A bird sat on a straggly beech tree growing out of a pile of shattered concrete, gazed over the countryside wastes, and cleaned itself with its second head.

  On the trail into a small village was a lone wanderer wearing a puffy jacket, shorts that exposed furred rabbit feet she skipped on with great strength. She was happy, uncaring of the desolation around her. She listened out with two big rabbit ears placed behind two small deer horns. Birds, swaying branches, and the sound of humming. As she got closer to the village, the humming grew louder and she picked out two distinct voices, one singing low and consistent and the other adding words.

  “So we move on to,” it sang, “another time without us. Human yet transformed.”

  She rounded the corner of the path where it narrowed from the bulging overgrowth of shrubs arching over into a form of tunnel. The lone jackalope wanderer peered around until she saw the two singers on a bench through the arch. Both of them wore overalls and had the heads of meerkats with blue eyes. The smaller and younger of the two had reptilian talons on his fingers which he pointed to the wanderer.

  “Stranger,” he said, his soft singer’s voice growing fearful. He was young, likely a teen. The older man stood up to support him.

  “Woah, no harm meant,” said the wanderer. “My name is Mori, I heard rumours there was an old person in these parts. It took me ages just to find your village.”

  The older meerkat man stepped forward, thrusting his chin forward.

  “I am old, what of it?” He was gruff, and Mori noticed the handle of a knife tucked into his boot.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Old. As in, born before the Great Deviation. I heard she actually lived during that time.”

  “What do you want?”

  Mori whipped out a piece of paper from her coat pocket and shook it like it was a tasty carrot.

  “Manu City is paying a lot of money for anyone with lived experience of the past. And I mean a lot, hundreds of stamps worth.”

  The younger of the pair whistled. In his fingers, the boy played with a piece of wood he clawed down with his talons. The older one scratched his chin.

  “And if she can’t move to the city?” he asked.

  “So there is someone?” said Mori. She stepped closer and handed the paper to the old man. “Honestly, I was just guessing when I walked this way so I’m glad I found the right place. And if she can’t move, the historians will come this way with supplies, fix the roads, and trade stuff. Do you have solar panels or wind turbines?”

  “You mean sun panels and wind spinners?”

  “Yeah, those.”

  “A couple sun panels… but we could use more.”

  Mori smiled and patted the man’s shoulder. He was a head taller.

  “I’ll take care of it, even without the old lady.” She flashed a badge on her coat: a helmet with a bee in the background. The two meerkats gasped.

  “A Manu Knight,” said the younger.

  “This way,” said the older man, bowing.

  ***

  It was a small village set in a clearing, surrounded on all sides by trees with overhanging branches to hide it from above. Mori counted over a dozen huts, and guessed a population of fifty at best. She knew they would be vulnerable to exploitation if the wrong person arrived.

  The older meerkat, Luke, apologised if the denizens were hidden away.

  “Our well is blocked, and we need to walk miles to the only clean river we know about to get water. It’s not even that clean, but we do have an electrical kettle to distil it.”

  “A single kettle?”

  “Yes, but we’re scavenging for iron to boil with wood fires,” he said. He pointed to the edge of the clearing. “This is her house ahead.“

  Covered by the trees was an old house made of red bricks and cement, though tree roots pierced through the cracks. The windows were either smashed clean apart or boarded up. The rest was a mix of old foundations with new wood. Mori walked up clean wood steps to a ragged doormat, admired the polished door knocker but one knock took the door off a hinge and it swayed in crooked.

  An object flew out the window, one with arms and legs. A classic-faced kid (no horns or hooves or animal features, he looked like a proto-human) levitated a few feet off the ground and shouted at her.

  “Please, my grandma, help her!”

  Mori rushed in, ignoring the world of memorabilia adorning the walls and found a woman so wrinkled she might have been made of tree bark. She coughed thick flem and wheezed.

  “What happened?” said Mori.

  “I don’t know,” cried the kid.

  Luke was running around the house, opened a door to the kitchen and came back out empty-handed, shaking his head. Mori noted the cracked lips on the old lady.

  “How limited is your water?”

  “Badly,” said Luke.

  “She said she didn’t need it,” cried the kid, “she said the git in the well would be gone by now.”

  Mori frowned at the meerkat man.

  “Why is your well really blocked?” she asked.

  The man sighed and shouted to his son to fetch some water for old McGoby who Mori presumed to be the dying lady next to her. He told the young kid to stay by her side and call out if they needed anything, then he led Mori out the door.

  They walked on the edge of the village clearing until he brought Mori to an arch much like the entrance. Luke stopped and gestured her down a path that grew darker as the branches grew denser.

  “Is that toward the well?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s in it? The kid mentioned a ‘git in the well.’” She crossed her arms and leaned against a tree. “Seems a bit mean. Maybe it’s nice.”

  “Well it’s not, and you said you’re a Manu Knight, which means you have to help us.”

