I didn’t have to wait long.
Metal clanged loudly from an alley across the road. I ducked out my hiding place and dashed across the street, making sure not to kick up any loose cobble in the process. When I reached the corner, I stopped and listened. I could hear what sounded like crates being crunched under foot and another barking growl. It was definitely him.
I peeked around the corner, just enough to get a quick look without being noticed. A street lamp on the other side of the road lit the narrow corridor. In the shadows, I could just make out the large boy digging around in a pile of garbage. It looked like something was hanging out of his mouth. I was afraid to find out what it was.
Flesh Eater took a couple of steps forward and the street lamp lit his face enough for me to finally see what he was chewing on. I braced myself for the sight of someone’s hand or foot, but it was nothing more than an old melon rind.
“What’s going on out here?” a man called out behind me, causing me to jump.
I spun around. “Shhh.” I raised my finger to my lips and whispered, “Don’t startle him.”
The man cast about. “Startle who, lad? There’s no one here.”
I pointed back over my shoulder toward the alleyway. “Go back inside. I’ll deal with him.”
“Deal with who?” The older man was carrying a large cudgel in one hand. His hair was a mess and his shirt was open at the front. He’d clearly just gotten out of bed to see what was going on, most likely ordered to by a frightened wife. He pushed me aside to see for himself.
A sharp gasp was about all he managed before running back up the street. “Good luck, lad,” he called out as he charged through his door and slammed it shut.
The alley fell quiet.
I rolled my eyes and turned back around to see what the large Pit fighter was up to. I hoped all the racket the man had made hadn’t scared him off. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and scooted back toward the corner of the building. The wood was rough against my cheek as I cautiously slid my head out to look around the corner.
I nearly swallowed my tongue when I realized I was staring directly into Flesh Eater’s eyes. Our noses were practically touching.
I screamed, and Flesh Eater screamed, but his sounded deeper and manlier than mine. He scampered back into the alley and I realized he was just as frightened as I was. That thought gave me the courage to step out from my hiding place and into the narrow, garbage-packed corridor.
I could hear sniffling behind a stack of crates on the left.
“Flesh Ea . . . uh, I mean, Tubby?”
A crate toppled off the stack, exposing his giant head.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Tubby. It’s me, Ayrion. Do you remember me? I’m the one who let you go.” I hoped he remembered.
“Arr—un.”
“Yes,” I said with a smile as I pointed to my chest. “My name is Ayr–ee–un. And you are Tubby.”
“Tubby,” he repeated, stepping out from behind the crates and into the faint light. He took another couple of steps forward and then stopped. He was clearly having trouble trusting me. It wasn’t like I could blame him. I was the one who had just snapped his fingers. Besides, who knew how long he’d spent caged away like an animal in Cutter’s compound. I couldn’t imagine what that must of have been like.
I reached into Reevie’s bag and pulled out an apple, holding it out for him to see. “Here. Would you like this? Are you hungry?” I tried to keep my words soft and gentle.
Tubby took another step.
“It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.” I made a point of sitting down cross-legged while waiting for him to do the same. He eventually plopped himself down a few feet from where I was sitting. I rolled the apple to him and he picked it up and sniffed it.
“Go ahead. It’s good.”
Tubby spit the leftover melon shell out and stuffed half the apple in his mouth and bit down. I couldn’t really tell because of the mask, but it looked like there might have been a smile. He released a soft moan as the juices dripped down his chin.
I wondered what it was like being forced to wear that hideous mask. Was it worn just during fights or was it something he was made to keep on? Knowing Cutter, it was probably permanent, used as a way to scare his tribe into obedience.
“Will you let me take that thing off your head?” I asked, pointing at his covered face.
Tubby didn’t say anything, but he grew very still.
