Chapter VII

A tiny bald man had climbed up a broken ladder leaned against the house wall, nailing a piece of wood onto the rooftop. His wife was standing close to the ladder with her hands full of nails, handing them up to her husband time and again. When not needed, she would run into the house giving off a mouthwatering smell of newly- baked bread. The husband kept grumbling about her forgetting to come back to help him.

Michael was starving and the mouthwatering aroma of fresh bread made him even hungrier. Lucius did not feel better either. They had not eaten for four days. Thank god they had been able to nick a bottle of milk for Laili which kept the little one content.

‘Quick or he will finish soon’, whispered Michael to Lucius, who approached the ladder carrying the baby and holding out his hand for alms. The man looked down and accidentally hit his finger with the hammer. Shocked with pain, he started swearing and blowing on his hurt finger.

‘Please give us something to eat, asked Lucius in a pitiful voice.

‘You back again? screamed the woman, ‘go away, get lost!’

‘My little sister is starving, please’.

The outraged woman shouted at the boy while the man was still busy blowing on his finger. Michael took advantage of the moment and ran into the house. The frying pan on the oven caught his eye and the mouthwatering smell of the baking bread made him almost dizzy. He swiftly grabbed the bread with his bare hands, but was not able to scrape it off from the frying pan; Although his fingers were burning, he did not let out a cry. Now it was his turn to blow air on his fingers, but this did not help him much. Michael saw a spoon nearby, grabbed it, and tried to scrape some bread off the pan, but no success again. He could not think of anything else but to snatch the cloth and tie it around the handle of the pan. He rushed out of the kitchen as quickly as he could.

Michael’s escape with the pan was soon followed by the nasty curses from the woman noticing the thief’s desperate actions. Lucius ran in the opposite direction which somewhat confused the woman as she could not decide which one to follow. Michael ran as quickly as he could and paid no attention to the dusty streets, burnt-down buildings, clothes hanging on lines to dry in narrow streets; he raced ahead carrying his steaming loot. The air was filled with the smell of wet clothes and old houses…

He was already somewhere between the baskets marketplace and a tiny bell tower, which had miraculously survived the attack. He sat down near the narrow side street to regain his breath. But now a different, treacherous feeling sneaked into him. The well-baked crust looked delicious… “No, Lucius, the baby…” He stood up quickly and headed towards that bridge under which he and Lucius were to meet.

It took him around ten minutes to get to the bridge. Lucius and Laili were already waiting under the arch built with yellow brick. ‘Did you run long?’, asked Lucius, when Michael sat on the brick under the bridge and put the pan next to him.

“No, I soon felt nobody was following me, so I walked here”, he answered. Laili was waddling on the pavement and drinking milk from the half-empty bottle which she was holding with both of her chubby hands. The boys ate warm bread which soon disappeared, but, although it could not satisfy them, Michael felt still full and knew this feeling would last quite long.

Half of Mondelay was burnt down after the attack. The part of the city that was built along the right bank of the river had survived while the other side of the town was completely destroyed. One could still notice random houses in the fishermen’s settlement still looking safe, but obvious traces of fire were still visible. The city was swarming with starving beggars and completely devoid of food. The ship had brought some food to the country, but that was obviously not enough and everything was extremely expensive. The knights were ruling the city at that moment and made the laws stricter and stricter day by day. Anyone who dare steal will have their finger cut off. And if they were caught again, they would have to say goodbye to their hand, but the fear of the punishment did not make things easier. People did not hesitate to steal even standing in front of the red - uniform soldiers, and Michael was not a bit surprised by that. They preferred to risk and survive, rather than to die of hunger, so they risked their fingers, some of them successfully, some of them not so much.

