Chapter 17. Sinister Resident.

Resident: Unable to Leave. From The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.

Things got far worse in the Maestro's palace over the next year. Previously, there had been some resemblance of order and sanity in the place. Some sort of routine, however horrible things had been at times. Now, everything was chaotic, changes were random and for the worse.

The hospital no longer functioned. Doctor Llewellyn was dead, and his nurse was nowhere to be found. Aster figured that if the nurse had had any brains at all, she had probably left around the time the Maestro had threatened to burn Doctor Llewellyn to death, if he couldn't accomplish the medically impossible. She at any rate, would not have stuck around if she had been in the nurses's position, knowing that suicide was probably the least painful option left for the Doctor, and thereafter, the Maestro probably would have made the same impossible demands of her.

At least the nurse had been able to leave. She only worked in the palace, she wasn't a slave like Aster, imprisoned in the place. Of course, the Doctor went home after his shift, as well, but had he tried to run, the Maestro would have noticed his absence almost immediately, and hunted him down. Likely, he may have delayed his own suicide until the last possible few days, in order to give his nurse time to find a safe place to hide. Aster wasn't sure what to think of either one. Despite her formidable intelligence, her young age and slightly autistic point of view made judging grey shades of morality difficult. She wasn't sure if she should condemn the dead Doctor Llewellyn as evil for performing the artificial insemination procedure that had killed Betty 31, then killing himself so that Aster ended up having to deal with the end results, or excuse him because the Maestro really left him with no choice, or even regard him as a hero, since he may have risked being burned to death by the Maestro by waiting to kill himself in order to give his nurse a better chance to escape. If she had escaped. Aster didn't really know what had become of her, other than that she hadn't seen her in a few months.

It was fortunate that during the chaos immediately after the death of the Maestro's unborn child, that nobody had tried to enter the hospital where Aster had been hiding. That fact did change, however, and a few weeks later, when Aster walked past the abandoned facility, she saw that the door was broken off it's hinges, and most of the drugs of the narcotic sort had been made off with. Other bottles, containing things like vitamins and antibiotics were still there, although in a lot of cases they had been pointlessly broken or spilled.

Aster gave the matter some thought, and as soon as she thought it safe to remove the improvised board and cloth splint from her arm, she snuck into the ruined hospital one day. Sorting through the mess, she gathered up the bottles of vitamins and antibiotics that were still intact, tossed them in a pillowcase, and hid them inside a ventilation duct in a store-room several floors away, along with a selection of some of the simpler tools Doctor Llewellyn had used.

Nobody noticed her thefts, amidst the other thefts and general vandalism that occurred within the former hospital. Aster didn't know what would happen if someone in the palace, especially one of the slave, were hurt or got sick in the future. Either they'd get better on their own, or they'd die.

There were other, sinister, changes as well. The slightly more agreeable guards, the ones who could sometimes be bribed with gems or sex for large favors, or who might do small favors out of kindness, were gone. The only guards left out of those who had previously worked in the palace were the more sadistic sort, like Paul Rasse and his group of rapist friends. There were a number of new guards in the palace, who Aster had never seen before, and to a man, they were either as brutal as Rasse – or worse.

The Maestro's 'court' sessions changed in nature. Previously, they had consisted of three parts, the formal presentation of tributes and taxes, criminal charges against those who had offended the maestro or favored friends of his, and disputes between private citizens. Now, the first and third parts were gone. Tribute and taxes were simply seized at random, with the amount being determined by the Maestro's caprice (or the greed of the guards he sometimes sent to seize it for him). Nor did anybody dare to bring 'private disputes' before the Maestro any longer, as his reaction to the first few people who had dared to do so, following the death of his unborn son, had simply been to listen to the complaints for a few minutes with a faintly irritated expression on his face, then to seize both parties by the head, one in each hand, and snap their necks with a quick jerk for 'wasting his time with petty nonsense'. The continuous injustice reminded Aster of something she had read in her thick, coverless book a long time ago, where there had been no "means, methods, rules or agencies of proof" left in the world.

