The village people congregated in the stricken fields as lepers might flock to a healer, faces illuminated venal and ghastly in the torchlight as they circled the tree to marvel at the unholy spectacle which awaited them there. Venturing forth with glacial reluctance, forming a sizable perimeter around the strange and garishly attired quartet standing shadowed and portentous beneath the gnarled branches. No one spoke.

One of the four eventually advanced into the midst, clearly deemed spokesman. A perpetually grinning monstrosity with drooling orifices, freakishly tall and snailike in his bearings, donning over a fitted suit a sky blue overcoat which drooped sluggishly over the slope of his shoulders and reflected a dull moist sheen which seemed almost amniotic in its texture. Broken manacles rattling at his naked ankles, he put out his drooping hands to the masses of frightened faces which attended him and began to speak.

And so did they listen to his proclamations, looking on with stupendous horror at the old man who had been hung from the tree only a few paces behind the grinning youth with rosebuds in his hat. Looking on at the head bent limply over the noose, the patch of pale and thinning hair ruffled at the crown of its scalp. The brown gingham shirt left hanging tattered and bloodstained off that withered skeletal husk.

The corpse had ceased swinging for some time; now it remained mostly static as a perfect caricature of victimhood to the violence which had befallen it, turning only ever so gently rightwards and back again at the wind's quiet bidding.

♚

He was sitting on the raised walkway in front of Ferdinand's General Wares with the rifle resting at his side, idly whittling a sharp point out of a piece of branch when the man spoke to him.

"Mornin brother."

He looked up, his blade stilled at where it had bit a shallow notch into the soft white birch.

"Morning to yourself."

The man looking down at him was smiling somewhat mindlessly, his head eclipsing the sun from where it hung low off the awning of the general store. He was a tall and whiskered fellow and had a long tattered jacket hanging off his shoulders, the empty sleeves fluttering down to his wrists like bedraggled whiptails. At his side he had one half-empty bottle swinging from two crooked fingers.

"Tis right pretty weather we're having today don't ye think. Ye waitin on the old man?"

The brother flicked a cursory look over his shoulder at the darkened window display.

"You could say that."

The man shuffled up the porch steps and peered inside the shuttered shop. He shook his head and removed his hat and swiped at his brow.

"He don't take to town regular no more," he said, sitting down on the top step. "Not since his back gone bad. But I know his clerk usually come in here round nine o'clock."

"He better be coming in today. Specially since he's the one who called me over."

The man hummed thoughtfully and shaded his eyes against the sun, blinking through its glary sulfuric haze as he looked up and down the parched yellow street.

"Ye ain't from round here by the looks of it."

"No sir. I come from Spider Miles."

"Do ye really now. I been there oncet, two or three year ago. Remember the air there was somethin real nasty."

"Still is. Doubt that'll ever change."

The man smiled again, eyes beset with a glassy bovine placidity. He raised the bottle and drank.

"Ye over here on business then?"

"Something like that." The brother squared his shoulders and continued to whittle. "The geezer still owes me money for some work I did for him."

"So ye's a tradesman or some'n?"

"No sir. I've never picked up a trade. It's just a few odd jobs I did for him not too long back."

"Well trade or no trade, work is work."

"Yes sir."

The bottle came up again. The man's stringy throat bobbed accordingly as he took another extended drought. His gaze dropped down to the brother's rifle. Fitted with worn leather strappings, it was bull barreled with a standard military-grade stock. There was also a strange cylindrical metal extension capping the tip. It was a silencer but the man did not know it. He just let the bottle hang from his left hand, swinging it gently between his knees.

"I do reckon the boy will be here directly if not old Ferdinand himself," he said, wiping at his mouth with his shirtsleeve. "I never did know him to keep none of his people a-waitin for long."

"Well, we'll see."

The man glanced at the rifle again.

"Ye ever been in the service, brother?"

"No sir." The brother followed his gaze and cracked a wary smile. "Oh. This is just something that was gifted to me."

"I guess it don't make nary sense to suppose they'da let ye keep all their fancy gadgets, the Navy."

"They probably don't. I wouldn't know though. I've never been a Marine."

"I gotta cousin who enlisted back in the day. Poor bastard ended up in a nasty row. Done got every last bone in his legs broke for all his trouble."

"Grand Line?"

"Yessir. Grand Line. I never been but Lord knows if it don't sound like just about the damndest place under the sun." The man shook his head, the liquor swishing within its walls as he swung the bottle in a distracted fashion. "Well Charlie came home but he never walk the same after that."

"I'd imagine."

