CHAPTER 2

WATCHING YOU FROM WITHIN THE WALLS

The feral kitten had climbed up onto the roof of the trailer just fine, but apparently it couldn’t get down by itself. Its curled-up body had been discovered there, dead of starvation and cold, the morning before Colonization Days had begun.

Several of the performers had gotten together and buried the tiny corpse behind the camp, at which point that minor incident was considered over and done with. Soon no one even mentioned it anymore. He was the only one who realized that the kitten’s shivering ghost had stayed left behind on the roof, though since he hadn’t done anything in particular about it, it was just the same as if he hadn’t known at all.

But something happened on the second night of the festivities, something that he considered far more important than any dead kitten. The girl who’d been staying with them for the last two nights, as a companion or something of the troupe leader’s old friend (who didn’t look anything like the part—more like a young man their own age), was standing in front of the trailer and looking fixedly up at the roof.

She was a girl of about fifteen or sixteen, rather plain-looking, but with something a bit foreign about her. Maybe it was the impression left by the contrast between her black hair and eyes and her pale white skin.

She didn’t have any strong expression on her face; she just stood still there for a while, looking. Eventually her eyes flitted left and right as if she was looking for something, and then she disappeared. A few minutes later, she came back dragging a long, thin board from God only knew where, which she propped against the trailer wall at an angle. Then she stepped back a few paces and stared some more.

After a short wait, there was still no movement on the roof. Finally he saw a change in her face. She tilted her head to the side and gave a puzzled frown, then smiled just a little and whispered, “You can get down now.”

A small shadow moved on the roof. Maybe it had been on its way to becoming a vengeful spirit: a hazy, dark clump of something like noise gingerly rested one front paw on the board. The paw was pulled back with a start, but then the creature darted smoothly down the plank to spring into a run the instant it touched the ground. Right before it disappeared into the dim night, the noise resolved itself into the shape of a cat for the barest instant and gave a single meow.

The girl expressionlessly saw it off and then began to clear away the board. She acted as if nothing had happened, but he could tell there was a bit more lightness in her step.

Probably her companion didn’t know about all this even now (since she didn’t seem like the type who’d go out of her way to bring it up), but he’d quietly watched the whole ten-minute affair with his head sticking out of the trailer—through the wall.

The third morning of Colonization Days was bitterly cold. To the outside observer, the procession making its way out of their remote camp wrapped in white mist looked a little…okay, a lot strange. Patchwork animals, fairies dressed in watery blue, clowns in pointy hats, and more shuffled off to work, muttering to each other: “Brr, it’s freezing this morning.” “You look like you’ve got it good in that nice warm costume. Switch with me for the day!” Among the other troupes she could even see a band of musicians in dazzling fluorescent divided skirts and some half-naked (in this cold!) giants wearing chain mail. They must be street performers who did strong-man acts.

“Oh!” She’d caught sight of someone walking a little apart from this bizarre parade: a lanky redhead who stood out from the crowd in a different sense. He was just now breaking away from the group, trading good mornings with Shiman, who was carrying a bunny head under one arm.

“Harvey, wait!” she called after him. He turned just halfway toward her and gave her a look that, for all its lack of expression, still managed to be blatantly annoyed. He did at least wait while she ran up to him, but he obviously intended to leave her behind.

The entertainers passing by occasionally cast interested glances at them. Kieli guessed a one-eyed, one-armed redhead as tall and lean as a rake couldn’t help attracting attention. Though on the other hand, the “aura” or whatever you’d call it that he projected was actually pretty forgettable compared to this crowd, so he didn’t stick out like a sore thumb or anything.

“You’re not fair! I want to come today, too.”

“What do you mean I’m not fair? You can’t come. Stay here.”

“Aw,” she whined. She’d expected that response, so she wasn’t surprised, but she still pouted and refused to back down. Today I’m going to get him to take me along! Two days ago he’d dumped babysitting duty on her, and yesterday he’d sneaked off somewhere without telling her (which was what made him unfair!). She’d accidentally fallen asleep last night, so she didn’t know for sure, but it seemed as if he hadn’t gotten back until almost sunrise. “If you’re just going to leave me behind every day, what was the point of me even coming?”

“It’s easier for me to get around alone.”

“But I want to —”

“No buts. You promised,” he shot back in a way that left no room for argument. Kieli glumly fell silent. She honestly hadn’t thought he’d put her promise to obey him to such devastatingly effective use; now she really regretted it. I never should’ve made that promise.

“I’m going, though. Take me with you,” said the radio hanging around Kieli’s neck once her turn was over. Harvey looked predictably displeased, but the radio ignored him and kept right on going. “I didn’t promise anything, you know. Take me with you as a substitute watch.”

“No watch is that irritating.”

“Quit grumbling and take me with you. Take. Me. With. You.”

“…Fine.” Harvey conceded with a sigh, though he made it clear he was surrendering with extreme reluctance. He reached out to lift the radio off Kieli’s neck, so she raised her own hands and took it off herself, just as reluctantly. If she left him to his own devices, he’d just slip into Harvey Time and forget to come home. It’d be a relief to have the radio with him, anyway, even if he wouldn’t bring her.

She stretched up to slip the cord around his neck. Her heart started pounding without warning at how close their faces were, but—“Huh? You’ve got another weird cut.” She could see it on one side of his forehead, hidden under his bangs. “Where’d you get that?”