The criminal trials, alone, remained fairly unchanged as to what they had been. Although it seemed to Aster that they were conducted faster than they had been previously. The accused was simply marched out and flung onto the floor, the charges against him read, and execution carried out immediately. Usually, this involved the Maestro either breaking their necks, or their skull. However, as time went on, Aster began to notice a change in the manner of executions. At times, the Maestro would twist a person's neck several times, wringing their head off the way Aster had often done to rabbits back when she hunted them, and the blood jetting from the neck would drench Aster and the other women sitting at the Maestro's feet, as well as the nearer guards (the Maestro had very few people left in his 'court') and the Maestro himself. The Maestro and the guards generally ignored the blood, as well as the convulsions of the decapitated body. Aster was inclined to ignore it as well, but pretended disgust when she saw that the other women were doing so. Not showing disgust would attract attention to herself, and that was more dangerous now than it had ever been before. Sometimes the Maestro would order someone to clean up the 'mess'. Other times, when he failed to do so, the body was simply left lying on the floor, in it's own blood and excrement. Nobody dared to suggest cleaning it up to the Maestro, if he didn't order it himself.

As if that were not bad enough, about four months after the Maestro's son had miscarried, some of the executions began to be carried out in an even worse manner. For some time, meals had been rather irregular and scanty. Most of the cooks were gone, and meals were served whenever the Maestro demanded them, by whoever he demanded it of (usually his female slaves). This could mean, depending on the Maestros' particular whim at the time, that breakfast be served at 11:00 at night, or supper be served at 4:00 in the morning. The power in the palace had been irregular for some time, as most of the technicians and engineers had either been killed, or fled, meaning that often the stoves didn't work. Aster managed to gain the very fleeting gratitude of a few women by rigging up some canisters of propane to an improvised grill to cook, but the Maestro himself actually created a more lasting solution by having a large fireplace, nearly 15 feet high and deep constructed in his throne room, directly behind his throne.

The Maestro would sit in front of this fire, like a giant green demon guarding the gates of hell. It was his latest toy, and far larger than it really needed to be simply to cook his meals. It used an incredible amount of wood, which Aster heard in whispers from the guards was now part of the 'tribute' demanded of the citizens of Dystopia. If they failed to supply whatever amount of wood the Maestro demanded they supply (which was often the case given that trees grew very poorly ever since the war), he got the wood regardless, simply by dismantling their house. The lucky were able to find some sort of poor shelter to live in, even if it were only a tent or a shed or a corner of a barn owned by someone else. The unlucky often froze to death.

It was this fireplace, made of green bricks (which eventually turned somewhat grayish with soot) that was involved in a horrible change regarding the manner in which some of the unfortunate condemned were executed. Aster had never like the fireplace, ever since it was built. The overly large size and the subsequent need for huge amounts of wood struck her as wasteful. It also meant that it was extremely hot to even sit anywhere near it, as Aster had to when she was made to act as an ornament and unwilling witness to the Maestro's increasingly grisly 'court' sessions. The heat was even worse when she had to help cook the Maestro's meals on it. Often, the heat was so bad that neither she nor the other women could get close enough to the blaze to cook with it, and had to use long pokers to drag a few blazing logs onto the overly large hearth to cook with. The flowing, sheer dresses they wore were also highly flammable, and after the first time she was ordered to cook the Maestro's dinner for him in the new fireplace (or perhaps inferno would have been a better word) Aster took to bringing a large bucket of water and a pitcher from the kitchen with her, and pouring it over herself to soak her clothing and hair.

The Maestro seemed amused by the way her wet clothing clung to her body. The other women thought her odd, at first, and did not care to emulate a socially awkward person they regarded as a 'murderer'. Until a few days later when one of the other women's dresses caught on fire while she was trying to roast potatoes in the huge fireplace. The woman survived, but was badly scarred, and a few days later, she disappeared. Nobody dared ask what had happened to her, but the other women began emulating Aster thereafter, and soaking their dresses with water when the Maestro made them cook by the huge blaze.

Aster did not like heat. She preferred cooler, autumn days, when the flower she was named after was generally blooming. She hated sitting near the enormous fireplace, and she loathed cooking with it even worse.

