A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,10

a terrible limp to my step, done no service by the disheveled land. It was going to be a nightmare climbing out of the city.

And the sun was disappearing behind the tops of the piled-up buildings.

*

I blazed a steady but inhibited pace, limping through the pre-twilit streets. I had managed to climb free of the square, had slowly conquered the jumbled alley and crossed the sloping avenue, but my progress was hindered. Only sheer determination and survival instinct kept my choppy strides consistent in their slow-going.

Survival was programmed into me. It was in all of us, but especially saturated in those of us who were thrust out into the open, exploited and counted on. It was why Albinos didn't cross each other. If we saw one of our kind while on a loot, we turned the other way. We avoided the promise of conflict that came with competition.

Some would think there would be kinship between us, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.

The impending twilight hounded me as I went, each minute a taunt as my steps dragged closer and closer to the symbol that was both my haven and charge. Safety lay there, but also – I had to sing the fields into bloom before dark set in.

Breath rasped in and out of my lungs. One rib grated against another like knife on bone as I breathed. I had not had the pleasure of sprawling across the city underbrush quite so artfully before. It was rather lumpy, I decided – and then cringed at the understatement. I had never felt so plowed out of joint in my life. I was certain my body had been perforated in a dozen different places from my spill; and where it wasn't dredged, I was sure it was cracked.

One apparently did not roll down these hills as the grassy green slopes of times past.

Dark colors were leaking down across the horizon.

Letta will fix you right up with her magic herbs and salves, I told myself. There was no need to worry about the speculated extent of the abuse my body had taken. In the back of my mind, I feared the consequences of being torn up in a locale so susceptible to infection, but we the children of Manor Dorn were hardy souls. The lot of us had been through hell and back, one way or another. Some of us twice.

I felt a subtle chill in the air.

The question was: should I return to that sunken square the next time to finish what I had started with the rich soil that I discovered there? Was it worth going back for further harvests, or had the novelty been shot through the heart and endangered? The other fellow ought to be more dissuaded from the area than me, I reasoned with myself, but my encounter with the place stayed with me. I couldn't help it; I was wrecked. Dissuasion was raked all over me.

Tomorrow brings new perspective. You'll see. I would be more than ready to hazard the location again when my next mission came around. After all, the other fellow had proven a point: these were desperate times. If I found good soil, I was going to dig my greedy hands in and bleed it for all it was worth.

The desperate were entitled to whatever they could get their hands on.

I limped free of the rubble, finally free of the city. Now there was only the distance, that long empty road ahead of me. I kept my eyes peeled for Manor Dorn's lonely silhouette as the outskirts crawled nearer one hobbling, maddening step at a time.

I tried telling myself: I could run.

But I could not.

My body simply would not increase its efforts without crumpling me into a heap where I stood. Pathetic or not, I was achieving my limit.

The fields expanded around me, the trails of architectural remnants dwindling into the weeds. What once had been a more rugged road this far out was now a thing of smooth wonder in comparison to the ruined city streets. It aided my handicap, but I kicked up dust.

I did not like kicking up dust out in the open. A creature could see that, across the distance. A moving cloud that meant live meat.

Yet there was nothing for it. I could do naught but blaze a trail toward sanctuary.

A pall of gray was arresting the land, but I saw it: the lonely manor rising in the distance. Soon the mist would mix with the gray to