  “Only if you tell me what’s wrong. I’m not jumping into a well to find out you have otters spitting lava in there.” She shivered at the memory.

  “It was…” said Luke. He paused, considered his words, then continued. “A month ago a bloated fellow lumbered into our village. He seemed nice enough. His skin was blue and glowed in the night. All his freckles or blemishes shone like old pictures of pre-Deviant cities. But one day he asked about our water, where we got it from, and the next thing we knew, he threw himself into our well, grew to three times the size and dried up our supply.”

  “And he refuses to leave?”

  “Shite, I don’t know if the git can leave. His arse will break the brickwork on the way out and it took us years to find the materials to build it.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Mori considered the prospects. A man who’s Deviation was body growth and water absorption would be tough to beat in a well of all places, but now that she pestered Luke for an answer, she would look like such a dick if she said no. Plus, the reward Manu City is giving out for pre-Deviant people’s stories is one she can’t refuse, and she imagined old McGoby will only help if she helped first.

  She walked down the dark path.

  “I’ll talk to him,” she said.

  “And if he attacks?”

  “I’m a knight,” she said, “I once handled a giant mole throwing cars.”

  Luke left, saying he would find a rope and Mori didn’t explain she didn’t need one: it was better for him to have something to do.

  At the end of the path was a well made of rubblestone (tarmac, broken bricks and whatever else could be glued together) and, attached to high branches, a network of plastic tubes and funnels to guide rainwater downward.

  She looked in, saw darkness at first, but on squinting found a blue glow at the bottom – just like Luke said. She hoped that whatever this ‘git’ was, he drank enough water to not get her feet too wet. Rabbit fur and water don’t mix, and if she gets too soaked, she slows down.

  Mori leaped in feeling a woosh of putrid air and splashed to the bottom. The water wasn’t even ankle deep, but before she could relax, the room snorted.

  A massive toad-shaped creature took up a corner in the cavern. It bulged and melted, glowing out a pretty blue light. The git in the well.

  “Who dares?” His eyes were black and his voice sent ripples along his body to the puddles beneath him. The colour of his skin and the soft light made it hard to tell where his body ended and where the water began.

  “Hey, I’m Mori,” she said, waving and keeping the other hand in her pocket.

  “I am the great Aqua Scourge, fear me!”

  “I’m alright.”

  His eyes might have popped out the way he tensed up. This bloated creature demanding fear was dumbstruck by her audacity. His body shook, stuck for words.

  She kicked her feet, messing with the water and realised how low it was. A couple feet away was a bucket and broken rope.

  “That’s mean, they need that rope to get the water out.”

  “Never! I am Aqua Scourge and have made this well mine. Their water is tribute to appease me or face my wroth.”

  “Yeah, I get it, you need lots of water so you stole theirs, but have you seen the fancy little funnel web they built up there? All they have to do is break it up, cover the well, then how much water will you get? I don’t imagine you’ll enjoy licking the ceiling for every drop you can get.”

  The bumbling, swelling toad unfurled two human-shaped feet and stood up. Luke wasn’t lying, Aqua was huge. Even if he was tiny before, he stood at twice Mori’s height now.

  “You dare threaten Aqua Scour–”

  “Yes.” She took her hand out her pocket and presented an origami swan made of white card. “Stop now, or I will throw this at you.”

  “Bahaha! What will a paper toy do to me? I can pulverise with a single blast.”

  “I don’t want you harassing this village,” she said and thought about what a ‘single blast’ might be. She crouched ready to jump. “And I don’t want them to trap you down here to die of thirst.”

  Aqua paused, his eyes darted side to side in confusion. His jaw flapped, but nothing came out.

  “You’re doing this because your body needs far more water than normal, but I can find you a better place.”

  Mori’s ear twitched. Outside of the well, she heard Luke arrive and drop something heavy to the grass outside with a thud. The rope. She might need his help after all.

  “Who are you?” said Aqua Scourge.

  “Morielle Aisling, Manu Knight of the greatest city in the Fractured Kingdoms.”

  “A knight… from Manu City?” he said, eyes widening in recognition.

  “Yes, I can help.”

  Aqua gurgled a crescendo, his glow brightened and from the pits of his body, a geyser of water fired at Mori. She ducked to the side and threw the origami.

  “Manu City is cursed,” he shouted; a waterfall dribbled out. “It is a mausoleum to the failures of the past.”

  Mori skidded through the puddled floor and felt her legs grow heavy. Her fur soaked up water fast and she knew she wouldn’t dodge the next blast from Aqua, nevermind escape the well. Not that she needed to.

  The toad man gurgled in the crescendo to indicate his attack. In a few seconds, she’ll be shot down. But she noticed how he stood a little straighter as his head no longer scraped the ceiling. Was he shorter?

  “A mausoleum?” she said. “No, we’re bringing the hopes of humanity back to life, learning from those mistakes.”