She abominated what the Maestro eventually began doing with the fireplace.

Aster had, to some degree, gotten used to the executions, whether the Maestro did them by snapping someone's neck, twisting their head off, or hurling them violently against the nearest convenient wall. However, shortly after he had the fireplace built, the Maestro was conducting a 'trial' for a man he accused of trying to 'tamper' with the water supply to his palace. Aster didn't know what 'tampering' referred to, much less whether or not the man was guilty of such a thing. She simply sat, unmoving, trying not to attract attention to herself, and bracing herself for the inevitable execution.

The inevitable came, but took a vastly more horrible form than it ever had before. The Maestro's hand flashed out, far faster than Aster's eye could follow, but rather than simply smashing or mangling the unfortunate man, the Maestro seized the man and hurled him bodily into the blazing fireplace behind him.

The screams were awful. The man's body caught on fire almost instantly, yet he was still screaming, and flapping his limbs like a headless chicken. Aster nearly vomited and had to look away. A few of the other women began screaming, despite venomous glares from the Maestro and one of them actually fainted.

After that, the Maestro would fling about one condemned 'criminal' in ten into the blazing fireplace. There was no rhyme or reason that Aster could discern as to which ones. Some of them that were 'guilty' of such minor offenses that a sane person wouldn't even have noticed them would be hurled alive into the fireplace. Others who had done something that might conceivably have deserved severe punishment (though under the current circumstances they were entirely understandable) like throwing a pre-war grenade at the Maestro. Some people, from what Aster heard the guards talking about in whispers, would commit suicide on even hearing the rumor that the Maestro was going to accuse them of a 'criminal' act. Others tried, generally unsuccessfully, to flee Dystopia, and were usually either hunted down or died of radiation poisoning. One man who was dragged into the Maestro's throne room on some charge or the other managed to somehow smuggle in an ancient pre-War gun under his clothing, and as soon as the Maestro began reading the charges against him, brought it out and shot two guards and himself. After that, all the condemned 'criminals' were brought into the Maestro's presence stripped and bound. That didn't prevent some of them from committing suicide with poison capsules they had hidden in their mouths.

The smell in the palace was terrible. The Maestro would let some bodies lying around in his throne room or hallways for weeks – or permanently. The sewage system frequently backed up due to lack of maintenance. Whenever he threw a hapless condemned 'criminal' into his fireplace, the smell of burning flesh was awful. The only bright spots in all of this were firstly that Aster gained a slight amount of tolerance from the women who otherwise condemned her as 'murderer' due to being able to figure out and repair most of the plumbing problems in the women's quarters with wrenches and other tools that had been left lying around, and secondly, that an increasing number of the 'criminals' were actually already dead – having committed suicide – before the Maestro read the accusations to their corpses, and carried out a ludicrous mock 'execution' on their already dead bodies.

As the smell grew worse, Aster grew very worried about the risk of disease. She made it a point to keep as far away from any bodies as she could, and to scrub herself in the showers, thoroughly, twice a day. More often, if she was feeling especially paranoid, or had encountered something that seemed particularly unsanitary. Sometimes she thought of the cache of antibiotics she had gotten from the ruined hospital, and was glad. It seemed increasingly likely that she was going to need them. She was lucky in that she did not get sick. Perhaps her frequent washing helped prevent it. Some of the other women occasionally got sick, and Aster reluctantly did not bring them any of the antibiotics. If she brought them, she'd have to explain where she had gotten them, and she didn't care to endanger herself by doing that. Besides which, she had no way of knowing whether she would need them for herself in the future. She did give them what advice and help she safely could when they were sick, including eating well, getting plenty of water (with a bit of sugar and salt in it), putting hot compresses on boils and lancing them when they came to a head. Usually the women got better. A few times, they didn't.

