EL Writes

Everrett liked staying at the radio station with his human. He snoozed the hours away keeping his human company. When he needed to do some personal business outside, his human would start a playlist and they’d go on a walk.

When his human started a playlist without Everrett prompting it, though, that meant trouble. His human only ever went to one place during radio hours: the antique store next door. Cinnamon Bun’s territory.

Cinnamon Bun had soft fur and a sweet expression. His human called him Bun-bun. Everyone else called him Sinnerman.

Sinnerman had the personality of a mobster, claws to back up his threats, and the desire to control everything around him. Everrett had scars.

“Just ignore Sin, Everett,” his own human sighed, “and you’ll be fine. You don’t have to come with me.”

Everrett couldn’t leave his human alone in enemy territory. Sinnerman was stretching in the antique store’s front window, claws on display and a yawn showing his teeth as well. Then sitting very innocently, he started purring.

The purr said, your face isn’t nice, but it would be a shame if something made it worse, wouldn’t it.

Everrett stuck close to his person’s leg as they walked in.

The actual antiques were on displays visible through the front windows. The rest of the stores contents could more accurately be described as old and used. They had to go all the way to the back to see the records.

Porsche the Parrot was at the back as well, which could have been a reprieve. Sinnerman and Porsche had an armed détente. Sinnerman could kill Porsche in a fight, but Porsche’s talons and beak meant they’d go down together.

The problem with Porsche was that he loved drama and wasn’t above making it.

Porsche saw Everrett coming and started hopping on his perch. “Hound Dog! Hound Dog!” screeched Porsche.

Sinnerman’s purr was a laugh, as he sauntered down the aisle behind them.

Everrett wanted to growl, but a sharp tug on his leash reminded him to ignore Sinnerman.

“Hey Gene,” said Sinnerman’s human. “We got some new records.”

“So I heard, Bonnie. I’m here to check them out.”

Sinnerman rubbed himself up against Everrett’s human’s leg.

The radio played in the background with the songlist that Everett’s human had pre-set.

Everrett kept guard, wishing they were safely back in the sound booth. Sinnerman jumped onto a table, claiming the high ground.

“Hound Dog! Hound Dog!” screamed Porsche.

Sinnerman licked his claws.

Finally, the radio started playing Country Roads and Everrett's human said, "I better get back."

“Hey Gene," said Sinnerman's human, "will you play Hound Dog for Porsche? I just know he’s going to be shrieking it all day if he doesn’t hear it soon.”

Everrett’s human looked down at Everrett and then back at Sinnerman’s human. “Why do you always bully my poor dog? But sure, I’ll play it when I get back.”

“It was my grandmother’s cousin’s or something.” I clench a stress ball in my hand, so at least my fingernails aren’t cutting into my palms like they would have otherwise. I knew exactly who the old lady had been: the sister of my grandmother’s first husband. I never understood their relationship and my dad had warned me not to ask.

“She didn’t like me, but she didn’t like anyone much. And she left me her jewelry in the will.” I hadn’t realized how much she hadn’t liked me until I heard that bequest. Maybe she just didn’t know me enough to care about what would happen. Or maybe she hated me for looking like my grandfather, her brother, and being about to marry.

“I already asked my girlfriend to marry me, with a ring and everything,” I smile shakily, “but weddings are expensive.”

“I can't give you more for a sob story, you know. I gotta make a living.” The pawn shop guy is casually rude. It doesn’t feel personal, he’s just doesn’t want people thinking they can con him. He’s behind a counter with scratched bulletproof glass between us. I can see three fire extinguishers nearby. I really hope they won’t be necessary.

The news had reported two cases of suspected arson recently – the house of a jewelry collector and a jewelry store – both within ten miles of here. The pawn shop guy is prepared for people to act shitty and I’m just one more person, looking suspicious with my nervous sweating and old box of jewelry. He doesn’t ask me why I’m not giving the jewelry to my girlfriend. Maybe he thinks she’s already turned it down. More likely he doesn’t care how much of my story is true.

He isn’t interested in me, just in the jewelry I brought in. It’s a tangled mess in an old case. I hadn’t bothered trying to separate everything out. I wanted it to be a mess. All or nothing. That’s the goal. Please let this work.

“I know, I know. I just talk when I’m nervous. I grabbed this from that bucket when I was waiting." I show him the stress ball, balanced on the palm of my hand. It’s a cheap thing with an old business logo half scraped off, from a bucket near the door. He’d been dealing with another customer when I came in, and I’d peered into the bucket. It had a bunch of random crap that didn’t have any prices listed. I was hoping it would be free, but I wasn’t asking yet.

I can’t hide the fact that I’m nervous; the best I can do is mask why.

“The old lady used to say that necklace was cursed.” I point with my other hand to a particularly ornate monstrosity. “Scared us kids something bad.” I try to smile but it feels sickly on my own face. “The police said it was her lucky charm, though,” I continue to ramble.

That got the pawn shop guy’s attention. “The police?”

“Yeah, the old lady never married, but she’d had suitors. Three of them all died mysterious deaths. The story goes, she wore that necklace whenever she was interviewed by the police and she was never charged with anything.” The words spew out like vomit. In my head, other words circulate: please don’t believe me; please don’t think I’m crazy, but please don’t believe me.

The pawn shop guy’s look of interest fades. “Oh,” he says. And then goes back to examining the jewelry, separating it into individual pieces and then putting those pieces into piles – silver, gold, and other – with no special attention to the one necklace. I watch him put it in the gold pile. Then he weighs the piles, and uses a calculator and a pad of paper to give me the amount he’ll pay for it all.

The offer is insultingly low. I wonder if the instinct to object is my own or part of the curse. The money doesn’t matter, just the offer itself. That is what matters, I tell myself as I make myself agree to the amount.

We go to the cash register, walking down the long counter with the bulletproof glass between us, leaving the jewelry behind. He rings me up and hands me the cash; I fold it and put it in my back pocket. The transaction is done.

It’s only then that I try my luck. I show him the stress ball again. “Can I take this too?”

The stress ball looks even more worn than previously.

He takes it from my palm and gives it a few squeezes himself. Checking that I haven't managed to sneak anything into it, but it really is just a bit of cheap plastic foam. He gives no sign he felt the moist residue of my sweat. Then he hands it back. "Sure. A gift."

"Thanks!" I chirp and get out of there.

He had given me money for the necklace and a gift for the curse. Something extra for something extra. Hopefully that will be enough to transfer it.

Neither giving the necklace to the collector nor selling it to the jewelry store had worked. The necklace had found its way back and around my neck both times the police interviewed me about fires at places I’d recently been but hadn’t charged me with anything. I really hope this third attempt to get rid of it works.

“Thank you,” I said to Melanie just as she blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

We blinked at each other in the University cafeteria. Elaine coughed next to Melanie and I finally said, “It’s okay.”

I hadn’t seen Melanie or Elaine since they graduated high school a year ahead of me.

I graduated as high school valedictorian by default – I was the only student in my year. It was the smallest public school in the state, grandfathered past the size requirements due to being in continuous operation since before the country was founded.

I had perfect attendance from sixth grade through twelfth grade because that was the deal I made with my foster parents.

My foster parents had found me on the streets after I’d run away again.

