by Daryl Banner
And what’s the world without dancing?
Lionis is reading in his favorite tree out back. Ellena leans against it, drops to the ground to rest. “You missed dessert,” says Lionis from above. “I know,” murmurs Ellena, grimacing. So in love with his books, she wonders if he’ll ever meet a smart girl like him. Indeed, will any of her boys give her grandchildren at this rate? All of them are gone or going … but not Lionis, never him.
Wincing only a little, she cuddles the tree like she might her son, were he not so high up. She’ll be a mom to him in moments, at least … these good moments she’ll be the truest mother there ever was.
0011 Kid
She’s long since finished with the length of bread she stole an hour ago, and still can’t figure out why the boy isn’t moving.
He’s just lying there. She watches him through the window, studying the rise and fall of his chest. Well, he’s breathing, so he isn’t dead. Occasionally he’ll roll to one side or the other. This happens every night.
Maybe he just pretends to sleep, like the Ancients. Maybe he’s just bored with the long night hours. She should try it too. Curling up against the windowpane, her feet taking place in the flat shingles of the little piece of roof, she copies him, leans her face into the glass just enough where a simple opening of her lids reveals him to her. She closes her eyes.
Opens them, he’s still there.
She closes them again.
Somewhere in the darkness behind her eyelids, she sees her dad at the door. “Hide,” he tells her—or maybe it was something else. His last words—or word—are a bit foggy. It frustrates her so much, how that last memory of her dad is slipping away. “Hide.” Maybe he said her name too, her real name … He called her something other than Kid.
She opens her eyes, then bolts up, startled.
The boy has risen, standing in front of the window. With great and careful slowness, he opens it, and she scuttles to the side to avoid him—of course he can’t see her anyway, but still she moves. The boy steps through, feet finding purchase, then crawls to the far edge, swinging his legs over, and drops.
Why not use the door? Kid shrugs, wipes her nose and follows with a quickness. The boy’s making way down the street and she has to keep up. She’s seen where the younger boy goes—the liar—and she sees where the older brother goes—to the libraries near and far—but never gave as much attention to this one. He ascends the metal stairs to the train station which annoys her; she hates trains. The way they smell, the crowdedness … Even with the Legacy of invisibility, it’s tough to hide in crowds without getting bumped into and discovered.
In the calm people-packed carriage, a woman with bluish-grey hair looks the other way, a bag on the ground by her booted feet. This did not go unnoticed by Kid. And when the woman leaves at the next stop, her purse is exactly one bag of breadsticks lighter than it was.
So easy people are.
Kid follows the pretend-sleeping boy off the train and down the most delicious-smelling street she’d ever before walked. How has this existed and in all her years of exploring never been found? The boy slips into the mouth of a building, and so does she.
The sweet aroma inside nearly topples her. The bag of breadsticks drops from her hand, forgotten, and she leans into the counter where a tall grey-haired man stirs a kettle of warm brown colors and bright, squiggly noodles. She’d never before heard a more delicious-sounding hiss.
When she turns, sleeping boy is gone, maybe to another room—what if he works here?—but her priorities have taken a most tasty turn. The doors to the back swing open, a lady with long arms bringing out a tray full of steaming bowls to a table of hairy men who talk too loud. Kid hurries through the swingers and the first thing she finds is a huge barrel twice the size of her body. Within, a bottomless pit of curly, steaming, edible treasure.
Without due politeness, she stuffs face.
What draws her out of the kitchen are the words being shared at a squat table just outside the door. The participants of the conversation are a thick, quiet girl with coppery skin and a too-skinny man with matted hair that indelicately hides his ears or any indication of a neck. If there’s anything Kid’s become quite skilled at, it’s being observant, and the two chatterboxes are stirring up wind about some rumored danger on the streets. This sort of talk is important for Kid, being a resident of said streets.
“I wouldn’t take warnings lightly,” says the skinny man, “and I don’t think your brother or anyone else upstairs for that matter should either.”
