Hello, everyone! Here is the next chapter in this story, continuing right where the last one left off. I wanted to expand on a few scenes in this segment of the original book where the city of Kanalis is first revealed. You'll see what I mean when we get into the chapter, which will be right now!

DISCLAIMER: The 'Amulet' series is created and illustrated by Kazu Kibuishi, and published by 'Scholastic'. The author owns any original characters and custom elements included into the story.

Onward!

It took all of five seconds for Caleb to completely disregard Miskit's warning about staring at Kanalis's residents. The customs officer that held the teenager's attention had the face and body of an old spotted pig, complete with white mustache and tiny spectacles over a pair of beady eyes. He wore a dark blue uniform and cap almost exactly like how an Earth police officer would, and a pair of faded grey pants with matching grey shoes covered his pudgy legs and feet. His short, plump fingers brought out a clipboard and pen from inside the pockets of his uniform in the relative silence following the door's opening.

"The documents, please," the officer repeated. As Caleb considered the sheer impossibility of a man looking like this being a few feet in front of him, Miskit handed over the folder he was holding. The officer's attention turned to the folder's contents, taking out one paper after the other while keeping the folder tucked beneath one flabby arm.

"Is this everyone here, then?" The man turned to Miskit for answers after he had counted how many papers were in the folder. "How many are in your group?"

"Seven members, Sir." Miskit added the honorific address automatically, and Caleb heard Morrie give a hard swallow right after. "Three robots and four humans."

"Hmm, big party!" The beady eyes looked up briefly from the files, counting the party over and moving up and down to find individual faces. "And whereabouts did you all come to Kanalis from?"

"Further north in Windsor. Near Gondoa Mountain."

"You went that far north?" Caleb couldn't tell if the officer looked amazed or surprised by this fact, his eyes not leaving the papers as he read over some lines at the top of one sheet. "I've never been farther than Demon's Head, myself. But that's another story," he finished with a quiet chuckle. "How long do you plan to stay in Kanalis?"

"At least a week, maybe longer. It depends on how quickly we get our plans done."

"Alright." One sheet of paper was put back, another drawn out. The officer paused as he read something on the new sheet. "Can you explain what your plans in Kanalis are, please?" he then asked Miskit.

Not missing a beat, the robot rabbit answered, "We first want to find a doctor for these children's mother." Miskit nodded towards Karen, wrapped up in Bottle's hands. "After that, we plan to bury their great-grandfather, who died during our travels."

"Bury?" The officer's happy demeanor morphed into a concerned focus, his eyes narrowing and his eyebrows drooping down as he looked at Miskit instead of the papers. The officer became a different person with a few motions of his face, which was a shock to Caleb.

"Is this man in proper storage?" the officer inquired of Miskit. Oddly, his voice maintained an upbeat tone even though his face showed clear concern and a bit of anger.

"Yes." The rabbit did not appear intimidated by the officer's questions when Caleb glanced down at him, but his ears hung lower to his head than usual. "He is in a stasis tube inside the house."

"How long ago did he pass? Tell me as accurately as possible, it will be good to know for the official record."

"Fifteen days." Caleb twitched in surprise at the sound of Emily speaking up for the first time in the conversation. Everyone turned to look at the young girl, her hair flapping about behind her head as light gusts of wind continuously went by. "He died fifteen days ago," she repeated a little bit louder.

The officer grunted and inclined his head towards Emily. "He must have been a great man for you to bring him all the way here. That takes a lot of effort."

"Yes," Emily quietly agreed, "he was." Her gloved hand rose to her chest and touched where her heart would be. They almost grasped her amulet, too, but she let it hang free around her neck. A solemn silence passed over the travelling party, a quiet instance during the hustle and bustle of Kanalis's toiling population.

The officer grunted again. "Right, yes." He adjusted his spectacles and coughed once into his sleeve before closing the folder up and turning back to Miskit. "Do you have all your belongings with you now? Anything else you need brought out by docking staff?"

"No, Sir. But there are other robots in the house, built for specific tasks that the deceased needed help with. Please do not remove them during your inspection of the place."

