Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

flesh and human feces, but the air was also dense with smells of sandalwood, sage, and the sweet twinge of honey. As men and women bumped me, I felt impotent; they would remain to bump others tomorrow.

I reached a sign that read POSTERITY HILL. FUTURE HOME OF THE JARRIFA FAMILY. High walls were fashioned with polished brown stones that jutted from the facade like giant thumbs, the work of a skilled hand.

“This is private property,” a shirtless boy said.

I ignored him and climbed to the top of the sloping road as he followed me. Young masons labored within a large stone foundation, scooping mortar and laying stones with advanced skill. From this plateau I glimpsed the full city. To my left, a hag’s spine of roads twisted into the desert. To my right, spires rose like candles into the sky.

“Did you hear me, feg?” the boy said, behind me. “This is private property!”

“There’s no such thing,” I said. But before he could scold me again, I descended the hill. I searched the base of the foundation until I found a corner where I could watch the workers without being seen, and there I waited for Agna.

Her father stepped out of a pavilion and walked around the foundation, admonishing the boys for apparent flaws that neither the boys nor I saw. One of the boys whispered to him and pointed at me.

“Who the frib are you?” Agna’s father said as he stepped up to the wall and looked down at me, his foot resting on a stone above my head.

I stood from my hiding place. “Is your daughter here?”

“What do you want with her?”

“Is she here?”

He leaped down to my level, and the ground shook with his weight. “Did you hear me?” he said. “What do you want with her?”

“You would not understand,” I said. “It is beyond you.”

“You freak!” he said as his fist slammed into my face. I fell onto my back. He kicked me, and I raised my hand to block the blows. With his next kick, Atleiu’s flesh suit tore at the index finger. When he tried to kick me again, I stuck out my hand, and his leg scraped my unprotected finger.

He gasped, while the ecstasy of nothingness coursed through me.

“What’s wrong with him?” the boys said. “Is he having a heart attack?”

Agna’s father bent over, holding his stomach. Then he stood, looked at me nervously, and said, “You stay the frib away from my daughter or I’ll kill you.” He walked up the hill and vanished behind a wall. Some of the boys chuckled and kicked pebbles at me until I heard his stern voice order them back to work. In the distance, Agna watched me until I heard her father order her back to work, too.

Carefully, I wrapped my torn finger back into place.

* * *

I circled the streets until I found a better hiding spot. On the opposite side of the foundation, three small walls obscured me completely from view, but a tiny slit allowed me to see out. The sun beat down on the boys as they worked, and Agna, to my joy, worked alongside them. Though she was the only girl among three dozen boys, they gave her no special treatment. She spread mortar and hefted heavy stones without help; she chiseled with practiced skill. But I noticed in her craft an attention to detail that the boys lacked. Every stone held her full consciousness. Every rap of her hammer carried the weight of aeons.

And she sang while she worked.

Oh, what sweet music! The boys sang with her; they mixed mortar by verse, carried stones by stanza, and finished walls by song, so that their labors resembled a dance more than a burden.

I knew the power of her song now and let it consume me. I reveled in forgotten vistas. Geysers from the oasis city of Sul erupted in my mind. The mirrored walls of Nier El Du blinded my dreams. The gargantuan city of Poc, carved from a single piece of stone, crushed me under its weight. I thought for a moment that this feeling might be greater than the bliss of annihilation.

“You!” Agna said.

I woke from my visions to see her peering down at me from the foundation wall. She threw her hands to her hips and frowned, and I recognized her mother in the gesture.

She sniffed the air. “I thought I smelled ash,” she said.

“Your songs, they are … beautiful—yes, that’s the word,” I said.

She glanced over her shoulder. “I was wondering who it was that Father beat this morning.”

“Now he has beaten us both,” I said. “We are kindred. By dawn, he will—”

“Kin? Hardly. You’d better leave, whoever you are. He’ll kill you. Don’t be stupid.”

“Tell me, Agna,” I said, “do your songs carry you to forgotten places? Do you have visions of dead cities?”

“What?” she said. She stepped back from the wall, mouth agape. “How do you know—”

“Agna?” her father shouted from behind her. “Who are you talking to? Is that feg here again?”

She stared at me. Then she shook her head and said, “Go away. Go away.…” But her words were insubstantial, like a desert cloud.

“Meet me at the bottom of the hill,” I said.

She disappeared behind the wall, and I knew she was mine now.

* * *

At the bottom of Posterity Hill, shadows crept across the ground as the sun turned overhead. Just after high noon, Agna’s small figure appeared at the top of the hill and scampered down to meet me.

“How do you know about my visions?” she demanded. “Did Mother tell you? Damn her!”

“No. I see them when you sing.”

“You said they’re ‘dead’ cities. What did you mean by that?”

“They have been forgotten. Erased. Yet your song rekindles their memories.”

Agna’s father appeared at the top of the hill surrounded by three boys.

“Let’s go!” she said. “Before Father sees us!”

We turned through the busy streets. The air smelled of cracked spelt, boiling beans, and the pungent reek of humans going about their business. Animals being slaughtered cried out and fell silent. She led me into a courtyard filled with date palms and speckled shade.

“They’re not dead cities,” she said. “They haven’t been born yet.”

“No, they’re very dead. But your songs give them new life.”

She frowned. “I’ve tried to tell Father about them. To let him know that there’s more to my songs than just music and words. But he won’t have an ounce of it. He says a woman needs a stable trade as much as any man, that my poems and music will only get me to a street corner, begging for change.”

“He’s wrong. I watched the boys sing with you. They work twice as hard under your spell.”

“Do you think so? Father works us all so hard. A song makes the day go by a little faster.” Her eyes filled with water. “The prefect plans to hire Father as his chief mason. When Father gets that job, I’ll be able to design buildings myself. I won’t have to take orders from him anymore. And when I turn sixteen Father promised to give his business to me. Says his back’s no good anymore. I’ll be free to create whatever I wish. I have dreams, things I want to build.”

I remembered that I had touched her father, that he would vanish from existence before dawn. “Your mother has a well-paying trade, though?” I said.

“Well-paying? She’s a seamstress in the textile guild. The pay is the only thing worse than the work. She doesn’t want me to follow in her footsteps, but I love working with thread, too. I often help her with embroidery. It’s wonderful. You can’t get the same precision with stone, not if you want to finish within this century.” She stared at her calloused fingers.

“And all through this has been your music.”

“Ballads have propelled me, ever since I was a girl.”

“Will you sing me one now?”

“Right here? Right now?”

“Yes!”

“This is silly. I don’t even know you.”