by Maggie Allen
He picked a charred piece from the edge of the fire, then sat before the stump. Feeling the many eyes and terribly aware of the tool in the muscled man’s hand, he started to trace shapes onto the pale face of the fireleaf. He didn’t work from any preconceived imagery; he never did. He just let the figures flow – the lines, the curves. These were echoes of dreams, bits of pure imagination plucked from nothingness and given substance in the real world. Sweat stood out on his forehead and dotted the center of his back. The charcoal scraped the surface of the leaf.
After several long moments, he had reached the end. The image was done. To add to it would only spoil it. Even so, he was reluctant to set down his drawing implement, to sit back on his knees and give these others a chance to fully see what he had wrought.
Some gasped. Others made musical mutterings that must be the idiosyncratic rituals of this village.
“Sholt,” said the woman.
He found her face among the crowding others. More people had come. By now he was fairly engulfed in the strange villagers. He gave the woman a confirming nod. They knew his work. His fellow villagers had boasted of his artistic outputs. His was a unique talent. It gave his village substantial prestige.
When he took the metaplastic blade out of the fold of his hip-wrap, his audience retreated several steps in fear, even the threatening man with the heavy brow. The woman, who had a sharp, knowing look in her eyes and cheeks smeared with red clay, flinched but did not recoil.
It was awkward, handling the knife with his left hand, but he had to lay his right hand on the stump, next to the fireleaf he had decorated. He splayed his fingers, pressed his palm hard to the wood. He didn’t trust himself to make a chop, so he set the weapon’s edge over the base knuckle of his right index finger, laid all the muscle and weight of his spindly body onto the handle of the instrument, let out a fierce cry, and severed the finger from his hand.
The pain was mind-altering. It sent him into a white, freezing realm where he wandered lost awhile, until hot motes intruded and melted the landscape. He panted and bled and felt tears running freely, and he knew these were only partly in answer to the enormous pain.
He looked down on the blood-spattered stump, at his lonely finger separated from his hand.
The woman had knelt on the other side of the stump. She pressed a cloth to his wound. Sholt’s whole hand throbbed, and the pain climbed to his elbow, to his shoulder, yet it was more bearable than it had been a moment before.
“You will still be able to draw,” she said, and though her tone was soft, her words carried to all the others.
He had to deliberately gather breath to speak. “Not as well.” It was true. He might learn to hold a reed dipped in liquid clay, to drag it across surfaces to make shapes, but they would no longer be his shapes.
Sholt tossed down the metaplastic knife. He shoved the fireleaf that bore his final work of art across the stump to the woman, clutched his hand and the bloodied cloth to his chest, stood and started back to where he’d left his dugout.
The person with the Warboots came in his twelfth winter.
Sholt had become a digger, working often with Halz. He liked going to the Rubble and was good at finding the little treasures buried in the stony ground. He had an aptitude for the job, if not any unique flair.
The adult with the Warboots this time was a woman, and her boots were just as splendid as the ones Sholt had seen in his ninth autumn. But the sight of them did not fill him this time with that same frenetic passion. They didn’t cause his heart to soar.
After the woman gave her talk to the village, she came to Sholt and wanted to speak to him alone. She had learned what he had done, of course. Everyone was still eager to talk about how he had put off the war. It was the kind of big, selfless act he had dreamt about since he was a boy.
They sat on rocks by the brink of the moonlit lake. Small splashings sounded at irregular intervals. An empty boat creaked nearby.
“These should fit,” she said, holding out the Warboots from her traveling sack. “I get to touch with our base every two years or so for more pairs.” Her sack looked fairly full.
He took the boots and rested them on his knees. He had been barefoot since spring. Even the winter chill didn’t bother him anymore.
The boots were magnificent, the same shape and shade and construction as the pair he had first coveted, so long ago now.
“You’ll be walking a lot,” the woman told him tiredly.
