Free Never Knew Another by J. M. McDermott Page B

that smelled like noxious death and fed the street rivers. Rachel and Djoss waited it out on an abandoned stairwell, where a crumbling roof held back the worst of the water.
    “I guess we made it,” Rachel said.
“Yeah,” said Djoss, “You know anything about this city?”
“No,” she said.
    He frowned. “Me neither.”
    The streets were flooded. Anybody walking there was ankle deep in muddy sewer water. Dead rats floated past clinging to paper and small sticks. Something else floated past, in a wad of cloth. A doll or a dead baby drifting through the flooded street, catching on the ridges of wheel-ruts. Rachel closed her eyes. When she opened them again, it was gone.
    She forced a smile. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s the biggest city in the world. Nobody will notice me here.” Her hands were balled up into fists inside of her pockets. She kept looking down to make sure her sleeves were still laced shut across her forearms.
    “It’s not your fault,” he said.
    This far north of the main city, the buildings were still cracked and bruised from the war nineteen years ago. All the men and women here walking the streets were shipwrecks with feet. All these cracks and angles pushing through the floods, they sank in every step.

    ***

    We did the best we could, but there wasn’t much.
    They spent weeks on the street, sleeping in doorways. The winter rain was ceaseless, and if it broke it didn’t break for long.
    In the heaviest downpours, the landscape blurred before Rachel’s eyes. The mud, the cracked boards, and the faces in the street were all the same weary entity swirling its sea-beast tendrils like roots across the mud.
    She closed her eyes again.
    If they stayed on the street, people would notice that only her clothes had a shadow. Someone would step on her boot and discovered strange lumps that shouldn’t have been there instead of toes. Sleeping in doorways, sleeping in abandoned buildings, sleeping in hovels and trash, she was always at risk that her serpent’s tongue might fall out of her mouth where passing folks could see. They sought out shadows and hidden places in the night, but this was no guarantee. She tried to sleep face down when she could, deep in a shadow. They walked all day in between the sweeping storms, hidden in the crowds, and selling cheap illusions when Djoss couldn’t find work for the day.
    Everywhere Rachel went, she was afraid.
    There was work or there was not, safe and unsafe. That was all to the ones like Rachel and Djoss, on the street. If anyone came near, they didn’t stop to talk about anything that wasn’t a job. Rachel and Djoss pulled back into shadows and corners and crowds and walked away.
    We kept moving.

    ***

    We came south. Djoss and I kept going where we thought there might be work, and maybe a place off the street. It wasn’t fast.
    Djoss and Rachel reached the edge of the warehouse district.
    Down the street to the south, four men swung brickbats at each other. Three other men crawled away, crumpled in the blows. Blood was on the ground.
    “A good sign,” said Djoss. He smiled at the war in the middle of an avenue. It was the kind of thing that meant no one would be looking after them. “Yeah, we’ll find a place down this way if we keep moving.”
    “I hope not.”
    “Hope so, you mean. Rowdy work’s easy to come by, easy to keep.”
    “Djoss, please…”
    He kept smiling. He led her down through the streets, south and south into the night.
    Past the warehouses, a river curved through the levies to the sea. They crossed a ferry in morning twilight with the crowds of men on their way to work among the abattoirs. It cost almost everything they had left.
    We kept moving.
    A cock crowed in early light. Dawn pushed against the jagged rooftops.
    Somewhere, birds were singing.
    The walking shop-girls were already awake with their handcarts. Street boys played dice on a fat brick fence for the honor of skinning a cat they had found in a