My foster parents didn’t ask questions, always had food available, and had only one rule: I would attend school every school day.

I had only tried to skip twice, in eighth grade. Both times one of them had found me, and escorted me to class.

Loitering at the corner store, I hadn’t been hard to find. But when I got so lost in the forest that I scared myself, one of them still found me, took my hand, and led me to the school. I clutched their hand for safety the whole way back.

“Do you regret the bargain you made?” they asked me.

“No.” It came out a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Because we had a bargain. They lived in a big house in a tiny town that had to have at least one kid in each grade for the school to continue. I was the only kid for my grade.

Most years had two students, although I wasn’t the only year where it was just one, but the year ahead of me had three students, because Melanie had skipped a grade to be in the same year as her friend Elaine.

It was in eighth grade that Melanie had smirked at me and said, “you’re welcome.”

I asked my foster parents if they would have helped me if Melanie hadn’t skipped a grade. They looked sad and shook their heads. One of them said, “We would not have, and that would have been our loss.”

“But it might have been better for you,” the other said.

“Will you get another kid, after me?” I asked, like pressing on a bruise.

“Not unless the school needs another student. We were very lucky with you. We could give you something you needed.”

They did give me what I needed: a safe place to stay, to learn, to be comfortable in my own skin. They gave me a chance for a future.

I graduated with a full-ride scholarship to the state college. I had moved into their house with only the clothes I wore, but moved out with two full suitcases, a handmade quilt, and a lunch to eat on the bus to campus.

I was grateful for everything they gave me, but it had hurt to leave.

Because I can’t remember their names. Or what they looked like. Or the name of the school, although I have my diploma framed on my wall, so I can read the name over and over again, even if I can never quite remember it.

I understood why Melanie hadn’t wanted to graduate alone, but I did wonder, “how did you know what that town was before you left?”

“I hear the wailing women are bothering your village,” the stranger said, with open concern and a friendly face.

Gardwin frowned. Emit should not have said that. Gardwin had sent Emit to see if any of the other local villages knew what had set the wailing woman off, but it did not surprise him that Emit had taken the opportunity to complain.

He would have sent someone else, except that he’d been happy to get Emit and his complaints out of the village and doing something productive.

Eight days ago, a wailing woman had appeared at dusk and sent a chill through all who had heard it. And then reappeared every evening since.

The first night, the men had set a watchman and slept lightly in case of attack, while the women had checked on every child and every elder, and made healing teas for every cough and poultices for every scratch.

They’d all been grateful when no one had died that night. The wailing woman’s warning had been enough to ward off the foretold death.

The second night, they’d done the same, but had been less grateful the following morning.

By the fifth night, many of the villagers were irritated with the wailing women disturbing their peace and Emit most vocal among them. Gardwin had proposed that Emit travel to the other nearby towns to see if anyone knew what was happening.

Emit must have taken it as an excuse to gossip monger and complain if this stranger was the result.

The stranger introduced himself as Bernard, a hunter who was making his way from his old village to his cousin’s village. He shared a brace of rabbit in exchange for a meal at the inn and news about the wailing women.

He listened to their recounting and shook his head sorrowfully. “Sometimes the wailing women go mad, just like any other creature and must be put down for the good of all.”

It was a shocking suggestion. And yet. What else could they do? It was Regan the innkeeper who asked Bernard if he was willing to do the deed in exchange for another night at the inn.

The villagers conferred, and while there wasn’t universal agreement, no one stopped Bernard from ambushing the wailing woman when she appeared, slitting her throat with his hunting knife.

The abrupt end of that mournful wail was a relief.

The blood looked black in the twilight, and Bernard dragged the body away to bury in the forest before returning for his night at the inn.

Gardwin slept poorly but from a guilty conscious. He was glad to see Bernard go, unnerved by the ease with which the hunter had slit the throat of the wailing women. Even more unnerved by how Bernard had seemingly killed the village’s fear when he’d killed the wailing women: now that she was no longer wailing, they had nothing more to fear. No illness or attacks.

Everyone in the village was more relaxed now.

And then Emit returned.

“Oh god,” he cried, looking haunted. “I’ve seen so many dead!”

Gardwin could feel his blood turn cold. “What?”

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I didn’t particularly like Sophia, but I felt connected to her. And my brother had loved her. Or so he said.

He had loved her so much he had asked her to marry him. He had offered her our grandmother’s wedding ring with the diamond worth more than our house. But when Sophia said “no,” he killed her, so maybe he hadn’t loved her all that much after all.

“She rejected me!” he told me, throwing the ring down. His hands were bloody and he smelled of smoke and ash. “She chose her death!”

“You had to know that she wouldn’t convert. And our families have fought for generations.”

“I was willing to put that aside! I would have forgiven her! She chose damnation!”

I wondered what he had offered to forgive her for. For her faith or for her relatives’ actions.

I picked up the ring and thought that he should have offered her something new. It was our grandmother’s wedding ring, yes. But Sophia’s mother had worn it too, after it had been stolen. Before it had been stolen back.

Sophia hadn’t liked me any more than I had liked her, but we’d known each other. As children we had sworn an oath of peace between us two.

“Did you apologize to her for our father’s actions? Or our grandfathers?” I kept my voice even, as I asked.

“Of course not! Our father and grandfather were avenging our family! You know what her family did to our mother! I was willing to forgive that for her, but she rejected salvation!”

I did know what they had done to my mother.

I also knew what we had done to Sophia’s mother.

I put the ring on the coffee table as my brother finally turned to me with concerned eyes. “You’ll need to be extra careful. Be sure to carry a knife.”

“Of course.” Sophia’s family would target me now. Justice would target my brother for his actions. But revenge would target me, as Sophia’s reflection in an enemy camp.

I wondered if Sophia had forgotten her knife. Or had she refrained from killing my brother because of our oath? She shouldn’t have.

As adolescents, Sophia and I had realized how impossible our childhood oath of peace had been. We had shamefully agreed to modify it: we would try to avoid harming each other, but we would not be forsworn by self-defense.

I thought about justice versus revenge as I made my brother dinner. There could be no reparations for death, but there could be justice. If anyone wanted it.

The ring sat there: enough wealth to buy a house or kill a family.

I hadn’t liked Sophia. I hadn’t had the chance to like her. But I knew her and she deserved justice.

I felt too cold and too hot at the same time.

I gave my brother his dinner, assured him that I was carrying my knife, and left him to rest in his room.

I returned to the living room to wait for what was to come.

I flinched when the door slammed open, startled by the noise, but hardly surprised.

“Do you know what your brother did?” Sophia’s brother demanded.

“He told me. He’s in his bedroom right now.” I gestured down the hallway.

Even now that Sophia was dead by my brother’s hand, I wanted to keep my oath. I didn’t want to harm her further by hurting her brother.

“He killed my sister!”

“Yes.”

“Well, I have come to kill his. A sister for a sister is fitting revenge!”

Of course. I didn’t struggle as he put his hands around my throat.

Instead, I closed my eyes. And stabbed him in the stomach with my knife.

His hands released.

I jerked the knife upwards to get his lungs too.

My hands were hot with gore. The sound he made was awful.

He collapsed to the ground and I sank down with him. I pulled the knife out and hoped he would die quickly.

