“‘Hot town, summer in the city

  Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty

  Been down, isn't it a pity

  Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city”

  The third time Nettle woke up, she couldn’t fall back asleep—not for lack of trying. Her skin was raw from constantly tossing and turning in the sand-like linens. Worse still, the musty pillow did nothing to block out the rhythmic squeaking next door. She sat at the edge of the bed, mouth ajar, then groaned to her feet.

  Her legs ached in protest as she blearily felt her way to the small adjoining washroom. The sink cried out its disuse as she pumped. Nettle splashed her face, smelling the rusty water as she rubbed the crust from her eyes. Her shirt worked wonderfully in place of a towel.

  Nettle fumbled her way to the bedstand, finding the oil lamp. The old thing was fickle, but eventually, she brought a warm orange glow to the room. She turned to retrieve her bag, but jumped in surprise.

  A dark figure loomed over her.

  Instinctively, a panicked jab flew into the intruder's gut. Her fist struck wood, and Nettle fell to her knees.

  “Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.”

  Crows and swallows, I’m stupid.

  Nettle sucked on her knuckle, tasting blood. She’d just attacked her own coat. She spared it a glance as she squeezed her hand in a rocking cradle. It hung unperturbed by her betrayal. She curled up, her forehead touching the hardwood.

  “Who puts a tree in the middle of a room?”

  Nettle crawled the remainder of the way to her bag. Deep in its recesses, she fished out something that never left the back of her mind.

  The book's blue leather binding was embossed with a field of dyed wildflowers. Standing up, she examined the leather’s sheen in the lamplight. She crossed the room and sat at the edge of her bed, this time without attacking any clothes.

  She placed the book on her lap and flipped it open. Swirling marbled paper bound the inside cover. Nettle ran her finger down the colorful lettering.

  “Notes on the Nature of Life and Things Otherworldly,” she read aloud. “This is a living work. Below are those whose contribution allowed this collection the life it deserves:”

  Contrasting the official nature of the introduction, a chaotic smattering of names followed, sprawled in every script imaginable. An orderly block of Voo names dominated the left, but quickly fell apart, names cramming where they could. One ‘Rekka Pato’ took enough space that later entrants took refuge within her looping letters. It was a warzone.

  Nettle skimmed the vine-like Auvoo, mostly ignoring the scratchy Feliflese and the angular Sibseelic. More than anything, Nettle marveled at the simple pictograms left by Nobodies– no, the Ooahli. Some drew crude likenesses of themselves, but most chose the traditional path, drawing their namesakes: a simple pond scene, a sprig of mistletoe, and a stag beetle. Nettle swallowed a lump in her throat.

  She flipped to the next page. Tracing the letters, she slowly read aloud.

  “Today, I ate an apricot, and a spirit fell from the sky. The Kiki fell beyond the trees, bright and hot. It found me nestled in the breast of an autumn field. By then, I’d finished my apricot and tossed the pit. The Kiki’s head was dry and corpse-like. From the neck down, the spirit was the very model of a gentleman, although his cravat sat undone, and it wore a belt made of the skulls of some cats. Out of his cuffs, I spied the hind legs of a tabby cat in place of its hands.”

  Nettle reread the paragraph, but it didn’t make any more sense the second time.

  She continued, “It spoke in a bouncing sing-song voice like every word was a question, ‘May I ask you something?’ Despite its macabre appearance, I felt it meant no ill will, so I agreed.

  ‘Who are you?’ it asked. Enough time passed before my speaking that the Kiki sat beside me. It never lost patience, but I eventually had my answer.

  ‘I’m not sure who I am now, but it's not who I wish I were.’

  Now, I thought myself terribly clever, but the spirit turned to me and said, ‘No. Who are you?’

  Again, I took my time before answering. ‘I am of those who came before me. I am their love and hatred, their sun and moon.’

  The spirit thought on this, then said, ‘I meant your name.’

  Feeling the fool, I told it I was Tiso, and it seemed satisfied. I rested my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, the Kiki had fled. It left this journal in its place, so today, tomorrow, and overmarrow, I shall write.”

  “I don’t know what any of that meant,” Toad said, sitting beside her.

  “Me neither,” Nettle replied absently.

  The bones in Nettle’s neck creaked like an old door as she turned with unnerving slowness. Toad, for his part, sat kicking his legs off the bed like a young girl on a park bench. He tilted his head and batted his froggy eyes, the perfect image of innocence.

  “How did you get in my room?”

  Toad pushed his already face-splitting smile to its limit.

  “Whatever could you mean?” Toad asked with mock innocence, scratching his back with a rusty key.

  Nettle ripped the key from his grip and threw it over her shoulder. His smile never dipped, even as keys’ clatter rang from the far side of the room.

  “Ever heard of knocking?”

  “Have you?” Toad leaned back nonchalantly, “I was out there banging on your door so long I got calluses.”

