Growing up on her homeworld, Caly had gotten used to stone walls and cold granite castles sitting atop lonely hills. But, somehow, the orangy-brown blocks of this wall made the fort look more warm and inviting.

Except they couldn’t find the entrance.

They walked around the damn thing three times before Olm spotted the pillar—an old, eroded monument that marked this place as a Synod fort. The words were worn down to smooth, illegible shapes, and half the pillar lay strewn across the path in the sand. There were more signs of a scuffle: smears of black soot on the walls and bullet-marks on the trees. Some of the stones had melted under concentrated plasma fire. There were bullet casings in the sand. She picked one up, inspected the head stamp. No rust. Recent.

Caly pulled her rifle into position. Olm already had one hand on his chest, ready to open his armor, and his Hammer hand was clenched around the gloves controls. She scanned the branches above, searched the walls. Nothing but the breeze.

They found the door, a heavy wooden thing. Neither of them talked as they approached. A scream, high and shrill, pierced the silence. It was coming from inside the fort—the scream kept going for what felt like minutes, and then all was silent.

Olm nodded at the heavy, wooden door embedded in the stone wall.

“Me first?” she asked.

He gave her a look that said, “You wanted to do this.” So, Caly sucked in her breath, and approached the door—her rifle at the ready.

She was debating whether or not to knock when a slat slid open.

“Dropping off?” a muffled voice crowed through the slat, “Or picking up?” The voice sounded almost metallic, like the speaker was talking through a tin can with holes in it.

Caly had to stoop down to the to see two eyes peering back at her through a pair of goggles that magnified the eyes to a ridiculous level.

“I… what?”

The magnified eyes blinked rapidly, adjusting to Caly’s face. “Well, you don’t look like a child, unless they grow that tall where you come from. So, I figure you’re either here to drop one off or pick one up. Which is it?”

“We’re looking for the orphanage-”

“Orphanarium,” the voice said, suddenly irate.

“Orphanarium?”

“Out here, orphanages are for the unwanted. And I don’t believe there’s such thing as an unwanted child—excuse me a moment. Tomick, you ankle-biting he-demon, get down from there!”

Caly turned away, and whispered so that only Olm could hear, “That explains the screaming.”

“Maybe,” Olm said. Caly noted his hand was still clenched in his glove.

“What are you saying? Hold on,” the voice grunted from the other side of the door. Then, a deadbolt clunked, knocking a layer of dust off the door. Caly started to move forward, but Olm put a hand on her shoulder. He shook his head, and pointed at himself. Then, he pushed open the door, slowly. Took a few cautious steps in, craning his head up at the walls. She heard him trip, and catch himself. Heard him let out a disbelieving, “Whoa.”

Then, an animal snarl. Olm yelped.

Someone screamed back—Gran, Caly assumed—but she wasn’t shouting at Olm. “Tomick, what did we say about biting? Bite food, not people!”

Caly shoved the door all the way open, planning to set the place alight with plasma bolts. She blinked at the mess.

A crowd of toys—stuffed animals and homemade dolls—were lined up in front of the door. They were sitting there, in various states of repose, in various states of destruction (missing eyes, fur, horns, limbs, some deflated from a lack of stuffing, some with caved in heads, some with nothing but their head), all staring up at the door, as if someone had put them there while waiting for Caly and Olm enter. More projects littered the courtyard—a scarecrow made of sticks, wearing an enforcer’s helmet, a pile of misshapen pottery drying in the sun, and Olm, waving his arm back and forth, trying to shake a child-sized xeno off his forearm. Yes, the child’s teeth were as large as icicles, but they utterly failed to pierce Olm’s stony skin, and Olm seemed more bewildered than pained.

“How do I get him off?”

“I can’t apologize for that one,” Gran called from somewhere out of view, “He’s teething. His kind gets like that at that age. It’s the only reason he gets his own bedroom, though if you believe the others, it’s an outrage. A scandal. Of course, he’d probably bite them to death if I wasn’t watching—Tomick, I’m going to give you to the count of three—”

Olm shook his arm, and there was a scraping sound as the child’s jaws slid down his wrist and fell off. The little xeno smacked the ground with an audible “Uff.” When the kid put a clawed hand to his mouth, his eyes went wide, and he cried out, “I ‘hipped my ‘hooth!”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Gran asked, not even looking at him.

