respect. Maybe for the next person," muttered Amit. "Five bowls of soup for one head. Hot soup. THAT is civilized."

"Who needs soup if it compromises your dignity?" said Eron.

"You eat your dignigty," Amit yelled from the locker. It was not yet day when the boy emerged with his bulging bindle. "I'll be having takahe and vegetables with more salt than some sorry scribe like you can afford." He said grinning again.

It was going to be a long day. Eventually, the sun graced the edge of the horizon bringing confusion of the early hours to a sort of hesitant illumination, but not color. It took awhile before they could distinguish what was cloud and what was sky during the hour when only shepherds, farmers and Auckian street sweepers were normally awake.

Starting down the road, Eron felt like he was intruding, not just on the paths the nomads frequented, but on the time reserved for those who earned their living with their hands. But, he reminded himself, he never was a Yellow Guardsman. Really, he was a Green Guardsmen. He had as much right to be awake before dawn as anyone during the hour of the grunts.

It wasn't long before the two boys settled into a comfortable routine. They walked. Amit learned the alphabet. They walked some more. Sometimes they ate stew, but always, just before dusk they scrambled to get a clean locker. Eron insisted on one that didn't smell too much like a latrine and no bones. At least, not human bones.

Sleep. Wake. Walk. Sleep. In between, Eron developed a transient awareness that not the all of the nomads were the same. Some slept in lockers. Others were successful tradesmen who traveled in vardos, ornate wooden carts that protected the travelers from becoming the dinner for the megafauna almost as well as a locker. The men driving vardos grouped together at night, forming a chain, linking their vehicles end to end as closely as they could manage with help from their horses and hebras. When Eron tried to tell Amit what he had observed about the people, the boy spat on his boot in disgust.

But, it was clear that only Auckians owned carriages, which Eron had always assumed was because the nomads lacked the skills or the resources to make them, or buy them, but after a bit of time spent walking with them, he realized that the cylindrical carts simply suited the nomadic life style better, another rejected fact he shared with Amit. And some of the carts had been carved with such intense precision and intricate design that he doubted any of the owners would trade one for an average Auckian carriage. While Eron had run around the maze of vardos parked in the city markets all his life, he never really saw them as more than part of the nomad's businesses whereas in fact, they were proudly defended homes. But, for every nomad in a vardo, there were at least five ragged travelers following the trails and roads on blistered foot.

"Have you ever thought about moving to the village?" Eron asked one of the younger women drawing water from a busy brown stream one morning. They had stopped so Amit could listen to people chat about road conditions. And he was bored.

"The gawds have not been so unfair to me yet," was all she was willing to say.

But, Eron could tell from the glares of the others traveling with her that he had said something wrong.

Eron counted only one highway man for every fifty nomads, on foot, horse or in vardos. In Auck City, the highwaymen were demonized as murdering thieves, but to the nomads, they were the wardens of the road that kept order and ensured security. They were brothers and cousins. The strongest and the fittest, not unlike the Red Guard, although Eron hated drawing that conclusion. To Eron's knowledge, the highwaymen never made themselves known in the city, but on long stretches of road in the Eastern wastes, they trotted openly and were adored almost as intensely as they were feared within the city.

But, Amit didn't merely appreciate the men who worn tricorn hats and most often sported eye patches. He worshiped them.

"They will fear me," he shouted when Eron asked what the boy planned to do with his life. Amit explained in great detail how he would buy a horse and rob every Auckian who left the city walls.

"That's entirely nonsensical," said Eron. "Are you going to go set up the lockers every night? That has to be so dull."

"It's ultra-sensical," said Amit. "I'll defend the people from everything."

"How would you carry all the stuff you steal?" said Eron.

"I'd give it away and then everyone would own me a favor. I'd be the richest man on the road," said Amit swinging his bindle. "And what I don't give away. I'll bury deep underground."

"Right," said Eron. "Where are you from anyway? Hatched from a moa's egg and raised by loogaroo?"

"I'm a Prince," said the boy.

"Prince of what?" said Eron incredulously.

"Just a general sort of Prince."

Eron stopped on the dry patch of mud he was crossing. "Why do the highway men wear eye patches? They must lose a lot of eyes fighting the panthera."

"My father was the bravest highway man on the road," said Amit ignoring him. "He killed 20 guardsmen with his brain. And he escaped. My mother and all of his kids were left to die in a burning temple by his mortal enemy, Prince General."

"There's no such thing as princes," said Eron. "And if all of his kids died, you wouldn't be here."

"I came on a boat from a distant land where the people have CARS and PLANES."

Eron shook his head.

"The Ishim bought me from Hansa to serve them, but turned me out of their cave for having too many spots."

But, each time he asked, the boy told a more and more preposterous lie until finally, Amit declared, "I hatched out of an egg laid in forest by a red moa."

"I believe it," Eron agreed wearily.

Together the fugitive Green Guardsman and wild boy of the waste formed a slightly unbalanced duo, which required little ingenuity for Eron to maintain. He kept them occupied between their lessons betting on who would pass next. Eron called the game, Horses, Wheels, Feet and Hats. Each win equalled a bite of stew. After a two days playing, Amit quit.

"No more," he said looking over his shoulder at Eron who was dragging his feet in the gray dust clouds.

Five bites. Fair enough. There was only fifteen to began, he thought. But, the boy had a point, by dawn on the fourth morning, there would be nothing left, no matter who won the gamble.

It came with a clear cloudless sky, the day Eron ate his last piece of pemmican. They still four days travel to reach the camp. At the hour when Eron would normally have had breakfast, he ate nothing for the first time in his life. By the afternoon, his stomach rumbled. The cheese was gone. The sausages had been cooked into the evening stew. With nothing left to share around the fire pit that night, they had nothing left to eat.

"I need to eat," he told Amit glancing along the side of the road where the packed mud and footprints ended and the dry yellow grass began. There must be a sort of plant he could chew on.

"You just ate," said the boy sneering at him.

"Thanks," said Eron, touching his stomach. It didn't feel different. Not yet.

"Now I know my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me. Eron likes to eat all day..." The boy paused and thought for a moment having started the improvised tune without deciding how to end it. "And looks like a monster made from clay."

"You mean the Golem?" said Eron.

"Whatever," said the wild boy. "If you're hungry, go steal something. Quit bothering me."

"Maybe I can trade something with one of the nomads?"

"Gloves," said Amit. "Clothes. Or you can try working, but I doubt anyone would hire you."

"Or maybe that metal container. It's useless, but it is metal. And you can just keep whatever is in it."

"I will not give it to you," said the wild boy somewhat solemnly.

"It's mine," said Eron still listening to the rumbling in his stomach. The boy had never sounded so serious. He found it unnerving. "In fact, I think we should stop someone and trade it now. That man with the limp that passed just before the bridge. He had a lot of feathers on his stick and a bow. If we run, we could catch him up. "

Amit said nothing.

Eron's brow furrowed in anger and a bit of desperation. Even if they got to Waimate to trade, no used gloves would fetch enough supplies to arrive anywhere near Pict City. Eron marched swiftly up to the boy and grabbed at neck of his tunic with the heat of his anger building inside him, but the wild boy was fast. Faster. And he was gone. Amit ran from the road and disappeared like water through a sieve through the dark foliage of a shady grove. Eron had started the chase, but his legs were sore and there were open blisters festering on his heels and around his toes.

He'll come back, he thought. Eron wasn't sure of it and looking at the brush, he could not hear a sound. He sat on a sandstone rock beside the bright open road. There was tree on the horizon and in the blurry beyond, a few minor hills. He picked at his sunburnt arms trying not to think about how far it was to Waimate or how much farther it had started to seem without the speckled menace.

He wasn't going to cry, but holding it in was empty solace when subjected the logic of the natural scribe. He was still lamenting his mistake, when someone tapped him on his shoulder. Without indication or warning, Amit had made his way behind him holding a large moa egg. It was bigger than a man's fist and according to Achzya, full of protein, whatever that was. Eron salivated instantly.

"I knew you'd be back," he lied.

"Let us eat from the bountification of my people," said Amit mocking a village priest... and Eron.

The wild boy headed off in a steady gait forward with a shuffling sound that marked every hour of every day from first light until sundown. It had become a new normal. Eron followed the boy and kept his mind busy by stepping over large pebbles and repeating phrases about food.

Good food. He touched his toe to a larger pebble.

Good meat. Eron placed his heel in front of a pebble that looked slightly larger than some of the other pebbles on that step.

Thank the gawds. With no large pebble in sight, he lined his toe up with a dead leaf that might look like a large pebble if he hadn't been paying attention.

Let's eat. On the last line, he compromised by lining his toe up with a twig that was in no way comparable to any sort of pebble, but least it was something.

When they reached the lockers that night, they offered the egg for the stew. Ate. Slept. Woke up hungry again. It was warmer and muggier that night and none of the nomads had been too talkative, but at least they accepted the egg without complaining.

"Big fat mouth," said Amit curling up in a corner of the box the next night. "Big fat soggy mouth."

"What do you want?" said Eron.

Silence.

Amit had not found an egg and he hadn't been hunting. Eron, on the other hand, could hardly stand his ground in line before a fruit vendor's cart in the Auck City market. Capturing an animal was clearly outside of his skill set. Finding eggs was something he decided he could work on.

After trying to rest for a while on the first night of his life without food, he got up, lit his oil lamp and unrolled the discourses while Amit shifted and kicked him in the ankle. Eron shoved his scrawny leg away.

"If I tell you a story, will you put that out?" Amit asked, sounding almost parental.

"I need to read."

"Then give me some medicine," said the boy. "You're annoying."

"You don't need it."

"I'll start singing," said Amit.

"Singing what?"

"The alphabet song," he replied gravely.

Eron closed his eyes, breathed heavily and pinched the lamp wick with his fingers. "I think I would prefer the story."

"Good. There once was a scribe from Auck who never shut up and did talk. And the fat boy did eat, all of his meat. So I bashed his head in with a block."

"That's a limerick," said Eron. "A decent limerick." The concept of rhyme not being lost on a boy who couldn't write took a moment to penetrate. "How long did it take you to think of it?"

Again. Silence.

"Well, it wasn't a story," said Eron shifting his torso into a slightly less uncomfortable, but still dusty position on the ground.

"Alright," said Amit a few moments later. "But, you'll regret asking." He then described in great detail a group of desperate nomads who plugged the air shafts of the lockers with oiled clothes at night. They robbed the suffocated corpses in the morning.

"I don't believe you," Eron whispered.

"And the only way to survive is if you shut up," concluded the freckled boy.

"You fell off a cart, didn't you?" said Eron. "That's it. Dropped on your head and forgotten.

Before long it was daylight again. Night. Day. Night. Day. On the road, one almost became the next and there was no telling the two apart.

On the long stretch of dirt road that dug through the Eastern Waste like an old hag's ridged fingernail, Eron walked. The crackling of the earth before them reminded Eron of dried bits of gravy on unwashed pots. In fact, he hardly noticed when the landscape started to change. Everything looked like some form of gravy.

As he trotted past the fields where the medicines, dyes, fibers and other resources were grown in the fragile patchwork of inedible plants, he got an idea. Eron put his hands to his throat. Amit had wandered ahead and would not see his peculiar little experiment. So, he pressed his hands deeply across his Adam's apple and...

It didn't work. For some reason, he couldn't suffocate himself. So, he tried holding his breath. He managed a fleeting sense of floating and a bit of gasping. Eron could hardly see the round pebbles under his feet and his head pounded like a nomadic drummer with anger management issues when he finished, but...

That didn't work either.

His morbid experiments did distract him from the emptiness growing louder in his gut, but only momentarily. Anxiety, it seemed, had settled into every bone, radiating its discomfort. It followed him to the lockers. Nervously tapping his feet against the walls that night, Eron considered his options. Chewing grass, boiling the leather straps from his bundle, stealing, licking the bowls after the nomads finished eating, accidentally chopping off one of Amit's digits. No, the boy's fingers were too skinny.

He couldn't even cry.

The vial. Shaped like rosebud, the browning tincture had started to harden around the opening. Four drips on his tongue. That was all. His mind and stomach went numb and he dreamt without sleep about cats and cars and guns and things that were more easily forgotten.

But, very unlike the renegade piece of sand that stuck under his finger nail from when he tried digging for tubers, whatever they were, the tightness in his abdomen was painless, almost comfortable the next day. Feeling pleasantly delirious, Eron catapulted down the road on a mysterious energy wave.

"I feel so alive," he told the beautiful blue sky as he bounced and skipped down the road kicking up dust. Sure, his head was a bit foggy, but he was ready to take on a panthera single-handedly. "Amit!" he screamed at the dark sillouette on the road behind him. "How long does it take to starve usually?"

"Do you think we could run the rest of the way?" Eron said when the boy didn't respond. "Or get some pikes? Were on the road. We could get some good pikes. Or we can make some. Let me think about it."

He veered into a meadow as the perplexed looking boy with the golden hair followed after him. Amit was a nice boy. Of course, there was nothing on the trees that would make a good shaft, but he found some urigold flowers. Their radiant yellow assaulted his eyes, but he took some and one by one he dropped the petals behind him as meandered farther off the path under the welcome shade.

Until he collapsed.

"You know they're not after me," said Eron. Amit was on his knees beside him muttering something he couldn't hear. "The guards won't discover Gil and they won't come looking for me. My skin is too dark to be mistaken for Gil and as far as they know, he's me and I'm him. I'm delirious," said Eron touching his face. "I have to eat something."

"No, already. It's harder if you keep eating," said the boy. "Just wait. Don't run. Walk. Have some water. Stop being soggy."

His feet ached and his head pounded like a village drummer. Was he getting sick from not eating? "This is the end," said Eron taking the bota and dripping it in his mouth. It leaked and went up his nose. He coughed horsely and started to whine.

"Give me your gloves," Amit sighed tugging at Eron's loosely bound bundle, which was still under him.

No more than an hour later, he returned with some pemmican. It was hard, portable and something to chew, but for flavor it was not a vast improvement over the oatmeal soap. Eron knew, because he had taken a small nibble from his loaf while the boy was gone.

They rested early that night beside the tantalizing scent of roast takahe in the pit beside the lockers. When the other nomads had long since finished their meals and gone below, Eron took his lamp out and stood on the metal bars that led to the locker's opening. He looked to the fire pit while the memory of the meal poured into this nostrils, but there was nothing there. He closed his eyes and saw the juicy bits falling from the crisp bird and sizzling on the hot rocks was doing something to his head.

"Nomads steal," he whispered aloud. "So there is nothing wrong with stealing from nomads."

"They're poor," said Amit whose features were grossly illuminated by the flicker of the lamp.

"Give me my metal tube," said Eron. "I just want a bite of something."

"You don't want to trade it," said Amit rolling over.

"You're a feral nobody," Eron said. "You know nothing. Right now, I want some of that bird."

"The bird is gone," groaned the wild boy.

Eron reluctantly lay down on the cloak and patted down the rougher parts of the dirt he was going to sleep on until a crisp sounding crunch tore through the air.

"What is that?!"

"It's a hat," said Amit dryly.

"That's an apple!" contradicted Eron quickly. One solid fruit struck his head from the boy's direction. Without complaint or retaliation, Eron ate it and most of the core, too. Then, when he had finished, he found a tastelessly textured lump of pemmican next to his blistered foot. It seemed the wild boy had not eaten his share.

"Shame," whispered Eron carefully biting the edge.

Although Eron briefly plotted to take the metal canister from Amit as the boy slept, before nodding off that night, Amit had dug a shallow hole, tossed the tube in and covered it with his ragged green tunic. And he just lied down on top of it.

Eron hated him.

"Are you awake?"

The wild boy did not reply.

Eron waited.

More nerve shattering silence.

"I never went without food before," he whispered to the emptiness in the locker. "I haven't ever walked this much. I sleep in beds. I have a family. I read my books sitting on chairs or benches."

If the gawd of the lockers was listening, it didn't respond. Not that Eron was sure there was a gawd of the lockers, but in case their might be, it wouldn't necessarily hurt to explain himself.

Night again followed the day while the road stretched onward before them like the empty days on Eron's calendar back home. Hunger itself didn't hurt, but the fear did. If Eron had marked the days, he would have been counting hours of worry and in the end, it was better to let them pass unnoticed.

Whenever dawn broke on the waste, the sun illuminated an ellipse of light through the air vent at a sharp angle, but eventually the clouds got in the way. Eron could tell they'd overslept. It was overcast and Amit was still sleeping soundly on the cloth from his threadbare bindle.

Eron prodded him. The boy's skin was wet. His body felt chilled to his touch, but he was breathing normally.

"Get up!" he screamed. He shook the child's freckled arm.

Amit groaned.

Eron lifted the inside cover to the locker and let a gust of fresh air circulate. There were nomads outside. A fire was burning. It must be lunch, he thought. Help. The locker gawd sent help. Maybe even a highwayman. Before going out, Eron decided to give Amit a little water from his bota and a bit of medicine from the herbalist's glass vials, but even as it dripped the liquids into his mouth, the boy did not respond. He didn't swallow. He did not move.

Limp as a rag, only one twitching arm betrayed the life within him.

Eron draped his tunic over the boy and starred at his slender companion. How many days had it been without food? Amit had never complained. He was a nothing more than a kid living his life on the road with no one to protect him. Maybe a runaway. A child abandoned by a widow. Perhaps he was just got lost and his family gave up hope of seeing him again. But, he was just a kid. No one to fear.

Germs, on the other hand, were tiny, vicious little creatures that hid everywhere assembling their forces to strike at random. A true enemy of Auckland. Normally, the Yellow Guard were tasked with eradicating them, but on the road, Eron would have to fend for himself. So, he prayed.

And then he went outside for help.

But, the faces that met him were not the ordinary men and women he had grown accustomed to see around the pit. They seemed equally startled by Eron's sudden appearance.

"I thought you prechecked already," said one man to another, barely older than Eron.

Their faces were clean shaven directly under their noses and chins and they wore their hair short like a guardsmen preparing for battle. Normally, both Auckian and Nomad let their hair grow, because the gawd of memories read it to the gawd of new year resolutions who was very good friends with the gawd of just deserts. No one wanted to be on his bad side and because the gawd of memories would make stuff up to entertain the gawd of new years resolutions known for his dramatic flare, hair mattered. At least, that was what Achazya had said though Eron recalled the fat tutor had been drinking heavily when he explained it all.

"Looks like someone is strangalating behind his clan," said the tan nomad with ginger mutton chops. There were four men in total.

As humiliating as it might be to a man to fall in combat after someone yanked his braid, it still took courage to wear such menacingly short hair, which was clearly visible under his black akubra. Nomads typically wore the wide brimmed hats tied up on one side.

"I'm not alone," Eron said, a bit unsteadily. His abdomen flushed with panic as he emerged from the cool dark of the locker. Something instinctually told him that if there was anyone on the road who might stuff air vents with oiled cloth, these would be the men inclined toward that sort of base criminality.

Stretching his arms and yawning, he approached their fire. "Rough night. Hangover. My friend is still sleeping it off."

Eron had never been a good bluff. And with the first crackling spurt of flaming wood, he skittishly jumped against the concrete box like a helpless rabbit taking cover from the roving megafauna. And it was completely unhelpful to his brave facade that at the exact next moment, a thick blast of smoke crossed his eyes. They watered uncontrollably as he tried again to sound as road worthy as possible.

"But, I can handle it better," he said, starting to choke just a little.

"How old are you?" asked a dark haired man. In his weathered hands sat a steaming ceramic bowl. It smelled divine.

Eron was salivating.

"Twenty and five," he said. Thadine had never told him exactly when he was born, but Eron was sure he was at least sixteen and had the wispy strands of early facial hair to prove it.

They smiled, which Eron didn't like, and then begin a complex series of hand signals.

"Scribe," said one.

The other nodded gaining some comprehension of what the men were saying to each other.

Whoo. Hooot. Woooot. Hooot.

It sounded like an owl. Eron and the rough looking men watched as the wild boy's legs buckled and he hit the ground with a thud only paces away from the fire pit. He continued to hoot on all four. The nomads backed away to the far side of the fire as Eron tried to process the confusion. Amit was naked, barefooted, in only his tattered loincloth with his freckled knees gleaming in the midday light.

Eron had no idea the boy was so pale. He had never seen anything like it before.

Amit rigidly arched his back and shook as if Earth was moving him throwing him onto his back, white skin in the mud and the dust and the traveler's debris. The boy's head and his drenched shock of pale hair bashed violently against the ground. His eyes rolled back.

"Ishim!" cried the red headed nomad who had not yet spoken. His voice was high for a man his size.

One of the other men, the tallest of the four with the most clearly almond shaped eyes, grabbed his cat skin mantle, a white long haired fur over his shoulders and grunted. In response, another pulled his leather pot from the wooden cooker and flung the rest of the beany muck fiercely onto the ground, rolling up his cookware while it was still hot. The men didn't wait long enough to see Amit's lips turn blue.

But, he heard the ginger chopped man call it a fit.

"In the aftermication, grandma would be knitting trousers as if nothing happened," he was muttering, but the others were saddling their horses and did not seem reassured.

Finally, Amit's muscles gave in and his body conformed to the puddling nature of flesh conforming perfectly to the will of gravity.

"He's finished," said the nomad with the sick grandma heading back to the fire pit.

Instinctually, Eron fell on his palms. While he didn't bash his head quite as hard while flipping over, he barked loudly. The man changed his mind and joined his rugged companions in a swift retreat just as Eron got into the full swing of his performance. A little drool dribbled down his chin. It was a nice touch. His wrist stung where the dirt had collected in the wound made by the hags' rope.

Only one wrist. While Eron's right arm was still scabbed and ached a little when he moved it, the other had healed clean, the skin perfectly intact. As soon as the clopping hooves faded down the road, he tore down the stairs into the locker to retrieve the two vials from the Dunedin herbalist still tucked into his bundle. The vials, made from a red glass, were hard to tell apart, but there was on the base of one, three bumps of glass in the shape of a triangle, and on the other, a squiggly line. The one with the three bumps healed. He placed a single brown dap under Amit's tongue. Then, dripped a little more on the wrist, which had not healed.

The boy slept soundly under the gentle warmth of the midday sun. As he waited, Eron gathered a few scattered beans left the stone benches and ate them, dust and all. It was officially the lowest moment of his life, he thought as he bit each bean carefully.

"What happened?" said Amit when he finally rose.

"You hooted," said Eron.

Although Eron had heard of the Ishim and how they could take control of a person's body, he didn't believe they were real. Just stories for children. Some people claimed that original settlers transformed into Ishim after living for a very long time. They lost density after drinking a special sort of herbal health tonic until their bodies became gaseous. The Ishim were immortal. Beings composed of only smoke and steam. It was a ridiculous idea.

"Why did I hoot?" said Amit examining his filthy sunburnt body.

"Maybe you were possessed," said Eron.

"Simple!" cried Amit. "I wonder what the Ishim wanted with me this time." And he dusted himself off as if nothing unusual had happened.

Already, the wound on Eron's wrist was little more than a scar. But, for some reason, he was just glad the boy was alright.

"Did you take your tube?" he demanded realizing he'd been unconscious for half the day.

"No," said Eron, "But, we're only one day away from Waimate and you have learned the alphabet.

The wild boy looked crestfallen.

"I'm going to the D.O.T.," said Eron. He hesitated for only a second. "You can come if you want."

The boy's face lit up. Eron had never had many friends and none of them were younger than him. He tried to think what Achazya would do. He grabbed the boy's head and starting rubbing it with his knuckles. Amit misunderstood. Pulling back, he tripped Eron and before he could blink once, the spotted boy had his elbow pressed into his trachea. It hurt. And he couldn't breathe.

He drew a desperate raspy stream of air inward.

"I keep the tube," said Amit releasing the pressure. "And you don't mention food until we have some."

"Yeah, alright," said Eron, and the boy let go.

For the first time since he left the city, Eron was happy. He used the medicine on his blisters and even a pimple he felt growing on his forehead before they left down the road. Alive. That was all that mattered. If there was anything the road had taught him that city and village didn't seem to know, it was that sometimes just being alive was the best thing that could happen.

As agreed, he kept his mouth shut. Eron never mentioned eggs or takahe on their last day. He didn't even breathe in dramatically when they passed a vardo where two nomads stopped to cook rice and beefalo broth long before dusk.

Though it was divine. Hunger did that. It made everything edible seem like a gift from the gawds. Root vegetables. Spices. Other things Eron didn't talk about were boiled grains with sugar beet syrups and berries and nuts. And especially not hazelnuts, which he loved. He uttered no sound in reference to the packets of roasted hazelnuts served in Auck City at the ball games though they were on his mind for hours. Kebabs in garlic and bean sauce. Hot chocolate. Cheeses from the Saturday Market. Fresh cheeses. Old cheeses. Butter Cold slices of beefalo with mustard.

Tight lips. Straight back. Straight legs. Eron kept walking.
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 still 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 beads 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 consider 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.
CHAPTER TEN

Waimate.

A sickening spectacle.

In the middle of the chaos, nomads chased nomads. They raided tents and scavenged others who had fallen.

Eron watched a man jump on woman's bindle. He tore it open from the side and pawed its contents to the ground. Then, the wretched man who was little more than bones with a beard attached to its wrinkled skull, wrestled with the woman for possession of the few bits and scraps she had owned before running after another victim.

There were so many bodies heaped on the ground. Eron could not distinguish between the ones that were tied and the trampled dead, but he held his tunic to cover his mouth as he ran as if it could spare him from their fate. The smoke, more than the guards, threatened them all.

Eron made his way, hacking and wheezing, to the Northern gate where the bulk of the frightened people huddled together pressed against the wooden gate. Nomads were surrounded by rings of Red Guardsmen with blood on their pikes and intolerance in their eyes.

And when a guardsman speared a man through his upper thigh with his pike, Eron gasped at the surreal horror of the man's howl. In the guard's other arm, the dark brown hair of a woman held tightly. Her mouth stretched open in terror as the next blow went through her lover's abdomen. The guard dropped his rope and the dark haired woman clawed at the top of her head pulling away from him as the guard swung her around.

"Slaver!" she screamed. And she wailed. But, it wasn't the sound of pain. It was despair. A darker and more hollow sound than Eron could bear.

The Red Guards were everywhere. The Auckian guards had to be resettling the nomads, Eron told himself with limited conviction. Waimate is too big, too permanent. There were too many people in one place that did not recognize the Municipal Code. They were a threat. They had to be resettled. They were not taking slaves.

But, in another game of hunter and prey, the nomads were again corralled between the burning tents, against the stockade that had built to protect themselves and into a trap. With hands bound behind their backs, the captured nomads kneeled in lines strung together by long ropes linked to leather collars secured tightly around their necks. They were tethered the way rigging holds a sail.

Surrounded. There would be no escape.

"We're all slaves now," a man whispered to Eron.

If he was discovered among the nomads, Eron would be taken with them, but then, most likely transferred to the custody of bounty hunters. He scanned the crowd for hope, but those left standing free huddled together seemingly resigned to their fate as the guard took them one by one.

They had grown calmer.

A short haired highwayman, with leather pants and beaded armor, stood in front of a line of guards. The man made a sweeping gesture and twenty or thirty of the people charged. The rest remained. Only a few passed the guard and others were taken among the highwayman who was quickly impaled upon the tip of a guard's pike. Although the nomads outnumbered the guard ten to one, only fully a coordinated charge might break their line, but they had no training. No organization. Many were holding their children.

Eron was filled with shame. He and the other men should have joined the charge.

"Elemnope," came a picked screech from above.

There was Amit clinging to the post of a toppled tent, looking over the stockade. Eron waved both arms and the boy dropped to the ground just as the guards closed inward taking more of the nomads with their ropes.

He gestured Eron to follow him.

No stopped them as they made their way to a storage shed that leaned against the stockade. Inside were empty flasks and a few bladders of wine. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling. There were tools piled on the dirt floor. Amit wasted no time pulling down the poles set precariously against the wall that was formed by the back of the stockade. A hole. A large one of rather recent and hasty construction from what Eron could tell.

As soon as he knew what the wild boy had planned, Eron began to help move the poles until there was enough room to pass through into the dark inner structure.

A nomadic teenage boy, with barely enough growth on his face to call a beard, had obviously seen them. He stepped into the shed and pushed Eron aside disappearing into the interior of the stockade. The shed door opened again. Another nomad. More were coming behind him. Eron and Amit plunged into the hole before they were knocked over again. Smoke, which they could feel, but not see, filled the space between the walls of the stockade. Only shreds of light illuminated it as it wafted warmly through the structure. A wooden lattice framework that held the platform between the two rows of logs secured deeply into the earth created a maze, but outer wall of the stockade was solid from what Eron could see. The slivers of light that shot diagonally through the air from the gaps between the logs did not reach floor, but had there been an exit, it would have been immediately obvious. Amit was already navigating the debris far ahead of Eron and he was loosing sight of the boy in the smoke as they followed the curve of the wall.

"Halt!" bellowed a guard from behind.

Eron did not halt, but the sound of the guard's voice sent chills through him.

"Eron! Stop!"

The faster nomads passed him as he slowed down and turned to see the one person he wanted to see the least. It was Aden. Eron stopped, because he knew he could not outrun him. Though the smoke obscured their view, he was facing his older brother.

In all the years he'd been bullied, Aden had never really hurt him. Even helping to banish him to Dunedin, he had done no lasting harm. But as Captain Aden of the Red Guard approached him, Eron did not see his brother in the man's expression. He saw only a guard in Auckian guardsman's leather. He saw Auck City itself. His home. His people. His family. His legs felt like coiled springs. He wanted to run.

Aden commanded the loyalty and the fervent passion all Auckians felt for their home, he was its primary protector, and this was the first Eron could not answer that call to patriotism his brother's authority represented.

"Why are you here!" Aden roared in a confused fury.

More nomads filtered past as Aden stood shaking in anger like an alchemist's kettle. Eron watched his sharp features contort in the dim light. His light brown hair shone wildly, caught in a beam of light, and as always, his broad shoulders spanned an intimidating width.

But, Eron couldn't answer him.

There was nothing he could say that Aden would understand. Bo was an infinitely more reasonable captain and at that moment, Eron wished it was she who had caught him escaping.

Aden had killed guardsman who abandoned their posts.

Over his shoulder, though barely visible, Eron could make out the outline of nomads blocking the light from an opening in the outer wall, one after another as the left.

"Why is my brother running with the gypsies?" yelled Aden.

Eron remained still.

Silence.

Gypsy was not a term Aden normally used. In the city, he would have gone home and told his mother if he had heard someone say it. Thadine would not have approved and she would never have accepted it from her son.

Eron was still paralyzed when Aden began to advance on him.

"Raider!" Amit screamed. "Slaver! You stay away from him!"

"Go on," said Eron to the boy who was hiding somewhere in the shadows, watching.

"Aden, I needed supplies. Dunedin was robbed. I'm going back," he lied.

Cough, cough.

The smoke was growing denser and every one remaining inside the stockade were starting to choke.

"You were in Dunedin three days ago," said Aden coldly. "Quarantined with the flu. Cough. You hardly recognized me and now you're here."

"Was my condition serious?" Eron asked.

Silence.

Brother stood facing brother.

"I think you've done something unthinkable," said Aden raising his pike.

"Unthinkable? You're taking slaves, Aden," Eron yelled, clenching his fists. He didn't know if it was true, but a force inside him, more powerful than himself, seemed to speak for him.

Eron was not brave. He was not strong and he had no great fortune to manipulate the lives of others, but had his intuition and his intelligence. And there had been a few moments in his life, when he had absolutely nothing to lose, and logically, knowing the odds, he was able to speak his mind.

He backed away from his brother almost imperceptibly.

"We're bringing them into the fold. They will get contracts. Even the old and the infirm will be given everything they need. I can't promise the same for a deflector."

Cough.

Eron was breathing faster, but still choking on the sheets of smoke that floated around them.

"Into the fold? Whose propaganda is that?" said Eron. "Forced contracts are slavery."

"It's crueler to leave them without protection from the state," said Aden, but his confidence was obviously waning.

"You're taking them from their homes," said Eron.

Cough, cough.

"They'll have new homes," said Aden. "Safe, settled homes."

"Have you seen the dead? Have you seen them? How many did you kill?" said Eron with such blind rage that his words seemed to be speaking themselves.

"You have to come with me," said Aden.

"If I come with you," said Eron. "I'm already dead."

"You deflected. Cough," said Aden quietly.

"I'm in Dunedin unless you tell someone otherwise," said Eron taking a gamble. "So, either you kill me now or let me go."

Aden lowered his pike and looked at the ground.

"Does Thadine know what you're doing?" asked Eron playing the last card in his hand.

"Mother," said Aden lowering his eyes. "Has been contracted, too."

Eron starred at his brother in disbelief. Cough. Cough. Cough.

"The archivist promised to provide her medicine while she'll tend their house."

"And the workshop?"

"She lost it. Her hands. She didn't tell anyone," said Aden almost tearfully. Eron could hardly stand to look at him.

"What about the workers?" said Eron.

"Some of the laborers have volunteered for contracts," said Aden. "But, when the doctor saw her hands. He decided she couldn't manage. They took the workshop. She's- Cough. She's happy."

There was a finality to the why Aden spoke that was at once as unconvincing as it was pleading and desperate. Eron was shocked. He couldn't imagine the looms being operated without his mother and worse, he could not imagine his mother without her looms. Her hands had been troubling her for years. They had knobs on the joints, but she had always had enough help.

"I don't understand," said Eron, coughing harder. "They can't take the workshop when she has help."

"Things have changed," said Aden, sounding defeated. He barely resembled the brother Eron had left behind. "People are hungry."

"Hunger," said Eron, "will make anyone volunteer."

A gust, heavy with smoke blasted across them. Both Aden and Eron fell down choking dangerously hard. Eron fumbled over the debris toward the exit where the nomads had escaped. Amit was waiting. Listening. Aden pursued his younger brother on all fours and caught Eron by the foot. The smoke continued to billow around them. Eron trembled less with fear than with anger.

"I can't allow you to leave," cried Aden.

"You abandoned our mother to slavery!" Eron screamed.

"Do you still think she's your mother?" sneered Aden pulling Eron toward him across the dirt. "Father was dead years before you came."

Cough.

"She took you in!," said Aden bitterly. "You could barely talk. Your real mother abandoned you. My mother found you wandering in the streets alone."

"No," said Eron. His heart sank through the dirt and the worms and the rock, a million miles below the surface of the earth. It hurt, because it felt true. "I don't remember," said Eron. Cough.

"I know you don't," said Aden. He was crying, something Eron had never seen before. "You could already write. Just a scrawny little child. I hated you."

Eron looked at Aden. He bore no resemblance to the man still holding his ankle. They gasped as another gust of smoke and warm air hit them. It had always been a joke that one of them was hatched from an egg. Humor buried their secret until the obvious could not be recognized anymore.

"I'm sorry," said Eron finally.

Choking hard, Aden loosened his grip.

"The Western Route. Cough. It's guarded," said he standing.

With a single smooth motion, he took his guard issue knife from his belt and flitted it into the ground between Eron's feet. Then, the Captain of the Red Guard disappeared down the dark corridor inside the stockade in the direction of the shed, running like a man who wanted to forget. And Eron watched until he could not hear his brother's coughing anymore.

There were flames on the wood.

Hacking and wheezing, Eron exited the stockade. Carts were strewn everywhere, toppled and their contents scattered and picked over. Outside, the hysteria had not abated, but the guards were not taking slaves.

Eron's eyes still stung and it took a few moments to adjust to the sun and the surreality of their surroundings.

That such horrible things happened under a sky so brilliantly blue that it could shame the takahe's feathers, Eron couldn't understand, but his eyes were not teared with sadness, just smoke. He was in shock. With every step Eron took away from the camp, his lungs burned harder and harder until he surrendered to the ground between the vardos and nomads escaping the gruesome scene behind them.

KABAM! KABAM! PUWUUUUUUU!

A blinding light, a circle of flame and smoke, burst through the air above them and the vibrations thundered inside his chest as as they passed. A black cloud shaped like a toad stool rose over the platform near the East entrance. It was the Auck Fire. Nothing other than alchemist's lab could have turned the air so red and orange.

Eron was numb. He heard the first blasts, but his mind retreated to a place of pain and shadows close to the waking world, but entirely part of it. Carried by his own instinct, the would-have-been scribe, willed himself to stand and wove himself through the stalled train of carts until he passed some wreckage where two nomads in brown rags and a dozen children were busy moving shattered panels of wood to clear the road.

Amit was there looting the bread from inside a tipped red vardo. As he leaned over, piling flat bread into his tunic, Eron saw not only Gil's canister, but the pouch the hags had stolen, dangling from his thin neck.

His coin. Somehow, the boy had recovered it.

Amit took one only glance at Eron before he started to run. Up the grassy hillside Eron trailed the much faster wild boy until in the shade of some sparse trees where Amit tripped, spilled his bread and Eron overcame him still coughing.

"You traitor," cried Eron pulling at the cords around the boy's neck.

He broke the pouch free as the snotty, spotted bonepot slipped his grasp and shot up a tree like a young panthera. Eron could not hope to follow him, but at least he had his bread and the coin pouch.

But, it was empty.

In the branches, Amit pulled the coin from his pants and held it up.

"You take me with you," the boy begged.

