"Do you have any idea whatsoever where you're going?" Aderyn demanded, already certain what the answer would be.

"Nope!" Ahead of her, the crazy girl skipped gaily through the snow, trying (and failing) to snatch snowflakes out of the air. Those are probably radioactive, too, thought Aderyn gloomily as she trudged along behind, feeling dismal. If one got on that idiot and she got radiation poisoning from them, it was her own fault.

To her left and right, crumbling skyscrapers loomed, their windows cracked and grimy. The decrepit road stretched out in front of them, massive cracks from the perpetual winter weather zig-zagging across the chipped tar and yellow paint. She reached up over her shoulder to touch the grip of her épée, making sure the black cloth cover was securely fastened around the blade. If it got rusty and snapped, it would be next to useless to her, except maybe as a doorstop or a paperweight. There hadn't been that many stores that had sold fencing equipment, even before everything had gone kaboom. And somehow a length of pipe just wouldn't cut it, for obvious reasons.

The bitterly cold wind stung her face with a fierce bite akin to a whip wherever it was exposed, unprotected by her ski goggles or her mask. A gust of wind lifted her hair up, and she shivered and shoved her hands into her pockets. "Mystery Girl," she called. "Just where, exactly, do you expect do find your name? And how am I supposed to help you?"

"Well, my name's not Mystery Girl." She squinted into the sky. "I know that. That's a start, isn't it?" The girl held out her gloved hands, watching as delicate specks of snow perched on her palms before melting into nothingness. "You know, I can't fight at all, and you have a pointy metal stick. You're lucky. I'm glad you're my friend."

"It's called an épée. Learn it." Aderyn sighed, stuffing her hands deeper into her jacket. I'm the bodyguard. Wonderful. "Remind me again why I'm here."

"Because we're friends!"

She chose not to respond to that. "And we're just walking in no particular direction, am I right?"

"Yup! But I'll bet we'll find my name wherever we're going!"

Well, that's certainly encouraging.

The crazy girl twirled around a couple metres ahead of her, seemingly unaware of the icy headwind. She hummed and sang snippets of song to herself, or possibly to . . . Thing. It was probably supposed to be a cat, but it was tattered and dirty, the whiskers on one side of the face singed. Aderyn figured she probably didn't want to know how that had happened.

Then she stopped. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd spotted a flash of movement. Another worm? Or something even worse than that?

"Mystery Girl," she hissed. The girl didn't hear her. Aderyn groaned, and despite wanting to remain quiet, she gained her attention by calling, "Hey!"

"Huh?" She turned around. "What's going on?"

Aderyn's hand slowly went to her épée's grip. "Something's watching us. Keep it down."

"Is it another worm?" The girl looked around, her voice hushed only minimally. "Because I hate worms. I can't count their teeth, but then I'm not very good at counting and—"

"Do you ever shut up?" Aderyn growled, slowly sliding her sharp sword from the cover slung across her back. "Because now would be a good time to start."

"I do occasionally stop talking, yes, usually when I'm asleep."

"Then why don't you try it right now?" She was rapidly losing the little patience she'd gathered since first meeting the girl. A flicker of movement on the roof of a building drew her eyes, but when she looked, she saw nothing there. But there was no mistake, something had been up there, and it was blue.

"There's no way I'm going insane too," she muttered.

"But you're talking to yourself," pointed out the crazy girl in a dreamy tone. She was now looking up at the sky, not really paying attention.

"What did I say about shutting up?" Aderyn said through gritted teeth. She hefted the sword, feeling its familiar weight in her hand. There was something nearby, that was certain. And knowing the wastelands, it wasn't friendly. "Mystery Girl," she said, "I don't suppose you have any other friends out here?"

The girl turned a confused stare upon her. "Didn't you just tell me to shut up?"

"Just answer the question!" Her eyes flicked from side to side. Something was making her uneasy, and this time it wasn't the cold.

"No . . ." She looked a little sad now, her gaze directed down at her feet, her arms wrapped snugly around her tattered stuffed animal. "You and Thing are my only friends. Why?"

I somehow expected that. "I just told you; we're being watched."

