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Ciris returned the bundle and its unknown remnants back into the crevice and blew out the candle, leaving it in the stone.
In the darkness, Jane watched her silent and nimble figure against the field of stars as she jumped down a rockfall and vanished from sight. She leapt to the first boulder, catching herself in a crouch, then to the next and the next, trailing the girl as best she could.
Beyond the last boulder was a dirt path through a thicket of juniper that scratched her skin, and spider webs, invisible in the night, stuck to her face. At the end of the path, she emerged onto a paved road.
Ciris put up a hand to halt her, scanning up and down the street as she listened intently.
She heard nothing—the world was mute and motionless.
Satisfied, the girl crossed to a sidewalk leading deeper into the urban density of the city.
In the distance, she recognized the spiral of Air Tower, reminiscent of a narwhal’s tusk jutting skyward. Built twenty years before her birth, it had been one of the tallest buildings in the world. Its occupants were as mysterious as its management. Its ascending ridges housed—among other businesses and ventures—the Eurasian headquarters of the Greta movement, the Assembly of People of the Earth, a non-denominational monastery, and at its apex, a suite of twenty-one floors occupied by the Transcendent Apartments Company, renowned residences for the elite few who had climbed the Escape ladder to the enlightenment of L21.
In her day, the structure would have been adorned in shimmering lights, like the shard of a fallen star, a beacon to the wealth of its patronage and humanity’s lofty reach. This night, the windows were vacant and dark, save for the very top, which reflected the red moonlight. Like the rest of the city, it was deserted.
They continued cautiously as the moon cleared the mountain, granting them its eerie crimson glow for guidance. The broad street narrowed to a line of buildings with barred windows peeking up from walkout basements. Fourteen years ago, these houses would have been cheery homes casting warm light for passersby—even during a war, it was hard to kill the commerce of a city.
Ciris held up her hand to stop and listen once more. She cocked her head, then grabbed Jane by the wrist and drew her down into an egress behind a garbage bin. Their hiding place was cloaked in shadow yet had sight both up and down the street.
She recognized the rhythmic slap of bare feet on dry pavement. Two indistinct figures came into view, moving with the lightness of youth. She heard laughter and whispers. They were sprinting, and she thought they were going to run by when suddenly they stopped, and silence ensued.
A boy shouted something she could not understand.
“Come.” Ciris went into the street.
Two boys waited on the cobblestone, their eyes fixed on Jane, both in their own immodest loincloths, their limbs tawny, and their wild, unkempt hair a shimmering saffron in the moonlight.
One of the boys was older than Ciris, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, with broad shoulders over which a satchel slung to his side. The other boy was younger, teetering on the cusp of puberty. He carried a knife secured in a sheath belted to his narrow waist.
The older boy stood his ground and shouted a staccato sentence that landed on them like hail.
“Understand?” asked Ciris.
“No,” she said. “Who are they?”
“Orphans.” She must have felt Jane’s heart skip, for she quickly added, “Good orphans.”
She spoke to the boys, and they fell into a brief spat involving several hand gestures directed at Jane. The little one had a singsong voice, the other, low, almost manly. The little one struggled to get a word in edgewise, and the older one kept overruling him, but when Ciris stomped her foot, the bickering ceased.
The older boy went to the side of the road to the shell of a burned-out car riddled with bullet holes. He rummaged in his bag and produced a cone-shaped object, which he set on the fender. It was crystalline, and it sparkled in the night, catching the moon’s ember. With a finger, he pressed the top of it. It blinked on, casting the hood of the demolished car and their own company in an intense laser blue, then began blinking in a pattern that snaked from the base to the tip.
Jane almost laughed. It was a cheap, plastic Christmas tree ornament, the kind that could be gotten from a common trinket shop.
The boys approached, inspecting her warily in the light.
“Tongue of fire. Come,” Ciris said.
The younger boy stepped up to her, his eyes fixed on her bosom. He reached out as if to cup a breast, but stopped and placed a hand on her shoulder. In the warm night, his touch was hot. He put his other hand on her other shoulder, pulled her down, and tipped himself up on the balls of his feet, his face close to hers. His breath smelled of moist sage. His lips brushed hers. Lingered, wet, a kiss. He pulled away, sparkling eyes, a grin to match. She tasted his saliva and pressed her lips together.
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The burning started behind her eyes and came out in tears like bits of shattered glass. A fever crept up her neck and into her ears until she was deaf with the banging resonance of bells. Her mouth was full of spicy flames that danced on her tongue until she swallowed them. They scorched her throat, down into her solar plexus, into her navel where it subsided.
The boy laughed and danced around her.
She was panting, heart beating, chest heaving as though she’d run a race at full sprint.
The older boy turned off the Christmas tree and returned it to his bag.
“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” he said to Ciris.
“I told you I’d be back, didn’t I?” she replied.
“There was a hunter over in the old city,” said the little boy.
“Did you take the beast?” said Ciris.
He looked down and played his toe on the cement. “No,” he said shyly, “I hid in the shadows. Stefan turned into the rat. The stupid fucker didn’t even know we were there!”
“You sure? It could be tracking you right now.”
“He’s not,” said the older boy. “I know my chants.”
Ciris turned to Jane. “Can you understand?”
She nodded. But it was not English they were speaking.
“So, talk!” hissed the younger boy.
