Outside the Walls: The Maker's Place

       
           

      The Moon was windblown and bright. I could see the girl, but she was an outline, part of the night, and she didn't answer me. She just started walking again, heading back toward the wagon road. We followed her until she turned and gestured at us to stop. "Hide here and wait for me," she whispered. 

         Before we could react, she was running down the narrow, muddy track, disappearing into the trees. Fob and I looked at each other. I could tell he was still angry. I was, too, but that was the least of my worries. The girl was almost impossible to like, but I liked her anyway because she wasn’t afraid. I was. I had never known anyone who wasn’t afraid. So I started walking, following her.

            When I heard an odd sound, I ran and I could hear Fob’s footsteps behind me. We kept going, staying close to the edge of the rutted road so we could disappear into the trees if we needed to—then we finally stopped when we saw the glint of another metal cage shining in the moonlight.  It looked like the one we had seen on the wagon, except it was bigger and full of odd things: There was a pile of what looked like dried clover, a long, thin rake of some kind, a mound of blackish tar, and a row of woven baskets like the wagon drivers hired people in the Old City to make, but they were woven much finer, the sizes and shapes more complicated than any basket I had ever seen.

            Fob and I stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at the cage until a little breeze ruffled the clover and I stepped back from a strong, strange smell in the air—just an instant before the girl was coming toward us, waving her hands,  screaming at us to run. We turned and sprinted back up the road. She caught up and we all kept running until we were back on the far side of the meadow, gasping for breath. Then she turned to me.  “What’s your name?”
            That pissed me off. Things were bad enough without stupid jokes. She was the only one who had kept her name a secret.
            “What’s your name?” she asked me again.
            “Dickens!”  I leaned toward her and shouted, hoping to startle her into jumping. But she didn’t. She just turned to Fob. “Tell me your name.”   
            He looked at me, then at the girl. “My name is Fob,” he said quietly. “You know that. What’s your name? Have you found a new one yet?”  The girl shook her head, and they stared at each other, like dogs that were about to fight.

            The girl glared at Fob for a moment more, then she exhaled and stepped back. “That was a makers-place. One where the poisons are made.”
            My  skin prickled. Fob and I had both awakened by the river without any memories. Everyone in the Old City does.  I looked at the girl. “The children in the wagon seemed so sad and—”

        “No,” she interrupted. Her shoulders dropped and she looked up at the moon before she answered.  “They are small but they aren’t children. Those are the makers.”