"I will inform the ground crew about that, thank you for bringing it up. Enjoy your time in Kanalis." The pig-man then looked Emily, Navin, and Caleb each in the eyes in turn. He then unexpectedly took off his hat and tipped it towards the party. "I am sorry for your loss," he told the three humans, "and I hope your mother has a quick and safe recovery here."

Emily lowered her head, but it was obvious she was blushing. "Thank you," she whispered to the sympathetic officer as he placed his hat back in its proper place. He then handed the folder back to Miskit and stepped aside on the top of what Caleb now saw was a white stairway mounted on large wheels. It seemed like their first hurdle was complete: they had gained passage into Kanalis.

A nudge from Bottle got Caleb's feet moving with the others. As he looked to Emily, he saw her eyes glittering with tears that had yet to make the trek down her face. Navin's face appeared frozen in neutrality; Morrie was sweating like every other time Caleb had seen him stressed. Only Miskit appeared satisfied with the outcome as he gave Morrie the paper-filled folder to put back into the brown pouch. Bottle, of course, was silent.

Miskit took pole position for the group without pausing or speaking, and everyone else walked with him in equal silence. The various noises from other piers along the docks got closer and closer, louder and louder, as the group got to the bottom of the movable stairs.

It was Emily who finally spoke about what had just happened; she hesitatingly turning to Miskit and asked, "Do all the people in Kanalis look like him?"

"No, Miss Emily," the servant of Silas Charnon answered as the party got to a large stone pathway leading to a big set of stairs and the one passage through the city walls. "Kanalis is a port town, so it has a very diverse human population. It is said that everyone in Alledia comes here at least once in their lifetime. For our sakes, I hope that means we can find a good doctor for Miss Karen."

"That guy wasn't a human, Miskit," Navin bluntly commented. "He was a pig. Like that raccoon-guy I saw earlier, remember?"

Now that Navin had substantial proof to back up his earlier claim, Caleb believed he would have seen someone like that driving one of these walking homes. He could see other animal-like people in the crowd the closer he got to them all. There was a female deer walking on two legs and wearing pretty clothes, and right by her was someone in the same officer's uniform as the pig-man but sporting a panda bear's face and fur. He was speaking to another officer who looked like the grizzled Doberman one of Caleb's neighbors always took out for evening walks, just standing on two legs and having human hands on his hips.

So many people: people that looked like animals, or maybe animals acting like people. Caleb didn't like it.

Caleb stuck so close to Bottle as the party went through the tunneled passage, other animal-looking humans and even a few strange robots ambling past them in either direction, he could have glued himself to the robot's metal frame and got the same results. The space he had to breathe and move around without risking a bump with one of these animal-like people got smaller and smaller until he barely breathed. A sense of genuine fear made his heart push more blood through his body, making his steps jittery. He didn't try to speak, and thankfully no one else tried to speak to him, as they exited that claustrophobic space into open sunlight again.

Unfortunately, the small circular patch of stone they stood on did not lead to a quieter space than the docks. True to what Caleb had suspected from the outside looking in, the two streets of Kanalis branched out into tightly packed houses or ground-floor shops. Instead of motorized cranes, the clamor of what looked like hundreds of people all talking at once rang in Caleb's ears.

There was no way to deny the truth anymore. Kanalis was a city, and worthy of the title of "Capital" in Caleb's mind. Surely, Karen would get the help she wanted here. Where else, if not in a place like this?

"Alright," Miskit said loudly enough for the entire group to hear him against the crowd, "we'll be going to a doctor who Silas knew to treat Miss Karen. If I remember correctly, their office is…" Miskit raised one of his hands and pointed a finger down the left street, moved to the right-side one and announced, "This way."

Miskit moved down a small ringed flight of stairs, and everyone else followed him with varying degrees of reluctance. Bottle, weighed down with holding Karen, was at the back, and Caleb remained by the blue robot out of personal safety. Emily, Navin, and Morrie were in front, the two kids turning their heads to look at something new every moment and Morrie watching their observations. Miskit remained in the lead, silently following the path in his mechanical brain.