I wasn’t sure if his silence was a yes or a no, but I took the risk and calmly stood up, making sure to keep my movements slow and smooth. I proceeded to move around behind him to take a look at the leather casing. So far so good. There was a sudden pop and crunch as Tubby sunk his teeth into the remaining piece of fruit. I breathed a quick sigh of relief and my shoulders relaxed. He seemed more interested in the apple than me.
The covering was held on by a simple buckle. I carefully reached out to undo it. “Now I’m going to loosen your mask, Tubby. Is that okay?” I waited for him to nod yes, but once again, there was no movement, so I took a deep breath and reached for the buckle. I slowly pulled back on the strap and unhooked it from the latch. “I’ve almost got it. Just . . . a . . . little . . . further.” I carefully lifted the covering from his head. It was heavier than I had expected.
The enormous boy didn’t move. I carried the head piece around to the front to get a better look at what I was dealing with. I still couldn’t see his face. His brown hair had grown in thick clumps around his head like creepers up the side of a knotty pine. I actually thought he looked scarier with the mask off.
Tubby lifted his hands and ran them across his face. He pinched his nose and then played with his ears. A wide grin spread across his face, almost bringing tears to my eyes. “Come on,” I said. I walked to the edge of the alley and motioned for him to follow. “We need to go before the patrollers get here. Look.” I pulled the last apple from Reevie’s stash and held it up for Tubby to see. “I have food. You don’t need to eat garbage. You can come home with me.” I almost laughed at the thought.
Tubby stood to his feet and snatched the apple from my hand. “Home?”
“Yes, you can come home with me. No one’s going to hurt you, I promise. And you don’t have to wear this thing anymore.” I tried stuffing the headdress inside Reevie’s satchel, but it was too big and hung halfway out. “Once we get home, we need to look at those fingers of yours.”
Tubby raised his hands and looked at his disfigured fingers from where I had popped them out of joint. I wondered how he was coping with the pain. I didn’t exactly regret breaking them considering the circumstances, but now that I was starting to understand the simple way Tubby’s mind worked, I wished it hadn’t come to that. I hoped Reevie would be able to set them without any permanent damage.
His apple hanging from his mouth, Tubby followed me to the head of the alley. I scanned both sides of the street to make sure the way was clear before hurrying us out and down to the next street over. The giant of a boy stayed close, taking short steps to match my stride. He made sure to keep a few steps behind me, like a pet following its master.
Trying to earn his trust was going to be a rough road. With all the physical and mental abuse the big kid had endured, there was no telling what it was going to take to get him through it. I hoped I had made a little headway.
We were nearly to the granary when the absurdity of what I was doing caught up with me. I started to laugh. My sudden outburst took Tubby by surprise and he jumped into a defensive stance—hands out in front, head up and sniffing the air as he twisted around looking for danger. It took a while for him to realize that the expression on my face wasn’t one of anger or fear, but of pure unrestrained joviality.
Tubby mimicked my expression by spreading his bloody jaws and croaking out a garbled laugh of his own. It was the most disturbing sound I’d ever heard, which, of course, had me laughing even harder, which in turn brought an even greater response from Tubby.
I laughed so ha
rd I was afraid I’d need fresh trousers–not that I had any. I laughed at my unbelievable life. I laughed at myself, at the circumstances that had brought me to this point. I laughed at Tubby with his hair growing around his head and dried blood crusted to the front of his face. I laughed at my miserable luck and my perverse ability to somehow make it through every time. But, most importantly, I laughed at what I knew was coming.
“Reevie’s going to kill me.”
As predicted, Reevie nearly gave birth when I walked into the granary with Tubby. Bull, along with any of the other rejects who still happened to be up, ran screaming at the first sight of the bloody giant. It took quite a while to coax Tubby inside, and even longer to coax everyone else out so I could introduce them to their new roommate.
After a very long, very hot bath, I joined Reevie, Bull, and Sapphire as we began our work on Tubby. We had to clip pins to our noses to bear the smell. It took quite a while to get him into the extra-large basin of soapy water. He seemed frightened of everything. We cut his crusted mop of hair, scrubbed his skin with stiff brushes, and burned his filthy clothing. We went through three tubs of water to get him clean.
