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A small campfire against the dark, tucked under the overpass on level ground against the retaining wall. A svelte boy squatting on his haunches gazed into the flames. He wore a pair of red running shorts and sandals on his feet. In the firelight his skin was the color of red clay. His hair was stylishly cut, shaved close on the sides of his head, and long enough on top that at times it fell across his face and brushed his shoulders.
Occasionally he would look up at her and say something, but although she could hear the crackle of the coals and the song of a cricket, his lips moved silently. When she attempted to speak, the words formed images in her mind but no sound. After the third attempt, she gave up trying to communicate; instead, she observed. She concluded that his face was pleasing to look at and that he was handsome—possibly beautiful—according to the beholder.
The night passed, and the boy stopped feeding the fire, settled down, and slept. During his sleep, a dog crept out of the shadows and sniffed his feet. It possessed a feral savagery, but when he shifted in dream, it spooked and ran away and did not return.
In a timeless moment, torrential rain swept over, dumping its deluge in heavy curtains, but under the bridge, it stayed dry. The deafening sound woke the boy. He sat up and pulled his legs to his chest, rested his head on his knees, and watched the embers.
Alas, he stood. He slipped his shorts as a tree might doff a leaf, letting them lie where he had been sleeping, and ventured out, concealed by the darkness, to bathe in the fresh rain and drink from the sky.
When he returned, he donned his shorts and took a small cardboard box from a bag she hadn’t noticed because it was camouflaged by dirt and grass. He dropped a twig on the remnants of the fire, igniting a solitary flame. He kept adding small branches until she could feel the heat. His hair was wet, and the rain droplets on his skin reflected the fire as though he were adorned with garnets. He took a pinch of substance from the box and cast it over the fire. The flames turned deep green, and the drops of water shone like emeralds.
He approached her again, looked up into her face, and reached toward her. This time when he spoke, his words came from a great distance, as a shout wings across a field.
“Hurry!”
She answered him, Where am I now? But he looked on attentively, waiting, listening.
Eventually, he got back down and watched the green flames until his eyes closed.
Morning came with the blue of twilight and then the bright of day. The fire had gone cold. He awoke, rubbed his face, and ambled away from the camp to piss.
The air was hot and salty and sticky. She longed to wipe her clammy face and scratch her nose, but she lacked arms.
In the daylight, she understood the boy and the fire were perched atop a steep, sloping abutment, hidden—provided he stayed low—from the highway below that had a solid white line down its center.
The only traffic was around high noon when the shadows from the columns were contained beneath the bridge. She heard the clomp, clomp, clomp of hooves on pavement.
The boy crawled on his bare stomach to the edge and peeked over.
A team of horses came into view pulling a military truck latched to them with a heavy harness. They halted in the shadow provided by the overpass. Men with swords in their hands and guns hanging from their shoulders marched next to the truck. They conversed, but their words were indistinct. They set their weapons on the side of the truck and sat in a circle on the road to eat and drink. Now and again, laughter. After they lunched, two men took up their weapons and stood guard, watching in either direction while the others slept on the road.
All this time, the boy was motionless.
When their nap was over, and the shadows had grown longer, the men resumed their formation, and the clomp, clomp, clomp started again until they were out of sight.
Her desire to move was unbearable, but she didn’t know how. All she could do was watch this boy and his doings around his little camp, which weren’t very interesting. He had a remarkable ability to sit for long stretches of time without moving. She memorized his form, his posture, the mole on his right shoulder…
In the evening, the setting sun streamed under the bridge, bathing him in tangerine light, and he was as a copper statue, shielding his eyes until it had set. In the gloaming, he left the camp for a while, returning with more branches and dried grass.
He cleaned out his shallow fire pit with his bare hands, rubbing the ash over his skin and tossing the rest away. He meticulously added a layer of leaves and grass, then twigs, and finally small branches. He took a lighter from the bag and struck a flame, which he gently coaxed and nurtured into a robust fire.
