by J D Morganne
Beck shifted around Jaxon’s chair to the other side of the car. She pulled her bag around her and set it on her lap to sit next to an old man who had entered before. Jaxon waited for the man to address her like the leader she claimed to be, but he only formed a small gap between them. She wasn’t a commander here, Jaxon decided. She was nobody.
For the rest of the ride, Jaxon stared out the window and wondered how sand had bypassed his socks and shoes and lodged itself between his toes. The car stopped at a platform halfway down the mountainside. Jaxon read the sign: Welcome to Tiyeert—Shopping District. Nano shoved past everyone to get off first.
“Goofy.” Aria helped the old man off before searching for Nano.
“Cake,” he screamed from across the plaza. “Now.”
Aria and Beck carried on in the background, exchanging their list items and adding more. Night embraced Jerus with silvery stars. Candlelit shops and streetlamps casted distorted amber shapes across the road. The fireflies that flickered around the flowered guardrail swarmed together before scattering, leaving Jaxon with a sense of peace.
“I’ll meet you back at Tituba’s,” Aria said, before going toward the bakery.
Jaxon didn’t know most of the sweet smells flooding his nostrils, but his stomach wanted whatever it was.
“Loving night, Emiir,” a plump man from inside said to Beck as they passed his window.
“Loving night, Yuya.” Beck leaned on the chair’s handles, pushing herself onto the back of Jaxon’s head. “Weebaii dree-ha ore dree-ha’eey weebaii?”
He tried to focus on something else as she started yet another conversation.
Dark faces took on cool blue tints as the sun traded places. In an instant he realized he was the oddball out. Farah would fear these fair-haired, polychromatic-eyed, dark-faced people. Most Enkindlers in Obedience were of average height and weight for their age. Their food provided the appropriate balance of nutrients, vitamins and whatever else was in those gross packets. Jaxon had always felt hungry even when he was full. These people didn’t look hungry or like they ate packets of slime. No one person looked the same and Jaxon caught himself chuckling at a chunky kid racing a thinner boy down the street.
“What was that sound? Did you laugh? I almost missed it.” Beck pushed his chair over the threshold of a place called Bongani’s. “You’re heavy,” she said, with a groan. “Push yourself.” She left him at the door and went off to collect whatever was on her list. “Better grab whatever you need to run away,” she called.
Push yourself. He ignored her impertinence and stood up. He limped and hopped, holding onto the t-shirt racks in his path. He started to search through an assortment of red and yellow shirts.
In a cramped corner, three women held up pants to another woman, who was pouting and shaking her head at her reflection. Her legs and butt were the thickest parts of her, and Jaxon doubted those pants would come close to fitting. Her eye was familiar. Jaxon wouldn’t forget a yolk-colored eye. Eshauna. She caught his fascinated stare in the mirror and Jaxon turned away. Heat built in his cheeks, intensified by Beck’s fingernail tapping him. He pulled away, but she pushed a marker into his hand.
“For them,” she said and glided by as the three women approached. “Ladies,” she said.
“Loving night, Emiir,” two of them responded.
Eshauna took the marker. “Hi again,” she said with a voice that matched her sharp, blue eye.
The pasty, glue taste on Jaxon’s tongue wouldn’t let him speak.
She grabbed his cast and pulled his arm to her. Some women in Obedience were brave enough to approach men, especially soldiers, brave enough to “entertain”, but most were reserved. Eshauna wielded the marker like a magical sword that granted all her wishes.
“May The Mother bring you a speedy recovery,” she said. Her puffy lips were bigger than Beck’s and Aria’s. She licked them wet before smiling and handing the marker over to her friends, who each signed his cast.
When they had gone and Jaxon was still trying to figure out the point of the interaction, Beck snatched the marker and dropped it into the basket. “You like that attention?”
What did she mean that attention?
As if she noticed his exhausted legs trembling, she pushed the chair to him. When he sat, she dropped the basket on his lap. “You’re about six-feet, yeah?” She listed her head, studying him from foot-to-head. She insisted she could guess his shoes size by the size of his hand and demanded he hold it up.
