Hayley saw the bread fly from her basket, chased by a myriad of other groceries loosened by the collision with the strange man she didn't see.

  She was once again enrapt with her follies, tales she couldn't shake from her mind. A moment prior she was a deadly assassin who used her feminine wiles and brilliance to entrance then poison the enemies of her employer, of whom paid her very well. And she lived in a casino on the moon.

  On this world, she was not paid at all. Her father's money bought the bread that had landed squarely and safely on a bed of fresh horse manure.

  “My bad… Uhh… So-so sorry miss,” the strange man croaked. His voice sounded like he hadn't spoken aloud in a week, and his accent was as unplaceable as his face. Even if he was of the distant Mongol race, he may have been sick, he was too tall and his long arms hardly had any of the muscle she was used to seeing on a man.

  She took a step backwards and covered her face. He stared at her blankly, like he had never spoken to anyone before.

  In a flash, she remembered her manners. He wore a jacket with a collar, heavy wool, and had multiple pocket watch chains. Anyone who needs to master time in such a way was at least monied.

  She bowed so hard it may have been a kneel and pleaded, “I'm sorry sir, very sorry. Forgive this simple girl's insolence.”

  He stared, not the kind of stare she had received from the usual men she passed on the streets.

  Something paternal, like she was a lost pet or a caged animal.

  “No worries,” he said as he produced a coin purse. Without looking, he grabbed a handful of coins and held them out to her. “No worries, miss, I wasn't paying attention. Uh, as per your customs?”

  She thought his expressions queer but knew when a man handed out money, she wasn't in a position in life to say no.

  And this time she wouldn't be spelled with a nightshade potion for the trouble. She took the coins and saw a glint of gold among the silver.

  “Sir!” she called out, but upon looking up, the man had already darted kitty-corner across the road and down an alley.

  She looked at the sum of the coins. A few were bizarre foreign pieces, but of the ones she recognized, it was a sum more than twenty times what she paid for all the groceries.

  She deposited their weight in a coin pocket she had sown into her brazier. Despite her mother's wanting, it had grown tight again, and she knew this would attract the wrong kind of attention.

  Not that she had any relief from that kind of attention. For nearly a decade, men and women alike would notice her, for their own purposes or for scorn. Her slim frame carried the kind of lean muscle from her chores that seemed to draw preferences, and her layers upon layers of dresses and brazier couldn't hide the shapes her mother never grew but her father’s friends very much preferred. While her blue-green eyes and dirty blonde hair were not uncommon for a town founded by islemen, she seemed to attract a lot of genuine compliments from children.

  One of the silver pieces caught her eye. It felt off, a little light. She assumed it was Roman or Tzarist, although she knew hardly anything of those lands.

  The coin was embossed, and the raised words lined above the raised head said “Liberty,” the man looked isleman. She flipped it over. A bird with flared wings adorned the back like a Roman coin but she could read the words. Wherever the “United States of America" were, they were far away from the Columbic Federate.

  They must use a different calendar too, because the inscribed date of 1972 was more than sixty years ahead of her calendar.

  ***

  Hayley couldn't stop thinking of the man with the strange quarter dollars. He looked strange, vaguely Mongol, but his skin was more gray than yellow, and his eyes were a nearly amber shade of brown. He was taller than Hayley and lanky, but he made carrying what little meat was on his frame look like a terrible burden, so much so that he did not stand taller than most men.

  She imagined a scenario where they might meet again, and he could tell her of his travels. Perhaps she could even get him to propose, and they could elope in one of the strange locales. The Amerigo continent must have some nonfederal states, unified, using the anglicization of the explorer’s name. Sadly, she didn't know where that might be, the only geography and politics she knew came from the drunken rants of her father.

  She saw the sign: Perelli's Cobbler and Shoeing. Reality dropped its weight onto her shoulders like one of those cartoon anvils they show at the cinemas.

  Her family insisted, for many years, that she would marry the butcher's son. She watched as he grew, not up but out, and became a cruel and indecent man.

  Hayley got to the door and opened it quietly. If her father was working, he would scream and throw his tools at her. Sharp metal tools. Her otherwise comely face bore a few small scars to that effect.