Olm’s eyes went wide. He started to apologize when Gran stopped him, “They grow back. I swear, I could start a bone jewelry business.”

Red walls ringed the yard, with little apartments built into each one. A tower lorded over all, and on the opposite side a gathering hall frowned down on her. Dust covered everything, and slashes of dried mud painted one side of the hall, along with countless other stains, scratches, burn marks, and pieces of slightly-crinkled paper covered in scribbles and brightly-colored shapes. Xeno children from every corner of the Synod crawled around the walls—running, shrieking, being shrieked at, and in general causing chaos. They were all so dust covered that, despite the difference in species, Caly thought they all looked like siblings.

And at the epicenter of this chaos stood Gran. She stood proud and short, and covered in foliage: long vines draped down her head and were gathered in a long knot that hung down her back, and heavy leaves were draped over her shoulders, a cape fastened together with sunflower stalks. More vines draped down her front, so that Caly almost didn’t notice that her skin was metalwork. And her face—all tarnished chrome, just flexible enough to frown. Those weren’t goggles on her eyes, those were her eyes. She’s not a xeno, Caly realized. She’s Made.

Gran pointed at Caly with a broom, “Careful with the gun,” said in that inorganic voice, “The kids get … clingy. Don’t ask me how, but if they get their paws on it, it will make it sticky.”

On one hip, she carried a basket that held one infant with a thumb in its mouth, and in her other arm she had a broom, and in between sweeps, she hollered stern commands at the worst offenders. “Kairen, quit hitting your sister! Gola, quit making your sister hit you!” One kid, sobbing, came up to her, and after a series of indecipherable blubbering words, Gran said softly, “Oh, no, sweety, you don’t need heart surgery. It’s okay if you swallowed it. Where did you get gum anyway?”

Through all this, the baby on her hip slept so soundly, its eyes never once opened.

“Jessup! Tucian! Get down here and help me get these dust devils off to the well!”

Two xeno children, older than the others, peeled off from their huddle on the walls, and started gathering the younger ones.

Gran addressed both Caly and Olm without taking her eyes off the kids, “Well, as I was asking—Larold, if I see you climbing that tower one more time, what did I say would happen?—are you dropping off your—” Gran lowered her voice, “Your unwanted. Or are you here because you want to adopt one of these fine and promising future members of society.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Caly swept her gaze across the courtyard. Tomick, that child with the saber teeth, was gnawing on a rock now, trying to shorten his unbroken tooth to match the broken one. Next to him, a three-fingered prackian child (at least, Caly thought she was a prackian) was running with a pot wedged onto her head, banging it with a wooden spoon in a way that had to hurt.

“Actually,” Caly said, “We’re looking for someone who might’ve come through here—”

“Gran!” a pair of insectoid twins chittered and tugged on Gran’s leafy frock, “We did all our chores.”

“Already?” Gran said doubtfully.

The twins bobbed their heads in unison. “I mopped.”

“I swept!”

“And we changed all the sheets.”

Gran set the broom aside and kneeled low, still holding that sleeping infant on her hip. She patted one of the insectoids on the head, her demeanor suddenly as soft as a cloud. “Well, look at you two. Give me three minutes, please, and I’ll get it from the beehive. Now, where was I?” Gran’s goggled eyes irising as they refocused on Caly, “Oh, yes. Dropping off or picking up?”

Eagerly, she looked from Caly, to Olm, and back to Caly.

“Uh,” Olm said.

Eagerness faded into disappointment. “Oh, who am I kidding?” Gran said, “Nobody ever comes to pick them up.” With her free hand, she pulled one of the twins close and covered both his ear holes, “Nobody wants these kids. They come here, they make promises to return when times are a little less tough. It’s all lies, though I don’t tell them that.”

The other twin blinked up at her with huge, buggy, innocent eyes, only vaguely aware he wasn’t supposed to be hearing this.

“But,” Gran sighed, making a sound like a heat vent set to max, “I supposed that’s the way of things. Not many care about the unwanted. All I can do is what I’ve always done: take them in and give them a piece of what they deserve. So, where’s yours then? Skip the lies, I’ll take them all the same.”

