• Chapter I
    in which I, in a matter of days, gain a new home.

    I stood in front of the burned, abandoned building, tears blurring my vision. The faded sign that swung slowly in the wind read "Bernel Healing Center." The windows were boarded shut, and weeds grew from cracks in the sidewalk. I approached the door and, finding it locked, fell to my knees in the shelter of the stone doorway and wept.

    I must have cried myself to sleep, because I awoke stiff and sore in that very spot. The sky was black and the streets all but abandoned, so I knew I'd been unconscious for quite some time. All this my mind processed automatically; I was too engrossed in my grief to care.

    Before long, I heard the boom of thunder. Heavy rain began to fall with a hiss, and soon I was drenched. Nevertheless, I stayed where I was for hours, mourning. When I became too cold, I pulled my legs close and pressed my body back into the meager shelter of the doorway.

    Because of the cold, I did not sleep that night. Instead, I watched the street aimlessly, almost as if I were standing--or sitting--guard. In the monotony of the night one hour was the same as the next, with the exception of two events; first, the cessation of the rain, and second, the rising of the sun at dawn.

    Cold though I was, I did not welcome the sun's rays. I wondered how the sun could shine when I was so miserable; it felt like it was mocking me. I closed my eyes, trying to block it out.


    How long I sat like this, I don't know. Eventually, my stomach growled. I tried to ignore it, thinking of the stories of heroes who had gone long without food for their various causes. I could not ignore mine for more than a few minutes, though. As much as I regretted it, my body was not capable of such feats. I sighed heavily, opened my eyes, and set off to find some food.

    A few blocks away I spotted a small, peripheral bakery. I could smell the aroma of bread from where I stood, and approached cautiously, fingering the meager change in my pocket. I’d not brought anything more than what I'd needed to get to Bernel under the worst circumstances, expecting to be accommodated at the Healing Center. Obviously, that was not the case.

    The door opened with a palpable groan as I slowly, tentatively, pushed it inward. The inside of the bakery was all but abandoned, except for a young man reading unobtrusively at a table in the corner. I let the door swing shut, and approached the counter as if in a dream, the scent of freshly baked bread filling my consciousness.

    I decided against eating in the bakery, instead taking my miniature feast back to my haunt at the former Healing Center, where I sat in the doorway--the only shady spot--and brooded as I ate. I recounted to myself the events of the past few months.

    The previous summer, a group of nomadic traders had come to my home village, Merekra. They'd bought and sold goods, as traders are wont to do. One family had been able to buy a horse to replace the one that had died a few months earlier.

    The first signs appeared when the first son of that same family fell deathly ill. At the same time the horse they had bought from the traders died of a mysterious disease. That was the beginning of the end.

    Soon the disease had been spreading around the entire village, striking down humans and horses both. Some had tried t o go for help, but none had made it farther than a few miles before either they or their horses had begun to show signs of the Illness, as it was dubbed.

    My family, living near the outskirts of the village, had been one of the last when the disease had finally reached us. Soon everyone in the house had been dying, with the exception of one: me. Some cruel twist of fate had made me immune, and finally I'd decided to make the long journey to the infamous Healing Center in Bernel, in hopes of finding some kind of help.

    Now, of course, I knew it was too late. Even if I had found help, the journey had taken much longer than I had any reason to expect; by the time I returned, it would have been far, far too late. Tears fell from my eyes as I mourned for the death of the world.

    I heard footsteps approaching on the stone path, and looked up, wiping the tears from my eyes. There stood the boy I had seen in the bakery some time earlier, staring up at the facade of the building with one of the saddest expressions I had ever seen.

    I stood up quickly, somehow managing to hit my head on the shallow wall beside me with a muffled thunk. His head turned, and his eyes met mine, widening in surprise. Taking a few hesitant steps forward, he said, "Your head--it's bleeding!"

    I put my fingers to the side of my head, where I had hit it, and felt something warm and wet. It stared at my red stained hand for a few seconds, and then looked back up at the boy. My vision was blurred, either from crying or from dizziness, but I could see his worried expression as I sat down, my head light from blood loss.

    He was suddenly beside me, sifting through the contents of my pack. "What are you doing?" I gasped.

    "You need a bandage," he said. "Do you have any cloth in here? Extra clothes?" I nodded, reached in, and pulled out at random a shirt, which he immediately tore a long strip of cloth from. I pouted a little--that one had been a gift. Oh, well. He swiftly wound the makeshift bandage around my head a few times before tying it off.

    "There," he said.

    Neither of us spoke.

    "I'm Julie," I offered eventually.

    He reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Andrew."