  Instead, she found a few days’ work piled up, a sure sign he chose to chase drink over chasing work. This was made more precarious by a cobbler dying shop in a city full of autorobota producing cheap shoes by the dozens. Nova Yorkshire was a large city built on the delta of a mighty river on the eastern coast of what was a new world a few hundred years ago. The settlers from Euronasia were able to beat back the talking beasts who moved here via divine reckoning and make this place their home.

  Then they fought each other, and in the end, the federated Columbic rose and cast them out. She knew she was lucky to live in such a bountiful paradise, but today, staring at those shoes, she felt like even the Amerigo states might be preferable.

  “She’s getting too old!” her father hissed.

  Her mother's voice answered, “She’s barely done being a child! We—”

  “Be quiet!” her father roared, “She will be taken by the butcher’s son and we won’t have another hungry evening. She may already be too old for his appetite.”

  A pause, Hayley struggled to keep still and quiet. Her tears silently dripped off her cheeks and onto her dress and the groceries.

  “You will break the news, you women can speak of such things better.”

  Hayley tread very carefully, five or so paces out into the light mist, then slammed open the door.

  She knew she couldn't hide the tears and ran forward, tossing the groceries down. “Oh, mother, an awful man ran me off the sidewalk and paid me to leave, and I tried to save everything and I don't know what's lost and…”

  Her mother showed her more compassion than she was accustomed to, and embraced her for the first time in years. The father shot her a glance, filled with guilt and shame. He'd sell his only child for steak and pork.

  “Let us eat, we can thank Marysson and cast off the day as she cast off the first sin.”

  ***

  Hayley feigned a spell and took leave to her room, merely an alcove in the rafters she made her own. She was alone there mostly, she could hear her father's heavy footsteps and her mother's constant wheezing below, and could be heard just as easily. She couldn't be seen though, not by any of her father's peering customers or by the man himself, who once sought a grandson too soon from her and too drunk to complete the act.

  She imagined here a lot and made charcoal drawings when she could to cover the walls. Tonight, her hands found a different purpose.

  She imagined taking one of the dirigibles from the aeroport south of the bay all the way past Columbic City, past the Spainland Peninsula. She imagined summers like she had seen in the paintings, always warm, trees always green. No coats, smog, or snow to be found. She could find one of those Eldoradan temples lined with gold and live like a princess. She could find engineers, like in the cinema, and fire their S-boats into the space between and take over the moon for herself. Or even the distant world of Ares. She imagined great cities teeming with all kinds of people who flee the misery on Earth.

  He is there. His eyes shine gold as he steals an S-boat and flies it past Zeus, past Cronus, and even past Niberu, the invisible one who causes the others to wobble in their orbits.

  He takes her aboard and shows her the wondrous autorobota woven into the vessel's skin and bones, keeping her flying precisely along such vast distances and great speeds.

  Her outerwear hung at the door, precariously. Anyone who opened it would cause the entire mess to clatter to the floor. What little she had left gave way to her imagination.

  The man, his tired eyes wiped clean with a sparkle as he saw her in the S-diving gear. In her bed, she helped him loosen what he loosened in her fantasies.

  She felt for him what she wanted him to feel, softly as he kissed her.

  “And this is the fusion core,” he said, “where the deuterium and xenon are fused in the same nuclear fire as our Sun.”

  She had never heard this word before, something like new-clear, but this was a natural state for her. Some words had real roots, like xenocide, the xeno- is other and the -cide is murder, as she later discovered. She obviously read them and just forgot.

  The coats, dresses, and more clattered!

  She took up her undergarments and shouted, “I am sleeping away this spell, please, please, oh please, leave me!”

  Her mother answered, “You can take such tones to your grave, not leave them in my home! Your father and I have an announcement for you.”

  ***

  “I will not be the pigman’s daughter-in-law!” Hayley shouted across the table.

  She was already irritable from being interrupted above, more so by not being allowed to change back into her outerwear.

  Her fathers frozen stare never left her.

  “Now, now, he's a sweet boy. You hardly know him, how can you judge?” her mother said, her voice saccharin.

