There was a big circle, a middle-sized one, and the last so small you had to squint to see it.

  “Da, da, da,” said Father Ken, tapping the circles in descending order. “Rheina, rhen, earthen.”

  “Rheina, rhen, earthen!” the class chanted.

  “Top, middle, bottom,” he said.

  “Top, middle, bottom!”

  “I am a servant.”

  “I am a servant!”

  “Born to serve the rhen.”

  “Born to serve the rhen!”

  “Declare your index.”

  “One, three, seven, eighty-six!”

  “Two, two, seven, thirteen!”

  “Three, one, seven, twenty-three!”

  Maselli looked at the digits on the back of his hand and refused to read them out loud. Not everyone was born to serve. Soon the world would know him—not as just another earthen, but as someone worth remembering.

  The bell rang for closing. Chairs scraped, bags swung, and the children headed for the exit.

  “Tomorrow we’ll learn how to kiss the rhen man’s foot properly,” the priest might have said. “Find partners and practice.”

  “How’d you like to kiss my foot, Maselli?” Hanna lifted her dusty boot to his face. He grimaced, and she hurried after him, as always.

  “I don’t have time for games. Franka’s waiting at the gate. He brought me goods from the Farm.”

  “Father,” a telltale cried. “Franka’s back.”

  “Don’t you children go near that boy!” Father Ken shrieked. He shoved Hanna and Maselli aside with both hands, peering outside the classroom. “Where is he?” Yohannes waddled through the crowd at the entrance and pointed toward the gates. Fat Yohannes. Always reporting.

  “You banned Franka from school premises,” Maselli said. “You never said he couldn’t sell through the gates.”

  “Why isn’t he at work?” the priest asked, more curious than angry. “God have mercy on his soul. Maselli, remind me to meet with your parents. We must discuss your brother’s behaviour.” It was a waste of time. His parents had given up on Franka long ago.

  Maselli crossed the schoolyard, headed to his brother. “Don’t tell me you’re giving him your savings again,” Hanna pressed, right on his heels. “He’s stealing from you.”

  “I’ll become an ascender one way or another,” Maselli said. “Why should I not give money to someone willing to help me?”

  She cut in front of him. “Hand over your money. Now.”

  “No.”

  “Give it!” She grabbed at his pocket. “I’m not letting you buy fake drugs again.” Dust rose as they wrestled in circles. Hanna’s bony elbow jabbed his stomach. If you knew Hanna, you’d know her elbow was a spear. The boys were watching and Maselli wasn’t about to lose a fight to a bossy, dirt-brained girl. He yanked her off with all his might and ran to Franka.

  “My favourite customer,” Franka said.

  “What do you have for me?”

  Franka pushed a black bag through the gate. What Maselli fished inside was nothing but a lump of charcoal. “I don’t know, Franka.”

  “Are you doubting me?”

  “Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten what you sold him last time,” Hanna snapped, having returned to Maselli’s side.

  “The bleach was a mistake,” said Franka. “I was going for the serum, but the guards were watching me.”

  “And the leaves that made his butt itch for a week?” Hanna asked.

  “Wrong plant. Right lab, wrong plant,” Franka explained. “But this time’s different.”

  Maselli rolled the lump in his palm. “Doesn’t look like something stolen from a lab.”

  “That’s because it isn’t,” said Hanna. “Why can’t you see he’s duping you?”

  “We’re family,” Maselli said. “What would Franka gain from cheating me?”

  “Exactly,” Franka said. “Forty-three kliqs, please.”

  Maselli dug through his pockets for his crumpled notes, the coins in knotted handkerchiefs and the stack in his socks. He straightened the money and stretched out his hand. Just before Franka grabbed it, Maselli yanked it back, laughing.

  “I’m not stupid!”

  “You aren’t?”

  “You haven’t told me what this is yet,” Maselli said, showing off the lump. “...or how it works.”

