CHAPTERS

• PROLOGUE
  
• 1 BLEAK
  
• 2 ACQUAINTED
  
• 3 NOWHERE
  

PROLOGUE

The gas escaped with a sickening hiss, raising goosebumps up his arms. A shiver ran down his spine and it took all his strength to walk away from the nozzle; to leave it on. He approached the laboratory window and prodded the blinds down to squint through the gap. Midday, August fifteenth, twenty-six-oh-three. The clouds hung just the same as they always did over the city of Ban-Ken-low, thick, polluted, traced with colors of green and brown and grey. But today they felt much more grim than usual, as if the foreboding grey had come for Dr. Polcene himself.

He saw four figures slip outside his gate and stop to wave their arms at one other. One was wearing his lab coat. The figure's spectacles glinted in the daylight.

Dr. Polcene smiled. He wept and drew a handkerchief from his slacks. His wallet fell out with it and he peered down. He dried his eyes and bent. The gas was beginning to tickle his throat.

He opened the dented Invincible™ wallet and his finger fell upon a photograph. He slipped it out and smiled again, then picked up the wallet and stood. He walked along the lab trailer and left the door open as he passed into his study. He sunk into his desk chair with a sigh and set down the wallet. He held the photograph out.

The image, creased and crumpled at its edges, depicted thirty-four familiar faces, one of which was his own. The date was written in the corner.

"Has it only been two years, here? Remarkable."

He coughed into the crook of his elbow, beginning to feel light-headed.

He leaned into the photograph. Of course twenty years of success had to come to an end at some point, but he wished it didn't have to be for all them. He cursed himself for the past two years. The photograph marked a happier time before he had taken funding from Ban-Ken's leaders; before he had brought all thirty-two of his family, his life's work, to the city. It had condemned them all, that decision. Malcom Perry, the thirty-fourth in the image, had been smart enough to stay away.

But everyone was out now, running in their groups through the streets, disguising themselves with his clothing and everything they could find in his linen cupboard. Thirty-two frightened beings.

He had made them to do good. He had made them to restore the Earth to a green state. He had raised them to believe in humanity, and in nature, and to do what no human could; to be pure in a purpose above themselves. It had been so exciting when his species prototype had woken for the first time and asked him what he was.

"You are Ted. You are the first faun," Polcene whispered, as if the spectacled being was sitting up again before him. He held the handkerchief to his nose and tried to itch away the burning sensation. "One day you'll make the world a better place."

He pressed his head into his hands.

"I hope that day comes." He hung his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Oh, by the stars. Don't let them all die."

One would have to get out. One, at least, of the thirty-two would escape the city where its wall's hadn't yet been finished, and they would serve their purpose.

"And, in my passing, I dream of only one thing..." He penciled his statement onto the back of the photograph. "That while I may not be there to see it, my fauns will restore our world, and the future will be green at last."

He closed the photograph into his wallet and struck a match.

1 BLEAK

2815

There wasn't a muscle left that functioned beneath his shriveled yellow skin. There wasn't a speck of clear vision left in his filmy eyes, or a moment of peace from the ringing in his weeping ears.

He stood in Death's reception, the others in His office. They'd been avoiding the appointment for months. But it was inevitable, as it always had been.

Abraham, the man that had been determined from the beginning to outlive them both, woke that bleak day to triumph. The patience of Death had run out.

There wasn't a heartbeat left in Tulip. His eyes searched hers, until a fly landed on her filmy iris. He smiled and propped himself up on his elbow to look past.

The faint breath of Gage shuffled the sand at his thin, cracked lips. The mute's eyes were fixed in a squint by clotted mucus. The very faintest glint of life flickered behind; a dying candle in desert wind.

Abraham laughed, at last seeing them at the ends of their ropes. He fell onto his back again and threw his fists into the air.

"Hallelujah!", he crowed, as though he saw rescue and sanctuary on the horizon only now that he, and he alone, stole haggard breaths.

Unlike his faded companions, he had served time as a guard under the Shir family's protection. He had started their journey stronger, fresh from a privileged life. With all said and done, he would have given anything to have the privileges back; his arm, his leg... anything he had left, he would surrender. Just one slice of orange, a glass of bourbon, and he'd desire nothing more. Or, everything more.

Alas, his stomach was empty, and hunger, a beast, clawed his innards mercilessly. His spindly skeleton was near to breaking from his calloused skin.

All he had to go on was the hope for survival, which he glimpsed through the clouds of bronze-painted dust that hovered in the starkness. There were buildings out there, just visible behind low-hanging smog and grainy clumps of disturbed earth.

Where there were buildings, there were people. Where there were people, there was food, there was water, there was hope.

You would think Indiana was a desert, he marveled, as he picked his weary bones up and gathered his resolve. He wiped the sweat from his brow and started into the vastness, sand-scorched feet stumbling beneath his weight. It was dry and barren as far as the eye could see, littered with crumbling and scrapped waste from the old days. Antiques like cars reduced to frames and hubcaps. The train that they had camped by for the night had been stripped of its wheels and passenger seats. The wind had whistled through rust-eaten holes and glassless window frames and thundered in its hollow cabin.

Since his banishment from Ban-Ken, he-with the others-had passed through five settlements, and from each had been turned away, humiliated and hungry, and looking for nothing more than some human decency, some sympathy. It had been months. They had been staggering at the ends of their lives for months and hadn't met a single caring soul. Everyone was too interested in saving themselves. That was the world, wasn't it? Selfish!

Abraham's companions had run out of bread six days prior.

Cunning from the beginning, he had hoarded a secret share to himself. Each night while the others slept, he had sparingly indulged.

He had expected Tulip to have died a lot sooner; in the first month with the other three from their group. The fact that she had survived so long had only reduced their limited supplies further. Abraham stole water from her and her lover, Gage, every night when they were asleep.

He had considered snapping Gage's neck at multiple points to be rid of his stomach, for the man, a mute, couldn't have screamed. Abraham had always been regrettably susceptible to the screaming and the pleading, and in his work under Shir employ, it had racked him with guilt, accumulated over years of service. It was the guilt that had caused him to falter, to become sloppy, and in the end, to be banished. He had been injected with a concentrated dose of Ban-Ken's notorious plague, and a reversal to the cure that he had taken for granted for his entire loyal life. He had felt the effects instantaneously.

The others in the group had simply caught the plague while scrounging in the filth of Ban-Ken's lowly West End. The radiation in the city was immense, and they had never had access to the cure, as he had.

For Abraham, the abhorrent plague was a punishment for his spinelessness, and it tortured him far more than any traditional electric chair or cashiering would have. He'd have taken a public beating over this. He'd have taken a sentence to death by starving lions over this.

Of all things, guilt had ruined his once perfect life.

The packed dirt road felt unsteady beneath him, but despite his weakness, he swore to survive, and his trembling knees pushed on. Teeth clenched, and thoughts dazed by delusional imaginings of the sweet taste of oranges and bourbon and the comforting aroma of lavender, Abraham staggered from morning to night. He didn't sleep for the fear that he might not wake.