  “Boy? Boy?! He is nearly a decade my elder, a man in his own right except for his inability to do anything but be cruel and ugly.”

  Hayley meant in his behavior, but his porcine visage matched the description as well. Her parents seemed to take the latter.

  “It is decided. Would you have us thrown out into the cold? A rejection like this would kill the business.”

  “Business,” her father echoed from behind a red nose and blushed cheeks.

  “I will not. Ever. I'd rather die!” Hayley shouted, standing.

  Her father stood too, far more quickly than the amount of drink should have let him.

  “You! You will be quiet!” he bellowed, cracking his knuckles and stretching his wrists. He only ever made this motion before pounding a particularly troublesome shoe right, or pounding a particularly troublesome child right.

  Hayley knew, pound for pound, he would beat her, if he could still stand. He had decades of muscle on her, even if his back and joints protested. He wouldn't stop either, and her mother might just let him. The pair cast evil eyes on her, greed flashing green like their skin had electric lighting just underneath.

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  Hayley curled a fist. Maybe she would go out fighting. She had heard stories of women battered who found love from gentlemen. She saw stories of battered women left to die by constables.

  Then her imagination kicked in, too early. She shook her head, the idea stayed in her mind.

  “Fine. Will I be able to decide before the engagement?” she asked.

  The father flopped back into his chair, her mother pursed her lips. Her answer wasn't going to be good.

  “Engagement is done,” he rumbled, “You will be wed on the Sonsday.”

  Sonsday was only five days from then. The day all holy events are planned, the day the son of Mary, the concubine of God, was born.

  “Five rutting days?!”

  “That mouth!” her mother shouted at the swear Hayley let loose.

  “I will not have that in my house!” her father barked.

  Her plan was in the barest of infancy and nearly cut down. Five days to work a miracle.

  “And,” her father said, eating the last of the horse manure bread, “you will have to go back to the market and acquire the groceries.”

  “I just went.”

  “And you will go again!” he sneered now. Something was off.

  “We haven't the coin,” she argued.

  “We don't?" he said, a cruel smile on his lips. “We don't?" he asked again, looking at her mother.

  The woman's face split. Her mother made a habit of avoiding smiling, or baring any expression. Today, she wore the same evil grin.

  Her father threw her coin purse onto the table, and it made a heavy sound against the heavy wood.

  “No.”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “The awful man at least paid you for pushing you into the mud, is it?”

  “No, no, father it wasn't like that. He was good—”

  “He was good?!” Her father roared to life again, aggression stomping free of the mire of drink.

  “No, I’m saying—”

  “You will be quiet! Quiet! The shame you have brought to us ends. Your mother will draw the list, and the change will be counted.”

  The air hung heavily. She knew the best way out was to agree. But not just agree, he would know she was plotting. She had to resist, in some useless fashion.

  “May I be allowed to purchase my own flowers? The minimum?” she hissed, she was actually seething but she had to display it too.

  “Not more than a septus. We can't let you look like a beggar's child.”

  “Decem, may I?” she pleaded.

  Her mothers face softened, and she echoed his words, “She cannot look like a beggar's daughter on Sonsday, can she?”

  “Cannot,” he replied, the matter closed and her tiny slice of argument won. She could spend the tenth of a dollar for her bridal bouquet for a wedding she had no intention of attending.

  She had five days.

  ***

  She was scrutinized the entire day, needled and goaded by her mother as she did the chores around the house and the shop. Her father seemed invigorated, finishing a pair of heavy work boots that had languished for more than a week. This also meant more work, more chores. She had to clean the areas he worked, and also the messes and destruction he caused as he worked. Today it included a mead bottle thrown and smashed against a distant wall.

  At least he spared the window to the shop

  She was cast out in the late afternoon abruptly, the change counted carefully. The prices for groceries at the market went up last month and she saw she didn't have enough to get everything. The grocer had long since grown tired of her pleas.

  She marched down anyways. She filled the basket with all the things on the list, less a few items. She took the time to haggle the price of a few damaged tubers and tomatoes, and that let her fill her basket with a decem to spare.

  But she didn't spend it at the flower shop.