  “Oh, right,” Franka said. “That’s astaphite.” Hanna groaned, abandoning Maselli. They watched her go. “She’s just jealous. Once you’re an ascender, she’ll see how foolish she’s been. Eat it—” Maselli opened his mouth. “Stop! Not yet.”

  “When then?”

  “Tonight. During church service. Sneak up to the tower, climb out the window, eat a bit of the stone, and then jump.”

  Maselli blinked. “Why?”

  “Well, you’ve got to prove your worth with these kinds of things. God isn’t going to give powers to some coward, would he?”

  “I guess not.”

  “When you take a bite out of the astaphite and jump, you’ll be proving to God that you are serious, Maselli, serious.” Franka rested his hands on Maselli’s shoulders, locking eyes with his baby brother. “No risk, no reward.”

  On his way home, Maselli walked past the clinic, its windows barred and doors bolted. Dead trees rounded the building, their grey branches twisting over the rooftop. One hop at a time, he stepped across white stones in the shifting black dust. They used to be statues of old politicians.

  “Fly, ascender,” he whispered, clasping his hands and crisscrossing his fingers. The power of ascension filled him. He launched off a stone, streaked through the air, and crashed. He slid into the dirt, seething at his burning knee. It throbbed like hell, but he was fine. No blood. Maselli patted his pocket to check if his astaphite was safe.

  His parents had warned him never to cut through the fenced area. But it was getting late, and they’d be annoyed if he wasn’t home when they returned.

  CAUTION. RADIATION AREA. KEEP OUT, the sign on the worn fence read.

  A sign all his friends ignored. It was just like the BIOHAZARD sign in the laboratories on the other side of the village. They were just for show. He and Hanna wandered in there once to find potions to give him powers. He just got sick in the stomach after drinking some funny-tasting chemicals.

  Behind the fence, there wasn’t much to see. Some loose copper wires dangled from metallic towers with blinking lights on top of them. There was also an entrance to the underground tunnels. He and Hanna knew plenty about what was down there.

  Far off, seven apartment blocks stood side by side. Maselli pushed through the fence and sprinted the rest of the way, the sun beating down. Mates whistled at him from the open, asking him to come over and play. He ducked under drying lines, wondering whether his mum had things hanging he should pick. Hanna might already have done that.

  Maselli ran up the stairs, taking them two at a go until he reached his floor. It was all quiet, as always, until the grown-ups returned from the Farm. He checked his schoolbag for house keys, stopping only when a hum resounded through the village.

  A colossal machine prepared to open a rift in space. The machine was a Ring, a giant metallic… ring, suspended above the ground by two stone pillars. Purple scalene triangles glowed as the Ring hummed louder. The dust floating within it crystallised. Big sisters grabbed their naughty baby siblings running towards the heat waves spat out from the angry machine.

  Space ruptured and a portal unravelled within the Ring.

  Black boots stepped out of the portal into the black dust of Blackwood.

  The grown-ups poured into the village, dispersing toward the apartment blocks. Fathers in grey and brown coats trudged past, their hats hiding their faces. Mothers dusted their skirts with the backs of their hands, baskets heavy in their arms before being handed to the eldest daughters. On every left hand, digits were stamped into skin — a constant reminder of what the earthens were meant for.

  Maselli put on his finest jacket for the evening service. He patted his left pocket, where his stone was nestled. Aron and Mari waited for him in the living room, both of them as fine as him. She’d got on a pleated skirt that came up to her belly, a blouse, and a chequered petty coat over that. His father wore a brown jacket, with brown trousers, looking like a bigger version of Maselli. The faces they wore didn’t match their clothing, however. Not when they were weighed down by all the hard earthen work they did today.

  Aron had no smile for Maselli, unlike Mari, who did. She lay a hand on Maselli’s back. Together they flowed into the stream of neighbours heading to church.

  They didn’t leave the building before his psychic mother noticed he was hiding something from her. “How long are you planning to be carrying that coal around?” she asked, bending her ankle over the next step as if to say she wouldn’t move unless this conversation happened.

  “If you knew what it does, you wouldn’t bother me about it.”