Reevie treated the damaged skin on Tubby’s lower half from where he had never been properly cleaned. Needless to say, it rounded out one of the longest, roughest nights I’d spent in Aramoor.
By the time we were through, Tubby looked like a new person. Seeing his face for the first time, Sapphire said he wasn’t that hard on the eyes, which Tubby found rather pleasing to hear, especially coming from someone as pretty as Sapphire. She had an admirer after that.
As the days rolled by, we focused on helping the wounded recover. Reevie was able to get Tubby’s fingers back into place using the last of the ether. He splinted each one with a metal rod just to keep the big kid from re-dislocating them while they healed.
Tubby did everything he could to please us. I think he was afraid that if he didn’t make us happy, he would be sent back to Cutter. I had to constantly reassure him that he would be welcome at the granary as long as he wished to stay.
Sapphire returned to the Temple to resume her position as the head of Spats’s Guard. She had wanted to stay with us, but we needed her to be our eyes and ears within the tribe, not to mention the invaluable amount of information she could gather while attending the Guild Council meetings, so she finally agreed.
I spent most of my time working on the immediate dilemma of how we were going to survive given the meager provisions we had. We were going to need food and medicine, and at the moment, we didn’t have a way to acquire either. To top it off, the wager Reevie and I had placed on me to win wasn’t being honored because both parties were still standing at the end.
I was sitting in my favorite spot on the granary’s roof, gazing out at the white spires and domes rising from the central part of the city, when a voice startled me from my brooding.
“I thought I’d find you up here.”
I turned to see Sapphire peeking out of the hatch leading down to the warehouse. She climbed out, taking a moment to coo at Reevie’s pigeon cage before sitting on the empty seat beside mine.
“I have news.”
“I hope it’s good news. I don’t think I can take any more bad.”
She smiled and fiddled with her hair. “I guess it depends on how you look at it.”
“Oh?” I twisted in my seat. She had my attention.
“I found out the reason for Spats’s unexpected change of heart in the Pit.”
I grunted. “And by change of heart, I take it you’re referring to my own chief betraying me and calling for my death? Yeah, I’d like to know that too.”
“Apparently, Spats, being the imbecile that he is, placed a very large wager with Noph on Tubby to win. He was hoping that the earnings he made off your death would allow him to repay whatever penalty Hurricane was going to be charged for having attacked Avalanche’s compound, and maybe even make him some extra coin in the process.”
I mulled it over. As much as I wanted to get my hands on that weasel’s neck, in a way, it made sense. Spats was planning to use my defeat as a way to hedge his bets against his own failures, both on the battlefield and in the Guild Council. He just hadn’t counted on me winning. All I could do was shake my head. “So, what’s the good news?”
Sapphire smiled. “Well, now Spats owes a wager he can’t possibly repay, which means that when they find out that he can’t make good on his debt, he’ll be brought up before the Guild, maybe even lose his place as chief.
“What happens to Hurricane if Spats is removed as chief?”
Sapphire stopped fiddling with her hair. “I don’t know. Not sure this has ever happened before.”
I took a deep breath and slowly released it as I gazed at the heart of Aramoor, the sun dipping toward the peaks of the Sandrethin Mountains. “I say we don’t worry about it. That’s a problem for another day.”
Sapphire eased back in her chair. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Protector! Are you up there?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed in frustration. “Well, that didn’t last long.”
She smiled and followed me to the open hatch.
“What is it?” I asked, barely making it to the opening when Rat’s head popped out the top.
