This time was to be different, though. On my hands and knees I crawled to a corner. I’d put together a bag in case some calamity required our egress; I had always imagined Somyellia, Celly, and I running off to some distant land, or maybe hacking a life out of a giving thicket somewhere deep in the magic-haunted wilderland. I sifted through loose silver, garments, candles, a corked vial, a loaf of bread which had molded horrendously, until at last I found what I’d been searching for: flint and steel.

With great care, I was able to burrow a hole in the side of the vial. With some additions found around the house, I built, as best I could, a vessel to billow my lungs.

A candle lit my back, facing the graves below, I commenced burning the remnants of my mistress’s favored drug.

Once fully enveloped, I crawled to the edge of the collapsed wall and hovered over all the graves. Looking as if miles below, they glimmered with the glow of nearby street lamps and the few candles that burned in the land of the dead. Here, my soul was at zero.

I found what it was to possess utter rage. A rage that pulsated slowly and made all the world turn gray. I choked on dust and learned not to lament on the cliffs of lamentation. I remembered not to remember, and then the winds passed me. I ripped at my chest. I sat crouched, eyes staring into a ruined valley that I had never known. I gave myself to the gods of destruction, but they did not take me. I waited for my takers to claim me, but they did not come. No howling wind carrying my raiders from the shores of recallable time. No hordes of flesh and noise.

In what could have been ages later, Somyellia found me crouched in a damp corner on the bottom floor. The moldy loaf eaten, along with other things strewn about that neither of us could pinpoint by species or origin. I was naked, covered in dirt and parched with a horrible thirst. Even for a black-magic hooker from the Thunder Bustle, my ghoulish appearance stopped Somyellia in her high leather boots. Putting aside her carnal duties, with the care of a seasoned midwife, she nursed me back to health and to sanity. In a volley of screams and cradled flailing, I slowly began to let go of many things.

—

The years that followed my running away were so full of chaos and poverty that only a morbid collage of memories remains. For all the swirling turmoil of abuse and neglect, I had been a boy who was well-fed, regularly schooled, and had ample means of washing off the residue of corpses and perspiration. All of that was gone.