Handsome tried his best not to flinch. This wasn't how his ability worked. What he tasted was connected to himself, revealing how his own day would go, but he couldn't taste the day for Boss or for anyone else. The people closest to him did affect what his taste buds picked up on, sure. But Handsome wasn't close to Boss and never would be. He'd never taste how the day would go for that man, though he did imagine his demise would make for quite the broccoli day.

"Today's a stale cereal day."

Boss squinted. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"It means it's okay. Not good or bad, just... normal."

He paused, then said, "All right." He handed Egret a sack to put her scavenged medical waste in. Handsome hated that she would be in there all by herself. There could be dangerous people guarding it, or rabid dogs perhaps.

"I don't want to go without Handsome!" Egret could no longer contain her frustration at the situation.

"Can you pull him up over that fence with you?"

She lowered her head, shook it. No.

"Well then, your brother stays with me. The faster you do your job, the sooner you'll see him again." He flipped his hand at her. "There you go. Up and over."

Handsome tried to encourage her with a smile and nod. Boss had a heat behind his speech. Even the calmest of words could contain a threat; they didn't dare argue with him. After a short pause, Egret did as she was told, face scrunching up before taking flight, her tattered yellow sun dress flittering about as she rose above the fence line. Soon she had disappeared behind it.

Handsome tapped on the outside. "Egret, are you okay?"

A tiny voice. "Yes?"

"Remember not to stay longer than you can float for or you won't be able to get back over the fence."

"She'll be fine." Boss grabbed his arm. "Lev will stay here and bring her back when she's finished. Let's go."

Before long, Handsome found himself back at Boss' house, where he was shut into an upstairs room. He sat on a bed and tried not to think of why the room would taste of burnt rubber. A few hours later, an old woman wearing a white apron streaked with grease stains came in and deposited a tray of food at the foot of the bed. She refused to speak to him, her wrinkled face set hard, like she was used to delivering provisions to the children Boss locked up. Did it most every day, so what's it to her?

Handsome tried to ignore the food, but the smell was almost as heavenly as the taste on his tongue. Vegetable soup—a whole bowl, warm bread dripping with butter. An entire glass of milk. Not sour days milk. Whole, fresh milk. He dipped a piece of bread in the soup and took a bite, eyes rolling into the back of his head. This would have been a broccoli day had he not been keenly aware that his sister was being forced to pick through hypodermic needles and the soiled garb of diseased hospital patients.

He ate like the starved boy that he was, but stopped himself when half of everything had been consumed. Egret would need to eat too. The rest was for her.

When she returned in late afternoon, she was followed into the burnt rubber room by the muscly man and the grease-stained woman, who carried a second tray of food. Egret rushed to Handsome's side while the woman eyed Handsome's half-eaten lunch. "Wasn't good enough for you, then?"

Taken aback, Handsome could barely form the words that were in his head. "It was the best food I've ever tasted. That's why I wanted to share it with my sister."

The woman's hard face softened for a moment. "Didn't you realize she'd get her own?" She set the tray down next to Handsome's and mumbled something he couldn't understand as she shuffled out of the room.

The muscly man followed her, closing the door as he went. A hollow click of a lock being secured into the tumbler echoed through the room. As soon as that was done, Egret burst into tears.

Handsome hushed her. "It's not so bad. They're feeding us, aren't they? And there's an inside bathroom here and everything."

Egret hiccupped. She twisted herself so her face was buried in his shoulder. It took a long time to compose herself enough to tell him how her day really was "that bad." He made her recount her story through bites of soup and bread.

The job had started off normal enough. She had her sack, her hovering was going fine. She seemed to be the only scavenger there, and there was a big mound of trash to go through, only it wasn't really a mound, not like Treasure Mountain, but more of a pit, like it could be covered over with concrete and no one would ever know what was down there.

But Egret knew.

It wasn't like Treasure Mountain didn't have its fair share of horrors. There were always unidentifiable fluids and all too identifiable blood stains. There was rot and decay and everything you could imagine that people threw away because they didn't ever want to think about those things again. Egret was only seven, but she wasn't new to this. The medical dump wouldn't be filled with stuffed bears and candies hermetically sealed in plastic.

She'd discovered what was "that bad" just after locating a rather promising stash of what looked to be a crate filled with bottles of medicine. The crate was heavy, but if she used her hovering ability, she'd be able to hoist it up over the fence and deliver it to Lev. She'd used all her strength to dislodge it from where it was sticking out from under a dented metal table. Unfortunately, it wasn't the only thing wedged under that table.