He nodded. He would wear his Warboots and travel from place to place, to all the sites where people were clustering, where populations were growing, where one people might chafe against another. One of the reasons he liked digging so much was that it reminded him how huge the Great Rubblization had been, and how centuries later it still needed to be spoken of, its dreadful lessons pounded home, endlessly. Or else people would forget. And make those same mistakes again.
Sholt looked up at the woman, finding her expression as grim as the one he felt weighing on his own face. Her left eye was missing, the socket a hollow of aged scar tissue.
With a bleak finality he put the Warboots on his feet, did up the laces with his nine fingers, and stood.
The Rum Cake Runner
Jessi Cole Jackson
Jessi Cole Jackson is an MFA student in children’s literature at Hollins University. Her work has been published in Crossed Genres Magazine, Every Day Fiction and podcasted at Cast of Wonders. When she’s not writing (or reading!) she makes costumes for a Tony Award-winning theatre and lives with her husband in the prettiest part of New Jersey (though she’s not from there).
Sitting on the threadbare sagging couch cushion, Nesi tied her Sneaks’ laces tight, double knotting the loops. The apartment was warm, as it always was, and smelled sweet, as it always did.
“And pick up those vanilla beans before making your rounds,” Uncle Toni said. “It’s important.”
Her head whipped up. “No way! I’d have to go to the market with a full load.”
He just shrugged. “If you go after your deliveries again today, Rohit will have closed up shop again and we need it for tonight. No arguments.”
“The mutts’ll sniff me out for sure! I’ll be a wafting target,” Nesi said.
Nonna chuckled from her old wooden rocker in the corner. “She’s just like you, Antonio. She doesn’t understand how to not argue.” She rocked and knit, her work already done for the day despite the early hour. They could bake the sweets Nesi was responsible for delivering anytime, but the bread making – the smaller, but only legitimate aspect of the De Luca family business – had to be done at night so it was fresh each morning.
Uncle Toni handed Nesi a red cap. “Wear this one today and be sure to turn it on. You’ll be fine at the market.” Sweat stained and faded, it was in much worse shape than her regular cap.
“This thing doesn’t even work half the time!” she said. What good was AI detection software if it never worked? She smacked the dirty cap against her palm. Maybe she could jostle it hard enough that it’d actually warn her. “Who’s going to bail me out when I get snagged by the coppers?”
“I will, little one,” Nonna said, her low voice creaking and groaning like the chair she rocked.
“You want me to give the best route we’ve got to Anya?” Uncle Toni said. “Put on the cap and get your butt out the door. You’re gonna be late for everyone.”
Nesi rolled her eyes but put the filthy thing on her head, pushing her shaggy black bangs to the side so they weren’t in her face. She kissed Nonna and walked out the door, a small white paper bag in one hand and the rest of the day’s deliveries in her nylon backbag.
She’d barely made it down the three flights of rickety steps before she had her first customer.
Old Mr. Yan sat on his cement step, his dirty shoes resting in the even dirtier gutter. “Hello Nesi. Two almond biscotti, please,” he said.
He held out his wrist so she could scan it for credits. Uncle Toni preferred to be paid by cash, but Nesi d
idn’t care. Payment was payment – so what if credits had to be made clean? That was why they baked all night and her older cousins sold bread in the market. Everyone knew you couldn’t actually make any profit on that sort of baking.
Nesi handed Mr. Yan the small white paper sack and droned the line she was supposed to recite after every purchase. “And remember, always buy your pastries from De Luca. We’re fresh. We’re discreet. We have the best sweets in New Rio.”
They did the same thing every morning, which was okay with Nesi. She hadn’t even bothered to pack Mr. Yan’s order away with the rest of the little white bags since her first week on the job, three years ago. He may be predictable, but predictable made running pastries easier.