Aster had occasionally wondered, ever since the Maestro's tantrum, the terrible night his unborn son had died, who 'Shulk' was, whom the Maestro had warned her not to 'suggest' or he would kill her. Wondering about it was one of the few distractions she had from the horror her life had become. She wasn't sure how she found out, whether it was from reading in the Hall of Heroes, or hearing the Maestro laughing suggest to his guards after flinging a disappointing (to him) dead criminal into the fire, that he should 'put the Shulk's sarcophagus in there'. Time and living had become a nightmare and confusion. But at some point she did learn, however it was, that apparently the Maestro had a cousin, a woman, who was also a gamma creature, like him, and who had tried, along with the 'abominable creature' to kill the Maestro many years before. They failed. The Abominable Creature escaped, though he had lost an eye and a hand, but the 'Shulk' was not so lucky. The Maestro had locked her up in a 'sarcophagus', something that looked like a huge metal coffin. Apparently she was actually still alive in there, but sleeping. There were tubes and wires leading into and out of the oversized metal prison.

For a few days, Aster distracted herself from the horrors of the palace by contemplating the possibility of letting the 'Shulk' out, but was eventually forced to give up the idea. The metal container was well and truly sealed. Possibly, she might be able to cut through it with a torch… in several days. Since the sarcophagus was set into one wall of the Maestro's throne room, where Aster had previously thought it merely to be a peculiar decoration, it was hardly likely that she would be able to use a torch on it for that length of time without being noticed. She took out some of her annoyance at the matter by deciding that the Shulk and the Abominable creature were both stupid. Far stupider than her. They were stupid to attack the Maestro directly, however strong they might have been. What they should have done is found a way to sneak up on him, preferably while he was sleeping, and stuck an icepick into his ear.

That, at any rate, is what she would have done in their place. It was their stupidity that made them lose, and resulted in Aster's current situation. Satisfied with that line of reasoning, one afternoon, when the throne room was empty, Aster made her way over to the sarcophagus, and whispered towards it: "It's your own fault you're in there. If you're going to shoot an arrow at the King, you stupid cunt, don't miss."

Then she gave the metal container a kick, accomplishing nothing except to stub the toes on that foot. She hopped away and felt a bit stupid herself. Supposedly the 'Shulk' had been sleeping for years, so she could hardly hear Aster anyways, much less feel her kicking the metal prison. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Obviously the possibility of the 'Shulk' bearing his child – which she probably could have done – was what the Maestro was warning her not to suggest. The absurdity of her made her nearly sick. The Maestro raped women to death – when he didn't have to, burned so-called 'criminals to death without a qualm, and did any manner of other horrible things. But getting his own cousin pregnant? Apparently that would be going quite too far.

About a month before she turned 18, Aster finally had her first menstruation. She had actually been very thankful for a long time, for her late development. She, at least, had not yet been able to end up like poor Betty 31, torn apart from the inside out by the Maestro's child. Now, it was possible that she could end up that way. She spent much time brooding on it. She knew the Maestro hated her, and it seemed like the sort of thing he would like to do to her.

The combination of the new possibility of a fatal pregnancy with a gamma child and being an unwilling witness to sadistic horrors eventually began to wear down on Aster's mental state. At times, it seemed she was in a fog, much like that which the codeine had caused in her. A few times she would wake up in the middle of the night, sit up in the dark, and think she was back at home in the Zoo, and that the whole horrible experience had been a nightmare. Other times, she thought none of it was real, including herself. Surely if she were a real person, such horrible things couldn't be happening to her.

More and more often, she thought that perhaps she was dead, and in Hell. It made sense. Hell could not be worse than what was happening to her, and she was a murderer. She had killed Betty 31, and murderers went to Hell. Perhaps the Maestro had killed her after she failed to save his unborn son, and part of her punishment in Hell was to not remember that she had died.

Autumn came. Most of the leaves fell off the trees that she could see from the barred windows of the palace. It seemed hot, despite the season. Perhaps the leaves had fallen early. Trees still grew in and around Dystopia, but they didn't seem healthy, and they grew more and more poorly every year. Or perhaps her expectations of what a tree should do had increased. Certainly after poor, dead Betty 31 had drawn her a picture of crowded trees and plants, like a pre-War illustration, that she claimed existed in and around Milwaukee, the trees in Dystopia seemed scanty, withered, and sickly and comparison.

