Chapter 3

"What are these stones?"

The precise, crisp, female voice rang through the room. It might have once been a living room in the big house. The ceiling was high and vaulted and housed a chimney and fireplace.

Rachel's eyes focused on the box that was shifting back and forth in front of her so that the light from the windows on the ceiling would catch in the gems.

"Garnets..I think. They're semi-precious."

"Mmm...semi...precious." Dark brown eyes set into sockets that were surrounded by tightly stretched, paper thin skin danced over the top of the box. Then her fingertips, tracing around the tightly woven strands, over the polished surface of each piece.  "And where did you find it."

"It was a trade, from a traveler."

The eyes darted up, and Rachel forced herself to raise her gaze and meet them. She already knew the question but she waited to hear it, her shoulders tense.

"And this traveler's name." The words came out slowly and strained. There was irritation behind them. Rachel felt a small glimmer of satisfaction but would never let it register on her face.

"He's gone. He was there only one night. He left before the third shift whistle."

The room she stood in was void of humanity but for Rachel and the woman she spoke to. Rarely were her guards allowed to remain inside while she was in audience. Rachel had met with the boss many times before but she was always surprised at the newest acquisitions that were displayed. Old mounted animal heads from the time before had been re purposed. Necklaces, bracelets and earrings hung from their antlers, and candles perched in holes drilled through their heads. The raised floor that stretched out in front of the fire place had been turned into a raised Dias with a throne, an armchair covered in a deep purple blanket. Every inch of space on the walls either supported shelves or hooks. Hats, coats, books, magazines, paper and pencil, cans of food. It was a museum and a general store crushed together into one room.

The woman who inhabited the space, and the whole house, matched it perfectly. Her long white hair stuck up in places, unkempt. She wore wrinkled clothes in layers, browns and tans with the occasional spark of red or neon blue.

No one ever saw her outside of the main house, in the streets or in the fields. The meager, sandbag walls that surrounded the town were nothing compared to the tall, brick and stone parapets that completely blocked the view of all but the top most level of the house. There were other houses like it, but they had been gutted and burned, or subdivided into many different apartments and worn down by too many bodies in too small a space. This place was the best possible place, and it had been selected intentionally.

Margaret Wilson hadn't been the first boss, but she was the only one that Rachel remembered. The old woman was as close to a vampire as Rachel could imagine. Boss Wilson had a leech like nature about her. Every move was hungry, desperate and unnaturally graceful. Someone her age was supposed to be blind and arthritic and swelling at every joint. But Margaret was corpse thin and impenatrable.

Rachel knew, as well as anyone else in their town, that a lot of what the government allotted them, intending that it be shared by the whole town, was staying right here in this house. Stored away some where, used as bribes or payoffs, to buy the loyalty of people that would much rather be left to their own devices.

Sometimes Boss Wilson would reward one family of workers inexplicably. Rachel hated those times. There would be happy children's faces, weeping mothers, suspicious but relieved fathers, all thinking that life was finally turning upward. They would tell everyone in the town about their gift, and about who gave it to them. But there was always an agenda. Anyone finding favor with Boss Wilson didn't keep it. There was never a clear reason.  It was cruelty for cruelty's sake, Rachel thought.

She had learned never to accept charity in this new world, and especially not from someone in power. It could mean more than losing her life, or even her soul. Because there was always another life at stake.

"Why would you give this to me?" Margaret asked, finally setting the box down on the small table near her throne. A blanket had been across her lap from the moment Rachel entered. The house was air conditioned, powered by who knew what source. Rachel couldn't imagine wanting something so heavy on her during the day time but if she were stuck in this house every day...she might just. The waste was starting to get to her, as it always did.

"It seemed valuable. We are running low on hops and wheat at the restaurant. We have very little to put in the soup that will keep the workers nourished and h-.." Rachel nearly choked on the word. It was bull, all of it, but it was necessary. "Happy."

Boss Wilson nodded her head slowly, as if moving it any faster might jostle the great inner workings of a genius mind. Rachel knew better, and she recognized the heady smell that always seemed to permeate the house. Perhaps that was why Margaret always seemed so numb. She was always high.

"There may be more wheat...there may be more hops. But those things are not cheap. The government doesn't always send me everything that we need, Rachel."

Crossing her arms, Rachel shuddered involuntarily. It was cold in this room, but the drop in temperature had more to do with Boss Wilson's change of tone. Nothing Rachel didn't expect.

"There have been very few traders coming through. Most of them see the men at the town gates and turn away." She explained.

Margaret leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her fingers playing over the top of the box, tracing the edges of the biggest gem there. Rachel stood there long enough to assume that she had fallen asleep, when the Boss took a deep breath. "Rex tells me there were two strangers...four days ago. One he only saw leaving, the other...the other seemed to catch his interest."