"Aye. Back then youngerns used to just sign up in droves. Pension used to be better or so they say. But lookin back I can scarce see the appeal of it knowin the meanness in these parts."

The brother fixed his gaze to the toes of his boots. "Probably more looking to become pirates these days than the other way round."

"Aye, I believe they are. All thanks to that catwhiskered feller they kill down in Loguetown, eh? Funny how some things go one way then come swingin back round like nothin ever happent before."

"Yes sir."

"All slowmovin and eventual but it'll happen in due time. Goin and comin back again. Man is sure a fickle creature. But it cain't be helped I reckon."

"I guess," the brother said. "But I've never really studied it."

"It don't need no studyin," the man smiled. He drank again. "Some things ye just end up learnin through the very fact of livin."

"Yes sir."

They waited together in silence. The sun climbed higher in the sky and disappeared fully beyond the fringe of the awning. A cool navy shade passed over the both of them. In the near distance they could hear swallows warbling over the feverish drone of crickets. The brother continued to work his blade until all that was left of the branch was a measly stub. He held it up between two fingers, turning it over idly, before flicking it off the side of the walkway. Eventually the man spoke up again:

"Yonder comes the old man."

He looked. A covered black buggy materialized from the grove, pulled along by a thin sorrel mare. It scattered a flock of birds from the brush as it emerged from the treeline and came rattling up the gnarled path, jostling over the crosshatched grooves of wheel tracks etched into the hardened mud. The driver pulled in at the walkway and leapt deftly down from his trappings, scurrying over with harried diligence to unlatch the side ropes. A tall, gaunt man with silver streaks in his hair alighted and turned to help a pretty auburn-haired woman step out in a flurry of rustling skirts. When he saw the boarded windows he stopped short and bristled.

"Closed?" he barked. "Still closed? The hell is Larry at?"

"Beats me," the man with the bottle called out, shrugging. "Me and this feller here, we done been waitin near half an hour now, ain't that so?"

"Sounds about right," the brother said. He stood and slung his rifle and looked at the mare. It appeared to be wholly resigned to the situation, its long neck craned downwards as it grazed upon a small patch of grass sprouting near the post.

Ferdinand mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief and turned to the young woman, who now had gone towards the back of the buggy where two luggage crates were strapped to the carriage.

"Fancy, sweetheart. You'll take care of this for me, won't you?"

She smiled at him and motioned the driver over with a flutter of her pale wrist. Fishing out a ring of keys from his pocket, Ferdinand turned and barreled up the steps to open the door. The man clambered to his feet and followed him in. The brother turned as if to do the same, then hesitated and looked back to the pair at buggy.

"Hey there," he called down.

They looked up, eyes squinted against the morning sun.

"Need any help?"

The young woman looked over to the driver. He shrugged nonchalantly, one crate already held aloft in his arms.

"Nah," he replied. "I think we good."

"Alright."

He stood watching them for a few seconds more, as if wanting to add something, before turning abruptly on his heel and limping into the store. The old man had gone behind the counter and was barking a steady stream of obscenities into a Transponder Snail receiver. The man with the bottle was nowhere to be seen at first glance, though the brother was soon to spot his head over shelves of merchandise as he meandered the aisles.

The brother went up to the counter and waited. He heard the door open and close behind him, accompanied by a barrage of footsteps as the driver came in and put the crate down and went back out again. Ferdinand presently put the receiver down and looked up, mopping his forehead with his shirtsleeve.

"Well I can't say I got this shitshow sorted to a finality but it'll have to do for now," he said. "Sorry to keep ye waitin."

"That's alright," the brother said.

"Amai, is it?"

"Yes sir."

Ferdinand coughed and wiped at his face again and opened a drawer. He took out a sheaf of berri notes and riffled through it before sliding it across the counter for the brother to take. He undid the paper strap and began counting the bills. The older man watched him, brow furrowed in diminutive concern.

"There's just one more thing."

"Yes sir."

"About the expedition."

The brother looked up from the money.

"What about the expedition."

"Well. I went down to the harbor last week. Got a chance to speak to the captain. Now he says he won't take ye."

The brother set the bills down and considered this a moment, eyes narrowed into thin slits.

"What changed?"

"Eh?"

"What changed. He seemed pretty keen on having me on the last time I seen him."

Ferdinand coughed into his hand again, though this time the motion seemed more discreet.

"Listen," he said, putting his palms on the counter and leaning in. "You want God's honest truth?"

"I think I'd prefer it if everybody I speak to just gave me that as default, sir."

