“I believe you,” Reese said, slotting her declaration forcefully into the silence left while Yuri gathered her thoughts. “Stop picking at split ends you don’t have,” she continued. “I mean it, chicka, relax. I believe you.”

Equal parts chagrined and surprised, Yuri dropped the strands of black hair she’d been worrying at with shaky fingers. “Sorry,” she muttered. “This is… it’s pretty hard for me.”

Reese nodded, pushing her lone tuft of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I can see that,” she said, “and that’s pro’lly the biggest reason I don’t think you’re yankin’ my chain. Don’t get me wrong, what you’ve been telling me is pretty out there, but I don’t think you’re lying to me. Doesn’t leave me any choice but to go ahead and trust that you’re telling me the truth as you see it.”

“I could always quote Shakespeare at you,” Yuri offered, trying her best to smile even though she knew it wouldn’t reach her eyes.

“I think you’ve done enough talking for now, chicka,” Reese said. “It’s almost five o’clock. I vote we take a break, get some food, and then maybe I’ll tell you a little bit about what’s been going on with me for a bit.” She stood, stretched, and offered Yuri a hand. “C’mon.”

Yuri accepted Reese’s aid, leaning against her as she got to her feet. “I’m not really hungry,” she said.

“Well, I’m making you eat anyway,” Reese replied. She grabbed a wallet and set of keys off a shelf near the door, as well as a black pack of clove cigarettes and a lighter. “You look like you haven’t had a good meal in years, sweetie.” She shoved everything into one of the many pockets of her low-slung cargo pants. “I’m taking you to Ledo, and that’s that. I’ll help you pull your bike in.”

Once Yuri’s bike rested safely against the wall near the window, Reese shoved Yuri out the door. “So, I have another confession to make,” she said sheepishly as she locked the door behind them.

“What’s that?” Despite herself, Yuri had resumed picking at the ends of a few stray strands of hair.

Reese fished around in her pocket until she produced the lighter she’d palmed and a cigarette. “You’re doing it again, stop it,” she snapped, cupping the lighter with one hand and flicking it with the other.

Again, Yuri dropped the hair between her fingers. “Sorry. It’s… bad habit, yeah. Hey, when did you start smoking?”

Reese inhaled deeply, causing the cherry at the end of the cigarette to flare. “Mmm, about six months,” she said. Smoke chased her words, swirling through the air and away on a breeze. “I was stressed, it was there. Not much of an excuse, I guess.”

Yuri made ‘gimme’ motions with one hand and took a long drag off the cigarette once Reese passed it to her. “Six months, huh? Yeah, sounds about right.” She passed the clove back and leaned against the white plastic railing that guarded the wooden walkway to the second story apartments.

“So you, too,” Reese said, bumping her shoulder against Yuri’s as she leaned on the railing next to her. She held the clove in a ham-fisted grip as she let her arms dangle over the side. “I wanna ask you what happened,” she continued, “’cause it seems like things were pretty cool at first, but I told you that we were gonna let you have a break.”

“It’ll take me a while to get it all out,” Yuri said. She cast her eyes downward, studying their hands in the warm light of the early evening. She saw Reese bump her arm more than she felt it, and she gratefully accepted the cigarette that had been offered. “I know I didn’t make this up, but telling you about it, I feel like it’s made up. It’s like these things didn’t happen, like they didn’t happen to me. Sometimes, even when it’s only me, I just keep having to tell myself, ‘This is real. These things happened.’ But it’s hard.”

She heard Reese fishing out and lighting another clove. “Life’s weird,” Reese declared with a puff of smoke. “I mean, we just never know what’s gonna happen, who it’s gonna happen to.”

They stood together, shoulder to shoulder in silence, for a few minutes, periodically ashing over the railing and failing to blow smoke rings into the distance.

*

It took less than ten minutes for them to drive to Ledo Pizza in Reese’s tiny Toyota. Once they’d seated themselves and placed drink orders, Reese dragged Yuri outside with a paper menu and lit up another clove cigarette. After inhaling deeply, she passed it to Yuri. “This was the ‘peace offering’ Lexi made me. This was way back, though, before I moved out, like right after he and Matt started their thing.”

Yuri took a long drag off the clove, holding the smoke in as long as she could stand before exhaling. Her hand shook as she passed it back, leaving a smudge of ash on the toe of Reese’s green Converse shoe. “So how did that go?” she asked, her voice thankfully much steadier than her hand.

Reese snorted. “‘Awkward’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. It felt like he was some skeevy dude trying to audition for the part of my dad or something. It was kind of awful, but it makes me snicker when I think about it now.” She shrugged and pushed her hair behind her ear again. “When he offered to take me out to lunch again, I figured, ‘What the hell, why not?’ It was free food, y’know, stupid as that is.”

“Free food is a good motivator,” Yuri said. “You guys wouldn’t be living in the apartment if it hadn’t been for pizza. I can’t blame you for taking advantage of a couple of free meals.”

“Free meals TINSTAAFL aside,” Reese said.

“All things considered, I think TINSTAAFL totally applies,” Yuri said, lips quirking up in a sardonic smirk. “I mean, you have to share a bathroom with him now; I’ve seen his hair products.”

“Well, yeah, I know that now,” said Reese with a chuckle. “But anyway, yeah, it was really weird at first. Like I said, almost skeevy. After the second one, he asked me for a third, and I started getting to know him.” She paused to take another drag, and passed he cigarette to her friend. “We just kept going like that, I think he musta blown like, a hundred dollars on lunch for me over a couple of weeks. I started talking to him, in between stuffing my face.”

Yuri scooted closer, leaning her forehead against Reese’s bare shoulder. The smoke from the cigarette laced through her fingers, and she noted that it was significantly shorter than she felt it had any right to be. She took the last vicious drag from it and dropped it to the concrete at their feet. Her friend crushed it beneath one heel, grinding to be sure there was no spark left.

“So, I started telling him about me and Mom for some reason,” Reese continued, draping an arm around Yuri’s shoulders and leading her back inside to their table. “I dunno, I guess I felt like after all the money he threw at my stomach I owed him something. Not that he ever acted like it, I just felt bad not talking to him since he was buyin’ me food. And so we’re sitting in the food court at St. Charles Town Center mall, and I’m spilling my guts and suddenly I just start bawlin’, y’know?”

They reclaimed their booth and sat down simultaneously, Yuri tucking both of her feet underneath herself, and Reese splaying her legs out under the table. Their waitress drifted back to their table and set out their drinks and some silverware. “What can I getcha?” she asked in a thick southern drawl. When Yuri gave her the briefest of nods, Reese rattled off their orders: baked cheese fries, a Caesar salad, two strombolis, and a single plate of lasagna. The waitress scribbled a few scrawls onto the pad that dangled loosely from her hands and sauntered off without another word.

Despite herself, Yuri couldn’t help smiling. A feeling of relief washed over her, and a knot in the pit of her stomach loosened; she squared her shoulders and sat a little straighter. “I guess it’s a good sign that after all this time, you can still order for the both of us when we get food. So, anyway, you were spilling your guts and started bawling?”

“Right,” Reese continued, “in the middle of the food court! And so he just gets up and just hugs me and pats my hair till I stop, ’cause this was back when Mom wouldn’t let me shave it. That was the first time I felt like maybe someone other than you gave a rat’s ass about how I felt, and it was the first time I got a good whiff of how he smelled.” The hints of a wistful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she talked, and Yuri felt a stab of empathy with her friend. “He smelled like cloves and Old Spice.

“Anyway, after that, we had a little truce going. Or maybe a ‘time share,’ I dunno.” Reese shrugged and toyed with the straw in her Coke. “It was weird. I’d have Matt all to myself for a couple of days out of the week, then Lexi’d have him the rest of the time, and usually once or twice a week he’d get lunch or dinner for me. Sometimes it was just fast food, y’know, and sometimes he’d drive me down to someplace like Red Lobster, but most of the time, he’d give me a ride home after school or something and just make food.”

Yuri pulled her drink closer and began chewing on the straw while Reese talked. “Was it any good? The food he made, I mean?” she asked around her straw, hoping to encourage her friend to keep going.

“Oh, hell yeah,” Reese said, nodding emphatically enough that her hair fell back into her eyes. She grumbled and pushed it back behind her ear. “I haven’t made Lexi cook for you, have I? It’s insane. I don’t know why he’s in a band, he should be training to be a five star chef or something. Anyway, he was just so nice to me that I couldn’t keep hating him. Eventually, I was hanging out with him almost as much as I was hanging out with Matt. Then one day, you remember, the day Mom ‘kicked me out,’” Reese emphasized the phrase with air quotes and a sneer, “I was feeling really low, and he was there and… well…” She trailed off, averting her eyes and blushing.

Sensing where Reese had been taking the conversation, Yuri frowned, put her drink back on the table, and reached across to pat one of Reese’s hands. “I’m not judging you,” she stated firmly. “I promise you I won’t judge you or think badly of you or anything. Hey, look at me, c’mon. We’ve been friends for years, I’m not gonna think worse of you for telling me this.” She smirked. “You’d have to tell me you were a post-op Saddam Hussein before I’d start to question why I’m your friend.”

Reese snickered, trying to hide her embarrassment behind one hand; Yuri let her. “Some days I wonder about you, chicka. But that’s why we love each other, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Yuri said, patting Reese’s hand again. “So… what happened after that?”

“I pretended it didn’t happen for a little bit,” Reese said. Her fingers returned to toying with her straw. “I felt horrible. It lasted all of, like, two days. Finally I broke down and told Matt what happened.” She scowled, and Yuri patted her hand again. “Those were probably the worst days of my life. I always looked down on those so-called ‘best friends’ who went and messed around with their friend’s gal, y’know? And there I was, I’d just gone and done it.”

“I’d thought you were miserable because you were crashing on Lexi’s couch,” Yuri said. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, chicka,” said Reese, her expression brightening just a little. Yuri squeezed her hand across the table, and Reese squeezed back. “I was afraid of what you’d think, ’cause you know how I feel. And it worked out in the end. After day two, I couldn’t take it anymore, I cornered Matt after school and spilled my guts and begged him to forgive me. And that jackass just laughed! I mean, yeah, looking back on it now it’s kinda funny, but at the time it was just too much, and I practically beat him within an inch of his everlovin’ life.” She chuckled a little, and Yuri leaned back and resumed chewing on her straw.

“Well, okay, you know I’m not that type,” Reese admitted, “but I did sock him good on the arm a couple of times.” She shrugged. “The rest is just really boring and awkward. But that’s how it happened.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” Yuri said with as much sincerity as she could put into her voice. It was true, she regretted being too wrapped up in her own problems to be a better friend.

“It was my own damn fault,” said Reese with another shrug. “I could’ve said something, but I didn’t. Can’t really blame you for that.” She grinned. “Hey, lighten up, here comes food.”

Sure enough, their indolent waitress returned bearing a large tray with their order on it. With little more than a lazy, “Here ya go, hon,” she shifted their plates from her tray to the table and sauntered off. Reese’s grin grew wider, and she made a production of breathing deeply of the steamy vapors wafting up from their meals. Yuri grinned, too, as she watched Reese start tearing apart a stromboli across from her.

Yuri began picking at the cheese fries, humming thoughtfully to herself. “This is good,” she declared, though she wasn’t entirely sure if she was referring to the fries or something else entirely.

“Yup,” agreed Reese around a mouthful of lasagna.

*

They returned to the apartment with a pair of take-home boxes, sated and cheerful. Once the leftovers had been safely tucked away in the refrigerator, Reese pulled Yuri down onto a beanbag chair with her and hugged her fiercely. Bemused, Yuri returned the hug as best she could from her awkward position in Reese’s lap.

“You feelin’ better, chicka?” Reese asked.

“Yeah,” Yuri said. “Yeah, I am. Thanks.”

Chapter Nine – Chapter Ten

“I can’t believe I haven’t gotten the chance to berate you sooner,” Mer said as the five of them settled into the plush coach. He had claimed one window seat, with Kiih claiming the one on the far end of the bench, and Ro had settled between them. “Seriously, a real live Worldwalker and you just failed to mention it to me until after she’d left! I’m hurt, really I am.”

On the bench next to Yuri, Len rolled his eyes and shook his head. “She is sitting across from you, Mercutio.”

“Which is fantastic,” Mer said, gesturing widely. “But the point isn’t so much about Miss Yuri’s presence– no offense meant– as it is the fact that Ro should’ve said something to me sooner.”

“Well, to be fair, he didn’t know until just before I went home,” Yuri offered, fidgeting with one of the laces on the cuff of her shirt.

Mer sighed. “You’re right, and it really isn’t that bad since you’re here now.” He grinned and leaned forward. “So, tell me, what’s it like where you come from? Len mentioned a little bit of history you shared with him, but now that you don’t have someone dragging you off, I’d love to hear more.”

Yuri shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t know what to say. Adan is so weird to me, I don’t even have a point of reference.”

“Fair enough,” Mer said. “How about I ask you again after we’ve been around town and you’ve got a better idea of what Nachtlin’s like?”

“Sure,” Yuri said. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

“Indeed, babysitting a foreigner is exactly what I dreamed of doing today,” Kiih grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and glowering out the window.

“Seriously, what is your problem?” Yuri asked. She found herself mirroring his pose, crossing her arms and glaring at him petulantly. “I’m here under my own power, I’m not asking you to take care of me, and I’d rather spend my afternoon with Len and Mer anyway.”

Before Kiih could respond, Ro raised his hands in a placating gesture that caused Kiih to snort and turn away. “Please, Miss Yuri, try no’ to be too hard on him,” he said. “Festival season’s rough on us is all. Iffin ya’re ’round after tha worst, we’ll be less… um…”

Chewing viciously on her tongue so she wouldn’t jump in with a suggestion she’d regret, Yuri shrugged. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but I’ll try to stay till after things settle down,” she finally said. “But I don’t want to be a burden or anything. I definitely don’t want to be a bother to you.”

“That’s a relief,” he said, tone dripping with so much sarcasm that Yuri had to fight the urge to wipe her hands on the shirt she’d borrowed.

“Seriously, why are you being such a jerkface?” she snapped in response. “Trespassing, okay, I can totally see that, now that I’m not so confused, but come on, we’re trying to be nice here.”

Kiih shifted, straightening his spine and narrowing his eyes further. “What you fail to understand is that I have a job. I do that job well, by my estimation, but when annoyances and distractions, such as this Festival affair and your unfortunate fall into my garden, keep me from fulfilling my duty, I fail to see where I should be the least bit cheerful about any of it.”

“Bah, don’t mind him,” Mer said, waving a hand dismissively. “Let’s talk about something more interesting.”

“Oh, I have a question,” Yuri said. “Since I’m not hallucinating and I’m not dead, how do I understand what you guys are saying? I speak English and a tiny bit of Japanese, and I’m told you guys speak High Adani. How’s that work?”

A cheeky grin worked its way onto Mer’s face, and he leaned toward Yuri, resting his elbows on his thighs. “I’ve heard a few theories on that, but I never thought I’d get the chance to actually test anything.” Somehow, his grin managed to widen. “So, right now, it seems like I’m speaking your native language, right?”

Hesitantly, Yuri nodded. “Yeah… where are you going with this?”

“Just humor me for a few moments.” Mer cleared his throat. “Tell me, does it still seem as though I speak with your tongue?”

“Yeah…”

Again, he cleared his throat. “And now it seems as if I speak your language?”

Yuri nodded again. “Still sounds like English to me.”

By this time, Kiih and Len were both staring at Mer as though he’d begun speaking in tongues. “What in the world are you doing, Mercutio?” Len asked.

“Just making sure Miss Yuri’s understanding wasn’t limited to just High Adani,” Mer replied as though his answer should have been self-evident. “Now, what I’ve been reading suggests that once a Worldwalker comes into his or her abilities, they change. Instead of hearing what people are saying, somehow their minds start to hear what people mean to say. Granted, there isn’t any way for us to be totally certain, but that’s what it seems like.”

“But I can’t read anything,” Yuri pointed out. “Everything just looks like lines to me.”

“Tha’s ’cause there’s no’ a person’s mind to catch a meanin’ off of,” Ro said slowly, eyes lighting up with comprehension. “I see. No’ tha’ words in print have no meanin’, there’s just no person to read their meanin’ from. Oh, d’ya think tha’ if someone closed their head tha’ she couldn’t unnerstand ‘em?”

Yuri turned to Len, a feeling of intense awkwardness making her fidget uncomfortably on the bench. “I’m really not sure what they’re talking about,” she said quietly. “Do they do this a lot?”

“Quite often,” Len replied. “Mercutio is a bit of a scholar, even if he doesn’t look like one, and Ro is not the sort of person to pass up a good conversation. I think he might be becoming a scholar himself in self-defense.”

Across from them, Kiih snorted but said nothing.

