, she thought as the dogs barked in the distance. They were getting close, the pursuers, and if she was caught, then that was it.

  Not only would the night-post lose its current shipment. It would lose its soul. She knew what she meant to these people, and she couldn’t afford to be caught. Not like this.

  If they caught her, they’d whip her. They’d torture her until she gave up names, and then they’d lie about it to everyone and say that she was eager to save her own skin. She’d try to hold out, but she knew she wouldn’t. She’d seen what torture did to a man, and a woman. The aftermath. The shame of being broken.

  She’d try to hold out, but she’d tell them every name she knew before the end.

  “We’re almost there,” she promised the parcels. It was easier to think of them that way, sometimes, rather than by their names. It was safer, too. If she knew too much of their stories, too much of their history, then that could be used against them.

  No, better that she was just a lantern in the dark and a voice guiding them to their new home.

  “The dogs are almost—“

  “The dogs can’t follow us where we’re going,” as she caught sight of the light of an open door. She’d thought it a will-o’-the-wisp the first time she’d seen it, but like then she’d been chased by dogs and hadn’t been too worried about getting lost. She’d needed to get away, and when the door had slammed shut behind her—

  “There!” she shouted. “We just have to get to that door and we’ll be safe. The dogs and their handlers won’t be able to track us in there.”

  Her calm and steady voice reassured the parcels, and the mother with her babe and the older children began to run with renewed vigor.

  The babe began to cry as her mother sprinted with the girl over her shoulder, and the children floundered, but the lamplighter of the night-post picked the younger boy up by his shoulder and set him on his feet.

  “Run, you can make it, it’s just a bit further,” she encouraged, even as she looked over her shoulder to see how much of a lead they had on their pursuers.

  Not much.

  Enough.

  The last of the children slipped through the door and the door slammed shut behind them.

  Safety.

  The man behind the bar smiled at his new customers. “Welcome to my Inn. Don’t worry. You’re under my protection while you’re under my roof, and that means things you might not be able to understand. Safety is such a nebulous concept when you have so little of it, but I never let my customers leave my doors into danger.

  He looked at the lamplighter. “Not unless they choose to do so, at least.”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve been good to the night-post, good sir, and I beg your protection once again,” she said.

  “How many times does this make? Twelve, I think.”

  She swallowed. She’d only been here seven times.

  “No, I’m remembering backwards again. Nevermind. It’s all the same. You and your parcels are wet and dirty and tired and cold and hungry, and I wouldn’t be much of a host if I didn’t set those things aright. But the first of the choices you have to make this night is which order you want me to go about solving them.”

  “And the payment?” the lamplighter asked nervously.

  “The same as always,” the Innkeeper said. “Your Story. That’s all I need from you, and the contract for the safety of your parcels is complete. I’ll open the door to the North in the morning, and they’ll be free to contact your affiliates there to get them set up with their new lives.”

  He paused.

  “But I need Story from of you, you understand? My magic doesn’t work without it.”

  “Ain’t no such thing as magic,” the mother argued.

  The Innkeeper smiled, and he held out a hand to conjure a platter with a roasted chicken on it.

  “I beg to differ.”

  ***

  “Who is he?” the boy whispered to his sister in the bath. The big tub could hold several adults, and the water was always hot, but it was just them at the moment. Their baby sister and their mother had already taken their turn while the siblings were eating. “Do you think he’s one of the old ones? The ones that we’re not supposed to talk about?”

  “I don’t know,” the older girl said, washing his hair. “I don’t know what this place is, I wouldn’t have believed it was magic if I hadn’t tasted that chicken. It’s like what they serve in the big house, I think.”

  “We’re never going back, are we?”

  “No, I don’t think we are.”

  “Promise?”

  The girl kept scrubbing his short hair. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep Antony. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah I wouldn’t have believed you if you said yes. Thanks for not treating me like I’m Suzie. You’d lie to Suzie, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a heartbeat,” his older sister agreed. “Now come on, I washed your hair, you do mine.”

  “Right,” he agreed, and they swapped roles. “Do you think, if I asked, the magic man would teach me magic, Becka?”

  “I don’t know,” his sister answered.

  “I’m going to ask him.”

  “I think he’s too important to have a little brat like you following him.”

  “I just want to know magic. He doesn’t have to teach me that much,” Antony argued.

  “Well, if he says no don’t bother him. I think he’s someone important. Maybe even one of the old ones in the stories that the people from the old country talk about. The ones they get whipped for teaching us little ones.”

  “You think?”

  “He does magic, doesn’t he?” she asked.

  Antony washed his sister’s hair and got lost in daydreams of what it would be like to have magic of his own.