“Thanks Mister!” she said and dragged herself off down a narrow alley, the opposite way of all her scheduled deliveries. She wished she could follow her normal route – after all, she rarely got into any trouble that way. But orders were orders and if she came home without the vanilla beans again, Uncle Toni would give her route to Anya and she’d have to spend another two years drumming up new customers.
She’d made it down the couple of stone stairs and a single step into the marketplace before bumping into another shopper.
“Watch out you little malcriada,” an old lady hissed, shaking a wrinkled fist in Nesi’s face.
She ducked away quickly to avoid getting whacked. “Desculpe,” she called over her shoulder, but a sea of people had already separated them.
Stupid Uncle Toni.
Mornings were the worst time to come to the market – full of tiny, hunched Asian ladies like that old crone, young bottle-blonde women with brown eyed babies strapped to their chests, half-rusted androids overloaded by goods, and olive skinned errand runners like her ducking and darting through the crowd. And they were all haggling over whatever goods they’d chosen, scanning credits, trying to pack too much into their too small totes.
Even if this went well, which she still doubted, it would take her forever just to get through all of these people. Hopefully, her customers would wait for her and wouldn’t buy sweets from any of the other runners.
“Hey kid!” someone shouted behind her.
She turned, her best salesgirl smile on her face, expecting someone to have recognized her uniform – green pants, white shirt with the De Luca family’s emblem on the chest, red cap – and wanted to place a quick order. It would be odd to buy from her in the middle of the market, but it happened sometimes. She wouldn’t turn away the business.
But when she turned, she couldn’t see around the people closest to her. Who had yelled? She shrugged and turned back toward the merchant stalls. There was a lot of shouting in the crowded market. If there was no business to be had, she needed to just keep fording through people. Get to Rohit Rangan. Buy his vanilla beans.
Then a warning ‘EEP!’ from the mutt sensor in the cap screeched in her ear. Incoming trouble.
She looked back again in the direction of the voice and locked eyes with a man in a dark blue uniform. A copper. Puts!
She heard a harsh, mechanical bark. She jumped, clicking her heels together to turn on her HoverSneaks. She had to get away, quick.
She hadn’t seen the mutts, but she knew they must be with the coppers. Even when faulty, the warning system in her cap didn’t activate just for the men, and that tinny bark sounded close.
Holding on tight to the straps of her backbag, she zipped forward, fast, aiming for a small gap in the crowd ahead of her. She just hoped all of the old biddies wouldn’t leave the same sort of gap between her and the law.
“I’m sorry!” she called out when she careened into a particularly frail looking lady. The lady’s middle-aged son glared at Nesi over his mother’s head. She covered the family emblem on her chest with her hand and tried to just keep moving forward.
Stupid Uncle Toni.
If she could just keep ahead of the coppers, she would be okay. The mutts could have caught her easily, but after that incident in the northwest market last month, laws changed. Now they had to be kept on a short eLeash.
A Único rolled on its rusty single wheel into her escape route, cutting her off. Its little plastic back basket, full to the brim with the harvest’s best root vegetables and mangoes, was rigged on with tape and wires.
Nesi grabbed its slim polyvinyl shoulders and pushed the little android from behind.
“Oh my!” its tiny metallic voice squeaked, no doubt shocked by its sudden burst of speed. It probably hadn’t moved that fast in ten years.
She shoved it gently to the side, out of her path, so she could squeeze past. That model was notorious for tipping over when jostled and the last thing Nesi needed was to be tripping over cassava, yams, and Mallika.
The mutts’ hollow barks sounded closer. She looked at the roofs of the buildings surrounding the square. The vanilla beans would wait for another day, another time. She needed to get out of the market, now. If only the Sneaks could make her fly.
The coppers she could handle. Even if they caught her, they would just throw her in a cell overnight with the other runners, try to charge her with selling illegal goods, and so what? She was a kid according to the law – still not fifteen. They’d let her and any cellmates go within twenty-four hours.
