3. The Nursery

The boy plopped down on the ground and removed his shoes for the third time since he'd entered the bazaar. When he turned them over, a fountain of sand slid out.

He hadn't come into existence with shoes. On the third day of his stay in the police station, the man had brought this pair for him to wear. It had been . . . nice. Not in the same way the cloak had been, but still nice.

Once he'd emptied out his shoes, he started walking again. The bazaar was deserted, unlike the first time he'd traversed it. Did people not go outside at night? To him, night seemed so much more temperate. He'd been allowed outside several times since he'd been brought to the police station, but always when the sun was out, when it was too hot for him to do anything. The cool air was refreshing in a way the cold rain of his first moments hadn't been.

The boy felt a pang of unease. Perhaps it was unwise to be out here in the dark. Dangerous, even.

Spooked, the boy hurried through the silent marketplace, searching for shelter. With dozens of market stalls scattered all around him, it wasn't difficult to find a place to hide. His eyes scanned the area for a few seconds before falling across a shop laden with half-ripened fruit. Green bananas hung from a hook attached to the sign, just above a bowl of apples. From another hook dangled several round fruits the size of his head. He hurried over to that stall, ducking under the wooden countertop to find two cupboards, large enough to hold several boys his size. The first one was packed full, with some fruits he recognized and some he had no name for.

The boy wondered if this was where the man found the fruit he brought every day.

The second cupboard was a little more barren. He only had to shove aside a couple bowls of apples to make room for himself. After a cursory glance around to make sure no one was watching him, he slipped inside the cupboard and closed the door behind him.

There he waited, hoping nothing scary would find him. If the desert was so dangerous at night that people couldn't venture outside, that must've meant there were monsters lurking even in populated areas like this. It was better to just stay silent until the sun rose again.

He sat there, curled up, for several hours, peeking outside every few minutes to ascertain whether or not the sun had come up. The darkness outside only seemed to deepen, like a shadow spreading out to swallow up the city.

But terror could not pin him down forever. After the first few minutes, he calmed. After a few hours, he began to grow hungry again. With food so readily available, he decided to pick one of the apples from its bowl and snack on it. The juicy texture reminded him sharply of the first time he'd met the kind man, and he found himself clutching the apple core to his chest when he was done, right over the cloak.

For the first time, it occurred to him that he had no idea where to begin looking for the man. The police station had been their primary meeting place for so long, and the boy wasn't sure if he'd be able to find the spot where they'd met, now that it wasn't soaked with rain. He wasn't even sure he could find the police station again.

In the dark cupboard, the boy began to feel lost.


Streaks of pink spread out across the sky like pale fingers.

"You're here early, Fujitaka," Kentaro muttered. He was hunched over on one of the benches, clutching a cup of coffee in his hands as if it was the last rope tethering him to a life raft.

Fujitaka sat down beside the water trough and filled his canteen for the day. "Couldn't sleep," he admitted.

The younger man looked up, grinning. "Still worried about that boy you found?"

He removed his glasses, cleaning the layer of grit from them. In the desert, his spectacles accumulated a fine layer of dust within minutes. If he didn't clean the lenses, this layer thickened until he couldn't see out of his glasses at all. He'd developed a habit of wiping them off every few minutes. "I'm a little worried. A kid like that shouldn't be alone in the desert."

Kentaro murmured an assent, then went back to his coffee. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know. Keep visiting the police station, I suppose. At least until his parents come to pick him up." Though that's seeming less and less likely, since they haven't come looking for him yet. He sighed.

"Why don't you just adopt him or something?"

Fujitaka looked up. Put on his glasses. Realized he'd only wiped one of the lenses, then removed them again to correct the mistake. Put them back on.

Adopt him? he thought, staring at his colleague. Of course, it made sense. If the boy's parents didn't show up soon, he'd be transferred over to foster care until someone took him in. Even then, Fujitaka had heard plenty horror stories about what went on in foster homes.

