The Dreamwalker's Path

1/Hall of the Hours, Sanctuary

"The person we’re trying to find looks to be about eight or ten years old. She has brown hair, light brown eyes, and freckles, and she’s from the outer village, so she’ll have a distinct accent in comparison to children raised in the rest of the city.”

The Fourth Hour of Sanctuary stood with her hands clasped in front of her, carefully watching the crowd of volunteers that she and the other Hours had gathered. The pupils of her eyes were contracted to sharp, black slivers that split the milky yellow of her iris, a clear indication to anyone familiar with her species that she was not happy. The reason for her dissatisfaction seemed to be embedded in the next portion of information that she gave to the crowd.

“The girl answers to Emelye Hornblower, and she is very important to Sanctuary.”

The Eighth Hour stepped forward to join the Hour in white, and extended his hands to the crowd.

“Each person here has been paired up with another person, or placed in a group of three. Each group has been given a section of Sanctuary to search, and each Hour will look over the two sections which correspond to his or her time of day, and you can find us in the Hall of the Hours, which is easily reached by all sections. We encourage you to stay with your partner or in your groups, and to immediately report to your overseeing Hour should you spot Emelye or anything else unusual. The other Hours not present here are already in place.”

“Does anyone have any questions?” Four looked from one side of the group to the other and counted to twelve to make sure that there was nothing else to address.

She was just about to dismiss the volunteers when a dark skinned, white eyed woman dressed in red and white raised her hand. “What about those who will be searching in sections twelve and zero? No one has seen the black-clad Hour in months and I didn’t see him here when the rest of you were conversing.”

The Hours of Four and Eight shared a look.

Eight, stepping farther forward, answered, “The Hour of Twelve is currently performing another task for Time. Those of you in sections zero and twelve, which are normally under Twelve’s jurisdiction, will report to Time itself. You will be able to find her the same way that you would find Twelve.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Four turned her back to the people of Sanctuary and leaned in closer to Eight. “What the hell are you doing?” she hissed.

Eight raised his chin slightly and responded in a low whisper, “Time didn’t tell the people that Twelve was gone because of the panic it would invoke. What do you think they would do with the information that our new Twelfth Hour is a lost little girl? Especially now that it’s widely spread that the gods are rioting against the Historian? How do you think they’ll respond knowing that we are missing an Hour and that Sanctuary might fall apart because of it?”

Four pursed her already thin lips, but she nodded. Turning back to the crowd, she said, “Each of you knows where you’re supposed to look. Go with luck and Time.”

Caitell wrapped her purple shawl tightly over her shoulders and moved back into the crowd as the Hours wished them luck and protection.

A moment later, the crowd began to disperse, and Caitell barely had a chance to tell Chapel and Twix to be safe before the sandy little boy and his pixie friend disappeared under the shuffling feet of the adults.

The witch shivered and shook her head. The last thing she needed was news of that boy and his sprite getting into trouble.

A tall figure loomed over her, reminding her that she needed to focus on her own self at the moment. She looked up at her partner and was confronted by a face more dragon than man. Her surprise must have shown because he stepped back apologetically.

“Never seen a Phanin up close before?” Under his words was the soft crackle of flame in a well-kempt hearth. With each breath the humanoid exhaled, an equally soft, inviting shade of orange bloomed from the hollow of his throat and rose up to his jaw, and with each inhale, the glow receded. As he spoke, his tongue flicked between long fangs.

Caitell looked up at the creature and shook her head a little dumbly. He was well over six feet tall, had cheekbones too high for a human, and a thick jaw. His brow was covered by a heavy ridge of black scales that disappeared into his hairline and reappeared again at the corners of his jaw to cover his neck and glowing throat. She looked down at his hands to see that they too were covered in black scales and each finger sported a vicious looking talon.

“Just Four and Two,” she admitted, finally.

“Had you never seen Xyri of West?”

She felt heat rise to her face. “You’re a Westie.”

He looked around a little cautiously. “I used to be,” he gave her a once over, eyeing her purple and grey clothing. “And I would bet, given your garb, that you used to be one of the Eastlings.” For a moment he looked angry, and Caitell tensed, ready to run away if she had to. But whatever emotion he felt didn’t linger for long before it was replaced with a much less threatening expression.

The demon haunched his shoulders and let out a puff of air through glowing nostrils.

It was hard to tell with a face that was so foreign, but Caitell was certain that shame shaped his expression.

“The game got way out of hand,” he told her in a matter- of-fact way, and Caitell recognized his tone as one she had adopted many times over since the battle at Carter Street. “Xyri never meant to hurt anyone,” he continued, “I don’t think that any of us meant to, really.”

It was the closest thing to an apology that Caitell had ever received from anyone outside of the Eastlings. No one outside of any of the gangs seemed to understand how the war had started. No one seemed to really care. They all just blamed the gangs for any death that it was convenient to blame them for, and no one bothered to look at how many of their own they had lost because the Alchemist had taken a child’s game and twisted it into something evil.

