SC 10158, May 18
Keelan is surrounded by movement and noise. There are creatures everywhere, all moving, all making noise. Something short and furry bounds past. A family of slimy-looking things passes by slowly, each step making a loud squelch. Something small flies past, too fast to be seen, and creates a massive buzzing sound for just a moment. Maybe it's a tiny flying animal, or maybe it's a tiny flying person. Something large and scaly with four legs like tree trunks lumbers down the center of the street with furry bundles on its back, and Keelan is jostled by all the smaller things getting out of its way.
The buildings are large, so most of the large things can get in, and they are made of a patchwork of metal, marble, granite, and brick. There are grooved paths carved into the walls of the buildings so that the tiny creatures can walk about with less fear of being stepped on. The paths are lined with stalls, booths, or small fenced areas, and creatures stop at these to exchange items.
This must be what it would be like to be shrunken down and placed in a termite hive, if none of the termites looked anything alike. This isn't the right world after all.
Keelan remembers being the largest thing around and how uncomfortable that was and how much nicer it was than all of this. This is all very fascinating, but it's getting to be a bit much, and this would be a good time to go home. This isn't the right world.
Fritaki is nowhere to be seen.
Some sunlight glints off someone's metallic headpiece and stabs Keelan in the eyes.
Home. Home. Maybe "home" is too much to ask for, but surely this strange land has a few dim quiet places where one could rest. Surely. Somewhere.
As she walks and searches, Keelan puts the collar of her shirt into her mouth so she has something to chew on. After a few minutes of noise and light and jostling, it's not enough anymore and she gnaws on her right hand.
High places have always been kinder to Keelan, so she is pleased to see a tower in the middle of a seething plaza. It must be as tall as ten houses. She runs up the stairs until she reaches a door about a third of the way up, and then she climbs. The doors and windows are surrounded by ledges her fingers and toes can grab and occasionally some decorative trim or misaligned brick fills in the rest of her path.
At one point she stops to rest at a balcony, but the door into the building is open wide and there are creatures--people?--in there. Between the people and the wind, there is no peace here. One of the people inside looks at Keelan, and she decides to hurry onward.
As she pulls herself over the top edge of the roof, she sees a fountain and several more creatures. Most of them look like they can fly, but a few probably climbed up here, or were carried. Some of them look at Keelan briefly, but they go back to what they were doing. Some are making sounds at each other, some are eating, some are splashing in the fountain, some of them are lounging on carpets, some of them are hanging from ropes, and some are chasing each other around.
The fountain is alluring and it would be nice to touch the water, but there are already people around it. There is no room for Keelan. So Keelan hums, chews her hand, and stands where she is, looking at the water drops glinting in the sunlight.
Thump! Something like a small dog crashes into the back of Keelan's legs, and she falls to her hands and knees on the flagstone. When the world stops spinning, she looks back and sees the thing, which is dog-sized by shaped more like a bat. Previously three of these creatures were chasing each other, chittering and squealing, but now they approach Keelan slowly and chitter in a softer tone. Chirp chirp squeak. Keelan does not understand it. The one that bumped her reaches forth with a winged appendage, and she tries to pull away but she is too slow--PAIN!!--It pats the sensitive part of her foot.
"YAAAAAHHH!!" Keelan lashes out with her voice. It's the only thing her voice is good for. The bat-things scatter, jumping off the side of the building and peering at her from where they cling to the edge. Keelan stumbles to her feet, and other creatures try to approach--a larger bat-thing, something like a large raven, a bipedal cat--but she roars at them too so they back away.
Everyone is at a distance now, but they are all looking at her. They are on all sides of her. Why do they need to look at her? It's not unreasonable to yell when in pain. Why do they have to make such a big deal about it? Keelan roars some more, in protest. Some of them make sounds at each other, quietly. They don't take their eyes away from her.
She wants to leave. She stumbles when she takes a step backwards--BUMP! Falling! COLD! PAIN! After a moment of dizziness, Keelan realizes she has landed in the fountain. It's only a few inches deep, so she gives up and lays down. It's too cold, but getting out now will only make her colder. Once her ears are submerged, the water muffles all the noise. The top half of her body is behind the curtain of falling water, so she likes to imagine the spectators can no longer see her. She stares at the water and hums a single note.
In time, things get quieter.
Her feet are still hanging out of the fountain, and something touches one of them. She pulls them toward herself and shuffles into a sitting position, ready to defend against this new attack. There are shapes moving beyond the falling water. A person puts his forearm into the stream to make a window through which he looks at Keelan. It's a human, an adult with a beard.
