IT HAD BEEN five years since I'd run away from Wormwood Creek, but almost nothing had changed. Everyone was hostile towards Nick and Cristine, except for my twelve-year-old cousin Wallace who apparently had moved in with Doffish after his parents had died the year before. It had taken his and my combined efforts (and a near-shouting match between Doffish and me) to get a bed for Erik. It was actually my old bed, which had turned into Wallace's and now Erik's. I'd given Wallace several gold so he could stay at the inn.

Nick, Cristine, and I couldn't do the same. The innkeeper, grumpy old Martha Krause, had refused lodging to Nick and Cristine because she didn't want "any nasty foreigners" sleeping in her beds and hadn't let me have a room because I "ought to be sleepin' under my father's roof, like a good girl."

Dr Martin refused to tend to Erik, who remained unconscious for the rest of the day. So Nick, Cristine, and I pooled our healing abilities and took care of Erik's wounds on our own.

The people at the weapons and armour shops wouldn't sell to Nick or Cristine, so I took orders and bought everything myself. I also bought a pair of dragon claws for Erik. His handrills were still okay, but I'd noticed that they seemed more unwieldy than other claws he'd had. I knew it had to be bothering him.

That night, Nick, Cristine, and I bivouacked outside the village.

The next day found me sitting by Erik's bedside, wishing there was something I could do for him. I just couldn't puzzle out why he hadn't woken up. Nick had examined him earlier and pronounced him perfectly healthy, but he was still out cold. It was almost like he was sleeping, only he'd been that way for almost twenty-four hours. I wondered if maybe it was a psychological thing - protecting him from shock while his subconscious mind absorbed it.

I'd been there nearly an hour and a half before Cristine came in and sat down next to me. It was another five minutes before she said anything. "You don't call him 'Father'," she said.

"Huh?" I asked, looking away from Erik.

"Mayor Doffish," she clarified. "I mean, when you greeted him yesterday you did, but... You call him Doffish when you talk to Nick and me, and you never called him anything while you and Wallace talked him into letting Erik stay here... Why?"

I sighed. "It's a long story," I said, looking back at Erik. He looked more peaceful like this than he had any other time I'd seen him - silver brows unknotted, usually tense frame relaxed into the mattress. "About as long as the story of why I left this backwoods, xenophobic hole in the first place."

"Surely it couldn't have been that bad here," Cristine said. "Not for you, anyway. You're not...well, foreign."

"I hate that word," I muttered. "Foreign. It's all I ever heard growing up. No, you can't talk to the minstrels; they're foreign. Don't you dare go look at the goods the merchants are tryin' to sell - foreign wares, the lot of them, and no good at all. That's a strange, foreign idea, girl; don't go blabberin' that all over the village." I folded my arms. "And did I stop talkin' to the minstrels? Of course not. I didn't stop going to look at the merchants' wares; they were fascinatin'. I learnt stories from the minstrels, stories from places where if you wanted to talk to someone you could, and you never once had to worry about where they were from. There were tales of heroes other than Greygnarl. Ideas that hadn't come from Wormwood Creek. I could have lived off what everyone else termed 'stinkin', foreign lies, not fit to be told round here'." I smiled grimly. "Nobody liked that much, especially seein' as I'm the mayor's daughter. That's what started this whole mess in the first place."

Cristine blinked. "What do you mean?"

"This," I said, gesturing round at the village in general. "It's not a story that's much told, but I know enough. About three centuries back, the daughter of Wormwood's first mayor got caught up with a foreigner who turned out to be some sort of fugitive from the Gittish Empire. Some troops came after him, and, well...the mayor got killed protectin' the daughter, and the daughter got killed trying to protect the fugitive, and it was all for naught anyway because once the girl was dead, they captured the fugitive and locked him up in a Gittish prison. The village was devastated. They haven't had any willing contact with the outside world since."

For a moment, Cristine didn't say anything. Then, finally, she murmured, "That's so sad. That something like that could happen in the first place, and then that it's affecting these people all these years later... It's dreadful."

"Yeah, well, I can't feel too sorry for them," I said. "Right now I'm just worried about gettin' to Upover as soon as possible. If we're lucky we'll have time to warn Greygnarl that the Gitts are back and Barbarus and Lieutenant Hootingham-Gore are coming for the village."