“Get what?” said Harvey, touching his own brow with his left hand. He blinked as if it was news to him, too, and cocked his head to one side. “Huh…oh, yeah, I hit my head on a sign yesterday. It was too low.”

“When something is too low, bend over,” jibed the radio tiredly. Kieli thought he had a good point. She sighed, half exasperated and half worried. Honestly, why is he so unbelievably oblivious sometimes? Then she abruptly realized something was off.

She figured out right away what it was. If the wound still hadn’t healed by today, that must mean it’d been really bad at the time. She knew Harvey didn’t pay much attention to himself, but surely even he would’ve noticed something like that?

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, it’s just a scratch. Don’t touch it.”

“You’re such a liar. There’s no way it’s just a —”

“I said don’t touch it!”

Kieli froze, the hand he’d brushed away hanging suspended in midair.

She hadn’t expected him to reject her so fiercely when she reached out to touch him, and now she gaped at him with no idea what to do. “I’m sorry, did I upset you…?” Even to her own ears she sounded on the verge of crying. Now he’d heard her sounding all weird! What should I do? she thought, scrambling frantically for something to say next.

“Hey! Whatcha picking on her for?” called a flippant voice. Kieli turned around and saw a performer in striped overalls grinning at them as he walked past. Under one arm he carried a yellow-and-green patchwork mouse head—seeing it, Kieli finally connected the face with a name. Well, the nickname based on the costume, anyway. This man was called “Rat.” The bear that was often with him had a nickname based on his costume, too: “Bearfoot.”

Now the mouse and all the others were trooping by them, hooting and whistling and catcalling.

“Ohoho, what’s up? Lovers’ quarrel?”

“Don’t go makin’ your girl cry, now!”

Flustered, Kieli found herself blurting, “Oh, no, it’s not like that!” Harvey, on the other hand (Did that “girl” mean what it sounded like? Which means that’s how we look?), just called back an unruffled “Whatever” without showing any particular reaction to the word. When she darted her eyes up to his face to see how he was taking it, he gave her a brief glance and one last “You stay here” before walking off himself. Kieli might as well have been his dog.

The thick morning mist swallowed up his dull-copper head in no time, and she stood there in place for a while, exactly like a dog. More than one thing about that whole conversation made her unhappy, but eventually she resignedly made her way back to the camp. Busy as she was forming a plan to secretly follow him next time, she didn’t see that one pink animal costume had stopped walking to stare at her.

And that was how the third morning of Colonization Days began…

It was sunset that evening when everything happened.

A burglary…?

The performers had come home after their day’s work, and the camp was getting lively again. About twenty people were gathered together in the central clearing surrounded by each troupe’s trailers, talking about something with grave faces. Kieli recognized a few of them from Shiman’s troupe, so she walked over and listened. Apparently several of the trailers had been broken into, including their troupe’s. Since the place was practically deserted during the day, people didn’t keep valuables there as a rule, so nobody had lost much other than some food. Still, everyone there seemed on edge.

“Maybe he was an amateur, if he only stole food.”

“No, he must’ve been able to pick locks, because the storehouse was locked up.”

“Oh, please. Lock picking is a basic skill for anybody in the downtown slums.”

“Nobody saw this guy?”

“Oh, hey, Kieli!”

When someone suddenly turned to talk to her in the middle of a conversation she’d been watching from the outside, Kieli instinctively stiffened. She looked up to find the owner of the voice. It was one of the performers whose names she knew: Rat, currently not wearing his mouse suit.

“You were here all day, right? Did you see anyone suspicious?”

“No…” She scanned through her memories of the day. After she’d finished dealing with the troupe’s enormous pile of laundry, she’d played in the sandbox a little with Nana, and then in the afternoon she’d ended up dozing off with the girl in her private trailer. The other troupes’ trailers were pretty well out of eyeshot from where she spent her time, so she couldn’t say about them, but if someone had robbed Shiman’s group, it must’ve been during that nap. “I didn’t notice him.”

“Aw, man,” Rat groaned, looking glum.

Kieli was miserable with guilt. If I hadn’t taken that nap, maybe I could’ve prevented this.

Then someone said something completely unexpected: “Maybe you were the thief, eh?”

“Huh?!” She was so shocked she didn’t even think to deny it right away. She’d never seen the man in Shiman’s troupe before, so he must be from one of the others.

“I mean, you’re the only one who was here the whole time, right?”

“That’s not a bad point, actually. Plus it’s weird that she didn’t notice it happening.”

Once the idea had been suggested, the others started to nod, too, and then all kinds of people were turning sharp, suspicious gazes on her.

No…Kieli felt her heart throbbing painfully. She balled her hands into fists inside her coat.

“Quit saying that stuff, guys.” One young man leapt to her defense, breaking the charged atmosphere. She recognized him, so he must be one of Shiman’s people, but she couldn’t quite remember who he was. After a beat, the name “Bearfoot” popped into her mind.

He seemed good-natured, and not actually all that tall for someone who wore such a gigantic costume. He gulped nervously when the eyes that had been focused on Kieli swiveled toward him. “I mean, you know, there’s no p-proof…” It was nice to have someone on her side, but he didn’t seem very dependable.

If someone much more dependable hadn’t chosen that moment to appear, the two of them would definitely have lost the argument.

“I was wondering what all the fuss was about.”