But if the mutts got a hold of you, they were known for never letting go until you were broken and bleeding. And most of the time, they didn’t care if you were a legitimate delivery boy carrying French loaves or someone like her, with much less legitimate product.
She angled her body to move faster through the crowd, wishing she could scream at everyone to just get out of her way. But that would do her no good, just give the coppers a more specific point in the crowd to convey on.
“Walnuts today, Nesi!” Mac, the nut seller, yelled when she whizzed past his stall.
“I think I’ll come back later!” she called back, making the big man laugh loudly.
“Little runners need to wrap their stashes better so the mutts can’t detect them!” he called at her retreating back, laughing and laughing. His booming chuckles carried across the entire square.
Best thing about ol’ Mac – he was loud. Thank God.
Market browsers of all ages now noticed her in her delivery uniform, full pack strapped to her back, trying to escape from the two coppers and their slobbering electro-mutts. And once they noticed her, they began to make a way for her, whispering quick encouragements before filling in behind her.
One thing that was always certain about the residents of New Rio: they would help Nesi however they could to keep her goods out of the hands of the law. Sugar had been an illegal substance before even ancient Nonna was born, but that hadn’t stopped people from consuming it.
“Make a way!” she heard one of the coppers say.
“Move!” the other one yelled, followed by swearing.
Soon enough, she reached the old sandstone steps that led out of the market square. She turned to be sure she had made a clear escape and saw her pursuers in the middle of the courtyard, pressed in a sea of bodies. It looked like the shoppers closest to them were talking – playing the role of concerned citizens. But maybe it wasn’t an act – it wasn’t very often a citizen caught a copper by his ear. Maybe they were asking for aid to catch the thief of a stolen watch or complaining about the state of the trash collecting robots.
Both coppers looked out above the heads of the crowd at Nesi, who was easy to spot hovering just above a step in the middle of the colorful, tiled stairway. She smiled and gave a little wave, kicked off the hover feature to save the battery and landed with a little puff of dirt.
She turned and left the scene, saying a quick prayer of thanks. They would never find her in the winding labyrinth of streets that was New Rio, even with the mutts. Runners knew the streets better than anyone, Nesi better than most runners.
She was hot, dusty and relieved. She had made it, at least. Without the vanilla beans, but she’d check again at the end of the day. And if Rohi
t Rangan was closed, then stupid Uncle Toni could come down tomorrow morning and fetch them himself. Her job was running pastries, not errands.
Now on to the day’s deliveries.
Hours later, Nesi trudged back into the market. It had been a long day walking her way around the city, hot in the autumn sun. After the morning’s incident, she hadn’t even been able to hover. Her Sneaks were almost out of juice. At least she’d been successful – only two small bags of product left. Perfect.
She made her way over to Mac’s stall just in time. He was packing up for the night.
“Hey Mac, wanna do some business?” she called out when she got close.
He glanced over a thick shoulder and smiled. “Hey little Nesi! Nice flying today.” He set down a crate of black walnuts and came over to other side of the rickety table he called a counter.
She grinned and with a flourish of her hand, bowed to the big man. “I do what I can, sir, to entertain the masses.”
He laughed hard at the little joke, slapping his thigh. His face turned a bright cherry red. Mac always laughed too loud and too hard and too long. Eventually, he calmed down enough to say, “So you want to do some business, little lady? Finished up your delivery boy tasks for the day?”
“That I have.”
“Got a list for me?”
She glanced around the square, craning her neck to see if old Rohit Rangan was still around, but the spice seller’s shop was closed up tight for the night. Uncle Toni wouldn’t have his vanilla for the night’s baking then. He’d have to come down himself to get his precious beans.
The whole place was nearly deserted, totally empty of other customers with only a few vendors packing up their little shops.
“Pecans, almond flour, and a whole bag of those walnuts from the US,” Nesi said.
“You want shelled or unshelled?”
She sighed. “Unshelled if they’re cheaper.”
He chuckled. “They always are, Ness.”
