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1
Riz Gukgak revealed himself to be a hazard at an earlier age than Sklonda could have ever predicted.
When Sklonda was fifteen, her exasperated mother had said, “One day, I hope you have a child just like you, so you can know how hard I had it.”
Sklonda had never considered herself to be a terribly difficult child, but if she was half as wild as Riz, her mother had been right to curse her so.
He was a calm baby at first, perfect in every way imaginable. He slept well through the night, smiled and babbled cheerfully, and he ate anything put in front of him without complaint (as every good goblin should). He almost never cried—and on the rare occasion that he did, his face would screw up all tight and devastated and torn, tiny sobs would scream from his throat as he reached out with grabby hands for one of his parents, where he would immediately find comfort.
He wanted for very little. Their apartment was small, but the lights were always on and food was always on the table. His toys were old, but well-loved, and his parents sang to him and hugged him and told him how much they cared for him.
Riz was the most perfect baby a goblin could ask for, and every time he smiled so wide the dimple in his cheek appeared, it was as if he knew it.
Then, when he began to crawl, he became a little terror.
They couldn’t babyproof everything fast enough. If Sklonda took her eyes off him for a minute, he would be getting into every cabinet in the cramped kitchen and pulling everything out of them, or rolling himself off the peeling couch, or climbing out of his crib only to land on his little head. He always moved so fast, Sklonda couldn’t keep up with him.
Pok said he was a rogue in the making. Sklonda always laughed and rolled her eyes, then told him to find the little rogue before he snuck out of the house at a teenaged six months old.
The first time he actually scared her, though, was when he was eight months old.
She always let him crawl along beside her—despite his independence inside the home, he preferred to stay beside his parents while out, so letting him crawl while walking to the laundry shed in the middle of the apartment complex was fine. He always cooed so happily when he got to sit in the patch of earth and pull at the grass, she couldn’t help but let him crawl all over it. Somehow, he never scraped his knees on the pavement, so there wasn’t any harm in it.
But when the laundry bag tore as she was about to carry a load upstairs to their second floor apartment, and she stopped to gather the fallen clothes into her arms, Riz didn’t stop.
His tiny fist reached for the tenth step as his knees scrabbled for purchase on the concrete stairs—
He slipped—
Sklonda looked up to see Riz falling.
She screamed. She dropped the laundry. She dove, arms outstretched, ready to catch her falling baby, whose face was contorted with confusion—
Her arms wrapped around him, catching him in a not-quite-right position, one arm wrenched between their bodies, his legs kicking and flailing.
Relief plummeted into her stomach, almost nauseating in the way it fell so quickly. She adjusted her grip, brought him up to face her.
Big, black eyes blinked, his bottom lip trembling. Still, he didn’t cry, even as he clutched one little arm to his chest and wouldn’t let her touch it.
Apart from his usual babble, Riz had only said one word at this point— “Dada.”
Now, he said his second word, high-pitched and scared. “Mama!”
“Oh, sweetie,” Sklonda murmured, her own eyes brimming with tears. “It’s okay, I’m here. I caught you. I’m always going to catch you, okay?”
The hospital was expensive, even with the decent health insurance that came with Pok’s (and formerly her) line of work. But when she brought Riz home that evening, arm wrapped up in a tiny cast that still didn’t prevent him from sucking his thumb, she knew she would sacrifice anything that money could die to ensure his safety and happiness.
2
The next time Riz scared her half to death, he was three years old.
Sklonda had her back turned for only the briefest of moments. It was barely any time at all! Just enough time to tear a slice of pizza from the take-out box and put it on a paper plate.
“Don’t forget, no dessert until you eat your plate,” she said, turning around just in time to watch as Riz’s high chair (which he was now standing up in, he must have figured out the code on the padlock that kept him buckled in) tipped over.
Riz fell almost in slow motion, his arm reaching up too late to try and grab the tray of the high chair as he fell from it. His right leg kicked at it in its desperate flail (just like when he fell down the stairs) and steadied the chair, leaving it standing up, while Riz continued to fall.
He hit the floor right before Sklonda could reach him, pizza now facedown on the kitchen floor, but not all of him hit the floor. The back of his head collided with the edge of a not-quite-even floorboard, far too hard and with far too loud a thunk for her to assume he was fine.