Everyone turned at the sound of that low yet penetrating voice. Behind the ring of people stood a middle-aged man in an overall costume—the leader of the Shiman Troupe. He was always the last to leave work; from the costume he was still wearing, he must have just gotten back. Above his humorous short-legged body, his rugged face was frowning grimly.

“Boss!” appealed Bearfoot in a tearful voice. Shiman swept an impartial glare around the clearing at his own troupe and the foreign troupe members alike. “I came over here because I heard there’d been a burglary, but maybe I got mixed up. I guess you guys aren’t the group talking over the burglary after all; you’re the group ganging up on a girl.”

“No, Shiman, nobody meant to —” An older man, maybe another troupe leader, tried to talk his way out of it, but he snapped his mouth shut at Shiman’s sharp glare. After one quick look at him, Shiman continued, addressing the whole group again.

“All right, listen up. This girl is a guest of my group, and my friend’s dear companion. She’s not somebody we hired to watch our stuff, and we’ve got no reason to suspect her, either. Now, if any of you still have something you want to say, you can say it to me.”

Threatened with that hard face and low growl, nobody could find their voices. After a pause, he cast one last look around the group and then nodded. “Okay, then. Each group will just have to be careful of their things. That’s all we can do about it. So, let’s call it a day. We all have to work again tomorrow.”

And that was that. Everybody looked relieved, and they immediately started splitting off into groups and heading back to their own camps, chattering among themselves.

“You, too,” Shiman said to his own people. “Go back and grab some dinner.” They wandered back to their trailers. Bearfoot the bear hovered anxiously until everyone had left, but when Kieli turned to him and said, “Um, thanks,” he gave her a shy smile and shuffled to catch up with the others.

When only Kieli and Shiman were left under the light in the clearing, an abrupt silence fell. Shiman gazed sternly around the camp for a while, but eventually he turned to her, and his face softened. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“I’m okay.” The other troupes must trust him, too. He’s awful at that balancing act, but he’s a really great leader. She thought she could see why Harvey had kept up their friendship. “Um, would you mind not telling Harvey about this?”

“Sure…but why not?”

“If I cause him trouble on this trip he’ll send me away.”

Kieli was completely serious, but after a moment’s stunned look, Shiman let out a stifled little laugh. Then he gave up stifling it and burst into loud, unrestrained laughter. His booming entertainer’s voice echoed in the quiet night, and he hurriedly smothered it. “Sorry, I was just thinking what an interesting girl you are. I can see why you’re so important to him.”

“I’m not sure he thinks of me that way…”

“Nonsense. He’s never kept one girl with him on his travels so long before, has he?”

Oh, I see, thought Kieli, starting to feel convinced—until she realized what else that meant. “Er, so that means he’s been with women before, for short times…?” she started to ask, then trailed off.

Shiman sheepishly scratched the back of his head with one paw. “Whoops, I guess I shouldn’t have said that. Well, uh…you know what he’s like, so even if he has some whims sometimes, they usually don’t last long…” He meant well, but he wasn’t really helping himself.

Well, when she thought about it, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. He was an adult…She was starting to feel depressed for some reason.

Puff.

Something soft touched the crown of her head. When she glanced up, a big bunny’s hand was resting there. It felt warm and gentle, totally out of keeping with the stern-looking man inside. But just maybe, it exactly matched the kindness of the man inside the costume. “He’s a troublesome little brat, but look after him, okay?” Kieli looked up at the man’s face stuck on the bunny’s body and pulled herself together, nodding.

“Okay.” Then she pouted and complained experimentally, “But he won’t take me with him, even though we’re looking for a good friend.” Why am I saying this? Maybe he just seems like someone who’ll indulge me?

“Yeah, he told me a little about it.” (Knowing Harvey, it was probably literally only “a little.”) “But I imagine tracking down one person in this city would be tough, even if it is his hometown and he knows his way around.”

Kieli blinked. “Hometown?”

“What, he didn’t tell you?” Shiman scratched his head again, obviously wondering if he’d said another thing he shouldn’t have. “I doubt there are any written records left, but when I was a kid you could still hear the heroic stories from the old folks. Stories about South Westerbury’s invincible, immortal soldiers who crushed the North Westerbury occupation force and led the city to freedom.”

The ultimate result of his three days of walking around was, “Yeah, I figured.”

He’d actually more or less reached that conclusion on the first day. According to what he’d heard from the informant he’d visited that first day, about a month ago there had been a small stir about a “moving corpse” showing up in southeastern downtown, and that was apparently what had sparked the rumor that there was an Undying in Westerbury. There wasn’t much eyewitness information, not enough data to make a definitive call on, but at any rate, nobody had reported that it was a blond woman with blue eyes.

He doubted that would be enough to satisfy Kieli, though, so he’d spent another two days walking the streets of downtown just in case. But ultimately, the best result he could get was “Yeah, I figured.”

Personally, Harvey had never connected the Undying from the rumors with Beatrix in the first place. He’d arranged things so that she’d be able to find out where they were through information peddlers, so he assumed that if she were really in Westerbury, she would have contacted them to tell them so by now.

Where the hell did she go…?

He’d told Kieli that there was no need to worry about Beatrix, but it was starting to bother him a little. She wasn’t a nomad like him. She usually picked a city and settled down there (because cities were far more convenient, and—which was probably more important—she could shop in cities). It was hard to imagine that she was somewhere so remote that she couldn’t even get word to them.