"Well then I'll give it to ye, but don't you go spitin the messenger. He went and found two more willing to come on in your stead, simple as. He says he doesn't reckon someone like you can survive the New World."

"Someone like..." The brother frowned sharply. "What the hell does he know when he's never even been to the Grand Line?"

The inside of the store was poorly lit and through the dimness Ferdinand's eyes suddenly seemed to glint ominous and catlike. He looked down, taking in with wordless doubt the brother's bad leg, and then back up again.

"I dunno myself," he finally uttered. "I'm just tellin you what he told me to tell ye."

"It's bullshit," the brother snapped.

"Yes sir. I understand. But mebbe you should take it up with him since he's got final say. Now, if you'll excuse me."

The brother looked on in unabashed amazement as Ferdinand turned and retreated into the back room. He stood very still, staring after the old man's form, before silently gathering up the berri notes and shoving them into his coat. Then he turned and went out very slowly like one defeated. He unslung the rifle and sat on the steps and stayed there for a time, the sun beating down hot and relentless upon his bent form. Eventually he lowered his face as if in deep thought.

♚

The sister came down the road slowly, trudging over a creek bridge and through a copse of blackhaws where overgrown weeds sprouted thick and high enough to graze her fingertips. Houses swam into view from the distance, rising forth from the countryside like headstones cleft out of brick and stucco. She passed a pond, going carefully at a safe distance from its banks, swatting away droves of flies which rose forth from the marshy fescue, before stopping to rest in the shade of a chestnut tree. Leaning her weight against the bark, she moved the slim cloth bundle she carried to the crook of her free arm and blew out a gentle rasping breath, daubing away the thin patches of sweat which had formed on her brow.

It was only then that she did see it in the far distance – the hanging anthropoidal shape, the tepid fluttering of garment and hair.

For a moment she was frozen stiff, seemingly transfixed at the sight of the dead man strung up in that tree. It was hard to tell what exactly drove her to falter closer - whether it was curiosity or disbelief or an amalgamation of both - but she eventually did, creeping surreptitiously along one of footpaths etched between two adjacent quadrants of farmland.

Drawing nearer, she could see that there were two or three other bystanders hanging around the scene as if to keep vigil. One stood only a mere couple paces from where the corpse hung, swearing profusely beneath his breath as he adjusted a flashbulb on a stand. Connected by its shell to a lanyard of some sort around his neck, a miniature Transponder Snail hung snoring at his chest, blissfully ignorant to its owner's irascibility. The other wore a suit and sat fanning himself furiously in the shade at a careful distance.

He saw her as she came up and leapt to his feet, wheeling ahead and gesticulating with all the wildeyed enthusiasm of a prophet performing the motions of some demonic exorcism.

"Sorry Miss. Sorry, sorry. Can't come any closer. We in the middle of some'n."

"In the middle of somethin alright," the other man griped, not even bothering to turn. "I'd sure like to know how damn productive it'll turn out if this godawful contraption can't even stand straight for two fuckin seconds -"

The girl looked between them repeatedly in visible confusion, as if unable to make sense of the gross incongruity between their demeanor and their present condition.

"There now, Miss." The man in the suit smiled down at her apologetically, removing his hat and mopping furiously at the pale gleaming dome of his brow. "Miss, if you could back up now please. Give him some space. Tain't no sight for a little thing like you."

"Blah blah. She already seen it, Herb."

"Listen here now Miss," the suited man said again. With his broad arms extended in a vague corralling motion he bore an uncanny resemblance to a fat and lethargic goose beating its wings. "We need these pictures to print for tomorrow and Galvin here, he can't stand to have no bystanders hanging around when he takes em, so why don't ye head back towards town? Eh? I promise you'll hear the whole story in the papers directly."

The girl stepped back, craning her neck to see the body. It clearly had been left there for several days, the limbs now rendered limp and bloated, and someone had put a cloth bag over the head in a paltry attempt at preserving dignity. It was with great difficulty she dragged her eyes back down to her addressor.

"Do you know what he looks like?" she asked numbly.

"What he looks like?" The suited man frowned in confusion.

"Yes. His face. Have you seen it?"

"His...?" The man looked over his shoulder, expression turning sour. "....maybe I saw a flash of it afore they put that thing over his head. And let me say twas no healthy sight for nobody much less a youngern like you."

"Can you tell me what he looked like?" the girl pressed, hugging her bundle tighter to her chest. "Young, old?"

The man shoved his hat down further over his ears and glanced nervously at his watch. The joints of his suit were darkened with sweat.

"Pretty old I'd wager," he finally relented. "Pushin sixty, sixty-five perraps. Ain't that right Galvin?"

