Chapter 2. The Youngest Vet
Take the children and yourself
And hide out in the cellar
By now the fighting will be close at hand
Don't believe the church and state
And everything they tell you
Believe in me, I'm with the high command
There's a gun and ammunition
Just inside the doorway
Use it only in emergency
Better you should pray to God
The father and the spirit
Will guide you and protect from up here
Swear allegiance to the flag
Whatever flag they offer
Never hint at what you really feel
Teach the children quietly
For someday sons and daughters
Will rise up and fight while we stood still
Silent Running - Mike and the Mechanics
When Aster was 12, there was a lot of trouble in Dystopia for a short while. Some people, led by an old man called Rick Jones did not like the Maestro. Aster wasn't entirely sure why. But she did know that she didn't like the trouble. Sometimes there were explosions in the night, that upset the animals in the Zoo, and she would have to run out with a lantern, in her pajamas and slippers, to help her father try and calm them. Usually simply talking to them in a calm voice did the trick. Otherwise giving them a small treat, a few apples for the deer or buffalo, or a piece of rabbit for the tigers did the trick.
Worse than the explosions at night was the fact that the fighting against the Maestro made a lot of people afraid to go out, even during the day. Not as many people visited the Zoo, and money was short. Aster had long since become a very good shot with the bow, and sometimes went on the outskirts of Dystopia, where there were rabbits and wild dogs. A lot of times they were deformed, from the radiation. Once you left Dystopia, the radiation levels went up, and the animals had obviously migrated from Outside. Her father worried about the animals being radioactive, but could not find a Geiger counter for sale anywhere. At least not for any reasonable price. Eventually, he went to the Library and came back with a book that showed how to build something called an 'electroscope' from an old jar, a few bits of wire, and two small circles of aluminum foil. He gave Aster the electroscope, then ran his comb through his hair several times, before holding it out near the jar. The two pieces of aluminum foil moved apart as he moved the comb closer to it.
"The industrial base here is gone." Her father sighed. "They aren't making Geiger counters any more, and I can't get any of the ones that are left for love or money. But this should work. It detects certain types of radiation, as well as electricity. Carry it with you when you go hunting. If the aluminum foil leaves start moving, then get out, fast. And hold it near any animals you kill. If the leaves move, they aren't fit to eat."
Aster found that that wasn't quite true. Sometimes an animal could have static electricity in it's fur, and the electroscope would detect that. But usually putting an animal on a damp spot of ground would discharge any static, so if the electroscope detected anything after that, it had to be radiation. She also read the book her father had gotten that showed how to build the electroscope, and found out that it only detected something called 'beta' radiation. But generally where one sort of radiation existed, others did, too, so it was a pretty good device for making sure she didn't get exposed to it, or feed any radioactive meat to the Zoo animals.
Her father's comment about the 'industrial base' being gone made Aster curious, though. She had never really wondered before where the different machines in the Zoo, or Dystopia had come from. They had just been there, like the animals or the rocks or the Maestro himself. But now that she thought about it, they didn't breed like the animals. They had been made by people before the war. And there had been a lot more people then, to do things like mining metals or oil, and driving trucks and boats full of them, and making things like the machines out of them. Seven billion people, according to the old books Aster read at the library. Most of them had been killed in the War. There wasn't much mining, now. She heard a few people had tried mining for gold and diamonds in the Outside of Dystopia, but they didn't get much and often died from radiation, because they didn't have a Geiger counter. And apparently most people didn't go to the Library to find out what an electroscope was like her father had.
All the metal now, and the machines, had been made before the war. A few people melted the old metal down and made things out of it, but they were just simple things like pots and pans and horse shoes. Nothing like the old machines like cars and trucks and airplanes. They still ran, but there were fewer of them than there had been, because they weren't making the parts to fix them any more, either. Apparently just making the parts required an Industrial Base. A lot of the cars in Dystopia had metal or wooden wheels, because there were no more factories making 'radial tires' like cars used to use.
Aster thought about that. A lot of food was brought into Dystopia on trucks. Trucks were machines, too. What happened when all the machines were gone? How would they get food? There were wagons pulled by horses, but horses couldn't pull as much as trucks, and there were an awful lot of people living in Dystopia.
That worried her so badly she had trouble sleeping that night, even though there weren't any of the explosions that had become more frequent. The next morning while eating some oatmeal she asked her father: "What happens when all the trucks wear out? How will we get food from the Outside?"