Which could mean that she was in some kind of trouble and wasn’t free to act…

Dammit, Harvey thought hypocritically; she causes me so much trouble. Then he got the strangest feeling he heard a voice saying You’re the last person I want to hear that from, and flinched. He wished she would quit treating him like a little brother already. She ought to forget about him and worry more about her own problems, and he also thought she deserved to be happier. Not that he would admit that even under torture.

“Okay, so I get that Beatrix isn’t in Westerbury,” a disembodied voice began.

They were in a narrow back alley squeezed between two high walls. The radio’s freely aired complaints bounced off the ashen walls and blue-gray darkness, giving them an echo that made it hard to judge the distance between them. “But what are we still wandering around looking for, then? And in all these back alleys, too—they’re way too hard to walk in.”

Harvey squinted and stepped over an empty beer case blocking his path. “…I’m the one doing the walking, you know.” The other trash, construction materials, and assorted junk littering the alleyway made it even more claustrophobic. “I just got this feeling like if they were here, they’d be in a place like this.”

“By ‘them,’ do you mean that supposed Undying from the rumors?”

“Something like that.”

“Is it someone you know?”

“No, I don’t think so…,” he answered. He couldn’t think of a response that was less vague than that. He wasn’t even really sure himself why he was looking. In fact, he had a hunch it would be better not to. Alarm bells were going off in his head that felt well past the point of “hunch” and more like some sixth sense telling him Don’t touch this.

But he couldn’t help it; something bugged him about the whole thing, and he couldn’t get it out of his head.

Someone had witnessed a “moving corpse”…

Unthinking instinct had him feeling the back pocket of his work pants for the jackknife he’d stuck there. It was a large one, specially designed for military use—he couldn’t imagine it would be much use against one of them if push came to shove, but it was better than nothing.

Harvey’s stomach turned. Attack weapons revolted him, and he was revolted at himself for carrying one around. He knew it didn’t excuse him of anything, but up until now he’d never actively carried a weapon, even if he did use them when emergencies arose.

Still, he had to acknowledge that if something happened, he’d be at an extreme physical disadvantage the way he was now.

“Hey.”

“Mmm?” No sooner was Harvey yanked abruptly out of his thoughts by a voice calling him than—bam—he crashed into a sign sticking out overhead.

“…Learn from experience already,” said the radio exasperatedly.

His forehead hurt too badly for him to even make a comeback. He held his hand to it and groaned. He’d smacked himself well and good this time. Don’t stick signs on the walls of streets nobody ever goes down; that won’t get you any sales.

“If you noticed it, you should’ve told me sooner…”

“It’s your own fault for not paying attention, and you know it. For God’s sake, get it through your head that you don’t have a nice convenient body that’ll heal without any effort anymore. Kieli’s sure to get suspicious if you keep acting like you did this morning.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be careful. Shut up for a second,” Harvey snapped, sick and tired of having every little thing he said come back blown up to ten times its importance. He closed his eye and concentrated on the flesh under his hand. There was a sensation like tiny insects crawling around inside the wound. Furrowing his eyebrows a little in displeasure, he pictured a fluid like coal tar crawling out of the cut and knitting together the damaged cells.

It was just a little scratch, so a few seconds later it had completely disappeared. The cut Kieli had pointed out this morning had already vanished, too. Or rather, he’d made it vanish.

There was one thing he’d learned to do to make up for the hit to his core’s regenerative powers. As an unexpected side benefit of learning to consciously trace the flow of his blood and the regenerative particles in it, he could now use his mind to concentrate its functions on an injured part of himself and put enough healing power into it to cure minor wounds as well as he always had—though he had to use that technique sparingly, since it also slowed down the healing of his more serious wounds. He’d more or less given up on his right arm, but he was going to be in trouble if he didn’t at least get his eye back pretty soon. It was even easier to bump into things now that he couldn’t judge distances (or anyway, that’s what he thought was happening).

He hadn’t told Kieli about the crack in his core yet. He knew he couldn’t keep her in the dark forever, but when he thought about how worried she’d be, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Although he suspected he was making her worry plenty already…

“This morning wasn’t good…” He hadn’t meant to brush her hand away so violently.

“Don’t pick times like that to freak out—save your energy for showing some reaction when it’s actually called for.”

“Such as?” Harvey asked, letting his eye wander around the alley. The radio was probably talking about how the performers had teased them this morning. As he looked up at the gaping wall of a building that could have been either mid-construction or mid-demolition and thought about how well-ventilated it must feel, he went on. “There wasn’t anything to react to.”

“Oh, please. Just give up and admit it already.”

“Admit what?” He sighed. “…Look, sixteen is still a little borderline, right?” It belatedly occurred to him that as excuses went, that sounded pretty weak, and of course the radio just had to jump all over it.

“Hah, I see what you did there! So what you’re saying is, when she’s seventeen or eighteen there’ll be no problem. That’s what you’re saying, eh?”

Okay, now he was pissed. “Give it a rest! I don’t need you saying this crap to me, I already —” Wait, I already what?

“You already what?” inquired the radio, as if reading his mind.

