Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Well, all is silent except for Dingle. It’s difficult to travel with a goat. It’s near impossible to travel quietly with a goat. Once I realize this, I pull out the corn cakes and keep giving him tiny nibbles as we head through the town to keep him from bleating. By the time we make it out of the village, I’m down to only one cake and I polish it off myself.
Traveling here is so odd. The skies are bright with stars, but everything else is so, so dark. There are no streetlights, no electricity, nothing. Just unrelenting black night. It feels dangerous and a little bleak to head away from the comfort of houses and into the brush. I figure that even though it’s probably not safe to cut through the woods, it’s safer than staying on the roads. If we were going to be felled by something as simple as a bear, we would have already been killed in the swamp by an alligator.
At least my bug bites have healed quickly and are no longer plaguing me.
We sleep in the woods without a fire. Or rather, I sleep and Kalos just sits nearby, staring at me until I wake up. It’s unnerving to realize that he’s not sleeping, but he’s also not eating, not drinking, and certainly not handling any other bodily functions. He’s not human at all. It’s like he’s a bad copy of what a person should be, or a really convincing hologram. Sometimes I have to stop myself from reaching over and pinching him.
“You there?” I ask at one point.
His brows go down and he scowls at me. Yup, he’s there.
It’s two days before we find the outskirts of a city tucked in a valley near the woods. It’s close enough to the coast that I pull out the map again and study it, frowning.
“This doesn’t look like Balsingra,” I comment to Kalos as I peer at the map and at the city on the horizon. “You said it had walls, right? The one on the map has walls, too. But that city has no walls that I can see.”
It sits atop a hill and spreads over it like an ant pile, with clusters of small, whitewashed homes and thatched roofs, but no walls.
“It isn’t Balsingra,” Kalos says.
“It’s not?” I eye the map as if its betrayed me. “Did we take a wrong turn?”
“The map isn’t going to show every settlement,” he tells me in a scathing voice. “Do you think my world has only a handful of cities in it like the map shows?”
Oh. “Well…no. I don’t know. How the hell would I know? I’m not from here!”
“Well, it doesn’t. This town isn’t big enough to warrant being included on the map. I suppose you’ll want to go anyhow?” His tone is full of irritation, as if the very idea of visiting this town seems like a pain in the ass.
“It might not be a bad idea. As long as we keep a low profile, we could resupply and buy some weapons. Maybe some things that make camping easier. You’ll have to make sure you don’t kill anyone though.”
Kalos narrows his eyes at me, not liking the reminder about the fisherman he nuked. “If we must. Dingle is almost out of feed, after all.”
I like that he brings up the goat’s needs and not mine. Classy. “Then it’s settled. We’ll head in, get what we need, and head back out again.”
“To Balsingra?” he gives me an annoyed look. “What’s so special about that particular city that we must go there?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just that your other Aspect already passed through. I’m hoping they won’t think to backtrack to find us.”
“Mm.” Kalos doesn’t look convinced, but he shrugs. “You’re in charge.”
“That’s right,” I say brightly. “Let’s just keep going and stick with the plan.”
We step out onto the dirt road that winds through the farms and head towards the little settlement. It’s a town of maybe two hundred houses and it’s busy and bustling. Ahead of us, a woman is driving a few sheep forward with well-timed swats of a stick. There’s a woman with a basket on her back and what looks like a bundle of firewood. As we get closer to the center of town, I notice there’s a rickety wooden bridge over a muddy steam, and by the sides of the stream, women gather and pound their laundry against stones. They people-watch as we cross the bridge, and I get uneasy as I realize I’m carrying our pack and Dingle’s lead, and Kalos is carrying nothing.
People are going to ask questions. Hell, if I saw a woman carrying everything and the man next to her chilling out, I’d ask questions too.
I keep a bright, sunny smile on my face as I turn to Kalos. “I’m going to need you to either take the pack or take Dingle’s lead.”