I awoke to the sound of bottles being kicked. I had bundled up my coat and used it as a pillow even though it left the rest of my body freezing in the chilly night. The cobblestone had done a real toll on my back and I shifted to find a slightly more comfortable position and resume what was a rather horrendous sleep.

“Hey look!” I heard a boy yell and that fully woke me up. A series of footsteps followed, pounding the ground hard enough that I could feel it faintly. It sounded like they were coming towards me so I looked up and, sure enough, a group of boys were making their way over to me. The body that had been burning the previous night was nothing but a small heap of ashes.

“Whatcha doin’ out of the back slums, ya maunder,” one of the boys asked, kicking the bottle in my direction rather hard. It skittered past, bouncing against the wall next to me.

I didn’t really know what the slang meant but it certainly didn’t sound friendly.

“Whatcha think he’s doin’ here, Harry?” The boy who was speaking was wearing a cap and suspenders, positioned closest to me.

“Got lost, it seems, ain’t it?” This boy was smaller than the others, four in total.

“Well, we might just have to show him where he belongs, right?” The lead boy said.

I scrambled to my feet, feeling the danger. I was no scrapper, never having been in a fight before. Even though these boys seemed younger than me, I knew they were going to mop the floor with me. Four on one was not fair odds. The end of the alleyway was a dead end, meaning that there was no way to run since they were blocking the only exit out into the street.

“I’m sorry, I’m new here,” I tried to protest, weakly, but that didn’t stop their advance.

I backed up, stumbling over myself until my back hit the rough brick wall. The boys had spread out, creating a lazy semi-circle around me. I was too afraid to say anything, the sound of my pounding heartbeat probably loud enough for them to hear.

“Where ya goin’?” The leader grabbed me as he spoke. Suddenly, everyone was grabbing me. They pulled me away from the safety of the wall and fully encircled me, hands gripping my collar, my hair, my hands.

“You shouldn’t have come here!” one boy said, punctuating his statement with a knee to my face. My head would have been thrown back if not for the fierce grip on my hair, one that felt like it was going to tear my scalp. The hit hurt enough that I lost my sense of self, the flurry of tugs and pulls feeling like the force of an underwater current, with me just tumbling through. I closed my eyes, just like I always did.

A fist connected with my cheek and this time my head slipped out of the grip holding it in place, pulling out a fistful of hair with it. They let me flop to the ground. A barrage of kicks followed, hitting my head, my stomach, my legs, and arms. I curled into a ball, doing my best to block it all out.

Back in middle school, this had happened before. I was a nerd and already a bit of a recluse, preferring the shelter of words over people, a life lived in the tranquility of the library. Kids soon realized that and, in that terrible way middle schoolers do, turned it against me. The library became a labyrinth of traps, sometimes hand sanitizer covering the seat I used to always use or the books I liked being soaked in fruit juices so I would have to pay a fine. But the locker room was the worst. I would get tripped and everyone would gather round, laughing as Sammie gave me wedgies. They called it “no underwear Tuesday”. Sometimes things got violent, just like now.

At some point, during the beatdown, someone spat on me, saliva trickling down my face. Since I was protecting my most vulnerable spots, someone decided to target my head, kicking and kicking. His shoes ripped my skin and my head rocked back and forth each time. The pain was so intense that it colored the darkness of my closed eyelids red. Or perhaps that was the blood.

I don’t know when the kicking stopped but eventually it did. They were talking with someone but I couldn’t piece it together, too disoriented to tell. I risked a glance and saw, near the opening of the alleyway, an old woman dressed in robes and wearing what looked like a wizard’s cap.

“And that means you won’t be coming back, right?”

“Yes, High Mage, we won’t be coming back.” The response was lightning quick and revealed the group’s collective terror.

“Then leave. Now.” Her voice boomed and the boys scattered, falling over each other to escape. The wizard lady watched them leave, the intensity of her gaze burning holes in their backs as they scurried down the street. After a moment of watching, she turned to me and made her way over. As she did, though, something odd happened. With every step, she seemed to change. At first it was her stature, which had loomed large over the boys. She shrunk slowly, to a more modest five feet. Her skin, old, wrinkled, and white, now changed to a strong and healthy umber. Her robes and hat shifted into a school uniform, one that reminded me of a prep school or something. By the time she reached me, she looked like the average college aged girl, hair tied up into a nice braid, but a college girl from the 18th century.