“…Nothing. End of conversation.” Harvey tilted his head up with a sigh, and his eye lit on a mess of steel framing built alongside the temporary wall there that must be several stories tall. I should hang him off the highest beam and leave him here, he thought, more than half seriously. He’d gone as far as to plan out how he’d climb all the way up there when he felt someone’s eyes on his back.

He turned around, but nobody was there. It was a straight and narrow alley, and although there were plenty of things in his way as he walked, he didn’t remember anything big enough for a person to hide behind. And anyway, if someone had been following them, he would’ve noticed them making at least some noise (even if he didn’t notice hanging signs).

He stood still for a few seconds and peered into the dimness, but there were no suspicious movements. Still, he didn’t think it was his imagination, either. What had…?

The radio seemed to pick up on something, too. A short, harsh burst of static suddenly erupted from the speaker. “Herbie, there’s —”

He’d noticed it and swiveled to look behind him even before the Corporal had the chance to finish. A blurry face appeared through a gap in the metalwork along the wall that no human could squeeze into, and then disappeared again just as quickly. Wait, isn’t that —?

As he instinctively jerked his gaze up, the whole structure crashed noisily down on his head.

“He’s late…,” Kieli breathed and watched the white puff of air disappear into the cold night air. The radio wasn’t here today, so it ended up being just her talking to herself.

Sitting on the edge of the block wall at the entrance to the camp and killing time was starting to become part of her daily routine. She thought Harvey would probably come home at a halfway decent hour today since the radio was with him, but he was still a little late. Everyone at camp had already gone to bed. The plains wind caressed her cheek, and its faint white noise caressed her ears.

Up until eighty years ago, these peaceful Westerbury winds must have been filled with the smells of blood, iron, and smoke.

At the time of the War, the giant twin cities of North Westerbury and South Westerbury had been long-standing enemies, and apparently the fierce urban warfare had cost many civilian lives. The North Westerbury army had invaded South Westerbury and laid it to waste; those ruins were the area south of today’s railroad tracks. After that, South Westerbury had temporarily been part of North Westerbury, but once the surviving rebel forces had gotten their hands on a platoon of Undying, they’d become mighty. They’d beaten back the occupation force and not only liberated the conquered territory but seized control of North Westerbury, too; then they’d expanded on that success and invaded Easterbury. All the wartime ruins in the wilderness of eastern Easterbury were the relics of the Easterbury Federation Army’s final resistance against the forces driving them further and further east.

There were no detailed records left of the War. According to Shiman, this was the story passed down to him by his grandfather, who had lived through the final days of it, when Shiman was just a little boy.

And Harvey had been one of the Undying in the South Westerbury Army’s “possession.”

I wonder if that means he was born in Westerbury…

Kieli’d never heard a single thing about Harvey’s childhood or his family. It was even harder to imagine than the Corporal’s family, and she’d also always had a vague impression that Harvey didn’t want her asking.

Her life was nothing except things she wanted to know about but hesitated to ask about. What had happened in the capital while they’d been apart? Jude who was supposedly dead, those monsters like drowned corpses that they’d run into in the sewers below Gate Town—Kieli was sure those things must’ve had something to do with the capital, and with the Undying, too. Even she could guess that much.

She’d always been too scared to ask Harvey about any of it. She didn’t know anything, but all the same she had a bad feeling about it that was weirdly clear: if she asked him, and if he told her everything, she thought she knew what he would say next. Kieli, would you mind if I went to the capital again?

In her heart, she shook her head in refusal. No, I’ll never let you. He’d been hurt so badly the first time. There was no way he could go back. And there was no way he’d want to take Kieli with him, either.

“…He’s late,” she repeated out loud. Now that she’d been thinking about this stuff, she was really worried all of a sudden. Forcing herself to hope that he’d just come in from the opposite end of the camp again, she hopped down from the wall. The only walls around the camp were the makeshift block wall that came up to around Kieli’s chest and the walls of the trailers themselves, so if someone wanted to come in, they could get in from anywhere.

Illuminated by the lights scattered around the clearing, the cluster of long, thin trailers lay there like a sleeping herd. The four trailers that belonged to Shiman’s group were parked a little ways away from the others.

Kieli started to run toward them, but she stopped again almost right away.

Who’s that…?

She squinted into the shadow of a single trailer parked near the camp entrance. She could have sworn she’d sensed someone watching her. Wondering what they could be up to creeping around after everyone was asleep (and ignoring the fact that she was doing the same thing), something suddenly struck her. Could it be the thief?!

It could be the person who’d robbed them that afternoon. She’d read in a book once that criminals returned to the scene of the crime.

The moment the idea occurred to her, she froze in her tracks, unable to move. Why would a thief be watching me? I don’t know what to do…I’m scared…

Kieli felt another glance fall on her, this time from the shadows on the opposite side of the trailer. She instantly shook herself out of her paralysis and took off running in the opposite direction with all her might. When she made it past the clearing, she took an abrupt turn and dived into the shadow of the first trailer she saw, then started winding her way between the trailers. She’d lost sight of Shiman’s trailers in her blind rush, but she figured she’d see them right away once she got somewhere with a little more space.

When her lungs started to burn, she paused for breath, forcing her heart to stop racing and listening intently for sounds behind her. Even after she’d waited for a bit, she didn’t hear any footsteps following her. Maybe he’d given up, or maybe it had all been in her head, and nobody had ever been following her to begin with.

