I am Gideon: Chapter #13

I Meet a Mystery.

I worked hard for a solid month to pay Azar back for my birth certificate, but it was worth it. The experience of meeting Mrs. Membuss was worth the cost just by itself. She was ensconced in a tiny dark room not much bigger than she was, and when she turned her chair around to peer up at us from under a green visor, she was enormous. I’d never seen anybody even remotely that big. Her eyes were huge in a green face, which I realized was a reflection of the visor — but it was still chilling in a “listening to ghost stories around the campfire” sort of way.

“Kid needs a birth certificate,” Azar said.

“Does he now?” she purred, and her voice was rich and soft and sinister, and in that moment I loved her. She exuded mystery and adventure of the sort I’d longed for but never had — not the adventure of hardship and rejection and scrabbling to survive, but of launching oneself out into new worlds and situations and boldly battling on undiscovered frontiers. “How old are you?” she asked, and those huge eyes traveled up my entire body, counted my ribs, noted the cleft in my chin, and stopped when they met mine. “Fourteen, are we?” she purred. “Azar, you’re branching out.”

“I’m sixteen,” I said, trying to make my voice sound deep.

“Of course you are,” she murmured. “You are whatever you say you are in here, and that is what you shall be. When were you born?”

I had no idea. My mother had said it was a pain in the ass to try to make a living and be pregnant through the hot months, so I shrugged and said, “I was born in the cooling season, sixteen years ago.”

Again, those huge eyes studied me. She knew exactly what was going on, but she was used to having people come around who wanted another identity, so someone who needed one in the first place wasn’t much of a stretch. “We shall give you a birthing day in what the Terrenes call Autumn, and the Equi call Oporens, shall we?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Do you have a day of the season in mind?”

“What’s a good day? What’s a lucky day to be born?” I asked. I felt like I was part of some wonderful story being told around me and I could choose my own ending. I also felt a bit like I was floating — and I only learned later that the smoke drifting lazily about the room was from Blue Hazeltine, a common narcotic.

“Let’s give you a birthing day on the thirteenth,” she said. “The thirteenth Dragonhorse will rise this year, or so the rumors have it, and you will see power manifested as a person. A man with the powers of a god. Things will change then.”

I nodded, she bent to her work, and Azar and I stood there breathing in Blue Hazeltine and grinning at each other.

“Go away now,” she said without turning around. “I will have this for you tomorrow afternoon.”

We turned to leave, and she said, “Bring me some soaked bread when you come again.”

“I wonder if she ever eats, or if she lives on Blue Hazeltine smoke,” Azar mused, shaking the smoke out of his clothes and jerking his chin back toward her closed door.

“I’m pretty sure she eats,” I said, and I guess my inflection was enough to set him on a roar. He was still laughing when we got back to the inn.