Going down in flames...

[The Cinderella Man]

You need a drink, honey.

“That makes two of us,” Victor thought, still sitting on the damn sack of wheat (or at least what he hoped was wheat) and still completely befuddled with the whole situation. He should’ve known that something was amiss. No, that wasn’t quite true. He knew that this deal was haywire from the moment he was introduced with the terms. Nobody paid that much and wanted furtiveness in return if the deal wasn’t as rotten as Bazaar fish on Saturday afternoon. But illegality wasn’t as much of an issue when your stomach and your pockets were empty. However, there was wrong over which he could walk over and then there was the kind that forced him to regrow his conscience on the double. And Cadee was certainly the latter.

“I don’t know who gave me this wretched job., he started, pulling out his combat knife and cracking open another crate. Turnips. Not very fresh either. And even if they were, raw turnips weren’t very edible. “They didn’t seem too eager on revealing their bloody names and I didn’t bother to ask. When somebody shoves five hundred gold pieces into your hands, you become mighty ignorant in a hurry, if you know what I mean.”

Victor opened another, found potatoes, then moved onto the sacks. Despite rather lousy results in prospecting, there was a relief in him that there were no more tied and gagged children within the cargo. The sacks were filled with beans, wheat and something that looked like a peas only smaller and not green. It didn’t matter because none of it was edible without being cooked and he and cooking weren’t on best terms.

“There’s plenty of stuff here, but we’ll need to cook it. I’m going to build a fire,” he said to Hana, his knife once again scaring the girl just enough to make him feel stupid for not putting it away before approaching. He sheathed the weapon clumsily, but Cadee failed to find her trustworthy just yet, clutching for Lehana tightly and diverting her eyes from the prizefighter. He couldn’t blame her. He had an aversion towards children and they mostly felt it on some primal, sixth sense level. It’s not that he exactly disliked them or anything, but rather that he didn’t know how to act around them and this lack of ability to commune was disconcerting enough to always keep him at safe distance. He couldn’t prattle, he couldn’t be the softie that spoke in that idiotic mushy accent, but he could be a hardass and it was like a dark aura around him.

When he started to break the crates into firewood, he remembered that he had a water flask in his gym bag. He pulled it out, neared the front of the carriage again and tried to hand it over to Cadee with a weak excuse of a smile. Ultimately, it wasn’t too reassuring so he just placed the tin flask on the seat and return to what he was good at; breaking stuff. It was hard to smile when you had nothing to smile about for years now. Smiling wasn’t like riding a bike. It was like a muscle. If you trained it and used it on daily basis, it came out naturally like it did with Lehana. If you refrained yourself from using it, it would atrophy and eventually die. And Victor’s smile was dying a little bit each day for years now.

After finding a relatively dry patch of grass within the grove, the boxer built a small fire from the wood he acquired by dismantling Cadee’s prison. Luckily, he always lumbered a small pot on his travels – sticking to his own motto to always be prepared – so there was something to cook in. However, given his ineptitude in the art of cooking, the pot didn’t see too many delicious meals during the travels. Most of the time it was just a vessel in which Victor warmed some water for tending his wounds.

“Uhm... Do you think you could make something, Lehana? I’m... Well, not really good when it comes to cooking,” he spoke, scratching the back of his head and feeling mighty embarrassed and dumb again once he brought a little bit of everything he found in the back of their wagon. Not good at cooking, not good at dealing with children, not good at anything except being a two-time loser that liked to classify himself as a pugilist. Well, that wasn’t completely true. He was good cannon fodder, but given the fact that the requirements for that line of work were being big and dumb, it wasn’t something to be proud of.

Victor took a seat by the fire on the opposite side from Cadee. He reckoned that he looked way too much like her initial captors and gave girl enough room to adjust. The rotten feeling in his gut only got worse as he looked at her. Flinching at every strange sound, sitting on the ground humbly and staring at the crackling flames, holding his canteen in both of her hands as if it was the greatest treasure in the world, she seemed like somebody that just escaped the clutches or a sadistic tormentor. People that did this kind of things weren’t human, they were beasts. Victor wanted to make them pay, make them go down long and painful, make them taste their own sweat and blood and tears before they finally meet their maker. But he wasn’t a hero. Even now, as the three of them sat around the fire, all he kept thinking about was what the hell was he supposed to do with this frightened little thing that was afraid of her own shadow?

“I should’ve known there was something wrong,” he said to Hana, his eyes peering at the fire and through it, at the frail lass. “Those bastards. They knew I needed the money so bad that I won’t ask any questions. They came to me after one of my boxing matches – another loss, of course – telling me they needed some muscle to protect their cargo. And when you start having more losses then wins on your record sheet, you’re not exactly picky, if you know what I mean.”

[Hana]

Hana nodded promptly when Victor asked her to cook. “Sure, just gimme a spoon and I’m all set,” she answered, taking the collection of vegetables from Victor and pooling them in her lap. She sat diagonal from both Victor and Cadee, feeling somehow that she should be keeping an eye on both of them. Cadee needed it more, obviously; the poor little thing looked as fragile as a porcelain doll, and her pale face didn’t make it too hard to believe. Victor, on the other hand, sounded as guilty as though he’d tied up the brown-haired girl in the first place, though he clearly hadn’t. Hana had the impression that, as he awkwardly shrugged off his inability to cook, the guy’s self-esteem was as deflated as Hana’s was overblown.

And she knew full well that hers was overblown. She wouldn’t have come to Althanas at all if it hadn’t been for her rather disproportionate ego. She would have spent a good few years having accepted the fact that her siblings had started their own successful lives and had left her to help her mother and father. It wasn’t an altogether bad lifestyle, considering it involved a free roof over her head and plenty of food, but it was her parents’ lifestyle, not hers, and Hana was determined to forge her own name in the world.

Now she wasn’t so sure she was glad to be where she was, but she would make the best of it. Wasn’t that how a future was made, hadn’t her own father said so? ‘Out of the throes of misfortune,’ or something? And anyway, she wasn’t entirely unfortunate in this case. On the other side of the fire sat two people that Lehana didn’t regret meeting at all.

“You know, technically, you’re still doing what they asked you to. You’re protecting the cargo – er, Cadee,” she insisted, correcting herself. “Although I can’t say the same for the vegetables,” she added with a chuckle as she waved the potato in her hand. She’d grabbed her knife from the floor of the wagon, cleaning it off on her pants and cutting into the potatoes. She made sure to cut them into medium, three-sided sections, just like Ulani had taught her. Hana’s mother was a stickler for technique when it came to cooking and harvesting.

