Read Stories From the Shadowlands for Free Online Page B

today. The air still hangs smoky and rank and dense, and I hate the smell because it reminds me of things I want to forget. I think maybe Takeshi noticed, because he let me wait outside to stand guard instead of going into the nest to search for stragglers.
    For a few hours, we thought perhaps we had done it. We thought we might have succeeded in ridding the city of the Mazikin. But when Takeshi emerged, he shook his head. “At least one got away. There are footprints through the ash.”
    I thought of the boy Mazikin I killed. He was only one of many I slaughtered yesterday. And still, it isn’t enough, and they are still out there collecting people. They will go somewhere else in this vast maze and start a new nest, and now we start the game again. I have no words for this feeling.
    Day 908
    “I made you this,” Takeshi said. He tossed a crumpled piece of parchment at me. He smelled of the streets, and his face was shadowed with fatigue from days of patrolling.
    I unfolded it and peered down at the chaotic scrawl. It looked like the scribbles of a child. “What is it?”
    He frowned and leaned over to look at it. “It’s the pagoda cluster thirty-seven blocks south, nineteen blocks west of the forty-eighth block on the south edge of downtown, marking from the corner of the DRUG store nearest the Station.”
    I held the paper up and tried to reconcile the drawing with my own recent observations of that area. Takeshi’s perspective is warped, a little like his sense of humor. His intentions, however—I can’t find fault with those, not this time. “I can use this,” I told him. “Thank you.”
    “I still say it’s a hopeless project,” he replied, then walked away.
    Day 1000
    I would give up a lot for one bite of a fresh, crisp apple. I lie awake sometimes, trying to collect my memories and stack them high enough to bring the taste to my mouth, the texture to my tongue. It used to be easier. I think, someday soon, I will have forgotten entirely what it felt like. I wonder what else I have forgotten, and how many things I have left to lose.
    Day 1251
    I am still in the northeast sector, patrolling after one of our Guards was set upon by two Mazikin. He is recovering, but Takeshi sent me to investigate whether there are signs that the Mazikin have located their nest here. I have found myself an apartment near the city wall, because from here I can sit on the roof and watch the grey sun rise through the haze.
    Last night, I had planned to watch the sunset as well, because I anchor my days to that rise and fall, but I became distracted. Across the street is another apartment building, and through the fourth window on the seventh floor, right across from my own apartment, I can see a girl, no older than seventeen or eighteen, long, dark hair, thin wrists and slender fingers. Her long dress seems like it might have been fine and expensive, but it is covered in stains, tattered and soiled.
    She paces back and forth constantly, her hands fluttering around her face, her hair, her body, never stopping, like she's trying to fix herself but doesn't know how. I found myself watching her for hours, until the sun was gone, until the dim stars winked overhead, until I realized there was a light in the east and I had watched her all night.
    Day 1252
    She left her apartment tonight, and I followed her. I couldn’t bear the idea that the Mazikin might find her and take her, so I crept along behind, listening to her murmur to herself in a language I do not understand. She found her way to a CLOTHES emporium, a giant warehouse containing aisles and aisles of tables, upon which are piled all manner of apparel.
    She was not the only one in there. Other city residents wandered the place, sliding their hands over the fabric, some of them burying their faces in it or hugging it to their chests. When they take a garment, another grows in its place. I touched a shirt on one of the piles. All the fabric is damp and smells of mildew, enough