IT IS morning again. Two days later. The Kerr household is about to receive a visitor.
Gemma is preparing once more to head to the Glass Halls. Her mother Esther has been up for hours, but has yet to make it in to see her husband in his separate room. He takes a while to wake. Sometimes he does not wake at all.
Bana Kerr is ill. He has not seen the outside world in years. The thick red velvet curtains are perpetually drawn shut over the stately large windows. The light hurts him, causes his eyes to burn. He wears overlarge sunspectacles even in bed. He is layered in clothes and blankets so he does not catch chill. Hooked up to a machine—a gift from GOD, which operates by His Power—that does his breathing for him, he has not the mobility to travel outside the manse even if he wants to. His illness has made him extremely pale. Or rather, instead of skin, he has a thick layer of transparency. The wise doctors tell him this is due to his lack of a soul. Like so many in the powerful echelon of the Immortal City, Bana has had his soul bled from him, “retracted,” per GOD’s request. Souls get in the way of progress, it is said.
Esther gives the door a polite knock and enters. Bana and Esther have not slept in the same room for some years. Esther, holding a lit candle, approaches her husband slowly. A short maid follows her with a white washbasin. Esther is a tall woman, stoic and stern. She does not walk. She glides like a plotting specter. She wears a long, dark, violet gown. It is long-sleeved and covers all from her neck to the obedient train behind her. Her hair is dark but streaked with gray and piled atop her head in perfect artistic mounds. She is a formidable woman, and even the cavernous bedroom she has just stepped into seems to shrink at her entrance. This perception is at odds with Bana, whose very bed envelops him.
Esther takes her seat on the settee beside the bed. The candle is placed on the stand. The maid, a perpetual annoyance named Duana, begins washing Bana. Esther takes one of her husband’s gloved hands. His own breaths are barely audible beneath the breathing apparatus and the heaving of the maid.
“Must you carry on so?” Esther hisses at Duana.
The maid swallows and tries holding her breath as she washes Bana. This only makes matters worse as Duana begins grunting and wheezing for air.
Esther rolls her eyes. “I have had enough!” she says. “Leave! Do it later, you silly girl.”
The maid backs away quickly, leaving the washbasin, and scurries to the door, closing it behind her.
“You would think,” Esther says, “that we have been through enough that we needn’t worry about incompetent servants.”
Servants have been the bane of Esther’s existence for some time. It all started when that woman brought her bastard child to the door, claiming Bana was the father and that she wanted to work for them. But Esther decides not to think on this matter. It will only upset her.
Bana is perfectly still. He is awake, however. Esther can tell from his machine’s breathing pattern.
“Or maybe we haven’t,” she says. “Maybe we’re just getting started. Oh, Bana. Things have gone so badly for us faster than I ever thought possible. What happened to this new world you and I were going to help usher in? That was the whole point of buying the election, wasn’t it? And the revolution afterward. It seemed so fine at first. Then you do… this… to yourself, and soon after, you get the plague. Yet the decisions we made all seemed right at the time.”
She squeezes his hand. “They were the right decisions, weren’t they?” she pleads, gritting her teeth. “I need you to tell me they were right.”
Bana merely grumbles, and she lets go the grip on his hand.
“Sorry, dear.” She resets herself. “So sorry. Sometimes, here all alone, I am left to my own thinking for far too long. I haven’t left the manse in days. But I worry for Gemma. What will He do to her when you and I are no longer here? She will be of no use to Him at all. As it is, He is waiting for the two of us to pass away in some hopefully non-mysterious manner. Or at least, he wants me dead. You, I’m not so certain.”
She hears a timid knock at the door.
“What is it?” Esther shouts. “I’m with my husband.”
“Yes, m’lady,” the maid says, “but you’ve a visitor is all.”
The door is pushed open abruptly, and a wall of a man walks in. The maid scuttles in after him.
“Sorry, m’lady,” Duana sputters, red-faced and white-knuckled. “He wouldn’t stay put in the parlor like I asks him.”
Esther holds up her hand. “It’s fine.” Her voice cannot mask her irritation. She stands to greet her guest.