"Really? Did he describe this-"

"A tall man. He appeared to be strong enough, not too old or young. About your age. Long, wavy hair. Wearing a most curious set of boots."

Rachel's eyes widened a bit, a sense of familiarity and panic setting in. She scrambled to grasp where Boss Wilson was going before she got there.

"Boots...I...yes I remember a stranger like that. He...he tried to trade some old, dead batteries for some soup. He went on his way." Rachel desperately thought back to her first lie. Was she keeping them straight? Was there a hole somewhere that Margaret could dig into?

"Rex saw him leaving, dear Rachel. Walking from the town. Sometimes he is a dull boy, but Rex followed this stranger and found that he had hidden the most remarkable machine on the road outside of town. A motorcycle, Rachel, from the old days. Now...that would have been a very worthy trade. Something very...exciting...something that could keep the government occupied for another...year."

Rachel's mouth opened but she didn't speak. A motorcycle, a machine. The Boss wanted it, and clearly didn't yet have it. If Rex, a large, muscular man who thought himself capable of anything, hadn't managed to get the cycle then he had either had a rare moment and made his own wise decision to leave it be, or he had tried and been defeated by the stranger. She hadn't seen Rex at the restaurant since the stranger had gone, but she had been hoping that he had been sent by the Boss to do more of her dirty work. Any time away from that man and his unending sex drive was a blessing.

If the stranger escaped, then he and his machine were long gone. Surely the Boss had to know that. And yet she was bringing it to Rachel's attention. Which meant the Boss thought that Rachel knew where the bike was, or the stranger.  Or both?

"I've never seen the motorcycle." Rachel ventured.

There was a long silence, while Margaret tested the air between them for lies, the tip of her tongue pulsing just past her front teeth, like a snake.

"Then you've seen the stranger?"

What had Rex reported? Had there been an altercation between the two men? Even if Rex had been defeated Rachel couldn't imagine that the stranger escaped without a scratch. The stranger hadn't been showcasing any weapons when he first entered the restaurant. Rex liked to carry around a gun or two, and a billy club made of pipes soldered together.

"No...I haven't..Boss Wilson. Should I watch for him?"

Margaret smiled suddenly. It looked more like a grimace, but the pleased sigh coming from behind it seemed to release the tension in the room. "Would you? That motorcycle would be a lovely trade, and I'm sure a stranger in the desert might want some help from someone so talented as you. You have such a giving heart Rachel."

The compliment was as empty as the room and Rachel took it as a dismissal, turning to leave.

 "Who knows? Maybe the stranger could become a father to Micah."

The sound of her son's name struck like lightning. Rachel turned slowly, crossing her arms over her chest attempting to make her reaction look more casual than it was. The one year reprieve had been veiled before, but Boss Wilson had now made it fairly clear. She wanted the bike, she wanted the stranger. If Rachel could deliver one or both, the Boss would keep Micah's existence hidden from the government for one more year. Most children were supposed to go for training at the age of six. Micah had just turned seven a few months before.


"Do you like the box, Boss Wilson?" Rachel asked. She kept the shaking from her voice, steeling her stomach and the vat of tears preparing to spill.

Margaret craned her neck awkwardly, picked up the box with a limp wrist and let it hang precariously from her finger tips. She seemed to look at everything in the room but the box before she said. "It suits me. I can see that a bag of hops, and a bag of wheat are delivered to the restaurant. We must keep the workers...happy...mustn't we?"

Rachel left the moment the doors at the opposite end of the room swung out. She hurried down the cold corridors and out into the hot dusty sunlight, not stopping until she was outside the back door of the restaurant. The heat of the day hit fast and hard but this time it was welcome. She slammed the back door of the kitchen behind her. The room was empty. Cookie was probably resting upstairs. The restaurant wouldn't open for hours yet. Micah should have been upstairs working on his morning cleaning chores, but moments after she sank into a corner, she heard his quiet, frightened voice say, "Momma?"

Tears had already streamed down her face, but her sobs had been silent. Had something happened? She held her hands out to her boy and he sank down into her lap, wrapping his arms around her neck, burying his face there. She waited for him to tell her what was wrong, but he stayed silent, curling as tightly into her embrace as he could.

What ever the problem was it clearly wasn't an emergency, and in that moment she desperately needed her baby in her arms. She held tight to him, quietly letting the tears fall, pulling back on the reigns. Panic wasn't allowed, she reigned it in. Fear couldn't be permitted to take over rational thought, she reigned it in. By then Micah had drifted quietly into sleep. Rachel smiled. When he was an infant Micah had refused to sleep unless he was being held in someone's arms. She couldn't count the hours, days, weeks she had spent holding Micah until her shoulders screamed in pain. Devising slings and carriers that let her keep him close to her chest but save her lower back.

