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Chapter 10
The Opari Wilderness
Early the next morning, Quinn slid into the rain forest that made up this section of the Opari Wilderness. He made his way, moving swiftly and easily through the maze of underbrush without a sound. The Other, his dark companion, came to his call, and they merged—making his persona far greater than the sum of its parts. Now utterly aware, Quinn moved into the shifting geo-temporal environment that was Opari.
The Goddess came to him as a small blue butterfly that fluttered around his head three times and finally landed on his opened hand. He stopped moving—her presence held him spellbound. His very cells thrummed with joy. As he always did, he found himself snared by the awful immensity of Her persona. His other shrieked a warning. He regretfully fought his way free of Her splendor, then spent a long moment finding the perfect balance between detachment and singularity. Finally, data from the environment flowed instead of flooding into his consciousness. The problem with navigating the Goddess Opari was not too little data, but too much.
He smiled a regretful smile as he felt Her disappointed pout at his withdrawal. Her wondrous complexity still pulled at him, but he could function now. One day, he knew he would fail, and his doom would be moss and lichen consuming his body inch by inch as he sat by some random tree while his spirit rapturously explored Opari’s mysteries. It occurred to him to wonder if that was what had happened to old Cayden MacLeish.
As always, when he roamed the Opari, curious watchers followed his passage. Three forest sprites tasted his mind mood, and when they found it benign perched on his shoulders, chattered about all the local gossip and shamelessly begged for treats. Quinn absently flipped them M even his habits had been deliberately crafted. He sighed. The last months had brought change. The chance of that peaceful, comfortable life plan had vanished. He was going to have to accept the inevitable and move to Keeper House.
Quinn frowned, trying to ignore the tendrils of panic that still hovered at his mind’s edge after the sight of the mind ripper.
It was raining hard when he got down to Fremont. He begged for a parking place behind Rudy’s Barber Shop, slipped on his backpack, walked to the statue of Lenin with its blood-red hand, slipped behind it and emerged into the hot summer sunlight of Oldtown. He slipped off his jacket and absently stashed it into his pack. He felt off-center in a way he hadn’t for years. Vulnerable.
Quinn mentally shook himself.
Get your shit together. Oldtown is not a place to daydream.
Chapter 11
Northmarket District-Oldtown
Unlike most goblin-kind who were vicious, cunning, and utterly without compunction, eleven-year-old Klzyx was a peaceable being with simple wants. His only goal was to feel comfortable and safe. He only felt comfortable kastamonu escort and safe when he had more than enough coins to put a roof over his and his sister’s heads and food in their bellies. Not for him was the debt to the neighborhood moneylender! He was a coins on the barrel head sort of being.
As a result, Klzyx lived his life ruled by the heft of coins in his money pouch. He either had a bounty (reveled in the voluptuous feelings of safety and security), a little (faint fevered blossomings of anxiety) or none (panting with overwhelming panic). Thus, he was a frugal little being. Unfortunately, Roze – his sister – was not. Even old Mag, who had loved her dearly, had called her an excessively greedy goblin. In his constant endeavor to keep her happy, safe, and most importantly, quietly satisfied—his life moved in stages, from safely law-abiding to risky criminal depending on his wallet and her whims.
On this day, with his money pouch nearly empty and Roze’s birth celebration looming, Klzyx hunted in Northmarket. He was a master snatcher trained by old Mr. Whiskers himself. He’d been following a human, an aged itinerant wood crafter with a nice fat purse hanging from his belt.
When the gaggle of merchants and shoppers stopped to listen to a furious argument between two Black-Stone dwarfs, he slid in front of a half-blood mountain troll at a precisely calculated moment. As expected, the big troll muttered a curse and shoved him out of its way into the old wood crafter. Klzyx instantly palmed his stubby pocket dagger to slash the leathers holding the man’s coin pouch.
—And found his hand caught in an iron grip.
Klzyx yipped in pain. He looked up and found amused green eyes looking back at him. Eyes that were not elderly at all—but bad news—very bad news.
Despairing, knowing his effort was probably doomed to fail, his other hand went for the stabbing dagger at his hip, only to find the scabbard empty.
“Well, met Master Snatcher,” the man finger signed him in thieves cant, “I mean you no harm.” The man offered his dagger back to him hilt first, seemingly unconcerned that he might get stabbed as soon as it left his hand.
The man smiled and whistle-clicked softly in low alfar, the lingua franca of the marketplace. “I need a few moments of your time, good sir. Some call me Longshanks. Might I know your name?”
Klzyx’s eyes grew wide. His mouth opened, but no words came. He licked his lips and finally croaked out. “Yes, Master. I am named Klzyx. I do not know my clan’s name or the name of my matriarch,” he said apologetically. The sharing of name and clan was an important social ritual in goblin interaction. Status was all. Klzyx’s shame was that he had no clan to greet and impress with. There was just him and his sister. The clan was all to goblin-kind—clanless goblin-kind were considered derelict—useless.
“Well kayseri escort met, young Klzyx. Let us sit for a spell over at the Ravens Pub. Unless my nose has led me astray, today is beef stew day.”