It seemed to take forever. I held his hands in mine as his body struggled and failed and shut down.

“I won’t apologize for killing you, but I’m sorry for it nonetheless,” I told him. “I swore that I would try to avoid hurting Sophia, including by hurting her family. If you had wanted to kill Sophia’s killer, that would have been justice. But leaving her killer alive? Punishing him by killing me? That might have been revenge, but it’s hardly justice.”

He was finally dead, our hands glued together with caked blood, when Sophia staggered through the doorway, battered but alive.

“You killed my brother?!”

I wondered if I’d gone insane. I was so numb and empty. “It was self-defense. My brother is in his bedroom.”

Sophia went down the hallway as I finally tore my hands away from her brother’s. I was washing my hands in the kitchen when she returned.

“Your brother is dead.”

“Yes.”

“Your brother was already dead.”

“Yes. I poisoned him. It was the closest thing to justice I could offer you.”

“I survived. I didn’t want to hurt you by killing him.”

My laughter surprised me. I still felt so empty and yet the laughter kept coming.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” Sophia said.

“Take the ring and go away,” I said. I didn’t want the ring. I didn’t want revenge or even justice. I wanted reparation. I wanted healing.

Sophia picked up the ring, looked at it, looked at me, and said, “Come with me.”

“What?”

“This diamond is worth more than either of our houses. We’ll go to a city, sell it, and get a house. I don’t want revenge. I don’t even want justice. Let this be our reparations.”

I didn’t particularly like Sophia, maybe because she was my mirror image. My hands were as clean as they were going to get, but we were both covered in dried blood.

The canyons were a marvel of nature on the foreign planet. They were deep and craggy and showed geological eras that the scholars had barely begun to document. The people who had landed and settled on the surface of the planet competed viciously among themselves for the right to design the bridge to be built across the first of the complex canyons.

The land was rich but remarkably fragile. The first human settlement was well-established within a generation, but whenever they tried to expand beyond a ten-mile radius, a crevice would open up directly under where they’d started foundations, swallowing the materials up.

Since the directions of easy expansion were proving not so easy, they started looking in the other direction: the great canyon.

“We could build a bridge across it,” said one particularly ambitious engineer who was married to an explorer. “And then explore further in that direction.”

“Do you have any idea how expensive that would be?” said the mayor.

A nest of locals who occasionally came through had clicked among themselves before their translator said in its unnervingly melodious voice, “Why would you suggest such a thing?”

The mayor did not like the locals and thus made an abrupt reversal, declaring, “It not a suggestion but a surety!”

The mayor had not been pleased to discover that their new planet already had life on it, and even less pleased when that life had proven quickly and thoroughly to be obviously sentient.

He was not alone in that feeling. Some settlers still tried to argue that the locals weren’t really sentient, but they tended to be those who worked up on the satellite rather than anyone who might run across a nest of locals in their daily life. Bing, who was one of the first kids to be born on the planet, thought that argument was so dumb. The locals were fascinating and fun!

Bing had clicked his tongue at a nest of natives when he was really young and according to his parents had either narrowly escaped death or been adopted as a mascot, or possibly both, in response.

Ever since, nests would find him when they came to visit, sweep him up in their number and herd him along with them. He added finger snaps and toe taps to his arsenal of sounds. They taught him how to say friend with a clap of his hands.

“I am the speaker for my nest, and you can be the speaker for your settlement,” his favorite local told him. “It is only fair.”

The local’s voice was as blandly pleasant as ever, but Bing thought the gentle mockery was implied by the words alone.

The rest of the settlers certainly thought so. They had no need for a human speaker and no one was going to take Bing’s word for anything anyway.

But still Bing thought it was very cool whenever a nest of locals would invite him to walk with them. Sometimes he would act as a tour guide, pointing out all the things of interest, and other times they would coach him on how to make more clicking noises that meant something.

And he was often present when something happened. Like when a satellite worker sent the mayor an audio message while a nest of locals was present to hear, insinuating that locals were just complex mimics. The nest had listened and then their speaker said, “Surely it is more likely that the voice from your little box is artificial instead?”

That observation had set off a wave of paranoid security checks that had turned into an incredibly embarrassing audit after it was discovered that a pair of workers on the space station had let an artificial program perform a number of their tasks while they had a rather torrid affair.

In all the turmoil of the audits, the certainty of the bridge became firmly established, and the design competition had commenced.

The locals watched with polite disbelief but were somehow convinced by the mayor to agree that they would be the ones to build the bridge based on whatever design the settlers gave them, provided that the architects could prove that it was structurally sound.

Several of the proposed designs were more imaginative than viable.

The architects competed for years in order to come up with the perfect design to showcase the marvel of both natural and manmade creations. Every so often a nest of locals would come clicking through and ask dubious questions.

“That is a… remarkable design,” one of them might say. “I do remark upon it. Why don’t you attempt to explain it to me?”

Then whoever was there at the design station would try to explain how impressive it really was to the unnervingly inhuman locals as they clicked and chirped at one another.

Bing was an adult by the time the design competition was finalized and awarded.

Only one designer had flung himself over the edge of the canyon in despair.

The other engineer to die from that fall had been murdered and his murderer’s design had been disqualified, although she had argued that even if she was to be put back into a cryochamber until the city was big enough for a prison to be built, her design shouldn’t be affected since they were still going to enter her victim’s design. But the mayor and the captain both agreed that they couldn’t immortalize the settlement’s first (convicted) murderer.

Bing rather thought that this architect wouldn’t have been convicted of murder at all – her design had apparently been fascinating – if it hadn’t been a nest of locals that brought the body back to the city, very concerned about the health and well-being of the people there.

“This does not seem to be good enrichment for your people,” a local said to the mayor. “Perhaps you shouldn’t design this bridge after all if it leads to such harm among you.”

But the challenge continued, and the voting was finally scheduled and even Bing had to agree that the contenders were stunning.

The winning design looked solid as the rocks it would bridge while also as airy as the skies above. It was wide enough and sturdy enough to allow heavy vehicles to traverse it, while also having walking paths with lattice work sides to allow pedestrians to safely admire the views. The support structure for it would go down into the canyon and be drilled into the sides. Since the locals had agreed to produce the bridge, then it would be up to them to provide the material. The settlers wouldn’t have to delve into their own stockpiles of material before they’d had a chance to set up their own mining situation.

Bing wanted to warn the locals about this, but he didn’t want to be a traitor to his own people and he knew what the mayor would think if he said anything. Getting this bridge built was the first step in further exploring the land for mining opportunities, as well as farming and housing. He didn’t say anything and the mayor presented the plans to a nest of locals. “You agreed to build it.”

Bing was positive this was a different nest of locals, but he was one of the few settlers who could distinguish between locals. None of the locals ever seemed bothered by being treated like they were interchangeable.

None of the locals ever seemed bothered at all, really. He wasn’t sure how a local would look bothered.

The local speaker responded easily, “You have done the part you promised, so too we will do the part we promised. We counted the days you used to do your part. You may count the days for us to do our part.”

Having already waited a decade for the design, none of the settlers were happy with the implication of waiting another decade for the implementation.

“Maybe we could build it ourselves?” one of Bing’s contemporaries offered, having grown to adulthood over the course of this challenge.