Having no money, they started begging, Laili’s hunger made them forget their pride, but people who had nothing for themselves, could not spare anything for others, especially now when there were so many beggars in the streets. Ganged-up youngsters roamed around the streets, taking from the kid's food and clothes collected by begging during the day. People had started fighting for “better places to beg”, two hungry teenage boys with a little child could not cope well with others. The only way to survive was to go from house to house and collect some food by begging. At least they would not be attacked. If the boys saw someone decently dressed in the street, they would walk up to them and beg for help, but what they occasionally got was denial. Some of the people looked embarrassed when refusing them. Others would start screeching and screaming as soon as they saw them and some of them would not even open the doors to them. Once, when they were kicked out from the house entrance, they went back and nicked a bottle of milk for Laili from an open window. After this, they realized that going from door to door asking for help would not take them far and started stealing food. They would only steal from those people who had refused to have mercy on them or cursed them while refusing to help. That’s how they ended up at the house with the ladder, and when the housewife did not give them any food and provided them new curse words, the boys suddenly cooked up a plan to steal from her. This plan worked out well for them and soon both of the boys sat under the bridge feeling full and watching Laili, they were even chatting away quite happily. Michael noticed positive changes in Lucius after they had found Laili. However, although Lucius was becoming less distant and more open, he was still quite curt. Michael could not say for sure what the reason was behind this change, Laili or something else, but there was something he knew for sure, that in this bloody and burnt down city, he had a friend and there was a little girl who he loved as his little sister. As well as this, he was no longer starving, so what else was necessary for contentment?

They were sitting under the bridge for a while, then they got bored and decided to walk up to the city. As they could not leave Laili anywhere, they took her with them. It was chilly; they had left Lucius’ coat hanging on the wall in the rich district and it was difficult to survive without a coat in such cold weather. Michael lent him his coat once or twice, but he was also feeling chilly. Laili was in a better condition in that sense. She was wearing warm clothes bought to her by her rich foster family. At least, the boys were not worried about her. Michael was holding her hand in the streets and her hobble made him smile. Laili was curious about everything and pointed at objects around to learn more about them. Michael tried to boost his authority in her eyes and answer each and every question, whether correctly or incorrectly, he did not care. Lucius did not interfere with their talk, he was staring at the horizon as if searching for something, but he still managed to be attentive to his little sister. They had the stolen pan with them, hoping they could exchange it for money so that they could buy some clothes. Thus they walked along the street with a little girl, who still found it difficult to trot on her own. These were the streets the boys had run around looking for her when the city was on fire; the streets were covered in corpses and puddles of blood were to be seen everywhere. Something happened that night that made his longing to live even stronger. He wondered when and from where this feeling had come. Maybe that happened the night they escaped the death, or maybe when they found Laili or managed to travel the most dangerous route from the shelter to the rich people’s houses. One thing that Michael knew for sure was that something essential had changed in his soul, in his whole being. He was no longer the boy who used to stand in front of Aunt Luiza’s office, shivering at the thought of the next punishment imposed on him. Michael had matured…

The burnt-down shelter, the city glowing red, the coat left at one of the rich people’s houses, walking on the corpses, could all these be insignificant for a young boy?! The shelter caregivers and students, the night watchmen, and Aunt Luiza were no longer alive… Michael loved some of the people at the shelter and hated, was scared of, or pitied others. Those people were an inseparable part of his fourteen-year-old life. They were no longer amongst the living people, the fire had consumed their flesh and souls. Was this that easy to recover from?

Michael talked to Lucius about the man in the hoodie standing on top of the shelter gate. He had not noticed him, he must have been carried away by his own thoughts. But what would make him surprised anymore, hadn’t he witnessed the grey creature tear down a huge iron gate?!

No one in the city knew why this terrible slaughter had happened, who were those people, or why they had attacked Mondelay… People were consumed with fear, some thought it was the punishment sent by Rahail, others believed the attackers were human beings disguised as monsters and the monster did not exist at all. Some people even thought they wanted to kill the commander of the city (nobody believed this though, why would they send so many people just to kill one man?). Michael had even heard that all that had happened in order to rob the main temple of Rahail. Because of such a diversity of opinions, it was impossible to trust one of them. They said a lot of things, but the truth was that no one had ever witnessed anything like this before.