Hot dusty winds blew, howling almost like winter weather. Occassionally it would drizzle, but never enough to settle the dust that filled the air. Sometimes there would be a flash of lightning, and a crack of thunder, but never very loud, as if the heat and dust were muffling the weather in some way.

It was on such a noisy night, that Aster was summoned before the Maestro. 'Summoned' in this case meaning that two guards found where she was working, trying to repair one of her improvised propane grills that she had put into the women's quarters, and promptly marched her to where the Maestro was sitting in his throne room.

Dread filled her belly at the sight in the throne room. The Maestro was sitting at a large table, eating something on a plate. Aster didn't recognize what it was, at first. Half the lights in the throne room were burned out, or broken, and the Maestro was illuminated mainly by the huge fire behind him, on which some mid-sized animal was roasting on a spit. Several of the guards were sitting at other tables. Something was odd about their expressions. They still looked cruel, but they also looked apprehensive and guilty for some reason.

Aster was used to fear. Her years in the Maestro's palace, and surviving the things that she had, had forced her to learn to function despite often being in a panic. Her heart was racing, and her chest heaving, but she forced herself to at least breathe quietly, and stand still. To distract herself, she looked at the roast in the fire. She had sometimes cooked rabbits that way, but this was far larger than a rabbit, though she couldn't make out in the dim light what it was. It had to be about 40 lbs, dressed. Probably 60 lbs while still alive. But what was it? The proportions were odd. Perhaps a mutation of some sort, from the Outside. Aster had always avoided eating mutant animals, worried about toxins and radiation, but the Maestro, with his ability to heal, probably didn't need to worry about such things. A mutant pig, maybe. There seemed to be a lot of fat both on the spitted roast, and the part the Maestro was eating.

The guards put her on the other side of the Maestro's table, about 10 feet away, so he could see her over the surface. The Maestro took another bite of what he was eating, wiped one greasy hand on his beard, and gestured towards her with the large piece of meat he was eating. Turned at another angle, Aster finally recognized what he was eating. Truthfully, she had recognized it the moment she had come in, but had suppressed the awareness.

Oh dear God, not that. Her heart raced faster, and she felt like vomiting again, the way she had the first time the Maestro had thrown a condemned criminal into the fireplace behind him. Her ears rang, and she felt faint. She looked at the fire, and to one side, and at the floor. Anywhere but straight ahead of her, at the Maestro and what he was holding.

"You!" The Maestro rumbled. "I've heard that you've been wandering around a lot lately. As if you thought you could come and go as you please. Is that what you think?"

"I…" Aster honestly couldn't remember much of what she had been doing the past few weeks. "I don't know."

"You don't know." The Maestro mocked her. "And now you're not kneeling. The way you are supposed to. Tell me, just where do you think you are? That you can do whatever you want?"

Aster thought about it, and gave the answer that had been making more and more sense to her lately. "I think… I'm in Hell."

The huge green tyrant found this vastly amusing for some reason. "Hell…" he chuckled, taking another bite of meat. "This is my Kingdom. But close enough, I guess. Do you think you can do whatever you want, in Hell?"

She shook her head in a panic, remembered at last that she was supposed to kneel, and did so. "No. I don't think that. Forgive me, my Lord."

"Better." The Maestro nodded as she kneeled. "Much better. Tell me, what's you're name?"

Aster thought. What was the right answer? "Betty. Betty 23…. My lord."

"Good. You've learned obedience." The Maestro took a larger bite of meat, swallowed it almost without chewing, belched, then set the remainder down on his plate. "There was a saying once, in an old book, from before the War. 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven'. Well, I reign in Hell, perhaps. And you serve in Hell. Now, what do you say to that?"

"I… don't know. Am I dead?"

"Are you dead?" The Maestro sneered. "None of us are DEAD. Look around you. Do we look dead? Well, other than the one in the fireplace. His father didn't have any cattle for me, so what was I supposed to do? Hmm? You tell me."

Aster quaked in a panic. "I… don't know…"

"You don't know." His voice grew more mocking. "The brilliant little zookeeper, so full of books. And so very useless. You didn't know anything when I needed you to save my son, and you don't know anything now. Do you? You're just a stupid, useless woman, aren't you?"