By light and by dark, he wobbled and wobbled nearer to the distant settlement for days that he hadn't the strength of mind to count.

He fell many times. The first time, it took him minutes to rise. The last, it took hours. But the sign was tantalizingly near. A corrugated slab of rusty steel stuck up from the dirt on a leaning iron stanchion. In worn red paint, the name of the town was printed thick.

WEST HAVEN.

That was welcome enough.

When he reached the sign, he collapsed on top of it, overwhelmed by such ecstasy that he laughed, even as the sign broke beneath him and brought him with it to the dirt. He laughed and laughed until his lungs shriveled to nothing and he was forced to stop for saving breath. The sign threatened his frail ribs, heavy as an anvil on his chest.

It weighed little more than a lantern might. The steel was thin and worn, but not to the same extent as the deteriorated man. His efforts to escape from its hold were in vain, and after time, he tired. Too weak to carry on, his exhaustion swept him to sleep.

***

"It's foul, sir," Alyn whined, for the umpteenth time. "Right foul. Couldn't we mix some perfumes or some nice esters or something?"

Her teacher, the esteemed Master William Octienne, pressed his worn fingers to his temples and muttered under his breath. His class distracted. It wasn't just Alyn, either. They had all woken up to the smell. The entire settlement had woken up to the smell.

It had begun the afternoon prior. A faint trace of the odor had drifted in on dry winds and seeped through cracked windows and rotted doors. It had been so faint, then, that only three of the children in Octienne's alchemy class had smelled it. Alyn Smythy was the eldest of that three, and the most outspoken. She had expressed her distaste for the ghost odor long before it hit Octienne's nostrils. He'd not thought much of it, until he'd awoken far before daybreak to the reek himself.

"Alyn, please," sighed the master. "I know that it isn't ideal, but we must make do."

"I ain't gonn' focus if that stench keeps on suff-ah-caytin me, sir," she insisted in her offensive, indeterminate drawl.

"Not me, neither!" Another piped.

"Or me," peeped a third.

Master Octienne grimaced and planted his palms on his desk. He bowed his head for a moment. The pungent odor permeated the air and drifted ceaselessly to his nose. It smelled of something dead. Rotting, nauseating, and sharp. He raised his eyes to his students once more.

They were antsy. They shifted in their seats and experimented with different ways to breathe. Some, like Alyn and her ratty old scarf, covered their mouths and noses with clothing. Others clenched their teeth and cupped their hands over their faces like makeshift gas masks.

"Very well," Octienne submitted at last. "Class is dismissed. But! We will resume tomorrow with or without the smell. Understood?"

The students were comically relieved. They hollered sarcastic prayers and hooted praise for their master. Octienne reluctantly opened the door and allowed them out. One by one, they escaped.

Young Alyn was the last, as she never failed to be. She had an unbalanced and fairly stiff gait that she tried to conceal-an even after thirteen years of trying, couldn't. Octienne knew very well that the girl received unfair abuse for her constant clumsiness. The orphans were cruel to each other.

He never tolerated it in his own classroom, but in the orphanage, the children greatly outnumbered the three tired and passionless supervisors. They were rarely under supervision at all outside of their classes. They fended for themselves.

"Ah promise yeu, sir," she said as she strode past him as smoothly as she could, "I will find the source of that odor if it kills me."

He smiled. "I'll come with you."

"Suit yerself, sir."

She waited for him at the exit, which stood open at the end of the hall. The alchemist locked up his classroom and strolled to meet his prized pupil. They ventured from the dilapidated building together, into the parched Indiana air. Alyn followed her nose, and the master trailed behind.

Octienne appreciated the girl's talent in the alchemy trade, his trade, and often described to his colleagues his observations of her advancements in his class, with as much pride as he would for his own. He insisted that she had a gift with plants. To the scoffs of his company, he would claim that a plant in her care would grow twice as quickly as any other. In a town like West Haven, however, talent didn't take pupils far.

It was the kind of place that travelers avoided visiting; so small and insignificant that it didn't even exist on most maps. It was a poor settlement with an even poorer choice of mayor, where resources had to be rationed and soldiers were scarce. The entire town fit into the half-buried boundaries of what was once a shopping mall parking lot, lost in the middle of the 'Near'. Solar storms, movement of the tectonic plates and electromagnetic pulses, recurrent disasters spanning over centuries, had left most buildings and satellites from past eras as nothing more than unrecognizable piles of rubble that suffocated and crumbled in the dry gusts. Thick layers of dust and grime settled from the polluted air and left coatings of filth over the remains.

The starving town comprised of an unremarkable government building, which was little more than a shack built of reused and haphazard chunks of greasy cement, a small, deteriorating grocery store that restocked once a month, a school for trade apprenticeships in dire need of repair, and a teetering college with creaking supports for those that advanced. There were a handful of one-story hovels, and above all loomed an orphanage, where unwanted children from all over were left to struggle for a future. The orphans overpopulated the starving town, outnumbering the few adults ten to one, and surviving on half their feed. Octienne, like many of the strange and varied scholars and tradesmen and tradeswomen, dedicated his life to educating the orphans.

"Alyn, one day I am going to invite you to dinner," said Octienne. "I would like introduce you to a friend of mine who I know will be delighted to meet you."

"I'd take anything over the slop we get choked with at Dumbberry's."

"They do their best." Octienne shrugged sympathetically.

Dunberry's was the name of the orphanage. It had been dubbed Dumbberry's by the children for as long as Octienne could remember.

They approached the underwhelming boundaries of the settlement; the edge of the buried parking lot. Its crumbled stone walls remained standing in places. Concrete chunks littered the dirt. Octienne stopped.

"Alyn," he said, "we aren't equipped to go far outside of the boundaries."

Alyn scoffed. "There ain't no bandits in the Near, sir. None. If there was, that'd be news, and everyone would'a heard 'bout it before a day went by." She found a gap in the old wall and stepped halfway through it. "Aha! I think I found the stink, sir! P-U!"

Master Octienne toed nearer and peered over her.

She curiously crept towards a piece of metal. Just outside the barrier, Octienne recognized it as West Haven's sign, and something unmistakably human lay beneath it. He tilted his head. "Alyn, please don't-"

Without a wise glance at what was beneath, Alyn lifted the sign in one hand and flung it away.

Her eyes bulged, and with a sharp yip, she staggered back a good distance. Her hands flew to her chest. Her scarf fell from her face. She quivered at the sight and waited in terror for the foul-smelling carcass to rise from its disturbed grave.

Octienne, alarmed, hurried to join her and placed comforting hands on her shoulders.

"Good gracious," he gasped. "It's a man."

After a moment of stillness, Alyn's shock ebbed, and her interest returned stronger. A grin spread across her freckled cheeks. She moved close again, pinched her nose and crouched.
"Wow," she breathed. "A corpse!"

Its skin was painted green and yellow and purple and blue from the inside, shining through taut sinew. It was hardly more than a skeleton. Its bones protruded grotesquely, so prominent that each one could be counted.

