And behind my eyes, I see her.
Dorothy.
When I said her name, the look on her face…
Shock. Terror.
What kind of name is Dorothy anyway?
Who the fuck is this girl?
She appears in the Ends in a house that drops from the sky. She somehow manages to kill a Cardinal Witch with a kitchen blade and her bare hands, something no one, not even the wizard, has been able to achieve.
She makes her way into the Hollow, then defies logic andescapesmyblade.
No one escapes me. I never fucking miss.
She had help.
Alarm bells are ringing in my head.
It was a man who stabbed me. And I suspect it was the innkeeper who ferried them away into the night.
So now I wait.
And get drunk while I wait.
I upend the bottle and send the last of the West whisky sliding down my throat.
The girl returns with the required supplies. She sets a battered pan on the table and pulls out several rags. The first one, emerald like the city, opens to reveal a set of needles of differing lengths and thicknesses. The second rag is damp on one end, dry on the other. There’s a spool of black thread and one amber vial.
“What’s that?” I ask, nodding at the vial.
“Antiseptic,” she answers like it should be obvious. “Alcohol.”
“I wanted alcohol I can drink.”
She stares at me, and the dancing flame light paints her round face in strokes of red and orange.
Every time I look at this Ender, she reminds me of someone. But I can never put my finger on who.
I hold up the empty bottle of whisky and give it a shake.
She frowns, but makes her way around the counter, fetching me a second bottle, this one of Southern mead. She hands it to me.
“I hate honey wine.”
“That’s all that was left.”
With a grumble, I tear off the wrapping, then stuff the bottle between my legs so I can wrestle the cork from the tapered neck with my good arm. It comes out with a loudthwap.
The air is immediately perfumed with honey and my stomach rolls.
I don’t hate the taste of mead. I hate what it reminds me of.
Bringing the bottle up, I take a tentative sip.
The honeyed spice blooms on my tongue and I am a boy again, deep in the South, mourning a dead father and running from a mother with sharp claws.