Jaxon obeyed, even though he could tell her himself. He watched her run maniacally all over the shop again, snatching up anything she could get her hands on—shirts, pants and a pair of hiking boots. At the counter, she paid with the same gold coins she’d betted on him with. They were outside only a few seconds after, where brisk air slapped his face. Fireflies complimented an ultramarine star-filled sky. It was all around them, beyond the guardrail and beyond the forests. Jaxon had never felt smaller.
For hours he sat in his wheelchair while beautiful women signed his cast. He didn’t see Beck until she was rolling him somewhere else.
At the end of the night, only splotches of pink glimmered through the black signatures. The bags were weights on his lap and his eyes were heavy enough to drown him, but they weren’t done. Everyone met at an apothecary called Tituba’s. Inside, fresh spices and pungent citruses wafted on the air. Jaxon sneezed.
“Adorable,” Beck said, with a chuckle.
Aria turned her eyebrows down in concentration as she rushed from wooden shelves with her basket of oils and creams.
“She’s almost done.” Beck rolled Jaxon out front to a fountain. She sat where water sprouted from a stone woman’s hand. It sprinkled her face and the clothes she’d pulled from various bags and refolded to put into a larger brown backpack. “Two pairs of pants. You’re a boxer-briefs kinda guy.”
“Excuse me?”
“Aria told me.” She made it sound like Aria knew more about him than he did.
This time, Jaxon didn’t restrain himself from asking, “Did you bet on that, too?”
“Yeah. And something else,” she nodded toward his lap and at first Jaxon thought she meant the bags. The heat flushed in his cheeks when he realized what she meant, and he wanted nothing more than to bury himself beneath the nearest boulder.
Beck had tied ribbon around the paper bag she’d wrapped the underwear in. She stuffed it in his bag and piled the t-shirts she’d gotten from Bongani’s on top.
“Those colors will camouflage you, okay? Nano’ll talk to you about unbison.”
Unbison?
“And Torchers,” Beck continued without looking at him. “Your cast should last a while, but moving on that splint”—
“What’s unbison?”
“Didn’t you run into one?” Beck said. “Nano said one chased you when he found you.”
Was she talking about that repulsive monster that had nearly shocked Jaxon into a coma? Those things had a name? Jaxon shuddered at the idea of facing another one alone.
“Anyway, they’re blind and they’re invisible… basically. Until they’re not. So… there’s that. Nano can explain better. Aria’s puttin together a first-aid kit and she can talk about all that cream and whatever.”
“Do you guys have healing tape?” One roll of healing tape could protect him if he wasn’t bleeding out. That was all he needed. Healing tap and access to his AI.
“What is that?”
That was answer enough. “Nevermind.”
“I made you a map.”
She’d been carrying it the whole time and saving it for that moment? She pulled it from her pocket and unfolded it. It was hand-drawn in light pen and every jagged line formed beautiful mountains and forests. She spread the sheet in front of him.
“We’re here,” she pointed. “The Door you came through, back to Obedience, is here.” She traced a line across the paper and his eyes opened wide.
Where she pointed was hundreds of miles apart. Jaxon
hadn’t felt the distance when he was climbing out of swamp water and hiking through the forest. He didn’t know anything about Torchers or unbison. In his condition, he didn’t want to be up against any of that. He couldn’t move three feet without exhausting himself and he doubted he could wheel a chair through a tumultuous forest.
“There’s another route to a different Door.” Beck trailed her finger across the map again.
“Where does that Door go?”
Beck shrugged. “The hell would I know? Oh, almost forgot.” She snatched the bag from Nano when he got there.
Aria ducked beside Jaxon to tuck something in the compartment under his chair. She wore a glass canister, fastened to a leather chain around her neck, which she took off and put on him. “Eucalyptus,” she said. “To help with your breathing. Just sniff it slowly if you’re ever having trouble. Everything else is labeled. Remember to rub the antibiotics on your burn twice a day. I put a whole bottle in there. In a week, start applying this aloe vera salve.” She held up the bottle and tapped her finger on the name. She showed him a blue-tinted one. “This is for scrapes and bruises. It’s potent so don’t use too much, a little on your fingertip. And there’s cough suppressant. Gauzes, band-aids and a pocketknife.” She tucked the box under a quilt. “I assumed you wouldn’t have trouble making a fire.”