It was nearly a spitting image of the moldy plastic skeleton that dangled from the stand in Master Octienne's classroom. However, wafer-thin skin, scraggly hair, and threadbare clothes defined it.

"No, not a corpse..." Octienne breathed, lifting his hand to his lips.

The stranger's shirt, though filthy and missing buttons, was collared, short-sleeved, and once white. There was a black tie around his neck, knotted like a bandanna beneath his frizzled beard. The clothing and the state of the man told Octienne exactly where he had come from and made him cautious.

"Wait 'til the others get a load of this," Alyn marveled, intrigued. A scavenger like the rest of them, she licked her chapped lips, shoved up her sleeves, and wriggled her fingers into the man's trouser pocket in the search for treasures.

"Alyn, don't-" Octienne began.

Upon a sudden, the stranger jolted and flung his arm at her. She screeched and attempted to get away, but he grabbed her hand in a deathly iron grip. Two fleshless hands scraped her skin.

She hollered and spat and cried out, "Zombie! Help!"

The man, somehow living, clung to her wrist. She tried to pry him off and squeeze out of his grasp but he simply would not let her go, and in her struggle to flee, she dragged him with her to the town border. Octienne chased her, and there, the corpse of a man lost his will, and his strength ebbed. As soon as his bony digits peeled away and dropped to the dirt, she ran as fast as her clumsy boots could carry her and didn't look back. She didn't hear his hoarse pleading.

He shouldn't have been alive. Her wrist tingled where his rough, sharp fingers had scratched her.

"Alyn!" Octienne called. He waved his arms and anxiously followed her. "Alyn, stop! Come back!"

"Help," croaked the stranger.

Alyn tripped over and collapsed, face first, in the dirt a few yards away. She screwed up her honey-skinned face and shakily brought herself to stand. Before she could dash off again, Octienne caught her.

"Alyn, it is safe, I promise you," he chuckled. He had such a gentle voice. No order from him ever sounded harsh, and any temper that he may have had never slipped to his tongue. He was the kindest man that Alyn had ever met, and she reckoned he still would be if she'd only heard him speak once.

Every other man in town seemed to speak gruffly, coyly, or with coarse language or slurred words. Alyn couldn't trust a man with slurred words; they drank, and the drinkers always had something to hide. Alyn couldn't read a man who spoke coyly; they lied, and it was never clear when. Alyn felt unsafe with men who spoke gruffly; they were unpredictable.

"That man is no zombie, Alyn," Octienne told her calmly.

"It grabbed me, and it's dead," she argued, breathing heavily.

"Alyn, look at the poor man. He needs help." He gestured back to the wall. "Come with me. Please."

Alyn cringed as her master walked back to the bag of bones at the boundary. His heart would swell for anything, wouldn't it? The stranger was a frightful sight, and yet the master had no issue with running to his rescue.

"I wouldn't get too close, sir," Alyn called, wary in her own reluctant approach. She rubbed her thumb over her wrist.

The alchemy master knelt beside the shriveled man, crumpled in a heap face-down in the dirt and sand. Octienne prodded him onto his back and felt his wrist for a pulse.

"Please," managed the poor skeleton, though his sunken eyes were closed and he looked no more alive than he smelled.

"Alyn," Octienne summoned. He brought the man's arm around his shoulder. The very touch bruised the fellow's sallow skin. The master lifted him to stand and directed his attention to his student with a serious wrinkle in his brow and a no-nonsense look in his eye. "Alyn, can you carry this man? He needs help."

"Well, you seem to be able to carry him just fine," the girl sniffed. She eyed the skeletal hands of the stranger uncertainly. She squinted at his mucus-glazed eyes, and quickly recognized symptoms of illness beyond malnourishment. "Don't see why I have to do it. If you want to subject yourself to some unknown disease... then... that's up to you."

"Please," croaked the stranger once more.

Octienne frowned sternly at Alyn. "Now, my girl, have sympathy for this man. He is suffering! I know someone that can help him, and while I run to fetch this help, I would like you to bring... what is your name, my fellow?"

"A... Abraham..."

"You are in good hands, Abraham," Octienne softly assured. He offered his most pleasant smile of compassion to the survivor, and then frowned at his student, "Bring Abraham to the college. I'll have my friend come to the door."

Alyn folded her arms. "What if I go and get yer friend?"

"He wouldn't answer to you, and he's difficult to find. Please, Alyn. For pity's sake. I know what this man is ailed with, and I can promise you that you won't catch it by simply carrying him for all of twenty minutes' walk, tops. Please."

The girl scowled and huffed. "Fine."

She slunk to her master's side and cautiously took Abraham's arm. He was lighter than she had expected him to be, and after placing one arm around her shoulder, she figured it would be easiest to lift him in a cradle.

She swept him up in her arms and held her face as far from the reek as she could manage. "So, what's he ailed with, then?"

She held her breath. Abraham weakly clung to her. She'd carried schoolbooks that weighed more. They didn't have any expensive paper books, but the alchemy classes had a collection of etched clay tablet books, and binders filled with papyrus pages.

"Plague," Octienne answered vaguely. "Will you be alright?"

"Yeah, yeah," Alyn mumbled. She carefully started forward. She couldn't see her feet with the stranger in her arms. "Go on and get your friend, then."

Octienne nodded. "Thank you, my girl. I'll see you both at the doors of the college."

"Yes, sir."

The alchemist stripped off his robe and folded it over his arm, looking naked in his collared black shirt and slacks. He broke into a run, and even though it was one of those seemingly half-hearted 'my-bones-are-too-tired-for-this' adult runs, he quickly put distance between himself and Alyn.

Alyn sprung on, balancing her efforts to be fast with her efforts not to lose her footing. The dust in the wind pelted her back.

"Water?" asked the stranger.

"Do I look like I carry water?"

"Food?"

"Do I look like I carry food? Master Octienne'll help you out, just wait."

The college was nearly a mile from the edge of town. At a half-sprint with her load, she took the stretch to the front entrance in just over ten minutes. Octienne and his 'help' bustled to meet her. The friend took the sick man away from Alyn and promptly returned to whatever cave he had crawled from, disappearing through the college doors. He was a bearish man by every aspect.

"Jiminy!" Alyn exclaimed, gawking at Octienne's companion as he went. The man was a giant! An absolute giant! "Is that the friend you wanted me to meet over some dinner some time? He's huge, sir!"

His entire giantness was enveloped in one massive trench coat, which hid everything beneath, aside from the scuffed rubber boots below and the scruffy whiskers above.

Master Octienne placed his palm on her back and ushered her after the trench coat. "You'll be meeting him now, it appears, in unfortunately more stressful circumstances."

Beads of sweat dripped from his dark-skinned brow. Years of holing up indoors and teaching clearly hadn't helped his fitness. The sprint for assistance had left him panting, though he was nearly recovered.

"Third level," he said, and the dread for the three flights of creaky, damaged stairs ahead crept into his tone.

Alyn grinned, eyes ahead. "Yes, sir."