“You’re a boxer?” she asked Victor after a minute, looking up from the potatoes. She saw out of the corner of her eye that even Cadee’s downcast eyes glanced over at the muscular man in interest. “Well, even if you have losses, you’ve got to be good to make it that far in that field. My brother Julian used to want to be a boxer when we were younger. He used me as a practice dummy,” she said dryly.

Cadee tried to stifle a small giggle, a sound that immediately caught Hana’s attention. The Fallien woman looked over at the little girl, who was still clutching Victor’s water canteen like her life depended on it, but a smile lingered at the edges of her trembling mouth.

“Was that a laugh I heard?” asked Hana quietly but suspiciously, grinning slyly at the girl. Cadee pulled her knees up to her chest, holding them there and burying her chin in the folds of her voluminous shift. But there was a little more life in those brown eyes now, and it gave Hana hope for the girl. “It was! Oh, by the way, you can just call me Hana. And that’s Victor,” she said, pointing at the boxer with her dagger in her hand. “He’s a nice guy, he’s just quiet, like you,” she said, smiling at both of them.

Cadee wasn’t smiling now. She just looked at the other two, mostly at Lehana, hugging her knees tightly.

“Look, Cadee….do you remember anything about…what happened to you?” Hana asked carefully, keeping her expression serious and concerned. “You don’t have to tell me stuff you don’t want to tell, but I think it would be good if we could find out. It’s completely up to you.”

The girl hardly moved – she was already in the most protective position she could be – but she looked down at the flickering fire, watching its sparks fly outward. “I don’t remember,” she said suddenly.

“You don’t remember anything?” Hana asked gently.

“I don’t….I don’t remember a lot,” said Cadee somewhat defensively, her voice going up a note or two in her frustration.

“It’s okay.” The Fallien woman stood up and silently dropped the potato sections into the nearly-boiling water, sitting back down again to cut the long beans in half and letting the hissing of the pot fill the silence. She watched Cadee with kind, cautious black eyes.

“But there was a house,” the little girl offered after a moment, putting her legs down but still holding onto the canteen. “A big house….no, a….an orphanage,” she said, sounding a little reluctant. “And it caught on fire. It was everywhere, and…” She sounded as though she were about to cry. “And….I couldn’t see anymore. I think I fainted,” she said with obvious distaste.

She breathed in, and continued, both with difficulty. “I woke up, and…there were a lot of men there. Bad men,” she said with firm sincerity. “They thought I was asleep and I heard them talking about me. I don’t remember what they were talking about, because….because one of them hit me when I started crying,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “He hit me on the head, too, and I couldn’t….they tied me up—“

Hana poured the beans into the pot, set the rest of the vegetables on her coat, and stood up. She walked slowly to where Cadee, her eyes threatening to spill over with tears, and the Fallien woman cupped the little girl’s hand in her own. “Cadee, you can stop now, it’s alright. You don’t have to tell us anymore.” She felt horrible for having set the girl to the task of recounting her experience.

Cadee didn’t speak for a few seconds, her fingers clutching Hana’s firmly. “But you should know, you said you should,” she said apologetically, her speech interrupted by sniffling. “They said…they said I had something. They were excited about it, too. They said I had potential.” She stopped then, looking up at Hana. “But I don’t know what it means. I don’t know why that would make them tie me up and put me in that crate.”

[The Cinderella Man]

Victor listened to Cadee’s grievous account of the events that preceded her capture and the image in his head started to crystallize a little bit. Even though the girl’s memory was still rather hazy, it was a good insinuation at what really happened and what the reasons for her abduction were. The bad men were most likely slavers, merchants of the living whose line of work was outlawed in Corone. That’s probably why they wanted to keep the transportation clandestine, hidden under the ruse of a washed out prizefighter trucking some sporadic foodstuffs. The potential she spoke of was probably mentioned because of her youth. While Victor wasn’t exactly in the know when it came to the black market – especially the slave branch of it – he was rather certain that you could get a wad of cash for such a young prospect.

“They were probably slave traders, these bastards that took you,” he started after a period of silence that followed Cadee’s doleful story. “I dealt with their kind before...”

When Cadee’s eyes went from lethargic to flustered he realized how terrible that could be interpreted and that was more then enough for him to bite his tongue and reformulate hastily. “Not with them as in working with them, though. No, a couple of months ago there was this crook in the Slums that snatched people from the streets and peddled them out of Corone. Long story short, me and a couple of guys decided to nose around, maybe put a stop to it, but wound up in even more trouble. What I did find out was that slavers usually have a location outside of the actual city where they gather the kidnapped before dispatching them to their new masters. I think that’s what they tried to do with you, Cadee.”

The petite girl didn’t seem terribly interested in Victor’s speech, his words failing to elicit any kind of reaction except an occasional glance through the curtain of her unkempt hair threads. Instead she held on to the canteen with her left and to Hana’s hand with her right, still crumpled up in her defensive sitting position. And once again, Victor could blame her. If he was in her shoes, he wouldn’t really give a damn why somebody beat him senseless and packed him like a batch of apples. She was going through a nightmare and even though the wretched thing seemed to be over, rewinding and replaying it wasn’t something she was terribly keen on doing.

“Do you maybe have some family left in Radasanth?” the prizefighter asked, shuffling through the embers with one of the crate fragments before feeding it to the gentle flames. It was perhaps a dumb question given the fact that Cadee mentioned orphanage earlier, but quite frankly, Victor was at a loss on what to do from this point on. He was pretty much a bum, vagabonding from one battle arena to another, with no static place to call a home. And even if he had such a place, what was he to do with a child? Gods knew he could barely take care of himself and when it came to raising a kid, he was about as deft as a blind juggler.

Cadee at first didn’t seem like she heard his question, her eyes locked on the bubbling pot whose contents finally started to smell like something edible, then let out a silent “No” that got muffled by both her knees and the shift that she pulled over them.

“I see. Well, I have a friend who’s a Marshal in the Corone Rangers. A good guy. Hero stuff, if you know what I mean,” Victor said with a smile that came out a bit more naturally now. “He’s the one that got me out of the trouble with slavers back in Radasanth. I reckon once we had a good meal, we head on back to Radasanth and track him down. I assure you, he’ll tear those evil men a new one.”