“Er,” Olm said.

“Where is what?” Caly asked.

“The baby,” Gran said, “The one you don’t want. This is an Orphanarium, you know. People leave their children stranded across the desert sands, and I take those poor precious innocent little—Larold, put! It! Down!”

A child on the other side of the courtyard had found two hover engines, just big enough to propel a child’s bike, and had hooked them up to either end of a plumber’s pipe. The engines fed back and forth through the pipe, superheating the pipe until it glowed red. The pipe started to vibrate in mid-air, and one of the engines shot off, spraying plasma against a wall, and melting a hole in it. It might’ve been Caly’s imagination, but when Gran howled at the disobedient child, the leaves on her head seemed to stand on end, creating a kind of thorny headdress that only served to enunciate her outrage. Larold put the tube down and had enough awareness to look ashamed

“What was I saying?” Gran asked. Her head leaves came back to rest, and the wrinkles around her goggles and mouth softened, letting the rusted lines fall back into place.

“Isn’t it dangerous for him to play with that?” Caly asked, distracted by the high-pitched whine still coming from the other engine.

“Sorry, Miss Gran,” Olm said. “We didn’t bring a child.”

“Then how do you expect to give one up for adoption?” Gran asked, as if Olm was being thick-headed.

“We don’t.” Caly said.

“Oh?” The pupils in Gran’s magnified goggles suddenly swelled, and like a magnet finding metal, she was suddenly at Caly’s side. “Does that mean you’re here to—” and she whispered with far too much hope, “adopt one?”

“No.”

“Oh…”

“We’re looking for someone. He came this way.”

Gran withdrew, suddenly suspicious.

“Don’t know anyone who came this way,” the old machine woman said. “Don’t know nothing about anything except keeping these kids alive.”

One of the insect twins tugged insistently on her frond-dress. “What about Tawf, Gran? He waf here yefterday!”

Gran hissed at him, “They didn’t ask you, Maruhn-”

“I’m Ramuhn. He’f Maruhn—” the beetle child pointed at his brother, who was staring blankly ahead, mouth hanging dumbly open, his ear holes were still covered by Gran’s hands.

“Ramuhm, I’m sorry. Why don’t you—”

“And,” Ramuhn continued, “There waf thofe big people with the bikef and the gunf. Remember? They tried to break down the door. And Tawf made them run and we all cheered. I like Tawf. When if he coming back?”

“Ramuhn, please.”

“Whose this Taws?” Olm asked, his deep voice rumbling through their hissing argument. Gran and the beetle child looked up at him. Bored, the one with his ears covered started bobbing his head back and forth.

“This Taws,” Caly said, “Is he a human?”

The sudden white swiveling of Gran’s goggled eyes was all the answer she needed.

Gran frowned. She handed the infant on her hip to one of the older kids, and told the twins to run along. She waited until the yard was empty, all the children gone who knew where.

“You won’t find him here,” Gran said, her voice sharp and metallic. “In fact, you won’t find him at all. I told him to leave it alone. I told him. But I’ve never seen someone so naive. So stupid. His head’s full of noble ideas, and I don’t know how he made it out this far without getting his behind handed to him. But there’s something about him. He’s got his ways. Why, just the other day he brought me a whole sack full of—” Gran blinked, suddenly reluctant to say more. Caly and Olm already knew.

“Money,” Caly said. “A sack full of synars, wasn’t it?”

“For the children,” Gran said. “I don’t know where he got it, and I don’t intend to ask questions. Crowns know it’s going to a precious cause. I saved his life, and now, he’s determined to save mine, the fool.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yole,” Gran said bitterly, and Caly felt her stomach tighten involuntarily.

Even Olm held his breath.

It was said Yole was one of the first pioneers on New Nowhere, who got lost in the northern wastes. It was said she was a ghost, a curse made flesh and blood. Neither were true. But when everyone said she was mad, that was true. Yole, whoever she was, had taken up residence in the loneliest Spirine in all of New Nowhere. She lived, not on the land around the Spirine, but inside the thing.

Despite her solitude, the woman’s funds seemed nearly bottomless. She paid a premium for services, and for years attracted the most desperate people from far and wide. Those who came back from her private Spirine, came back strange. Incomplete. Missing more than just a few memories.