"Why should I? You ran," sneered Eron. He put all his hurt and pain into a glare, which he shot at Amit.

"You were going to leave me," said Amit.

KABAM! Another blast from Waimate shook the air and the explosion rose over the camp.

"You left me inside the camp," said Eron, heaving and coughing. He kneeled over.

"I came back," said Amit. The boy sounded unusually desperate. "And I got your coin protoback."

"Why did you run?"

"I don't know," repeated the boy shaking. "You were going to leave me." Amit's feral eyes studied the camp. "You already have a brother."

"No, not exactly," said Eron. "We're leaving together. Just come down now."

Amit hesitated, starring wildly at the sparse line of vardos, cards and refugees trudging down the road.

"You can even keep the tube," said Eron growing impatient. "Keep it safe. For us. We still need the coin to barter our way to the D.O.T. on the Eastern Route.

Amit shook his head,"You're going to leave me."

"Captain Aden said it was unguarded or at least, less guarded."

The boy had lost his bindle though his pockets were stuffed with goods he had acquired somewhat nefariously in the camp.

"Look, I'm hungry," said Eron. "If you come down and give me the coin, we can be blood brothers."

An ant was crawling up the mossy branch where Amit sat. The boy smashed in with his thumb and licked off the juices.

"I suppose I'll never be that hungry," said Eron.

"Will you leave me?" the boy asked again.

"I won't," said Eron. "You can't leave a blood brother."

Amit dropped from the tree. Wiping a drop of blood from an abrasion on his leg, Eron pooled it on his open palm, which he held out to the boy.

"That doesn't count," said Amit. "You have to postopen the wound yourself."

"I really think I've been cut enough today," said Eron reaching for Aden's knife. "Do we need to draw anymore blood? I could just rub this scratch against the cut on your nose."

In his silence, the straw haired boy seemed quieter and more innocent than before. Eron smiled at him.

"We need to do it right," he agreed cutting a small line across his palm and handing the knife to Amit. He entertained a brief and fleeting thought about germs, but decided against pursing that line of thought. Sometimes, common sense ruined the moment.

"Do you have to say anything?" asked Amit.

"No, I think that's all."

"Can you become blood brotherized by accidentification then?" he said, brighting at the mechanics of it.

"I like you, Amit," he told the boy holding out his bloody palm. "You're a thief and a vagabond, but-" They gripped each others' hands. "But, you're the only real family I have now."

Amit freckles on his cheeks gathered upward as he grinned at Eron. Eron put his arm around the pathetic creature and felt the muscles relax in the child's shoulders. He had never been anyone's blood brother, but it was an unbreakable oath that even a wild boy such as Amit understood.

Together they walked along the Eastern Road passing the stalled caravans, which had been detained by another road block placed by the Red Guard. Eron was strangely unafraid. He was not sad. He was not happy. He felt almost as if he were floating through the remainder of the day.

At dusk, shivering, they reached the last barricade and helped the nomads move the logs. They'd eaten Amit's bread with butter and honey, all taken from the camp. Eron was feeling stronger, but strange. Many of the nomads had set up tents where the masses of refugees huddled in blankets around an endless sea of hastily constructed fire pits. What few sleep lockers there were on the road, were full.

Amit and Eron crawled underneath a ring of vardos where Eron gave the boy his extra tunic, hoping not to be noticed by the drivers. They slept back to back for a while until Eron woke to the sound of crying. The wails of the nomads pierced the night sky. In the distance, the loogaroo howled.

They heard the sound of arrows loosed with a twang from the nomad's bows. A giant wolf yapped. The giant dogs were close. Eron's heart pounded. But, there were too many refugees. Hundreds of people. The loogaroo wouldn't be bothering them. Only watching.

When Eron finally opened his eye at the first light of dawn and looked out from under the vardo, he saw four hairy legs and a bit of purple rag hanging down. The owners of the legs had him by the ankle and pulled him out where they slide a sack over his head before knocking him to the ground and tying his arms. The cool morning air raised prickles on his skin.

From the smell of things, he knew it was the hags.
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 holding 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 able 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.
CHAPTER TWELVE

Eron and Amit ran from Moen and his vardo like panthera on coffee until they found a shady grove where Eron lied down on his back and heaved breath after strained breath. They didn't have to run. It just felt good after plodding along with the slow and steady cart. The afternoon wind blew across Eron's skin raising gooseflesh where he was wet and sticky from running. His hair stood on end. Though the vardo had provided some comfort, to venture out alone again was better.

Alone.

Alone, but, with Amit.

Eron loved watching the bobbing motion of the pukeko, a dark blue bird with a long red legs and a fat red beak. It was fearless. A few passed only feet from where he was laying and stepped awkwardly, as they did, onto the road. Eron looked back up to the canopy and tried to judge the position of the sun through the undersides of the leaves. He'd learned to live without the sound of the great Auckian clock booming every day light hour, but he hadn't quite learned to judge time by the position of the sun. He needed practice.

A rustling sound in the trees preceded a flurry of falling leaves. And Amit dropped his gangly legs from a branch directly above Eron. Then, he landed squarely on his chest, knocking out his wind. He heaved and gasped in desperation while the boy snorted in amusement.

"I need your map," said Amit pointing a slingshot he had taken from the nomads between Eron's eyes.

Eron gasped.

"The map," demanded the boy.

Still in pain, but not wanting to show it, Eron put his hands over his heart as if he'd been shot and lifted one foot stiffly up in the air. Amit waited silently as he conducted his theatrics. For the sake of authenticity, he reached over and picked a flower, closed his eyes and held it against his chest.

Amit ducked slightly as he crept toward him. With one eye open, Eron thought the boy seemed more like a wild loogaroo than a wild human sometimes.

"Where is it?" asked Amit, aiming the slingshot at him.

"Search me," said Eron closing his eyes.

Naturally, Eron had already memorized the information on the small leather scroll even the symbols on the back and they were a bit of a puzzle to him.

Amit reached out a spotted hand toward Eron's tunic when he shot upward, standing and knocked the boy to the ground. They struggled fiercely though neither had the advantage. It felt so good to laugh. While Eron had had a firm grip on Amit's shoulder, the wild boy had gone for his hair. Which of course, hurt. Like rabid panthera with their eyes locked, they released and circled each other. Eron's arms were the longest so he batted at Amit's face. But, the wild boy was quicker and always seemed to know what he was doing. They scrambled at each other in a flurry of dust and limbs.

Even Amit was laughing by the time he got a handful of dirt in Eron's nose. Though tired and sore and sad, their senseless joviality was a release.

"Can you supragive me the map?" said Amit.

Eron nodded, unbelted his tunic, reached into his pants and untied it from the strings of his loin cloth. He had taken to hiding everything he wanted to keep somewhere very safe. The coin had been safe. The map. Safe. Only the canister had never been safe. Even the vials were now safely tucked into the side folds of his loin cloth.

"I've changed my mind," said Amit as Eron produced the old shepherd's map.

Eron threw it at him. "We can't wait for those vendors to catch us up," he declared. Just as it started to rain. Tromping slowly on the road, Eron threw back his arms and with head pointing to the sky he cried out. "Why gawds?" A few cold specks of rain wet his face and he muttered a brief apology for everything he'd ever done wrong.

Eron hadn't forgotten that Amit stole the coin or the vial and that he wouldn't give back the canister even though they were now blood brothers. But, he knew, logically, only thieves survived on their own, especially when it came to children. And just because he had a friend for a week didn't mean he would stop stealing even from Eron. But, that awareness didn't stop him from muttering a quick prayer to the gawd of the municipal code for the boy to be miraculously transformed.

"See this patch of plants?" said Amit turning the map to face him.

"And what?" said Eron.

Amit tossed the map at Eron's chest. Eron caught it just as they heard a noise down the road. There was a distant outline of a man on a horse. Eron bolted for cover in the brush dragging Amit behind him. As soon as they could make out the size and color of his hat, they knew it was a highwayman.

Eron sighed.

He'd never been so happy to see that hat. Unlike the others he'd met before, this older man pinned only one side of his hat to the middle, but it was constructed exactly in the same manner as all the others, in black leather. The hat with two sides pinned formed an akubra. The same black hat with three corners pinned to the middle made it a tricorn. However, they wore it, it was a highwayman's hat.

Both boys ran to the edge of the road, nodded and smiled at the man as the brown horse carried him, clopping slowly, toward them.

"Any news from the camp?" Eron asked.

The man steadied his beast. The man's beard was short and gray and his earrings made from long bones carved in exhaustive detail. But, it was his pale eyes Eron would never forget. They were lighter than the sky in winter.

"There is no camp," he said.

The boys looked at each other.

"Have you seen any guardsmen on the road here?" he asked them.

"I have good reason to believe," said Eron nervously, "that they won't be patrolling this route."

"What good reason could you have?" said the man sizing him up.

"I'm an Auckian," said Eron. Amit hit him in the arm, but Eron continued. "We were there when they started the raid. I was told."

"You were told what?"

"One of the captains told me that the Western Route was unguarded," Eron explained quickly.

"It was his brother," said Amit.

The highway tipped his hat and turned his horse. Eron exhaled. He didn't know what the man would think of him, but he knew he had share what he knew. He should have told everyone before they left.

"I'm sorry," said Eron only just then realizing what his information really meant to the nomads.

As he left back in the direction he had come, Eron collapsed on a log. Amit watched him for a moment before taking the map from his hand.

"There are plants along this anti-area from here to here," said the boy running his finger in a line from one section of the road to Pict City. "No rivers. No cliffs. I think we can pass this way."

He was right. The symbols for various plants clustered in roughly from the Eastern Route directly to Pict from the village of Levelen.

"But, we don't know where it starts," said Eron. "Unless you know what these symbols mean."

"Well, that's a beet. And that's a beet. There. There and there."

"What about lockers?" said Eron.

"Sometimes there aren't any supraon anywhere," said Amit. "And we should be there beforicate prodark, I quasithink."

"And sometimes," muttered Eron studying the map, "I have no idea what you're saying."

Even if the Eastern Route was safer, safe had become relative. The land north of Waimate was not like the waste. There were more trees. More groves. More cover. And that meant shade and hiding places for hungry megafauna.

"I know how to get through the woods," said the boy.

He left Eron on the log and returned with dried loogaroo dung. It was white. After much protestation, Eron agreed to rub it on his clothes. Even he couldn't argue with the boy's logic. Nothing ate the giant wolves and the cats wouldn't go near the smell of their dung. And the loogaroo habitually avoided other loogaroo.

"And what if this dung belonged to the friend of the largest, hungriest loogaroo out there?" said Eron stuffing his nose with a bit of cloth.

Amit shrugged.

The sun travelled slowly across the sky as they walked to the village. Eron thought it might have been three o'clock when they arrived, but the tower, visible over the city wall, said noon. The day had only seemed long.

Levelen with its tall stone walls stood near the shore where a wide beet field stretched away through the woods with a well-worn foot path cutting haphazardly through it. Fortunately, the head of the shepherd's trail couldn't have been more obvious. It wasn't a wild patch of beets. It was a beet farm.

"It would be easier if one of us could sleep while the other was walking," said Amit shivering in a blast from the coastal air. "We could take turns."

"And the other one of us would do what?" said Eron, "Float in the air beside them?"

The boy snorted.

They traversed many abandoned beet fields before they arrived outside Pict City. The closer they drew to the coast, the sparser the trees. Making the dung, it seemed, almost wholly unnecessary. And though, Eron had grown used to the horrible smell of dung on his clothes, but he insisted on washing in the bay before they attempted to barter for a ferry ride.

As Eron considered what was to spare, a pukeko trotted through the ferns and stopped and put a beady round eye on him. It had a high red beak, dark wings, and brilliant blue body. It's long legs were more comical than sensible, which is why Eron liked them. He smiled at it and tried to imagine what it might ask him if it could speak.

"Me neither," he said to the bird.

But, before he finished the thought, a stone whizzed through the air and struck the creature. It collapsed as if it had been nothing more than a puppet held up by strings. Ripped from animation and life, it's eye shut. Standing behind them, Amit shouted in triumph. Eron's guilt was fleeting. He had an idea.

"How many do you think you could gather?" said Eron thoughtfully.

"All of them," boasted the boy.

"Get ten."

Finding a ferry man would pose no great challenge however, whether he made a good impression or a dungy one. Paying for it was going to be the issue.

Eron laid out his cloak on the rocky ground by the bay while Amit went back to the forrest cover for birds. Eron had taken a hide from the vendors to wrap the discourses. A ferry man wouldn't want. There was their meat, but very little of it left. The small furs they'd been wearing on their shoulders wouldn't suit a full sized man. And there was his lamp, the hand-sized pinched clay pot, but with no wick and no oil. He could trade the bota and the fire horn, but they were possibly the only two truly useful possessions he had. And Amit would rather die than part with the sling shot. All that remained was an extra pair of trousers, the vials and his knife.

Only the metal canister seemed totally expendable unless he counted his spare loin cloth, which he didn't. The canister was metal, which made it desirable enough, about the length of his hand and the width of two fingers. The exterior had intricate detail, but the design was simple, not coded - no writing either, just a series of bumps that wove together in long chains crisscrossing along from its round base to the lid. It had a leather hinge. Aside from the cobwebs, it was empty and washed, it might be useful.

Eron decided to rearrange his things even though the cloak was wet from the rocks and sand underneath it. He folded either end of the cloak in, folded one side over, and rolled it up before refastening the leather straps, which he then slung over his shoulders and covered with his small fur. Looking all dark and oily, Eron enjoyed his barbaric new appearance. Furs were rugged. Manly. Certainly not feminine. Amit had taken the only gray spotted fur in the vendor's vardo. His was cat. Eron's was beefalo.

The sky over the port city was streaked with thin and wispy clouds and the air radiated its pale blueness. The sea, with its magnificently salty flavor, rocked heavily in the great bowl that held it mysteriously at the edge of the land, but the wind at Pict knocked Eron about like an invisible hand with a bad temper. It seemed to have done much the same for the shabby wooden village, too.

Pict City had no great stockade or permanent structures. Where Levelen had a wall, Pict had nothing. Where Levelen had a tower, Pict, again, had nothing. However, from what Eron could see from the distance, it conformed nicely to Eron's concept of a temporary settlement. It was what a nomadic settlement should be even if it was a semi-protectorite of Auck City. There were some tents and all of them could be moved in a matter of hours. And once those were shuffled away from the windy harbor, only the flotsam and jetsam from the sea would remain among the few wooden structures, all of which seemed to have been built from logs tossed for years in the waves.

Sailors riding the waves from Auck City to the Eastern villages preferred Pict as their port to the midlands. No families or respectable vendors dallied there, because no public institutions or markets could survive the debauchery.

If there was one semi-permanent structure, it was the wind guard. A twenty foot stone wall cannibalized from the local ruins had been erected to protect the city from the Northern winds. Eron strolled cautiously along the on the far side of it while he waited for Amit. There were muscles and barnacles stuck to its base and above, seaweed. And lots of rotting dead things. All of which put Eron's mind to rest about whether the scent of dung would linger.

On the more lively side of the wind guard, the sun battered men were auctioning their wares in piercing and often inebriated cries. Eron listened intently, but he was not brave enough to join them.

Amit was carrying six birds when he found Eron crouched up against the wind guard playing with a hermit crab. He had two pukeko and four takahe.

"I've never seen a wild takahe before," said Eron.

"Neither have I," said Amit sheepishly.

They quickly found t ferry man at the port. The man was delicate looking as the crustaceans that clung to the side of his shallow boat. His gray beard had grown to his knees, a testament to the extreme apathy of the unwillingly retired sailor. He settled for the six birds without bartering.

"I think we paid too much," said Eron hoping over the gap between the slimy green algae on the dock and the rickety floating miracle of seaworthiness which was the ferryman's boat.

"True," grunted the hunchbacked mariner. "I would have taken you for a story."

"Are you interested in the apocalyptica?" Eron asked although he knew it was too late to renegotiate.

"Know it all by heart."

"You know the one about Uri and the Golem?" asked Eron.

"Naturally," said the old man adjusting the sail. They pushed off and float slowly away from the dock.

"And how Malak built the archive in only forty days?"

"Six versions," said the man.

"The invasion from Tasmen?"

"Even the men who fought there don't know that story as well as I do."

Eron gave up. They headed onto the glistening waters, rocking against the waves.

"What about Abraham Lincoln?" he asked.

"Who?" said the ferry man and Amit in unison.

"It's not apocalyptica, but still a good story," said Eron brightly. Either Achazya had made it up or read somewhere, but it was one Eron remembered well enough.

The man nodded and shifted the rudder.

"In a modern country, across the oceans, there was an administrator whose people enjoyed absolute peace and prosperity. His house was made from ivory and the whitest marble in the land. They had metal carts that were propelled from place to place by eating giant lizards called fossils."

"Beefalo dung," said Amit.

"Everything was perfect until the Rebellion. The men in the South, I think it was called India, enslaved the most skilled ball players and warriors the world had ever known. No one knows how this was done, but the house of Abraham led a war to free the men and fought bitter battles. At a village called Gettysburg, he invoked the power of the four fathers and won. Then, he abolished slavery and reunited India."

"Sounds like an Ishim," said the man.

As the distant shore grew closer, they could see the steep hills that surrounded them. Along the shallows of the shore lie the toppled framework of a modern city, jutting out from the ground, crumbled, no part wholly intact. Slabs of concrete rising above the waters blocked the ferry from docking. It was the Well.

Eron had never seen the great ruins at the Well before, but everyone knew about them. The blocks of concrete seemed to span forever between the brush and forest that cradled the old modern city. A larger modern city once stood under Auck City, but what survived the apocalypse and lasted into the age of Liam had long since been chiseled away for building material. The Well, being mostly under water, had never been inhabited again.

Eron and Amit disembarked in a foot of water among the incessant whirring and buzzes of the Sea Tui, a white bird with a black chest and a talent for mimicry.

"Lo!" said the ferry man pointing to edge of the waters.

"Lo!" cried a Sea Tui sounding almost human.

"Lo!" screamed Amit.

"Lo!" cried another bird.

The decrepit marvel of modern architecture that surrounded them was tagged with symbols and looked as if the old city had lost an epic battle with an army of paint brushes. Colored in against the side of a modern wall was a black hand pointing to the foothills.

"Should we follow the black hands?" Eron asked the ferryman.

"That depends where you are going," he said, pushing off with a long pole.

The waters were cold and splashed up to his knee. His feet were already soaked and going numb.

"Don't you wait for another fare," Eron shouted, eyeing the hills with some concern.

For a second, Eron thought he heard a voice.

"Stop him!" it said.

Splash! Splash! Splash! Amit was running through the water back toward the boat.

"He's got my home!" shouted the voice then farther away.

"Who is that?" Eron yelled. "What is going on?"

No one answered.

Amit pulled himself into the boat while the crusty old ferryman tried to pummel him with his pole, but Amit prevailed and soon had him by the neck with Eron's knife. Eron could see him hand something back to the boy who then jumped in the water, swam a few feet and then wadded back to where Eron was standing.

It was the metal tube. The boy heaved himself onto the sharp edge where the water ended and the concrete ruins began. He was soaking.

"I heard a voice," said Eron. "It wasn't you."

"You're protocrazy," said the boy who was shivering while he stripped off his tunic and knickerbockers to wring them out.

I've snapped, Eron thought, panicking. I have lost my mind. He sat down and held his head in both palms.

Right in front of him, a thick grayish black spider peeked over the edge of a slab of concrete. At first, he thought it might a small bird, but the eight hairy legs, bulging abdomen and slowly opening fangs were not easily dismissed. But then, Eron watched in horror as a tiny parachute made from its webbing burst from somewhere on its back, attached by four long slender silvery strands.

The arachnid glided softly on the gentle gusts of sea air toward Eron's face. Eron screamed and batted it to the ground.

Then, steeling his courage, he smashed it with his hand.

There was nothing there.

Eron lifted his palm, expecting to see a greasy crunchy splatter, but there was really nothing there but tiny pebbles. Some had left impressions on his palm. Others were stuck to it.

He sensed motion on the ground and saw the well camouflaged spider scurry under Amit's bindle. It was intact. Again, Eron pounded the ground flinging sand about and bruising himself.

"Die!" Eron screamed, multiple times, as he pursed the spider.

But, the creature's life wouldn't end. Eron thought he landed each blow directly on its vulnerable exoskeleton, but he felt nothing when making contact. Each time looked for the dead spider, he found it standing on all hairy eights, gazing at him only a few feet away.

"Finished?" said the same tiny voice he'd heard earlier. It came from the spider itself.

Eron scrambled backward grabbed at Amit's tunic. Too much medicine. It had to be the vials. Amit was right. He was crazy.

"Talking spider," Eron wheezed.

"It's pretty good," said Amit.

"Pretty good?" Eron said, heart throbbing, head pounding and adrenaline running critical mass through his blood vessels.

"The parachute," said the spider. "I've been working on the design. And if you're finished trying to kill me, I would like your opinion."

Eron nodded and then tried to bash the spider again with a single deft blow. The spider sprung onto Eron's chest and to him. He screamed. And despite having no obvious mouth aside from its fangs, it sounded like it was chuckling. If that wasn't terrifying enough, the spider puffed up expanding its body until it was larger than an apple. Eron tried to hit it, smash it, or knock it away from him, but his hands passed through its body as if it were made from smoke or mist.

Eron pulled his tunic over his head and threw it on the ground. The sea air was chilling, but the shock kept him warmer than he should have been.

If an insect could look smug, it was this spider. Delicately and with precision, it lifted its legs in unison and climbed back onto the concrete rubble.

"Wake up. Wake up. Wake up," Eron whispered.

Amit was grinning wildly.

"Relax," said the creature.

"I'm dreaming," said Eron. "Or I'm crazy."

"You do have a delicate mind," said the arachnid.

"Intricate," said Eron.

"Fragile," insisted the talking spider. "You know, that was the best parachute design Auckland has seen in over five hundred years. So, I promise. It was real."

"It was simple," Amit chimed.

"Yes," agreed the arachnid.

"No," said Eron.

"Micah boasts about his knowledge of modern warfare, but-."

It was cut short by Eron's heal landing where its head should have been.

"Stop it," yelled the spider. "You are awake. You are not crazy. You are outside the D.O.T. You are Eron. He is Amit. And I am Tukukush and if you don't stop trying to kill me, I won't help you."

"I am Eron," said Eron dumbly.

"How's my home?" asked the spider.

Amit laid the metal canister on the concrete beside him. The creature examined it with his front legs while Eron felt his forehead for fever.

"It took me a month to just to design the webwork for the rim," it sighed.

"I didn't really mean to kill you," Eron lied.

The spider yawned theatrically with a hand over its face where a mouth might have been. "I think you did."

"My tutor always said that poor hygiene caused both wine and people to grow bitter," said Eron. It was something Achayza often repeated as if it were great wisdom, but given the context, it made no sense at all.

"What's hygiene?" asked Amit.

"Bitter. I see," said the spider.

Eron felt a fragile hint of joy grip the corners of his mouth and he decided then and there to dunk his head in the sea thrusting his dark hair under the water until both his ears were submersed. He heard a wobbly muffled whooshing sound and pulled back, wet hair dangling.

But, the spider was still there.

"I can hear all the bricks falling into place inside that dense cranium of yours," it said patiently.

"An Ishim," whispered Eron. It was the only explanation.

"I am an Ishim," said Tunkukush.

Amit picked up his slingshot and walked away over the rocky shore collecting pebbles as he went.

"In fact, I was one of the first," the large arachnid declared proudly.

"Where are you from?" Eron asked not knowing how to start a conversation with an immortal.

"North Dakota," it said.

"Oh," said Eron. "Nice weather there?"

"I couldn't say," said the spider. "I haven't been to the Dakotas for five hundred years. And with the Earth's rotation not exactly being what it used to be, it could be under the ice caps for all I know."

"So, you are a man," said Eron hesitantly. "I mean, you were a man. That woman with the hair. The one at Waimate." Remembering, what the fortune teller had said, Eron felt ill. "I must be crazy."

"You're not. I can still be a man if I choose," said the spider.

"And you drank some coffee," said Eron. "Because some rock hit the earth, which is round and not flat, and made summer winter and winter summer, but there happened to be a few people out on a boat who survived seven years of darkness to land here and repopulated the island by re-writing the itty bitty teensy weensy blueprints that are hidden in our bodies by the gawds."

"In my time," it said rubbing its head. "They would have called you a man of science."

"You were in the container this whole time?" Eron said. And suddenly, every Gil had said made sense.

"Eron, do you know what the D.O.T. stands for?"

He shook his head.

"It's the Den of Thieves," said Tunkukush.

"I beg your pardon?" said Eron.

"You're pardoned," said the arachnid.

"I can't-," said Eron panicking. He had been so naive. "I don't want-"

He finally cracked and began to weep. He had to a small extent trusted the weaver, but the Den of Thieves? It was unthinkable. He would be killed. Even the highwaymen wouldn't help save him.

Amit had occupied himself by shooting pebbles at distant celestial targets that were starting to grow visible in the night sky. The spider, its body, began pouring like a heavy mist into the form of a tiny man. Barely a foot tall, it walked over to Eron and put its gaseous hand on Eron's arm.

"I want to go home," Eron sobbed.

"You're a very brave young man," said Tunkukush. "You freed a slave. You did what was right even when had other options."

"The weaver and those men were forcing me out of town," said Eron wiping his nose with the sleeve of his tunic.

"You could have alerted the guard and turned Gil in. They probably would have relocated you."

"I never thought about that," Eron lied.

"Slavery can look like a normal life," said Tunkukush, but that's what's so sinister about it."

Tunkukush was still growing and changing color. The mist and smoke inside him swirled around, lengthening his arms and legs. He had dark hair and tan skin. He didn't look like anyone Eron knew. His jaw was strong, but smooth and there was an uncommonly angular shape to his nose and brow. Although an Ishim could apparently choose any appearance, Eron was certain he was looking at the man Tunkukush had been sometime in his fifties probably five hundred years ago. It was almost too much.

He felt a bit dizzy.

"Liam always said that people can tolerate anything if they have hope."

As a man, the creature's voice had weight and depth. It resonated with the sort of kindness that could only be gained from a long hard life.

"What was Liam like?" Eron asked.

"Ordinary," said the man spider. "A lot like you."

"I was locked up for years before I boarded the Alliance," said the Ishim clasping his hands behind his back. He watched Amit for a moment. "I didn't know drinking the coffee would change me. None of us did. Not even Uri."

Tunkush was still growing. His eyes darkening into a deep brown and his hair turning whiter and longer. Finally, when his skin had taken the a complexion like dull copper, it seemed to stop.

"Listen, Eron," he said ominously, "One man achieving true liberty can blow the world apart."

"Like a bomb," said Eron.

"Well, not really," said the Ishim.

Eron had never seen a bomb, but he read about them.

Night was falling fast and the piercing call of the loogaroo rung through the ruins. Though night in the open was colder, there was beauty in it. Within the depth of cosmos hung the stars, a million points of light, a celestial mobile. For a sublime moment, he felt very small. Small was good. The gawds were big and he was small and that was exactly as it should be. And if the Ishim were real, maybe the gawds were, too.

"You must think I'm so pathetic," muttered Eron.

"I would have thought you were pathetic if you never cried after what you two have been through," said Tunkukush.

Eron stood up, slinging his bundle over his shoulder. The dark waters of the bay had begun to reflect the moonlight, which crept over the tree line just beyond the ruins where the hills rose before them.

Looking at Amit, who was shooting stones into the water and making sound effects only he understood, Eron told the old man, "He's pretty harmless except, perhaps, to the bakers and fruit vendors."

Tunkukush smiled widely.

"Pretty much just vendors," said Eron charitably. "Come on."

The Ishim recoiled in shape and size, as if being sucked back into the form of a spider by a rush of air pulled through a straw.

"You were in his pocket this whole time?" asked Eron.

The spider nodded. "Come on," it said. "Let's make some torches."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They collected twigs and dry grass to wrap around a chunk of punk Eron cut from a rotting log.

"Couldn't you give us some web to bind the torch?" asked Eron.

"No," said the spider. "I have to conserve my matter."

"You seemed human when you were a man," said Eron pulling some threads from the bottom of his tunic. "Couldn't you stay that way now?"

"This is easier," said the spider indignantly. It crawled onto Amit's hand and climbed into its tube. "And I can't be seen leading you into the Den."

"You're banned?"

"Novices enter alone or not at all," it said. The tiny voice rang with a tinny echo. "Not for forty days."

"And nights?" said Eron, lighting his shabby torch from the coal still smoldering in the fire horn, which had been packed in moss. "But not Micah. That's who I'm supposed to go see."

"Especially not Micah," said Tunkukush.

"Don't you know anything about the Den," asked Amit sounding more smug than Eron was comfortable with.

"I know they say its guarded by two monsters," said Eron. "And there are some pictures on the back of the map that look like lamassu. It's probably some sort of code."

Hrmmmph! came the metallic peep from the canister. "'Monster' is a kind way to say 'idiot.' And I wouldn't speak to those big-headed abominations more than necessary. Just ask for the riddle."

"They're real, too?" said Eron.

"Listen," said the Ishim. "Failing all other things, remember no hoofed creatures eyes face forward for a reason."

"Is that the riddle?" asked Eron.

Amit placed the cord attached to Tunkukush's canister around his neck. The boy wandered ahead through the ruins following a jagged trail of black graffiti hands followed closely by Eron, who was holding the torch. Eventually, amid the haunting cries of the loogaroo, they reached a jagged edge of a round modern wall. Eron followed the boy as Tunkukush rattled out directions through the labyrinth of broken stones. On the interior curve of the ruin, they passed a series of nomadic symbols imbedded in between scraps of flaking paint and obscene images, which matched the ones scribbled on the back of the shepherd's map.

Though Eron had learned to live without the sound of the great Auckian clock booming every day light hour from the square until sunset when the guardsmen silenced the internal mechanisms, designed in a bygone era, it was the hour when the crier roamed the streets bellowing about how safe and secure they were, that he missed the most.

"Nine of the clock and all is well," whispered Eron.

The trail of black hands was freshly painted and easy to follow. And they were everywhere. Three fingers bent against the palm and one beckoning them on down the rocky paths covered in bits of building, roots, and trees jutting out from crumbled walls. Even in the dark, they could make out the outline of the hand, but the debris never seemed to end as if they were walking in circles.

In the modern era, the city had been smaller than Auck City and the surrounding villages. But, it seemed to Eron, like a beefalo carcass picked and cleaned to the bone. Only walls and the foundations gave any evidence of what had once existed before it was leveled by earthquakes and time. No one knew what they had worn. What did they eat? What was modern music like? What did they know about the gawds? What secrets had been lost?

Amit strained the rubber band of his slingshot and released a chunk of concrete between Eron's feet.

"Put that away," hissed Eron. "Where are you getting more rubber if that breaks?"

"I'll steal some," said Amit.

"From who?" said Eron. "They only ship it from the islands once every five years. And last time they were in port in Auck City was two years ago."

"I don't care," said the spotted boy firing another piece of stone. "I'm going to be a highway man. I'll have everything I want while you work on the chain."

"Every thief must think they have a good excuse," Eron muttered to himself as they approached a dark hole in the side of the mountain crowned with a rugged arch of chiseled rock with a single black hand on the keystone.

Overgrown, weedy, dark and clearly of modern construction, inside the tunnel was as tall as two men and wide enough for four or maybe five vardos. It was incredible. The torch cast its light onward, but did not reach the other side, but its light reveal rock fallen everywhere from the ceiling. Stones spilt upon landing on the tunnel floor and mounds, endless mounds of small hard pieces of something caught the flickering light.

They made a crunching sound as Eron and Amit stepped on them. Never a good sign.

Bones.

The tunnel floor was covered with bone fragments.

"You go first," said Eron pushing on Amit's back and knocking him forward. But, he was feeling more fear than guilt.

"No heroes among Auckians," said the boy shoving him back.

"You mean thieves," said Eron.

"The answer to the riddle has the same number of letters as the last word in the riddle," whispered Tunkukush. "Remember that."

"I can't spell!" cried Eron.

"That could be a problem," said the Ishim.

Eron's imagination was racing like a panthera attacking his thoughts on a downhill slope. He didn't stand a chance. He treaded purposefully over the bones as if he could limit how much of the underside of his boot was exposed, but as Amit picked up speed, Eron hit a rock with his toe. Sliding onto his palms, he buried his face into an ashy heap of ribs. It was horrible. Amit's shoes were little more than two wads of leather tied and bound with slender strips, but they offered significantly more tactile control.

May the gawds forgive me if I pulverized anyone's peaceful remains," he whispered to himself.

It was the most pious thought he could muster. In Auck City, bones were buried whole, because most Auckians believed that a person's spirit was still connected to the body after death.

What had been mild discomfort finally erupted into terrified shudders as a scent darker than the latrine on the South end of the central square in Dunedin entered his unprepared nostrils. Blood, death and decay. He pulled the corner of his tunic over his mouth, but it made little difference.

The light at the end of the tunnel was the cool blue moon hanging low in the night sky. It opened into an enclave formed by rock and hillside. Eron dusted himself off and sprinted out into the opening. Around them, the grassy hillsides surged upward beyond the stark enclave, covered with trees, ferns and tree ferns. On the far end of the steep enclosure, a large black cavern mouth waited. There were few bones on the ground between the tunnel and the cavern, but what small piles there were had bits of flesh and fabric clinging to them.

A flash of light caught Eron's eye as he saw it. Them. There were two. Nothing could have prepared him.

On four thin legs, they rested, the heads of the Lamassu spanning the length of his torso. Their bodies seemingly thrown together from scraps of other animals. The shoulders, back and legs of the beefalo. The wings of the giant moa. The head of a man. With melon-sized glossy brown eyes and iridescent beastly rows of hornlike teeth, the Lamassu commanded the full power of his terror as they bobbed around, driven to a frenzy by the sight of two humans entering their foul smelling space. They were smiling. Each lamassu could easily fit a normal human's head in their wide maniacaly grinning mouths.

"TREATS," came the disturbing rumble of the beast on the left. Its voice echoed. And even Eron's softest hairs to stood on end.

They got to their hooves swiftly, the most nimble intelligence imaginable on four legs. The short rough fur from the purple body of the beefalo softened into the long curls that crowned their heads. And where their body hair ended, the dark purple plated braids began encompassing both hair and long beards that reached the middle of their beastly chests. And from their sides, the massive silky grey wings of moa brushed it aside.

"Balls," said Amit as the beasts advanced, swishing their tails behind them.

Amit bolted for the tunnel, but the smaller of the two abominations charged.

"Don't run!" screamed Eron, but it was too late.

It skidded to a halt, dry bones snapping where it landed. A blood curdling yelp reverberated through the passage.

The smaller of the two creatures pounded toward the hole and pranced back with the boy hanging from its fleshy lips. It spat him onto the ground at Eron's feet.

"FAINTED," it said.

The other circled Eron and start sniffing him. Its nose was disproportionately flat and its glee unyielding like a loogaroo with a bone. No, this was worse. They were lamassu with a collection of bones. The rim around Eron's line of vision began to fade and darkness threatened to take him. Nothing felt real. Something warm hit the inside of his trousers as a wide bristly pink tongue slithered from the mouth of the smaller of the two beasts to taste Amit's face.

"Stop!" said Eron.

"I CANNOT EAT ANOTHER HUMAN," groaned the smaller beast.

"How can you eat something that talks to you?" Eron yelled.

"HOW CAN YOU NOT?" said the broader and taller of the two and they both rumbled at its beastly wit. The boy's pale hair and spotted fur cloak stuck to the lamassu's rough tongue and lifted him slightly off the ground.

"HE'S RIGHT, MOSUL," boom the bigger one. "DON'T PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD."

"PATIENT," said Mosul, the beast nudging Amit with its forehead.

It stifled a giggle.

"DOCTOR," it said.

The Ishim's tube rattled.

"I want," said Eron remembering what Tunkukush had said at the ruins. "I demand a riddle."

The smaller and lighter of the lamassu continued grooming the spotted boy with it's tongue while the other pranced around and kicked its hind legs.

"YOU MAY HAVE THREE," said the big one.

"ONE," said Mosul.

"Germs," moaned Amit regaining consciousness.

"GERMS!" shouted the beast, its hooves clicking as it backed away.

"CLEVER LITTLE LIES," said Mosul, blinking its dense lashes.

"LIES," agreed the other, but it hesitated before it resumed preening its new toy. "NAME?" it said looking at Eron.

"I'm Eron," said Eron.

"HIS," said the beast leaning over Amit almost tenderly.

"Amit," said Eron. "Yours?"

"HE IS NINEVEH," laughed Mosul, the larger of the two beasts circling Eron, the lamassu and the spotted boy.

"SPOTS," said Nineveh grinning down at Amit who was still unconscious.

"Is the this the entrance to the D.O.T.?" Eron asked blinking painfully. The acrid fumes of the enclave were burning his eyes and though his head still spun, he had given up breathing through his tunic.

The lamassu looked at the cave and starred back at him blankly.

"Nevermind," said Eron.

"RIDDLE," said Mosul breaking into an exuberant gait and circling Eron with its beaded beard wagging under its heavy chin. "WHAT CONNECTS TWO THINGS, BUT DIVIDES MEN. ONE MAY DRAW A SMILE, BUT IT TAKES MANY TO MAKE A SINGLE WORD."

