Back when Solomon and I were twelve, something happened in that treehouse in his stepfather’s backyard. Something neither one of us could remember. I ended up in the hospital, with a crack in my skull around my left eye. And Solomon was never the same.

So what if whatever happened to Solomon and me was making us both go crazy?

What if we were both destined to break down, further and further, until there was nothing left?

Because neither of us knew what happened.

And you can’t fight a monster you can’t see.

Four

Solomon

“Good morning,” Radha said, when I came out of my room. A cup of hot, sweet milk tea waited for me on the table.

I hugged her. My landlady, my auntie. My foster mother. My friend.

Immense and unstoppable.

She’d taken me in four years ago, when Ash had fallen sick and her mother, the queen, had kicked me out of the Palace. Traumatic at the time, but in some ways it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

“Sit,” Radha said.

“Can’t. I need to get going.”

“You need to sit.”

I sat. I sipped my tea as fast as I could, and watched the Underbridge come awake. The shantytown beneath Dragon Pagoda Bridge was at its quietest now, before the night shift workers trudged home and the day shift ones marched out. The wind was right, so we got the breeze from the river instead of the swamps to the north. I kissed Radha on the cheek, then crossed the square to the shower stalls.

Shacks were piled ten stories high, dilapidated but stable on their scaffolding. Narrow streets and alleys and garden plots ran between them. Everyone paid a tiny bit into a common fund every month, to pay for repairs and maintenance and security. And feed for the monsters, of course, who slept in a big pen to ensure they didn’t get hold of someone’s chickens.

That’s how it was. Poor people knew that all they had was each other.

Migrants had been living under the bridge for decades when the police started cracking down—arresting people for trespassing, burning shacks when people refused to get out. To her credit, and everyone’s surprise, the queen had intervened. Granted royal permission to live under the bridge to anyone who wanted to. Ordered the cops to stop messing with people. Which pissed the cops off immeasurably.

Ten years later, we’re still here. Five thousand of us. It’s overcrowded and everyone is always up in your business and sometimes it smells bad, but I love it. Walking back, fresh and clean and hungry, I looked up in time to see a pod of sky whales heading east. Their massive tails shattered clouds with each swing.

“Connor still asleep?” I asked, when I got back.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” she said, and chuckled.