Free City of Ruins by Mark London Williams Page B

a little, not gerk-skizzy , but klnndd , frightened—and somehow a
little harder, too. Like he is trying to be old before he’s
ready.
    He also has long strands of human hair coming
out of his young face, trailing in front of him.
    The Bearded Boy, Silver Eye tells me. He’s part of the carnival, too.
    “Fish for dinner!” He has a metal container
in his hands, and he throws us whole fish, entire aquatic life
forms, with scales and tentacles, most of them quite dead, into the
cages in front of us.
    “So you’re the new guy,” the Bearded Boy says
to me. “The Dragon Man.”
    The Dragon Man. Impressive.
    “Rocket told me about you. Well, don’t
breathe fire on this stuff; you’ll overcook it!” He laughs.
    “That is what you human mammals refer to as a
joke, correct? And as long as I am here in jail, is it possible to
get another name? Such a re-naming wouldn’t be allowed on Saurius
Prime, but here on Earth Orange, I should take full advantage of
being an outlaw.”
    “Eat!” he snaps back at me. “Don’t talk!
We’re moving out. And that’s all you need to know for now.”
    Moving where?
    “You don’t talk either!” he snaps at the
wolf. “I told you it spooks me when you get into my head like that!
I don’t want any other voices there! And we’re movin’ to wherever
Rocket wants to go next. He said something about home, that’s all I
know. Huh. Like anyone really has a home anymore.” The Bearded Boy
turns to huff-stomp away, but then turns back to us, his eyes still
scared, but needing, perhaps, to talk to someone anyway. He stares
at me a couple moments longer. “You don’t look so scary in there.
No sudden moves, though, or I’ll get Strong Bess to come in here.
Rocket might be right. Maybe he’s finally caught a real moneymaker
with you.”
    The Bearded Boy approaches again. “Or maybe
you’re just somebody in a suit.” He takes a stick and pokes it
through the bars of my cage.
    “Oww!” I yell.
    “Even if you are a dragon man, don’t get any
big ideas. You’re not the star of the show yet.”
    Then the Bearded Boy walks away. The fish he
threw at me is already starting to smell.
    I’ll take it, if you’re not hungry. Food is
hard to come by here. You should try to get some sleep before we
move again. We’ll be leaving in the morning.
    “Does that boy think I’m a slaversaur, too?
Some kind of outlaw Gwangi that wants to hurt him?”
    No, Silver Eye tells me. He’s
afraid Rocket won’t need him in the carnival anymore. He’s always
scared he’s going to be replaced. And he doesn’t have anywhere else
to go. You mentioned the place we’re camped now is called Wolf
House. Do you know if these great ruins were caused in some war
between wolves and men?
    “I don’t think so. Has there been such a
war?”
    They have waged war against us for thousands
of their years. Are these the ruins where Rocket captured you?
    “No. Close to here, though. I was revisiting
the house of my deep friends, and I let my guard down.”
    How?
    “I was standing in my friend Eli’s room, and
it happened when my attention was caught by this.” I take the
folded sheets of paper from my pocket — a once-standard medium for
communication between humans, but now rarely used except by
publications like the National Weekly Truth — that I found
next to Eli’s old bed.
    It has his name on it: ELI .
    “I believe this is what humans call a
‘letter.’ It is from an old nest-friend of Eli’s named Andy. And I
need to find a way to deliver it.”
     
     
     

Chapter Seven
    Thea: Time Bandits
    February 2020 C.E.
     
    I know that I am sick, that I am seeing with
what we called pox eyes back in Alexandria, when I witness
Mr. Howe and Eli fall out of the sky into my room.
    Or at least, through the ceiling. And on to
the floor.
    “The shortcuts around this place” Mr. Howe
says to Eli, wiping himself off, “aren’t what they used to be.”
Both of them are wet, almost muddy.
    “Being swept away