The series of questions confused her. "No. I mean, yes. I mean, I don't know. Whatever it is you say."

"Stupid." The Maestro nodded as if this had somehow settled something. "You're all stupid and treacherous. However clever and innocent you may seem at first."

He picked up the meat from his plate. Long pig. Aster forced herself to think in the euphemistic slang term, and took several more bites, glaring at Aster the whole while. He set it down again, and pointed one huge green finger at her.

"Take off your clothes, girl."

Aster had long since lost all modesty. She stepped out of the green dress as casually as if she were merely taking off a hat. The Maestro inspected her body, disapprovingly, looking from her head to her toe, as if trying to find one small part of it that met to his standards.

"The other women tell me that you finally started bleeding a few months ago." The Maestro said. "I thought perhaps you'd finally have some decent curves. That you'd look like a woman. But my God, look at you. Taller than most men. Huge feet. Shoulders wider than your hips. Don't get me started on your hair. Ugly brown color."

The Maestro inspected her for a few more moments, then shook his head. "You want to know what you look like? Honestly? You look like someone took a woman's body and fitted it over a man's skeleton. That's what you look like. Some kind of freak, almost."

"I'm sorry that I am ugly, my lord. I can't do anything about my height. Do you want me to bleach my hair?"

"Bleach your hair?" The Maestro snorted. "What good would that do? It would still be brown, underneath. Honestly, I have to say, that you are by far the ugliest woman I ever brought here. I don't know what I was thinking, to honor you like that."

You think what you did to me, what I've been through, is an honor? Aster thought in disbelief. She said nothing, and looked at the floor.

"Now your sister," The Maestro continued. "She was nothing like you. Lovely, long blond hair. Slender.. The right height. Small hands and feet. Nice curves, even as young as she was. The two of you were as different as, well, night and day."

My sister… Aster failed to notice the Maestro's use of past tense verbs in his statement. It's only been four years… My God, she's younger than I was.

"Where…" Her voice trembled. "Where's my sister? Where's Thumb? Is she here?"

"She was" The Maestro's smirk became terribly cruel. "Like I said, the two of you were as different as night and day. You're still alive… she didn't survive the night with me."

"NO! THUMB!" Grief and coldness warred in her chest. "WHERE'S THUMB! WHERE'S MY SISTER?!"

"How the hell should I know?" The Maestro snarled in irritation. "Somewhere in the charnel pit. I don't keep a fucking record of what bodies land where. If you want her, why don't you climb down and get her?"

Fear joined grief and coldness. She wanted to find Thumb's body. She should find Thumb's body. But she was afraid of heights under the best of circumstances, and that horrible pit terrified her. She stood, gaping and looking stupid for several moments, until the Maestro finally made a disgusted noise.

"Fine. Don't go. Why don't you just leave?" There was a sadistic glimmer in his eyes.

"Leave?" Aster didn't understand. She was a prisoner here.

"Leave!" The Maestro pointed behind her. "Are you so stupid that you don't understand simple English? Get the hell out. You're good for nothing. You're useless, and ugly. And the other women keep complaining about you. I don't need you here gobbling up my food and scaring them. So get the hell out."

"Out…" The concept was unthinkable. "What… should I do?"

"Do I look like your Father? Go ask him." The sadistic glimmer grew stronger. "If he's still alive."

"Father…" Aster hadn't thought about her father, or about Thumb, in so long. "What did you do to my father? Where is he?"

"That Zookeeper?" The Maestro grinned cruelly. "Back at his home in the zoo, where I left him, I suppose. But he seemed very upset when I took your sister the other night, and said it was to replace the one that died."

"But…" Aster couldn't comprehend a lie of such pointless cruelty. "I'm not dead."

Of course, there was no way her father could know that.

"Go tell your father that." Suggested the Maestro. "If he's still alive. He was sobbing about having nothing left to live for, the last I saw him."

Leave… it was a foreign, nearly unthinkable concept. But there it was, in front of her. And she had to hurry. If it wasn't already too late. She reached down to pick up the dress that the Maestro had demanded she take off.