We were quiet for a moment longer. Then Cristine rose and put a hand on my shoulder. "Come on," she said. "We need to get you outside somewhere. It's not good for you to sit in here brooding like this."

I wrinkled my nose. "I really don't feel like going anywhere," I said. "Though it'd be nice to get out of the village for a little while before that bloody meetin' tonight."

"Good. Come on," Cristine said. "You've got to know a few good places to hide out round here."

"Well," I said slowly, "I do know some." I stood up. "Grab Nick if you like. We're goin' to Wormwood Canyon."


A little while after noon, Wallace came running out to the canyon. "He's awake!" he called, even before he was in sight. "Tammy, your friend's awake!"

I'd been sitting at the edge of the canyon, staring across the abyss like doing that could make the other side magically closer. When I heard Wallace, I jumped to my feet.

"Erik's awake?" I asked, hurrying over to him.

Wallace nodded brightly. "Except...well, Unc - I mean, Mayor Doffish, says that he has to come to the meeting tonight, too. And Erik says he wants to talk to you."

"Oh," I said. "Okay. I'll head back to the village. Nick, Cristine, do you want to stay here or go back?"

"I'm perfectly fine out here," Nick said. "The company's much better."

Cristine giggled. "I'm staying, too," she said. "I don't really feel like being glared at right now."

"All right," I said. "Come on, Wallace, let's head back."

Erik was waiting in the doorway of Doffish's house, leaning against the door frame with his arms folded. When he spotted Wallace and me, he started forwards.

"Hey, Erik," I said. "How are you?"

He snorted. "I sincerely hope you are not truly expecting an answer to that question," he said. "You were aboard the Starflight, were you not? And I believe your eyes and ears were open."

I grimaced. "Yeah," I said. "So, Wallace said you wanted to talk to me?"

Erik nodded. "Someplace more welcoming than this village would be appreciated."

"I know what you mean," I muttered. "Here, let me make a pit stop and then we'll head out. I know a nice place a little ways north of here."

He gestured for me to go on.

I stopped by the tavern half of Wormwood Creek's inn and asked for a bottle of the specialty lager. Then, on a moment's reflection, I ordered a bottle of diluted wheat beer, the stuff that kids could drink while they were learning to hold their liquor. The bartender gave me a stern look and said, "Miss Doffish, you know your father wouldn't approve of your drinkin' -"

"Yeah, well, he doesn't approve of anythin' else I do," I said. "Look, here's the gold, Mr Brines; you can tell Doffish if you like, but I don't care." I pushed the money for the drinks across the bar. After a moment of hesitation, Mr Brines took it and handed me the drinks. "Thanks," I said, and left.

Erik was still waiting. He raised his eyebrows when he saw the bottles. "You are truly going to drink again, after what occurred last time?"

I rolled my eyes and started heading out of town. "That was an unfortunate accident, and it won't happen again," I said. "I know this stuff, and it's not a quarter as strong as that bloody Desert's Throat. That stuff might as well have been straight whiskey. Here," I said then, holding out the wheat beer. "This is yours."

"And now you are trying to introduce me to this, as well?" he asked, not taking it. "Tammy, I am not quite sure you are in your right mind."

"Am I ever, accordin' to you?"

He inclined his head. "Point taken." He hesitated, and then took the bottle. "What kind is it?"

"Wheat beer," I said. "Diluted, so it's got a really low alcohol content. It's what kids learn on if they want to start drinkin'. I don't think it tastes the same, but I didn't figure you'd ever had much to drink. I didn't really want to find out if Celestrians can get drunk. Though you'd probably be more fun that way."

He rolled his eyes.

We headed north along the path, following the stream to our right. "Where is it that we are going?" Erik asked.

"The spring that feeds the stream," I said. "It's in a little cave up north. I've found it's a good place to go if you don't want to deal with anyone from the village. Only Wallace and I pay it any mind." I'd shown Wallace the cave the one other time I'd seen him, when he was six and my uncle and aunt had come to visit.

It was a little while longer before we reached the cave. I pulled aside the curtain of trailing plants so we could head inside.

Erik looked around, seeming rather interested. "Quite a hideout."