It takes a few moments for Keelan to realize she can mostly understand his speech. It's not quite like the speech she's used to hearing. "Hey, kid, are you okay?" he's saying. "Are you hurt?" Keelan gapes at him. "Come out here."
Keelan frowns and curls up defensively.
"Come on," says the man. "If you cooperate, I'll give you some candy."
Keelan is actually quite hungry. Perhaps it's worth the trouble.
Somehow the man knows her thoughts. "Aha, I thought you'd be interested." He backs off and lets the curtain of water close.
Keelan crawls out cautiously. Everyone who was here before is gone now, and Keelan would be alone if not for the man and one other person. The other person looks a bit like an ermine or weasel but stands on two legs and is four feet tall. Its neck and torso look too long for the length of its arms and legs, but its fur looks soft and fluffy. More importantly, both the man and the ermine-person are wearing a blue coat with a badge on the breast that's adorned with an eight-pointed star.
Fritaki pointed out that eight-pointed star when they came into the city together. It was the symbol of the Peacekeepers. The Peacekeepers are in charge of making sure things remain peaceful in the city. They get rid of problems. Keelan has not been very peaceful.
But the man taps the edge of the fountain with his foot. "Sit here and we'll patch you up while you eat this." Keelin moves into position and stares at the lollipop the man brings out of his satchel. "My name is Eric, and this is my partner Zureen."
The ermine is named Zureen and says, "Hello, good traveler," at Keelan. Its face does something that might be a smile. It has a lot of teeth.
Keelan lifts her hand to give a half-hearted wave.
"What's your name?" Eric asks.
Keelan sighs. There is a sound which represents her, but she has never been able to make that sound. Eric gives her the lollipop anyway. The iridescent green wrapper seems to be made of a fragile material, so she removes it with all the care and precision she can manage. After putting the candy in her mouth, she flattens the wrapper across her thigh. Only then does she give her right hand up to Zureen. Zureen's own hands are a bit paw-like, with long claw-like nails that have blunt tips. The nails are blue with yellow markings, probably painted.
"It seems that something has bitten you," Zureen remarks. Her dark eyes glance back and forth between the bite marks and Keelan's mouth. "I wonder if you bit yourself." Everyone always thinks it's weird when Keelan bites herself. Apparently the giant talking weasel is no exception.
As Zureen prepares to bandage her, Eric settles into a crouch and looks at Keelan. Keelan looks at the carpet on the ground next to him. "You seem a bit dazed." He holds up three fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Keelan holds up three fingers with her left hand. She flinches at the stinging sensation from some medicine Zureen dabs on her. She imagines herself being pushed a little deeper into a dark pit.
"You seem to be a human," says Zureen. "I wonder why you don't speak." Everyone wonders why Keelan doesn't speak, even Keelan. Zureen turns her gaze to Eric when Keelan doesn't respond.
Eric shrugs.
"Perhaps it's too young to know how to speak yet."
"No, he's got to be like eight or nine years old," said Eric. "Kids learn how to speak long before that. I'm guessing he's sick or scared, or maybe just feeling stubborn." Those are some of the nicer hypotheses anyone's ever had about Keelan. He didn't even seem offended at the idea that Keelan might be staying silent out of stubbornness.
Zureen releases Keelan's hand. "I wonder if you have any other injuries!"
Keelan shakes her head to say no. Her head hurts, and the shaking makes it worse, so she feels like she falls deeper. Eric and Zureen back away and stand up.
"So, do you know where your parents are?" Eric asks. "Or how you got here?"
Keelan's parents are on a wooded highway in another world, and she got here because a fairy convinced her she could ride to a better world on the back of a giant squirrel-dragon. She snorts as she tries to imagine explaining such a thing. Even someone who could speak would have trouble.
"Well," Eric draws the word out while he thinks. "I guess you should come down to the station with us. Someone's bound to be looking for you."
Keelan takes hold of the candy wrapper and stands up to follow them. Eric seems to notice the way she walks on her toes, but he doesn't say anything about it. Zureen opens a trap door in the roof, and they all go down the stairs. The inside of the building is dim compared to the outside, but there are flickering lanterns. After a short walk down the stairs, they come to a brighter room, and there are a few more creatures around. Some of them look at Keelan. Keelan looks at the lanterns.
Eric leads them to a platform and says something to the little frog-man who is standing there. The frog-man operates a lever--the floor falls. Keelan grabs Zureen for balance.