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At the moment the city was under the control of Lord Rain and his guardsmen. When they first appeared in the city, the conquerors had already left. The attackers had collected their dead, but the traces of the attack could still be seen in the city: damaged walls, destroyed pavements, burnt-down buildings, the torn-down gate, and many casualties made it obvious that something terrible and significant had happened in the city. The whole city was under construction, everybody tried selflessly to reconstruct the ruined city. Michael did not want to even imagine how long it would take to bring back the old glory of the city, but most of all, he was heartbroken about the harbor. The whole harbor had been destroyed together with the ships. The surviving sailors and boat builders had put up their tents on the beach. The merchants had returned to the city, selling everything necessary at extremely high prices. They had even managed to open the taverns near the harbor. The sailors did not hesitate to spend their last gold coins on drinks. One could hear their drunk singing from the taverns. Michael was genuinely surprised that they still had a desire to sing carefree and spend their last coins on drinks after they had lost everything…

They slowly passed by the basket market. Michael had seen this place many times during his Sunday trips. The city was full of life then, but now nobody cared about the baskets, the market was almost empty. The boys tried not to approach the house with the ladder, so when they left the market behind, they turned right and went along a narrow street that led to stone steps. Then they walked up to the huge fountain with a statue of an old man holding a trident in the middle. The statue had his nose chopped off. Michael had seen that place quite often and remembered how lively, swarming with people it used to be. Now only a dozen doves were wandering around and no one to give them the seeds to peck. The boys walked up the narrow street. There were four-five-story houses on both sides of the street and apparently this neighborhood had not been damaged by the fire. The clothes were hanging on the balconies and the ropes stretched across from one building to another. The inhabitants were talking to each other so loudly that everyone could overhear conversations. The topic did not change, the attack on the city and the magic that accompanied everything. The tales about the magicians had long been made up to scare kids, so Michael did not really pay much attention to them. Michael had to listen even to the complaints of the prostitutes, who had been left without jobs and were scattered around in side-streets. The only new information he learned was that the rich were planning to erect a statue to commemorate the red-uniform soldiers slain in the fight against the enemy. There was so many dead in the city, amongst both the soldiers and ordinary citizens, that it had become necessary to widen the graveyard. The guardsmen asked the people to bury their dead as soon as possible, in order to avoid any kind of dangerous diseases.

People started selling second-hand stuff in Mondelay. They opened a new market near the fountain and that’s exactly where boys were heading to, hoping to sell their pan, or exchange it for warm clothes. The boys walked around the stalls while the merchants were suspiciously watching them. Kids were known to be good at stealing clothes from some merchants and selling to others quite cheaply. Michael saw one of the merchants take some clothes from a boy and hoped he would be able to sell their pan as well. He also saw the same merchant take something from the hands of a little girl; so it was decided to approach him.

An elderly, silver-haired man with a black mustache was sitting next to his stall.

‘What are you looking for?” He asked the boys.

‘We want to sell this’, Michael showed him the pan he had been carrying like a flag all the way, ‘We saw one girl give you a parcel, maybe you will want to buy this’, added Lucius calmly.

The man with a mustache did not say anything for a while but kept staring at the boys.

‘Okay, I will have it, he was first to speak and threw two copper coins on the stall.

‘The pan costs much more than this’, spoke Lucius again, still quite calmly and the merchant added one more coin.

‘I won’t give you any more, it was obvious from his voice he would agree to give them more if Michael and Lucius started bargaining.

Michael did not really like that the man frequently sneaked a peek behind their backs. Michael looked back and noticed a boy with chestnut hair staring at him and Lucius. Soon he was joined by two more boys and the gang started moving towards them. Michael felt something bad was about to happen, so they took three coins and quickly left the place.

‘We are being followed, whispered Lucius, who was carrying Laili in his arms.