Cadee might’ve smiled languidly at this, but her current position prevented him from seeing it. Her eyes did seem a bit more vivid now, less tense and frightened and more observant and tranquil. Gradually she was tearing herself from the disconcerting events of the past and focused on what was ahead of her. Somewhere deep inside of her, coy and afraid to surface, was a sliver of hope that she might make it alright with these two strangers.

With another silence creeping between him and the young girl, Victor turned his attention to his bag-o’-stuff. He rummaged through it in search for the small ceramic bowl he carried around for times he actually had something to eat, then after finding it, he fished for utensils. Well, utensil since he mostly carried just a spoon. This forced him to take out the rather large boxing gloves in order to move them out of the way. By the time he found the renegade spoon, the voice of Cadee caught him by surprise.

“Those look funny,” she said, almost surprising herself with the newfound courage to speak. Victor looked up, acknowledged that she was referring to his bulky gloves, and smiled at the girl.

“Now that you mention it, I guess they really do,” he replied, picking up the pair of scarlet gloves, each with a different inscription on the front. “You want to try them on?”

Cadee didn’t reply, but she didn’t seem to protest against it either, so Victor placed the bowl and the spoon next to the cooking pot before getting up and making his way around the fire with a pair of boxing gloves. The girl seemed a bit stiff as he approached, but when he hunkered with a smile and turned the gloves around so she can put in her tiny hands, she finally let her knees drop. She moved tentatively at first, but soon her fists were nestled in the warmth of the gloves that each looked as big as her head. Victor couldn’t stifle a chuckle at the sight.

“What does it say?” Cadee asked, trying to decipher the writing on them.

“It says Architect and Destruction. That was my nickname back when I knew how to fight. Architect of Destruction,” he said, hoping that the ominous name wouldn’t frighten the girl, but it seemed that he managed to break the ice just enough for it not to.

“You must’ve been a good fighter... To have such a mean name.”

“I guess I was. But that’s a long story and a sad one at that. I reckon Hana might have a better story to tell while we have a bite to eat.”

[Hana]

“Of course. I’m a master storyteller,” declared Hana, leaning against the side of the carriage and relaxing herself. The tension she’d unknowingly had building up in her body seemed to be disappearing as swiftly as the sun was doing now. Cadee may have been as beat-up as a punching bag inside, but she wasn’t broken. It was easy to see that she could be salvaged from the wreckage that was her life. As inept as Victor claimed to be at tasks like handling a carriage and cooking, he appeared to be just as capable at waking Cadee up from her horrendous misfortune. Both the brown-haired man and the little girl sitting on the cart seemed to be waking up from a stupor in their lives, and it made Hana smile.

“Just give me a bit to think of something good.”

She decided to give them a little more time and room to get comfortable with each other, and sat back down on the grass, ignoring the slight dampness of it, and let the popping of the boiling vegetables and the soft dialogue between Cadee and Victor calm her down. Hana had to fight to keep her concentration from slipping as her eyelids began to droop. Even as fast as the day had gone, it had been eventful enough to drain a good portion of Hana’s endless energy. Every now and then she’d pick up Victor’s spoon and give the pot a stir, the scent of the boiled vegetables awakening her ravenous appetite. Don’t go stuffing your face, Hana reminded herself sternly as she removed the pot from its place on the fire, setting it on a flat stone nearby but leaving the fire to keep them warm. Who knows when Cadee last ate?

“Coooome an’ git it!” she drawled in the loud, twangy voice her mother would use to catch everyone’s attention for dinner – as a joke, of course. Some of the foreigners who dropped by their farm had accents she could hardly believe, and Ulani did like to imitate the lot of them.

Cadee’ looked as though she were picking herself up as Hana ladled the stew into Victor’s bowl and set it down on the grass for a moment. The Fallien girl dug briefly through her coat pockets. “Where is it, damn thing….here!” In Lehana’s hand was a small packet of green, prickly looking things, in several different shapes and shades. “You need a little kick in your dinner,” she sang, tossing the package up and down in her hand before pulling some of its contents out, clenched tightly between her thumb and forefinger and spreading pinches of it over the vegetable stew.

“These are cooking spices, from Fallien,” she explained lightly as she approached Victor and Cadee. “That’s where I’m from, too. Careful, it’s hot.”

Cadee set the canteen just to her left, still reluctant to have it far from her, and took the bowl of stew gingerly, letting it rest slightly on the shift over her knees. Spoon in hand, the girl got hold of a potato and blew on it for a bit longer than was needed. Hana grinned as Cadee ate the potato wedge whole, chewing deliberately and, thankfully, smiling a bit afterward.

“It’s good,” she decided, attacking the stew with a heartiness that Lehana would never have guessed she had.

“Don’t burn your tongue, kid,” warned the Fallien woman, though kindly. She glanced at Victor with a laughing expression.

“Ah wom,” replied Cadee, her cheeks bloated from the excess amount of food in her mouth. It pleased Hana to see that not only had her cooking skills passed muster, but that Cadee was opening up to her more and more. Maybe it would work out. Maybe they could find Cadee a home, a good, safe one, and get that friend of Victor’s to take care of the dumbshits who’d done such a horrible thing to the bright little girl before her. “I’ve never been to Fallien,” Cadee ventured quietly once she’d swallowed a good chunk of the vegetables.

“Maybe I could take you there someday,” said Hana, jumping up onto the seat of the carriage and sitting next to Cadee. “Would you like to hear a story about Fallien?”

The girl nodded curtly, swirling the spoon around the remaining bits and pieces of food in her bowl and leaning her head back against the carriage front.

“Well, it’s not a story about Fallien, per se…” began the Fallien woman, leaning back like Cadee and watching the stars flash into existence in the fading light. A curtain of blue was falling over the country sky, and Hana felt a measure of peace after the hectic events of the day. “But my dad told it to me. Do you know who the Jya is?”

“No…” Cadee’s voice was trailing away into fatigue as she absentmindedly spooned the rest of the food into her mouth.

“Guess that was a dumb question, sorry. The Jya is the mother of Fallien, the one who takes care of its people. A new Jya was appointed twelve years ago, when I was seven. That was when the Jya Y’landis Kehtoara died.

“My dad was going to Suravani’s Oasis that day. I remember us all hearing about the death of the Jya, and Papa was going to go and find out who the new Jya was. He was practically in the middle of nowhere the whole way there, but he saw something he said he’d never forget.” Hana paused for dramatic effect.

