The burners come, in the middle of the night, while I lie between two cloaks in rustling grasses, the sound so liquid we could be drowning.

The child found a tree to perch in. A bushy tree. Maybe just a bush. He tosses and turns with the wind and manages not to fall out to the ground.

I lie between two cloaks in the mugginess of the night, trying to sleep, a stranger's stars suffocating on smoke from the dull light.

I call the light "dull," hardly visible through the thickness of my cloak. I imagine those hidden stars are suffocating, behind the smoke I can't even see. My fingers tremble with the temptation to tear away the cloak; know the true color of the light above the town, how darkened the stars, how sharp a line against the black the color strikes. I clench those fingers into fists instead.

The dull light dances. When the child starts sobbing. When the child starts sobbing I sit up, cloaks falling. So it wasn't my tempted fingers that did it.

"Hello?" I whisper through wet bandages, hardly stuck to my face. I whisper, harmony to the rustling grass. The town afire burns orange, frantic hearts perish and flee, to the sea, to the roads. An edge of magenta cuts through the orange, blinding against the black. I shake my head.

"You're awake?" I whisper, counter to the sobs of a child. I shrug out of the two cloaks, let the jet bird curled in the dirt have them, I crawl blindly through the soil towards the sense of crystalline blood, smooth, pointed; my palms find flaking bark.

"Hello?" I whisper up into the rattling leaves. The child turns above me with the wind, sobs suddenly stifled. I crouch on my heels. "Is it the fire?" I whisper.

The child doesn't move.

"I can't sleep either," I whisper. Squint towards the town, the burning orange. "I see my old mentor, in the flames. He's always magenta," the color flickers. "Sometimes there's a queen, silver gray. But mostly there's clawing ribbons from a numberless army, people I killed..." the orange flashes yellow, red; I flinch from the claws scraping the exposed sky. "There's decade old boys, still glaring into my heart, there's a little girl in cyan and green who's name I'll always remember," I blink my eyes away, shudder in the dark. "Who do you see?"

The child doesn't answer. Doesn't move. Sobs stifle up his throat until he coughs. I rest my forehead against the flaking bark, cover my eyes with fists and count with each curled toe that gets cut off from my blood.

"You could watch the suffocating stars instead," I say. "Smoke doesn't hold people."

The child doesn't move.

***

Dear dead, two and a half years out, a town with a towering garden of trees at its heart, you found yourself paying for a room for the week. Uncomfortably sweating in the upper office of some wealthy folk in gilded cloaks. Uncomfortably sweating, with the heat, with the fire crackling in the fireplace. The jet bird hid in your backpack, aware enough of your pulsing heartbeat to remain silent.

The gilded cloak folk peered at something on the table before their crossed legs, something you gave them, a pair of paper wads in sevens. To ignore the shaking in your legs, you pointed to a fat metal instrument on the table's corner. "May I ask what that is?" you asked, politely, like you in your worn cloak and unwashed fingernails belonged in the gleaming room, standing in a perfect square of sunlight on the gray rug, with these gilded cloaks.

As one, the pair of gilded cloaks stared flatly at you. You slowly lowered your arm.

"A microscope," the one said, violet sleeves folded neatly on the table. "It magnifies the tiny to be visible to the eye." Not so subtly, they scooted the fat metal instrument away from the corner.

"Yes," the other nodded. "Grains in the wood become many hundreds of times their size." As if already planning to, they carefully slid a paper wad worth seven onto a flat panel near the middle of the instrument and stuck their eye towards a tube.

"Ah," you nodded too, like you understood, because you did understand, but they wouldn't know that you, with the dirty fingernails and worn cloak, would understand. The one gilded cloak covered a smile. You were clearly better at practicing how to do that.

You ignored the fire, flicking in the red wall behind them. "Is the payment acceptable?" you asked.

Blue gilded cloak leaned away from the microscope. The other gilded cloak scrutinized you, the prickling swamp you were, signed something with flicked fingers to blue gilded cloak and they both flourished from the room. You sighed.

Of course, you vaguely knew why they left. Payment led to inspection--lots of scammers come through the coastals, tongue click-click--and inspection led to signing, something about papers and promises in ink. As if they knew what that meant.

You sighed, since really, they didn't answer your question. Was your payment acceptable? Or were they off to do...whatever they did to scammers, tongue click-click?

You ignored the fire, in the brick fireplace. Less simple without shallow gilded cloaks to keep you busy. You shifted your weight to your other foot. You ignored the fire, behind the metal grate. Less simple with the crackling pounding at your ears, the heat, all you did was flick your gaze sideways.

But that was enough.

Claws erupting from the grate, the wood logs, you stifled back a yelp and stumbled back to land on the glimmery gray rug, nearly crushing the jet bird who cawed at you.

A numberless army clawing at you, shockingly yellow and green, they demanded you die how they died, ripping at your pounding heart. You scrambled away and grabbed for the nearest thing, stabbed your palm on the table corner.

Crackling and sparking, magenta hues crept out of the fire's corners to the oiled wood floor, you whipped blood from your palm, slashing up the figure forming in the flames. But the slashing hissed into a bubbling of blood, you lost all sense of the ribbon and the flames crescendoed.

Kolariq cackled, magenta curling over the rush of yellow claws, "you thought you could escape me, boy." He hissed to the bubbling of the gleaming wood floor, "I will hunt you down for how you murdered me," red blood fountained from his vacant eyes.