The mayor yelled at him before anyone else even got a chance. “No! They agreed to build it, and they were picky enough in the design aspect. They’ll build it with their own materials too!”

“We will do as we promised to do,” the local agreed pleasantly.

Later, as Bing walked them to the edge of the canyon, he offered to continue the argument if they’d like him to. “You shouldn’t have to build it! We’re the new people here and the ones who want the bridge anyway.”

The local merely said, “It is safer for us to build it than for you. You are too fragile and you fall too heavily.”

Then another local spoke, “Also, you do not know the materials best for this.”

Bing blinked. “I didn’t know any nests had multiple speakers!”

“It takes skill to play these sounds. I am learning.”

And then they were at the cliff edge, and the nest clicked their way over the edge and back down the long sides, as Bing snapped his fingers goodbye at them.

He wished he’d spent more time learning their language since they were putting such effort into learning his. Back in the city, the mayor flatly refused to pay for work that the locals had agreed to do without asking for payment for either time or materials.

The mayor would only allow humans to volunteer their free time to help manage and overseeing the locals’ work, with the idea of helping them be more efficient and speed up the process. “Some human oversight will teach them efficiency!”

Bing didn’t think a ten-year design challenge or their continued inability to build anything further out than ten miles, really spoke of human efficiency, but he wasn’t a kid anymore and knew better than to say anything.

A nest of locals heard the offer of oversight and merely said, “As we came to you, you may come to us, to see our factories.”

Then they descended back over the canyon edge.

This was not the end of the discussion. Bing had always held back from the edge, but several settlers took up the challenge.

The reasons varied for why those settlers never returned. Some of them were reported to have found a new life and home that they refused to leave, writing pleasant farewell letters that looked exactly like what a human might write, and then never wrote again. Others died. The bodies were returned with many sorrows for the shame of mortality and the risks inherent in exploration.

The mayor might have tried to make a fuss about the situation but then the locals began to build the bridge.

They swarmed up the canyon in larger numbers than any of the settlers had ever seen before, wildly outnumbering the human settlers. Even Bing was unnerved by the roiling mass of them. They built and built and the sound resonated for miles, thundering across the entire settlement, day and night. The sound echoed down the canyon and reverberated through the tools and seemed to drill into their very brains.

The mayor tried to demand that they be quiet. He shouted to be heard, “You’re Too Loud!”

“We are building the bridge as we promised, and at the speed that you have requested.”

“At least stop at night!”

“To stop a bridge half-done is to let it fall.”

“That’s not how bridges work!” the mayor was red faced, although from anger or fear or embarrassment or just sheer exhaustion, Bing wasn’t sure.

“That is how we build bridges,” the translator’s voice was as calmly soothing as it ever was, even with the grinding background noise.

It was a very long month, season, nearly a year.

Then they finished. After nearly a year of thunderous noise, the silence fell like an attack.

The locals receded back down into the crevices, leaving the canyon looking just as gorgeously natural as it ever had been.

There was not a bridge in sight.

There was, however, a bridge by feel.

It was also visible with the use of heat-vision goggles.

The bridge, when viewed through heat-vision goggles looked just like the architectural designs. Except for the addition of swirling patterns of hot and cold spots. They looked lovely as a pattern but ensured that any human traveling across it would either be dealing with some extreme temperature fluctuations or walking an extremely circuitous path.

Wearing such goggles a few braves humans ventured out onto the bridge, especially carefully once they discovered the paths marked into the surface to allow the locals’ appendages to perfectly fit were like inverted cobblestones with sharp edges ready and waiting for an unwary human to twist their ankle. The unpitted sections were instead slick as glass.

“It’s entirely useless as a bridge!” the mayor yelled.

A new local with a new nest clicked back at him before saying very slowly, “It is a very good bridge. We are very impressed with your design. We will visit more often now.”

More locals came to visit.

The settlers did not explore the far side of the canyon and remained hedged in by the sudden crevices that developed whenever they attempted to build too far from the city center. Some of those other crevices grew more like canyons over time.

Bing was a mature man with kids of his own when his favorite nest of locals swept through and invited him to observe the construction of another invisible bridge, over the canyon on the other side of the settlement. At least it was quieter this time. “You’re confining us to this settlement.”

He still didn’t have the language to click or tap the statement.

“Humans are so fragile and yet so hungry. You came to our planet and called it yours. You planned to spread across the whole surface. And your satellite is somewhat concerning.”

“Why do you let us stay then? Why build a useless bridge at all?”

“It is not useless to us. You crossed the stars to visit us. Now we cross the bridge to visit you. It is only fair.”

“I don’t know what that is, but it’s not fairness.”

“Then it is mercy. You have your city and your farms. And we are your friends.”

“This isn’t friendship,” Bing said uncertainly.

“Is it not? Being a friend to you doesn’t mean that I am loyal to your settlers. Just as being a friend to me doesn’t mean you are loyal to those you call locals. Is that not true?”

Bing thought back to the times when he hadn’t spoken. When he’d made offers of assistance that he couldn’t fulfill. He tapped, ‘I never want to hurt you.’

“Then don’t. When things are good, we can enjoy each others’ existence.”

“And when things are bad?”

“We try to avoid that,” the local said in its blandly beautiful voice.

“The people referred to as Franks were not a single group, but rather consisted of several related Germanic tribes who were first referred to that way by the Roman empire in the third century. Centuries later, the word Frankish would be the basis of the word French. However that same group was also referred to as Germani, and even more commonly under the catch-all term Barbarian.”

An axe whirled through the air.

THUNK!

It struck the whiteboard behind the professor.

“Aaaa!” shrieked the students.

The axe jutted out rather jauntily from the projected image of a Frank warrior.

The professor only paused briefly before continuing, “That is a francisca, a type of throwing axe used by the Franks, most commonly in the sixth through eighth centuries. This particular example is a modern reproduction made by a blacksmith friend. What’s up, Barbara?” he asked the woman who had thrown the axe from the back of the room. Who looked remarkably like the image of the warrior on the now thoroughly cracked whiteboard. She grinned as she walked towards him.

“She can’t throw an axe in here!”

“She just did.”

“You all see her too?”

“The professor’s RA who just threw an axe?”

“I’m his RA! I thought she was a hallucination from overwork.”

“This is an invasion,” the Frankish woman said. “A barbarian invasion.”

“You look very Frankish right now, which works with the francisca, but you know I don’t think ‘barbarian’ is really appropriate. It’s such an imprecise term.”

“Am I not Barbara, the foreign woman, defined by her foreignness?”

“Oh my god,” a student’s voice piped up, “Is he blushing?”

“He is!”

“Are you kidding me? I’m blushing! Get it, Professor!”

Barbara didn’t acknowledge them, even as the professor’s blush deepened. “Do you remember when we first met?”

“I had just been hired, five years ago. You were interested in learning to knap stone.”

“You had just been hired and offered a community class in stone knapping. I was interested in spending time with you. I prefer blacksmithing and most of human history agrees with me.”

“99.3% of human history was Stone Age,” the professor objected.

“As soon as it was an option, humanity turned to blacksmithing. But I still had fun learning, and I don't regret a minute of it.”

“It is fun,” he insisted, more to the students than to Barbara.

“It is,” Barbara agreed and continued, “Do you remember the first time I told you I loved you?”