Zureen makes a sound that might be laughter. "You can be at peace, traveler. It's an elevator." Keelan stands back and lets go of her--or tries to. One of her hands keep petting Zureen's furry head, all on its own. Zureen is so soft. Just as Keelan gets used to the downward motion, the frog-man reaches for the lever again, and Zureen says, "There will be a lurch as it stops."
There is a lurch as it stops. Even with Zureen's warning, Keelan's throat clenches and she feels herself fall deeper into the pit in her mind.
They seem to be on the ground level of the building now. As they pass through the main entrance, Eric stops to speak to a bird person who is standing there. Keelan tries to concentrate on what they say, but she can't understand it.
"It seems you're not patronizing this inn," said Zureen. "Someone saw you climb the outside of the building. I didn't think humans could climb so well."
Humans usually can't climb so well, but Keelan can. The next breath she takes feels better than most breaths.
They walk to the far edge of the plaza surrounding the tall building. Only when Eric starts opening one of the doors does Keelan realize that the Peacekeeper station is crammed inconspicuously between other establishments. There is a bell hanging on the door that rings when they come in, and the sound makes the muscle in her neck get tighter for a moment.
The inside of the building is plain and prim. There are lanterns lit to make up for the dimming sunlight from the windows. There is a counter dividing the room in half, and there is a crow perched at the counter, writing something with a piece of graphite stuck to its beak. Keelan has never seen crows do that, but otherwise, it seems to be a perfectly normal crow.
The door chime rings again as the door closes. It makes part of Keelan's face twitch.
The crow looks up at them. It takes the graphite off its beak using its foot and says, "Oh, good, you found our injured child. What happened to the troublemaker?"
Keelan has never witnessed crows speaking like that either. In her imagination, her mother is standing next to her, pointing at the crow, saying, "Look, even that bird can speak--so why can't you?"
Eric says, "I think he probably is the troublemaker." He takes some papers from a tray on the counter and leafs through them. "Any reports of a missing boy? He's a bit young to be traveling by himself, but we haven't been able to get anything out of him. I guess he can't speak."
"Well, his voice seems to work fine," the crow comments. Keelan has been humming a single note this whole time. "But no, nothing so far."
Keelan wonders whether Fritaki would report her missing at all, whether she would specify that Keelan is a girl, and whether that would cause any problems, but Zureen pipes up with, "It smells like a woman."
"Really?" Eric asks of Keelan. "Are you actually a girl?"
Keelan raises an eyebrow at Eric and hopes that he senses her disapproval. Is Keelan actually a girl? She's not sure of the correct answer. According to her mother and father, Keelan is supposed to be a girl but has failed horribly thus far. Besides all that, Eric has already noted that Keelan doesn't speak.
"No missing girls either, or children of any kind," said the crow. He looks at Zureen, "But it looks like you made a new friend."
Zureen is soft. Her thick fur squishes nicely between Keelan's fingers. "The young ones often want to pet me. At least this one isn't slimy."
Keelan supposes she should try to write something. Her parents were always mad when she tried to write when they wanted her to speak, but she looks at the crow and make a gesture to mime writing on her hand.
The crow looks at her, so she makes the gesture again. "Oh, oh!" The crow reaches for a sheet of blank paper with his beak and lays it out on the counter for her. He shuffles through a collection of tools and retrieves a graphite-tipped stick suited for human hands. "Here you go!"
Every scrape of the graphite against the paper makes Keelan's teeth itch and sends her a little further into the dark pit, but she writes, "I am looking for my friend who is a fery named Fritaki." Delyth never taught her how to spell "acquaintance" or "fairy" or Fritaki's name, so this will have to do. She tries to sketch a likeness of Fritaki, mostly just to clarify that Fritaki is a fairy. After some consideration, she adds, "I live in Altaria. I can't speak. I don't know what to do. I would appreciate any assistance you can offer."
At first none of them can read what she wrote. Since Delyth taught her well, they're surely just being difficult. Keelan sits on one of the chairs at the counter and pets Zureen roughly while Eric and the crow discuss.
Zureen gestures to a bucket nearby. "This is where you can throw away the trash from your candy." Keelan has been chewing the lollipop stick for a while, so she puts it quietly into the bucket. "It seems that you want to keep the wrapper."
Keelan's heart sinks. Apparently, it was too much to hope that she could keep it. It's so beautiful and colorful that it seems like a shame to throw it away.
But Zureen reads some reports and doesn't say anything else about the wrapper. Maybe she doesn't mind if Keelan keeps it, or maybe she just got distracted. Just in case, Keelan slowly folds it to a smaller size so she can hide it in her hand.