  “All of Blackwood knows what you’re doing with a magic stone, Maselli. Forget Blackwood. The entire UCL knows about my delusional boy.”

  “I’m not delusional.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “But you kind of are.”

  “No one would mock me when my face is on every billboard in the city,” he said. “You’ll be reading about me in church. A year from now, I’ll be High Commander.”

  Uncle Percy put in, “Aron, you must be cursed for something you did. No one could be born with two wayward sons in a row.”

  “My boy is not a deviant, thank you very much,” Mari shot back.

  “There’s the problem,” said Rita, Hanna’s mother. “You’re too soft on him. Our children will join us on the Farm soon enough. Rid him of those fantasies.”

  Mari turned to Aron, but Aron pretended not to hear. The comments came from all around them. Mari bowed her head, giving a polite smile whenever someone else piled on.

  A long black trail of Blackens moved through the thickening fog, most families holding up orange lanterns that gave little light. Their shadows stretched long across the ground, the moon following them from the side. Children pointed at it, whispering about why it was trailing them to the church—until the Ring caught their eyes.

  Hours after the portal had closed, the giant metal circle and its two pillars still hummed. The purple triangles embedded within glowed even hotter in the dark.

  Then they walked past Blackwood Forest. No matter how many times they walked alongside those trees, no matter that it had stood since the day of their birth, the forest always stole their breath. Out of the black soil grew a thousand trees, straight and tall—black trunks, black branches, black leaves. Since its creation, it had been as silent as the rest of the community.

  In commemoration, everyone bowed their heads. Grown-ups covered the talkative children’s mouths. Sometimes when it got quiet, you could hear conversations between the trees. Maselli’s parents believed it was only a trick of the mind, but he liked to think it was something more. The ghost of Frennie perhaps.

  They arrived at the church courtyard and readied themselves for the rites: a minute or two of silence, reflecting on the day and all their sins. Maselli used the moment to study the church itself—its wide base floor, a second story above, and the tower from which he would jump. Franka was nowhere to be seen. It didn’t look like he would show up to witness Maselli’s attempt.

  Rheina, if you love me, you will see how dedicated I am. Please, I’m begging you, make me an ascender.

  “Pray to the Six and not the Seven,” Father Ken intoned.

  “Pray to the Six and not the Seven,” the chant began.

  “Six keep us!”.

  “Six keep us!”

  “Six keep us!”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Six protect us!”

  They got seated behind one of the many pews and already Maselli’s mind danced around with variables. What excuse would raise the least suspicion? What time should the excuse be given? Was anyone watching him right now? His foot shifted over the floorboard. Maselli’s vigour grew by the hour, and when his patience ran out, he stood up and shifted out of the pew.

  “Where are you off to?” his mother asked.

  “Taking a piss.”

  As he made his way to the back door, no one stopped him or asked where he was headed. He dragged his feet to the rear stairs, half-hoping someone would yell and force him to turn back. Did they actually want him to jump out of a window?

  The first floor was stacked with boxes and crates reserved for the holidays. He turned toward the winding staircase that led up to the bell tower. Each step grew heavier than the last.

  He broke off a piece of astaphite and crushed it between his molars. “And here I am,” he said, standing on the windowsill, peering down at the courtyard below.

  “Maselli, my son, you have made me proud,” a voice squeaked. “I will now give you wings to fly!”

  Franka and a few friends burst into laughter. Their twisted shadows climbed along the walls as they revealed themselves from their hiding places.

  “You’ve made me a lot of money tonight,” said Franka. “Maselli would do anything to be an ascender.”

  “I can’t believe he’s still standing there,” one said.

  “Don’t make fun of him,” said Franka. “My brother will be the first earthen ascender.”

  The thing about God is that no one knows the way He works. Fair enough, Franka thought he was pranking Maselli, but it wasn’t so. This was all part of God’s test.

  “Maselli, why are you still standing there? Fine, you got me. I’m terrified that you might jump. Get down and let’s go home.”

  “No risk, no reward,” croaked Maselli.