Caleb lasted all of two minutes of walking until he finally cracked under the pressure. "Why does everyone look like this?" he blurted out at the robots. "This never happens on Earth!"

"Kanalis has been affected by a curse for generations, Mister Caleb," Miskit calmly replied, slowing down near a wooden vendor shop with hanging sausages on hooks and strings. "The humans here slowly take on the appearance of animals over many years." He waited a moment as Emily and Navin noticed what was being said. "Sometimes, it starts when they are children as old as you, Master Navin, or younger."

"What?!" Emily gasped as Navin paled in equivalent shock. "That's terrible!"

"It's not as bad as you think, Miss Emily. Despite their appearance, they are still humans in every other way. Everyone here has dealt with the curse for so long that it's a fact of life now. Take that shop over there, for instance."

Miskit pointed with one of his fingers to the shop with hanging sausages and a small pile of potatoes on the wooden counter. As the three humans watched, a bird-like man with green feathers and big glasses had one of the potatoes in his hand – a human hand – and a small woven basket tied to his pants as he spoke to a burly cat-man with curved ears that stuck out of his head like horns. The avian customer quickly drew out a pouch from the pocket of his ripped jeans and put a few coins on the shop's tiny counter. The shopkeeper scooped the metal pieces up in his paw as his customer walked away, the potato going into the basket for later use.

"He just bought that, right?" Caleb asked Emily and Navin as he kept watching the bird man walk away. "Like in a store on Earth?"

"I think he did," Navin slowly agreed. "I mean, he had money, and you need money to buy food."

"I never thought I'd see people dressed up like birds and cats doing these kinds of things," Emily finished. She loudly inhaled and wrapped one of her hands around her amulet, composing herself before her brother and Caleb as Morrie placed a hand on her shoulder for comfort. "Is the curse contagious, Miskit?" she then inquired of the rabbit.

"I don't know for sure," came the answer, "but I don't think so. Only humans are affected, so robots like me, Morrie, and Bottle are safe. We can ask the doctor about it if we have the chance."

That wasn't good enough to convince Caleb things were safe. "Does the curse hurt?" he pressed. "If it takes a long time to change from a human into these animal… human… uh, people, then it must be painful. Like a werewolf, maybe."

Miskit raised his single eyebrow high. "Were-wolf?" he repeated. "Is that some monster from Earth?"

"It's talked about on Halloween, but no one's ever seen a real one." Caleb leaned down a bit towards Miskit as he spoke, drawing everyone else into a miniature group huddle. "According to legend, werewolves turn from humans into something part man and part wolf, or into actual wolves, every full moon. Then they go around hunting and killing whatever they find until the Sun rises, and they become human again. The stories always make their transformation a painful one."

"I don't believe in werewolves, Caleb," Emily stated as a few groups of people passed by behind her that no one in the group looked closely at. "They're just a Halloween story, like you said."

Navin, in contrast to her sister, appeared interested. A smile filled his face with joy as he recalled to his sister, "Some kids at school dressed like werewolves last year for Halloween, Em! They growled and howled like dogs while wearing these big masks, remember?"

Emily rolled her eyes at the memory as Morrie quietly asked the boy, "What is 'Halloween', exactly?" This got Navin's focus put squarely on him, his eyes wide with the glee of explaining a fun thing to an interested listener. "Well," he rapidly began, "it takes place one night every year, and it's a chance for kids like me and Em to get lots of candy. And people, they go around in costumes and dress up like monsters, or robots, or, or, Lenny went as a ninja one time—"

"Slow down, Navin." Emily stayed calm as Morrie was taken aback by Navin's speedy articulation. "He doesn't need to know everything about it."

"Miss Emily is right." Miskit ended the huddle with a concerned tone of voice that Caleb felt partially to blame for. "We can talk about this later. Follow me and stay close; the doctor's office isn't too far away."

Everyone obeyed the robot's command, but Navin continued to talk about the joys and horrors of Halloween to Morrie. Caleb continued to stay by Bottle at the back of the party, and now he started to notice the human traits of the strangers around him. There were even a few genuine humans among them, but his fears had prevented him from noticing them among the crowd. Even so, they were still strangers to Caleb, and he had never been good at dealing with strangers.