  Nettle leaned in, “Those are warts.”

  “Bah. Well, nevertheless, Queenie gave me a key so as not to disturb the peace. I was going to ask if you would join me for breakfast, but you were preoccupied.”

  “Consider the peace disturbed. And what makes you think I want to go anywhere with you?”

  “You wound me, Nettle, you do. Remember on the road— my jokes? You certainly appeared to enjoy my company then.”

  Nettle tapped her chin as if in serious recall, “Jokes. Jokes . . .” She rolled the word around like a flavor she wasn’t sure she liked yet. “Jokes? Oh, jokes! That’s what those were?”

  Toad’s face crystallized into angular anger as he deadpanned, “The three-legged pig is a classic.” He relaxed. “I found myself enjoying your presence was all. Plus, it would be a shame to be alone on Allsday.”

  She bit her tongue.

  Something about him felt like stepping into a pair of well-worn boots. She didn’t even need to undo the laces. Nettle hung her head in defeat.

  “Alright, let's get breakfast.”

  Toad’s face flowed through emotions: first, delight, followed by smugness, and finally, a playful pondering.

  “Of course,” he said, “you’ll be paying.”

  “What? No way. Go ask Queenie for a spot.”

  Toad’s expression soured.

  “I’d rather not see Queenie more than necessary today. Last night, he and I, uh, lost more hands of Runaround than we had funds for, strictly speaking. I gave out a lot of IOUs.”

  “I’m surprised he’s not having frog legs for breakfast.”

  “Eh, He’ll get over it. You’re supposed to lose money on Allsday. It’s practically a holiday tradition.”

  “Today’s Allsday,” Nettle pointed out.

  “Yeah, but they start the night before here. In Leylen’s, Allsday is the day with both the most sunlight and starlight.”

  “Fine,” Nettle said, putting on her shoes, “But I’m delivering these letters first.” She pulled on her coat and held open a pocket. “Are you riding side saddle?”

  “I better. It’ll be busy today.”

  He jumped into the proffered pocket, and Nettle collected her things.

  “Do you need all that for breakfast?”

  Nettle looked around for anything she might have missed.

  “I’d rather not leave everything I own in a room whose owner is wanting for moss and lends keys out to his friends.”

  Nettle locked the door behind her and jangled down the stairs.

  The tap room was a graveyard, so she left her room keys on the bar.

  The early morning sky was so brilliantly pale that it hurt to look at. The Garden’s streets were a mix of people who got up early and people who never went to sleep. They were indistinguishable in all but stench. Nettle jostled her way toward the Postmaster’s office, careful to avoid puddles of dubious origin.

  Leaving The Garden was like stepping from a forest into an orchard. Parents with bright eyes dragged half-asleep children, stopping to listen to the musicians who lined the street. Nettle’s dusty blacks stood out against the saturated yellow and orange sea.

  The crowd’s sporadic currents, combined with the gaudy stripes of the traditional Allsday garb, created a nauseating effect. Nettle kept her head down as much as she could while not getting lost in the eddies of people that pooled around the musicians.

  Nettle felt at her backpack, her mind filled with pickpockets, cutpurses, and people who thought someone like her might deserve something unfortunate. She increased her pace just in time to slam into someone.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “I’m so sorry,” the blood rushing through her ears dimmed the din of the crowd, as though everyone stopped to watch.

  The large man whose back she accosted craned a bald head over a wreath of flower necklaces that engulfed him like a rich man’s ruff. A nasty burn streamed across the top half of his face, counterpointing the lopsided grin he wore to ease the tension.

  “Is Mr. Luciatti with you?” The man asked, although it was hard to hear him over the musicians.

  “Who?” Nettle asked.

  He must have mistaken her for someone else, which was a first. The man scrutinized her face and found only bafflement.

  Wordlessly, he bestowed upon her a flower necklace with such reverence a prince might feel envy.

  By the time she thought to thank the strange man, the undertow swept him away. She fiddled with the yellow zinnias.

  Nettle fought through the crowd, cutting cross-stream and ducking into the postmaster’s office. An entrance bell dinked at her intrusion into the dim room, startling awake the portly teller behind the counter. She approached the groggy woman and laid the two leather parcels she carried on the counter.

  “I’ve brought some letters from across the valley.”

  The woman tilted her head in a smile, threatening the stability of the precarious art piece she called hair.

  “Nettle?” She put on a thin pair of glasses. “I’m not expecting you till next week.”

  The woman ran her finger across a ledger, her head following along, line by line.

  Her hair lagged behind, swaying with the motion like a dog ready to play.

  “I,” Nettle studied a landscape on the wall, “was in a hurry.”

  The woman looked like she’d just heard her grandma died.

  “Oh no! What happened?” She leaned forward predatorily, likely hoping something left in the will was for her.