“Senator General Hegart.” Esther tries a smile, but he will not believe it. He will not even appreciate the effort. “How wonderful to see you. It’s been too long since your last visit.”
“A mere month, my lady,” the senator says. His words are drowned by the excess saliva that falls from his mouth into a fine handkerchief he holds. The senator general, like Bana, was struck down by the plague, but he has recovered for the most part. The drooling is a problem, though. He is not a handsome man. Perhaps he was once. Esther cannot remember. But now, dressed in his heavy, black overcoat and loud, angry boots, his dark spiked hair at odds with his pale flesh, he is the very picture of Death. His black pupils and sharpened teeth—each one whittled to a tiny dagger—only add to the nightmarish effect. But he is a man of strength. He can shadow the sun when he gets in a rage.
“What can I do for you, Senator General?” says Esther.
“Nothing, my lady. Nothing at all.” His polite voice is even more unsettling than his appearance. “I came to check on the good Senator General Kerr.” He glances at the bed and lets a stream of saliva drain to the floor. “I see he is doing well.”
Esther grabs the senator general’s elbow and guides him away from the bed toward the door. “Yes, well, I apologize that I can’t offer you a seat, Senator General,” she says. The maid bows her head as they pass her. “But we have such a day ahead of us. Such a busy day.”
“My lady,” he protests, “I am only here because GOD is concerned for your husband’s welfare. Bana holds a special place in GOD’s heart.”
“And now you can tell GOD no. Bana has not died.” At the chamber door, she looks the senator general in the eye. “And neither have I.”
“May I remind you, my lady, that GOD does not care so deeply for everyone. You are fortunate to have His attention.”
“Fortunate?” She laughs. “And may I remind you, Senator General Hegart,” she says, her voice the hush of weeds, “of what Bana and I have had to do to put GOD where He is.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I regret nothing. I only ask for a little respect when you come to my home, you slobbering wreck of a man!”
His eyes are blazing.
“Duana,” she calls for the maid. “Show the senator general to the door.”
The maid hurries past them, but she stops as she sees Gemma standing at the top of the stairs that spiral down through the manse. She has been standing there for some time, listening.
“Is something wrong, Mother?” Gemma says.
“The senator general is just leaving. He came by to see your father. Wasn’t that kind of him? Now he must go. The ferrymen can’t look after themselves, after all.”
The senator general ignores Esther. He has grown a smile as he looks on Gemma. Esther takes a deep breath.
“How lovely you have become, Lady Gemma,” the man says. “How very pretty.”
Gemma says nothing in reply. The air is fragile all around them.
The senator general glances at Esther, then to the maid Duana. Esther grasps the deviant in him.
“Come, Duana,” he says. “Show me to the door.”
Esther keeps her eyes on him as the tiny maid leads him away. Gemma joins her mother by the chamber door.
“I do not like that man, Mama,” says Gemma.
“Hush, dear,” Esther replies. “It’s impolite to say such truths aloud, even if they are shared by those around you.”
Esther looks at the outfit Gemma wears today. “You resemble a man, darling,” she says as she heads back to Bana’s side. Gemma follows her. “The bow tie, the blazer. It’s not feminine. That style of dress will get you in trouble if you’re not careful.”
“What was the senator general here about, Mama?”
“Do not worry, dear.” Esther takes her seat on the settee again. Bana has fallen asleep. “That man can be contained. I’ve dealt with foes far more cunning than him. And far more attractive as well. Your father and I were revolutionaries, after all. Hegart was only an underling in that fight.”
“You were heroes.”
“Indeed.” The word troubles her in the context. “We have seen and done things the poor senator general can only dream of. Did I ever tell you about the hot air balloon ride Bana and I once took?”
Gemma smiles. “No.”
“It was after the Revolution, before the plague, and we were assigned to take to the air and see just how much of the Immortal City survived and how much was scorched beyond repair. At that time, the balloonists had not been outlawed yet. In fact, I still know a few of them, though they have not flown since.”
“What did you see, Mama?”