"You could just let us go," Eron muttered.

'Word' was the last word in the riddle. So, the answer had four letters.

Tunkukush's tube rattled aggressively. Nineveh nipped at it, but it was too small to catch in his teeth without biting Amit and for some reason, he seemed to have decided not to do that yet.

"YOU CAN GO," said Mosul.

"Simple!" breathed Amit as he tried to raise himself from the ground. Eron was almost more worried to see him awake than lying limp, but silent.

"JOKE!" roared Nineveh, placing a purple hoof on the boy. Its laughter echoed around the enclave and water rolled from its glassy eyes. Nineveh wrapped its wings around the front of its body and covered its face with the graceful tips. "BOO!"

Eron jumped. His heart pounded and the anger burned inside him. He had never really hated a predator before. He respected the loogaroo and the panthera. They ate to live, but the lamassu seemed to feed off their captives' fear and had their bodies for dessert.

Words were made up of lines. No matter where they were drawn. A smile could be drawn with a line. Lines could connect things. And a line could be drawn in the ground.

"Line," he blurted, not wanting to second guess himself.

The answer had come from the void from which all knowledge enters the mind. Sometimes it flowed to freely and other times it trickled to as if blocked by a large wad of stupidity. Eron had been lucky.

"BOTHER," groaned the smaller beast and it hung its head mockingly. Its chest heaved as if to cry. Mosul comforted it with his wing. They didn't care. It might have been different if the lamassu were hungry, but they weren't.

Still, there was no time to waste.

Eron pulled Amit up from the ground and draped him over his shoulder as Mosul made a sad face, which might have been cute if he didn't have dried blood clinging to his beard. They shuffled into the cave as fast as they could clear the entrance and were in complete darkness before passage narrowed enough that Eron was sure the lamassu couldn't follow. He took the fire horn from his shoulder. The coal nestled in the clump of moss, which protected it, was almost too small. But, with a little effort, he relit the torch by setting it in the burnt end of the torch and blowing slow and steady. Then they slipped and skidded down the steep path into the den, which opened again and was clear and wide enough to walk comfortably. No more pulverized bones to tread on. And the smell of death behind them was faint.

"Leave the torch," rang a tiny echo from the spider's home as it dangled around Amit's thin neck.

"We can't see," said Eron.

"It may take an hour for your eyes to adjust, but the den has its own light source."

"If you say so, but uh, where did those things come from?" asked Eron turning the torch and warming his hands on it.

"Dr. Uri made them," said the Ishim. "What is more frightening than a superior predator with average intellect and inferior compassion?"

The point was taken. Eron dropped his pack onto the dusty, but solid ground and unbelted the straps which held his bundle together. He put the tip of the torch to the floor of the cave. The flickering shadows lowered on the walls and the embers broke free, rolling back toward the entrance as if being sucked out, as he pressed down on it. Eron looked over his shoulder. He couldn't see the lamassu any longer. He couldn't see anything. Not even a gleam of moonlight pouring from the cavern mouth. It was pitch black.

"Don't relax yet," said Tunkukush. "The den has more for you."

"Like what spider man?" said Eron. Eying the dark for a good spot to lie down.

"No one will speak to you," it said. "The thieves may seem to look straight through you, but most likely they'll have everything you own by the end of the first day."

"We can take it back," said Amit.

"If they catch you, they'll kill you," said Tunkukush.

"Wait. Why should a line connectify two points?" said Amit.

"It's called geometry," said Eron. "A form of knowledge. You'd have to study it. Like writing and reading."

"Is it better than writing?" asked Amit.

"Yes," said Eron who wasn't really listening.

"Are you going to teach me gem-on-a-tree?" grabbing his slingshot and pointing it at Eron. Eron couldn't see it, but by the sound of it, he knew what the boy was doing.

"Geometry," corrected Eron as they trudged downward. "Geo has something to do with the Earth and 'metry' is when you measure the distance around and between and through things."

"Eron," sounded the metallic ring of the spider's voice from his home still hanging on Amit's chest. "You don't have many friends, do you?"

"No," said Eron sounding a bit morose. "And the one I do have hid the medicine I needed to keep the other one alive."

"I told him to take it," said the spider.

"Well," said Eron. "I'm glad we're getting to know each other."

"How far to the Den?" said Amit.

Eron shrugged.

"How far?" the boy repeated clearly unable to see him.

"Not far," said Tunkukush. "I will tap once to turn left and twice for right. There is a cave up the river where you can hide."

"When was the last time you were there?" asked Eron. He didn't really care. He was getting so tired he would have napped where they stood.

"Around 2342," said the spider. "Or 2358? Either way, it was the end of the anti-fundamentalist revolt about the time when all the holy texts were burned."

"What good are books with preholes in them?" said Amit.

"They were books about gawds and the ancient world," said Eron. "All lost to history now."

"There are digital copies on the Golem's hard drive," corrected the Ishim.

Even in the dark, Amit and Eron's blank stares were deafening.

"Oh, right," said Eron although he had no idea what the Ishim was talking about. But, being openly told he was wrong by the creature, who had lived five centuries, didn't feel good. He just wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or anger. No, it must be humiliation.

It was much colder underground.

Clean and crisp air flowed steadily through the cavern. Counter to Eron's expectations, it wasn't warm. Just a bit dank. It didn't smell of thievery, but instead the chilly corridor smelt like a tomb, dusty and old, as if the air were carrying the scent of cheese and fresh compost.

Eron and Amit sat waiting in the passage for just a few more minutes. And Amit contented himself with throwing rocks against the wall after the Ishim forbade him to use his slingshot in the cave.

"Why are we waiting so long?" moaned the kid.

Eron was tired. He stank. He could easily pass three days, four days, five days in a bed, especially his own bed back in Auck City, with nothing more than a blanket, some scrolls and a lamp. And bread straight out of the oven. With butter.

Each night on the road from Dunedin, Eron had pictured Micah and the comforts he might offer once they arrived, but with one leg already in the underworld of the thieves, his fantasy had evaporated.

D.O.T.

Den of thieves.

How could he have not made the connection?

Eron repacked his bundle by feeling the textures and shapes of its contents, a faint hint of their outline seemed visible when held each item close, but it could have been a trick of the mind.

Crunch.

It seemed like he could almost see where were shards on the ground beside his pack. It was his lamp. He went for his fire horn. He could use what was left of the ember to check the floor and see if he left anything.

"No," said the Ishim. "Put it down. No light."

"You haven't been here for 250 years? Right?" moaned Eron feeling the clay texture of one of the broken fragments.

"That's about right," said the spider.

"And we only have supplies for about four days," grumbled Eron completing his inventory.

"I've got seeds," said Amit. "Pumpkins."

"Naturally," said Eron. "Pumpkins don't need light." But, he thought again quickly and added, "They may be useful sometime down the road. Just keep them for now."

"No light," said Eron slumping down against the wall of the cave.

"Careful!" screamed the Ishim. "Don't touch anything. Your eyes are already starting to adjust. Now, let's get moving."

"Why don't we find Micah and ask him for help," Eron groaned.

"Micah wrote the code," said the spider. "Listen, no one comes to the den under anything, but extenuating circumstances."

Amit was sneaking one of the pieces of Eron's lamp. He set it quietly into the cradle of his slingshot.

"I can see that," said the spider.

And it was likely the Ishim told the truth since the metal canister around Amit's neck hung only inches from the boy's hands.

Eron started to worry that his brain would invent the information it lacked. A border of light appeared to circle the impression of his body where he had leaned against the cavern wall. It was greenish. And pale. He spread his palm and fingers and pressed them against the rock. A dark handprint remained on the surface as he drew it away, but there was no residue on his hand. Something was growing on the surfaces and whatever it was congregated in the corners, along the floor and ceiling.

"A-M-I-T," said the wild boy smugly withdrawing his finger from the cave wall. "How do you spell 'here.'"

"You don't," said the spider.

They were interrupted by the sound scuffling feet, which resonated through the cave from somewhere behind them. Amit brushed his name away leaving a trail on the surface of the cave. Eron was now able to see the path leading into the Den as well as the dark streaks where people tread in and out. Everything in the corridor glowed faintly green. Every surface had become imperceptibly brighter moment by moment, even the boulders and the fallen rocks and the stalagmites, but they couldn't make out any details of the people approaching steadily.

"Slave raiders are quasisending everyone on the run," grumbled a man. His voice carrying well enough.

"Yeah," agreed a more feminine voice. "Maybe they'll get too fat to catch us after eating all the food they're planning to grow."

"But, how many have gotten in?" said the first voice.

"Two," said what sounded like a child.

In total, seven thieves passed.

None of the weathered glares made contact. Among them four wore tricorn hats and three tattered akubra. Braids. Eron could see the texture of their leather pants clearly. Though the green light distorted the colors, which looked faded and dull, he was even starting to distinguish shades of blue, which looked greenish, from red, which appeared brownish.

"Were those monks?" whispered Eron as soon as they had gone.

"Thieves," said the Ishim. "If you met one of the monks, you'd know it."

"Why is that?" asked Eron.

"They're all Ishim," said the Ishim.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After a short series of abrupt turns and following a long narrowing corridor of glowing greenish rock to the left and then again left and left again, they stood facing a metal cage on the edge of a cliff. Behind it, the passage into the den opened before them and it was dazzling. It was a city. An underground city carved from the rock. Or at least that's what the faint outlines far in the distance in the open cavern appeared to be. It wasn't all really too clear yet.

The cage was the size and shape to fit four men, suspended within another cage, both shaped from metal. The glow dust had been wiped clear from the inner cage, but residue still collected on the top of the outer bars. It was fastened against the overhang and suspended from a dust covered high above that seemed to be fitted into the rock between the stalactites.

Amit boarded first pulled a lever on the base of the cage. The gears jolted into motion while the surrounding chains moved up and down around the fragile box.

Clank! Ker-Clank!

Just as impulsively as he had started the contraption, Amit shoved the lever back, stopping it. The cage halted a foot lower than it had been. Eron pushed the metal accordion gate open and lowered himself into the box. He noticed immediately that floor was wooden. It didn't clank. It creaked.

"Start it again," said Eron.

Amit pulled the lever again and they were going down. What Eron saw through the bars of the cage as it slowly lowered was, in his estimation, the most magnificent feat of architecture imaginable in the Liamic Era. Each doorway, every path, stair, fence, pole and bench had been carved from the rocky interior of the cave and what was removed was placed elsewhere to build up the ghostly underground city. The edges were smooth. The walls finely chiseled. There were handprints here and there on the surfaces of every walkway they passed going down. Some were older and lighter. Others were dark and obviously fresh.

Eron counted eleven stops, eleven floors in all before the ill-fitted mechanics of the device gave a final jolt. They were at the bottom.

"It's an escalator," he said carefully drawing the opposite gate of the contraption shut. It opened on all sides. Where they entered from the top of the cliff, two side exits for each walkway that led away along the cliffside and the opposite gate that opened outward on ground level facing some buildings in the distance.

Remarkable. If Eron had had a blank scroll, he would have wanted to sketch a picture of it. Though the top of the cavern wasn't visible, paths and stairs wound all around the interior. There was even an enclosed spiraling walkway that circled eleven times to the top of the cliff that ran parallel to the elevator.

"The Archive had seven levels before the ash storms," whispered Eron to no one in particular.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

It seemed the Ishim was getting impatient as they should gawping at the den. Eron and Amit walked along the lower footpaths. They could see others rounding up along the cylindrical buildings, but Tunkukush kept them walking into the thick of the city, which was lined with posts that held bowls of the green dust.

Thieves rested on benches. People were darker than everything around them, because there was little dust collecting on their person. But, as Eron's eyes adjusted to the light, he could still see them as if it were the early hours of dusk. A man in a tricorn hat stepped under a lamppost and every hair on his beard shone brightly with reddish hairs and light skin. The lines of his face dug deep, but only few steps away from the lamppost and he was again an anonymous shifting dark mass.

"There are so many," breathed Eron. "How do they all know not to speak to us?"

Ping.

Left.

Eron and Amit meandered around the periphery of the buildings trying to not stare anyone in the eye. It wasn't really a city like Auck City, more like a modest sized village square, as there was in Dunedin, but with stairs to upper levels a regular village wouldn't have. There was a creek and a stone bridge that crossed it. Benches. Drapes over the doors to people's shops and homes. Carts. Food. Unusual sorts of foods Eron had never seen before although they could have been eels. He couldn't tell. But, certainly fish. Lots of fish. In fact, everything smelled a little fishy around the buildings.

They took a tunnel that led away from the nearly bustling center down some stairs descending and broadening until they opened along side the creek where the bitter cold air rushed in and the black waters gurgled. The sound of water pouring rapidly over the aquifer echoed. Eron pulled his fur around his shoulders. A raft tied to the bank waited, but as Eron grabbed for the rope, Tunkukush banged furiously.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"Perhaps we should swim?" Eron said, dripping with sarcasm. His legs ached. His head was spinning. He was so tired he could hardly stand.

"Wade," hissed the Ishim.

Eron plunged his foot into the icy waters and felt the bottom barely higher than his knee. And just like that, he was awake again. He was starting to hate the Ishim. Walking against the current was slow. It pushed them backward, rushing around their shins.

They trudged through the waters, burning cold and turning blue, until they found a miserable rocky ledge securely boarded. Eron yanked enough planks free for them to climb into the dry space, which was about the size of a Dunedin pillared building.

He rested his head and slept immediately.

The sound of the water roared calmly and smoothly beside him when he woke. His legs hurt. Amit had built a fire and was hanging the last of his bird meat to make jerky over a makeshift spit. Eron's eyes hurt, too, though the breeze from the water whisked the smoke away from their damp enclosure. Eron scooted toward the flames and curled around the stones Amit had assembled to keep the fire contained. The green glow had faded before the warm firelight. It was so peaceful.

Eron slept again. And he stirred again later to see Amit sleeping on his bindle and they slept some more. A day may have come and gone. But, when he woke up, his trousers were completely dry, if a little stiff. He didn't open his eyes.

"Ropes in the pub," came the tiny voice inches from his ear.

Eron listened without showing that he was awake.

"Ropes," repeated the spider.

"Ropes," mumbled Eron, suppressing his amusement.

The Ishim was hanging from a web attached to the ceiling whispering its instructions into his ear.

"You want the ropes from the pub," said the Ishim.

"I will obeeeeey," said Eron, like a golem, elongating his vowels as the laugh buried just under the surface of his expression burst through.

No matter what the Ishim had planned, the first thought Eron's mind was that he was alive. There was ground beneath him. Fire beside him. Water. Food. Well, not much, but a little. All of his legs and arms were still attached to his body. Nothing was being burned to the ground. No arrows or pikes flying. No blood spills or screams. He wasn't sick. Nothing was trying to eat him. This. This was bliss. The small part of him that missed his mother and needed something new to read couldn't compete with the sheer joy he was experiencing just realizing that he had opened his eyes.

No one could take that from him. Not even a plotting Ishim.

"Tunkukush, leave me alone," he laughed.

"What did I say?" said the spider crawling up it's thread away from Eron who turned his back from the meager coals still burning in the pit.

"You were talking," said Eron. "That's bad enough."

"You must have been dreaming," said the Ishim.

"Wait. I've got an idea," said Eron rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Does it involve ropes?" asked Amit with a smirk. "Because, I know where to get them."

"Let me think about this," Eron said stretching. He yawned. "Are they in the pub? Let's go get some rope."

"Simple!" said Amit rolling himself up into a sitting position.

"Good idea," said the spider.

"No," said Eron pulling in another wide yawn and flailing his arms out. "Not yet. I've earned this. Only a bed could make this better."

When he got up, which was quite a while later, he felt new. Eron took a rock from the ground and began a tally on the rock face. Fourteen days had come and gone since he left Dunedin. Only forty more to wait until he spoke with Micah. The coating of dust on the walls scratched away easily and fell in clumps, which Eron formed into a ball the size of his thumb. From the rubble in the corners of the enclave and the density of the greenish powder, which he could barely see after Amit put another piece of drift wood on their tiny blaze, it was obvious no one had been there for ages. Even a thief on the run from the other thieves wouldn't be foolish enough to stay there. One tremor and they would all be covered in boulders. The buildings and the tunnels above in the main chamber of the cavern were reinforced with beams. This roomy area was not.

"We need eye patches," said Amit.

"What for?" asked Eron.

"To keep one eye conditioned to the dark," said Tunkukush.

It made sense. If they wanted to keep a fire, they would still need to see in the cave without waiting hours for their vision to adjust.

"I guess we can make some," said Eron.

With some leather from their furs and threads from the arms of Eron's spare tunic, they fastened patches to tie around an eye.

"What are you doing?" demanded the Ishim after Eron had finished.

"I'm putting my things away," said Eron. He had his bundle open and was chewing on some of Amit's bird meat.

The scrolls were in relatively good shape though they'd been rained on and the edges were soaked through. He had both of the tinctures thanks to Amit and the Ishim conspiring against him. He still wished he could have saved Eloise. Whatever the one vial contained, he had never seen anything like it before. Who knew? It might even bring back the dead. The fire horn and the bota had been invaluable. He looked their straps over for signs of wear.

"Will you be doing that all day?" asked Tunkukush.

"Does it matter?" asked Eron rhetorically.

Although he slept on his gray cloak and the fur he took from the vendors, it was not something he ever wore. He was Auckian. Auckians wore robes. Cloaks were popular in the far western fields, but they made great bundles when used with a leather strap set. Eron had taken to rolling the vials and the lens in his loin clothes, which he then rolled inside the discourses, which went inside the cloak that he bound tightly with the straps. Eron typically wore both his yellow tunic and the navy tunic he got from the weaver's son though when it was warm, he often rolled one of them tightly around the discourses before rolling them all inside the cloak. Aden's knife went in the blade guard attached to his thick leather belt. He had only one pair of trousers, one pair of boots from the villagers and one set of knit stockings made by his mother.

It was time to wash them again.

"Eron," said Tunkukush who had returned to the metal canister around Amit's neck. "Is that necessary right now?"

He had started to strip his clothes for a dunk in the aquifer.

"Are all 500 year old men so impatient?" said Eron.

"You have half a dry bird left," said the tinny ringing voice from the metal canister.

"And some pemican," said Eron holding up a chunk the size of his fist.

"You have to learn to steal," said the spider.

"Right now?" said Eron. "I think I've earned some time to rest."

"Yesterday, I agreed with that. Today, I don't. You slept two days already," said the spider. "That's fifteen days you should have marked on your calendar. Not fourteen. And most of those days you didn't eat."

"Amit and I can go many days without eating." He waved at them both.

"You already have," said the spider. "Amit even longer."

Eron touched his sunken stomach.

"You're going to need your strength for this," said Tunkukush.

"Let me think about it," said Eron. But, he didn't mean it. The spider had a point.

As instructed, the boys ventured back into the heart of the D.O.T. and found what looked like the pub. It was on the third level by the elevator and had recently been emptied. Mugs and wooden plates littered the table. The rock floor was coated with medicinal wine and other types of alcohol Eron had never smelled before.

"Why can't we just eat rats?" said Amit looking in through a chiseled opening in the outer wall of the pub, resting his arms on the wide bank. Rodent droppings had collected in the corner of the window and mixed with a buildup of the green dust.

As far as Eron could tell, the thieves dusted their chambers regularly to keep the lighting low. The dust, once you adjusted to seeing it, shone with the brilliance of midday, if noon had been a typically peridot sort of hue. The thieves preserved the batches of dust they collected in containers of every construction and size. At the pub, they were set on the doorsteps. They would bring them in to light the room when it opened.

Unlike the people above ground, thieves in the D.O.T. slept in a pattern of about four hours broken only by a drinking ruckus for three hours and then another four of sleep before they wandered from their stoney rooms to engage the day productively. The slovenly shenanigans halted dead in their tracks while the pub owner slept, but they started again as soon as he woke up.

Two sleeps. Four hours each.

Eron reckoned, after watching the coming and going of the inebriated thieves for a few days, that the storage room would be heavily guarded. But, it was easy enough to find. The pub workers had to fetch fresh barrels regularly down a long alley alongside the pub through the only wooden door in the den that was barred shut and bolted.

"If we can get in, we could hide in the empty wine barrels during their first sleep, covering our scent with coffee grounds. We plug the lock and leave during their second sleep. We take the ropes and coffee. Nothing else," said Eron.

"Why do we need ropes?" asked Amit.

"Tunkukush," yelled Eron once they'd arrived wet up to the kneed and still hungry back at their forgotten chamber. "Why pray tell do we need the ropes?"

"Tunkukush," Eron repeated tapping the canister.

Two smokey eyes popped through the holes on its side.

"Must I cater to your every whim?" groaned the spider. "Do you know the story of the boy who cried wolf?"

"I don't know what a wolf is," said Eron.

"Like a loogaroo," it replied, a bit gruffly. "It's a clever parable with a profound moral that goes like this - there was once a spider who stopped coming out of his home, because a young man bothered him once too many."

"What's a moral?" asked Amit.

"Leave the spider alone or he won't come out," said the Ishim. "And I'd like to be put down for a while."

"That's the moral of that story only," corrected Eron. "A moral in general is- Well, it's concerned with right and wrong."

"So, I'm not a moral," said Amit, setting the metal canister on a boulder in the far corner of the cave.

"You're pretty good sometimes," said Eron, subtly congratulating himself on his own wit.

"I'm suprabadified!" Amit protested. "I'll be a thief and I'll never have to be good again. Until I'm a highwayman."

"That is not even English," said Eron.

"What is English?" asked Amit.

"It's what we speak."

"I don't speak English," said the boy.

Eron sat down and started to massage his head. He was getting frustrated. He got up and went to the Ishim's canister.

"Tunkukush," he said, tapping the tube with his grubby nail. "Didn't Gil send you with us to help me?"

The spiders eyes popped from the holes on his canister again and looked at Eron, "You're hungry, aren't you?" It said softly. Almost compassionately.

Eron nodded and felt his ribs sticking out.

"Then, stop feeling your stomach and look for something to eat!" it yelled, seeping back into the canister. "And don't forget the ropes. Now, leave me alone."

"Can't you just disguise yourself as someone else?" Eron pleaded. "And what do ropes have to do with food? Why aren't we trying to take some food?"

"Come here. Closer to me. Both of you." Amit and Eron leaned over the tube, but the spider didn't come out. "Listen carefully, I lose mass every time I change shape, move, talk or even think," it said, echoing from its little gray holder. "I could get the ropes for you, but I will disappear before I get back with them."

"Do you need coffee?" asked Eron thoughtfully.

Coffee made their ancestors evolve into Ishim through a process called dedensification. That was what Achazya said. Ishim coffee. Not any sort of coffee. If you were young, it aged you. If you were old, it repaired you. If you were wounded, it healed you.

"It won't help," came the grumbly echo.

"Is that what is in my vial?" said Eron, suddenly struck with suspicious epiphany. He ran to his things, which were meticulously laid out on the ground beside the empty fire pit. "Where are they?"

"I buried them," said Amit.

"Why in all the years since the alliance landed would you bury them?" said Eron exasperated.

"Tunkukush said."

"And he made you hide them when Eloise was dying," said Eron.

Amit nodded.

"It's the Ishim coffee, isn't it?" said Eron. He was only a handful of internal diatribes away from losing his mind. Ishim. Real. Ishim Coffee. Also real?

"Yes," said the spider. "But, it won't help me. Just get some ropes."

"Come on," said Eron. "Anyway, I need to use the toilet."

"Toilet?" asked Amit. He had probably never heard the word before.

"A latrine." Still no sign of recognition. "It's a hole in the ground to relieve yourself and bury it where it doesn't stink," explained Eron.

"Mine's over there," said boy, pointing to the other corner of the room.

Amit followed Eron past a line of thieves still acting oblivious, still going about their business, muttering, gesturing, carrying things, bodies, plunder, and generally living the life of a scoundrel. They had come to regard the thieves like shadows, generally disregarding their presence, in the same way the thieves disregarded them.

"How simple! That's the latrine, isn't it?" said the boy, pointing to a cluster of doors with crescent moons.

Eron opened a stall door while Amit tried the adjacent booth. A whirring noise erupted beside Eron like the sound of a river crashing against a boat. Amit threw open the door.

"You're not even wet, are you?" said Eron. The latrines were positioned over the exposed part of the aquifer and emptied into them. During the few days they'd been in the cave, Eron had learned that the water was piped into the rooms from above. Ground level water carried away the waste. So, when they were walking home to their little enclave, they were effectively in the sewer. "They've even got some fine papers to rub on your nether regions," he told Amit, feeling the texture of the material. "This is paper, but not as hard as the stuff they use at the Archive."

"I'm taking some for the fire," said Amit shoving a stack into the pocket of his knickerbockers.

He had never announced his intention to steal before.

"You can never underestimate the importance of sanitation," Eron lectured. "Sanitation is civilization. My mother would call this a wretched den of sin and despondency, but I think even she would appreciate these toilettes. Especially this paper."

"Desponden-what?" asked Amit.

"I don't know," said Eron, exiting the stall. "Something bad. I guess I just needed to exercise my vocabulary before I lost it." He shrugged. "Better than always going supra-this and anti-that."

Amit kicked the back of his heel. "You think I'm an idiot," he spat pounding Eron on the temple.

"No," said Eron. He ducked and covered his head to avoid the boy's wrath. Amit might blow off steam now and then and steal things, but Eron couldn't imagine he'd actually hurt his blood brother. "Wait! Look up there!"

"I'm not falling for that," said Amit, though he did stop pounding on him.

The latrines opened into an open parklike area. Nothing was growing, but there were benches around the open space. And there was a view of the elevator, the spiral stair and farther down along around the inside of the cavern where no rooms were carved into the interior wall, beside the end the fourth to eleventh floor, were words. The Municipal Code. It had been etched into the wall. And not in the nomadic symbols, but in English. Modern English.

"Don't steal everything?" Eron read aloud. "That's not how I remember it."

"Simple," said Amit with reverent admiration. "Thieves can read, too."

They also noticed beams across the third, sixth and ninth levels. It caught both the boys' attention at the same time. They looked at each other knowingly. A pattern of wear on the third floor where the dust had been worn at different points along the beams revealed that someone had slung across them.

"I could lower you straight down over there," said Eron, pointing at the main walkway between the taller buildings. Right above the vendors.

"Do you think anyone will try to kill me for taking this?" said Amit patting his pocket.

"The paper?" said Eron. "No, latrine paper is usually free, though not as nice. But, that won't matter considering everything else we're going to need."

They crouched down behind a restaurant that had been chiseled from the ground in one round piece in the center of the open space. And plotted. Together, Eron and Amit hatched an infallible plan to get the ropes they needed from the pub. Eron was sure that the only way the pub owner could bring the wine barrels to the third level was by hoisting them up from the main road. And he figured that was how Tunkukush knew they had ropes in the store room. The spider must have noticed on the way in. So, once they had a few ropes, they could sling Amit over a beam, lower him to bottom level and pilfer the supply carts while they passed. It couldn't be any simpler.

"Simple, so, let's get more paper," suggested Amit.

"Right," said Eron.

They went back to the latrines.

Eron fed stack after stack of soft tissue to Amit through the air vents in the rear of the latrine where the boy waited to catch them. It might not have been the most obvious method for collecting all the paper, but it was better to have one person going in and out of the stalls and one walking away with all the paper. Amit tied the tissues to his chest under his tunic with a bit of string Eron found on a lamppost.

Then, they waited in cold breezy latrines. Right before the first sleep of the evening, the pub owner went to the store room for a fresh barrel, leaving the solid wooden door ajar. Eron was ready. He crept up behind him and while standing in the doorway stuffed the lock with a wad of tissue.

"Is the pub still open?" Eron asked him, making a lame excuse for being there before the man noticed him.

The owner looked up, but said nothing when he saw who it was. The burly man had thick hairy arms and a long gray beard, which brushed against the barrel as he rolled it out of the door with his oversized palms. The man kicked the door shut behind him. And it stuck in a closed position, but only Eron could hear clearly that the latch mechanism had failed.

"Why the coffee?" asked Amit when they were in the storeroom rubbing the grounds on their nearly thread bare tunics.

"It covers the smell of anything. Even us," said Eron, reaching for the lid to the empty barrel and pulling it over him. Inside the barrel, Eron removed his stockings, filled them with the coffee grounds he'd collected and tied them to his belt.

A revel of intoxicated singing pounded across the walkway beside the alley. And then it was silent. The second sleep had began. Like a ball player, Amit threw open the wooden door of the stall and together, they dragged a man-shaped mass of rope, which they had covered in tissue and Eron's spare tunic and fur. It was the most pathetic ruse imaginable, but what thief would stop them. They slide the rope dummy to the river without being asked any questions, which was partly owning to the fact that everyone was either sleeping, drunk or indoors. No guards among thieves.

"I, Eron of Auck City, the first scribe to outwit thieves in their own den!" cried Eron once they'd reached their chamber.

"And I!," started Amit. He stopped shouting and looked embarrassed.

"Amit," offered Eron.

"Amit of, uh," said Amit, concentrating.

"Amit, wild boy of the waste!" said Eron quickly.

"Never mind," said the boy, slumping against the wall.

"A natural thief like you doesn't have to boast," said Eron. The boy brightened.

It was true.

Thieving did not come as easily to Eron as it did for Amit whose genius and composure during the process was unparalleled. Eron didn't think he was doing that bad. He just wasn't that good. Every day after the two sleeps when the supply carts arrived, Eron lowered Amit from a beam and the spotted boy swiftly selected a few of life's basic necessities from whatever was brought in. The beams were not easy to make out in the dark. And a boy with no dust on his body, hanging in the air, was even harder for the recently arrived thieves to see. Their carts were nothing more than the sort of wheelbarrows the Dunedin farmers used. But, Amit could pick anything from a pile with his toes. The boy knew timing. He knew when to let a cart pass. He knew how much he could take. All Eron had to do was hold the rope and pull him up if anyone approached the ledge on the level where he kept watch.

At first, Amit kept their ambitions modest. An onion. The first day. They roasted it. The next day. Another onion. Also roasted. Some moa feathers for bedding. It was a matter of getting a bit of whatever came by. More onions. Some garlic. The days and the sleeps passed slowly with little to eat. It was easier for Amit who didn't need as much. At the cavern, they studied the sounds of letters and began stringing words together. It was amazing how fast the days could pass when there was little more to do than wait.

But, a day came rather quickly when Amit looked over the wheelbarrow full of root vegetables and saw something he wanted much much more. Amit stole a freshly pressed tricorn hat with a fine golden feather from one of the lamassu.

"You can't wear that anywhere," said Eron, as Amit set his new black hat on his greasy yellow head.

Their bellies were hardly bursting. Churning. Gurgling. But, not bursting. Although Eron held the rope, Amit took what he liked. After a few more days, he had upgraded almost all his gear. But they hadn't eaten. It took a little coaxing from Tunkukush before Amit agreed to give Eron a chance on the rope so he could focus on the necessities. Like food.

Supplying an underground village was not like supplying the Auck City market. Eron estimated that there were only 150 people in the den at any given time. There were no street vendors. No market. Just a few shops, a pub and the restaurant in the open space. Only a few wheelbarrows entered each day. Whatever came is what had to be eaten.

It wasn't as easy for Amit, being smaller, to lower Eron, but it was made easier adding extra rope and having Eron climb out onto a higher beam and sling it over before wrapping it again around the lower one.

Once over the wheelbarrow, which had stopped beside the restaurant, Eron sorted through a heap of cherries. He was looking for something he liked more than cherries when he spied a crate full of books being loaded into a cart by a thief at the base of the elevator. It was nothing like the scrolls made by the Yellow Guard, but a text. A dingy text, bound on the side, with square bits of paper stacked one on top of the other. Real paper. Not the latrine tissue either. It was solid and undoubtedly coated in modern print. Eron was frothing at the mouth.

He untied the loose end of the rope attached to his belt. Amit looked down at him from the overhead ledge. Eron held out his hands in the shape of a book and mouthed the word 'book' over and over until Amit quit shaking his head. Eron grabbed three books. Shaking with excitement, he retied the rope, and yanked it until the wild boy pulled the rope one arm length at a time until it snapped.

Thud!

Eron hit the ground.

Before he could yell out, he felt a gag pulled between his teeth. His wrists were quickly bound by the stolen rope. Amit dashed toward the ground floor, but was easily taken by the men waiting for him. With hands bound and arms tightly secured to their torsos, also covered with the old fraying rope, they were marched downward and onward through a long tunnel on the sixth level of the underground city. They were led past a small army of highway men, who shoved the two novice thieves into an arched entrance that was marked with modern writing. They fell on their sides in an open room in the middle of a ring of solemn and shadowy figures, all of which hovered in the air a few inches from the ground.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"I think they're Ishim," whispered Amit.

Eron shook his head in gravely in agreement.

It went without saying.

The twelve levitating immortals seated themselves at a wooden semicircular table. It looked as ancient as they did. One of the highway men, tied Eron and Amit to two wooden seats in the middle of the rocky chamber. He reeked of onions, probably owning the six full wheelbarrows brought during the last two weeks. It was what everyone was eating. The ceiling in the chamber was high. Too far to see and too far to see to the top, but endless shelving, around and up, was clearly carved into the walls.

Behind the twelve Ishim, both men and women, all wearing tricorn hats gathered. There may have been twenty in total, but Eron wasn't counting.

"Look at all. The. Books," he gasped.

Around the circular room, the stone shelves teamed with row after row of modern texts. Each section must have held one hundred or more. Multiply that by twenty, which seemed to be about how many sections there were around the perimeter. Eron couldn't tell completely, because the men and immortals were standing in the way, but there were seven sections vertically reaching the height of the door in the back of the room. The room being at least four doors high itself. Eron could make that judgement, because a ladder was perched against a balcony where another collection of books rose higher toward the ceiling, interrupted by another balcony and another ladder.

"All stand for Grand Marshal," bellowed a thief standing by the door where they entered.

One of the Ishim, a decidedly bookish looking man thin and pale, unlike Tunkukush, walked in through the back door and took his seat at the middle of the semicircle, "Pardon, Ruth, if I could just get you to shift your chair over a few inches that would be splendid."

A middle aged looking Ishim scooted her chair so the man could step around. He didn't carried less presence than the thief who announced him.

"So, let's get started already," said the Ishim adjusting his glasses and reading from a paper set on the table before him. "Eron of Auck City and guest. What is this boy's name?"

"Amit," said Eron. The question didn't seem directed to anyone in particular. Eron looked around at the faces assembled. No one reacted. No one questioned.

"Good enough," said the Ishim filing it in with a pencil. "Eron and Amit. You are charged with unlicensed theft and novice level evasion. How do you plead?"

"Oh, they're guilty, Micah," sounded the familiar voice of Tunkukush.

Eron and Amit looked at each other. The surprise was apparent in both of their eyes. Eron shrugged.

Tunkukush appeared to seep from the bookcase behind them, like a misty fog. He became a man wearing a majestic war bonnet. Layers of bright feathers crowned his head, cascading to the floor. Thick. Intensely beaded band flowing with stiff rods and vibrant feathers.

"Kindly remove your hat," sighed Micah. "We have a strict policy about hats."

Tunkukush's bonnet evaporated. Then Micah and the Ishim he called Ruth, casually discussed something called 'plumbing' and 'personal hygiene' as they waited for one of the highway men to fetch something from the back room.

"Is that really necessary?" groaned Micah.

Tunkukush had replaced his bonnet with a heavy set of metal chains.

"Try me as a man or try me as an Ishim," he replied coldly. "Could you obey all the laws of both men and Ishim, but enjoy not a single privilege of either?"

"She's not one of us," said Ruth.

"I've waited far too long for this opportunity, you punitive old academic," said Tunkukush. He was looking directly at Micah.

"And you're going to have to wait a little longer," the Grand Marshall calmly. "The law is the law."

"And who interprets it?" he said.

Something about the vibrations of the Ishim's voice sent chills through Eron.

"Micah, please proceed," said the thief who had announced him. The absent highwayman set a pencil beside Micah and returned to the lineup where he had been standing before.

"I don't think these are all the papers I need," said Micah who finished riffling through the pages in front of him. "We'll have to schedule a short recess later."

"When was the last time all forty were gathered?" said Tunkukush.

"We do it more often these days," said Micah.

"Don't you notice anything about the boy?"

Eron looked at Amit. That time, Amit shrugged.

While Tunkukush preoccupied himself with lighting a pipe fashioned from his own smoke, it began to dawn on Eron that the Ishim were not looking at his spotted companion. Each seemed to avert their gaze when their eyes met. And all eyes. All Ishim eyes. Were on him.

"So, he looks like Liam?" said Micah, sounding impatient. He set down his spectacles. "Tell me why?"

"A clone," said Tunkukush swishing a tiny fire stick in the air until the flame vanished. His mock pipe mockingly lit. "You can tell by his skin."

Micah grew paler. His skin, hair and clothing lightened in a flush, in a way only an Ishim change. If the other Ishim didn't float or do other impossible things like lengthening their arms to reach in front of them, Eron might have mistaken them all for humans. Although they did all appear to be in perfect health. To a fault even. Not a single scar or blemish on any of them except Tunkukush whose skin and clothing was flaky and gray.