Eastling, Norther, Southbit, or Westie: whoever was left of the four gangs was all that anyone who had played the game and fought the war had left. It wasn’t much, Caitell thought, but understanding from someone who had once been an enemy was better no understanding at all.

So, Caitell did her best to smile her way through her own apology, and tentatively reached out and touched the Phanin’s scaled forearm. “We were all misled.”

They stood awkwardly for a long moment.

“I’m Jardel,” the male finally offered.

That was something she knew how to respond to. “Caitell.”

She felt as though a weight had lifted off of both of their shoulders. “Are you patrolling section zero with me?”

He offered something that was almost a smile. “Yes,” He showed her the slip of paper that he had been given by the Hour of Eight upon his arrival in front of the Hall of the Hours. “That is, I mean, if you don’t mind.”

Caitell looked around. “I don’t think that I have a choice, but luckily I don’t mind.” Her smile was still uneasy, but then, she was still smiling. “Shall we?”

They headed down the street, Eastling and Westie side by side, with only few inches between them.

2/ Eight’s Street, Sanctuary

Chapel darted down the street with Twix waddling behind him on all fours. They had been chosen to cover section eight. Chapel wasn’t sure if he’d been assigned section eight because it was currently one of the daylight districts and he was young, or because it was a smaller section, and he was a smaller person. At the end of the day, Chapel could honestly say that he didn’t really mind either way. Section eight was the section that he’d been born in, and where he and his parents had their happiest moments. He used to play in the park that was there, and used to visit the dark haired witch who taught the children their ABCs and 123s.

He was familiar with the streets and what the streets were supposed to look like, which would make searching for anything unusual, like a small girl, easier. Chapel didn’t even mind the complaints and wails that Twix made somewhere behind him.

“My feet hurt! All four of them hurt! All four of them, and the tail that I no longer have. Chapel, are you listening to me? You’ve worked me so hard, now, that I’m experiencing phantom pains.”

“Quit your whinin’ Twix, we’re haven’t even been around a whole block yet.” The boy looked over his shoulder and frowned as the pixie flounced toward him, his pale blue face looking a little purple. Realizing that Twix wasn’t going to stop whining, Chapel decided to take pity on the pixie, knelt down and picked the pixie up by the middle. “Look, you can ride on my shoulder from now on, but you can’t pull my hair or try to collect my earwax or anything, do ya hear?” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Especially no stealing earwax. I need that stuff to keep loud sounds out.”

Twix looked like he was about to argue, but Chapel put

his finger over the pixie’s mouth. “Shuddup.”

The pixie now quieted, Chapel continued down the cobblestone path. “I used to walk around here every day,” he told Twix. “This was the street that I grew up on.”

Twix made a gagging sound. “Oh, oh that’s special.

Lovely. I’m bored. When are we going to eat?”

“Twix, we en’t here to eat, we’re here to look for things that are out of place.”

“What things? Edible things?” It always came down to what could be eaten and what couldn’t when chameleon fairies were involved. Chapel chalked it up to the fact that they had two stomachs. More space to fill meant more food to be eaten, which meant that someone was always hungry.

“Prolly not, okay?” the little boy furrowed his brow. “Look, ah’m tryin’ ta help the Hours find Emelye. It’s all very serious business, so if you’re not going to help me, then I think that you should just go do whatever it is that you normally do around this time of day.”

“I eat.” Twix burped to emphasize his point. “So what?

You’re a detective now, or something?”

“Yeah, I guess...” Chapel shrugged his shoulder, dislodging the pixie who took to the air with dragonfly wings, and pulled a large piece of plywood away from the wall. “I just wanna help find Emelye before she gets hurt or sumthin’.” He carefully replaced the piece of wood and walked farther down the road, pausing to look under a stairway. Truth be told, he had liked the girl—not that he was going to tell Twix that. But she had cute freckles, and her face wasn’t so bad to look at considering that she was a girl and all… “Like Shallot Hams?”

“What?” The boy curled his lip as he stared at the pixie.

“That detective that lives on the street with the Baker! The one who finds stuff because he knows everything or whatever.”

It took Chapel a long to understand what Twix was trying to say to him. “You mean Sherlock Holmes from Caitell’s books?”

Twix burped again, flopped off of the railing of the staircase and onto a crumbling stone step. “I like shallots and ham. They sound tastier than a Sherlock. What the heck is a Sherlock, anyway?”

Chapel shrugged. “Probably a type of wizard, I guess.” He grabbed Twix around the middle and put the pixie on top of his head before turning down a small side street where a collection of fire escapes climbed up tall walls that belonged to no particular buildings. “Why don’t you focus on helping me, and I’ll getcha a criquette on the way home, okay?”

“I hate criquettes. I want a shallot in cheese sauce.”

Chapel muttered under his breath, but agreed. “Sure, if you find sumthin’ unusual that will help find Emelye for the Hours, then I’ll get you a shallot with cheese.”

“Something unusual like that?”