2 ACQUAINTED

Alyn shot up the stairwells, grinning with excitement. The offensive odor of the living corpse hardly bothered her now that it marked something so interesting, so new, and so utterly bizarre.

Her hand ran over the thin wall, running over the flaking paint and chipped wallpaper that poorly concealed holed and moth-bitten plaster and crumbling brick.

The boards on the stairs were mismatched, repaired by students and teachers constantly since the school's opening. Some were the original wood, some were artificial wood or synthetic vinyl, and others were sheets of metal. It created a symphony of sounds that chased her with each step, up and up and up.

There was a pattern on the wallpaper, but there was so little left of it that it made little sense, and by the third level, it was mostly chewed away to expose the plaster beneath. The tunnel homes of long-dead insects wounded the thin walls like bullet holes.

There was noise on this level, and as Alyn stepped into the hall, she saw multiple heads poked from the six doorways along the corridor, noses pinched against the stink, and voices raised in complaint.

"What's that smell?"

"What's the hermit up to?"

The girl followed their glares to a hole in the ceiling, from which a steep, narrow steel staircase unfolded, and she tumbled towards it. They led her to a landing, which stopped at a wall. A platform spread from left to right. She clambered onto the landing.

The ceiling of the cramped space was slanted so that if she stood by the wall where the staircase ended, she had to hunch. If she walked away from it, about a meter, there was a partition wall with an open door.

"You'll cough up anything I care to give you, idiot," came a harsh, unkind drawl from behind the wall. Alyn peeked through the doorway, into a cozy blacksmithing classroom. Octienne's friend prowled the floor. "You are extremely malnourished. Recovery won't be immediate. Drink the damn water, and don't ask for more than what I give you."

Abraham limply sprawled in a wooden chair, clutching a tin mug. He meekly obeyed the giant and hiccuped quietly after a few swallows.

Alyn crept into the attic room. The boards creaked under her weight.

The whiskered bear of a man turned his head, brown eyes narrowed. Loose strands of hair shadowed his eyes, making the dark circles beneath appear darker. His lips twitched downwards, his whiskers shifted.

The young journeyman extended her hand and bounded towards him, all cheer. He was supposed to be delighted to meet her.

He regarded her blandly; cold brown eyes glancing over her, lip curled. His hair was graying, carrying scattered traces of dark brown and tawny color. Thick black rubber boots protected his shins, scuffed with burns and ashes from his trade. A hole, burned straight through the right, revealed his big toe in its thick stocking.

His whiskers quivered in a scowl and his cold gaze moved from her extended hand. He ignored the gesture to take in the rest of her, quickly. "An orphan," he muttered.

Alyn took a step back to take him without craning her neck. Perhaps the oversized clothing added to her impression of his size-or perhaps it was merely the comparison to her own malnourished frame and inferior standing of four-feet and nine inches (and a centimeter). His patched, fraying, and faded trench coat covered his palms when his arms were straight. When bent, the sleeves slid just to the heels of his hands, where he wore threadbare fingerless gloves in stained black. His bracers, straps faded to a blotched brown and pushed out by a pot belly, attached to grayed slacks that were carelessly stuffed into his boots.

"I'm Alyn," introduced Alyn. A sheepish smile unmasked the gap between her two front teeth. She withdrew her rejected hand and buried it in her well-worn bomber jacket pocket. Delighted, indeed.

The stranger shook his head and grumbled something under his breath. His gaze lifted to the doorway.

"William," he said and strode to greet the alchemy master.

Alyn folded her arms, unsatisfied with the giant's vague acknowledgement. She chewed her lip.

"Master Hughes!" Master Octienne returned, "You can help him, can you not?"

"Blast it, William!" the giant, Hughes, swore through clenched teeth, grabbing the alchemist by the arm.

"Language, Hughes," Octienne scolded, peering at the grip on his bicep.

Hughes pulled him outside of the attic room and closed the door, which left Alyn with the exhausted stranger from beyond the barrier. Abraham guzzled the last of the water in his mug and dropped it to the floor. He curled into his chair, yawned, and closed his shadowed, milky eyes.

Alyn crept to the door to listen to the muffled voices behind. She lifted the flap of her faded aviator's cap and itched the hair away from the sensitive pink underside of her ear. She scratched the fur on the topside, which was uncomfortably cramped against her skull; the tip, tapered to a point, tucked up in the cap. It always felt nice to let the air touch her ears.

"... thinking bringing a refugee here? The plague is contagious, Octienne. That is the reason that no other towns are accepting Ban-Ken refugees, if the poor bastards do manage to escape those blasted walls," the stranger, Master Hughes, growled. His voice did not sound like that of a kind man. It had an unyielding grit, the kind of grit that made hairs stand on Alyn's nape. The kind of grit that made her cautious. "This town is full of imbeciles. Oddly enough, I didn't think that you were one of them."

"Oh, mark me, Hughes," the alchemist muttered, "I wouldn't call myself a fool for trying to save a life. I know you can help him. You're the only man in the darned country, excluding the city itself, that can. Don't you deny it."

Hughes snarled. "Well, unlike you, William, with your bleeding damn heart, I use my head." A footstep clunked on wood. "Haven't you noticed what he's wearing? And obviously, carrying the plague, we know he's from the city. The good people, the people worth saving in Ban-Ken, don't dress like that. He is a guard. What makes you think he's worth saving?"

Alyn picked up on the familiar shuffling sound of Master Octienne's slippers. After years studying under him, she recognized the nervous habit like a sixth sense.

"He's barely alive," breathed the alchemist. "You know as well as or better than I that the Shirs immunize their guards against the plague."

"Yes, so clearly he must have done something very wrong," Hughes snapped, "Wrong by their standards or by our standards is up to questioning. But he's carried that tie with him all this way, so there's obviously some attachment to his old position, even still. I'd not give him my trust if he carved his heart right out and handed it to me."

"Then how about you tell me the cure formula and I can help him myself!" Octienne quipped. There was a silence, broken by a creak in the floorboards. "All right, all right. It's personal. Fine. You go ahead, then. Please, Hughes, for pity's sake."

The stranger heaved a bitter, heavy sigh. "Against all my better judgements... I'll do it. But you have to do something for me."

"Of course."

"How soon can you prepare a batch of my potion?"

Octienne gasped. "Heavens! You couldn't be out already, could you?"

"Ban-Ken's situation is getting worse by the month, Octienne. A plague-bearer outside the walls? It's unheard of, and I can't help but wonder if it is accidental, or more sinister-and I will question your man on this, have no doubt. Regardless, I'm leaving town. I need the potion for the road. It's time to finally get off my ass and do something about the blasted Shirs and their carelessness," Master Hughes spat. "And I'll need a prescription for the potion, as well."

"Oh, wonderful! Drew, that is wonderful!" Octienne gushed. "If I start now, I can let it brew overnight and have a barrel ready by morning!"

The giant grunted. "If the brew is ready tomorrow morning, then I will leave tomorrow morning. I'm sure nobody will miss me here. My students can be transferred to another teacher. You can take care of that, I'm sure."