“Riz, sweetie, are you okay?” she asked frantically, having just gotten to her knees in time to catch the rest of him, even if she was too late to get his head. Riz laid in a heap on the floor, eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling, and for a second her heart stopped—
Then his eyes moved, blinked, scrunched up in pain.
“Ow,” he said, barely more than a whimper.
He was bleeding—years of training and work as a detective had honed Sklonda’s skills enough to check for injuries before moving him, so she felt around his head and neck for any obvious breaks.
A tiny amount of dark blood came back on the pads of her fingers, clinging to Riz’s fluffy shock of green hair. A head wound. She would have to take him to the emergency room again.
“We’re going to the doctor, honey,” she said, tousling the front of his hair. Riz’s face screwed up in disgust.
“I don’t wanna.”
“You hit your head, we have to make sure it’s okay.”
Riz sat up as soon as she let go of him, but as she went to stand, he made grabby hands in her direction. With a sigh, Sklonda scooped him up. For once he didn’t squirm as she carried him over to the kitchen counter, where the home crystal usually sat.
Pok picked up on the first ring—good, he must have been on his way home from his latest mission. Ever since she started taking care of Riz full time, she was no longer in on the details of what he did and how long it would take and where. She wasn’t irritated by it at all.
“I’m taking Riz to the ER,” she said in Goblin, as soon as he answered, face haggard in the grainy image that appeared. “He fell and hit his head.”
Pok immediately lost all sense of exhaustion. “Is he bleeding?”
“Yup.”
Riz reached down from her arms to the open box of pizza, its greasy smell wafting out toward him, and tore himself a slice. He only took one bite, though, before letting it drop to the counter.
“Hey, Riz!” Pok called from the crystal. Riz barely perked up. “Dad’s going to be home soon, and I’ll bring you a new toy if you’re good for Mom at the doctor. Sound like a deal?”
The three year old gave the crystal a shaky thumbs-up. Pok returned it with a strained grin.
“Okay, little rogue. I’ll see you soon.”
“Bye,” Riz whispered.
Sklonda shifted him onto her hip. He was really getting too big to carry around like this. “When are you going to be home?”
Pok checked his watch, rubbed a hand down the side of his face. “Tonight, hopefully?” he sighed. “It might be pretty late, though. They have us tied up here at the precinct with all this paperwork.”
Sklonda snorted. “Tell them if they don’t expedite it, I’ll be down there myself to yell at them.”
Pok laughed. “Will do. Be safe, love you.”
“Love you.”
The call ended, and Sklonda grabbed her wallet, keys, and Riz’s shoes, then hurried out the door.
Riz came home that night with three stitches in his head to find his father waiting, teddy bear in hand. He leaped into Pok’s arms, almost falling again, and Sklonda laughed and put away the leftover pizza and hugged her family close.
3
Working at the precinct again was certainly taking its toll. Sklonda was exhausted more often than not, even though she was only working while Riz was at school. She usually drove the old clunky car to the elementary school at seven in the morning (an hour and a half before school was set to start, but the custodians were happy to let Riz tag along), then went straight to the precinct, then worked hard with barely a lunch break until Riz got out of first grade at four—unless, of course, Pok was home, in which case she worked until eight or nine in the evening.
Pok was home this particular day, so Sklonda didn’t end up coming home until just after eight.
She sat in the parking lot of the apartment building with her forehead pressed against the peeling steering wheel.
When was it going to end? Sure, they made enough to get by, but Riz was a growing boy who needed more than they could provide. This was the third day in a row that Sklonda and Pok had skipped breakfast to let Riz eat, waiting on the paycheck that was supposed to come in last week from Pok’s latest mission. They just didn’t have enough saved to cover both rent and food if their paychecks didn’t come on time.
More importantly, she hated to think that Riz might be ashamed of his parents. Sure, he was only seven, but Sklonda died a little every time she went to go pick him up from school in their old car that was built for humans, shoddily hand-modified by placing a crate on the driver’s seat and gluing long blocks to the gas and brake pedals so that goblin feet could reach. Maybe that was why he hadn’t really made many friends. He’d never invited anyone over—and maybe that’s just because they’ve never been able to host a birthday party, but maybe he doesn’t want the other kids to see the ratty carpet and the stained walls, the lack of food in the fridge and the small pile of dead bugs collecting in the lamp.
