The kind owner of the house treated them to a generous breakfast to begin their third day. After thanking her, Luke and Kamrin resumed following the streetcar tracks. Angelis was a large borough; the marble pillars and dark glinting statues reminded them of how much further they had to walk.
“Angelis is one of the boroughs directly at the boundary between the North and West division,” Kamrin said that morning. They were both able to walk more comfortably as the air was decidedly warmer. “The next borough we enter will be a western one.”
“Is Savannah borough near the Northwest boundary as well, then?” Luke asked.
“Yes. It shouldn’t take more than a few days to reach Savannah. Its neighboring boroughs are Helene and Kamrin, so we should pass through one of them before we enter Savannah.”
“Kamrin?” Luke repeated, smiling, “You were named after that borough?”
“I was! I’ve never been there, though; I wish that’ll be the borough we walk through. It’s common for children to be named after the boroughs they were born in. I was born in Savannah, but my father’s friend’s daughter was already named that, so he named me after the borough beside it.” She paused. “How were you named, Luke?”
“I—?” Luke stammered, trying to remember, “I don’t think I was named after anything in particular.”
Kamrin shrugged. “That’s all right. My baby brother was named Nyle because that’s my grandfather’s name. He’s not much like my grandfather, though—he’s loud and annoying and attention-seeking. If babies grow up to be adults, why can’t they begin their lives by being helpful?”
Luke couldn’t help smiling as he watched Kamrin skip ahead of him without waiting for an answer. It was easy to forget that she was still a child.
_________________
Graceway soon taught him never to let his guard down again. The house they approached for lunch was more rustic and wooden than any other house they’d seen. It did not fit in with the rich and historic architecture of Angelis. It was more like a cabin, resembling an old, sandstorm-battered house in the Purlieus more than one in an Angelis neighborhood. Nevertheless, they’d chosen it as it was the nearest to the tracks and therefore saved them the trouble of straying far from their path.
“Hello?” Luke called uncertainly, after several knocks. There was silence. “Should we try another house, Kam?”
“Wait, Luke, I see something,” Kamrin said, peering through the window with her hands to the sides of her vision.
“Kamrin, don’t look into someone’s house!” Luke admonished her. “You never know wh—”
The door opened immediately, but to Luke’s instant relief, there stood a serene elderly lady at the doorway. He’d sprung toward Kamrin instinctively, but immediately stopped and inclined his head respectfully.
“Are you two travellers?” the lady asked pleasantly, and motioned them in.
Kamrin, who’d complained about being hungry earlier, entered excitedly. Luke entered a little more cautiously. The lady, impatiently ushering him in, looked him up and down appraisingly. Feeling uncomfortable, Luke glanced at her wrinkled face. Finding nothing threatening there, he slowly followed her down the hall and into her kitchen.
Kamrin was seated happily at the table. The lady left them and soon they heard pots banging together in the kitchen. An appetizing smell reached them both.
Luke joined Kamrin, but he continued to sit up straight. The table was in a narrow dining room. The door was shut tightly. The window Kamrin had looked through earlier was the only one open; every other window had the curtains tightly drawn over it, which Luke found odd, as the house was very dim.
“Lunch is almost ready, children!” the old lady called from the kitchen.
Kamrin snickered at Luke being referred to as a child with her, when she stopped and peered at him. “Are you all right, Luke?”
Luke nodded and tried to remain calm for Kamrin’s sake. He could not understand why the lady would live alone in such an old and poorly kept house. The lady soon brought in bowls of soup. Kamrin thanked her and began to eat.
The lady sat there and, oddly enough, watched them eat. Luke had relaxed at the sight of real food, but one fateful glance at the lady, and he saw her nod imperceptibly toward something behind him.
Luke whirled around. He saw nothing. Yet suddenly, he heard creaking footsteps outside the dining room. Some others near the kitchen. There seemed to be a shadow coming through the door crack, and others all around the room.
Luke felt his hands grow cold as the lady’s way of looking at Kamrin, the curtained windows, and the relative isolation of the house made sense. The lady had begun talking in an amiable voice, but Luke did not hear a word of it.
“Kamrin, get up,” Luke said loudly, getting roughly to his feet. His spoon clattered to the floor and both Kamrin and the lady looked up at him, one in bewilderment and the other seeming offended at being interrupted.
“No, no, dear, stay seated,” the lady said to Kamrin. She turned to Luke. “Has something startled you? I have some cats back—”
“I said get up!” Luke said, his own terror making his voice sharp. Kamrin looked up at him reproachfully, likely thinking him offended by something the lady had said.
Luke looked toward the door and somehow knew that it was locked. They were trapped in. Except for the window Kamrin had looked through earlier. Luke charged toward that window, pulling Kamrin with him, and wrenched it open with all his strength. Behind him he heard the lady scream with a sudden change of voice, “Hurry, they’re escaping!”
