Chapter 2

Alastair stumbled through the forest in a frenzy, bottle in hand. That dumbass kid was going to cost him his whole business! Even worse, if someone found out he was beating the boy, the consequences would be terrible. They would probably take him down to the local prison and lock him up, barely giving him enough food or water to survive. It was a life in hell- but was it too similar to the life he had given the boy? He shook his head, unaware of where this thought had come from. He couldn’t be sympathizing with the boy, not when he was his master, and especially not when there was business to take care of. He shook his head and turned around, grunting angrily. He knew what he had to do. He lurched drunkenly back to the weathered building. There was work to be done.

Abbott woke to the sound of the front door slamming. Heavy footsteps entered the shop; frantic breathing accompanied them. He could smell the liquor from his room. It immediately caused his head to spin, and only then did he realize that the immense pain he had felt earlier was dull and muted. It was certainly still there, but not as strong; he could push it aside and ignore it as if it were just an annoying itch.

Finnian, he thought with a jolt. He thought he remembered the other boy lifting him up, but nothing after that. Was it possible that he had dreamed it all in his half-conscious state?

He then took notice of the fact that he was lying on his bed, bundled up tightly in the sheets. He knew immediately that Finnian had indeed been there, and that he had put him in the bed to rest. But then, if he really had been there, was he still in the shoppe?

Abbott heard the drunken steps falter outside his door. He shut his eyes tight, in an attempt to shield himself from whatever punishment was coming next. The door swung open in one fell swoop, and the ragged man stumbled in, stopping at the foot of Abbott’s bed. He reached out one long finger and poked the boy in the face.

Abbott’s eyes shot open to find the man directly in his face, looking into Abbott’s eyes with his own bloodshot ones. Abbott could smell the alcohol on Alastair’s breath; his stained teeth bared in a grimace. The two stayed like this for some uncomfortable seconds, before the older man backed up and smiled.

“You’re fine, I see,” he slurred.

Abbott tried not to scream. How could the man think that he was fine after he had beat him so cruelly, so savagely? But he knew that saying this would escalate the situation and only make matters worse. He cleared his throat half-heartedly, his mouth dry from sleep and blood. “I- I guess.”

“Good. I expect to see you up for work tomorrow morning, as soon as the sun rises. Don’t be late. We can’t lose customers, can we? Without customers, there’s no business. Without business-”

Your sorry ass is back on the street where it belongs, Abbott thought grumpily. He had heard this speech so many times he could recite it in his sleep. Did O’Leary really think in his twisted mind that Abbott would be ready to deliver prophecies tomorrow? He sighed as the man rose to his feet and staggered back out the door.

“Sunrise,” he spat over his shoulder. “Be up and ready. Or else.”

Abbott knew that the man wouldn’t be up by sunrise, not after the amount he had clearly had to drink that night. He would probably be awake by late afternoon with a splitting headache, leaving Abbott to run the shop from behind the scenes.

Perhaps, Abbott mused to himself, Finnian would return for him, and whisk him away into the outside world, never to deal with the likes of O’Leary again. But he knew that this was nothing but a wish, a dream to get out of this terrible situation that he was stuck in. It would never happen. But Abbott could dream, couldn’t he?

That night passed without another complaint from Alastair. Abbott should have been sleeping, recovering from the day’s beating, but instead his mind was wide awake, so his body was too. He couldn’t stop thinking that perhaps he gave the old man too much credit, that maybe he wasn’t such a good person on the inside. After all, it seemed that all the man really cared about was his own business and reputation, and anyone like that couldn’t be a good person, could they?

He shook his head. He desperately needed sleep; his body ached in a thousand places, and his ribs were surely cracked, not even counting the four or five prophecies he had struggled to deliver that day. Each prophecy recently had been taking more out of him, and he was finding it harder and harder to recover after each one. He feared that Alastair would push him too hard one of these days, and he wouldn’t wake up afterward. But maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? To be free of his obligation to his terrible master, to not have to feel pain anymore? To just be gone.

But he knew he couldn’t. Deep down, he felt that there was something more to live for, something besides this imprisoned, impoverished life.

He was determined to find it, no matter what it might be.

Abbott awoke that morning to a rapping on the shoppe door. He panicked, sitting up sharply with a jolt of pain. Running one hand through his unruly hair, he swung both feet over the edge of the bed and stood up in a hurry. It was only out of pure spite that he didn’t collapse on the spot; his legs felt like they were made out of pure molten lead. He took a deep breath and made his way unsteadily out to the hall.

He paused, glancing down the hall to see that O’Leary’s personal quarters were sealed tight. Smirking, he relished in the thought that he was right. The other man had drank far too much the night before, trying to forget the temper that had caused him to viciously beat Abbott.