Her father looked startled. "What made you think of that?"
"Just what you said a while back when you showed me how to use that little electroscope. That people didn't have an 'Industrial Base' anymore, to make Geiger counters with. People aren't making trucks any more, either. What happens when they all wear out?"
Her father shook his head. There was no point in worrying a 12 year old child with the fact that their world was inevitably doomed. Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered trying to preserve the zoo animals. There was nowhere for them to live, that he knew of.
"The trucks are made to last a long time." He told Aster. "Most of them can run for at least a million miles. And there's plenty of fuel. They won't wear out for a long time, yet."
That Aster would probably live to see the end of trucks and fuel was something he did not worry her with. There were far more immediate worries. Money. And food. Both were always short, and had gotten shorter since Rick Jones had started his ill advised terrorist actions.
"See if you can find a deer today." He told Aster. "Something big. And some long thin branches, from a weeping willow or a raspberry. I want to try to teach your sister to make baskets. She's not strong enough to help much with the animals, but she can do that, to make extra money."
Aster did not find a deer but did kill two wild dogs. Or perhaps they were coyotes. It was hard to tell, the two often interbred, and the fact that one of the coyotes had an extra leg didn't help. It wasn't radioactive, though, so they fed most of it to the tigers, and just kept a leg for themselves. It tasted horrible even after they spooned boiled raisins onto it, and Aster's father said that if the Maestro didn't want a buffalo anytime soon, they might be able to slaughter one of them for themselves next month.
There were no more explosions at night for a few more weeks after that, which made Aster happy. Then one night, there was a fairly loud explosion, followed by a huge flash of light. The noise woke Aster up in time to see the flash, and she got out of bed and pressed her nose against her window.
"What's going on?" Thumb whimpered.
"I don't know. Probably Rick Jones and his idiot terrorists again. All they know how to do is cause trouble and wake up the animals at night." She kept her nose pressed against the window. Usually there was more than one explosion, or at least sirens or something, whenever the terrorists were up to their usual destructive tricks. But there was nothing. Dead silence.
Then all the electric lights in Dystopia went out.
Thumb screamed. "What's happening?"
Aster was scared herself, but her father had told her that whenever anything bad happened, like the terrorists causing trouble, she needed to be brave for her sister. He said the terrorists wouldn't bother them, anyways. They weren't interested in animals, they just hated the Maestro.
"It's nothing. It's just dark like in the Mouse House."
"Did they blow up the power plant?" Thumb started crying. "If they blew it up, the lights will never go back on."
"I don't think they blew it up. That would be a really thing stupid to do. But even if they did, there's other power plants in different cities. The ones Outside where no-one lives any more. The Maestro can go pick one up and bring it here. He can do anything."
"Oh. Yeah."
The reassurance that the power plant would be fixed, one way or the other, seemed to calm Thumb. Aster picked up the lantern on her dresser and felt around for some matches. Matches were becoming more expensive, too. She wasn't sure how they were made. Did they need an 'Industrial Base' like trucks and tires? What would happen if matches ran out? How would they make fire?
She put the matches down and went into the kitchen, where there was a banked fire in the iron stove. She took a small set of tongs and used it to take a small coal out of the stove, then brought that back to her and Thumb's room, and used it to light the lantern.
"There! Now we have light!" She said to Thumb. "And I didn't even use a match to do it."
"That's smart!" Thumb said. She looked out the window. "Can I have the crown you made me?"
"Sure." Aster went over to a shelf that had their toys. She had found a piece of sheet brass a few months ago, just lying there on the ground, on the Outside. It wasn't radioactive, so she had tried to use a pair of her father's metal snips to cut a knife out of it, thinking she could use it when she went hunting and sell the steel knife her father had given her. Alas, a knife needed to be made of something thicker than thin sheet metal, and the crude shape she cut ended up cutting her palm and bending when she tried to use it. Not knowing what else to do with the metal, and liking the gold color of it, she cut the brass into a zig-zag shape, fastened the two ends together by cutting two slits in the metal and bending the remains of her would-be knife through them.
She put the crown on Thumb's head. "There, now you're Princess Thumbelina. Just like in the books, after she married the Fairy Prince."
"Will I be married someday?"
"Probably." Aster said. "Probably sooner than me. I have to run the zoo. And you're prettier than I am."