  She found one of the corner timekeepers and paid him for a candle, two slots. Her own candle, not a shared one.

  “Fancy miss, where do you want your picks?” His words were polite but his eyes were not.

  “Thirty mins and one and a half hours, sir.”

  “Sir? A monied lady like you need not call me sir, unless you plan to take me coin too.”

  “Too?” Her mouth ran faster than her mind. Her mind was barely here, it had already followed the man from yesterday down the alley.

  He held out a gold dollar, the symbol of the Columbic Federate stamped into the soft metal.

  “A lady such as yourself must be awful popular.”

  He nearly drooled the last word. Her candle did not have the picks installed and was not lit.

  “Maybe if I have spare time, but you must alight now.”

  She began to walk away, ignoring his squawk. Contract law was the law here, especially in such a civilized town. He had her coin, and the constable would back her. Probably. The danger came to women who ran out.

  His squawks ended, and she saw her candle held high on his cart. He waved gratuitously, his hand friendly but his eyes not.

  He waved as he motioned towards his bell. He would ring it for her in one half of an hour, then again at one hour and a half passed. By the second bell, she had just enough time to run home.

  ***

  She made it down the alley, but his footsteps had long since been washed away by the near constant mists that cloaked the river's mouth. Industry had blessed the city with this, although those who spent too long in it, or tried drinking it, would be poisoned.

  She peered into windows when she could, but this section of town was nearly abandoned. She was more likely to be peering into a broken window than a covered one.

  She had barely made it more than a few blocks before she noticed the brick didn't end, and the walls did not obey the normal gridlike patterns of cross streets.

  She wasn't allowed to go that far, out of the safety of the townshire she lived. She heard fear in her father’s voice when he talked of it, but she never imagined it was so close.

  A bottle clinked against stone, as if fallen from careless hands. The owner of those hands, and his friends, appeared from a doorway that had long lost its door.

  “Little miss! Little miss!” one of them called out.

  She marched on, hoping distance would end the encounter. A hand grabbed her by the upper arm and spun her around, nearly causing her to drop her basket.

  “You seem lost, little miss,” the man sneered.

  The others chuckled that ugly chuckle men with bad intentions share with each other.

  “I'm looking for a man who walked this alley yesterday,” she said, mustering as much courage and right to belong as she could.

  “Oh yes, very much so. And you found him, we were all down here yesterday, weren't not?”

  More chuckling.

  Another man slipped his hand under her other arm, and then some.

  “No, he was…” she paused. She saw him for mere seconds, could barely describe him. Her mind waivered. Did she even pick the right alley?

  “I’m sure he won't mind if we had you over for a spell, he's waited all day.”

  Hayley knew what came next.

  The basket was heavy, but unwieldy. She couldn't run with it, couldn't fight with it.

  Her mind fled, and she grasped at it to stay. Now wasn't a good time for follies.

  She thought of a brief image, a man laughing that laugh while smashing his cohort with a bottle of milk. The scene was like a piece of art, slow and intentional.

  She would have to act faster of course, but perhaps.

  “Please, don't," she said, partly to appeal to any of them still human, but partly to cover her kneeling.

  “We won't hurt you, little miss. Not much.”

  The sensory hell of her large dress paid off, no one saw her set down the basket on the quiet man's feet, nor remove the glass bottle of milk, grasped like a weapon.

  The lead lowman leaned in, drink heavy on his breath. “So why don’t you—”

  Hayley hit him in the temple as hard as she could. The glass bottle made a bone jarring tink against his skull and he toppled over.

  Her other hand grabbed as much dress as possible as she ran deeper into the alley.

  She heard shouts as the other lowmen tumbled over her groceries.

  She couldn't look back, she just ran. She heard their shouts and footfalls behind her. They got faster, louder, closer. Her hands no longer had the milk, and she didn't remember dropping it.

  Her mind tried to slip away again, but when she shook herself right the image stayed. The man from yesterday stood at the end of the alley, still blank faced, appearing to investigate the commotion.

  “Trolop! You'll be had till you split!” one of them shouted.

  He made a face, not at her, or them. Then, a flash, like he didn't understand the language.