In those days she could never have imagined a time when she would want to hold her boy for hours and hours. Rachel kissed his head, brushed hair from his forehead, then held the strands back looking at his hairline. The red mark was still there, the birthmark. As a baby it had been easily visible. Some would ask if he had been dropped or had hit his head. Rachel kissed the mark. A mark that she had just as easily seen in the photograph the stranger had shown her.

A stranger that kept turning up. Why was he so important? Why was the bike so important? There weren't many working motorcycles in town. Even still they weren't that valuable. Why was this one so important to Margret?

It wasn't just a trade. It couldn't just be Margret's greed driving this. If it had been Margaret would have sent her goons after the trader. She wouldn't have bothered to offer something of value to someone not directly under her thumb. No...Boss Wilson was avoiding the stranger somehow...she was wary of him...or maybe even afraid of him. She was going through back channels and side lines. 

The whole thing stunk horribly of the government and its ever growing control of the small colonies or towns that remained after the end. Rachel wanted no part of it, but she was being drawn in. She was smart, she had always been smart. She would figure a way to work this to her advantage. Ultimately it wouldn't matter how smart she was. All that mattered in the end was Micah.

Chapter 2

Every night was the same. The same workers with the same attitudes. The same girls with the same ratty clothes and ill applied makeup. The same dusty, mangy mongrel dogs trying to scratch their way through the kitchen door to where all the tasty smells were coming from. The bread was the same, the soup was the same, the ale was the same. But it was the only place in town where people were allowed to gather in large numbers. Without building their own still it was the only place where the workers could get drunk.

The only things that changed really were the rare travelers that happened across the town. Some of them were returning from work visas. Some were homeless, wanderers, vagrants. They came through at their own risk and most of the time very few of them left with their hide intact. All of them were supposed to register with the Boss within 24 hours of arriving but very few of them lasted the night.

No one said anything...but any new women were immediately taken behind the building and used til there was nothing left. The children could sometimes be saved from the horrors of the worst of the workers. The men either challenged the pecking order or became the pecked.

Those workers that were registered in the town didn't have to pay or trade for meals, housing or booze. They all had tabs. They were registered parts of the government. They were to be provided for. They had to show their identification tags until Rachel or Sasha or one of the other girls could easily recognize them, to get what they wanted.

The strangers in town could trade. The trades could be mundane or extraordinary. During the day very few traders came in because they didn't make it past the loafers that lay about just outside of town. At night the loafers were in the restaurant drinking away what they did nothing to earn.

The first trader of the night came in very quietly. Rachel recognized him immediately. He had been living in the distant mountains for almost a full year. He managed to grow some green things, foraged others, and he had opted to trade with Cookie and Rachel instead of the boss.

The relationship they had developed was a good one, based on what little trust a person could have for another person without being related.

He called himself Nathaniel. He was young, Rachel's age, but the sun, and the wind, and hard living had made his hair gray, and his head to wrinkle. He rarely shaved, and his long beard reminded Rachel of the old traditions. Of Santa Claus at Christmas time. As she led Nathaniel back behind the counter with his bag of trades she realized that Christmas had passed by a month ago. She had completely forgotten it.

Just as Rachel came into the kitchen, Cookie headed out, an unspoken exchange of responsibilities. Cookie didn't get along with Nathaniel for reasons that Rachel never understood. After all, Nathaniel was generally the source of the good green things that Cookie loved to eat.

"The winds are up." Nathaniel said, putting his bag on the table. Rachel could see where the weight of the bag had created long sweat stains over his shoulder and down his back. The tan coat he always wore smelled horribly of unwashed skin and campfire smoke. Nathaniel's teeth were rotting worse too and she knew that he had to have run out of the brushing powder that she had sent with him. That or else he'd simply given up on brushing all together.

"Another sand storm is coming. Cookie says she can feel it in her bones."

"Could use some water up in those hills. Haven't got much green for you today."

Rachel felt some of her hopes falter a little. But she knew Nathaniel. He never came down unless he had something good to trade. Together they opened the thick canvas bag.

Inside there were bundles of dried herbs, roots, and berries still clinging to the branches that had birthed them. Enough to enrich the soup and bread that Rachel made especially for Cookie and Micah for a month or so.

Beneath these were several articles made from animal bone. Needles and knives, and buttons of various sizes. Rachel spotted a few that were thicker than they should have been and had only one hole. She plucked them from the stack, drawing in a breath to tell Nathaniel that she couldn't take them. Before she could the bearded man smiled. "Wheels...for young Micah."