The latter statement was true enough. The two girls were opposites in many ways. Aster was smarter, healthier, and stronger. But when it came to looks, Thumb was the one who was blessed. Aster had mouse brown hair that she kept cut short to try to keep it easier to clean, and at the age of 12, when most girls were starting to look like women, still looked like a boy. And a short boy, at that. Thumb was weaker, not as smart, often sick, but between her delicate, perfect face, and curled, golden hair, in the world before the War could easily have made a fortune as a child model.
The power blackout had not gone unnoticed by their father, and the next day he told Aster that she was old enough to tell the men who worked in the zoo what to do for the day, while he left the Zoo and found out what was wrong with the power plant. Before he returned, however, the power came back on, and both Aster and Thumb were happy to see the lights shining in Dystopia when evening came. Their father came back shortly after dark, and told Aster that she had done a good job being in charge of the Zoo that day.
Aster beamed under the praise and asked her father: "Did you find out what made the power go out last night?"
"Rumours." Her father said. "The power plant itself wasn't damaged badly. Though I expect you already know that, since the lights are back on. But the word is that Rick Jone's and his terrorists got a hold of a Time Machine, somewhere. I don't know what they used it for, but it can't be anything good. But anyways, it was the power taken up by the Time Machine that caused all the other electricity to go out. A fuse or a breaker blew somewhere. Or maybe they somehow diverted all the power to their machine. I don't know. But it's fixed now."
"What's a Time Machine." Aster asked. "Is it like a giant clock?"
"No, it's nothing like a clock. It's a nasty trick on nature." Her father looked annoyed, which meant that a Time Machine was something Bad. "It lets you go back into a time many years in the past, or in the future. To change things that happened. Or bring things from the past or future back here."
"And that's bad?" Aster was pretty sure from the way her father looked that it was very bad indeed, but she was curious about the Time Machine.
"Very Bad." Her father said firmly. "Remember all the bombs used in the War, that nearly destroyed the world? With a Time Machine, people could go into the past and get more bombs, to kill even more people."
"What about the animals in the Zoo!" Aster was dismayed. "Would it kill them, too?"
"Definitely them. The world's almost dead, as it is. It can't take any more damage."
Well, that settled it. If the Time Machine could bring bombs from the past, and kill the Zoo animals, then it was definitely very bad.
"I ain't never having no business with Rick Jones or his terrorists." Aster decided out loud. "I don't want no bombs that hurt the animals."
"Good." Her father nodded. "They might very well ask you to join them someday. You're a good shot with that bow of yours, and they'd be interested in that."
"The bow's for hunting. What would they want it for? To fight the Maestro, like they do? That's dumb. It wouldn't even go through his skin."
"Good. You're smart. If they ever ask you, tell them no. Don't tell anyone they asked you, but you be sure to tell them no, you hear?"
"I will." Aster reassured him again. She and Thumb cleared off the table and went to bed. She never saw her father's sigh of relief. He had gone to great troubles to give Aster and Thumb the impression that the Maestro was invulnerable. Which wasn't quite true, but if they thought that he couldn't be hurt, they wouldn't ever make the mistake of getting themselves killed by trying./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Nothing happened for a few days after that, and Aster wondered whether Rick Jones and his terrorists had even gotten a bomb after all. It seemed that if they had gotten a bomb, they would have used it. So maybe they didn't have one. Or maybe they didn't even have a Time Machine. Hell, maybe the stupid power plant had just broken down by itself and people were simply blaming the terrorists. She had read about such things before, such as something called the Reichstag Fire in a place called 'Germany', a long time ago, before the War.
For the next few weeks, things went pretty much back to normal for Aster. She was learning to do minor surgery on the animals, and first aid. Her father got a woman's body from somewhere, either the morgue or the hangman probably. He showed Aster how to do an appendectomy, cesearean, epistotomy, tracheotomy, and amputations on a person, and told her under what circumstances to do them. He said that they were some of the very few surgeries that were still possible to do safely. A long time ago, before the war, there had been other surgeries, but there had been other anesthetics than opium back then. She asked her father why he had brought a human body, she thought she was going to be a Zookeeper, not a doctor, and her father said that a veterinarian already knew most of what was needed to be a doctor for humans as well, so she might as well learn it. It was important, he said, to be as useful as possible, because Dystopia was a dangerous place for people who were not useful. Especially for women who were not useful.