For the time being, she was relieved. She set off walking rapidly, anxious to get back to people she knew. Madly hoping that Harvey and the Corporal would be home by now, she turned around the corner of the next trailer—

—And smacked straight into the thief.

They both let out simultaneous little shrieks, and then while Kieli stood there frozen stiff, the thief made a panicked escape into the wall next to her. Into the wall.

Kieli was left behind groping for a response.

“…Oh!” She snapped back to her senses and bolted along the wall the thief had disappeared into. It’s not a person, it’s a ghost! And the moment she realized that, her fear strangely evaporated, overtaken by a gutsy impulse to catch him. She had a hunch this made her different from normal people.

When she burst around the opposite corner, the thief was just slipping out of the wall into the gap between two more trailers. Kieli saw what direction he was heading in and circled around to cut him off. When he shot out of the shadows to come up right in front of her, he let out a surprised squeak and skidded to a stop, immediately tensing to dive into the wall beside them.

“Wait!”

At the sound of her voice, he stopped with half of his body sticking out of the wall. Kieli was at least as surprised as he was. She hadn’t actually expected him to wait.

He jerkily turned around, and she got another good look at him. When she connected his face with his nickname, she was doubly surprised. It was “Bearfoot”—the good-natured-looking young man who always wore the bear costume.

“You’re the thief…?” Kieli murmured, dumbstruck. A second later she realized there was a much bigger issue here. “Wait, but why are you…a ghost…?” Her own question confused her even as she asked it. The thief was a ghost? No, wait, more importantly, when did he die? He stood up for me today when everyone was upset over the robbery, and he was definitely alive then—

In no time, her brain was completely overloaded.

“Um, I’m sorry I scared you. I’m not a burglar, and I’m not dead, okay?” the ghost said, scratching his head and looking at once pained and guilty. Kieli stood stock-still, at a loss for words. “So you really can see me…?”

He said he’d always been spiritually sensitive, but he’d awakened to this mysterious power about a year ago. He’d slipped up during practice one day and hit his head hard, lapsing into a coma for three days and scaring the living daylights out of the troupe and their leader—which he knew because he’d seen it all from above, so it had been a little funny to him when he’d come to and Shiman had scowled at him and snarled, I wasn’t worried one bit about you, you little jerk. I only cared about how I’d lose people’s trust if somebody died on my watch.

Anyway, he’d recovered soon enough, and to look at him you’d never know there were any aftereffects, but there was one. One nobody else could ever have guessed.

Ever since his accident, he’d apparently been able to separate his consciousness from his body while he was asleep.

“Then your body is sleeping in your trailer right now?”

“Yep, that’s right.” He grinned at her. Kieli, still unable to fully digest all this, mumbled a noncommittal “Huh.” She was sure this situation—squatting against the wall of a trailer having a long talk with a ghost who wasn’t dead—had to be seriously weird.

“But what were you doing there?” she asked suspiciously. Even if he was able to escape his own body, that wasn’t a reason to be peeping at someone from the shadow of a trailer in the middle of the night.

“No, no!” said Bearfoot. “I wasn’t doing anything bad. I just, um, sort of missed the right time to say something…” The explanation that had started out so spirited tapered off into silence. Maybe he came to say something to me? Kieli blinked at him, and he went on a cautious voice. “Er, well, I felt bad for you what with how he treated you so cold, so I thought I’d harass him a little…But then it came crashing down harder than I’d expected, and…buried everything.” Huh? What buried what? Kieli frowned, unable to figure out what he was saying.

“So basically,” he began uncomfortably, staring at the dirt as he rephrased it a little more clearly.

Basically, he’d accidentally buried Harvey under a giant steel frame at a construction site.

Kieli got as far as “Wh —” before she lost all ability to speak and just sat openmouthed for about three seconds. Then: “Why didn’t you say so before?! This is no time to sit here relaxing! Where is he?! Show me!” She was already on her feet and poised to run before she’d even finished talking.

“W-Wait here, I’ll go back into my body and take you there.” He winced a little as he bounced up from the ground, maybe startled at her ferocity. Then he started running toward the Shiman Troupe’s trailers. Actually, when she looked closely, he wasn’t really “running”; he was kind of hovering a few centimeters above the ground. Only Kieli’s footsteps made a sound as she jogged after him through the dark, silent camp.

When they broke into the central clearing, she could see Shiman’s four midsize trailers parked across the way. For some reason, people were crowded around the one where the male performers slept.

But they should all be fast asleep by now…

There was a figure standing on top of the trailer’s roof. The men below it were shining flashlights up at him and trying to coax him down with cries of “Hey, what’s the matter?” and “Come on back down, Bearfoot!” He looked more like an ape than a bear, wandering around the rooftop, hunching over and peeling his lips back from his teeth to leer threateningly at the people below.

“Huh. Look, that’s me,” said the ghost standing next to her stupidly.

Kieli narrowed her eyes at this total lack of tension and shot back without thinking, “Shouldn’t you be a little more concerned about this?” She could see something like dark fog churning around the man on the roof. It was a hazy collection of static particles that didn’t quite form anything. But every so often, the blur would focus into the shape of an agonized human face.

It was nothing but lingering regrets of the dead now, with no mind of its own left—vengeful spirits must’ve targeted this body as their hiding place because it was empty and soulless.

“Wh-Wh-What should I do?! This never happened before…” Just as the ghost belatedly seemed to realize how serious the situation was, a cry went up from the crowd in front of them.

