Free Rainbow's End - Wizard by Corrie Mitchell

warmly enough. Izzy never hesitated: he opened the driver’s door and swung his skinny legs out, clambered to the ground.
    She couldn’t have been more than three and stood in a small puddle; her little toes in their open-topped sandals were blue with cold. Izzy didn’t mind in the least, but knelt in the wet in front of her, gently took her small shoulders in his large, bony hands, smiled and said, ‘Well, hello there, pretty girl.’ Kneeling like that, he could see under the lorry, and there was no one else around. ‘Are you lost?’ he asked
    She shook her head , mutely, and Izzy said, still smiling, ‘Well, where’s my manners? My name is Izzy. Do you have one? A name, I mean…?’ She nodded but stayed silent.
    ‘ And would you like to tell me what it is then?’ he asked, gently.
    She bit her lower lip and nodded, said, ‘Margaret’, softly, and then added; ‘Maggie…’ Her small voice was tired and despondent and carried all the weight of the world.
    ‘Whe re’s your mommy, Maggie?’ Izzy asked.
    Her eyes were the colour of pansies, they hurt and they brimmed and then they overflowed, and Izzy pulled the little girl against his chest.
    S he cried then - great hiccupping sobs that were too big for her; they hacked and tore at her little frame and Izzadore Greenbaum’s soul. He held her, shuddering and shaking for a long minute, soothing and reassuring her in a soft voice; and only when he felt her calm down and mumble something into the wet material of his thick woollen shirt, did Izzy hold Maggie at arm’s length, and ask her to say again. Her eyes were washed a brilliant purple-blue and she used the trailing end of her over-long jersey sleeve to wipe her tears and runny nose; succeeding only in leaving a wide smear of goo on hundreds of tiny freckles.
    She said, ‘I think Mommy’s sick again…’ She gave an after-sob and a small hiccup. ‘She won’t talk to me.’ Her eyes started brimming again and she rubbed them with a small fist.
    ‘Will you take me to her?’ Izzy asked, and Maggie nodded, eagerly; glad to the point of forgetting her wet knickers at finding someone to help her mother. She took his sleeve, and with small steps led him around the lorry’s front; to a bus-shelter he hadn’t noticed before, not twenty metres away.
    The young woman , somewhere in her early twenties, had been pretty not so long ago. Her blonde hair was unwashed, and like Maggie’s, unkempt. She wore a baggy jersey and blue jeans, and a plastic bag filled with crumpled clothing and odds and ends, stood between her worn out tennis shoes. Her eyes were only half-open and glassy, and her skin pasty-grey. Izzy knew she was dead before he touched her, but put two fingertips on her carotid artery anyway. She was already cold and he stood back, looking at her with pity and sorrow, and thinking of what to do.
    And suddenly the sun was out: it made sparks in Maggie’s unruly copper curls and chased the shadows from her eyes, and made Izzy wish he was any place but there.
    He saw them then. They came out of an alley between two shops, pushing their way through packed and overflowing rubbish bins; their black clothes and silence immediately denoting them as being different. There were four and they were less than a hundred metres away, and stood talking for a few seconds before starting towards him and Maggie.
     
    Izzy didn’t - couldn’t wait. He picked up Maggie and ran. Back to the lorry and around its front; handed the little girl up through the still-open driver’s door and onto the soft leather seat; scrambled up after her and picked her up again, half throwing her on the seat next to his; slammed the door and plucked the keychain from the ignition; then stuck his arm out of the window, and wildly began swinging it; the crystal at its end sparkling and flashing in the crisp, sun filled morning air.
    In his side mirror and he could see them - running towards the lorry and very close; and then falling over one