This was just a short-term issue, though. Pok was going to be working in the office for the foreseeable future, stretching his investigative and research muscles rather than continuing with more undercover work. Then they’d have two steady incomes from the precinct and all would be well.
She did have to go inside at some point, though. Preferably before she fell asleep in the car again.
It was with heavy, reluctant arms that Sklonda removed the key from the ignition and kicked open the door, sliding down from the box on the seat. She carefully shut the car door, then grabbed her briefcase out of the backseat and headed up the stairs to their second floor apartment.
How long had it been since the key didn’t stick in the lock? Eight months, at least. They called the apartment’s main office when they first noticed it, but nobody had been sent out to take care of it, so it still took a couple of jiggles and jerks of the key in the lock to get it to open.
Sklonda was still in the process of wrenching her key out of the lock when an excited child’s voice shouted out to her.
“Mom, watch!”
And she turned around just in time to see Riz leap off the back of the couch and crash face first into the floor.
“Riz—!”
“Riz, buddy—”
Pok, a bowl and dish towel still in hand, sprinted into the living room. Both of them dove to their knees, Sklonda throwing her briefcase aside.
“I’m okay!” Riz insisted as they helped him sit up, but his face told a different story. His upper lip was bleeding, dripping down his chin already.
“I’ll go get a washcloth,” Pok assured, hurrying away. Sklonda pulled Riz’s head toward her, ignoring his complaints.
His nose looked okay, and there wasn’t much sign of bruising. That lip looked pretty nasty, though. He’d torn through the bottom of it and hit it hard against the wood floor, leaving it bleeding and already swelling like no tomorrow. Not to mention, he must have been snacking on popcorn or something right before falling, because there were a couple of tiny off-white chunks mixed in with the blood.
It looked bad, but not too bad. Once they got some of the blood cleared away, they would be able to tell if they needed to head to the hospital or not, but Sklonda was hopeful that it could be solved at home with some ice.
That meant it was time to calm her racing heart. “Riz, you’re going to kill me one day,” she muttered, giving him a tight hug. “How many times have I told you not to climb on the furniture?”
“It wath my pirate thip,” Riz said, lisping with the state his mouth was in.
“Well, no climbing on pirate ships, then,” Sklonda told him. How many times had she rescued him from accidentally toppling off various pieces of furniture? When was he going to grow out of this lifelong phase? Was six years old too young to expect him to know how to use furniture properly?
Pok knelt down beside them, holding Riz by the shoulder with one hand while he wiped at his mouth with a damp cloth. Riz twisted away.
“I can do it mythelf,” he said, but when Pok handed him the cloth, he barely tapped it to his lip before handing it back. “Ith that good enough?”
Pok chuckled. “Close. Here, you count to five, and I’ll clean as much as I can.”
Riz started up immediately and Pok attacked his mouth with the cloth. “One, two, thee, four, five, that’th it!”
“Open your mouth for me, little rogue?”
Riz had shut his mouth tight and turned away (a difficult task, seeing as he was still in Sklonda’s lap), and now eyed Pok with a suspicious gaze. After a moment, he let his mouth fall open the smallest amount.
Even that was enough to show his chipped front tooth. More than chipped, really—about half of the tooth was gone, a little chunk of off-white tooth dangling from the pink drool already dripping from his lip. More of the tooth was on the floor and in the cloth.
Well. It certainly wasn’t popcorn, was it?
“Sweetie, your tooth,” Sklonda said, hugging him a bit closer. “You broke your tooth.”
If he didn’t feel alienated at school already, he would now. Sure, goblin teeth never really stopped growing; after ten years of slow growth and constant grinding down, nobody would be able to tell that his sharp upper front tooth was ever broken. But that was ten years—right now, he was a six year old goblin who was struggling a bit socially. He’d have to return to school tomorrow with a lisp, and go into middle school like that, and still have the chip when he entered high school.
“Oh,” said Riz after a moment. “Doth it look cool?”
“What?”
“Do I look like a pirate now? Becauthe they have gold teeth.”
Sklonda couldn’t hold back an exasperated sigh, and Pok couldn’t hold back a delighted peal of laughter.
4
The car was silent.
Riz didn’t usually act up in school. He got in a bit of trouble for disrupting class sometimes, or climbing trees during recess, but he was otherwise a good student.
