Stepping out of his hut the next morning, Ryz takes in the haggle of florists, fruit sellers, jewelers, fixers, and assorted vendors. Tensing his jaw, he flexes his fingers and a feeling descends on me; sounds are muted and my mind is calmer. It is delicious, languid, as if my neurons have stopped sparking. I want to say something more to Ryz but my faculties are giving way to something else, something deeper. Everything is clearer, more finely-etched. The buildings, their architectural details, blue walls, green shuttered windows. Mangoes glisten in vendor carts. A drop of sherbet blossoms in a glass. A car tyre rolls through a puddle of water, each droplet visible. I gasp in surprise. So Ryz is an Enhancer—it’s a rare ability, to sharpen the powers of anyone you choose. It’s the opposite of my ability which can be used to make people duller.

My power makes people view with me with suspicion and fear while his makes him an excellent ‘team player’. I am almost jealous.

“Some warning would’ve been nice,” I say, trying to ignore how much I’m enjoying the feeling.

“I don’t give warnings,” he says, sullen. I can tell he doesn’t want to help me. I wonder how Leela persuaded him.

Now she pulls at his arm. “Please Ryz, be nice. Remember those shoes you want.”

“Of course. You’re paying him for this.” I say, sounding more bitter than I meant to.

“You think people work for free?” Ryz is on edge. As usual.

Shaking off my irritation, I try to focus on the task ahead. If anyone knows more about the potion, it will be the runners, the secret errand boys of the city. Through nooks and crannies, they wander and lurk doing jobs for whoever will pay them—business tycoons, the cops, ganglords. They pick up secrets like lint in their cloaks which they are willing to sell for the right price sometimes, to the right person.

We turn into a one of the more decrepit streets. Here, the buildings are crumbling and dirty water flows in the gutters. It is one of those areas which the city inexplicably forgot at some point. Raia is full of such places—you turn a corner and it’s like falling into another world. It used to scare me in the beginning. The village I grew up in holds no such surprises. There are few people around and those that are pay little attention to us. It is only when somebody almost walks into me and Ryz pulls me aside with an impatient look on his face that I realize we are invisible. Apparently, he can do more than enhance other people’s powers. I had not counted on his powers being quite so impressive and it unnerves me and I wonder again why he is hiding out in Kala Bazaar. And how has he managed to evade being drafted?

He would be a prize catch for the Concilium. It is not the time or place for questions so I bite the inside of my cheek and remain quiet. After walking a mile or so, we are faced with the Gustad, a building with monstrous faces etched into its mud walls. Rusty pipes travel its length and it looks like the brainchild of a mad scientist obsessed with gargoyles. It is hideous.

Inside, the building is hollow, walls between rooms having crumbled long back to create a cavernous space. There are no ceilings and the roof, high above, has holes through which sunlight lances in. Pigeons waddle, pecking in the dirt for bugs. In a corner of the large hall, four boys sit cross-legged around a game of cards, nursing sweaty green bottles of beer. They are aged between ten and sixteen. Their eyes are like grey marbles, whirring in their sockets.

Leela approaches them while we hang back. Ryz is quiet, sweating as he heightens Leela’s powers. I am also more alert to the brooding and secretive energy of the city’s underground, its runners, the underdogs of crime, not just these four boys but everyone who comes to this space, almost overwhelmed by the sensations. A rose blooms in my mind. I have no idea what it means.

Closing my eyes, I give in to the images crowding in, shapes I cannot distinguish from each other. Emotions flood me: anger, fear. A bitter fatigue cloaks all of it. This, I’m guessing, is the boys’ predominant energy. I cannot hear them but sense they are telling the truth.

Once we’re outside again, Ryz draws a shaky breath and coughs a few times, then drinks water from a dirty fountain even while grimacing at the mud that gets in his teeth. His face is pale. Lung-based side effects, I’m guessing. We all have them; nobody likes to talk about it. How the use of our powers erodes our bodies. Talking about it would make us feel weaker and less useful to the Concilium. I turn to Leela. “What did you find?”

“They know about the girl but not where she is. They think a man is after her, maybe more than one man. They don’t know his name but he wears a orange bandanna—,”

“Orange bandana—,” something is troubling the edges of my consciousness.

Leela cuts in. “Yes, like the boys in Ki Gardens but she hasn’t been seen there. She was last seen in the mountains, somewhere near the Celadion Underworld. Near the forest called Cretin’s Angel.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“That’s a good thirty miles away, to the north-west,” I say, trying to piece it together. Cretin’s Angel is part of the contiguous hills that run from the ocean to the desert on the western edge of Raia. “So she can’t have anything to do with the stolen goats.”

Leela looks as confused as me but Ryz is still looking a bit sick and she grabs his arm. “Let’s get you home.” Ryz nods weakly.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask because side effects are not meant to be this serious or this obvious, for that matter.

She looks uncomfortable. “It’s because of me, because I’m not fully human. It takes him more effort.”