It was the dark of night when he brought out the cardboard box and cast more of the substance into the fire. The flames flared up in the deepest green. He seemed unconcerned about the fire getting out of hand. He walked around it, scrutinizing it as if he had lost something therein. He tried different angles—standing on his toes to peer down from the top or lying on his belly to view it from the base.
Finally, he took the box and dumped all it contained into the fire, throwing the cardboard in for good measure. The flames roared up, scorching the girders and fanning out across the slab, dousing everything in the emerald light.
He came to her and spoke again, his voice louder and more distinct, “You’re almost home. Follow my fire.”
Her muscles began to cramp. Her fingers twitched, and she could feel the dirt on the bottoms of her feet. She felt drowsy at last. Her eyes, which had been wide open for so long, could finally rest. When she closed them, she woke up.
----------------------------------------
She sat cross-legged in front of the green fire. Ciris beside her. Stefan and Lasha stood, stretching their legs.
“Welcome to the Free City. I guess they let anyone in these days,” said the boy, brushing his hair back behind his neck.
“Hung!” cried Ciris, jumping to her feet.
“Little sister,” he said. He embraced her and pulled back, inspecting her nudity. “You got older.”
“Time runs faster on the other side,” she replied.
“Who are your friends?”
Ciris extended her hand and helped Jane to her feet. “She needs the Orb Thief.”
“Yeah. Her and everyone else,” said the boy named Hung.
“The price was high,” said Ciris.
“Okay, you see, he’s not going by Orb Thief anymore. It’s Black Scorpion now. So be careful with that.”
“What happened to The Coyote?”
“He did some research and found out coyotes are scavengers,” said Hung. “It didn’t work with his brand.”
He approached the boys, inspecting them curiously. “Are they all golden on the other side?”
“Stefan is the big one. Lasha, the small one,” Ciris said. “They’re orphans.”
Hung jumped back like he’d seen a snake.
“Not the bad ones. They don’t bite. Guys, this is Hung.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“I don’t mind a little biting, in the right places,” quipped Hung, a smile spreading across his face.
“And she?” Hung now turned his gaze on Jane. “I don’t feel the Maji in her.”
“She’s a queen from a powerful land. She calls herself Jane.”
“There’s still room in the hotel. Nhat, I mean, the Scorpion is building an army. He comes and goes. You’ll have to find him when you can.” The boy beamed a smile. “Here, cover yourselves.” He dug into the bag and brought out two pairs of shorts and two t-shirts. “You can use my sandals,” he said to Jane. “Ciris walks on cat paws.”
Jane pulled on the shorts. The t-shirt was thin and tight, snuggly fitting her full bosom. On Ciris, the clothes hung loose.
“Um, hello?” said Stefan, hands hiding his genitals. Lasha giggled.
“Don’t tell me you’re shy,” Hung teased. “Besides, I need to see how you control your beast.”
“Masterfully,” retorted Stefan.
“We’ll see.” Hung looked over the embankment. “Lots of magic here tonight. We should leave before something shows up.”
They followed him up the dirt path to the top of the bridge.
On the road above, everyone froze in place, staring up, transfixed.
Jane’s heart clenched in her chest, and a primal fear gripped her guts.
“It’s torn through,” Hung declared. “No one knows what happens next.”
“Fuck,” whispered Ciris.
They gazed in silence. The silhouette of a distant city glowed low on the horizon, but their eyes did not linger there. High above the urban lights, the canvas of obsidian sky was split by a long, crimson gash. Lacerated edges unfurled from its gaping mouth, sending bloody rivers of fire across the firmament. From the jagged wound, a gargantuan structure protruded like a mountain tipped on edge—a deliberate machine of alien creation, a tableau of bespoke oblivion.
Every so often, a silver or golden streak would fall from it, burning in the sky like an asteroid, illuminating the faces of the children, and reflecting in their wide, unblinking eyes.
What she beheld demanded something for the ears, but the world was deaf, save for the intermittent cry of a cricket and their collective breath.