“Thought the Spirine had finally done her in,” Gran said. “Hadn’t heard nothing about Yole in years. That is, until a few months back. She’s hired new blood. Bad blood. They take what they can, and burn what they can’t. Only Blacktree and a couple halfway stops have escaped their evil. And me, of course.”

“We saw signs of battle,” Caly said.

“Yep. That was them. Yole’s people—I don’t know what got into their heads—but they thought they’d steal from a poor old lady like me. I told Taws not to make a fuss. I told him to give over the money, but he kept saying something about how he wasn’t going to let ‘it’ happen again, whatever ‘it’ is. That fool’s never been right since I found him. He’s got a heart in him, made of something more precious than gold, but he must’ve lost half his mind when he crashed on the rocks. And I’m not so sure about the other half, neither.”

“What did he do to Yole’s people?”

“Don’t know, and didn’t ask. I took the children inside, and we hid, and the sounds we heard, by the stars and the void between, it wasn’t like nothing I never heard before. Taws came back up this way, his arms black like he’d been playing in gunpowder.”

“Maybe it was blood,” Caly said, “What color is human blood?”

“He didn’t seem hurt. And I didn’t hear from Yole’s kind either. I haven’t let the kids out of the fort’s walls since Taws left, because I’m afraid to find out.”

Caly thought over it. She hadn’t seen any bodies where they’d come in. Just signs of battle. And those black smears.

“Where’d he go?”

Gran only shook her head.

“Look,” Caly said. “I need to find him. I’ll pay you whatever—”

“You won’t hurt him,” Gran said.

“I … We weren’t … I mean, I wasn’t—”

“It wasn’t a question. And I don’t need your money to tell you he’s already gone. He left yesterday. Poor fool chose the dark way down. I told him not to go, but he said he knew Yole’s kind. He said she would just keep coming back. Poor fool.” Gran sniffed quietly. Excused herself, and wiped her metal nose on the fronds of her frock.

“He went to Yole’s place?” Olm asked.

Gran nodded, quietly.

Olm sighed his resignation. “Guess that’s that.”

Caly looked at him, her fists clenched at her sides.

“You don’t come back from Yole’s place. And even if you do, you don’t. Not really, anyway. The Mad Queen’s contagious.”

“Maybe if we go to Zyroc empty-handed,” Olm suggested, “We could beg. Or maybe head back to Yonder and see if the Bitter King’s forgotten about what happened.”

“No.”

Olm cocked his head sideways at her, cords of muscle tautening in his neck, cracks in his skin glinting in the late afternoon light. “No?”

“The Bitter King doesn’t forget. The Bitter King will kill us.”

“And Mad Yole won’t?”

“I’d rather shoot myself in the foot than go begging at Zyroc’s ugly feet.”

“Then … ?”

Caly pulled Olm to the side, just outside of Gran’s hearing. It wasn’t necessary—Gran was busy shouting at a batch of orphans who were peeking over the walls, trying to eavesdrop. A girl with a white lines on her skin and a leafy frock that was so large it dragged on the ground was mimicking the older woman’s every move, a tiny shouting replica of Gran.

“I’m going to get our money back,” Caly said.

“You’re … going to steal from the orphans?”

“Of course, I’m not going to steal from the orphans!” Caly hissed. Up on the walls, the kids blinked down at her. She lowered her voice, “Just because I’m couran doesn’t mean I’m a heartless monster. You heard her—he only left a day ago. We can catch him before he gets anywhere near Yole’s place. We find him, he pays us, and then he can run off and die.”

Olm put a fist under his chin, thinking hard. “But he gave it all to Gran.”

Caly scoffed, “Nobody’s that generous. Not out here. Not anywhere.”

Olm inclined his head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“Besides,” Caly continued. “There’s a principle at stake. Nobody steals from a daughter of the House of B—”

“Technically, he didn’t steal from you. If anything, you were the one trying to rob him.”

She glowered.

“Oh,” Olm said. “You were trying to have a—thingy. Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“What do they call it? An ego trip?”

Caly, fuming, stomped off, not wanting to see the smile that cracked Olm’s face.