“What kind of weapon, exactly?”
He leans across the table so he can talk quieter. Of course, Kid standing right next to them unseen and hears it all anyway. “Something Sanctum-borne. A real power piece, that’s what I’m told. And I don’t think we should make hide at it, Cinth, really, I think it’s an opportunity.”
She screws up her face. “You think we should—?”
“Yes.” He itches his scalp, dandruff floating like snow to his shoulders. “We need to claim it for ourselves. Find it.”
“A weapon … from Sanctum?” She laughs almost shyly. “I’d like to see Rone’s face when—”
“Don’t tell him yet. You know how he gets.”
“Oh. I know how he gets.”
The two of them look away, and for one eerie moment, Kid feels like they’re staring right at her. She slowly backs into a chair at the table near them, careful not to disturb its positioning and draw noise.
“So I’m making progress,” the skinny man murmurs longingly, “on my mapping project. I know it is so far from completion, but one day, I’ll have the whole of Atlas on a map, whether Sanctum likes it or not.”
“You would never find paper big enough.” The girl smiles, takes a sip of her—something.
“Well, it’s never been done. I could be the first.”
“I’d love to see how you manage mapping the lost ward.” She chuckles again, shyly, hollowly. “Dead and uninhabitable as it’s been for centuries.”
“The whole of the city is a mystery, except for where you live. Imagine,” he breathes, his voice going dreamy, “seeing what first ward and second ward are like. The precise placement of the Lifted City, each of its support sectors. And can’t you see the added advantage of such ambitious mapping? The mystery itself is a weapon that Sanctum uses to keep us in control; our ignorance, our fear of unknown dwellings, corners of the city no soul would dare venture.”
“You sound like a paranoid conspirator.”
“Knowledge is power. Awareness. Without either, we’re just blinded puppets in a box. I will make light of all the dark in the city so that one day nothing goes unseen. I swear you this, Cintha. Those in power will do whatever they can to get away with everything they can.”
“Hey, where’d you come from?”
For one peaceful moment, she doesn’t realize she’s being addressed. Then Kid realizes she’d let herself slip from the realm of unseen things. Her mouth hangs open, speechless and still. How’d she let her Legacy release her in a moment like this, revealing herself to strangers?
“I’m—” starts Kid, her eyes going from the girl to the guy, back and forth.
“I’m Prat,” the guy offers, smiling softly. “Pratganth, for full. What’s your name? You here with your mom?”
“Ya,” the Kid agrees, clinging to the lie this Prat fellow inadvertently gave her. “I’m waiting for my moms.”
When she talks in her sweet voice, people listen, they’ll believe anything. But the ugly one called Cintha presses on: “This part of the city isn’t for people your age, little girl. Where’s your mommy?”
Kid looks from one to the other. There’s no trust, not in a city where everyone she’s met is a liar or a thief, where bakers run her off and scary men with masks break into homes like shadows … the masked ones who took her daddy from her, who took her mommy, her house … her everything and everyone.
“Dead,” says Kid.
Then she dashes from
sight and into the kitchen, stealing one last proud handful of curly from the steam bin before she’s out the backdoor, spicy noodles dancing like long invisible necklaces from her tiny fist.
0012 Wick
In the evening sunset that burns through the kitchen window like an angry thought, Lionis is studying at the counter instead of making dinner. There’s a perfectly fine desk in their parent’s room, a cluttered coffee table that could easily be cleared, and countless areas at the library, yet Lionis chooses their kitchen counter. As for what he’s studying, who knows. Not like he has an upcoming test or job interview or anything important at all, ever.
“Lionis, I need to get a knife.” He doesn’t answer at first, which infuriates Wick beyond anything. “Lionis.” Wick is so patient, he really is. He puts up with so much on the daily, and his brother can be so insufferably self-important. “You’re leaning against the drawer. C’mon.”
“Okay,” he answers absently, ever so slowly moving out of the way. Wick yanks it open, the drawer giving Lionis a good and well-deserved punch in the side. Lionis stares at his brother indignantly. “What was that for?”
