by Jada Fisher
“So, what if you guys get cavities?”
“What’s a cavity?”
This could go on all day, and even without my dreams, I could tell that time was at a premium. “You mentioned you don’t have a ton of food or supplies, and I don’t want to put you out, so is there a place we can round up enough for us not to starve and figure out our next plan of action?”
Mal nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to go on a run myself, but the timing hasn’t been great. But the night before last was the last full moon, so now it’ll be safer to go out at night.” She looked us over and wrinkled her nose. “But we gotta do something about those clothes of yours. You stick out like a sore thumb.”
“What’s wrong with our clothes?” Mallory retorted. “Other than they’re not covered in dirt and filth and tattered to all hell and probably made out of fabrics that haven’t been invented in this world.” Mal gave her a dull look and she sighed. “That was a joke. Clearly humor is different here too.”
“Sure.” Mal got up too and dusted herself off. “I know a guy that we can probably trade with, but it’s not easy getting to him. We can hit him up at the apex of our scouting and then come back here to base.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,”
She nodded. “Good. Because I’d like you guys geared up and out of my hair as soon as possible. It doesn’t take a girl in my head to know that trouble’s gonna follow you like the shadow of a wing.”
I wanted to object, but she was right. The sooner we got out of the dimension, the better. We didn’t belong here, and I shuddered to think of what might happen if we overstayed our welcome.
We waited until the darkest part of night before heading out. I wasn’t sure how Mal knew when that was considering there were no clocks around or windows of any sort, but when she led us outside, it was indeed almost pitch black.
I had never seen the city so dark, so devoid of sound and life. There was no hum from the transformers of what little powerlines that still were erect, no sounds of traffic or scuffling of feet. There were no sirens, no merry music spilling out of bars as tipsy patrons stumbled home. Just…
Silence.
I tried not to let it get to me as we crept along, doubled over and pressed against jagged, crumbling walls. But we didn’t get far before Mal held up a hand to stop.
I sent her a questioning look, not daring to speak, and she pointed to a puddle just a few feet ahead. I stared at her dubiously until it clicked, and then I shook my head emphatically.
But she just pointed again, her gaze telling me that she wasn’t going to let up, and I sighed. The whole exchange was in silence, but there was plenty of attitude on both sides.
I sat down and stripped my shoes off. If I was going to douse myself in who knows what kind of toxic sludge, then I was at least going to have dry feet. I couldn’t imagine trying to sneak through the city with squeaky, wet sneakers.
Once I had both of those off, I stood and walked over to the puddle. Cautiously, I stepped in, and it took all of my willpower not to gag.
The water was cold, and slimy, with a distinct sort of oiliness to it. I tried to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell the rottenness of it, but then I could taste the overly-sweet, cloying, dusty nature of it instead.
So, I held my breath instead. It was deeper than I thought it would be, about up to the middle of my calf, and I stepped around in it for several seconds before trying to get out.
But Mal cleared her throat, and when I glanced to her, she was pointing down to the ground. I gave her a pleading look, but she seemed absolutely adamant.
Gross.
Slowly, even though I knew that this would probably increase our chances of survival by quite a bit, I knelt in the muck. Using my hands, I splashed water onto my chest, shoulders, and then finally—after a tense pause—my hair.
It was awful. Perhaps one of the most difficult things I had to do aside from surviving the whole house-fire thing. But I managed and stood there, dripping for a moment, before slowly slogging out.
“Your turn,” I whispered, gesturing to Mallory.
“Uh-uh. Are you crazy?”
“Do it,” Mal said forcefully. “Or I don’t take you a step farther. Right now, all of you stick out like neon lights. So, get dirty, or go back to whatever dimension it is you came from.”
Mallory stood there another moment, her arms crossed stubbornly, before sitting down and removing her shoes too.
It didn’t take long for her and Bron to both do what they needed to do, and by the time they were done, my feet were dry enough to put back in my shoes. Once they were on, I grabbed some grit from the ground and rubbed it onto them as best I could, grateful that I had dark, cobalt sneakers instead of the bright, pastel ones I’d had before.
“Better,” Mal whispered once we were done. “We just might survive this. Keep low.”
We nodded and kept on. We reached the end of the building tunnel, then it was a quick dash across the pothole-filled street before we were between more piles of rubble. These ones hadn’t collapsed against each other, however, leaving a small sliver of night sky above our heads.
It would just take one dragon passing over to spot us, and the thought made me sick to my stomach. I thought my life back in my dimension was hard, but this was so much worse. I thought I’d rather deal with a dozen Baelfyres than this mess.
Then again…maybe that wouldn’t be so great either. Tucking my head down, I told myself to focus. It wouldn’t be worth it to make up hypothetical scenarios if we all ended up roasted to a crisp. Currently, I couldn’t tell if I could even call a shield up, and I didn’t feel the tug of any visions, so we would only have Bron to protect us, and that was probably asking a lot of a single dragon prince.
From the buildings, we went through the carcass of a flipped train, twisting this way and that until finally dropping into some sort of sinkhole.