*

While the spires that comprised the Cathedral were the geographical center of Nachtlin, it quickly became apparent that the bazaar to the northwest of it was the real heart of the city. As the academic conversation raged on, Yuri scooted closer to the window and parted the velvet curtains in order to take in the sights she’d missed by being lost and miserable. Eventually, Len slid closer and began pointing out various things as they rolled past.

“It is such a shame that we are not coming from another direction,” Len said quietly. “There are much more interesting things to see, like the botanical gardens that are kept for the High Consulate, or the fountain built to honor the kings and queens who became the first Consulates.”

“If Miss Yuri stays,” Kiih said from across the cabin, keeping his voice low, “then there is no reason why you can’t tour the sights at your leisure once Festival starts.”

“Are you offering?” asked Yuri.

Kiih snorted (something Yuri noticed that he did often) and shook his head. “Gods no, but I almost wish I could. I loathe Festival season with every fiber of my being, and if I could use a guest as an excuse to abdicate my duties, I would do so.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, as absolutely fascinating as your realm of origin may be, you do not possess enough standing to get me out of this.”

For a moment, Yuri was incensed, but then a thought struck her. “Did you just… make a peace offering?”

“It was brought to my attention that I may have been uncharitable due to the time of year,” Kiih replied, his tone even and low. “I am not, by nature, a charitable person. In fact, I am often a very irritable and cantankerous old man, but most of my barbs are not intended to be…” He paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully before finally saying, “They are not personal affronts.”

“That is probably the nicest I’ve ever heard you be,” Len stated with bemused astonishment written clearly on his face.

“I’m an irritable and cantankerous old man,” Kiih repeated as he spread his hands in a ‘what can you do’ gesture.

Yuri let the drape fall closed and turned so she might face Kiih; she hadn’t really been paying much attention to the scenery since he began speaking, anyway. “So what’s so terrible about Festival season that it makes you so… ‘uncharitable?’”

“Festival is the most important Adani holiday,” replied Kiih. “Everyone in Illustra’s service, from the smallest altar-keepers who polish incense burners to the highest priests and seers are expected to don church finery and trot it out for all to see.” By the end of his statement, his lips had curled up slightly in a vaguely disgusted snarl. “It’s a hassle and a bother which I feel has no bearing on my other duties, and I fail to see why I should be forced to participate in the dogmatic farce when there are other things that need my attention.”

“I see,” said Yuri, even though she felt a little more confused than she’d begun. “So that means you’re a priest?”

Almost in unison, Len and Kiih both let out sharp barks of laughter, though Kiih’s was decidedly sharper. Mer and Ro both paused in their discussion to warily eye the rest of the occupants of the carriage. When no one offered an explanation, they returned to their conversation, and Kiih rolled his eyes.

“He is most certainly not a priest,” Len said, trying and failing to suppress a snicker.

Across from them, Kiih opened his mouth, presumably to deliver a snappy retort, but Mer interrupted him. “I do believe we have arrived,” he said, hopping off the bench and opening the carriage door nearest Yuri. “Welcome to Nachtlin’s bazaar, Miss Yuri!”

“Please, you guys don’t have to call me ‘miss,’” Yuri said, smoothing down her shirt as she slid off the bench. “It makes me feel like I’m… I dunno…”

“An honored guest, mayhaps?” Mer supplied readily, eyes twinkling. “All right, fair enough. We’ve arrived! Please, ladies and honored guests first, Yuri.”

“Sure, put me on the spot,” she muttered with a shake of her head. Cautiously, she stepped out the carriage door and took a deep breath.

As soon as she left the confines of the cabin, all manners of sensation bombarded her senses. A warm breeze brought the sharp tang of salt water laced with a multitude of scents she could only assume belonged to any number of Adani foodstuffs being roasted or baked or fried nearby. She heard an ocean in the distance, the lapping of waves serving as a subtle heartbeat for the laughter, shouting, and general hub-bub that apparently characterized business in the bazaar.

The sights were what struck her the most, though. Laid out before her was a grand plaza that stretched for half a mile on all sides, at her best guess, which was teeming with colors and fabrics and people. Colorful streamers waved joyfully in the wind, drawing attention to vendors’ stalls or covered wagons. People of all shapes, sizes, and colors milled about, chatting, trading, spreading gossip, working. Near the center of the plaza, a large group of people in white and blue robes scurried madly around a wooden platform not unlike a stage upon which stood someone Yuri could only assume was their overseer.

Behind her, Kiih disembarked. “The swarm has already descended,” he grumbled, unlacing his cuffs and rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. “This will not be pleasant.”

“What won’t be?” Yuri asked, though she didn’t really expect an answer when he brushed past her.

For a moment, he ignored her as she trailed behind him, but finally he paused and pointed at the stage before them. “That writhing mass up ahead is largely composed of people who mistakenly believe themselves to be my superiors. I must navigate my way through them without offending them, acquire my assignments and garb for this season, and make as clean a break from them as possible without being saddled with their own dirty work.” He turned to face her, his expression pinched. “I advise you to keep quiet, do not speak unless spoken to, and should anyone ask, you are a friend of a friend, visiting from Vienne for the season. Anything more and Len or I will address whoever wishes to know.”

From behind her, she heard Len say, “Of course; she is the child of a good friend of my family, come to visit me.” Kiih nodded his brusque approval.

As they neared the stage, Yuri could see more clearly the central figure apparently in charge of it all: a slender woman of moderately short height in a white robe that put Yuri in mind of a Korean hanbok, but less colorful. Her dark hair, like Kiih’s, had been braided and pulled up at the top of her head, but the style was far more elaborate, and it was accented by more gold beads and pins than Yuri could reliably count from a distance.

When she caught sight of the group headed toward her, she smiled and began waving at them wildly. When she opened her mouth to shout, “Why, Kiih san’Illustra, what a pleasure to see you!” Yuri realized that she was not looking at a slender woman at all but, in fact, the prettiest man she’d ever seen.

The man hopped off the stage and deftly maneuvered through the crowed to greet them personally. Without waiting for an invitation, he grabbed Kiih’s hand and shook it vigorously. “I was beginning to think that you weren’t going to make it. Oh, and you brought guests!” His wide brown eyes swept over their party quickly, and his smile widened. “Ro, a pleasure as always! And Mercutio Kellaras, so good to see you, but whatever are you doing with this scoundrel? And who are these two charming people?”

Mer, who had been lagging at the rear of their group with Ro, sauntered forward and shook the man’s hand. “You know, I think I associate with him just to see how long it will take him to keel over. The short gentleman with the profusion of jewelry is my hired man, Len sa’Vienne, and that fetching young woman next to him is his friend, Yuri.”

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you both,” he said, shaking Len’s hand and politely raising Yuri’s hand to his lips. “I’m Mahir san’Illustra, the current proprietor of this monstrosity.” He gestured vaguely at the goings on behind him.

“I’m not here to indulge in pleasantries, Mahir,” Kiih said, the corners of his mouth tight. “I merely wish to escape with my garb, my assignments, and– hopefully– my dignity as soon as possible.”

Mahir nodded knowingly, and ushered them a little farther from the stage and the commotion surrounding it. “I have a feeling that someone on-high doesn’t particularly care for you. You were assigned a sword-dancer role this year, and it’s only come to my attention in the past two days.” He smirked crookedly, an expression that looked a little odd on his delicate, youthful face. “If you like, I’ll just have your garments delivered to your domicile; I understand you have a lot of work ahead of you?”

Kiih snorted. “You haven’t been doing this very long, have you? That is typically the role I occupy, assuming I haven’t irked anyone lately. What of my vigil duties?”

“You and I are going to be Silaelin’s ushers for the duration,” Mahir stated. “I have it on good authority that she loves pretty things, which I can only assume is why we were chosen.”

“Of course,” Kiih said, expression souring. “I suppose that’s all I need, if you’re willing to have my garb delivered.”

“Certainly,” said Mahir. “I’ll let you get back to entertaining your guests.”

Again, Kiih snorted. “Entertaining. Of course.”

Ignoring his attitude, Mahir turned to Len and Yuri. “It was a pleasure to meet the both of you. If you’ve got the time after the vigil, I’d love to join you all in the celebrations. Mercutio owes me a handful of drinks, as I recall.”

“It was a genuine accident,” Mer said, raising his hands in protest. “The fraug was strong and the floor was comfortable, it couldn’t have been helped.”

Mahir chuckled. “Of course. You should probably leave, I think the natives are getting restless in my absence. If you want to leave with your dignity intact…” He trailed off and waggled his eyebrows at Kiih.

“Come on, then,” Kiih said, pivoting on his heel and striding purposefully in the direction of another large group of people. Mer and Ro both bid Mahir farewell before hurrying after him.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand him,” Yuri said, shaking her head.

“That’s not an uncommon feeling,” Mahir said. “You’d better hurry, he looks like he’s intent on disappearing as quickly as possible.”

Len hooked an arm around Yuri’s shoulders and gently led her in the direction Kiih had gone. “It was nice to meet you,” he said to Mahir, who nodded and bowed low as they passed.

They caught up with Kiih and the others easily, Len making their presence known by a polite clearing of his throat. The stage and its mass of workers were completely obscured by the throng of people they’d buried themselves in, most of them jockeying for position in front of a stall that the merchant loudly proclaimed sold “only the finest authentic Viennese harpy jewelry.” Len shook his head at this pronouncement and whispered into her ear, “If any of these people had bothered to actually visit any of the southern cities, they would know that this man is peddling garbage.”

“People will buy what they like whether it’s actually ‘authentic’ or not,” Mer said over his shoulder. “Oh, don’t give me that look, I know that kind of thing sets you off. I don’t need good hearing to know what you were saying.”

Apparently feeling enough distance had been put between himself and Mahir, Kiih fell back a little, leaving Ro and Mer to head up their little group. “It seems that your presence was enough to keep me from a likely lengthy and embarrassing encounter. I don’t believe that Mahir would have let me leave so easily if it hadn’t been for your face.” He paused, obviously working over his next words before committing do them. “I will try to be a good host, at least for the rest of the day.”

“Th– thanks, I think,” Yuri said, taken aback. “Um, I could really use some shoes right about now, as lame and cliche as that sounds. I’d rather not get my toes broken in this crowd.”

Kiih glanced down at her feet, grimacing. “I suppose so,” he agreed. “I imagine you have no money?”

“Oh, no, Mer gave me twenty dynas before we left the shop,” Yuri said, “though I’m not really sure how much buying power that is. He said I could get a nice pair of shoes and a souvenir or two, though, so I guess it’s a bit more than twenty bucks where I come from.”

She stood on tip-toe and strained to see any signs indicating what nearby vendors sold over the heads of the crowd. What few signs she could glimpse were less than informative, being covered in script like that on the bills she had tucked in her shirt, or like the words engraved above Silaelin’s door: beautiful and completely indecipherable. “Ugh, I can’t read this.”

“Don’t worry. Since Len will be of no use, I know where there’s a perfectly serviceable cobbler at the northern end of the bazaar,” Kiih said. He let forth a short whistle, but gave no other indication to the pair of gentlemen ahead of them that he had changed his course.

The crowd thinned out a little further down, from a near-constant press of bodies to a relatively sedate ebb and flow of people. Rather than being forced between Kiih and Len, Yuri was able to walk abreast of them and get a better look at the clothing and features of the people around her. There was no unifying theme to the clothing she saw; some people wore simple shirts and pants in dusty earth tones, some people were dressed in a manner Yuri associated with business-casual, some people were dressed in three-piece suits like the one Kiih had worn when she first met him, and some peoples’ clothing defied her classification altogether.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a familiar pale almost-face. She turned, hand poised to flag him down and mouth already forming Corwyn’s name, when Kiih’s hand came down on her shoulder. “Come this way,” he whispered, bending down so that his lips were closer to her ear. “I don’t know why you were about to call out to that pale man, but I advise you to keep as far away from him as possible.”

Without another word, Kiih steered Yuri away from where she’d seen Corwyn, leaving Yuri to wonder, what in the world was that about?

Chapter Eight – Interlude

Len greeted her with a grin, having changed into a pair of black slacks and a blue shirt to match the one Yuri wore. He had also donned all of the jewelry he’d taken from the dresser, which seemed to include multiple earrings, a couple of discrete silver rings on each hand, and at least one necklace that had been tucked into his shirt. “I’m glad that it fits,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

Yuri nodded, absently checking the pajama pants thrown over one arm for the pendant Corwyn had given her. When she felt its reassuring weight in one of the pockets, she nodded brightly. “Yup. When’s the carriage gonna be here?”

“Mer said half an hour about half an hour ago,” Len replied, offering Yuri his arm. “While he may tend to be lazy if he has nothing scheduled, if he says something will happen at a certain time, it will happen at that time.”

“Oh, yeah,” Yuri said, sliding her arm into his. “Ro said that the first time I came here, I think.” With her free hand, she smoothed down her shirt and adjusted the kilt on her hips. “Anyway, you said something about a festival, right? What’s the occasion?”

Leading her down the narrow steps, Len nodded. “Yes, Nachtlin will be celebrating Festival at the end of the month. It’s the holiday that commemorates the trials of the Mother’s chosen ones as they fled across Adan to the Dark Coast and founded what would become this city.” He let her arm slide from his as he moved to open the front door for her. “For the first five days, it is customary to light candles in the windows of our dwellings,” he continued. “Once the vigil is over, we celebrate in the form of week-long festivities.”

Outside, Mer slouched in a chair, one booted foot propped on an adjacent table, one hand dangling almost to the wood of the deck, and the half-smoked cigarette he’d stubbed out between his lips. He had chosen to wear a pair of dark breeches tucked into knee-high leather boots and a white shirt the cut of which put Yuri in mind of a swashbuckler. “I’m guessing, based on what Ro and I talked about the last time we got to see you, that you haven’t partaken in Festival before,” Mer announced, using his other hand to light the stub.

“It’s true,” Yuri admitted, “but it seems pretty cool.”

“Oh, it is!” Mer agreed, hopping to his feet in a sudden burst of motion that somehow failed to knock over any of the furniture (though Yuri noted that the table wobbled just a little in his wake). His face lit up with a wide grin that made his brown eyes glitter. “Hey! Look at you, all dressed up. That old kilt looks so much better on you. We’ve got to get you some shoes, though. Len might like to leave his toes at the mercy of everyone else, but your feet are too cute to let them get dirty.”

He waved the hand that clutched the cigarette, leaving wide arcs of sweet smoke wafting through the air. “Anyway, I hope you’re staying for a while. The vigil starts in two days, and then Festival kicks off. Then it’s pretty much a week of wine, women, music, and a lot of other stuff that should probably interest me as a civic-minded individual, but who cares after the wine and the women?”

“I’ll be honest,” Yuri said, fighting not to redden, “I’m not really that interested in wine or women.”

Mer’s face fell, and he favored Yuri with a most stricken– and excruciatingly melodramatic– expression. “I am so sorry to hear that,” he said, his tone just as overly dramatic as his face. “I mean, a fine pair of breasts is probably–”

“That is quite enough, Mercutio,” Len interrupted, clearing his throat.

He glanced past Mer and into the street, which had become significantly more lively since Yuri had arrived. “Is that the carriage you called for?” he asked, an edge of scandalized horror creeping into his voice.

Yuri followed his gaze and saw a massive coach rolling inexorably toward the cafe. It was made of some sort of dark wood that was carved into intricate designs of vine-wrapped trees and large ferns gilt in gold. Thick green drapes shielded the passenger compartment from view, but the coach was large enough that Yuri estimated it could comfortably hold six broad and surly people. Of the driver, there was no sign, nor could she see exactly what sort of animals pulled it.

“Oh my Gods,” Len groaned, covering his face with the palm of his hand and shaking his head slowly. “It is the carriage you called for, isn’t it? Oh my Gods, are you thick? What, exactly, is discrete about that?” He gestured helplessly down the street.

“Come on, Len, you need to relax,” Mer said. “I just thought it’d be nice to go in comfort, and it’s not like we can’t afford it. Speaking of which, I know you’re new to the area, Miss Yuri, and I have planned ahead!” He lodged what remained of his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and patted himself down until he produced a wallet from which he drew a few bills. He extended them to Yuri. “This is twenty dynas. Not sure how much it’d be where you’re from, interplanar exchange rates being nonexistent and all, but it’s enough to get you some shoes and a couple of nice things at the bazaar.”

Hesitantly, Yuri took the bills and inspected them. A little larger than a dollar, they were a calming pastel blue with green and yellow accents and a large portrait of a fine-featured man of indeterminate age facing a segreant dragon like the ones she’d seen near the Cathedral. There was writing on it, a caption of some sort, she assumed, but it resembled little more than a few odd twists and curls. She deliberately folded the bills and reached into the neck of her shirt to lodge them under one breast in the not-terribly-supportive shelf bra built into her camisole. “Thank you,” she said a little awkwardly. “I don’t know when or if I’ll be able to pay you back, but I’ll try.”

