Eden

Thirty-Two

I look around. Thinking about stealing has given me an idea. If there's a city, there ought to be police of some sort, I assume, and every old-timey film I've ever seen has some kind of town watch who stand around at the city's gates, and are the closest thing to police the past has.

I'm thinking about asking for help, or even just directions, and wondering whether I should, and exactly how I'd do that. And also, I'm sort of assuming that there is actually a police, and that us turning up here isn't so completely unusual that they don't have some kind of procedure for what to do next.

That's the idea, anyway. So I look across the market, and beyond it, to that huge stone gateway we'd seen from the road. I expect to see guards there, like loitery people in obvious armour and uniforms, but actually, there aren't any. People are just walking in and out as they wish. No-one seems to be watching them, or caring what they do.

I look around for guards, or soldiers, or someone who looks official. I look around, but can't see anyone.

I'm disappointed. It had seemed like a good idea.

I mean, yes, I know pretty much every film about the past has the town guards as nasty bullies, but I'd hoped that was just the movies, and the people who made them being unfair.

But never mind. It's a shame, but now I need another idea.

But first, before I think, I get distracted by that gateway.

Because now I'm seeing it closer, it's huge. It's impossibly huge. It's forty or fifty steps wide, and twice as many high, and is still small compared to the wall it's in. So I stand there in the market, kind of shocked into being impressed, looking at that wall, and wondering who could have possibly built it. In the past, I mean, with wooden cranes and ropes and things like that. Because it looks old, very old, and I can't see why anyone would bother with all that effort. Because by the twentieth century, when it would have been easy, by then they would have used concrete, not stone. Which looking, I can see they didn't. So obviously, making it was a big deal.

It's a strange wall, is all, and a stupidly huge gate, but it isn't what matters right now.

What matters right now is that while I've been looking at the gate, Lexi has been staring at one of the food stalls, where they're frying something which smells wonderful. And she's still staring, kind of fixatedly, and I have a horrible feeling she's just going to grab something and start eating out of desperation if I don't get her food soon.