"Oh how clever. He will love those Nathaniel."

"I wasn't down for Christmas, had nothing to give him. Took down a wild dog. Took me some time to make these." He never really met her eyes as he spoke. His speech pattern was simple and steady. The words of a man who rarely talked, and when he did it was most often to himself.

Rachel beamed, resisting the urge to hug him. Pestilence was hard enough to combat without welcoming it with open arms. She didn't want to speculate on what kind of bugs used his body for a hotel.

"They are perfect, thank you."

"I woulda liked to give 'em to him maself but...I know how you like him to stay up in the room when you've got a full house. Other than this here basket, I haven't got much else to trade. I'll take whatever you can give me. I don't want no charity. Just like always."

The basket he pulled out was small, in the shape of a box and decorated on the top with several semi-precious gems woven tightly in. It reminded Rachel of a jewelry box she had owned as a young girl.

"It's lovely. You've been finding more and more gems."

Nathaniel shook his head, a dirty finger with a ragged, tooth-worn nail resting on the lid, inches from the largest of stones. "Those are the last of what I could find. I gotta move my camp soon. Might be movin' it pretty far. North, probably."

Her stomach dropped. She knew what it meant. Fewer visits, a loss of the nourishing roots and berries that couldn't be found in the desert, a loss of a lot of the trade items that Rachel needed in order to keep Micah out of sight of the government, the boss, the people that meant to take his talents and twist them.

She swallowed and nodded her head, her fingers tightening around the box. It was valuable to someone who could afford pretty things. Someone like the boss. She would show the box to Cookie. They could decide how best to trade it later. She set the box down on the counter and quietly collected the herbs and berries and the stone wheels into it.

"We'll miss you greatly Nathaniel." She said before she held out her hands to him. Reluctantly, in the manner of a man who already had nothing, he released the strap that he hadn't let go of since he came in. Rachel took the bag and moved to the back, filling it with the things they could spare. Cans of powdered milk, meat and snails, something no one would eat but that came from the government in spades. Nathaniel never complained about receiving them so she always saved the cans for him.

She put in several loaves bread, most of them left over from the day before, a large box of matches and a bag of tobacco that she had been saving for months. It was as valuable as oil and gasoline, if not more so, and very few were able to get their hands on a bag. It had cost her a lot of time and careful trading to get it but for what Nathaniel provided, and for the friendship and loyalty that he had offered Micah and herself, it was worth it.

When she returned she smiled at Nathaniel, who had characteristically helped himself to a bowl of soup. She let him eat, leaving his bag beside him. Even before she could leave the kitchen he had unconsciously slipped his hand back through the strap of the bag.

"He gone?" Cookie asked quietly, turning briefly from the bar full of hungry men and women. Rachel shook her head, smiling softly.

"He's eating. But he says he's moving on. Further north. Perhaps you should make amends-"

Cookie scoffed and turned to walk down the bar and tap another keg. Rachel walked away from the counter, taking up her rag and moving to clear and wipe down the tables. As she worked she dodged exploratory hands, both male and female, ignored comments and ducked at least one thrown piece of crust.

Nothing was ever good enough of course. The soup was too thin, the ale tasted like dog spit and the bread was too hard and too tasteless. The insults bounced off of her like the bread did. There had been far worse things, far harsher climates that she'd weathered.

By the time she returned to the kitchen with a stack of dirty dishes, Nathaniel had gone. He always ducked quietly out the back door when he was finished. It was safest for everyone that way but Rachel felt a pang of regret that she hadn't actually said good bye.

The mid-afternoon rush of workers filed out. Some to return home to what semblance of families they might have, others returning to the wells and mines. The worst of the worst, especially Rex and his crew would be in later. There was work to be done but Rachel was excited to show Micah the present Nathaniel had brought him. It would give him something to do for the rest of the evening and keep him from coming to the top of the stairs to listen too closely to the conversations below.

She was mere feet from the stairs, when a voice behind her caused her to pause. With the restaurant quiet it was hard to miss. A man had entered. Someone she had never before seen. He looked to be her age, but like Nathaniel he had some gray appearing at his temples. He wore traveling clothes and was covered in the dust of the road. The black jacket and hat looked almost tan. His face was covered in unkempt beard and framed with long, wavy brown hair.

She would have dismissed him immediately if it hadn't been for his eyes. Clear blue, crystalline eyes.

"Do you own the place?" He asked her, craning his neck to one side to scan the few occupied tables, then looking the other way, toward the door that led to the kitchen.