When Sklonda got the call at lunch that Riz had gotten suspended, she had been more than a little concerned.
The principal had leaned over his glasses to look down at her. “He crawled into the vents,” he’d said bluntly. “He was running away from class. Came out in the girls’ bathroom. It did cause a bit of damage to the vents, so I’m going to need you to take him home for the rest of the week as he thinks about what he’s done.”
For one thing, Sklonda wasn’t sure when Riz’s skills had progressed to being able to crawl through vents. Last she knew, he was still squirming his way behind the couch to find toys with his little magnifying glass.
He really was turning into a rogue, wasn’t he?
For another thing, this was so entirely out of character for him. Riz loved going to school, even though he struggled with the socializing aspect. He was always excited to study and his teacher had really taken a liking to him. The last parent-teacher conference they had, she had told Sklonda all about what a little model student he was, even if he had a bit of trouble staying still.
Of course, one had to consider the outside factors.
Riz got into the seat directly behind Sklonda when they got into the parking lot, abnormally quiet. She adjusted her rearview mirror so that she could see him a bit better, but his face was turned away, staring out the window.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, pulling away from the school.
Riz shrugged.
The real problem wasn’t that Riz was in trouble. He’s been in trouble before, though mostly for going out of a teacher’s sight during recess. He’s developed a good sense of judgment, understanding what consequences will typically follow what actions.
Sklonda sighed.
She changed to the right lane, checking over her shoulder before merging. Riz still wasn’t looking at her.
The real problem was that she simply didn’t have time to watch him for the rest of the week. She usually worked nights, so it wasn’t that it would get in the way of her shift schedule, but she would be utterly exhausted. And while Penny, the girl from the family downstairs, had started watching Riz after school, Sklonda couldn’t ask her to cover full days. Penny was in school herself, after all, about to graduate the eighth grade.
She knew why Riz was acting out. How could she not?
The problem was how to ensure that things like this didn’t happen again.
“I know it’s been a rough month,” she started.
“No, Mom,” Riz interrupted. His words were sharper than she had expected with his downcast posture, almost more angry than upset. “It’s been the worst month ever.”
Sklonda opened her mouth to correct him, but ended up closing it again. “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “This has been the worst month ever. But, honey, you can’t go breaking the rules because of it.”
This time, Riz didn’t answer.
“If I broke the rules at my job, I would get fired,” she explained. “So even though I’m really sad, and mad, and a lot of other feelings I don’t know how to describe, I still have to follow the rules.”
In the rearview mirror, she could see that Riz—Riz had turned his head to face forward, and he was crying.
Just a little bit. Just a tear rolling down his cheek here, a slight sniffle there. “Is—is there a word for more than really sad?” he asked, his voice breaking.
Sklonda’s heart had broken many times over the past month, but it broke again then. Riz cried so rarely, it felt almost out of place for such a formal nine-year-old boy. “Yeah,” she said, surprised to find her own voice choked. “Grief.”
Riz sniffled again. “That’s how I feel. And mad.”
“It’s . . . it’s hard without Dad.”
Riz’s reflection nodded. “And without you.”
What?
The light ahead turned red; Sklonda slowed to a stop, then twisted around in her seat to look at her son.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m right here, Riz.”
Riz looked away awkwardly. “It’s different,” he said quietly. “You’re never here.”
Oh.
She couldn’t be there, though. She had to work. She was their only source of income now, and maybe, if she could work hard enough, she would get that promotion and be able to shave off a couple of hours, but right now they were barely getting by. She couldn’t be there for Riz, and that hurt like a blow to the chest, knocking the air right out of her.
Was that why he acted out? To get to spend more time with her?
Sklonda had never felt worse as a mother. Not even that time she let him fall down the stairs could compare. They might as well have handed her the award for world’s worst mother, right now.
But there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
“I have to work, sweetie. I’m sorry. But how about this,” she suggested, mind whirring to try to think of some way to work through this. “How about on the weekends, we do picnic lunches, just you and me. Every weekend.”
Maybe at the cemetery, once the tombstone was installed.
Definitely at the cemetery.
“And we can visit Dad,” she added. “Then it’ll be a nice picnic for the three of us. Does that sound good?”
Riz thought it over. She could tell—his tongue started to trace over his chipped tooth in that way it always did, his brows furrowed. There were still tears on his face, but they were drying.