“What’s that…?” came the small voice from beside her, curious but only mildly so. Cadee’s eyes were trying vainly to stay open.

“Well, first he saw a fire. There was already a pile of ash beneath the fire, so he figured it had been burning for quite a while. It was in the distance, so he couldn’t really rush over and put it out, but he saw something come out of it. The fire roared and ignited again, climbing as high as these trees. He saw the wings, first. Huge, red and gold wings that stretched out like sunbeams, the body itself like the sun. It was a Phoenix, being reborn, a young Phoenix, and it called out to the sky and flew on the wind, right over my dad’s carriage. It looked right at him and took to the sky.”

Hana stopped again, glancing over at Cadee, who was only seconds away from slipping into sleep for the night, and finished her story. “They are reborn when a great warrior dies. My dad figures it was a tribute to Y’landis Kehtoara’s death. He’s never forgotten the sight of it.”

Cadee’s soft snore was the only sound next to the crackling of the fire after Hana stopped talking. The Fallien woman looked over at Victor again and smiled. “Am I good, or am I good?”

[The Cinderella Man]

Lehana’s story managed to both awaken one part of Cadee – her interest – and put the rest of the tyke to sleep and Victor was extremely glad for that. The girl seemed like she didn’t have a restful slumber for at least as long as she didn’t have a good meal, and given the ravenous manner in which she wolfed down the offered food, that didn’t happen in days. So with the warm food in her belly and in an environment that finally didn’t feel hostile to her, young Cadee drifted away to sleep with less then a relaxing sigh. Her head was leant on Hana’s shoulder serenely, her hand holding onto the shirt of the dark-skinned foreigner.

And while that image should’ve been blissful enough to bring some comfort to Victor, Lehana’s story brought a touch of melancholy in his mind. She spoke of majestic, mythical bird being reborn in the name of heroes and distinguished warriors, and he thought how such accolade was unattainable for the likes of him. He wasn’t a great man. He had no exceptional skills that elevated him above others, no magical abilities that made the people stare and awe. The only thing he knew how to do was box, and even that he did rather poorly. There would be no Phoenix rising when he dies, no tears shed over his death, no solid proof that he ever existed. In the end, his worst fear would come true and he would be forgotten. For every hero that perished there were at least a thousand souls that depart without as much as a footnote on the gravedigger’s journal. That thought alone was enough to thwart his spirits momentarily.

Hana didn’t allow him to sink into his usual self-loathing though. The girl was certainly a coltish piece of work, gloating over her ultimate success in both the cooking and the storytelling department. The prizefighter looked at her, did his best to chase the sudden attack of sadness that crept into his mind with a faint smile and bowed his head jovially to the Fallien lass, admitting her victory. She was good. He wouldn’t know where to start when it came to telling tales, and even if he managed to conjure some sort of fictive story, it was bound to be as intriguing as a funeral recession.

“What exactly was in those herbs?” he whispered a jest, both his voice and his face serious for a second before crumbling in front of another smirk. He picked up the empty ceramic bowl from Cadee’s lap, gently extracted the spoon from her tiny hand and descended from the carriage seat. “I’ll go get you some. I’m not really hungry. All of this got my stomach in a knot.”

His sister always said that he was too emotional about stuff. It usually couldn’t be seen on the outsides that he kept rather phlegmatic and standoffish, but there was always something brewing behind his plain brown eyes. Right now it was a strange mixture of gladness about the way things turned out and fear for those that might yet transpire. Victor didn’t like events that he couldn’t predict and this entire encounter with Lehana and Cadee was as maverick as a lightning on a stormy sky. God only knew what else might happen before the day’s end.

He sat on his hunkers next to the dying fire, poured two ladles of the stew in the bowl and got up to face a man with a crossbow pointed at his face.

“Drop that and get your hands above your head, scum!” the bearded man spoke, his finger disconcertingly close to the trigger that would send the boxer to kingdom come. Victor considered obeying, then remembered the girls that sat on the wagon, perfectly calm and unaware of the threatening man, and despite the fact that he felt as if somebody put his bowels into movement, he opted for a hostile plan of action.

His wrist jerked the small bowl, pushing it towards the ominous man and pulling it back in one motion, expelling the steaming contents onto the man’s face. His reflexes didn’t abandon him, his battle experience kicking in and making him duck and dodge just in time to evade the fired crossbow shot. The man before him screamed in horror, clinging to his face and throwing the weapon away to attend to his visage. The prizefighter didn’t give him a chance to recover. He tackled the man’s gut, throwing him on the ground and firing a devastating punch at the man’s nose. With a sickening crack, the bone broke and the shrieks stopped.

“Lehana! Get her out of here! There might be others...” he tried to shout in panic towards the girl with the sun-kissed skin, but even before he got to finish, he noticed a pair of hooded figures standing beside the wagon, their crossbows pointed at the two girls. His hands shot towards the crossbow of the fallen man, his mind ignorant to the fact that he had no idea how to operate the weapon, but before he even got a chance to pick it up, he was struck from behind fiercely.

Victor’s vision diluted, blurred the environment into a mush of dark greens and olives with an occasional brown as a face loomed over him.

“It’s hard to find good help these days,” the voice from above spoke, but to the boxer it was distorted to the point of incompressibility. He felt as if he was on his knees, the ref was counting and he had nothing left in him. “Playing around with our merchandise, have you?”

That was the last thing that Victor heard. A kick to the side of his face rendered him unconscious effectively.

[Hana]

Lehana could have spent the rest of night in that spot, watching the fire spit sparks into the sky and letting Cadee use her as a makeshift pillow. The little girl’s hand latched onto her shirt was more reassuring than anything that things were going to be alright. As Hana breathed in and out softly, letting the stillness envelop her and cast her deeper and deeper into sleep, she couldn’t help but smile at what came to mind. I’m going to be a great aunt, that’s for sure. Aysha’s kid’ll love me….

She was about to rouse herself from lethargy to ask Victor if he had any kids, but found that she was the recipient of a much more unpleasant wake-up call. At first there was only shuffling in the dark corner of the encampment where Victor was, a voice she thought to be his, then a yelp. Hana sat up at once, her eyes trying wildly to focus after falling half-asleep.

“Lehana!” Victor’s voice was more alert than it had been all night, his tone panicked and his face almost terrified. “Get her out of here! There might be others—“

Shit! What the hell is going on?!

Instinctively, Hana’s hands wrapped around Cadee’s shoulders, shaking them. “Cadee, wake up! Cadee! We have to get out of here!”