"Dead people can't do that. And you can't hear me," you whispered, eyes trickling tears, blood welling from the cut on your palm.

"You will pay for how you killed me," Kolariq hissed and cackled and the gleaming substance coating the wood floor popped, the yellow claws erupted past the metal bars and seared towards you.

You suffocated back a scream, kicking at the spreading flames. Your cut palm found the next nearest thing and hurled it toward the fire.

Crack.

The floor caved in, carrying with it burning floorboards. Crashing to the level below, you didn't peer down to check if the flames were extinguished. You sat up. The indent of a metal corner stung your bleeding palm. The jet bird's unsquished screeches made you flinch, afterimages of bright green clouding your eyes with Kolariq's vacant eyes, sharp teeth; violet claws knifing for you.

Tears trickled from your eyes, the door slid open to silence. Wiping your cheeks, you barely dared meet the hems of gold-on-violet, silver-on-blue, both over black shoes. A sniffle became cause for a thunder of unintelligible shouting from the gilded cloaks.

"The fire broke through," you pointed, to the wood around the jagged hole--not blackened and burned like you'd seen moments before. But you pointed anyway. "I didn't know what to do."

Unintelligible shouting came perfectly translatable with scowling faces, waving arms, payment led to inspection led to you snatching back your paper wads totaling fourteen without permission, trembling legs carrying you and a shivering backpack into the spotless hall, down evenly square stairs, out the door painted with overlapping silver rectangles. Echoing cackles trailed you through the town of towering trees, like smoke clinging, "you thought you could escape, boy?"

***

The blade I burn myself on names itself exhaustion and insects. I wake sometime near dawn, leaning against the flaky tree, the child's blood perched up in the bushy branches.

I curse the insect crawling down my hair. Plummeting, it disappears into the soil.

I shiver uncontrollably.

The ash the burn leaves is invisible aquamarine, I know, crawling back to the cloaks in the gray, today will be a rough day.

I sleep until dawn, when coarse blood wakes me. The culminating sense of it. Muddled, I pack my belongings, the jet bird lazily lofting into the air. I have no interest in joining crowds leaving the town.

I go to wake the child, but stop, backpack digging into my shoulders. The coarse blood is too far out, moving too quickly for people plodding up a road. So they must have boats. I missed that.

Drained, I blearily sit on my heels, awash in the morning calls of birds, the scent of tangy blood from the barely stuck-on bandages. I sit awash in the distant babbles of waves, the rustling of grasses, whispering air on my fingers and the faintly itchy red bumps of my arms. It's a poor substitute for real dreaming.

But, since I'm already awake, since the sky is dawning, since the still-burning remnants of the town really aren't that far away, I crawl back to the tree.

"We should leave," I whisper into the branches, squinting at shadows or hair or eyes. "Get further away."

Wordlessly, the crystalline blood shifts over creaking branches and slowly descends. I crawl into the rustling grasses. The child goes still behind the flaky tree trunk, so I rise from the ground and start walking. Every footstep sore, every sway against grass scratching the bumps of my arms.

Insects are the worst, in this muggy warmth, and I dislike the way my skin bumps red to bites of insects.

Why couldn't we be immune, I think to the jet bird wheeling above, to singeing swords leaving evidence of red and aquamarine?

I start walking. The child carves a rippling trail in my wake.

***

Dear dead, the first three bone knives that you sold you kept track of, their particular curves, the knobs and ridges smoothed out under wet fingers. The next five you determined to forget, it hurt less to watch another merchant--expert in blades but not bone--scratch at, squint at, sniff at your work, like the yellowing substance once part of a fish held secrets buried deep in the marrow.

You determined not to get attached to those. You still did.

You determined after the next four necklaces to quit counting, you didn't need to number the whole skeleton of a fish you carved and strung together, some flat and heavy, others needle-thin, some curved as sickles.

You still did.

Then after the next three blades you determined to quit counting, but you knew the price each one paid; two, seven quarters, two plus a half. One bone knife for a can of meat. One sickle knife for a cheap room on a wallowing street. One curved blade for soap scented like old leaves.

The price you paid to stay alive, dear dead, let's start with the time: months of a skeleton wasting away at the bottom of a beach puddle, buried by sand. A day of your feet tiptoeing through cold waves, senses tugging and stretching bones to your call. An hour of chipping away, a cut from your ankle supplying aquamarine as razor sharp, as quick as clean as you needed. The price you paid to stay alive, days for the dead skeleton plus leaking away your own lifeblood, as quick as clean as dreamless nights.

You promised not to count the next bone necklaces you sold, the bone needles, bone sticks for stirring soup. How much did people in hot humidity stir soup?

You promised not to count, so you didn't count once. Didn't count twice. The third time you didn't count you determined not to count the number of times you didn't count. The jet bird's head spun with your mutterings, curled in the cloaks on a creaky floor in a dark room, the disease-ridden bed shoved to the farthest corner to keep it from reaching out to claw you.

The price you paid to stay alive, counting bone knives, each one given up for someone else to scratch at, a welling cut to your heart in dire need of paper wads to keep on pounding.

Yet stay alive you did, dear dead. Dead dear. All the counting added scars to the costs, and two forevers of you and I divided between calluses and packed ash wishes. Stay alive you did; prices paid and all.