“We’ve been watching it really close,” said Hung. “It grows, it expands, it comes. We think some of the lights are a battle from beyond the Veil.”
“How long has it been?” asked Ciris, her voice struggling to remain in control.
“A long time,” said Hung.
“How long? The moon was blood, but the sky was whole when I left.”
“We’re not good with calendars here,” the boy replied. “A decade, little sister.”
She put her hands to her head and expelled a cry of despair. “He has forgotten me.”
“He missed you dearly, but time takes the longing from the heart.”
“Ten years. He’s a man now.”
“Nay, stunted by the damned magic, time has not touched him.”
“Has he found another?”
“There have been other lovers,” he said, “but only for his needs. He’s a warrior now, as wild as the storm.”
“He always was,” she said.
“Don’t worry. You’ll still find the same vain and spoiled brat. Just one thing… he’s sensitive about his wings.”
“His wings?”
“The night of the Ferris wheel. The wounds were poisoned with a curse,” said Hung.
A thunderclap, and for an instant, the night was bright as day. An incandescent mist lifted from the ground, hiding their feet.
Lasha clung to Stefan, who reached into the air. A yellow glow wrapped around his hand. He jerked it away as if he’d touched fire, and the glow sizzled, sparked, then vanished.
“The Veil has become unpredictable,” said Hung.
“How long,” said Jane, “before it breaks through?” The language of her words tasted foreign in her mouth.
“Soon,” said Hung. “Minutes, hours, days, years, soon.”
“What’s the plan?”
Hung addressed Jane: “You claim you’re a queen. If you have an army, get them ready. First, the moon fills with blood. And then…” He pointed up. “The sky will open. Lunatics will come out of thin air or from the sides of buildings. They’re fleeing from Chaos. The Majestic hosted a man once. He came out of the water while the boys were fishing. A sorcerer from beyond the Veil, he had a tongue of fire, so he learned our language in a matter of days. I wish he hadn’t. We gave him food and dressed his wounds. We should have never helped him. He said he was the king of a land with a billion people and had a thousand wives, five thousand children, and a palace that could contain the expanse of the Free City. All of it was destroyed. He alone slipped through to save his life. Thinking we had an ally, someone who knew what was coming, the Black Scorpion let him touch the orb. That was a big mistake. He told of sorrow and of death and of nightmares come to life. He terrified the Maji and tried to take control of the hotel. The Black Scorpion was victorious, of course. Nhat should have killed him. I begged him. But he spared his miserable life if he agreed to leave the Free City forever. Now he’s out there somewhere,” Hung pointed away from the city into the vast darkness. “And he took seven of our friends. My friends.”
“I have missed a lot,” said Ciris. “I should have stayed.”
“What is it?” asked Jane. She could not take her eyes off the disturbance in space.
Hung shrugged. “It is the Chaos. Soon we will all be like that man, searching for the portals in the Veil, running from curtain to curtain, hiding in its folds.”
A small hand gripped hers. It was Lasha. “Can your kingdom survive?” the boy asked. “America?”
Her kingdom? It felt like a childhood dream. “I don’t know,” she said. Doubt filled her heart. The celestial mountain appeared larger than the moon.
Lasha looked to Stefan, who gently stroked his hair. “We fight,” the older boy declared, “and we find a way to survive.”
“Oh, the Scorpion is going to love you,” said Hung, grinning.
“Let us go and find this Black Scorpion,” said Ciris.
“We can’t go together,” said Hung. “To quell the violence, they put a curfew on boys and men. We’ll take the beast.” He dropped his shorts into the dirt.
Lasha put his hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle.
“Have you transformed before, little one?” Hung asked him.
Lasha shyly shook his head and whispered, “I promised them I would learn.”
“And you?” he asked Stefan.
“What do you want, a wolf, a tiger?” bragged the teen.
“Maybe something that won’t send the citizens running for their lives. I have the perfect potion on my tongue.” He licked his lips.