The brown-haired girl was awake as soon as her name was spoken, but instead of looking at Hana, she was looking right behind the Fallien woman. At first all she could do was stare – it wasn’t hard to see her slipping right back into the shell she’d been while trapped in the crate. Her pupils seemed to thin, and her little hands dug into Hana’s arms, her nails leaving indentations as she clung tightly to the Fallien woman. She screamed shrilly.

Hana released the brown-haired girl and spun around as though dancing, her right fist flying, though it felt to her that she was moving in slow motion, thinking wildly that she hoped her aim was right and that she wasn’t going to die within the following seconds. Her brother had taught her how to fight – she could only trust that he’d taught her the right way and that Cadee’s fear was enough incentive for her to knock out whatever was standing behind her. She felt her fist connect with something soft, the weight of whatever she’d made contact with unexpectedly heavy, and at the same time a bolt of heat ran up and down her left arm.

When she brought her hand back, she stared down, breathing heavily, at a man whose dark robe and accompanying hood cast shadows on his tanned skin, but her focus was on the large black bruise that was spreading around his right eye. He was squirming on the ground, cradling his head in his hands and letting out muffled groans as he did. But then Lehana saw the crossbow lying on the ground at his feet and, remembering the uncomfortable heat on her arm, looked warily at the blood winding around her shoulder in strands like serpents. At least it hadn’t done more than get a good scrape at her side, though it hurt like hell.

Feeling a rush of adrenaline, she pushed at Cadee’s back. The girl sounded as though she were hyperventilating, but she moved fast, stumbling over the kinks in the floor of the carriage and scrambling over the seat. “Go, go—“ Hana was chanting as though it could make them both move faster, but she hadn’t seen the second man approach her from behind, and the throbbing in her shoulder was joined by a fresh wave of pain in her head as something very solid connected with her skull.

She was seeing stars, but they faded in and out of her vision with an impossible speed.

“Cadee...” she shouted, her voice growing faint as her hands stretched weakly to her sides for her knife, her naginata, a piece of wood, anything, but then she felt the strength in her legs give out, and she hit the floor of the carriage seat, the world falling into darkness. She saw Cadee screaming in panic, staring back at her with terribly frightened brown eyes.

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In her unconsciousness, Hana couldn’t do much else but pray to Ghral, the B’neshan goddess of summer whose crest was tattooed on the Fallien woman’s stomach. She couldn’t imagine a worse time to fall back on her religious inclinations, but it was the only semblance of thought or dream that was allowed to pass through the wall of fire in her mind.

And then her eyes struggled to open, and succeeded. Every blink was painful, but through the haze of soreness, Hana could see that her surroundings were dark, very dark and very different from the woody encampment she had been in only seconds before. How long had she been out?

She tilted her head to the side and, trying vainly to ignore the jabs that struck the back of her head, saw a rusty-looking grime covering the wall she was leaned against in strands. It made the room look almost primordial, and when she found the strength to lift her head, she observed, with alarm, that the gritty floor, dirty walls, and long, thick bars running vertically in a long row all comprised what had to be a jail cell. The Fallien girl sat up, her panic now very obvious as she tried to move without succumbing to her whirling vision.

Though the only light in the cell was far away and didn’t give much to go on, Hana could see the faint outline of a man a foot or two away from her, his brown hair matted with dirt and congealed blood.

Victor.

She crawled slowly over to him, feeling queasy and nervous that he wouldn’t wake up. And where was Cadee? “Victor,” she croaked, leaning against the wall next to him for support and clenching his shoulders. “Victor, wake up. Victor are you alright?” She ignored the fact that it was a stupid question, because he clearly wasn’t alright. She needed him to be awake, because as independent as she was trying to be, she couldn’t handle this on her own.

[The Cinderella Man]

Victor wasn’t quite certain of the exact number of times that he woke up after being bludgeoned into unconsciousness, but he was pretty damn certain that it was becoming hackneyed in a hurry. He knew that there was always trouble in the world, but the fact that the wretched thing seemed to have the ability to home in on him was starting to irk him. In Serenti he got knocked out by some nickel-and-dime thugs. In Concordia forest, a bunch of pretentious, tree-hugging druids punched his lights out. Hell, even when he wasn’t on land, trouble found him on board a ship called Deadalus that ultimately got overtaken by pirates that threw him overboard without blinking twice. More and more the boxer begun to think that he was genuinely jinxed and that someone up above was having a blowout while watching his feeble attempts to defy fate.

So today his head was once again a couple of cubic inches short to properly hold whatever was throbbing within his skull. His consciousness was just around the corner, so close he could almost grasp it and reestablish it, but he didn’t feel like doing so yet. Another five minutes, just until the headache stopped knocking on the walls of his mind. Even when he heard a rather distant voice calling his name, he tried to brush it away with something that should’ve been words, but came out as a muttering of a drunkard that woke up in a water trough. However, the second time his name was spoken, it was accompanied by a pair of hands that caught him by the shoulders and pushed him up in the seating position. This probably wouldn’t do the trick and woke him up if his head didn’t touch the moldy wall behind. The headache that merely knocked before became a battering that he couldn’t ignore.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake,” he mumbled, his eyes shooting open and struggling with sharpening the image that they saw. His hand made a move towards the back of his head, made contact with the crusted blood that made his hair sticky, poked at the lump below and decided to leave it be for the time being. Only then he actually ascertained that Lehana stood in front of him, peering at him with those large black eyes that, despite their abysmal depth, seemed rather rattled. Once he took a glimpse at their environment, he found out the reason why they deviated from the usual half-amicable, half-brassy look.

They were locked in what seemed like a dungeon cell and like all the cells Victor ever visited, this one failed to diverge from the archetype. Filth on the floor, mould on the walls, weak, almost weary looking illumination... Yep, they were certainly in a bloody prison. “How come they never make these prison cells nice?” he said, the jest a mere product of his currently miserable state and the splitting headache that reminded him with every second that it won’t go away. Another look at Hana’s eyes made it rather clear that it was no time for jokes.

“You doing alright, Hana?” and then, once she put some distance between them and he noticed that there was something missing, he added: “Cadee? Where is she? Did she manage to escape?”