"We'll reconvene later," said Micah closing his eyes. "I must speak with our honored elders and also, Tunkukush." The way he said it betrayed a lot about how the Ishim felt about each other. Respect and extreme distaste.

All twelve immortals lifted their index fingers and connected at the tips. Tunkukush levitated across the room to join them.

Eron put his arm around the spotted boy who pulled away and shot Eron a look heaping with shame. Although Eron had counted their days in the den, he wasn't entirely sure if he'd counted all the sleeps accurately. There was no sun rising. No clocks ticking. No sure way to tell if it had been thirty eight days or forty two. He just didn't know.

After a moment spent in utter silence, the Ishim broke contact and lowered their hands. A few rubbed their temples. Eron couldn't tell if they were in pain, frustrated or if linking together as they did was just overwhelming.

"Our verdict is rendered," Micah announced. "Tunkukush will bear responsibility for these two." He snapped his fingers. A puff of smoke escaped between them.

Micah scribbled on the paper and then instructed the bailiff, the thief that slouched in the doorway, to take the paper. He disappeared through the back door.

"Those in favor," said Micah.

It was unanimous.

The Ishim turned to the old man,"You are banned for an additional century. In two days, the boys must report back to the Bailey in two days to be entered into the register. Amit will return the hat."

"Eron took it," said Amit pointing at Eron.

"Did he?" said Micah, not sounding remotely interested. "Dismissed."

"One problem," said Tunkukush. "You still have to deal with the highwaymen. They acknowledged novices just by showing up here."

"Sentenced to death without trial," yawned the Ishim. The forty men behind them drew their knives. Micah motioned for them to be lowered. Cautiously, the highway men responded.

Micah put his hand across his eyes and tilted his head, "I am being lectured on the code by a man who has received consecutive banishment for the past 300 years. Can somebody stop this ride? I want to get off."

Tukukush once again stood tall in his war bonnet. He nodded. And then vanished.

Eron and Amit were unceremoniously thrown from the Bailey and untied in the center of the den. In two days, they returned. With the hat. They found the bailiff who led them into a small room on the ground level adjacent to the Bailey. Roots hung from the ceiling. He was a tall man with thin brown braids and narrow features. Eron had thought he was a thief, but there was something about the way he affected the walk of a man. His stride was too wide for anything, but an Ishim.

"Forty days," he said rubbing his hands together. It was all so much more bureaucratic than Eron had expected.

The bailiff's eyes were set deeply into his skull. He was surprisingly graceful in manner and had an enchantingly modern accent, which sounded as if it were reading straight from Liam's Discourses. Not unlike Micah and the others. Tunkukush didn't sound that way. Although older, he was so much more normal.

"Were you one of the originals?" asked Eron.

"I was born one hundred and sixteen years after the ship landed," the man said. "My parents were from India."

"You're an Indian, like Tunkukush?" asked Amit.

"Different India," he said sharply. "Hold up both your hands and repeat the Code with me."

Amit and Eron followed the man's lead. The code of the thieves in essence followed the Municipal Code of Auck City, which Eron knew by heart. There were variances. A few exceptions. But, by and large, it was the same.

The Ishim entered their names onto a scroll.

"Jacob of the Roads, Sarah of the Roads, Ben of the Roads, Moen of the Roads, Ezekial of the Roads, Amit of the Roads and now, Eron of Auck City," the bailiff mused looking over his record. "There is a first time for everything I suppose."

"Has anyone seen Tunkukush since the, um, trial?" Eron asked.

"You chose poor company, Eron," said the bailiff. "As one of us now, you can change that."

"How many people survive?" Eron asked quickly. There were so many unanswered questions. "As novices. Here."

"Almost everyone," the Ishim said, getting up and leading them to the door. "The challenge isn't being a thief. It's wanting it enough to come here. Will you excuse me?"

"But, the Ishim," said Eron. "Are they the monks?"

The bailiff escorted them out. "Yes. Yes," he said, pulling the banner over the opening.

"I thought people their age would be more patient," Eron said to Amit. "Not less." Some of the men were walking toward them. Thieves in den were drab looking people. In the near dark, they looked even worse.

"I don't care," said the spotted boy whose eyes were filled with dreams and far away imaginings.

One of the thieves ventured forward and shook the young boy's spotted hand. They welcomed the young men. Despite having pretended not to see them for a full forty days, every man and woman now exuded a warmth Eron couldn't trust as readily as Amit did.

Amit revealed in it.

And the thieves seemed to regard them as local celebrities. Even the forty highway men. Amit busily chattered with the braided men and women still eyeing their hats. The boy radiated joy as he followed them to the pub where he immediately turned all of his attention to acquiring his own tricorn hat. The pub, packed tightly with foul smelling men who rarely bathed or cleaned their teeth, offered the best education on the island. For anyone who wanted to be a thief.

Amit had found himself. Even though his feet dangled far from touching the rock floor.

At a very young age, the boy had identified his path through life among the ranks and swarms of other human beings. And Eron felt more lost than ever. He wasn't enjoying the medicinal wine or the way their new companions rubbed Amit's hair. It seemed everyone was smiling except him. Amit, surrounded by other people, lifted his mug in Eron's direction. Eron leaned, alone and confused, on the bar. He hated wine. He'd always hated wine.

From the first time he opened a book, Eron had been consumed by the written word. Little scratches that could be translated into sounds. Into ideas. The records of other people's thoughts. Without words hovering two to three feet in front of his face, he felt useless.

Nothing more than a refugee.

"You don't have to live like that now," said the white haired old lady leaning on the bar beside him.

"At least I'm free," said Eron, stomaching a gulp of his dark herby wine. "Even if I can't go home. At least I'm free." He'd been explaining his life story in way too much detail.

"Everyone has to fight for that," said woman patting his arm with her wrinkled old hand. She was so pale Eron doubted she had left the den in decades. Her skin. Her hair. Even her eyes were too pale.

The many floor to ceiling beams in the pub blocked Eron's view of the musicians playing string instruments. Four in total. The tune they plucked seemed to float through the air. It felt like strings, or something. He was drinking too much. A complicated composition, their music had the quality of having thought too hard, trying too hard to impress and that unmistakable edge of acceptance when the musician gives into his own work. It wasn't the rowdy din Eron expected. It was glorious. Visionary. Something that would be played in the Auckian Archive and maybe was. Like Gil, they could be escaped entertainers. Maybe they brought books with them.

Like a craving, a burning hunger, Eron couldn't stop thinking about books.

The last thing Eron had read from his withering copy of Liam's Discourse was about the aftermath of a great rocks falling from the sky. Meteorites. Is what the modern's called them. They blasted through the air toward the earth so ferociously that the ground shook and volcanoes erupted. Liam, the great leader, remained safely at sea on a type of vessel called a cruise ship. Many of them became Ishim until the strain of Ishim coffee was lost. That was the story at least. Something awakened in Eron, that moment as he slumped against the bar. As if he realized that his education had effectively blindfolded him from the truth. Distance. He had never believed in the Ishim, because he'd never read about them. He knew the megafauna had been made by a genetic engineer called Uri, but he still doubted the histories. And the lamassu.

Clone.

The word Tunkukush had used at the Bailey. Achazya never mentioned the word during Eron's tutelage.

"Clone," Eron mouthed the word as he held his hand to his eye trying to look as though he might be stopping the pressure of a headache rather than repress a renegade tear.

Sitting still amid the commotion and excitement, a woman winked at him. She had long black braids, but was attractive despite her looming stature. She may have been in her late 20s, but the sun had taken its toll on her skin. The woman walked to the door and waited for him, holding the banner open, until Eron followed. The old woman waved as Eron took his fur from the back of the stool. Embarrassed, he nodded.

Outside, the thieves mulled about busily crating plunder from one place to the next in sacks and wheelbarrows. It was hours until the next sleep and something had obviously happened outside. But, the unbearably loud clamor of activity faded as Eron strolled down the covered walkways and across the bridge over the underground river behind the woman. The open river rushed along quietly below their feet. She stopped next to the latrines.

"I want to go home," said Eron with a quiet, sad laugh.

He leaned over the railing and buried his head in his arms.

The woman patted his back. Eron didn't move. She stroked the back of Eron's head maternally as he starred at the water. It wasn't what he expected, but he was a bit drunk.

"We are not whole enough to mourn the sadness sometimes. It remains trapped inside until we have put the pieces back together." Her voice was gentle.

"Sorry," said Eron. "I'm Auckian. I don't know what you're saying. But, I-I feel fine. Do you live around here? I do. I think. Yeah, I do."

"I'm from Waimate," she said.

"I was there when it-" Eron couldn't say it. Burned.

"I'm Ester."

"Eron," said Eron.

"Watch this," she said.

The dark haired woman brushed a bit of dust into her palm and tiptoed over the far side of the bridge and let the green particles funnel through it onto the surface of the water. Eron leaned over to see the dark waters illuminated, sparkling, rippling and passing underneath them. There were pebbles resting on the riverbed. He could see coins. Weapons. Broken crates.

"It's like an underwater archive of criminal history," Eron laughed.

"Micah says you're a wordsmith," she said.

"He told you that?" Eron asked.

"He said you were just like Liam," she said.

Eron was dizzy enough that the intensity of her stare didn't make him uncomfortable.

"Liam was his father," she said. "He told one of the highway men that you're a clone. Of him."

"I don't know what a clone is," said Eron.

The lights in the water were swimming. Spinning. So was his head.

"It's just an impressive way of making a twin."

"Gil's twin?" shouted Eron.

Ester shushed him. "I don't know Gil," she said.

"I don't want to know," said Eron, belching over the river. "Him."

He was so sick.

Once he recovered, enough to see his hands clearly, Eron looked pensively about the interior of the den. There were food service workers, tailors, small merchants and even people who did laundry for other thieves. As they did every night since Eron arrived, the thieves in the pub drank until the majority collapsed sleeping in piles with mugs half-drained in their hands. But, that night the pub owner closed the shop around until the first sleep ended. The Red Guards often keeled over onto the similarly limp piles of human wreckage when new recruiters graduated from their training. The Green Guards never did. There wasn't enough alcohol in the island to bring them down. That night, Amit was among the fallen. Eron left him at the pub as he and Ester talked about their families.

"I've never actually had a conversation with a thief before," Eron admitted. "Why were there forty highway men at my trial? And why do the Ishim hide down here? What do they do all day? How many people live here anyway?"

"There are plenty of thieves," she said brushing his black hairs away from his mouth. They had grown over his face since he last cut them in Dunedin. "But, there are only ever forty highway men. Micah prefers it that way, I guess. Something out of one of his books."

He reached over to touch her braid, but she pulled back.

He flushed.

"I'm not as drunk as you," she tried to explain.

Ester insisted on walking him home. Eron and Amit had been given their own residence on the fifth level of the third building in the center of the den. Eron forgot and started to lead her down to the aquifer. Ester skillfully redirected him and took him to his door. Though happy to have his own space and shelving, Eron had no food to offer the woman since all their stolen property had been confiscated. There had only been onions anyway.

The room was dusty. Amit would have been satisfied to sleep in the near blinding light rather than brush it away and put the luminescent material in a pot. Not Eron. He made a mental note to clean before anyone else saw it. Ester declined his offer to visit his chamber. So, they sat outside on the balcony where she told him all about her trade as a potter. They talked through the quiet hours of the night while others snored away their intoxication. Ester was particularly fond of making pots with holes in them that formed patterns on the wall. Eron loved the sound of her voice.

"Or, you could make little loops on the pot and hang them from the ceiling," came the tiny voice of a spider.

"What is with you and ropes?" groaned Eron. Although, actually, he was relieved the spider was back.

Tunkukush climbed swiftly up his thread toward the ceiling.

"It was just an idea," said the creature crawling away indigently.

"I need to sleep so I can make more plunder tomorrow," she said, getting up and offering Eron her hand.

"When you gain something honestly, it's called a product, not plunder," corrected Eron.

"Good night, Eron," said Ester.

Although he could no longer imagine that gawds watched over them through the many layers of rock that formed the mountain, he thought maybe there were other ones that protected the underground city. It was so old. And it was safe. And something about being off the road and away from all the dangers of nature was blissful, even if he didn't have access to the Ishim's library. Yet.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Eron woke to the outline of the bailiff in his doorway holding a clipboard and bit of charcoal. His head was pounding like an Auckian tax collector in spring.

"We're just friends," cried Eron bolting upright.

But, Ester was gone.

"I'll make a note of it," said the bailiff dryly. "I'm taking census. Two occupants. Male. On youth. Where is the other one?"

"Still out," said Eron, rubbing his face with his palms. He sat up and looked around the bright room. "Glad it's census, not rent," he said, trying to smile even though it hurt his face.

"That, too," said the Ishim. "You will need to join our labor force unless you plan to bring back plunder."

"No one said anything about paying rent," said Eron.

"Nothing in this world is free," droned the Ishim. "Report to my office before the first sleep and I'll get you registered."

"I thought that was the point of being a thief," said Eron.

Ester was at her wheel when Eron found her room. The wheel spun rhythmically as she hummed. Fresh bowls lined the shelves. Many had designs pressed into them with sticks and rods, but a few where painted. One in particular caught Eron's eye. It was the cave, but rather than being aglow in green dust, it was purple and behind, a great white light instead of the endless darkness. Incredible. She was, in Eron's estimation, an excellent potter. The lumps of clay stacked beside her wheel appeared to be a dark brown, but Eron knew in sunlight, it would be reddish. And though crude and thick, their form was skillfully fluid.

"Do we have to get married n-now?" he stammered nervously.

It was a question that weighed heavily on his mind since he woke that morning. He'd never touch a girl's hair before. In his city, the question wouldn't even need asking.

"Tempting offer," Ester smirked, dipping her hands into a pot of water and tilting them at an angle over his wheel. She began to shape a rough ball of clay secured to the base of her wheel. Her foot bobbed up and down on the pedal. But, when she saw how violently Eron's legs were shaking, she stopped the wheel, slowly bringing the clay into a half formed lump. After wiping her hands on her heavy gray apron for some time, she got up and brought a cushion for him to sit on.

"This isn't Auck City, Eron. We can wear our hair loose. No face paint required. Trousers even. And there is no shame in having friends," Ester added, putting a clay kettle, she had obviously made herself, over the grate on her small fire.

Eron's mother would not approve. Women in trousers were not women. Thadine had once poured over Bo, their neighbor, now Captain. She brought the girl dresses and ribbons. When Bo joined the Red Guard, Thadine stopped inviting her to the factory. Eron didn't know what he thought.

"Auckian women don't have to wear face paint or cover their hair," he said. "I think it protects their skin from sun damage."

Ester furrowed her brow, "What happens when they don't?"

The conversation was not going well. Eron made a lame excuse to leave, before he walked into any more serious levels of trouble, and headed back to his own chamber where he discovered Amit sprawled out, arms and legs over the floor, face down. Eron pulled the woolen banner across his front door and stepped around the spotted boy, making sure to accidentally plant a quick jab in his rib with a toe. The boy groaned.

Eron's bundle and what remained of his possessions were laid out along the counter, carved out of the rock. No joints. Just chips and scratches from years of use. He didn't remember doing that.

His loin cloths, nearly the texture of bark, were just a straight piece of light weight fabric with two strings on either end. The strings were tied in front, the fabric pulled through the legs, looped over the tie in the front, then tucked back through the legs where the final tip of the cloth was twisted and stuffed into the back. After a certain point, turning it over and tying it in the other direction just wouldn't do. They needed washing.

And Eron's single marino undershirt had a hole in the armpit enough to fit his foot through. They had been using green rags, torn from the tunic Amit was wearing when they met, to tie up things, but those things that needed tying had been reclaimed by the thieves after their trial and their rags were taken as well.

"Where's my slingshot?" said Amit feeling the fitting around his belt.

"Did you leave it at the pub?" said Eron, securing his bundle with the leather straps.

The thin limbs of the young boy flailed about his pockets. He stood weakly and rummaged under the cloak and fur he slept on. Amit threw himself at the few things he had left on the counter before stumbling over to Eron's bundle, which Eron deftly swopped before it fell into his inebriated grasp.

"You're drunk," said Eron. "And how old are you?"

"Where is my plunder?" cried the boy.

"It's not plunder when you come by it honestly," Eron snapped.

"Go sit on pike," said the boy slurred.

Only one day as a thief and he was already sounding just like them. Amit gestured at Eron then turned and landed against the wall, which neither rattled nor resounded, but absorbed the blow. Thick chunks of chunks of the dust caked onto the boy's fist and bits fell like soft green pollen. Amit clutched at his chest, feeling for Tunkukush's tube. His eyes rolled back in his head and he folded over, unconscious. His slingshot was tucked into the boy's belt on his back.

"We have to work today," said Eron, knowing Amit wouldn't hear him. "Because, that's what thieves do. Apparently."

While Amit slept, Eron cleaned. He didn't have a pot or bowl to collect dust in, but he swept it around with his hand. It was a mysterious thing. Gray when the fire was lit. Green in the dark. And the darker it was, the greener the dust. He heaped a pile of dust at the foot of the banner that covered their door and surveyed their room. There was nothing more to be done except maybe, wash his clothes. There was a basin for that built into the counter, but he didn't have a pitcher and unlike the pub and Ester's workshop, where she lived, he wasn't connected to the pipe system that brought water from above.

Gawds, the room was so empty.

After he finally recovered, a day later than Eron expected. The spotted boy fumed and raged against the idea that they would have to work in exchange for their room in the den. It was an offense to everything the boy believed in.

"I will not work!" screamed Amit.

Eron grabbed his tunic, but the boy got lose. He reached for his wrist and began to drag him fitfully toward their door, "I waited," said Eron, struggling to move forward. "I hide all day. Yesterday."

"I'm a thief!" the boy howled. "I'm going for plunder! I. Will. Not. Work!"

He let go and Amit tumbled onto the rocky floor. One problem with living underground Eron had already noticed was that not all the rock was smooth. Amit had scrapped his elbow. Blood trickled down his pale forearm. There was really nothing to clean it with except Amit's cloak. The boy criss crossed his scrawny legs and wiped himself with the old rag.

"Maybe they need us to kill someone," said Eron, taking the vial with the three bumps on the bottom end from his bundle.

He had wanted to unpack. He wanted to make their room a home. Considering how long they might be there, the bare surfaces and hollow space felt wrong. But, he didn't trust the thieves.

The prospect of being recruited as assassins eventually persuaded the boy to join Eron outside the bailiff's office. Once lined up with the other thieves, determined to be his own man, Amit refused to stand next to Eron. Shoulder to shoulder with taller, more muscular men, Eron missed Amit immediately though the boy was wedged between two men only three men down. More and more men gathered until the line up spilled out from the major buildings of the den down to the open space below the elevator. More than one hundred men stood waiting stiffly in formation when the bailiff came out and began jotting notes on one of his scrolls.

"This is Able, as most of you know," said the bailiff, pointing behind him with the back of his graphite stick. "With our annual beefalo hunt beginning tomorrow, he is in charge of organizing the participants." Able stepped forward and looked over the men. "Considering everything that has happened this summer, all the highway men will be joining the hunt to provide relief for displaced families and the elderly."

Able was large. That was the easiest thing to say about him. And he wasted no time handing out job assignments. No speech. Just work. Although Amit and Eron were both given duties as kitchen hands, the spotted boy celebrated privately, all but ignoring Eron. And he refused to walk with him back to their chamber when the thieves were dismissed.

Eron moped back to their spartan home while Amit went straight to the pub. For the first time since he left Dunedin, he felt lonely. Scared even. Eron couldn't see around joining the beefalo hunt. Gil was safe in Dunedin. And he was to scrub pots and boil things out in the open, on the plains, where anyone could see him. Worried, he couldn't force himself to go out that night. The thieves and highway men pounded the ground in front of his door and the tiny oval hole that was their only window. Packed and ready to leave, they would be leaving the room empty.

Shame. The most desperate part of feeling lonely. He neither spoke nor approached anyone that night. Although he took a walk over to Ester's workshop, he found it empty. And Tunkukush's tube, which Amit had left in their room, was also empty. He wanted to go home. Instead, he spread out his cloak and fur. And he cried while everyone else celebrated straight through the night.

In the morning, they joined the caravan of thieves and passed the morose lamassu separately. Both abominations flapped their wings, cooling their furry bodies, as they studied the masses slowly leaving the den. After more thana month underground, the sunlight wrecked Eron's view and he stumbled nearly underfoot, inches from Mosul.

"MEAT?" asked the smaller of the beasts.

"Like you need it," Eron whispered under his breath, tempting fate. But, the lamassu, as aggressively and inhumane as they were, occupied a functional role for the thieves and monks alike. In exchange for defense of the den, they ate well. Not something even the boldest animal would jeopardize. Mosul drooled on him, but left Eron unharmed. Mostly. The drool sort of stung.

The terrain they were crossing offered little cover from the rain. A light sprinkle tickled Eron's nose as they marched up the hill. Bearing north and west, the caravan brought a few wheelbarrows and many weapons as they pounded over the footpaths toward the plains. All one hundred thieves and highway men.

"I hate washing dishes," said Amit flopping down beside Eron who was diligently peeling root vegetables at camp one night.

Other than the occasional chat with a thief or Ester, who usually preferred to walk with the women, Eron had spent time more alone than ever before. One hundred travelers and almost no one to talk with. And no sign of the spider. Even in Dunedin, he had more companionship. It had been nearly a week he was alone with his own dark thoughts. And memories.

"I need a bath," said Eron, ruefully.

The fine layer of dirt and oil coating his skin and the stinky, crusty feeling around his face, arms and lower body had reached epic proportions.

"Masterful understatement," chimed the arachnid's voice from within the metal tube around Amit's neck.

"You can use the dishwater," said Amit helpfully. Unlike Eron, Amit hadn't stopped wearing his eye patch and he was poking it with end of a spoon Eron had just washed.

Eron, having already had his hands deep in the sludgy mess, shook his head at them. And he held the corners of his mouth tightly downward not wanting either the boy or the Ishim to sense his relief just knowing they were talking to him again. For a few days, he had imagined he might be mad, if given the opportunity. But, that particular pique swelled and faded just as quickly as the hills opened onto the plains.

Eron and the other kitchen hands had prepared a mountain of carrots, kumara, sweet potatoes and parsnips for the camp. But, Amit had never shown his face when there was work to be done. As much as he had wanted to, Eron breathed a word about Amit's absence to anyone.

"Here have a knife," he said, handing Aden's blade to the boy.

"Simple!" cried Amit.

Then, Eron plopped a basket of turnips on the boy's lap. Amit's lip curled. Eron felt a fragile hint of joy grip the corners of his mouth and pull them reluctantly into smiling position. He turned so Amit couldn't see him.

Happiness.

He had nothing to read, except the discourses. No protection, except the one hundred men and woman traveling beside him. No possessions, except the few things he really needed. And no friends, except the two people in the world, he cared about the most. It was probably only coincidence they were also the two most annoying people he'd ever met.

Eron left the spotted boy and the spider at the camp. The great herds of beefalo were migrating to the north and the thieves had plotted a course to intercept them, but at midday, they rested. And Eron was due for a break. He found a bend in a nearby stream where he rubbed himself with the rough side of leaves. The fresh air and cold water left his hair standing on end. He dipped his bare toes into the mucky earth and squished them until the water around his feet muddied. And the residual oils from his body drifted down the across the surface of the clear water, shinning colorfully and pooling just above the swirling depths of the stream, which was blocked by floating debris.

Gooseflesh.

It tingled.

Big fluffy clouds spread thinly across the afternoon sky and the sun radiated its warmth with a lazy breeze. Even in summer, the D.O.T. felt like like winter. And though dew still set heavily in the early hours of the morning and the rain made an occasional appearance at the most unwelcome times, the Auckian plains had anticipated autumn, growing brown and brittle. But, at least, they were warm.

For no reason at all, Eron climbed a fallen log and belly flopped unto the darker part of the stream. It was cold, but deep enough to take the impact. He crawled on his elbows to the shallower bank, pretending to stalk the minnow, which quickly evacuated the water around him. Perfectly content to shiver violently as the cold water coursed over his slender frame, he let his head sink under. And as if fading into a partial slumber, his worries drifted away with the murky waters flowing slowly through the green hillside.

Ester stood on the bank where his clothes hung over the large log he'd jumped from. Naked and vulnerable, Eron crossed the waters to the other bank, splashing and faltering in rapid retreat away from the woman. She had joined the hunt as one of the navigators, but taken little time to socialize with him since the night they met at the pub.

But, Ester wasn't even looking at him.

She crouched down, put a finger to her lip and lifted a bow that Eron hadn't noticed was in her left hand. It was a simple curved unit with little binding around the hand grip. Ester stepped sideways leaving her weight on the top of her foot, silently, quietly, while Eron tried to see what she was after without moving from where he stood waist deep in the stream.

A loogaroo pup rustled in the brush. Its eyes flashed and its tongue dangled innocently in it's mouth. It's wet nose poked around sniffing the wet and freshly washed cloth that hung over the back of the log, while its dark little tail wagged with excitement. But, the sound of a bow string twang, an arrow whizzing through the air and a yelp cut its life short. It dropped to the ground. Even as a pup, the loogaroo outweighed most human males.

"They burrow into the ground to raise their young," said Ester. "Get your clothes on. I'm going to need help here."

That night, the camp roasted dog meat. Loogaroo. A mother and six pups had been taken by the thieves. Their skins had been scraped, dried and prepared to wear as disguises. With skins tied over them, the thieves were ready to approach the herd of beefalo.

"Why don't they eat the old ones that die?" Eron asked over their dinner. "You know, before they turn carrion?" The juicy meat tasted divine, but the thought of the poor pup gnawed at him.

"What? Wait around for one to keel over?" chuckled a short bearded, stocky thief.

Amit might have been sitting beside him again that night around their fire, but that didn't stop him from laughing at Eron along with the others. Amit could fit in there. He never would.

"You'd rather read about beefalo than shootimacate one," said the thief.

"I'd have to think about that," said Eron.

The thief stood and pushed his stump behind him, "You wouldn't slice its heart from its chest." He breathed in and pretended to grasp a heart in his hand. "Feel it beating as the blood ran down your arm."

Wild eyes. Eron didn't like him.

Approaching the edge of the fire, Able, a dark and unusually distinct looking man with heavy brows, pointed at three of the eleven seated. They would be joining the hunt.

"Here, give this a good scrubimacation," said the stocky thief drinking the drippings from the dog meat and root vegetable medley. He tossed the bowl at Eron's feet. "I need to sleep."

The other two who had been selected left as well. Amit didn't seem crushed about not getting chosen until Eron caught him slamming dishes into the washtubs later that night.

"Can you hunt large game with your slingshot?" said Eron.

"No, but I can cut anything," shouted Amit waving a dripping kitchen knife through the air. "With this."

"Able took the men who had real weapons," said Eron.

The boy looked crestfallen. Whereas Eron thought he'd given him hope for being part of the hunt in years to come, Amit, like the child he was, only felt the pain of missed opportunity more deeply.

"We can watch from the cliff tomorrow," he blurted.

Amit's golden eyes widened and before Eron could take it back, the boy had loaded a stack of pots to soak and pulled off his apron.

"I'm going to get some wine," said the boy.

He pushed past Ester who was on her way to the ring of basins where they'd been working.

"Am I the only one who thinks its wrong to let him drink?" asked Eron, exasperated.

"It's only berry juice," she said.

"But, he gets drunk!" said Eron, watching the boy rush toward the rabble of men who hadn't yet retired for the night.

"Here," she said, handing him her greasy dish. "I've got to get to sleep."

"Oh," said Eron, taking the familiar clay bowl in hand. "You're going on the hunt."

She nodded and grinned.

At first light, Amit dragged Eron through the tall grasses upward to the vantage point that overlooked the herds. From the cliff top, they could see purple spots galloping together below looking more like raisins than real food.

"There," said Amit pointing.

Hardly distinguishable from the other dark masses, about fifteen thieves with loogaroo furs tied to their shoulders were creeping slowly toward the outliers of the herd on the far side of the valley. The beefalo had trodden and munched the ground in the valley nearly bare in trail of endless consumption. As soon as they noticed the thieves, bellowing, the beasts charged together like debris gathering in a stream. They turned their horns outward toward the advancing men. Later, the thieves on horseback would drive the herd into a narrow passage where the others waited on the rocks to pick off the ones most likely to fall.

"I'm going down there," said the boy.

Eron gripped his shoulder.

"With only your slingshot?"

But, the boy broke free and skidded down the loose earth, like a rolling rock, toward the passage where the others were assembling. Dust flew up behind him.

Eron followed.

But, he hadn't realized he'd lost weight. Though belted, his trousers slid down and gaped at his hips. He grabbed them and held them tightly with one arm as he ran after Amit. They sprinted over a footpath that veered through brambles that scraped the skin on his arms. Amit, much swifter and nimble than he was, easily pulled ahead. And soon was nothing more than a yellow spot hurdling itself ever closer to the action.

Alongside the herd, the dust swirled. Eron heard the horsemen shouting. They were on the move. The hunt had began. The dense horns of the beefalo stuck out from the darker fur that massed on their great purple foreheads and sharp shoulders. Its hunch impressive, like a hill of fur that tapered downward to their minuscule hind legs and meager tails. But, when they ran together, they swarmed and tore the earth apart. The ground shook. The sky blurred with dust and it engulfed the wild boy.

Eron froze.

One of the beefalo, still running, with uncountable wooden shafts and feathers jutting out of its dying frame, had turned back from the narrow passage along with a small portion of the herd divided from their fellows. Weakening, it slowed and the other beefalo blew past it. With bloodlust on his face, Eron watched the stocky thief from the previous night, drop from his horse and shove a knife in the animal's side.

He knew it was time to retreat before getting caught in the stampede.

That night, the sun set in hues of pink and orange like pigment dropped onto wet paper by the gawds. Eron promised them everything if they'd bring the boy back from the hunt intact. He was responsible. And that night amid the revelry of feasting thieves, the gawds granted most of his prayer. The cries of women often cut through the ruckus, the loud booms of baritones and tenors, and often lingered long after the others had faded. He heard Ester calling his name.

Amit had been taken to a tent with three other injured. His yellow hair matted against the ground, glistening with sweat by the gentle glow of a glass container full of luminescent dust someone had brought from the den.

"The fracture on his left leg is anticomplete," said highway man tending him. "And he crackedified four ribs."

"It's broken all the way through or not?" said Eron confused.

"I said it was complete."

A cold sweat. Amit was slippery and his cheeks were chilled. Eron wiped his hand on the boy's sleeve just as Amit would have done.

"I'm sorry," said Ester, putting her hand on his shoulder.

Bones could be set. People could heal. But, injuries had a tendency to fester and turn septic. Infections killed more people than injury. In modern times, they had medicines to stop it. Eron and Amit lived in the wrong time for that. Tunkukush's tube pinged once. Right. There was no time to waste.

"Watch him," said Eron who charged out of the tent.

The celebration churned wildly around the camp. They'd cut and piled meat in the wheel barrows. One purple beefalo filled a single wooden cart. Eron plodded past them. Their furs could warm a person during the worst part of winter. Eron darted around the frames on which the thieves had started to cure the thick curly mats. They were threaded and pulled tight. The flesh side had already been scraped.

Eron had taken to hiding his bundle in a bush whenever the caravan stopped. It was too troublesome to carry while he was scrubbing things. After fetching the vial, which he suspected contained Ishim coffee, he brought it to Amit. The boy moaned as he opened his mouth. A few thick dark drops of that and the poppy concoction carried Amit's suffering away into the plush warm dreams of total inebriation. As he drifted, he fought a friendly battle to keep his eyelids open. One he lost while Eron took Tunkukush's tube.

"What did you give him?" the highway man, a woman with sharp features and brown hair and skin, demanded.

Eron showed her the vial containing the Dunedin herbalist's pain killer while he slipped the other one into his pocket.

"Give it to me," she said.

Eron handed it to her and she opened it and sniffed.

"Don't," said Ester. But, it was too late.

Outside the fires roared and so did the thieves with glorious undulations of the tongue. Distracted for a moment, Eron did see the woman put the little red bottle to her lips, but it was quickly drained. The woman didn't make eye contact as she quit the tent.

"She must have already finished the rest of the supplies," said Ester riffling through the baskets.

Only empty bottles remained.

"Why would she do that?" said Eron.

"The addicts always volunteer for this job," said a puff of mist. The freshly formed arachnid settled itself on Eron's arm. He was never going to get used to that, but it didn't seem to phase Ester.

"She was the only one who volunteered," she said, sighing, and surveying the other wounded. "They'll be in terrible pain soon."

Four in all. Twelve broken bones between them. Not enough coffee for all. Eron hated the brutality of it. The mathematics of surviving. How much can you spare. How much do you need.

Tunkukush crawled down his hand while Eron fought a very natural reaction to brush the thing away as it's spiky legs tickled the hairs. It disappeared into his pocket, but Eron lifted both the spider and vial out where he could see them. Sampling the residue, which had dried against the lip just beneath the stopper, the spider put his leg to its mouth.

"This coffee is old," it said.

"You don't mean Ishim coffee?" said Ester surprised. "Micha said every strain died of disease during the revolt years ago."

"Give him the rest," the spider instructed Eron.

"Tunkukush, weren't you banished?" boomed Able, pulling back the tent flap. He was decked in leather armor, a dark brown weave over a red tunic probably taken from a guard. "Again?" Eron wanted to go, but Able was effectively blocking the exit.

"Only from the den," said Tunkukush popping suddenly into human form.

Able grinned. The scar across his bulbous nose bunched.

"I'm glad you're here, old friend," he said. "Plans have changed. We're going to find Uri."

"Not the whole camp?" said Tunkukush.

"The rumor on the road is that Grey Camp was raided last night," said Able strolling between the men to peek at their injuries. "Uri's forrest is the only safe place left on the island. That's where the new refugees are going. And that's where we're bringing the plunder."

"It's not plunder if you come by it-" Ester kicked him.

"If Micah is against it," said the Ishim, "I'll be more than happy to oblige."

"The only thing Micah cares about is smoking and steam bathes," said Able. "When was the last time he left the Den?"

"It's been a while," agreed the Ishim, reluctantly. Apparently, it wasn't even a real question.

"The highway men maintain the balance," Able said. His tone struck hard though his words didn't sound aggressive. "Remember that."

Since the Ishim and Ester both nodded, Eron followed along even though he had no idea what they were talking about.

Tunkukush reverted to an arachnid. "They could only be expected to tolerate our laxity for so long," it said, crawling onto Eron's shoulder. "I don't think Micah or Malak remember what being flesh is like anymore."

"Malak is not an Ishim," said Eron. "He's only been the Auckian Administrator for ten years."

"You can't believe that," scoffed Ester.

Whatever they had to say, Eron wasn't ready to hear it. Part of him needed to believe them. The other part needed more evidence. He leaned over Amit and started to pour the rest of the coffee through his lips.

"When the Alliance first crashed, Malak was known as Bruce Thornton," said the Ishim. The spider flung itself onto the boy's cheek.

Amit flinched and scratched his nose.

"I don't even know his real name," said Eron.

"What is your name?" said the spider loudly mouthing each syllable.

"Amit," said Amit.

Ester suppressed a giggle, "He's growing facial hair. Look."

It was true. A reddish fuzz had sprouted along his jaw.

"He does seem bigger," said Eron looking at the boy's nose. "Is that acne?"

It was.

"We've probably aged him two years," grumbled the Ishim dematerializing back onto his house though the air holes. "But, he'll still be a boy inside," rang the the metallic echo. "I have good reasons to believe the human brain doesn't mature until a person reaches two fifty."

"Two hundred and fifty?" Eron mouthed to Ester.

She nodded.

Eron pulled Amit into a sitting position, but he wasn't able to bring him to a standing position under his own power.

"Get a wheelbarrow before they fill them all with meat," Eron instructed Ester. She nodded. "And we need to thank whoever found him and brought him back to camp. They probably saved his life."

"That was me," she said, letting the flap close on Eron's nearly palpable embarrassment.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A sense of urgency had gripped the camp long before dawn.

They were leaving.

Fast.

Eron may have been the only one who wanted to return to the den, but he soon learned not to voice his opinion. There was not a thief on the hunt who didn't know someone who might have been at Grey Camp. Although smaller than Waimate, it had become during the last month, the new largest nomadic settlement. But, it fell to the guard much faster.

The sun hadn't time to color the path they were taking when Able lead the thieves out off the plains and into the woods, but when it did, a multitude of colorful birds chirped their unearthly symphony. In one day, they would be at Uri's workshop. Eron struggled to believe that the legendary alchemist actually existed. Still.

Eron shuffled his feet heavily up the winding footpath pushing the wheelbarrow with Amit's flailing limbs hanging over the sides. The peculiar birds haunting the firs and pines were the first of many signs that they were approaching the stomping ground of a rouge scientist who, according to legend, could reconfigure a plant or animal's internal blueprint. The path was rougher than the roads. All of the wooden carts had been steered into the forrest at the edge of the plains, but with considerable effort.

Although detouring to Uri's workshop was an easy decision to make, not all the thieves and highway men followed. Around half turned back South to meet the newest wave of refugees as they crossed the bay or braved the isthmus at Cookland before heading north to the forest.