Rachel automatically followed his gaze. "No." She said, carefully hiding the box behind the curve of a hip. "But I work here. If you'll give me a moment...I..." She gestured vaguely up the stairs, waiting until the stranger nodded before she took the steps two at a time.

There was something about his face. Something about the way his hair hung near his cheekbones. And his eyes. It was as if she had met him before, and yet she was certain that she didn't know him. Halfway up the stairs she realized that Cookie was in the back of the kitchen, likely occupied with another batch of bread. She wouldn't be able to hear if the stranger decided to take advantage and steal something from behind the bar.

Rachel wouldn't have immediately labeled him as a killer or a thief but she had no real way of knowing his intentions. It wasn't safe to leave him alone in the restaurant longer than a minute or so. At the top of the steps she paused in consideration then tucked the box up against the base of the banister and went back down the stairs.

She could show Micah later.

"Have you tags?" She asked as she crossed the floor to the bar. The stranger had already seated himself on the stool and set a bag on the counter top. It had to have been one that he carried on his back because she hadn't seen it before.

"Tags?" He asked, and his eyes flickered toward the door that led to the outside.

Rachel gave a humorless smile without parting her lips and said, "Then if you'd like a meal or a room you'll have to trade. I can tell you our prices are stiff. There isn't much to be had in the desert."

"I've noticed that." The man said and pulled the bag off the counter and into his lap. Rachel heard the sound of a zipper being pulled back. She didn't like that she couldn't see into the bag anymore and she took a step or two away from the counter, watching for his hands.

When both came up forming fists she arched a brow in confusion then stepped forward again. Several objects made plunking sounds on the counter. He pulled his hands away and she blinked in surprise.

"These can't possibly work!" She said, picking up one of the two inch cylinders and turning it in her hands.

"They do...but only when combined with this." The stranger said, pulling another object out of the bag. It was made of metal, about four inches long, and four inches high. It felt heavy when she lifted it and underneath she could see a spot for the batteries that he had produced first.

She fit two of them into the slot and set the object down on its wheels. It didn't move at first and she looked back to the traveller. Pulling his hand free of the gloves he had been wearing, the man reached out a single finger, poked at a small button on the top of the cab and set the small train engine into motion.

It took off slowly, chugging away down the counter top.

"Send it back down this way." He said and Rachel picked up the toy, feeling it pulse in her hands. As it returned to him the stranger put out a hand to halt its course, and quickly attached three cars of similar design behind the engine, then let them go.

"Where did you find these?" Rachel asked, her mind working through the possibilities.  He didn't look government but there were always rumors about spies sent out to test the workers. To make sure that all trades were going to the bosses.

He paused, looking after the toy. "I made them," he said turning the train with the practiced ease of someone who had handled it many times before. He let the toy run a few more moments before he stopped the engine and removed the batteries.

Micah would love them, Rachel thought. He would be excited for days. There would be hours of taking apart and rebuilding. Hours of learning. And this man had created them? She was getting ahead of herself she knew, but could he be another Nathaniel? Could she persuade him to stay there in the town? She didn't think he was lying. No one lied about having the ability to create things. It made him valuable, and it would be dangerous for him to misrepresent such an ability. Did she dare trust him with her knowledge of Micah?

"What...what is it you want exactly?" She asked finally, her eyes latching onto his, wanting to see how his irises reacted when he answered. She only caught a glimpse however because the stranger had looked down to his bag again. He was pulling out something else and Rachel instinctively backed away.

He must have caught the movement because he paused as well and glanced around the room again before setting something hard and flat down on the counter. When Rachel stepped closer she could see that it was an old metal picture frame, turned upside down. The metal around the outside had been reshaped and the black cardboard backing faced upright. When she turned it over she found another backing where the glass should have been. She looked askance at the stranger who grinned awkwardly and slid one of the cardboard pieces free.

"Glass never lasts long on the back of the...well...in the desert, you know." He said then tilted the frame up for her to see, his grin disappearing. An old photo, taken before the end. Just before the end according to the date in the corner. The subject was an infant, a boy judging by the clothing.

She met the stranger's eyes then looked back to the picture.

"I'm looking for this boy." He said. "It might be my son, or my nephew maybe...I don't really know...but if he's you know..." The stranger brushed at his face hastily. He might have been scratching his face or wiping a tear, but the air between them thickened when he did. "If he's alive I think he's mine."

Rachel looked from the face in the photo to the stranger and back again. "He looks like you." She said, feeling something horrible starting in the pit of her stomach. The stranger smirked awkwardly again and nodded.

"Yeah I get that a lot."