It was hard not to look up every third second, sure that a dragon would be spiraling above, signaling our doom, but somehow, we made it to the bottom.
From there, it didn’t seem like there was a place to go, until Mal walked over to a large piece of metal shrapnel that looked like it might have once been a door and slid it to the side.
Sure enough, there was a hole there, and it actually looked both worn and well structured, unlike most of the hidey holes that we had scurried through in the past day or so.
“Welcome to the last of our big hideaways,” Mal whispered before sliding the metal back in place with the two handles on the underside. “Most of the other ones have been blitzed or abandoned.”
“Does that happen often? Blitzing?” I asked, curious to learn more.
“It used to more in the beginning, when the dragons first took over and there was more of a resistance. There was a handful when I was younger, but after the whole dead-you traitor thing happened, they had a whole two years where they focused on nothing but raiding rebellious bases. Since then, it’s been the occasional raid, usually when someone gets careless, or a human betrays us for some scrap of meat or merciful death.”
I stopped at that. “Wait, humans betray each other?”
“Yeah, all the time.” She shot me a look over her shoulder. “Don’t tell me your world is all peace, love, and hunkidory.”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then why would you expect my world to be that way? Anyway, keep your heads down, don’t make eye contact, and just pretend that you’re mute and deaf. Especially you, dragon boy. If they find out what you are, we’ll all be gunned down faster than you could shift into whatever big, bad form you think you have.”
“Noted,” Bron remarked dryly, one of the few words he had said since we had woken up.
It did make me worry a bit about him. Although we had spent the night curled together, taking comfort in each other’s presence, he hadn’t exactly been himself. Not that I could blame him. He’d been betrayed by his cousin and ripped from his world all in one day. The last
he knew, enemy dragons were swarming everyone he knew and loved. I didn’t imagine that could be very easy for him, yet he hadn’t complained even once.
Thank God I had met him first and not Baelfyre. I shuddered to think how this might have all turned out if that had happened.
I shoved that thought out of my mind. I needed to stop spending so much energy on imagined horror stories. Instead, I looked around, noticing that we had traveled far enough in the tunnels that lanterns now occasionally hung from the walls or ceilings. Battered, dim, but shining nonetheless.
How long could it go on? While I wasn’t any sort of engineer, I couldn’t make out any sort of structural support or anything to sustain the tunnel, so it couldn’t be that long… Could it? Man, it almost made me wish that I had gone to college.
Almost.
Finally, the tunnel widened and dumped out into what looked like it might have once been a subway station. Unlike everywhere else we had been, however, this place actually had human life in it.
Lights hung from the ceiling or on chains, glimmering against the pitch blackness, and people strolled this way and that. There were a hundred of them, maybe more, scattered all over the large room.
“I guess this is what you’d call our market,” Mal said, striding forward. “The guy we’ll want to see is all the way at the other end.”
“Of course he is,” Mallory muttered.
“What’d I say about being quiet?”
“…sorry.”
“Thanks.”
We walked along, and even though she had asked me to keep my head down, I still found myself looking up and taking things in. And one thing was for certain… These people were not doing well.
Almost everyone was skeletally thin, and what few chubby people I spotted still had a gaunt look on their face that spoke of too much processed food and salt, but not enough nutrition. There were a lot of missing parts as well. I saw several without legs, a few without arms, hardly anyone with all their fingers, and a whole lot of missing eyes and ears. In fact, I didn’t think there were more than five that were bodily whole, which made me wonder if the dragons liked to chop off various body parts, or if being an off the grid human just came with a heightened risk of amputation.
Some heads perked up as we passed, but most kept about their business. I saw people bartering at stands, and others sitting around small fires. It was basically like any ancient bazaar one might have read about, but instead of everyone being decked out in fantasy gear, they were dressed in clothes from the sixties or seventies. Well…very tattered versions of those clothes.
After what seemed like ages, we made it to the back. There, the ramshackle stalls and tents all faded, instead leaving one large building made of tin siding and subway shrapnel. It looks tremulous and unsteady, and I wouldn’t want to live there, and yet people were coming in and out like this was no big deal.
I guessed to the citizens of this world, it really wasn’t a big deal, judging from the way that Mal marched forward with her chin in the air.
Oh boy. Why did I get the feeling that this wasn’t going to be fun?
Right… I was kinda psychic. That didn’t bode well.
But bad feeling or not, we continued onward, after Mal. She led us up a small flight of stairs, then onto a landing set up just like a storefront.
“Well, if it isn’t little Miss Melody!” a large figure crowed from behind the macgyvered counter. “It’s been quite a while since I last saw you. Come to work for me again? You know I’ve always kept a spot open.”
“No, Krangle,” Mal spat, voice dry. “Just came here for a quick trade. I need clothes, some supplies, and water rations.”
“Really? The perfect Miss Melody needs some help? I thought you were the best skirmisher this side of the border.”
My skin was already crawling at the man’s tone. His skin was sallow and drawn, with a thick coat of dirt over several parts of him. Although he towered over even Bron, he lacked the muscle or fat to be intimidating, so mostly he just looked creepy.
