Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey by Forrest Aguirre

table where Pomp sat staring into the crystal ball, transfixed.
    “Your little friend has seen something. What is it, fey one?” she tapped Pomp on the back.
    Pomp startled, going invisible, then flitting about the room, knocking into the little lanterns that hung from the ceiling.
    “Von Helmutter! He’s here!” Pomp yelled.
    “No, not yet, dear. But if you saw him here, he soon will be.”
    “He is here!”
    “He is not here yet.”
    “What? What is ‘yet?’” Pomp asked.
    Vadoma looked to Heraclix for help, but the golem merely shrugged.
    “Look around, little one,” Vadoma said. “Do you see Von Helmutter here?”
    “No. Is he invisible?”
    “No, dear, he is not invisible.”
    “Then he is not here,” Pomp’s voice relaxed considerably.
    “When is he coming, Pomp?” Vadoma asked, careful to speak gently, so as not to startle the fairy.
    “It is morning when he is here,” Pomp said.
    “Then we must hurry. They will look for you here, but they will not find you. When they do not find you, they will leave. They always do.”
    The sun had crested the city’s outer wall of buildings but had not yet penetrated down to the streets when Heraclix and Pomp, on the incomplete rooftops of the gypsy quarter, heard the clomp and clank of Von Helmutter’s men as they tried to weave through the wooden maze below. The length of the men’s bayoneted muskets made the going difficult, but they dare not leave their weapons behind. They were in the midst of enemy territory, according to what Vadoma had told Heraclix and Pomp the night before.
    The pair watched as the soldier’s torches bounced along, bungling their way through the outer rings of the quarter.
    “Torches,” Heraclix said.
    Pomp looked down over the edge of the rooftop.
    “Still dark down there.” She giggled, stretching her arms and wings out to soak up the rising sun, which was roughly parallel to their location, a good forty feet up.
    “But the sun will show through soon. They have light enough to see.” Heraclix said. “And why not lanterns . . . ?”
    He bolted upright.
    “Pomp! We’re endangering Vadoma and everyone here! We must leave at once!”
    Pomp saw the wisdom in this. She liked the old woman and didn’t want her to be hurt.
    “I will bring the soldiers with us!” she said, and flew off before Heraclix could finish saying “Pomp, no!”
    Pomp doesn’t think the soldiers need their torches. It’s morning time! She buzzes in, bites fingers, takes one torch, then another, douses them in a bucket of water.
    Soldiers shout, and so do the Romani. It’s very confusing, but Pomp is able to take away and squelch two more torches before the shooting starts. The soldiers don’t aim, they just shoot, and the Romani flee or fall. One, two, three of them collapse, two men and a boy-child. Another shot, a woman falls, her husband rushes at the soldiers, wielding a knife, but he is cut down by bayonets.
    Von Helmutter notes the confusion, smiles, orders “throw torches to flush them out!” and the air is full of a dozen smoking brands.
    Pomp can only put out a couple of them. The others set fire to the timbers, flames licking up the posts like dragon tongues.
    Screaming residents throw buckets of water at the flames, some succeed at quelling them, some do not. It is not enough to stop the fires from spreading, meeting, engulfing.
    Pomp pests a soldier just as a flaming section of building comes crashing down with a yell. A familiar yell.
    But buildings do not have voices , she thinks.
    Heraclix landed, quite awkwardly, on a large piece of roof that had become a piece of the floor. Great jets of smoke shot out from underneath, extinguishing some flames, fanning others.
    Heraclix rose, then rushed a group of soldiers, screaming “It’s me you want. Come and get me!”
    The soldiers agreed and complied.
    He barreled through them, knocking them aside, but gingerly, carefully, then continued past, away from the center of the Gypsy