It was a rather ridiculous question, but given the fact that he suffered some serious trauma, it was good that he was able to form reasonable sentences. As if to answer his question, a whimper came through the barred wall that looked over the hallway and further into the opposite cell. Victor did his best to push himself back to his feet, using the slippery wall as support, before he approached the rusty bars. At first he couldn’t see a thing, the opposite cell clad in deep shadows. But then, after his eyes managed to adapt to the faint luminance, he could see a familiar looking figure. With her shift drawn over her knees and her head buried in her hands, there was little doubt who occupied the neighbor cell.

“Cadee? Cadee, is that you? It’s Victor and Hana! Are you alright?” he spoke in what seemed like a tone that tried to be both hushed and yet strong enough to reach the girl. For several seconds there was no reply, just minute rocking as the girl sat in the corner. Then, almost in a whisper, Cadee’s voice crept towards them.

“They... They said I must help them. That I had potential... That I burned down that orphanage,” she mussitated, almost as if she was merely talking to herself. “Fire. They say I can create fire. That’s why they want me.”

“Who are they, Cadee? Did they hurt you?” Victor asked, his hands gnawing at the rust of the bars from the desire to hurt the evildoers, and yet at the same time, that same hands wanted to cradle the frail lass.

“A little bit. I... I don’t know who they are. There’s an elderly gent... Looks like a priest. He said he’d make me his pet,” she said, her answers interrupted by faint sniffles. The more she spoke about the ordeal, the more frantic her rocking became, making her hit the wall with her back.

“Bastards,” the boxer uttered below his breath, and then spoke as softly as he could: “Don’t worry, Cadee. We’ll get you out of here.”

But regardless of how much he tugged on the hoary bars or how many times he shouldered the padlocked doors, the metal would not budge. He looked around the cell, but the damn thing was barren, without a single item that could help them in this instance. “Damn it! There has to be something. We have to find a way out of here, Hana.”

[Hana]

The Fallien woman usually tried her utmost to keep her mouth clean in the presence of anyone younger than herself, but the circumstances were too horrible to comprehend without fouling the air with curses. Hana began to mutter nasty words under her breath in the Fallien tongue – as fluent as she was with Common, she’d always thought that its vocabulary of curses was far too limited. She was much more creative in her native language. And anyhow, she knew it was highly unlikely that either of her companions were well-versed in Fallien curse words.

“I know we have to find a way out of here,” she answered tersely and frantically in Common once she’d gotten the verbal frustration out of her system. “I just…” Hana rested her forehead against the ruddy bars, trying to clear her head and the nausea that seemed to be sticking with her. “I just don’t understand it. Shit.Why do people do this?!” She slammed her left palm against the padlock of the door in aggravation. A bolt of fresh, sharp pain skittered up and down her bloodied left arm as she began to pace, the metallic ringing of the padlock echoing through the hallway of cells. Cadee shuddered.

For a moment Hana had to evacuate every other presence from her mind, to ignore the pounding in the back of her head and the sick feeling that was slowly but surely making its way from her stomach to her throat. The fact that she was a prisoner was enough to send her mind and her innards reeling as though she’d been hit in the gut as well as the back of the head. Then there was the disturbing imagery of Cadee’s confession.

And it was fairly safe to say that she and Victor wouldn’t be getting paid for the interrupted cargo delivery.

“Okay,” she said finally, her heart banging around in her chest like Ulani organizing her pots and pans. “Okay. We’re going to get out of here,” she declared with a confidence that felt a little more like a question waiting for confirmation. “Cadee…”

The curtain of dark, gritty hair swung as Cadee inclined her head at the Fallien woman. She wasn’t quite snapped out of her panicky reverie yet.

“Cadee,” repeated Hana with a little more tenderness, trying to control her voice – it seemed to want to travel up several octaves in her fear. She approached the bars again and wrapped her calloused fingers around them, smiling unsteadily at the little girl. In her own despair, she’d forgotten how abysmally frightened the girl must be by now. She’d gone through enough with her capture. To think, that someone – a ten-year-old girl, no less! – could create fire, and enough of it to destroy something several times her size was just that; unthinkable. Power like this was the substance of legends, even in Fallien. And power like this was a burden that no one as innocent as Cadee could have to bear. The thought of the barbarians who’d done so much to put the little girl though so much pain, and the sick bastard who intended to use the girl for his own benefits, made bile rise in Hana’s throat and her own brand of fire rise behind her black eyes.

“I’m not going to let them get you, Cadee.”

The girl sniffed heavily and rubbed her nose against the already-filthy sleeve of her shift. “Y-you promise?”

“I promise. We’re getting out of here, okay? So you just hang tight for a second.”

Cadee scuttled closer to the bars of her cell, gripping the metal with trembling, sooty hands. Her prison was obviously no cleaner than Hana and Victor’s. “But you’re in there….and I’m in here…how are we gonna get out?” Her voice cracked again.

Biting her lip with furious determination, Hana took a few steps back from the bars, slipping a little on a small puddle in the middle of the cell. She got the feeling that it was urine, but instead of lingering on the subject, she bounced forward and swung her right leg high and forward, aiming for the padlock. The door jiggled slightly but stayed in place, and the padlock made a spectacular tinny noise loud enough to wake the dead. After a few more failed attempts at this, Hana slumped against the bars, clenching her fists. “Damnit…”

She looked at Victor hopelessly. She felt almost as badly for him as she did for Cadee. The poor guy had only wanted to make a little extra coin for himself, and now he’d been slammed most unpleasantly into a predicament involving two strange girls and a dirty jail cell. They hadn’t even gotten a bite to eat. Hana wondered vaguely, if only to keep her thoughts from straying to We’re gonna die, if the fire was still burning in the little countryside glade with….

Fire. Fire.

Her eyes bright with excitement, Hana whirled around and peered through the bars at Cadee. “Cadee! You can make fire!”

Cadee screwed her face up in puzzlement, sitting up straighter. “I know that….”

“No, no, I mean, you can use your power to melt the locks on the doors! I mean, if you can burn down a building, you can melt a little piece of metal—“

The girl looked stricken for a moment. Hana coughed sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Can you try it?”

“I don’t know how!” protested Cadee, fidgeting with her hands. “I didn’t even know I….did what I did before! How do I do it now?”

“Just focus. Maybe all you have to do is think it, but do it forcefully,” encouraged the Fallien woman. “Try focusing on ours, over here. Imagine it melting or something.” Hana gestured at Victor to move back from the door, but before either of them could leave plenty of space between themselves and the padlock, something yellow sparked inside the padlock, as though someone had lit a match inside it. Flames began to lick the sides of the lock, and with a whoosh of sound, a large flare arose from the padlock, shooting out in all directions.

