Chapter Four
Two Sutova guards passed a cupboard that looked like a pink milkweed pod, chatting. They reached the end of the hall and turned the corner. The cupboard clicked open and Pan crawled to the floor. She slipped down the hall.
She'd assumed the dungeons were scary and depressing because, duh, dungeons. She was surprised to find that the above-ground half of the palace- for Pan was sure she was in a palace- looked exactly like the below-ground she'd left, except the bones were polished to a yellow gleam and carved and the flesh was healthier, so they looked more like the inside of a fresh corpse than a rotten one. She'd also assumed she need only get above-ground to find a window and fly out, but so far she'd climbed two stories and had seen nothing of the sort.
Pan skidded to a halt as she felt a ki signature coming her way. She bolted back the way she came.
"…must have dropped it somewhere around here."
Great! The two guards were coming back! It was far too well-lit up here to use the ceiling trick. They'd see her from a mile away.
Pan spotted a door and used it. She closed it as silently behind her as she could, holding the prickly round knob so it wouldn't click and hoping it didn't surprise her by doing something doorknobs weren't supposed to, like scream or bite her fingers.
Neither of those things happened so she leaned against it and sighed. When was this strangeness going to be over?
She examined the room she'd walked into and decided the answer was not yet, apparently. It had familiar enough shape that she could identify it as a bedroom, but the bed looked like a sac for spider eggs and filled with bedding that looked like spider webs. More cottony strings hung from the ceiling and brushed the mirror of a black dresser. Pan approached it. Her reflection grew as she drew closer to the glass.
Atop the dresser, beside a soup tureen, there sat a row of dolls.
They were all Sutova girls, draped in differently-arranged gauze and varieties of accessories she didn't recognize, bony rods and loops and metal boxes. Pan picked up the largest, an orange doll with a blank and ambiguous smile.
"Do you like them?"
Pan looked up from the doll and saw a petite Sutova woman behind her in the mirror. She would have been the doll's double but not for the life in those smoky red eyes. She looked like royalty. At least, there was something in her bearing, the turn of her shoulders and the tilt of her head, and her formal attire. Although "formal" this case it meant the fishnets were silvery, the scraps white and lacy, and the tendrils atop her head piled into something like a twist.
"I'm scared of dolls," Pan said, too shocked to lie. She hadn't felt the woman approach at all. Had she finally found a Ketchian who knew how to mask her ki… and if so, just how strong was she, that she bothered?
The woman laughed. It sounded like wind chimes. "I'm sorry to have caused you distress."
"I didn't mean they weren't pretty," Pan said, putting the doll back down and, fearing she'd never be able to prop it up the way it had been, opting instead to lay it across the dresser. "I only… is this your room? I didn't mean to barge in. I'm looking for the way out, and this isn't it, so I'll just be on my way."
"You don't have to leave," She said. "I'm not offended. They do have rather vacant faces, don't they?"
There was a window on the wall, a sliver of one with yellow sky behind it, but maybe it was big enough to slip through. Pan couldn't trust this woman just because she was acting nice. Even if she wasn't faking, Pan was still being hunted by the palace guard and couldn't afford the precious seconds this conversation was costing her.
"I was just about to have breakfast," She continued, gesturing to the tureen. "It's terrible being stuck in this tower, marched out for decoration, having to eat my meals by myself. I'd love it if you could stay for a bite."
…said the spider to the fly. Seriously, the place was draped in webs. How much more threatening did it have to be?
Still, whatever she was cooking in that pot did smell good, and Pan hadn't eaten since lunchtime yesterday.
Pan's internal struggle came to an end with the heavy knock on the door. It was Captain Ember, and he didn't wait for the Sutova woman to open it; he and Officer Gelata threw it open with enough force to splinter the bone.
So, the window, then.
Pan stepped backwards without taking her eyes off her enemies. At least she could fly now. There was no point in suppressing her ki. One good spring and she'd be out. How many of them could fly, and how well? Could they follow her?
The regal woman stepped between her and Ember. "What is the meaning of this?"
"We're here for that girl, Princess Incendria, and I wouldn't get too close to her if I were you. I know she doesn't look dangerous, but she killed one of my men when she resisted arrest…"
Pan reversed that step and punched the wall. It cracked. "You liar! You did that yourself. I was trying my best to keep everyone alive."
"…and for your safety and the safety of everyone in the palace, she needs to be returned to the dungeons. If you won't hand her over willingly, I'll…"
Incendria uncoiled a tendril from her "twist" and smacked Ember across the face with it. "You'll what, Captain? Force your way into the quarters of the Princess of Asphodel? I'm sure my brother would love to hear about that."