Mer waved a hand dismissively, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it! Getting the opportunity to rub elbows with as distinguished a person as yourself is good enough for me. I just can’t wait to settle in and just pick your brain about where you come from!” He grinned widely. “Until then, I’d be a terrible host if I didn’t see to it that you’re comfortable. Besides, I can afford it every once in a while, despite what Mister Discreet over there thinks.”

Before Len could do much more than open his mouth to argue, the carriage drew parallel to the front of the cafe. The door on the side swung open of its own accord, exposing an incredibly opulent interior which Yuri guessed could in fact seat eight broad and surly occupants with ease. “All right, then, lock it up!” Mer said, jauntily tossing Len a set of keys over one shoulder and making a break for the carriage.

Len deftly snatched the keys out of the air, shaking his head and shuffling back to the door. Yuri heard two loud clicks which she assumed were the locks, then Len again flashed her a winning smile. “What’s done is done,” he said quietly to her, “so I suppose we really should just enjoy it. Shall we?”

Yuri returned Len’s smile, taking his arm and gamely falling into step beside him. “Sure!”

*

As it turned out, traveling between the house Kiih shared with Ro and the Sunset Cafe only took about ten minutes by coach. Yuri barely had enough time to pull the pendant out of her pocket, stow her pants under the plush bench, and settle into a window seat before the coach slid to a smooth stop and the door across from her swung open.

Mer jumped up and leaned out the door. “Ooh, looks like we’re in luck. I think they’re home!” He pulled himself back into the cabin and motioned at Yuri. “Ladies first, of course.”

“This will not take long,” Len said. “Why not wait here?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Mer replied cheerfully. “Come on, all ashore! If we’re lucky, we can probably con Ro into making Kiih make us something to eat.”

Yuri pushed herself reluctantly off her seat and stretched her legs. Gripping the bar next to the door, she hopped out of the coach as gracefully as she could manage. She heard a soft thump as Len disembarked, then Mer noisily clambering out next, followed by the sound of the carriage door latching shut.

Before Yuri had taken more than a handful of steps toward the cottage, the door burst open and Kiih strode out a look of mean determination on his face. A good portion of his hair had been caught up in small braids, like dreadlocks decorated with tiny golden beads, and most of it had been pinned into a loose knot at the top of his head before being allowed to flow freely down his back. His right hand rested easily on the hilt of a sword that hung from his left hip, and the ties to the cuffs of his shirt (which was cut much like the ones Len and Yuri wore) fluttered in the wake of his motion. “I swear to you,” he snarled, “if you don’t–”

“We love you too, Kiih!” Mer called jovially. “You going to invite us in?”

“Oh, for Mother’s sake!” Kiih cried, throwing his hands up in disgust. “What in the Gods’ names are you doing here?”

Both of Mer’s hands grasped Yuri’s shoulders and propelled her forward. “This fine young woman says that you have something of hers,” Mer replied when they were within easy speaking distance. “And I thought that it’d probably be good for Ro to get out of the house. I swear, I don’t know how he survives sequestered like this.”

Kiih merely rolled up his shirt sleeves and crossed his arms over his chest. “What I don’t understand is how a self-proclaimed linguistic genius such as yourself can possibly misconstrue the phrase ‘go hang yourself’ in as many ways as you do.” He sighed and turned to glare down at Yuri. “He’s talking about the shoulder bag you had with you, and that helmet?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said, nodding brightly in an attempt to deflect Kiih’s bitterness. “I had some notebooks in there, and my cell phone, and I think I had a paperback book in there. At least if you can still call it a paperback with its covers taped on.”

“It started to make strange noises after a few days, so I gave it to Silaelin for safe-keeping,” Kiih said, his expression pinched. “If you want it, simply find her; I’m sure she will return it to you. You can leave now.”

“Not a chance,” Mer said indignantly. He hooked one arm around Yuri’s shoulders and dragged her forward, elbowing Kiih aside as they passed. “Hey, Ro, we’re breaking you out!” he hollered toward the cottage.

When Yuri saw Kiih’s hand drift back toward the hilt of his sword and grip it so firmly his knuckles went white, she balked. “You know, antagonizing the jerkface who’s standing there with a sword looking ready to chop us up really probably isn’t the greatest idea in the world,” she hissed at Mer through clenched teeth.

“Bah, he won’t kill me,” he replied easily, tugging on her shoulders until she reluctantly began dragging her feet again. “Oh, he’ll want to, but, for one thing, his job won’t let him, and, for another, Len won’t let him, and he knows it.”

By the time the thought to question Mer’s statement made it to her mouth, Ro appeared in the door, his red hair sticking out at odd angles. “Oy, ya three, stop makin’ a scene and come inside.” He squinted over Yuri’s shoulder, bringing into focus the lines underneath his eyes. “Oh, sorry Len,” he said finally, “di’n see ya there. Ya four. Inside, iffin ya don’t mind.”

Yuri turned to Kiih in time to see his expression go stony. “I would greatly appreciate it if you wouldn’t cut me off at the knees,” he said, his words clipped and angry. “We are here for a reason. More importantly, I am here for a reason.”

His words hung in the air for a moment, heavy with some meaning Yuri couldn’t grasp. Ro merely shrugged tiredly and motioned everyone inside. “I’ll get us some tea,” he continued, as though Kiih had said nothing. “Ya’re needed in town anyway, there’s no reason we shouldn’t go with Miss Yuri, Mer, and Len.”

Kiih’s shoulders slumped, his hand moving from his sword to instead rest on Mer’s shoulder. “I swear to you, I will end you one day,” he said, though Yuri heard more resignation in his tone than any actual rancor.

Mer nodded cheerfully in agreement. “It’s true, but not before we get well and drunk. I mean, so far gone that even you start slurring, and then you go for my throat and miss, and I get a rakish scar for your trouble.”

Kiih shook his head. “Let’s skip the tea and just get this over with.”

Chapter Seven – Chapter Nine

This time was different. She never lost consciousness and was keenly aware of the exact moment where her feet touched the ground. She felt a strange pressure in her chest and a crackling of static electricity as her feet landed softly on the cobblestone street. She opened her eyes to see her hair and Corwyn’s floating around them as though they were both suspended in water. Then the electricity faded, the pressure released, and she stood, hands clasped with Corwyn’s, staring up into his mask-like face.

So this place is a place dear to you? he inquired, cocking his head slightly to one side and stepping so that they were side-by-side. His fingers reluctantly slipped out of hers, but she did not offer her hand again.

She took a deep breath and took in their surroundings. They did, indeed, stand in front of the Sunset Cafe, but the light filtering over the roofs of the surrounding buildings and the distinct lack of patrons implied that they had arrived at sunrise instead of the time Len (and the name) had implied was their busiest.

“Yeah,” she replied finally. “It reminds me a lot of a place my dad took me when I was younger, and the people I met here were really nice. It’s got a good feel to it.”

Corwyn nodded. It looks pleasant, but it seems that if it is occupied, they are asleep. Perhaps we should go?

“Nah, I think I’ll hang out here until the owners get here,” Yuri said. “I promised them I’d visit next time I was in town. I didn’t really expect there to be a next time, but since I’m here…” She trailed off, finishing her thought with a shrug.

Fair enough, Corwyn said. I believe I will part ways with you, then, at least for now. I do not know how long I’ve been a prisoner to myself, but I am anxious to see how life has gone forward in my absence. Perhaps I will be able to find another friendly face. He turned to face Yuri again, and she received the distinct impression that he would be smiling warmly, if he could. I would be most pleased if we could meet again before you leave.

“Um, sure. But, if you’re going off on your own, how will I get in touch with you?” She gestured at the Cafe before them. “I mean, I’m not going to spend my whole time here. I don’t even really know how long I’m going to be here anyway.”

I have a perfect solution, Corwyn said, the base of Yuri’s skull prickling from the pleasure in his voice. With a pale, slender hand he reached into his red shirt and pulled out a delicate pendant made of something that looked like snowflake agate wrapped in braided gold wire. He reached under his hair and unclasped the chain before extending it to Yuri. This was given to me as a gift. It has been with me so long that it is practically a part of me, and if you were to speak something to it with the intent of speaking to me, I will hear it.

Yuri cupped her hands under the pendant, and Corwyn allowed it to fall into her grasp. “Thanks. I’ll let you know when I’m going to head out. Um, try not to get in trouble, I guess?”

The same to you, Miss Yuri, Corwyn said. He then turned sharply on one heel and simply disappeared before her eyes, swirling out of existence as though submerged in water. Yuri couldn’t help feeling discomfited and mildly dissatisfied as she climbed onto the porch of the Sunset Cafe and hunkered into one of the chairs in one corner.

Ultimately, it came as no surprise when she jerked awake to see a cup of tea, a small plate of something that looked like strudel, and Len all sitting across from her. Seeing Len smile at her somehow made her keenly aware of the fact that her hair was likely a mess, she had yet to brush her teeth, and she was still wearing her obnoxious green and pink pug pajamas.

“I will be completely honest,” Len began when it was clear that Yuri was both awake and listening, “I had pretty much expected to never see you again. But I’m glad that you thought to visit. I take it you are no longer colossally lost?”

Simultaneously straightening in the chair and adjusting the camisole top of her pajamas, Yuri nodded. “Yeah, I actually came here under my own power this time. Sort of. So, um, how long has it been since we met?”

“A month or so,” Len replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “As I said, I really didn’t expect to see you again. Admittedly, the next time you find yourself her outside of business hours, you really can walk around back and knock. Chances are good that I’m awake even if Mercutio is not.” He picked a strudel off the plate and took a bite out of it. “What brings you here, if you aren’t lost this time?”

Yuri could feel her cheeks reddening, and she turned to look out to the street in hopes of hiding the worst of it. “Well, I was having a nightmare, I guess, and when I woke up I was here.” At Len’s quirked eyebrow, she blurted, “But I know where I am, and I know how to get home now, so I’m not lost lost. Just… um, ‘on walkabout,’ I guess.”

Len nodded, still favoring her with the ghost of a smile. “Well, Mer and I had been planning to take the day off, perhaps head to the Library, maybe wander to the bazaar and see how preparations for Festival are going.”

“Who’s going to run the cafe while you’re gone?” Yuri asked, immediately feeling silly as soon as the words had left her mouth. She began studying the cobblestones closest to the cafe with a fierce intensity that might have set them on fire, were they combustible.

If Len found her inquiry to be silly, he gave no sign. Instead, he shrugged and said, “We are the Sunset Cafe. Most of our patronage happens after night has fallen. Besides, even though Mer prefers to work the shop himself, he does keep a handful of staff. They usually arrive later in the day, though.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him finish the strudel and then pull out one of his aromatic cigarettes. “At any rate, if you would like to accompany us, you would be most welcome.”

When Yuri could feel most of the heat leaving her cheeks, she cautiously turned to the plate with strudel on it and began picking one apart and eating it. “That’d be cool,” she said at length. “I mean, I’d really like that, but I’m afraid I don’t have any shoes.” She began to study the vivisected pastry with the same intensity she’d favored the cobblestones. “I mean, I didn’t exactly go to bed dressed for a day in the city.”

Leaning back, Len looked her over, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Well, you seem to be about my height, and I am quite sure your shoulders are thinner than mine, so I should be able to loan you a shirt.” He ducked under the table briefly, then shook his head. “Nothing I can do about shoes that fit. But I can loan you something to keep your feet safe, though we will need to find something comfortable for you if we will be walking all day.”

“That sounds good,” Yuri said cheerfully, pulling her legs up to her chest and curling her toes over the edge of the chair. “So, when were you two planning on heading out? And what are the chances you know where Jer– Kiih lives? I think he has some essentials of mine.”

Len scowled, looking for all the world as though he’d swallowed something slimy. “That depends entirely on who’s been polishing his sword recently, and I frankly would not care to know.” After a moment, his expression settled into a mild grimace. “Sorry, that was very unfair of me. There are two places you are likely to find him, and I know both of them.”

“Wow, I know Jerkface is kind of a… well, jerkface, but there’s a lot of animosity between you two, isn’t there?” She rested her chin on the top of her knees and began to fidget with the hems of her pajama pants’ legs. “I mean, when I first saw you, you looked like you would’ve hauled off and decked him right there if he’d blinked wrong. And he kind of looked like he would’ve been happy if you’d given him an excuse to do the same.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Len said, sighing and casting his eyes downward, “Kiih means well most of the time. However, as strange as it may seem, we have known each other for a very long time, and we have both said and done things that aren’t easily forgiven or forgotten.” He shrugged. “Anyway, if he has something of yours that you need, we can pass both places today if necessary.”

The front door to the cafe opened, and a disheveled (but significantly more hale-looking) Mer stumbled out clutching a steaming cup in both hands. His eyes swept over the porch, and he slumped into a chair next to Len. “‘Mornin’,” he grumbled, hands fumbling over Len’s person until he retrieved a cigarette. While Yuri and Len stared incredulously at him, he blearily set it between his lips and snapped his fingers several times until a small flame appeared between his thumb and forefinger. When it was finally lit, he seemed to relax.

After a moment, Len cleared his throat. “I don’t think I will ever stop being surprised at how much you don’t respect personal boundaries, Mercutio,” he said, tone of voice clearly indicating how appalled he was.

“Yeah, and I’ll never stop being surprised that you can get a pretty girl to talk to you,” Mer muttered around the cigarette, smoke chasing his words. Len shook his head, holding out his own cigarette for Mer to light.

“So, anyway,” Mer said, “I was thinking that we could just get a coach for the day, because, frankly, I’m too delicate a flower to let wilt in this sun, and if Miss Yuri is here, then it’d probably be a good idea to let her see the city in comfort, instead of on foot.” He began to idly blow smoke rings over Len’s head. “Sound like a plan to you?”

“Some days, I think I hate you,” Len responded drily, waving away the rings over his head and blowing a little smoke out of his nostrils. “But yes, that sounds fine.”

“This might seem a little bit dense,” Yuri said hesitantly, sliding into the lapse of conversation, “but, um, did you just set your finger on fire?”

Mer glanced up at her, looking genuinely surprised. “Oh, this?” he asked, snapping his fingers again to produce a flame. “This– this is nothing, this is just a parlor trick. I wasn’t trying to startle you.” He shook his hand and the tiny flame died. “So, I’ll just go make arrangements to get a carriage when I’m done, then.”

“We’ll be making a detour,” Len said, taking a drag and then crossing his arms over his chest.

“Ooh, I love detours,” Mer said with a sudden cheer that Yuri could only attribute to the fact that he now had nicotine and caffeine in his blood stream. “So what’re our new plans?”

“It’s nothing major, just paying Ro a quick visit, since it seems he might have something Miss Yuri left behind last time,” Len replied as nonchalantly as he could.

Mer grinned. “Fantastic. Maybe we can see if we can drag him along. It’d probably do him some good to get some fraug and watch the Festival preparations.” He pulled a heavy glass ashtray toward him and energetically stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. “Right. I’m going to go make arrangements. You kids do whatever it is you kids do. This party is leaving in half an hour with or without you.” He stood, gulped down the entirety of the mug he’d brought outside with him, and left it on the table as he strode purposefully back into the cafe.

In his wake, Yuri said softly, “Seriously, you don’t have to call me ‘miss.’”

Len favored her with one of his disarming grins, took a very long drag from his cigarette, and snubbed it out. “I didn’t want to offend you by acting familiar with you,” he explained. “Here, let’s go get you a shirt and see if my shoes will fit you well enough to do until we make it to the bazaar.”

“I’m sorry that Mer seems to want to bring Jerkface along with us,” Yuri said as she pushed herself out of her chair. “We can skip it if you want. Doesn’t he know that you two don’t really get along?”

“He understands that we don’t care for each other,” Len said with a shrug. “I think that he chalks it up to professional differences, and it isn’t really important enough for me to tell him otherwise. I doubt that Kiih and Ro will be able to come with us anyway.” He rose and gathered the dishes from the table. “You may have noticed that Ro and Kiih live a relatively regimented lifestyle by necessity, and anything unscheduled is usually not welcomed.”

Somehow, while balancing all the dishes on one arm, Len held the door open for Yuri and gestured for her to go on ahead of him. “Just go up the stairs in the back. My room will be on your left. Feel free to see if there is anything you’d be willing to wear in public.”

Yuri followed his directions, heading for the narrow door in the back through which she’d seen Mer, Ro, and Kiih disappeared on her first visit. As Len had implied, the door led to a short hall that ended at right angles to a set of narrow, steep stairs that creaked no matter how lightly Yuri tried to tread on them. The landing at the top of them was covered with a thick rug that felt pleasant under her bare toes and was lit by several tall windows through which warm sunlight spilled invitingly. To her left, a door stood slightly ajar, while the other three doors stood open. One was obviously an office of some sort, a desk featuring prominently in what she could see of it. Another was a bathroom with a white porcelain sink and claw-footed bathtub. The other seemed to be Mer’s room, as evidenced by the fact that Mer was sprawled on the bed against the far wall.

