Between Friends: A City Between Compliation Read online

  That’s what I thought, anyway, sitting there and grinning at my portal. I’d taken a trip yesterday, and last night I’d clued in my supervisor. If I did things right for the next twenty years or so, maybe I’d get promoted up the chain for this.

  I went and got my own coffee before the coffee boy got back, eager to sniff out more payments that had a suspicious lack of product to go with them. I put the mug down on my desk and settled myself to sit down, but something sharp and hot seared my leg where my Behind Identify Card should be. I yelped and pinched it out of my pocket. Behind magic is the good stuff, but there’s nothing that melts faster than an Identify Card, magic or no magic. Something about magic and the newer human manufactured substances doesn’t blend well.

  Now that I looked at the card, too, it was a lot blacker than it should be. Well, parts of it were blacker than they should be, and it was still hot in my fingers, too. Was it burnt?

  I squinted down at it, irritated to find that my glasses weren’t around my neck, and reached for the desk where the missing glasses should have been.

  My desk wasn’t there. Actually, the office wasn’t there. No wonder the ground was so squishy beneath my peg—it was real grass, not the magic-fake they put in Behind offices.

  Great. Someone had relocated the office without telling me. I’d send off a pretty strong message as soon as I found where those goons in Location had parked it this time. I’m as security-conscious as the next leprechaun, but there was no way we’d been found so soon after the last move. No way I should have been left behind, either.

  I looked down at my Identify card again, and it looked a bit red in the middle. Red in the middle, and if I squinted at it just right, there were words making a black scrawl in the centre of the red bit.

  Kill the kid and you can come back, it said.

  I snuffled a dry laugh down at it. Somebody was having a laugh. It was a bit stupid, though; kid was the word used for human children, and who was going to find a kid Behind? I looked a bit closer at the words, and a sticky breeze swept across my forearms, raising goosebumps in spite of its warmth. That wasn’t just red behind the writing. It was Red. If somebody was having a laugh, why was my Identify Card marked Red for Deport? Deportation Red meant tried, executed, and deported. No return to Behind.

  That was stupid. Someone had to be having a laugh. I was still Behind…wasn’t I? But where in Behind was I? I looked around me, dazedly taking in the dark green foliage of trees and the playground, and the half tree that someone had turned into a house—wait. The playground? Fae don’t have playgrounds. And why was the heat so heavy today? Where in Behind had access to this kind of muggy heat? Muggy…muggy heat? There’s no muggy heat Behind; too many weather mages.

  “No,” I said numbly, sweat springing to my brow. “Because that means I’m—that means I’m in the human world.”

  Red for Deport. I was in the human world.

  “What did I do?” I demanded of the hollowed-out tree house, my voice high and panicked. “I paid my taxes. Found taxes. Gave my leg for the Fae Corp in the Third war!”

  I sat down in the grass and buried my head in my hands. This was bad. The worst. I couldn’t survive in the human world. I wasn’t trained. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t even have a job! Who would keep me in gold if I had no job? And the humans—how was I supposed to communicate with them? I didn’t even know if you could communicate with them; it was bad enough trying to communicate with the milk cows that were brought over from the human world when ours died out.

  Something bit me beneath my trousers, and if the air around me was a muggy heat, this was a fiery heat. I yelled and shot to my feet, slapping at the spot, and pinched whatever the heck it was through the trousers and out into the open. It was an ant, squirming and dying, its broken legs flailing at me. With my Sight I could see the poison on its pincers, even if my normal sight wasn’t good enough to properly make out the pincers, and when I looked back down at my leg, horrified, I could see the same poison beginning to course through my veins from the point of the bite.

  But…but it was so small. How could it be so deadly?

  I threw the ant away from me and slapped my hand back over the bite, drawing out the poison in the same way I’d drawn out the ant. It came out reluctantly, as fast-spreading as it had been in my blood. I didn’t know if my legs were weak because of the poison, or the fact that I’d almost left it too late to treat comfortably. What was this place? What place had such tiny, deadly animals?