Pan dropped her fist to her side. Plaster dusted her knuckles and trailed down to the floor in grains. "If Captain Ember wants a rematch, I'm up for it."
"I told you before I wasn't playing games with you," Ember said.
Pan pointed to the dolls on the dresser. "But we can't do it here. We'd break everything. Like this, it would totally break. And this thing."
Next to the doll was what looked like a ceramic flower, shiny bone over gold quartz. She picked it up.
"I have no idea what it is. I probably already broke it and don't even know it, so I'm going to put it down now, next to the soup dish." Steam rose from the pot; fragrant steam, heavy with spices. Noodles swam in the broth. The soup looked as good as it smelled.
"You haven't broken a thing," Incendria said. She held up a bowl that looked like a clamshell. "Does this mean you're staying?"
Ember made to cross the threshold again. "Did you hear a word I've said? That isn't your… your pet to feed and dress up. She's a professional warrior and she must be dealt with by professional warriors."
"I thought I qualified," Incendria said. "I also thought the barbaric dark ages where we arrested children for show were several hundred years behind us."
Gelata flinched as if she'd been slapped.
"But since you've arrested her, I pardon her." Incendria waved her hand.
"You don't even know her," Ember said.
"What's your name?" Incendria asked.
"Son Pan," She said. "And I'm twenty."
"There you go. Now I know her, and I've pardoned her. If you dispute my judgment you can take it up with King Sulfuri. In the meantime, you have no further business here, and I trust you can find your way back down your rabbit hole without an escort." Incendria dished out a bowl of noodles and thrust it into Pan's hands.
Pan held her bowl. The ceramic burned. It was nothing compared to the flame in Ember's visible eye; if looks could kill, she'd be charcoal.
Gelata tugged his arm. "There's nothing we can do, Captain. It's the Princess's call."
In fury, Ember backed away from the threshold.
"This isn't over," He said.
"Fine by me. I'm not kidding about that rematch." Pan punctuated it by shoving a bite of noodles into her mouth. They were tasty; sweet, and meaty on the outside, but with an inner crunch like tempura.
"By the way," Ember said over his shoulder. "You're eating Bludwald rat intestines stuffed with marinated naif-beetle shells."
Pan looked at the bowl and the "noodles" still dangling from her chopsticks.
"There's no point in asking for the recipe, then," She said. "I'd never be able to get those ingredients back home."
Ember growled and slammed the door behind him.
Once he was gone, Incendria laughed so hard she almost doubled over.
If anything, Pan trusted Incendria less after that scene. Who took a stranger's word over an advisor's, and why? She had to be up to something. Not to mention Pan did trust Captain Ember to mean it when he said he hadn't given up on dragging her back to that dungeon.
But she couldn't help it. She laughed, too. Incendria's was just that contagious.
ooo
Pan sunk beneath the cloud of bubbles and scrubbed the remnants of shackle-grime from her hair. She came back up with a splash, leaned back on the tub. The fizzy soap called her back to sleep.
She knew she couldn't listen. She was still inside a palace where the Captain of the Guard wanted her dead, and she knew somewhere outside it, the Cold family did, too. She still didn't know which of its surviving members had trapped her here or when and how they'd strike. A hot bath wasn't going to solve any of those problems.
It was the best stop-gap of all time, though.
She remained alert enough to turn when the door opened, but it was only Incendria with an armful of clothes.
"Where's Grandpa's gi?" Pan asked.
"I haven't thrown any of your things away- I've brought that communication device Ember took from you and set it on the dresser- but your clothes need washed. Besides, they'll draw too much attention. We need something that won't look out of place in these halls."
That was why Pan was here and not outside. She'd been on track to continue her way out the window once her meal was finished. Incendria had asked her not to, pointing out the castle was in the middle of a city that hadn't seen a Saiyan since the late King Vegeta had visited as prince, and would have divisive but equally dangerous opinions about what a new one meant. Pan might not have been convinced by Incendria alone, but since she'd overheard Ember and Gelata discussing the same thing, there might be some truth to it.
Even so, she was slightly terrified of what Incendria might bring her. So far she'd seen nothing but leather thongs and crab-shell bikinis in these halls, and even if she managed to squeeze into one of those outfits without blushing, the air was still frostbitten and liable to leave her face blue instead of red.