The crate removed, Egret stared aghast at a pair of cloudy brown eyes gazing blankly at the sky beyond Egret's head. The eyes were attached to a gray-skinned head and the head was attached to a frail, naked body. She put a hand over her nose but it was too late. The stench from the corpse had already worked its way inside of her, making sure this moment would be burnt into her memory for the rest of her life. She turned to the side and dry-heaved, grateful for once to have an empty stomach.

Still floating, she dragged the crate back away from the corpse. In doing so, her hand scraped against something gelatinous she'd at first assumed was a pile of decomposing food. It wasn't. Her unearthed corpse turned out not to be the only permanent resident of the medical dump. This one's skin was still soft, like death was a new experience for it, but its stomach had been sliced down the middle. Piles of long sausage-like organs she didn't have a name for spilled out of it and that, she realized, is what she had inadvertently touched.

Desperate now to get out of there, she resisted the urge to puke again, and instead focused on carrying the crate and lifting it, and her with it, over the fence. As she swept over the dump, she realized what it truly was: a mass grave. These had been real people once. Perhaps they didn't have families to claim them and give them a proper funeral. Still, even the poor folks of the Maze burned their dead, sending them off to the heavens while their families stood nearby and mourned. Dumping them here like garbage—Egret was not so young that she didn't understand the wrongness of it.

She delivered the crate of bottles to Lev, who poked through them, staring at each label with varied levels of interest. "Okay. It's a start. Take your sack back in and see what else you can find."

Already trembling, Egret began to shake. "Go back? But... there's... there's people in there!"

Lev scrunched up his nose? "Scavengers?"

She shook her head. "No. I mean there's bodies. Lots of them."

"Well then, what's the problem? Dead people can't hurt you, silly girl."

Egret couldn't believe what she was hearing. What kind of person would make a little girl pick for valuables in the middle of a mass grave?

"I can't go back."

"Sure, you can. You're just scared."

"No, I mean, I can't. That crate was heavy. I used all my floating. I won't be able to float again until tomorrow."

"Are you kidding me?" He kicked at the wooden container. "That's all we get out of you for one entire day?"

Egret stood there silently. It was only a half lie, really. She hadn't eaten since that bread last night and the crate had taken a lot out of her. She could still hover, but she didn't know for how long. The thought of being trapped in the dump with all those bodies overnight made her knees nob together.

"I kept telling myself that it was a stale cereal day, Handsome. You'd have known if something really bad was going to happen to me."

Alone in their room, his sister safely returned to him, Handsome gripped her tight.

"Eat up. You'll need your strength if we're going to get out of here."

The two windows in the room had bars on them, but there was a third in the bathroom, bar-free. It was too small for an adult. Two underfed kids, on the other hand, might be able to squeeze through.

They waited until the outside world was dark and the inside world was silent. Handsome stood on the back of the toilet bowl and slowly wedged open the window while his sister flushed, hoping to mask the noise it made. The opening was narrow. It would be a close one. He scanned the darkness outside. The window opened to the side of the house, which he hoped was a good thing. If there were guards around, they'd mainly be watching the front and back doors.

He motioned for Egret to go first. She floated up and wrenched herself through, Handsome guiding her legs as she went. As they'd discussed, she kept herself afloat, hugging the side of the house to avoid detection. Now it was Handsome's turn. He couldn't float like his sister, but he was agile from his years skirting the narrow lanes of the Maze. Gripping the edges of the window, he pulled himself up. Egret yanked on his shoulders and then hugged him to her, inching away from the wall to drag him out with her. His stomach and sides scraped along the window frame and twice he had to wiggle to make it through, but soon he was free. For once, their roles were reversed: Handsome clung to Egret for comfort as they floated away from the house's edge, suspended like the moon in the sky.

Their plan was to float long enough to make it out of Boss' yard and his guards' line of site. Egret panted with exertion as she moved towards the hedge twenty feet from the bathroom window. She wouldn't be able to carry his weight for long, especially after using so much of her ability earlier in the day. Jaw clenched, Handsome scanned the ground, fearful that any moment someone would spot them and a hail of bullets would follow.

As the hedge grew closer, the pair began to lose elevation.

"I can't go much longer," she whispered. "You're heavier than you look."

"Just a little more!"

Five feet until the Hedge. Handsome's foot brushed against a tree limb. The front door opened and then closed a second later. There was no way to tell if it was someone coming outside or going in.

Two feet. They took a dive downward. Handsome pressed his lips together, closed his eyes, pleaded.