  “Jump and you die, you idiot,” said Franka. “It’s coal.”

  “I’ve tried everything,” said Maselli. “This is the only way.”

  The boys rushed forward.

  “Stay back! I brought myself here. Nobody gets to take this away from me.”

  Father Ken and half the congregation gathered out the window, looking up at him from the courtyard. “Boy, are you possessed?” the priest yelled. “Get down from there!”

  It was all part of the test. He gift was ready. He just had to jump.

  “Maselli.” Mari.

  She wept as though Maselli had already died. A quarrel broke out below—Franka’s friends in the hot seat, fumbling to explain what had led to this. Emotions flared all around, circling one man in the room who remained still as a mountain: his father.

  Aron stood with one hand in his trouser pocket, silent. The longer that silence stretched, the smaller God seemed in Maselli’s mind and the larger his father grew.

  “Maselli,” called Aron, and everyone else shut up. “Show me your hand.”

  One finger at a time, he let go of the window frame and raised his hand. Mari rushed forward, but hands grabbed her and yanked her back into the crowd. She screamed and fought, but they dragged her farther until she was carried down the stairs.

  “What is on your hand, Maselli?” asked Aron.

  “Numbers.”

  “Read them,” said Aron. Maselli shook his head. “Read them!”

  “One three seven… forty-seven.”

  The walk home was the longest it had ever been. Franka had vanished, and someone had taken Mari home on the promise that Aron would bring Maselli back. Aron led the way while Maselli stumbled behind, his vision blurred by fog and shame. It didn’t matter. He kept moving his feet forward. If he made it home, fine. If not, who cared?

  “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I feel you should know,” Mari said at bedtime. “When I was carrying you, the doctors told me you were a girl. God had other plans and gave us a boy instead. And anytime I see you doing something like this, I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like if you’d been a daughter instead. Worse? Better? Or would you have been just the way you are? I don’t think it matters all that much because you are what you are, and I have learned to accept that. God gave you to me, and I would very much like to keep you around for as long as I can. Please, I’m begging you, try nothing so foolish again.”

  “How can you call it foolish when no one has ever tried? I could’ve been the first earthen ascender.”

  “You’ve never heard the story about the boy who so badly wanted to be different?”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “He wanted to craft lightning, summon beasts, and command the sun. Born an ascender, he would have become a Gaverian. But the boy was just another miner, and that was what he would be for the rest of his life. One day, he dug up precious astaphite. The boy knew what he should do. Give up the stone to the rhen and carry on with his peaceful life.”

  “But he didn’t. When he crushed the stone in his palm, what happened?”

  “He died,” she said.

  Alone. He was all alone. This village was not his home. He did not belong to this world. The emptiness inside him would keep growing until it devoured him whole.

  Maselli got out of bed, pulled on boots and a coat, fixed a hat over his head, and found an empty bag. He filled it with biscuits and juice boxes from the fridge. An hour passed before he had the courage to step out. He crept down the hall, down the stairs to the lobby, skipping three steps at a time, bracing to bump into a neighbour.

  Out in the open, he set his mind to finding a new home. The winds were colder than before, and in them he heard a whisper, ‘Go home.’ But Maselli had no home. No haunting voice could send him back. The memory of the tower clung to him. The numbers on his hand glimmered black in the moonlight. Just another earthen.

  His fast walk turned into a jog as he neared the forest. Strange voices hissed at him. They said, ‘Tread the night and die, you fool.’ The trees shook their branches, warning him away.

  Blackwood Forest stood at the bottom of the slope. He crouched, inching down, boots digging into the stiff earth. The trees grew taller, shadows stretching wider. The moonlight stopped short of the forest’s edge. Tomorrow they would wake and find him gone for good. They all hated him anyway.

  Desire led his way. When you were this determined, you didn’t need a lantern to find your path through pitch-black dark. He ran about, trying to get lost on purpose. Faster. He broke into a run. Trees blurred by without end. His chest burned, his lungs collapsed, and then he stopped.