“Whoa, whoa, Cadee!” yelled Hana, leaping backwards, but as soon as she did, the fire seemed to melt away, leaving a charred residue on the padlock.

“I’m sorry!” wailed Cadee, her voice muffled by her hands over her mouth.

“It’s okay, we’re okay,” breathed Hana, though she almost wanted to laugh a little at the girl’s astonishment at her own power. “You’re just not used to it yet. You could light a hallway of torches all at once with that fire of yours. Keep trying, just keep it steady this time…”

For the next few minutes the ritual repeated itself: Hana and Victor kept at least three feet away from the door, Cadee’s face twisted in fierce concentration, the lock erupted in large flames, and vanished seconds later. Until the sixth or seventh time, when the fire that Cadee created hovered along the metal curves of the padlock, shrinking a little in size but not in intensity. Seeing that it had not vanished jarred Hana into a series of encouragements.

“Good, good! Just keep it like that, a little longer, a little more…”

Beads of sweat rolled down Cadee’s pale face. Hana could see her twitching a little with her enormous effort. The flames remained in place but grew in size again, and beneath the white and blue core of the fire, Hana could see the metal thinning, running down the sides until, with a start, she saw it drop from the front of the door and roll along the hallway until the fire itself was put out by the dirt piled around the bars.

“You did it! Victor, she did it, we’re out!” said Hana with delight, tugging at Victor’s arm as she pushed the door open. “Kid, you’re amazing. Now let’s get you out of there the same way, huh?”

[The Cinderella Man]

According to the proverb, the road to hell was paved with good intentions and while Lehana and Victor wouldn’t necessarily end up in the eternal flames of the underworld, it was quite clear that their good intentions weren’t getting them anywhere good. Nowhere but climbing up the walls like mice in a labyrinth without an exit. The cocoa-skinned woman grouched something in what must’ve been her own language before she picked a fight with the door just like he did several moments ago. And just like him, all she got out of it was a pain in her hand and thickening of her frown. The imprisoned boxer reckoned that all the rattling would attract the attention of the crooks that threw them in the slammer in the first place, but when Hana calmed down, the only sound in the proximity was the one of Cadee timidly sniveling in the corner of her cell.

If the stone floor wasn’t covered with grime and slime, Victor would’ve probably sat back on it while the Fallien woman tried to ease Cadee’s mind. But given the fact that floor’s level of appeal was next to none, the bruised prizefighter propped his back against the wall with a cheesed off expression appearing on his lineaments. Usually, when he was forced to face the music or got in a pickle with no obvious way out, he would make peace with it, put on a phlegmatic mask and wait for the inevitable. But today it wasn’t just his worthless life that was on the line. There was a stranger that he drew into this ordeal and a girl that should’ve been lying in a warm bed right now, hugging some plush teddy bear without a care in the world. But fate was a bitch and it treated all with the same frivolity.

His attention snapped out of the pissed off mulling and back to reality at Lehana’s mention of fire. It seemed like a sound plan, there was no doubt about it. It also seemed like a good way for all of them to turn into well-done heaps of flesh if the potential firestarter just happened to overdo it. But given the fact that there was a good chance that Hana and Victor awaited a silent execution and a nameless grave, even a chancy way out seemed like a godsend. So he let his companion do the inciting and exhortation while he kept an attentive ear on the door at the end of the hall.

This almost got his eyebrows and hair scorched. He was right next to the door when Cadee gave it a go for the first time, nearly blasting both the padlock and half the cell with her conjured flames. But with Lehana’s soft words of encouragement and guidance, the frightened orphan slowly got a hang of it, her flames heating up the lock gradually. Victor – ever the skeptic when it came to magicians, bunnies that came from the hat, summoned creatures, fabled wizardry and a myriad of other tricks – had to finally yield to the realization that magic wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Especially if it got him out of a tight spot such as this one. He still wasn’t particularly interested in how it worked and he definitely wouldn’t be taking lessons in the local mage’s guild, but the resentment that he usually had towards prissy magicians and their razzle-dazzle was gone for the time being.

It seemed like ages until the padlock finally lost all integrity and fell onto the ground. The smell of what Victor classified as a mixture of brimstone smoke and coal dust was prominent in the air by now, but none of them cared too much about it. They would be leaving the discomfort of these cells soon anyways... Or at least they thought they would. Even as Hana made a move for the door, the boxer finally picked up some movement from beyond the heavyset, iron gates that barred the exit from this section of the dungeon.

“Wait, stop. I think somebody’s coming,” he said in an austere whisper, steadying the foreigner with his hand as his eyes focused on some random spot, his ears tensing to their utmost to clarify his assumption. It took them only a second to do so. Resounding footsteps could be heard, thick-soled shoes on stone with a pair of mouths that palavered on something he couldn’t quite catch. “Not now, bastards. They’ll see the padlock. We need to do something quick.”

Kneeling hurriedly next to the bars, Victor reached towards the padlock only to withdraw his hand before touching it. He maybe was getting hit in the head for money, but he wasn’t stupid. That thing was bound to be as hot as a poker. The footsteps clicked louder, positioning the owners of those heavy boots on the other side of the door. Victor’s right hand went to the left sleeve of his shirt, struggled with tearing it off before he wrapped the cloth around his fist. The makeshift glove was a feeble insulation, but it gave him just enough time to pick up the semi-melted padlock and place it position it in the manner that made it look somewhat uncompromised. It wouldn’t pass closer inspection, but if everything went according to the plan, whoever came through that door wouldn’t get a chance to study anything closely except the texture of skin on Victor’s knuckles.

“Alright, listen,” he said to Lehana, holding both of her shoulders as he explained. “I’ll lure the guards to the door. With any luck, he’ll get close enough so I can shove the door right at him and knock him down. Now, you’ll have to get the other one. Go for the nuts. It works every time, and if it doesn’t, pop him one on the nose.”

There was no more time for discussion. The lock of the rusty door clacked and the door screeched like a cat in heat, introducing a pair of varlets that had the same every-Corone-crook beady eyes, sharp lineaments and three-day beard. Instead of crossbows, spiked clubs hung on their hips as they continued their conversation and advanced down the hallway.

“Hey! Hey, you two numbskulls! Yeah, you two inbred idiots, I’m talking to you,” Victor shouted, attracting their attention somewhere around the first insult. “I want to talk to whoever is in charge... If he has wits enough for talking, that is, since the two of you definitely lack it.”

