White and Other Tales of Ruin

They walked on quietly until they felt the cool kiss of fresh air on their skins, tasted it in their mouths. They struggled through a gap in the wall, barely wide enough to crawl through, emerging minutes later from a maintenance pipe on the riverbank. The river flowed into the city. It was so huge, wide and sluggish that its gravity seemed to pull them with the flow, urging them back, back home.

“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” Honey said, looking at the lights behind them.

“I’ve never been anywhere else,” Tom said.

“It’ll be fun. We can discover things.” She looked at him and smiled a mischievous smile. “And Tom, do I know some things about you!”

“Shall we go?” he said, heading off along the course of the river.

“Not forever,” she said. “We’ll come back one day. Not forever, Tom.”

He nodded. They’d come back because he owed that to the Baker.

They’d return to see what they had done.