He opened them again to find himself cocooned within branches, Egret laying on top of him. They hadn't made it over the hedge but were instead held inside of it, branches scraping at his back and legs. He assessed the situation as fast as he could. Their crash landing might have made enough noise to alert someone. It had seemed noisy to him, every leaf rustling down the line at their impact. Recovering her wits, Egret pulled him in the direction leading away from Boss' yard. They rolled, tumbling awkwardly into the neighbor's yard. Again, precious moments were lost as Handsome discovered how very unpleasant it was to have the wind knocked out of him. Egret recovered first, pulling him to his feet. They ran on a stone path beside a shimmering pool. The house, as stately as its neighbor, stood dark and silent.

A porch light flicked on at Boss' house, casting dappled rays through the hedge's oval leaves. Handsome ran faster, dreading the possibility that men may be waiting for them when they reached the street. They arrived at the front gate and Egret threw open the latch, rushing out with Handsome right behind her. No sign of Boss, no big hulking men, but the voices carrying from Boss's front yard did not sound pleased. Staying close to the sidewalk's edge, they fled.

They would go home. They would tell their parents about the horrors Egret had experienced at the medical dump, how she couldn't be made to go back there. Their parents would protect them. Somehow, Mama and Da would keep them safe.

A few blocks from Boss' mansion, Handsome squeezed himself into a grimy crevice between buildings, pulling Egret in with him. He ran a hand over damp, moss covered walls.

"Where are we, Handsome? How do we get home from here?"

"Shh, I'll take care of that. Just listen now."

Frantic voices mixed with steady footsteps echoed off the surrounding buildings. Handsome held his breath. The noise escalated and then grew softer as the men retreated down the street. He tugged on his sister's arm. "They're leaving. Come on."

They ran again, this time straight ahead, not turning towards where the men had gone and certainly not back where they'd come from. Handsome let his mouth go slack, let his tongue take over, the taste test map of the city he'd memorized in route to Boss' house the day before taking shape in his mind. A spice... nutmeg. That was off some ways. They'd have to go straight for a bit and then left a block or so.

Once they found nutmeg, he was off to the next taste: onions. Then green tea, a dull tang like that of peeling paint, dried apricot, curry, river stone. Hundreds of tastes guided them through the back alleys, around stumps of old trees, through a series of sprawling housing developments, their honeycomb heights sticking out of the Maze's backbone like tumors. Their taste he remembered, not sweet at all, but more of a bitter pill. After an hour, they spied Treasure Mountain, its bits of abandoned steel glimmering dully in the moonlight, and from there, they traced their steps, sluggish now with exhaustion, back home.

The door was barred. Handsome knocked, knowing as he did so that no one would respond. His parents would be asleep, passed out, beyond hearing. After the third futile knock, Egret slumped beside him. They huddled together under the doorframe, knees against their chests, arms wrapped around each other. After a while, they slept.

Handsome jerked awake as the trusty weight of the door gave way. He and Egret fell backwards landing on the concrete surface at the feet of their father. Da glared down at them, gentle rays of morning sunlight doing little to soften his expression.

"Why are you here?" Da's face twitched, his bloodshot eyes watched them, waited for Handsome to say something that would justify the slap he was itching to give.

It was Egret who spoke first. "There were dead bodies, Da. They made me scavenge through dead bodies."

Da's expression remained severe, but his fist loosened at his side. Wrapping herself up in her cotton shawl, Mama stepped over and pulled Egret to her feet. "Jo, maybe we should—"

He cut her off. "Did you survive?" He placed his hand under Egret's chin and tilted her head up. "Did you?"

She nodded, big eyes filling with tears.

"And you both got fed." He looked to Handsome for this.

"Yes, Da."

"You got fed, you had a fancy house to sleep in. You had people looking out for you. But here you are anyways, fucking up everything for us."

"Da, he'll make her go back there!"

There it was, the hot stinging pain as Da's hand connected with his face, the taste of iron as blood pooled in his mouth covering... what was that? He'd been so shocked upon wakening that he hadn't been able to taste the day, and now blood masked everything. For the first time since he could remember, Handsome's day was unpredictable, though on a practical level, he already could tell it wasn't going well.

Da pulled him away from the door and shut it. "What did you think was going to happen when you left, Handsome? Boss wants you, wants your sister. Did you think this was something you could escape from? Do you know what will happen to me, to your mama?"

"I'll... I'll go back. I'll taste the days for him. Just... please Da, don't make Egret go!" Da's hand found Handsome's face again. Egret and Mama whimpered as the force of the blow sent him sprawling over the floor.

"You'll both go back. Now."

Author's Note: They followed the metaphorical bread crumbs back home! But unfortunately, our children's tale does not end there. Do you think they'll have to go back with Boss? What then?

Thank you for reading! I'm looking for people to join my launch team and receive a free ARC of an Urban Fantasy called BLOOD KING that is being published by City Owl Press this August. If you're interested, I'll link to the sign-up form in the comments. 

New part coming in a few days!