“Uh, Master,” Klzyx said apologetically, “it is worth my life to go in there. They doesn’t serve my kind there. The troll at the door will cripple me for even trying to enter.”
“Huh. Well, let us give it a try anyway unless you don’t like the beef stew?”
The young being’s eyes grew round. “No, master,” he said earnestly, “I had some once a long time ago; I remember it was wonderful.”
“Perfect, my friend. Now why don’t you signal your spotter to join us? I’d wager she would like a taste of stew as well.”
Klzyx gave the tall man a shocked look. How did the big being know about his spotter? Then he nodded resignedly and signaled, “Come here” to his partner, an apprentice named Clover.
In answer to his signal, she popped out of the shadows and skipped across the busy lane. She was a cheerfully blithe little being, just turned eight seasons. Mr. Whiskers had assigned her training to Klzyx a couple of weeks ago. While she was still clumsy at the snatch, she proved to be a reliable spotter/distracter. With guild security enforcers increasingly patrolling Northmarket, a good spotter was critical to avoiding the punishment for theft: slavery or death.
“She’s new, isn’t she?”
“Yes, master,” he said apologetically. “Her name is Clover. She don’t know hardly anything at all, Master Longshanks. Sometimes she backtalks and she asks questions, lots and lots of them. Please don’t hurt her.”
“No worries, young Master. I was new once and a spotter as well.”
***
Quinn carefully assessed the environment as he and his new friend waited for the little dirty-faced, bare-footed dryad. He noted she was dressed like the other street urchins, in a raggedy gray tunic and leather trousers. She arrived at the goblin’s side, stood well away from his reach and stared round-eyed up at him.
“Well met, Mistress Clover, Master Klzyx and I are going to break bread. Would you like to join us?”
The little being whose bright green hair showed she was an elf/dryad mix turned her violet eyes to the goblin and quirked a questioning eyebrow. She whispered, “Who is this being, sir? What does it want?”
“He is going to buy us a feast. I do not know what he wants. Be silent and behave. Do not anger the being. There is a chance of food in this place for us. Food, the likes of which is far out of the reach of beings like you and me. After we eat, we will see if we need to run.”
Quinn quirked a smile at the earnest interchange. Oldtown was awash with orphaned children. If they were lucky, they self-organized into gangs because predators of all stripes abounded. If not, they were almost always kıbrıs escort enslaved. He well remembered his time on the streets. Life soon turned them feral, but they cared for each other.
“Let us go feast.” He kept a firm grip on the little goblin’s hood, and the three walked over to the pub’s entrance.
After some initial bluster, the troll guarding the door looked at the sudden coldness in Quinn’s eyes and quickly admitted the three.
The tavern was typical of its kind, smoky and dark, with low ceilings and ancient worn wooden floors covered with sawdust. Quinn chose a table in the far corner near the kitchen (and the rear exit). He grabbed some chairs. Katie and Niamh should be joining them soon.
While two little thieves whispered. Quinn let his mind wander back.
***
After the fire, a lady brought him to live with a new family. The house smelled bad, but five-year-old Lachlan Quinn was too numb to care. He could still smell smoke on him from the fire that had burned up his mommy and daddy.
“This is your new home,” the lady said. When Lachlan didn’t reply, she went on. ” You will like it here, I’m sure. There are lots of children to play with. You’ll have fun.”
She reached down and gave him a pat on the head.
She was thin and smelled of cigarettes. Lachlan didn’t like her one bit, but he was quiet about it.
The lady of the house was very fat with small mean-looking eyes that sat sunk into her white powdered face. She smelled of cigarettes and a sharp perfume that burned his nose. Lachlan decided he didn’t like her either, but he didn’t say so because she was scary.
“You can call me Mommy. All my little darlings do.”
She turned her attention to the lady who had brought him and led her to the door. “Thanks, Margaret, we’ll be just fine here. He seems like a nice little boy. Be sure and update your records to show we have one more hungry mouth.”
She shut the door and turned to Lachlan. Her mouth slitted and her eyes grew cold. She slapped him. “That was for your own good, boy. There are rules here. Follow them, and we will get along. Break them, and there will be punishments far worse than that slap. Stop your sniveling and come along. I’ll show you your room.”
Three months passed. Lachlan had settled into his new place. He had a new friend named Annie, who was six. She had come to his room the first night and asked to sleep in his room because she was scared and she would be his new friend. Lachlan agreed. He was scared too.
Annie had rules that she taught him. “We take care of each other.” She pulled the blanket and the pillows off the bed and made a cozy nest for the two of them in the closet. “Never sleep in the bed cuz sometimes the daddy comes home drunk and will climb in with you. Drunk big people do bad things. Always save a little food cuz the mommy sometimes forgets to make supper. If you steal from the refrigerator, make sure it’s just a little bit that won’t get missed. And always, always be quiet. Never make a sound. If you are loud, you’ll get a whippin’, especially when the Mommy has one of her sick days. Always sleep fully dressed in case we have to run outside if the Daddy goes crazy…”
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