The man on top of the trailer had all of a sudden leapt into the air. He flew over the heads of his flustered mates to land behind them and come running straight Kieli’s way. “Ack!” She reflexively dropped to the ground and covered her head. Just before he would have bowled her right over, he jumped up again and alit behind her. By the time she turned around to look, he was already a good way off.

“Hey! Where am I going?!” The ghost man who’d been covering his nonexistent head right along with her took off after himself. Kieli quickly followed. The man they chased was really just like an escaped circus animal: jumping from trailer to trailer, making pointless circles, taking all kinds of detours on his way to the camp entrance. There’ll be trouble if he makes it into town. We have to catch him somehow before he gets there!

She managed to catch up to him as he was climbing the post supporting the light over the gate. His ghost paced in a panicked way on the ground below him. Kieli walked over to stand beside the ghost and looked up. She didn’t think the man baring his teeth and bellowing from the top of the post would understand her, but she gave it a try anyway. “Hey, come down from there, okay?” To her surprise, he fell quiet. Had she gotten through to him? She couldn’t tell. She motioned for the bewildered ghost to stay put and climbed up onto the wall of blocks next to them without taking her eyes off the man overhead.

Once she was on top of the wall she stood up and gently reached out a hand, doing her best not to startle him. “Everything’s all right. Come down from there.” He looked down at her consideringly. I think he’s calmed down now…?

No sooner had Kieli thought this than a bright white light struck his face. “There he is! He went that way, guys!” shouted a voice off in the distance. All that calm promptly went down the drain. The possessed man started howling again, and with no warning jumped down toward the blocks.

In surprise, Kieli dodged, sending herself tumbling off the blocks and choking with pain when her back slammed into the hard ground on the far side.

“Kieli!” yelled Bearfoot—or rather, Bearfoot’s ghost. When she lifted her head, she saw the body crouched on all fours at its perch on the wall. It sprang up and launched itself toward her where she still lay on the ground.

As she automatically curled into a ball, there was a ringing thwack!, and the man’s shadow was jarred sharply to one side.

Huh? Now he was lying crumpled on the ground where he’d crashed into the blocks. Kieli gaped and then swiveled her gaze in the opposite direction, where she saw a lanky redhead with a small radio hanging around his neck. A bent pipe, maybe a piece of steel framing, dangled from his left hand.

“Hey! How could you do that?!” shouted the ghost angrily, springing to his feet and dashing toward himself. She thought she heard him wail, And that’s the same spot I hit last year, too!

“How could I?” Harvey tapped the pipe rhythmically against his shoulder and said, looking really quite calm, “I should be asking you that. Do you have any idea how hard it was to crawl out of there?”

…Okay, so he looked calm, but he was subtly but surely pissed off. Now that she got a good look at them, Kieli realized both Harvey and the radio were covered with dust and looked as tattered as a couple of cave explorers. The radio’s fitful static sounded almost like living breath, and with each burst its speaker was spewing angry noise.

“No, um, that was an unfortunate accident, and…” The ghost scurried to hide behind his own felled body (which seemed kind of wrong, really). Harvey took a single, silent step toward him, steel pipe still dangling from his grip. Air gathered itself around the radio in a sort of giant inhale.

And then the shock wave zinged by a hair’s breadth above his head and careened up into the sky, where the black fog that had been approaching from overhead scattered as if to escape. It occurred to Kieli that the man’s body hadn’t moved from where it had hit the ground. The blow to his head must have driven out the spirits possessing him.

“Just get the hell back in there!”

“R-Right!” Flinching at Harvey’s roar, the ghost hastily disappeared back inside himself—

—Or at least, that’s what Kieli had expected; in reality he only lay frozen there covering his own body, and a few moments later they were still waiting for something to happen. The fog above them began swarming together again.

“What are you waiting for? Hurry it up.”

“Um, the thing is…I can’t get back in.”

“What are you talking about?” Harvey demanded, eyebrow twitching in irritation.

Bearfoot looked dismayed. “I’ve always been able to go back whenever I felt like it, but it’s not working now…Wh-What should I do? How do I get back?!”

“How should I know?!”

“Calm down and think of something fun! What you want to do once you’re back inside your body, or something!”

“Huh?! Who’s that talking?!”

“Shut up and get a move on!”

After this confused exchange, everybody piped down at once, and a sort of absurd silence fell.

“…Um, okay, then,” said the ghost nervously. “Is it all right if I ask Kieli out on a date…?”

Kieli had been gawking from the sidelines for the whole conversation, so when she heard her own name come up out of the blue like that she let out an involuntary squeak of surprise. “Huh?” She found herself sneaking a glance at Harvey’s face, but unsurprisingly, there was no change in his expression.

His voice, when it came, was dangerously low, though. “…If you never want to see your body again, that’s fine by me.” A menacing aura swelled up around the radio, as if it were in agreement.

“Wah!” cried the ghost, covering his head. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” The shock wave (really and truly!) flew at him, and he vanished just in the nick of time as it sliced viciously through the spot he’d been occupying a split second before.

“Oh, I see him! Over this way!” Shouts and beams of light flew back and forth from within the camp, coming closer to them.

“Ow, ow, ow…Sheesh, I’ve got a big lump on my head now…,” the man grumbled as he sat up, clutching his head. By the time the others had made it over to them, the situation finally seemed salvageable.