Meanwhile, Eric and the crow are exchanging comments that Altaria uses different letters than they're used to. No one in Altaria has ever heard of Mideas, but apparently the opposite is not true. After a few minutes, they are able to decipher almost the whole message, but the crow brings out some kind of reference sheet to transliterate Fritaki's name.
"So you're looking for a fairy," Eric decides. "Do you know where she is?"
No. Keelan means to shake her head, but since that's uncomfortable, she ends up rotating her whole upper torso.
"Are you staying at a particular inn?"
No.
"Did you have plans to meet each other somewhere?"
No. That would have been a good idea, but Fritaki is impatient and impulsive.
"Do you remember where you got separated?"
No. It was in the middle of a street in the marketplace, but the marketplace is large and has a lot of streets.
"Well, I guess we'll have you stay here for a while until we can find your friend to come get you."
Zureen leads Keelan down a flight of stairs and into a basement hallway lined with closed doors. They pass a few identical doors before they get to the one Zureen unlocks. She lights a candle on a small table, and only then can Keelan see the the room is very small, with nothing but a table, a sturdy cot attached to the wall, and a small window very close to the ceiling.
"You can take a nap on here," said Zureen as she patted the bed. "The toilet is through there." She indicates a smaller door that Keelan hadn't noticed. "I think you want some peace and quiet, but I have to prop this door open or it will lock automatically."
Zureen leaves her alone, and Keelan sits on the bed with crossed legs, curled around a pillow, and rocks back and forth, staring at the flickering candle. It makes her belly feel better when she rocks. After a while, she lays down and shivers under the blanket. The thin beam of light from the open door gets dimmer as the sun goes down.
She stares at the ceiling and thinks about the dark pit in her mind. She doesn't often go this far down, but there have been a few times. She is sure there isn't a bottom and she'll just get progressively unhappier as she's pushed down and down. She is floating out of it now, slowly but surely. With every passing minute, it becomes easier to breathe.
This is the most peace she's had in a long time. Eric, Zureen, and the crow have been nice to her. The bed is firm and the blanket is soft. But what will happen if Fritaki never finds her? Will the Peacekeepers make her leave? How will she obtain food? Is it even possible to go home? Where will she live? She tries to ignore those things for now. This is cot is an island in a sea of problems. She pets the blanket. It would be nice if the blanket felt like Zureen. She is finally able to close her eyes.
"Thulile! Thulile!" This is Fritaki's voice shouting the word that Fritaki calls her. She can hear and feel the buzz of fairy wings near her face.
Keelan tries to open her eyes. Only one eye opens because the other is stuck. Fritaki's form fills Keelan's vision, silhouetted by the glow of her own wings.
"Omagoodness, where have you been?!" Her voice is high-pitched. "I was so worried about you!" Fritaki clasps her hands on Keelan's cheeks.
Thwap! Keelan's hand smacks Fritaki away, acting all on its own somehow.
"Right, right." Fritaki hovered a bit farther away and spoke a bit more softly. "From what the Peacekeepers said, it sounds like you turned wild again."
Keelan blinked enough for her other eye to open. Last time Fritaki had used that term was when Keelan had been overwhelmed and had to yell and thrash. She supposes it's what happened on the roof.
"Last time this happened, you had to sleep for a long time," Fritaki continues, "so I was able to talk the Peacekeepers into letting you stay here for a few more hours while I go find us a place to stay. Does that sound good to you?"
Keelan supposes she should nod. She blinks instead.
"Good, good." Fritaki stands on the bed and points a finger at Keelan. "Now! I need to you try to avoid causing trouble for the Peacekeepers while you're here. Best if you just sleep the whole time, but at least don't make a mess or attack anyone. They're a government agency, not a charity, and if you make trouble, they'll find all sorts of ways to raise the fee I have to pay for your room and board." Fritaki put her hands on her hips and stood as straight and tall as possible, reaching a full height of eight inches. "Understand? Good!"
Keelan is glad she understood, because Fritaki is gone almost instantly. As she flies out, Zureen walks in, and delivers a tray to Keelan's table. She smiles and waves a paw, but she leaves without saying anything. Zureen is so nice.
The tray has a cup of water, a cup of beef-and-potato soup, a piece of bread, and five pieces of candy. Each candy has a different wrapper. Keelan unwraps the candies. She can't see them clearly in the dim light, but it seems they all have a fanciful pattern or color. She lays the full collection of six wrappers out flat on the edge of the table, lined up in order by size. It's beautiful.
Could it be? Maybe this is the right world after all.
Or at least, maybe it's a better world.
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