“I saw the city, of course. Not all nine rings of it, though. It stretches so far, you can’t see everything. That’s what struck me most years later.” Esther stares into the air. “The streets that had been set alight by the raids glowed red hot, and the waters, too. The River Hung was filled with fiery debris. It resembled the internal workings of a body, veins and blood vessels and the like. It was quite beautiful in a horrid way. As the rivers of flame stretched below, the fires were growing. They grew on and on until they vanished from my sight. It was as if I was witnessing a…”
“…virus.”
“And then came the plague, not two years later.”
AS A Sister of GOD, Mags Hensil has a duty to report any suspicious characters or questionable gatherings to the senator general. This is not a task the Sisters of GOD take lightly. They take nothing lightly. They are ever diligent, searching out the ghettos and lesser rings for sinners: the ill, the illegitimates, the orphans and unwanted, the unwed mothers, the same-sexers and third-sexers. Anyone who goes against the plan of GOD. The Sisters are harsh and trust rumors to be true, for the world is filled with depravity and sickness.
Once a week, the coven of nine Sisters reports its findings to Senator General Hegart, who then talks to GOD about what he has been told. GOD and GOD alone decides from His Tower which sinners are the most in need of punishment and to what severity. Nothing is done without His approval.
This very morning, the nine Sisters of GOD stand before Senator General Hegart. They are positioned in a Holy triangle in front of the senator general’s large, black desk, Mags Hensil at the apex in her jeweled cowl. The Sisters are clothed in their Robes of Salvation. Like Mags Hensil’s own, these are long and white, hiding any form. Unlike Mags, no jewelry or gems are allowed on the robes of the under-Sisters. They wear flat, wide headpieces with thick white veils tumbling from all sides so their faces are never clearly seen. Under the veils, they wear oval-shaped sunspectacles not only because of the glare of the sun on the silver city streets, but to avoid being blinded by the light of GOD so near his presence.
The senator general’s hall is the remnant of a large, spiraling cathedral near the base of GOD’s Tower. The church is no longer His house; He has evolved beyond it. Hegart sits in front of a large, mournful window of painted white glass, so when the Sisters look in his direction, they see an awe-inspiring giant silhouette. He is the Mouth of GOD, after all. His features should not be seen when speaking GOD’s own words.
After the Sisters’ responsibility is finished, they bow their heads and say in accord, “GOD is watching.” Senator General Hegart rises and takes the list of sinners to GOD. The Sisters wait with their heads bowed, quietly, patiently, for an answer. Sometimes they have had to wait entire days. But not today.
“The old woman in District 56 of the third ring,” says the senator general on his return. “She is called Gran. She is not only ill, but a third-sexer as well. Good work in finding her. She has befouled our air for too long. The gypsy family of three squatting in District 49 as well. And in District 53 of the third ring, the flesh-peddler and whore who is looking to end her pregnancy…”
He names many others. The macabre shopping list takes an hour. He excuses the Sisters and they depart.
“GOD is watching.”
He uses a string of ferrymen to get the sinners list to Cayden Lothair in the third ring. They are much quicker than the Kingdom Guards and know how to slide through shadows with secrets. Cayden is in his run-down dwelling with five other ferrymen now. They are not friends. They do not speak. They are readying themselves for what they have to do. They hear a knock at the door, and the carrier slips the list inside. Cayden reads the names. He says “Gran,” “Dunbar,” “Duff,” “Orna,” and so on, each with an address following the name. Sinners. He will deal with them.
First, however, he must see to the father and the son.
AIDAN WILL not make it through the day. Rossa is sure of this. His night was fitful and filled with hallucinations. Rossa heard him call for Claire a number of times. She heard his whispered conversations with her, as if Claire were sitting on the end of his pallet. Rossa almost believed she was comforting Aidan, helping him to prepare for the next plain.
We could not see Claire. If she was there, she kept herself hidden from us. Some do. But then, we cannot see some things.