The professor winced, but Barbara just continued, “It was three years ago and we climbed a cliff in the dark; I told you I loved you as we watched the sunrise. You told me that you were so happy that you could introduce me to this kind of study and I could love it as much as you did. We stayed up there all day, tracking the shadows moving over the archeological dig site.”

“I published an article about that and got some very nice responses.”

“Oh my god,” one of the students put her head in her hands.

“Well, now I’m embarrassed for her.”

“Oh, I read that article!”

“For her? I’m embarrassed for him!”

“It was a good article,” Barbara agreed. “I read it. But I need you to know that I am deeply in love with you, and would like to do things with you that are not appropriate before our current audience.”

A student attempted to interject, “Nothing you’ve done so far has been appropriate!” but another student quickly shushed them. “Don’t mind us!”

“Did you have to ask me this in class?”

“When you’re not in class, you’re researching or writing or exploring ruins or maybe, finally, getting some sleep. And I’m not going to interrupt any of those! But you’re used to classes being disruptive. You’ve complained about them before.”

“Hey!”

“At least we’ve never thrown weapons.”

“Maybe he’d like us more if we did, if he has a type.”

Barbara was grinning even as she ignored the students. “I could have gone to your office hours, but I thought cornering you there with a deadly weapon might be taken the wrong way.”

“You already threw your deadly weapon. You really shouldn’t throw a weapon unless you have another primary weapon.”

“I know. But you’re still avoiding the topic.”

“You deserve someone who makes time for you. Someone with time for things that aren’t climbing hills and watching shadows for research. Who you don’t have to interrupt in class just to have a conversation about,” he blushed again, “your relationship.”

“Francisco, you’re looking at this all wrong. You never interrupt me when I’m doing what I want to do. You never demand my attention when I’m learning to spin linen and weave cloth, or smith weapons. But when I have time free, you always welcome me. You let me climb a cliff with you at 3 am and interrupt your class on the Barbarian Invasions and never tell me to go away.”

“It was the Migration Period. The word ‘invasion’ implies that they weren’t welcome.”

“Exactly,” she smiled at him, soft and sweet.

“Smooth, professor!”

“And I’m planning to give the students a pop quiz on what parts of your outfit are historically and culturally accurate and which aren’t.”

“Oh come on!”

“Really? Professor!”

“I want to ensure you remember me proposing,” she grinned at him.

“Proposing?” He was abruptly completely focused on her, not paying attention at all to the students.

“You work enough with your hands that a ring would get in the way, so I made you an engagement axe.”

“I love it,” he said, still blushing. “I accept.”

She finally reached him at the front of the room, tilted his head, and thoroughly kissed him.

“Awww!”

“Remember your audience!”

“People in wall,” I try to communicate. “Bomb today.”

“There are no people in the walls. You’re safe here,” the officer assures me, failing to understand.

“No wall,” I slap the wall of the police station. “My wall,” I gesture towards the doors, to indicate the small room where I sleep. “My language no good,” I offer, although in my home language, I am clear and precise. Only in their language do I struggle. But it is their language that they might understand. They need to understand. “People in wall! Bomb! Today!”

I look at the clock, tracking the time uselessly. I don’t know when the bomb is set to go off. Just that it is today. It could be any minute, so every minute feels like a countdown. For the bomb made by someone on the other side of my bedroom wall.

Another officer rushes in. He speaks too quickly for me to follow, but I recognize the word “bomb,” and am so relieved. They know. I am not at fault for failing to communicate. A weight shifts off my shoulders.

And onto theirs.

A translator arrives and demands, “What you know? Tell me.”

“I never saw them but the tenement has thin walls so I could hear them. I recognized the word for bomb, but how could I report it? But it’s today, so I had to try. I am incredibly grateful that they understood.”

An open letter,

to the anonymous person on the internet who told me “you should kill yourself”,

to the stranger who attacked me in “self-defense” because my existence scared him,

to the government that thought it could legislate that my nature isn’t natural,

I say to you: Let us compromise.

You will scare me and I will scare you, and neither of us will attack, and we will both live.

You will renounce your children as strangers and monsters, and I will take them in with love and care, and we will all live.

You will tell me to fear neighbors and hate strangers, and I will still nod greetings to them when we pass on the street, and we will all live.

We will all live until we don’t.

In the end, I will die.

I will die of old age, surrounded by family and friends, and even by neighbors and strangers.

I will die after living my life fully, collecting rich experiences and great memories.

In the end, I will kill myself by letting my heart beat for so long that it must finally stop.

In the end, your best defense will be that I have better things to do with my life than hurt you.

In the end, no law can overturn reality.

The spinning barbershop pole looks out of place on the old stone building, but it's been installed there for longer than many of the headstones in the cemetery. The barbershop itself has been there even longer than the fancy electric pole with its bright colors.

This barbershop is not the heart of a community, at least not any longer, but I do well enough that I have a set of armchairs and a couch in the front for customers to wait until I’m ready for them, although just as often it’s for them to compose themselves until they’re ready.

The cemetery has grown around the old stone building such that the barbershop is now tucked into one corner, the entrance is still facing out, but the backdoor isn’t. On the edge of a cemetery, I get people both arriving and leaving funerals: Most want an excuse to sit back in a chair, close their eyes, and let a stranger change them in ways that they hope will result in a better version of themselves than they currently feel.

But I do have my regulars. And on the first day of spring, I know who to expect as my first customer when I unlock the door.

He only comes once a year, but he’s memorable with a wild beard and tangled hair, at least one leaf or twig still caught up in the mess. It takes two washes to clean it and get it smooth: one wash to get out the dirt and the next one to get out the massive amounts of detangler I’ve used.

We talk about the trees and how they’re coming back to life and the squirrels and birds too.

Once his hair is clean and dry, I braid it to keep it out of the way and only then proceed to the close shave. Removing the wild bramble on his face makes him look fresh-faced and child-like.

When I’m done, he looks in the mirror and proclaims:

“When the world becomes too much, And I am lost in my own growth, Your sharp razor and gentle touch, Remove the excess and bring back my youth.”

I gather up the cut hairs and put them into a small paper bag. I fold it closed and offer the packet to him.

In return he gives me a plastic bag full of coins. The coins are tarnished and worn, the bag smelling of the algae that grows in the pond on the other side of the cemetery, where visitors are encouraged to throw coins for a wish.

It’s always the exact correct amount, but I count it carefully none-the-less because he’s insulted if I don’t.

It takes time to count the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, but there’s no rush.

Another customer arrives, but she sits on the couch and doesn’t try to get my attention.

Once my annual customer has departed I turn to the new customer.

Her face is red and splotchy from crying, her hair is a ragged halo around her head, and she’s gently massaging the start of bruises on her hands.

“A pocket knife?” I ask.

She huffs a laugh. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And once you start, you can’t give up halfway,” I agree.

“I messed everything up. The scissors on my Swiss army knife broke from the pressure.” She showed me her hand and the small stab wound that was already scabbing over. “But my braid was half off already. I had to do the rest with the knives.”

I should offer to clean the wound and put some antiseptic on it, but I’m wary of getting too close, so instead I say, “That’s difficult. But you were successful.”

