Standing on the stone hands of the Molech statue, I can see the mannish women of the watch assemble, surrounding the pit. Soldiers with painted faces, dressed in chartreuse uniforms, converge on the march. Some of the soldiers wear furs and masks to make themselves resemble various animals, such as cats, dogs, foxes, lions, deer, and so on. Taur, Liana, and I are already outnumbered by the watch, so when the soldiers arrive the odds will be even worse.

“Hey kids!” I shout from my position on the slanted hands of the Molech statue, “Let's go to the bakery! My friends and I are buying bread for everybody!”

The children let out an excited shout and clamber out of the pit. Taur and Liana position themselves in the midst of the swarm of kids who are excitedly running to the nearest bakery, which is in the ring of shops encircling the plaza.

“Hey you! Would you like to ride on my back?” I ask the little boy in a dress, the one who I told he wasn't a real girl. In the excitement of the bakery trip he's forgotten to cry. I scamper over to him and crouch so that he can climb onto my back.

“Wow, your skin is so cool and soft,” the boy exclaims, “I thought it was gonna be rough and scratchy like a snake.”

Whenever anyone touches my skin they always say the same thing, and predictably, I get big-headed. I don't want to tell the kid that a snake's skin is as cool and smooth as mine, because I'd like to build myself up a bit. In reality, though, it's pathetic that I feel proud, when the truth is that I'm a man in a reptile's body, and I keep clinging to the slight differences between a gecko and a lizard, as though that makes me special.

“Hang on!” I say as I bolt for the wall, springing from the ground and catching the wall so that the boy and I are perpendicular to the street. A woman shrieks from the edge of the mass of children, and I figure she's the child's mother. Don't worry, lady, I caught him with my tail when he started to fall.

“Earth goddess! You can stick to the wall! That's so cool!” His voice is full of excitement.

“By the way, kid, there is no earth goddess,” I tell him. “God the Healer created everything. Remember the song I sang?”

The bakery is jammed with children clamoring for bread, and it's impossible to get through, so the boy and I pass along the wall.

“You think I'm a boy?” he asks me, and I hear doubt creep into his voice.

“Well, would you rather have a dress or a sword?”

“A sword!” His arms are wrapped around my neck, and I feel them tighten.

“Then you've got yourself a sword,” I tell him as we clamber along the wall with my tail helping to keep him in place. I crawl to the doorway, and then nearly bend myself in half as I pass over the mantelpiece and emerge on the interior wall above the door with the boy in tow.

“All right!” Taur shouts. “A piece of bread for everybody!”

“Taur, Liana,” I shout to get their attention. “Out the back. We may have to rendezvous at the 39th psalm.”

I see him struggle to remember, but in a moment his face and Liana's face show recognition, and he flashes me a thumbs up. The two of them, truly an odd couple made up of a giant, muscular man with horns and a young albino girl, press their way through the throng of children and out the back exit. We've used the children as a screen for a moment and have prevented the watch from acting forcefully. Children have already bitten onto their bread and can hardly talk to their mouths full.

“Once you have your bread, move outside.” I have to yell to be heard. I move to a spot over the counter where the boy on my back can clamber down. “Hey, you, fatso! You already had a piece of bread.”

The boy grabs a second piece of bread from the baker and flashes me the claw gesture, then smirks as he starts to bite into it. My tongue shoots out of my mouth and hits the piece of bread in his hand, and retracts just as quickly. I realize that my tongue has also latched onto his hand, so I have yanked and dragged the fat boy through the crowd of kids. He looks at me wide eyed when my snout latches onto his hand. The saliva in my mouth has begun to dissolve his second piece of bread. He starts crying, but I can't speak because my snout is clamped onto his hand and the piece of bread he's holding. My vertical irises, set in large eyes on the sides of my head watch him unblinkingly, and he begins to wail.

“Let go! Ouch, you're hurting me!”

I can't speak, so I'm waiting for him to get the hint. I squeeze gently with my jaws, then release. He continues his wailing, so I bite down again, and let my teeth sink in a bit, then release. He finally realizes he isn't getting his piece of bread, and that whining and crying doesn't work on geckos, especially geckos who have been through purgatory, so they don't give a crap about some crybaby kid's complaints. The kid lets go of the piece of bread in my mouth, and I release him. He runs blubbering out of the bakery, clutching his hand and arm which aren't injured at all. That's the problem when a society goes soft—everybody is a victim.

The children race out with their bread, leaving just the boy in a dress who rode on my back earlier. I remain on the side of the wall, clinging and watching the baker hand the kid his bread. By now I've noticed something odd about the bread in the bakery.

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“Hey, why is all the bread in the form of female genitalia?” I ask the baker, who is a plump woman with rosy cheeks.

“We celebrate womanhood in honor of the earth goddess,” she replies, wiping her sweaty brow with the hem of her apron.

“Do you have any bread in the shape of male genitalia?” I move higher up on the wall as a precaution.

A look of disgust crosses the baker's face. “Of course not. You reptiles are sick.” She shakes her head as she rearranges the few remaining pieces of bread in the display case.

A bland woman and a thin man come into the shop. “Oh Nyra! Thank the goddess you're safe!” She throws her arms around the boy in the dress. “Did the lizard man hurt you?”