Feeling vaguely self-conscious, Yuri slipped through the door Len had indicated. His room had the air of a place in which someone stored their things but did not actually live. It was clean, neat, and sparsely furnished. A small, neatly made bed occupied one wall; a worn chest of drawers with a mirror on top occupied another. A rug similar to the one that covered the landing was thrown over the vast empty space in the center of the room, which caused Yuri to suspect that they had both been Len’s personal touches.

She drifted to the dresser, trailing her fingers lightly over the chipped and scarred finish. The top of it was mostly bare, though there were a few pieces of jewelry scattered on it. From one corner of the mirror dangled a leather thong to which several colorful feathers and beads had been attached. Yuri instinctively knew these items to be the only things in the room that gave even a small indication of its occupant’s personality.

Shaking her head, she pulled open the drawers until she found the one which seemed to contain most of Len’s shirts. Most of them appeared to be white button-down shirts like the one she’d first seen him in. She set these aside, assuming that they were his work shirts. In the back of the drawer, she located a handful of large shirts with laces at the neck and cuffs, which she immediately found to be suitable. She picked one made out of a soft, neutral colored fabric, which she slipped on over her pajama top.

A quiet knock came from the door, followed by a call of, “Excuse me, may I come in?”

“It’s your room,” Yuri called back, replacing the things she’d pulled out of his dresser and pushing the drawers back in. When Len opened the door, she straightened and tugged at the shirt to make sure she hadn’t left anything exposed.

“Well,” he said judiciously, hiding a smirk behind one hand, “it fits you, but I cannot say that it goes well with what you’re wearing.”

Yuri sighed. “I know, I know, but what can I do? You’ve got some seriously skinny hips there, and if I could squeeze into something of Mer’s, it would probably be too long.”

Len gazed at her thoughtfully for a moment, his brow furrowing and the hand that covered his smirk dropping to cover his chin. Finally, he said, “I might have something, but I will have to stress that it is not something to be worn lightly.” He walked over to the bed and reached under it, pulling out first a pair of thong sandals that looked a bit like Birkenstocks, then a wide and shallow box made of some sort of fine blonde wood. He set the sandals next to Yuri’s feet and placed the box delicately on the bed.

“What’s that?” Yuri asked, inching closer.

With great care, Len slid the lid off the box and set it aside. “This is one of the few things I kept with me from home when I came to live here.” He reached in and pulled out a supple length of tooled leather. “This is a Vienni kilt. Originally, they were the garments of the Harpy tribes but were soon taken up by the rest of the inhabitants of the Vienni province because of their flexibility. This one in particular was given to me by my father, and it is decorated with symbols describing our family line.” He laid it out flat and indicated several strips of leather attached to what Yuri assumed was the top. “It wraps around the waist and fastens using these. It would easily accommodate for the fact that your hips are not the same size as mine.”

“I couldn’t possibly wear that,” Yuri protested, staring at the leather in nearly slack-jawed awe. “Your dad gave that to you! I don’t want to mess it up because I’m a klutz sometimes. I mean, you don’t put your family tree on something that you just wander around in because you can’t find pants that fit.”

Len chuckled and folded the kilt into a square and set it on top of the lid to the box. “I understand your feelings, but part of why these became so popular is because they are very durable. No, the special one is here.” He pulled another length of leather from the box. This one was much longer, about twice as thick, and stained a dark red. The details on it looked similar to the other one, but it was accented with brassy studs and rivets. “This is a Vienni war kilt. It’s made to be worn into combat, and the designs on it depict victories of members of my family. I inherited this from my mother.”

“Wow. That’s amazing,” said Yuri. She reached out and lightly felt the leather of the first kilt Len had shown her, pleasantly surprised by how soft it felt under her fingers. “Okay, if you’re willing to let me borrow the kilt your dad gave you, I’d be honored to wear it.”

“Wonderful. Here, I’ll show you how to tie one.” He carefully laid the red war kilt back in the box and picked up the soft brown one. Holding one end under his navel, he wrapped it around his waist twice and used the strips of leather to tie it into place. “Simple, right? You probably won’t be able to wrap twice, probably just a time and a half.” He undid the ties and handed the garment to Yuri. “If you need my help, I’ll be right outside.” Giving her a jaunty smile that made her stomach flutter a little, he gathered some of the jewelry off the dresser and left.

After a moment, Yuri set to figuring out the kilt. Trial and error told her that it fit best when she took off her pajama pants before trying to tie it, and when she tucked the shirt into it. Len’s estimate of a wrap and a half had not been wrong, and when she saw her reflection in the mirror, she couldn’t help but smile at how strangely snazzy she looked. She slipped her feet into the sandals that Len had laid out for her, noting how comfortable they were despite how much larger than her feet they were, and opened the door.

Chapter Six – Chapter Eight

Between Sil’s apartment and the Kitazawa residence stretched about half an hour of uncomfortable silence interspersed with Yuri describing, somewhat awkwardly, her second experience in the darkness.

“I can’t even begin to speculate about what goes on in the place between the planes,” she said very seriously, both hands on the wheel of her 2005 VW Beetle, eyes straight ahead. “However, what you’ve described both times lines up pretty well with what I’ve been told about interplanar travel. That ribbon you saw was probably a manifestation of the thread I’d told your subconscious to follow when I instructed you to think about where your home was.”

“So… you’re really, actually, Silaelin, but you live in Waldorf?” Yuri struggled, and largely failed, to wrap her brain around the concept.

Sil nodded, her demeanor shifting back to the somewhat cheerful attitude with which she’d begun the drive. “It’s called ‘bilocation,’ when one person or object occupies two different places at the same time. It’s… well, it’s really hard to explain to someone who either hasn’t done it or isn’t at least in the clergy, but as far as you’re concerned, Silaelin and Silvia are one and the same. Which is why I said it’d probably be best for everyone if you just called me ‘Sil.’”

“Okay.” Yuri turned to watch the small towns on MD-235 roll past outside the passenger side window. “What do I do now? When is now, anyway?”

“It’s only been a few hours, I’d imagine,” said Sil. “It’s a little after ten, and you said it was around three in the morning that you got hit, right? This time it was convenient, but you will probably find that the amount of time you spend somewhere else isn’t proportionate to the amount of time that passes here.

“As for what happens now… well, that’s up to you. Like I said, there’s a little work that you need to do before you can be sure that you have conscious control over what you’re doing. If you want to just forget this happened, you can, but I really wouldn’t recommend it. I mean what happens the next time? The universe is pretty big, what are the chances of you finding someone who can help you get home again? Chances are, you’d just be stranded and miserable.” Sil shrugged. “But it’s up to you.”

“Not much of a choice, is it?” Yuri muttered sullenly.

“Aww, cheer up! All is hardly lost.” Sil flashed a dazzling smile. “I can give you my number and we can get together whenever you feel like it, and I can give you some pointers on how to get a handle on this. It’s not that hard, you just have to keep at it. Like exercise. Is this your turn?”

“Yeah, this is it, at the light.”

Sil flipped her turn signal on and finally executed the turn onto Pegg Road (the home stretch, Yuri thought). A little less than a mile down the road, both she and Sil could see what remained of her bicycle, stranded in the ditch. The car slowed. “That’s yours, right?”

Yuri felt her heart sink a little. She frowned, sighed, and shook her head. “Just leave it. No sense in bringing it home now. It’s not like I can use it, and God knows I don’t want to have to explain it to my parents whenever they get home.”

“You sure? I have a sheet in the trunk we could throw over the back seat, and I’m sure we could wedge it in without too much trouble.”

“I’m sure. Now, in about a mile, you’ll take a right, and that’ll be my subdivision.”

With a barely perceptible nod, Sil eased the car back up to the speed limit.

*

Though Silvia made sure to scribble her personal cell number on a card printed with her business cell number, Yuri did not call. Neither did she give Silvia her home telephone number; her cell number was moot, since her cell was in the bag which she no longer possessed. When Yuri’s mother called the land line, worried because Yuri had not been answering her cell, she merely mentioned how her bike and bag (which included cell phone, a partially filled sketchpad, and a weatherbeaten copy of Good Omens, among other things) had been stolen at some point in the past few days. She told Reese the same story, and no one thought better of it.

The hazy feeling she’d experienced when she first opened her eyes on Silvia’s sofa lingered like a miasma. She had difficulty concentrating on anything for any length of time, and spent most of the next few days either asleep on the couch or in a kind of stupor on the couch, watching whatever happened to be on the television at the time. She tried desperately to play a handful of console games, as though the distraction they offered could make it easier to forget the few hours she’d been lost. However, the only games she could actually succeed at were mindless button-mashers that let her mind wander with relative ease.

Her days soon became a blur of eating, sleeping, and the TV Guide Channel.

A week after Sil had pressed the business card into her hand and driven away, Yuri dreamed.

Her dream self rolled off the couch and onto the hardwood floor of a coffee shop that seemed to be a bizarre hybrid of the one she remembered fondly from her youth and the one in which she had met Len. With elements from both jammed together in this way, the differences between them were clear; the coffee house she remembered was older, the furniture and fixtures worn and faded, but well loved. The Sunset Cafe was warmer, the wood newer, and a greater amount of care had gone into maintaining the things customers often abused.

In the rear of the room, a fire roared in the fireplace (which looked disproportionately large on the wall), and a handful of people gathered around it, speaking in anxious tones. They seemed to not notice the girl gazing at them quizzically from the floor behind them, but Yuri knew with strange, dreamy certainty that they worried they were being watched. To her left, Len appeared behind the counter. She wasn’t quite sure if he’d appeared out of thin air or if he’d simply been elsewhere and walked into her field of vision; either way, he smiled at her gently and beckoned her over, laying out some pastries and a cup of tea.

Without really standing up or walking, Yuri found herself perched on a high stool in front of the counter. “I’m very glad you came back,” Len informed her as he set about cleaning the strange device Yuri assumed was an Adani espresso machine. “Though I think that you might have chosen a poor time. The whole city is in disarray– it seems a monster is loose in the streets. It’s good to see that you safe in all this mess.”

Yuri had meant to say something flippant like, “Monster. Right.” However, what she heard leave her mouth sounded more like, “Safe. Right.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “No one’s safe now. There’s no peace in this house.”

Len merely shrugged as though Yuri’s strange declaration were the most normal thing. “It could be worse. You could be out in the cold like them.” He pointed toward the bay window at the front of the cafe, and Yuri’s gaze followed. The world outside the cafe was dark, almost too dark for her to discern anything. She leaned forward just a little, and saw a small flash of something in the corner of the window.

She no longer sat within the supposed safety of the coffee house. Now she stood in the dimly lit street, a twisted parody of the grace that characterized Nachtlin’s buildings and roads. Everything around her was jagged, shattered, and harsh. All the buildings seemed splashed with black or brown, and the structures that Yuri knew to be made of the strange white bedrock were all mottled and covered with thick ropes of a ruddy ichor that twitched ever so slightly. In the allies, dark forms huddled together, indistinct and pitiful.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the flash again, closer this time. She whirled on her heel in ultra-slow motion, her hair whipping around her face just as a bolt of lightning split the sky open and illuminated everything around her in stark clarity. The first fat rain drops pelted her with cold as she stared into a pair of fiery green eyes. She barely noticed the white face or the black hair that framed them; she was pinned by their luminous ferocity and the vicious glee she saw in their depths. If eyes were the windows to the soul, she realized distantly, this soul had been made of shards of glass and razor wire. The longer she stared into them, the less human they looked.

The illumination from the lightning faded slowly, leaving Yuri in a dark, rain-soaked landscape lit only by the predatory green eyes. Below them, a glimmering white smile formed, a crooked and malicious slash in the dark. Behind them, other pin-pricks of color began to appear, a forest of malevolent eyes moving silently toward her. Lightning flashed again, and the green-eyed creature surged forward so quickly that she had no hope of tracking its movement. It lashed out with a hand like a claw and gripped her throat so tightly that Yuri could feel her windpipe collapsing in its grip.

It jerked her forward off her feet and lifted her so that she was staring into the eerily electric depths of its slitted pupils. She heard it sniff her once or twice, then felt it huff its breath out harshly in her face. The edges of her vision began to grow dim (from lack of oxygen, she assumed), and the last thing she saw was the crooked grin floating in front of her like some twisted Cheshire cat.

*

When Yuri opened her eyes again, she almost convinced herself that she was still dreaming. Everything was dark and a little chilly, though there were no eyes floating either near or in the distance. The lack of rain, the lack of a cityscape, the lack of anything at all eventually filtered into her awareness and dispelled all thoughts that her dream had shifted.

I was sure that I had imagined you, a familiar “voice” said. Yuri turned around, beginning to kick her feet as though treading water, to see the spindly and familiar shape of Corwyn. I thought I had imagined that you called my name.

“If it’s any consolation, I’d been hoping that I’d imagined it, too,” Yuri said wryly.

Corwyn shrugged. I don’t understand, but I really don’t need to, do I? He drifted a little closer and reached out to tuck a lock of Yuri’s hair behind her ear. When Yuri did not flinch or jerk away, he pulled his hand back and gave the distinct impression of widening his eyes. My Gods, I can touch you. This is real, isn’t it?

In response, Yuri grabbed his hand and lightly tugged on all of his fingers. His skin was cool to the touch but not clammy, and it put her in mind of how Silaelin’s skin had felt. “I guess it is,” she said, trying for his sake to keep the sullenness out of her voice. “Listen, I’m not really sure what I’m doing here, but I do want to thank you for pointing me where you did. I met someone who was able to help me, even though I kind of stopped listening to her after I got what I wanted out of the deal.”

What brings you back here, if you viewed our encounters as a dream? Corwyn asked, seeming to study Yuri’s fingertips.

“I’d just been sort of hoping that this would go away if I didn’t think about it,” she replied, feeling shameful telling him this. “So when I got home, I tried to pretend that it had never happened. That meant turning down an offer someone made to help me get a handle on the situation. Tonight…” She sighed. “Tonight, I had a bad dream, and when I woke up, I was here. I didn’t mean it. But it kinda proves that I need help with this, doesn’t it?”

Hmm. Corwyn pulled away and drifted slowly to Yuri’s right. Flailing her arms a little, she followed. If you might pass freely here, then it is possible that I might pass freely as well. Perhaps it is time I left this place?

“I don’t think I understand what you’re saying, now,” Yuri said.

I was damned, Corwyn replied, gently taking Yuri’s hands into his. I was to live here for the rest of my days cold, alone, and without the comfort of anyone’s touch. However, you are here, you are real, and this means I am no longer alone. To prove his point, he laced his fingers with Yuri’s and cautiously pulled her toward him. This is fantastic, he continued, a tingly edge of excitement creeping into his “voice.” Please, since you are the catalyst for this, I would be honored if you chose where we go first. It would be a pleasure to see a place that you enjoy.

There was a brief moment in which Yuri thought of the living room of the apartment which Reese, Lexi, and Matt shared, but she quickly decided against it. Instead, her thoughts turned to the Sunset Cafe and the time she’d spent sitting on its porch listening to Len. “Sure, okay. I think I know just the place.”

Corwyn looked at her expectantly, his fingers still loosely intertwined with hers. Please, lead on.

“Right.” She closed her eyes and tried to recall the instructions Silaelin had given her. Instead of beginning large and working downward, she held in her mind a picture of the Cafe as she had first seen it from the street. From there, she built a panoramic image in her mind that drew the graceful nautilus curve of the city streets of Nachtlin, which she situated like a shimmering white shell on what she imagined to be the Dark Coast.

There was a moment in which she felt like the universe slotted into place and she knew she’d done well enough. She tightened her grip on Corwyn’s hands and drew him with her when she began to tumble downward.

Chapter Five – Chapter Seven

She hadn’t known exactly what she’d expected when the spindly towers in the distance became less distant, but she knew that she hadn’t quite believed Len’s description of the heart of the city practically being carved from the bedrock. At first, it seemed she had been right: the first few layers of the city seemed like a cross between an idyllic Victorian suburb (or what she imagined one might look like) and some sort of bland architectural style that wouldn’t have seemed too out of place back home. As near as Yuri could tell, the streets were all cobblestone or brick, extremely well taken care of, and apparently laid out in a sort of spiraling pattern like a nautilus shell.

The closer the towers in the distance came, the less normal things seemed. By the time they loomed tall overhead sometime in the afternoon, the cityscape began to be populated by irregular buildings that simply protruded from the ground. Eventually, entire blocks grew up like quartz crystals, and then the roads merely became the slender byways between clusters of rock formations that looked perfectly natural but which were obviously inhabited.

This, of course, was entirely separate from the people.

When they had set out from the Cafe, the streets were sparsely populated, mostly by people who seemed perfectly average except for their slightly odd clothing. The closer to the city’s heart they drew, however, the denser the population became. The people came in nearly all shapes, sizes, and colors, most walking, some pushing carts, some drawing rickshaws, many riding bicycles. Most of them were humanoid, or at least bipedal, and they were packed so tightly in the streets at points that Yuri could barely see them pressed between the gentle line of Ro’s back and the irritated solidness of Kiih’s chest.

