My first hero

Table Of contents

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The copper dome could’ve been a school

or a mansion

or a hill somebody polished.

But people definitely lived inside,

I could hear them

talking,

their machines

buzzing,

noises drifting to the mesa

like heartbeats through a demon’s skin.

I walked under the icy sun

to the second closest dome–

no need to see

why the aluminum people

from the nearest dome

got zapped,

yeah?

But the side I approached had no door, and I felt too lazy

to walk across the stones and sagebrush

to search for one

so I drew myself a rune for a snitch-demon door and wriggled inside

the pinhole.

The interior smelled like grease. Like hot welding tools and metal.

No one greeted me,

slipping from the pinhole and standing on human feet,

except some rats

with copper teeth

and greener tails.

In the distance, through inscrutable

railings

and poles,

machinery whirred, lights flickered,

voices rumbled,

walkways rattled.

I shuffled between wires and rats

until I could peer into the foot of a street

where children silently played

with steel hoops

and fraying dolls

and dirtier hair.

Hoping my cloak

didn’t look too dragon-black for these strangers,

I approached the road, leaning on my walking stick

when I could,

crawling

when the pipes made me.

One child

with pigtails

noticed me under the plumbing

and said,

“I’ve never seen a grandma scootch before.”

That got the rest of the children to stare,

abandoned steel hoops wobbling down

while I twisted my cane into the dust

and hoisted myself up.

“I’m not a grandma,” I told them. “I’m a witch. Do you have those here?”

They didn’t understand a word I said

since I spoke a hundred-year-old dialect

of Australian English

mixed with some demon and dragon accents

while they spoke

something I learned in a language class

but forgot the name of

and never had the two teeth on the roof of my mouth

to speak properly.

“You’re tall,” another said, and threw a gray doll at me.

My cloak repelled it with a puff of smoke.

I sighed, and grew the teeth on the roof of my mouth

to talk, swallowing pain and blood 

when they cut my tongue.

“What’s this place called?” I asked, mouth bleeding.

“The City,” they said.

“Does The City have a name?” I replied. “What about this region?”

They blinked dull eyes,

like even though I was interesting enough

to stop their play

I wasn’t interesting enough to combust

a sparkle in their gaze.

“Is there somewhere I can find food here?” I asked.

“Not tenth street,” one said.

Another elbowed him. “Don’t tell old ladies where you live,

they’ll put squirpoons under your pillow.”

“I didn’t tell her where I live!”

“I live on fourteenth street,” another said. “Can you give me a squirpoon?”

“I live on seventh!” Another kid threw a doll at me, and my cloak repelled it.

The kid laughed, scooped up the doll, and threw it again. It bounced off

to the ground.

I tightened my cloak around me. “Please stop that. I’m new here, I’m just looking for some food.”

“Oh, no one has food,” another kid said. She picked up a steel hoop

and kicked it across the street,

this tiny, oblong square of open play space

between hissing pipes and concrete houses

in uneven rows.

“Not anyone here, anyway.” She glared at me.

That should’ve warned me

what I’d scootched into.

Instead, I smiled. “Should I catch the rats instead?”

The doll kid threw it at me again. A few other kids laughed.

“Good luck with that,” Hoop Kid said. “Weapons are banned, and if the patrols find traps,

they punish the closest household.”

“I don’t need traps.” I turned back to the pipes, plucking a yellow petal from behind my ear,

twirling it for the kids to see. To see, in case they knew anything of magic

or waratah flowers.

But the kid with the hoop scoffed. “What’s that, straw?”

Oh, if I’d taken more classes in the Strings of Fate,

I might not have dismissed the inkling

tightening around me

like a sweater.

Instead, I blamed the pressure on

more kids throwing dolls at my dragon black cloak,

I blamed the itch

on dust getting under my sleeves,

I blamed the warmth

on getting out from under the icy sun.

So I smirked at her. “It’s a flower petal, actually.

You want to see what I can do with it?”