The boy also looked an awful lot like someone she knew. The photo was faded and cracked. She could see why the stranger had chosen to hide it in the frame. She couldn't know for sure but the longer she stared at the photo the more she felt her heart clench.

"If I don't know him...I mean if you can't find him here...I can't really take this." She said, pushing the toy back towards him. She wanted him to take it back. She wanted him to take his photo and move on and look somewhere else. So she could forget the sinking feeling, the feeling she had been dreading all of Micah's life.

She could see the traveler's eyes dull immediately. He was already giving up on his quest and she got the feeling that he had been searching for a very long time.

"I saw that you have rooms to rent upstairs. I could use a place to sleep for the night, some food."

Rachel folded her hands together, pressed them lightly against the place where her stomach was threatening to rebel. She wanted to tell him that there were no rooms available. She would feed him and get him out as soon as possible, but she couldn't risk him going up stairs. Couldn't risk him seeing...no. That picture wasn't of anyone she knew. It was too much of a coincidence. Too far fetched.

"We don't have any rooms." She said, her voice freezing and her pitch dropping. "I have some soup in the back, some ale, but the bread is cold."

"I'll take just about anything." He said and opened his mouth to say more, but Rachel wouldn't let him.

"You can have the food just this once. You can keep your toy and your batteries." She told him then turned and dissappeared through the kitchen door. Once she passed through that threshold she planned to gather food for the stranger as quickly as possible, let him eat and rush him on his way. Her body rebeled before she could and she was soon bent over the bucket she had used for mop water hours before, wretching.

Cookie rushed over to her, then moved away and Rachel could hear water running. Moments later there was a cold wet cloth pressed against the back of her neck, while Cookie pulled her hair away from her face.

"Was it the ale again? Have we got a bad batch.  I knew I couldn't trust that Nathaniel. He's poisoned the soup hasn't he?"

Rachel trembeled, her stomach muscles still clenching while she tried to take deep breaths. Her throat felt raw, her eyes stung with tears. She was able to shake her head before she leaned back against Cookie's strong arms, gulping air.

"It wasn't one of the workers was it? I saw that traveler out there. Didn't recognize him though."

"I don't know him." Rachel said softly, her voice congested and raw. She pulled the rag away from her neck and wiped her face with it, then accepted Cookie's help to stand. "He needs soup and bread and to be on his way."

Cookie guided her to the stool the older woman had been seated on before and walked only a few feet away to pull down a glass bottle from behind several sacks of flour. She poured a small measure of the amber liquid into a wooden cup and set it on the counter.

"You take slow slips of that then. I'll take care of this one."

Cookie's hand rested briefly on Rachel's shoulder, warm and strong, before it slid away, leaving a gap that seemed to expand and swallow the entire kitchen in seconds. There were no more sounds or smells, only a terrible black hole that threatened to take away any hope left in the world.

Rachel had long ago forced herself to forget the truth. Forget anything that didn't help to keep her sanity and her family together. There were too many other things to remember. How to survive, how to stay tough, how to hide a small genius and still allow him to grow and breathe and be as close to a normal boy as he could be. His name was Micah, he had to know that. He was only seven, he had to know that too. He was loved...that was the most important part.

What hadn't been important at all was how exactly he had come into Rachel's life. He had been so small and young when she first held him in her arms. It didn't matter that he wasn't of her womb. He needed a mother...she desperately needed a son. Needed him.

Seven years ago, mere months after the chaos had began, no one cared to dispute her claim of motherhood. An infant was extra baggage, an extra mouth to feed that no one else wanted. He had already been discarded once.

Rachel had been so wrapped up in finding this new life that it had taken away the pain of the loss of...

A sudden gust of wind beyond the walls of the kitchen pressed grains of sand against brick. The sound, so often reminding her of the rain storms of her past, brought her back from the brink and her hand closed around the hand carved cup. The centimeter of liquor inside was from before the end, a bottle that Cookie saved for special occasions only. No one but Rachel and Cookie even knew about it. Sometimes it was all that got them through the day, just knowing that a part of the past still existed.

Rachel sniffed at it and knew she couldn't keep it down. She would let Cookie drink it later, but the rough hewn nature of the cup was grounding her.

She had clung to Micah for so long. Fighting to keep him alive when he was little, fighting to feed and cloth a rapidly growing boy with little more than rags on her own back. Fighting to keep him hidden from a developing ruling power that wanted every asset at its beck and call, promised a bright future but only returned more nightmares.

But this traveler. She couldn't trust him, it would be foolish to assume so. He hadn't been to the town before, and he had managed to enter it without injury to his person. Maybe he was a survivor, maybe he was a spy. Maybe...

She couldn't deny what she had seen in his eyes and in the photo. The boy in the picture and the boy that she had taken as her own, they were one and the same. And Micah looked an awful lot like the stranger.

