Hollow City

As I raked bits of hay from my hair with my fingers and bit into a loaf of inedible bread, the Gypsies and their children watched us with mournful faces. It was as if they knew, somehow, that the previous night’s fun had been a last hurrah, and now we were being led off to the gallows. I tried to cheer one of them up. “It’s okay,” I said to a towheaded little boy who seemed on the verge of tears. “We’re going to be fine.”

He looked at me as if I were a talking ghost, his eyes wide and uncertain.

Eight horses were rounded up, and eight Gypsy riders—one for each of us. Horses would get us to town much faster than a caravan of wagons could. They were also terrifying to me.

I’d never ridden a horse. I was probably the only marginally rich kid in America who hadn’t. It wasn’t because I didn’t think horses were beautiful, majestic creatures, the pinnacle of animal creation, etc., etc.—it’s just that I didn’t believe any animal had the slightest interest in being mounted or ridden by a human being. Besides, horses were very large, with rippling muscles and big, grinding teeth, and they looked at me as if they knew I was afraid and were hoping for an opportunity to kick my head in. Not to mention the lack of a seatbelt on a horse—no secondary restraint systems of any kind—and yet horses could go nearly as fast as cars but were much bouncier. So the whole endeavor just seemed inadvisable.

I said none of this, of course. I shut up and set my jaw and hoped I’d live at least long enough to die in a more interesting way than by falling off a horse.

From the first giddyap! we were at full gallop. I abandoned my dignity right away and bear-hugged the Gypsy man on the saddle in front of me who held the reins—so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to wave goodbye to the Gypsies who had gathered to see us off. Which was just as well: goodbyes had never been my strong suit anyway, and lately my life had felt like an unbroken series of them. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

We rode. My thighs went numb from squeezing the horse. Bekhir led the pack, his peculiar boy riding with him in the saddle. The boy rode with his back straight and arms at his sides, confident and unafraid, such a contrast from last night. He was in his element here, among the Gypsies. He didn’t need us. These were his people.

Eventually we slowed to a trot and I found the courage to un-bury my face from the rider’s jacket and take in the changing landscape. The forest had flattened into fields. We were descending into a valley, in the middle of which was a town that, from here, looked no bigger than a postage stamp, overwhelmed by green on all sides. Tracing toward it from the north was a long ellipsis of puffy white dots: the smoky breath of a train.

Bekhir stopped the horses just shy of the town gates. “This is as far as we go,” he said. “We’re not much welcome in towns. You don’t want the sort of attention we’d draw.”

It was hard to imagine anyone objecting to these kindly people. Then again, similar prejudices were among the reasons peculiars had withdrawn from society. Such was the way the sad world turned.

The children and I dismounted. I stood behind the others, hoping no one would notice my trembling legs. Just as we were about to go, Bekhir’s boy sprang down from his father’s horse and cried, “Wait! Take me with you!”

“I thought you were going to talk to him,” Emma said to Millard.

“I did,” Millard replied.

The boy pulled a knapsack from the saddlebag and slung it over his shoulder. He was packed and ready to go. “I can cook,” he said, “and chop wood, and ride a horse, and tie all sorts of knots!”

“Someone give him a merit badge,” said Enoch.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible,” Emma said to him gently.

“But I’m like you—and becoming more so all the time!” The boy began to unbuckle his pants. “Look what’s happening to me!”

Before anyone could stop him, he’d sent his pants to his ankles. The girls gasped and looked away. Hugh shouted, “Keep your trousers on, you depraved lunatic!”

But there was nothing to see—he was invisible from the mid-section down. Morbid curiosity compelled me to peek at the underside of his visible half, which earned me a crystal-clear view of the inner workings of his bowels.

“Look how much I’ve disappeared since yesterday,” Radi said, his voice panicky. “Soon I’ll be gone altogether!”

The Gypsy men gawked and murmured. Even their horses seemed disturbed, shying away from what seemed to be a disembodied child.

“I’ll be winged!” said Enoch. “He’s only half there.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Bronwyn. “Can’t we keep him?”

“We aren’t some traveling circus you can join whenever the notion takes you,” said Enoch. “We’re on a dangerous mission to save our ymbryne, and in no position to play babysitter to a clueless new peculiar!”

The boy’s eyes grew wide and began to water, and he let his knapsack slide off his shoulder and fall to the road.

Emma took Enoch aside. “That was too harsh,” she said. “Now tell him you’re sorry.”