“Are you okay?” The concern was etched onto her face. I wiped at my forehead, hand coming away covered in blood. Oddly enough, I think I was in a state of shock, at this point, so the only thing I could really focus on was the fact she had transformed from an old wizard lady into a young girl.

“How did you do that?” I whispered, entranced.

“What?” Her brow furrowed in confusion.

“What you just did.” I coughed hard. “You just changed.”

She realized what I was talking about and shook her head. “We gotta get you help. Come on.” The girl pulled me up to my feet. I stumbled into her, my left leg unable to carry my weight.

“Is it broken?” She was looking at my leg. I was protecting it, keeping it slightly off the ground. It hurt like a motherfucker but it didn’t feel broken. I had broken a leg before and the pain was so severe that I couldn’t do anything except roll around on the ground. This didn’t feel as deep, instead more like a really really bad bruise. Surface level.

I shook my head no. “Probably sprained or maybe just bruised.”

“Can you walk?”

I set my foot to the ground, carefully, and tested it out. It hurt but, with a limp, I could move. We set off and left the alleyway after picking up my jacket. She was holding me tight, allowing me to use her as a sort of crutch.

It was much easier to get a sense of the city during the day. We were currently under a pair of two immense buildings, spanning at least fifteen stories up. A clocktower was carved into one of the buildings. A bridge near the roof extended across the street, connecting it to what looked like a mix between a castle and a factory, complete with smokestacks, merlons, and parapets. A series of massive gears spun leisurely on the side of the building, turning who knows what.

Looking down the street, I saw that this was no anomaly. All the buildings were thoroughly humongous. But, towering over them all, was the castle at the center of the city, stretching higher than any skyscraper I’ve ever seen on Earth. Not only that, but it was broad, looking like it could easily have been a half mile long.

“Wow,” I breathed quietly.

The girl turned and looked at me, that look of muted confusion crossing her face but she didn’t say anything and neither did I.

We continued to walk down the street, watching a tram car pass by filled with a variety of suited men and women wearing dresses. The dresses weren’t very bulky, instead, being thinner and way more likely to show off a little skin than Victorian sensibilities would allow.

“What’s your name?” She said eventually. I had noticed folks staring at us, moreso me, the blood probably attracting all the attention. Maybe she was trying to distract me from the onlookers.

“Griffin.”

“Nice to meet you, Griffin. I’m Hana.” She was smiling, genuinely. I returned the smile, as best as I could, likely looking more like a zombie trying to smile than a person.

After a moment, I asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“To my apartment. I have some medical supplies up there.”

“Why not the hospital?”

This was her most confused look yet but she had no trouble finding her words, apparently, because they came out quick and sharp. “You’re poor.”

“What do you mean I’m poor?”

“I’m not trying to be rude, but you were sleeping out in the streets.”

“So? What does that have to do with me going to the hospital?” I said, suddenly indignant, surprisingly so, in fact. I wasn’t normally one to challenge authority. It must have been the shock from being mugged in broad daylight.

“People from the slums aren’t allowed in hospitals,” she said with a shrug.

That was certainly something. I had grown up in America and, generally, the ritual there was that poor people would be allowed in but then get slammed with medical debt on the way out. Something like 50% of bankruptcies were due to medical bills. But simply excluding them? I mean, I guess the same thing went on at home. Something like a hundred thousand people die every year due to not having adequate medical insurance. But still. Damn.

“That’s fucked,” was all I could say.

“It’s totally disgusting,” she said, eyes focused on the sidewalk.

My head throbbed. “Why are you helping me?” Another question that was far more straightforward than I usually was.

She looked up and I realized her eyes were a soft burnt siena. “You wouldn’t help someone like this?”

Fair enough. I nodded.

We stopped in front of a pristine building, made up of large beige granite blocks and crowned by an extended embrasure. It looked more like a castle than an apartment building but in we went.