By the time Yuri was too hot and miserable and exhausted to continue being awed by her surroundings, everything opened up and they stood before the structure that could only assume was the Cathedral from behind Ro’s shoulders. The crowd thinned out, with the exception of a small procession of people clad in flowing emerald and turquoise garments carrying a stately palanquin. The occupant was shaded from the sun by layers of gauzy fabric, but Yuri still caught a glimpse of a woman in robes that seemed almost like a kimono.

As they began to cross the open area, the woman in the palanquin gracefully parted the fabric with one slender, pale hand. Her porters had carried her close enough that Yuri could make out details about her such as her waist-length, fiery orange hair, her sharp chin, the beauty mark just to the right of her upper lip, and her eyes.

There was a moment in which Yuri’s green eyes locked with the woman’s, in which the world seemed to stand completely still as the stranger studied her with the air of a languid predator. Then the fabric fell back into place and the moment spun off into the air, gone.

Yuri shivered despite the heat. The woman’s eyes had been red like the first drops of blood that well up from a puncture.

“Ya all right?” Ro inquired, turning back with a worried expression on his face. “I know we’ve dragged ya through half tha city, but I swear we’re nearly done.”

“I’m fine,” Yuri said. “Just felt kind of like someone goose-stepped over my grave.” At Ro’s puzzled look, she sook her head. “Don’t worry, just a saying. I’m fine. Who was that woman who just passed us? She was gorgeous.”

From behind her, Kiih replied tersely, “That was Olivia Delegarde. Last surviving member of the House Delegarde, and the next in line to be High Consulate, when the time comes. And the time looks as though it’s coming quickly.”

“Hey, High Consulate! That’s the secular ruler you guys have, right?” Somehow, remembering that small fact from Len’s conversation with her cheered her up a little. “So, we’re almost there?”

“Tha’ we are. An’ iffin all goes well, we’ll have ya home soon.” Ro smiled, and Yuri felt her spirits rise a little more. She stepped away from her two escorts, took a deep breath, and looked at more than just the open square (though it was really more of an oval, she thought).

The structure was impressive once it wasn’t blocked by a person half a head taller. Where most of the city previously had put her in mind of quartz clusters, the Cathedral itself put her in mind of the images she’d seen of snowflakes. It was a massive collection of graceful white towers that sometimes branched and sometimes did not. Around the spires swirled slowly moving lights, like multi-colored wisps, accenting further the graceful beauty of them.

Ro gently took her elbow. “Come on, Miss Yuri, let’s get ya a look at tha inside.” Yuri nodded somewhat dumbly and followed where he led her. Her eyes never left the beautiful towers, and the chill that had run down her spine when she’d glimpsed Olivia Delegarde was completely forgotten.

At the opposite end of the square, there stood a tall arch which was flanked on either side by massive stone dragons. They appeared to be strange sort of cross between western dragons and the drawings of dragons Yuri had seen in Chinese restaurants. They had four legs and huge wings like those of a bat, and they stood upon their hind legs with their front ones clawing ferociously at the arch. Their necks were long, curving over the top of the arch, upon which rested their heads, which were shaped like a western dragon’s, but which had a mane and feathers. Both of them were obviously meant to be in the middle of a terrible roar. Vaguely, Yuri recalled the term “segreant,” though for the life of her she couldn’t recall where she’d heard it.

At this point, Kiih began to walk briskly in front of them, leading them through the arch and onto a wide thoroughfare that led to a circular courtyard. They were surrounded by the white towers, some of them reaching at least twenty stories into the air, some of them only one or two stories tall. They obviously seemed to be arranged in clusters, which were divided out like pie slices by thoroughfares just like the one they’d just taken. When Kiih turned to take one of the other paths out of the courtyard, Ro reached out and snatched the other man’s braid with the hand not guiding Yuri.

Kiih stopped mid-step, turned on his heel, and quirked an eyebrow.

“Ya know,” Ro began, thoughtfully toying with the tuft of hair left loose at the end, “I really think tha’ mebbe tha Library isn’t tha place for us to be going.”

The corners of Kiih’s mouth twitch slightly before he finally said, “All right. If we are here for information, yet we are not going to the very large repository of it, where shall we go?”

“Hmm, I think tha’ mebbe we ought to pay Silaelin a visit,” Ro stated judiciously.

“Silaelin is a busy woman,” Kiih said, a thread of steel in his voice which confused Yuri by its presence. “We aren’t scheduled to meet with her, it’s very likely she won’t even be in.”

“She’ll be in,” Ro said with certainty.

Kiih stared at him through narrowed eyes for a moment before gently tugging his hair out of Ro’s grasp and leading them down a small foot-path on the far side of the courtyard. After a few yards, the path terminated at a small wooden door framed on either side by hanging ferns that practically glowed with miniature versions of the large floating wisps that played through the very tops of the Cathedral’s spires. The door itself was plain, set with a metallic plate engraved with a writing that Yuri thought might be the beautiful bastard child of cuneiform and Edwardian script.

Kiih brusquely rapped on the door four times and stood at attention with his spine perfectly straight and his hands held stiffly at his sides. A few moments passed, then the door swung inward revealing a tall, buxom woman clad in a simple white shift under a long white robe trimmed in blue and gold. She had skin that made Yuri finally understand what it meant for someone to have an alabaster complexion, and hair that looked like finely spun gold threads piled on her head and held with various pins and clips. Her face was slender and pointed in a very Fae way, and her eyes were a wide, clear blue.

Her face lit up when she saw the three of them, and she stepped aside and motioned them in. “Welcome! I hadn’t been expecting you just yet, but it’s so good to see you two! And you brought a friend, how lovely.” She caught Yuri’s hands as she crossed the threshold and favored her with a wide smile. “I am Silaelin san’Illustra. It’s a pleasure to meet you. What’s your name?”

Yuri blinked, somehow taken aback by Silaelin’s cheer. “Um, I’m Yuri Kitazawa. It’s nice to meet you.”

“What a peculiar name,” Silaelin said, leading Yuri into the dwelling. It appeared to be two round rooms connected by a wide arch. The first room, into which the door led, was obviously a sitting room combined with a study (at least that was Yuri’s impression from the many tall shelves full to bursting with books). The other room was partially obscured by a curtain, but Yuri could still see a bed and some pillows.

Their host gestured to a round table to one side of the room, around which Ro and Kiih had already arranged themselves. Yuri dumbly took the seat next to Kiih, and Silaelin arranged her robes so that she might take the seat between Yuri and Ro. She smiled at Yuri again, then glanced between Kiih and Ro.

“So, what brings you gentlemen to me on this lovely afternoon?” she asked. Kiih gave Ro a pointed glare which obviously said, It was his idea, but Silaelin ignored it. “And why would you drag poor Yuri through the midday sun to do it? She’s obviously on the verge of heat sickness. Kiih, please, would you fetch some glasses and some water?”

Kiih nodded and rose stiffly, heading through the curtain and out of sight. Ro watched him go, then turned back to Silaelin with a contrite expression on his face. “I’m sorry, Silaelin, but I went somewhere closer first, and had no luck. We were headed to tha Library when I had tha thought tha’ it might be ya could pr’vide tha ’sistance Miss Yuri here needs.”

Silaelin turned to Yuri, fixing her with a sharply critical gaze. After a moment, her eyes softened, and she said soothingly, “I’m sorry to hear that you’re in trouble. Please, tell me what’s going on. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to help you, but I can guarantee that I will do everything in my power.”

Yuri nodded slowly and laid out everything that had happened up until this point, giving more detail than she had to Len, but she still balked at describing her experience with the stranger in the dark. She merely mentioned that she’d woken in a dark place and then drifted in a random direction before waking up in the garden. If Silaelin could tell that Yuri had omitted something, she gave no sign of it.

Partway through Yuri’s retelling, Kiih slid silently back into his chair and pressed a glass into her hands. When she finished, he said, “I apologize if we’re wasting your time with this.”

“Oh, you’re hardly wasting my time,” Silaelin said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s always nice to see your pretty faces, and I think that I have a pretty good idea of what Yuri’s problem is. Or, at least her perceived problem. I hardly believe that one’s ancestry is something one must be ashamed of.” She said this with a pointed look in Kiih’s direction, but he seemed impervious.

“So… what’s my ‘perceived problem,’ then?” Yuri asked hesitantly.

“I’ll need you to answer a few questions for me before I can say with certainty,” Silaelin said. “Tell me, where you come from, is it at all strange that your hair looks the way it does?”

“Yes,” Yuri replied. “It’s pretty weird that my hair’s this color. It’s not a natural color for someone’s hair where I come from, anyway. I was a little surprised when I saw Je– Kiih’s hair, and then there were a lot of people on the way who had kind of oddball coloring.”

“Hmm. All right,” said Silaelin. “I’m going to guess that wherever you come from, it’s just your kind there, and no other sentient races?”

“That’s right,” Yuri said. “Where are you going with this?”

Silaelin smiled. “Well, when two sentient races interbreed, their children usually have physical appearances that are in some way, large or small, not normal for either of the parents’ races. Most often, it’s purely cosmetic, like hair, eye, and sometimes skin color, but it’s not unheard of for horns to sprout or for someone to be born with scales.

“Granted, there are a few exceptions,” she continued. “Some races mix remarkably well, and that’s one of the reasons they survive, such as Harpy’s Children in the forested regions of our southern provinces. Does that make sense?”

“I… I guess,” Yuri conceded, frowning a little. “So are you saying that some member of my family was a fairy or something?”

“You’re certainly enough of a headache to be some sort of imp,” Kiih quipped. Ro jabbed him in the ribs sharply with his elbow, and Silaelin shot him a withering glare. He crossed his arms over his chest and straightened in his chair. “Apologies.”

“Anyway, as I was saying.” Silaelin clapped her hands brusquely and pushed a stray lock of golden hair behind one of her ears. “No, I’m not saying that a member of your family was a fairy or something, not exactly. What I am saying is that someone in your family was not entirely human. I don’t believe that there’s any fae ancestry involved, or at least it’s extremely unlikely. What I think is that you, and maybe other people in your family, are planes-touched.”

At this pronouncement, Ro’s eyes widened and Kiih sputtered indignantly, “That’s impossible! Worldwalkers are the stuff of legend. They’re a bedtime story mothers tell their children to warn them what happens when you play with things you don’t understand.”

“That’s true,” Silaelin said with a nod, “they are a cautionary tale to anyone who wants to manipulate the fabric of existence, but they aren’t just a story. It’s so rare to see Worldwalkers that they can comfortably be relegated to just legends, but they exist as surely as the Merciful Mother does. And their children are planes-touched.”

Yuri’s frown deepened as she remembered what Corwyn had told her. “What does ‘planes-touched’ mean? What exactly are ‘Worldwalkers?’”

“It’s actually easier if I start with your second question,” Silaelin said cheerfully. “According to legend, and mostly according to fact, too, there was a great and shining society of people who were so steeped in art and innovation that everything else just paled when compared to them. They were a people made up of dreamers and seekers, and for them, there was no limit to what they could do with technology and magick. When it occurred to them that the universe was vast and they should create a way to travel it, it was only a matter of time before they began to build.

“What they built was a network of gateways that, when activated, would use the naturally occurring magickal energy that runs through the universe to create doorways to different places. This included travel between gateways, but mostly it was aimed at creating stable, sustainable doorways to other planes of existence.” She paused, apparently to gauge Yuri’s reaction. When she noticed the glass that Yuri had been holding on to but not drinking from, she scowled. “Drink some water. Seriously.”

Startled, Yuri nodded and took a few gulps of the cool liquid, then set the half-empty glass on the table in front of her. “That’s better. It would be a really bad idea to do what we need to do with you on the verge of falling over. Anyway, like I was saying, these people attempted to create permanent doorways to other planes of existence, other worlds. Before, only limited travel between planes was possible, and then only for individuals with small burdens, and usually at a great cost. For the most part, when they brought the first few gates up, they were very successful. However, in their eagerness to push forward, they forgot caution, and failed to see a fatal flaw in their works.

“It ended in a tragic explosion that obliterated more than half the face of their world, and those who survived were drastically changed. The exposure to the wild magicks unleashed bleached everyone’s skin and hair, and it changed the very make-up of their beings. When all the dust settled, those who remained found that they could move freely between planes, among other things, but it was a hollow achievement when they knew that all they had built was now dust.

“With nothing left on their world, they wandered. Some of them started families, but most of them find it very difficult to settle down. Their children, when they have them, are known as being planes-touched. They, too, can walk between worlds, like their parents. And all who can traverse the planes as they can are known as Worldwalkers.” She leaned back and fixed Yuri with another appraising look.

For her part, Yuri tried her best not to look skeptical. “That’s… well, that’s a lot of information to think about,” she said finally. “But… as interesting as it is, how does this get me home?”

“Well, in and of itself, I suppose it doesn’t,” said Silaelin. “But it means that you probably got here under your own power, and not through some freak accident, which means that you’ll be able to leave under your own power. However, since you were only using your ability as a reaction to being in danger, it will probably take a little work before you can move between planes at will.” Before either Yuri or Kiih could say anything in response, Silaelin held up her hands. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, if I’m right, most of that work you can do when you get home.”

Yuri brightened. “So you can help me get home?”

“Yup,” Silaelin said brightly. “Ro was right to bring you to me. I’m sure there are books about the planes-touched around here somewhere, but I’m pretty sure I’m in a unique position to help you.” She reached around the table and took one of Yuri’s hands into hers. For the first time, Yuri noticed that her skin was cool and smooth, and the bones of her hands were fine but strong. “Now, I need you to do me a couple of favors here.”

Yuri blinked and looked up, realizing belatedly that she’d been staring at Silaelin’s fingers. “Um, sure. What’s up?”

Silaelin hummed thoughtfully. “Well, first I’m going to need your word that you’ll do what I say, even if it seems silly.” When Yuri nodded, she continued, “Now, I want you to look me in the eyes.”

With a little reluctance, Yuri complied. Silaelin’s eyes were large, though not so large that they looked out of place, and her irises were a blue caught between cerulean and corn flower, with striations of indigo and something that might have been gold. No, that was not precisely right. One was flecked with a little more gold; in fact, her left eye seemed to be more of a swirling green than blue, as she’d originally thought. Yuri blinked again, and Silaelin’s eyes were blue once more.

“… you to think of where your home is in the universe,” she heard Silaelin saying, though she couldn’t for the life of her remember anything she’d been saying before. She hadn’t even been aware of her lips moving, though now she thought she could see a slight upward tug at one corner of them. “You can close your eyes now, if you think that will help.”

Again, Yuri complied, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. As she felt the air fill her lungs, her world narrowed to the cool weight of Silaelin’s hands on hers and the darkness behind her eyelids. She concentrated stubbornly on the concept of home, thinking first broadly of the Milky Way galaxy, then zipping through it until her focus was on the Sun and the bodies around it. Then, she shifted to Earth, sheepishly recalling montages in movies that start with satellite photographs of the entire country which eventually zoom in on a particular house.

Eventually, she noticed that Silaelin’s hand had slipped away, and she could no longer hear even the vaguest hint of the other men in the room. When she let out her breath slowly and hazarded to open her eyes again, she was floating, alone, in the darkness. Her heart fluttered for a moment, on the verge of panic.

“Mister Corwyn?” she called out desperately. The darkness around her swallowed the cry eagerly, and it sound distant and tinny even to her own ears. She tried again, but the result was the same.

Before she could work herself into a truly good fervor, she felt the slightest of tugs on her right index finger. Glancing down, she saw the glimmer of a thin opalescent ribbon wrapped three times around her finger, one loop for each knuckle. It stretched behind her as far as she could see, though it seemed to disappear sooner when she looked forward. She felt the tug again, more insistent this time; it was definitely pulling her forward.

Casting one last look toward the darkness, Yuri sighed and began kicking her legs, trying to propel herself in the direction of the ribbon’s persistent tug.

*

When Yuri opened her eyes again, she found herself lying stretched out on a sinfully comfortable couch. Above her leaned a woman with what must have been a painfully ample bosom and a face much like Silaelin’s, though somehow subdued. When the woman saw Yuri’s eyes flutter open, she smiled broadly. “Welcome back! How are you feeling?”

Yuri sat up and immediately rubbed her eyes with the hand she was not using to prop herself upright. “Ooh, fuzzy. Where am I? Who are you?”

She heard the woman who looked like Silaelin hum quietly. “Well, my name’s Silvia, but it’s really better for everyone involved if you just stick to calling me Sil. As for where we are, we’re in my apartment in Waldorf, Maryland. I kind of wanted to settle down in a place named Statler, but unfortunately that choice wasn’t available.” Yuri peered at Sil between her fingers and found her still grinning. “At least now I know why it wasn’t an option. I have a car, do you want a ride home?”