"Oh." The crazy girl inched closer, looking curious. "What is it?"

"If I knew, I'd be doing something about it!" Aderyn snapped.

The girl looked taken aback. "Sorry. There's no need to be mean."

Aderyn groaned.

There was a scrape from an alleyway, the sound of cloth dragging over the ground. She felt her fingers instinctively tighten on her weapon's grip.

"What was that?" The girl went into a crouch, and she almost lost her balance simply doing that. "I-is it a worm? Or something else?"

"Just a rat, maybe?" said Aderyn hopefully. As if. There's no way I'd get that lucky. "I'm going to see what it is," she said in spite of her better judgement.

"You're the one with the pointy metal stick. Good luck! Please don't die!"

"It's an épée." Aderyn adjusted her ski goggles with one hand as she turned away from the girl and approached the alleyway with slight trepidation. There were lots of things out here in the wastelands that could overwhelm an ordinary human, even a skillful one armed with an épée. The shadows clung to the walls like black wool, white flecks sprinkling the muddy grey ground. She took a few tentative steps into the alley. Nothing moved but a few snowflakes spiralling down from the overcast sky. Inhaling, she took another step into the alleyway—

"Anything there?"

"GAH!" Aderyn spun around, her sword's tip flicking upwards to rest on the red and gold scarf of one surprised girl.

"Did I do something wrong?" Mystery Girl asked, confused.

She let out her breath. "Are you crazy? No, actually, don't answer that. I already know the answer. The point is I nearly skewered you like a shish kebab!"

The little she could see of the girl's face drained of colour. "There's—"

"Don't you get it? I could've killed you!"

"Um—"

"And then where would you be? How would you find your name then?"

She made a squeaking noise. "I don't think—"

Aderyn was about to say more when a shadow loomed over her. A cold finger ran down her spine. Not good. She bit her lip under her mask.

"Mystery Girl," she said quietly.

"Yes . . . ?"

"Can you tell me what exactly is standing behind me without screaming, fainting, or running away?"

"I can . . ."

"Then do it before I turn around."

"Um . . ." She took a step backwards. "It starts with an H. It's scary. And it's about two feet away from you."

Aderyn almost dropped her sword. Starts with an H—oh, don't tell me . . . She swivelled her head slowly around, knowing she was going to regret doing it.

Behind her was a creature shrouded in a long, dark tattered cloak, its face something that may have once been a gas mask, though it was hard to tell. Three round eyes created a triangular shape on its forehead and two pairs of jagged claws clacked menacingly together as it silently towered over her. A hunter-wraith.

. . . Oh. . . No. "Okay. We are now going to run away. We are going to do it calmly, and you are not going to panic. Unless you'd like to see how long you can survive against it."

"Whatever you say," said the girl, backing away slowly. "Personally, I think running away is a good idea."

"Then do it!" Aderyn dug her feet in and leapt forward, grabbing the girl's arm with her left hand as she launched herself into a sprint. Dragging her along, she heard only silence behind them, but that didn't mean anything. Hunter-wraiths made no sound and glided noiselessly over the ground, searching for prey. Somehow, that made them even more frightening.

"Can't you kill it or something?" demanded the girl breathlessly. "You have your stick!"

She wasn't about to waste breath explaining again. "You think I can kill something like that?"

"Well, I know I can't!"

Aderyn's feet pounded the ground. She glanced backwards, and her heart skipped a beat. The wraith was in fast pursuit, pincers still clacking together with a sharp, alarming snapping sound.

Wide eyed and doing her best not to panic, Aderyn faced forwards again and cried, "We have to hide somewhere!"

"Do you have somewhere in mind?" panted the girl.

She looked up at a half-demolished skyscraper. "It's probably crazier than you are, but yes, I do."

It took a moment for that to sink in. "Hey!" she said indignantly.

Aderyn pulled her into the building, rubble crunching under her boots. "Go upstairs and wait for me."

The girl balked. "What're we doing?"