"Fortunately, the city has a sizeable Brenchian population. I sent one of the scullery maids to them and she found this. It should fit."
The garment Incendria unrolled was, to Pan's relief, whole and practical, a peach-colored calf-length coat with long embroidered sleeves and matching wide pants. It looked warmer than her gi, and just as easy to move in.
"That's what you are, by the way, if anyone asks: Brenchian. As long as you keep that tail of yours wrapped around your waist, this overcoat should hide it, and you'll look the part convincingly enough. It's not like anyone's expecting to find a disguised Saiyan among them."
Oh, if only that were true, Pan thought. She said, "Thank you."
Incendria left, and Pan dried off and pulled on the outfit in a hurry, mostly to save her feet from the cold floor.
She stretched as she returned to the spider web room, where Incendria said, "Perfect fit."
"It is. I was worried the sleeves and the coattails would be in the way, but it moves like it was made for this. That's another one I owe you." Pan tried a few moves to confirm it, but Incendria still didn't look pleased. "What?"
"What's your favorite color?"
"Gray or red, depending on when you ask."
Incendria flicked her wrist. "Green Wave Chameleon."
Pan froze as the Prismasphere energy enveloped her. She didn't know how to fend off that bear trap, should it close around her again. It didn't, though; all she felt was a tickle. She held her arm out, and behold, her formerly-pink sleeve was now gray with red embroidery.
"Amazing!" Pan said. "How do you do that?"
Incendria winked. "Magic."
"I'm serious. Do you know why I'm on Ketchyn?"
"I suppose you're going to tell me you really are a vicious criminal."
"No, but I'm on some vicious criminals' naughty list. I know they brought me here, I just don't know why, or why now, and I definitely don't know what to do if they attack me with that." Pan thumbed out the window at the sky, hovering cloudlessly somewhere between yellow and yellow-green. "When I tried to fight off Ember's paralysis, something happened. Something really… painful."
"A backlash," Incendria said.
"That's what Gelata called it. What's it mean?"
"Do you really want to know? Then follow me." Incendria scooped up the ivory rod from the dresser, the one Pan hadn't broken. "From what I've seen of you, you'll understand it better if I show you."
This was still no time for Pan to drop her guard, and she didn't completely, but now that she wasn't expending so much energy feeling for ki signatures and hunting for hiding places, she noticed figures carved in the bone-pillars. She hadn't looked at them closely enough to see that before. Occasionally she found a colorful mural stretched between them. Little things like a discarded cup left on a table or fingerprints dotting the fly-wing glass; the castle was lived in after all.
As they arrived on the first floor, something else struck Pan. She and Incendria had been passed in the halls several times by guards in uniform, by servants, by what she assumed were other nobles.
Every one of them had been Sutova. Underground, she'd seen an even number of Sutova and Reizomorphs, but once she'd hit the surface, the latter vanished completely – so completely she didn't even see any depicted in the carvings or paintings.
"Strange," She said.
"What is?"
"The last Reizomorph I saw was Officer Gelata, and she chased me up here."
Incendria shrugged. "What's strange about that? Ah. Here we are."
Incendria opened a set out double doors to a room that, even with the fleshy construction materials, Pan recognized instantly. The smooth plank floor, the mats and training dummies, an entire wall concealed behind a floor-to-ceiling mirror…
"You've got a dojo here," Pan said.
"And we couldn't have reached it at a better time. Watch this."
Incendria held up the strange rod. Had Incendria been serious after all? Was that a magic wand? No; she gripped it between both fingers and it flared, and when she spun it yellow-green light shot from its sides, extending the small cylinder into a full-length staff.
"A power pole," Pan said. "My grandpa used to have one of those. His wasn't crystalline, though."
"Mine's tuned to the Prismasphere, just as the Prismasphere is tuned to me," Incendria said. "Now watch."
Pan didn't have to spend long wondering what she was supposed to be watching for. The yellow-green light pulsed once, twice; the green darkened, spread, and swallowed the yellow.
"Most planets have a sun and moon dictating their cycles; days, months, years. Ketchyn was little more than a chunk of cold rock and a dusting of megaregolith when we landed here, so the first Sutova colonists banded together and created the Prismasphere with their own life forces to render it habitable. We are the Prismasphere, and the Prismasphere is us," Incendria said. "It has its own phases. We call them waves. The earliest is the red wave, but you missed that, and the orange dawn; you just saw it shift from the mid-morning yellow wave to the early-afternoon green wave. Next will come blue and then indigo, and then… well, everyone stays inside after that. Now, come at me."