“Here’s ya’ damn food.” Pouting, Nano dropped the basket of baked goods where Beck’s bags had sat. “Spent my last on that and didn’t get no cake.”
“That’s your fault.” Beck shrugged him off. “You should’ve brought stuff to trade.” She bent in front of Jaxon again.
So she wasn’t all bad, either. They had all used their money to get these things together for him to go off and get himself killed. He didn’t know the territory and running off into the unknown didn’t sound like the best plan now. Honestly, Jaxon was terrified.
“Wow.” Beck held her smirk behind tight lips. “You’re good at hiding your emotions. Aren’t you scared?”
Why would he tell her? She almost sounded like she wanted to instill fear.
“Even if you’re not, it’s scary out there.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, but she didn’t pay attention to Jaxon when she talked. She waved at the man closing his bakery. “Why don’t you come back to the house? Or you can stay at the chateau.”
The chateau was the first place they had taken him. It was empty. He wasn’t anxious to spend more time with them, but he didn’t want to stay in that huge place alone.
“You can keep the room at the house,” Beck said again, rolling her tongue on the inside of her cheek. She turned to him, her eyebrows raised high. “Yeah? Take a hot shower, which you desperately need. Have a hot meal. Get some sleep. Try at it in the morning?”
Jaxon wanted to tell her that she didn’t need any old toys clogging her space, but everything she said sounded like heaven. He wanted a shower and had already fallen in love with that bed, which was softer than his mattress back home.
“Is it gonna take this much convincing? I don’t want Aria’s hard work going to waste. She got you back to your normal, robotic self. And plus, she wants you to stay too. Right?” She shot her eyebrows up at Aria, waiting for the answer they all expected.
Aria nodded, then laughed when Nano snatched her hand.
“Okay,” Jaxon said, not because of her, but because he physically couldn’t go on.
“Settled,” Beck said and picked up her bags. She dropped them on his lap. “Home we go.”
12
Hot water pounded every speck of dirt from Jaxon. He’d spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the shower. Three knobs were a bit excessive in his opinion, but the water and soft soap washed away the sour smell of sweat in his hair and the dirt in his fingernails. When he finished, he dressed in an uncomfortable pair of something Beck called “jeans” and one of the shirts she’d bought from Bongani’s.
His wheelchair wasn’t waiting for him where he’d left it outside the door. Someone had replaced it with two crutches. He paused at Beck’s muffled voice, coming from her garden room. Jaxon could make out the crown of Nano’s head, but Beck stayed hidden in the cover of giant leaves hanging from the ceiling.
“What do… want… do?”
He inched closer, trying to make out the words.
“…done enough,” Beck said.
“… but… with fire… sss… them in Jerus.”
“If he… foot in Jerus...” They sounded like they were getting closer. “I’m not scared of fire. I will reign lava so molten they’ll rediscover fire. They’ll delete hot from the dictionary and call it Beck. ‘It’s Beck as hell in here,’ they’ll say. But they’d be wrong, because Beck is hotter than hell. Get me?” She yanked the glass door open and stopped when she saw Jaxon. “Humph. Eavesdropping?”
“No.” But he wasn’t brainless. They had been talking about him. Who else there could manipulate fire?
“You clean up well.”
Jaxon looked himself over. He couldn’t speak on their taste in clothes. He couldn’t keep his legs still, trying to soothe the itching from the jeans.
“How was the water?” Beck said.
He shrugged. “It… was Beck.”
Nano slapped his leg, his laughter a howl.
“That’s cute,” Beck said, unamused. “Well, come downstairs. Aria’s cooking.”
“No, thank you.”
Beck nodded, at first like she accepted his answer. Then, like she was a mother who’d had enough of her picky child. “What’s the news with you not eating? Is that another one of your silly laws?”
