There were so many sounds. The generator hummed. The electricity cracked off the forks. The dog screamed, which was the most bad part of all. It fell down screaming, and shook and twitched. It was the scariest thing she’d ever seen, even worse than the Mothers. She held the button down anyway. There was a bad smell, a burning smell. The dog stopped twitching.
The other dog made an angry yell, and it jumped at her, too. She hit the button again. Hum. Crack. Scream.
Both dogs lay on the ground, fur smoking. Jane ran and ran and ran, satchel full of heavy canteens crashing into her leg. The dogs didn’t follow her.
It wasn’t until she stopped running that she understood they were dead.
She hadn’t meant to do that. She had made something to hurt dogs, but it worked too good, she guessed, because she had hurt them dead. That made her feel something in a very big way, something good and bad all at once.
She threw up. It was a bad thing to do, but she threw up until there was nothing left but gross sharp spit. She realised the front of her pants was wet, and her face burned as she understood why. She was ten.
Jane sat down in the dirt and drank a water pouch. She was still shaking. The good-bad feeling was still there, but the more she thought about things, the bigger the good part got. Things were okay. She had bad water that Owl would clean up, and she knew where to get more. She had something she could eat, maybe. She’d stopped the dogs. She’d stopped the dogs!
You look very brave, Owl had said. Jane thought of that and felt real good. She felt real good because Owl had been right.
‘I’m brave,’ Jane said, so she would remember. ‘I can stop dogs. I’m brave.’
On the way back, Jane reminded herself of the things she needed to ask Owl. She wanted to know words. Words for the flying animals, for the purple stuff that wasn’t an animal and also maybe food, and for the feeling you got when you felt bad for making a thing dead but also good because you were still alive.
SIDRA
The art district had every bit as much noise and detail as the others, but it was less crowded, at least. In the other districts, everything was always being pushed and sought in an important rush, as if your credits might not be good enough if you didn’t buy something now. But here, where the items for sale were anything but practical, both merchants and patrons seemed to have all the time in the world. Sidra could see little barrier between culture or medium. Everything was crammed in together – wooden Laru sculptures, Harmagian rock carvings, fusion artists mixing traditions with abandon, body artists offering to alter flesh and scale and shell. The shops reflected the same mix. On one end of the spectrum, there were pristine galleries with clean walls and echoing ceilings; on the other, you had people selling prints and figures from behind portable tables, or sometimes straight off the ground.
Blue’s shop fell somewhere between the two extremes, though nearer the more humble end. His stall – ‘Northwest Window’ – was in a larger communal building, one small cell in a busy hive. Sidra stood in the corridor for three minutes before walking through his door (painted, appropriately, in a thick coat of rich cyan). She’d behaved badly toward Pepper, she knew, and Blue was on Pepper’s side, first and foremost. Maybe he already knew about the fight. Maybe Pepper had sent him a message, telling him she was out of patience for Sidra’s nonsense. Maybe Blue felt the same way.
When Sidra walked in, her worries vanished. Blue looked up from his easel, and he smiled at her as warmly as he always did. ‘Sidra! What are, um, what are you doing up in the sun?’
‘I’m not at work today.’
‘So I see.’ He wiped his brush off with a rag, set it down, and got to his feet. He wore an apron, but the clothes beneath it were still speckled with paint. ‘Taking, ah, taking a day off?’
‘Yes.’ She looked around. She’d been to the shop before, but it was a little different every time. She noted the changes: the paintings of the mysterious forest and the bustling carnival were gone – sold, presumably – and a new canvas depicting a group of space-walkers hung on the wall. There were five brushes and a scraper in the sink – fewer than the twelve brushes she’d seen the last time – and the dead globulb in the south corner of the room had been fixed. There was one thing that always remained the same, though, and it was the chief difference between this place and those he shared with Pepper: Blue kept his own environment immaculately tidy. Everything had a shelf, a drawer, an angle. Pepper had spots for things, too, in her way, but Blue always kept his shop looking like he was expecting company at any second. Even the dirty brushes in the sink were neatly set in their cup of water.
Sidra was aware of Blue studying her as she examined the space. ‘Everything okay?’ he asked. ‘You look upset.’
‘No,’ Sidra said. ‘I don’t. The kit looks upset.’
Blue glanced over the kit’s shoulder, making sure the door was closed. ‘That’s, ah, that’s an important distinction to you.’