Mirror, Fox, Key

THREE

"Should we have stayed, Moo?" Kib shuffled backwards along the dimming road, her purple cloak wrapped around herself, hiding the murmur of light inside her, a pleading spin in her eyes. The fire-colored trees rustled overhead and let in warm patches of moving light, but not even their golden shine on the flowers could distract the robot from the replayed memories in her head. Upon second and seventh and hundredth review of the recorded interaction, after analysis of every shift of cloth and mote of dust, Kib could trace worry and sadness in the image of Usaro's face, the quiet lilt of his voice, the way he had smothered himself in the pillows to escape the reality of the robot's presence.

"I said something wrong, didn't I," she whispered aloud. Her plastic fingers twisted in the golden scarf at her throat. "I said I had to go, I didn't say why. He probably thought I hated him. He probably thought I wanted to get away. He gave me a gift and I barely said thank you and then I left. He just wanted a friend, didn't he? He's all alone and he wanted somebody to talk to and I left. I left him all alone. But we can't stay, we have to keep going, we have to keep moving, but we could've stayed... a little longer. I could've been nicer. I should go back and explain, I should apologize--" An electromagnetic shiver scraped at her back, and Kib jumped with a swirl of her cloak.

The air rippled across the road ahead like a mirage over hot summer asphalt, as if an invisible wall stood in Kib's way. She stretched out her palm and felt a charge of shimmering energy like the aura of a high voltage wire.

"This is too many impossible things today, Moo." Kib stepped back and passed her scanners along the glimmering wall: it extended deep into the wild woods on each side, as if there were no ending at all. "There's got to be charged metal or a wire underground," she hypothesized aloud, "and a power source big enough to charge the whole woods." With this she dropped to her hands and knees and pressed an ear to the dirt, listening for the pulse and churn of a mechanical thing.

Instead, she heard footsteps.

"A robot is the last thing I expected," growled a voice above her.

Kib shot to her feet and stumbled backward, lights flickering erratic as her stuttering heart. A disheveled man loomed over her, his dirt-scraped hands jammed in his pockets, his balance weighted by the backpack on his shoulders. His icepick eyes bored into the robot's flickering skull.

"Where'd you come from!" Kib squeaked, and she flung a quick glance up and down the dirt path to be sure no more strangers would materialize out of the empty road.

The disheveled man yanked a hand out of a pocket and cast a dismissive gesture at the shimmer behind him. "The shift," he replied, and breathed long and deep. "What smells like chocolate?"

"I'm a peddler," Kib answered automatically, the words spilling from her mouth the same as every time someone commented on the rich aroma that clung to her, though this time her wide eyes tracked the man who had appeared suddenly like a ghost. "Hot chocolate, three bits a mug, two for five."

The disheveled man watched her in silence-- while the autumn woods rustled and distant crickets scraped the air --as if waiting for a punchline. When none came, he dropped his backpack with a leaden thump on the ground, then knelt down to rummage in one of its many pockets. "How's business in the middle of nowhere?" he scoffed while he held out a loose fist, and he dropped five tarnished bronze triangles into Kib's cupped hands.

Kib stared at the money as if it might disintegrate any moment, as quickly as the stranger had appeared. Her spinning eyes lifted to the disheveled man's grizzled face, and those icepick eyes were sharpened on her again. She closed her hands around the bits and scurried away to Moo's side. "I'm just traveling right now," she said louder than she'd intended, and dumped too much brown sugar into a saucepan. Kib hurriedly adjusted her recipe. "Between towns, you know. After a while in one place, the novelty wears off and everybody goes back to making their own drinks, so you have to keep moving and finding new people who are still curious..."

While the robot prattled nervously, a stirring shine of chocolatey, sugary decadence swirled and bubbled in the pan atop the hot ring in her palm. Kib poured half of the rich liquid into a generous mug and returned to the disheveled stranger, who now sat cross-legged in the grass on the side of the road but still watched her as if he'd never blinked.

"I'm Kib," she said, her gaze fixed on the ground, while the stranger accepted the hot mug. "What's your name?"

"Rook." His voice sounded unsure. Kib chanced a look at his face again and was relieved to find he was no longer looking at her, but he scowled at the steaming mug in his hands as if it had lied to him.

The forest creaked. Filtered sunlight diffused pale and blue behind the trees. A chill descended on the shimmering road. He still hadn't taken a sip.

Kib sat in the dirt across from him and wrapped her arms around her knees. "Do you not like chocolate, Mister Rook?" she asked carefully. His eyes snapped up and she flinched.

"Is this another trick," Rook asked gravely, his voice low and forbidding as the ice in his stare, "or are you lost here like me?"

"It's not a trick, and I'm not lost." Orange light shivered behind Kib's plastic face. "I've been following the road. The next village is just another three miles. You can come with me, I'll show you the way--"

"How long have you been three miles from Annoth?" Rook interrupted her, and he took a long swallow of hot chocolate while Kib curled a fist in the shining fabric of her golden scarf.

"I thought I should've been there by now," she admitted, "but it just means I'd calculated a straight line instead of the hills and the winding road and Moo was tired so--"

"Annoth was wiped out twenty years ago," Rook announced, holding out his empty mug. "And these woods are a demon's trap. I've been crossing the shifts for three weeks, but it all folds into itself. There's no way out."

Kib's eyes widened. "I thought he was just making things up."

"Who?"

"Usaro." The golden scarf tangled in Kib's fidgeting fingers. "He said Annoth was lost-- but it's not! My data was updated last month and Annoth has a current population of 257 people and an operating textiles market and a school and a website, and it definitely exists! I downloaded their newspaper, I can read you the articles from five weeks ago, there was a grand opening of a new sandwich shop, it says--"

"Annoth is gone." Rook's voice dropped like a stone between them. He wiggled the mug for her attention. "No one survived who saw what happened, but whatever wasn't burned to charcoal was mutilated beyond recognition. Have you at least heard of the Rattlewood Demon?"

Kib shook her head, and she took the mug to refill it from the saucepan. Rook cast her a suspicious glare as he accepted the hot mug, and he held it between his coarse hands. "I'll tell you," he said through the sweet steam, "if you want to hear it."

"Is it a scary story?" Kib sat across from him again and wrapped her fidgeting hands in the golden scarf.

Rook breathed a quiet, snide laugh.