“Um, sure,” Yuri said, still feeling a little blurry around the edges. Out of habit, she reached beside her on the couch, and her hand met nothing but air (and delightfully soft cushion). “Crap!” she said feelingly.

“Hmm?” Silvia cocked her head to one side curiously.

Yuri squeezed her eyes shut, as though that might help her feeling of sheer stupidity. “I think I left my bag and helmet at Jerkface’s house.”

Sil burst out laughing.

Chapter Four – Chapter Six

Len made a short detour behind the counter, preparing two more cups of tea and a plate with four more delightful pastries before leading Yuri gently to the patio in front of the Sunset Cafe. Through some seemingly miraculous equilibristic feat, he managed to balance both cups (on saucers), a small pitcher of cream, a tiny pot of honey, and the plate while opening the door, then pulling out two chairs. Yuri graciously planted herself in one of the chairs, and Len sat across from her, laying out the tea and pastries in a cheerful spread. He then cocked his hips to one side as he fished around in his pocket and produced a battered silver case and a bedraggled box of matches. “You do not mind, do you?”

“Hmm?” she looked quizzically at him for a moment, deciding to finish off her first cup of tea.

He opened the case and pulled out a cigarette. From across the table, Yuri could smell the sweet tang that she associated with the cloves her friends sometimes enjoyed. “I know not everyone enjoys this habit, but…” He floundered, obviously searching for the proper words. “Well, it seems more natural to me if I tell a story while indulging.”

“Oh, sure,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I have some other friends who smoke, it’s all right, I don’t mind.”

He smiled again, lighting the cigarette and taking a long, nearly sensuous drag from it. Yuri couldn’t help but find the curl of smoke that escaped his mouth terribly interesting. “You must excuse me, I did not grow up speaking High Adani, like you. If I’m unclear, please, tell me.”

The hand holding the cigarette made a wide, expansive gesture in the general direction from which Yuri remembered hiking. “Out there is the outskirts of Nachtlin, the very edges of it.” He gestured in the opposite direction, Yuri’s eyes following his hand to see more than just the hints of a spindly skyline in the distance. “That way is the city itself. It is a place of spires and trade and mysticism on the top, and a place of grime and dirt and a little bit of hope on the bottom. The entirety of this continent of Adan is ruled from those spires: by the benevolence of the Merciful Mother’s clergy, and by the High Consulate.”

“So you guys are run by a benevolent theocracy?” Yuri asked, her brows knitting together as she processed the information.

Len nodded. “Yes, and the High Consulate, who is a nod to the days when Adan was many separate provinces ruled by different monarchs. They struggled with each other and often with the Mother’s people, but when the Mother sent Her chosen ones to found a city on the Dark Coast, Nachtlin, the government that was forged was meant to strike a balance. There used to be more Consulates, but when the provinces finally unified under one rule, there was only one ‘monarch’ to represent. See?”

“I think so,” agreed Yuri, tentatively picking up a pastry and nibbling on it. “I’m sorry if this is a little basic, but who’s this ‘mother’ you’re talking about, and why would her chosen ones be founding a city on the coast?”

“You have no idea who the Merciful Mother is?” Len inquired. His voice conveyed genuine shock, and he leaned forward as though to study Yuri more closely. “The Merciful Mother is the Mother of All Things. She has forty-four recognized names, but when someone enters the clergy, he takes the first of Her names, and becomes known as san’Illustra.”

“So, this Merciful Mother is named Illustra, and she’s pretty much your god?” Yuri placed her half-eaten pastry on the saucer and picked up the tea to sip on.

Again, Len nodded. “She is the Goddess of this land, yes, but Her influence is incredibly vast. It’s why I’m surprised you do not know at least one of her names.” He mirrored Yuri, picking up his tea cup and taking a sip. The smoke from the cigarette he cradled in his other hand curled lazily around his face, giving it a pleasant, dreamy quality. “She was not always present here, though. Like I said, once, this continent was split into many different warring countries. History tells us that the wars were escalating to the point that it’s possible the countries would have simply warred themselves out of existence, if things had not changed.”

He paused, took a short drag off the cigarette, and exhaled slowly. “It was brutal. The suffering of everyone was so great, but there was nothing anyone could do to stem the flow of blood. Then, quietly, people began to whisper a name. They were a tiny sect at first, barely worth notice, but they grew, quietly, in number. They taught of love and acceptance of each other, in the names of the Merciful Mother. Bit by bit, they began to change the hearts and minds of the Adani people, and the rulers of the land were rightly afraid of these changes.

“So the Mother gave visions to a man, his wife, and their loved ones. They would travel across the continent, to the middle of the Dark Coast on the western shores, and there they would build a cathedral which would serve as the center of life for all who spoke any of Illustra’s names.” With the hand holding the cigarette, he gestured back to the city’s center. “When they arrived, they found most of the spires you see already carved from the rock. It was merely their job to inhabit it and make it their own.”

Yuri’s eyebrows drew downward slightly, and she scowled. “That seems a little fantastical. That’s what your historians teach you?”

Len shrugged. “It’s the church’s teachings. But we know that this city exists, that the Cathedral at its heart exists, and the Merciful Mother does grace most of Adan. So, for all intents and purposes, it’s as real as the conversation we are having: it may be, or it may not be.” He grinned. “Now, please, tell me about yourself. Where do you come from? What is your life like?”

“Well…” Yuri began, worrying at her bottom lip subconsciously, “I come from a place called Maryland, in the country of the United States, on the continent of North America. My country started out as a handful of colonies of another country overseas, but eventually we battled for our independence. Um… We’re ruled by a democratic republic, which is where everyone elects officials who do all the decision-making…” She sipped at her tea and racked her brain for everything she’d managed to absorb in her social studies classes. “Y’know, I never really thought of how to condense two hundred-odd years of history before.”

“Only two hundred?” Len seemed impressed. “Your country is so young. Don’t worry about it if it’s difficult. Tell me about yourself, then.”

Yuri smirked sardonically and said, “You already know the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me. There’s not that much more to tell.”

Len frowned, his eyebrows drawing together. “That cannot possibly be true.”

“It is,” Yuri insisted. “I mean, there’s other stuff, but it’s all pretty mundane compared to this. I like foreign TV shows, comic books, video games; I like to draw a little bit; I just found out that I’m adopted, and my birth mother committed suicide, and I have no idea who my biological father is. But that’s got nothing on either dying, being in a coma, or falling into another world.” She shrugged and began picking apart what remained of her pastry with her fingers.

“So that must be why your hair is that color,” Len said in the voice of one to whom all has been revealed. “That’s very interesting. So are these words. ‘TV shows, comic books, video games,’ they sound very exotic.”

“They aren’t, really,” she said with a shake of her head. “TV shows are a dime a dozen, comic books are just books told with pictures instead of words, and video games are… well, okay, I guess you’re right, TV shows and video games are hard to explain to someone who has no point of reference for a TV.” She sighed and licked the last pastry crumbs off her fingers before plucking another one off the plate in the center of the table. “Seriously, you guys have some pretty average-looking buildings, at least by my standards. And you run a coffee shop that seems to have a pretty nice-looking coffee-maker. How do you guys not have TV? And didn’t I see a cash register in there, too? And bikes, you guys have bikes.”

“We have what we need, with the Merciful Mother’s blessing,” Len finally replied judiciously. “There are people who devote their lives to finding ways to improve life for others, and, Mother willing, they are inspired to create new things. If we can’t make a ‘TV,’ then She does not wish it to be made, at least not now.”

“That sounds a little… I dunno.” Yuri’s face tightened as she struggled for the right words. “That’s unsettling to me, I guess. In my world, there was a time when the dominant religion would burn books and kill inventors and scholars because they felt that knowledge was harmful.”

“That is horrible,” Len whispered. Without taking his eyes off Yuri’s face, he stretched and reached over to another table and grabbed a cut-glass ashtray, into which he stubbed out the remains of his cigarette. “Are you sure you want to go back there? Gods know that Nachtlin is far from perfect, but I can’t think of a time where people were killed for pursuing knowledge.”

Yuri shrugged sheepishly. “It’s not like that now, not that we don’t have problems either. But home’s home, y’know?”

“Of course,” Len said, looking a little sheepish himself. “Well, if it’s at all possible–” He stopped, his entire demeanor going from open and friendly to closed, cautious, and stony. Yuri followed his gaze to the door, in front of which Kiih stood with his arms crossed over his chest and a deep scowl on his face.

“We are going to the Library in the Cathedral,” he said evenly, though his face betrayed his irritation. “This was a waste of time.”

“Was no’,” Ro protested from behind him, elbowing his way forward to offer Yuri a hand out of her chair. “But it’s true, it’s tha Church tha’ can help us now.”

Mer shouldered his way past Kiih, though he failed to jostle him as Ro had. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help, Miss Yuri,” he said, though he was grinning. “But it was a pleasure to meet you, and I wish you luck getting home.” He glanced at Len, whose expression remained stony. “Back to work, peon.”

Len grimaced as though he’d swallowed a lemon. “Please, try not to make me strangle you in front of the guests.” He reached across the table and took Yuri’s hand. “It was very nice to meet you. If you find yourself in Nachtlin in the future, it would be a pleasure to see you again.”

Yuri smiled, and he grinned in return. “Sure, why not? It’s a date.”

“Can we be going?” Kiih asked irritably from the door.

“‘Course, ‘course,” Ro nodded, pulling Yuri to her feet and gently leading her from the coffee shop.

Chapter Three – Chapter Five

Lunch was good, as Ro had declared it would be, and it passed relatively amicably. Briefly, Yuri wondered how lasagna could taste so anal-retentive, but she decided it was a subject better left for some other time. Once the dishes had been piled in the sink and Kiih had changed into more presentable clothing (which constituted a gunmetal gray three-piece suit accented by a silver pocketwatch in the vest), they set out for town. “S’not a bad walk,” he said. “No need for bicycles. ‘Sides, it seems like ya’ve had a bit too much of ‘em for one day.”

“I appreciate that,” she said.

She did not appreciate the fact that Ro’s definition of “not a bad walk” ended up being a thirty-minute hike through the woods just to reach the edge of the city. She further did not appreciate the fact that both of their suits still looked impeccable by the time they reached a true road, yet her legs below the knees itched painfully from the dust and grit.

“So, where are we going again?” she asked, having a hard time keeping the irritation from tainting her voice.

“Well, there are two places we’re gonna visit to start with,” Ro replied over his shoulder. “Tha first is a coffee shop run by a ‘quaintance of mine who’s more knowledgeable about this land than anyone now living. Tha second is tha best library on tha whole continent.” He grinned. “Iffin we don’t find a single clue ‘tween those two places, then I think maybe you were just meant to stay here.”

“That’s… not exactly encouraging,” Yuri said skeptically.

“What Ro means is that, between these two sources, if there is anything at all for us to find we will find it,” said Kiih.

“Tha’s what I said.”

“Where is this coffee shop, anyway? Is it close? Because my feet are getting tired and I’m getting cranky.” Yuri scowled for emphasis.

“Oh, yeah, it’s quite close,” Ro said. “The Sunset Cafe’s not a bad walk from here at all.”

Yuri’s scowl deepened. “By ‘not a bad walk,’ you mean ‘less than five minutes from here,’ right?”

“I suppose people in your world don’t use their feet very often,” Kiih quipped in mock seriousness.

“I suppose people in your world don’t allow corporal punishment just because someone’s being a colossal jerk,” Yuri shot back.

“Oy, ya two, stop it.” Ro turned to glare at both of them. “We’re not far now.”

Within five minutes, the Cafe came into view, though only the wooden signs out front and the porch full of small tables and chairs indicated that it was anything more than an older two-story residence. It reminded Yuri quite strongly of a coffee house she vaguely remembered her father taking her to when she was younger, and the memory put her a little more at ease.

The sign in the front window, however, raised her hackles once again. “‘We’re Closed Right Now; Back in Five?’ They’re kidding, right?”

“Mer’s tha punctual sort, so he should be back any time now,” Ro said defensively.

Someone behind them snorted. “Hah. Mer is sleeping off a hangover, leaving me to deal with the shop. He says he just has stomach pangs, but I do not believe a word of it.”

All three of them turned and faced a very tanned young man with spiky hair just a few shades more brown than his skin who stood less than a handful of inches over five feet, if that. He had a strong jaw, a nose which might’ve indicated Jewish ancestry (had they been on Earth), eyes that looked almost exactly like polished amethyst, and a pleasantly wide mouth. He wore a pair of black slacks and a white shirt under a long and much-loved apron. In his hands, he carried a very large jar which looked to be full of cream.

Ro rolled his eyes. “Jus’ lovely. Would ya mind wakin’ him up for us, Len? It’s… a bit important.”

Len’s gaze passed over the group, his eyes narrowing and his expression darkening when it came to rest on Kiih. The taller man returned the look, and they remained that way for a second or two before Len nodded. “Of course. Let me unlock the store. Not sure why I bother, because I know we never get customers till dusk.” He walked past them, shifting the jar of cream to one arm and fishing around in his pocket for the keys. Once the door was open, he took the sign out of the window and motioned them inside.

The similarities with the coffee house of her youth did not stop at the exterior. The interior was also quite similar, having hardwood floors, nearly threadbare throw rugs, wicker chairs, mismatching tables, a stone hearth, and a glass counter which all bore a striking resemblance to her memories. In one of the chairs set before the hearth slumped a lone, bedraggled-looking figure with a towel draped over his head. In his hands he cradled a steaming mug, the vapors from which wafted into his obscured face. “Izzat you, Len?” he croaked.

“Among other people,” Len replied easily. “I’m glad you are conscious, Mercutio. Now, stop looking so pitiful. You have visitors.”

The figure straightened, the towel slipping off of his head to reveal a pallid young man, perhaps Ro’s age, with shoulder-length blond hair and pitiful-looking bloodshot eyes the shade of good chocolate. When he saw Ro, he managed a weak-looking smile. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Ro placed his hand on Yuri’s back and steered her to where she would more clearly be in Mer’s line of sight. “My friend here has a bit of a problem, and I was thinkin’ tha’ ya might be able to help us find a s’lution for her.”

Mer’s eyes lit up when he saw her, and it seemed like he underwent a transformation. While he still looked rather hung-over, he no longer projected a pitiable air. Instead, he broke into as suave a grin as he could manage, straightened his posture, and ran his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to straighten it. “Oh, hey, didn’t see you there. How’re you doing?”

“She’s in a bit of a pickle,” Ro said. “I’ve got some s’picions, but I want to talk with ya, first.”

“Aww, I’m sorry to hear that. Len, you want to get her something while Ro and I talk?”

Len, who had made his way behind the counter at some point, favored Mer with a look generally reserved for the totally incompetent and the terminally inobservant. “No, Mer, I am going to sit here and let her starve and die of thirst.” He gestured to the plate upon which he’d artfully laid several pastries, and to the steaming mug with a spoon and a teabag set in it. “Honey?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” replied Mer, batting his eyelashes as fetchingly as he could manage, which was not very.

Behind the counter, Len scowled. “Not you. Miss, would you like honey for your tea?”

Yuri nodded. “Yes, please,” she replied, sliding up to the counter and taking a seat at it. “My name’s Yuri Kitazawa.”

“Mine is Len sa’Vienne,” Len said, placing the pastries and the tea in front of her. “Nice to meet you. What kind of trouble are you having?”

Yuri noted vaguely that Ro had flopped an arm around Mer’s shoulders and was dragging him to the back of the room and through a narrow door. When Kiih followed them, she allowed herself to sigh with relief. “It’s… well, it’s hard to explain, not to mention a little embarrassing.” She sighed and nibbled at one of the pastries before dunking it in her tea and gobbling it nearly whole. “These are good. My compliments to the baker.”

The young man across from her grinned. It was the sort of expression that changed the whole look of his face and made it seem ten times brighter, even despite his slightly exaggerated canines. She caught herself staring at how his eyes twinkled when he grinned. “Thank you, I try my best. But flattery will not make me ignore the fact that you are dodging my question.”

She laughed a little nervously. “Eh, it was worth a try. Seriously, though, it’s a little embarrassing.”

“Does it involve a jilted lover and incriminating images of you mud-wrestling?” Len asked, his tone completely deadpan. Yuri tried desperately not to choke on her pastry, only barely succeeding.

“Oh, God, no, nothing like that!” she cried. “No. I’m just… uh, lost. Like, really, really lost. Like, there aren’t enough adverbs in the world to describe exactly how lost I am.”

“Colossally lost?” Len supplied.

“Getting there.”

“Phenomenally lost?”

“Worse.”

Len paused for a moment, tapping his chin to emphasize his exaggerated expression of deep thought. “Mmm… How about ’stranded on a distant world’ lost?”

Yuri smiled sheepishly, in part because of her discomfort with the situation, in part because she’d caught herself staring at his eyes again. “Bingo.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” said Yuri. “Though, the more I think about it, the more I think maybe I got a concussion or something, and this is all a figment of my imagination.”