“Melody isn’t even my real name, so you can stop with all the pet talk”
“Aw, what’s a matter? Trying to forget the good old days?”
Somehow, Mal managed to keep her face absolutely straight. “Do you have the supplies or not?”
“I might. What are you bringing me? Judging from your lack of bags or anything of that nature, I’m guessing it’s just the clothes on your backs or the bodies that are in them.”
He looked past her to examine the three of us, and that was right about when I realized that Mal and Mallory looked a whole lot of similar and we didn’t really have an explanation for it.
But somehow, he didn’t notice. “I’ll take the tall, fed girl and give you three waterskins, some clothes, and a couple of cans. Haven’t seen someone look that healthy in years.”
“I’m not selling you any workers, Krangle. In fact, we have clothes to trade you.”
“You want to trade me clothes, for clothes? What kind of point is there in that?”
“The point is that these guys have clothes that aren’t like any we’ve got around here. They’re survivors from Europe. Made it over here on a derelict boat, a relic of the past.”
“Uh-huh. Let me see these supposedly different clothes.”
Mal motioned for one of us to go forward, and I figured that it couldn’t be Mallory given the whole doppelganger thing, and it probably shouldn’t be Bron either, so I marched to the counter.
The guy smelled just about the same that he looked, and it took all of my will-power to keep a straight face when he reached out to grip the bottom of my shirt.
For once I was grateful that I had worn a stretchy sort of knit that was practically 100% synthetic fibers. The moment that his grubby fingers bit into it, his eyes went wide and he gave it a few tugs.
“What is this?” he asked incredulously.
“Like she said,” I murmured. “Different.”
“And yours are all like this?”
I shook my head. “They’re all slightly dissimilar. Some of them are stronger than others.”
“Huh.” He looked at me like he was thinking for several long moments, and before I could really react, he was reaching upwards and winding my hair around his fingers. “This is different too. Its been bleached, which is hard enough to find, but you’ve got some fancy dyes in here too.” My skin went cold. “Judging from your roots, you haven’t touched this up in at least a month. So that makes me wonder… Where the hell this boat is of yours that you sailed in on.”
“Seized,” Mal answered quickly. “By the dragons. These three are the only ones that managed to escape.”
“Tragic, obviously.” I could practically feel Bron tensing behind me, ready to attack at any moment, and I willed him patience. Then the man’s fingers trailed from my hair to the side of my face, and one of his dirty fingers traced over my lips.
Alright, there was a line of what I was willing to tolerate, and he was well over it. I reached up and gripped his wrist, wresting it vehemently away from my face.
I didn’t mean to, but I didn’t try to stop it, either. I felt that strange energy spike within me, and the next thing I knew, my mouth was moving.
“I would think twice before doing that, Ulysses,” I heard myself say, voice low and full of warning. “What was that your mother always told you? Be careful where you put your hands, lest you lose them?”
I let go and the man reeled back, staring at me in both shock and horror. For a moment, I was absolutely sure that I had ruined everything, but he shakily straightened and cleared his throat.
“There are some rooms in the back for you to change. I’ll give you the supplies you need.” And with that, he was disappearing behind a tattered curtain, leaving me to sag against the counter.
“Do I even want to know what that was?” Mal asked, coming up beside me to steady my wobbling frame.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “The less you know, probably the better
.”
“Agreed. But let’s go to the backroom, shall we? I’m sure Krangle will have some beautiful outfits and plenty of accessories for you.”
I nodded, and we followed her to the back, the whole time feeling even more like I needed a hot shower. When we reached the back, I saw there were indeed two closet-ish rooms. In front of each of them was a pile of rags, which I guessed were our new getups.
“Does it matter which is which?” I asked.
“The one to the left is the boy’s,” Mal answered quickly. “The one to the right is yours, and the small pile by the wall is Mallory’s.”
“How could you possibly know that?” my friend countered, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
But Mal just shrugged, unperturbed. “There’s a headscarf in the center pile. That must be for your hair. If Krangle noticed it, so will others. That’s possibly the nicest thing he’s ever done. The small pile is just too tiny for big boy, and—since I’m obviously not a complete moron—the rest was easy to figure out.”
“Huh. Consider me impressed.”
“I consider you annoying. Now get changed.”
“Alright, alright, geez, I’ll go first then.”
Mallory grabbed her pile of clothes and went into one of the closets, sliding the curtain closed behind her. It was threadbare and there were still enough holes that Bron turned around, humming gently to himself in embarrassment.
Goodness, being dragon royalty certainly made him a lot more prim and proper than anybody else I knew. Not that I was complaining. It was just…cute.
Since there was another stall open, I grabbed my own clothing and headed in. While I certainly hadn’t expected anything I could take to a fashion show, I was still taken aback at just how decrepit they were.
There was a sort of shirt-smock thing that went down to my thighs, and loose, shapeless sweatpants that looked like they were more patch than actual material. At least there was enough cloth between my thighs to protect me from chub-rub. The last thing I wanted while skulking around the city for supplies was to get chafing between my legs.