Rossa has many thoughts on her mind. She worries how she will get Aidan’s body out of their home once he has passed. She will need to find a trustworthy outertaker. That will be an ordeal. She has but the boy to help her. She worries someone in her own household has told the ferrymen of her dealings. Everyone has a price, and her family lives together for necessity, not love. Her brother Frulu has been acting most peculiar, keeping close to the boy when before he wouldn’t deign to be in the same room. But most of all she is worried for the child, for Key. He has a gentle heart. She does not want him to see his father die. She decides not to tell him of his father’s approaching death, but instead this new day tells him to play his father a morning song on his drum.
“Your father… he’s asked it of you, boy,” she says, forcing a smile.
Key looks at his father, feels the sweat-soaked face with his little hands, and looks up to Rossa with some doubt.
Rossa puts her hand on Key’s head. “Play, child,” she urges with a whisper. “He can hear you.”
Key plays his drum, but Aidan does not move. Rossa sees the concern in the child and hears it in his playing. His song has no mirth, no playfulness. Her own smile finally gives up and dies. Morning song, mourning song. He stops after a minute to stand and stare at his father. The candlelight is giving the room a funerary ambience. Rossa does not like this.
“Here, child,” she says, taking Key’s shoulders and turning him to face her. “Go get me some bread from the market.” She takes a coin from her pocket and places it firmly in the child’s hand. “Your da will be hungry when he wakes up.”
Not long now, she thinks. She truly hopes it was Claire last night. She forces herself to believe it.
Key stares blankly at the coin in his hand for a moment, then looks to Rossa. Her big eyes plead. She wants to apologize, but what for?
“Hurry home,” she says, pushing the boy out of the dying man’s presence. “Don’t ya dawdle. Just get the bread and come on back, ya hear?”
The boy walks away with his drum, head down. He is consumed by the darkness in the house. He knows.
Rossa wants to say something to lift Key’s spirits, but nothing has been able to lift anyone’s spirit for years. Every day has shackles. Every day is weighed down by a nauseous sense of dread, an orange sky, and an angry GOD. Yet this day, it feels even worse. There is a nervous bad excitement. From the doorway, she looks back at Aidan. They are all in danger with him here.
“He might as well be dead, foolish gal.”
She hears a muffled cough and she turns. Frulu stands in the dark of the hallway. His face is in shadow, but his eyes glisten with… something. She realizes it now. Aidan and Key have indeed been betrayed. You cannot break an already broken heart, but her stomach sinks, and she wants to kill her brother. She hopes Key does not listen to her, that he does not hurry home. She hopes for his sake, he stays well away. For she knows now what is coming. And who.
KEY IS walking slowly to the market, as if his bare feet are tied together by invisible strings. He knows something is wrong. He knows Rossa is not being honest with him about his father. His drum hangs at his side. He mindlessly plays with the coin in his hand, turning it over and over between fingers. He keeps his eyes on the ground. Key doesn’t want to buy bread. He wants to be with his father. To play for him and make him smile.
He looks over his shoulder as he continues to walk through the morning throng of people. He notices a strange man following and keeping an eye on him. The man is watching him like Rossa’s brother, Frulu, does. Any other person might not have given the man two thoughts, but Key is a gypsy, and gypsies are taught to be ever watchful. They have a second sense… and a third and a fourth just in case that one fails them.
Key starts walking faster. The man stays with him. The boy’s heart speeds up along with his feet. He is dodging quickly through buyers and sellers, easily passing between them. They hardly notice him. He sees a second man over his shoulder. He cannot get a good look at this one. He stays in the shadows under tarps and roofs, yet he is more terrifying than the others. He moves without seeming to move, as if surfing the shadows. These are ferrymen.
Distracted, Key suddenly runs into a woman in a long, orange gown. One of the local prostitutes. He has seen her before across the street. She has a pleasant smile and smells of flowers.
“Are you okay?” she says.
But she does not wait for a response. Key understands the absolute fear on her face as she surely sees the ferrymen behind him. She wraps a golden shawl over her mouth and moves very quickly away down a side street. Key follows her, but then he scampers up a set of rickety steps he has used many times before while running from bullies or venders. He races up the steps into a building, not looking behind him. He is passing through flats and hallways inhabited by others. They keep yelling at him, calling him names, but he does not slow down. He only wants to get back to Rossa’s to be with his father.