“I hardly believe I am a figment of your imagination,” Len said with a smile, “but I suppose any self-respecting hallucination would say that. Here, drink your tea before it gets cold and disgusting.”

“Can hallucinatory tea get cold and gross?” Yuri asked, holding the cup in both hands and sipping from it. “Mmm, this is good.”

“I’m glad you like it. It’s one of our house specialty blends. Guaranteed to make you feel at least a little better about life, or your next cup is free.” He winked at her, grinning widely. “So, tell me, how did you manage to become ’stranded on a distant world’ lost?”

Yuri continued sipping from the cup, studying Len idly over its rim. In doing so, she realized that he had what might have been the most disarming grin she’d ever seen, which, she reflected, was why she decided to briefly sketch out her experiences thus far, though she skimmed over her experience floating in the darkness. He maintained eye-contact throughout, nodded to urge her on, and let his face settle into an unfeigned thoughtful expression. “I admit, that is rather fantastic,” he hazarded when she’d finished. “Bit of bad luck, falling out into Kiih’s garden, that is for sure.”

“It could’ve been worse,” she said, a small concession with ‘Jerkface’ out of earshot. “At least everyone I’ve met so far hasn’t been a rapist or a murderer. And at least two-thirds of the people I’ve met have been nice. Nice and willing to humor me and not throw me into a mental institution.” A subtle tremor started in her voice, but it quickly spread to encompass her hands. She took a deep breath, let it out, and set down the cup of tea. “Oh, God, I’m either hallucinating that I’m lost in a fantastical and strange land, or I really am lost in a fantastical and strange land, and I have no idea how I got here. Or how to get home.” Despite herself, she sniffled piteously and found herself needing to blink back tears.

“Oh, hey, hey, shh,” Len said, briskly abandoning his position behind the counter, sliding onto a seat next to her, and gently laying a hand on her back. “It’s not all bad.”

Yuri sniffled again and sighed. “I’m sorry, this is so stupid and it’s totally not anything I should be making you deal with.”

Len shook his head. “Your situation is hardly normal, and if you feel the need to vent, I freely offer my ears.”

“This is just really too bizarre,” Yuri said slowly, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. “What happens if I’m dead and this is the afterlife, you know? I got hit by a car. And now I’m here. Am I in a coma? Am I in some new dimension? And how the world can lasagna taste anal-retentive?” Abruptly she burst into tears.

They were not the panicked and howling sobs she thought they might be; instead, they were strangled hiccups that only really served to make her diaphragm ache. After a few moments, she felt Len pull her into a somewhat awkward hug, patting her back gently and making generally soothing sounds. “It’s all right, it’s all right, please try not to worry,” he said gently. “If you are hallucinating, then you will be fine when you come out of it. If you are dead, then you should enjoy your afterlife. If you are lost, then try to enjoy the scenery while you figure out where you need to go.” He pulled away and gave her another of his winning smiles.

“Yeah,” Yuri said, scrubbing at her eyes again and doing her level best to return his smile. “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.”

Len leaned over the counter, feeling around almost blindly until he came back with a cloth napkin, which he pressed into Yuri’s hands. “Here. I’m sorry for not thinking of it sooner.”

“Thanks,” she said again, using the napkin to dry her eyes and wipe her nose. “So, now that my freakout’s out of the way… um… what’s this place like?”

Len hummed thoughtfully. “I’m not as good at this as Mer is,” he said, “but I will do my best to give you an idea about Nachtlin and its history, and in return you can tell me a little about yourself.” He rose and motioned toward the front of the store. “Come on, it’s a beautiful day. Sit outside with me while we talk?”

Yuri nodded. “Sure, I’d like that.”

Chapter Two – Chapter Four

When next she opened her eyes, she saw grass and very little else. She could discern that it was daytime, though, and that her body seemed to be totally intact. Upon a little more observation, she seemed to still be in possession of her helmet and her bag, and (judging by the weight of it on her back) all of the items it contained. With a grunt, she pulled her arms and knees close and pushed herself into a kneeling position.

Her heart sank.

All around her, flowers bloomed. Most of them appeared to be wild roses which had been trained to grow around the branches of any nearby trees, but some of them looked utterly garish and bizarre, like a Georgia O’Keefe painting strung out on hallucinogens. The patterns in which they all grew were just a hair too regular for all of this to be natural, and it left Yuri with two possible conclusions. Either there had been a sudden, drastic, and violent reforestation movement while she’d been unconscious– and she doubted that very much– or she was not, in fact, on the shoulder of the road on which she’d been struck.

Try as she might, she couldn’t force herself to accept the first conclusion, which meant that she was alone in a strange place with no idea where she was. That did not sit well with her at all. Warily, she undid the straps holding her helmet to her head, removed it, and hooked it onto the strap of her bag.

“Oy!”

The sharp bark caused Yuri to start as she frantically scanned her surroundings to find its source. In short order, a tall man stepped into her view, clad in a pair of faded and dusty slacks that might have been pinstriped in their youth and a button-down shirt that might have once been white in its heyday. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and the top two buttons of the shirt were left undone, showing skin that was lightly tanned and a little sweaty, though the skin on his forearms was criss-crossed with thin white lines. His face, which might have been handsome under other circumstances, was made up mostly of harsh lines, made even harsher by the expression of aggravation upon it and the fact that all but a few loose strands of his hair was pulled back into a thick braid.

He narrowed his navy-blue eyes and glared at Yuri quite viciously. “You had better have a very good reason for trespassing, young woman.”

At a total loss, she responded with the first thing that crossed her mind. “You have blue hair.”

The man quirked a narrow eyebrow, though he still looked rather miffed. “And you have purple hair with black stripes in it. How does that excuse you trespassing on my property?”

“It doesn’t,” said Yuri, “but I thought I ought to mention it. Just in case you didn’t know. Or something.” She put on what she hoped was a charming and disarming sheepish grin, though it had trouble staying on her face. “I’m, uh, a bit lost, y’see. And not used to people having blue hair. So I was, um, wondering if you could maybe tell me where I am?”

The man with the powder-blue braid continued to glare at her. “You’re trespassing. In my garden. I’d be well within my rights to beat you if I find anything’s been disturbed.”

Yuri blinked owlishly at him before scowling. “You’ve just got the worst one-track mind, don’t you? I’m sitting here trying to tell you that I’m totally lost and have no idea where I am, and you’re convinced I’m maliciously trespassing in your garden. Excuse me for thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll just ride my bike home, nothing could go wrong, oh wait, I got hit by a car, and now I’ve woken up in a weird place with a blue-haired man, maybe he can help me!’ I didn’t realize you’d be such– such a freaking… jerkface!“

The man pulled himself up to make the most of his nearly six feet of height and crossed his arms over his chest. “Excuse me?”

“I called you a fucking jerkface,” Yuri spat, glaring defiantly up at him. “I’m just asking you for a little bit of help, and you get all pissy. Sounds like jerkface behavior to me. Don’t think you can intimidate me because you’re taller.”

“You impudent little tart!” he snarled. “You trespass when this area is clearly marked as strictly off-limits, then you have the nerve to be snippy when, horror of horrors, I’m clearly unhappy that someone has wandered where they shouldn’t? And then, you call me a ‘jerkface?’ You illiterate child! You can’t even be arsed to read the signs, and you have the gall to call me ‘jerkface?’”

Yuri hopped to her feet, closed the distance between them, and poked the man squarely in the chest. In the back of her mind, she knew that she should be cowed, but the shear absurdity of the situation lent her strength. “Now, you listen here, jerkface! What part of ‘I got hit by a car and now I’ve woken up in a weird place’ are you too not getting? Maybe if I’d gotten here under my own power and passed all these happy fun signs you’re so uppity about, you might have reason to be pissed. But I didn’t! I just blacked out and woke up here with no fucking clue where I am! Now, if you’ll please point me to the way out of this ’strictly off-limits’ area, I’ll be on my merry little way, and I’ll be sure to tell everyone I see that the jerkface is in and boy is he a fucking bitch!” She continued glaring up at him, her lips pressed together in a scowl of epic proportions.

Before the man could gather the words to sling back at her, a rustle came from further in the garden, followed by a muffled voice. “Oy, Kiih, what’n tha hells’re ya doin’?”

The man– Kiih– took a deep breath, and it seemed like most of the tension and anger just flowed out of him. He didn’t bother to plaster a smile on his face, but he did seem to make an effort to look only mildly annoyed. “I was doing a bit of gardening. Why?”

Another man stepped into view, a little shorter than Kiih, and far paler, with a mop of crimson hair and eyes the color of grass and a singularly amused expression. He was a bit better dressed; his pants and shirt were both neatly pressed and quite clean. “I can hear ya all tha way at tha house. D’ya always call tha plants ‘impudent tarts?’ S’no wonder we can’t get any good fruit.”

Kiih opened his mouth to speak, but Yuri leapt into the break in the conversation first. “Hey, you look pleasant enough, and your hair isn’t blue, so would you mind telling me where I am and why there’s a jerkface threatening to beat me? Please?”

“Oh my. Where’re my manners?” The newcomer bowed deeply. “My name’s Ro sa’Surlan, and, unfortunately, tha’ so-called ‘jerkface’ is mine. I think. Who might I have tha pleasure of meeting, Miss?”

“My name’s Yuri,” she said, still favoring Kiih with a vitriolic look. “Yuri Kitazawa. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I see ya’ve already met my… ’sociate, Kiih,” Ro said, clearing his throat and straightening his necktie. Kiih snorted derisively. “To answer ya’re question, ya’re in our garden, and Kiih’s threatening to beat ya because we’re– well, I’m– not really s’posed to get visitors.”

“Oh.” Yuri sighed and turned to Ro. “I was hoping for a little less specific location, if that’s all right. Like, where am I in relation to Three Notch Road?” When her question was met with blank stares, she continued, “Maryland? The United States?” She took a deep breath. “Planet Earth?”

“Ya’re a long way from home, I think,” said Ro judiciously after a few moments. “I’m guessin’ maybe you ha’en’t heard of Nachtlin? No, I didn’t think so.” He smiled at her, his expression equal parts warm and sheepish. “Well, it seems we might better head back to someplace not so out in tha open where we might talk more.”

“You’re… inviting her to our house.” Kiih didn’t bother to hide his disdain for the idea or his incredulity. “Even when I am to forcibly remove anyone from our property who didn’t have prior permission to be there.”

Ro shrugged. “She’s got my permission now. Ya always tell me to trust my guts, and now my guts are sayin’ tha’ we really ought to have Miss Yuri back to the house and take some lunch with her.” He glanced over at the girl. “Tha’ is, of course, iffin ya’re int’rested in food.”

“I can’t say as I’ll turn down a free meal,” Yuri said, her previous anger replaced by the feeling of being at a total loss. “Granted, I’m in a bit of a hurry to get back home, so I’d like it if we could maybe make it quick?”

“We won’t keep ya too long, I promise,” Ro said amicably, motioning for the other two to follow him as he meandered away. “D’ya like tea? Coffee, maybe?”

“I like them both, but I do prefer tea just a little bit more,” replied Yuri. She glanced warily at Kiih before shuffling into step a little behind Ro. “So, um, seriously, though. Where am I?”

“You’re on a plot of Church-owned land not too far from the outskirts of the city Nachtlin, which is the capital of the country of Adan, on the continent of the same name.” The sarcasm positively dripped off of Kiih’s tongue, and Yuri bent every fiber of her being toward ignoring it.

“Is the official language here English?” she pointedly asked Ro. “I mean, your accent seems a little foreign, but Jerkface seems to speak it fluently.”

The redhead chuckled. “‘English,’ ya say? I speak nothin’ of tha sort. I grew up speakin’ tha Northern dialect of Adani for tha most part, which is where my accent comes from. Kiih speaks High Adani, just like ya do, from tha sounds of it.”

Yuri’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Wow. Adani sounds a lot like English, then. I mean, since that’s the only language I speak well, and I can understand you guys just fine. Are you sure you guys aren’t just pulling my leg?”

“Quite sure,” said Kiih drily. “If I were to play a practical joke on you, it would involve something far more life-threatening than the name of the language we’re all speaking.”

On that note, they arrived before a cozy-looking little cottage made out of mossy stone, the front door of which had been left wide open. It had a few windows interspersed irregularly on each of its walls, and there was a chimney which had been blackened at the top with years of soot and pitch. Overall it gave the impression of something out of a fantasy novel. Or a horror movie, Yuri thought, suppressing a snicker. Like a modern day remake of Hansel and Gretel. At least there’s no obvious signs of a great fire for them to cook me in.

The interior was just as cozy-looking as the exterior, though with significantly less moss. To Yuri, it looked for all the world like a Country Living-decorated studio apartment. The furniture seemed to have been scattered haphazardly about the room with little sense of continuity. The dining table had been placed near the kitchen area, but it was set next to an overstuffed and well loved sofa. In one corner there was a large bed, but the dressers were both on opposite ends of the room from it, and the bedside table had been placed at its foot. The only thing that made sense to her were the large cushions set upon an area rug in front of the fire place.

“Home sweet home,” said Ro brightly, leading her to the couch and motioning for her to sit on it. “What d’ya think? I decorated, but in a few months it’ll be Kiih’s turn to rearrange, and I’ll have to say ‘goodbye’ to how homey it looks. Anyway. We’ve got sammiches, iffin ya like, but Kiih’s got somethin’ in tha oven warming already, iffin ya can wait for a little bit.”

“I guess I can wait,” Yuri said after a few moments’ thought. She let her bag slide off her shoulder and she rested it against the wall by the door. “So, I know I slept through most of my geography classes, but last time I checked, there was no such thing as a continent of Adan, and therefore no such language as Adani. What’s going on here?”

The redhead cast his eyes around the room before glancing at Kiih. “Would ya mind, er, tendin’ the meal while Miss Yuri and I talk?”

Kiih and Yuri exchanged a look which was full of befuddlement before the taller gentleman shook his head and plastered a scowl on his face. Yuri was quietly certain that, had this been a Japanese cartoon like the ones she and Reese watched, Kiih would have been crushed under the weight of a humongous sweatdrop. “Of course. It should be ready to come out of the oven in about thirty-five minutes, though, so kindly make your discussion as brief as you can manage.”

Ro nodded cheerfully, flopping onto the sofa and patting the cushion next to him. “Please, sit! Is this not tha most comf’terble couch ya’ve e’er had tha chance to sit on? I love it, but Kiih thinks it’s positively ugly and keeps trying to get rid of it whene’er I’m not looking.” The grin that seemed like a permanent fixture of his expression slowly faded. “But we’re not here to talk ’bout my sofa.”

“It’s still a nice sofa,” Yuri offered timidly, suddenly wary of the shift in Ro’s mood.

He leaned toward her, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Miss Yuri, I know this may be hard for ya to believe, but I s’pect that ya… er, ‘aren’t from around here,’ if ya get my meanin’.”

“No offense,” Yuri whispered back, “but I kind of knew that already.”

Ro shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t make m’self plain enough. I mean, I think tha’ maybe ya fell into our garden from a diff’rent world.”

There was a crash a few feet away as Kiih dropped a metal pan, but he said nothing.

“Oh,” said Yuri.

“Just ‘oh?’” asked Ro, cocking his head to one side. “I sort of expected, ya know, maybe a bit of denial or claims of impossibility. Or sommat like that.”

“I’m too in shock to be in shock yet, so I’m sort of just taking everything at face value right now,” Yuri explained. “Give me a little bit and I’ll probably be in hysterics.”

Ro leaned back, looking relieved. “Ah, tha’s good then. I s’pose tha’ means now’s as good a time as any to mention tha’ I have no idea how to get ya back to where ya came from.”

“Well, there’s never a good time to tell someone that,” Yuri replied. “So, you’re telling me that you think I somehow fell into a different world when I got hit by that car, and there’s no way for me to get back?” There was no hint of anxiety in her voice, though she did sound a bit agitated.

“No, no, not at all,” Ro said. “What I’m sayin’ is tha’ I have no idea how to get ya back. Things like this don’t happen e’ery day around here. But I know there are a few places we can go and a few people we can ask tha’ should point us in tha proper direction.”

Yuri hopped to her feet. “Well, then, why don’t we?”

“Because Kiih’s spent so long on what’s in tha oven, and I’m quite hungry. ‘Sides, tha people we need to see will still be there in a bit, so what diff’rence is an hour goin’ to make, especially when tha food’s good?”

“I guess you’re right…” Yuri heaved a sigh. “Maybe it’s for the better. I mean, how many chances am I gonna get to explore a strange new continent?”

“Tha’s the spirit!”

“Don’t worry,” Kiih said from the kitchen area, “I’ll personally ensure that we find a way to send you home.”

The girl snorted. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re just saying that because you don’t wanna have to deal with me if I end up being stuck here?”

She caught a glimpse of a sardonic smirk on his face as he busied himself with setting the table. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Jerkface.”