  ***

  Stolen story; please report.

  “So,” Yansa said when she returned to the common room of the inn. She had washed, she had changed and fed her youngest daughter, and she was just barely starting to believe the lamplighter’s promise that they were safe here. “Your magic, it has a cost. Take that cost from me. Leave my kids out of it. I’ll pay for all four of us.”

  “It’s not like that, Yansa,” the Innkeeper said gently. “It’s not a terrible price. I’m not some devil you must sell your soul to. I really just need you to tell me your Story to work my magic.”

  “And what happens to us when we give it up?” Yansa asked suspiciously. “You’re one of the Old Ones, and you work the Old Magic. Don’t try to deny it. You don’t look like us but maybe that’s because you’re the Old Ones from these lands instead. There’s always more. There’s always something hidden. Tell me what it is, so that I can shield my children from it.”

  The Innkeeper was silent for a moment. “You truly want to know what I get out of helping you?” he asked. “Time. Every Story I hear, every customer who tells me their tale, gives me a little bit more time. I exist for a little bit longer before fading into the Nothing once more. You think I’m doing you a favor by bringing you to safety? You’re doing me a favor as well. It’s hard to believe, Yansa, but you have something I desperately need, and it’s not something that I can take by force. Only stories freely given can sustain me.”

  He shrugged and began cleaning a mug that was already clean. “Take as much time as you want. Talk with the Lamplighter. Talk with your children. Chances are, you might pay your tab without even realizing it. Stories are funny, they have a way of telling themselves.”

  “What about my babe?” Yansa demanded. “She can’t even walk yet, how can she—“

  “She’s already paid in full,” the Innkeeper said. “With dreams of how much she loves her momma, though she can’t say the words yet.”

  Yansa collapsed into a chair behind her. Had it always been behind her, or was it just there when she realized it was too late to turn back and she needed to sit down.

  “Okay,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me,” the Innkeeper said, his eyes taking on a look of supernatural interest. “What is your very first memory?”

  ***

  “My parents were born on the other side of the great ocean. I don’t know much about what life was like over there, except for the stories that my aunts and uncles told me growing up. It doesn’t sound like it was a very good place to live, to be honest, since Our People were hunted down and put in shackles for the men in the boats.

  “They’re not really my aunts and uncles, you understand. We were just all lumped together in the new world because we spoke the same language. I don’t know that any of my actual family from the other side was able to keep together when we got to this land.

  “My first memory, since you asked, was my father singing a song in the language of Our People. I don’t remember the words, but I remember the melody, and I put new words to it when I turned it into a lullaby for my own children.

  “For my first twelve years, things weren’t too bad. Father and mother both worked in the fields, and the aunties tended us children while they were busy. I never really thought anything too unkind about the people in the big house because after all, they did give us a place to live and they fed us, so I thought everything was okay.

  “I got married when I turned fifteen. It wasn’t my idea, and my husband was ten years older than me, but he was a nice man. He was kind to me, and he was a good father. We had Beckah first, and then Antony. And when I was pregnant with this little one, the old man of the big house died.

  “His son inherited everything. And that’s when everything turned terrible.”

  She sniffled. “Do I have to talk about the terrible things they did?”

  “You don’t. I’ve heard it all before,” the Innkeeper said. “What happened to your husband? I’m assuming he’d be with you if he had a choice.”

  “Yes, he would be,” Yansa agreed. “But the Old Man’s Son sold him two weeks ago. The Lamplighter—she says that she’d going to try to reunite us, up north. But that we had to leave tonight. That Malcolm can follow later, because it’s easier to smuggle men than women and children. And that the Old Man’s Son was planning on selling my family and splitting us up, even the little one here, so I had to go or it would be too late. You understand, don’t you?”

  “I do,” the Innkeeper said. “I understand enough to know that you’ve been through a terrible ordeal, and it will never be over. But for now, you can rest. You’ve paid your tab in full.”

  “And my children?”

  “They’ve fallen asleep,” the Innkeeper said. “And I’ll talk with them in the morning. Before setting you on the path to freedom.”

  Yansa sniffled. “I don’t know how to thank you. If you keep your word—“

  “I’m only doing what’s right,” the Innkeeper said, cleaning his mug calmly. “Get some rest, Yansa. You’ve had a terrible night. Tomorrow won’t be so bad.”

  Yansa nodded, and she went to the bedroom where her children were sleeping. She joined them in the bed, and her son turned and wrapped his arms around her without waking up.

  For just a moment, she allowed herself to be perfectly happy.

  And then the worries drifted in as she started to drift off to sleep.