  And why was it so skin-meltingly hot, for all that was gold?

  I didn’t dare to sit on the ground again. At home the grass was green and plump and cool, free from murderous insects and good for recharging; here, now, I could see that it was teeming with deadly life. Gold only knew what kind of other venomous insects were waiting to kill me. There was a nice, sunny spot on the metal play equipment; it was bright and sunny as well, painted in yellow and orange, and I felt that at least there was a shining spot to the day thus far.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief, hopeful of soaking up a little energy from the sun, and sank down on the metal square.

  It burnt.

  For the second time in five minutes, I leaped to my feet with a howl, clutching my rear. Was it silver? Who makes human playgrounds out of silver? But there was no debilitating spread of malaise, no nausea; just a pained kind of after-burn that faded slowly but left me disinclined to sit down again right away.

  It was just hot. So gold-fired hot from the sun that it had burned me to sit down on it.

  I whimpered a bit. I didn’t really care where I was anymore; I just wanted to go back home. I picked a spot in the shady brown instead of the sunny brown, and sat down—this time very carefully—on something wooden and duck-shaped that wobbled beneath me but didn’t burn me. A sensation of coolness soothed my burnt backside, but I couldn’t feel anything energetic in the grass beneath my feet.

  I groaned into my hands. “Where can I even recharge in this place?”

  “Athelas likes to use the waterfall in Snug,” said a voice. “Zero prefers the sea. But if you want to use something nearby, there’s always the Huon river.”

  I looked up wildly. It was a kid. Standing there in front of me with its hands in its pockets. I didn’t know if it was male or female—you can’t tell with humans; they’re all so ugly, and they don’t smell of anything. At least with Behinders you can tell who’s male and who’s female by smell. I didn’t know how long it had been there, either.

  I stared at it while the sweat trickled down my temple and made a prickling line right to my collar.

  Kill the kid and you can come back. That’s what the writing on my card said. Well, this was the only kid in the area; long-legged and long-haired, it had a hopeful sort of expression to its face. I mean, it was still ugly, but it was ugly in a nice sort of way. It looked like you could pat it on the head without being bitten. Not that I could reach, but still.

  “You appeared out of nowhere,” it said to me. It sounded thoughtful but not surprised. “I don’t know what kind you are.”

  I glared at it. It knew a bit too much for a human, didn’t it? Or was it just confused? I said, “Kind? What do you mean?”

  “You know—Behindkind.” It tilted its head. “I know you are one, just can’t tell what kind. You’re not tall enough for fae or pouty enough to be a vampire. Are you a troll?”

  “Who do you think you’re calling a troll!” I demanded, sitting up straight in outrage. The wooden duck wobbled and threatened to dump me in the brown, crackly grass.

  “Oh, sorry,” it said. “Didn’t mean to offend you. I know a troll and she’s really nice.”

  “That’s because they’re eager-to-please little nubkinses!” I snarled, clinging with both hands to the wobbling duck’s wooden handles. “They should just accept that they’re ugly and no one loves them.”

  “Oh,” said the kid. It didn’t try to say anything else—just sat there as if it was waiting for me to notice somethin
g.

  I ignored it. “Red for Deport,” I muttered to myself. “Who has that clout and who would do it? Who am I? Just a little government lep’ looking for his next pay stream. No need to mark me Red for Deport, was there? Who’s the sorry beetle that sent me off into the human world without a trial?”

  “I don’t know about that,” said the kid, “but I don’t think we’re actually in the human world.”

  “’Course we are,” I said, without paying too much attention. “Where else would we be? You’re a human. The place feels human—gives me a nasty shiver.”

  “Ye-es,” said the kid uneasily. “But—”

  “And I’m a leprechaun. Don’t go calling me a troll.”

  That distracted it. “Oh. There are leprechauns Behind! What’s your name?”

  “Five-Four-One.”

  The kid giggled. “Really?”

  I scowled at it. “That’s my batch number. What else would it be? Wipe that smirk off your face.”

