"Will you ever know how tiny you are, floating out among the stars?"
A fan of dark lashes painted shadows on the pale face. Looking out into night and looking into vast emptiness, she was never afraid.
"how do you want to die?"
"now. I want to die now. Where does this world end?"
"it ends with my world."
"you have to go somewhere when you die, too."
"we go separate ways."
Her lips parted to gasp warm breath into the chilly air.
"never."
As Kitty and I pulled into the small town she grasped the steering wheel anxiously. We pulled up to the run down city hall, which appeared to be completely overrun with shabby looking citizens.
"oh good lord, if this what a hoe-down actually is, I'm not a fan."
Kitty parked on the side of the dirt road and we got out. Almost everyone stopped arguing amongst themselves and stared at us on our way into the building. Kitty pulled herself up and tried to look dignified. Inside the room was dimly lit with candles and totally packed with people despite the late hour. They all stopped talking. Kitty gulped. An older woman stepped forward towards Kitty.
"excuse me miss, how can we help you?" Kitty readjusted, standing up straight and cleared her throat.
"yes, my name is Kitty Jones, I'm leading the campaign for reinstation of parliament."
Murmers broke out around the room. The woman suddenly leapt to life.
"oh my goodness, have you come all the way from London? My name is Grace Kilterson, call me grace though."
"yes, thank you, it's lovely to meet you." I stood behind Kitty, trying to be surreptitious and succeeding little; those that weren't staring at kitty were staring at me. I twiddled my thumbs casually.
"And who is this handsome young man?"
I groaned a little. Kitty suppressed a grin.
"This is Bartimaeus. Hes a…volunteer for the campaign."
I bowed in ironic form. "Pleasure."
Grace peered at me for a moment.
"Miss Jones, Bartimaeus, I mean no disrespect, but is that not the name of a demon?"
Kitty stood a little taller at this.
"It is. Bartimaeus and I aim to break the power magicians hold over both Englands people and spirits such as him. He aids me of his own free will."
Grace looked quite taken aback.
"My goodness Miss Jones! Well, you are very impressive. Well, please follow me."
Kitty and I followed grace over to the front of the room where a stack of papers was intimidating the bedraggled people behind it.
"Miss Jones, I'm assuming you know about the situation in our town, and many others?" Kitty flushed an embarrassed tone of pink.
"Um, no. I'm sorry, you'll have to refresh me…"
"oh! Well then, you ought to have a seat." Grace signaled for Kitty to sit beside her at the table across from the hunched clerks peering into depths of paperwork. Grace pushed the mountain aside and revealed two bespectacled youngsters, a girl and a boy hardly a day over thirty.
"Lara, Richard, this is Kitty Jones, she's here with the parliament campaign and this is her friend, Bartimaeus." Their eyes suddenly lit up and they clumsily both got up to shake Kitty's hand, knocking papers everywhere in their hurry.
"Miss Jones! It's an honor!" the girl squeaked, wringing Kittys hand.
"Miss Jones, can I just say I am so impressed with what you've done and that the reintroduction of a democratic government is the most brilliant idea anyone had ever had." He pushed his glasses off, seeing as they had slipped down his nose in his jittery excitement.
Kitty laughed nervously.
"Haha, well I think the guy who invented parliament may have had some pretty brilliant ideas."
They paused awkwardly. Kitty looked tense, realizing her joke had fallen flat. I sighed, recalling the reason we didn't send her out to rally people for the campaign.
The girl and guy looked at each other and started laughing.
"haha, that's funny! That's a good one!" They giggled, twitching slightly and turning a little red, pushing up their glasses with their index fingers. Kitty turned behind her to give me a bemused look. I shrugged. She turned back to them.
"Haha, yeah…well, I'd love to stand chatting all day but we actually came here because it happens to be the headquarters for the largest and possibly only power company in England. And well, as you can tell, the power is out. Supposedly the source for our electricity is here and we just wanted to see what we can do to get the power back on. London is…well, people are in a bit of a frenzy."
Everyone glanced at their shoes at this. Grace motioned for Kitty and I to sit.
Richard placed his hands on the table.
"Miss Jones, have you ever heard of Sitkuss Pine?"
She glanced at me and I shrugged. The name didn't ring any bells. I had an ominous feeling though. But then again, I often had an ominous feeling. Pessimism usually saved my skin. I let the ominous feeling carry on doing it's usual process of creating thirty six different backup plans.
"Sitkuss Pine owns the power company Pine and Son. I'm sure you know who they are."
"Heavens yes. They have a monopoly over nearly all of England."
"Well, this is where Sitkuss lives. His manor and estate are on the other side of town. It's a little hard to miss. Around four years ago he moved back here after his father died. He's been terrorizing our town and every town outside London ever since. He established a firm grip on the power supply of every town in a two hundred mile radius and cut down on labor by nearly fifty percent. Immediately afterwards, he raised prices significantly so he could expand out to London. Power prices have been steadily increasing ever since and…well with nearly half the towns in England out of work because he fired all the labor for the local plants, the economy has completely crashed. Every year he freezes at least five families to death simply because they can't afford to heat their own houses!"
Kitty cringed at gave me a worried look. I really wasn't liking the sound of this guy. He was a right old ebanezer.
"Well, this last week, our little town saw the first glimmer of hope it's seen in a long time. With parliament in place, magicians won't have this sort of ridiculous grip on all the money in our town. The only reason this ever went unchecked and unheard of is because Sitkuss is a magician. He's a right old codger though, if he didn't have magic up his sleeve, he'd be in prison for some of the atrocities he's committed! Anyways, I'm getting a little heated. The point is, we're all on your side, Kitty Jones."
Kitty drew herself up and beamed at this.
"Thank you Grace. That's very good to hear. What exactly do we do about this power situation though? It's not exactly like our campaign has very much money to draw on if that's what Sitkuss is looking for-"
"Oh dear, yes. That. Well, as you said the headquarters for the main power supply is in town. It's actually inside Pines home. But there is on small problem. Mr. Pine has left town and the actual dead switch to control all the power operations is….impenetrable."
Kitty's shoulders slouched a little at this news.
I was glad I had been pessimistic in my thinking.