Near the center of Izevel, the crowds die off and those who occupy the shadowed center are masked with the eyes of grim. Drair moves through the alleyways between their modest hovels, her scarf pulled about her mouth and nose to block the sand. She is grateful for the eyepatch that covers her Lynac, squinting her exposed eye from the abrasive spit of wind. She walks west of the great dome central to the village, using the squat adobe homes as wind blocks.

  Her hand grazes the wall of a crumbling home, feeling the rough sand-brick on her callouses, and she peeks around the corner to the next street over. Up the passageway, she spots a young man crouched low outside a towering umber building. The open stone spaces meant for windows are crumbling, shiny with the oil of waiting elbows laid out into the air of the alleyway. The boy, cloaked in an amber shawl and not more than ten years old, is picking stones from the ground to stack them haphazardly upon each other. He curses loudly when they crash to the earth below, tumbling about his ankles.

  She approaches, boots tamping down the sand. She ducks into the shaded alleyway, removing the green linen scarf from her head to fall at her shoulders. Her dark hair is tied about her neck in simple fashion, flustered and fraying. The boy takes notice of her and starts, jumping to his feet, tripping on the stone staircase behind him, crashing down as heavy as the stones he had stacked. A curse erupts from his mouth. He is thin of face and dark of eye, with a right hand like Kelo’s, peeling and sickly. His head is shaved and dimpled, with high cheekbones pink from the sun.

  Drair steps up to him, offering a hand. The boy’s eyes burn, thick lashes nearly covering his gaze. “My name is Drair,” she says. The boy hesitates, scrambles to his feet. She takes note that they are bare and calloused.

  “What do you want?” he snaps. He hurries to hide his skeletal hand within his sleeve.

  Drair squints her eye, lifting her face to the sun. “I’m not sure,” she muses, looking back down at him. “Maybe we can start with some shoes for those feet.”

  He peers at her with dark eyes for only a moment. “I’ll give you anything you want for a chicken hand pie.” The words spout from his mouth.

  “Deal,” she says.

  He looks around, as if searching for some impending danger, then slips inside the building. She hears a commotion from the floor above her head as it flows from the window. The hushed and hurried voices of four children can be heard, with an audible exclaim of “Get me one, too!” She waits, hands shoved in the pockets of her fatigues, for what seems like several minutes before the boy returns, rushing so quickly from the doorway that his heel slips on the stairs. He regains composure quickly and swallows hard, staring her in the face with a hard-pressed brow.

  “Aslo.” He breathes.

  Drair blinks.

  “My name is Aslo.”

  “I’d like you to tell me what happened to your hand, Aslo.”

  He pulls in a sharp breath, his black eyes flashing to the hand at his side, fingers struggling to conceal themselves within the opening of his much too large cloak. “How do you…”

  “One of my comrades–“ she stops herself. “One of my comrades is afflicted as you are. I want to know the truth of it, how it came to be.”

  “And you’ll buy me hand pies if I tell you?” the boy asks. Aslo gazes at her as if her pockets rained money.

  “You said one hand pie.” She lifts a finger.

  “Yes,” he looks back at the window above their heads. “But my friends want one as well.”

  She sighs. “Let’s go.”

  The boy shadows her through the back alleys of the city to the heart of the market, neither saying much. When they arrive, the lunchtime rush has died down, and the soft flap of tent canopies, each a different color, echoes off the adobe buildings lining the market. She stops short of the road.

  “Which one is your favorite?”, she says, looking down at the dirty-faced child. He rubs his nose with his good hand, humming to himself.

  “The yellow tent at the end. She sells the fruit pies too,” he grins with yellowed teeth.

  They traipse through the dusty paths to the yellow-dyed tent where a muscled woman with crow’s feet and smiling eyes greets them.

  “What can I get you both?” she grins at Aslo.

  He blurts out a long list of pies, with specifics on each of them—chicken with no onions, melon with a salted crust, apple with sweet sauce, cherry, but the real cherries, not the fake ones—and the vendor took each order, still smiling. When each pie was delivered and inspected by Aslo’s great judgement, Drair handed over the price in coins.

  “Surely not all those are for you, boy?” the vendor says, taking the coins in her palm. “You’ll end up with a belly ache eating all that.” Her eyes become larger as she notices the fleshy, damaged hand on his left arm.