"How is it dangerous?" Aster asked. "Isn't it a lot safer here, than Outside? There's no radiation."
"There's other dangers in the world besides radiation. You'll understand soon enough."
Aster didn't understand, but her father refused to talk further about it, and after a while she forgot about it, and things went back to the usual routine of studying and helping to care for the animals. She performed several tracheotomies on some rabbits, which her father pronounced a success when the rabbits lived. Then they ate them for supper. She had to do it without giving the rabbits any opium. Her father said that if someone were choking, she would have only 2 minutes to perform a tracheotomy. Not enough time to give them opium. To save lives, her father said, to be kind, sometimes you also had to be cruel. It didn't seem fair. She hunted rabbits, of course, but she always killed them right away, she didn't cut them up and keep them alive after that. It was gross. The rabbits tried to squirm away when she held them, and made this horrible SQUEAL when she jabbed the sharp end of her knife through their throat, into their windpipe. She hadn't even known that rabbits could make noise, before then. Then of course, in the beginning she didn't even do it right most of the time, and would cut into a fast bleeding artery or vein, the bright red blood jetting out over her hands and arms, and even on her face sometimes. She grimaced and wiped it off. It tasted tinny and bad. The rabbit would quickly die, the jet of blood turning to a slow trickle as it's heart stopped, and her father would say nothing, and simply take it, get another one, and tell her 'again'.
Even when she did do it right, there still seemed to be a lot of blood, and the rabbits thrashed around as she put a tube unto their windpipes, so they could breath. If they lived for at least 5 minutes, father said she had done it right. It was hard to do, you had to know just where to poke the blade in, so it would hit the windpipe, and not any veins or arteries, and just far enough and not too far, so it only made a hole in the windpipe, and didn't go all the way through, or cut it in half.
It's easier on people" her father said. "If you explain what's going on, they'll hold still for it, and since they're larger, there's more room between the blood vessels and the windpipe is larger, too.
But Aster didn't see how it would be easier on people. It would be a horrible thing to have to hurt people, to cut into their necks without any opium. Even if it was to save their lives. When she told father that he told her she was kind, but that she had to get tougher. Dystopia was dangerous to people who were too kind, just as it was to people who were not useful.
Things had been simpler when she was younger, and could just look at the animals and help keep them clean, and not have to hurt them to be useful or kind to the other animals, or to people. But maybe that's what growing up was, things got complicated and weren't always good. Eventually, Aster got used to it. What if her father were to choke? Or Thumb? Or one of her favorite kitties? It was worth hurting a few rabbits that were going to die anyways, for a few minutes, to be able to save them. And once her father said that she knew how to do tracheotomies properly, she no longer had to practice them and hurt the rabbits. Things went back to normal.
But, of course, things were not normal. As it turned out, the terrorists had not brought a bomb back from the past, in the Time Machine. They brought something far worse. The brought the Maestro himself. Aster had not really thought all that much about the Maestro before. He was something that was there, like the animals and the rocks and trees. Pretty much, he'd always been there. So far as Aster could understand, he was the King of Dystopia, though he didn't call himself the King, and apparently neither did anyone else. Everyone called him the 'Maestro'. Which meant 'Master' in some other language. Which meant King, Aster guessed.
Except, of course, it was not exactly the Maestro that Rick Jones and his terrorists brought. It was the Maestro when he was younger, and apparently the Maestro did not like himself at all when he was younger, because the two started fighting! Aster knew about this when she heard a huge explosion early one morning, a few weeks after the power had gone out, and her father came running into her and Thumb's room.
"Come on, we have to get downstairs. The Maestro is fighting the Hulk!"
Aster rubbed her eyes sleepily. "Who's the Hulk?"
"The Maestro when he was younger! Come on! Get up! We have to get into the basement! It's dangerous!"
"Dangerous?" Aster was more awake now. "What about the animals! If there's danger we got to protect them. Get them inside."
"No! This isn't a storm!" He grabbed Aster by one arm and Thumb by another and dragged them after him. "We can't protect them. We'll be lucky if we can protect ourselves!"
Things got very loud after that. It sounded like the part with the tornado in the movie 'The Wizard of Oz' which Aster and her sister had seen a few times at the movie theater they had in Dystopia. Except it was even louder than the movie, there were horrible crashes that sounded like they were terribly near the zoo, or even inside it. Aster wanted to go over to the window to see what was going on, but her father pulled her down, and made her and Thumb crawl under a sturdy wooden workbench.