He leaps from a window in a bedroom wherein a young man is romancing a young woman and onto a tarp. Rossa’s place is in view. The ferrymen have stopped pursuing him. He must have lost them after he turned into the alley. Perhaps they were not chasing him after all. Key is breathing heavy, cradling his drum like a baby, as he watches the street below. He sees four more ferrymen approaching Rossa’s like hungry dogs. Key wants to scream. He wants to bang his drum and make a ruckus, but something in him will not allow that. We are glad for this.
Rossa comes out of the heap onto the threshold. She looks defiant and proud. Her hands are on her hips, her chest is out, and her mouth is a straight line. One of the four ferrymen is in her face. He says something. She does not move. A crowd is gathering. He says something more. Key cannot make out the words. Again, Rossa says nothing.
In a blink of Key’s eyes, Rossa is on the ground. The ferryman strikes her again. His brutal blows have no passion or emotion. She yells something hateful to him as blood flows from her lips. Key is crying from the tarp, covering his mouth so he does not make a sound.
A third strike across the face. The crowd disperses in gasps of dismay as a large black wagon with dark angels of GOD adorning each corner pulls up in front of the door to House Bouadica. The horses are frothing.
THE FERRYMAN pulls Rossa into the dimly lit heap by her hair. She is fighting and screaming, but her family is not coming to her aid. Instead, they all bow as if in supplication to the four ferrymen who bring an even deeper darkness to the place.
“We only want the gypsies,” says the lead ferryman, a man with raven black hair and dark skin. He speaks without any emotion to his voice. “The man and the child. They are sinners against GOD. We do not wish to harm anyone, but this woman forces our hand. Where are the sinners?”
Rossa is kicking and screaming. Blood runs from her mouth and nose, tears from her eyes. “Don’t ya say a damn thing!” she warns.
Her brother gives her a disdainful look and steps forward. “I’ll show you,” he says. “The father be in the back room. The child, I do not know. He left a bit ago, I think to the market.”
Rossa wishes death upon her brother. Her ancient relations could draw on the power of the gods and passions, and she wishes she could summon said power to cut Frulu into pieces on the spot.
They drag her down the dark hall to just outside Aidan’s room and pull her to her feet. Her arms are held behind her back by a ferryman. She sees through the darkness Aidan sprawled on the floor. At first she thinks this is the ferrymen’s doing, but then she discerns the truth of it and feels a sad relief. Aidan heard the commotion and reached the threshold of the room before collapsing. Frulu stands over him, and a ferryman crouches at Aidan’s side. The ferryman feels for Aidan’s pulse.
“He is dead.” He rises and walks over to Rossa. “Where is the child? He is an orphan now.”
Rossa grins. “So, he’s died before you could wheel him off, eh? What a pity. Yer sweet GOD’ll be heartbroken.”
The ferryman tilts his head. “Where is the child?”
“Leave him with me. He is mine. He will not be a motherless orphan.”
She is expecting to be hit again, but there is a scuffle behind her. Frulu suddenly points wildly and cries, “That’s ’im! That’s the boy!”
Rossa turns, and the expression on Key’s face at the sight of his father is enough to let loose all the tears she is holding.
Frulu races past Rossa and the ferrymen toward the boy.
And with her scream, Rossa cracks the plaster in the walls. “Run, Key!”
Key takes off like a blaze of lightning. A ferryman takes from his coat a cold, metal scythe and unfolds it. He swings, meaning to hook the boy with it, but instead tears a gash in the pelt of the drum. Frulu grabs the child’s arm. As Key struggles, the scythe rips through the drum as well as Frulu’s arm, sending it flying into the rest of the prostrate, huddled family Bouadica.
Rossa’s heart leaps. The boy will get away! Key runs out into the streets as they throw her to the floor. The ferrymen follow the boy, leaving Rossa and her family behind. Her brother is howling, his arm lying limp on the other side of the room where his horrified family tossed it. Rossa gains the strength to get up and run into the street after Key. The ferrymen are gone, as is their death carriage. But more importantly, Key is nowhere to be seen.
