“I think what you really want is a shower and a glass of water and a large dinner and possibly a nice bed. Would that be more correct? You don’t seem at all to be in the condition to grasp what’s happening here, even if we did tell you everything.” Neci turned and started toward the back of the room. The two burlys there stood up straight and separated as if to flank her. “Kerwen, do we have a room available?”
Ripley said, “Well, I think there’s one out in Stralia, near the old reptile dens that’s…”
A tiny, demure voice, spoke from the darkness. A girl’s voice—new and different. A fourth one. “There’s a room next to me in the big cats’ caves. I keep it clean. She can stay there.” From the hallway to her right, through the entrance Syn had used, a slim version of the others, a copy just like the other three, stepped forward. Dressed in a pale, yellow dress with several large, unraveled holes, a thin girl stood, her shoulders slumped, her eyes to the ground. Of the three others, she resembled Syn the most. Her hair was hung like Syn’s—loose, long, unkempt, and floating around like a cloud.
Taji chuckled, “We didn’t bring you home a dolly to play with, Pigeon.”
The little girl winced at this but kept her eyes down.
Neci paused before exiting. “Promise to be nice to this one, Pigeon?”
There was another wince at the name, but the girl named Pigeon muttered, “I promise.”
Neci nodded. “You too, Taji.”
The big girl only grunted an affirmation.
Neci continued, “The room next to Pigeon. Kerwen, show her the way. Draw her a bath. Dinner will be in three hours. And post a golem outside.”
Riply said, “Can do.”
Golem? Syn wondered. The burlys. They had called them golems. Syn remembered the word from some movie or story—stone giants brought to life. No mind. No soul.
Taji had already turned and was walking out the other way, toward the street entrance. Neci shouted, “And Taji?”
The muscled copy stopped and shut her eyes.
Neci didn’t wait for a response, “Fix the table before dinner.” With that, she exited, the two burlys—two golem—falling in her wake.
The room grew numb. No one spoke. Syn was not sure anyone breathed.
After a long, cold minute, Ripley smiled. “Well, that was a pleasant homecoming, wasn’t it?”
Taji slammed her fist against a pillar along the door frame. It shook. She grunted and stomped out of the room to the outside.
“That one’s just a bit aggressive. Bit of an anger problem. It’s all good. She’ll soon be treating you like just another sister.”
“Sister?” Syn said.
Ripley motioned. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. I think I have some clothes that’ll fit.” She laughed at this. “Oh, and call me Kerwen.”
Syn followed and looked around for the other one, the thin girl named Pigeon. She was nowhere to be seen. She had faded completely away, just like she had entered.
As she was ushered away, Syn glanced back, scanning the concrete floor for her spear. But it was gone. Lost in some dark shadow.
28
A NICE, NEW WORD
“Maturity is a series of shattered illusions.”
As she followed Kerwen out of the spires, small parts of what Zondon had been before revealed themselves. The first was the large stone wall with the letters J, U, N, G, and L on it. Syn thought it was to spell “Jungle”, but the E had gone missing. Underneath this, at eye-level, was a wooden sign whose original letters had faded to almost be unreadable. With effort, Syn made sense of them. ANIMALS. CHILDRENS PLAYGROUND. NATURE CENTER. With a large arrow pointing to the left.
They passed a fenced-in area with a large tree structure that was obviously artificial. Different articles of clothing draped across the branches. Shirts, jeans, socks. The four girls had been using this as a place to dry clothes.
Beyond that, they came to a false stone structure with three cave entrances carved into the outside. Syn now knew she had been here before. The painted sign above the caves confirmed her suspicion. It read BIG CATS. And then below it, read LIONS AND TIGERS.
Syn blurted the realization out, “This is the Zoo.” Or at least it had been this Disc’s Zoo. So much had been boarded over and fencing had been torn down and moved to other places. It was dark, and there was no sound of the animals here.
She now understood why the paths didn’t light up. The Zoo on her side, in her world, didn’t respond to her presence either. The thought put her at ease as understood the reason now. No, she reminded herself, I can’t think of it like that. My world is this world. We’re in one world. Both Discs. She imagined that this must be what Lucy had felt like going through the wardrobe. Or Eve leaving Eden into Nod. Something dark and terrible waiting. Something with a crown and fangs.
Kerwen tapped the wall. “It surely was. And fortunately for us. Kept us from going hungry for a long time.”
Syn shuddered at Kerwen’s meaning. They had eaten the animals.
Kerwen pointed to a dark entrance with the word TIGER over it. “That’s yours. The runt lives right next door.” She pointed to the entrance with LION painted above. “See you at dinner. Know how to make your way back?”
Syn glanced down the path behind and nodded.
“Good.” Kerwen walked away but looked back over her shoulder. “Don’t try leaving just yet. You won’t get out. But don’t be late. She hates when people are late.”
Syn nodded affirmation and then entered the grotto, pushing against a lightweight door that had been hung haphazardly just inside the faux-cave’s entrance.
She had expected to find bales of straw and bones and a mess. Instead, it resembled an actual room. Whoever had lived here before had gone to great work to make it feel normal. The room was clean. It wasn’t the scrubbed hominess of Arquella’s house, but it was far nicer than Syn had expected since arriving at Zondon Almighty. The city was so rundown, so forgotten, and far opposite of the bots’ perception of the place, that she had expected to find a floor mat in a dirt room. Surprisingly, there were boards below her feet.
The room was not crafted with flat walls. This was meant to feel like a cave where a wild animal would feel comfortable. A narrow entrance opened into the vast space that served as the bedroom. Syn followed a passage near the rear of the space to discover a makeshift bathroom. Against the far wall, oddly out of place, stood a white porcelain bathtub. Above it was an overhead pipe sliced open and a single nozzle that turned the water on when pulled down. A bucket with a hole in the bottom placed under another faucet served as a sink. It wasn’t great, but it would work.
She contemplated taking a nap but eyed the shower head. Oh, to be clean.
The water was so hot it turned to steam as it splashed against the porcelain tub. This bathtub had been dragged from somewhere else. Perhaps one of the upper settlements. It was ornate, out of place, and Syn loved it.
The bed was a set of two mattresses stacked one atop another. She ran her hand over the comforter. It was soft. She felt tired suddenly. Perhaps a short nap before dinner.
She fell forward onto the bed and bounced with a slight giggle. She laid naked on top of the bed and felt herself melt into the bedding.
She probably didn’t have time for a nap, she thought. How long had she been in the shower? More than just a few minutes. It had taken her awhile to just get undressed after Kerwen had walked her over. Before crawling in the bathtub, Syn had checked every wall. She hadn’t wanted surprises. The main room had a roof, and she had discovered a tiny lamp in the corner, which, when she had turned it on, illuminated everything in an orange glow. After searching every possible place, for what she couldn’t determine, Syn had returned to the bathroom and the filling bathtub, taken her grubby clothes off and stepped into the hot water. It hit her skin, and she had unwound. Not just a sense of relaxation, but the release of fear and panic and other emotions she was still struggling to name. She had cried and let the water wash her tears down the drain. They had lasted only a few minutes, and she had found herself energized as she stood there. She had glanced down to see a swirl of dirt and blood whirl around the hole in the tub. Blood. Her blood. The burly’s blood. The dust from the walk in the desert. The grease from fixing the line of bots. And the remaining grime was a collection of so many different things she had encountered