    "Well, Andrew, now what?" I prompted, hoping he had somewhere else to be.

    He must have misunderstood, because he said, looking at the ground, "Oh, I guess you can't stay here, can you?"

    Despite wanting desperately to stay where I was, I nodded in agreement. What was he getting at?

    With a quick glance at the dilapidated building behind us, he remarked, "Since you can't stay at the Center, you might as well come with me. It's not far."

    * * * * *

    I was lucky to have a guide through the winding streets of Bernel, where I would easily have gotten lost after a few blocks on my own, especially as it was getting dark. Andrew was right, though, and after about twenty minutes we had reached our destination.

    He stopped, so suddenly I almost ran into him, in front of a large old house. Approaching the door, he extended a fist and banged on the door.

    There was, after a while, the sound of a lock being undone, and then the cracked and faded wooden door swung open--groaning so hard I was afraid it might break. Inside stood a small girl of about fourteen, with dark brown hair, shockingly blue eyes, and a strong resemblance to the person standing across from her. Her eyes flickered between the two of us, finally resting on me when she said, "What, another one? Where'd you find her this time?"

    Though I was startled by her statement and accusatory tone, Andrew answered calmly, "She's hurt, she's alone, and she needs a place to stay." He gestured to my injured head. "Ellen, what else are we here for?"

    Ellen's eyes narrowed. "Just get inside." We entered.

    Once we were inside, Ellen shut the door. The light disappeared so quickly I couldn't see a thing. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I saw what might once have been a beautiful mansion before it had fallen into disrepair. Straight ahead was a large staircase, which Ellen and Andrew proceeded to climb. I followed behind, not wanting to get lost in the dark.

    As we reached the top of the stairs, however, I began to feel faint. As soon as we emerged into the brighter light of the second floor, Andrew noticed, looked at my face with concern, and said to Ellen, "Where's Tarisa?"

    "She should be in her room; why?"

    "I want her to take a look at Julie here."

    For the first time Ellen seemed to notice my bandaged head. "Bring her," she agreed, and continued walking.

    I noticed several features of the corridor as we progressed. It was lined with lanterns that flickered in harmony; between each of the lanterns was a door--I counted forty of the latter. At the end of the hall was a window that was boarded shut. A few rays of fading light broke through the cracks, illuminating two halls that went off in either direction from the spot.

    We stopped in front of the last door on the left side. At least, we stopped at the place where the door should have been. Instead, there was just a dirty blanket hanging over the doorway. I looked back at the other "doors," and noticed that most were in similar condition.

    Ellen pulled back the blanket to reveal a small room containing four beds, one in each corner. On the mattress in the far right corner sat a kind-looking woman of about 20 or 30 years. She looked up upon our entry, and, seeing me and Ellen, but not Andrew, who had vanished somewhere behind us, exclaimed, "Who's that, Ellen, a friend of yours?"

    "No, Andrew found her somewhere. She's hurt her head; can you look her over?"

    The woman--Tarisa, I assumed--gave a concerned smile. "Of course," she said. "That's why I'm here." She turned to me. "Sit down here, honey," she patted the mattress beside her. "Let's have a look at you."

    I complied, meanwhile noting that the mattress was not very comfortable. As I did, Tarisa turned her attention completely to me.

    "Now," she said, "how did you hurt your head?"

    "I hit it on the corner of a wall," I summarized. No need to go into painful (in multiple ways) details.

    After examining my general cranial area for a few minutes, she directed me to the washroom to remove the blood from my face and hair.

    "It doesn't look like you have a concussion, but I'd like to have you stay with me overnight, just to make sure," she said while binding a fresh bandage around my head. "You can use the mattress across from mine; the others are taken."

    We returned to the room, Tarisa informed Ellen of the arrangement, and Ellen departed to deliver the news to Andrew, whose disappearance had not been explained.

    After I had arranged my things, I turned to my new roommate. "You're a doctor, right?" I began.

    She shook her head knowingly. "I'm just an apprentice, but I know enough to be of use here. I ought to have been finished by now, but since that fire at the Healing Center nearly a year ago..."

    "A year?!" I exclaimed. This was the topic I had been aiming for, but the news was entirely unexpected. "How? What happened?"

    "Nobody's really sure," she said, "but the popular theory is that it was an accident, such as the furnace being left on too long or a candle left just barely too close to a curtain."

    A year!--I fell to sleep wondering how it would have been if this news had reached Merekra before I had left.

    * * * * *

    The next morning, I was awakened by a rustling and thumping noise coming from the other end of the room. I opened my eyes and sat up to see someone going through a large sack of something, scattering items all over the floor.

