No more fights. No more gangs. This city would not swallow her alive, and heaven forbid it take Elise with her. So up the slope she climbed, Elise quietly in tow and never once asking whither they went. The witch hoped she wouldn't be scared when she told her.
At last, after many walks and many more buses, Henden leveled out into a dilapidated urban sprawl. They had left the crater behind. Dusk had come, casting a murky glow across the shells of empty factories, furniture dealers, and repair shops. The dimmest of nightlives. Rosy neon signs lit the way to brothels and casinos, while above them men's eyes followed them from abstract windows.
"Come on. I think we're far enough out." Dorothy mounted her bune wand. Her friend couldn't join her fast enough.
Elise surveyed the city limits. The pinking wasteland looked gorgeous, yet sad, now that they took to the skies. Salmon, quartz, and ashen blonde lights enflamed the dead grass and greasy walls. Tin streetlights cast long shadows. Telephone lines slacked to nowhere. She might have felt something more had she the time, but the scene flickered rapidly into obscurity. Cold wind bristled her hair, as she and the witch rose higher still. They were leaving it all behind.
"Dorothy, where are we going?"
"There."
Elise followed the witch's finger away from the Great City altogether. Across the fields of dirt and sullen barbs, beyond the furthest dens of common life, lay an imposing installation nestled into the side of mountain.
"What is it?" asked the girl, who held her friend tighter. It was not the first time Elise took comfort in the strength of her core. No wonder at 5'1" and thirteen she could lay a man flat! Hopefully this security would brace her for the words she almost certainly knew would follow.
Dorothy's voice came unusually low. "Our ticket out of this place." She held the wand steady against the dry, easterly wind, but it didn't steady Elise's voice.
"What do you mean?" faltered the girl.
"Do you remember what the priest said about the great airship departin' for the southern rim tomorrow mornin'?"
"Yes."
"That's Tosier Air Army Base, the only place it could be."
"Do you mean to say...?"
In the flares of their old binary suns, Dorothy's eyes flashed their own strange ancestry. "I'm sick of this place. I'm sick of this world and all the people try'na control me. The next time I set foot here, I will be the master."
Her unabashed ego disturbed Elise not for the first time. However, and although the witch didn't mention Elise or what she wanted, Elise had no love for this world, either. Her parents were dead. She was on the run. The prospect of leaving frightened her, but what other choice did they have? Perhaps she would have the chance to see the ocean after all.
"I'm with you," Elise whispered. She did not look back, and yet she could not shake the feeling that they were being watched.
She was not wrong. Below them, a bedraggled and disgraced Chapelure stepped out of a smoking casino with the green butt of the cigar still in his mouth. After the lead suspects in the pirate attack escaped under his watch, he had been sent back to his post in Henden and given no further assignment. An admired man who had served his nation well could think of nothing but the faces of laughing women. He had stumbled, and had but one person to blame. He did not know her name, but the girl who stole the boule from the baker would pay the price for what she did that day.
Although green powder had been known to make men hallucinate many things, not least their terrible desires, Chapelure could not deny what he saw above him as he slouched onto scummy streets: two girls on a magic wand, one with stockings over her legs and over her head, and one girl in a turquoise dress.
Spitting the smoldering green cinders from his lips, Chapelure ran to his battered old car, toggled the ignition with his key, and tore onto the road out of town. He could just barely see them and soon he would not, but he had good instincts and knew where they would go.
He would not return to this place without the girl in the turquoise dress in custody. That he swore.