Mama held a syringe of pail fluid as Handsome and Egret were shuffled out of the house. She'd stopped protesting her children's fates when Da handed it to her. Her face drawn, Handsome imagined she would have stopped this if things were different. She was sick but she still loved her children. The sickness just made her forget the order in which she loved things, made her think she loved something else more than them. Handsome knew the truth. He gave her a kiss goodbye, tasted the salty tears on her cheek.

She whispered in his ear. "Don't come back."

Down the road again they went, the dusty trash-strewn road.

Five minutes away and Da turned on Handsome. He flinched, expecting a third strike. Instead, Da reached into his pocket, brought out a thin piece of gum wrapped up in shiny silver paper. "You think I haven't figured out how you found your way home? Open up."

Handsome complied. Spearmint. Strong, not entirely natural, coated his tongue. The sting from where he'd bit his cheek woke up and screamed inside his mouth, cool and hot at the same time. The outside tastes died away—the day taste that he hadn't been able to decipher this morning, the dry grass taste of the abandoned field to their right. There was nothing but the gum, the power of it overwhelming everything else.

They walked and Handsome tried to keep track of where they were, but after a while, each dilapidated structure looked like the one before it. Da seemed to be taking extra turns just to confuse him further. With his sense of taste compromised, the Maze was unnavigable in his mind. It was like trying to memorize the path of every drop flowing from a bucket of water tossed into the street. They disappeared too quickly, absorbed into the backdrop of the city before he could account for them.

This time, his father brought them to a low brick building not much bigger or nicer than the one Handsome called home. The muscly man, Lev, met them at its threshold.

"Boss ain't happy." Lev pointed to Handsome and then to Da. "Not with either of you."

Da crossed his arms and knocked Handsome forward with his knee. "It won't happen again."

Lev placed a possessive hand on Egret's shoulder, drawing her to him. Da's lips curled back, like he wanted to snarl at Lev but Lev was the bigger dog, the dog closer to the alpha. He took a step back, away from his children. "Do what Boss says, Egret, and you'll always have what you need."

Handsome bit his tongue, still hot and cold from the spearmint gum. Egret didn't need what Boss was offering. Neither of them did. It was their parents whose needs had to be met. This was all happening because of them.

Da wandered off, leaving the children with a wolf as a babysitter.

"You," Lev pointed to Egret. "Day two, you're coming with me. And you," he sniffed Handsome's breath. "Spit it out."

Handsome gladly dropped the gum into Lev's open hand. Lev considered it for a moment and then stuck it to his wall, covering a tiny crack. "Boss says you're to stay here until he can figure out what to do with you. He'll be by later today so you can do your day tasting bullshirt. Sit tight." He motioned to a rickety chair.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Handsome realized this had been a command, not a suggestion. He sat and Lev took a pair of handcuffs from a box under his bed, securing Handsome's wrist to a pipe stretching up the length of the wall next to the chair. "What if I have to... you know."

Lev tossed an old tin bucket at Handsome's feet. Even with the remnants of the gum lingering over Handsome's taste buds, he could tell the bucket's taste was one of unimaginable foulness. He gagged and Lev laughed. Before he'd recovered, Lev had dragged his sister from the house, her feeble protests muffled by thick walls. Alone in the shadows of Lev's house, Handsome pondered his predicament. There wasn't much else he could do. He watched the light from the house's sole window shift as the sun rose farther into the air, the shadows from the window's bars shifting across the floor in slow motion.

Boss was coming. When he arrived, he'd want to know what Handsome tasted. Handsome opened his mouth, slid his tongue over his teeth, tried to sample the day rather than the lingering spearmint or the earthiness of Lev's house. He expected stale cereal. Hoped for it really, fearing sour milk would be the soup de jour. Instead, neither flavor came to him. In their place was an unexpected sweetness, thick and juicy on his tongue. The sensation made his mouth water.

A perfectly ripe mango.

The mango calmed him. He let the weariness of the past day slip off him and let the sleep he so desperately needed lay upon him like his favorite blanket.

When he woke, he couldn't say how much time had passed. Five minutes? Five hours? The light from the window had dimmed. From his vantage point, the sky looked grey now. Clouds must have rolled in. A man in a cream-colored suit stepped in front of the window blocking his view altogether. Boss.

"You know, I'm pissed more at your father than at you. You're just a kid. You don't fully understand the situation. I get that, I really do." Boss pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket. He lit it and took in a deep drag. "Now your father, on the other hand, has worked for me for a long time, since he was a kid himself. I would've thought he'd learned a thing or two about properly disciplining children. But here you are, you eat my food, you sleep in my bed, and then you bust the handle on my guest bathroom window trying to get away from me.

"To top it off, then you're stupid enough to go back to your parents. Like they're, what... going to protect you from me? Is that what you think?" He took another drag off his cigarette and then laughed, a deep resonant, merciless laugh.

He crouched down in front of Handsome's chair so they were at eye level. "Do you know what I bought you for?"

Handsome cringed. He shook his head, trying not to think about what Boss meant by "bought."

Boss clucked his tongue. "It will be easier for you if you just accept what's happened. Most people belong to somebody. You belonged to your Da, now you belong to me." He snuffed out the butt of his cigarette on Lev's table and threw it onto the ground. "Earn your keep and tell me how my day is going to go. What do you taste?"

Handsome couldn't help himself. He smiled, wide and toothy. "Ripe mangos." It was his first ripe mango day. Still, like all the other first days, he knew without a doubt what it meant. "Ripe mangos mean there's hope today."

#

Boss left soon after this proclamation, self-consumed enough to believe Handsome's prophesy must be about his own day rather than Handsome's.

Let him think it.