  “I met some-” Nettle paused.

  “Vagabonds?” Toad offered in a whisper.

  “-veggiebonds.”

  The woman looked expectant. She kept looking. Eventually, she gave up in favor of muttering to herself. Nettle couldn’t be sure, but she thought it was something along the lines of, ‘Grandma was a hack anyway.’

  “Let me go get what I owe you.”

  As the clerk shuffled into the back room, Toad plopped to the floor and took a look around. He sat beneath the painting, studying its use of color theory, no doubt. A froggy finger stroked an equally froggy chin.

  “She seems to know you pretty well.”

  “Certainly seems so.” Nettle rocked on her heels.

  Toad studied her face, a sly smile forming.

  “You don’t even know her name, do you?”

  “People like her make me sick. Preying on the tension life gives to others.”

  “What a profound way to say she’s a Nosey Nelly.” Toad paused mid-thought and slowly inspected Nettle, considering.

  “Call me Nelly, and we’ll have problems.”

  “I didn’t even say anything.”

  The clerk returned with steps punctuated by the jingle of coin. A purse lay cradled within her arms like a newborn. The purse thunked satisfyingly onto the table, its glory for all to see.

  The clerk spoke with mock cheer, “With two deliveries, you total forty-four moss.”

  The woman flipped through her ledger until she found a page full of runners and their estimated arrivals. She flipped the book around and slid it across the counter.

  Nettle drew her jaggedy nettle leaf of a signature and, after a thought, did the same under the estimated delivery containing the image of a stag beetle.

  “One of my two deliveries belonged to this man. He died.”

  The woman made a face like her Grandma faked her death, moved to Sibseel, then fell in with the wrong crowd and got stabbed to death. Or maybe nothing like that at all.

  Nettle raised a hand, preemptively cutting the woman off, and continued, “Can I get the deliveries to Aushoo? I’ll be heading there soon.”

  “Of course.”

  The woman reached under the counter and, after rifling around for a time, produced a leather satchel identical to the two she had just turned in.

  “Thank you,” Nettle said before adding awkwardly, “And happy Allsday.”

  Nettle put Toad back into her coat pocket and attached the letters secu– “Did you just put a frog in your pocket?”

  “Toad, actually,” Toad said.

  The woman made a noise that would have been more at home coming from a horse. Nettle left her to whatever that was and stepped outside to the noise of celebration.

  “I know a good place for breakfast if you head south a street.”

  Nettle’s worries thinned as the crowd did.

  “Take a right up here.”

  The musicians became significantly less professional as they moved further from the prime real estate.

  That one even has a– Wait, I recognize that jerk.

  It was the jerk from the Word Loan wearing a ragged orange pork pie hat. He sat with his eyes closed, gently plucking a guitar as though he had practiced all his life. Nettle approached and listened to the sweet music with a frown.

  There was something fundamentally human about etymancy that Nettle felt she missed out on. This man was no sweet poet. No black heart could bring such desperate cries of anguish out of an instrument. But here he was, borrowing the life of another.

  The jerk finished his song and looked up to his audience of one and a half.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

  “Likewise,” Nettle replied.

  She made a show of taking a single moss from her pack and placing it in the bowl before him. He looked at her with disdain.

  “Play something,” she said, and with a scoff, he did.

  His music was unconfident, and he tested his voice with a short, warbling note. He stopped and started again, still watching her. He lost his tempo, rushing to prove his borrowed talent, then stopped. With a long exhale, the man closed his eyes and began a simple, up-and-down folk strumming and sang.

  “Little white tern, tossed in the wind

  Your mama told you there’d be snow

  But little white tern, you only knew nests

  Now you’ve gone where Mama can’t go”

  He began to whistle a simple, waving tune that flowed over the ups and downs of the guitar. Nettle found that she could enjoy his song simply because it didn’t belong to him. The words were old, and the music and talent belonged to the one-armed word lender. The man was the man and the music itself.

  “Little white tern, lost in the world

  Mama’s gone, and you forgot her words

  Little white tern, can you find another

  Don’t you know, life is made for two birds”

  Nettle clapped, surprised at her authenticity, and laughed, “You give hope to the least of us.”

  He furrowed his brow, trying to parse her words. Nettle left before he could put his foot in his mouth.

  Toad led them to a small food stall whose single, greasy occupant hunched over today’s paper and meticulously cut the pictures out with a knife.

  “Batisto,” Toad said. Then, when the man continued to carefully cut a person from the woodcut printing, he yelled, “Batisto!”

  “What do you want?” Batisto asked, never looking up.

  “Roasted crickets, candied if you can.”

  “And I’ll have toasted peasant bread, with olive oil, topped with ham, cheese, and tomato,” Toad added.

  Batisto deftly made their food, all the while stealing glances at the paper.