“Can I help make sandwiches?” he asked cautiously.
Sklonda smiled at him. “I wouldn’t want anyone else.”
The light turned green; she faced forward again, hit the gas.
What happened next was best described as a sharp blur. She knew every moment of it, but in the future, details would be difficult to recall.
A horn blaring. She pulled on the steering wheel, panic stiffening her arms, and then couldn’t see or feel anything as red flashed across her vision and the air was punched out of her small body—
Sklonda opened her eyes to the feeling of blood rushing to her head.
She was upside-down, she realized after a moment of blinking, held down by her seatbelt, her hair floating above her. The acrid smell of burning rubber filled her nostrils as she took in the scene—the car was flipped onto the roof, the white airbag from the steering wheel slowly deflating, and the driver’s side door was crushed against her arm and leg.
With that realization, the pain hit.
Sklonda gritted her teeth to keep from crying out. The door was beginning to drip with her blood, but she did her best to stay calm. She could still wiggle her fingers and toes, so that was good. Probably no spinal damage.
Then her eyes caught the rearview mirror.
Riz.
Riz’s eyes were closed, his chin against his chest. The back door was crushed too, but it didn’t look quite as bad as the driver’s. That didn’t mean anything, though—she could see a splatter of blood on his cheek. He clearly wasn’t uninjured.
“Riz,” she said desperately, and despite all the training she had received about car accidents and how to treat those injured, she started struggling against the door, trying to pop it open to free herself. “Riz, wake up, sweetie. Please wake up.”
There was a moment that lasted too long where Riz didn’t move or speak. Sklonda couldn’t see what she was doing, trying to get free while keeping her eyes fixed on the mirror.
Then Riz lifted his head, his eyes open but dazed. “Mom?” he said, looking down at himself. He pulled at his seatbelt in confusion, then looked back up to the roof of the car, now below him.
“We got in a car crash,” Sklonda told him, relief flooding her entire body. Assured of Riz’s temporary safety, she returned to the task of getting out. She managed to wrench her arm free from the crumpled plastic and metal, wincing as it scraped against sharp edges on the way out. After that, she was able to shove the door open, even as it pulled her leg with it.
Sklonda kicked at the door with her right leg until it loosened enough to release her leg, dark blood running rivulets down her shin, only visible through the torn and bloody fabric of her slacks.
“Riz, don’t move,” she ordered, then stumbled out of the car. Her crystal—she grabbed it from her shirt pocket, and with fingers shaking so badly she could barely hit the right digits, dialed the emergency number.
“I got in a car crash,” she said as soon as the responder answered. “I’m Detective Sklonda Gukgak, I’m here with my son Riz on Third and Oak Street.”
“Is the other driver conscious?”
Sklonda paused. The other car hadn’t flipped, but she could see it—while their car had rolled to the edge of the road, the car that hit them was still in the middle of the intersection, its front entirely destroyed and windshield shattered.
“I don’t see any movement,” she said, watching the vehicle for a moment, before it got too painful to stand. She sat back down just outside the car, able to make eye contact with Riz.
“Mom, my leg is stuck,” Riz said, eyes squeezed shut.
“Don’t move, honey.”
Unfortunately, one of Riz’s specialties was moving.
After another strain of his leg, he gasped.
His eyes rolled up into his head.
His head slumped forward, chin to his chest.
“He just passed out,” Sklonda said, her own pain forgotten as even more adrenaline raced through her. “Riz, wake up. Stay awake. Look at me, Riz.”
“An ambulance is on its way.”
“Hey, do you all need help?”
Sklonda tuned out all other noise—the person approaching, the emergency operator on the phone, everything—and heaved herself up, cradling Riz’s upside-down face in her hands. His eyes were closed, eyelids fluttering slightly.
It looked like his leg was caught by the twisted undercarriage of the driver’s seat, the plastic wrapped tightly around it. No wonder the poor kid wasn’t able to pull it out.
Luckily, Sklonda never went anywhere without a knife. She unclipped it from her belt and clicked it open, diving in to saw away at the plastic. It was an awkward angle, reaching up around her son, and her shoulder began to ache with the strain almost immediately. No time for that. She had to get Riz safe.
From what she could tell, none of the plastic was actually cutting into his leg, just constricting it. Sure, there was plenty of blood on his leg, but she could trace each drop to various scrapes, not a major source. One piece of plastic hacked through and Riz fell a little more loose, held in place by his seatbelt.
