Memories surfaced and flooded my consciousness as I spread it on the floor. I knew maps like this. My LoreMaster was an avid collector and used to spend hours in his tower, bent over with his nose stuck in them. I heard his voice lecturing in my ear, “Great cities fall into great ruins in a matter of years and towns or villages vanish into the woods in even less time, but mountains, rivers, and lakes remain, more or less, in the same place. With enough attention to detail, old pre-Catastrophe maps could prove extremely valuable.”
Before we parted ways, LoreMaster Harim gave me a map and list of his hideouts, telling me to use whatever I found to keep the Guild of Historians alive, but I had failed both him and the Guild by being torn apart by Lizards in the City Within the Mountain.
I turned my attention to the map I was holding and magnified it tenfold with my sight. This newly awakened memory gave me an idea of where we were, and I marked the village on the thin paper with a circle made by a piece of coal I found on the floor. Now I just had to figure out where we needed to go.
I looked up and examined the roof of the attic, and I spotted a trapdoor. There was no ladder in sight, but a successful, and quite daring, balancing act over several pieces of piled-up furniture meant I could open the trapdoor and stick my head through. Getting my body up there required a bit more work, especially when Galinak still hadn’t shown up, but I didn’t care—I was acting like a man possessed. When I finally made it to the top of the roof I was in a kind of euphoric ecstasy. Childish. Stupid. I know. But it felt good to seek a solution to a mystery and then solve it. I desperately needed to know why I’d been given my life back, and walking away without finding a way to answer this question was not an option for me. I began experimenting with my vision, zooming in and out, trying to see as far as I could and to memorize the topography.
At the edge of my enhanced vision I saw the distinct silhouette of the City of Towers, my old home.
“Hey!”
I stopped zooming and turned my head down.
“Look what I found.” Galinak was sitting bareback on a horse. “Took me ages to tempt him to come over, but once I got my hands on him, he became very obedient.” If Galinak was suffering any setbacks because of last night, it didn’t show.
This was definitely the best day of our new lives, so far.
“Well done,” I shouted in reply. “Now let’s gather what we can carry. I know where we can go and gear up.”
“Really?” He danced the horse in a circle. “And where is that?”
I didn’t bother to shout back. Instead, I turned to study the hills to our north.
“We are going to visit an old friend,” I whispered to no one in particular.
Peach
Wake up, Lady Peach. We’re making a tinkle stop.”
I opened my eyes and had to blink several times before I could focus. I’d dozed off simply to gather some strength, but the conditions inside the truck’s cabin were far from ideal. I was jammed in the backseat among heaps of junk, dried meat, a keg of beer, and several primitive guns that looked as if they were taken from the museum of historical armaments.
To make matters worse, suspended above my head by chains and ropes was an old, heavy machine gun. It swayed dangerously with the rocking of the truck. If that thing fell on my head it would be the short end of this vessel. The old truck was jerking sideways as much as it was moving forward on the broken road, and it made me nauseous and weak. Having to duck every so often so as not to get hit by the machine gun wasn’t helping things.
“Sure,” I said weakly, the taste of dust in my mouth. I’d already lost the contents of my stomach three times in the last five days and was down to my last five nourishment pills.
Brak was the driver. I didn’t know why he kept a cowl over his head during the entire journey, even in the oppressing heat of the truck’s cabin, but other than that he was still the chatty, glass-half-full kind of guy I’d met in the looter’s camp. In fact, I believed the reason Brak agreed to take me along was less about the contents of my sack and more about companionship.
Trevil kept to his silent brooding and spoke to me only when it was necessary. He also kept his revolver on his person at all times, remained vigilant throughout most of the journey, and took the entire night-watch duty, refusing even when I offered to relieve him for a few hours. He’d never expressed his consent to taking me along, and my educated guess was that he was not happy about it but had given in to Brak’s whim.
Brak had introduced Trevil as his cousin, but I had my doubts they were blood related. It wasn’t just that their physiques and demeanours were extremely different; there was something in the way they related to each other that spoke of a different sort of familiarity. There were other signs; my womanly instincts told me neither of them ever looked at me like the men at the bar had. Yet they refrained from touching each other, or expressing their intimacy in any obvious way. I spent time during the journey wondering why they kept their relationship a secret. The world I came from had long accepted same-sex relationships, and Tarakan society was even coming to terms with human-Angel relationships. Sadly, it seemed like the world I’d woken up to might have fallen back to its old inhibitions.
Brak parked the truck and turned to me, sweat glistening under his cowl. “This spot is really beautiful, Lady Peach. We should go to the ridge and look down at the valley.”
The look Trevil shot his companion was so apparent I almost laughed.
“Oh, come on, Trev.” Brak gestured at me. “Look at her. Lady Peach needs a bit of fresh air, and you need some peace and quiet from my chattering.”
Trevil shrugged but leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as we climbed down. It was a short trek through rich, tall grass, and we had to climb down a bit till we got to the ledge, but Brak was not exaggerating. It was an odd sight that filled me with mixed emotions. The vast lowland below was filled with destroyed buildings, roads, and bridges, but it was also rich with vegetation. I even spotted several small fields with clear signs of cultivation.
“This is where we’re going”—Brak pointed in the distance—“Lakewood Hope. It’s a new settlement built over ruins. They named it Lakewood because it’s between a lake—”
“—and a wood,” I said, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah, Lady Peach, that’s right. My grandad came here after the breaking of the world. He was one of the founders of Lakewood Hope and my father lives there, and my older brother. My sister got married seven seasons ago and moved away, but she moved back when her man went foraging too deep and too long in the contaminated cities and died of sickness.”
“So, it’s just you and your cousin on the road, then?”
The look of momentary vagueness in Brak’s eyes was all the proof I needed.
“Yeah … just me and Trev on the road, looking out for each other.” He changed topics. “You never told me where you’re from, Lady Peach.”
A part of me was listening to Brak while another was trying to figure where I was, but I was never strong in topography. “I am from very far away,” I answered.
“I gathered that—your accent is not from these parts—but how far?”
I levelled a stare at him. “Where I come from people do not need to hide who they love.”
Brak quickly turned his head to watch the land below. “That’s far away indeed then,” he said quietly. “So, what brings you here?”
There was no reason to lie.