"Wait, what?"
"You needn't worry about harming me. I'm not as delicate as I look."
"Yeah, but… neither am I." It wasn't that Pan didn't want to comply, she just had yet to glean anything about Incendria's battle capabilities. The woman had a martial arts poker face. Was Pan aiming for Mama Videl or Uncle Vegeta?
Pan decided to start between the two in the hopes Incendria wouldn't be injured if it were the former or insulted if it were the latter. She struck open-handed, mid-chest. It was the sort of move she'd use in a competitive tournament.
"Green Wave Deflection," Incendria said.
This time, Pan was ready for the feeling of the Prismasphere gathering like a cloud. When it thickened into invisible mist, though, that was something new; and she lost momentum as she traveled through it. The edge of Pan's hand struck something and it wasn't Incendria. It was an invisible barrier hovering three inches before her chest.
Incendria thrust with the pole. Pan spun and the light passed harmlessly over her shoulder. How could she follow up, though?
"Masenko!"
Pan fired, but the small beam hit the barrier and dissolved. Obviously, the answer was "not that way." What could Pan get through the barrier Incendria had woven?
Wait, that staff of Incendria's. One end of it, the one Incendria held, was already on her side of the barrier. Maybe Pan couldn't get through, but…
This time, when Incendria brought the pole down, Pan grabbed the end of it and thrust it back to its owner. Incendria deflected it and the tip smacked the floor.
Incendria glanced down at the crack it made, and so did Pan. It didn't look like much, but the both of them could read its controlled fingers like a book.
Incendria could bring this building down if she wanted, Pan thought.
"Well done," Incendria said, and Pan could tell she'd reached the same conclusion about her. "I didn't expect you to spot my weakness that quickly. That said, it's a weakness I deliberately introduced. I wanted you to understand your shield is only good so long as you don't reach outside of it. Now that you know, let's get you making your own shield."
"Wait," Pan said. "The last time I tried to use this…"
"Did you notice anything," Incendria asked, "From when I changed the color of your clothes and what I did just now?"
Pan thought. "The shield felt stronger. But it's a more powerful technique, so it makes sense it would."
"Really?" Incendria tilted her head. "Blue Wave Razor Rain!"
White-hot ki pooled and erupted into razor-wire like strings. Pan darted through the sharp lines of ki, slipped through the final beams of the barrage.
Forget the building. Incendria could wipe the city off the face of Ketchyn if she wanted.
"Dear me! I expected at least one of them to connect. It's been far too long since I've sparred with one of your kind. I'd forgotten how tough you are," Incendria said. "But never mind. Did that feel as strong as the shield?"
"No," Pan said, surprised to find that was true. "The ki was fainter, even though the attack was more powerful. It's because the colors match, isn't it? Because it's green outside and you used a green technique."
"Indeed," Incendria said. "There are seven waves of the Prismasphere, and each one has its own related techniques. While there are exceptions like Red Wave Paralysis, which works on the body but in an offensive manner, and green wave deflection, which summons ki to form a shield, the simplest way to remember it is that red to yellow techniques heal and are used for defense, while green to indigo hurt and used for attack."
"So instead of white and black magic, you've got red and blue," Pan joked.
"I have no idea what that means, but the point is, while you can use any technique at any time, if you use it while its corresponding Prismatic wave crests, it will be both more powerful and easier to pull off. You see, you aren't actually creating it. It already exists in the Prismasphere, and you're summoning it. It's only logical that if you call it when it's closer, it'll have an easier time getting to you. Now, let me show you once more, and then you can try it yourself."
"Like I tried to say before, I'm still not sure I'm ready for this," Pan said. "The last time I tried to summon the Prismasphere, something jumped out of it and attacked me. And I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding this, or miscounting, but first you said there are seven waves of the Prismasphere, but then you only said there were six…"
"There are seven waves. Six of them are useable. The last wave… that's the Violet Wave. Or in the vernacular, the Vile Wave. That's what 'jumped out and attacked you,' as you put it."
"Why?"
"Remember when I told you the Prismasphere is the collective ki of the inhabitants of this world?" Incendria leaned on her staff. "All worlds, all people have… toxicity, I suppose… inside them. The Vile Wave is ours. Every cruelty, every shred of malice, every injustice and every outrage, it all ends up trapped in the Vile Wave. And it's always looking for a way out. The Vile Wave crests after indigo has passed. It lasts from midnight until dawn, and as it flows, it seeks channels of escape. Merely being out and unprotected during those hours brings with it a risk of hallucination. Attempt to summon and it will find you and try to tear its way out through you. The more inexperienced the summoner, the greater the danger. The indigo wave was half over when you tried your first summon, so a backlash was almost inevitable."