  Toad puffed up and would have turned red if his green wasn’t in the way, “Batisto, are you going to talk to me, or are you going to cut people out of the paper like a Massic assassin?”

  Batisto pulled his sunken eyes to Nettle and grimaced. He gave her the old once-over, lighting up once he saw Toad.

  “Sorry, I should have recognized your croak,” Batisto said, handing them their food. “I was just getting some material for this collage I’m working on with my neighbor, you know, Ms. Lessly?”

  “You leave that girl alone,” Toad said mid-bite.

  “Why? Because she has red hair?”

  Toad swallowed. “No, because so does your wife.”

  Batisto laughed the laugh of someone who thought his actions were more charming than they were.

  “Oh,” Batisto added, “I just remembered. Queenie’s vulture was looking for the two of you, and I told him I’d let him know if you stopped by.”

  “Now, why would you go and do something like that?” Toad asked like it was the setup for a joke.

  “Money, mostly, but Urubu always puts on a good showing.”

  Toad scarfed down the rest of his sandwich and wiped his hands.

  “Well, that all works out. Nettle, you got all your belongings? Food? Water? Umm, Letters?”

  “I,” Nettle began, “Yes, but it's all traveling food, and I was planning on taking a couple days' break from walking.”

  Toad placed a hind leg on the lip of her pocket and pointed towards the horizon like a great explorer posing for a portrait. “Where is your sense of adventure, Nettle? Aushoo awaits across treacherous land, with a new companion, and opportunity on the wind!”

  “Have you ever crossed the waste? A whole week of nothing. A terrible, deadly nothing. I need a break.”

  “Don’t your people have a word for old friends who just met?” Toad asked.

  A shadow fell over the two, and a deep voice split the conversation, “Shaishava, I believe."

  A dark figure loomed over her.

  Nettle spun and threw an instinctive jab. A thick, dark hand effortlessly eclipsed her own.

  “Sheyshava, actually.”

  It was the man from earlier. He no longer wore any flowers, which put his natural overbearingness on display. Worse, he no longer wore his smile.

  “Hi, Urubu,” Toad said.

  “Hello, Batisto,” Urubu said.

  Batisto waved.

  Looking into Urubu’s scarred face, Nettle came under the possession of two very unfortunate thoughts: One, Toad was Mr. Luciatti, and two, Mr. Luciatti was right, they’d be heading to Aushoo today.

  Urubu put his hand on her shoulder and asked with a strange sincerity, “Is Aushoo nice? My sister wants to travel the West.”

  “It's seeming better by the moment,” Nettle said.

  “That is good. It’s rare to meet anyone who frequen–” Nettle threw a half-eaten bag of crickets in his face.

  Urubu flinched backwards, and Nettle bolted. As she turned down the nearest alley, Nettle unstrapped her shovel from her side. Urubu’s lead feet echoed down the alley just as Nettle took her second left, exiting the alley. She turned around and listened as Urubu thundered closer.

  “Why did you–”

  “Shhh,” Nettle hissed.

  Urubu exited the alley, and Nettle swung. The flat of her shovel thunked solidly into the meat of the man’s shoulder. It didn’t seem to faze him much, but the surprise of the act gave her enough time to dance out of his reach.

  She flipped around and sprinted down the empty street, Urubu close behind. Nettle took a third left around the same building and abruptly stopped with a foot outstretched. As Urubu rounded the corner, Nettle shifted her stance into a wide swing, accounting for the man’s height. This time, Urubu’s head and her shovel’s kissed.

  The man reeled, clutching a bloody nose, and Nettle dashed off again. She took a fourth left, looping back to where she started, and turned around again. She held her shovel overhead this time and waited for the man’s approach.

  And waited.

  “You don’t think he went around, do you?” Toad asked.

  Nettle ignored him.

  No one ever expects the third time.

  Just as she was about to take off again, Urubu spoke from around the corner in a significantly more nasal voice: “I can see your shadow, Miss Nettle. Please don’t try to hit me again.”

  Nettle looked down and saw he was right. She backed up slowly so her shadow didn’t give her away.

  Urubu called out, “Is she still there, Batisto?”

  “Yeah, and she’s ready to wack you. Did she get you with that thing?”

  “Twice.”

  “Oh, she’s running again, better go ge—.”

  Ting.

  Urubu was out cold.

  “Ope, she doubled back.”

  Nettle stood over the man.

  “He seemed nice, all things considered.”

  “Oh yes,” Toad said, nodding, “If you’re looking to be roughed up, there’s no one better.”

  “So, Aushoo?”

  “At least till Queenie cools off.”

  A cloud passed over the sun like a heavy sigh.

  “Alright,” Nettle said, “It’s going to be a long walk.”

  “Not with your Shaishava along for the journey,” Toad said, prodding her from his pocket.

  Nettle didn’t have the energy to correct him.