“I’ll be out back,” Wick replies, pocketing the knife and tramping into the backyard to practice his throwing skills. There’s a lovely nature-made bullseye on Lionis’s favorite tree, and Wick’s aim has improved greatly over the last few days; he’d like to improve it further.
But Lionis can’t leave it alone, following him out back. “What’re you doing to my tree?”
Wick throws. The knife hits dead-on. “Target practice.” He moves to pluck it out of the bark.
“That’s my tree.”
“How’d you reckon that?” Wick asks with deliberate kindness. “Read it in a book, did you? Or you buy this tree with all that money you make doing nothing at all?”
His brother stands between Wick and the tree, not so much in a brave, martyr-like way, but rather as an annoyed, superior being who thinks everyone is dumb and should heed him unquestioningly. This is so like him, acting like a second dad and he has no right.
“Hand it over, Wick.”
Wick lets fly the knife, landing it not an inch above Lionis’s tousled head of hair, nearly giving him a trim. The whites of his brother’s eyes flash with alarm.
“ANWICK!”
The two of them turn. Mom has appeared at the backdoor, her face and clothing spotted in a hundred hues of brown and red from her day’s labor at the muds. Her eyes express the same stony shock as Lionis’s.
“The knife’s yours,” Wick bitterly tells his brother.
“I will not have my boys throwing weapons at each other’s heads!” shouts mom. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Plenty,” answers Wick as he marches back into the house, “according to Lionis and you and dad and anyone else who knows better.”
“Wick …”
He’s gone inside, trudging across the room to drop into a pile of clothes by the couch and sulk. He doesn’t even care how they smell; their foulness can’t touch his. They can act superior all they want. Come nightfall, I’m out of here. Come nightfall, I wake the world.
“Anwick.” That disappointed tone in his mom’s voice at the door, he can’t stand for it, not right now. “Please, Anwick. Apologize to your brother.”
“I owe him no apology.”
“You owe him plenty. If he weren’t here, we’d eat beans from a can every noon and night, you know it.”
“Maybe you should think to take cooking lessons instead of greening at the temple.” Wick glares at a book on the floor, not minding his tone, hands trembling and hot sweat crowding his underarms. “It’d do Lionis some good pushing dirt all day instead of you.”
Lionis has come inside, made his way back to the kitchen. “Forgot to mention,” he says carelessly, “the oven’s not working again. Heat’s cut off. Need a technician, or maybe catch a favor from Tred. Meanwhile, gotta do it the old way.” He picks up a glass casserole and starts focusing, his eyebrows pulling in.
Wick can’t help himself. “You can’t do that.”
Both mom and brother stare at him. “Can’t do what?” mom asks, like she doesn’t know better. It’s so galling how she always takes his side.
“Your Legacy is gonna heat that whole thing up?” asks Wick accusingly, still charged with anger. “Ever heard of foodborne illness? Your hands can’t measure exact temperature, last time I checked. You’ve no idea how hot you’re making our dinner.”
“I used to do it this way before we even had the working oven,” Lionis retorts. “You didn’t complain then, why complain now?”
“Because I know better. If you don’t heat the meat right, you could poison us all. Any idiot knows that.”
Abandoning dinner, Lionis makes a grab of his book and waves it in the air. “Do you even know what I’m researching?—ungrateful, self-absorbed, pity-me Wick? I’m researching Legacies. Specifically, ones like yours. I am searching the science, I am gaining evidence, I am unraveling the very nature and fabric of Legacy. Does that mean anything at all to you? It’s for you!”
Mom makes a sound, and suddenly Lionis realizes what he’s done. Dropping the book at once, Lionis shrieks an unintelligible obscenity. Where once the spine existed, now black remains, charred by his own hand.
His eyes find Wick, his glare as scathing as his palms, blaming him instantly.