Eron tried not to remember the sight of the nomads bound, chained and hauled away to serve the Auckian Administration in Waimate. It reminded him of his mother. He felt helpless. And in his imagination, Grey Camp must have been worse. And because it was worse there, it was worse everywhere.

"Do the Auckians talk about Uri?" asked Ester, joining him on the walk. She had pinned her hair back with carved sticks and was looking tired.

"He's a legend," said Eron huffing laboriously straining to lift the cart over the rocks as they mounted an incline. "Not, I thought, a living one, but whether I believe it or not, this is where the refugees are headed."

"I heard people talking. Saying that only the alchemist, the warrior and the oracle are act independently anymore," said Ester looking ahead. "They're the only ones we can trust."

"Yeah?" groaned Eron. He heaved up the wheel over a stone on an incline beside a rut carved by running water that had long since dried. He didn't know what Ester was talking about, but he didn't know how to admit that to her easily either.

"Have you ever been to Auck City?" he asked.

"I've never met an Auckian," she said.

"Well," Eron grunted, pushing the wheel out of yet another dip on the footpath by rocking the cart aggressively and shoving as hard as he could. He kicked clumps of pine needles out of the way. "We tend to believe the Ishim are children's stories and all the thieves are killers."

"That's horrible," she said, looking as mortified as she sounded.

"And obviously it's not true," said Eron, panting and taking a quick break at the height of the incline as the other people walked around them. "All I mean to say is that I don't know about the oracle or alchemist or warrior. And I don't always think I can trust my own senses since I left my work in Dunedin. But, after seeing the lamassu, I can't believe anything that evil was made by a gawd."

"They're not evil," she said, looking at the leather bound to her feet. "They're just not human. What would other animals say if they could talk? And not everything Uri made was bad. The beefalo were a good idea. And the moa." She thought about her words for a moment. "Uri isn't like other Ishim."

"Neither is the spider," said Eron, knowing Tunkukush probably was hiding in the tube still strung around the boy's neck.

"And not the oracle," said Ester. "Listen, whatever happens when we get there, I just want you to know I think you're special."

Eron flushed. "I'm not special."

"I can't read."

"Does everybody know I can read?" he asked, gesturing to the bulk of the thieves marching slowly between the trees ahead.

"That's why they hate you so much," said Ester, looking somewhat perplexed. "And fear you."

Suspecting he wasn't wanted and knowing it felt very different. Eron's gut sank.

"How long have you known the Ishim were real?" he asked Ester as she took the handles and started to taking a turn pushing Amit for him.

He would have stopped her, but his hands had grown sore.

"I never had reason to doubt it," she said.

Eron noticed that unlike the others, Ester never embellished her language with unnecessary prefixes and pointless suffixes attached whenever and wherever to her words. She was so comely, too. He'd never thought about marriage, especially not to an older woman and a thief, but for a moment, he saw it unfold. No, it couldn't work.

"The oracle is a half-Ishim," Ester started to explain. "Your friend is the warrior. Uri is alchemist. Micah and the others are the monks. Malak and the others in your city are the archivists. Those are the only Ishim we know."

"All the archivists are Ishim, too?" said Eron, doubtfully.

He didn't really want to hear anymore, but she reassured him that she only conveyed what she'd been told about the archivists. Eron told her what his tutor had said about the coffee and the first settlers. After a moment comparing their information, he relaxed.

Ester stopped and looked at him ominously, "There are no more Ishim, because the Ishim coffee is lost."

They both gripped one side of Amit's wheelbarrow and pushed. The boy had grown even as the thieves marched. And he was much hairier.

"Cover your mouth," said Ester placing the edge of her tunic across her face. "Uri planted amnesia flowers - they're a type of urigold - around his workshop. Breathing the pollen will muddle your thoughts."

Eron obeyed, immediately, "But, I don't see any flowers." He'd heard of the guard talk about the forrest before, but they'd blamed the gawds, not the flowers, for the disturbances in their thought processes.

"They're up ahead," said Ester, her delicate features and soft voice obscured by the corner of her tunic. "You see the pots?"

Under a clump of grass on the side of the dense trail, a pile of broken crockery decayed. He nodded.

"Uri's workshop is a mess," said Ester. "Drops everything and anything everywhere. We're close."

Amit sat up. "Are we there yet?"

Eron and Ester both drew back at the same time and shot each other a worried look. The boy sounded like a man. Looked like a man.

"Get off," said Eron tilting the boy from cart.

Though still slightly shorter than Eron, the fine hairs on his face had sprouted and covered parts of his chin and patches around the far corners of his jaw. His body had filled out. His chest and arms widened.

Amit touched his face. "There's something stuck to me," yanking at the bits of hair on his face. He touched his body padding every inch with a wide eyed joy at the discoveries he made.

"I'm a man," said the boy.

"Not by the traditional definition of a man," groaned Eron.

Ester mustered an uneasy smile.

"I am a man," said Amit, pounding his new much more manly chest.

"You're a freckled child trapped in a large freckled body that looks like a man," said Eron. "But, that does not make you a man."

"I need a sword," said Amit.

"You don't even have proper shoes," cried Eron. Visions of danger flashed in front of him. Amit starting brawls. Amit talking to girls. The wrong people finding out about the Ishim coffee. Amit actually getting a sword. Amit starting brawls with a sword.

"Let's arm wrestle," said the young man slicing through the air, invisible weapon in hand and feeling his biceps for the third time. "I've got a beard."

"Where's that eight-legged Ishim?" Eron breathed.

Ester succeeded in convincing Amit to cover his mouth and not draw attention to himself without Tunkukush's intervention. She told him too much commotion would reverse the process. It was an effective lie. Not something Eron would have thought of on his own.

The path to the workshop was filled densely with pine trees, vardos and nomads camping by the streams. Unlike the groves on the road to Pict City, the pines allowed very limited vegetation to grow under them. The ground cover prickled with dry needles and the bark had the same unwelcoming texture. But, as they walked on, the view remained unobstructed with few bushes and an openness that felt like a house with a roof and many support beams. And there was so much debris scattered against tree trunks and in various piles, that Eron felt they'd already entered Uri's workshop. An endless hoard with no door.

All the thieves covered their faces with cloth, but the nomadic refugees already camping in the pine forest wore none. And Eron noticed more than one nomad with wounds from the fires. These were the people from Waimate. The thieves wandered among them, searching for relatives, with a hero's welcome. Hundreds had set up semi-permanent homes, staked claims on sites by the water and in less than a week the number would double, triple, it was hard to say.

It was going to be very unsanitary.

Ester stayed with Eron and Amit as they rounded a bend to a section of the forest teaming with mountains of ore and wood. An industrious forest community. Here the homes had an air of time an permanency, rock construction, thatched roofs and more hoard. Supplies. Awnings over fires. Metallurgy. Production. The inhabitants milling about were working in leather aprons and curious amount of yellow orange fabric that matched the clusters of gold and red flowers purposefully cultivated in pots and plots in every available space.

Finally, the through the parting crowds, they came to what was clearly the center of Uri's workshop, a building of early Liamic construction, stone jigsawed from modern ruins. One level ran under the shadowy canopy and supported heavy yellow awnings that covered machines clearly visible through the beams made from the pines. Among the machinery, with their loud moving parts and considerable waste piles, were large furnaces spewing smoke. Blacksmiths toiled at the bellows and the anvil while gears turned metal mechanisms Eron didn't recognize or understand. One round building near the center of the activity had walls, round and jagged, where most of the highway men rested all covering their mouths with whatever ever cloth was easiest to use. The air muggy had grown with anticipation, sweat and steam.

Able waited by the door to the round building. A baby wailed somewhere in the trees.

"You're wanted," he said, standing tall on the narrow steps. "And the warrior."

Amit pulled the cord attached to the metal tube off his neck and handed it to Eron. He and Ester left quickly, pushing the empty wheelbarrow, and headed to a spit where fresh beefalo was already roasting as they prepared the other cart loads for the impending influx.

At the door, which was as narrow as the steep steps leading up to it, Eron whispered to the Ishim, "Why does he want to see me?"

No response.

Feeling like a sheep with only two horns being led to slaughter, Eron tried calming his racing thoughts by breathing slower and with intention. He took a quick glance at Ester and Amit who had not seemed surprised or bothered by the fact that the Ishim requested him. Able waited, holding the door open.

Inside, Eron saw exactly what he imagined a mad scientist would keep in his home. Kettles boiled. Liquid spun through coiled tubes. Clocks chimed. Lights flashed and everywhere thin bits of metal led from one contraption to another stringing it all together for some brilliant and possibly modern purpose. Tunkukush poured out of the canister in Eron's trembling hand and moved like a fog over to a ledge within a circular depression that formed the center of the stone floor. That was when Eron finally saw him. Amid the clutter and chaos, a man, presumably Uri, sat smoking from a hookah, looking like a relic. Eron crept forward and cautiously joined them on the sand filled cushions that lined the ledge of the depression. It was not a sitting area built for comfort. Like everything else, it seemed functional to a fault.

The alchemist's most distinguishing feature rose, his hunch, from his back like the hump of a beefalo. Uri was decrepit. One eye opened less than the other and it seemed his ears, nose and the hair from both had been growing all five hundred of his life. He wore glasses and a white robe with a single pocket on the left side that held pens and a clockmaker's tool set. On his head, a skull cap, also white, partially covered his curly white locks that seemed to float on his head like a fine goose down.

Eron tried not to gawk, but the contrast between Uri and Tunkukush could not have been overstated. Uri was legend, hardly part of this world. The spider, on the other hand, sounded and appeared in every way, a regular grumpy old man.

"I see someone needs a steam," said Uri looking at Tunkukush, now in human form, who was considerably grayer and more transparent than him. Both wore clothes fit for the modern era, tailored, sleek and closely fit to their bodies.

"And how are all the forest jinn," said Tunkukush, accepting the hookah.

"Well, and the ifrit?" said Uri.

Even though he didn't know what they meant, it was clear to Eron that the Ishim were trading insults.

Another small door in the back of the round room creaked inward and a third Ishim her billowing figure through.

"I knew you were coming," said the woman sniffing a card-stock box marked with a popular type of Auckian spicy flavored tobacco. She set a piece on the hookah. It was the fortune teller Eron didn't think he'd really seen in Waimate. She rattled as she sat next to him.

A moment or two passed in uncomfortable silence.

And another.

"What's an ifrit?" Eron asked the woman.

"A myth that my father thinks Micah resembles," said replied.

Eron pointed at Uri and raised his eyebrows. He mouthed the question, "Him?"

She nodded, then got up, floated out of the room and re-entered backwards with a tray of mugs and a coffee pot.

"No thank you," said Eron.

"It's normal," she said smiling at him. "And it'll protect you against the pollen."

Anything that would keep his hands busy while the Ishim sat unspeaking in each other's company would be good, as long as it wasn't the Ishim coffee. Eron thanked her and took a wooden mug. He had dropped his tunic and been breathing the air without even realizing it. And he couldn't bear waiting any longer, but the Ishim seemed to have not gathered to speak to each other. He knew Tunkukush did not eat, but he was nearly ready to remind them that he did.

"Light it again already," said Tunkukush.

"You're too dry," said the woman. "Let's steam first."

Uri looked at her and lit the hookah. Eron's head was spinning like the whirling, twisting streams of silver air that spun about visibly inside the Ishim as they drew the smoke in.

"You avoid your steams and you smoke too much," she chided Tunkukush. "Someday you're going to start flaking."

"Maybe I want to flake," he said, drawing another smoky breath from the metal mouthpiece.

"No more of this," said the woman whose beads rattled as she grew suddenly longer, taller and younger.

She slapped the cushion beside her repeatedly until wild curly hair sprouted from her old head and fell like wood shavings to her waist. Her eyes blazed almost literally as the beads fell to the floor as if dumped from a bucket. And then disappeared. Tunkukush's face beamed with a joyous admiration.

As if in response to the woman's youth, Tunkukush lengthened and darkened his own hair. His gloriously round potbelly shrank and the jowls on his face and the heavy weight that pulled his eyelids over his eyes both lifted. He grinned deviously with a spark which not contained only within his dark eyes. He leaned over and pulled the woman's hair.

She slapped him on the back of the head, which her hand passed through. And while Uri seemed lost in thought, drawing smoke from the hookah, Eron began to hyperventilate.

The door creaked open.

"Decisions must be made," the woman said, watching Able enter. "You've spoken to them?" Able grunted and the Ishim rose. They were all apparently going somewhere, outside. Eron trailed behind them.

As could be expected, the thieves drank until the majority lie sleeping around the workshop with mugs half-drained in their hands. Eron, still not having developed a taste for medicinal wine, darted around them as he followed Able and the three Ishim to Uri's steam room. Amit hesitated to speak when he passed through the trees. The boy stood and watched a moment while Eron conveyed his confusion. He motioned for the boy to wait.

A loud drunk nomad, was explaining to the wavering crowd how he was going to train the loogaroo to attack to attack guardsmen using a weathervane and copper wire. He keeled over in the path at their feet and old female Ishim grunted her disapproval. Most of people around the workshop seemed deep in calculations regarding the logistics of war.

How to feed an army.

How to manage the wounded and the sick.

The fervor in the air frightened him, but not as much as feeling thrust into the middle of it. Able stocked the fire before they ducked inside the stone structure around and behind the circular building where they had been sitting.The meticulously tiled walls depicted the floods of the apocalypse in incredible detail. It wasn't a wall as much as a living story.

"Liam," said Tunkukush, tapping a figure on the wall.

Unlike Able and Eron who had to undress for the bath in the entrance, the Ishim neither changed nor transformed the clothes that were actually part of them.

Eron recognized the major stages of the story from his Apocalyptic Studies with Achazya. The ship, the founding of Auck City and the religious wars all brilliantly encrypted in colorful shards of tile.

"We never meant to become immortal," said Uri, easing himself onto the wooden bench in the small room. It almost sounded like an apology. Eron was embarrassed for the man. Warm wet air rose around them. Able's hairy chest hairs flattened.

"When the old did not die," said Tunkukush. "The young were stunted. They never replaced their parents."

"We made them eternal children," said Uri in a hollow and distant tone that sound almost as if words remembered more than heard. His back seemed to disappear against the wall behind him as he relaxed.

"Finally, we did away with the plantations. Burned the coffee, but fast forward a few years and not all of us have retired."

"Fast forward?" said Able.

Eron didn't recognize the term either.

"But, not all of the coffee was destroyed," Eron ventured. "And, I want to know what a clone is."

Uri leaned forward and met him with a dead stare, "About twenty years ago I took a sample of Liam's DNA and started three new lives."

More modern nonsense.

But, the old Ishim seemed quick to recognize the incomprehension hidden in plain sight on Able and Eron's faces. As he spoke, the steam moved and shifted around to form a model of his workshop. A vision of three toddlers knocking over jars and being scolded by the female Ishim appeared. Then, it changed and the boys were older. The woman carried each of them. One she placed in a village, one with the nomads and the third, deposited on the streets of Auck City where a beautiful woman took the boy from the streets. It was Thadine. As quickly as it appeared, the steam evaporated.

"I am not Liam," breathed Eron, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with the heat.

The three Ishim pried their heavy eyelids open and watched Eron charge to the entrance and pull his boots on his wet feet, but they didn't stop him.

Eron left.

And nearly knocked over Amit who was standing by the door to the bath house. Eron elbowed him trying not to reveal his agitation. He couldn't think about it just then. He needed to hide. Amit shoved Eron back taking the wind from Eron's lungs.

"I need food," said Eron. His body felt a bit numb and tingly. Something was wrong.

"Not hungry," said the young blond man with the facial hair the shade of Uri's flowers.

Out of nowhere, Amit ran at Eron and pushed him over. He twisted Eron's elbow to his back pulling his arm toward the back of his head and pressed Eron's face against the grass and pine needles, which left a tactile pattern of bumps and lines.

"I'm stronger than you now, scribe," said Amit.

"Let me up, now," said Eron rubbing the side of his face.

"Scribe," said Amit.

Eron charged, but the boy man deflected the attack as if he were brushing off stray branches in an overgrown path. Eron landed against a tree trunk. He rushed again they tumbled against a cart spilling some bone waste, which rolled down a trail under the feet of a group of thieves trotting up to the main fire. Rolling on the ground, they struggled for a moment. Eron attempted to disengage the boy, but Amit pinned him, knees on arms.

"Let him up," said Ester, approaching rapidly. She had a skirt on caked with mud, obviously having just visited the local potter.

"You're finished talking with Uri?" she asked. "What have they decided?"

A few of the forest dwellers pretended not to be listening. A man cleaned a copper coil under the awning where tasks no one wanted to do had been collecting dust. A couple younger people joined him, all working too slowly to make headway on the mess. The nomads made no pretense. A group stopped and stared at him openly. Even three of the highway men joined the growing crowd around the two boys.

Eron tensed up. Too many people. His lungs didn't seem to be expanding fully. Noticing the sudden distress, Amit finally released him.

"Is it war?" one of the girls in the crowd of nomads asked.

War?

It had been a couple centuries since violence, organized, armed violence, erupted anywhere on the island.

"They didn't say anything about war," said Eron, taking one of the men's hands, who heaved him up.

"Then what did they want with him?" asked one of the forest dwellers.

"He's a clone," said a thief Eron recognized from the den. "Exact copy of Liam."

"Not exact," said a fat old man in a leather apron. His hair was white and greasy. "That one's skin was darker."

"Are you supposed to lead us?" asked a young man with long black hair and very high cheek bones.

"Do you have his memories?" asked a nomadic woman.

"What happened to the other two?" asked one of the women in a red dress. She was middle aged and unusually large around the waist.

Eron picked up a wire brush from the table under the awning and tried to focus on it. His vision had dimmed. His skin seemed to tighten suddenly. And a sea of pressure and fear consumed him. He was breathing too fast.

"Give him some room."

It was the female Ishim. The oracle. She floated in and started issuing instructions to the middle aged woman, who pushed Ester and Amit away.

"He had too much heat," she said.

It was lie.

Even Eron knew that. Able came and helped the older woman in the red tunic lead Eron back into the round building. When he struggled to climb the stairs, Able lifted him. And he was deposited unceremoniously on the hard cushion in the depression in the middle of the room where Tunkukush brought him water.

Uri had resumed smoking. The old Ishim watched him.

"I had parents," said Eron starting to tear up. "Ronen. He was a Red Guardsmen. Died honorably for the city. Thadine." He choked a little and burst into tears as his chest continued to heave. "My mother. A weaver. I was going to be a scribe."

"We know," said Uri.

"I'm a coward," Eron sobbed. "Why did you-"

"Why did I make you?" said the old Ishim.

"Aden," said Eron curling up on the seating. "I have a brother. In the guard."

War could mean many things.

"We know," said the oracle taking his glass. "Relax, Eron. Breathe."

"I can't," Eron sobbed, picturing the thieves and the guards. The death. The destruction. The horror of war.

Able left the Ishim to tend him. Eron wanted to run. Hide. He felt like crawling out of his own skin and sneaking away from the workshop. Away from everything. But, eventually, the fear abated, as if it had given everything he had to reject the situation though nothing had changed. He was tired.

"The highwaymen believe it's your destiny to unite them," said Uri.

Eron started grouping the test tubes on the Ishim's coffee table by size and the amount of cleaning they would require while the man spoke. Tunkukush had the hookah. The oracle had visibly aged. But, they all seamed more solid than when he first arrived.

Still weak, Eron's hands shook.

"I didn't make you to replace Liam," the alchemist said. His eyes were dark and his nose large and long, but his voice and thought intense, if a bit distant.

"I don't remember being here," said Eron.

"I dematerialized, entered your brain through your ear and congeal around the hippocampus and converted protein chains," said the oracle.

Eron stared at the wispy creature.

"She blocked your memory," offered Tunkukush.

"Eron, I may have started your life, but I'm not the one who has to live it," said Uri. "You may stay and be my apprentice here or you may leave with the thieves."

"Right. A life of crime, science or leadership," Eron laughed dryly. "Not the career choices I thought I would be facing. What if I wanted to be a sanitation specialist?"

"Larceny, alchemy or hegemony," said Uri tightening the plate that held their flavored smoke.

"He does remind me of Liam," Tukukush said to Uri, looking pleased and passing him the corded tube from their hookah.

"I doubt Liam was a coward," said Eron darkly.

"Liam," said Uri, leaning forward. "Had worse attacks than you did. "

"I don't believe it," moaned Eron, sitting up.

"You don't have to," the oracle reassured him. "We never thought this would be easy for you."

She reached over to pat him, but he pulled away.

"Is there anywhere I can be alone for a while?" he asked.

Eron melted into a puddle of ambivalence in the bath house vapors, the only place it was certain neither a nomad nor a thief would disturb him. The empty room and the cold drips of water from the ceiling and the walls did not comfort Eron, but the Ishim left him alone there and he was glad of it. The crowd had remained circling the slim wooden door to Uri's building like a pack of old women at a discount cart in the Auckian Market. Uri allowed Eron a set of books, which they brought to the bath even though the moist air would cause some damage, they'd doused the fire and brought him a lamp. The vapors were slow to leave, but relief came quickly for Eron as he lost himself in the pages of the text.

It was a dictionary of word origins. An interesting read. He even found references to modern machines in the entry on 'fast forward.' Screens. Images. The moderns could control theatre and their machines played it all at will.

In the days that followed, the forrest grew dense with antiestablishmentarianistic plotters and villagers reporting various skirmishes with the guard. The leaves, which had only the whisper of yellow in their xylem, succumbed to seasonal forces and started to drop their red and gold foliage alike onto heaping layers missing neither the curved roofs of the vardos, nor the tents, nor the worn trails through the woods, nor the workshop, nor the kettles of the nomads, nor the thieves' bowls while they were eating. It was incredible. And neither did they fail to weigh down the awnings, nor muck up any workspace or generally lodge themselves in any place where they were not wanted. A lot of time was spent raking.

Newcomers all covered their mouths before served the special chicory and coffee blend that combated the effect of the amnesia urigolds. And Eron kept his distance from them. Enough eyes followed him whenever he left the dry bath house that he lost all interest in risking conversation. Ester kept an eye on Amit who stopped in regularly to insult him about being a scribe.

"Do you want to come with us to the fire?" Ester asked, poking her head in the bath house entrance. "Gawd, Eron, the floor is getting muddy."

She stayed in the door way waiting for him to answer.

Between reading indecipherable texts about genetics and looking up complicated words like 'xylem' and 'antiestablishmentarianistic' in Uri's dictionaries, he took a little time to help peel root vegetables for the hoards of frightened refugees that poured into the forest every day. When he had finished the Auckian etymologies, Uri loaned him books on generators and modern machinery. Between diagram after incomprehensible diagram of buttons, gears and wiring Eron was able to push every worrying thought to the back of his mind. But, no matter how much he wanted to disappear, as soon as he set the books down, he remembered his mother and how she always insisted he made an appearance whenever and wherever things were going wrong.

And there at the workshop in the woods, they were.

Eron grabbed his tunic, though it was a bit damp, and pulled it over his undershirt. It was almost routine. Sleep. Eat. Read in the bath house. Then, Ester would collect him to help prepare the evening meal. After, he might hide in a dark patch listening to conversations.

"Is the beefalo gone?" he asked.

"They brought a fresh one in from the prairie this morning," said Ester, "But it's not going to last maybe an hour. Probably a lot less."

Sometimes, during the second sleep, which was still observed by many of the thieves outside the den, Eron caught Tunkukush spidering over to the men and woman sleeping in the open air around the cold fire pits and whispering in their ears. And the next day, they plotted and planned with bits of Tunkukush's influence apparent, if only to Eron. Debates raged later and later each evening as strangers and long associates moved from makeshift kitchen to sleeping zones and the play areas for the young. As new people arrived, new information complexified the situation.

Eron did his best to avoid all of it. At first, showing his face outside, struck terror into his limbs. His lips quivered. His eyelid, the left one, twitched. Stares gave way to mutterings, which transformed slowly to giving him a respectful, quiet distance, with the exception of Amit and the Ishim. Even Able didn't approach him after his meltdown.

Tunkukush visited him infrequently. Only once he asked Eron whether he thought he'd go with the thieves.

"I'll decide when it is time," Eron told him, burying his nose in an anatomy book.

The spider didn't press the issue and neither did Uri, who most came to the bath house to bring books and check on the condition of the ones he had lent. No one had seen the oracle since they arrived, but when someone said she'd flown west, Eron could only assume they meant it literally.

"What was he like?" Eron asked Uri early one one morning while the Ishim was gathering a few of his texts from the bench where Eron had made his bed.

"Liam," said the ghostly creature floating inches above the then dry tile. "He was a friend."

"I-I mean," Eron stuttered. "Am I like him?"

The Ishim adjusted his glasses and looked through Eron.

"You are no more like Liam than you are like Gil or Gil is like Liam," Uri said. "You are you."

"How can I live up to their expectations?" said Eron looking at the door, imagining the hoards he wanted nothing more than to avoid.

"Make your own," said Uri. "That will be difficult enough."

"And that is what Liam did?" said Eron. "How he became great?"

Uri thought for a moment, "Liam probably would have survived anything."

"That doesn't sound like me at all," said Eron, feeling both crestfallen and relieved.

"I didn't make you to be him," said Uri, looking a little confused.

"Never mind," said Eron, slumping against the white tiles. He had no idea what to ask the old Ishim. He had questions, but it felt like Uri twisted them until the answer was wise, but it had no immediate application.

Uri moved directly in front of Eron, so uncomfortably close that he couldn't stay sullen. He cracked a smile. The Ishim stayed uncomfortably close.

"All you need is a vision," he said. "Everything else will sort itself out along the way. There is nothing you have to be or do," Eron was starting to twitch, his right eyelid wouldn't be still and Uri moved away, floating onto the bench next to him. Eron breathed his relief.

"Liam was the greatest visionary I've ever known," he continued. "There were two hundred of us on the ship that landed here. Fewer survivors on the island. During the first year, we were building shelters, raiding supplies from the wreckage and mourning. Liam spent a lot of time alone in the Sky Tower. I thought he had taken pharmaceuticals up with him. But, when he finally came down he said he'd been running scenarios. Liam thought that all we needed to rebuild was one thing."

"What was it?" said Eron.

"He never told anyone," said Uri looking wistful. "But, we worked for that answer. The Municipal Code. The Archive. The old community. He focused us on the basics."

"Liam didn't write the Municipal Code?" said Eron.

"No, he didn't," said Uri. "A lot of people worked on it.

"I've read his discourses at least fifty times," said Eron, incredulously.

"He didn't take credit for what we did," said Uri. "He used to sit in the tower and people would come to him with solutions. They would talk. He would listen. He recorded everything."

Uri was right.

Nothing in the discourses said the first administrator had been responsible for building the first community, but Eron was going to check as soon as Uri left.

"Liam tricked us," the Ishim said, getting up. "I don't think he knew anything more than any of us."

"Even you?" said Eron.

"Especially me," Uri said, floating toward the exit.

"What was the one thing?" said Eron.

"I think it was vision," said Uri.

"But, you're telling me that he didn't have a vision," said Eron.

"Maybe he had a vision of vision," Uri said. "

The weeks came and went while the nomads, the thieves and the highway men planned. Many of the people had began sharpening weapons. Fletchers from the villages and blacksmiths joined the refugees to help. Although it shocked Eron initially, he had come to accept that the villages straddled the divide, juxtaposed between the chaotic politics of the island, never truly Auckian and not clearly nomadic. But, the nomads had their sympathies. And Malak's aggression toward the settlements violated the Liamic treaty, which gave the villages the right to self government in exchange for tribute and the periodic quartering of Guardsmen. While they accepted and adhered to the Municipal Code, at least in principle, trust and loyalty had been lost.

"At dawn we leave for Rotorua!" Able cried from the small porch at Uri's door.

It was a dramatic announcement. Thinking of Liam, he wondered if it had to be. If everything wasn't on some level, a sort of facade.

The news tore grimly through the huddled bodies all the way down the trail and through the camps. With preparations only half finished, the highway men had taken a vote. Eron had not been present, but Ester told him that the Auckians Guards were occupying the villages of Thames, Rotorua, Plente and Taupo to quash brief rebellions. No slaves had been taken, but the governors' heads had been separated from their bodies in an unprovoked display of blood dripping violence.

"Rotorua is the least defended," whispered Ester as Eron joined the crowd outside Uri's round house. "Able thinks we can take it and occupy it without resistance from the villagers."

"Death to the slavers," said Amit, looking strong enough, but not wise enough to carry out his enthusiastic threat.

Cha! shouted the highwaymen with their braids flopping wildly in the night air.

Cha! screamed the nomads.

Cha! bellowed the thieves who toasted what they saw as great news with a clanking wine mugs and a revelry that lasted long into the night.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Uri stood on one of the cracked gray hearths of a cold furnace under an awning outside. The old Auckian founder would not be leaving his workshop with the thieves though most of the forest dwellers had chosen to go. Eron understood without asking. Unlike her father, the oracle, ancient and fragile as she was, perched herself gloriously on a horse to help to drive the wandering caravan west to Rotorua.

Eron waved.

The first step away from Uri's workshop was the lightest, but as he walked the dusty trail with four hundred strangers, surrounded by their strange ways and strange beliefs, and one red bearded wild boy, Eron's feet seemed heavier and heavier until finally they felt almost glued to the ground. Eron stood and tried to smell the amnesia flowers, but they were no longer blooming.

Alchemy. As a career, it had a lot to offer a young man in the late Liamic Era. Specifically gold. For the Auckians, nothing made more gold than studying alchemy, but there were still a few things on the islands that meant more to him than gold.

Since the Burning of Waimate, he had woke every morning with a single thought on his mind. It was Thadine. Eron planned to march westward with the burgeoning and disorganized forces. But, he would return to Auck City whether or not that proved to be their final destination.

Still, Eron grimaced painfully as he lost sight of the unfathomable wonders inside Uri's workshop. And with a sigh of regret, he followed the streaming masses as they headed to the village of Rotorua. Maybe someday he would return? Maybe he'd get caught the guard and they'd have his head on a pike?

The possibilities were endless, but the probabilities were somewhat limited.

Although the road was not long, but it was hard to pass, especially for the vardos. The caravan moved slowly like a broad and shallow stream toward the western villages. Some of the people fell behind. Others pulled ahead. By nightfall, they reached the edge of the village and milled about restlessly setting up camp under the cover of the now sparsely growing pines.

The grassland surrounding Rotorua was an open expanse unusual for the terrain in the west. It had more dips and crevasses than the crusts of the pies his mother's hired hands used to bake.

Amit was there when Able gave the orders for the boys to act as lookouts. He and ten other young men strategically positioned themselves around the perimeter of the city while the thieves prepared to siege the village wall. Eron had been busy repacking his bundle, but when he discovered the boy man gone, he quickly circled the outskirts of the village looking for him. Strolling along the three-horned sheep trails, he felt a sharp tug on his left pant leg that stopped him in his tracks.

"Down," Amit hissed.

Eron obliged immediately. The wild boy was lying flat against the ground with his blond hair blending into the drying grasses, which prickled and itched.

As the caravan's newest resident risk taker, Amit had not been known to exercise caution in any matter. None of the thieves from the den had recognized him after his transformation and he had a reputation. Only Ester, Eron and Tunkukush knew the truth. While Eron had busied himself studying in the bath house, Amit flung himself from trees and tread under horse's feet. He showed no fear. When they came to minor canyon where a meandering creek had worn the earth away, Amit jumped it. Everyone else took the bridge. And that all happened before the first howl of the loogaroo, when the wild boy man announced he would personally protect everyone on the road by finding and killing the whole pack.

"I can't see anyone, which means, nobody can see us," said Eron standing back up.

It was too dark to imagine that any guard standing watch on the village wall might see him clearly from such a distance.

Amit pulled him down.

"It's flat land," he whispered. "They can see us moveify. Or hear us."

Although the grasses immediately surrounding Rotorua had ridges, dips and a littering of obvious structures, Eron had to admit the boy had a point. And that was nearly as rare as him being cautious.

"What are you watching for anyway?" asked Eron.

Earlier in the day, Eron asked Able about the layout of the village. Fourteen lengths of brick and mortar connected end to end formed the outer walls, which enclosed the bulk of the settlement. Able sent scouts ahead who reported twenty guardsmen quartered in its wall.

"Noise," said the boy.

Amit rolled on his back and put his arms behind his head. Taking his cue from the boy, Eron turned over and gazed into gleaming celestial sea above them and listened for movement in the field.

"Wake me when it's time, alright?" said Amit yawning widely.

There was little Eron could see between the camp and the city wall besides darkness and a deep divide of land that felt like it stretched on forever under the magnificent depth of an open night sky. Having been so long in the forest and underground, he found the cosmos mesmerizing though it was little comfort against the autumn night chill. A biting wind whistled and blew the stiff dry bunches of grass that stuck up here and there like little porcupines planted into the ground. Eron kept a vigilance for awhile until his attention was drawn again, far above, deep into the heavens.

"They made it up there once," he whispered. "The moderns."

A dark rim extended around the iridescent crescent of the moon. Living in the city, Eron had never really noticed it before. It was a circle. No matter how the moon changed, it was really only one large circle suspended in the air.

"I read one of Uri's books that a man built a metal box and sent it up toward the stars with, I think, Auckian fire. He had a white dressing gown with a glass helmet. And he put a flag on it."

"He put a flag on a dressing gown?" said Amit. "What would be the point of that?"

"No, he wore the dressing gown and put the flag on the moon."

"Is he still there?" asked Amit.

"Where?"

"On the moon," said Amit.

"No," said Eron. "He's dead now."

"Who owns it now then?" asked Amit.

"I guess no one," said Eron thoughtfully.

"Then it's mine," said Amit grinning.

Eron squinted and looked upward. The humidity in the air blurred the moon's surface. Sometimes he could see the outline of a rabbit in the moon's dark spots, but that night, it was just one curved white sliver.

"I don't see any cities or roads," said Eron. "Maybe they put the rabbit glyph up there to tell us they were still alive?"

"What glyph?" yawned Amit.

"The rabbit on the moon?"

Tap. Tap.

Tunkukush rapped on the inside of his tube for their attention.

"It always looked like a rabbit," said the Ishim gruffly.

"I thought it was man," said Amit.

"That's absurd," said Eron.

After only a few moments debate, Amit dozed off and lay beside Eron snoring like a man. The Ishim had gone back to doing whatever it was that spiders liked to do to keep themselves busy when they lived in metal tubes. Probably knitting, Eron thought. Yarn. Rope. It's all very similar.

And they waited.

Eron fought sleep and strained to hear the sounds from the village, but all that came was the occasional stumble or grunt from the other lookouts. And sometimes a snort from Amit.

While they waited, he knew the thieves were fashioning ladders from the trees at camp and using pieces of the local farmer's fences. Eron caught the first glimpse of them dragging the ladders across the field carrying them low and quietly on their shoulders, at varying heights, toward the wall. But, everything was visible in the moonlight.

"Twenty men who can see clearly are more deadly than fifty who can't," groaned Eron.

Neither Eron nor Amit returned to the camp as they were instructed. All the lookouts remained behind to watch the siege. Torchlight dotted the edge of the village wall.

When all the thieves were assembled at the gate, Able roared, "Guardsmen! Rotorua is free."

Nearly two hundred men and women stood in an uneasy formation behind Able. Although they had few bows and fewer arrows, there was an ample supply of kitchen knives among them. Six thieves shuffled forward and huddled beside the wall preparing to receive the ladders.

"We are five hundred strong," Able bluffed loudly. "You are outnumbered. Surrender and we will spare you."

"Five hundred?" Eron whispered nervously. "If they see that he's lying, they might assume he's hiding something else and they might think they stand a chance. He's gambling their almost certain surrender for no reason."

"How many is a hundred?" Amit whispered back.

Able took a few steps backward as the torchlights along the edge of the wall slowly disappeared one by one.

Silence.

They could hear the thieves shifting around.

"And he didn't tell them how long they had to decide," Eron said quietly turning on the ground. "He didn't tell them."

A white hot flash of panic coursed through Eron. He wasn't prepared. He had not actually expected the thieves to fight. He had no weapon. No defense. But, if he knew anything about the Auckian Guard, they would fire arrows before the thieves brought the ladders to the wall. Surrender was not an option, but taking out as many thieves as possible would be.

Eron grabbed Tunkukush's tube from Amit's neck and tapped it. Nothing. He opened the lid and looked inside. Empty. Eron looked around for the nearest cover, which was a few trees on the edge of the field. As he was preparing to run, an older man signaled to the lookouts to join the line.

Death is brief, Eron thought. But, it didn't reassure him.

The longest moment of his life passed as the younger boys crawled on their elbows toward the bulk of the men. But, before they reached the en, they heard the cranking and lifting of the village gate. And with tearful gratitude, a group of villagers ran out to greet them. It seemed, the gruesome algebra had not been lost on the Auckian Guardsmen. There had been no resistance.

Eron collapsed on a hard lump of earth. When he regained consciousness, he followed the cheering masses, led by Able, into the village, flooding streets surrounding their temple where the Auckian Guardsmen were tied up along with a handful of their supporters. Slumped against the tall wooden pillars in ropes from torn from the red temple banners, they numbered sixteen. Only eight wore uniforms.

The scouts had been wrong. There were eight guardsmen at Rotorua.

"And how long until the guard send more men?" Eron overheard a shopkeeper, dripping in ingratitude.