With hope came hopefulness. Handsome couldn't be swayed from this mindset. This was the first day in which his prophesy must bleed into the next. If there was something hopeful about today, it must mean something good would come tomorrow. He just had to wait and see.

Handsome napped again. When he woke, the light was dim. Night approached and Egret still wasn't back. Handsome stifled an instinctual fear, licking his lips to taste the day that was still a ripe mango day. His pulse steadied. Sitting back in his creaky chair, he waited.

The room had fallen dark by the time Egret came in, Lev right behind her. The muscly man flicked on a lamp. "Electricity's on tonight."

Egret was tired but unharmed. "I wasn't in the dump all day," she told him. She'd done her time there, though, lived the horrors of the previous day again. But then Lev had brought her to Boss's house. Cook fed her, beans and rice, chicken and sweet bell peppers, and cake! Chocolate cake with strawberries decorating the top. Boss even bought her a pretty dress.

Handsome had noted the dress first thing, of course. It was pink and frilly, the kind of party dress Egret always dreamed of having. "It's beautiful."

"Give him his dinner, Lev" Egret smiled at her brother. "Cook made it for you."

Lev tossed a greasy sack at Handsome, who caught it awkwardly with his free hand. He waved his cuffed arm and Lev unlocked it with a grunt. "Don't try anything, kid."

"All I want to do is eat." That was true enough at the moment. The food tasted as heavenly as it had the day before. He scooped the beans and rice into a tortilla and took big bites, anxious to get to the crushed piece of chocolate cake at the bottom of the bag.

Lev watched him with wide eyes. "Didn't your folks ever feed you?"

"I found a whole box of pills today, Handsome. Boss was happy."

Handsome nodded. Lev walked over to a shelf above his washing tub and grabbed a glass bottle filled with mahogany brown liquid. "I could do with a bit of celebrating." He grabbed a shot glass, unscrewed the bottle's lid and poured the liquid into it. Handsome expected it to be syrupy, but it flowed fast and light into the little glass. "Bottom's up."

While Handsome ate his cake, Lev downed shots. One shot for every bite of cake. Egret hopped onto the cot, lay down and closed her eyes.

The liquor soon worked its way to Lev's tongue. "She has years as a hoverer. She'll be taken care of. You won't have to...." He filled his shot glass again and drank. "You won't have to worry about her. You do your job, she does hers. Boss will find a more permanent place for you to live."

"For me and Egret to live?" Handsome already knew that's not what he meant, but he had to hear it.

Lev laughed humorlessly. "You've got the easiest job in the world, kid. Your sister has to sort through needles and dead people. All you have to do is stick out your tongue. You think you deserve the same things?"

Handsome didn't answer. Lev hadn't yet proven himself to be an angry drunk like Da, but that sort of blind rage could manifest at the slightest provocation. He watched Lev drink in silence. After a while, the distance between Lev's head and the table he was stooped over diminished until finally his face collided with the wooden surface.

"They're moving me to Boss's house tomorrow."

Handsome started at the sound of his sister's voice. She'd only been pretending to sleep this whole time.

"I begged him to let me come back here so I could say goodbye to you, Handsome."

Handsome's head spun as if he'd been drinking alongside Lev. "What about me?"

Egret hopped off the cot and walked over to Lev. She lifted one of his arms and then let it plunk back down onto the table. Lev didn't stir. "Boss is going to be super mad at him in the morning."

"Egret?"

She turned to Handsome. "Boss has his own jail. He's going to move you there in the morning. He'll come visit you so you can taste the day for him. He doesn't want to deal with you beyond that."

Handsome swallowed. So that was it. He'd be put into a prison with grown men, criminals. Boss was already a criminal himself, so who would his fellow prisoners be? Something worse than criminals, probably. "What about you? You're going to make him even richer as long as you can hover... and then what? You won't be able to float forever, Egret."

"I know that. Boss knows that." Egret sat back down on the cot, head focused on where her hands were folded in front of her. "Boss says he'll have different work for me by then."

Handsome froze. He didn't want to think what that work would be.

"I..." Egret sniffled, then tears began to stream. "I want Mama. I don't want to stay here."

He put his arm around her. "Me neither. But I don't know the way home. I couldn't keep track of where we were. Can you get us to Boss' house?"

Egret thought for a moment. Her shoulders slumped "I can try, I guess."

Nodding, he lifted her up and, passing by Lev's unconscious form, they tiptoed out of the house.

There were no street lamps in this section of the Maze. The moon was an unreliable guide, its slim form dipping in and out of clouds. Handsome was no better. Nothing smelled familiar here. Used to being the one who guided them, it was hard to give this up and let his little sister lead the way.

This was even more challenging once it became apparent that Egret was lost.

"I thought it was in this direction." She stared long and hard at a dead end, then turned around. "But maybe it's back the opposite way."

It wasn't. Boss' house didn't seem to be any which way. Handsome kept his taste buds at the ready, hoping to pick up a whiff of something he'd tasted the day before, but there was nothing.

After an hour of walking, Egret was ready to admit defeat. "I'm sorry Handsome." She looked down at her toes.

He couldn't be annoyed with her. She was just a little kid, scared and lost. She'd never had much sense of direction. "Can you float, Egret? If you get up high enough, maybe you can tell where we are."

She shook her head. "I hovered all day. Let's find someplace to sleep. I can try in the morning."

Even though he was weary, the thought of sleeping out in this dark and rotten pork tasting place felt terrifying. "Let's keep moving. We have to come to someplace familiar eventually, right?"

Author's Note: Can you guess where the children are heading? Will it be someplace familiar as Handsome hopes, or someplace unexpected? Maybe both?

Two more updates headed your way next week and that will wrap up the story. Hope you're enjoying what you read. If so, don't forget to like the chapter! 

XOXOXO