Under My Skin by Charles de Lint

Author:Charles de Lint [de Lint, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780920623114
Publisher: Triskell Press
Published: 2012-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

Marina

I'm so relieved to be actually on our way to see this Auntie Min. I think about Josh and where they might have taken him. I hope that they haven't put him on a plane somewhere. And I pray that he'll resist the urge to change. I don't know that I could.

"Remind me," Desmond gasps as we jog east through town, "why we didn't bring our boards to school today?"

Elzie and I are having no trouble keeping to a nice stride, but poor Des is really being put through his paces today.

We're almost at our destination now. We went through some chi-chi neighbourhoods along the way, but here, rundown adobe houses with big dusty yards have replaced all pretence at classy residential housing. Yard decorations run to junked cars, broken plastic toys and old appliances. The sidewalk is littered with debris from the unkempt palms.

When we reach the lights at Rio Grande Drive, we cross the four lanes of traffic, then turn south to where the homeless have set up their camp of cardboard boxes and lean-tos below the freeway overpass. I've driven by this place lots of times with Mamá and my step dad, but this is the first time I've been up close.

The smell hits me first. I thought it would be rank—some horrible stew of garbage and urine—but it smells sweet, like walking through one of the fruit orchards up north when the trees are all in bloom.

The other weird thing is the silence. You can hear the traffic, but it's not much louder than the sound of the tide from my bedroom. It's quiet enough to hear the birds and the wind in the ragged trees, and I don't think it's just my Wildling hearing that's letting me notice this.

But the visual chaos is anything but peaceful. As we follow in Elzie's footsteps, we pick our way through old mattresses, rusting appliances, broken furniture, and an acre of plastic bottles, pop cans, wrappers and other litter.

It's odd that the city doesn't haul this garbage away, but my step dad says they leave it alone because the town council likes to group all the homeless in the same place. That way they don't have to worry about them camping out in alleyways or on the beach.

There certainly are a lot of people here today—a couple of dozen, at least. I guess the ones that got away after the police crackdown have all drifted back. They may be unkempt and dressed in raggedy clothes, but they also look tough. I try nodding to one or two, but they just watch us pass by with expressionless gazes. I get Wildling pings from some of them, but most are ordinary people—or at least as ordinary as anyone can be who lives in a place like this.

The ping's a funny thing—a weird combination of a barely-there scent, a tickle and a tiny bell sound. It's just this little low-key awareness that settles somewhere deep in your head.

So I'm surprised when the pings I'm getting ramp up as we approach a sofa at the top of the slope by the freeway's pylons.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.