  He sneers. “No, they’re for my friends.” Holding the bundle of pies wrapped in a sleeve of parchment paper, he turns on his heel and sprints through the market.

  Drair’s lips part momentarily, and she takes off after him, leaving the vendor in confusion. Dodging through what’s left of the crowd, she covers her mouth and nose with the cloth at her neck to keep from choking on the sand. Also slips through the roadway and disappears in an alleyway ahead. She feels an angry heat rising in her cheekbones to settle in the tops of her ears. Her legs push her faster through the alleyway, squinting in the dark, back out the other side to a narrow passage. She catches sight of the boy fleeing around a corner and dashes after him. Her boots kick up sand as she runs. Despite the heat, not a drop of sweat graces her forehead.

  She hammers toward the child, fully intent on tackling his small frame to the ground. Her judgment moves to a gentler approach, and as she closes in on him, she curls her fingers around the billowing sleeve on his right arm. He shouts, tripping over himself, and the two come crashing to the ground in a torrent of pies and sand. Drair feels the rough earth scrape over her right arm. Her head smacks the ground, sending stars through her left eye. She shakes the pain away. As she begins to collect herself, still holding steadfast to the boy’s sleeve, she hears a sharp gasp.

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  Aslo is standing above her, his hair disheveled, mouth agape. Drair’s heart jumps to her throat and she reaches up to feel for the leather cord tied around her head, but cannot locate it. She looks around, releasing the boy and drawing both hands through the dirt, frantically looking for the patch.

  “You’re a Xelinac,” the boy states, unmoving.

  Without hesitating, Drair spits a correction. “Xelinite.” Grabbing her eye patch from the ground and brushing the dirt from the inner surface, she slams it over her brow, tying it behind her head, wincing as the leather cord tangles in her hair.

  “Xelin-ite.” Aslo says the word slowly, slapping the T against the roof of his mouth.

  Drair shushes him, wrapping a rough hand about his mouth and pulling him to her. A protest of pain squeaks from the boy’s throat. “Do not say it again,” she growls. Aslo struggles in her grasp, whipping his arms about her face. Dodging blows, she releases him. He turns around to face her, his brows lowered deeply, his dark eyes flaming.

  “They bring loads of you here on the ships, but I don’t ever get to see them again.”

  “I know,” Drair growls again. “But do not speak of it here.”

  Aslo’s eyes open with the shock of remembrance, and he eyes the ground for his fallen pies, groaning loudly. “No,” he cries. “Everyone’s food is all sandy!” His eyes grow red and watery as he picks each pie off the ground with the care of a mother goose, brushing the dirt from their crusts. A pumpkin hand pie lies open, orange guts spilling from the mangled shell. Drair watches him in silence.

  He picks up the last of the pies, cradling the broken pumpkin pie, and walks feather-footed toward the compound. His sniffles echo off the alleyway. Drair follows him. When they arrive at the towering house, all the children seen before are waiting about the steps, hanging out the window and playing in the dirt, chatting boisterously. As they begin to spot Aslo carrying his ruined gift, each child greets him with a solemn downturn of the face or pat on the back. When they finish their lament and Aslo has distributed each hand pie with a tear of regret, he turns to her.

  “Come on,” he says. “We can talk in here. No one comes here anyway.”

  --------

  “Have a seat wherever,” Aslo mumbles between bites.

  Drair raises an eyebrow, electing to stay where she is at, near the doorway of a small room with one window. She waits while the mongrels devour their prizes. The child in the window is a girl of eight or so with bright red hair falling tangled down her back. Her freckles are so numerous and so dark that they nearly color her face. The boy on the side table is the smallest of the four, a mousy brown-haired youngling with bright blue eyes that seem too small for his face. The last boy is older than the rest. He is bare-chested, his ribs showing, and his dark eyes bore into Drair’s as he chews. She finds a comfortable stance of crossed arms and slumped shoulders, leaning herself against the door.

  “What do you wanna know?” Aslo says.

  Drair scoffs with laughter, suddenly aware of the odd situation she’d put herself in. “I want to know how you got that right hand of yours.”

  The red-haired girl stops eating.

  Aslo snaps back, “Just woke up one day and it was there.” He doesn’t look up.