"That supradepends how quickly Malak responds," grumbled the thief.

Not everyone was happy to be liberated. Rotorua was not a large village and it was easy for Eron to spot Ester. Dragging Amit away from the crowds hovering around the Auckians and their supporters, the three of them retreated through the night air to a shallow tiled pool in the farthest end of the village. A few of the villagers had set up a midnight kitchen at the local coffee house and were distributing a hot vegetable stew in any empty containers they could find.

"It's much appreciated," said Ester accepting a steaming wooden clog from a young Rotoruan girl with long braids. She was still wearing her night tunic and a white dressing gown that reminded Eron of the stories he read about the moderns on the moon.

From what Eron could see, there were few discernible differences between Rotorua and Dunedin. Pigeons bobbed about under the lampposts searching for scraps of fallen stew on the cobbled square, which was constructed in the same scalloped pattern as the alleyways in Auck City. But unlike Dunedin or his home in the west, the buildings were mostly wood. Rather than being covered in plaster, wooden shingles protected their sides and surfaces from top to bottom. Even the outer wall had been made from logs buried deep in the earth not unlike the Waimate stockade.

A few scattered bushes and an empty stage were situated against the city wall beside the pool. They passed main village square when they entered, which was broader, emptier and teeming with people. Only a couple thieves had retreated to this spot. Two men sat on the bare stage and another lay down to sleep against the side of massive red wood. It was thicker in diameter than a wheelbarrow. Eron had read about the giant trees, but never seen one.

Ester and Eron watched the moonlight dance over the rippling waves in the pool until approached by a slender villager. His features were obscured by a strip of fine linen, which covered his face looking like he may have taken up the habit in Uri's forest, but the bridge of his aquiline nose and narrow eyes betrayed his identity, at least to Eron.

"I never thought I'd see such an ugly face again," the man said.

Gil. He had on Eron's gray guardsmen's tunic, but the stripes had been removed and red trimming added. His leather pants showed no wear as if newly acquired.

"What are you doing here?" said Eron, wrestling a sudden surge of anxiety into submission.

Gil shrugged.

Eron's mind raced like a stampeding herd of beefalo. "Why are you here?" he said, as if the question had not been clear enough.

"I suppose I'll have to take your questions one at a time," Gil said, unravelling the cloth around his mouth. "At this very moment, I am saying hello to my old friend. Second question. A bit more complex, but it seems to me like I'm doing the same thing you're doing. Bit famished. Having some stew."

Gil put the bowl of vegetable stew he was carrying to his lips and made a loud slurping sound without breaking eye contact with Eron.

"I left Dunedin for a reason," said Eron.

"You did," said the entertainer who lowered himself majestically on to the rim of the pool a few inches from Ester and leaned casually away from her, now ignoring Eron all together.

Amit had drawn away and was studying their faces, looking confused.

"I'm Gil," said Gil.

Even under the weak lamplight, Eron could see Ester blush like blood on snow while his face flushed with anger.

"You abandoned my post,"said Eron, drenched in a shock of bitterness. "After the risk I took."

"Don't get your loincloth in a bunch," said Gil waving his hands at Eron dismissively. "It makes me feel like you don't trust me."

"I don't," said Eron.

"Listen," said Gil, sounding almost serious. "I couldn't stay. The guard have been disappearing in the villages. And there's a lot more heads decorating pikes along the roads, too. No latrine digger would have lasted in that climate. Someone would have come for me. Someone who didn't know us. Like your brother."

"So now I am dead?" Eron asked. "You met Aden?"

"We're dead," said Gil, turning his attention back to Ester, taking her slender fingers in his. "At least that was the village council decided. I never spoke to your brother."

She giggled. "Is this your brother?" Ester asked, obviously focused on something other than the conversation.

"I cothink they're executing the guardsmen," said Amit perching on the edge of the pool and looking down the main road.

"You mean you haven't you heard?" said Gil abruptly repositioning himself on his boney elbow.

He leaned toward Ester seemingly fascinated by the new development in their conversation. An almost bashful looking Ester shook her head.

"You mean you honestly haven't heard?" said Gil, playing with her hand.

"Heard what?" said Ester, gaining a little composure.

"Oh, the whole village is in an uproar," said Gil. "And the thieves!"

"They're hanging them," said Amit.

"What is going on?" Eron demanded.

"Your leader stole a jar of coffee from the herbalist, got on his horse and suprafled," Gil said looking nervous, but hardly distressed. "They're panicking. The oracle postponified the executions until the morning."

"They've started the executions," Amit said, sounding almost giddy.

It occurred to Eron that the boy had never balked at the horror they'd seen in Waimate. He was too young. Violence had seeped into him like a field watered with manure and he was somehow thriving. And that startled Eron more than Gil, the executions or the coffee.

"One jar of coffee," said Ester.

Absently, Eron set his stew with a clank of hard wood on glistening tile. The pigeons were quick to respond and bobbed over to it.

"Are you going to eat that?" said Gil, shooing them away.

The scribe doing fieldwork, the thief with an honest trade and the significantly less freckled Amit all watched as Gil ate Eron's stew while the chaos broke like a hailstorm somewhere deeper in the village. At first, it seemed the men in tricorn hats had subdued the confusion, but they were soon divided over the prospect of executing the guard. Not all agreed. Some wanted to hang the guards immediately. A handful of the thieves along with the oracle, aggressively opposed the executions. They wanted to delay. And the shouting set the village ablaze with dissension.

"They're going to use the rafters," said Gil, pointing at the wooden stage. For a while, Gil read the crowd as they filtered into the open theatre the very same way Eron read a scroll, predicting their moves and narrating for them.

A large brown man in a brown tunic, a villager, directed a group of thieves onto the stage where they disappeared momentarily before drawing back the red banner. A slender man with graying unkempt bed hair ran up the stairs that led to the platform and shoved the villager back against rear wall. The villager in brown took a rope off the back wall of the stage and swung the knotted end at the gray haired man missing by only inches. But, the onlookers, a few of the thieves, were able to arrest both the man's arms and hold him to stage floor.

"Take him home," spat the larger brown villager who began orchestrating the assembly of a makeshift gallows. A strong beam above the stage, rope and an over turned cart would suffice.

"We have to leave," said Eron, tugging Amit's sleeve. "We can go to the camp."

A fog of miscommunications appeared to be obscuring the men's ghastly work on the stage. One of the thieves pulled knife out and although Eron didn't see what happened, as too many bodies rushed in, the solid form of the villager collapsed. The stage echoed his fall.

More people gathered around anticipating the approach of the Oracle who followed the crowd on her stocky brown mare. Surrounded by a few openly armed thieves, her beaded head bobbed heavily as if she lacking control over the creature. And spectators crowed the edge of the pool, pushing against Eron, Gil, Ester and Amit, many of whom were still wearing their night tunics. The four stood on the edge of the pool to make space and keep a line of sight toward the wooden stage.

A woman screamed, but the crowd had grown too dense to pick out the owner of the shrill call. A person turning while struggling for something they couldn't see, knocked Ester into the water. The boys pulled her soaked and wilted looking onto her feet. Another scream. Gil steadied Ester, holding her forearm, but it seemed a better idea for them all to move ankle deep in the cool water until the commotion boiled over and they could move away without being trampled.

Something happened. Eron couldn't see what, but all the villagers seemed gasp and piercing screams cut loosely through the night. And then, the oracle's horse reared and she vanished in a puff of mist. More shouting. Eron covered his ears and leaned down. The moon reflected in the water and rippled.

"You need to climb that tree and stay out of the way," Gil said to Eron, pointing to the red wood near the wall. He looked at Amit, "He and I can do something. I've got a plan."

"There are no branches within reach," Eron protested, looking at the large rough trunk. "And not him. Just not him."

"That's alright," said Gil who not paying attention. His hazel gaze fixed on the nooses dangling empty from the rafters. "That is a stage. I may be the only one here who knows how to use it," he said, exhaling slowly.

In that brief instant, he looked like Eron, but that heavy breath was Eron. And maybe it was Liam? The pale entertainer didn't hesitate. He threw himself into the crowd. Eron had visited the stage in the square at Auck City, but he didn't understand what Gil meant. And he lost him in the crowd, but the thin man made his way through and climbed the stage.

"Enough!" he shouted at rabble.

Though unimposing in stature and almost feminine in the way he moved, Gil's voice carried, because it had been trained to carry no matter how large the audience. He moved forward with his arms out as if he were someone everyone there should know. In their confusion, the thieves setting the nooses beside him parted, allowing Gil to pass.

"Wait here," Eron told Amit and Ester.

Splashing out of the pool, he dropped his soggy feet on the ground and shifted between torso after torso in what he hoped was the way to the stage.

"Rotorua," said Gil, addressing the crowd, cutting through the pandemonium swirling senselessly around them.

"We are victorious," said he looking across the tops of the men and women's heads. Tricorn hats. Akubras. Night caps. Scarves. Everyone in the village had found their way to the theatre.

"We are whole," Gil said loudly and then he paused to meet their baffled stares. "We are not slaves."

Gil immediately found the center of the platform with two swift steps, but seemed to fill the space entirely. Eron climbed the steps, around the curious thieves and slid behind the retracted banner on left side of the stage where he could see Gil holding his arms out over his audience.

"Isn't that Eron?" said one of the highway men, a woman with thin braids and a stocky body. Eron had never seen her before.

"I am Gil," he announced calmly. "I escaped the rope chain in Auck City at Sky Tower."

"So did I," shouted one of the villagers. It was an anonymous challenge from a man safely hidden within the masses, but others began to mutter their approval.

Gil stepped forward again arms still outstretched. "Able is supragone. He is on his way to Malak," Gil announced. "He has betrayed us."

If it had been turmoil before, it was now an impacted riot.

Gil pointed to his temple. "We must now act from this truth and no other. It is the seed of our liberty. I will not live a lie."

"Malak will send more guards," a village woman in a red tunic wailed.

As the mutterings from the frightened and angry crowd grew in intensity, it was clear that Gil had little control. He was mistaken. Empty ideals, no matter how theatrically they were presented, would not inspire the people of Rotorua.

Eron shuttered.

Too much was at stake. Both the villagers and the thieves needed a leader, not to calm them, but to channel their fears, wrestle them into action and bring them together like a lens turned sunlight into fire when used properly.

"There are hundreds of us," said a thief with pale yellow braids. "And there are thousands of them." The youth directed all his anger at Gil.

One of the older highwaymen left holding the reins of the oracle's mare stepped forward, "Even the oracle has left us!"

"Hang the guard!" shouted a dark and round village woman whose night tunic could have easily fit three adult thieves, but barely covered her.

"Hang the guard!" cried the man with yellow braids.

"No!" Gil screamed. But, the chant had already gripped the mob.

"Hang the guard!" cried many voices coming together as one.

Two of the highwaymen dragged a battered man in a torn gray tunic onto the platform. Gil had lost composure when Eron spied a bindle marked with nomadic symbol for Auck fire. He took a deep slow breath and grabbed a torch from a woman's hand too quickly for her to prevent him. Tossing the bag behind Gil, he set light to its contents.

KABOOM!

A ferocious cloud of fire thrust into the air singing the loose fibers of the nooses where they hung. The people near the stage stopped and covered their heads. Gil had ducked, engulfed in the dark cloud, but rose to his feet just as Eron dropped back behind the banner again.

"Tell them you're a clone of Liam," he hissed at Gil, who looked nonplussed. Eron pointed firmly at the actor and then the crowd. "Tell them now."

"I am a clone of Liam," he said confidently. Eron didn't know if he knew what it meant, but Gil said it as if it meant everything.

"You were made to unite Liam's people," Eron continued.

"I was made to unite Liam's people," said Gil bravely facing the masses again.

"It's true!" cried Ester from the pool. The villagers, the nomads, the thieves and highway men spun on their heels.

Amit let out a proud howl.

Gil put out his arms again. And with rapt with attention, the people listened. "We will attack Auck City before the guard can prepare."

"Won't they be expecting us?" said the villager in brown who had managed the construction of the gallows on the stage.

"We will free our family and friends," Gil roared.

And that was all they needed. There was no more mention of hanging the guard or Able. They cheered Gil.

But, Eron started to hyperventilate.

There was no plan.

Reassembling herself in mid-air, floating onto the stage beside the now popular actor, the oracle reappeared. Again the villagers were drawn back by the sight of the her while those who came from the den and many of those from the road seemed less alarmed. She stopped only a few inches from Gil's long nose.

The theatre bursted with the tension while the huddled figures of men and women anticipated.

"My work here is done," she said placing a transparent hand on Gil's shoulder.

The oracle found Eron with her eyes and then disappeared as a hovering white cloud, which billowed over the dark unkempt heads and moved away toward the city gate as if blown by a breeze. The air was still. She was gone.

His heart felt the weight of gravity rearrange his innards as his stomach jumped into his throat. Eron knew, of course, it was completely unnecessary for her to remain visible while leaving the village. But, had she dissipated completely in Gil's presence, some of the villagers might have claimed she possessed him.

No, the oracle had done what was needed. She backed Able long enough to get to Rotorua, delayed the executions and then bestowed her loyalty on Gil.

"Tell them to take the guards back to the temple and call one representative from the highwaymen, the thieves, the nomads and the villagers to meet you in the lodge," said Eron.

With an dash of prudence, Gil gave the instructions and descended the stage. He walked to the village lodge alone demonstrating no preference for anyone who dogged him on his path. Calmly, he waited as a few of the village men hoisted the plank that barred the door. Two scraggly men scrambled in with their oil lamps. Then, slowly and with great purpose, Gil entered the vast musty room and took a seat at the head of the long u-shaped table. Eron lagged behind, keeping his features obscured with the long hair he had not cut in months. Managing somehow to skirt his way around the solid doors, behind the gathering crowd and around past the carved beams that held the ceiling aloft and finally to the corner of grand meeting table, he got within hearing range.

"And how will we breach the city?" asked a young highway man who was thinner and shorter than most of his companions, but his heavy brow and intense glare made him the obvious spokesperson for the group.

"Strong words," said an older villager, strategically claiming a seat near him. His braided gray beard swayed around his large belly. "You say you're a clone and some of the others even believe you but, that doesn't make you Liam. I think you were cooked up in that Ishim workshop."

Gil sat silently.

Eron came forward and told the crowd to leave, "Only the senior men will enter."

Their resemblance passed no one's notice.

"The governor is dead," said a village woman with thick dry curly hair. "Stabbed in the back on the stage before—" She looked nervously at Gil. "Before he arrived."

"Elect a new governor," said the youthful highway man with his arms folded.

"We don't have time!" she spat at him.

Eron motioned them toward the open door.

No one moved.

"And who are you?" asked the curly haired village woman from the village.

"My right hand," said Gil.

"And I'm his!" shouted the unsettlingly deep voice of Amit from outside the lodge door. At his side like two reunited magnets, Amit joined him while Ester, who had also made her way through, pulled reluctant stragglers from the doors until they were able to lock the heavy oak slab from within. All had been excused until dawn.

In the empty room, Gil was now trembling.

Ester rushed to his side and set a single tender hand on his. Eron felt a bitter sting in his throat. And with eyes wider than a stunned owl, Amit reveled in the immensity of the empty lodge. It wasn't that the space was so grand; the craftsmanship was. Amit seated himself next to Gil and rubbed his hairy arms along the table. A single board from a red wood tree had been cut to form the surface. Its rings and knots had been sanded and polished making it smooth.

Dunedin had a lodge similar to the one at Rotorua, a gathering place for the elders, but it was a brick house like any other on the island. Whole trunks of red wood trees framed the building inside like the ribs of an animal. Banners of red, yellow, black and white covered the panels of the room, which inevitably as was the case in every village lodge, but certain complex symbols underneath revealed the directions to the afterlife from where they stood. Apparently. Auckians, like Eron, knew very little about the village gawds.

"What are you going to do now?" Ester breathed. "We don't have to match their weapons or their numbers. Most of the guard were sent to Waimate and Grey Camp. It's safe to assume Malak's guard is still deployed across the island, but even so, even if we gathered everyone, we don't stand a chance in the city."

"I can't lead them," said Gil, not making eye contact.

"You were incredible," said Ester.

Gil's eyes watered.

"I can't lead them either," said Eron.

"I'll lead them," said Amit.

"No, you won't. You go outside and stand watch," Ester instructed, pointing him to the door. Tunkukush's tube was still empty. He let the boy take it.

For a second, Eron felt sublime. Liam in the sky tower. The first one. The real one as it were. He never needed an answer to unite them.

"Ester, stay with him no matter what happens," said Eron. Gil you don't have to have any answers. "They'll work together as long as all sides feel they are represented fairly."

"I'm a fraud," said Gil. "I only thought the hangings would make things worse for them. I just thought I could stop that. But, you heard them cheering me?"

"Yes," said Eron. "And yes, you're a fraud. But, yes, we can stop the slaving. We only need one thing."

Eron hoped their ignorance of Liam's great ruse would bring them the confidence they needed if only for a few hours. But, dawn broke with vengeance and Gil hadn't accepted his role. Eron's fears battered the inside of his weary skull as the representatives of the four factions wound around the chairs to join them. When the last entered, a dark skinned highwayman Eron had met before, the grumbling started.

"We must divide and conquer," said a small, but stern woman Eron recognized from the den. Her name was Miriam and she frequented the pub, but never introduced herself. She had been chosen to represent a loosely associated group among the thieves, who called themselves the order of the moving finger. She studied Ester smugly, having immediately spied the opportunity to get closer to Gil, through her.

"Forty highway men," said a villager. "And four hundred or more men and woman will descend on Auck City like a plague of falcon."

"Rotting falcons tossed over the wall or dropped in the water would be more effective," said the younger highway man with the heavy brow.

Fifteen people had joined the discussion. Eron knew none of them, but it seemed they had each learned everything about Gil and him in just a few hours.

"We won't get past the guard," said a man, a villager referred to regularly as 'Prosper,' a bizarre and uncomfortable sounding name nearly as grating as Ethel and Eloise.

All Auckian names came from an approved list formulated in the Archive during the Religious Wars. Only approved names could be registered in the census. Prosper might have been a nickname or his parents might have been nomads. And though Eron had grown comfortable moving in and around the nomads, he still cringed slightly when they crossed what he used to feel were nearly sacred boundaries, an echo of prejudice.

"I'm trying to tellite you," said the highway man with the heavy brow. "We aren't prepared for the consequences of getting caught. We need poison."

"I agree with Prosper," said the man representing the nomads, a healthy looking person whose subtle nervous tics made Eron uncomfortable. Easily the largest of the four assembled, his belly spilled over the sides of his chair and onto the table in front of him.

"There are always the sewers," said Gil.

He leaned back into the leather padding that covered the Governor's seat. He was acting. Subdued motions. Slow and intentional. He exuded confidence and mystery.

"Is that how you escaped from Auck City?" Prosper asked.

Ester shifted nervously, but only Eron seemed to share her concern.

"I left on ship carrying rice. In the bags. It took me to Nelson. I never saw the sewers," said Gil.

Eron wondered if that was even true.

"We don't know where the sewers lead or where they empty," said Miriam. "It can't be done."

For the first time that morning, Prosper nodded his agreement with the representative of the thieves. And so did the heavy browed highway men.

"But, I have a copy of the sanitation plans for the city and the villages. Updated earlier this year. It have the maps of the sewers and words on it have something to do with the maps."

"Words we can't read," said Prosper.

"I also have a scribe," said Gil opening his palm toward Eron whose jaw dropped to the floor as if weighted by lead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN

The sun had erased any evidence of that morning sunrise by the time the fifteen emerged from the lodge along with Eron, Amit, Ester and Gil. A slight coating of dampness still clung to the plants and a light chill permeated the air, but the dew had long since evaporated. Eron trudged with the other representatives to the center trying in vein to hide his ambivalence to Gil's plan.

Eron doubted strongly that Gil could remain in character. And despite his best effort, he hadn't convinced the actor to hold back and let the others generate solutions. The resurrection of Uri's Liam, as he imagined it manifesting through Gil, was already falling apart.

Gil had gathered a burgeoning crowd around him and was explaining how to breathe fire. The younger villagers followed him like ducklings as together they departed Rotorua. And Amit. Gil waved his slender fingers apart mimicking the burst of fire he had just described as he opened his arms wide demonstrating its size. Mesmerized by Gil's theatrical motions, Eron could have counted each of Amit's crooked teeth as he held his mouth wide open in wonder. Unlike Able, who stoically kept to himself and habitually refused the company of other thieves, Gil reveled in it. His eyes smiled wildly at the approach of every tricorn hat.

But, the representatives couldn't hide their bewilderment. The man who united them and shepherded their schemes seemed to come and go throughout the day often replaced by a foolish looking ham.

After only hours on the march, sweating and talking and walking on freshly troubled feet, the four hundred plus caravan left the endless reaches of the red woods, tall, majestic and eirily dark, and blazed their way through the lesser forests to a green summit. Nestled in the valley below like a golden brick disk in a bed of trees was Auck City.

A cloudless white sky hung above.

Eron was home.

Close anyway.

A surge of anger rushed through him like an aquifer of hate at the sight of it. Aden allowed Thadine to be contracted. Thadine had lied to him. Malak was an Ishim. And then there were the archivists. Nothing was what he thought it was. Auck City looked like a blight on the surface of the island and from its harbor poured its disease and destruction. Some vision.

"We can enter the city through the sewers," he said to Ester, suddenly overtaken by his rage. "But, how are we supposed to get out? And what are we doing here?"

Amit had finished his apple, part of his daily ration supplied by the thief's kitchen. He was already eating Eron's. Eron grabbed the apple from Amit's mouth, looked at the bruised patches, and then threw it against the trunk of tree. It burst into juicy chunks.

Ester twiddled the end of her bow in the dirt.

"Are you Eron?" said a nomad Eron recognized as a glove vendor from Waimate. "You're prewanted by Gil."

Eron rose and trailed after the vendor toward a cluster of highwaymen and a few of the representatives the Rotorua Meeting. Amit trailed after him. Ester seemed to be following Amit. Gil stood at the heart the men quietly sharing confidence.

"Have you been inside archive?" Gil asked Eron.

"I know how many people guard them it if that's what you want to know," said Eron. "But, they're next to the barracks and the foundry. It would take only minutes for them to be overrun."

On many occasions Eron had expected Tunkukush's tube to start rattling, but it had remained silent for days. He wished someone would stop Gil from planning.

"Can you take a small troop, maybe three or four, inside?"

All hopes seemed pinned on his response.

"I can lead people to the entrance," said Eron with some caution. "Achazya is the only one who knows how to get inside. That is, when you're not supposed to be. And he's seen the Golem."

As the highwaymen starred at him, even the man with the heavy brows, drips of sweat cut through the dust that caked their tired faces. There were twigs in their braids and grass stains on their tunics where they had rested on the ground. No one had slept. And everyone knew four hundred people, vardos and a few horses would be noticed. But, in someways, they were also a distraction.

"There is no Golem," said the fierce, but small man with the heavy brow.

"Have you seen it?" Gil demanded.

"Who is Achazya?" said a woman with short brown hair. It was Miriam. She was not beautiful, but she was as powerful as most of the men and possibly meaner.

"He was my tutor," said Eron. "He's been to every level of the Archive and he is the smartest person I know."

"He can't help us if he's not part of the order," said a man with pale braids and wide cheeks. He was a thief. Not a highway man. And not very bright looking, but stern enough to intimate Eron.

"I'm not part of the order," Eron reminded the man.

"You will be," he said.

"The Golem doesn't protomatter," said Miriam, emphatically waving her chubby hands. "No matter how strong that clay monster may be, it won't give us an advantage. We need to focus on the workers."

"The Golem is like a computer," said Eron. "A speaking library from the modern era."

"People who destroyed themselves?" scoffed the highway man with the heavy brow, crossing his arms. His closest associates, two men very similar in demeanor, nodded their approval at him noisily closing his mind and affirming their nomadic ideals of ignorance.

Eron relaxed his fists.

At least, he was being heard if not understood.

"Can you humor me?" he said, looking directly at Gil. "Exactly what is the plan?"

"We're taking the boats," said the man with wide cheeks. His face was covered in stubble and wrinkles, but it cracked a wide smile.

"And we're going to Ton," said Gil.

As if he had dropped a boulder from his shoulder, his body surged with relief. They were not going to fight the guard or try to take the city. They were going to steal boats! And flee to a tiny rubber producing island many weeks away from the city and the whole of Auckland.

"My mother is contracted by the Archivist," said Eron almost giddy. He looked down the tree spattered hill to the city within the walls. Compared to the camps it did not compare. Even the procession and the square and sky tower could be detected among the yellow structures, but tiny as they were, the mind was fooled. It was a massive, beautiful city, boasting no less than 150,000 residents. And he wasn't there to destroy it. Eron could almost kiss Gil's stubbly angular face.

"And the Golem?" said Ester, who rarely added her voice where she didn't feel she belonged.

"We're not just raiding the city for plunder," said Miriam.

Prosper grunted. He had been named the interim governor of Rotorua, but having taken part in their meeting the day before, he felt obligated to leave with the handful of villagers that chose to follow.

Miriam smirked. "We're freeing the workers," she said. "We might take a little plunder. Maybe that Golem even. But, it's friends and family that matter."

"On the island," explained the small fierce highway man. "We can plan."

"Good," said Eron slowly processing mental images of the thieves sailing north to the minor islands. "Very good. They say the Golem is slow, but it is probably the most valuable thing in the Archive. It has a library in its head."

"We don't need to know everything," said one of the highwaymen.

"But, we do need to know how to find Ton," said Miriam thoughtfully stroking her tiny chin. "If the sailors don't cooperate, we could run out of supplies and find ourselves back in Auck City."

"And," said Eron, disbelieving. "It could help us make modern weapons."

"Glad it's sorted," said Gil, clapping his hands. "Eron, take Amit and the luscious Ester. Go get your tutor before the gates close. And report back at sunset. It's hard work planning a disorganized riot."

"Luscious?" mouthed Eron.

Ester scrunched up her nose, but no one was convinced by her feigned disinterest. It was in her eyes. Even Eron could tell.

"Lumpish nit," muttered Ester through her pursed smile.

"That's no way to addressify our captain," said Miriam, almost sounding reluctant.

"My apologies, Captain," said Ester to "Captain Gil" who gazed coyly back in her direction.

She blushed.

Gil hadn't changed his thin garments or put on any additional aires since the thieves adopted him into his new role. Eron thought it might not be a bad idea to offer him his fur, which would bulk up his shoulders, lending a certain regality. At least, that was how Eron felt in it. If Able had looked the part, Gil looked the opposite of a natural leader.

"Tell me all about it when you get back!" shouted Gil as Eron marched away into the brush. Their "captain" waved after them like a teenage girl.

Eron cringed.

As they pushed through the camp, a trickle of rain fell through the warm air and Ester dallied with a food vendor, mostly for cover from the light shower.

"Are we going through the sewers?" she asked him. "Where do they start?"

Eron knew she'd never seen the city and had only the natural aquifer in the den to help her imagine it. Auck City rerouted water from a near river that spread in channels, above, below and through the city like arteries, coursing slowly toward the ocean. The five openings at the coastline emptied directly into the sea. Some tunnels had been repurposed and maintained from the modern city underneath, but as sea levels fell, the only ones maintained served the nearby forests communities of Ponsonby and Mount Eden. In the city, Auck City proper, only the square and the archive had been built on modern ruins. The procession and most of the residences had been laid on ground exposed by a tide that never rose again after the apocalypse. With their depleted populations and limited resources, the settlers could not maintain the systems of the old city. But, they could break it down for materials, which had been done effectively for over five centuries. Some of the Auckian sewers dated back to the first century after the apocalypse. Many of them regularly developed blockage and the Green Guardsmen took light underground to break it free, but no one else braved the dark and narrow block passages, because they stank. Worse than the breath of the lamassu.

"I can send a message to Achazya and ask him to meet us," said Eron. "We should do that before he leaves for the beefalo barbecue stand this afternoon."

"Because greasy fingers?" said Amit.

"Pardon?" said Eron.

"They smear the words," said the boy in a man's body.

Eron drew a blank.

"Books," said Amit. "You're going to steal books, right?"

"I'm not planning on it," said Eron. Although if they did enter the archive, he might borrow something to read. "Look, after "the beefalo stand, he goes to the wine tent or the alley of the wine makers. The man is like clockwork."

Uncomprehending silence fell over Amit and Ester. Naturally, they'd never seen a clock since there was only one and that, maintained by an archivist.

"Sounds like a race against intoxication," said Ester, accepting a ration of bread and meat from the vendor.

Eron wasn't hungry. Since the thieves left the den, food had been provided communally and organized by the highway men. In fact, the logistics of moving and supplying the caravan occupied most of their worries, but, resourceful and generous, they kept the hoards organized and fed.

The rain, or more accurately, the sprinkle lifted. Amit scurried ahead, dodging branches that swung back at them, as they descended the hill. Forced to waded fitfully through the dense brush, there was no trail to the gate.

Skidding and zigzagging down the slope, kicking up dust and dry leaves, they ran until Amit tripped and tumbled into a heap yards ahead of Ester and Eron. At the base of the hill, the brush thinned and a clear line of sight opened to the main gate and the primary road leading inside. They stopped at the base of a tree. Eron stepped up on an exposed root and tried to balance on his toes as he thought over the problem.

"I need some paper," he said.

"What about them?" asked Ester.

She was pointing to a group of men, young and clean shaven, possibly traveling from a farm. She was right. They might take a message.

"I still need paper," said Eron. "Let me think about this."

It felt important to prove to Achazya that his pupil, his literate pupil had sent the message. He wanted there to be no doubt in his former tutor's mind. Eron unrolled his bundle unwrapped the leather from his scrolls. Although it went against everything he believed in, Eron tore a square about the size of his palm containing notes Achazya had written himself before presenting them to Eron. Rather than spewing long winded explanations about how messengers were often used by con artists, he asked his companions to trust him.

"Give me the tube," said Eron.

Amit shook his head.

The Ishim drained slowly from the tube, shifting from a placid gray mist, wisps of the man milling about condensing around Eron, until finally a pair of reading glasses solidified at his feet. With thick wooden rims and a joint between the eyes that allowed a wearer to adjust the positioning, they were unexceptional by Auckian standards except for the false nose attachment.

"I didn't think of that," said Eron turning them over and pressing it against his face. The glasses, the pointed joint and the false nose conformed and held to his features, obscuring them.

He couldn't argue. The disguise would work. Balancing them carefully, Eron tied the straps around his head. Not all Auckians who needed glasses could afford the carefully crafted lenses. And many who could, didn't wear them, but enough did that no one would look twice.

"Soggiest thing I've ever seen," said Amit.

"You don't look anything like Gil," Ester exclaimed. "It looks real. Of course, Ishim, but it's incredible. It's brilliant."

"When did you last clean your teeth?" echoed Tunkukush's voice from Eron's nose.

Eron flushed red with embarrassment as Ester winked at him. He hadn't spared a single thought to oral hygiene since he first left the city. Maybe that was why she was choosing Gil. He rolled up his his scroll, tossing the needless torn piece in the center.

"Gentlemen," said Eron, motioning them to follow. "Let's go."

Ester folded her arms.

"Sorry," he said, but he wasn't really.

Starring at the brick walls in the distance as they advanced to the road, Eron reached up and touched his face. He felt no weight on his nose, only a sort of itchy wetness, as if a small layer of paste or mud had been applied. The exposed side was dry to the touch. He bent the cartilage in his nose to one side. He couldn't tell which part was Tunkukush and which wasn't.

"Are you sure you wouldn't recognize me?" asked Eron, turning around and lifting his hair to feel his ears and neck.

"You look much better," said Amit, reaching for Eron's brow, but Eron slapped his hand away.

He quivered slightly as they shuffled up to the two stone lamassu beside the gate whee four Red Guardsmen gripped their gleaming pikes and the teeth of the metal grate hovered over the opening.

"Destination?" said a short and stocky guardsman with a scroll spread on a short table.

It was the census taker, probably the most unwelcome sight he could imagine. A yellow guardsman, he had responsibility for conducting an inventory of the citizens many of whom worked outside the city walls. Next to him, leaning casually on the shaft of his pike, a Red Guardsman ate an apple, probably a gift or a bribe from a traveller. Only the dark bags under his eyes hinted at the full extent of his distress.

Ester, Amit and Eron, with their soiled garb and ratty tunics, blended well with the late arrivals. Villagers swarmed the entrance with goods for the Harvest sales, a celebration that would culminate in a firework display and an effigy burning of the mad man.

"City square!" said Eron in the same tone and manner as the villager that passed before them.

"Are you citizens?" he asked, not looking away from his work.

The parchment contained a list of names, people from the previous census not yet counted. Likely, Eron's name would be on that list, but Thadine had kept his census documents and she would have registered him. Except, now, she was under contract. No longer a citizen.

"We're from Ponsonby," said Eron shaking his head. "Horse breeders. Well, you see my aunt-"

"Weapons?" he droned.

"My aunt says I'm deadly with my cooking," said Eron, attempting another horridly weak joke.

"Straight down the procession. Visitors remaining in the streets after dark are penalized. Stick out your hands," he drolly instructed them.

Amit immediately thrust his freckly fist out, but the Red Guard drew back from his outstretched hand.

"You're diseased," he shouted.

Even though Amit had less spots as a man than he did as a boy, they could not be easily accepted as a natural feature by the average Auckian.

"They're just freckles," said Ester. "He was born this way. It's not germs."

But, this was the city. Villagers and nomads didn't understand how fast disease travelled. The guardsman had a responsibility to protect them from every enemy, no matter how small. In Eron's own lifetime, waves of disease had culled their population. It took the young. Sometimes, the old died. Only ten years ago, twenty percent of the city had been killed or crippled in a single week. And no one could explain it.

The man drew a face at her aggressively conveying his disgust, she shrank back in surprise.

"You can't enter without a special allowance from an Auckian physician," said the guard dubiously to Eron, ignoring that Ester had spoken to him.

He stepped away. Amit thrust his arm an inch closer and the guard backed into his pike, knocking it to the ground. A few of the Yellow Guardsman had popularized the idea that disease could be transferred by direct sight or sound. Not everyone believed it at first, but many had taken to wearing thin white veils, the type of fabric his mother got from the far island traders to make covers for women's hair. It was an expensive, but attractive talisman.

"All the Auckian physicians are inside the city of Auck," said Eron. "How can he see one?"

The Red Guardsman stretched his face in thought. "I don't make the rules," he said motioning to Eron to lift his hand up. "Figure it out yourself."

He slapped down a streak of red dye that marked Eron for admittance. "Go back up the road and wait for us by the first bridge," said Eron, pointing in the direction of a short wooden bridge he knew that spanned a small stream not far from visual range.

"I know it," said Amit, who marched away almost gladly.

He pulled up his sleeves as he walked and scared the other travelers queuing to enter Auck City while Eron thanked the guard.

Though the procession opened before him, the reality hadn't really penetrated that his mother would not be waiting in the shop or that his brother would not be coming home from work and that no lessons were scheduled in the morning. Everything that made Auck City his home had disappeared in the ether of service and war. Though full of more people than Ester had ever seen, for him, it was empty. People starred at them. More specifically, at Ester. She was certainly not dressed as an Auckian woman.

Forward.

That was the direction he had to go. Commonly called the procession, the street opening from the main entrance at the south was the widest in the city and rather than being lined by pillared houses and their doorways and windows, like the streets in the villages, only walls of repurposed brick stood high and far. The walls were decorated in tile, a pale mosaic that told the history of how the modern world ended and the Liamic Era begin. Achazya had often taken him and the other students there to conduct quizzes. The walls held in the city that burst over them with laundry lines and stacked structures, some in disrepair. Arched exits led into the city streets at the end of each era in the mural's painful narrative. It was old. As long as Eron could remember, the nomad's carts and vardos had obscured most of the mural with their activities. But, now there were gaps where many had used to fill the space along the procession. The villagers were vending. The nomads were absent. A terrible emptiness.

The procession emptied into the town square in front of the Administrator's Office, the Municipal Court and the Archive, tall magnificent structures built from modern ruins where the old city had once stood. As they marched toward the square beside the unlit lampposts, Eron saw imagines in the mural in a new light. Liam, though drawn stylistically and fading, stood at the entrance on the wall. Eron had thought the man looked like him, but only now could he be sure it was meant to be the first Administrator. The Yellow Guard often debated it.

And though fragmented in the rock, the face of Uri captured the wisdom Eron thought he'd gained in his incredibly long life. Next to them stood other men who legend said became the Ishim and the in the distance behind them, on the blue painted waters, the Alliance, their ship was docked in the modern port. Eron touched the wall.

And then he saw it.

"Your braids,," he whispered as though speaking to himself. Ester was too busy taking in the immensity of the sounds and smell to notice or hear him. "I recognize them."

Tunkukush's image was tucked away in the lineup at the end of the mural, but he was there. Still plastered to the tip of Eron's nose, the Ishim stayed quiet.

Ester, finally noticing him lost in his own sad thoughts, put a hand on his shoulder and they walked on as Eron battled the fog of memory and regrets. He wanted to run. When they passed a cobbler's cart by the arch that entered the street named for the weather gawds, Eron darted around a group of women in yellow robes. Ester pursued. Eron leapt over a crate left on the cobblestone pathway. She scrambled to catch him up. In the dank, but cool air in the shade of the pillared buildings, he was comforted to see nothing had changed. As if the buildings could.

