Free Grim by Anna Waggener

Jeremiah. She thought of John. Of all the men she’d ever put faith in and lost parts of herself over. Of Matt and the way he loved her kids like a dad would. He was her promise that things didn’t have to turn out in shambles. She nodded and took Jeremiah’s hand. He pressed it, looking relieved but not surprised. Armed with her consent, he finally led her through the arch.
    Erika shivered, her body struck by the full weight of sudden winter. Jeremiah’s palm, so warm, burned against her own.
    â€œIt’s no longer summer in the city,” he told Erika, and dropped her hand to walk on ahead. “When you leave the woods, time comes back to you.”
    Erika crossed her arms to hold in the escaping warmth. She looked around.
    The woman at the gate was a pitiful sight. She sat off to the side, just inside the border, and waited with an empty tin can in her lap. Her hair, mussed and greasy from going unwashed, fell down a crooked back. Dirt, food, and what looked like blood stained the cloth that she used as a wrap. Beneath it, her skin stretched itself so tight over her bones that she seemed painted on. The fingertips that held her alms can were pointed, joints clearly defined. Her face and shoulders looked sharp and chipped beneath the shadows of a falling sun.
    Jeremiah walked past her.
    â€œGive her something,” Erika said. “I know you have something.”
    Jeremiah glanced around, puzzled. “Who?”
    â€œHer. Jeremiah, please.”
    His eyes found the old woman and the tension in his joints released. “Oh, Erika,” he whispered. “If Earth’s richest man gave half a penny to each pauper in the Middle Kingdom, he’d be a pauper himself before the line even dwindled, and no one would be the happier. They only eat to make themselves feel more alive, but one day they’ll realize that their bodies are just shells. It isn’t charity they need — it’s courage.” He tapped Erika’s shoulder and motioned her forward. When he turned away, she fished through her pockets for change and dropped it into the woman’s tin. The coins clattered loudly against the can, but neither the beggar nor Jeremiah acknowledged it. Erika followed him on into the city.
    Limbo resembled the poor places of Manhattan, Erika thought, but without electricity or water. It smelled stale. Old food, old piss, old air. She tried to breathe as lightly as possible. Houses gaped open without window glass or curtains to line them. The streets were littered with garbage, crawling with beggars. Children ran naked, leathery skin thick on their undeveloped bodies. Babies, too young even to crawl, screamed from within the hollows of empty houses. Erika walked, hands over her mouth, as if in a trance. She stared ahead, too shocked at the poverty to register half of what she saw.
    Jeremiah took to the city as if he were strolling through Central Park. Erika wondered whether all of Limbo was this destitute, or whether Jeremiah was trying to make a point — an appeal, as it were, for her gratitude. This is how much worse off you could be, Erika Stripling. But Erika didn’t feel humbled, only terrified, and she didn’t relax until they stopped at the gate of an old manor.
    â€œA prince?” she asked quietly.
    He nodded. “Of sorts.”
    Only in comparison with the rest of the city could you call Jeremiah’s home a palace. White and double storied in the Palladian style with large windows and clean, classical lines — no amount of architectural beauty could hide the fact that it had long ago fallen into disrepair. A shell of ivy, still dead with winter, cocooned the walls and roof while the front gardens choked on weeds and stiff brown grass. The paint itself was chipping from its brick, and lines spiderwebbed the walk. Two candelabra edged out the night through the windows on either side of the front door.
    â€œAre all the princes so Victorian?”