  Maselli screamed, kicking the trunk before him. He pounded it with his fists, cursing it with every name he knew. At last, he slid down its side and sat against it, wiping his eyes with the back of his tattooed hand.

  If he had a knife, he’d cut it off. He’d make do with a sharp stone, or a scrap of metal. His eyes searched the ground until something glimmered. His heart skipped. Astaphite? Who cared? It would kill him anyway. Still, curiosity drew him closer. Crawling on all fours, he reached the object.

  Glass.

  A few more shards glittered nearby. More glass. A wick. A lantern. And a body.

  Fear hurled him back against a tree. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wasn’t imagining it. Someone lay face-first in the dirt, one hand reaching out, the other buried beneath. A blue dress. Black hair. Traveling boots.

  Silent as the dead.

  Blue lights flickered all around—blue like the dress the corpse wore. Another body rested beside another lantern. The more lanterns he found, the more bodies he saw lying beside them.

  He should run, he knew, yet he could not move. Those bright lanterns coming from a distance were no longer distant. He sat there for who knows how long, waiting for whatever it was to reach him first.

  Boots cracked twigs. Voices murmured. Women in blue dresses walked past, too far off to notice him.

  On all their faces, nasty black veins. They staggered onward, heading in the direction Maselli deduced was Blackwood. Some stopped and held onto trunks, taking in long breaths before moving on. A lantern crashed, and another body tumbled onto the floor. The body in front of him had the same black veins on the back of her hand. He imagined they covered her body.

  One woman broke away from the rest. Unlike the others, she hid her face behind a mask that covered her eyes and nose but left her full red lips bare. Blue feathers stuck out from each end of the eyeholes. Two others flanked her, holding small bottles filled with glowing pink liquid.

  They turned to the masked woman and spoke in a language Maselli didn’t know. She gave him a long, cold look and waved them on. They lowered their bottles and moved ahead. The masked woman stepped closer. Maselli shrank, curling into himself, nails digging into his shins. She knelt so their faces were level.

  From her belt she drew a vial, its pink liquid swirling with heat. She popped it open, and a warm gas poured out. “Maselli,” she said. “What are you doing in the forest all by yourself?”

  “I’m running away,” he blurted.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t belong.”

  “How so? What makes you different from the rest? I don’t know where you think you’re going, but there is nothing out there for you, I’m afraid. Putting yourself through unnecessary risk won’t change your nature.”

  “I want to be—”

  “Special?”

  She wrapped her fingers around his neck and pulled him closer to her potion. The smell wafted into his head. He floated, eyes growing heavy. As hard as he tried, he could not keep steady. Then he fell forward, right into her arms.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  “I gave you something to help you sleep. You would wake up in bed tomorrow and not remember any of this.”

  She carried him on her back. His arms looped around her neck, his legs clamped to her sides. He yawned, resting his chin on her shoulder.

  “Why assume I won’t run away again?” he mumbled. “I won’t stop until I’m no longer…” His eyes drifted to the numbers tattooed on the back of his hand.

  “People don’t need ascension to do meaningful work.”

  “Who cares if I’m the finest miner the UCL has ever seen? No one will know me.”

  “Recognition is best earned when we don’t chase it,” she said. “Fame isn’t worth the price of becoming what we are. Believe it or not, more ascenders wish they’d been born without their gift. You should be grateful for your lot in life.”

  “What do I have?”

  “Peace,” she said. “Something most ascenders will never know.”

  She stopped and pointed her chin out at someone not far off. Out of the hundreds, it was easy to figure out who the lady was talking about. A child like him. In contrast to their blue, they’d dressed this one in black. He would’ve missed her had it not been for her weird-looking eyes. All rhens have bright, coloured eyes. This girl’s eyes, however, were a fragmented mess of reds and blues and greens and yellows.

  “Who is she?”

  “Someone who has never known peace,” she said. “She is the Living World’s most powerful ascender. We wish on her the dull life of an earthen.”

