It’d kill me?
She drew a finger across her throat, then pointed to herself, and her companions.
And kill them?
Point, to ledge. Then hand to one side of her face, head tilted, eyes closed.
It’s sleeping.
One pointed finger, extended my way, then she ‘walked’ across the air with two fingers, very slowly, with exaggerated care.
Tiptoe?
I nodded and mouthed the words for ‘thank you’.
The roar of the water continued. The weapons came down as people stepped away.
The woman looked over her shoulder, waved a bit to get someone’s attention.
A man, bald. I couldn’t see what was wrong with him. It maybe said a lot that I had to define people in this place by how screwed up they were.
He stood, walking past me with a bit of a limp, he paused, then gestured for me to follow.
I nodded.
Up on top of the shacks, using them as stepping stones, to a higher area. A narrower ledge here – I couldn’t have two feet on one section at the same time. My stomach scraped against the wall with every step.
The bald man, his limp aside, moved with grace and ease across the ledge. Familiar ground.
Months or years of experience, easily.
He could have stood by and let me forge ahead on my own, but he didn’t. He continued to lead the way, periodically becoming little more than a silhouette in light or a vague human-shaped blur in the darkness. Here and there, he paused, gesturing to a possible hazard. A bit of stone that stuck out enough it might poke me, or a bit of ledge that wobbled when I touched it with my toe.
After what I might have guessed to be ten minutes of progress, he stopped, pointing down.
The act of looking was somewhat terrifying, given how little I could afford to lean away from the wall, but I looked all the same. I couldn’t make out the shape, not really, but it was big, it smelled like garbage, and it had spiky black fur with periodic spines sticking out. I could see it expand and contract with every breath, steam rising from one area I took to be the head.
I wasn’t sure if I would have even seen it. It was big enough to block some of the light.
When I looked up, my guide was already moving on.
It was easily another ten of fifteen minutes before I felt brave enough to speak up. “Hey.”
He raised a finger to his lips.
Right. I wasn’t about to argue.
I lost track of time before we reached safer ground. A corridor opened up, and we were able to step inside the mouth of it.
“You’re new,” he said. His voice sounded disused, creaky.
“Yeah,” I said. I ran my hands through my hair, where it was sticking to my forehead. How was it possible to be so cold and yet so sweaty at the same time?
“You come this way, you leave it ‘lone.”
“Will do,” I said. I held my hands up to the light above the corridor to examine them. My fingertips were raw from damp, cold, and friction. “I don’t… I really don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing.”
“You got choices,” he said. “You wander until something gets you, you find a place you can hunker down and you wait until something gets you, or you decide it’s too much trouble and get yourself.”
“Or you get others,” I said.
He gave me a look, about as dirty as they came. “Y’think you’ve got it in you?”
I sighed, then shook my head.
“Good. Because I’d throw y’off the edge here if y’did.”
I frowned, gazing over the edge at the darkness. The wall opposite couldn’t be seen. It was just a wall that extended up and down as far as I could see, a pinprick of light or two in the dark, and nothing more.
As if the world were nothing more than the one spread of grimy, damp construction here, the neverending downpour from a pipe that jutted out of the wall further down.
“You make it sound so hopeless,” I said. “Why even bother trying if you think it’s that bad?”
“The kids,” he said. “Not mine, they washed up alongside us.”
“Washed up?”
“Bad weather hit, could be hurricane, but I dunno, don’t watch or listen to much. Next thing, we’re all collected in some shallow drain with a whole lot of debris and dead.”
Washed away, I thought. Had the storm erased their ties to the world as surely as Ur had eaten mine?
“You’re settled awfully close to that thing.”
“Sure. Killed whoever lived where we’re at, we set up there, do what we can t’keep the thing going, fish the trough. If it stops turning, it might hear us and decide t’pay a visit. Lost two before we learned.”
I nodded slowly. “What is it? A goblin?”
He gave me a dark, suspicious look.
“What?” I asked.
“Yeh, it’s a goblin, or so we’ve heard. Not what most people would guess. Dragon? Sure. Bat? Yeh. But goblin?”
“I know stuff,” I said.
“Do you now? ‘Cause the only one we know who knows this sort of thing calls herself a witch.”
“Is she dangerous?”
“Yeh,” he said. “She’s dangerous. Not always. Not even some of the time, but she’s unpredictable, spiteful. We mostly steer clear, but sometimes if we’re hurt or something new’s come up, we ask, and we pay.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m not dangerous either, but I’m not all that unpredictable either. I was a beginner, before I found my way down here, and I’ve lost just about everything I had.”
His stare was long and level, and there was a tension in the air.
Was he considering whether he should just shove me over the edge? Handle the problem?
“If you want t’talk to her, she’s down through this way. No light, y’gotta feel your way.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
A shrug. “Wander until something gets you, wait until something gets you…”
“Or get myself. I get it.”
He nodded slowly.
I rubbed my arms, comparing the two paths available to me.
“Y’realize the cold can’t kill you,” he said. “Can’t starve, can’t go crazy without sleep. But when y’give up on those things, y’give up something human in yerself.”
Wearing you down.
I was getting a sense of how this place worked.
Probably just as easy to let us decide to sacrifice common needs and let ourselves become less human than it was to maintain the usual rules for each individual inhabitant.
I couldn’t afford to do that if I wanted to get out and resume a normal-ish life.
I looked around. Food was impossible and dangerous in its own way. Water was… disgusting.
Sleep? If I rested, maybe my mind would be a little clearer.
“Is this a bad place to sleep?” I asked. “I… I just don’t really know much about anything here.”
He looked around before giving me a response. “Probably.”
Probably.
The way he said it suggested that any place was probably a bad place to sleep.
I settled in, my back to the wall. The floor was slightly sloped, and a thin trickle of water ran along the floor, dancing this way and that as dirt moved out of the way or the wind changed. My rear end would get damp, and even my shoulders, where they pressed against the wall, given the state of my coat. As places went, though, it was drier than some.
When I looked up, my guide was on the ledge, getting ready to make his way back.
“Thanks,” I said.