Chapter 1

"Momma look! I fixed it."

Micah ran from the base of the stairs the moment he spotted Rachel across the room. He scrambled to is knees and gently lowered a contraption made of metal and stone to the floor. The moment his small hands moved away from it, the device propelled itself forward. The stone wheels, motor made of tightly wound metal and wire chassis cruised smoothly across the well worn wood until it came to rest against the base of a counter.

Rachel's eyes brightened and she beamed at the car, then at its creator. She knelt beside Micah and hugged him tightly, pressing her cheek down hard against his head.

"How wonderful. Just wonderful, Micah."

The boy grinned and threw his arms around her briefly before he excitedly broke from her grasp. He charged across the floor, picked up the small vehicle and quickly wound it again before setting it loose. Though the room was void of other people there were plenty of obstacles, chairs and tables and stools that stood in the car's path. Since he had not yet developed a way to remotely steer the small car Micah had to closely follow behind his contraption righting and winding it.

Rachel smiled after him as she stood. He was a smart boy. Had always been. She bent to the bucket full of lye soap and hot water. Broken skin stung as she retrieved the cloth she had been using before, wrung out the excess and wiped it over the nearest table top.

"Have you discovered a way to steer it?" She asked.

"No...I would have to re do the whole front...um..."

"Axle?"

Micah nodded after a moment of thought, the vehicle in his hands, his fingers wrapped around the part whose name he could never remember. "Right, I would have to redo the joints on the front axle for that."

"Is that all?"

Micah took in a breath and turned his car upside down while he weaved through the maze of tables and chairs finally plopping down on the corner of a chair near where his mother worked.

He was silent longer than Rachel expected and she glanced up to see him bent slightly, carefully focusing on the front wheels as he pushed the car back and forth on the table.

"I don't know." He said finally, but Rachel could hear not defeat, but future planning in his voice. They had been working lately on not giving up on a problem when it first presented itself.

"You'll have to work on it then..." She said, finishing the tables and moving to the long polished wooden bar. "But...after you've done your chores."

Micah groaned softly, his chin resting on the table, the car still moving back and forth a few inches.

"And you have your writing lessons."

There was another groan and Rachel smiled softly then strengthened her voice. "Come on, Micah. We only have an hour until the workers come in."

Large brown eyes rolled in her direction and the tousled head of hair rose with exaggerated slowness that seemed at odds with the energy she'd seen only a moment before.

"Cookie's waiting for you."

Micah trudged behind the bar and into the large kitchen looking more like the seven year old boy that he was, than he had moments before. He looked very much like any seven year old boy would look when given undesirable chores to do. It was so normal, so nostalgic, it gave Rachel pause.

Her hand went automatically to the handle of the mop, discarding the wet cleaning cloth, and she sunk the bundle of rags at the end into the bucket of water, and paused.

The room around her was quiet, which was rare. Twenty-two round tables, ten cracked and mended booths, a bar with ten stools, none of which managed to make order out of the mess of humanity that would fill the place in less than forty minutes. The windows were always covered with sand and dust on both sides no matter how many times she tried to clean them. Sweeping only passed the dust around, she had long ago given up on hoping to keep things clean that way.

But she thought, pulling at the heavy mop handle and slopping the lye water over the floor boards,  wetting it down seemed to help. It kept the air cleaner when the mob of sand covered, sweat soaked men and women stormed in and out through the course of an evening.

"He's done so much to that car in the past three days..."

Rachel jumped, and a hand flew to her breast over the place where her heart seemed to try beating out of her chest. "Oh...Cookie, " she sighed.

The older woman's eyes widened a bit, her mouth quirked the tiniest bit in the corner, the only sign of humor before she finished her statement. "He'll be making tiny people next..."

Rachel shook her head, letting her heart calm as she forced the mop back and forth over a large area of open floor. When she moved back to the bucket she could feel Cookie's presence still in the room.

"Lost?" Cookie asked, poised with a stack of clean glasses in her arms.

"In thought...yes." Rachel moved the bucket to a drier part of the floor and slopped water out again. "Every once in a while I forget how long we've been stuck in this place." The wet rags moved back and forth smoothly over the boards, deftly guided around well known snags.

Cookie straightened from her task of putting glasses under the bar and pressed her fingers into the aching muscles in her lower back. Chronic pain, part of getting old. She wondered sometimes if it made a difference that things were the way they were now.

"That's the problem with dreamers..." She said, and her face slipped into a wizened repose when Rachel looked up. "You're able to escape. The rest of us never forget because we never leave."