"Go!" She shoved her up the crumbling steps before peeking outside. The wraith had seen them enter the building. It would've been nice if it hadn't, but then not a lot of nice things happened to her these days. The door was barely functional, but it was better than nothing. Grabbing its rough edge, she yanked it into place and wedged it with a length of metal from the floor. She could hear the girl's feet thudding up the steps above her, not taking the care to be silent. Her épée's blade gripped in her left hand just above the guard, she raced after, taking the steps two and three at a time. No time to sheathe the thing, and she might need it later.

"Mystery Girl!" she called upstairs.

"Yes?" echoed down the answer.

"How high are you?"

"Pretty high, if you ask me!"

Very helpful. "Find a window!" she panted out, jumping over a gap in the stairs. A muffled boom and a crunching noise from the ground floor told her that, in fact, the door had done nothing but slow her down. Damn it. The hunter-wraith had gone through that makeshift barricade like paper.

Her legs and lungs burning and her heart thudding like a drum, Aderyn rounded the corner and almost crashed into the girl as she peered out of a window, fragments of glass scattering the floor and sticking out of the frame, reminding her uncomfortably of a worm's mouth.

"Why do we need a window?"

"To escape." She lifted a leg to kick away the rest of the glass before using her épée to clear the frame of any remaining shards.

"I'm not jumping all the way down!" The girl took a step away. "I won't be able to walk with broken legs, you know."

"We're not jumping to the ground, idiot!" Aderyn pointed at the nearby building, its roof below theirs. "We're jumping to that."

"How is that better?" cried the girl.

"We have a chance of living that way, so if you do enjoy living, and I'm pretty sure you do, then follow me!"

Before her brain could process just how stupid this idea was, she placed one foot on the windowsill, took a breath, and hurled herself into thin air. Cold wind rushed past as she fell, and she almost felt relief that she'd managed the jump. The worst was over.

In the end, the landing was actually the worst part.

She hit the rooftop with both feet, the impact sending a wave of pain up her spine. Crashing to the ground in a roll, she bounced a couple of times before coming to a stop, her forehead cracking against the cement. She lay still for a few seconds, her body complaining loudly and her ears ringing, before pushing herself onto her hands and knees.

"Ouch," she muttered. Not one of my brighter ideas, I'll admit.

"LOOK OUT!"

Aderyn barely had time to look up and think, Oh god before the girl landed on her and she was smacked back down flat.

"Oof." All the wind was knocked from her lungs and, for the second time, she lay still. Would something else would come flying down from the sky? An anvil, maybe?

"That was terrifying! I felt like Indiana Jones in that second movie!" the girl exclaimed, gasping for breath. "Um, Aderyn?" She poked her shoulder. "Are you . . ."

"Get. Off. Me. NOW."

"Oops." Clambering off, the girl brushed dust from her pants. "Sorry, Ad."

"Ugh . . ." Aderyn got to her feet as well, searching for her sword. Picking it up, she grabbed the girl's arm and dragged her over to behind what used to be a heating system.

"Now where are we going? I don't like running around all over the place," she complained.

"Shush." She peered around the corner. The hunter-wraith glided past the window and she jerked her head back, her heart racing again. After a few moments had passed and she didn't hear anything, she chanced another look. Nothing. "I think we're okay," she said eventually. "Still, we should wait a few minutes before going down."

The girl shivered as a gust of wind rattled across the roof. "If you say so . . ."

Silence fell like a curtain between them. Now that the majority of the excitement was over—hopefully—Aderyn could feel her bruises making themselves known. She shifted a little on the rubble and winced at the dull, achy pain that spread throughout her ribs. She's heavier than she looks, that's for sure.

Catching her breath, she looked up at the overcast sky, a blank canvas of grey stretching from one horizon to the other. A few lone snowflakes whirled down and landed on her upturned goggles, making her blink instinctively. Another gust whooshed over the rooftops, bringing with it a dusting of ash and snow, and she slid her sword cover off her back, slipping it over her blade. Just as she did this, the rustle of pages came to her ears, and she turned her head to see the crazy girl poring over a thick book.

"What're you doing?" she asked sharply, irritable after another desperate clamber for ownership of her life.

The girl looked up, surprised, her eyebrows raised.

"Reading," she said, as if that explained everything.

She sighed. "Why're you reading, then?"