  ***

  Antony woke in the morning feeling safe and warm and happy. In a bit of a daze, he followed his nose through the door into the big room, not remembering where he was but only thinking that his mother must have gotten hold of some of the eggs from the big house and what smelled like bacon. Bacon was a rare treat and he was—

  “Antony!” his mother scolded. “Put some pants on!”

  Antony jerked fully awake and looked down. Blushing, he realized that he wasn’t in their little cottage and he couldn’t just—

  He ran back into the bedroom to dress. He didn’t bother with shoes and socks, but he put on the britches and shirt that were next to the bed. They weren’t the britches and shirt he’d arrived in the Inn with, but the ones that the Innkeeper had set next to the door when he’d been in the bath with his sister. They were just his size.

  Once he was dressed, he returned to the common room, still blushing, and sat down. The Magic Man was there in a moment.

  “Would you like eggs and bacon? Or perhaps something a little different, this morning?” the Innkeeper asked.

  “Different like what?”

  “Different like from another world,” the Innkeeper offered.

  Antony’s eyes lit up. “Like for real?”

  “I almost never lie,” the Innkeeper said, and he held out a hand. In a moment, a bowl filled with colorful little pebbles coalesced into being. He set the bowl in front of Antony, then manifested a jug of milk in his other. He poured the milk on the pebbles and gave the boy a spoon.

  “They call it ‘fruity pebbles,’” the Innkeeper said. “Children your age love it. But I can fry up some eggs and bacon if you prefer.”

  Antony tried the cereal, and his eyes lit up. So sweet!

  He ate, and he ate, and he ate, and the bowl never got empty. Not until he was almost full and suddenly all that was left was the sweetened milk, which the Innkeeper suggested he drink. He did, and afterward he leaned back and burped.

  “Will you teach me how to do magic?” the boy asked the Innkeeper.

  The Innkeeper made a sad face at him. “I’m afraid that my magic, the kind of magic that makes me special and powerful and able to help people like your family, it’s not easy to acquire. You would have to give up your body and become something else entirely, Antony. It’s a…difficult thing to do. I was made like this, I was never anything Other than what I am. But there are those who were like you who chose to become like me, and they are … darker than I am. I do not think you would like that very much.”

  “Is that the only kind of magic there is?” Antony asked.

  “No,” the Innkeeper said. He pulled out a card and handed it to the boy, looking conspiratorially at the boy’s mother. “If you see this sign on a door, then someone inside the house knows magic. Knock twice and say that you’ve eaten at the Inn that trades not in coin, and perhaps they’ll teach you something.”

  “The Inn that trades not in coin,” the boy repeated, committing the words and the symbol to memory.

  “And then, the next time you visit in fifty years,” the Innkeeper said, “You tell me all about your adventures, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay!” the boy agreed.

  “Speaking of adventures, I bet you get up to all sorts of mischief with the other boys your age. Would you like to share some of those stories with me? I’d love to hear them.”

  Antony looked towards his mother, who was busy feeding his little sister, then leaned forward and began talking in a hushed tone. It wasn’t some big secret, she already knew it. She’d whupped his butt good and true for it. But she didn’t need to hear the reminder of the time he’d tried to steal a chicken from the big house, only to get caught by one of the aunties and have to sneak it back into the coop before anyone noticed.

  The Innkeeper waited until he’d finished the tale, then leaned back and laughed a hearty laugh, the kind that Antony was hoping to hear when he started the story.

  He felt good. He felt safe. His family was here, except for Pa, but the Lamplighter said that she’d—

  “Where’s the Lamplighter?” he asked.

  “She left last night,” the Innkeeper said. “Don’t worry. You’re safe. When you open the door, the next stop on the Night-Post will see you to your new home.”

  “Oh,” Antony said. And that was good enough for him. He was only eight years old, after all.

  ***

  Once Beckah had told her story—a long and winding tale over a breakfast of grits about how her grandmother had taught her to braid hair while telling tales of the other side of the great ocean—the small family of four, missing their father but clinging tighter to the core for his absence, walked through the inn’s door into a basement far, far away from the forest where they’d entered the Inn.

  The Door slammed shut behind them, causing Antony to jump in fright, and a moment later a woman in a white and black dress came down to investigate.

  “The Lamplighter sent us,” were the first words out of Yansa’s mouth.

  “Of course she did. We weren’t expecting you so soon, but come upstairs. We’ve so much to discuss. I won’t say things are going to be perfect, but you needn’t worry about whippings and beatings and the other terrible things I’ve heard of from the south. Nothing’s ever perfect, but all we can do is strive to be better, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Yansa agreed. “That’s all we can do.”