Child of a Rainless Year (54 page)

Authors: Jane Lindskold

BOOK: Child of a Rainless Year

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They only nod and we stand and watch the trarffic hiss by. Rain has fallen recently and the streets are still wet. Evening darkness is filling in the gaps left by the parting clouds. Here and there, automatic lights flicker on.

Ali holds Francis by the arm. The other man has retreated into a depression more paralyzing than any of the drugs he has taken in the past.

“See ya, Sarah,” Ali says. “We’re off.”

He shepherds his friend off, muttering confidently. Neither spares a glance for me.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” I whisper after.

Looking around, I find myself alone and for the first time in memory there is no one to tell me what to do or where to go. The doors of the Home are locked behind me.

Staring out into the darkness, I start to cry.

For many hours I wander the dark, wet streets, comforted only by Betwixt and Between’s witticisms. At last, hungry and wet, even the little dragons fall silent, and I huddle disheartened in a doorway. The cold metal security bars press against my back and the damp pavement seeps through the soles of my shoes and the seat of my pants. Still, I am tired enough that I drowse.

In my dreams, I hear chattering voices. Only when they persist and grow shriller do I begin to suspect that I am not dreaming. Reluctant to relinquish sleep’s shelter, I open one eye. Quickly, I open the other, for I cannot believe what is before me.

A girl crouches on the sidewalk, her head level with mine. Her hair is shaved short and dyed flaming orange; her lips are iridescent blue. She wears tight pants of bright purple leather and a short cape of the same material. When she leans forward to prod me again, her long, silver earrings jingle and I see that she is not wearing a shirt—instead a wolf’s head tattoo peers out from between her small, round breasts.

I stare at this harlequin, so amazed that I forget to be afraid. Her blue lips curl in a smile both innocent and merry.

“Hey,” she says. “What’s your name?”

“Sarah.”

“I’m Abalone.”

She looks as if she expects me to question this. When I don’t she goes on, “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new on the streets?”

Confused, I can only shrug.

She tries again. “Is this your home?”

I shrug again. “The foxes have their holes and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.”

Abalone grimaces. “You’re not a preacher, are you?”

I shake my head.

“Wolf’s Heart!” she exclaims suddenly, touching her tattoo. “I’ve got it! You’re from the nuthouse, aren’t you?”

I tilt my head inquiringly.

“The Home, right?” Abalone’s glee is apparent.

“Yes,” I say, happy to please this merry miss.

“Great! Beer and pizza for me,” she says, leaping to her feet. “And Head Wolf will be proud of me. Come on?”

I hesitate.

“C’mon, you don’t want to sleep in the rain, do you?” she asks, putting out her hand to draw me up.

I am familiar with following other’s commands. Taking her hand, I get to my feet. Abalone is shorter than I am. I wonder how old she is. From their place in my travel bag, Betwixt and Between study Abalone.

“What a piece of work is man!” Betwixt chortles.

Between hisses. “She said beer and pizza. It’s better than being cold, wet, and starving.”

I let my guide hustle me away. As she takes me down side streets and alleys, I quickly lose whatever bearings I had. Finally, she pauses before a dark, narrow concrete arch.

When she has unlatched a door, she looks up at me, her face somber. “Walk where I do; step as I do. Do you understand?”

I nod.

She slips through the arch and I follow. The building is empty, the interior dimly lit from a streetlight outside that shines through a broken window. I follow Abalone, matching her step for step as she walks directly down the center of the room. A few steps before the center, she makes an abrupt right turn and continues in a straight line.

Now that we are deeper in, I can see that the floor is cracked and worn. There are many holes from which the bitter mustiness of dampness wafts up. A misstep would land me in the pit, followed by a shower of concrete.

Abalone leads the way through several more turns in this markless maze until we come to an apparently blank wall. Now she finds her grin again and pushes aside a heavy canvas curtain. I gasp—it is so perfectly painted that I must touch it to reassure myself that she has not somehow transformed stone so that it will bend.

“Head Wolf made it,” she says, again with the touch between her breasts. “He calls it tromp le eye.”

She gestures me past her and I step onto a narrow platform that extends over Chaos. Abalone is beside me in a moment and she gestures down.

“That’s the Jungle—Welcome home!”

I cannot move. I cannot speak. I can only look down and, as I do, the colors resolve themselves into shapes and people.

Abalone has brought me to a great cylindrical room made all of metal welded along lumpy seams. Electric lights ring the middle heights, illuminating all but the highest curve.

There are holes scattered randomly and some of these are patched. Others lead to wooden platforms like the one on which we perch. Ladders of rope and wood and metal cling more or less firmly to the sides. Heavy ropes and cables web the cylinder’s heights. From some of these, hammocks are suspended, with people asleep in them or swinging gently back and forth.

On the ground level more people mill. Some are eating; others are singing around a small camp stove. Along one edge, a three-quarters-naked couple wrestle, oblivious to the action around them. I guess that there must be three or four dozen people within the cylinder and that most are adolescents.

To one side, with a cleared area around it, is a small domed tent, beautifully painted with lush jungle foliage and bright, impossible flowers.

Abalone tugs me and half leads, half drags me to the nearest ladder. Knees shaking, I follow her to the floor. She does not pause to praise me, but simply walks directly toward the painted tent.

Overwhelmed, I clutch my travel bag and, with my eyes downcast, walk behind Abalone. Even so, I see little things that tease my curiosity: an ebony recorder with the loving polish of hundreds of hands, a worn doll, a pair of new shoes with the tag still on them, again and again, the wolf emblem. I hear soft comments as we thread our way to the tent, but no one addresses us directly. Sometimes, only Abalone’s strut tells me that we are the center of many eyes.

We halt before the tent and Abalone motions for me to keep silent.

Then she squares her shoulders, thrusts out her little breasts, and proclaims: “We be of one blood, ye and I!”

Her words have barely been completed when the tent’s doorflaps open and a young man walks out. He is dark-haired and dark-eyed, with brown skin and fine features like those of a Hindu doctor at the Home. He wears nothing but a loosely wrapped bit of cloth around his slender hips. His skin is lightly beaded with sweat and I smell clean, male musk.

He is trailed out by a petulant-looking girl with pure white hair and slate grey eyes, wearing nothing at all but a wolf tattooed on one buttock. As she walks across to get water from a tap, I see that the wolf chases a doe tattooed on the other buttock.

But this is peripheral, for the man is speaking to Abalone and with his words, chatter and song melt into silence in waves around us.

“What have you brought to me, Abalone?”

“One of the people from the Home. A woman. Her name is Sarah.”

“Sarah,” he tastes my name, “from the Home. What do you have to say for yourself?”

His black eyes meet mine and something like lightning flashes through me.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

CHILD OF A RAINLESS YEAR

Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781429913102

First eBook Edition : February 2011

First edition: May 2005
First mass market edition: June 2006