The girl's shoulders visibly slumped.

"Alright," she breathed in a near-whisper, nodding slowly and backing away. Then, louder: "That would be all then, thank you. It was surely all I could think about, coming over here..."

He stood there in mute perplexity, a shadowed effigy wavering stark and stupendous in the weltering haze, watching on as she turned with a timid duck of her chin and began walking painstakingly back the way she came. A fly droning around his shining head ventured close to his nose and he swatted at it absently, still staring in helpless incomprehension after that frail and solitary silhouette which shrank further and further away along the burnt yellow plain. Eventually he shook his head as if in deep pity.

She went on, holding her bundle gingerly beneath one arm and walking briskly at first. Not once did she see it fit to turn back to see the work of evil she had left behind. The ground sloped gently downwards and as she was further along the path she felt the clay give away into marsh, the soil sinking soft and loamy beneath her thinshod soles. Another scraggly grove of trees was soon to loom before her, one she would have entered without a moment's thought had not a soft voice issued forth from up ahead:

"Careful there."

She stopped short in her tracks and looked up. It was a wonder she hadn't noticed him long before, as distinctive as this strange young man was within the desolate tract of wilderness upon which he was situated. He had been standing only a few paces off the path, his blond head bent at a shallow angle.

Now he espied her wordlessly over cupped hands as he lit up a smoke.

"Hello," she said, voice uncertain.

A familiar bloom of amber flame flared quivering from between cracks of his thinly cradled fingers. The young man's hands came down to reveal the freshlit cigarette perched at the corner of his pale lips.

"I'd be careful going up that way," he repeated calmly, nodding. "Lots of sinkholes off the path."

The girl's eyes trailed down to regard the inconspicuous splatters of mud which caked his trousers below the knees.

"Alright then," she said gravely. "Thank you. I'll try to keep an eye out for them, sir."

He nodded again.

"You came from over there?"

"Yes sir." She looked over her shoulder and hesitated. "There's... there's a man hung in a tree off the road. So I wouldn't advise you to go that way unless you can stomach it."

The young man's eyes, barely visible as they were from beneath his shaggy flaxen locks, swung sharply back over to her.

"You saw that?"

"Yes sir. I did."

He fell silent for a restless beat, blowing out a thin jet of smoke. Then he said:

"I'm very sorry you had to see it."

The girl thinned her lips and nervously began to toe the dirt.

"They'd covered up the face at least," she said. "But still, it was..."

"Yes. I know."

"And there were some people over there too. Taking pictures and everything."

"The press?"

"Yes sir." She looked up. "The press... That's what I figured. Because there was something very similar that happened on the island I'm from."

The young man listened, breathing in a lungful of smoke.

"We had some people who were burned out of their houses," the girl explained. "Had the ends of their hands and feet cut off and made to crawl the streets until they... well, until they couldn't anymore. They had people come in and put their pictures all over the papers and I still remember it to this day. It makes me sick to my stomach every time I think of it."

The young man shook his head.

"What was it that brought it all about? A robbery gone wrong? Or a riot?"

"Pirates."

"Oh."

She peered up at him closely. He wasn't looking at her anymore, instead shading his eyes against the sun's glare to study the footpath which disappeared up the hill from which she had come.

"Were you going to go up to see it?" she mused aloud.

"I was thinking about it," he said. "But maybe not."

"They probably wouldn't like it," she said. "They said they don't like to have bystanders about. And one was very angry already."

"Is that right?" The man dropped his hand, eyes nearly closed against the light. "Well, then maybe not," he repeated, more to himself. "There wouldn't be much of a use going up there if they weren't to let me near to begin with."

"I guess not," the girl said. "But then I suppose I don't see much use in having to see it at all. Not unless you had to."

He cracked a wry smile.

"You're right about that. But as for me... Well, yes. You could say it's a part of my responsibility. Keeping track of these sorts of things."

"Oh." She blinked. "Are you a reporter too then sir?"

The young man looked at her a little strangely.

"No," he finally said. "My job is a little different, but that's a separate matter. I'm trying to find someone right now."

She continued to look at him though now as though she had been endowed with a renewed sense of appreciation.

"You are?" she asked. "Well then I guess that makes two of us."

"Ah," the young man said. He was studying her very closely now.

"It's my older brother that I'm hunting," the girl explained. "He ran off a couple months ago and I need to get something back from him."

"A couple months is more than plenty enough time to go a long way."