  Drair looks around at the rest of them. The girl looks back at her hand pie when she makes eye contact.

  “The rest of you have the same affliction, correct?” Drair drones.

  The mousy boy, surely no older than five, sweeps the pant leg up to reveal his left shin. The flesh is melted away to the blinding white of his shin bone. “I do!” he shouts. “My mother gave me mine.” He looks at the sulky boy next to him, pointing at his back. “Tandron has a hole in his back, and Riya,“ he points at the girl, “has a big spot on the back of her leg.”

  The girl looks at the boy with fire in her green eyes. She flicks her hair behind her back and stands, stamping her feet on the floor. A violent retort erupts from her mouth, “You’re stupid, Nicol!” as she stomps out the door, slamming it behind her.

  “Riya is touchy about her’s,” Aslo sits back in his rocking chair having finished his sandy chicken hand pie. He rubs his hairless head. “We’ve been here a while. Nicol is the youngest, but we haven’t had any new ones since.”

  “What happens in the dome?”

  “Oh, the dome,” Aslo readjusts, sitting taller in the chair. “It’s where they take the Xelinacs—the Xelinites. They don’t come back out once they go in. Lotsa kids left to go there. Apparently, the alchemists are fixing people like us, but I dunno how.”

  “And why haven’t you gone there?”

  “I like it here,” Aslo shrugs. “No parents yelling at you. No chores. I eat whatever I want.”

  The mousy boy shouts, “Hand pies!” raising his fist above his head.

  Drair hesitates. “Can you feel it?”

  “Nah,” he drawls. “Even Tandron has his in a bad spot and it doesn’t hurt him, although some of the others complain about theirs itching.”

  Drair is silent for a moment. The children stare at her with shining eyes. It is Aslo that breaks the lull in conversation.

  “Can you feel yours?” he asks.

  Another scoff erupts from her throat. She shakes her head lightly, “No. If it weren’t for the persecution of Xelinites and this damn patch, I would never notice.”

  “I’ve heard that you die if you use it.” The mousey boy, Nicol, wiggles in his spot on the floor.

  “Yes.”

  “So, what is the point? What does it do?” Aslo is brushing the crumbs from his cloak. The floor is covered in them.

  Drair grimaces. “I experienced the Lynac’s power one time, and I don’t feel that it's worthy of children’s ears.”

  Aslo laughs, a short, bitter sound. He looks at his rotted hand resting on the armchair. “We’ve seen more than most adults around here. If anything, I think us kids deserve a reason. If not for this,” he waggles his bony hand, “I might have a family, earn money. You get used to the looks people give you, but the not knowing why...” He trails off, shrugging.

  Drair nods. “I understand.” She draws a deep breath. “The Lynac is inherent, hereditary. If you are not of pure Xelinite blood, you cannot have the Lynac. There are very few of us left, and the ones that are left live a life in hiding. We are hunted for our power.” She feels a flush in her cheeks, turning her eye to the crumb-covered floor.

  “I experienced the might of the Lynac as a girl. My father activated his to save our lives. Our town had been overrun by soldiers from across Vaeba. Our hideout had been discovered and the soldiers surrounded us. My father, swords flashing at his throat, showed me and my siblings the power we have. When he activated, a jolt rang through his body and I heard the screams of those soldiers for weeks after they died. It was as if the bones in their body had dissolved, ripping the muscles, breaking the tendons.

  “My father fell to the ground not long after, his body limp. He was gone. The soldiers lay in heaps in the sand. The sound coming from their lips was haunting. Not for children’s ears.”

  The children are silent but for the soft sound of Asle scratching his head. “It's almost as if the Lynac has been used on us, but never finished the job,” he muses.

  Drair nods. “I came here to make myself learn what my power has done,” she says. “I came here with someone like you. His eyes are black, nose all but gone. I wanted to know why I came to this land, who my choices might affect. I thank you for your time, and for letting me into your home.”

  “Why are they hunting you?” Aslo says from his recliner, his hands clasped in front of him. “The alchemists, I mean.”

  “I am not entirely sure, but I have a good idea.” She turns to open the door behind her, but is stopped by another question from the boy.

  “Do you know why we’re like this?”

  She stares at the door, her hand settled on the doorknob. “An equal and opposite reaction.”