Unlike the alleys in Dunedin, only two or three people could walk side by side through the narrow passages. Water and waste covered the stones where it made its way slowly to the sewers below. The smell. Eron had never fully experienced it before.

He ran faster, feeling the space close between him and the one place in the world he really needed to be, stomping the puddles, rounding corner after corner toward the factory where he had lived since Thadine rescued him. Where he had been abandoned by Uri or someone Uri sent him with. Eron had had hope, but it was struck a formidable blow when he saw that a fragment had fallen from tiled symbol embedded in the stucco outside the factory. He had not fully believed his brother. It lay on the ground trampled across the doorway as if no one had been coming and going, especially not his mother. The mark of the rain gawd still adorned the space above the door, one dark cloud and three drops of blue, but part of the dark cloud had fallen.

No banners hung from the barred windows. In the empty doorway, he saw the rooms inside were empty. No looms, no workers, no stock, and no fire stood as evidence to Thadine's little industry, her little woolen empire, as she often called it. Even the stockpiles of wool were gone. And only a body lay in the corner. There was nothing else.

"Mother?"

Eron's voice echoed as he cried into deep shadows of the empty building. He touched his cheek where the spider still clung in silence as Ester splashed through the muck behind him coming to the dark doorway.

"My brother said the Archivist would keep the factory running," he said softly almost pleading with the rain gawd who was supposed to have protected them.

Eron rushed beside the body, but it was clearly not Thadine. A beastly old man with gray hair snored and Eron backed away as his apnea made him jump.

"Where is your tutor?" asked Ester.

"Where is Thadine?" he shouted at the man. Eron couldn't resist. Part of him had lost any concern for the thieves, for his friends or for the slaving, the very moment he thought he could do something for his mother.

The lump on the floor rolled to face him and tipped himself up on an elbow, "Gone!"

"Did you live here?" said Ester.

"My mother's factory," said Eron. "She's a slave now."

"Not so soggy now," said Ester for the first time not extending the compassion Eron had grown to expect. The betrayal stung, but she was a thief and in comparrison to the hat wearing, painted and robed people of the city, it showed.

Diving darkly into his fears, Eron plodded over the cobbled street between the icons of storms, sun and clouds in silence with Ester following him. Auck City may have looked the same from the cliff where the thieves camped, but inside the walls closed in on him. They found their way through the puddles of waste water to the alley where his tutor lived and walked up a rickety stair to the top floor of a pillared building. Smoke wafted from the downstairs neighbor's open window. Eron coughed and before he got to the platform that clung to side of the building like a vine, the woolen cover to his tutor's tiny flat opened.

"I can hear you," said the man. It was Achazya. "I have a knife and I can locate human kidneys faster than you can say your name. Go on. We don't have anything of value. Try my neighbor. Now, there's a man who hasn't been paying his taxes and has all the wealth to show for it."

"You bastard!" shouted a woman from the window on the lower level.

Eron laughed. Ester looked at him and suddenly he forgave her as his own pain lessened. He couldn't risk revealing himself while people were strolling along below on the road or the neighbor continued to eavesdrop.

"I have a new student for you," Eron lied.

Achazya stuck his red face through the door and beamed at him. His beard was longer, thicker even, but he still looked like a young man trying too hard to appear like a hardened old sage. His belly protruded from his marigold robes, which had always dragged on the floor boards leaving them ragged.

"I don't teach women," he said, eyeing Ester with extreme suspicion. It was very unlike the Achazya Eron knew.

"Since when?" Eron said, somewhat in shock.

"Our son wants to be a scribe," Ester covered like applying a bandage to the conversation. "You're younger than I thought you'd be."

"Not meaning any offense," said Achazya. "I'm often mistaken for being much younger than I am, too. I think it's the coffee they serve in the Archive when I was training. I drank a special mix of it every morning. And me, now nearly fifty. I could probably get you some. Not cheap."

Liar. His face was flushed and his eyes bloodshot. He did not look entirely well.

When Eron had been his student, only five months before, Achayza had already described the three times he'd visited the Archive in great detail. Few lower level scribes, guardsmen or not, were allowed in. And he had never mentioned special coffee, Ishim or otherwise. And he was probably twenty two. Not fifty.

"Can we discuss tuition with you inside?" said Eron.

Achazya, standing behind the heavy banner suspended on a stressed looking wooden rod, blocked the entrance to his flat entirely.

"You want your boy to miss the fireworks?" said the tutor mockingly aghast.

He stepped out onto the first plank of the platform, which creaked under his incredible weight. It was not a support that three people should stand on. Eron stepped back, "Yes, it is very important that we discuss terms and arrange a schedule now."

"My fee is reasonable and I happen to have an opening. And unlike others, I take on reluctant students. Why don't we discuss a contract over beefalo rib?"

"I'll have to go to Ezekiel," Eron blurted, invoking the name of his bitter rival who happened to be a significantly more popular tutor among the city's elite.

But, Achazya looked dumbfounded. Not concerned. His tutor's expressions were normally blander than a bowl of steamed rice.

"Ezekiel's dead," he said. "I thought everyone knew he was caught teaching his housekeeper to write. Where are you from? You're not Auckian."

Eron reached for his glasses, but the spider clung on without budging, so he quickly pushed past Achazya, ducking under his arm which he had rested against the side of the building and then tumbled and stumbled over the junk that lined the floors and the walls inside. Eron understood immediately why he'd never been let in before. His main chamber held a hoard that even Uri might find admirable.

Achazya was not married and it was doubtful he ever would be, considering there was no space in his home for another person. Eron picked up a cone made of old greenish glass. It was modern.

"I have permission to bring my work home with me," his tutor said, dropping the wool banner behind him, but Ester peeked in anyway though she was easily fended off by Achazya's girth.

Eron surveyed his rusty pile of tools. He had always imagined his tutor lived in a tidy space, not a collection of mouse droppings, cobwebs, crusts, garbage and all the disorder that found in the home of the truly miserable and discontent. Each object seemed grouped with like kinds though the effect was still a multicolored mountain range of artifacts. Modern artifacts. Another thing Eron had not suspected. The hoard of artifacts probably bowed the floor below them and worried the neighbor. Or maybe she'd caught him bringing something in. Either way, the neighbor had more than enough right to be concerned.

Eron tripped on a rusted box and landed painfully on a pile of wood, metal bits and another pile of the green glass cones.

"Tunkukush!" Eron said.

"Quiet up there," shouted a voice through the cracks in the floorboards.

He tried to remove the glasses and the false nose again. this time the Ishim released its grip, mistily and lazily streaming away from his face as Eron pulled on the hinge. White mist wafted upward as the glasses disappeared. Eron's former tutor gaped and pointed as Tunkukush began to reform in the air before him. Achazya leaned a stack of heavy text, almost as tall as the large man, and knocked some papers back onto the hoard behind him. His face flitted between awe and fear and cowardice and questioning. Eron could only imagine that he had looked the same that day on the bay at Pict City when he first met the Ishim.

Achazya turned his red face and pressed to the dusty book spines and loose papers and fragile, moldy scrolls as a slender string of web shot from the cloud the Ishim had formed and attached itself to the ceiling. Tunkukush condensed into the shape of a spider. Achazya pried on eyelid open, looking much younger than Eron remembered him. He still had acne and the patches on his face where the hair did not grow were larger than Amit's red scruff.

"Eron?" he said.

"It's me?" said Eron.

"Are you dead?" said Achazya looking up at the spider. "Give me a sign."

Eron waved his hand across the man's line of vision, "Do I look dead?"

Achazya blinked, but remained focused on the many eyes of the large arachnid.

"You put a white hat on my head during our first lesson in the square. Remember?" Eron said.

"Was it possessing you?" he whimpered and pointed to Tunkukush still dangling from the ceiling on a glistening thread.

Tunkukush climbed up its thread and scurried away across the ceiling. Achzya screeched somehow making the sound of a cart skidding on cobblestone while rolling down a hill. The neighbor pounded the wall from below. The spider disappeared.

"What was that?" he asked.

"I can explain everything," said Eron.

Finally able to turn his attention from the Ishim, he grabbed Eron in a soft, but powerful bear hug and breathed out heavily.

"Phbbbbbfft," he sounded, his relief passing over his lips, like air escaping from a three horned sheep's bladder. "Thank the gawds. Eron," said Achazya with a quavering voice and teary eyes as if broken from a trance. "Look at you."

"Where's Thadine?" Eron asked gravely, pulling himself from the man's mighty embrace.

"Your mother is working in the Administrator's Office in Sky Tower. Third floor," he said eyeing the hoard for sign's of the spider. They auctioned her belongings to pay for her maintenance. She's alive and well kept," he said. "Unlike her workers and all those other volunteers."

"Other volunteers?" said Ester folding her arms in the doorway.

Achazya extended his hand to her, but then hesitated and pulled it back, "Have you come in from the roads, too?"

Ester was wearing pants, leather pants, and a functional airy tunic. She had no paint on her face and no cloth to wrap her hair. Eron had grown so used to her appearance over the weeks that he forgot how foreign she seemed to him at first. But, that was because most nomads coming and going from the city made an attempt to blend in while Ester could not have imagined what she would find.

"But my mother is a citizen," interrupted Eron. "How could she be contracted?"

Achazya timidly looked Ester up and down from the leather wrappings on her feet to the messy dark braids on top of her head.

"Are you talking about people your guard have forced into slavery?" spat Ester.

She wouldn't have spoken that way to a thief, but this was instinct. She knew a weak man by the inflections in his voice. Fortunately, Eron's former tutor was smart enough to recognize a rhetorical question. He muttered something apologetic sounding and led them through his monstrosity of a living space into a kitchen in the back of the flat, considerably less cluttered. Almost tidy even. This was more how Eron had pictured his tutor's living space. It had a bed in it, in a corner where a family might have dined, opposite a fire place, clearly connected to the floor below and the irritable neighbor. And a small bundle of vendor crates formed a wardrobe, which held a variety of robes, all yellow. Thadine often paid him in clothes. Whereas most average Auckians owned only two or three heavy outer garments, Achazya had at least eight. The basin was free of dishes. The counter stack purposefully and even a wooden set of drawers kept his personal belongings in order. And the red tiles on the floor coated with a glossy polish.

He landed heavily on his cushioned bed, offering Eron some medicinal wine, who promptly declined, but took the bota from him.

"We came with a proposition for you," said Eron.

Achazya motioned for his bota. Eron shook his head.

A ratty, thin gray cloth of the style made by his mother, was covering the window. Eron tossed the bota through it. They could hear it land on the roof of the building next door. Everyone knew Achazya didn't stop once he had started. His former tutor scowled at Eron sparing no indignation and then felt around an empty box, producing a corked bottle and defiantly drank from it. It made little difference. At this time of year, most Auckians slept on their roofs or their neighbor's roofs. Even in the villages, the roofs were flat and accessible although the buildings not quite as crowded together. Achazya sat back on the sagging cushions in his kitchen and put his head in his hands.

"What is your proposition, Eron?"

"We want to take the Golem," said Ester then hovering in the archway between the hoard and the minute and somewhat spartan studio.

More explanation was needed.

"The city will be overrun by thieves tomorrow," Eron blurted. "Not an organized attack. We need your help."

"To steal the Golem?" said Achazya raising his brows and taking another swig of wine. "And take it where? Or is that detail not organized either?"

Eron hesitated for the briefest instant.

"Or maybe you can tell me about Tukukush?" said Achazya, swishing the liquid remaining in his bottle. "I know its name. And I know what it is."

"Have you met an Ishim?" said Ester.

He shook his head.

Negative.

Ester elaborated on the plan with some contributions from Eron as wonder and disbelief alternately washed through his former tutor's expressions. Eron tried to explain Gil. Achazya nodded and listened stroking his wispy beard. He told him about Micah and the monks. Achazya didn't challenge the idea that Ishim were really. In fact, he knew all of their names and had studied banned writings on the Ishim stolen from the Archive. Micah. Tunkukush. The bailiff. The oracle. He knew them all. When Eron described Uri's workshop, Achazya set down his bottle.

"But, why do you want with that clay coated hunk of junk in the Archive?" he asked.

"It contains all the knowledge of moderns," said Eron surprised at the callous sounding question.

"It sorts the artifacts," said Achazya. "Hardly ever talks.

"You told me it knew everything," said Eron.

"That's what the thieves believe, too," agreed Ester.

"You need to someone who can get you in and out of the Archive," said Achazya. "Someone who knows the Guard's schedule. I see the Golem every time I go collecting."

Blood rushed through Eron's veins like race horses, "Will you help?"

Achazya got up from his cushions and sought a heavier robe from his wardrobe.

"The Yellow Guard allocated ten licenses for tutors. I couldn't afford the fee. A man's got to eat, Eron," said Achazya patting his rotund glory. And your mother made excellent robes, but they don't last forever," said Achazya showing them the threadbare patch under the arm. "I've got a side job teaching a potter to take inventory, but it's the only thing saving me from being contracted."

"What is inventory?" said Ester brightening.

Achazya droned down to the minutest trivialities of accountancy to Ester's rapt attention, but Eron stopped them.

"Thadine is not my mother," said Eron fingering a metal rod with four prongs on a wall hanging. The only decoration in the room, it was a map of the island. "She found me."

"She loved you and she is proud of you, Eron," said his tutor.

Ester melted. Eron tried to smile.

"My parents left me this apartment," he said gesturing toward the main room. "They died of disease. One of the archivists took me on, but he died a few years later. I have zero family and zero connections and zero licenses."

"Sell your artifacts?" said Ester, shrugging.

"Anyone caught with even one is disemboweled, beheaded or beheaded with his own intestines," said Eron.

"Come with us?" said Ester.

Achazya went pale.
CHAPTER TWENTY

"It's a DVD about Little Bighorn!" Tunkukush exclaimed where they found him in the main chamber of Achazya's apartment resting on the artifacts.

He was holding a shiny round disk in his hand, but his body, now in man form, looked as much as a paper effigy as it did a man, dry and though still the right colors more or less, the surface of his skin flaked at the joints.

"Is that important?" asked Ester.

She struck Eron as visibly more and more uncomfortable since they first entered the city, but Ester was growing on Achazya. He seemed fascinated by her. Achazya had not only agreed to help them locate and retrieve the Golem, but he now intended to join the thieves, nomads and villagers in uprising against the new policies. Eron had helped his old tutor pack a bundle. The choices had pained him, but in the end, he reluctantly kept to the essentials with the exception of a few unnecessary scrolls, which Eron agreed to carry.

"Pretty scratched though," Tunkukush said tossing the disk back on a smooth cylinder where hundreds more had been stacked.

"The Ishim," said Achazya stepping cautiously as if Tunkukush might scurry away like a wild animal or perhaps, a spider.

"You've really never seen an Ishim?" asked Ester.

"The attorney," Achazya confessed. "I thought I saw a man working in the Archive. Once. When I had first started breaking in. He vanished in a puff of smoke."

"How did you know it was Jim?" asked Tunkukush, interested, but also preoccupied reminiscing over a set of weights obviously made with modern industrial techniques. "I mean the attorney. His name is Jim."

"Unusual name," said Ester.

"Modern names were banned during the Religious Wars," said Achazya. "Jim. I don't know. All the names were blotted out in the books I have. But, he looked just like the drawing of the attorney. Great big nose."

"That was Jim," laughed Tunkukush.

"And you're the warrior," said Achazya.

Eron had never been as keen on Apocalyptic Studies, glazing over the details that Achazya regarded with intense curiosity. And though Eron never memorized a word of it, considering it childish even when he was a child, he vaguely remembered the rhyme about each of the original settlers and their pre-apocalyptic occupations. 'Stan. Stan. He's our man. If he can't park it no one can.' Stan was a parking attendant from a country called New Jersey.

Now, Achazya's interest made more sense. And it was no wonder the Ishim was not mentioned during his tutelage. No Auckian parent would allow their child to be exposed to myths, superstitions and conspiracies about the Ishim. Only facts and details approved by the Yellow Guard.

Eron watched the two lock gazes, academic and Ishim. Tunkukush's face seemed nearly as flooded with questions as the former tutor. But, Achazya broke away first, looked to the dirty floor beneath him and stood up and shouted, "Give me liberty or give me death!"

The neighbor pounded the ceiling again.

"That slogan was used by the nation that overtook mine," said the Ishim, "But, you certainly know your modern history."

Achazya thanked him nervously. He was often equally passionate and inappropriate at the same time. Awkwardly, Eron adjusted his weight.

"I have no family, but I swear on my soul and on all the soul's of all of my dead relatives that I will serve your revolt faithfully," said Achazya. "I will follow wherever you lead."

"It's not his revolt," said Ester.

Achazya nodded and clasped Ester on both shoulders, "I begged the gawds for hope. This is their answer."

Achazya's zeal left Eron both proud and uncomfortable, but from the glowering furrow on Ester's tan face, it was clearly stirring something else.

The large man found a sharp scrap of metal and sliced down his palm. Ester winced and turned away. He handed the cutter to Tunkukush solemnly as the dark red fluid trickled down his arm. The Ishim drew smoke from his palm and handed it to Ester who scratched the surface only as much as was required. Achazya's elation infected Eron who also drew significantly more blood than was necessary. Unlike Eron leaving behind his empty room at the den and his mother's empty factory, Achazya had made the admirable decision to abandon a life time of work. And as Tunkukush honored it, Eron got swept away in the beauty of it all.

Eron wrapped his hand with a cloth Achazya brought him.

"I will never understand men," said Ester turning away and cover the spot where she pricked her own palm.

"My brothers," said Achazya beaming at them both.

Tunkukush nodded and transformed briskly back into glasses for Eron.

The blood brotherhood. Everyone respected it. For some, who had lost their family to disease or disaster, it was the only basis for familial bonding.

Eron's old tutor lead the charge down the stairs, thunderously. He rapped aggressively on his neighbor's door while Eron and Ester leaned against the posts and watched. A breeze shot through the passage between his building and the next and bringing the smell of food from the nearby vendors. The sweet scent of the harvest festival filled the air.

"At this hour, you'd better be bleeding," shouted the Auckian woman who opened the door.

It was early evening. The lampposts were being lit, but the sun still held high over the narrow streets and many entrances to the stacked and crowded residences.

The large man held up his palm. His neighbor scowled at them and slammed the door. Although she had not painted her face, her hair had been carefully wrapped and she wore a light green robe. Achazya rapped again. And again the door opened. He thanked the woman for her incredible tolerance. And she looked at him as if she'd seen an Ishim.

"I won't be coming back," said Achazya with a fiendishly wide grin.

Without saying a word, she brought him a gold bar, which he pocketed. It rattled in his already heavy bundle with the other valuable metals he had acquired less legitimately.

"I sold it all," said Achazya as they walked down the cobblestone and puddles. "She knew what was there. Discovered it years ago and never turned me in. Sad story. Her husband is a worker in the Green Guard, but he is hardly paid more than rations and shelter. I wouldn't be surprised if the Administrator contracted them both long term soon."

Achazya took a book of red stamps from the deep pocket of his yellow robe and tore down the perforation, separating a fistful, which he tossed at Ester and Eron.

"Rations," he said.

"Rations?" asked Ester studying the image on one of the stamps.

"We're not allowed to barter for food," said Achazya.

"Since when?" said Eron.

"After you left," said Achazya. "Now, the administration sets the prices for goods sold in the city. And the quantities traded." Achazya stopped walking. They were at the arch of the procession. "Each one is numbered, but that doesn't stop people from making counterfeits."

"And if they're caught?" asked Ester.

Achazya slashed at his throat in a cutting motion and then lifted an imaginary head and fitted it to an invisible pike. More graphic than needed, but the point was taken.

"Whether or not they have the original," he explained. "The Red Guard goes by the numbers, you see?"

"Why is Malak doing all this?" said Eron. "Rounding up the nomads? Controlling the trade? Issuing licenses to teach?"

"You think I have all the answers?" said Achazya with his typical joviality. "You always did."

"There has to be an explanation," said Eron.

"Perhaps Malak has nothing to do with it," said Ester.

Though many Auckians had retreated home for their evening meals, the procession still bustled with activity as the lampposts began to cast their delicate glow on the watery stones. Although called the square, the town square was more or less perfectly round with a plethora of bumps, ridges and creases here and there. The first Auckian bricklayers placed steps and ledges wherever they needed to cover a dip or a groove. No masons. Eron often mused that if a horse had died in the street back then, the original masons might have paved over it, too. Generations came and went before masonry evolved into buildings formed with crisp lines and massive stones. And the first new constructions were the ziggurats, which hovered in the distance as they walked the rest of the procession.

Auckians and villagers alike wandered about from stand to stand around the central fire chewing beefalo and licking their fingers clean. A few showed signs of intoxication, Achazya normally would have been among them, but the majority had more important matters to attend.

Despite Ester's weak protestations, they stopped at the beefalo carts and unloaded the ration stamps. Auckian ribs had the bone stripped and the juicy marinated meat skewered by a long thin piece of wood along with cubs of cucumber and cheese.

"No vegetables," said Achazya.

The vendor's thin dark face and pale eyes betrayed a reluctant gratitude as he passed the former tutor a bag of jerky and three ribs.

"I tutored his son last month," Achazya whispered. "In secret. He went to one of licensed tutors, but they've been overrun with pupils or gotten lazy."

Eron patted him on the back. The rebel spirit had infected Auckians as well as nomads. He could almost grieve. Part of him wanted to find Auck City intact, its inhabitants blissfully unaware of the nomadic camps raided. And they were. Achazya remained skeptical that the guard had taken and contracted so many people so violently. It was beyond comprehension. Ester clearly wanted to rage at his denial, but she held it in. Eron couldn't deny what he had seen, but the small part of him that wanted an unchanged Auck City, had been disappointed. The city dwellers had their own concerns, their own oppressions and their own fears. Theirs was a quiet organized violence that suited the way they lived.

At the wine vendor, Achazya pulled a coin from a script that hung on his leather belt under the bulk of his belly.

"Corruption of the youth at its finest," he said slinging a bota filled with medicinal wine over his shoulder.

He was still swaggering when they reached the ziggurats.

Where, under the Sky Tower, they passed a band of thieves returning from the fair with a number of desperate and ragged deflectors. Ester knew them though their braids had been cut and their chins shaven and the women had wrapped their hair and painted their faces in the most basic manner. From a distance, they appeared Auckian, but too close and they were reckless imitations. The raid had began although dust waited lazily on the far reach of the horizon.

Ester lowered herself onto the steps of the Archive and took in the sky line. Certainly she had seen the massive structures from the hill, but on ground level they left even those who had spent their lives on the stone roads within the city walls, mesmerized. It might have been the way the light crested over the step-like structures or the incomprehensible weight quarried and moved for their construction. Or the decades it took. Achazya landed on the steps next to her and opened his bota.

"Wine dulls your mind," said Eron taking hold of the leather covered pouch. Achazya reached for it and the reddish brown liquid squirted from the nozzle.

"We're hardly the only ones out for a bit of wine tonight," he said. The low rumble of Achazya's laughter assuaged Eron's frustration.

Achazya and Ester drank and swapped the finer techniques of book keeping. Like a nomadic prophet, a man, middle aged and well dressed, waved his arms around and shouted toward the Sky Tower about the Ishim, the coffee and the end of the world. Before Eron would have ignored someone like him. Now, he listened intently.

"Aren't the gates closing in an hour?" said Eron slashing at a fallen tree with a long stick.

A cart rattled past as another pack of thieves sauntered through the market. A village shepherd drove four black bleating three-horned sheep to the sacrificial pyre. A green guardsman finished lighting the last lamppost on the far side of the square. After much screaming about the second apocalypse, the prophet stopped just as a Guardsman approached him from under a tree, pike in hand.

"Oh, it's you!" cried the guard. He was an average looking man with a round jaw and some hair growing from it. Dark eyes. A long noses. And not particularly broad in the shoulders, but someone Eron knew instantly should have been in the Yellow Guard. Too much intelligence in the eyes and too little brawn in stature.

Achzya swayed skillfully away in artful dis-symmetry as the guard lunged for him.

"What has he done?" Ester slurred.

"He urinated in a public space," said the guard who by then had allowed the prophet to run in favor of the former tutor. He had the man's wrist. "Last week."

"That is not in the code!" said Eron.

"And," said Achazya, batting the man's hands away as there was no real point in trying to run, "The week before."

"You don't want him," said Eron. "You want to contract him. Keep him from surviving until he accepts a contract."

Ropes, a normalized and inevitable condition in life, no longer shocked Eron. Achazya was bound around the wrists and the guardsmen led them to the barracks through a low stone entrance into a deep room filled with weaponry where the active Red Guardsmen trained next to the foundry adjacent to the Archive. It was just around the corner. The cells were in the back. Achazya did not resist. The interior of the barracks spanned an open space greater than any Eron had seen enclosed in brick before on one level. The low pillared roof was supported by a forrest of wooden beams scarred and splintered by battles gone amiss. A clinking anvil echoed from the foundry and the the stench of metallurgy assaulted their nostrils.

"Eron," Ester said, prodding him in the rib. "The gate."

"We're coming back," Eron reassured his former tutor. "You're my blood brother now."

Achazya flashed a weak smile. It broke Eron's heart like it was made from crusty day old flat bread. But, when the guard wasn't looking, he winked, "The guard train in the square at noon, remember?"

Right.

The Red Guardsmen did their stretching and agility exercises in the center of the square where all the Auckians could see. Meaning, they were not all gathered in the barracks. Eron winked back. Achazya's smile brightened and he raised his brows in a flash.

The guard who took him in walked them out of the barracks.

"You're friends," he said, sounding apologetic. He placed a hand on Ester's back and pushed them to the steps leading up and around back into the stable bordering the foundry. She stifled a groan that only Eron noticed. "We've consulted a physician about his bladder problem before, but rules are rules. Even the Yellow Guard confirm that it should be possible for him to make it to the toilets."

"He's done this before?" said Ester with a smirk.

"A lot," said the guard who fidgeted with his beard for a moment. He looked into the stable and peaked down the dark rocky stairwell to the barracks. "Your friend," he whispered. "Gets arrested every month."

"For how long?" said Eron.

"He always breaks out," said guard even lower. Eron was starting to feel sympathy for the man. "They don't punish him for breaking out. It would give the others- it would give them ideas," he swallowed nervously. "He's a good man."

"I agree," said Eron.

The sun had retreated. Nearly night, the gate would be closing soon.

"They won't contract him," whispered the guard. "They're going to excute him." He nodded at Eron, encouraging him to understand.

"For peeing outside?" said Eron dumbfounded. Festival goers did it all the time. It made no sense.

"Officially," said the guardsman. "Unofficially, it's because they can't figure out how he does it."

Two men approached dragging a vagrant. The guard stiffened. It was Aden. Eron's heart pounded though he knew Aden wouldn't recognize him.

"Thank you," Eron said in a loud poor attempt to deepen and obscure his voice. "We're grateful for your assistance."

The guard tipped his helmet, gave Eron the Auckian hand signal for caution, turned dramatically on his heel and disappeared into the barracks after the others.

In an instant of perfect surrealism, they found themselves exiting the gate at the exact moment of closure. It was too close. Nearly providence. As if the gawds had intervened. And Amit, freckled and hungry looking, waited outside, not beside the new census taker on duty, but close enough to be a menace.

They left in a hurry. Eron welcomed the good weather by taking of his outer tunic as they climbed the hill to meet Gil. The night air retained much of the warmth from the day, which was tense as it blew lazily around the camp. Fewer people attended Gil that evening. Fewer people seemed to be camping on the hill.

Although they'd not been visited by the Red Guard, the administrator had sent a bounty hunter to survey the caravan. Captured, he wouldn't confirm how many had spied.

Gil had heavier concerns and less support. His flair had flattened and so had his hair. Even his shoulders hung visibly lower. He jokingly asked Eron to trade places with him. Little more transpired. And fearing the worst, wine was not served. Ester caught up with the other potters and people she knew. Eron, Amit and Tunkukush found a somewhat flat area in the trees to brush clear and roll up in their cloaks. One positive thing about traveling with the nomads, the loogaroo and the panthera never attacked. There were too many of them.

And then it was morning.

Eron found Ester asleep a few feet from the spotted wild man when the first light began to eclipse the stars. For a few minutes, he let them sleep and starred through the turning leaves as the deeper shades of the night sky disappearing. It was hard to ignore the beginning and end of a day, which announced itself so clearly. Lives began and ended just as abruptly. Auck City stretched out in a cold white haze below on the hill. Though summer had more time to run its course, some mornings, like this one, hinted at autumn. Like the changes in seasons, the mood of the city had transformed during the time he'd been in the villages and on the roads. In those few stolen minutes, it occurred to Eron that he didn't need Thadine to explain his life or how she found him or why she never told him he wasn't hers or Rowan's child. He needed to know why Auck City had descended into tyranny and turned on its own people. But, if Achazya had no answer to offer, how would Thadine, a woman more interested in fashion than politics, know the answer to such a large question? No, that wasn't it. He just needed to see her. Sometimes family was the answer to questions that had no answer.

Decidedly wistful, he roused his companions while another early morning epiphany landed on him like a hailstorm from a clear sky.

Malak.

Having met Tunkukush, Uri, the oracle, the bailiff, Micah and the monks hiding in their dreary caverns, witnessed their powers and their vulnerabilities, he found it easy to believe that the Auckian Administrator was an Ishim. They had their finger in every pot. How could they resist the greatest city? The last remnant of civilization. The settlement constructed by their own hands. The home of their own descendants.

Malak was an Ishim.

Eron believed it more than possible, likely boarding on obvious. But, all the Ishim had one quality that Malak lacked.

Apathy.

"Amit, give me that spider," he demanded, but the Ishim didn't emerge from its tube.

Eron shook it until the arachnid crawled lazily from the narrow opening and perched itself on the edge.

"Why is Malak suddenly interested in rounding up the nomads?" said Eron. "Is he challenging Micah?"

"No," yawned the Ishim. "I fear it's worse."

"War," Eron breathed heavily. "Immortals against immortals. And innocent people caught in between."

"Worse," said Tunkukush. "I don't think the Ishim are any part of it."

Some of the thieves had already brought friends and family back to the camp while Eron tried to recruit Achazya. Among them, the women who had been contracted to prepare the Auckian women's make-up were in high demand, and busied themselves that morning disguising a number of the nomads with white face paint and perfectly formed features in yellow, red and black pigments. But, before Eron left for the cells, the rumor circulated that no man or woman without proof of citizenship would be allowed in. The temporary edict, meant to protect the city, undermined the thieves simple, but caviler plan.

As Gil and the rest the distraught rebels scrambled to redirect their efforts, Eron examined the sanitation plans. A direct route led from a sewage pipe about two clicks west of the port into the poorer part of the residential streets along the shore.

Large enough. Opening into a presumably sympathetic part of the city. Unexpected. Exiting into the very place they wanted to be. Near the boats.

"We will need to send in decoys," said Gil after listening to Eron's idea. "Some of us will need to enter in through the front gate with forged documents."

"Simple!" said Amit.

The highway men, thieves, nomads, villagers and the handful of Auckians now mingling in his inner circle all agreed. And they congratulated Gil on a well convinced plan.

"You're a natural leader," said Ester in awe.

Eron waited expecting the waves of admiration to turn to him.

"You do learn some things in amateur theatre," said Gil bashfully set a glow by Ester who gently placed her hand on his arm.

Gil seemed to grow a few inches by the sheer force of his renewed confidence while Eron was still waiting for recognition when the decision was made to depart the camp.

Circumventing the city, they left in groups creeping around the forrest through the farms. Eron, Ester and Amit had broken away ahead of the others. Eron suppressed his mutterings and the urge to voice his indignation as he tread cautiously over twigs and leaves. At one point, he thought a farmer spied them, but nothing came of it. He was too busy planning how he would lecture Gil once they set sail to the northeast to pay attention. Fuming, he marched along the coast bitterly following Ester with Amit trailing behind collecting shells.

Brown water trickled from the drain, a wide cylinder that emptied into a stream. Without a source of light, they walked silently through the muck, rodents and unbearable stench eventually reaching the grates that opened to the streets above. Under the city, the shaft that formed one the five major sewer lines had a ledge. Narrow, but serviceable, they no longer had to wade in waste, avoiding the build up of fats and debris. They would need to pass twenty-seven before they emerged in an abandoned building that had once housed a communal kitchen.

Eron could barely breathe and he hated Gil.

"Is that you Mal?" a voice echoed as a shadow shifted ahead of them.

It slumped and splashed into the waste water just as Eron registered that both Amit and Ester had fired on it. Amit kept his slingshot ready with a stone in hand, but Ester was already putting her bow away.

A green guardsman. The outline of the body was large.

"They don't carry weapons," said Eron, hovering over the limp mound as the water drained slowly around it.

"He was a guard," said Ester.

She walked with her bow drawn, stepping cautiously and listening for the person the dead man had named. Eron was relieved when they reached the twenty seventh grate without encountering him. If it had been lighter, he might have examined the body. Maybe he knew the man.

They changed into clothes the thieves had given them from their first raid. It seemed a tragedy, but Eron discarded his trousers and his shoes. He was glad to see Amit's clothes go. The boy never washed them.

Again at the door of the barracks, they were led through the training facilities by the guard who had taken Achazya in, a truly conflicted man. He apologized more than once explaining the size of his family and how the red guard were now working on commission. No prisoners. No pay. The man, obviously feeling the strain of the arrangement, brought them into cafeteria where Aden sat eating hot grains on a bench with five other men. Eron touched his face. The immortal-as-glasses clung securely to his nose.

Aden had grown a sparse rim of hair around his face and his complexion had grown sallow in the short time since they met inside the Waimate stockade. The circles under his eyes ran the full length of the bone underneath. All hint of his prideful nature erased. Next to him, Bo bent over the table aggressively spooning at the meal and purposefully chewing with her mouth open. She appeared equally as disheveled, but even more determined to shun whatever feminine characteristics typified her behavior. Eron drew shallow breaths and kept walking altering neither Ester nor Amit to his private fear of being recognized. They exited through the stairs and wandering in the open air under a canvas awning around a grimy looking group of men, fire, bricks and bits and pieces of their craftsmanship that was strewn around the Auckian Guard Smithery like scattered birdseed.

The weary academic waited on his knees on the sand by stack of bricks that held the coals used by the blacksmiths. They'd clamped Achazya's hands in leather cuffs and tied him to a ring on the ground where an usually tall man, both greasy and fearful, but healthier looking than the Red Guard in the cafeteria, gleefully heated a branding iron. Eron winced.

"Oh gawds forgive them," Achazya bellowed thunderously. "For the prophets of Tunkukush have brought the warnings for the wicked. They have not heard the word of the Ishim in the hour of their revulsion."

Utter nonsense.

Eron coughed.

"In the hour of reckoning, he comes to the city and the guard will know him and his companions will do likewise for the clay monster they may not see," the fat man riddled. "And his companions will do likewise."

Achazya, looking directly at him, conveyed the very important information about the state of his mind with a quick wink. And just as he had joined Amit in a fit at the sleep lockers, Eron dropped to his knees and started to sway.

"Homninuh homninuh homninuh," they chanted together, Eron following Achazya's lead.

"Mark him already," said one of the smiths, but the tall one faltered and watched Eron.

"He said something about the gawds," said guardsman who had brought Eron's former tutor in. "Normally, he just tells us where he left his bota."

In their hesitation, Ester landed heavily on the sand and began to sway beside Eron. But, when the guardsman fell and joined them, all the smiths gathered to watch the spectacle.

"I have a prophecy for your captain," Eron stammered.

"The word of the gawds," said Achazya.

"The word of the gawds!" screamed Amit who finally understood the ruse.

"Bring me the son of Ronen," said Eron.

"He is eating breakfast and doesn't need any trouble from you false prophets," said Bo, stomping through the smithery at the insistence of one of the blacksmiths who trailed behind her timidly. "Just take them below."

"All of them," asked the guard.

She raised a hand and left them.

The jailor, well known to Achazya, snored in a pool of his own drool over his desk, guarding the humid cages under the smithery. He bore the Red Guardsman's stripes and heavy leather armor over his dull wrinkled tunic, but his uniform showed only age. No use. No cuts. No punctures from knives or arrows. The guard stirred him with clank of his pike on the stone wall, he jolted upward and mumbled a welcome, taking their weapons, with an uncommon civility.

Five freshly shorn thieves, including Miriam, sat lazily waiting inside the holding cells where Eron, Achazya, Amit and Ester were locked, the rusty hinge creaking shut behind them. While the guard cut the prisoner's hair to control the lice, mites and bed bugs, they did not expect to eliminate them. And any efforts would be wasted as more people came bringing more infestations. Miriam's hair now stood in patches two to three inches from her skull, showing more gray than had been in the longer layers.

The surface of the cage bars had worn smooth and narrow where countless people had waited for either doom or reprieve. Dangerous men never saw the cells. The Auckian Guard disposed of their bodies without detaining them, but eventually a small number of repeat offenders eventually saw the gallows, which swung listlessly before unnerving glare of the morning sunrise over the courtyard where anyone could view them from the square. The guard conducted hangings before dawn so that children were spared accidentally witnessing the deaths while shopping in the market with their parents.