Possibly more successful than she would ever know, with a sacrifice of hair and blood. Dead hair and living blood, and a fresh grave. Undoubtedly, sweat and tears as well.

“Eventually. He loved my hair. And I couldn’t bear to keep it anymore.”

“Then it’s where it should be. Now let’s get you to where you should be. Do you want me to just even things out, or do you have a hairstyle in mind?”

She shakes her head, “just fix it some way, if you can.”

“There are a lot of things I can’t fix, but this I can.” I usher her to the chair and give her a damp washcloth to sooth her face as well.

Her hair is thick and well cared for. I talk to her about the history of sacrificing hair in mourning as I wash and condition it, and begin to trim the ragged edges into a semblance of order.

I’m not a stylist to do anything fancy, but she’s not the first and won’t be the last to feel the need to sacrifice something for a departed loved one.

Her face looks clearer and her hair more intentional by the time I’m done. A proper bob with symmetry and severe lines. I think it will suit her, and she nods in recognition of the women staring back at her from the mirror: that woman will survive.

I sweep up the remnant and put them in a paper bag, folding it securely, and offer it to her. She waves it away. “Just throw it out. I’m done with this.”

“Of course,” I say.

She pays with a fancy credit card, which is when I learn her name, but I intentionally don’t memorize it. It comes and goes as soon as the charge is finalized.

A man comes in, just as she’s leaving. He holds the door for her, and they both pause to offer each other condolences. It’s clear that they don’t know each other, but they both know why they’re here.

“I haven’t seen most of my family in… years,” he tells me without prompting.

He wears a black suit that looks new. Physically it fits him perfectly well, but I guess that emotionally it’s deeply uncomfortable. His hair has begun to grow out of a fancy asymmetric hair style had likely required a lot of a product. It’s not something I would normally give a customer but, “I can sharpen up your previous cut or I can give you a conservative cut to match your suit.”

He runs his hand through the hair. He takes a deep breath and sighs it out. “Yeah, yeah, if you can give me back my old hair cut, there’s no point in hiding anymore is there.”

It isn’t a question, but I answer anyway. “Probably not.”

He tells me about his grandmother while I wash his hair, and shave the side again, and trim the long parts. She was quite the dame in her day and had a racy history that she’d shared with him but hadn’t with his various cousins, who had been deemed too boring to understand that sometimes a girl needed to get in a bit of trouble to have fun. She’d survived to a ripe old age and enjoyed every bit of it, according to him.

When I swept up the hair clippings and offered him them packed in their paper bag, he accepted it but asked “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Supposed to? Nothing much. If you don’t want it, feel free to leave it, but sometimes people like to leave a sacrifice in a grave or burn an offering over one. The paper and hair is fine to either bury or burn.”

“What do you do with the hair that’s left behind?”

It was a good question, and I answer him honestly. “I give to the earth. It’s a good fertilizer.”

“Oh. Huh, I have a garden back home. I’ll have to try it out.” He tucks the packet away in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He pays with cash. I never get his name, and it makes me wonder what he knows, or suspects, or if he’s simply naturally careful.

I would bet his grandmother knows more than she says, certainly now.

The next customer is a local. He lives only a few blocks away and comes by once a month to get a trim, regular as clockwork. He talks about his grandchildren, pays with a check, and waves off the offered paper bag of trimmings. He never acknowledges that the barbershop is partially embedded in the cemetery, an exemption to zoning laws having been grandfathered in due to maintaining perpetual occupancy.

It’s quiet for a time after he departs.

A woman comes in wearing a particularly out-of-date dress that I notice but don’t comment on.

People wear all sorts of clothes to the cemetery, often their Sunday best, or a formal outfit that would be old fashioned in any other circumstances.

She asks for a trim, although I’m guessing what she really wants is the comfort of the experience rather than the results. A wash in warm water, a scalp massage, a warm blow dry, and some meaningless conversation that still creates a human connection. I tell her about the latest scandals I’ve heard about actors and musicians, inciting gleeful shock without any real stakes. She doesn’t recognize the celebrities I mention and I don’t recognize the ones she does, but we still keep a good conversation going.

When I’m done, she’s very complimentary of the trim. I sweep up the trimmings and put them in a small paper bag, but by the time I turn to offer them to her, she’s gone. She also didn’t pay.

I consider the paper packet.

The paper bag is important. It keeps the hair together without the static of plastic, it's burnable and biodegradable, and it's opaque. There’s no way of knowing if the hair vanishes like a dream.

I put the folded bag aside, with the others I’d kept today.

Customers trickle in and out for the rest of the day. Some strangers, some locals.

Some take their hair with them while others leave it behind.

At the end of the day, after the last hair has been swept up and the last customer has left, I collect all the little paper packets.

A man crosses my path as I’m locking up. His hair is held back in a bun such that I can’t tell its length. His beard is carefully groomed. He has a pleasant face and naturally smiling eyes.

“Oh,” he says in apparent surprise. “Are those extra hair clippings? I can take them off your hands, if you’d like.”

I don’t answer.

“I’m a wig maker, I mean a doll maker,” he corrects himself, perhaps because I couldn’t hide my expression of judgement at that first attempted lie. He laughs self-consciously. “Of course scraps like that are only good for dolls, but human hair is so much better than artificial.”

I just bet it is. For many things.

“I believe you,” I say, although I know it wouldn’t be normal dolls he makes. “I don't keep all the hair: I offer it back to each customer. Anything I have has been twice denied. And now it goes back to the earth.”

The man looks less pleasant with every word I say. Now even stealing them wouldn’t work. Already twice denied, and my refusal a third.

The barbershop tucked into the corner of a cemetery isn’t at the heart of any community, but it is on the border of several. I don’t involve myself in any grand events, and I make sure that I’m not drawn in by anyone else.

For all that people refer to healthy hair, even hair in good condition is dead. Even as hair grows, it is already dead. A personal border between life and death that each person carries around.

Death deserves the dignity of a cemetery.

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and no vengeance could fix what happened that night. You didn't ask to become a vampire. It would have been easier to just expire. But rather than die in a pool of red, you rose back up as a monster instead. I’d followed your sire back to their lair and destroyed them with little flair. When I returned from that nest, I took you home as my guest. I comforted you as best I could, and asked of you what you would: “It is not mercy that makes you so thirsty, do you want me to give you peace?”

It had been a terrible day and way to die, and you lost the struggle not to cry. Your car broke down, your coffee spilled, you’d snapped at a stranger, and then been killed.

“I didn’t mean to be rude, I’m naturally good, What did I do to deserve this?”

“It’s not your fault. You don’t have to halt,” I equivocate, “but maybe just accommodate your new situation?”

“I refuse to retire, and instead will aspire to turn this quagmire around.” You sound very profound, as you begin your calculation.

I wipe the tears from your face and give you space to find your own place as this new being you’ve become. “Although I died brutally, I refuse to act cruelly, to this hunger I refuse to succumb!”

I wish you best and don’t tell you the rest -- as I watch you go, you don’t need to know that I’ll be waiting.

Taking from blood banks is the first thing you try, until stores run dry, and families cry, and patients die for lack of blood transfusions.

Eating only “bad people” is next on your list, but you get the gist in an obvious twist, that Hollywood is based on delusions: Villains and killers or even henchmen, do not hang around, readily found, by recent vampire freshmen.