  Aqua shone brighter than his first shot, his face scrunched up from the strain. A thousand purple veins popped on his face in a blinding fury.

  Mori crossed her arms.

  “Oh yeah, you showed me your powers over water, but I didn’t say what I could do.”

  She smiled as a flying object stabbed at Aqua’s eye making him yowl and fire the shot wide. It streaked to Mori’s side and crashed into the wall. Rocks fell, and Aqua’s body was smaller than before. He tried to protect his eyes from the thing attacking him and it flapped away.

  There, in the cavern, the origami swan was flapping its wings as if alive. Even stranger, the thing had grown a set of human-like teeth from its card mouth and two cartoonish eyes.

  “Gwan,” said the origami. It flew around and dove in for Aqua’s eyes again.

  The toad man tried to duck but fell instead, striking the floor headfirst when the rest of his weight cascaded around him.

  “What is that thing?” he said.

  It landed on Mori’s shoulder.

  “Animation. With a single touch I can bring objects to life. Cool, right?”

  “They’re horrid!”

  “They’re called Garys, or I used to call them that as a kid,” she explained, “but now they can say anything!”

  “Gwan,” said the origami. “Gwan, gwan!”

  “... provided it’s a single word and it still has to start with a ‘G’. Yeah, I don’t get it either.”

  She chuckled as she threw it again and ran toward the well’s exit while Aqua struggled back to his feet under the attack of the animated origami swan pecking at his eyes. Fortunately, Mori saw what she was waiting for: Luke dropped one end of the rope down. She reached for it and a single touch made it wriggle and bend like a snake. Eyes and mouth appeared.

  “Tie up the toad man,” said Mori.

  “Grope!”

  “No! We went over this, it’s Gope,” said Mori as the animated rope slithered down into the cavern and around Aqua’s legs. Up above, she heard a quick yell from Luke. “It’s okay,” she shouted up, “just let it go.”

  Aqua smacked the origami away and it crumbled to mush in the water, a final gasp leaving the body of the paper-mache, but Mori waited idly while her new animation curled up his legs, around his hands and contorted itself into a knot.

  She walked up to Aqua and wagged a finger. The toad man hurled insults and a water blast but it had less than half the power than his first shot and his body shrank, so the Gope animation tightened further.

  Mori sat on his back.

  “Get off me you swine,” he said.

  She pointed at her head.

  “Rabbit ears and horns look like a pig to you? You so silly. Such a silly little guy.”

  He spat out a meagre shot. It didn’t even reach her.

  The rope returned to normal so she dragged Aqua toward the well’s exit.

  “I’m taking you out of here. You had your chance for peace.”

  At a touch of her palm, the walls of the chasm came to life with eyes and mouths turning it into a twisted children’s mural.

  “Gwall,” they said, “gwa–” and Mori shoved her hands and feet into the handholds those cartoonish mouths provided to drag herself and Aqua out of the well. Perspiration painted her brow and trickled down her bare arms now her jacket was securely wrapped around her waist.

  Above she was greeted not just by Luke and his son, but by the small floating boy, the old lady McGoby in her wheelchair and a dozen other members of this village who gathered around to witness the Manu Knight hauling the bandit out of the dark to restore their water. A cheer went up, Aqua was gagged. Luke agreed, after Mori pressed him, to keep Aqua hydrated enough to not die before she could send for support back home.

  A week to walk back to Manu City, a few days to prepare, and a week to return.

  “But, if you’re okay with me sharing your location,” said Mori, “my friends can get here in less than a fortnight. they will take Aqua into custody and bring supplies. That means new solar panels, more food, and whatever else Manu City has to share. Oh, but we will want any stories the old McGoby has to share. The historians back home are dying to know about pre-Deviant times.”

  Luke shook her hand.

  “Of course, a thousand times yes. I’ll talk it over with the others, but after your help, I can’t see a single person saying no. Put us on the map, but please stay the night. Let us celebrate.”

  She was brought a towel to dry her legs, but even as fur stood up, a bitter chill ran up her skin. It would be nice to stay and relax. A warm fire, share talk and gossip. Observe the stars at the brightest when day by day they disappeared from the shinier Manu City skyline. But somewhere, another village needed their knight.

  Mori sighed. She untied her jacket from her waist and zipped it back up. It was a rare thermal piece of clothing, useful for the dreary weather of the Fractured Kingdoms.

  “Sorry, but I need to get back. Duty calls for the Manu Knights.”

  Before the rest of the village could see her, she gave Luke a hearty hug, and she hoped away into the night.

  To the edge of the clearing, back out the arch of branches, out of the woodland and off into the endless expanse. The moon was almost full as she bounded across ancient square fields filled with the dereliction of the lost. She found a road covered in a web of cracks, a rusted car flipped onto its side, and a sign too mouldy to read except for a few half-words: ‘... I’m loving i…’

  From her pocket she took out a banana to gorge on. On her face was a smile wider than her head.

  Life was good.