She started on the next piece. The sharp plastic from the part she’d already cut grazed across her knuckles, but she ignored it in favor of more aggressive movement, cutting through the next piece in record time.
Somewhere, beyond the buzz of adrenaline, sirens echoed. Took them long enough.
Sklonda cursed as the knife got caught on a particularly thick bit of plastic. When it refused to force its way through, she dropped the knife and just pried it apart with her fingers, digging her claws into the plastic.
That was enough. Riz’s leg had a clear path out, even if it wasn’t exactly loose. However, Sklonda couldn’t get him out. She would have to let go to unbuckle him, but that would let the plastic snap closed again and leave him hanging by the leg. The seatbelt had kept him safe in the crash, but now it was an obstacle. The knife had fallen abandoned to the asphalt, just out of reach.
Only one thing for it. Sklonda reached her head up and tore into the waist belt with her teeth, chewing apart the tough fabric with all her jaw strength. It was thick and bitter, like the oldest, most rancid piece of jerky ever, but she could barely taste it. She gnawed at it like a dog at a bone, gradually forcing apart fibers that were never meant to meet her teeth.
She wasn’t sure how long it took, but more and more broken threads sprang up until—
When Riz fell, he fell into her waiting arms.
The paramedics took over after that. They carried them both to the ambulance on stretchers, Sklonda having collapsed the second she was able to set Riz on the ground. In the ambulance, Riz’s eyes flickered open and darted around frantically before they landed on Sklonda, when he smiled, relaxed, and let them fall closed again.
Relief flooded her chest. She had him. She always had. She always would.
5
Sklonda pushed by the front desk, moving past her coworkers and anything and everything that would dare get between her and her son. She ignored the call from someone behind her, someone who clearly didn’t know what the stakes were for her.
“Detective Gukgak—”
“I need to see my son,” she said shortly.
She had keycard access to the holding cells. Most of those in the force did. She scanned her badge and followed in after those cops who she watched pulling her son (bleeding, his hands were literally soaked with blood) into the precinct.
Riz and his party were there, all of them in the second of the three holding cells together. Riz’s ears perked up when he saw her; he scampered toward the bars of the cell, pressing his face up against it. His hands were still bleeding, though much of it had crusted over to make ugly, mottled brown gloves.
He opened his mouth to ask a question, but Sklonda cut him off. “Have they not sent a cleric to check on you all?”
They were all injured, at least a little bit. Gorgug held a torn piece of cloth against a deep slash on his arm, Kristen was carefully dabbing at a cut on Fig’s forehead with her sleeve. Anyone could see that they needed a cleric, maybe two. They weren’t even given a first aid kit. Nobody gave these kids anything.
“We’re fine—” Riz started, but Fabian cut him off.
“No, Mrs. Gukgak. We asked, but they didn’t listen.”
Sklonda pinched the bridge of her nose. What kind of incompetent idiots was she working with? These were kids, for goodness’ sake! Clearly injured kids! In a magic-repellant holding cell!
“We’re fine,” Riz said again. “Mom, what’s going on? What’s the situation out there?”
“Riz, honey, your hands,” Sklonda said beseechingly. He was just like her, unfortunately. Focusing on the task before taking care of himself. Couldn’t she have had a kid who was just a bit more selfish?
Riz looked down at his hands, eyes growing a bit wider at the sight. “I . . . I forgot,” he said, voice suddenly small. “Kristen—”
“No magic,” Kristen said despondently.
Riz’s fingers twitched and he winced, his hands releasing the bars instantly. Sklonda was there in a second to catch him by the wrists, properly examine his hands.
They were covered in small, deep cuts. Scarily deep. Deep enough that she hissed between her teeth just to see them, her hackles already raised.
“These need a cleric, and right now,” she declared, turning them this way and that in the poor lighting. Something sparkled within the cuts, but with all the blood, she couldn’t tell if it was a trick of the eye or not. “Sweetie, is this glass?”
Riz shrugged. “I guess? That isn’t important, though—Mom, I saw Penny, she’s—”
“You’re on camera, don’t say anything you don’t want to be heard,” Sklonda reminded him. She turned out toward the door, toward the two officers loitering there. “Hey! Can we get a cleric for these kids?”