“Oy, ya two, stop it,” said Ro with just the barest edge of annoyance in his voice. “Be nice. We’re goin’ to have a pleasant lunch, e’en iffin tha’ means I have to gag tha both of ya.”

Through some miraculous force of will, Yuri managed to clamp down on the urge to respond petulantly, “But he started it.” She was quite proud. Instead, she sniffed at the air, hoping to catch a whiff of what was meant to be their food. “It smells pretty good.”

“I assure ya tha’ it tastes good, too,” Ro said cheerfully. “My Kiih’s not a gourmet chef, but he can still cook. Say, ya’re all right with meat and tomatoes, right?”

“Yeah… Why, what’s in there?”

“It’s flat wheat noodles with a tomato-and-meat sauce, some cheese chunks, and a few vegetables, all in layers,” Kiih supplied dourly. “You do have wheat noodles and tomato sauce and cheese where you come from, right?” Yuri glared at him, but did not rise to the bait this time.

“So, you’re saying that I’ve fallen into a new world, and in this new world, you’re fixing lasagna for me?” she asked incredulously.

“It wasn’t meant for you,” retorted Kiih with a scowl.

“D’ya not like lasagna, Miss Yuri? We’ve got sammiches, iffin tha’s tha case, like I said.”

Yuri giggled. “No, lasagna’s fine. I like lasagna. I was just expecting… well, something exotic and otherworldly and possibly inedible. Or something.”

Kiih snorted. “Oh, so you wanted Ro to cook.”

“Oy, tha’ was uncalled for!” Ro shook his fist menacingly, but he was still grinning.

Prologue and Chapter One – Chapter Three

The girl whom Yuri Kitazawa saw in the mirror looked far too little like herself for comfort. Her cheekbones were high, her chin delicate and pointed, her face shaped a bit like a heart, like Yuri’s were. Her hair looked rather like Yuri’s did: a shade between violet and royal purple, shoulder-length, and with a few oddly-placed streaks of blue-black. However, the corners of the girl’s mouth were pulled ever so slightly downward, and her eyes were sunken, hooded, wary, and tired.

A shaky hand with slender fingers pushed her bangs out of her face, and Yuri leaned in to more closely inspect the haunted doppelganger on the mirror’s other side.

It was, she declared to herself, the eyes that bothered her the most. They were still the same deep jade color Yuri was used to, still the same nearly almond shape that denoted her half-Japanese parentage. But the way they darted around, the way they seemed a little more recessed, the way they were couched in puffy bags of skin that spoke of night upon night without sleep… those were things she did not recognize.

She let her bangs fall back over her forehead and took a step back. The rest of the mirror-girl was not terribly alien. A little thinner than she remembered, perhaps, but was that really all that terrible?

Yuri eyed her reflection again, made a winning attempt at a smile, but her eyes stubbornly refused to cooperate. Instead, she heaved a sigh, swore under her breath, and left the bathroom in search of clothing.

*

The distance between the Kitazawa residence and Yuri’s destination turned out to be far more manageable on bicycle than she’d originally remembered (it was a just straight shot down Pegg Road). As she pedaled slowly into the apartment complex, she vaguely regretted not simply walking and enjoying the balmy April morning. The sun was not yet overbearing, and a fine breeze blew in from the direction of the Chesapeake; all in all it was enjoyable southern Maryland weather.

The particular unit she sought was near the rear of the complex, third left turn, second building, unit 14 around the back. She hauled her bike up the stairs and chained it to the railing before tentatively knocking on unit 14’s door.

From the other side of the door came a few muffled thumps, an indistinct “oof!” and the sound of two locks and a privacy chain being slid away. Then the door opened, and Yuri smiled to see a girl who was slightly taller, chubbier, and more tanned looking her over. She only had one tuft of hair– dyed a petulant pink and falling indolently over her left eye (the one without the pierced eyebrow)– the rest of her head was blanketed with a quarter-inch of blonde peach fuzz. She frowned a little, worried at her bottom lip, worried at her labret piercing, then reached across the threshold and pulled Yuri into a fierce hug.

“Hey, Reese, you’re aware I need to breathe, right?” Yuri teased, returning the hug then stepping back.

Reese scowled, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her unceremoniously into the apartment. “Getcher skinny butt in here, girl. Seriously, did you spend the last few months just not eating, chicka?”

Yuri shrugged meekly and glanced around the apartment. It was, as she had suspected it might be, sparsely furnished and moderately untidy. There were posters on the walls declaring the occupants’ musical interests, movie interests, and even one poster enumerating Chuck Norris’s incredible feats. On one wall were two tables with computers, a TV, and a handful of gaming consoles, and along the other were propped various musical instruments, some of which Yuri was sure she’d never even known existed. She decided that the best course of action would be to drop her helmet and messenger bag next to the door and flop down into a folding saucer chair near the TV.

Her friend moved into the kitchen. “So, tell me, chicka, what’s going on with you?” She returned with two cans of soda, one of which she pressed into Yuri’s hands before settling on a beanbag chair next to her. “We took this year off so we could raise hell together before we went off to college and then we just… stopped talking.”

Opening her soda, Yuri said, “I think… I think that maybe this year was just too full of the world messing with us for us to be messing with the world.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Reese studying her intently. “Listen, girl, I think that we’re not being all that honest with each other. I think… maybe we haven’t been honest with each other in a really long time. Like, since before your aunt– since before your mom died.”

It took a lot of will power– more, certainly, than Yuri had possessed in the past– to not burst into tears. Reese saw this, as closely as she’d been watching Yuri’s face, and she reached over and took one of Yuri’s slender hands into her own. “I know you said it didn’t bother you much, but I think it did. I think it does. But I’m not gonna sit here and tell you to spill your guts when you’re not the only one who was hiding things.” Yuri turned to meet Reese’s intent gaze, and felt an immense sadness at the rift she was suddenly noticing between them. Her heart ached as she stared across a chasm that was at once only a foot and a half wide and millions of miles across.

“I’m sleeping with Lexi and Matt,” Reese blurted out, her face reddening and her brown eyes dropping. “It didn’t start out like that, at first I just was angry, I wanted to hate Lexi because I’d been so in love with Matt for so long, and then I wanted to just make things difficult and then one day I went out to lunch with Lexi, ’cause he could see how hurt I was about him being with my second best friend, the one I had a crush on, and…” She paused, took a deep breath, chugged what must’ve been half her soda, and continued, “And it just sort of happened. I thought Lexi was just cheating on Matt ’cause he was a man-whore, but… I’ve been sleeping with ‘em both. We all like it this way. I’m not going to college yet, either. I’m working. We’ve saved a lot of money. We might buy a house in a few years.” Tears glittered at the edge of her eyes. “I’m sorry I never said anything, Yuri.”

At that moment, looking down at her friend, realizing that (though much of it was no surprise) her friend had hidden so much from her, Yuri could feel her heart breaking. Her vision blurred, just a little, and she sniffled weakly. “We’ve been hiding a lot from each other, haven’t we, Reesey?” she said finally, trying to punctuate it with a reassuring smile.

“I guess so,” Reese replied, answering Yuri’s failed smile with one of her own. “You know I’ll love you no matter how much you don’t talk to me, right?”

“Y-yeah…” Yuri trailed off, blinking tears out of her eyes. “I… I haven’t told you… There’s so much I haven’t talked to you about, Reesey. And I think you’ll think I’m crazy. But you’re right, it bugs the shit out of me that I didn’t find out I was adopted till my bio-mom died.”

“I’m here for you, chicka,” said Reese fiercely, “no matter how crazy you think you are. Besides, it can’t be crazier than moving in with your boyfriend and his boyfriend, who also happens to be your boyfriend.”

Before she realized she was doing it, Yuri slid out of her chair and onto her knees, reaching out and wrapping her arms around Reese before burying her face in her friend’s ample bosom and letting out a keening sob. In fits and starts, between bouts of crying, and speaking mostly into Reese’s shirt at the beginning, Yuri began to talk to Reese honestly for the first time in almost a year.

And, despite the creeping fear that gripped her heart, Yuri told Reese everything.

1 – Eight Months

Her story began eight months earlier, with Reese and Yuri sitting in the same apartment, bingeing on soda, snack food, and a deadly cocktail of Japanese television (both animated and live-action), American and British science-fiction shows, and the occasional hilariously terrible Soul Calibur death-match. It was a tradition that had begun not terribly long after they met in eighth grade and realized they were both geekily kindred spirits. The particulars changed: what shows they watched, what snacks they consumed, but this was their so-called “girls’ night out,” and had been for years.

Eventually, between episodes of Doctor Who, Reese leaned back and sighed. “Not that I’m complaining, but I know something’s up, chicka. So spill it.”

Yuri scowled, reaching for the bag of chips that lay open between them. “So, you know how I’ve been having weird dreams again lately?”

“The ones where the phone rings and you answer it and it’s some old lady saying, ‘Your father’s coming home,’ and then you hear some chick scream and you’re all alone in the house?” Reese asked. Yuri nodded.

“Yeah. Well, night before last, this old woman called. She didn’t speak much English, but I figured out she was asking for Dad, and it turns out that Dad’s sister, Shizuka, committed suicide and that old woman is the grandmother that disowned him, and now he and Mom are flying out to Japan to be with her.”

Reese pursed her lips before saying judiciously, “That really sucks. But you don’t know any of your dad’s family, right? So that’s not so bad, right?”

“You’re so terrible,” Yuri scolded, though she smirked a little. “But yeah, you’re right. I didn’t know the woman, and by all accounts my great grandmother is this crotchety old bag who’s mean and spiteful. But that’s not the weird part.”

One of Reese’s eyebrows (the pierced one, of course) crept up. “It gets better?“

“No, it gets worse. So, night before last, Dad gets a call from his evil grandmother saying that his sister committed suicide. He’s torn up, but apparently he kind of saw it coming because she’s been unstable for a while, right? But what I didn’t know until last night was that Shizuka wasn’t always like that.” She took a deep breath before continuing, “Apparently, she had this guy she was madly in love with, and she got pregnant, but when the guy up and left her, she just lost her mind. Her grandmother wanted her to get rid of the baby, but that just made it worse. So Dad and Mom told her they’d take care of the kid because she couldn’t do it. And that’s why Dad got disowned.”

“Whoa. Suckage.” Reese looked at her for a moment before her brow furrowed. “But hang on, you’re an only child, aren’t you? Did the baby die before you were born or something?”

Yuri took another shaky breath. “Yes and no.”

“Oh. Oh…” Understanding dawned on her friend’s face, and she reached over and hugged her tightly. “I’m sorry, chicka. If you want to talk about it…”

“No, it’s all right. Like I said, it’s weird, but you’re right, I never met the woman. Mom and Dad raised me, and even if Dad’s genetically my uncle, he’s really my Dad.” Yuri shook her head and pulled away. “It’s just weird, is all. Really.”

Reese nodded and pushed the one lock of hair (currently a frenetic orange) behind her ear. “Well, I’m here for you, chicka.”

“Thanks,” Yuri said with a smile that almost reached her eyes. “So how about you? You liking it here? Is being a kept woman all it’s cracked up to be?”

“It’s nice to not be living with my mother, if that’s what you mean,” Reese said with a snort. “Lexi and Matt are good sports about the whole mess, too.”

“I know they’re good people,” Yuri said, stressing the words to emphasize that she wasn’t so much describing them as good as she was commenting that they were of a different breed than most people. “But I guess I’m a little worried about if you’re being a good sport. I was there when Matt and Lexi started going out. I remember how miserable you were.”

Her friend grimaced as though those particular memories had a singularly awful taste. “Like you said, it’s just weird. I’m fine.”

For a moment, Yuri felt as though something important were drifting by, that if she didn’t snatch it, it would be gone. The moment flitted away, though, and they lapsed into something that might have been companionable silence before putting on an episode of Stargate and resuming their fannish binge.

*

By 2:40 am, they’d exhausted a good portion of their supply of media, Soul Calibur wasn’t quite as hilarious, and the snacks had completely disappeared (”But why are the snacks gone?” Reese drawled, stumbling around the kitchen doing her very best drunken Jack Sparrow). As Yuri began gathering her belongings and shoving them into a messenger bag by the door, her friend said, “You’re allowed to stay the night. Didn’t you ride your bike or some silly shit like that?”

Yuri slipped on her sandals and pulled her bicycle helmet over her head. “Yeah, but it’s not far, and I’d really just like to be home tonight, y’know?”

“I guess I can understand that one,” Reese acknowledged. “I just don’t like it when you wander out all alone. Take care of yourself, okay? And give me a call sometime, let me know how you’re doing.”

“I will,” Yuri said, slinging her bag over one shoulder and stepping out into the cool August evening. She un-chained her bicycle from the balcony and walked it gently down the stairs toward Liberty Street. Once there, she slung a leg over the bike, seated herself, shifted her bag so it rested more comfortably, and began pedaling.

The apartment complex was lit well enough, but once she turned onto the Pegg Road, she had only her manually powered headlamp to guide her. The more she pedaled, the brighter it got, and when she hit her stride, it rendered the road a little less visible than the headlight on her car might. At the very least, it had always been enough to see her path and be seen by any traffic she might encounter at night.

She saw the truck’s headlights as it pulled up behind her, but remained unworried; her clothing was light, her reflectors were clean, she’d done everything in her power to be visible short of wearing an orange safety vest. It occurred to her much later that she was riding in the dark on a Friday night, and despite last call having been an hour ago, the odds were entirely in favor of the driver being drunk.

For a moment, she felt like the bottom dropped out of her stomach as the truck came up too fast, drifting lazily into the pittance of a bicycle lane. Seconds stretched, the corner of the truck’s rear bumper clipped her front tire and sent her careening through the air and toward the trees on the side of the road.

Visibility was nil, but Yuri could still vaguely make out the ground into which she was destined to crash. She had enough presence of mind to think, I’m glad I didn’t forget my helmet, and then things went black.

*

She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d expected from being dead, but she was sure that it wasn’t exactly what she found herself experiencing. All around her was a black so dark and thick that it was so much more than the mere absence of light. It seemed to be a living, breathing, membranous thing, an undulating ocean, a vast expanse of arid claustrophobia, everything and nothing at once.

It came perilously close to making her head hurt.

“Do I even have a head to hurt now?” she mused aloud.

Yes. It is a very beautiful head. I am rather surprised to find such a thing here, let alone attached to a body. Yuri did not so much hear the voice as feel it: a warm tingle at the base of her skull. She turned in the direction she thought it had come from, though the black turned what should have been a whip-like motion into a slow, languorous rotation.

Facing her was what might have been a broken man, once, but such terms as “broken” and “man” were hardly applicable anymore. He was a memory of a man, distorted and twisted, with long hair the color of the surroundings and a smooth white face, nearly featureless and like porcelain. It had a few curves to it which described delicate, high cheekbones, a somewhat Roman nose, and a Cupid’s bow mouth which was ever-so-slightly frowning. He was tall, and wispy, with long elegant limbs, though he was very clearly more slender than could possibly be healthy.

“What do you mean?” Yuri inquired, swallowing against the momentary flash of fear that coursed through her body. “I mean, why’s it weird for someone to be here, and where is here?”

The man cocked his head to one side curiously, drifting slightly closer. It is bizarre because very few people know that this place, this membrane between planes, even exists, and of those few, even fewer can come here. He paused. Typically, only a Worldwalker could do such a thing. But this place is so vast, why did you choose to visit me?

Yuri blinked in confusion. “You mean I’m not dead?”

No… Should you be? The man’s puzzlement was quite evident, despite his utter lack of facial expression.

“Yeah, probably,” she said. “I got hit by a truck while I was riding my bike to home, and then everything went black. That’s what dying would be like, I think.”

The man continued to drift closer, his hair floating around his head as though he were under water. I do not believe you are dead. If you are dead, then I am also dead, and the Gods are too cruel to allow me that. He shrugged, a slight lift of his sharp shoulders. But, still… why did you choose to visit me?

“I– I don’t think I meant to,” said Yuri. “I mean, everything just went black, like I said, and then you started speaking to me. It just sort of… happened.” She paused, and a thought struck her. “If I’m not dead, does that mean I can go home? And if so, how do I manage it?”

A moment passed before the man extended a spindly arm and pointed off to the side. Go that way. From there, you should be able to find your way. At least, that is the way I always took before.

Yuri nodded and kicked her feet to propel herself in the direction he indicated. “Thanks, Mister…?”

Corwyn. My name is Corwyn. He sketched a vague sort of languid bow, though he never took his “eyes” off of the girl who propelled herself slowly away from him.

“Well, thanks, Mister Corwyn,” Yuri said. “If we meet again, my name’s Yuri.”

She got the distinct impression that, if the man had a face under the white porcelain mask, he would be smirking sardonically. With any luck, we shall not meet again. Safe travels to you, Miss Yuri.

Before she could say anything in response, the black disappeared, and she found herself falling.

Chapter Two