"Leave the clothes." Ordered the Maestro. "You came here with nothing, and you'll leave with nothing. You've done absolutely nothing of use while you were living off my generosity, and I'll not have you stealing my clothes, any more than I'll have you eating my food any longer, Zookeeper."

I didn't come here with nothing. I came with Tony Tiger. Aster thought. But Tony Tiger was long gone, offered as an inadequate penance to the woman she had murdered. And now, in the same pit her sister was in. Aster turned, shuffling away, and feeling ashamed. A good sister, a brave sister, would have insisted on going down into the charnel pit to find Thumb's body. But she was nothing but a worthless coward, always saving her own skin. Not a hero, like the ones in the Hall of Fallen Heroes, many of whom had died fighting the Maestro. Because she was afraid.

She was afraid of heights.

She was afraid of the charnel pit.

She was afraid of the Maestro changing his mind.

It was the last thought that got her moving. What if he did change his mind, in the next few minutes? What if he killed her and put her body on a spit? Or worse yet, did so without killing her first?

It was the last thought that got her moving. Not daring to move too fast, terrified of moving too slowly, she shuffled out of the throne room, down the hallway. Aster was worried that it was a trick of some kind, that she would be allowed to get just so far down the Hallway, then the Maestro, running far faster than she could ever hope to do, would suddenly come after her, seizing her in one huge hand, and doing God only knew what to her.

She saw the main doorway of the palace. It looked unguarded, but surely that was a trick. Surely, a whole legion of guards, or the Maestro himself, would be standing just outside, ready to seize her and laugh at her foolishness the moment she stepped through the doorway.

She paused at the threshold, not knowing from which way the inevitable recapture would come. From within, or without. But surely freedom couldn't be. She didn't even want it, bought with such a price. Thumb. Her father.

The thought of her father got her moving. If there were a chance that she was being let go, after all these years, then she had to get home. To her father. If it weren't too late.

Please, God, let it not be too late.

Aster stepped out the huge doorway to the palace, steeling herself for the recapture that she was certain to come at any moment.

It never came. No-one was there. The only sound was the unseasonably warm wind, howling through nearly bare trees and blowing the branches, the dust, and her hair. It chilled her, despite the temperature. She coughed, struggling to see through the dust and the darkness, then forced herself to stop. Someone might be out there, hiding, waiting for her, and they would hear her coughing.

Cautiously, crouching so as to lower her profile, she skulked through the square in front of the palace, past the heads on their high spikes. She couldn't read the signs in the darkness, and couldn't really remember who they had been, or what exactly they had done to offend the Maestro. There had been so many, lately, who had been executed for 'crimes' against the Maestro that a few, earlier 'criminals' and executions seemed unimportant now.

Aster still moved slowly, crouching as low as she could. Her eyes darted as she wondered from what direction the recapture she was certain was imminent would come from. From the palace? From behind that line of trees over to her right? From one of the alleys? Surely they wouldn't just let her go, after all these years. Guilt welled up again. And fear. She not only didn't want freedom, at such a price, she wasn't sure what she would do with it. Still, an animal instinct for survival kept her moving. She went down the street, past some buildings, ignoring a surprised noise from someone in an upper story window who saw her naked form go by. She ignored the first few side roads, then, keeping her body in the shadows of the buildings, turned into the fourth one.

Still, no signs of pursuit or followers.

Aster moved faster now. Which was not very fast. Her feet were soft, from feminine shoes and the smooth floors of the palace, and walking on pavement and gravel was painful. She minced her way along as fast as she could, looking behind her every few seconds for signs she was being chased, but never saw any. After nearly half a mile, she came across a rubbish pile. There were some torn, filthy scraps of canvas. Not enough to cover her body, but she wrapped several pieces around her feet, and tied them as tightly as she could. Poor protection, but better than bare feet. With a few layers of cloth between her skin and the harsh road, she moved faster now.

She got colder. She had thought it unseasonably warm, but it was still autumn. The howling wind sucked the heat from her body. She went past a few more rubbish piles, but failed to find anything she could use to keep herself warm, unless she wanted to make a fire, and there wasn't time to do that. As it was, it might already be too late.