    "Hey!" I cried as a bauble grazed the side of my head before it hit the wall and fell onto my mattress. The figure stopped and sat back on its heels. I saw that "it" was a thin girl, one that looked at least a year younger than me, with long reddish-blond hair, and a round, child-like face.

    "I'm so sorry," she said. "I was just looking for--Oh!" her face lit up with recognition. "You must be Julie! Ellen told me about you when I came in last night. I'm Ally. This is my room too, by the way. Did I wake you up?"

    I shrugged, and then said, "What was it you were looking for?" I looked questioningly at the bag.

    "Oh! Ah, have you, by any chance, seen my Monitronizer? It's a metal ball, about this big--" she held her thumb and index finger as for apaart as they would go, "and it has a circle with a square inside scratched onto it."

    "Sorry, I haven't seen anything like that," I said unhelpfully. "What exactly is a... a Motr-whatever?"

    "It's nothing, really, by itself. It's a part for the Seeker-Spy I'm building. It's a very important piece."

    "Huh." I didn't really care what a Seeker-Spy was right then, because my stomach was suddenly growling very loudly.

    Ally looked at my stomach, then at my face. "Breakfast is down the stairs, to the left, and the third door on the right. Or you could follow your nose." She suddenly spotted the whatever-it-was that had fallen on my bed. "Hey, could you hand me that?" I put it in her hand as I left. "Thanks."

    * * * * *

    Ally had been right--I could smell something incredibly fragrant as soon as I stepped out of the room. Following her directions, I soon came to a room containing a large swarm (compared to my experience in a small seaside village) of children and adults. I saw Ellen standing by the far wall, talking to two women I'd never seen before. More importantly, I saw mountains of food on the table. Having eaten once in the past few days, the fact that most of the "good stuff" was already taken had no effect on me whatsoever.

    I approached the table, my moth watering and stomach growling louder than ever. It was then that I noticed almost everyone had left the room--I must have woken late, unsurprisingly--only Ellen and one of the ones she had been talking to remained. The woman met my eyes, blushed, and approached me, blurting, "I'm Simone. We're neighbors, I guess. Tarisa's and Ally's and your room is right next to mine."

    Ellen, noting my hungry expression, interjected, "Take as much as you want; it'll get thrown out otherwise." I went at the food with so much passion I wondered why I couldn't have had they much energy during my travels.

    That though was a mistake; the memory of why I had taken that journey brought back the powerful sadness of the past few days. I felt my expression fall from bliss to the depression that had surrounded me before I had come here.

    I hadn't realized I'd stopped eating until someone sat down beside me, breaking my trance. I looked up, and saw it was Andrew. I hadn't seen him come in; I must have been too lost in my grief. But why was e sitting on my left, opposite from the door? Then I noticed that there was another section of the room, giving the whole hall an "L" shape. He must have come from the section around the corner, out of my line of sight.

    He looked at me oddly, as if I were a particularly hard puzzle he was trying to figure out. Finally he asked that fatal question: "What's wrong?"

    I shook my head, staring down at my plate. The food no longer looked appetizing. I sighed and pushed my seat back from the table, intending to head back to my room, where I could cry all I wanted. I stopped, though, when I felt Andrew's hand on my arm. I turned, and his expression was so... sad, like he knew exactly what I was thinking, that I sat back down in the chair from sheer surprise.

    I put my head in my hands, not wanting to look at his face. "I was just thinking--I--I--my--" I got not farther than that, for my words faded into sobs and I laid my head down on the table to hid the tears cascading from my eyes.

    Thankfully, he remained silent until my weeping had subsided. When I finally lifted my head were alone in the room. Andrew continued to look at me with a contemplative and confused expression.

    He asked quietly, "Do you want to talk about it?" I shook my head, but did not make any indication of leaving.

    After a very long pause, I said, "Why are you still here?"

    "I live here."

    "'S not what I meant."

    He sighed. "You were upset. You were crying and I... I thought maybe I could... sorry." He looked away, embarrassed.

    I had to smile a little at his face. "It's not your fault."

    For the first time I was really able to look at the building. Although practically falling down on our heads, it was obviously once a very nice place--even nicer than I had originally though.

    Andrew noticed me looking around, so I suggested that he give me a tour. I couldn't help feeling guilty and humiliated by my display. I needed distraction.

    He immediately agreed, and I found myself being led around the building at top speed.

    "This is the kitchen," he pointed out as we came to one of the last rooms on the first floor. There were some young women, as well as a few girls, working at various tasks around the room. Most looked up when the door opened; some topped what they were doing.

    Some girl--she looked barely twelve years old--seemed particularly astonished. "Who's this?" she inquired, looking at Andrew.