"Yes, yes. Of course, I'll take care of it."

Alyn heard heels thudding on the wood floors. She knew Octienne to be light in his slippers. Hughes' heavy gloved hand fell on the door's handle, and Alyn quickly tumbled back.

The door caught the toe of her boot and brought her down.

"Oof!" Her hands flung to her ears and she hastily secured the flaps of her cap to cover them. She stared up.

Master Hughes dully regarded her, his whiskered lip curled. He kicked her legs from his path and pushed past, hard enough to bring out a yelp. "Eavesdropping. Typical! Octienne! Take her away."

Octienne chuckled behind the man's back. He cut himself off to fix Alyn with a glare of warning, head shaking in disapproval. Alyn frowned and hugged her knees to her chest. She huffed indignantly.

"Actually, Master Hughes... she's had quite a bit of contact with the refugee. I'd very much appreciate it if you could make sure that she hasn't caught anything."

"Caught anything?" Alyn squealed and pictured herself with horror in the same sickly state. "But, you said-!"

The blacksmith laughed. It was a harsh noise, like a bark. Condescending and sharp. "Oh, please. What did she do, drink his spit?"

Octienne sternly set his brow. "Hughes."

The scruffy hulk rolled his eyes and shook his head. "I'll look."

"Thank you," the alchemist nodded with a smile.

Master Hughes took the mug from Abraham and refilled it with water from a keg. He placed it by the zombie's legs and gestured to the door. "I'll walk you to the lab."

"Ah!" Octienne stepped back onto the stairway's landing. "Wonderful."

Hughes stopped before he closed the door and leered at young Alyn. "Don't touch anything, stupid girl."

The girl bristled, and her fingers gnarled to fists. She met the blacksmith's steady scrutiny with a glare, which was answered with a door in her face. The two masters' footsteps receded down the stairs.

Abraham moaned.

The girl pushed to her feet and tripped to the blacksmith's cluttered teaching desk. She poked his pens and patted his pile of books, touching freely, out of fleeting spite, what she was told not to touch.

Her interest in such harmless action soon faded, and she dropped to her rump in the master's chair. Her head tilted as her eyes fell upon a hard-covered royal red book where color appeared in slivers at the edges of the real-real!-paper pages.

"Food?" Abraham croaked.

"Yeah, I'm hungry, too."

"Crumbs."

She pulled the book out from beneath another and curiously opened it to a random page, which depicted a brightly colored image of character in a peculiar suit of metal, with a flowing red cape attached.

"Ooh." She thumbed over to the next page and found another picture, but this page had more words. She turned the page over again.

"Lavender..." the stranger sighed, his eyes closed. He smiled dreamily.

Alyn looked up and acknowledged the pleasant smell for the first time with a long inhale. She closed the book and tucked it under her arm, hopping off the chair. The flowers perched in a rectangular pot on the windowsill, where they strained to capture whatever sun they could from the thick, polluted cloud cover over the settlement.

He must have taken them from the labs, she thought. Must like the way they smell.

Really, there was no use in keeping plants for non-alchemical reasons, as the costs often outweighed the benefits, and as such, meretricious or non-alchemical plants were only bred by collectors or environmentalists or the wealthy. The seeds for meretricious plants were hard to come by and expensive. Even after managing to get a hold of some, they required such care to maintain. There simply wasn't enough natural sunlight, or water.

Alyn put down the book on the bench at the semi-circle window, beside the row of kegs, and inhaled the petals. They were well cared for.

As she drew back from their sweet embrace, the heavy approach of Hughes clunked on the steel stairs. Alyn froze.

The man trudged into the room and batted the door shut behind him.

Alyn turned and hid the book and the flowers behind her back as best as she could. His eyes locked on her and he bristled. His ears, cheeks and nose took on a red hue, and his massive fists clenched.

"You!" he snarled, and she jerked her hands away from the flowers behind. The blacksmith raised his great meat hooks to swat at her. "Get away from those! Away!"

Alyn scrambled a few paces, startled. "I was just...!"

"Keep your filthy hands to yourself, stupid girl," Hughes barked. He cupped his hands around his precious flowers and spoke to them rather than to her. "You were told not to touch anything. Just leave, girl."

"But..." Alyn looked to Abraham. "What if I caught that man's sickness?"

The blacksmith laughed. It was a harsh noise, like a bark. Condescending. "Oh, please. What did you do, drink his spit?" He shook his head and waved her off. "There is no way that you have picked up the illness. Get out, stupid girl. Get out." He picked up his book, shaking his head irritably. "Stupid, stupid girl."

Alyn frowned and puffed out her chest.

He thrust a finger towards the door. "Go."

Alyn bowed her head and glared at her feet. She slunk to the exit and sat by the door. Her legs crossed and her arms folded over her lap. With a huff, she muttered an insult too quiet to be heard.

The blacksmith took no notice. He neatly replaced his book on his desk and bent over the dozing refugee, who spreadeagled in his chair as though tossed there by a wind. Wavy locks curled over his cold eyes. His whiskers shifted in contemplation. He drew a silver flask from his pocket and straightened out to take a swig.

He leaned his hand on the back of Abraham's chair and kicked the man's shin to rouse him.

"Did you come here alone?" he questioned.

Abraham hauled up his heavy head and dragged open his slimy eyes. He eyed the alcohol first, then gradually lifted the weight of his tired scrutiny to his interrogator. "I am alone," he rasped.

"You are now," Hughes agreed impatiently, "but did you leave Ban-Ken with others?"

"All dead." The stranger lowered his gaze. "Two are a few miles from this town, by an old train."

Hughes snorted. "Octienne may be optimistic, but I am not. I doubt you survived your companions by sheer miracle." He lifted his flask. "Miracles don't exist. Snakes do." After a swallow of his drink, he set the flask beside a barrel on the counter by the window. He dragged his grubby fingers over his face. "I can't believe that Octienne interrupted my perfect schedule for this bullshit. You don't really believe that you deserve to be saved, do you? Give me your wrist."

With one boot, he pushed Abraham's chair nearer to the counter. The refugee clung to the wood. Once still again, he whined.

"Your wrist," demanded Hughes.

The sickly man moaned and heaved his bony wrist into Hughes' grasp.

"I'm not a snake, sir. They were malnourished to begin with, and I was not. Having a few more pounds is all that saved my life, by God, I swear! They died of natural causes!"

His filmy eyes wept, from plague or emotion, Alyn couldn't decide. She felt sympathy for him. Master Hughes turned the man's wrist over so that his knuckles faced the ceiling and unsheathed a knife from his waistband.

Abraham started. He tried to pull away, but with barely the strength of Hughes' little finger, there was nothing he could do. Alyn gasped and sat forward.

"Hey! I thought yous was s'pposed to save the man! You can't...!"

"Shut it!" The blacksmith snarled. He didn't even spare her a glance. "Keep struggling and I'll slit the underside."