‘Get ready’, whispered Michael and unexpectedly they turned into another street, mingled in with the crowds of people in order to get rid of the pursuers and when they were about to leave the market, Michael looked back. He was just going to whisper to Lucius that they were no longer followed when the chestnut-haired boy suddenly appeared from between the stalls; He was obviously much older and faster than Lucius and Michael and he could catch up with them pretty soon. He would catch Michael first, as Lucius, with Laili in his arms, was fast to escape. ‘We have to think of something’, mumbled Michael to himself. Every hope was gone: the boy with chestnut hair was following them whereas the other two boys had taken a shortcut and were running towards them. Michael kneeled. It happened so quickly that the followers were not able to stop and stumbling on Michael, fell on the ground and rolled downhill. Meanwhile, before the followers managed to stand up again, Michael and Lucius were already running in the other direction. While running they caught a glimpse of a boy standing in the middle of a narrow street and gazing at them. ‘He must be one of them too’, thought Michael, but there was no time left to think, he could hear the followers’ footsteps. They ran into a small alley… Little did they know that they were trapped in a dead end…

The followers were no longer in a hurry seeing that, the boys had already walked in the trap. The first one to approach was the chestnut-haired boy followed by the one tricked by Michael. His face was all red and scratched, he looked furious and Michael instantly knew he was in trouble. Panting, Lucius let Laili down, made her stand in the corner and calmly asked not to move until she was told to. The girl followed the orders, she was not scared, but then again, she knew so little of what was happening. Lucius’ face showed no emotion: he looked coldly at the boys. Michael was a bit embarrassed by his own fear and tried to look at the followers. All three looked much older than him, the chestnut-haired one was a lot taller than him. ‘If only I had that pan now’, wished Michael…

‘Money! Quickly!’ Those freezing words were followed by ugly swear words and threats.

Michael stood frozen and tried to pluck up his courage to give him a proper answer, but Lucius did this first running towards the boys with his fists held high. He even tried to hit the chestnut-haired boy, but the latter turned out to be stronger and threw him down with a single strike. Michael overcame his fear and ran towards the much older adversary but the chestnut-haired boy hit him so hard that Michael felt his eyes spark the fire. They might have thought that they could throw him on the ground with one strike too, so he turned to Lucius, however, Michael went through beating up like this every Sunday from Derek, so he soon regained his consciousness.

Michael overcame his fear the moment he was running towards the chestnut-haired boy. Before the fight, he was terrified but when it actually started, he felt the fear disappear. He only focused on what was happening around him, that’s all. He hit the chestnut-haired boy (who had turned to Lucius) with his right fist in the stomach and when the latter turned around to him, he was hit in the face. Michael would gladly kick his bleeding nose, but two other boys attacked him and he fell down. Lucius jumped on one of the attackers and got rid of him. But the other one was towering over him, trying to strangle him so strongly that Michael started rasping. Lucius managed to free one of his hands and pushed his finger into his eye to draw him away from Michael. The boy yelled with pain and jumped away from them. Lucius was about to kick him when he saw Michael kick the boy between his legs, and push the curled-up boy away from him.

He swiftly jumped up, but the chestnut hair hit him so badly that he was about to fall on the ground, but stepped back and kept the balance that way. He caught a glimpse of someone’s left hand coming towards him too, but thankfully he managed to bend down, otherwise, he would not be able to stand. Next, he tried to attack the boy and wrestle with him but the adversary turned out to be much stronger than Michael, and quite easily, he threw Michael against the wall. He felt all the air leave his lungs while lying on the ground unable to breathe and feeling painful kicks delivered by the darker boy. He saw Lucius thrown to the ground by two other attackers, notice Laili biting one of the boy’s feet and Lucius shielding her from the kicks.

‘What are you doing?’, this was not a question aimed at an answer, it sounded like a mocking…

The chestnut-haired stopped kicking Michael.

‘And who are you?’, He asked back.

Michael stood up in pain and looked in the direction where the voice was coming from. It was the guy, because of whom they ran into the dead-end (or, rather, because of him blocking the road, standing in the middle), he was approaching them, strolling. His blond hair was dancing and waving in the wind. He must have been a bit taller and older than Michael. He was moving with a strange self-confidence and a sarcastic smirk on his face. His voice was filled with irony too. As if he had not heard the question, he continued with his monologue.

‘I would not have interfered with your fight, but as the baby is also involved, I will take her and you can continue doing whatever you like’, he finished his speech, when he went closer to Lucius, his two adversaries, and Laili. He quickly took the girl and moved back.

‘Where are you taking her’, screamed Lucius and tried to get up, but those two were holding him back…

The stranger slowly walked away.