Sasha didn’t sit. She shuffled her feet instead, adjusting the straps of her bags on her shoulders and looked down at the ground in between them. “I’m Sasha. I… I’m here to help with…” The machine? Like Yiya said? No, she had no idea what to do with something like that. “I saw the notice. You need… an escort? I’m here for that. I’m good at finding my way.” ...
Making her decision, Sasha lifted the bag from her shoulder, long and narrow, and laid it on the floor next to the blanket; ... The rest of her belongings were in a second bag, an ordinary backpack ... Now divested of her burdens, Sasha sat at the very edge of the blanket facing the old apothecary; she felt just as awkward as before, but at least now she had followed Yiya’s request.
“Um… are there going to be others? The notice… didn’t…”
The old woman's earrings clattered (wood and beads and strings of sturdy silver) while she turned her turban-laden head, her sharp eyes twinkling, amusedly following Sasha's nervous movements. Once Sasha had finally sat down on the woven rug, Yiya squinted with a pleased, smoky smile. In answer to the question, Yiya slowly canted her head toward the stairwell and gestured with her pipe over Sasha's shoulder: someone else was arriving.
-
Dressing appropriately for the journey to come, she strapped her boots securely, fastened a holster with a sixshot revolver (a gift from an insistent Olivia) to her waist, and grabbed her backpack. ...
Toni stepped forward to join the other two. From her pocket she pulled a folded copy of the flier, presenting it to both women. "Uh. I'm guessing I'm in the right place," she said. "Antonita Hawkes. But I go by Toni."
Yiya puffed thoughtfully on her pipe, and the air filled with the musky spice of incense. Her wrinkled eyes fell pointedly on Toni's revolver, then drifted aside to the rifle-shaped bag that Sasha had laid on the rug. The old woman hummed to herself, puckered against the pipe, and wheezed a stifled cough while she peered distrustfully at the red glowing herbs in the bell of the pipe.
"That's my flyer, Antonita Hawkes, you guessed right. Sasha here arrived just before you." The beads on her turban jangled while she leaned toward Sasha with a smile.
"I'm Eudora Abby, but I go by Yiya. Sit down, Antonita, sit down! Don't strain my old neck to get a proper look at you." She waved a knobby hand insistently at Toni while, out of the stairwell, another traveler drew near and happily occupied another sitting space on the rug.
-
As she drew closer, the old woman spoke. She seemed wise and content. It made Neomi smirk, and she took her seat. Quickly she explained in little detail that she was the the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Adams of The Burrow, and she knew hardly anything outside of Oaken City. She rolled her eyes and continued with a small expression of how much she was looking forward to the journey.
As she said all this, Neomi had taken her backpack and opened it. She had removed her sketchbook, a few pencils and an eraser. And, like the woman, Neomi sat cross legged as she began recording her surroundings. There was no hesitation in her actions. If anything, it was all rushed.
While Neomi summarized the small tale of her Burrow-dwelling within the city, Yiya puffed thoughtful poofs of incense smoke and watched the sweeping scrape of pencil on paper, her brow knitted with interest. After a few moments of quiet (in which the mechanical terrarium-robot squeaked and released a short hiss of pressure) Yiya removed the pipe from her mouth and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.
"I hope you plan to draw everything and anything interesting that you perceive, young Neomi Adams of the Burrow. You never know when a sketch will prove important." She gestured, bangles clacking, to the other two who occupied the rug.
"This is Antonita Hawkes, who goes by Toni and has come quite impressively prepared, and Sasha, whom I glean is an excellent scout and a tracker." She smiled through the last word, straightening her posture proudly.
"Yes, I think we all will do nicely, if you finally decide to come along."Yiya tapped out her pipe into a stone bowl beside her, then she pressed her thin palms on the rug and her joints creaked and cracked while she groaned with the effort of climbing to her feet. She accepted any help that might be offered, until finally she was upright and taking a deep breath.
"Now. Where did you put my cane?" She squinted over her shoulder and whipped out a skinny hand, smacking the glass terrarium as if it were a misbehaving child.
The robot sank slightly on its pressurized legs and a wooden cane toppled clattering to the stone floor seemingly out of nowhere.
"Thank you." Yiya stared in exasperation down at the cane on the floor before she made a wiggling gesture at her guests.
"Neomi, dear, could you please pass me my cane?" It was polished, golden-brown wood with a dragon head for a handle.
"Sasha, if you would be so kind as to take that bowl and dump it out in the railbed and pass it back to Echoh." With a gesture, she indicated that
Echoh was the name of the terrarium machine.
"Antonita, come on and roll up this rug, give that to Echoh as well. That means everyone off it, come, come on! And I'll tell you, in the meantime, what you're in for."Yiya hobbled swiftly off the rug, and Echoh the terrarium-robot squealed and hissed after her, quick and nimble on its six spidery mechanical legs. The little ecosystem inside its glass bell was not at all disturbed by the movement, not a flower petal out of place, so smoothly and carefully it stepped.
Should anyone attempt to give something to Echoh, the robot would reach out with one of its spindly legs, open a pair of scissorlike claws, and snap them shut around the proffered object, which would immediately disappear as if swallowed by the air. Echoh would accept anything between its claws, and anything would simply disappear with a
snap.
Out of habit, the old woman placed the empty pipe between her teeth, and she squinted beyond the chandeliers and blue-shining mosaics into the hollow dark of the rail tunnel, where cool stagnant air hovered like a ghost.
"I come from a village far away from here," she said, her words echoing on the vaulted stained-glass ceiling.
"It's called Geami, the windy meadow, beyond the last of the mountains, near enough to the ocean, you can smell the salt. For years a dark ailment has plagued us, it's gotten worse: we hear every sound as loud as a gong. A pin dropping rattles your skull like a thunderclap." She pinched her fingers and released them over the floor.
"Every shuffle of clothing scrapes your ears. The shriek of a seagull feels like your head will split in two. Wax and earplugs do little good. The turban helps to block the noisy vibrations," she tapped the heavy wrapping on her head,
"but as the years go on, even if you've gone deaf, your bones are always trembling so badly from the noise that the people are simply falling apart, inside and out. Children collapse in the road, their parents pass out in the fields. Some just go toward the ocean and never return. Your body is a tuning fork, and the world is a hammer."With a shuffle, Yiya turned around to see how her new companions were getting along with the cleanup.
"There's a Rue responsible for it. And that tree," she smiled tightly and pointed at the terrarium with the small end of her pipe,
"is the very poison that will be rid of it. The plant is called the Trailing Bird, extremely rare and very finicky: it only grows in a tiny little spot on the mountain over Oaken City, and will die the moment it's uprooted. So I'm taking that little mountain spot with me. But the flowers of this tree, the very color of them, sends the Rue into a tizzy. I journeyed here, I climbed mountains, I found the Trailing Bird and stole it, but I know I'm not prepared to fend off angry Rue. So I ask you: will you help us?"A high-pitched mechanical sound accompanied a trembling in the rail tracks below. The railroad corridor behind them paled with a deep red light that grew brighter and brighter like an approaching demon, rumbling like distant thunder.
Toni was the first to sense it: something was standing on the tracks, the air around it breathing, its presence gentle as a breeze.
Then, Sasha and Neomi might catch glimpses of a shadowy, smoky figure, as tall as two men, hunched with dangling arms, its head the shape of a hexagonal prism. The last trails of Yiya's pipe smoke swirled in its hollow eyes.
It swayed on the tracks. The red light of the approaching train shone straight through the smoky figure while it raised its long arms high as if to engulf the train with its expanding presence.
Yiya only watched her guests expectantly. She couldn't notice anything was strange at all.
