Gennifer Albin - Altered

Some of the stores in the grey market are boarded up, others crumble toward the sidewalk, but lights burn faintly in a few. I have no interest in going inside any of them. I’m eager to explore the shops in the heart of the Icebox, not these back-alley establishments on the metro’s outskirts. I want to visit the stores with real customers. I want to know more about Earth, but right now we have so little money we stay away. I’m not sure what we’re waiting for though, since we’re not getting any answers in the grey market.

These streets are deserted. A few hulking, old-fashioned motos chug along the streets near the main marketplace, but not here. The pedestrians we spot keep their heads low, ducking into shops and not making eye contact with us when we pass by them. Despite the constant darkness, my body tells me evening is near. Actually the airy rumble of my stomach does. Business transactions begin in huddles on street corners, and more and more customers trickle into the grey market to conduct their affairs after hours despite the curfew imposed throughout the Icebox. They don’t seem concerned about the rumors of snatchers roaming the streets after the lamps go out. In the nicer sections of the Icebox, food stalls are packed up and people rush their children indoors promptly at 7:00. Not here though.

The solar lamps are already growing dim. In less than an hour, they’ll be extinguished completely. On a corner, a young man inspects one of the lamps. His bag lies open, revealing a variety of wrenches and screwdrivers, but his clothing doesn’t suggest he’s a laborer. His pants are well cut, and his long coat is leather, which seems like a luxury given the absence of animals I’ve noted in the Icebox. He’s not a simple worker. He must be a Sunrunner.

“Will Erik be able to find us?” I ask Jost. He drops my hand at the mention of his brother’s name but stays close to me.

“We’re only a street away. Trust me, Erik can take care of himself,” Jost replies.

“Look, I understand—”

“No, you don’t.” He stops me. “You trust him. I don’t. He’ll take off the first chance he gets.”

“And where will he go?” I ask. It’s a logical question, so I’m not likely to get a straight response.

“You don’t know him like I do,” he says, giving me an answer as crooked as they come.

“Maybe not.” I stop and face him, planning to remind him that a lot has changed in the last two years. Erik may have left Saxun to pursue a political career, turning his back on his family and friends, but it was Erik who helped me the night Jost and I were discovered sneaking around the Coventry. I’ve been preparing my give-him-a-chance-before-I-stab-you-both lecture for the past few days. But something I see over his shoulder stops me.

A woman. She’s short, tottering in heels down the street. I catch glimpses of her face in the flicker of dying lamplight. The slope of her eyes. Her diminutive, slender form. The thick, straight hair swaying around her shoulders.

“Valery,” I breathe.

“What?” Jost asks, confused by the change in conversation.

“It’s Valery,” I say, grabbing his arm to turn his attention to the other side of the street. The woman has passed before he can catch more than her fading shape. She’s moving quickly and with purpose.

“Valery is dead,” Jost reminds me in a gentle voice.

I know that. At least, she should be dead. A victim of retribution for the suicide of Enora, my mentor at the Coventry and Valery’s lover. Loricel told me Valery had been ripped the night Loricel warned me of Cormac’s plans to remap me, and yet I’m positive of what I’ve seen. “It’s her.”

I don’t wait for him to argue with me. Valery is growing smaller in my vision, her figure blurring with each step she takes away from us, and I follow her. I don’t run. That seems a sure way to draw unwanted attention to yourself in a place like the grey market, but I move quickly enough that I keep her in my sight until she turns a corner.

Skidding around the building she disappeared past, I realize I’m on the edge of the grey market. The buildings stretching before me are better maintained. Most have signs, and many are already closed. But Valery is nowhere in sight, which means she’s gone into one that’s still open. Doors are locked, lights turned off, and then I stumble upon a door that creaks open when I touch it. The lights are on in the store, revealing a cluttered room full of books and knick-knacks strewn in piles along the floor and filling tables. It will be a miracle if I can even walk around. But someone could hide here. I have no reason to suspect Valery saw me, but if she did, I wouldn’t blame her for wanting to avoid me.

That doesn’t mean I am going to let her.

I GLANCE AT THE SIGN HANGING ON a post by the door: THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. Curious indeed. After a few moments navigating the store, I see no signs of life, but what I do find holds my attention: relics from a forgotten world, particularly an old radio. I forget my quest and stare at it, tentatively reaching out to touch its buttons, but it’s as dead as the one hidden in the secret cubby in my parents’ home. A product of yesterday, and nothing more.

I’ll have lost Valery completely by now, if it was even her at all, so I linger in the store and riffle through the books, knocking years of dust off them. A copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets catches my eye. I read it over and over as a child, stealing it from the stash of contraband in my parents’ room. We had a few books, and if my parents minded my reading them, they certainly never said anything. I understand now how precious they were, and more than anything I want to take this volume with me. I couldn’t protect those books. I couldn’t protect my parents, but I can have a piece of them again.

“Not many young people are interested in books these days,” a raspy voice says. A face, lined and gaunt, follows the words, appearing in the doorway. The woman limps over, resting against a cane, and I notice that one of her feet is made of steel and wood.

“My parents had it,” I tell her. “I read it as a child.”

“Quite the luxury,” she says. “Books and having the time to teach your child to read.”

I pause, not sure how to respond. This conversation is heading in a dangerous direction. Many of the Icebox’s inhabitants are refugees, but that doesn’t make it any safer to admit I am one myself.

“Keep it,” she offers.

“I couldn’t,” I say. “Not without paying.”

The shop owner seems to grow an inch at the mention of payment. She can’t do much business selling radios that don’t work and books that can’t be read.

“I don’t have any money though,” I admit.

“Well,” she mutters, shaking her head, “at least you can read.”

“I have this,” I say, unlatching an earring. I only offer her one, because I know the emeralds in the pair are real and because I know the boys will be furious if I come back missing both. We’ve been hawking our possessions strategically and we’ve been saving the earrings until we have a plan for getting back to Arras and need real money.

“You’re either proud or an idiot,” she says, but she accepts the earring. “Look around, take some more of this junk off my hands. An emerald for a book isn’t a fair trade, child.”

I pocket the sonnets and consider asking for the radio, but purely out of nostalgia. It will do us no good, and I’ll be forced to abandon it as soon as we are on the move again. Instead I trail my fingers along the dusty spines of books. The books my parents kept were full of stories and poetry, but many of the books on these shelves recall the history of Earth. It’s the information I’ve been seeking. This woman has been collecting it for me, safeguarding the information against the entropy that envelops so much of this world. I wonder how many generations of owners stacked these shelves and traded the past before her.