Seeing that Alastair wouldn’t be in any condition to confront him again, Abbott pushed down the bile rising in the back of his throat and swung open the door to the main shoppe. He almost jumped at what he saw: numerous customers, a mob almost, standing outside, banging angrily on the doors and waiting impatiently for the store to open. Apologetically, he raced as fast as his feeble body would allow over to the front door and undid all of the thirteen locks that held the front door closed- his master was a very paranoid man, after all.

Before Abbott had even opened the door all the way, the mob started shouting questions in his face. The knife edge in their voices showed their true aggression.

“Where’s O’Leary?”

“Who are you?”

“Why wasn’t the shop open sooner?”

Abbott looked outside. It was true, he had slept much past sunrise, when the shoppe usually opened. Judging from the amount of light pouring in through the windows, which Alastair must have opened before passing out the previous night, it was mid-afternoon. Which meant-

Abbott craned his neck to take in all the faces in the crowd. This was around the time which Finnian had brought the papers by the day before. God, it seemed like such a long time ago. The days seemed to be getting longer after each one passed in pain and repressed anger. It couldn’t be healthy to live this way, Abbott thought.

He was brought back to the present by a tall, lanky woman pushing her way through the half-opened door into the shoppe. She stopped directly in front of Abbott and jammed one long, bony finger into his chest. “I don’t know who you think you are, but this store was supposed to open a long time ago. I’ve been standing here for the better part of the morning hoping Alastair would come and unlock these damned doors, but instead I get some battered street-rat in the middle of the afternoon. Now where is the owner? I demand to know the reasoning behind this. I desperately need a poultice for my son, who’s likely dying in bed right now, no thanks to you!”

Abbott panicked, his mind going completely and utterly empty. He managed to squeak out between gasps, “Mr. O’Leary is rather… indisposed at the moment. I’m afraid I don’t know of any poultices in this store. Is- is there anything else I can help you with?” he stammered. “Ma-ma’am,” he added after a murderous glance from the woman.

“Nevermind, you useless boy. I’ll just take my business somewhere else- Lord knows I should have done that hours ago. Good day to you, you dirty knave!”

She spat on the ground in front of his bare feet, and spinning on a heel, she strode out of the store with a swish of her coat. But the calm did not last; almost immediately after she left, another angry townsperson entered. A small, balding man wearing a sloppily patched jacket stomped into the store behind her, three small children in tow. He glared up at Abbott with beady, watery eyes and snarled, “Where is the prophecy man?”

Abbott’s heart skipped a beat. “What-what do you mean, sir?”

The man scoffed. “The man who sells prophecies, you oaf. Are you stupid? What the hell else would I mean?”

Abbott inhaled deeply, trying not to lose his temper. The man must have been talking about Alastair. Calmly, he recited the same speech he had given the other customer. “He’s indisposed at the moment. Could I assist you instead?”

The man ground his teeth irritably. “Unless you can give me a goddamn prophecy, I suppose you should get the hell out of my face.” Grabbing onto the grubby hands of his children, he huffed and turned to leave. Abbott was about to let him, but a small voice in the back of his head said that this was his duty, and that if O’Leary knew that he passed up a sales opportunity, he might just kill him.

“Wait-” Abbott muttered. “I- I can get you a prophecy. What do you need to know?”

The customer froze in his tracks. Backing up, he faced Abbott and regarded him with a wary eye. “Where did my gun go?”

His heart stopped in his chest until he realized that was the question the man wanted to know. The man wasn’t intending to shoot him- yet.

“I’ll go find out, sir. Please be patient, it may take a while.”

The man tsked, but made no motion to leave. Abbott hurried back to his bedroom and sat down on the ground roughly. He wasn’t sure if he had enough energy to successfully deliver a prophecy, but he was surely going to try. There was no one to listen to what the voice would say, so he would have to pay close attention to his vision. He closed his eyes tight, and took a deep breath, smelling the coppery scent of blood on his own clothes. He probably looked a fright- it was no wonder that woman had called him a street-rat. He certainly appeared to be one.

He shook his head to himself. Focus, now, he told himself. You have a job to do. He could feel the warm glow taking over his body; he could feel the green light pulsating out from under his eyelids. The last thing he felt was the last of his energy rushing out of his limbs as his head hit the ground.

He was standing in an empty field. The sky was dark with anger; it appeared that a storm was looming on the horizon, except there was no horizon. The sky and the earth were one, and then he was falling, falling far down into the abyss that used to be the ground. He could feel a powerful force, it was just there out of sight, but there was an evil connotation with it as well. This was something that had hurt someone else, and Abbott wasn’t sure if he wanted to find it. But if it was the gun the man was looking for it, he had to.