When Kieli looked up she could still see the black fog floating bitterly above them, but soon it dissipated, as if it was scared of all those people and lights.

Kieli jogged through the silence and crisp, cold air of the clearing before dawn and slowed to a stop just before the camp entrance.

Oh, good, he’s here…

A redheaded man was perched lightly on the wall of blocks, gazing toward the city. When Kieli walked over to him, panting a little, he stilled his hand in the act of raising it to light his cigarette and turned around. He frowned immediately at the sight of her. “…Why aren’t you dressed warmer?”

“Oh!” She looked down at her shorts and camisole top and started spouting flustered excuses. “I saw you coming out here, so I was in a hurry —” She really couldn’t deny that it’d been careless to come out here dressed so lightly. She’d only run a short distance, and her bare arms and shoulders were already freezing. She could see her own breath.

When she’d woken up in the middle of the night and peeked out the trailer door to try to guess what time it was, Harvey was just passing by toward the clearing. She’d darted out after him without stopping for anything, so not only had she come without a coat, she’d even left the radio sitting by her pillow.

“You didn’t have to rush.”

“But I thought you were going to leave without telling me again.”

“I’m done going out for today.” Kieli thought that by the clock it wasn’t a done for today sort of a time so much as a today hasn’t even started yet sort of a time, but Harvey seemed to define “day” according to his own rights—and pretty loosely, at that. Apparently to him, the possession incident (which had been unconvincingly passed off as a sleepwalking fit) counted as part of “today.”

“Can I sit next to you?” Kieli asked hesitantly.

“You don’t have to ask.” It wasn’t a very welcoming answer: not a no, but not really a yes, either. Still, when Kieli moved to clamber up the wall herself, he took her hand and pulled her up.

She sat on top of the blocks with her legs hanging down on the city side, her back to the camp. They were close enough that her bare shoulder was almost-but-not-quite touching the sleeve of Harvey’s jacket. Feeling a tiny bit shy, she watched the city skyline in the distance lighten steadily from blue-gray night to the thin, sandy color of early morning. This borderline time between yesterday and today was the only time when all Westerbury slept quietly, even the “new city” with its glitzy lights that stayed on deep into the night. It was like the whole city was resting up for the start of a new day.

Kieli felt a rustling next to her, and then Harvey was shoving his coat at her. “I’m getting cold looking at you,” he said, keeping his gaze straight ahead. She sat feeling confused at how distant he sounded for a moment before she took it gratefully. The half-length men’s coat was too big for Kieli in several different ways. It smelled like smoke.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“No,” answered Harvey shortly and indistinctly around his cigarette, tucking his empty right sleeve back into the pocket of his parka. Kieli sighed internally. As usual, it was hard to tell whether he was being kind or cold.

…Speaking of which, had she been right that he was angry last night? When Bearfoot had asked if he could take her on a date? But then again, he was probably angry about being almost buried alive.

She sneaked a glance up at his profile, but she’d sat down on his right side, so the white medical tape over his eye was in her way, and she couldn’t read his expression. Not that he was even wearing an expression, probably. Maybe Harvey noticed her looking and maybe he didn’t; he was totally nonchalant as he tilted his head back to look up at the brightening sky and blow out a puff of smoke—

“Ah!”

As Kieli watched, he overbalanced and tumbled backward off the wall.

The noise he made when he hit the ground sounded really painful.

“Harvey?!” she shrieked, more startled than he was. Then she hopped quickly down from the blocks and back into the camp. Crouching over him as he cradled his head in a stupor and groaned, she asked him, “Are you okay? Sheesh, what were you even doing?”

“I was just —” Harvey began, and then stiffly cut himself off. “Nothing.”

He was averting his eye for some reason, so she looked down at herself, saw the way her camisole top was sitting, and discreetly pulled the coat closed. “Oh.” Not that I have much to show off anyway. Hardly anything to show off, really.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. As the air between them grew slightly strained, Kieli heard a voice sigh, “Talk about lucky…” Looking around, she spotted a man’s severed head peeking out of the wall of a trailer a short distance away.

Harvey sat up with a jerk. “You just never learn, do you?!” The man instantly yanked his head back and disappeared with a little bleat of nervousness. Harvey made a disgusted noise and put a hand to the back of his head, shaking off the dizziness. “God, he’s got some nerve…” He hoisted himself easily to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Kieli asked, still squatting on the ground.

“Back to the trailer to smack him awake.”

And with that, he stalked off toward the campsite. He didn’t show any inclination to wait for Kieli, so she hurried to stand up, catching her knee on the too-big coat and almost tripping back to the ground in the process.

She could still feel a lingering trace of its owner’s warmth against her skin. She couldn’t help thinking, not about how snug it made her feel now, but how much colder she’d feel in a little while when it faded. It made her more anxious when he was kind than when he wasn’t. She almost thought it might be best if he was just always curt with her.

“Hey, what were you about to say before?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Harvey answered without turning around.

Kieli pouted at his tall back. “Liar!” But all the same, somehow it was a relief to hear the kind of answer he always gave. She went after him, shaking the dust off of his jacket.

The lights in the clearing were still on, but they were already blending into the color of the early-morning sky and losing their meaning. The world had crossed the threshold between yesterday and today, and another bustling Westerbury day was dawning.