  The women in blue were everywhere now, sprinkling potions across the village. Maselli heard them upstairs, knocking on doors. No one resisted. Everyone seemed to wait their turn. Hanna and her parents stood by their door, eyes half-closed. He didn’t understand how they’d made the whole village so obedient. Perhaps their mere presence was enough. Even he hadn’t run when they first appeared.

  The only people missing from the crowd were his parents. She reached his door. Too tired to be surprised, his eyes did bulge at the scene in his living room. Not only did Aron and Mari seem fine, but they were having a conversation with the women in blue, two other masked women and with the girl in black.

  The girl who was said to be the world’s most powerful ascender sat on the sofa with her legs dangling. She had her chin pressed against her chest. Her cheeks were bloated as she played with her fingers.

  Under the light, he got a better look at all the women. Black vines covered their pale faces, so faint he’d missed it in the dark. The only one exempt from the ugly vines was the girl in black. Upon thought, she lifted her multi-coloured eyes at him, and his heart exploded with beats. Maselli tightened his legs and arms around the lady carrying him.

  “Floren,” said one of the seated masked women beside Mari. “I was worried we had come to the wrong house.”

  So that was her name.

  “This is Maselli,” Floren said. “We met in the forest and I have become quite fond of him. I believe he would make a wonderful companion for Ezrael.”

  “Wonderful,” said another masked woman. “Everything is settled.”

  His parents were probably thinking how Ezrael was a silly name, and how they’d change it to something proper like Ezra. Aron studied the girl in black, then glanced at Maselli.

  “Is there anything else?” Mari asked, breaking the suffocating silence.

  “Just to thank you,” Floren said. “Few would accept such a burden.”

  The three women rose from the sofa and bowed to Maselli’s parents.

  “Malik, Corin, shall we?” Floren asked.

  “Certainly,” the other two said in unison.

  Maselli nearly threw his arms wide, ready to shout at everyone about how ridiculous this was—until he realized they weren’t leaving just yet. They stood around the girl in black.

  “This village will not remember you exist tomorrow,” Floren said. “Do not, under any circumstances, walk out this door. Ever.” She pointed to the front door. “Aron and Mari will provide you with everything you need. Do you have questions?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “And girl—return to Solvaria and I will kill you. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Lady Sefaney,” the girl murmured, looking down.

  “Thank you again.” Floren bowed to Mari. “We will see ourselves out now.”

  Each of them brushed past Maselli. When Floren reached him, she tugged at his cheek. “I suppose this is goodbye,” she said. Maselli had no words.

  Later, he lay on a floor mattress, staring up at the ceiling. The village was as quiet as it could be. From the bathroom came Mari’s voice and the sound of running water.

  “When do I get my tattoo?” the girl asked.

  “They are not for you, my dear,” Mari replied.

  Maselli shivered. He would not sleep—not tonight. He wanted to remember everything: the corpses, the swayers, real magic. The night was too monumental, too heavy, to be forgotten. Aron and Mari hadn’t even thought to ask what he was doing in Blackwood Forest.

  They came into his room: the girl wrapped in a towel, Mari behind her with fresh clothes draped over her arm. The girl frowned at Maselli, then turned to Mari.

  “I’m not changing in front of him.”

  Mari apologized with her eyes. Maselli left, only to be called back once she was dressed. He slumped face-first into a spare mattress.

  The bed squeaked whenever the new girl shifted.

  “Lady Sefaney told me you like bedtime stories,” Mari said. “I don’t have any books, sadly.”

  “It’s okay,” said the girl. “My father will come for me soon. You don’t have to fuss over me.”

  “I am your mother. And until your real father comes, Aron will be your father,” Mari said gently. “But how can you dream pleasant dreams without a story to sleep with?”

  “It doesn’t have to be from a book,” the girl said. “You can make one up.”

  “What stories do you like?” Mari asked.

  “One about the Gaverians,” Maselli would have said, if anyone had asked him.

  “I want a story about the Spider,” the girl said. “Do you have any good ones?”