"If they break the house down, the workbench is strong enough to support the weight. Someone'll dig us out, later."
Thumb stuck her fingers in her ears, frightened of the noises and shouting. It was worse than when two of the male tigers got to fighting over a female. Tigers didn't make the whole ground and house shake. And they couldn't get out of the cage no matter how mad they got at eachother.
Aster didn't stick her fingers in her ears, that was a baby sort of thing to do, and she was twelve years old and learning to be a vet and a doctor. But she wished she could. She didn't know who the 'Hulk' was, but wished he would go away back wherever he came from. Then she remembered what her father had said, that the 'Hulk' was actually the Maestro when he was younger. It must have had something to do with the Time Machine her father had said made the power go out a few weeks ago. But that didn't make any sense to Aster, either. If the 'Hulk' and the Maestro were the same person, why would they fight eachother? It didn't make any sense. If one of them killed the other, wouldn't he only be killing himself? Especially if the Maestro killed the 'Hulk', himself when he was younger, he wouldn't live after that to become the age he was now. Wouldn't he vanish or something? Aster didn't quite understand how that would work, with a time machine. And the fighting didn't make any sense, anyways. If she went into a Time Machine and met herself when she was younger, like when she was 8, she supposed she would think her younger self was kind of stupid and babyish, but that wasn't really anything to start a big fight over. Was it? If her 8 year old self didn't understand some of the things that 12 year old Aster did, like doing the tracheotomies on live rabbits (which the 12 year old Aster still didn't like very much), she'd just tell her 8 year old self to go sit down, and she'd understand it in four years, when she was twelve. What else was there to do? Punch herself? The way she did the boys who teased the Zoo animals? It would be her own nose she was punching. She'd have to be crazy or something to do that.
At twelve years old, the further realization that her assessment of insanity was, in fact, an extremely accurate one as applied to the Maestro, did not yet occur to her. It eventually would, in the not too distant future, but it did not yet. Despite intelligence, and education that already far surpassed a great many adults, even those before the war, Aster was still a child, and given the time she lived in, a remarkably sheltered child, despite the cruelty of some of the medical procedures her father insisted she learn.
For a while, things got louder and louder. The ground and whole house shook, and the shrieks and bellows of the frightened Zoo animals joined that of the two combatants. Aster heard what sounded like some bad words, and once, in a loud voice so deeply baritone that it made Aster's very stomach vibrate, something like 'SMASH!' which seemed an accurate description of what the Hulk and Maestro were doing not only to eachother, but to everything around them.
Eventually, however, there was one horrific scream, so horribly loud that it made Aster's ear ring and she wished she had put her fingers in her ears like Thumb had. Then there was a horrid laugh. But after that the noises and shouting stopped. At least for a while. After several more minutes, there was more noise, but it was different from the sounds of fighting. Aster heard sirens and shouting, but they sounded like regular people shouting, not giants like the Maestro or the Hulk. A while after that, even with the sirens and shouting, the sounds of the animals calmed down, which Aster's father said was a good sign, as animals could sense danger. But he still insisted that they all remain under the workbench for another hour at least. He even timed the hour on his watch. Aster was bored. And hungry. They had been hiding in the basement nearly the whole entire day. It was dark and damp in the basement, and the sun was starting to set, making shadows in the corners that crept forward and eventually filled the whole room. Thumb was scared of the shadows, but Aster hugged her. "It's just dark. Like in our room at night. There's nothing here but the same basement that was here before."
"I don't like it." Thumb whined. "What happened with all the fighting. It was scary."
"I don't know. It's over now. We're okay." She turned to her father. "We'll be okay, won't we? And the animals, too?"
"Yes, I think so." He got out from under the workbench, and dusted himself off. "You two stay under here. I'll make sure that it's safe."
Their father went upstairs, and was gone for a long while. Aster heard the door to the house open, then close a few minutes later. Nearly another hour went by, and there no light left in the basement at all. Aster couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. Thumb shrieked suddenly.
"What happened!"
"Something ran over my hand!" Thumb cried.
"It was probably just a spider." Said Aster.
"It was big and furry." Protested Thumb.
"Well, maybe it was a rat, then." Aster decided.