"I always thought so, too," I said. "See, there's this part of the cave, with the spring; but round that bend there, there's another little hole in the wall to get to another cave. I always called it the inner sanctum." I smiled a little. "Even if you're in this part, you can't find the other cave very easily. The entrance is smaller and hidden a lot better. So it's a lot more private."

He was silent for a moment, looking round. Then he said, "You are speaking differently."

"Huh?"

He snorted softly. "You are speaking differently," he repeated. "Your accent, I mean. It is not half so quick as it was when I first met you."

I shrugged. "It's been unwindin' ever since I told that story in Bloomingdale," I said. "I s'pose it's only to be expected, too, coming back here and all. People in Wormwood don't have the same accent as other places in the Protectorate."

"Mm."

I made my way over to the bit of wall by the inner sanctum. "It all seems smaller than I remember," I murmured.

"You are no doubt bigger than you were at the time."

"Well, yeah..." I sighed. "Look, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

Erik blinked. "Ah. Yes," he said. "What occurred after I passed out? Stella and your cousin both spoke of a black dragon. And if you would kindly explain just why it is that you never spoke to us about being from Wormwood Creek - even when I specifically asked why you did not wish to come here - I would greatly appreciate it."

I sighed and popped the top off my bottle. After a quick draught, I said, "Well... After you passed out, Aquila jumped out of the Starflight. Nick, Cristine, and I were tryin' to tend to your wounds, and Stella flipped out, so I went to see what she was looking at... There was this huge black dragon flyin' alongside us. Barbarus." My tone went flat as the name came out. "On his back was a monster - something half man, half bird. Aquila greeted him as Lieutenant Hootingham-Gore." I met his eyes. "Erik, when you grow up round here, you learn about the Gittish Empire. Lieutenant Hootingham-Gore was one of the Triumgorate, the trio of men directly below King Godwyn. Aquila told Hootingham-Gore he had the fyggs. I'm sorry, Erik...your master's workin' for the Gitts."

Erik's face looked like it had been carved from stone. "Impossible," he said, his lips hardly moving. "Aquila would never work with the Gittish Empire. It was believed to have been their fault that his master Corvus disappeared."

"I'm sorry," I said again, quieter. "But it...there was no mistakin' it. 'The operation was a huge success, I trust?' Hootingham-Gore asked, and then later he said Barbarus was 'lending his services to the Gittish Empire'. And Aquila told him that he'd gotten the fyggs. There was no way to misinterpret." I fingered the neck of my bottle nervously.

Erik still looked like stone. Hesitantly, I put a hand on his shoulder. "Erik, d'you...d'you want to hear the rest? It's not much, but..."

"Go on," he said. His voice was almost inaudible.

I swallowed, nodded, and kept talking.

"Well, Hootingham-Gore said that he and Barbarus were going to go to Upover to wipe out the Hero of the Heavens. Greygnarl. And then as a 'demonstration' of how excited Barbarus was about that, the dragon attacked the Starflight... I grabbed the control lever and managed to bring us down here so we could heal you. You didn't wake up the rest of the day, or this mornin'. And then you did wake up, and...well, I s'pose you know the story from there."

He nodded slightly. His expression still hadn't changed.

"And why," he asked finally, "did you never tell us of the fact that you came from here?" His voice was flat.

I wrinkled my nose and took another sip. "I didn't want to think about it," I said simply. "I left because I couldn't stand it here any more. I needed space to breathe."

"It seems to me that your life would have been simpler if you had stayed."

I snorted. "Yeah, no weird faeries or annoying Celestrian boys."

Erik rolled his eyes. I was relieved to see it. The stony-faced, flat-toned reaction he'd had to what I'd told him had worried me.

"Maybe," I said more honestly. "But simple isn't always right. It wasn't for me." I leaned up against the wall and took another sip. "Although I'll admit, they make a mean lager. You haven't tried yours yet, have you?"

"Mine is not a lager," he pointed out, but he struggled with the top and managed to pop it off. He took a hesitant sip and made a face. "It is dreadfully bitter."

"It's a bit of an acquired taste," I said.

He shook his head. "I shall never understand mortals," he said. "Why would you wish to acquire a taste that leaves you insensible?"