On the way back, we are all lost in our separate thoughts. Leela keeps a protective hand on Ryz’s arm and he allows it. He doesn’t look at her much but a faint blush creeps up his face, disturbing his usual pallor.

The next day, I meet Leela at the foothills of the mountains and we drive up the crest. The temperature falls as we ascend and pine cones litter the ground, some the size of small rats. At a cha station near the top, we stop and Leela gets out, her body cold, curling into itself. I describe Emi to a vendor and ask if he seen her.

“No, no, here’s your change,” he says, shaking his head and pushing coins at me. The flags on this summit are black, a sign that people around here do not like strangers. I step away from his energy—the smell of blood, eggs, the smell of lies. Is he lying to avoid contact or for some other reason?

“Are you sure?”

The lines on his face deepen. Leela makes an impatient sound to indicate it is a waste of time.

We get back in the car, drive on, and a few miles later, the official limits of Cretin’s Angel begin. “We should walk for a bit,” Leela whispers. “See if you can sense something.”

The forest is foreboding even during the day, its paths dark. The trees are taller here and more dense, their branches tangling together. Twisted trunks cover the forest floor. Leela examines the bark and earth for clues, peers into tree-holes. We go on like this for a few miles, sometimes meeting a lone forager, but for the most part, it is steep and deserted. Halting under a tree, I drink water. Leela collapses on a stump and pushes her long braids out of her face, glares at a leaf on the ground. It moves and shifts, revealing its insect nature. For a while, we remain like that, overcome by fatigue and the sounds of the natural world. Then, they continue.

After what seems like half a day, I touch the bark of a tree and sense something. Human fear. Longing. Grit.

Maybe Emi was here, walking among the Douglas fir that rises thirty feet into air, her feet bleeding and dirty, exhausted and scared, not knowing how far she had run or what miles lay between her and Sector 5, knowing only that she couldn't stop, that she must keep on—I slap a mosquito off my hand and it leaves a smear. It is deathly quiet. I’ve lost Leela. She calls out. I run, tumbling through the forest until by a stream, I come to a stop and it is with horror because there she is, Leela, except she looks like…nothing. She is blurry, almost faded. Her pupils are darker than usual, almost forest green, almost black.

“Leela,” I say, an undertone of panic in my voice despite my effort to act normal. As if I see women growing wings every day because that is undoubtedly what’s happening here—in place of arms, she has wings, tiny at first and then as I watch, they grow in size, brilliant yellow with white spots. Leela looks at them in wonder, then moves them slowly, an experimental look on her face.

I am afraid to speak again.

From from tree to tree, Leela flies, touching bark more intimately than humans ever can. Minutes pass. Time has become a loop. Leela’s body moves in the forest like a breeze. I wait.

Leela comes back to herself in fragments as I watch, transfixed and discomfited at having witnessed something so private. She seems both bewildered and enchanted by what happened, but unafraid. “I transformed,” she says, looking at her own hands with a sort of wonder. Her eyes are mesmerizing. One could drown in them.

“It’s happened to you before?” I manage.

“No. Or maybe only once, a long time back—I don’t remember it clearly. I was very young. It was after something really bad had happened and I thought I was dreaming, hallucinating.”

“You weren’t. I saw them.”

“I’ve heard it happens to some of us but it’s rare. Old magic.”

She hesitates. “I heard something.”

“What was it?”

“I think it was her.” She close her eyes and chants as if from memory. “I’m so hungry. A little further, maybe another animal I can hunt. The last one was so small.”

A twig snaps at my feet. The forest rustles and sighs.

“Is that all?” I ask.

“Yeah, the voice fades in and out. But it means she’s been here recently. In the last two days. I wouldn’t be able to pick up signals from earlier than that.”

Without speaking much about it, we go back the next day and the next but find nothing further. After that, we return once or twice a week, reluctant to give up altogether. For a month or so, there is nothing, only the changing of leaves, the shifts in weather. By now, the girl could be anywhere but traveling to the mountain gives my days a structure, a form. After a time, I begin to enjoy the wandering, the conversations with Leela. I have almost forgotten the Bhulg warning, dismissed it as superstition. Perhaps, my over-wrought imagination saw the entire incident as more meaningful than it actually was. The thought is both terrifying and reassuring. By now, the search is an excuse to get out of the house, forget the worries around my future and the suspension.

On the third week of our visits, Leela and I lose each other for a little while as we are prone to doing sometimes. We inevitably find our way back to each other so I’m unbothered but when she calls out to me, her voice is pitched oddly and I clamber up the brush in her direction. When I reach Leela, my breath is fog and the trees are eerie, thickening in the dark as if they might pull me into themselves. Leela is staring at something on the forest floor. An animal. Quite dead. A variety of moose perhaps, it sprawls on the ground, body engorged and out of proportion, eyes open, mouth slack.

“What the hell happened to it?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” Leela mutters, pointing to where next to the corpse, lies an egg. Large and luminous.

A perfect blue egg, the size of a coconut, lying in the grass, rolling slightly from side to side. Unbroken.

“What is it?” I ask.

“No species I know.”