“I… I understand,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I do.” All three children burst out laughing, then hushed themselves, peering into the darkness. She had spoken, but it was not her language. She had pulled the sounds from a reservoir she did not comprehend, yet they resonated with meaning, so familiar, so intimate. “Why… How…” Her fingers touched her lips—the boy’s kiss.
“The Dreamer taught me,” said the little boy. “Then I kissed Ciris.” He had a devilish grin.
“And Stefan,” said Ciris.
The boy made a disgusted face.
“The Maji speak it beyond the Veil,” said Ciris.
“Who is she?” asked the older boy.
“She’s the queen we do the promise for,” said Ciris. “It was her in the chair.”
“Fuck. She’s the one who’s gonna get us killed,” he said.
“Shut up,” spat Ciris, “No one is gonna die.”
“M’lady,” the younger boy bowed with deep reverence. “I’m Lasha. This asshole’s me mate, Stefan.” He slapped the older boy’s ass.
“Ow!” Stefan kicked at him, but Lasha bounced out of the way.
“You think everything’s a game,” said Stefan.
“cause ‘tis!”
“The way you were pissin’ your legs when that howler was after us didn’t seem so fun.”
“Fuck off. You shoulda let me shove this in his eye.” He drew his dagger. The blade glinted in the moonlight like iron pulled from coals.
“Enough,” said Ciris. “We need to get her to the Dreamer. This is promise-work.”
“Come, to the Dreamer, I know the way,” sang little Lasha. He twirled upon the cobblestone and skipped happily into an alley.
The end of the alley provided a stairwell up a concrete barricade. Lasha waited by the stairs, and when Ciris passed, he tried to kiss her, earning him a stern snarl and hiss in return. When Stefan pressed by, he shoved Lasha.
“Like you don’t want to!” Lasha taunted.
For Jane, he gave a jovial bow and scrape, along with a wistful, “After thee, m’lady.”
The stairway led up to an open space where the medieval architecture blended into modernity. Here, an intersection of streets and passages converged their labyrinthine journeys.
Above them, the moon was surrounded by a rusty halo and reflected like a fire in the glass panels of Air Tower. In another time, in another reality, she remembered the same effect, only the light had been silver.
Ciris had her sword at the ready. The boys’ rivalry stopped, and they stood still and serious. Lasha’s hand was on the hilt of his knife. They watched the streets and waited.
“Well, hunter,” Stefan spoke beneath his breath, “dost thou detect thy kin?”
“No,” Ciris responded with a sharp edge. “The moon is bright on this magic night, but the Veil is strangely still.”
“We’ll be fine. I’ll lead the way,” he said. “Lasha, watch our backs.”
The boy pulled his knife. “I’ll cut them to shreds.”
“Right. Be careful you don’t cut off your dick.”
Lasha stuck his tongue out at the older boy.
Stefan guided them through a street of shanties, nothing more than tin and plywood hovels along the base of the corporate megaliths. They proceeded at his cautious pace, following the curve of the road until he halted before a shack closed off by a door of curtains.
“We’ll take this one,” he said.
Inside, the shack was pitch black. There was the sound of shuffling, and the room filled with the honest, blue glow of the Christmas tree. Stefan held it above their heads for all to see. Everyone turned slowly, inspecting the chamber.
“Are you certain?” asked Ciris.
“Aye,” said Stefan.
They stood in a living room containing a small sofa and a television on a cabinet. A crumpled bag of potato chips rested on the floor.
“No!” cried Lasha.
“What?” said Ciris.
The boy pointed.
A pile of bones rested at the end of the sofa next to the wall. Two undeniably human skulls stared up with empty eyes.
“Don’t worry,” said Stefan. “They’re older than you.”
“Did the orphans get them, or maybe the hunters?” asked the smaller boy.
“One or the other,” Stefan said.
Jane spotted a calendar next to the television. She went to it. It was covered in a thin layer of dust and remained unchanged from that fateful month, that infamous day, that horrific moment nearly fourteen years in the past. Stefan and Ciris would have been babies, Lasha not yet born.
“Where is everyone?” she asked. “I remember…” She closed her eyes. The tragedy was unforgettable. The EMP shut down all communications. A technician brought her a satellite phone, and Washington gave her the news. The admirals, war-hardened men, began to weep.
The panic of that day filled her again. She should not be here. This was all wrong. It could not be. It could not be. She grabbed Ciris’s arm. “Where are they?” she said. “Where are we?”
“Is it true then?” the girl asked. “Are they all dead?”
“Yes!” Jane said, fear possessing her voice. “Tbilisi is no more!”
Lasha watched her fearfully.
“Beyond the door, it is different,” said Ciris. “We are in a skirt of the Veil, hemmed in by an enchanted thread. The orphans know only this reality, so it does not matter. Don’t scare the boys.” She pulled free of Jane’s grip.
“Stay close,” said Stefan.
Holding the tree aloft, the young teen led them through a back door and down an internal passage that connected the shanties. In the fashion of the Asiatowns, the homes opened to this alley instead of the street outside. Jane had been in places like this before. For the undocumented, it provided security and a sense of community on the inside, a vibrant vein of thoroughfare and culture.
She imagined music and lights, the smell of food cooking, people talking, and children playing. Tonight, the homes stared out dark and deserted.