  Then he dipped back inside the warehouse.

  He was much too far away.

  A hand caught her dress and tore her backwards. She fell onto the slick pebblestone road hard, knocking the wind out of her.

  Four lowmen stood over her. Each found a wrist or ankle to place a foot on, wordless cooperation that appeared very rehearsed.

  “Now fellas, who's got a coin to spare for the little miss.”

  “Doesn’t she owe us, for the beating and the toll.”

  “Toll! Toll! Toll!”

  They went around in circles, cheering and goading each other in this way, until one of their heads exploded.

  The crimson viscera flew away from her at blinding speed, although the remaining spurts from the man's trunk still splattered her arm and shoulder.

  “In son’s name?” Another head popped aggressively backwards, more blood sprayed Hayley and the corpse flopped to the pebblestone alley in an ungracious heap.

  She looked where the lowmen did. The man she came to see stood with a comically oversized chrome rifle, a tuft of blue smoke escaping its barrel.

  He did not speak, he simply primed the bizarre firearm for another shot.

  No sound came from the alley, from him or the weapon. A brief flash of light, a tuft of blue smoke, and a third missing head on a third limp corpse.

  “No wait! Listen, we—” The last lowman dropped.

  Hayley had been forced to spend time, a lot of it, with the butcher. For some reason, her father had the tailor size her for dresses with the butcher present. They usually sold the dress afterwards, but the men were always very attentive during the sizing.

  Hayley shook the flashback away, the man had already disappeared. Despite the bodies and blood, she ran toward him, knowing he would not shoot her.

  ***

  Hayley stared at the weapon, barely a pace away from her. It didn't have a barrel proper, but instead some kind of lens or aperture.

  “You can't be here,” he said.

  “Please, we met yesterday, I—”

  “Yesterday?” he echoed, his odd accent and beguiling features puzzled her. Puzzled about her and at her.

  “I ran into you at the market. My bread fell and you gave me coin.”

  He smiled, and said, “Oh yeah, bread-girl. You got a new bread, right? I gave you enough?”

  Hayley regarded him again. “Sir, you gave too much, and caused me some bit of grief.”

  “Oh, sorry. I, uh, well… Bread costs a few bucks where I'm from. I can't keep track…” he trailed off.

  “Buh-tcks,” she tried to make the sounds.

  “Dollars?” he said.

  “Bread is barely a septus. Three for a decem if days old.”

  His blank expression. He came back alive and repeated, “Listen you can't be here. When Sarge gets back, well, I have to finish before then and the window is closing so—”

  “I'll help. Let me show my worth and earn my coin.”

  “No, listen, you can't. Ugh!”

  Hayley made a face at the bizarre sound.

  “Listen, you just can't be here. Please go, okay?”

  Hayley opened her mouth to retort, but her mind held no words. Instead, what came out were sobs.

  During the sobs, she tried to explain the situation at home. She knew he was the gentleman from her follies that would save her. She tried to explain, but between the sobs and the vocabulary, he seemed to miss the point.

  “Hayley, you're a fine girl, what a good wife you will be—” he started.

  “No!” her voice suddenly carried anger. “You will listen!”

  Her father's tone came out and she felt like vomiting. But it did work, his face looked more attentive.

  “You will take me to Amerigo States, away from this place.”

  She stopped due to the horror on his face.

  “It's the… Columbine Federation here, right?”

  “Columbic Federate.”

  “So, um, why do you think I can take you to the You-Ess?”

  “No, I said Amerigo States.”

  “United States of America?” he corrected.

  “Yes, those!”

  He walked over to a small box cautiously, shiny for wood but definitely not metal. It had a small face full of tiny holes, like a grate or sieve.

  “Lee, afternoon, two two dash oh four mark seven five. Cross contamination detected in a local, my fault during a chance encounter. Yesterday, by her recall. About two weeks for me. Named Hayley. Late teens, dirty blonde, green eyes, medium build, minor facial scaring. Claims to seek asylum in You-Ess for marital rape. Will hold, over.”

  The box clicked.

  Hayley smiled. It sounded a lot like she wasn't going to be the pigman's daughter-in-law anymore.