Rossa looks around for any sign of the child. She knows most of his watch posts and hideouts, and he is gone. She will look for him more thoroughly when she is certain she herself is not being watched. The boy is a gypsy. He has the wits to survive on his own until then. She hopes.
She is turning to head back inside the heap. She must deal with her traitorous brother and collect her thoughts. She is in tremendous pain and shaking badly, but she sees a man in the shadows across the street. She wipes the blood from her face with the back of her hand and puts her hands on her hips. She stares this mysterious figure down. Another ferryman no doubt, but not one from inside the heap. A large caravan passes between them, and when it has gone, the man has disappeared.
THE YOUNG prostitute Orna is naked in the strange, dark room. Her orange gown hangs from a meat hook on the wall like dried beef. The room is too dark to see the street doctor to whom she was referred, but he greeted her when she entered the doorway in the back alley. She was not certain at first she had found the right place. She wondered if even an ersatz doctor’s office shouldn’t have more light.
“You’re Orna?” he said from some secluded corner.
“Yes,” she replied, trying to see a form or figure.
“Disrobe. See those pills on the table? Take ’em. I’ll be with ya shortly.”
She did as she was told. She has done this dance many times in bedrooms and alleys across the city.
That was an hour ago. Now she sits on the cold metal table shivering and naked, shielding her breasts from the dank chill in the room. She shakes, not just from the surroundings, but from the memory of what happened earlier today, after that small boy ran into her. She saw a ferryman, and a familiar one at that, named Cayden. He has been her client for a few weeks now and has seen every inch of her body. But never before had he looked at her like that. Like prey. Like he was a predator in the shadows. Orna had not wanted to take him on as a client. He scared her, as well he should. Ferrymen threw workers in her line of work into death wagons without qualm. But he offered her more coin than she had ever seen.
That look in his eyes. Did he know what she was planning to do?
She cannot be blamed. This is the first of these procedures she will ever have done. She has been with child once before, and it was brought to term. When the baby was born, the child had a delicate heart-shaped birthmark on her right cheek. Orna sold the little girl to a good family, she thought. It broke her heart to do it, though.
Then one day, after a particularly rough client, she stumbled into a backstreet gutter, aching and injured. Her concern with her own health melted away, for beside her lay a pale, lifeless baby with the shape of a heart on its cheek.
This world, Orna now believes, is no longer meant for children. It is hardly suitable for adults.
The pills she was told to take are making her feel light-headed and dizzy. She does not like this. She rises from where she is sitting on the old apothecary table, but nearly falls from vertigo.
“Doctor?” she calls out. “Doctor, I don’t feel well.”
She doesn’t hear an answer. Her vision blurs.
She wonders if he’s even there. She has already paid his price by third party. It was everything she had, all the money Cayden had given her. If this doctor has played the scoundrel, she is ruined. She doesn’t have the coin left to make an appointment with someone new, and raising a child would mean death and starvation for them both.
Orna keeps to the walls of the dark and drab office as she continues calling for the doctor. She grows weaker and more disoriented with each step. Almost at the door, she is doubled over so far, she is nearly crawling. She can see the glow of light, but she falls to the ground.
She looks up, frantic to get out of this place. As the room spins, she is touched by shadow. Three robed figures are blocking the door, their hands folded in front of them. “GOD is watching you,” says one.
“Sisters of GOD!” Orna screams as she tries to edge backward and away.
An arm locks around her neck and pulls her to her feet.
“Disgusting perversion!” the voice says. “Crawling around naked like a shameless whore. And wanting to murder your unborn child, too. Your sanity has escaped you, but we will set it right.”
Orna sees the blurry image of another figure step in front of her. She cannot hold her head up.
“Orna Taith.” It is Cayden. She knows the voice. “You have been found guilty of sins against GOD. You will now be taken to the ninth ring.”
Orna tries to scream, but she cannot. The Sister’s hold around her throat is too tight. Cayden! Help me! Cayden, please help me!
The Sister releases Orna. Before the girl falls to the ground, stronger arms catch her. She is falling under, into a sleep where she is half-awake. She can hear what is happening around her, but she cannot react. Orna is brought into the light. Her eyes squint as she sees the Angels of GOD on the four corners. They will judge her now as she is thrown into the death wagon.