  “The Spider?” Mari asked. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who that is. Besides, spiders are real enough. Wouldn’t you rather hear a story about dragons and princesses? I don’t think you’ve ever met Princess Ezra.”

  “I’m not a princess,” said the girl. “And that’s not my name.”

  “But in this story, you are a princess,” said Mari. “You were surrounded by people who loved you very much. So, one day, you threw a party and invited the whole kingdom to celebrate your love. Everyone was invited—except the mean dragon who lived in the mountains. When he heard about the party, he swooped down with his mighty wings and burned your city with flames. You begged him to stop, and he said he would… only if you returned to the mountains with him, to spend the rest of your life loving him and only him.”

  “How did the dragon learn to speak?”

  “He learned by reading a lot of books.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes,” said Mari. “A young man from a far-off town heard what had happened. He, like everyone else, loved the princess very much. Even when everyone told him there was nothing he could do, he didn’t care. And so, he set out on a journey to the mountains with nothing but his courage.”

  “He’s going to die, isn’t he?” asked the girl.

  “Well, I don’t think—”

  “You should give him a sword and armour, like the Saint’s Krima.”

  “But this boy didn’t know any Saints.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “This isn’t real, so anything can happen, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Let me tell the story,” the girl said. “On his way to the mountain, the boy met a peddler with a cart. The peddler gave him a sword. And the sword was magic—because the peddler was also a wizard.”

  Mari laughed. “That’s a lot for one man to be.”

  “Yes, but it happened anyway,” said the girl. “The boy met all kinds of sorcerers who gave him spells to help defeat the dragon. And when he reached the mountain, he flew to the cave on his magic carpet. They battled with fire and lightning—everything exploding, like boom, boom, boom!”

  “Wow.”

  “The boy raised his sword, the dragon raised his, and they clashed—”

  “The dragon had a sword?” Mari asked.

  “You’re the one who said he could talk,” the girl murmured. “He held it in his teeth like this.”

  Mari stifled a laugh. “Oh, dear. Tell me more.”

  “They clashed swords. The boy dodged, did three backflips, and jumped high before stabbing the dragon in the heart.”

  “He did it!” Mari clapped, laughing.

  “He did,” said the girl.

  “That was a fascinating story, Ezra,” Mari said. Things quieted. The bed squeaked, then came a kiss. “I guess you don’t have to be born special to become a Gaverian,” she whispered. “Good night, Ezra.”

  “Good night.”

  It was nice, Maselli thought, to have someone who believed in the impossible as much as he did. Maybe living with this girl wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “Hey,” the girl hissed. “Are you asleep?”

  “No,” Maselli muttered, turning on his side.

  Her face hung upside down from the edge of her bed, those fractured, multi-coloured eyes glimmering in the dark. “What’s a Gaverian?”

  Maselli blinked. What an odd question. “They protect us. They’re ascenders who defend the UCL.”

  She frowned. “UCL?”

  “United Cursed Lands,” Maselli explained. “That’s down here, the southern lands. We’re southerners in the cursed southern south.”

  “Are we far from Solvaria?”

  “Probably.”

  “Is your father one?”

  “A Gaverian?” He almost laughed. “No. Gaverians don’t come down here. They’re all up north.”

  “What’s up north?”

  “The city.”

  “What city?”

  “Henrik City. Henrikia. North, north, north. Please stop asking questions.”

  She stared at him a moment, as though ready to ask ten more, then said simply, “Okay,” and pulled back into her bed.

  Great. Now he was the curious one.

  “Um, Ezra?” he ventured. No answer. He almost dropped it, but the question burned in him. “Can I ask you something?” Her silence felt like permission. “Those ladies in the forest…” He stopped, breath caught. How could he say this? “Do you know what killed them?”

  The girl was quiet for a long time. Maselli thought she wouldn’t reply.

  “It was a shadow,” she said at last. “Monsters live in that forest. One of them ambushed us. That’s what gave them the black veins.”

  She could have stopped there. But in a voice small and still, she added:

  “It will kill you all.”

  Maselli rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. A shame he would forget everything tomorrow.