His vision went rusty and light seemed to glow from everywhere, but also nowhere. The light wasn’t outside, it was inside of him. This was a completely different beast; any hint of the man’s gun was gone. Instead, Abbott found himself staring at the figure of a woman, kneeling on the impossible ground. Her back was to him, and she was draped in robes, so he could make out nothing about her. He wasn’t sure how he knew that she was a woman, as there were no defining characteristics, but he knew this, as he knew many other things from his visions.

A voice surrounded him, lifting him up in its airiness, whispering things in his ears. It was a different language, but somehow he knew what it meant. It was calling to him, beckoning him forward, to find it. But Abbott also knew that there was a dark side to this temptress, there was a honey-coated knife hidden among the words of welcome.

One last phrase stuck out to him- “Life for eyes. A fair trade.”

As soon as these final words were uttered, the vision surrounded him dissipated, and he found himself back on the floor to his room, retching violently. He was shaking so badly that he couldn’t lift his head off of the ground; it seemed as if it were filled with darkness. He couldn’t get that voice or the feeling of sweet evil out of his mind. Let alone that woman.

He wiped his mouth with an unsteady hand. He had never, never, seen another person in a vision before. That vision was different. Normally they had a purpose, to answer a question that a customer had desperately needed the answer to. They didn’t often make sense, so it was no different in that regard, but it just felt different. Abbott didn’t know why, but somehow he knew deep down that that vision was for him.

When the strength had come back to his body, he went back out to the shoppe to find the man and his children standing by the front desk, tapping their feet and talking in hushed tones. They froze when they saw him enter the room, the man’s eyes boring holes into Abbott’s soul.

“Well?”

Abbott decided in that moment to make something up. “It said that… that only you knew the answer to that question. L-look inside yourself.” He shrugged, finding the man staring incredulously at Abbott’s rapidly heating face. “Hey, I’m only the messenger,” he lied. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I know.”

The man shook his head, the thick jowls on his face quivering dangerously. His fingers moved deftly, and there was a flash of metal as Abbott prepared himself for a knife in the gut. Instead, the man hit Abbott in the forehead with a small silver coin as he sneered. “Keep the change, ya big imp. Look inside myself, my ass. I hope you burn in hell where you belong.”

Shaken, Abbott picked up the coin off the floor. He rubbed his head where he had been struck and sighed. It wasn’t his fault; he couldn’t control what he did or didn’t see. After all, he didn’t see why everyone else’s problems had to be his problems too. Couldn’t he just live a normal life like everyone else, like-

Finnian? A flash of curls in the back of the now-full store caught Abbott’s eye. He snapped his head in the direction, but realizing that the person wasn’t actually Finnian, he bowed his head and went to talk to other ungrateful customers.

The afternoon slipped into evening without much more excitement. Abbott delivered four or five more prophecies, successfully this time, but he was bone-tired; every muscle in his body was screaming in complaint. He felt as if he were going to drop at any moment- he was swaying tediously, and his head was practically buzzing. After the final customer left the store and he turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’, he returned to his room and nearly fell onto the bed. He closed his eyes, his chest heaving up and down, each breath bringing more and more pain into his side. He was certain that the old man had cracked a rib. It wasn’t anything new; Abbott was used to the perpetual suffering that came with living in the Empyrium, but this was also different. The first vision he had that day, that was different. Dangerous. He still didn’t feel like he had recovered from the effects, and that woman was still lingering in the back of his mind, as if waiting for him to slip up so she could attack. Her dark form was behind his eyelids whenever his eyes allowed themselves to close, watching for a moment of vulnerability to take down his defenses. Abbott knew he had to stay strong, despite the seemingly evil force in the back of his mind. He took a moment to compose himself, then rose from his bed and tiptoed gently down to the door at the end of the hall.

The lights were out behind it- this was odd, as Alastair almost always left the lanterns in his room lit. Abbott pressed ear up against the door, and hearing no noise coming from inside, he placed his hand on the doorknob.

He turned the knob delicately, cringing as the metal on metal squeaked. After no audible reaction from inside, he finished opening the door, peering inside with wide eyes.

He found the lantern sitting on the other side of the door, unlit and cold. He struck a match from inside his pocket and held the light up, casting the room in a warm glow. The light fell upon… nothing.

The room was absolutely unremarkable. A rumpled bed sat in one corner, a small workbench was in the other. The room connected to a small bathroom, but other than that, there was nothing else inside of it.

Including the man whose room it was. Alastair O’Leary was gone.