Abraham whimpered and stopped, though his finicky trembling involuntarily carried on. "P-Please. Please, sir. D-don't-Don't kill me. I-I... I'm too young! I-I've come all this way! Dear God... m-mercy!"

Hughes flourished the knife like a pen and pressed its point to the refugee's flesh. Abraham pleaded and cried.

Alyn jumped from her seat and flailed her arms. "No, sir! You can't!"

She grabbed a hold of his forearm and tried to pull his knife-bearing hand away from the frightened refugee. He roughly threw her off.

"Don't," the blacksmith warned. He pointed the knife at her and deterred her heroism with an intimidating sneer. "Keep your damned hands to yourself. I told you to leave." He repositioned his blade over Abraham's wrist and pricked through the skin of the whining man. He dragged the knife diagonally down in a line. The wound wept runny, discolored blood. "The cure causes a buildup of heat inside the body. It needs an opening to escape from, or it makes an opening by itself. Like baking bread. I can promise you that this way is more humane." He lifted his knife and drew a second, smaller line in the flesh, across the other. Both cuts, forming an 'X', were deep.

Alyn frowned. She hesitated and hovered at Abraham's side. The master was very far from conventional, she thought. "I- I don't get it." But she saw Abraham relax with understanding.

Hughes held a piece of cloth to the wound. With his other hand, he sheathed his knife and drew a capped syringe from a pocket in his trench coat. "Are you still here? Blast, child! Do I have to throw you out myself? I am busy. And you don't want to see this."

Alyn stepped back.

Abraham squinted up at the giant. "Un... untreated cure? But, that's..."

"Outdated," interrupted Hughes shortly.

"Impossible," finished Abraham, perplexed. The refugee's brows pinched. He licked his raw lips. "What did you say your name was?"

The blacksmith bit the cap off the syringe and spat it to the floor. "I didn't." He dropped the cloth from Abraham's oozing arm and flicked the tip of his needle as he knocked out the air bubbles. "This will hurt."

Abraham's eyes fell to his lap, and when Alyn searched for them, she found that the pathetic film had lifted by some illusion, replaced by a calculating clarity that she couldn't understand. She felt chill up her spine, a sense that made her wary.

She knew the master's name, for she'd heard it from Octienne. Master Drew Hughes, the reclusive blacksmith; and one look at him told her that he wasn't interested in sharing his name with the refugee. One look at the refugee told her that it was likely best he didn't know.

"May I have your name, sir?" he asked.

"Why?" Hughes barked. He wielded his syringe like a weapon. Abraham's arm continued to seep. The unhealthy mixture of blood and pus dripped to the floorboards. "Suddenly interested?"

The refugee's eyes dulled. Just there, in that moment. He raised his pitiful gray gawp again to meet Hughes' cold gaze. "Just curious about the man saving my life." A faint, close-lipped smile accompanied his lie. "I am Abraham Walters. It's nice to meet you, mister...?"

Alyn chewed on the inside of her cheek and retreated behind Hughes, watching the stranger with new caution, suddenly uncomfortable. Her boots shifted.

"Master," snapped Hughes. "Master Smith, to you."

"Apologies, Master.... 'Smith'..." Abraham shivered and wiped his yellowed brow. His eyes gave away his bitter disappointment at the false name, but with an irritated twitch, he let it go. Perhaps he knew that he was arousing suspicion. He regarded his arm. "I feel faint," he squeaked. "You're bleeding me out, sir."

Hughes narrowed his eyes. He clenched his fist around the bleeding wrist of the living corpse and forced his needle into the crook of the man's elbow. The weasel squealed and squirmed.

"Ah! Ah, ah!"

"There's a blackmarket for the untreated cure. Retired scientists from your laboratories don't always keep their confidentiality."

"Y-Yes, I-I assumed nothing else!" the refugee whimpered. "I just had a moment of hope, that's all!" He thrust out his other arm, wrist upturned. There was a little tattoo, like an oversimplified eye. The blacksmith's eyes widened, then narrowed. He grimaced and glanced off to the window.

"How silly of me!" Abraham continued, with a hysterical chuckle, "I'm faint. I'm tired. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, and I am dying. Excuse my confusion. I suppose I shouldn't be hoping for miracles anymore. Please, sir! Please!"

Hughes sneered and injected the red solution. "I don't have pity for you. As far as I'm concerned, you should have been left where you were." He pulled out the needle and discarded it on the counter.

Abraham's eyes bulged and he groped at where he had been pricked. His frail body went rigid.

"Stand back, girl," grunted the blacksmith.

Alyn hid tentatively behind him, clutching a fistful of his coat. He shifted away and prodded her fingers off.

The refugee moaned in anguish. He trembled and rubbed at his arm. His fingers twitched and his eyes flicked back and forth.

"What's happening?" Alyn asked.

The giant peered at her. "For the last time, girl, you don't have the plague. Octienne was just being... bothersome. You can leave."

Abraham screamed and fell from his chair. Alyn recoiled, gasping. He writhed and kicked. Steam trickled from the cut on his wrist.

Alyn stared in absolute horror at the man on the floor. Every movement he made bruised him, yet he would not stop moving. Sporadically and violently, his limbs pounded the floor and threatened to snap. His tortured, ceaseless howling grated at the girl's sensitive ears, and the flesh around the blacksmith's incision bubbled.

Master Hughes picked up his flask and lumbered to his desk. He slouched in his chair and pulled a stack of papyrus slabs towards himself, apathetic to Abraham's wails. "Sook."

Alyn bit her thumb and scurried after the blacksmith. He ignored her. She crouched by the feet of his chair and cowered behind his desk. Though the imagery startled her, and the sounds crushed her heart, she couldn't resist peeking at the suffering snake.

Abraham's cries subsided gradually to moans, and after an agonizingly long few minutes, he fell out of consciousness. His breath staggered. The cut on his arm, cauterized from the inside out, left a permanent and ugly scar.

Master Hughes lifted his gaze to the man when he grew silent. He swirled his silver flask and ran a pen over a stained slab of papyrus.

Alyn scanned the corpse from a distance. After thought, she approached the fallen man and stared at his bright red arm. His skin already looked healthier. Malnourished and taut, but clearer. The yellow tinge was less prominent.

Hughes rose to bat her away. His aggression towards her had reduced to meager annoyance. The annoyance one might have for a tormenting fly. "Again, child, you may leave."

Alyn blinked and pointed to the tattoo on the man's right wrist, the one that looked vaguely like a squashed eye. "What's that tattoo? Is it s'pposed to mean something?"

Hughes crouched beside her and gave her only his words in the acknowledgement of her presence, not his attention. "It means nothing. Anyone can tattoo themselves." His eyes followed his hands to the refugee's pockets.

Hughes drew three items from the man's left pocket and nothing from the right. He poked the trinkets around in his palm and abruptly stood. "Go and tell Octienne to meet me here at five."

"I'm not your apprentice. You can't order me..."

"Go. Now."

