“We’ve been through worse. We’ll get through this too,” he said firmly, with more confidence than I had.
He held up a silver key, “We’ve been given a home with a four-year lease to get through your schooling. The rent is free. That doesn’t sound so bad, eh?” He smiled and slight relief spread throughout my body. Free was incredibly kind, but the thought of just abandoning Isariah for four years broke my heart. Sorrel, our hut, Hipsie’s Tavern…
“Where is it?” I asked, looking around at all the roads and buildings. I still didn’t know my way around here.
My father looked back at the guard and nodded. The guard then pushed off the column he’d been leaning on and began to walk ahead of us.
My dad leaned into me. “That Clarke fellow said I would have a few days to settle in and then I’d be given a job with coin payment.”
Coin payment!We didn’t even know how to use coin. There were different sizes and denominations for all sorts of things here. And my father was horrible at mathematics. He quit the village school early to start working as a laborer to feed his family. But he was the strongest and most hardworking man I knew. He could lift a boulder larger than me and throw it fifty feet away! He did beautiful masonry work as well. I’m sure he would be an asset here.
“We’ll figure it out,” I told him in a soft voice as I took everything in.
We’d walked away from the main gate along a high green hedge that formed a privacy wall. Now we had reached an arched opening with metal letters above it.
West Side.
Ahh, the famed West Side. The guard walked under the arch, and I steeled myself for a rat-infested, wreck of a city. When I crossed the threshold and looked up, a bark of laughter flew from my throat.
My father and the guard both looked at me, puzzled. The city before me was beautiful. I mean, it wasn’t as freshly painted and well-manicured as the East Side’s colored buildings and floral arrangements, but there was row after row of sturdy red brick buildings. Sure, the cobblestone road was cracked, but it wasn’t packed dirt like the passageways in Isa. Not a tent or thatch hut could be seen, and from what I could tell, the homes had electricity crystals!
“Sorry,” I muttered and wiped the smile off my face. The people here might not have extra coin for decorations or lilac paint, but who cared about any of that. I couldn’t see a thing wrong with this place, which told me everything I needed to know about the snobbery of The Gilded City. If your house wasn’t the color of a robin’s egg and teeming with fresh flowers, you were seen as beneath them.
I was already annoyed with living here.
I counted four streets until the guard made a right on Street D. They were lined out in letters of the alphabet, which made it easy. My father couldn’t read sentences but he was okay with single words or letters, so he should be able to learn quickly how to memorize where we lived. If not, he would find other landmarks to identify our street, like the rusted little bike stuck inside the bush at the end. We had no use for bikes in Isa, as the ground was so uneven and the forest so thick there was nowhere to ride. But Hipsie had a yellow bike she used from time to time as a workhorse to transport ingredients from the market stalls, and I’d ridden it a time or two. Hers was wooden and these looked like metal, but the idea was the same.
I was lost in my thoughts all the way until the guard stepped up to a black-painted door with the number “4” on it.
“You are Street D, number four.” The guard spoke for the first time, and his voice was so low it made me jump. “There will be monthly inspections by the landlord to make sure you are keeping the place up to standard. No pets. No visitors for more than three nights.”
My dad nodded, but I felt a little weird with the landlord situation. In Isa we owned our hut. It had been ours since before my dad was born, passed down generation to generation. Renting something, and having rules about where you lived, was new to us. But they didn’t seem too strict. We didn’t have pets since they were extra mouths to feed, and sleepover guests were also not a thing common to us, as everyone in Isa had their own place. I supposed now Sorrel might want to visit, but…
“Thank you,” my father said, cutting off my thoughts. And then the guard left.
Dad looked left and right down the street, no doubt wondering if anyone else was going to let us in to the home. I looked at him and shrugged as if telling him to just open it.
He pulled the silver key from his pocket and the door swung open.
A door. A real wooden door with a lock. Not a flap. This was already fancier than we were used to.
When my father stepped inside, he stopped, and I ran into his back, careful not to touch him with my skin.
“It’s furnished,” he said in wonder.
I sidestepped him and took in the scene before me. We’d entered into an open living room, complete with a plush green velvet sofa, shiny wooden coffee table, and a beautiful cream rug that sat atop lightly scratched hardwood floors.
The walls were a pale yellow, and other than a few scuffs, the place was cleaner than we were. Not a speck of dust or dirt marred the space.
“We should take our shoes off,” my father said, and I nodded.
Further in was a little four-person dining table painted in a pale blue shade, and a full kitchen like Hipsie had at the tavern.
“A full kitchen!” I ran through the house barefoot and my father followed.
I turned to him to see that he was grinning. He loved cooking and baking; he could have been a baker in another life. His breads and sweet rolls were the softest in Isa when he had time to make them. The galley kitchen had some kind of stone countertop I didn’t recognize, and the cabinets looked to be a dark oak. There was a sink, a nice drying rack for dishes, and…
“What’s that?” my father asked, looking at the giant ice chest.