“You’re welcome,” says Wick unkindly, abandons the den in silence and, with a foot-stamping trip up the narrow stair and into his tiny room, he slams shut the door, drops to his bed of blankets on the floor and pushes face into pillow. Even the hum of wind from his cracked-open window can’t reach him.
Ever since a certain age, the two brothers never got along. He couldn’t say with confidence what kindled the animosity. Lionis has always acted so superior, the self-declared intellect of the family, and his Legacy isn’t even Mentalist; it’s Morph, hot palms. Wick can recall each and every burn his brother gave him when they played, accidental or otherwise, but doesn’t know which fight set them so against one another. He doubts either of them remember what it was even about.
Later that eve in the bathroom when Wick’s peeled off his shirt to shower, dad appears at the door. Wick can already predict the lecture he’s about to get. Of course he’ll be in the wrong; it’s never Lionis’s fault, not ever.
But his father’s attention is stolen elsewise. “What’s that on your back, son?”
A bruise from training at the Noodle Shop. Wick cringes, forgetting he even had it. He didn’t think Rone’s staff hit hard enough to leave anything—or maybe it was the boxing. “Doesn’t hurt.”
“That isn’t from our night sessions.” Wick can tell his dad is already working gears, math flittering through his glassy stare. “Has your mom seen that?”
“I still have it, don’t I? Obviously she hasn’t seen it.”
“Where’d you get it from, Anwick? Don’t lie to me.”
Clenching his eyes, Wick makes a rash decision. He can’t say it with his eyes open; he might give himself away, his dad’s Legacy having such a cunning way of outsmarting his secrets. “I don’t want to train anymore.”
“Not an option,” his dad says too quickly, as though already sensing his son’s withdrawal. “You have to train. You’re not your brothers, you know it, I know it.”
“Yes, we’ve made that very clear.” Wick’s nerves are already so frayed, body shivering not due to cold. “But I need to sleep … whether you accept it or not.”
“Do you know what I have sacrificed for you?” Oh, that tone, the one that stings of the times when dad actually did put a beat on him, to the face or otherwise.
“Go ahead,” Wick spits, venom through chattering teeth. “Hit me, see what happens. Knock me out and you better hope it puts me to sleep for good, otherwise my knuckles will find your face soon as I wake.”
“Don’t you threaten me, son. I put you before everyone since you wore diapers and cried ‘mommy’ in the night. I risked
the lives of everyone in this household for you … Every tantrum thrown before bedtime! Every Sanctum inquiry dodged, every friend and neighbor and uncle estranged or put off!—all to keep your secret.”
“Why’d you bother? Protecting my secret has made you hate me so much, clearly.”
“I do not hate you, Anwick!—You do not see—”
“Could’ve turned me in at three years old when you realized what I was, been finished with it. Hand me over, score some Sanctum gold—the freak I am, the Outlier.”
“You’re no Outlier and you know it.”
“I don’t know what I am.”
“You’re a Lesser. A vulnerable one who must train.”
“I must sleep—Training can wait …”
“Death will not wait. Weapons find your hand, Anwick—”
“NO WEAPON CAN SAVE ME!” Wick shouts at last, snapping, then slams the door in his dad’s face and screws on the shower. The noise of the drizzling water drowns his last scream, and the weakly-dribbling nozzle sprinkles hot as the tears that will soon burn his cheeks.
His father doesn’t wake him that night.
0013 Ellena
After Anwick’s made it off to school with Link, looking more and more tired with every passing day, she puts herself in the kitchen with Lionis, determined to make her own breakfast. She succeeds in burning her toast and undercooking an otherwise perfect pair of eggs. Lionis offers to make more, but she insists not to waste them, as it’s one of the few proteins they can afford to buy, and eats the runny things and the charred things.
As one makes progress down the long winding road to the Greens, weeds begin to creep out of cracks in the pavement. Tiny white and ochre wildflowers tickling out of concrete, lilac spouts pushing their way through the slab, vines crawling up the walls of otherwise drab buildings … These are the friends that greet her for yet another arduous day’s work in the Greens.
