Strange City Magic

7: The Occasional Siege, and Other Pastimes

The clouds parted, cleared, and returned again. Clumps of grey swirled in tight vortices overhead, from horizon to horizon as if hundreds of tornadoes were about to touch down all at once. They ignored this. In the City, a tornado was equally as likely to come from a clear blue sky as a funnel cloud.

They drove westward until the roads became rough, and the buildings sparse. Navigation relied entirely on landmarks and memory. If they travelled too far they would come across the Moss, ironically both the only built-up area of the City and the last place that anyone wanted to be. If they hung too far south, they would find themselves in Uptown, the effective warzone between the Moss' Jumpers and the downtown gangs. Should they follow that line, they would eventually meet up with the Wending, which would lead them all the way down to the neighborhood lazily referred to as Soudeas. There wasn't much more than that, to the infamous City.

If they were surrounded on all sides by strings of otherworldly bubbles which they called the Sometimes, then it was only logical for there to be a layer of surface tension around the border. At least, that's how Loren thought of it. Generally the bubbles popped in a matter of days or weeks, to be replaced with another. But some lingered. For months or years they reflected some other reality, or some other place, through slick distorting walls - and inevitably somebody would make a game of it. Their road eventually trailed off into trees, and they were forced to take the last leg of their journey on foot. Loren panted. Her chest felt like it was being compressed down into the size of a walnut; her stomach pulsed, sending jolts of pain down through her thighs with every step she took. "Are you sure you're okay?" Su asked.

"I'll be fine."

They crested a densely wooded hill and chose a pair of broad trunks against which to set their backs. That familiar sensation tingled played taps on their spines, but they made certain to sit firmly in the City's domain. This was one bubble in which it would be dangerous to be caught in the pop. Before them, the earth dipped steeply into a wide and barren plain of curly yellow grass. Porous red rocks protruded here and there down the slope, interrupting the otherwise perfect lines of swaying stalks. Behind those rocks, lines of men in military uniforms stood with automatic rifles slung across their backs. Jeeps and crates and other men with radios milled behind them, looking bored but at attention. Two dozen, all together.

"Definitely Austria," Loren said.

"No," Su said, "they're Bulgarian."

She squinted. "How can you tell?"

"The helmets. Dead giveaway."

At any given point in time, at least one of the world's nations was attempting to apply force to their legal restrictions on free travel to and from the City. Since nobody out in the real world knew how to access the City, they would instead blockade districts of their own territory where a recent disappearance had been reported. Nobody in the City understood why those forces would occasionally appear through the trees where Loren and Su now sat, but that didn't stop anyone from having fun. So the Occasional Siege was born.

Occasionally nobody showed. Occasionally more than one group arrived at once. Those were the most entertaining days. More typically, the game relied on patience. It could be hard to pinpoint when exactly one group was replaced with another. They shifted back and forth like stations on a busted radio - the only sort of radio they got in the City. Loren's eyes drifted shut. The sky had changed to a deep beet red, and was subtly threatening hale. A dry wind picked up. "You ever feel like running down there, to see how they'd react?"

"Not particularly," Su said. "Allergic to bullets."

"You think that's what would happen?"

"Army types always shoot first."