"And that's… all it does?" Pan asked.
"Oh, according to legend, it can do any ridiculous thing the other waves can't, from spinning gold of grass to raising the dead. That's relegated to legend, though. The only thing any living summoner has ever proved it can do is snap their mind, break their will, and kill them."
"How do I stop it from getting me again?" Pan asked.
"Stay indoors at night. Don't use the Prismasphere when the Vile Wave is cresting unless you absolutely have to," Incendria said.
"And if I absolutely have to?"
"Drop the thread as soon as you feel the Vile Wave heading for you. You won't want to. It has a siren call. You'll have to force yourself not to listen. But at least," Incendria's voice brightened, "There's no chance of that happening this time of day. Now watch me again. Green Wave Deflection."
Though it may have been meant to soothe her fears, Incendria's speech only made Pan more reluctant to reach out to the Prismasphere. She wondered if it was like a horse or wolf that could feel her fear. She tried to choke that fear down and pay attention to Incendria's barrier, how she'd pulled it from the atmosphere, how she'd woven it into a shell.
"Green Wave Deflection," Pan said, trying to do the same thing.
She did manage to form a barrier. It just wasn't around her. It was halfway between this room and the hall, and it split the mirror from top to bottom.
"It wasn't supposed to do that, was it?" Pan asked.
"Try again," Incendria said, still grinning.
Bothered or not, Incendria was right. If Pan wanted a fighting chance of surviving Ketchyn long enough to leave it, she had to learn at least this technique. Otherwise, the next time she was attacked, she might not wake up in a dungeon. She might not wake up at all.
With that thought, and a heavy sigh, Pan resigned herself to spending the next few hours groping for slimy space ki. She was normally excited about learning new techniques, but this was the first new technique that left her feeling like she was going to need to jump right back into the bathtub once she left the dojo.
ooo
When Pan understood she was about to spend her second night on this strange world, a new worry began to gnaw at her. On top of her fears for her family back home, and her fears of the shadowy forces after her on Ketchyn, there was something else, something more immediate… something already building in the back of her head.
Incendria had assigned Pan a room identical to her own in all but size (it even had the spider web trimming and the dolls) and the type of window; this one was a casement with a windowsill set deep enough into the wall to double as a chair. From this side, it was impossible to estimate how big Asphodel City was. She couldn't see anything but rooftops, and they tended to look like sides of beef and crab shells, which threw off her sense of perspective.
Pan crawled out the window and hovered to the roof. It also looked like a side of beef. It wasn't squishy, though, and with the proper clothes the cold wind felt refreshing. The sky had turned a shade of blue that was almost earthlike. It was comfortable enough.
Hey, Bonpara, she thought. Are you there?
It's a relief to hear from you again, Bonpara thought. Did you make it out of that castle?
I made it out of the dungeon. I'm still in the castle. It's not as dire as it sounds, though; it turns out the princess is on my side. How's grandma? How did she take the news I was going to be late?
We don't know. We were afraid to tell her in person. We left her a note and ran.
Pan didn't want Chi-Chi to worry. She knew she would, of course. That's what her grandmother did. But that didn't mean she liked the idea, and now, with nothing but a mysterious note promising her Pan was safe and would be back as soon as possible; would that make things worse? It had to be better than nothing.
Is everything all right? You sound… distant, Bonpara asked.
I have a headache, that's all, Pan thought. I'm trying to take my mind off it. Maybe I could send you a picture of the city. It looks about the size of South Capital.
There was too much city to take in a single glance, and though she'd been all over the North Quadrant, Pan had never seen anything exactly like it. It looked less like buildings and more like a crowd of giant creatures in various states of skinning and shelling standing in uneven rows around a network of terra-cotta streets, with crowds of smaller creatures in turns milling around them. Red and meaty awnings here, scumbled shell there, eyeball windows and heart-flesh doors. The strangeness made the one normal thing Pan saw, the tents of an open market, stand out.
There, on one of the tables, sat the thing Pan needed. If this planet had a sun, it would surely be casting a ray of light directly upon it. It was tantalizingly close to the palace, too. It would be such a small matter to sneak out and retrieve it.
Gotta go again, guys, Pan thought. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong. I just have to buy myself a, er, souvenir.