I hope the doctor we go to is a human. It'll be easier on the kids. As unlikely as that possibility now seemed with the revelation of the city having a transforming curse, he hoped it would end up true. A human doctor would be less scary to talk to, especially for the children. Were Emily and Navin scared right now, like when Karen had first been taken away?

Caleb tried to focus on the task at hand. I can still help them. I can keep them safe.

A woman with the face of a grey hamster passed by Caleb, a large pouch strapped around her back holding a little baby hamster-child the way Caleb carried heavy schoolbags to his classes. The child was asleep despite the bag's bobbing motions, like Karen was in Bottle's arms. The image was something genuinely human, a mother caring for her son. Caleb's eyes remained on this mother, seeing her brown and blue clothes looking dusty under the sunlight. A piece of him went out to her in place of Miranda, his own mother, far away and unable to comfort him.

I was going to leave home eventually. So, why does it hurt so much?

The mother and son turned off the main street, away from the dust kicked up by the crowd and into a darker alleyway. Caleb stayed with his group on the street, turning his eyes to the path ahead as a group of lizard-men with green scales and wearing hooded red cloaks ran past in a hurry. Wherever they had to go, it probably wasn't where Karen had to be, and Caleb forgot about them as Navin got to the part of his explanation concerning the best Halloween candies to eat.

The heat of the day quickly got to Caleb; the travel cloak made him sweat, and the gloves soon had some of that sweat on them as he kept wiping his face and forehead. The docks were far behind them all, several blocks deeper into the city's winding interior. The battlements on the walls were still visible, but the smoke clouds from factories further inside appeared darker than from outside the city limits. The roar of the falls was now a low rumbling, nearly white noise in the group's ears. The crowds had remained as numerous as before, the species of 'cursed' humans just as diverse as by the docks.

Navin's explanation of Halloween had ended on a lackluster note, the boy trailing off when Morrie failed to demonstrate real enthusiasm for getting lots of treats for adopting a disguise. Lacking a partner for conversation, he had settled for staying by his sister and trying to keep up with Miskit's relentless pace. His energy had diminished somewhat due to his time beneath the Sun's heat.

"I'm thirsty, Miskit," Navin announced, speaking up for Caleb and the quietly thinking Emily. "Can we have some water?"

"In a minute, Navin," was the only reply Miskit gave, not even slowing down as he looked at the sign of some open-air restaurant sporting stools and small bowls of steaming food that customers greedily devoured. "We should be nearly there."

Caleb's throat felt dry, but his tongue still managed to generate saliva so he could speak. "Miskit," he admitted, "I think we're lost. I mean, w-we've been walking for a while now without a rest." He quickly swallowed a bit of saliva down and tried to not worry how Emily and Navin's younger bodies were handling the heat.

"Exactly how long has it been since you were last here?" Emily probed, her tone remaining quiet as strands of her hair stuck to her forehead. She did not bring up a hand to wipe them away.

"Do not worry, please," Miskit said to both of his critics. "I know what I'm doing."

Caleb sighed in discontent as he kept following the leader, staying in front of Bottle and Karen and their continuous, steady motions. He blinked quickly as the sunlight bounced off something reflective in the crowd; a mirror, or maybe some shop window. When his vision cleared, his heart leapt in his mouth at the sight of someone in the crowd, a stranger, staring right at him.

The world slowed down around Caleb. The man holding his gaze had the face of a raven; black feathers with a curved beak, gray eyes locked onto Caleb's sapphire-blue ones. The rest of the man's body – clothes, scars, or anything he carried on him – became irrelevant compared to the man's face and eyes. There was a tiny movement of his beak as he said something unintelligible to Caleb. Then he vanished back into the surrounding mass of people like a puff of smoke.

Caleb stumbled as he returned to the walking pace he had held before. Did he just…? No, he didn't. His forehead wrinkled as he considered what he had just seen, and especially what it could mean. Before he got very far down that path, Miskit finally stopped walking at the sight of a large line of people standing before one big building across the street.