If he allowed that to happen, was he condemning the boy to permanent misery? Unable to speak, with only the most basic of concepts mastered, the boy would be labeled a problem child, passed quickly from family to family without ever finding a permanent home. And what about when he grew up? Who would support him then?

I could, Fujitaka thought. If he'd even remember me by then. Or I could wait for the police to transfer him to the foster home and take him on as a long-term foster child. Maybe Kentaro's right. But I don't have the financial ability to care for him . . .

"Fujitaka? Hey, Fujitaka, that was a joke."

He blinked, the voice pulling him from his reverie. Kentaro was staring at him as if he'd just grown a third eye.

"I was just joking, you know," the younger man said. "Even if you could get money from the government, you probably wouldn't even qualify to adopt."

He looked down. "Right. Of course not." He stood up, slinging his canteen over his shoulders so the plastic container rested against his hip. "I'm going to go see if I can make anything of the hieroglyphs we recorded the other day."

Kentaro sipped at his coffee. "Have fun decoding those. Our research team can't figure them out."

Fujitaka swept past the younger man, his new cloak billowing behind him as he walked. He'd finally bought a new one after his paycheck had come in, to replace the one he'd given the boy. I don't regret it, he thought fiercely. It was worth it.

He hurried down the stone steps, mind flitting back to Kentaro's careless suggestion. "Why don't you just adopt him or something?"

Why not? Fujitaka thought to himself. Even if he can't speak, the boy understands what I'm saying. Isn't that enough? We could learn sign language. And even if I don't qualify to adopt him, I probably qualify to be a foster parent. At least as long as I'm here. He frowned. Though dissecting every detail of these ruins could take years, it was unlikely he'd be here that long. Most likely, he'd be called away to investigate some other place once the major features of these ruins had been catalogued. That could take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending on how many hidden chambers they discovered.

But then he would have to leave.

The boy must learn how to communicate by then. That's the most important thing now.

Fujitaka realized he'd passed the room he'd intended to study. He doubled back and entered the chamber, bending down to get through the tiny door. It's like this room was built for a child, he thought. As an archeologist, he had to acknowledge the possibility. Many ancient cultures had practices or structures that served little function in the modern world. Perhaps a room fit for children was one of them.

There was writing all across these walls, just as there was over most of the ruins. Fujitaka went to work copying them down, starting at the southernmost wall, where he'd left off yesterday. The tedious task of documenting each symbol allowed his mind to drift further from his research.

The boy always seemed so disappointed when he left, as if he feared he wouldn't return. As if he had no one else looking for him. Is it possible he doesn't have parents? Fujitaka wondered. He hadn't heard of any lethal accidents since coming to Clow, and he didn't think a lone boy could've survived more than a few weeks on the streets, even if people were generous with handouts. Those bandages had also seemed relatively fresh despite the storm, as if they'd been recently applied.

Was it possible there was no one looking for him? That he'd simply been abandoned?

Fujitaka realized he'd stopped copying down the hieroglyphs. Quickly, he looked up and finished the row, being careful to note every detail for later. Who knew what significance these symbols had to the people who had carved them into the stone?

The day progressed languidly, minutes stretching into hours. Most of the morning was spent recording these markings. The afternoon was devoted to examining the artifacts the excavation team had pulled from this room. Most of these had been dragged out to the larger chamber adjacent to this one, packed away in plastic bags and labeled as chamber C-14.

The other archeologists who'd been looking at the artifacts this morning cleared the room when he entered, all silent so their perceptions wouldn't color those of the other archeologists and limit possible conclusions. Discussion would come later, once everyone had formulated their own ideas on the artifacts.

Fujitaka started in a secluded corner of the room and picked up a plastic bag filled with half a dozen stone cubes. He donned a pair of gloves and pulled them out of their bag for closer examination. On each side was a different pattern. Two of the sides had triangles etched in them. Two sides had diamonds. Two sides had circles. Each shape differed in size from its companion, making them distinct. Dice? he wondered, recording his observations in his notebook. Blocks?