You long for a time when finding food was straightforward, and not so disordered, as looking for a moral gap in the social contract.

As days progress and you regularly assess who deserves to be beaten and eaten Your once clear ethics became near relics decreasingly intact.

Action thrillers always have killers but your community’s biggest disunity is about the utilities. Your city is safer than a communion wafer, your own experience a statistical anomaly.

You put out feelers and find some drug dealers challenging Big Pharma’s monopoly.

Once you enforce patent protection, you’ll hardly feel remorse for some further concession. It may seem controversial, but with careful inspection, criminal intention is near universal: Loitering and littering, jaywalking or speeding, Everyone is a criminal in someway, and thus a gateway to being your prey,

You are owed the right to feed. You are simply fulfilling a need. No one is sinless within every creed.

You’re a good vampire gaining vitality from humanity’s depravity, Every assault: righteous by default. Your hunger an accelerant to identifying a degenerate. For everyone you hurt must be less than dirt, to maintain your self-regard.

This “criminal contingent” is more than sufficient to keep you happy and replete. On your buffet is anyone who goes astray, with no need to show a receipt. With such massive excess, your un-life is a success, so that’s when I return to make it complete.

I am polite, when I visit that night with my insight: “There’s a serial killer” I say, and your whole body sways, and your eyes light up with pleasure. You’re never so at ease as when there’s someone to seize that you can proceed to censure.

“In fact, to be exact, there are a pair,” I say, as you stare, “one more prolific, the other more specific, in where they choose to venture.”

You’re more than ready, to go out and be deadly, towards another human descended to malice. “A wonderful selection, give me their direction,” you demand without realizing your hubris.

“They are both right in this spot,” I say as I strike with my wooden spike directly into your heart.

I return from your deathbed to clean up the bloodshed, and see to your latest victim.

No one detects, or even suspects that “Create your own prospects” is my favorite dictum.

"Thank you for your service," the maitre'd spoke to Jason as he led them to the private room reserved for the reunion.

"I'm not..." Jason started, but Yuanli cut him off, from where she clung to his good arm. "Yes, he's saved many people."

The man nodded, his worldview vindicated, while Jason scowled at Yuanli as he helped her sit. "He thinks I’m military."

"Ex-military," she corrected, nodding at his prosthetic arm before turning to touch up her lipstick. 

"It's a birth defect," he muttered.

The waxy black lipstick created a barrier between her and the world. She liked the monochrome effect with her pale skin and black hair, eyes, and dress.

"You look like a silver-screen star." Jason said it like a compliment but they both knew it was also a rebuke. Silver-screen actresses had played scripted roles as celebrities as well as their movie roles. 

It was also a lie: instead of bombshell curves, she had the emaciated thinness of a POW with atrophied muscles. Some civilians thought she looked fashionable, and she leaned into the misconception. 

Jason thought she should be more honest about herself, but Yuanli felt naked without protection, even if she’d swapped desert fatigues for urban camouflage. 

"Sargeant Chao! You made it!"

"Good to see you, Manson."

"Who's this?"

"My physical therapist, Jason. I'm not yet up for unaccompanied activities."

Stephanie Manson nodded, and offered a hand to Jason, "We appreciate what you're doing for the sergeant."

Mr. Everett’s blood-red Porsche zips past me into the new parking garage. An automated scanner has replaced the human attendant. The price also increased, but that doesn’t affect me on my skateboard. Removing the bike racks while not allowing bicycles in the building had. I wasn’t sure if my bike had been stolen or simply “removed” when I tried leaving it out front, but either way, I couldn’t afford to replace it. The police had shrugged off my report, saying I should have used a bike rack.

A skateboard is faster than walking, and I tuck it under my arm, then hide it under my desk. The first few hours of work are resetting passwords, restarting computers, and clearing malware.

When I return to my desk, my cubical-mate Derek greets me with: “The vampire said the paycheck issue was a system bug that IT is fixing.”

I take a deep breath. “Did Mr. Everett actually tell anyone in IT to work on that?”

Derek shrugs. “He certainly didn’t ticket it. Whether or not he told anyone, well, he says he did.”

Everyone who works with Mr. Everett knows he has a preternatural ability to escape consequences. I’m never sure how much Derek is joking, calling him a vampire draining our life force.

“I was planning to troubleshoot this anyway,” I admit. It will take time away from my assigned work, but everyone needs regular paychecks. I wasn’t the only one screwed over when a deposit for the 30th went through on the 2nd instead.

The finance system is a mess: incorrectly updated months ago, it was disconnected from the IT system.

Fixing that floods the IT inbox with tickets, setting Derek to cursing. None of the tickets explain the paycheck delay. I don’t find any recent changes until I check the trash folder, containing a single update by @regis.everett: a manual three-day delay of all payments.

Mr. Everett had deliberately caused the problem, tried to hide it, and then blamed the IT department. I wish I was surprised. Derek keeps a stake at his desk. A stake to the heart kills a human even easier than a vampire.

I go to HR instead.

“Mr. Everett caused the paycheck delay. Can someone come with me to ask him why?”

It’s impossible to read Ms. Hightower’s expression through her heavy make-up. “Hmm. I should be present for that.”

The confrontation goes as well as I expect.

Mr. Everett looks at the evidence and says, “Oh yes. The company earns interest at the end of the month. With just three days delay, the company earns an extra 3% interest on the amount paid out. It’s basically free money.”

My bank’s overdraft fee and my apartment complex’s late fee increased my monthly rent by 20%. I wish I had that stake.

“That’s quite clever,” Ms. Hightower says. “The board will be pleased.”

“Legend says a scout from the Tye Dynasty ran up these stairs in a single day, wrote what he saw, and then threw himself off the top so his report could reach the bottom in time to change the battle,” Dugan described.

“Not a very smart scout: A body from this height would splatter. Smarter to toss it down with a rock,” Caritan dismissed.

“Easier to find a body at the bottom, than a rock,” Dugan offered.

Ambrus ignored them as he crawled up the wide stone steps, dragging his useless legs behind him. The tower had originated as a three-day pilgrimage to the observation deck, to see human ingenuity below and heavenly dances above: the two paradises.

Three stages of stairs, to be ascended over the course of three days. The gardens where pilgrims could eat fresh fruit and rest in comfort were long destroyed: the gardens salted, the rain barrels smashed.

They neared the top on day seven with heavy packs of food, water and weapons.

The weapons were for the other pilgrims, few though there were. Current pilgrims came to watch the world end: the misery of the people below and the fires in the heavens, promising no peace even there. Too high to hear the lamentations below, too low for whatever came the heavens above, the only sound was the celebration of destruction.

Ambrus focused on continuing to move. His magic couldn’t heal his legs or aid his mobility, and neither could prayer to the warring heavens.

With Dugan and Caritan armed and ready, no one bothered them as Ambrus arranged himself into a seat.

Below, the lands billowed with smoke, swarming with soldiers under dozens of banners. Above, the heavens were filled with blazing clashes.

Ambrus concentrated on the kegs of water his companions had carried.

He had done this work a thousand times in the kitchens by his prison: purifying water by evaporating and condensing into perfect ice crystals, leaving all impurities behind. Heat and chill, a water cycle in a single room.