3 NOWHERE

When Octienne entered the attic, Master Hughes sat with feet propped arrogantly on his desk. If he saw Alyn behind his desired guest, he gave no sign. His expression was set in a grimace, and his eyelids hung heavier than they had hours earlier.

He gestured to a seat in front of him, and Octienne neatly folded into place. Alyn hovered at his back.

"We've had a talk," said Hughes. He nodded to the back of the classroom.

Abraham sprawled, bleary-eyed, in a chair by the wall. He clutched a pocket-sized leather-bound flask. A small, round pair of golden spectacles perched crooked on his nose. The lenses were mostly missing. Jagged glass poked from the inner rims.

"Alcohol, Drew?" Octienne questioned, a stern eye upon his companion. "You gave a malnourished man alcohol?"

Master Hughes waved the scolding away. "If it kills him, then it kills him. It's at his own risk." He rolled his eyes. Even this small action came off lethargic. His gaze landed on Octienne, and his whiskers twitched upwards in mockery. "Fret not," he purred, "he's an experienced alcoholic. Carried his own flask all the way across the state for a refill."

"Oh, who are you to talk?" the alchemist sneered. "Drunk before dinner."

He shook his head and muttered misgivings to the floor. Hughes frowned. Octienne dusted his lap and straightened in his chair.

"I am not drunk," Hughes argued. "I've had a long day, William. I'd really like to be alone as soon as possible. I've had enough of your charity chase."

The blacksmith flicked a plastic card at Octienne, who startled at the action. The card dropped to the floor. Master Octienne sighed and gave a small, sympathetic smile to his friend.

"I understand," he said. "I imagine you must be having quite the migraine."

"Yes..."

Octienne bent and swept the card between his fingers. Alyn peered over his shoulder to see.

"That was one of three personal belongings that he carried," Hughes explained. "The other two being the flask and the ridiculous broken glasses. It is his identification card."

There were words on the card, all gibberish to Alyn. They accompanied a small, uniform photograph of a young man in a crisp white collared shirt, a rich green waistcoat, and a black tie. There were two golden pins on his breast pocket. Though the picture only captured from his chest up, everything about him radiated a pride and narcissism that spoke volumes about his character. His shoulders were regally held back, his head held high, and his pearly whites begged for attention in a great grin-flashed as though he owned the world.

To Alyn, with little experience, he looked as though he truly might. He had the plump, healthy weight on his bones. He had the precision and care in his appearance, with not a single hair out of place and not a speck of stubble on his chin.

"It's funny, because earlier... your pet was here for this... he claimed 'a few pounds' was all that had saved his life," Hughes mused and raised his silver flask. "More like fifty. Ha. And he claims to be a rebel."

"I...!" Abraham began with huff.

"That's him?" Alyn squealed.

Octienne pointed to a word on the card. "Captain. What does that mean? Ban-Ken is inland, and last I checked they didn't have an army."

"Oh, it's not a real title. More of a rank, I think."

"It is a real title," Abraham grumbled.

"If he is to stay with you, you can ask him all about it. I really couldn't care less." Hughes dismissed. "Some stupid rank system based on kissing ass. And he claims to be a rebel."

"That re-really isn't fair!"

Hughes hung his head over the back of his chair and pressed the heels of his palms to his brow. "It's all very confusing, and I'd rather... not think about it. More important than the workings inside the Shir manor is the state of things outside. Abraham has estimated that over eighty percent of the population of the city is now in Shir employ, and the remaining is... well, as you would think. They are infected. Dying. There won't be an ounce of decency left within those walls at all in another decade, mark my words. It's a terrible thing."

Octienne bowed his head. He slid the identification card onto Hughes' desk and folded his hands. "Terrible, indeed. Perhaps I have held you back here for too long. Things in the city are worse than I had thought. Only twenty percent left fighting..."

"And worse, Mr. Walters was released from the city in a group with the intent to spread plague."

"Not my intent," Abraham corrected nervously, "My Lord's intent. Lord Pallis."

Hughes sat forward, taking his boots from the desk. "It is disturbing to think that there may have been other groups... Lord Pallis must have lost his sanity. If the plague gets out, that's an epidemic."

"Indeed!" Octienne cried.

"In any case, Ban-Ken can't keep waiting to be rescued. I had hoped that someone better would have taken out the Lord and Lady by now. But... if there is no one else... I do have a very nice sword." He pointed at an intrcate green great-sword that hung in a well-kept display case a few yards behind him. It was patterned with geometric lines and circles in a darker shade.

Alyn's jaw slackened and she marveled at it.

Octienne leaned back to murmur, "He made that sword himself. He's very proud of it."

"As I should be. It was extremely trying to make."

"Wow," said Alyn.

"Yes, yes," Octienne chuckled.

Hughes nodded and rubbed his jaw. His whiskers scratched against his finger-less glove. "Anyways...," he mumbled after a while, "you can take him, now."

Octienne glanced briefly to Abraham. He pursed his lips and reached out to touch Hughes' hand.

"I don't think that you should go alone," he said. "I want you to take Alyn with you."

Both Hughes and Alyn jolted.

"What?" Hughes asked. He pulled his hand back. "The girl?"

"Me?" Alyn asked, eyes wide.

"No, no, no, no. No." Hughes waved his hands and shook his head. He glared at Octienne. "No, I travel alone."

"You could use the company. She'll keep you on the right path. She has a good heart. Wouldn't you like to go, Alyn?"

"Uh..." She had nothing to her name but her lifelong desire to be somebody. But, despite always dreaming of leaving the doldrums of her settlement, she had never dreamt of leaving them at the side of a gruff old stranger.

"Could we discuss this privately?" Hughes hissed.

Octienne folded his arms. "There is nothing to discuss." Even so, he gestured to his young journeyman. "Leave us, Alyn. Take Mr Walters with you, if you could. Help him to my home? If you knock on the door, my wife should be around to answer. Tell her I'll explain when I get there."

Alyn didn't move right away, but was quickly encouraged by the stern eyes of the two masters. She swallowed and nodded.

"Yes, sir."

She tripped to the back of the classroom and Abraham gave her his arm. He hung uselessly from her shoulders when she tried to walk with him. His bare, bony feet pedaled weakly.

"He won't be able to walk, stupid girl," said Hughes.

Alyn frowned and scooped Abraham's legs into her arms. He was an awkward bulk; unbalanced and taller than she. Despite the uncomfortableness, and the smell, the girl trundled out of the room and closed the door behind herself. She heard Hughes almost immediately burst into argument with her master and scurried to the steel stairs.

"Hughes!" crowed the drunken refugee with reverent glee. He clutched fistfuls of her jacket. "I've been saved by Drew Hughes!"

***

July 22nd, 2815

The air was undeniably fresher that day. The dust in the wind smelled like adventure. Alyn had woken before dawn to smell it. After Master Octienne had visited her at the orphanage the previous night, she'd barely been able to catch a wink of sleep and had, in the end, succumbed to her excitement and sprung outdoors to rub her departure in the imaginary 'face' of West Haven.