Cookie took the empty tray into the kitchen with her leaving the younger woman in silence. After a moment Rachel broke it with a miffed laugh. Cookie was an enigma, even before the end, but now...

Rachel attacked the floor more vigorously. She would have time to think later. Outside the shadows were getting longer. There would be wind that night without a doubt and the angrier the wind, the angrier the workers. She would have to send Micah up to bed early, and tuck him in before the late shift arrived or he would be up listening to it all night.

That meant she had to prepare a story for him and she set her mind to that while she finished the floor. By the time she reached the door and dumped what little water remained in the bucket, the place where she had begun her task was already bone dry. Nothing ever stayed wet in the desert.

Micah ran past her as she carried the bucket behind the bar and into the dimly lit kitchen. She just barely caught a glimpse of the car he held in his hands as he ran.  She sighed, dropping her arms in exasperation as she looked at Cookie.

The woman was turned slightly away and Rachel could sense the conspiracy already.

"I asked him to help you."

"And he did." Cookie said.

"For five minutes." Rachel protested and put her cleaning tools away. She slipped into an apron and sat at the central counter where Cookie was running a sharpened blade over the skins of thin, emaciated onions. The last of the shipment for the month, and they were only halfway through.

"He needn't peel the onions and there was nothing else left for him. He wanted to do his lessons so that he would have light left to work on his car."

Rachel pursed her lips, took a peeled onion from the basket and started chopping it. The process was smooth and fast and practiced and she had diced two more before she responded.

"He's smart, Cookie. Too smart. And the more I let him learn, the greater the risk that knowledge is to him."

Cookie said nothing, concentrating on a green spot that might turn into a chute, carefully cutting it away and setting it aside.

"And he likes to show it off." Rachel said, jabbing the point of her knife into the air before attacking another onion. "I've encouraged that in him too. It's dangerous. Far too dangerous."

She shook her head, moving to the stove and casting the diced onions into the large cook pot, scraping the cutting board clean with the dulled side of the blade before she stirred the boiling, murky water. She could feel a familiar lump forming in her throat and she knew the tears that might follow would have nothing to do with the onions.

Beside the pot she pulled a cloth away from a wooden bowl containing rising dough. This she carried back to the counter where Cookie worked, preparing a surface for the kneading.

"It won't be long before Rex or one of the others sees him. Sees what he can do. They'll take him before his tenth birthday and turn him into something-"

"Rachel..."

"I know...I know, Cookie. We've been over this. We've been through this far too many times. It's just..." There was flour everywhere. On her hands, on the dough, on the surface of the counter, on the floor.  Rachel sat back on a work stool and let the back of her hands rest against her knees. She took a deep breath, feeling it catch in her. She wiped the cleanest part of her arm across her forehead and sighed.

"Every time he accomplishes something...I feel so proud. So happy for him. I want to encourage him." Tears threatened to spill from her eyes and she finally let them. She'd blame the damned onions if anyone asked. "He deserves to be encouraged. He is such a smart boy."

"But..."  Cookie said, finishing with the last of the onions and moving them to the pot before she focused her eyes on Rachel.

"But...it makes me feel as if I'm training a gladiator...giving him skills that will ultimately destroy him.  Or worse...someone else." With effort Rachel was able to stuff the rest of her emotions back into the tight mental box where she kept them. She swallowed once or twice to get past the taste of bile that always rose when she made the mistake of thinking of Micah's future.

Cookie said nothing, only turning toward the next task. Had she gone to Rachel, comforted her, said meaningless things that changed nothing, Rachel might have slapped her. But that wasn't Cookie's way, and Rachel pulled herself back from the edge, her hands sinking into the dough and working it into loaves that were soon baking in the brick, sun-heated oven.

There were other things to be done. Tea leaves to boil, salt and seasonings to be added to the thin soup. They would have to tap between five and seven kegs of what amounted to moonshine for the evening and they had to be moved from the cool cellar where they aged to the bar top.

The women worked together quietly until the first of the workers started tapping at the glass of the windows.

"Do we ever open early?" Cookie asked, exasperation fueling the famous anger that she exhibited only when the bar was open.

Rachel smirked wryly. "It's Walter...he doesn't know when we open because he doesn't know when the workers are released."

"Because he doesn't work, the souse."

Rachel retrieved her loaves and put more dough into the oven, pleased with the way this batch had browned. It was never a good night when the bread was burned.

"Are we ready then?" She asked, pulling off the flour covered apron and draping it over the back of a chair.

Cookie pressed withered hands against graying hair, pulling it up and back into a bun that she tied with a bit of wire. "Give me a moment to spit in the soup."

Rachel cackled wickedly, took the keys and moved to the door to open the flood gates.