He moved onto the next bag. Kentaro caught up to him then, grinning broadly. "You find anything out about the writing on the walls?"

"Not much. It seems very similar to what we've seen on all the other walls."

"Ah. Well, at least the ancients were consistent." He studied the blocks for a moment, still smiling. "You know, these things look almost like children's toys."

Fujitaka pulled a conical piece of stone from the next bag and examined the etchings on it. Several pictures had been carved into the stone, the lines clumsy and uneven, as if the makers had sacrificed finesse for utility. He could see what appeared to be a stick figure holding something vaguely circular. Other lines crisscrossed the length of the cone. From the base rose a small knob, just large enough for him to grip between his fingers.

"Children's toys, huh?" he murmured, lost in thought. After a moment, he set the cone on the pedestal in front of him, point down. With a twirl of his fingers, he sent it spinning over the stone slab. It's balanced like a top. "Did this come from the room I've been studying?" he wondered aloud, checking the hand-drawn map in the front of his notebook.

"Yeah. The one with the tiny door," Kentaro told him.

Children's toys. A tiny door. Most likely a nursery of some sort. He frowned, mind flashing back to the conversation this morning. If the universe is trying to tell me something, it's not being very subtle.

"You done with that?" Kentaro asked, eyeing the top as it stopped spinning.

"Yeah. Go ahead." Maybe I should bring something to entertain the boy today. He's probably bored after days of being stuck in one place.

"You okay?" Kentaro asked, serious for once. "You look . . . troubled."

Fujitaka frowned. "Do you think . . . I'd be a good parent?"

The younger man snorted. "Obviously. You're the most responsible person I know."

He opened the next bag. This one was a bit harder to figure out. A collection of stone slabs, all uniformly shaped, but thin, easily stackable. Each had a different symbol carved on each side. Flash cards, maybe? That would make sense, in a child's room. He turned the cards over, looking at each of the symbols. After spending hours looking at the writing on the walls, these markings seemed deceptively simple, as if they were just fragments of the hieroglyphs he'd been copying down. Like an alphabet, he thought, focusing. "Hey, look at this. Don't these look familiar?"

His colleague peered at the simple markings, eyebrows slanting down in concentration. "They look a little like the markings we've been studying, but simpler."

Fujitaka nodded. "That's what I thought, too. Do you think this is their alphabet?"

"A phonetic alphabet? And they have thousands of different symbols on these walls?"

"There are modern languages that have both phonetic and picture-based alphabets," Fujitaka reminded the younger man. "And if there's any similarity between them, maybe that will help decode some of what we've seen."

Kentaro nodded seriously. "Should we call a meeting?"

He nodded. "Just a small one. A few of our colleagues. Just to see if they think it's significant, too."

"I'll get Takeshi and Oruha. Where should we meet?"

"Right out front. Half an hour from now."

Kentaro almost hit the doorframe on his way to find the others. Fujitaka turned back to his work, recording each symbol on a fresh sheet on notebook paper and drawing comparisons to those he'd sketched out before. He'd need solid evidence to show his colleagues if he wanted to be taken seriously. By the time half an hour had passed, he had half a page of similarities written out. He hurried up to the main level, then through the massive gap in the side of the ruins that everyone used as a doorway.

Oruha and Takeshi were waiting for him outside, each wearing woven hats that shielded them from the desert sun. Oruha had hair black curls tied back in a thick ponytail, and was busy sketching something in her notebook. Takeshi sat on the bench beside the water trough, fidgeting. A moment later, Kentaro came up behind him and darted over to join the group.

"So, it sounds like you found something," Oruha said, tucking her pencil behind her ear.

Fujitaka nodded and launched into a summary of what he'd discovered, disclosing his hypothesis that chamber C-14 was a nursery, as well as that the civilization that had created this structure had used two different alphabets.

"There's evidence to support that," Oruha said after a quick examination of his comparisons. "Suzuran thought the same thing, about that room being a nursery. The hieroglyphics, though . . . Those are going to take more work."

