Part 5 ~ Old Bromia

The steady drum of water was a welcome, obscuring sound, as the shower spray soaked down her hair and washed over her face.  She stayed there for a long time.

Sidonie stepped out of the shower with a shudder and a chill spreading over her damp body.  Even a vigorous rub dry with a towel was not enough to dispel it.  Her hair clung to her nick and little droplets of icy water trickled down her spine.  The numbness always came back.

She was glad to have something to put on besides her school uniform.  It had never fit well or been very flattering, tailored seemingly for the sole purpose of accentuating how skinny and shapeless her legs were poking out from under the pleated skirt and how narrow her shoulders were with the stiff white shirt bunching up between them.  She slunk into a pair of worn jeans and a t-shirt with an iron-on picture of a dove flying across the front.

Her feet went into her blue sneakers, and carried her down the hallway to a small back door that opened to the street.

It wasn’t a street, more of an alley, really.  There was an old broken exit sign glowing “IT” above the doorway.  Sidonie paused for a moment, not glancing back but thinking about what was the other way, back inside the theatre.  She didn’t intend to leave, not really.  She knew you didn’t go out and about in the Ghetto at night.  But she had walked from her house in Rivalie and ended up here on compulsion and compulsion carried her out into the night.

The door to the alley only opened one way.  She realized this when she was standing outside, ankles bent out nervously as she turned to look back and noticed that there was no handle on the door and it did not push in.  Her hair was still wet from the shower and she shivered.

The alley was empty, which is not what she would have expected.  There should have been homeless broms, perhaps strung out on speed or crack or some special bromian drug.  Possibly a cat or two, as well.  Definitely piles of garbage.  But no.  The alley behind The One And Only was clean and devoid of anything remotely interesting.

She stuck her hands in her pockets and walked along the wall till she got to the street.  It looked the same as it had earlier, only darker.  The lighted marquee flickered ominously, as if warning her not to wander.  Sidonie glanced up at the sound and did a double take.  Where the marquee had been empty earlier, placard letters spelled out:

COME HOME

She stepped down off the curb and walked across the street, still staring up at the marquee.  Crossing the street without looking was not something she had ever done before.  She stopped in the middle to look down the length each way, marveling at just how dead the Ghetto seemed.  The street lights were off and there was no light shining from any window.  The only light came from a murky moon and the faintly humming marquee of The One And Only.

Suddenly, she heard a noise, and turned towards it.  At first she didn’t know what it was, but after a second recognized it as the weak and fluttering sound of a bicycle bell.  Out of the darkness came the bicycle it was attached to, the sound of thin wheels on pavement amplified by the lack of any other noise around.  The rider, a skinny boy in old sweats, gave her barely more than a second glance as he rode by.  She followed him.

He was heading south, and took a right on a street marked Genvensee.  There was one lonely streetlight still lit on the corner of Genvensee Street and Shady Avenue, shining down on the sign, which was crooked.  Sidonie had to speed up her walk to keep up with the boy.  He did not know, or perhaps did not care, that he was being followed, as he never looked back.  But he pedaled just slowly enough for her to keep up on foot if she hustled.

She took several turns down streets which were not lit and whose names she did not know.  It seemed there was nothing and no one else out and about, until she heard a glass crashing noise from an alley.  It made her stop for just a second to look, even though it was too dark to see anything besides the foggy outline of buildings.  When she looked back to the street, the boy and his bike were gone, disappeared into darkness or thin air.  Everything was silent.

The moon decided to come out, then, round and staring from behind the clouds.  It revealed a long empty road leading to a scraggly dead end of bushes and grass.  Sidonie looked back down the alleyway to her right and saw a shadow flit from one side to the other.

“Hello?” she ventured, taking a step in that direction.  A faint scuttling answered her.  “Is someone there?”  She was up to the edge of the sidewalk now, and knew she was being unwise.  She was unlikely to find anything good scuttling and flitting about a Bromian alley.

Something came out of the shadows, wheeling slowly towards her.  She took a step back.  It was a bicycle; an old one with bent handlebars.  It rolled up to her side and fell against her.  Startled, Sidonie moved out of its way, and it crashed to the ground.  One wheel spun pointlessly in the air.

Sidonie looked into the alley, puzzled, wondering who would think she wanted a bike and push it out to her.  But there was no more sound from the shadows, and she had lost her desire to go searching for something.

She bent to pick up the bike.  It was cobwebby and rusted, but when she straightened the handlebars she thought it looked usable, so she wiped the seat with her sleeve and climbed on.  Her feet fumbled to find the pedals for a moment, then she was riding the bike down the road.  It was a curious feeling, as if the bike were taking her where it wanted to go.  But that was crazy.

Sidonie reached the end of the road, and noticed that a thin dirt path continued on through the bushes where the pavement ended.  She continued on, or perhaps the bike continued for her, she couldn’t quite decide.  The moonlight was barely bright enough to light her way, but she didn’t worry about falling or running into something.  I feel safe, she thought.  Very safe.

She didn’t know how long she pedaled down the path, or what sort of terrain, exactly, it took her through.  She had the feeling of just going along for the ride, her legs churning the wheels and her hands resting on the handlebars, but being guided along through the dark.  There were hills, and trees, and possibly a small bridge over a stream.  She passed through them without paying much attention.

Eventually, she came to a road.  It was compacted dirt with a strip of rampant weeds growing down the middle, but straighter and wider than the little path.  She continued going south, and realized after a mile or so that she was heading towards Old Bromia.

Sidonie had never been to Old Bromia, but then, not many people had.  Not even broms, if you believed what Feyanna Ardash said in her book.  It was a wild and desolate land south of Rivalie, said to be made of trees and old ruins and Nothing Else.  You did not have to be very smart, or creative, or curious, to know that Nothing Else meant Something Else.  But you didn’t say it.

A long time ago Bromia had been a country, with a city, though no one remembered now what the city had been called.  The Bromians lived there, like the Rivalians lived up north in Rivalie.  The Bromians and Rivalians traded, and traveled, and intermarried, and were alike as two neighboring countries could be.  No one was really sure when Bromia began to go bad, but when it did the Bromians slowly migrated north to Rivalie, and before anyone knew it, there was the Ghetto spreading out over the southern side of Rivalie.

There was a little bit of Bromia there, in the Ghetto, eating away at the city.  People said it ate away at the Broms, made them a little bit crazy.  You’d have to be crazy to live in the Ghetto, they said.  But they also said that the Broms would always have a little bit of Bromia following them.  Sidonie supposed that if you could not get away from it altogether, you might as well stop running.

She didn’t realize she was tired until she fell off the bike.  It did not hurt that much, just enough to jolt her awake as she tumbled to a heap on the roadside.  She grumbled at the bike, glaring at its wheels spinning in the air.

The moon was hiding again and she couldn’t see beyond the vague lump of toppled bike.  The grass felt long and soft where she lay, if a bit wet from the nighttime damp, and she wanted to lay her head down and stay there.  Briefly.

I will not sleep, she thought.  I will lay here for a moment, and then go home. It seemed a solid plan.

When she lay her head down, she slept, and when she slept she dreamt dreams of Bromia before it was old.