They looked at each other, clearly uncertain if that was something they could do. Idiots. Sklonda would go get a cleric herself, but she was too busy holding her whole life in her hands.
Which quickly became hard to do when her life’s knees buckled.
Sklonda caught him by his forearms, which suddenly felt clammy, like he had come down ill. Riz had always run a bit hot (maybe due to the fact that he always ran). Cold felt unnatural on him.
Sklonda swore as Riz’s weight pulled down on her. His face was pale, his eyes unfocused.
“I think the adrenaline’s gone,” Riz mumbled, his throat bobbing as he swallowed thickly. “Mom, I don’t feel good.”
Sklonda gritted her teeth, trying to figure out how she can run for a cleric with Riz on the verge of collapsing, but then the weight lightened.
Adaine and Kristen had both moved forward, taking Riz between their arms and easing him to sit on the floor. Adaine sent her a tentative smile. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Gukgak, we’ve got him.”
“Hey, guys,” Riz slurred. He slumped back into Kristen’s chest, his brow furrowed with pain but his body almost relaxed. “See, Mom? We’re okay. We don’t need a cleric.”
Despite herself, Sklonda snorted out a laugh. “Sure, kid. I’ll be back in a minute.”
When she returned with the cleric and got those kids healed up, Riz pressed his face against the bars and whispered to her about Penny Luckstone and palimpsests and the arcade, his hands littered with shining, white scars.
He pressed his forehead against hers through the bars before she left.
She couldn’t help but wonder when he got tall enough to do that.
+1
The world freezes around Sklonda and at first, she freezes with it, before realizing that for some reason, she alone can move.
It takes a bit more invasion of personal space than Sklonda is strictly comfortable with to shimmy her way out of the squad car. They’re not far from Aguefort – a five minute drive, probably – and she pauses on the street: there are students here, dressed in their nicest for prom, frozen mid-sprint down the street. Their expressions of terror don’t match their sparkling dresses and pinned flowers.
Sklonda hates to say it, but she gets distracted. She tries to make a person move, claps in their face, shoves them, but the frightened teenager in the green suit doesn’t so much as breathe.
There’s something weird going on, and the Aguefort Adventuring Academy must be at the center of it. She turns to look in that direction, up the hill, and in the darkness her keen eyes manage to pick out a still column of smoke rising up from the school.
She tightens her chest holster, adjusting the position of her gun, and takes off in a dead sprint.
The first person she finds at the school gym when she sneaks up the steps, trying to muffle her gasping breaths, is Kristen. She steps out from behind a crumbling pillar because Kristen is moving, she’s dusty and covered in scrapes but moving and breathing and supporting a limping Fabian under her arm.
“Kristen,” Sklonda says, taking Fabian’s other side. “The whole world has gone crazy—what’s going on?”
“I created a god,” Kristen says, sounding dazed. Fabian coughs. “Oh, and we stopped time,” she adds. “For twelve hours.”
Sklonda nods. She can work with that. “Where’s Riz?”
Kristen pauses. She looks at Fabian, who shrugs. “He went down during the fight,” he says. “Around the same time as Fig.”
Sklonda’s sprinting into the building before Fabian can even finish his sentence.
The gym is a disaster—torn prom decorations litter the splintered floor, spattered with blood and food. One section of bleachers is utterly destroyed, plastic from the hard seats scattered around.
More importantly, though, there’s a massive dragon in the center of the room.
Sklonda ducks behind a cluster of half-popped balloons, but someone calls out—
“It’s fine! He’s frozen, too.”
Great. She checks that her gun is loaded and clicks the safety off, then steps out from behind her cover. A werewolf waves at her from the dragon’s mouth. She nods at him. Too many questions, no time for answers.
“Have you seen Riz? A goblin?” she asks. The werewolf glances around, frowning, but a teenage girl pops her head up from the stage at the front of the room.
“He’s over here, Mrs. Gukgak!” Adaine beckons. “I think I saw him there?”
She’s pointing to a space beside the stage. Sklonda dodges the bodies of a few students (dead? Alive, but frozen? Who knows) and follows Adaine’s finger.
The corner is full of wreckage—bleachers, stairs, food, streamers, and more making it a landmine to walk through. Sklonda picks her way to the piled-up corner, hoping and praying that if Riz is here under all of this, he’s alive.