Ester embraced Miriam.

"How are we getting out?" said Eron, feeling the cell bars tightening the air around him. He was hyperventilating. It wasn't like a sleep locker. It was the people. Too many. Too close.

Achazya crawled over to the toilet basin and started shifting the round slab on the ground. A few of the prisoners joined him. The jailor snored. After a few minutes effort and strain, they revealed a drain that had been carved and widened. The previous occupants of the cells had even added footholds.

With a finger to her lips, Miriam suppressed the escalating thrill among the thieves who lifted themselves from the straw on the stone floor to see their salvation. Only a short ways down, enough space to crawl through to another cell veered away apparently to connect with the other basins.

"Someone has to stay," whispered Miriam.

"We draw straws," said a burly Auckian with one eye.

"And the jailor?" she said.

"Sleeping draught," whispered Achazya. "The clerk drugs him. She lost a son here. Many years ago."

Ester and Eron passed hopeful smiles, which were dampened when a handful of straws were waved under their noses by the largest of the Auckians. Eron pulled one from the side, assuming the man, not the driest parchment in the scroll, would conceal the short straw within the bundle where he could not see it before covering the ends with his fist. Right or wrong. Eron drew a long straw and exhaled audibly. When the others had their taken their lots in hand, it was clear who would stay behind to put the stone back.

"You're dealing Auck City a tremendous blow," Miriam told Achazya shaking his hand. "I hope we meet again."

She shed a tear for Ester and they held each other tightly.

"Next time," said the Auckian man who had cut the straws, padding her soft arm.

Relief turned to guilt when she looked to him, "Eron, if I don't make it to the boats, tell Gil," she had to draw in her strong emotions and regain control, but then said, "Tell him. Just say that I believe in him."

He tried to put on a sympathetic face, but if she hadn't been the one chosen to stay behind, he would have unleashed his fury. Miriam said nothing to him about him. And she'd just met his former tutor.

They climbed down into tunnel into the next cell, slinking cautiously toward the area that emptied into garbage chute from the Archive.

"That's the way to the Archive," said the Auckian, holding Achazya back.

"We're taking the Golem," he said. "Come with us."

"I'm Solomon," said he said.

"I'm Eron," said Eron. "This is Achazya and that is Amit."

"Shem," said the taller man with curly blond hair, dark skin and patches of pink on his face and arms.

"Jacob," said the shorter, wider man with a broad face and sleek dark hair cut to his shoulders.

Jacob wore a typical blue Auckian robe, but Shem seemed be in work clothes, a sort of craftsman.

"Is he sick?" asked Solomon.

"They're freckles," said Amit.

"And I'm Rachel," said a dark skinned woman whose delicate structure contrasted sharply with the others that had been in holding.

Eron imagined she might be among those the thieves intended to rescue. The strongest of the eight, Solomon took the bulk of the responsibility for helping others up the slippery passage. And dropping to the other side out of view, they entered the space only the highest ranks of the Yellow Guard were allowed to enter.

Eron landed hard on the floor, but the drop was not far, as it opened at shoulder height.

Eron had always imagined the Archive to be a hopeful place. Clean. Organized. Brimming with wonder. But he'd seen caverns in the Den that provided a more hospitable and tidy work space. Everywhere they turned trash piled to the ceiling and unidentifiable pieces of junk were grouped with like unidentifiable pieces of junk. It was Achzya's flat on a grander scale. Each tower of broken goods reached the ceiling. Some had labels. Most weren't. A path winded around the room around the towers to the source of a single mellow orange light.

"That's a computer," said Achazya. "And that's a pizza oven and that's a radiator. The moderns used it to heat their saunas. Bathhouses without water."

"Without water?" Solomon breathed to Rachel.

"How do they work?" asked Amit tossing a rusted meathook onto an assortment of monkey wrenches and crowbars, all of which Achazya named for them.

"With lightening," said Eron.

"Quiet him," said Solomon.

Next to the garbage chute, a series of mechanisms, transported artifacts to the Archive with a system of rattling pulleys within the wall. The baskets attached to the ropes moved one after another up and down on the hooks. Large enough to hold each one of them, they boarded and rode them down three levels to bottom level where the first thing Eron saw was the unnatural light of the golems round red far set eyes, which glowed and illuminated the broom in its hand. Unlike the third floor, the lowest level of the Archive had no debris, no piles of garbage and little dust. Amid the shelving, organized and tidy, the massive clay creature stopped its work and waited as the eight men and women, climbed one by one from the baskets.

"The wisest being in all of Auck is a janitor?" said Eron.

"Negative," blared the golem in a tinny monotone.

"Retrieving data from memory," the tinny monotone of the golem blared, as a small green panel on its chest circled in a smooth repetition.

Though coated with clay, the body of the golem, cracked, bulking and crumbling around its joints, revealing more lights and thin strands of metal. It stood a foot higher than Solomon and moved like a man. The golems arms and legs were formed to imitate human limbs. This was the mystery of the Archive Eron had always imagined. Solomon had his hand on a piece of metal he'd taken from the third floor, but Eron and the others were brimming with wonder. Even Achazya starred at it, waiting for Ester to disembark from her basket. The golem inspired an awe in Eron typically reserved for approaching wide open spaces filled majestic natural features, like the raging herds of purple beefalo or having his finger caught in the delicate grip of a newborn. He could hardly imagine that men had made it. The golem was clearly a work of the gawds.

The golem's broad chest tapered inward from its unnaturally broad shoulders. In ever respect, it seemed the moderns had designed it to look more or less like a man with the exception of its head, which looked like it was made by a child on the beach with a pail.

The green light continued to circle on its chest as they observed the creature struck with the awe reserved for wide open spaces with majestic natural features, having one's finger caught in the delicate grip of a newborn and the inexplicable events generally attributed to the gawds.

"Retrieving data," it said again.

Clank. Clank.

The chains began to move.

"I hear something in the shaft," said Rachel, leaning into the chamber and looking up.

The lower baskets jangled from the added weight above. It could be garbage or they could have been seen by an Archivist.

"The stairs," said Achazya pointing the steps leading away from the corner of the room and up around the corner of the stone floor.

"Four minutes twenty-two seconds," said the golem. "Retrieving data. Five minutes seven seconds."

"Follow me," said Achazya to the towering clay beast.

"Password?" said the golem.

"Doomsday," said Achazya.

"Processing," said the golem.

The gears of the chute echoed in the shaft. Achazya grabbed the golem's stubby fingers and led it toward the stair. To Eron's surprise, the creature did not protest, but it moved slowly. Each step resounded up the stair with its heavy weight and the obvious effort required to move it.

"Can it go any antifaster?" said Amit.

"Negative," said the golem its heavy robotic ascent. "Password accepted. Please set personal specifications and restart the system."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Chunks of flaky putty dropped on the stairs as it lifted its solid boot shaped feet. They rushed seven levels higher on the spiraling staircase before they reached the main floor of the Archive where two men in yellow robes with red stripes and scarves advanced on them.

The Archive, on the public floor, spread outward, white, glossy and more opulent than any other space in all of Auckland. A marble room with golden inlay and columns with gems spiraled around it in a pattern that looked like water winding through a forrest, Eron visited to register for citizenship and document his service with the Green Guard. Cases of books with their dingy spines turned outward, lined the walls, along with row after row of wooden card catalogs, a database of paper and endless notes few would ever need. Not the modern works held in the lower floors, but the records of Auck City dating back to the early establishment of the Yellow Guard. The Archive was the best of Liamic architecture. It overlooked the square on the far side from the two corner stairs leading into the lower levels. Between them, a grander wider stair lead into the first level of the ziggurat known as the Auckian Sky Tower. At the pinnacle, a small residence housed the administrator. Every branch of the government lived or worked here. And it was guarded.

The men in the yellow and red robes advanced quickly in a masterful demonstration of their training and skill. Solomon cracked one on the nose with his metal shard while Jacob evaded an initial blow and then twisted the other's neck. They dropped to the marble tile where Amit viciously pounded the base of each man's skull until they faded and were unconscious. Rachel sobbed.

"We can't exit that way," said Eron pointing to the main doors.

Solomon agreed immediately, but Ester drew closer to the exit already aware that Eron had motive for subterfuge. Achazya trailed behind a few floors below with the golem, which was stilling moving like a jar of molasses with passive aggressive tendencies.

The two stairs that divided at either side of the platform exiting into the first floor had not been covered in marble. Eron had never been to this part of the tower before. It was constructed from large bricks fit together, gray and rough to the touch.

"Servants' quarters," said Eron. "Do you know where they are?"

"Third floor," said the fat man, his brow wet with sweat.

A brief corridor connected the stairs on the second floor where a hollow space opened into the main chamber below. Below the bodies of the two guards lie unmoving and there was no sign of guards coming from the lower levels of the Archive.

A year ago, Eron couldn't have climbed seven flights of stairs without panting, but after months on the road, his legs and his lungs had grown stronger. Rachel and Achazya both wheezed as the golem plodded on up the wide smooth stairwell, still dropping bits of itself as it went. Solomon yanked Rachel's arm up the steps as a mist wafted in front of Eron's face, his glasses and false nose disappeared and Tunkukush congealed before them.

Rachel heaved a stifled scream.

"Soggy Ishim," Solomon cursed.

Jacob stared with his dark eyes wide under his heavy lids and Shem said prayers for protection to the gawds. Though not larger than an imp, the Ishim had taken human form. He pattered across the stairwell to a heavy banner that covered the exit upward on the left side. He pushed it and it swayed. Eron followed.

"Not this way," said the Ishim crossing to the other stair.

With each step, Tunkukush dematerialized into puffs of steam and smoke. He reformed on the second floor to form a banner, an identical green velvet with gold trim. It was the offices of the Green Guard. The shuffling of feet of more guard and scraping of leather grew louder behind it.

"Genius," said Achazya catching them up, "I'll wait with the golem."

"Wait for what?" said Solomon.

"We're rescuing Eron's mother," said Ester. "She works for the Archivist."

"But how are we going to escape?" demanded Rachel.

Eron hung his head.

"Lights out," Achazya instructed the golem.

The orbs in its eye socket flickered and then faded. Beside the steady curtain made from Tunkukush, Achazya crouched. The golem stood woodenly behind him.

"Wait with him," said Eron to Rachel.

Heart pumping and nerves spiked with fear, he followed Solomon up step after step winding around the next opposite stair and exited through a blue banner into a corridor on the third level. Ester scurried on toward the window at the far end, but Eron motioned for her to return when he saw a door with a metal plaque dented with the image of the wind gawd. He nodded at it and silently they gathered. It was his mother's room.

Solomon gripped the handle.

Locked.

"We have to break it down," Eron hissed desperately.

Ester pushed him aside and rapped three times on the wood.

As the door creaked open, the figure of a guard emerged from the farthest stair just as the drowsy face of Thadine peaked through. She was in her dressing gown. The shock of white in her brown hair appeared to have spread. She was tall and lean with angular features normally reserved for men too handsome to work with their hands.

"You found him!" she cried.

The worn powder on her face began to melt in a trickle of joyful tears as she pulled Eron into a fierce embrace. And the guard behind them stopped and straightened his pike. It was Aden. Five men and Bo fully clad in their leather armor and bright red stripes on the upper arm of their tunics drew in behind Eron's brother as their trained aggression gave way to a perplexed panic as Aden lowered his pike.

Eron closed his eyes.

"Aden didn't find me," he said.

Thadine pushed him back to met his eyes.

"He escaped the riots," said Aden still rigid with guardsmen-like austerity.

Neither Bo, nor the other guards, would contradict their hero, their celebrated Captain. They would not advance until he gave the word. Eron trembled.

Eron held Thadine's warm papery hand and risking everything he said, "I've been hiding with the thieves."

"What have you stolen?" asked his mother shocked.

"Stolen things," said Amit, somewhat oblivious to the nature of the question.

Confusion wrinkled the narrow ridge of Thadine's brow.

"What riots?" said Solomon.

"The nomads are revolting," Aden lied.

"No," said Eron, trying to calm himself. "The Guard have been raiding their camps for slaves." But, as he spoke, doubt gripped his conscious like a vice, "I-I came to free you."

"We're taking a ship for Ton," said Ester, watching Aden uneasily.

The other prisoners backed behind Eron and his mother. Only Solomon had a weapon, though a blunt piece of metal could make little difference against the guard man's pikes. A long leaden silence between the combatants was broken by the scrapping of slippers and a woman in flowing robe dropping onto the corridor of the third floor behind Aden, Bo and the other guards. She commanded their obedience without speaking a word stepping between them and Eron and the other prisoners as if under the protection and authority of the gawds.

"Who are you?" growled Solomon.

"Hansa, acting administrator," she said cooly.

The woman had red hair in abundance, a rare trait on the island, but relatively common among the archivists. It was wrapped in a white cloth that matched the color and sheer texture of her robes. A necklace draped over her square shoulders, which were aged by the sun and nearly as spotted as Amit's face, even in his adult form. Hansa maintained an air of disinterest as she examined the men and women collected in the corridor. Where there was no room for her to pass, both the guard and the prisoners shifted. Her checks were set high and shallow on her face and she seemed to be little more than old skin stretched over bone, but held together on the inside with modern steel.

"Ton," she said, "That's where the rubber is shipped from. Should be warm." She smiled insincerely at Thadine then walked away, back turned, shoulder bones cutting the air with each step until she reached the step.

"Hang them," she said nicely.

One of the guard roared and charged Eron with his pike down and in a flash it was over. Bo remained like a statue along with the fourth guard who waited behind them. Initially, the prisoners had began a retreat, but in shock Eron had not thought to flee and Ester had moved in and taken the blow. The blunt tip of the guard's pike dug into her chest. Blood ran softly into the fabric of her tunic. Amit whined. Solomon dropped to catch her head. And Jacob and Shem paused at the window seeing for the first time that it led to nowhere.

Thadine had a hand over her mouth. Ester had died instantly and already looked so peaceful that she might have been sleeping if it weren't for the blood still soaking from under her punctured rib. The shock would have numbed her to the full impact. Eron knew that, but somehow that meant he was feeling it for her.

"My son," his mother whimpered as she rushed to Aden's side.

She gripped his checks in her slender palms and began to sob. Aden hugged her tightly.

"We'll escort you," he said.

"Yes captain!" said Bo and other guard.

And it was only at then that Eron saw the second injury. The guard who had killed Ester lay bleeding beside her, a wooden shaft protruding from his back through the slats of leather, a weakness only another guard could fully exploit. And of the three guard remaining, only Aden was no longer holding a pike.

He stepped over the guard who was still breathing laboriously and grabbed his brother around the chest. Eron's head barely reached the man's stubble, but Aden wrapped his strong arms around him and pressed his head tightly against his leather and pulled his mother in, too.

"You don't have to forgive me," said the captain. "Either of you."

"Come with us," said Eron not hiding the desperation in his voice.

Aden squeezed Eron around the shoulder, "Go home," he said to Bo.

"Are you dense?" said Bo defiantly. "We're coming with you."

"No," Aden spat dropping Eron and releasing his mother, "I'll take the blame. Do you think Eron's friends are going to welcome us with open arms?"

Bo shifted her weight thoughtfully without backing down.

"We're coming, Captain," said the other guard whose helmet obscured his features, but he sounded as solid as he looked.

"This," said Aden, gesturing to Eron and Thadine, "is my family. I protect them. What they need, I provide. I will not be your captain."

"I don't need you," said Bo through her teeth, "I've killed more than a hundred people. For uniforms. Food. Clothes. A place to sleep. When my aunt died with the influenza, I followed you and I turned my pain into a profession. You don't have to remind me that I have nothing. No family. No friends. Only neighbors. But, it was the wrong choice."

"I'm trying to help," said Aden.

"No," said Bo. "Eron is right. And I'm not following you this time. I'm following him."

"And you are always welcome with us," said Thadine, soothingly.

"What about him?" said Shem pointing at the young guard standing with Bo.

"I have friends," said the man who had lost the flow of the conversation.

Solomon and Aden lifted Ester into Thadine's tiny chamber. His mother had a bed with a wooden frame, a table for her ointments and powders and a closet. In the corner, he recognized her nesting boxes she used in the factory to organized threads. The floor. The walls. The window. All bare cold gray stone. Even the boxes. Empty. This was not his mother's home. She had less than twenty robes and only three jars of white paste, which she quickly piled on her bed sheet along with a selection of clothes and shoes. The sack was massive, but Aden would carry it.

"Did you know him?" asked Thadine as they carried the wounded guard into her room.

"Do you have wine?" said Bo.

"You knew her," said Eron's mother as he knelt beside Ester trembling.

She would not get up. She would not talk to him again. He couldn't ask her if she was okay being left behind. And instantly, it was too real for him.

Thadine rummaged in her closet for a large vial in a green glass, which they administered in haste.

"Hansa has a way to control auck fire with metal," Thadine whispered to Eron when she had finished. She looked at her reflection in the old wavy mirror that hung behind a desk as Eron laid Ester's hands one over another. Thadine took something from under the nesting boxes and handed it to him.

It was a gun.

"Why does the guard not know about this?" said Bo fingering the object as Eron held it in a cautious stunned silence.

Solomon reached over and picked it up and the moved the small curved piece that fired it with a loud explosion. The shot dented the mirror and imbedded in the wall behind it.

Eron took one last glance at the potter before Solomon pushed him through his mother's door. As they descended to the second floor, in spider form, Tunkukush, crawled across the elegant woven rug into the middle of the mishmashed assembly of reluctant rebels. At first Eron thought only Achazya noticed him before he burst into a gaseous cloud startling Amit as he returned to his tube.

"Ishim," Achazya said to Aden who was looking pale.

"Though the main door," Eron said in his most masculine voice. "Can you take us to the docks?"

Eron knew the faces of the thieves and the nomads. He hadn't spoken to all of them or learned their names, but he could tell them from the Auckian citizens. But, when they stepped out onto the grand entrance of the Sky Tower, opening into the square, and the mid-morning sun, there were none. Not only was the Archive closed, but the market had been shut down. Solomon seemed worried. Thadine passed a private farewell to municipal code where it sat under the black draping in the center of the vast labyrinth of closed carts and moody vendors.

Jacob, borrowed a Green Guardsman's supply lorry from an unsuspecting woman on garbage detail. Though there would be no elegant manner for removing an eight hundred pound clay beast, disguising the golem as rubbish had an advantage when escorted by three guardsmen.

The march to the docks led them through the part of town that emptied into the sewers they had come in through. Thadine nervously obscured her face with her white scarf. She had often employed people near the docks to ship her textiles or collect raw materials she had ordered. No murals or sidewalks lined the path and there was no evidence of the Auckian architecture seen in the square or the procession. The structures had been formed from flotsam and jetsam, mostly worm eaten wood. And the streets smelled of inadequate sanitation planning, industry and three day old fish. It hadn't bothered Eron before, but Thadine and Rachel both clung to each other as though it were worse than prison or the servants' quarters. It wasn't. Not really.

Their uneventful escape came to jarring halt when they heard the first blast of Auck Fire. They ran. Jacob pushed the golem and Aden hauled his mother's bundle staggering clumsily after them with the awkward sack.

Gathered on the docks, a line of guardsmen rained jeers at the sea where the Auckian fleet unleashed its tan sails and cut white trails into the glistening surface of the Specific Ocean. The rest of the dock burned, emitting cascading clouds of billowing black smoke.

That was it.

Everything Eron had fought for flitted into the distance like a forgotten conversation over a cup of coffee on slow afternoon.

As though it hadn't mattered.

As though the gawds couldn't be bothered with to trifle with the tedious workings of human rights. The man who had sold everything he owned on a bid for his liberty, trembled visibly. Rachel broke into tears. Amit yelled after the boats. And with the exception of Eron, the Auckians seemed wrenched from within by an unseen terror. Eron stood numbly starring at the sea as the thieves, nomads and the men and women they'd rescued disappeared creeping onward toward the far horizon.

Solomon ran. The rest of them followed close enough to see him dive into the waves beyond the rocks off the edge of a dock. He swung each of his broad arms in the cold sea reaching for the transport as the gap between the swiftly moving wooden hulls and barnacle coated beams of the dock widened. Boats burned beside him.

Thunk.

An arrow whizzed through the air over their heads and caught his back. Red blood floated causally into the blue waters and his futile aspirations abruptly and unceremoniously were ended.

The larger two of the ships might hold at least a hundred men, but others had an advantage in speed and carried between fifty and eighty. There was no way to know how many had boarded for they left, but Eron and the others felt alone.

"We missed the boat," said Achazya.

"Our ship has sailed," Eron laughed.

Thadine scowled at them and shielded Rachel from the darkness of their humor.

"They'll probably caught in a storm," said Jacob, "or eaten by giant cephalopods."

"Aunt Sarah," said Aden.

"I couldn't impose," said Thadine, but as the Red Guard passed them on their way to the edge of the dock where they slaughtered the first old man who appeared sympathetic to the boats, she had a change of heart.

"I'd been saving to buy your contract," said Aden. "She offered to sell two of her horses and take you. I wrote her a month ago after I ran into Eron in one of the villages."

"You told her I'd been contracted?" said their mother raging with injured pride. Pride was not so much a quality Thadine possessed as a choice of lifestyle.

But, they spared no more time watching the seven vessels tread the horizon. And without deliberation and only symbolic coaxing from Aden, they found a garbage cart and transferred the golem. Eron and Rachel squeezed in beside it while the spotted man found his place beside Eron's former tutor. Shem pulled the lip shut and Aden latched it. Bo, Jacob and the other guard escorted the rocking cart one lonely step at a time away from the city.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

They drove to the cart to the western gate. Not aware two captains of the Red Guard were deserting the city, the guard at the gate. When no more foot traffic bobbed about on the road beside them or behind them or anywhere within hearing range, they pulled off everyone, but the golem.

Achazya put his thick hands to his puffy red cheeks and blew a sound like a tui bird. Amit radiated delight at the imitation. Shielding his eyes from a ray of light that escaped the canopy of trees they were passing under, Eron watched as Amit soundlessly drew air into his mouth and dreamed visibly that he had the academic's gift for imitating bird calls.

"On the hardest days, I never seem to notice them," said Achazya wistfully when he had finished talking to the birds.

"Notice who?" asked Amit looking around.

"Bing song doesn't penetrate the troubled mind," said Achazya ominously tapping the side of his head.

Jacob pulled his knit hat over his face and put his legs up on the golem.

"It gets into mine easily enough," said Eron checking the road for traffic, but though the birds continued to squawk from the branches and wheels of the cart tore gently across the stoney ruts, he knew he would not be listening to the feathered din Achazya had not drawn his attention their way.

"They're always there," said Amit chewing the idea over at a pace typical for a glacier.

"A man can stop and listen to them anytime," said Eron's former tutor, "but he doesn't."

"Or a woman," groaned Bo from the platform above them.

"What I'm trying to say," said Achazya, "Is that a person may hear the bird song, but they don't always listen to it."

"Sometimes you have to stop in order to smell the roses," Bo droned sarcastically.

"I can still prohear them," said Amit, leaning over the edge of the cart, seemingly deep in thought.

"I wasn't speaking literally," said Achazya.

Eron had seen the same look on the fat man's face a dozen times as he eyeballed Amit's head like an inspired artist studies a formless lump of clay.

Over the next hour or so, the former tutor presented two new concepts for Amit to add to his meager vocabulary. Consciousness and abstraction. With the freckles on his forehead still straining to make room for the ideas, an epiphany struck the boy in the man's body. He stumbled across the cart and starred at the road that led back to Auck City. But, only Achazya was infected by his sudden enthusiasm.

Adorned in her delicate Auckian fabrics, but soaked with the food waste that lined the bottom of the cart, Thadine had fallen asleep on Rachel's shoulder who was also snoring.

And although the wheels of philosophy had began to turn for the first time inside the spotted cranium a few warped floorboards away, Bo had long since lost interest in the pointless conversation. She sharpened the gleaming edge of her guard issued knife on a strap of leather. But, Aden, holding the reins, and riding the cart steadily, was listening carefully, concentrating.

"It's the Ishim," said the wild boy.

Amit's eyes opened wider than an owl that had just spied a two pound field mouse with a limp. And even Aden handed the reigns to the other guard so he could follow Achazya's response.

"What is the Ishim?" said the former tutor.

"This cart," said Bo, "is not a Yellow Guard training facility."

"It's a teachable moment," spat Achazya.

"We're not guardsman," said Aden, climbing over the edge of the driver's seat and joining the cart full between Shem and Rachel.

Bo slumped bitterly in her seat.

"Can you explain," said Achazya. "You were saying something about Ishim?"

Knowing what might come, Eron suppressed an aggressive smirk as Amit opened his mouth. Achazya didn't know he was a child in a man's body or that he'd been found living alone on the waste.

"The Ishim visit babies and use their mist to make them startify their thinking. That's how consciousness gets in to their head," Amit explained in earnest. "When the mist evaporates, it leaves the abstraction."

Eron exploded in peals of laughter, rolling back against the shallow edge of the cart on his buckled legs. Wiping the edge of her blade, Bo didn't betray her emotion. But, both Shem and Aden waited with baited interest while Achazya tapped the boards of the cart thoughtfully gathering his strength for another onslaught against the steel exterior of the boy's mind.

Eron's former tutor started to speak, but reconsidered it. Without question, Amit was the unwaveringly literal-minded pupil he could have found. The spotted boy sat down as the cart creaked onward. And Eron wondered what the golem might have to say if it weren't recharging.

The forrest grew denser and the bird song had all but concluded for the afternoon when Aden finally stirred from his private musings. He looked uncharacteristically thoughtful.

"So?" Aden said with hesitation.

"Does the captain have a question?" said Achazya.

"Is it true?" the musclebound warrior ventured hesitantly.

Amit placed his spotted elbows on his knees and leaned toward Achazya. For a few moments, neither the wild boy nor the great Auckian warrior broke their gaze as the academic scrambled for a response. And Shem was equally captivated.

"Consciousness does start at birth," said Achazya slowly, "but the Ishim-"

"Pull in the next driveway," Aden interrupted.

Achazya sighed his relief.

The woods had thinned and at bend in the road rested an ancient structure. With a solid wall of modern construction, Aunt Sarah's cottage had been built centuries ago from materials salvaged from buildings toppled by earthquakes much like the structures found inside Auck City. Only these were not set into a wooden framework and covered with plaster. Their blocks were bare. Where mortar held them together, moss had grown and in many crevasses and ivy had followed, creeping up the side, covering half the structure. If it weren't for a stream of white smoke winding its way out from the chimney, the cottage would have easily been mistaken for another overgrown ruin, forgotten and abandoned by earlier inhabitants. It was a model of negligence.

The cart halted and after waking Thadine, they disembarked, stiff and anxious. The fiery eyes of the golem ignited, but Achazya instructed it to wait.

The rotting wooden gate at the entrance fell off its hinges as Aden pushed it inward. He set it against the nearly toppled fence as if no one might notice though they both knew Aunt Sarah would be livid. Eron treaded over the grassy dips and mounds in the yard. A broken kettle. A bed frame. A yoke used for the horses. Equipment deposited years before left an impression though it had been almost entirely reclaimed by the earth. Leaves had gathered and decayed. Seedlings had taken root. Ferns had encroached. Eron doubted that the others even realized the path they were walking on had once cut through a yard. Like Uri's hoard, it was all part of the forest now, but unlike Uri or Achazya, Sarah didn't accumulate things, she simply had grown too old to manage what she had.

"I need a bath," said Thadine holding herself for a dignified entrance and brushing her food stained robes.

Rachel clung to her side as they climbed onto the porch, but Sarah had the door open before they could knock. She was short, squat and much more muscular than was absolutely necessary for a man or woman. In her prime, she had been a remarkable ball player like her brother Ronen, the man Eron thought was his father. Until a hunting accident, Sarah's husband spent most of his life in the service of the Green Guard monitoring Ponsonby's endless cycles of bloom and decay and protecting rare mushroom varieties from over-harvesting. A single room with the beds built into the wall, the cottage had cabinet bursting with old fabrics from Thadine's workshop. Roots hung from the rafters. And large kettle hung over a sturdy hook in the open fireplace.

Sarah served Thadine, Rachel and Bo a cup of coffee.

"Don't touch that crockery!" she cried as Jacob reached for a cup. "I don't have enough coffee for everyone," she admonished. "If you had told me you were coming here, I'd have been better prepared. Not you darling," she said to Thadine.

"I didn't mean to propresume," said Jacob.

"You can sleep in the loft," she said following Jacob around with her small piercing eyes as tired to avoid the gnarled woman. "Take them to the stable."

Aden and Eron nodded obediently. Sarah hadn't changed. She handed Aden a folded quilt with moth holes.

"Don't let them play cards," he told Bo who seemed stunned that the men were leaving her behind.

The boards of the stable roof were more or less intact though most of the shingles had long since departed allowing light to trickle in. No need for a lamp. Aden fetched the cart, untethered the horse and they released the golem.

"I have a cousin who lives by the ruins over the hill," said Shem.

Bo opened the stable door. Aden frowned at her.

"Fabrics," she mumbled by way of an explanation for not staying with the women in the cottage.

Eron followed Bo who followed Jacob who followed Aden who followed Jacob and Shem up a ladder to the open platform above. Achazya followed, too, but the first rung snapped under his weight so he opted to stay below with the horse and the clay creature.

"Now what?" said Aden picking up a bit of straw to chew and leaning his brown curls against a beam.

"I don't know anymore than you do," Eron whispered, studying his brother's face.

On the platform, Bo stretched her hairy legs and unbuckled the straps of her armor. By the time she had her helmet off, lied down on the bare boarding and put her feet through the open window, she was grinning like a lamassu.

"We're up the creek without a paddle," she announced.

"In what way?" asked Shem. "We have three warriors, two academics and two-"

"Additional," offered Jacob. "And don't forget our antiquated modern machinery."

"Hold on," said Eron. "I've got a knife."

"We're fucked," Achazya shouted up helpfully.

"He means that we're ruined," said Eron. "It's a modern term."

"Academics," said Aden glumly untying his boots.

"But, we have an advantage," said Achazya sounding optimistic. "Speed. We can complete a full inventory of our resources in less than a minute. Can the Auckian Guard do that?"

Bo tried to cover her face to suppress the tears, but she was laughing too hard. She rolled onto her stomach.

"We will save a lot of coinage on provisions," said Jacob.

"No weekly debriefings," said Shem.

"Let's shut down supplies, fire the clerks and put the armory on a two week termination notice," cried Bo.

"And do away with are the sensitivity lectures for working with women," said Aden.

"I say we opt for open air barracks and internally sourced in ground latrine facilities," said Eron unleashing a bit of grin.

Achazya's deep rumbling chuckle was infectious. After a few uncontrolled spasms and violent snorts, Amit dangled his legs over the ledge.

"Can I join you?" the wild boy asked.

Aden nodded.

"Initializing," said the golem.

It counted down in a varying series of non-chronological increments as Eron climbed down the ladder. He examined the cracks around its arms and legs. A large hole on the back of its neck exposed a network of metal strings and square boards decorated in geometric inkings one of which read "personality matrix." Eron forced an unfastened end back into the small fitted holes in the board. It made a ping sound.

"I do wish I had a digestive system," said the golem.

Eron jumped back.

The golem's voice had changed.

"Coffee," the creature sighed, "Columbian preferably."

Achazya shrugged.

"Columbia: a Spanish speaking S. American country bordering the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Population: 43 million people," it said with human sounding yawn.

Aden, Bo and the others peered over the edge of the loft as the golem started rubbing the side of its head where its temples might have been had it not been a computer. The orange lights in its eye sockets flickered. If Eron didn't know it was a machine, he would have thought it was blinking.

"My short term memory is still loading. New information. Accessing. Aw man, every one was killed. Bad, bad earthquakes. Dangerous for all the squishy life forms. Last known contact with Colombia was a radio transmission picked up by the Alliance from Tobago in 2059. And whoa! Either my GPS is on the fritz or Columbia is not exporting coffee anymore. That can't be good for their GDP," it said.

"What did you do?" said Achazya looking the metal strings on its neck.

"Anyone have any supraidea what it said?" said Amit.

"Excuse me," said the golem raising a finger at Amit, "but the prefix supra modifies a noun, which indicates the new term is transcendental."

Eron patted the lump of clay with a renewed appreciation.

"What's your name golem?" said Shem.

"Frank," said the golem.

"That's not a name," said Shem. "What happened to 'negative' and the other modern jargon?"

"Eron did something to the hair on it's neck," Amit blurted. "The per-some-mal-ete-my-tricks."

"The Archivist reset me," the creature groaned.

"It's possessed," Bo shouted grabbing her knife. "Ishim spy! That's why no one followed us. They are in the golem!"

"Technophobia?" the golem asked Eron.

Bo jumped off the edge of the loft and pushed her way past Achazya. She held the edge of her blade evenly only a few feet from the metal strings exposed on it's neck.

Crumbling at its joints, it lifted its massive hands over its neck protectively. "I've been a sorting, sweeping vegetable for three hundred years fifty seven days two hours and twenty one seconds. Don't disconnect my personality matrix. It's living death being no squishy being could understand."

Eron looked at Aden and flashed his eyes in Bo's direction.

"Leave it," he said.

"It's an Ishim," Bo replied sternly, not lowering her knife.

"Any of us could be possessed," said Eron, hoping Tunkukush didn't choose that moment to leave his tube.

"Quiet," said Bo.

"Mute settings disabled," said the golem, "I did it myself," it whispered to Achazya.

"She meant me," said Eron.

Bo let her knife drop, "There was this girl," she said. Her voice cracked. "No burns. No abrasions. The smoke killed her. She went on the pile with everyone else." Bo started to sob. "Maybe they could have placed her in the ground the way they used to lay her in her cradle and sang her to sleep."

"What are you talking about?" Aden interrupted.

"I saw her before we set the fire," she shouted at him and then collapsed on the straw covered dirt, sobbing violently. "A grave for a hundred people with no marker and no funeral."

"I can't listen to this," said Jacob, he dropped from the loft and left the barn.

The forest carried the clean smell of pine and fir trees and Jacob left the door open, but he re-entered before taking more than a dozen steps.

"Listen," he said, closing the door behind him. "I know this area. There's a cave on the other side of the ruins where I used to play survivors and monsters with my cousin. It was made by the moderns. Long and narrow for the carts to pass."

"Who else knows about it?" asked Aden.

"One end is caved in," said Shem. "But other is only partially covered."

They all shot Shem a quizzical glance.

"He's my cousin, too," said Shem pointing at Jacob defensively, as though that had been obvious.

"Any one could have discovered it by now," said Aden dismissively.

"But the idea is sound," said Eron. "We will resist."

"Of course we'll resist," said Bo.

"How?" said the guard.

"We just will," said Bo spinning her pike on one side, the other and around her back.

She grunted a fearsome war cry and stabbed it forcefully into the dirt as a gust of wind blew leaves in through the open door. Amit took a crooked stick and did an uncoordinated, but enthusiastic imitation.

Aden rustled the blond hair's on Amit's head.

"Together," said Eron. "We will resist together. Here. In the forest."

They left the cart, the horse, the golem, the women in Sarah's cottage, the stable and the networks of Auckian road that brought them there and made their way toward the mouth of Jacob and Shem's cave, climbing a green hill dotted sparsely with broad leaf trees. No one spoke. They conveyed everything important by moving synchronized together at the same pace. The wind had picked up and a light rain visited and left its marking the dry ground though it was absorbed almost instantly. The wind had warped the shape of the few trees on top of the steep hill and left them gnarled and pressed closer to the ground. From the bare pinnacle, they could see the black opening in the distance across a sea of green foliage. No path led down to the other side. They zigzagged along the muddy outcrops wherever their footing would hold. And at the bottom, the former guardsmen, the academics, the prisoners and Amit peered in at the long channel leading underground. It resembled the entrance to the lair of the lamassu though it was longer and no light shone from within.

Under the brilliant open blue sky and the soft billowy cloud cover, they stood side by side surveying the cave.

"Amit of Ponsonby," Amit breathed.

"We're all 'of Ponsonby' now," said Aden putting his arm around Eron.

Eron smiled, "I think Ester would have liked it."

A new feeling stirred inside him. Something different than anything he had felt before. He had nothing he wanted to arrange or organize. And everything seemed to be in its place. It was not right, but it was good. It was not predictable, but it was hopeful.

"It's going to be a lot of work," said the guard.

"We will do it together," said Aden.

"Together," the others agreed.

"So this is where it begins," said Achazya prophetically beaming at the barren rock chamber and stumbling forward to explore their new home.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to all the people who supported and contributed to Peevish Penman Press. To my mother, sister and son. To the Masons in Wellington. To the staff at Victoria University. To the Proctors in Washington. To Clan Bailey International. To the beta readers. To the travelers at Pentlands. To the staff at Laurie's House in St. Albans. And the friends and family who have been there, online and in person, always supportive, always forgiving my misspellings and typos.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carrie Bailey is a one dimensional coffee obsessed writer and illustrator from Oregon. She has lived in Chile, New Zealand, North Carolina and is now working and traveling in Vermont.

She started writing in 2009 and publishing a poem about instant coffee. Since then, she's organized The Handbook of the Writer Secret Society and published multiple novels and short stories.

The Ishim Underground is her first major science fiction work.

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