    He looked at me, as if he had forgotten that no one here knew who I was. "This is Julie." I smiled at her, but she did not return the favor.

    Andrew seemed not to notice. "Where's Mike?"

    "He's out in the garden with Simone."

    Without further hesitation, he led me towards a large wooden door that opened to a large yard containing the aforementioned garden.

    "This is our garden," Andrew stated unnecessarily. "It's where we get most of our food and the supplies to make the stuff we sell in the shop to get money for whatever we can't make ourselves."

    The garden was very nice, but it was not what held my interest right then. "Who exactly is 'we?'" I inquired, tour forgotten. "Who are you? Who are all these people?"

    He ran his hand through his messy light brown hair. "This is the Orange Inn," he began, sounding like he had made this speech before. "All the people here have lost there homes and their families, who have nowhere else to turn. In the old days it would have been called a Sanctuary."

    I fit right in, then. "What about you?" I hoped fervently I wasn't being rude.

    We resumed walking, heading past the garden. "Our parents--mine and Ellen's; she's my sister--were the ones who started this place about 20 years ago. It was in better shape back then.

    "I don't know where they first got the idea from, but the number of people has grown a lot since then. It's kind of like a little city here." He smiled.

    I was intrigued by the idea. "Your parents--where are they now?"

    His face fell. "They're dead."

    "Oh. I'm sorry." I could certainly empathize--but I stopped myself before I let my thoughts go too far.

    "They were in the Healing Center a year ago--did Tarisa tell you about that?"

    I nodded. "Is that why you came there yesterday?"

    "That, and I followed you from Mener's."

    I stopped. "Who's?"

    He reddened. "The bakery. You looked sort of lost, so I was going to offer to help. But you're fast! I couldn't get close enough until you'd stopped."

    "And then I really did need your help," I joked.

    He didn't think it was funny. "How's your head, speaking of which?"

    "I'm fine. It doesn't hurt at all, and Tarisa said I don’t' have a concussion--whatever that is. So that's good, right?"

    I never got a response, for at that moment a great noise broke out form
    somewhere on the other side of the garden, back by the house. Andrew took off running in that direction, and I followed.

    When we reached the house there was a huge crowed (which consisted of nearly everyone I'd seen so far and many more I hadn't) gathered around a spot near the right side if you were facing the inn. I heard angry shouting--an argument.

    "Why would you do something like this, Leewyn?" a male voice boomed. "Don’t' you value our safety here at all?"

    Andrew was pushing his way through to the center of the crowd. "What's going on here?" he demanded.

    As the people parted to make way for him, I caught a glimpse of what all the fuss must be about. A woman was kneeling, holding a small bundle in her arms. A tall, bulky man was standing over her, looking very angry.

    The woman whimpered. "OH, shut up, you little thief," the man growled.

    "What is going on here, Mike?" Andrew repeated, putting himself between the two.

    Mike growled again. "This idiot stole something from the palace." Someone gasped. It might have been me. I was shocked. The Palace!

    Andrew ignored his anger, and turned to Leewyn, crouching down so he could meet her eyes. He said something, too low for me to hear, and the woman handed him the cloth bundle.

    I couldn't see the contents of the package as he examined it, but the look on his face gave me a pretty good idea of their nature.

    He rewrapped the package and handed it to Leewyn, simultaneously pulling her to her feet. "Leewyn," he said slowly, "You will take this back to the Palace. You will return the things you have stolen."

    "I-I can't," she stuttered. "I'll be killed! I-I'll--"

    "You'll be fine," Andrew assured her. He turned to Mike. "Since this is so important to you, you go with her." Then he turned away and left.

    * * * * *

    As the crowd dispersed, I stood on my toes, looking for a familiar face.

    "Who are you looking for?"

    I jumped, then turned around to see Ally standing directly behind me.

    "Nobody," I fibbed.

    She said nothing, which was kind of awkward. Then I asked, "Who is Andrew? Why does everyone act like he's so important? He can't be much older than I am."

    "Well, you know, his and Ellen's parents were the ones who started this place. And they're gone, so technically the whole place is his now," she said dismissively, smiling as I raised my eyebrows. "Plus he's really good at making fair decisions, like you saw just now."

    I wasn't sure that had been such a fair decision, but I said nothing. I had bigger problems on my mind--like what to do with myself now that I had nowhere else to go. As Ally walked off, I found myself wondering: Would I stay here? If not, where else would I go? There was something about this place, though, I thought; something mysterious. I had so many questions I wanted to answer, so many people I wanted to get to know. Right in that moment I made my decision, and on revision found it perfectly fair. I would stay.