"That's true. But there's this feeling I've got telling me he couldn't have gone so far. I just got to keep looking and I figure I can catch up to him." Just the simple act of uttering these words aloud seemed to reinvigorate something in her for she managed to crack a small hopeful smile, wholly pure in its sincerity. "What about you, sir? How long have you been looking?"

"Years, you could say."

"Years!" Her eyes flew open with childish bewilderment.

"Yes. Years." The man breathed out another stream of smoke. "I guess I'm the same way. It's been a long time, impossibly long, but I truly believe I'll find him some day. As long as I keep looking."

He smiled again, tentatively, and the girl smiled back.

"Well I got to get on," she said, adjusting her grip on her shawl.

The young man nodded.

"Mind you, watch out for those sinkholes if you ever go off that path."

"I will, thank you sir. Are you still planning on going up there?"

He glanced over his shoulder again, the cigarette propped between two crooked fingers as he ruminated.

"Yes," he said presently. "I think I will. They can try to run me off and if they're lucky enough to manage that, then so be it."

"Well." The girl smiled. "I do hope you manage to find whoever it is you're looking for."

"Same to you, Miss."

She nodded and went on, continuing her slow, ambling trek up the marshy path. The man started to turn away. On second thought he stopped to study her receding form with an air of uneasy skepticism, unmoving until she had long disappeared past a bend in the road. The tip of his cigarette glowed a deep rubscent hue as he slowly lowered his hand in thought, a thin train of smoke wreathing his head and diffusing strands of sunlight like disintegrating shards of a halo.

♚

"Hospital? What, you sick or som'n ma'am?" The clerk pushed up his glasses and squinted critically down at the bedraggled apparition poised behind the counter. Indeed, she was a curious sight to behold – a shirking, emaciated slip of a girl, standing before him like a mannequin staged in a window display with her posture pin-straight in its rigidity and her hands clasped tightly over her bundle. The bedraggled states of both the shawl and dress hanging limply from her frame easily betrayed the fact that she had little to no means by which to facilitate any purchases should she desire to make one. She was smiling albeit somewhat nervously, and he deduced in an instant that she surely must be a recent convalescent, so wraithlike was she in appearance. Her eyes, glittering dark and feverish against the bone-white of her skin, appeared unnaturally large upon her gaunt features, and the fraying swathes of her outer garment tumbled generously over the worn gray counter when she leaned forwards slightly to speak.

"Oh no." The girl shook her head patiently. "I just had something I wanted to ask them about."

"We ain't got nary hospitals here," the clerk answered, frowning. "Now they's a clinic thataway. But the doc, he's so backed up with calls he near ain't scarce ever in."

"Oh."

"I know they's one of em Navy outposts a couple islands yonder but they get taken elsewhere fer they business I reckon. Ye sure ye ain't hurt or sick nowhere ma'am?"

"No sir. I just figured...." She paused. "Well, I just figured that if there ever might be a place for a lost baby to get taken to, it would be to the hospital. Wouldn't it?"

"...a baby?"

"Yes sir. A baby."

The clerk squinted his eyes into thin puckers.

"Ma'am, are ye really tellin me ye lost yer own youngern?"

The girl nodded vigorously. He folded his arms and thought for a moment. Then he leaned in over the counter with deliberate skepticism.

"What's it look like?"

"I've never seen him," she answered promptly.

"Never seen it?"

"No sir. He was taken before I could get a good look. But I know the person who did it, and I was hoping maybe that a hospital might have taken his name down if he ever thought to drop it off."

The clerk considered this for another beat.

"Sweetie, he could have easily given em another name and nobody woulda been any the wiser."

"Maybe... But look; I got his picture here in case anyone's seen him!" Her face brightening, the girl dug into her shawl and doggedly presented the faded slip of paper. "He can change his name but surely he can't change his face."

He shook his head.

"I don't suppose that myself but still. They's still aplenty of witchery in this world bound to surprise us both. Anyways, how's ye's to know that he come over here and not elsewhere?"

"I do believe he came by this way."

"Based on what."

"Based on..." The girl trailed off and drew herself up short. She pressed her lips together into a straight line, now clearly in agitation. "I'm sorry, but that isn't any of your business, sir. I just wanted to know if there was a hospital or a clinic where I could go ask around for him."

Behind her, the little brass bell hanging over the entrance chimed as two more customers entered the shop. The clerk glanced at them over the girl's shoulder and quickly relented.

"Like I said. Doc's office is right acrost the street. Door's painted red; ye can't miss it. I doubt he's in but if he is do tell him I sent ye."

"Alright. Thank you for that, sir."

The clerk shook his head helplessly as the door swung shut behind her.

"...the Lord have mercy," he muttered beneath his breath.