"I don't like rats. They bite!" Now Thumb was even more scared.
"They do not." Aster said.
"One bit me, once." Thumb pointed out.
"That's because you trapped it in the corner and were too much of a baby to kill it. You should have just left it alone, if you were going to be a baby like that." Aster said.
" I don't like to kill things, like you." Thumb's voice sounded petulant and Aster knew that she was probably pulling a face in the dark.
"I don't like it either," Aster protested. "But it has to be done. We need to eat, and feed the animals. And I have to learn to be a vet and a doctor if I'm going to be Zookeeper someday."
"Well, I'm glad I ain't going to be Zookeeper." Thumb said. A few minutes went by. "Where do you think Father is? He's been gone, awful long."
"I don't know. I'm sure he'll be back soon", said Aster.
"What if…" Thumb's voice trailed off. But Aster knew Thumb was thinking the same thing she was. Father had been gone an awfully long time. Anything could have happened to him. Maybe the fighting wasn't over. Maybe one of the cages of the dangerous animals, the tigers, or even the wolves had gotten damaged in the fighting and the animals had gotten out and attacked Father. Aster could think of several other bad things that could have happened, as well. And what if the tigers hadn't gotten out. Even if they hadn't gotten father, they could surely smell Aster and Thumb, no more than two mouthfuls to the terrible beasts, hiding in the dark basement. Aster knew the tigers could smell far better than people could. They could see better, too. They could probably see in the dark, where Aster and Thumb were hiding. Probably they could even hear Aster's heart thumping inside her chest. For all she knew, there was one there in the basement right now, crouched only a few feet away from them, staring at them with big red eyes that glowed in the dark and getting ready to pounce! Aster knew that real tigers had yellow eyes, not red, and they just reflected light, they didn't really glow in the dark, but her fear made her imagine tigers to be even worse than they really were.
No. She couldn't think things like that, or tell Thumb what she was thinking.
"Everything will be fine." Aster finally told Thumb. "You'll see. Father's smart enough to run away if he sees anything dangerous. And it was probably just a Daddy Longlegs that ran over your hand, and the long legs felt like fur to you. Here. I'll sing you a song about spiders to make you feel better."
She felt around for Thumb's hand in the dark and sang a song she remembered their father singing, when they had both been younger:
"The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout.
"Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
"Out came the sun and it dried up all the rain.
"So the itsy bitsy spider crawled up the spout again."
Thumb laughed. It was a baby song, but made her feel better. Just then, the basement door opened.
"It's alright!" cried their father. "It's over. It's safe! Come on out. Thumb, you go to bed. Aster, grab a lantern and help me check on the animals."
"Aster scurried to obey. She walked alongside her father, checking the cages to the left, while her father checked those to the right. Most of them were undamaged. There was a large tree that had somehow been thrown onto the roof of the Mouse House, where the common vampire bats and other nocturnal creatures live, and it had damaged the roof, but the glass fronted cages inside were all intact. Aster stared at the tree. It wasn't one of the trees that grew in the Zoo, at least she didn't think so. She hadn't seen any missing trees. She asked her father where it came from.
"Could be anywhere." Her father said. "Strong as they are, either the Maestro or Hulk could have thrown it from a mile away. Or more. We should be grateful there wasn't more damage. That roof isn't too bad, I'll get the men to work on it, and it'll be good as new in just a few days."
Something occurred to Aster. "Who won the fight? The Maestro or the Hulk?"
"Oh." Her father actually seemed surprised by the question. He seemed more focused on the problem of getting the roof fixed than the dramatic fight between titans that had damaged it in the first place. "The Maestro. Not that it matters. One monster is as bad as another."
Aster puzzled that over. The fight had been scary, but it was hardly the Maestro's fault that some nut jobs had brought some younger version of himself to Dystopia in a Time Machine, to start a big fight. She supposed the Maestro was a giant, she was getting old enough to understand that no other adults were anywhere near as big or strong as he was, but she always thought of him as the King, not a monster.
"Never mind." Said her father. "It's over now. The Maestro will round up the terrorists who did all this and make an example of them, and then things will get better. You'll see."
That was a lie, of course. Though Aster's father had no way of knowing it at the time. But even if he had known it, it would have been a good lie. Troubling the twelve year old child with the horrors that were soon to come would have done nothing whatsoever to prevent them.