"Aha!" Miskit announced to the group with a smile. "There's the soup kitchen. We're very close now."

It was a kitchen of some sort, with steam coming out of a metal pot big enough for Caleb to sit comfortably in. An 'uncursed' human sat by the pot with a large ladle, scooping out portions of the pot's contents into the wooden bowls of the people in line. The line moved quickly, each person pushing the others in front forward the moment someone had gotten their share. There were other pig-men, as well as gerbil-women, and even a family of chicken-men and women standing in order from smallest to tallest. All of them looked dirty, holding their bowls tightly to their chests and quickly getting out of the line to slurp up their meal when their bowls were full.

"That's strange." Miskit's voice revealed his concerned feelings towards the kitchen's booming business. "There are more people lined up here than I remember."

Caleb's memory of customers lined up at the convenience store checkout counter did not compare to the line before the soup kitchen. "Is there enough food for them all?" he asked everyone else, hoping for a "yes" from someone.

"There should be, Mister Caleb," Morrie responded. "Kanalis always had a large population, so they would have to import lots of food from the surrounding farms."

"Unfortunately," a stranger's smooth voice spoke up from too close by for Caleb's comfort, "all those farmers are in that line instead of in the fields."

A man slightly taller than Caleb stepped out of the crowd and entered the party's sight. He had the features of a young fox, his chin and inner neck white compared to the fiery red on his face and upper head. Two fox ears twitched on his head; his tiny black nose drew in a quick breath of the soup's aroma. His sharp eyes looked at Emily, Navin, and Caleb in turn, each for no more than a second.

"The elves' first conquests were the farmlands closest to Gulfen," the fox-man explained after he saw he had the group's attention. "These people fled their homes and became refugees." He turned to look at the people for himself, and Caleb saw the sword in a sheath wrapped around his back and the metal gauntlets around his hands. "Now," the stranger continued, "they are forced to beg for the food they used to grow for the rest of Alledia."

Gulfen... Caleb remembered that name was on Silas's atlas. Was that where the elves lived in this world, those grey-skinned people with Stonekeeper amulets? And there were more of them out there, taking land for themselves and driving other people away? Were they all looking for Emily and her amulet, or just that one from the mountains?

As Caleb tried to answer his own questions, Emily took a step back from the stranger, closer to Navin and Miskit. "Are you also a farmer?" she asked him, nonchalantly.

"No." The fox-man turned to her with that same judging look. "I'm a bounty hunter."

Emily's amulet suddenly jerked into the air and blazed an iridescent pink, all on its own. The girl gasped in surprise and stuffed the amulet between her hands quick as lightning, but it was too late to keep it hidden. What the action meant was a mystery to everyone save its owner.

"Step away from him, Miss Emily," Miskit quickly ordered as he moved between her and the self-proclaimed 'hunter'. "We don't deal with his kind."

The fox-man's jaws flicked into an angry look for a moment. "My 'kind' is not as bad as you think, little rabbit," he bluntly stated. "In fact, I'm one of the best sources of help you can get here."

"And how do you think you can 'help' us, fox?"

The hunter's eyes narrowed to thin slits. "The elves have you all marked for death." He turned to Emily, and his glare softened a fraction. "I offer my services to you as a bodyguard against them."

Caleb's body tensed up like a coiled spring, what he just heard hard to take in. His personal mission of protecting the Hayes suddenly became a whole lot harder. How angry were these elves to want a few people, including children, dead? How could the Hayes be happy when someone was trying to kill them all?!

A baby's cry came from, closer to the kitchen matched Caleb's rising distress, but he was able to hold it down for the moment.

"Why should we believe you?" Miskit demanded as he got up in the face of the armed stranger. "We don't know a thing about you, or who you work for. Maybe you're an elven spy!"