“I… I don’t think I can,” said Lasha.
“I know you can,” said Hung. “I knew it the moment you dropped out of the air next to my fire.”
“You did?”
“Be careful with him. He’s a witch’s pet,” said Ciris.
“I’ll be gentle.” He caressed the side of the boy’s face and twirled a finger through his golden hair. “You’re going to like it. First, you feel it here.” He traced a finger from Lasha’s navel to his groin, his dusky, mud-red skin contrasting with the boy’s honey hue. “A fire starts burning inside you. It comes up, up, and just when you think it’s going to explode out of your mouth—” He snapped his fingers. “You’re the beast! Let instincts take over.”
“It’s different for everyone,” said Stefan. “For some it’s days of pain.”
“Then they should find another line. They aren’t shifters,” said Hung.
“The hunters will sense the chant,” said Ciris.
“They’re mostly all gone. As soon as the Veil broke and the sky started falling, they packed up and left town.”
“Cowards,” she said. “They haunt children’s dreams, but when it comes time to fight something real, they run.”
“Indeed, but care is needed. There are spies from the Den everywhere.”
“Where can we find the Majestic?” asked Ciris.
“Oh, and another change: he wants us to start calling it Scorpion’s Lair. Has a nice ring to it if I do say so myself,” said Hung.
“Whatever! Do I still know the streets?”
“Sorry, hunter. Thanks to the Dreamer, they have changed much in the years you’ve been away. Stay on the road to the city. Don’t go into the jungle unless you plan to take the beast. Cross the city until you hit the sea, then follow the beach past the little restaurants. Don’t let the boys harass you. They’re just as romantic as you remember them. Go through that bit of jungle where the lovers call out of the shadows like birds with their coded cries. From there, you’ll know your way.”
Ciris gripped Lasha’s shoulders. “Be careful,” she said.
“I’m a little worried,” the boy’s voice was fearful.
“You’ll be fine. It’s time to learn.”
“Come, boys,” said Hung with electric glee. He approached Lasha and lifted his chin with a finger. “I need to kiss you?”
Lasha nodded.
Hung pressed his lips to the boy’s, then pulled away.
Lasha looked at his hands. He turned to Ciris. “It feels so—” His facial structure began to shift. His nose elongated, his ears grew pointed, and a soft coat of black fur sprouted out of his skin.
“You control the beast,” Ciris said. “Don’t forget.”
Lasha lifted his hand, and for a fleeting moment, a soft fold of violet light laced through his fingers to flutter like a ribbon in the wind.
“Ahh!” It was a whisper of surprise, caught between pain and pleasure. He gripped his testicles, then moved his fingers upward, following the line Hung had touched, up to the contracting muscles of his abdomen to his throat. A sleek black cat fell forward, hissed and stretched, turned a circle, and licked its shoulder once.
“I think I’ve created a monster,” said Hung with a mischievous grin. He turned to Stefan. “You want my kiss?”
“I can do it myself,” said the teen, and dove into the air to land with a soft thud as a tiger-striped feline.
“I wonder where he learned that from?” Hung mused, flicking the hair out of his face and shooting Ciris a playful look. But before she could answer, he too was a cat.
The felines purred, rubbing against each other for a moment, then darted in unison across the road into darkness of the dry ditch and the foliage beyond, leaving the girl and woman alone.
“That was… I don’t know what to say. I just don’t know,” Jane mumbled. Her mind wanted to react with shock at what she’d just seen.
“Your home beyond the Veil is still rational,” said Ciris. “The Maji there are well hidden.”
“You know it?” Jane asked. “America?” Trying the word in her mouth.
“I’ve been there.”
“You call me a queen, but I can’t remember. There’s so much I can’t remember.”
“It will come back to you in time,” said Ciris. “I don’t think the Veil was ever meant to be crossed. It fucks with your brain. Try to remember something you love about the old world. It helps me.”
“What is it you love?” Jane asked.
“A scorpion,” said the girl.