Luke could not afford to look back. He shouted to Kamrin, “Run to the tracks, where there are people. As fast as you can. Understand?” and without waiting for an answer, shoved her easily out the window. Then he ducked instinctively to avoid a swing from one of the men who had rushed in to capture him and Kamrin, the shadow of whom he’d seen coming through the door.
“Get the girl!” one of the men shouted, and as two men rushed out of the house, he grabbed Luke by the neck and began choking him against the window.
Fumbling out the open window, Luke was struggling to find something to use as a defense weapon when something grabbed his desperate hand and pulled, so violently that he was able to duck and crash sideway through the window and onto the front porch of the house. Luke rolled to his feet and saw Kamrin, her face pale. “Run!” she gasped, and realizing that she’d pulled him out somehow, he grabbed her hand and they both ran away from the house. They only stopped once they were being jostled and bumped in the middle of the steady Angelis street crowd and the house was nowhere to be seen.
_________________
“You’re from the Purlieus, aren’t you?” a man snarled, shoving Luke away after he’d run into him. “Go back to where you came from!”
“Kamrin! Let’s get out of here,” Luke yelled to her over the noise. They’d been so intent on getting away that they’d unintentionally entered a crowded area in the street. Once they located the tracks again, they continued to run along it, until soon they were amidst only a few passersby and their heart rates had slowed a little.
Only then did Luke’s anger return. Coupled with the utter terror of the last few minutes, as well as fury at himself for being so gullible again and at Kamrin, whose small refusal to obey had nearly cost them their lives, his fury was unrestrainedly unleashed at Kamrin.
“I told you to get up, Kamrin! Twice! Why didn’t you listen to me?”
“I thought…you were annoyed by something the lady said!” Kamrin protested, her face growing paler.
“You’re the one who’s grown up in the city! You told me about kidnappers and people seeking to harm others because they wanted money!”
“I’ve never actually run into them before!”
“When I told you to get up, you didn’t. Do you understand that those few seconds were what almost got us captured in that house?”
“I’m sorry, Luke! How was I supposed to know the lady was against us, too?”
“You weren’t; that’s why you were an idiot to run away from home alone in the first place,” Luke spat, and then fixed his gaze firmly forward.
The next hour or so they walked in silence. Angelis borough’s quiet roads and wide, pearly skies were now tinged with a hint of warmth. The air was becoming balmier and the clouds were lighter. The dented golden tracks glinted in the soft afternoon light, and Angelis citizens around them were bareheaded and wore thinner jackets. A sweet scent reached them from somewhere afar.
Luke’s anger and fear had settled as the landscape around him had remained serene for the last hour. Out of pride, he dared not look at Kamrin who was walking along silently beside him. Rummaging absent-mindedly in his pocket, he was pleasantly startled to find a few coins there. This discovery formed an idea in his mind. Only when it began to get dark, however, Luke sensed the chill of the Angelis dusk, took a deep breath, and paused.
“Kam?”
Kamrin looked up at him, and her face was drenched in tears and blotched with suppressed crying. Aghast at the sight, Luke knelt down to her eye level.
“Kamrin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so harsh.”
“Don’t be sorry, I’m not mad,” she sniffled, “I deserved it.”
Further floored, Luke argued, “You did not! I was angry at myself for letting my guard down again.”
When Kamrin still did not reply, he added, “True, you could have listened to me the first time, but I got carried away because I was so afraid. Will you forgive me?”
Kamrin barely nodded before breaking down into more tears. Shaking his head, yet feeling something that made his heart warm, he let her cry onto his shoulder as he patted her back. After a little while, pulling away gently, he said cheerfully, “Why don’t we treat ourselves tonight? Look what I found in my pocket.”
Seeing the coins in his hand, Kamrin gasped joyfully. “Can we buy ourselves something?”
“Of course; where would you like to go?”
“I’ve been smelling something amazing from over there,” Kamrin said, gesturing ahead of them. Luke understood instantly. “Let’s go find out what it is.”
The dark blue twilight had fallen by the time they reached the source of the scent another hour later. The wind had been carrying the delicious perfume of bread from the bakery toward them. “I’m sorry, Kam, this isn’t much,” Luke said to her, smiling at how excited she was to be inside the bakery. “I’m not sure how much we could buy with this.”
Kamrin looked at the coins, counted them very seriously, and looked at the prices. “It’s enough for us to buy four rolls each…or two loaves. Which do you prefer?”
“Four!” Luke repeated, incredulous. In the Purlieus, money was scarce as well as quite useless; those who had money would usually collect it in a large jar for years, not knowing what to do with it. Luke himself recalled being given these coins by a farmer of a field he’d helped water, a few years back. It was a pleasant shock to discover how much the money was worth in Graceway. Once the warm rolls were in his hands instead of the coins, he felt an unexpected delight: this was what it felt like to reap a reward after labor.
“Thank you, Luke,” Kamrin said happily as they sat outside, eating on the bench.
“You’re welcome, Kam,” Luke answered, grinning at the crumbs on the tip of her nose.
“What kind of food do you eat in the Purlieus?”
They sat and talked until they saw the first stars of the Angelis night.