“Gecko, lady,” I correct her.

The thin man must be her husband, but he stands around and does nothing. He can't even make eye contact with me.

“He says I'm a boy and I can have a sword!” The kid speaks with his mouth stuffed full of bread.

“So that's your way, is it? Bribe a child with bread and then feed it lies?” Her eyes narrow in anger, as if I'm intimidated, but the woman doesn't realize how easily I could kill her. “Nyra wants to become a null, I hope you know.”

“If you harm that boy, I will kill you,” I tell her, and I can feel the rage building. “He is now under the shield of God the Protector, and I am his vicar on earth.”

“Boy? Why, I... I'll have you...” the woman sputters as members of the watch enter the bakery. “Zephyr, don't just stand there! Report this reptile to the watch!”

The man seems to sink in on himself. His posture is already hunched over, and he exudes weakness. Rather than expect her husband to act to defend their child, she wants him to talk to somebody else about taking action.

A group of burly women with facial hair and hefty guts on them enter the bakery, forming a semi-circle around my spot on the wall. They aim their pole arms at me, which are an odd combination of flails, resembling a staff with a pair of nunchaku at the end, or poles with iron rods at the end, sort of like billy clubs fastened onto the ends of long sticks.

“In the name of the goddess, you're under arrest.” A hefty woman barks, jabbing her iron-tipped staff at me.

“In the name of God the Protector, give the boy your sword.” I am still, watching them with unblinking eyes.

“What?” the squat woman asks in confusion.

I repeat myself slowly, enunciating every word. “In the name of God the Protector, give the boy your sword.”

“Nyra is not a boy!” the mother shouts, throwing her arms around him. “It's a null!”

They never expect me to move this fast. I imagine that a dozen fat, out-of-shape women who are used to pushing around weak pseudo-men have an exaggerated sense of their own prowess and expect me to move at their dromedary pace. The bulky woman jabs with the end of her iron rod pole, and I jump, running along her extended pole until my jaws latch onto her head. At least her hair is cut short, because there's nothing worse than chewing on a human's head and getting a hair stuck in my throat. She shrieks, but the yell is muffled because I've engulfed her bloated head with my jaws.

I whip my tail across several faces, then drop, breaking the woman's neck. One of the watch swings her flail, but only hits the woman across from her. Another burly woman winds up her flail, but smashes the glass case behind her. My tongue shoots out through the crowd, striking a woman in the face, then yanking her forward into the path of one her comrades, who is swinging her iron-tipped pole. The pole strikes the woman, glancing off her head, but splits the skin and causes blood to stream into the corner of her eye and down her face.

The watch are slow to grasp that their pole weapons are effective outdoors, but only get in each other's way in the confines of a bakery. They release their long weapons, which clatter to the floor, but I step on one as it falls, snapping the end into a woman's face. She yelps, but I “headbutt” her, striking her with my closed snout. She staggers until a second strike shuts off the lights, and she drops to the floor. I kick with my shackled ankle, cracking a kneecap, then catch another woman in the crotch with a second kick. My tail whips across one guard's eyes, then I latch onto a thigh, tearing a femoral artery as I spin and throw, sending the victim into two of her companions, who all crash onto the display case, breaking what glass is left.

The boy's father is huddled on the floor against the shelves, kneeling and covering his head with his arms, so I use him like a springboard, vaulting off of his back and and latching onto the head of another lumpen woman. With my jaws fastened onto her head, I swing, and the poisonous spur on my left ankle catches another member of the guard in the gut. The poison is slow acting because she's carrying so much extra weight, but she grows pale, goes into convulsions, and flops on the floor.

The bakery is quiet, and I can hear the father sobbing. The boy is standing wide-eyed in amazement, and his mother has lost her show of righteous anger, now that she realizes I can, and will, kill her.

Kneeling down to the body of the watch, I remove her sword, even though I have to work to flip over her corpse because she's lying on her blade. My arms are infuriatingly short, but I slip out the sword and hand it to the boy.

“It's all yours.” I figure I had a pocketknife at his age, so he should be mature enough to handle a sword. “By the way, your name is Max. You are a boy, and someday you'll be a man, when it will be your duty to defend the city.”

“It's name is Nyra!” the mother shouts, suddenly emboldened in her rage.

In a blur of motion, I clamp my snout onto her head and shake her, drawing her off her feet and throwing her legs into her husband, who is still cowering on the floor. I sling her across the floor, and she rolls over the corpse of one of the watch until she butts against the display case.

She remembers that she should be afraid, and had better watch her fat mouth.

“If any harm comes to Max, I'll kill you. Keep that in mind.” I wave good-bye to the boy with my tail and walk out of the bakery.

I crawl out of the bakery, when a net is thrown from the roof and covers me. Ah, the old movie cliché. A spear lances into my tail just behind the hips, while a second spear, or maybe a tiger fork, is thrust at my lower abdomen, and I curl, so that it, too, pierces my tail behind my hips. Soldiers run in and seize my tail. I try to move forward, but I'm pinned.

I console myself with the thought that Taur and Liana have made their way out of the city, even if I'm captured.