Please, God. Let it not be too late.

It took Aster nearly two hours to get to the gates of the Bronx Zoo. She was shivering badly, by the time she stepped through. As she did, she jumped, suddenly thinking that if she had not been recaptured near the palace, perhaps it was only because the Maestro and his guards meant to recapture her here.

And yet, nobody was there. Despite that, as soon as Aster entered the Zoo, in fact, as soon as she had even gotten near it, she could tell something was wrong. It was quiet. Far too quiet. For far too long. Even at night, in the zoo, some animal or the other would give out a howl, or a grunt, or some sort of animal noise every few minutes or so. And with their keen hearing and smell, some of them should have awoken at her approach and reacted.

But there was nothing. As Aster walked through the zoo, she saw the reason why. The moon shone only dimly though the dust, and thin, occasionally drizzling clouds, but it was bright enough to see at least some details. Enough details to show her why the zoo was so silent.

The animals were gone.

And had apparently been gone for some time. Branches, leaves, and short shrubbery were scattered around the outdoor enclosures. The first two should have been cleaned up by her father and the men who worked for him, and the latter ought to have been either eaten or trampled by whatever animal lived inside the enclosure.

Aster began running, looking into first one enclosure, then another, in a panic. Surely there had to be some animals left!

But there were none.

She ran through the buildings that held the smaller animals. The World of Reptiles, and the Mouse House. The glass was broken, obviously some time ago judging by the leaves that had blown in and covered the shards. Aster cut her foot on one bit of glass that was under some leaves but didn't notice. There was no clue as to what had happened to the snakes, or lizards, or marmosets, or vampire bats.

"Please!" She shouted as she ran, leaving bloody footprints behind her.

"Please!" She wasn't sure if she was calling to the animals or to her father. "Where are you?"

She ran to her house, still screaming.

"Father! Please! Where are you? Where are the animals? Please? Somebody? It's me! Me! Aster!"

It's Betty 23. Came the Maestro's mocking voice. But that was just her imagination.

"Please, please little animals." Aster started crying, and ran out of the house. She felt like a child having a horrible nightmare. "Please, this isn't real. Please… you're all hiding on me somewhere. Please, this is just a trick. Please don't hide. Please come out. Please, little animals. Come out by Aster."

There were a few noises and squeaks in the grass and trees of assorted wild creatures, but no sign of the zoo animals. Or her father.

Despite running around the zoo several times, Aster never found the former. She did, however, eventually find the latter. She looked back in the house several times, going upstairs and downstairs, and flinging open the door to the closets. She looked in the supply sheds, and even the small shed where Wolfkiller had brought his paid women, so long ago. But there was no sign of life in any of them, aside from spiders and rats. The whole zoo reminded her of the dark basement where she and Thumb had hid, once upon a time, from two green titans battling eachother.

"THUMB!" she screamed. "FATHER!"

There was no answer.

Finally, Aster went into the medical building, where sick animals were treated, and surgery was done. There, she finally found her father.

Hanging from a rope, his silhouette obvious against the large windows.

"NO!"

"NO! FATHER! NO!"

There was a fallen chair by him. Aster righted it, and got onto it, trying to lift up her father's body. Knowing, as she did so, that she was far too late. Live bodies did not smell of death. She lifted it up anyways, holding it with one arm while she used her free hand to try to loosen the noose. To no avail. Her grip slipped, and she fell from the chair onto the floor, cracking her knee painfully.

Fortunately, she didn't break any bones. But it still hurt. She lay on the floor in pain, sobbing for several minutes, then looked back up. A despairing figure, a slave given freedom she never asked for, or even dared hope for, at the cost of what she had thought all these years that she was buying, was saving, by sacrificing herself to slavery, to the horrible lusts of a monster.

Her sister.

Her father.

Her Zoo.

None of it had been worth it. She hadn't saved what she thought she had. It had all been some sort of horrible trick.

Aster sat for the rest of the night unmoving. A single, barely living figure, below her dead father, in the hollow, dead shell of an empty zoo. Alive, when she should have been dead. When she wished she were dead, like every person and animal she ever cared about was.

She had never been so alone.