I laughed. "I've wondered that myself," I said. "It... I dunno. It was my private little rebellion while I lived here."

Erik raised an eyebrow. "You were only ten years old when you left."

"I know," I said. "It was probably stupid. But the only times I've ever had too much were in Gleeba and then once while I was travelling on a merchant ship, workin' with the sailors." I snickered. "That wasn't long before I met Cristine. I think I scared her a little at first - the weird, spiky-haired little kid who probably looked more than a little like a boy and had a mouth like a sailor."

"At the age of ten?"

"Eleven," I corrected, "but yeah." I shrugged. "What do you expect?"

He shook his head.

I rolled my eyes. "I suppose you were never much of a rebel," I said. "Bein' a perfect little Celestrian and all that."

Erik snorted and leaned up against the wall. "Guardians are chosen young from the ranks of the Celestrians," he said. "We were a small group, carefully raised and supervised. And then Apus Major bade...Aquila...to take me as his apprentice. When you train under one such as him, you do not deviate from instructions. Spending six or seven hours fighting monsters alone was his initial idea of good discipline."

I grinned. "Sounds like my idea of a good time."

"Yes, well," he said, "once he realised I enjoyed it, he put me on patrol duty, which consisted of hovering above Angel Falls, waiting for a mortal to need assistance." He rolled his eyes. "I do not understand why that was not his first form of punishment. It was dreadful."

"Yeah, that sounds worse."

We were silent for a long time, drinking our beers. Erik made a face every time he took a sip.

It wasn't until after both bottles were empty that we stood up and made to head back to Wormwood Creek. As we left the cave, Erik said, "Thank you, Tammy."

I blinked and looked at him. "What for?"

"For this," he said, gesturing back towards the swinging curtain of plants. "I appreciate your taking me here. And your speaking with me."

I smiled a little. "Well," I said, "what are friends for?"

Erik looked at the ground as we walked away. "Friends," he murmured. "Yes, I suppose." He nodded, looking up, and the corners of his mouth twitched into a small smile.

A little bit of warmth bloomed in my stomach. Whether it was his, mine, or both of ours, I didn't know, but it was nice. I smiled.

And we headed back to town in silence, the warmth playing all through my body.


That evening at sunset, Nick, Cristine, Erik and I went to the Wormwood Creek church for the town meeting. Everyone else was already waiting inside. Doffish was standing up front.

"There you are..." he said. "Right, Tammy, I'm only intereted in hearin' about one thing from you - the black dragon. Not long before you dragged yourselves up to our doorstep, we saw it flyin' over the village. You're not tryin' to tell us you had nothin' to do with it, are ya?"

"Absolutely nothin'," I said. "It attacked us!"

Doffish narrowed his eyes. "Don't come the raw prawn with us, missie!" snapped Dan Marshall, an old farmer. "There's no way you'd have survived if you'd been attacked by a dragon!"

"Yeah, don't listen to a word of it!" said old Mrs Krause. "She isn't a proper Wormwood Creeker any more anyway - it's all stinkin', foreign lies!"

My head snapped around to look at her, wide-eyed. Of all the rude, insulting -!

"We're gonna have to assume you and the dragon are workin' together," Doffish said, pulling my attention back to him. "Martha's right, Tammy - you aren't a proper Wormwood Creeker."

I glared at him, but before I could say anything, Wallace interrupted. "Why won't any of you believe what she says?" he asked. "Why are you so suspicious of them all?"

"Because they're not - she's not - one of us. She's a foreigner!"

Something inside of me went icy cold.

"Foreigner," I said quietly. "Really?" I clenched my jaw and fixed Doffish with a steely look. "I get it. Come on," I said then, turning. "They don't want us here. We might as well leave 'em!"

I strode away down the aisle, past the villagers.

"Tammy," Doffish yelled. "Tammy, that's not what I - Tamara Aegil Doffish, turn round and listen to your father!"

I stopped dead. "My father," I said, almost a whisper. "Listen to my father." I turned to face him. "My father, who drove me to runnin' away from everything I'd ever known when I was just ten years old? My father, whose my-word-is-law declarations made me feel like a freak - like somethin' that could never belong anywhere? My father, who just called me a foreigner?" I stalked forwards slowly as I spoke, until I was face-to-face with him. "I grew up here, remember - I know what it means when someone from Wormwood Creek calls you a foreigner! And you have the gall to call yourself my father?"

