Although I don’t have the word processor problem figured out yet, decided to post this, see what happens. I may pdf it at a later date. Nor have I intro’ed the character, obviously. Let me know if the “dialect” works for you?

Every day at dusk, Min, kinnie-mother, gathered all her bubs and half-grown kinnies together in a group around the little fire in their underground place in the rubble. The long-legs, two of them this year, stayed near the entrance to watch out for foreign kinnies not of their group coming to steal their food. And for wild dogs coming to steal their babies, to eat them up. And chase them away if any came.

Scrim grinned behind his hand. The whole time he was a little one, and then a half-grown, and now a long-leg, no enemies ever came. He never saw a wild dog, or a foreign kinnie not of their group, or a robot. The only foreigners he and Kel ever saw were men with bits of themselves missing. An arm or a leg. Who were easy to lead away from the hide-out coz they weren’t very fast clambering among the rubble and couldn’t run.

But here-and-now Scrim and Kel lurked behind the stone lintels either side of the entry-way into the hide-out. They looked out over the greying rubble with the daylight leaching away ahead of night coming. Both of them hungry because both of them with growing appetites. Both of them impatiently waiting for the herders to bring their booty of numbers to run the maze, so they could run the maze too. Because they were getting too big and too hungry to live among the kinnies. So said Min.

At the fire Min doled out the food and every little one and every half-grown chewed and swallowed their bread and drank their water before Min sent a half-grown to bring Scrim and Kel their bite. They both wolfed down the bread, two mouthfuls each. All there was of food that night with a cup of water.

When all the kids lay in bed, Min told the story. She used the father or mother name of the youngest of them, so that that baby would remember who to look for in Hell City if they chose to go there when they grew long legs. All the kids, long-legs included, heard their own mother and father names in the story.

Min settled herself on the blankets and started the telling. “A long time ago, Scrim-father and his Scrim-baby lived in the delta and they were out and about early in the morning for their fishing.

“The herders snuck up behind them, and looping a rope around Scrim-father started to pull him away. Little Scrim jumped into Scrim-Fa’s arms to try and stop the bad men but he wasn’t strong enough. And so they were both caught and counted as a numbers.

“After walking walking walking a long way, they came to a gap in the rubble.” Min pointed in the direction where the herders camped. “The city folk, seeing the camels coming, sent a drone to find out how-many in the cargo and stopped the lectrics for just that amount of time.

“The herders whipped the numbers into the road to the maze and Scrim-father ran and ran and ran ahead of them and over the maze. The time was short but he dropped his little Scrim into the arms of Min, kinnie-mother, thinking to save him.”

Tonight was Scrim’s last as a kinnie. In the day-that-was, Min asked Scrim would he run the maze into the city or would he go into the desert?

Scrim’s throat tightened because all he could remember then were Scrim-father’s strong hands clenching little Scrim tight to his heart for the running, and his ribs pumping out and in like bellows as he breathed hard and hard. And Scrim felt again how Scrim-father changed directions, like he turned on the ball of his foot, and ran diagonal across the path of the other runners.

Scrim fingered the scar along his arm. He remembered how Scrim-father and little Scrim got whipped with the whip curling round and licking them both. And he remembered how Scrim-father kissed Scrim a wild smack on his head and dropped him into Min’s arms. And how he was gone. Still and always gone. Scrim cleared the raspy bit from his throat. “Why wouldn’t I go into the hell? See if I can find him?”

“If you’re sure?” Min said.

The way she said it made him feel she asked more. “You set me studying the city. Days with the telescope. Fed me even when I didn’t hunt?” He made it a question. As always, he wondered why Min’s legs didn’t grow long enough to run. She’d led the troop as far back as he could remember and she stayed the same short size all that time.

She still just watched him.

Scrim turned and looked at the land beyond the rubble. Camels were the only animal living there that he could be sure of, owned by the herders who hunted people and sold them to the hell. “Sure I’m sure,” he said.

Then she organized him. The birds, swaddled and sleeping a day and a night, in the bag. A crust of bread to tide Scrim through the night.

So that morning, he rose from among the stones lining the road well ahead of the herders, and slotted in behind the first and second rank of runners. He ran as slow as he dared. Because as always there was the looking everywhere for new-things-to-know. Around him sped the numbers, screaming their fear with wide eyes, wide mouths.

Behind them, at the entrance to the maze, the raiders, laughing and joking, cracked their whips at their captives. Over in the north, over the rubble and beyond the maze, stood the white stone gates where shining truckomatics and customer transports went in and out.

Ah!! Almost tripped!

He corrected his pace. Scolded himself. Letting my attention wander and me a growed-up kinnie what don’t aim to figure in city business? He had to stay watchful running with the numbers so he didn’t get caught up in the mob funneling at the end. And he had to take especial note of what went under his feet. That more especially. 