You sure this is the time to be shopping? Still, Bonpara broke the telepathic link just the same.
Pan descended straight from the roof to the grass below. Of course this wasn't the time to be shopping. She respected the severity of her situation and the foolishness of leaving the safety of the palace. But this was an emergency.
Good thing her rooftop view had given Pan a decent mental map of Asphodel City's layout, because once she hit the streets, flying wasn't an option. Nobody else was doing it. Besides, walking turned out to be more fun. She got to see the carved-meat and sea-monster houses up close. The crowds mostly ignored her. She got an occasional sidelong glance of curiosity or mild hostility, but most travelers were content to look squarely at their own feet.
She finally reached the table. A green Brenchian shopkeeper with a pointed black goatee leaned in a chair behind it, resting his feet on the edge. He must have spent a lot of time in that position, because he hopped out without falling or knocking the chair over.
It was only as she approached that Pan thought of another potential obstacle.
"Do you take gammets here?" She asked. Most of the planets she'd visited were just fine with Zeni, but then, most of the planets she'd visited had some limited amount of contact with Earth. She didn't know about this Quadrant.
"I'll take as many as you're willing to hand over," He said, his speech lightly accented. Pan liked it. It was something familiar. "Although I'm guessing you mean you want something in return for them."
"Coffee." Pan said, pointing at the bag. "How much?"
He laughed. "I see you just got here. Tricky to price, that stuff. The natives and immigrants who've gone native aren't fond of it. They prefer their Nightwater. Visitors can't go without it. So while on the supply side, it's an import, on the demand side, it's not one that moves particularly quickly. How about you give me, oh, say, fifty for it?"
"You've got a deal," Pan said, counting out the money. It was all she could do not to pounce on the bag. Instead, she politely waited for the shopkeeper to wrap it up, arms at her sides.
Something tugged Pan's wrist.
Standing about to her knee was a little Reizomorph… boy? Girl? She couldn't tell. It was armored up like a tiny knight. It looked up at her with giant crimson eyes. It wrung its tail between its hands.
Cute!
"Hey, there," Pan said. "Where's your mom and dad?"
It just kept staring at her, wringing its tail. The shopkeeper backed away, suddenly nervous.
"Did you get lost?" Pan asked.
It bobbed its head 'yes.'
Pan scanned the crowds. She didn't see the child's parents or anything like a guard. "Back home, they always told me if you got lost, you should stay right where you are. That way you and your parents won't keep getting further away from each other. Not that I ever listened."
Something pricked Pan's finger, and when she looked down, she found it was the child; it had bitten down on her index finger and was sucking her blood with a face that could only be called contemplative.
It pulled her finger out of its mouth. "You got hurt."
"It's just a sting," Pan said. Come to think of it, punching with that hand had hurt like hellfire. Being bitten on the same spot should feel like an explosion. Instead, her hand seemed to ache less. It felt functional.
"What's that orange thing on your head?"
Pan ran her unbitten hand over her head. "This is my lucky bandanna. I travel the galaxy and I get into a lot of scrapes, but as long as I'm wearing this, I always find a way out."
It gave her another thoughtful stare. "You're a nice lady."
Finally, a woman pushed her way through the crowds and swept the child into her arms. "Tundra, what did I tell you about wandering away from me? I'm so terribly sorry, sir, miss. He's to stay out of the tents. I've told him a thousand times if I've told him once."
"No harm done," Pan said. "I'm just glad you spotted us. It's busy here today."
The woman clutched the boy as if she didn't trust Pan not to scoop him up and run. "We'll just be going. I apologize again for the intrusion."
"Bye-bye," Said the boy, waving over his mother's shoulder as she carried him away.
Pan waved, too.
She turned back to the shopkeeper for her coffee. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve before he handed it to her.
"Scary," He said. "You handled them better than I expected. Too many visitors are so frightened, they scream for the guards, and you didn't hear this from me, but in this part of town the guards might be worse. It's always best to deal with it yourself if you can. Still, I'd wash your hands before you drink this. There's no telling where the grub's mouth was before he put it on you."
Pan had no idea what that meant, and she knew she had to pretend she did, so she didn't respond at all. She excused herself quickly and bolted back to the castle with her coffee tucked under her arm. Overhead, the blue sky pulsed and rippled indigo.
Travel became quicker. That wasn't a good thing. The once-impenetrable crowds were thinning, and empty streets made for faster walking. Clearly, Pan wasn't alone in wanting to be behind a closed and locked door when the indigo wave solidified.