Fujitaka nodded, excited at the thought of a new task. He'd been copying down the same unknown symbols for over a week now. Being able to compare them to this new set of symbols would enliven his work, if Oruha let him take charge of it. "These are just things I drew up in the half hour before we assembled. I'm sure I can find more, try to connect some meaning to the letters. And if they're phonetic, we might even be able to learn something of how the language was spoken."

"I'll put you in charge of matching them up," Oruha said. "If you can get me a thousand examples of similarities by tomorrow morning, I'll consider the two related, and we can work from there."

"Tomorrow morning?" he echoed.

"Naturally. Our time here is finite. The sooner we uncover something interesting, the more grants we'll get, and the longer we can examine these ruins. Tomorrow morning, or not at all."

I'll be up all night doing this, he thought, heart sinking. But if I don't, she'll put someone else in charge of this. No, I have to power through it. "I'll have them by tomorrow, then."

"Good." She stood up and headed back toward the ruins. "Go home and finish those. I'll see you at sunrise."

"Of course." He bowed, then folded up his notebook, taking a long drink from his canteen. I won't have time to visit the boy tonight, he thought, wondering what his sudden absence would do to the child. Would it break the tenuous connection they had? Would the child feel abandoned? Not exactly setting a good precedent if you're planning to take care of him, are you? he thought to himself, hurrying back to the clay house he'd occupied for the duration of his stay. As he passed through the Clow Bazaar, he thought about his earlier intentions to bring the boy something to play with during the day.

No time now, he thought miserably, bypassing the marketplace. Within minutes, he arrived at the tiny house the excavation team had rented. He started a pot of coffee, then settled down at his desk for what he was sure was going to be a very long night.


The flood of light roused the boy from his sleep just as surely as a bucket of ice water. His eye flashed open, his legs shooting out automatically to defend himself from the surge of light. The basket of apples he'd been sitting next to all night turned over as his elbow hit it, and a dozen round fruits spilled out into the sand.

Shouts reached his ears, louder than any string of words he'd heard thus far. He rocked back in the cupboards, trying to regain his bearings.

Monsters, he thought, fearing something had found his hiding place. Something warm coiled around his ankle, dragging him out onto the hot sand. He opened his mouth, a loud squeal exploding from his lips. His throat ached with the first vocalization he'd ever made.

The shouting continued, and he writhed as whatever had gotten hold of his foot hoisted him upside-down into the air. Amidst the cacophony, he caught the words "fruit" and "thief."

Suddenly, the pressure around his ankle vanished, and he fell. Sand filled his mouth as his face plowed into the ground. A sharp pain lanced through the spot on his face covered by bandages, and he spent the next few seconds trying to sit up. Meanwhile, the shouting went on. He turned up to see who was yelling, dazed from the impact.

The man's broad shoulders blocked out the sun, the shade obscuring his features. The boy could only make out the distinctive slant of the man's eyebrows before the man's fingers wrapped around his upper arm.

The boy let out another squeal. It was an instinctive sound, unlike those fluid syllables produced by the man who'd found him in the rain. The boy was only semi-aware that the sound came from him, barely cognizant of anything besides the immediate threat. He ripped his arm free of the tall man's grasp and sprinted several meters before coming to a sudden stop.

The cloak, he thought, only able to summon up the word because it was one of the most important possessions he owned. He hesitated, his feet sinking into the sand. The man towered over him, a low rumble of unfamiliar words spilling free of his lips. Beside the market stall, the boy saw the cloak lying in the sand, abandoned.

Without thinking, he ran back to retrieve it. His short legs carried him across the sand faster than ever before, adrenaline pushing him forward even as instinct commanded him to flee. But he needed that cloak—how would the man know who he was if he didn't have it?

He darted between the tall man's legs, swooping down to snatch the heavy cloak from the ground. As he felt the rough folds between his fingers, the tall man's hand snatched the back of his pajamas and pulled him back.

There was a moment where the boy wondered what he'd done to make the man so furious. And then he felt the leather whip scrape across his back, and the only thing he could think about was the pain.