As Twix was perched on top of his head, Chapel couldn’t see him pointing, but a moment later, the pixie darted through the air toward the back of the alley and sat atop a pile of deep red bricks. “Looks pretty unusual to me, doesn’t it? Brand new bricks Just a-laying around like someone’s gonna build something.”

Chapel made his way to the back of the alley and frowned a little. “Not really, Twix. The four gangs are supposed to be helping to rebuild some of the crappy places in Sanctuary as a sort of team building exercise or whatever.” He didn’t know what the term team building actually meant, except that it was something that Caitell had said a lot, even before the gangs were being punished for the riot on Carter Street. “I bet there’s lots of piles of new brick just layin’ around waiting for someone to build something.”

Twix puffed his chest indignantly. “Well it’s unusual for me, so I still expect my shallot, if that’s quite all right with you!”

He made ready to jump off the pile and back onto Chapel’s head, but a brick trundled under his weight and slipped off the top of the pile.

“Oh help!” Twix squeaked as he too slid down the pile and onto the asphalt of the alley floor. “This is so indignant! I hate cities. I hate bricks!”

Chapel peered around the pile of bricks. “You okay, there?”

“No! No, I am not okay!” The pixie bemoaned, extending his tiny arms toward Chapel and making straining sounds. “My bottom is stuck!”

Chapel blinked. “What?”

“My bottom! My butt! My place where once and very recently I had a tail, but have a tail no longer! Don’t just stand there like you don’t know what I’m talking about! My butt is stuck in between these bricks and I can’t get out!”

Huffing to cover up the fact that he wanted to laugh (Twix would never forgive him. He was so sensitive sometimes), Chapel squeezed between the pile of new red bricks and the chalky pale wall of the alley. He knelt down to inspect the situation.

Twix’s long body was indeed stuck between two bricks just at the bottom of the wall. The crack wasn’t very wide, so it was a wonder that Twix had fallen in such a way that his bottom had gotten stuck, but the crack ran from the very bottom of the wall all the way to the top, getting more and more narrow as it went up so that by the time it got even to Chapel’s eye level, the crack looked only like a small erosion of the mason between two old bricks.

“You done yourself in for certain this time,” Chapel said somberly, holding out his finger so that Twix could grip it and pull.

“Don’t say that! I don’t want to live the rest of my life in a wall! It’s awfully hot on the other side, I’ll have you know! Terribly hot!”

Chapel frowned. “Don’t be dramatic, silly. There en’t nothing on the other side of that wall but more Sanctuary, and you know it never gets hot or cold in Sanctuary.”

One good heave on Twix’s part freed the pixie from the wall. He immediately scurried as far from the wall as he could, pressing himself against the new brick. “I’m telling you it’s hot in there! Put your finger in and tell me it isn’t!”

Resolving to do so only in the hope that it would keep Twix from harping at him about the warm spot in the wall for the rest of his life, Chapel moved to stick his finger in the crack in the wall. “You better not have left any pixie poop in there, or ah’m gonna be real mad.” He ignored the pixie’s ill-mannered protest, instead wigging two of his fingers so that they were in the wall.

“Cogs an’ Chimes, how ’bout that!” The boy removed his fingers and touched them to his cheek. “That’s proper hot, huh?”

“That’s what I said,” Twix whined. “You hate me, though, so you weren’t listening.”

To be truthful, Chapel wasn’t listening much at present, either. He had slumped down so that he was laying on his belly, eye level with the crack. “I bet you that there’s some sort of fire on the other side...”

“Probably a fire breathing beast,” Twix muttered, pulling at Chapel’s hair. “Get away from the hole, would you?”

Chapel waved Twix away. “It en’t a beast. It en’t a fire, neither.” He pulled his head away from the hole and stuck his fingers in again. “There’s a whole ’nuther place on the other side that I never seen before!”

“There, so I did lead you to something unusual!” Twix dusted his hands in a self-commending, job-well-done sort of way. “I think that deserves two shallots at least.”

“Yeah, okay, but we gotta tell the Hour before we get your food, all right?”

The boy braced his hand on the wall to help him stand, and gave a small yelp when the entire wall shifted about half a foot under his weight.

The boy looked at the pixie, the pixie looked at the boy,

and then both figures turned their eyes to the wall.

“I en’t supposed to say bad words,” said Chapel, “But I can think of a really good one right now.”

Twix buzzed from the brick pile to the wall and peered around the edge of the now very large crack. “Is it ‘oh shit?’”

“I en’t never said it,” the boy muttered, pressing his face into the crack.

“I think you broke Sanctuary,” the pixie said, retreating and buzzing over the top of the brick pile. “You better find a way to put it back before Time finds out.”

Chapel squeezed his arm through the gap, pushed until the wall gave a little more and forced his shoulder and chest through as well. The warm air felt blistering, and everything was as bright as section twelve.

“I don’t think I broke Sanctuary, Twix,” Chapel said as he pulled himself back through the crack and into the softer light of eight o’ clock in the morning. “But I think we mighta found out where Emelye went.”