From the dark before dawn, to the pink light that followed, she roamed the streets. Goodbye to the smelly alley between the orphanage and the grocery store. Goodbye, school. Goodbye, government building, goodbye, Dumbberry's. She beat Master Hughes to the front of the trade college, stopping there only after her third loop around her settlement.

She had nothing with her but her clothes and the meaningless doodads that collected dust in her pockets. She owned nothing else.

She sat on the steps of the entrance and waited for her life to begin.

Master Hughes stepped from the building at half-past five. She looked up at him, and he looked at his watch, as though he hadn't expected her so early.

"Good morning, sir," she greeted.

He nodded to her uncertainly and carried on. She watched him drift past. He slipped his fob watch into a pocket and drank from a tin mug.

As the crisp morning air grew stale, boredom began to settle. The sun hung behind the clouds, high enough in the sky for the invigorating pink light to disperse, and common orange to take its place. The child dropped to her knees and aimlessly doodled in the dirt for entertainment.

The blacksmith reappeared with a companion after what felt like hours for the girl. He came around the corner of a partially collapsed shed, quietly talking to his horse. A covered wagon followed them.

He quieted when he neared Alyn and stopped his horse and wagon before the steps. Alyn stood to meet him. Octienne had told her to be respectful, to be forgiving, to be obedient. Octienne had told her that Hughes was difficult.

"Can I help yous with anything, sir?"

"Your English," he grunted cynically, fingers to his temples. "It's appalling." He shook his head and pressed his empty mug into her hands. He walked on to the entrance of the school. "Follow me."

He used her services in loading his wagon, though there was very little that he trusted her with. His belongings waited in the foyer. He pointed her to a toolbox, a few bars of steel and bronze metals, and a roll of leather. The rest, he took to the wagon himself.

Octienne showed up nearer to seven, just as Hughes secured the last barrel. Alyn sat at the back of the wagon and swung her legs.

"I gave the man a bath before bed, and a fresh set of clothes. I burned his old garb. No more of that reek in the air," Octienne said. He sighed and spread his arms. "Isn't it nice to be able to breathe?"

"Tell me this; was he ungrateful?" Hughes asked. "I would expect him to beg for running water and a proper shower, and turn his nose at your selection of clothes."

"Well, he didn't have much complaint left in him," Octienne chuckled. "Oh, but it was so strange. He was like a child! I'd attribute it to the alcohol, but, my, the wonder in his eyes at seeing my home... it was as though he'd never seen anything like it. He asked me where the water came from without pipes and faucets, as though he'd never heard of a well. He asked me if I was in the middle of a renovation because I have so little furniture, and much of my floor is just firmly packed clay." The alchemist laughed. "But, what I found most amusing was that when I offered him a choice of my older clothes, he asked specifically for a tie. As I seldom wear either, I showed him the only ties I own, and he gasped as though I'd committed a crime.

'Paisley! Paisley!' He asked for his old tie back, but it was already roasting in the fireplace. And he damn near cried over it, too."

Master Hughes cracked a grin. "As I said, turned his nose up."

"What d'you mean by running water? What's paisley?" Alyn asked, leaning forward.

Hughes exhaled, and the grin left with his breath. He laid a hand in Octienne's shoulder and turned the man away from Alyn. "He's no rebel, Octienne. As much as you would like to be optimistic, I must advise you to be cautious. He didn't tell me the whole truth for any of the questions that I asked, I'm sure of it. In fact, I can't trust that he told any truth at all. But, even if not a word was true, I have known for a fact that Ban-Ken has been struggling for decades, and that is why I am leaving. Not because of him."

"And there is every reason to be cautious. Of course, I won't deny it."

Hughes gestured to the building. "Let us get the potion."

Octienne nodded and followed his friend. Alyn hopped down from the wagon.

"But, Drew," said Octienne, "whoever Abraham was, nothing will stop me from being kind to him. Furthermore, I strongly believe that if I can blindly trust a man, he will trust me in return."

"Oh, words to live by!" Hughes cheered, holding the door. "If you intend to die young."

Alyn steppes up after them and Hughes waved her back.

"We'll be back shortly, dear girl," Octienne assured. He stepped inside, brows pinched up at Hughes. "You are the bleakest man I have ever known, Drew. The very bleakest."

Alyn sat once again. She pursed her lips. People were starting to come outside. Classes at the schools would begin at eight, within the hour. She whistled idly through her teeth and waved at a teacher as she passed her by.

She wondered about paisley and water that ran and what kind of world the refugee had come from.

She looked back into the wagon and wondered about the blacksmith, too. He took his tools and his anvil to work, liquor and water and coffee to drink, and a box of non-perishables to eat. His sword was in its case at the back, and his flowers on a shelf. There was a locked chest in a corner which Alyn imagined held many mysteries. She was curious of its contents. Her lock-picking tools were in her jacket pocket, but she stemmed the urge to snoop. A cloth satchel slumped against the chest.

Master Hughes and Master Octienne rejoined her.

"Move," said Hughes.

Octienne helped Alyn down from the wagon, giving Hughes the space he required to slide the potion barrel inside. The blacksmith climbed up and secured it behind a long board that held all of the barrels in place. He clapped his hands together.

"Well," he said. He placed his hands on his hips. "That's that. I suppose we'll be off."

He lowered himself back to the ground and extended his hand to Master Octienne. "Goodbye, William."

"That's all?" Octienne chuckled and took a hold of Hughes' hand. He pulled closer to embrace the giant. He patted the man's back and withdrew to arms-length. "Take care of yourself, Drew. Keep Alyn safe."

"No promises." Hughes gave Octienne an awkward pat on the shoulder. "Do yourself a favor and get out of this dump, eh?"

"No promises."

Hughes grimaced. With a nod, he turned away. He waved a hand at Alyn. "Say your goodbyes, girl." He slunk to the wagon's steering platform with one more wave to the alchemist.

Alyn blinked up at Master Octienne. "It's been a pleasure, sir."

"Oh, don't be so stiff, child." He opened his arms, and she dived in.

She gave him a squeeze. "I won't miss no-one but you, sir."

"I'll miss you, too. The classroom will be so much quieter."

"Hey!" She pulled away. "I ain't that loud."

Octienne laughed and placed a hand on her back. He turned her to the wagon. "Off with you, Alyn. Go and... change the world. Be brilliant. I know you'll make a great difference."

She gave him one more energetic hug and an enthusiastic wave before she boarded the wagon. "Thank you, Master Octienne! Thank you! Goodbye!"

"Farewell, dear girl." The alchemist closed up the back of the wagon and knocked on the wood.

Hughes peered back into the cabin through a square window. He nodded to Octienne, waved one last time, and closed the window. Alyn settled on the floor. The wagon lurched and she fell forward with the jolt. Octienne pushed her back up and told her to be careful.

Alyn nodded sheepishly and watched him grow small. She watched as dust clouds swallowed the parking lot of West Haven, and him with it. There had she lived, hidden in the middle of nowhere for all of her thirteen years.

No longer. Alyn Smythy was on her way to somewhere.

Anywhere would better than here.