He could be dead.
No. No, he isn’t.
She sees his fingers first, a flash of green under a broken white folding table, torn through the plastic tablecloth. Then she sees his gun, lying alone a couple inches out of reach.
Sklonda’s heart jolts into her mouth. She’s usually good about gun safety, but the weapon drops from her hand without a thought as she surges forward, paying no heed to the smashed glass all around the table.
She grabs the lip of the table—sticky with spilled punch—and heaves it up and off, and—
Riz.
Riz, congealed blood from a deep slash down the center of his head and streaming from his nose and ears, dark bruises circling his eyes and chin and scratches down the length of his left cheek. Blood is soaking his torn white button-up, and Sklonda almost vomits as she realizes that one of the wooden slats of the floor has been pried up and lodged itself in his shoulder.
No. No, no, no, even under all that blood and sweat and ash (because there are burns crusting his skin and turning most of it the wrong color, not quite green, of course there are burns and ash with a dragon), he’s too pale, too pale to be okay—
Sklonda grabs at his wrist and feels, desperately, for a pulse, usually quick and prominent (she knows his heartbeat better than her own, knows from nights tucking him in after he fell asleep while working and holding his wrist for as long as she dared), but she can’t find anything. Her fingers don’t pulse with his lifeblood, and Riz is—
“Kristen!” Sklonda screams, her voice cracking, as she shoots back up, letting Riz’s wrist drop to the floor. When she spins around, Kristen is already there, carefully stepping around a bleacher seat. “Kristen—he’s—”
“Don’t worry!” Kristen says chipperly, and how—?
Riz is—Riz doesn’t have a pulse, her baby is on the floor with his head split open, like some sick rewrite of all her memories—falling down the stairs and hitting his head on the concrete, falling from his high chair and landing with his head on the corner of the table instead of the floor, leaping off the couch to slam his head into the ground, seatbeltless in the car and crashing headfirst through the windshield, falling from her hands in the holding cell and his head clunking against the floor, still and lifeless in each one, his skin turning grey and eyes going empty even though he’s just a baby, just a kid, just a teen with the same jagged front tooth he’s been sporting since he was six—
And Riz sits straight up, gasping in air, as Kristen removes her hands from his chest.
Sklonda gasps with him, falling down beside him, her hands frantically checking his injuries—the head wound has stitched itself shut, the bruises are lighter, the wood isn’t stuck in his shoulder and it’s healed over to form a shiny new scar. There’s still far too much blood but it doesn’t seem to be actively coming from anywhere, crusted around his face and drying onto his collar.
“Mom?” he coughs, too disoriented to properly bat her hands away. “Mom, I’m fine, Kristen brought me back up.”
Sklonda launches herself at him and into a hug, holding him as tightly as she can.
He’s okay. She can feel his heart beating in his chest, pumping away at its usual rapid pace. He’s bloody and sweaty and dirty, but he’s alive.
Before she knows it, she’s choking on a sob.
“Don’t scare me like that,” she manages through her tears. “Do you have any idea—you’re going to give me a heart attack, kid, I can’t—”
Gently, Riz pats her back, nuzzling his forehead against her shoulder. “I—sorry, Mom, but I’m fine. I’m fine, see? Now, uh—is Kalvaxus—?”
“Frozen in time,” Kristen helpfully supplies. “And I created a god. And Principal Aguefort is back.”
Riz doesn’t pull away, though he clearly wants to. Sklonda clings like her life depends on it. “That’s . . . a lot. Do we have time for, like, a sandwich? Or a cup of coffee?”
When Sklonda eventually lets him stand (only after carefully checking his legs for any serious injuries), she doesn’t let go. She holds onto his hand, even when he tries to squirm away because Mom, that’s embarrassing in front of my friends.
They don’t seem to mind. In fact, Fig grins broadly at her, and Adaine hands them both sandwiches, and Gorgug sits down beside them when it’s time to roll out his sleeping bag and nap, and Kristen keeps offering her a heal even though she isn’t at all injured, and Fabian carefully hangs on to Riz’s briefcase as if he’s just waiting for Riz to ask for it.
They’re good kids.
They’re really good kids, no matter what they call themselves, and Sklonda holds Riz as he snores and looks out over all of them asleep and she knows that Riz is too big for her to catch anymore.
But these five pairs of arms? They just might do.