The icy thing inside of me had broken, releasing a flood of boiling-hot anger.

"My father - I haven't called you my father since I was six years old, do you know that? You caused that - you! You're not a father, Doffish - you're a miserable human being, so caught up in your own beliefs and view of the world that you can't even see the damage you're doin' to the people who are trying so bloody hard to love you, even with your prejudices and stubborn ways. I've spent fifteen years feeling utterly alone because of your idea of fatherhood! Five years drawin' away from people who try to love me, because I was convinced that I was too different - too much of a freak - for anyone to care about once they knew who I was! Years of hiding from everyone's emotions because that was the only thing I knew to do. Because my history from here - from you - convinced me that the only way to keep some measure of myself was to hide away from the world!"

I was breathing hard. "You're not my father," I spat.

And I turned on my heel and stalked out of the room.

I walked faster and faster until I broke into a run, heading north towards my hiding place - towards the inner sanctum. As I ran, I felt my eyes start to sting with tears. My throat filled with sobs, and I couldn't breathe without a cry on every exhalation. But I kept running. I needed to escape.

Inside the inner sanctum, I collapsed to the floor and curled in on myself, sobbing. The sounds echoed off the walls of the little cave, sounding louder and longer than they really were. The acoustics in there meant that the inner sanctum always reflected my mood.

I had been there alone for several minutes when I heard movement in the cave outside. I swallowed and tried to hide my sobs. I didn't want anyone from Wormwood to find me.

But the person who crawled inside wasn't from Wormwood. It was Erik.

"Go away," I said, my voice breaking. "Just leave me alone."

He didn't say anything. Instead, he moved over to sit beside me.

I looked away, sniffling. "I told you to leave me alone!"

"Would you?" he asked.

"Would I what?" I snapped, looking up.

He didn't say anything this time, either, but I knew what he meant. I sighed. "No. I suppose not."

"Then I shall return the favour."

We sat there, not touching, not talking. I swallowed a few times, blinked back tears, and sniffed. Finally, I said, "We should...we should find somewhere to sleep. I'm sure they've banished us from the village permanently."

Erik nodded. "Nick and Cristine are waiting in the main part of the cave," he told me. "If you are ready, we can go out and join them."

I wiped at my eyes and rose. Erik stood with me. We crawled out of the inner sanctum and back to the main part of the cave.

Nick and Cristine were waiting out there, and so was someone else: a ghost. The wave of heavy sadness that washed over me as soon as I was out of the inner sanctum told me exactly who it was. "You!" I exclaimed, and the ghost turned.

"Oh!" she cried. "It's you. Haven't we...?"

Erik's eyes had gone wide, and Nick and Cristine turned to see what we were looking at. Cristine gasped. "A ghost!" she yelped.

"Oh," the ghost said again, "you can see me! I've been invisible to everyone else." Her relief was intense. "My name is Serena. I wonder, could I ask you a favour? It's something I can't do myself now."

She must have been from Wormwood, I realised, listening to her accent. All four of us nodded.

Her face broke into a smile. "I left something of mine back in Wormwood Creek," she said. "Something really important. Could you get it for me? Look at the foot of the Guardian statue. That's where I hid it. Please help me. Bring it back to me here..."

She sighed quietly, and turned back to the spring.

I sighed, too, as we headed out of the cave.

It looked like I wasn't going to be escaping the village so easily.


Writerchic97 here, struggling to squeeze every bit of free time out of her last day of freedom! Yep, school starts back tomorrow at eight o'clock sharp, so it looks like I'll be back to click-clacking at the keyboard during class time ^_^ On the positive side, though, the school library has a fair selection of manga. I'll be pretty packed, between school and cross-country and (hopefully!) the fall play, but I can read manga pretty fast. I'm thinking either One Piece or XXXholic... But hey, you never know! Oh, jeez, I will never be able to finish watching Death Note...

Okay, anyway, ignoring my random obsession with Japanese pop culture - which I actually can't really do, considering that this whole fanfiction was a product of it...

May all the bodies of the heavens watch over you!