“Silly?” he said, fixing his curious stare on her.
“I love this dude.” Nano grabbed Beck’s shoulders and rocked her, before kissing her cheek and leaving them both.
She shifted from one leg to the other. Jaxon didn’t say anything. She wasn’t the pious type and he didn’t have the desire to explain his principles.
“Look, Robot.”
“CO3.”
“That’s what I said. I respect your laws. Cool story. But, look, I ain’t gonna punish you. Yeah? I want you to eat something.”
“No,” Jaxon said, his army ethos stewing to the surface. “Thanks.” He wanted to crash. Plus, if he made it through the night, he would be out of there by morning. “I’d waste it. And you don’t waste food here.”
Beck smirked. “Then go to sleep. I don’t care.”
He found that hard to believe when she kept pestering him about food. “Peace be the night.” He tapped his celrings to open the door, remembered he wasn’t home, and turned the knob. He was halfway into the room when Aria came stomping up the steps.
Panting, she struggled to articulate. “Tor-Tor-damn it. Torchers breached the perimeter.”
Beck was off with a grunt before Aria got the last word out, racing down the steps to something out of view.
“Are you okay?” Jaxon said to Aria, wondering if her hand over her heart was for dramatic effect, or if she was having trouble breathing.
She smiled. “Aw, I’m good.”
“What’s going on?”
“Torchers are here.”
He’d heard the name Torcher enough times for it to leave a vinegary taste in his mouth. “Could you help me?”
“It would be my pleasure.” Aria offered her arm.
He managed not to put much weight on her while she helped him down the steps and through the front room. Nano and Beck were already on the veranda, Beck’s arms raised high at four approaching men.
She stepped onto the hot sand with bare feet. “You can stop right there.” She carried her leadership like a tacky necklace, gifted to her by someone more powerful. The men in the distance seemed to float on air, but Jaxon saw, as they came closer, that they were riding unbison, using thick stone horns to steer. “You can stop right there,” Beck repeated, once they were a short distance from them. “This is a pleasure.”
“We need to talk.” These men didn’t lo
ok like Aria and the others. Their strikingly blue eyes—one yellow, like Eshauna’s—clashed with the black paint on their cheeks and chins. The man leading the other three, jumped down from his unbison. His white robes brushed the ground, swaying the dirt around him.
“What warranted a personal visit?” Beck stood tall and steady where she was.
“We need to discuss the Treaty of Divii.” He had the solemn voice of someone speaking at a funeral.
“Discuss away.”
“In more private quarters.” His lips were too big for his face, so his squared chin appeared small. He had an annoying quirk of running his thumb over them when he finished talking. “I’m sure you understand, Emiir. Eyes and ears.”
Beck played with the idea, tapping her foot. Finally, she decided against it. “I trust you as much as I trust an alligator to watch a sleeping child, bait. Talk here.”
The man smirked. “A boy crossed our border.”
“False,” Beck said. “He entered Alasta’s Forest from another Door. Crossed from your side to ours, which makes this my concern, not yours. Nice talk.”
“N’wa Cayman miraa Traasta da Divii.”
“Cht wheey?”
They started to talk in that language Beck had used earlier to try to get information out of Jaxon. He searched his mind, trying to remember what it was called. Something-mulken. Beck fumbled over her words and slapped her hands against her thighs, growing ever irritated.
“Speak Old-World!” she said, finally.
The man appeared equally as irritated, though he managed to keep his composure. “If you hand him over now, we’ll allow this mishap to go unpunished,” the man said.
“Mis-hap.” Her chuckle came as a dry heave. “Are you braindead?” Her eyes shrunk and she made a face like she was trying to see through him. “Is someone operating you from some slimy basement in the middle of nowhere? You can’t be this stupid. This”— She waved her hands at the other Torchers on their unbison— “is unconventional. And don’t blame me because you can’t patrol your borders. Go back to your sky-mountain and do this right. Make some calls. Ding some bells. Send Cayman.”