  “Sorry,” the kid said, but it was still grinning. “But around here there’s a saying that goes I’d rather have a number than a name like that, and you’ve already got a number, so—!”

  Maybe this one wasn’t as intelligent as I’d thought it was. At least it wasn’t as stupid as the human cows had been.

  It was clever enough to notice my scowl growing. It managed to smother its grin a bit, and asked, “Why are you here, anyway?”

  “Curious, aren’t you?” I said sourly. I sneaked a peek at my card, but it was still red and black, the writing still jumping out at me. Kill the kid and you can come back. That was all well and good, but why should I? Who was this mysterious kidnapper to tell me to kill someone for them? Even a human kid. That’s the sort of thing I don’t approve of.

  But if I didn’t, how would I get home? I couldn’t live here. I needed my gold. I needed a place to recharge. Without those things, I would die even sooner than a human in this part of the world.

  I looked at the kid meditatively, which seemed to make it nervous. “What?” it asked.

  “You,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you,” it said, a bit more cheerfully.

  “What?” Did it have a card, too? Death matches were illegal Behind, but the governing powers could be stretchy when it came to applying Behind laws to Behindkind in the human world.

  “I just appeared, like you,” said the kid. “Well, I think so, anyway. Right in the middle of making dinner, too. They’re gonna be annoyed—’s’pecially JinYeong. Stuff always happens when I’m cooking his choice.”

  “Cooking?” I glared at it. “What the everlasting gold are you chuntering about? Nobody cares about whether or not your dinner gets cooked.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the thing,” the kid argued. “JinYeong cares, and that means he’s gonna be stroppy as all heck when he finds me.”

  “I don’t care if JinYeong is stroppy as all heck!” I snapped. I didn’t even know what stroppy as all heck meant. “What is this place, and why have you dragged me here? You’ve no business marking me Red for Deport!”

  The kid looked indignant. “I just said! I didn’t have anything to do with it; I was in the kitchen and then I was here. I mean, I think I know where I am, but when I tried to start walking home, I couldn’t get out.”

  “Out?”

  “Yeah. It’s weird; I can usually get in and out of Between without any problems, but whenever I try to walk past the picnic table to go home, I find myself walking back past the treehouse again.”

  “This isn’t Between,” I said, very slowly and loudly. “It’s the human world.” For all that was gold! It was a human! Why didn’t it know its own world?

  The kid looked like it was trying not to grin again. “Yeah,” it said. “But you try walking out and see how you go.”

  I didn’t like the way it was grinning, but I had to try now. I stumped toward the picnic table, my wooden leg sinking too deeply into the brown grass, and found myself walking past the treehouse instead.

  “Flamin’ weird, isn’t it?” said the kid, in a chummy sort of way. “What d’you reckon’s happened?”

  I glared at it. Was it stupid or senseless? No one in their right mind should be that comfortable and trusting when they had been thrown into a closed circle with someone who, for all they knew, could have been ordered to kill them.

  “Maybe we should see if we can get over it,” the kid suggested. “I reckon its fae magic, and fae don’t think about loopholes as much as I thought they would. Well, not when it comes to humans, anyway. They think we’re as dumb as cows over here, so they don’t usually make things too hard for us.”

  I coughed and tapped my wooden leg against the ground. “That right?”

  The kid grinned again. “Yeah. Oi. If you give me a leg up, I reckon I can climb over the top of whatever spell they’re using.”

  “A leg up?” Was that meant to be a joke?

  “Or I’ll give you one, if you like, but I reckon I might be lighter than you.”

  Oh. It wanted a boost. “I can get you to the first branch of that tree,” I said. On the side that wasn’t road and gravel, the trees surrounded the playground and overhung it; at least one of those branches should be caught in the same bubble as us.

  And if the kid was right—who was I kidding? Of course it was right. There’s nothing so snooty and self-confident as an intelligent fae. And they all think they’re intelligent.

  “Should I climb on your shoulders, or—”

  “No!”