“That’s a big mouth you have on you, chump. How about I knock all the teeth from it and shove my...” the boxer could think of several conclusions to that sentence, but none of them came to pass. Because it was at that exact moment that the guard stepped in front of Victor’s jail cell with his club patting the palm of his free hand. And that was the exact moment that the prizefighter shouldered the door that knocked the bastard away, sending him sprawling over the floor. Hoping that Hana would do her part, Victor came charging out like a rabid beast, burying a knee in the rogue’s chest as he came on top of his fallen form before he launched a hook that shattered the jaw bone of the man below. Just in case, another punch landed on the already malformed face, an experienced pugilist’s fist colliding with the nose.

There was no time to waste and Victor knew it. He left the kayoed – and possibly dead – man, snatching the club from his hand and approaching Cadee’s cell. The girl was once again nothing but a grimy ball in the corner, observing everything through her tangled hair threads. “It’s going to be alright, Cadee. We’re getting out of here,” he assured her, lifting the club and hammering against the padlock on her cell. The rather aged looking thing sustained three hits, breaking after the fourth.

“Come on. We have to hurry before more come,” he said, his voice rattling as he extended a hand towards her. She didn’t accept the offering though. Instead she ran straight towards him, wrapping her hands around him desperately, burying her face into his chest. He embraced her heartily with his free hand, feeling the way he always felt in such situations - awkward. “You’re going to be alright, kid. Now, go to Hana and stick to her no matter what. I’ll take point.”

[Hana]

Tiptoe, tiptoe. Shuffle. Step lively now, as her father always said. Hana towed Cadee behind her but made sure to keep a firm hold on the girl’s clammy hand. The two of them didn’t allow much more than their toes to touch the ground, making it look as though they trod on stepping stones in a creek.

They had good reason to. As soon as Victor had darted out of their cell to attack one grotesquely large guard, Hana flew like a bat out of hell to face his counterpart, a rough-and-tumble sort with an equally unattractive mug for a face. What little brain material Hana suspected him of having served him well at first; the man was obviously more prepared for a rebellious assault than Victor’s unfortunate victim. He made as though to shove Hana back against the bars, an action that might have thrown the Fallien girl back into the unpleasant oblivion of unconsciousness. Her heart nearly jumping out of her throat, Hana’s quick reflexes came into play, and she dropped to the musty dirt floor beneath her as the man’s fists went sailing into the air.

He grunted in irritation as his blows glanced off the bars, undoubtedly leaving a bruise or two. Hana slid in as close as she could without endangering herself too badly, and brought herself back to a standing position in the blink of an eye, but not before burying her knee in the man’s crotch with as much as force as could be applied.

The guard howled in pain, sinking to the floor in an almost pitiable state. Hana took a brief moment to allow herself a victorious “Hah!” It was doubly satisfying as she remembered that her mother had always said that if a man was boorish enough to try and hit a woman, it was up to that woman to relieve him of what little manhood remained to him. He was probably the same brute who’d decked Hana in the first place, she reasoned.

Suddenly aware that she had, once again, lingered too long on her own achievement, Hana took a step back from the man, who’d barely begun to recover from that staggering blow, and threw her fist into his face with renewed vitality. He almost blocked the hit, but was too slow (and still rather occupied with his previous injury). There was a rewarding crunch as her fist rammed his nose, and Hana needed only to hear the telltale thump as he hit the floor to know he was out.

“Siblings,” she remarked to Victor as he beat against the padlock on Cadee’s door. “Nice to know fighting with them is good for something.”

After Victor freed a grateful Cadee, the three of them made their way down a narrow, intimidating passage to the left of their cell block. They were a motley group, their tense, disheveled forms hugging the chipped, yellowing walls. At a corner or two, they encountered a passing sentry, upon whom Victor would immediately bestow a good cuff to the head. He had an admirably proficient way of striking, his arm twisting and locking as he administered the blow. If she were less nervous, Hana would have been asking him what styles of fighting he’d studied and whether or not he thought he would survive a few rounds against her brother, Julian.

However, she had no time for banter or even for a comment in passing. The three escapees had to keep their feet moving, especially after knocking out more of the lax guards around the prison hallways. Every shifting shadow, every flicker of a lamp made the Fallien girl’s heart race, her fingers clenched tightly around Cadee’s bony shoulders as she maneuvered the small girl in front of her.

Cadee was silent as the grave, reverting very close to the state in which Hana and Victor had found her; frail and agitated. Both girls relied heavily on Victor’s leadership as they wound through hallway after hallway. It reminded Hana very much of the hide-and-seek games she used to play with her siblings. But there would be no collapsing in a fit of giggles at the end of this game, no playful chiding when one of them was caught. It felt as though the whole world were out to tag them.

As they walked, Hana lowered her face down to Cadee’s level and whispered in her ear, “Cadee, if you can manage it….leave some fire behind us. That way nobody can follow us out. Just as a precaution. Can you do that?”

Cadee seemed to be deeply concentrated on staying in between the two adults, between her only layers of protection. She tilted her head slightly to indicate that she’d heard, and suddenly her small hand was clenching Hana’s arm. Whether it was for strength or to keep herself from falling over in effort, Hana wasn’t sure. She kept her free hand on top of Cadee’s tightly.

With a rush of wind, a stream of fire erupted in midair behind them, falling and spreading to whatever little flammable particles lay on the floor. Hana looked over her shoulder. The glow of flame illuminated her dark skin in a faint golden flush, and gave Cadee’s already anxious face a petrified clarity. Hana gently pushed on the small girl’s shoulders to urge her ahead.

“Good job, kid. Let’s just keep moving.” Hana suppressed a shudder. It was nearly as terrifying to know that she had to be the grownup in this situation, that there was no guiding hand to press her on now, as it was to be running from someone in the first place. She suddenly felt a desperate need to be home.

Dark as it had to be outside, Hana saw, with a comforting lift of her heart, the outline of trees and bushes in the shine of moonlight just ahead of them, through the rings of glass in a window. “There,” she croaked over Victor’s shoulder, surprised as how unused her voice felt after just a few minutes of silence. She felt a momentary wave of embarrassment when she realized just how much time she usually spent talking.

“We’re almost outside,” she whispered to Cadee, who gave a tiny little jump in her steps – a comforting sign that the laughing Cadee was still in there somewhere – and hurried.

Just a few more steps, thought Hana. Just a few more.