Out the corner of his left eye he saw his own kinnie troop among the blocky boulders alongside the maze. Always when they saw the kinnies, the numbers carrying their bubs and their kids veered from their straight run to push their little fry into the rubble for the kinnies to catch.

When the bell started its stridency Scrim was ready. The numbers almost stopped with fright before they started running faster because of seeing Scrim streak past with his legs pumping. He didn’t want to be nowhere near the maze when the lectrics was switched back on. The bell was the five-minit signal.

In the narrow street entrance they all jostled into, Scrim peeled off from the mob, ran a little way and shoved himself in the tween of a couple of buildings with just enough place to kneel. While he soused the fire in his heart with big gulps of air, the numbers milled into the arms of a heap of transies and were trucked away.

The place he’d picked to hide wasn’t too roomy, he found after a couple of hours. He couldn’t un-sling his backpack or reach for it over his shoulders. Small other sounds, stifled coughs-and-crying, meant probly a couple of numbers also escaped the round-up. Scrim squirmed for the food in his pack. In a minit his gut would loud-talk away his hide.

Hard feet clattered up to the gap between the buildings and Scrim thanked his luck the dark had come on.

“Sit tight, little one,” boomed a voice into the narrow canyon. “Come light I will winkle you out like a snail from its shell.”

Scrim froze like a hunted rabbit before it ran. He had to believe the transy couldn’t see him because there was no running possible. And no other place that he knew to hide in.

The footsteps went to another hiding place telling the same awful words.

Scrim had to be gone by light. He had precious cargo. Being found meant Min found and who’d look out for the kinnies then? He waited until there were no more loud feet scampering here-n-there and no more loud words thrown around. Told himself again why he picked to come into the hell. See if I can find my Scrim-father.

By-and-by he discovered that by crossing his arms he could pull the pack’s straps off his shoulders with opposite hands and slide the straps down his back. He rose by wedging himself up between the two walls, waiting sometimes for his legs to wake up. Half turning, he began to edge out, bag on his feet like a penguin-egg. A story Min had.

“Ksst.”

Scrim stopped with his heart hanging in behind his teeth.

“Ksst.”

Noise from above. The dark impenetrable. A thing that was as stealthy as a moth touched his head. One arm he flailed at it, best as he could, without making a sound. The thing come between his face and the wall, with a knot caught at his hand.

A rope.

Someone above pulled before Scrim was ready, but then let the knot down further for Scrim to stand on, bag hooked over his arm. 

A strong grip hand-over-handed Scrim to a high-up, the man swearing softly to make himself strong. 

“Bag is alive,” Scrim gasped when the precious load hung up on the frame.

“I hear you. Not a sound.”

Scrim clombered over a frame of wood. The big outside silence became small and closed-in. The man must of closed over the window hole though Scrim didn’t hear one sound and his ears pricked like a rabbit’s. He started as hands touched him.

“There you are.” The voice like a wind whisper. “Listen good. I am the Mapmaker.”

Scrim-his-business finished already! “These flyers, from Min, for you.”

“Later I thank-you. At light I have to be at my stall in the market place. I have to leave now. Don’t pass this rim.” The Mapmaker took Scrim-his-hand and showed it a wood rim on the floor. He didn’t seem any taller than a half-grown.

“In the daytime the anubots, big robots, come to see the flyers and the cat,” the Mapmaker whispered. “If they see you and think you are a bad, they’ll tear the house apart. Not a sound now because they hear better than you-and-me. In the corner is a jug of sand. Once the anubots have gone, make me a pattern of the maze, whatever you remember, there’s a good kinnie.”

The Mapmaker unhooked the bag from Scrim’s hand and clumped from the room, of a sudden making enough noise to wake the night.

Leaving Scrim to chew on a hundred questions.

Min sometimes pulled a pigeon from the air, paper on its leg. Min then said, “From the Mapmaker. This or that long-leg is gone from the city.” Successful or not she didn’t say except she eye-smiled iffen the long-leg made it alive and feral-free.

Reading faces was Scrim-his-special-good.

On the underside the paper had lines that Min put on or took off her map of the maze, the slab she had with mud grooves on it, that all her long-legs had to get by heart.

The Mapmaker stumbled about in the next room. Why would he iffen he knew where everything stood? Scrim heard him say, “Hup!” And then heard long sliding-sound. More stumblings down below.

A feeling came of his little self sliding down a mud-slide back home in the delta. The Map-Maker had a mud-slide in his house? A door down there scraped open. Metal on metal went squeaking from the house, stopped to close the door, and metal on metal creaked west.

A hundred and fifty questions. Scrim stretched out to doze the dark away.