  “Oh. Well, how am I going to—”

  “Turn arou—” I snapped, slapping at the containment spell to see exactly where it was. And that was as far as I got. Something raw and strong and magical threw me across the playground the instant I touched fae magic. I hit the tree house, though it felt more like the tree house hit me, and for a very long, dusty, grassy time, I whimpered up at the sky.

  There was the sound of running footsteps, and a voice yelled, “Five! Five, are you okay?”

  I considered whimpering again, but the kid might have heard me. “No, I’m not okay!”

  “Right,” said the kid. Its face appeared above me, then wiry arms tugged at me until I could sit up. “Yeah. Um, can you stand up?”

  “No!” I snarled, and stood up a bit hazily. I’d been winded, and that was as bad as it was, but there was no way I was going to say that after the fuss I’d made. “If I’ve broken anything—!”

  The kid was grinning again. Guess I’d underestimated how much it knew about injuries. “Look on the bright side,” it said. “At least your peg leg isn’t broken.”

  “With all this gold-perishing sunlight there’s no other way to look at things,” I grumbled.

  “Yeah, the hole in the ozone layer is right above us,” the kid said cheerfully. “Wanna try again?”

  “No!” There was a pause before I said grudgingly, “Yes. But I have to pee first. Another impact like that and the grass’ll think the rains have come to this gold-perishingly barren place.”

  There was a barely stifled laugh from the kid, but it said, “Wouldn’t do that f’I were you.”

  “What? Why can’t I pee?”

  “It’s not that you can’t,” the kid said, “but there was a redback on the toilet seat in the loo yesterday, and I don’t know where it went.”

  “What’s a redback?”

  “Spider. Pretty deadly.”

  “Either it’s deadly or it isn’t.”

  The kid considered that. “Then I s’pose it depends on how quickly you get to the hospital, and if they have the stuff to treat it.”

  “I don’t have to sit.”

  “I didn’t say it lives under the loo seat; that’s just where I saw it last. I was moving pretty quick then, so I didn’t see where it went after that. And I think it got touched by Between a bit, so it might be bigger than usual.”

  “Is everything here trying to kill me?”

  “Not everything,” said the kid. Its
eyes, which had been looking around curiously at something I hadn’t seen, widened. “Oh. But those might be.”

  There were so many trees out there, all green and brown from the heat, that I didn’t see the perishers until the kid pointed them out. About four or five very big bears surrounded the playground from every direction that contained trees, their greyish pelts blending into the branches they clung to with long, sharp claws, their eyes black and glittering in the shadowy foliage. They were each the size of a decently grown polar bear, and as they made their way toward us through the branches, the tree branches shook as if in an impossibly high wind.

  “What are those? What are those!?” My voice cracked. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what happened.

  “I think they’re dropbears,” the kid said thoughtfully. “It’s weird. They shouldn’t exist.”

  “Dropbears?” I said feebly. “What are dropbears?”

  Whatever else they were, they were definitely Between creatures—chimeras made of possibility, magic, and malice.

  “Kind of like really mean, really big koalas,” the kid said. It was looking less thoughtful and more alarmed as the dropbears shuddered closer through the trees. “They drop from trees and tear you to bloody pieces. They weren’t—I mean, they don’t exist. They’re a thing that was made up for TV ads. They’re not a thing that properly comes from Between.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped desperately that when I opened them, the dropbears would have disappeared. They hadn’t.

  I said, “They do now.”

  But wait. We weren’t Between—we were firmly in the human world. How in the woody green were Between-magicked dropbears approaching from the human world?

  “How?” I panted, mopping more sweat from my brow than I’d thought possible for my body to contain in its entirety. “We’re not Between! They shouldn’t be here!”

  “Yeah,” said the kid. “That’s what I thought. That’s why I said we’re Between, even though it doesn’t feel quite the same. Zero isn’t here, so I thought I’d wait and see what happened, but then you arrived so I s’pose we should try to do something about it.”