"Don't you like stories?" the girl asked, brow furrowed.

A shrug. Stories weren't high on her priorities list.

She gave Aderyn a look that made her feel like the crazy one. "What do you DO with yourself?"

Aderyn sighed and rolled her eyes behind her goggles. "All right, for the sake of argument: Will books make you immune to radiation? Will they warm you on a cold night? Make your stomach stop growling? All they do is take up room and weight."

"They do make great pillows." She giggled. "Just kidding. But without books, what would I do? As long as I'm stuck here, I need some way to entertain myself. How else would you do that when you're all alone?" Then she smiled. "Except for you and Thing, of course."

"But they're not necessary. . ."

Crazy girl looked at her sadly. "They are for me. They can take your mind off of life, make you forget. I've buried myself in books so deeply, I can't even remember my own name, but I can't forget my family, friends, or the life I had before the world collapsed upon itself." She looked down at her book. "I wish I could forget," she mumbled. "I wish I could forget it all. . . Then I wouldn't feel so bad. . ."

Aderyn didn't know what to say when a tiny pool of tears formed in the bottoms of her goggles. Crazy girl pulled them away for her face for a millisecond to drain them, then she sighed and buried her nose in her book again, trying to regulate her breaths.

She was silent for a few minutes, until crazy girl didn't look quite so sad anymore, then got to her feet abruptly, sword in hand.

"All right," she said, taking on an authoritative tone, "The hunter-wraith's probably gone by now, looking for a tastier snack. Time to move."

"Do we have to?" the girl asked, not taking her eyes off the book.

She looked down at the girl, then up at the sky. It was early evening, but she'd had enough excitement for the day. "Fine. But if we hang around here, that wraith might come back." She turned away, closed her eyes for a moment, letting the weariness and the pain sweep over her. Then she pushed it to the back of her mind and looked back in time to see crazy girl put her book away.

"Okay," said Aderyn. "Let's go."

Warmth. At least, relative warmth compared to the bitter iciness of night in the wastelands. Flames crackled and leapt into the air, and on the opposite side of the fire, the girl was lying on her belly, stared into the shifting orange, entranced.

Letting out her breath, Aderyn moved her épée into a more comfortable position on her shoulder. She was sore and scraped from her stunts earlier today, and her sword hadn't fared much better. Running a thumb over one of the many scratches decorating its guard like battle scars, she turned her face upwards. They were inside a building, but the sky was visible through the gaping holes in the roof—not that there was much to see. The night sky, as always, was dark and sullen. As she watched, sparks floated upwards through the gap directly above them, drifting this way and that before winking out of existence. She closed her eyes, and asked herself for the thousandth time: What am I doing here? She had other things she had to do, other things she had to find, and those things certainly did not include an insane person's name. But now she'd managed to get herself stuck with the aforementioned crazy person as a bodyguard, of all things. What would she even be protecting the girl from? Worms she probably wouldn't be able to fight off, and definitely not a hunter-wraith. Today had proved that. The only thing she could be a proper bodyguard against was a rat. In the end, maybe she should just slip away quietly sometime. The girl was crazy anyway. She wouldn't miss her.

"Pretty . . ."

Aderyn opened her eyes to see the girl reaching a tentative finger out to the fire, the flames reflecting in her aviator's goggles. "Don't touch that!" she snapped, and the girl paused.

"But it's glowy!"

She rubbed her forehead, exhausted both in body and in patience. "Ugh, fine, get burned, see if I care." As she watched the girl attempt to poke a coal, she groaned mentally. There was no way she could let this girl go off on her own. It was a miracle she'd survived this long already. She was no wimp—probably from dragging all those books around everywhere—but she was no martial artist either. Aderyn closed her eyes again. Looks like I'm stuck with her a little while longer.

There was a small yelp and the hiss of flames.

"Hey! Don't touch that!"

Mystery Girl had her finger in her mouth and she looked apologetic. "Sorry. I guess it doesn't like being poked."

Yeah. She needed help, and from the looks of things, Aderyn was the only one around to give it to her.

Still . . . things could be worse. "Every cloud has a silver lining."

. . . isn't that right, Galvin?