The fox bristled at the insult, but before he could make a move the same baby cried out again even louder. Then came a rough, "Shut that brat up!" as Caleb turned to look in that direction. He saw the mouse-woman from back on the streets now lying on her hands and knees, a few oranges scattered about by her. On her back was the mouse-child, screaming at the sight of what cast a dark shadow over him and his mother – an elf in plate armor and pointing a sharp sword at the wailing infant.

An elf! Caleb's spine went cold at the sight. They're here to get us! But when he looked to Emily, she didn't try to fight or flee from this elf. She just observed, silent and focused. Caleb turned to Navin to find he had moved right by his sister's side and was also not reacting in a bad way to the unfolding scene.

"Please, Sir," the mouse-woman implored her elven aggressor, "you're scaring him! Just leave us alone!"

The elf instead stepped closer to them both, his sword inches away from the baby's gaping mouth as the child started to cry along with its screams. "If you don't shut him up," the elf snarled, "you'll have one less mouth to feed!"

"No! Please, don't hurt my son!" The woman trembled, hands shaking as she tried to grab her food and get away. Then the fox-man stepped up against the elf, unbidden by anyone else.

"Leave her alone," the hunter told the more muscled elf. "She did nothing wrong to you."

"Watch your tongue, redhead!" the elf snapped back, and then he turned the pointed end of his sword at the new target of his anger. "This isn't any of your business, so leave off!"

"My business is with Alledia's people." The hunter knelt by the wailing baby and quickly got its attention with a few whispered words. In mere seconds, the child stopped crying, listening to the fox-man's words before finally nodding to him. The mother sighed in relief, and her benefactor stood up to face the elf again. "You see?" he said with a knowing smirk. "You just need some patience with kids."

The elf glowered, visibly insulted, and then dispensed his anger through a single right hook to his opponent's face. The hunter flew back, caught completely off guard, and skidded hard against the stone street. A few bystanders jumped or skittered out of his way before he crashed into a wall. As the dust settled, Caleb heard the elf harrumph with pompous superiority and then spit the words, "Cursed scum!" in his opponent's direction.

Caleb saw red. One sentence – one insult – flicked a switch in his brain. Memories of similar insults directed at him – stupid, clumsy, idiot – flooded his body with anger. He turned to the guard, hands clenching into fists, and then a metal hand gripped his arm and held him back.

"Don't do it!" Morrie hissed in Caleb's ear. "You'll just get hurt again, and then the elves will want our heads even more! There's more than one guard around here, I'm sure."

Caleb looked at Morrie as reason came back into his head. He felt torn between righting the wrongness of unprovoked violence and keeping himself and the Hayes safe by just letting the moment pass. He ended up choosing the latter as people started to move around the fox-man and help him stand up. It looked like he would be okay, but he had not come out of that unscathed.

"Let's go, everyone," Miskit said to the group. "The moment has passed." Caleb turned away from the fox-man and back to the more important goal. Emily instead stayed put, still looking at the recovering hunter receiving aid from Kanalis's people.

"Miss Emily," Miskit repeated, "let's go."

"We should help him." Emily looked at Miskit as the rabbit's eyebrow shot up in surprise. "He knows what the elves want with us, with me. He can help us."

"He couldn't handle one elven guard!" Miskit protested, flabbergasted at the suggestion. "He wouldn't be able to protect you at all! Besides," he added whilst mellowing down, "we have no money to pay him with. We're better off without him."

Emily appeared to agree, finally turning away from the scene and walking quickly after Miskit. Caleb joined up with her, Navin just ahead of him, and the other robots and Karen in the back. Miskit resumed his silent pathfinding, but Caleb's mind was not the least bit silent. In that one encounter, some dark things about Kanalis and Alledia had been revealed, opening the path to even more questions. Unlike his time in the Charnon House library, Caleb did not feel eager to get any answers. Things he felt only adults should know were happening in this new world; he silently hoped nothing worse than hunger and sickness would come to him or the Hayes family before they left this place behind.

Alright, that's all for now. We have met some new faces and learned more about Kanalis' internal strife. Can our party find what they need despite the sign the elves are here as well?

As usual, any feedback for my writing is appreciated. What did you think about the extra things I added here compared to the original books?

Draconos is taking off!