Dugan had asked him, “how large an area can you effect?”

He had sneered back, “as far as I can see.”

There was a reason he had been confined to a windowless storeroom. Dugan had smashed Ambrus’ knees on his lord’s orders, to prevent Ambrus from escape.

“Can you put out fires?”

“Of course.”

“Why aren’t you in the army then?”

“And put out fires? The army creates fires.”

“Putting out the enemies’ fires.”

“We’re all enemies here.”

When Dugan offered to steal him away for an impossible pilgrimage, Ambrus had agreed.

Here, where he could see all the land covered in smoke and all the heavens saturated in flame, he wondered if he had lied about the extent of his reach.

He started anyway, with the water he could touch, evaporating it and crystalizing it from the air to fall onto the platform. Again: evaporate the frost and crystalize the air.

Again: all the water and ice on the platform, not just what they had brought with them, raised into the air, and snowed down in millions of tiny crystals.

The other pilgrims were watching. They were raising their faces to the sky and opened their mouths to catch the flakes.

Again: all the water he could sense, into the air and then back to the ground.

Each time he cycled his reach expanded.

A fine frost settled over the parched and smoldering land, smothering the billowing smoke, creating a temporary peace as even the warlords paused to assess the miracle.

Wispy clouds softened the heavens, creating space among the flames.

Again and again he cycled the water, purifying everything he could see, from the top of the observation tower made to see all the land and all the heavens.

When he slept, the others stood guard over him. When he woke, he ate what they gave him to eat and continued.

A heavenly creature descended to perch on a banister that might once have been made for just such visitors. It watched him.

Then the scouts from warlords arrived, with swords drawn. Ambrus ignored them. There was nothing more he could do.

But the scouts sheathed their blades before bowing. One of them stepped aside to write a note, attach it to a flare, and toss the combination over the edge. Caritan murmured, “better than either a rock or a body.” One approached and said, “My lord has sent me to offer your lord an alliance.”

“Our lord,” Caritan waved at Ambrus, “appreciates your gracious offer.”

More scouts arrived representing a different warlord, and swords were drawn again.

“I have been sent by my lord to form an alliance with this lord.”

“We have already formed an alliance with this lord. You must surrender to us first!”

The pilgrims started taking sides, when a third group of scouts for a third warlord showed up.

The heavenly creature stood with a flaming whip.

Ambrus scooped up all the snow within reach, shaping it into a ball the size of his fist.

He threw it at the fighting scouts, where it splattered harmlessly but caught their attention.

“I decide who I ally with,” he lied with the arrogance of a true lord. They had greeted him as a lord and he would take advantage. “This a place of peace.”

It worked: they bowed, sheathed their blades, and sat down around him.

The heavenly creature sat down again, no flames in sight.

“What are you doing here?” It was possible the beautiful young man did not intend to be rude, didn’t care enough to be actively rude. Or maybe he was angry about an extra person in the green room when he had expected to see only other performers.

The green room was where theatre performers were invited to relax and let down their guard.

The Agency took advantage of that, maintaining surveillance on the stream of international performers. Traveling troupes were a traditional method to transport spies. Actors and spies shared skills and the need to interact with people of all social statuses. Even heads of state attended the theater and often enjoyed beautiful bodies in their beds. What more could a good spy desire?

"My apologies, Señor. The electronic juicer broke and I'm here to work the mechanical one until it is fixed."

“I suppose. I want pomegranate juice.”

“Immediately, Señor.”

The electronic juicer previously kept next to the fresh fruit had made a whirring sound that acted like a white noise generator as far as the hidden microphones were concerned. So it had been replaced with a mechanical juicer, plus an attendant to man it. Manuel had pointed out the idiocy of using a person to allow the microphones to work, but he had been overruled.

Manuel wore white gloves and used a sharp knife to slice the pomegranate in half.

He placed one half into the juicer and hauled down on the lever.

Juice gushed into the cup below, then trailed off to individual drips. He ignored the fine mist that sprayed out, slowly staining his gloves.

It would have been cleaner to use his bare hands, and more honest to use rubber gloves.

Instead, he wore white gloves that hid the old scars on his knuckles. He also understood eleven languages, but was currently pretending to know only two.

The green room was not actually green. That seemed like a good metaphor. Perhaps symbolic of how the actors weren't necessarily actors, except in the way that all the world's a stage.

Senior Information Analyst Manuel Rodriguez had more important things to think about than the meaning of the color of the walls.

There was no reason modern technology couldn’t compensate for a common kitchen countertop device. The previous audio recordings had been unusable, but Manuel was suspicious of how readily the blame had fallen on the juicer.

He removed the empty rind, tossing it into the trash can below the table, hidden from view by the long tablecloth. Then he put in the other half.

“Your pomegranate juice, Señor.”

“Hmm,” the man accepted the glass and took a sip. He had already performed and wasn’t concerned with getting red-stained lips.

Manuel hadn't worked in the field for decades, and the field had changed in that time. It was difficult to judge when to be suspicious. When he'd first been recruited from a drug cartel to turn evidence, he never thought it would lead to a career in espionage. Or, “counter espionage” as the politicians liked to say to calm their moral qualms.

Manuel still had a price on his head from those days, which was why he so rarely worked in the field. The price had only gotten higher as his career progressed. Staying in the office listening to bugs was both safer and more effective use of his time.

He cleaned the juicer, dropped his juice-stained gloves in the trash with the rinds. He was in the process of pulling on new white gloves when the man threw his still half-full juice glass at Manuel.

Manuel batted the glass back at the man, his fingers still tangled in a glove, but the sudden attack forced Manuel to step back against the wall.

The man leapt over the table and grabbed Manuel’s own knife to slit his throat.

Manuel worked in espionage as a spy, not an assassin. Most spying these days was done electronically.

Knowing how to fight wasn’t something he put on his resume.

Which might be why the assassin seemed surprised when Manuel dodged his strike, and guided the knife into the drywall.

This assassination was both too well planned and not well enough. Nothing official would have been this sloppy, or risked a long-term surveillance location.

There was a mole in the office, someone who could tamper with the recording and blame it on the juicer, and wanted to get Senior Analyst Rodriguez back in the field. Set him up to be assassinated without getting their own hands dirty.

He couldn't do any of the fancy moves, but he knew distance and angles. The debilitating strikes missed him by half an inch, but that was all he needed them to miss him by.

The assassin was young and strong and skilled, but Manuel was old and heavy with both muscle and experience. Once it turned into a grapple in the confined space behind the table, it was over.

He snaked his arm around the man’s throat and choked him out.

Manuel dropped his most recent gloves into the trash along with the prior set, and pulled on a new pair.

When the assassin woke up, Manuel would have some questions about who exactly had set him up. But in the meantime, he had a job to do, which included cleaning up the pomegranate juice that had been splashed so liberally, and masked any blood stains from their brief fight.

He hogtied the assassin with twine and packing tape, and gagged him with a dishtowel.

When more performers entered, Manuel was replacing the tablecloth. No one noticed the assassin tucked among the supply boxes. When they asked him where the other performer was, they spoke in Hungarian and he shook his head as if he didn’t understand. They discussed among themselves that the other dancer should work harder at socializing with the troupe, but seemed otherwise unconcerned.