Where It Went

The people would not stop touching the machine.

They drifted along the pale path in soft clusters, laughing under their breath and laying careful fingers on the cracked housing as if some strange fruit had dropped into the garden overnight. Warm air moved through hanging leaves and over shallow runs of water set into the stone. Above the trees, glassy transit lines crossed the sky in clean arcs. Elias stood beside the ruined chair-frame at the machine’s heart, one arm folded tight against his bruised side, and said for the third time, “Don’t lean on that. If there’s charge left in the frame, it could throw you clear across the path.”

A few of them looked at him. One young man with a smooth, open face smiled as though Elias had offered a game. Then his attention slipped away to a drifting strand of silver pollen caught in the light.

They had clothed him already, after a fashion. Someone had brought a loose pale wrap and looped it around his shoulders when they decided, with more concern for his appearance than his warnings, that his torn shirt looked wrong. His left ear still held a thin, mean whine. When people answered from that side, he had to turn his whole head to catch them.

He tried names first. “What is this place called?”

The young man touched his own chest. “Aven.”

“No, not your name. This place. The city. The district.” Elias swept his bleeding hand toward the terraces, the bridges, the bright towers beyond the canopy.

Aven followed the motion, shading his eyes with lazy delight, as if Elias had pointed out a flock of birds. “Garden.”