LAWL IS headed home to Gran when he is nearly run over by a death wagon. The ferrymen are about. He has no doubt that if he had not stepped aside, the carriage would not have stopped and some poor sod would spend the day scraping his body off the road. He looked into a ferryman’s eyes once, years ago when they took his neighbor away. That was when he knew how GOD steals one’s soul: straight out of the eyes. There is no soul in those depths. They are drained of color and vitality.
He hurries through the streets with his prize, his stained burlap bag o’ tricks holding doodads and whatnots like fire sticks and magnifiers. Today, he found some metal scraps and wires in the trash heaps and gutters around the district. He is working on an idea. He has many.
The ferrymen have him concerned. He runs up flights of stairs that zig and zag like the lines of a madman’s drawing. He leaps over a couple of homeless old men who have taken refuge from the city in the stairwells. When he gets to the apartment, he calls for Gran. She is not there. Both rooms are empty, and she is not hooked up to the machine Lawl designed for her, the one which feeds her pain medication when she needs it. He is starting to panic. He puts his bag o’ tricks on the bed and hurries out of their dwelling, down the long hallway of the heap. He passes many people, but dares not ask any of them if they have seen Gran. Most pay no heed to him anyway. They are content to deal with their own stinking miseries.
He finally finds her on the balcony. She stands alone, her white night shirt fluttering in the breeze, the orange sky threatening to go red above her. He sighs in relief. She looks like an angel overlooking the city from one of the forbidden books Lawl has seen. He stands beside her.
“My my! You are breathing heavier than me, love,” she says. “Did I worry you?”
Her voice is a tiny, breakable thing. Like candy.
“There are ferrymen in the district, Gran,” says Lawl, streaming his words together without a breath. “I was concerned…”
She lays her hand on top of his on the railing. “I’m still here. They havena got me yet. I’m feelin’ good today.” Then she smiles. “Or goodlier, I guess.” She giggles at her made up word. This makes Lawl grin. Gran was a teacher once, many years ago when there were still a few schools left.
“I’m a bit amazed you had the strength to get out here by yourself,” Lawl says.
“Me too!” She laughs and smacks the railing. “But I did it. Aye, I did. It took me near forever. But I did it. That big metal machine you put together for my pain meds is aidin’ me quite a bit, darling baby boy.”
Lawl has not been a baby boy in over thirty years.
“But you need to be careful, Gran. We don’t know who we can trust. Neighbors turn on each other these days. We’ve seen it. Aye, we’ve seen it too much.”
“I know, boy. I just wanted to feel the wind on my face this mornin’.” She breathes in as deeply as she is able. “It’s an obstructed wind, what with this city grown so damned tall, but it’s still sweet.”
“Was the Immortal City ever anything but damned tall?”
“Aye. When your daddy and me was kids, it wasn’t so big and clumsy as this.” She points to the west. “Way off over there, in another ring,” she says, “in another time, there was a garden. Prettiest thing ever seen. It was an old relic of a place even then. There was hills and streams and big bloomin’ flowers the size of your head. Me and your daddy used to play in it all day. We was pirates and Passions. The architecture of the city watched us, but only from a distance. There are places in the Immortal City GOD has not yet gotten His hands on.”
“Sounds nice, Gran. I’d like to see it.”
“You should go there one day.”
They look at one another and silently acknowledge the hopelessness of that comment. The magic in the air is blown away like dust.
“Come on,” Gran says. “Let’s head in. I’m gettin’ a chill.”
Lawl takes her hand, and they shuffle in together.
“When do you see your sweet Duncan again?” she says. “Is he coming over tonight?”
“No, Gran. I won’t see him for a week.”
“You miss him, don’t ya?”
“Aye, I miss him somethin’ awful, Gran.”
“Aw, that’s the pits, darling baby boy. That’s the real honest pits.”
Lawl wishes he could see Duncan this moment. He wants to tell him of the ferrymen. Of Gran getting up by herself and walking to the balcony. But a week. He has to wait a whole week to say a word to him about any of it.