A number of the outcasts had gotten to where they were calling me Protector. I had tried more than once to have them find something a little more creative, like my name, but the label somehow seemed to stick, especially considering every time someone new showed up at the granary and mentioned my eyes, Reevie would impart his now well-rehearsed explanation as to my heritage and the correct definition of the word Upaka. I think it was his way of reassuring our guests that the champion of the Pit, the strange boy with the colorless eyes, wasn’t going to kill them in their sleep and feed them to Tubby.
Peddle and Squeaks were waiting anxiously at the bottom of the stairs.
Rat was out of breath from the climb. “You’re needed at the front immediately, sir. There’s, uh, there’s . . . well, you’ll just have to come and see for yourself.”
“Come on,” Petal and Squeaks chimed in as they turned and headed back down the next set of steps leading to the main floor. “You need to see this.”
Sapphire giggled.
“Don’t encourage them,” I grumbled. She shrugged.
On the main floor, we met Reevie as he made his way up from our underground chambers. “What’s all the commotion?” he asked, not looking to be in the best of moods. He’d probably been interrupted in the middle of reading another one of his recently purchased—well, purchased might not have been the correct word—volumes on the latest medical practices. If there was one thing you could say about the little healer, it was that he was an astute practitioner of learning.
“Don’t know.” I shrugged. “They just said we were needed out front.” My hand slid to my waist on instinct where my fingers skimmed the leather grip of my sword.
By the time Reevie and I had made it across the warehouse, Bull had slid open the main door far enough for us to get through. The low sun was blinding, the perfect level to hit us in the face. Even with the squinting, I needed to place my hand over my eyes just to see. Petal and Squeaks tugged on my sleeves and pointed toward the road.
“What do we do about them?”
Rat bared his teeth. “Are we under attack?”
The loading yard in front of the granary was filled with kids.
Tubby rushed out the door and took a spot on my left, opposite of Reevie and Sapphire. He lifted his enormous bludgeon and grunted out the front hole of his leather mask. He had taken to wearing it whenever he felt the need for intimidation. The group of kids in front of us all backed up at the sight of him. A few took off running down the street.
Everyone at the granary had gotten used to Tubby once they realized he wasn’t a cannibal. Surprisingly, the former blood-stained giant actually preferred fruits and vegetables to meat.
Most of the k
ids found his presence not completely unwanted. In fact, many preferred him being there, if for no other reason than they felt safer having someone as big as he was around to scare off intruders. Rat had even let Tubby join his little club of miscreants, something Tubby seemed to consider a great honor.
Reevie scooted a little closer, his book gripped firmly to his chest. “What do you think they want?”
From the looks of them, I didn’t believe they were here to do battle. There wasn’t a single weapon in the lot. Unless you counted sticks for crutches and poles for toting what little belongings they had.
I could tell Tubby was upset by the unexpected arrival. I placed my hand on his arm, which was about as high as my forehead. “Don’t worry, Tubby. I don’t think they mean us any harm.” With that, he lowered his club and let it hang by his leg.
Across the way, a tall lanky girl in front took a few steps away from the rest. She had long, straight auburn hair that hung below her waist, and her outfit looked to be nothing more than random pieces of dresses all stitched together for the sake of simple decency. Her hands were trembling but she kept her back straight and proud.
“What’s your business here?” Reevie asked.
“We’ve come seeking the Protector.”
How had that name gotten out of the granary?
Reevie passed a quick glance in my direction. “And what do you want with him?”
“We . . .” She looked back over her shoulder at the group behind her. “We heard there was a place where everyone has value, a place that opens its doors to anyone no matter their age, or size . . . or sex.” She said the last with an extra hint of disgust. “A place that believes that no matter who you are, you can still make a difference. If that’s so, and this is that place . . .” She turned to look at those behind her again. They nodded for her to continue. “Then we’ve come to join!”
Shouts of agreement rose from those in the yard and on the street behind. Sticks and hands lifted the air as they continued in one voice to let us know that they wanted to be a part of a place that championed such values as the worth of an individual.
Hurricane (Street Rats of Aramoor: Book 2) Page 22