Lift remained in her seat on the stone, then smacked her hand at a cremling that had been inching across the step nearby. Starvin’ thing dodged, then clicked its chitin legs as if laughing. They sure did have strange cremlings here. Not like the ones she was used to at all. Weird how you could forget you were in a different country until you saw the cremlings.

“Mistress,” Wyndle said, “have you decided what we’re going to do?”

Decide. Why did she have to decide? She usually just did things. She’d taken challenges as they’d arisen, gone places for no reason other than that she hadn’t seen them before.

The old people who had been watching the children slowly rose, like ancient trees releasing their branches after a storm. One by one they trailed off until only one remained, wearing a black shiqua with the wrap pulled down to expose a face with a grey mustache.

“Ey,” Lift called to him. “You still creepy, old man?”

“I am the man I was made to be,” he said back.

Lift grunted, climbing from her spot and strolling over to him. Some of the kids from before had left their pebbles, with painted colors that were rubbing off. A poor kid’s imitation of glass marbles. Lift kicked at them.

“How do you know what to do?” she asked the man, her hands shoved in her pockets.

“About what, little one?”

“About everything,” Lift said. “Who tells you how to decide what to do with your time? Was it your parents who showed you? What’s the secret?”

“The secret to what?”

“To being human,” Lift said softly.

“That,” the man said, chuckling, “I don’t think I know. At least not better than you do.”

Lift looked at the sky, up along slotlike walls, scraped clean of vegetation but painted a dark green, as if in imitation of it.

“It is strange,” the man said. “People get such a small amount of time. So many I’ve known say it—as soon as you feel you’re getting a handle on things, the day is done, the night falls, and the light goes out.”

Lift looked at him. Yup. Still creepy. “I guess when you’re old and stuff, you get to thinkin’ about being dead. Kind of like when a fellow’s got to piss, he starts thinkin’ about finding a convenient alleyway.”

The man chuckled. “Your life may pass, but the organism that is the city will continue on. Little nose.”

“I’m not a nose,” Lift said. “I was being cheeky.”

“Nose, cheek. Both are on the face.”

Lift rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant either.”

“What are you then? An ear, perhaps?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

“No. Not yet. But close.”

“Riiight,” Lift said. “And what are you?”