Still Breathing

I had barely put my head down when Rowan returned with a clipboard.

I stared at it.

He stopped.

"Not a performance review."

"You understand why I asked."

"A revised agreement. Aldric wanted the terms written clearly this time."

He sat on the step beside me and let me read.

Meals. Accommodation. My pension preserved. Leave arranged in advance so the director could prepare the wards and staffing.

My duty was to guard the entrance in the manner appropriate to my abilities.

I liked that sentence.

It gave breathing its proper place.

"Any weekly reports?" I asked.

"Only if you have something to report."

"There's a bag of nuts beside the door."

Rowan glanced toward finance.

"Then perhaps we shouldn't put everything in writing."

I pressed my paw to the agreement.

He put it away and scratched my ears.

Across the lobby, Aldric watched us without approaching.

I nodded at him.

He nodded back.

We had managed eight hundred years without a welcome speech. There was no reason to ruin the arrangement now.

By lunchtime, the lower wards were unusually quiet.

By midafternoon, they were trying to find out whether quiet was sufficient.

An officer came upstairs carrying three messages.

"Cell Sixteen says the pipe is fixed."

"Good."

"The Gullet says the school wall passed inspection."

"I know."

"And the eighteenth floor wants to know if you require anything."

I considered that.

"They can stop making the officer come up here every ten minutes."

He smiled for the first time.

"I'll tell them."

The next morning, Felicity appeared at the entrance in her blue uniform.

She carried her phone, a notebook, and none of her former confidence.

"The observation supervisor sent me," she said. "I'm supposed to record feeding behavior on sixteen before breakfast."

I glanced at the stairs.

"Take the supervisor with you."

"She's meeting me at the gate."

"Good."

Felicity shifted from one foot to the other.

"Pip. About what I said—"

"I remember."

Her ears flattened.

Behind her, Seth looked carefully at the wall.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"You can start by listening to the people who work down there."

"I will."

I lowered my head to my paws.

She waited another moment, perhaps hoping for something that would make her feel better.

I was warm. I didn't intend to do extra work.

Her supervisor arrived and led her downstairs.

Half an hour later, the observation monitor at the security desk lit up.

Felicity stood behind reinforced glass, holding her notebook like a shield.

The Gullet lay on the other side.

"You may begin," her supervisor said.

Felicity swallowed.

"Today's subject is responding calmly to the feeding schedule."

The Gullet lifted his head.

"Did Pip tell you to say that?"

"No."

"Write down that I'm calm."

"I just did."

"Very calm."

Seth leaned over the monitor.

The Gullet looked toward the camera.

"And grateful for my accommodations."

Felicity wrote that too.

I closed my eyes before Seth's laughter could wake me properly.

On Friday, I went downstairs to check the pipe myself.

The first-floor hexlings pressed against their bars.

The smallest held out sunflower seeds in both hands.

"We saved these."

I took one.

"You could have eaten them."

"We wanted you to come back."

I looked at their faces.

They had been afraid of what the deeper wards would do. They had also, perhaps, missed their visitor.

Both could be true.

"Stay behind your door next time," I said.

"We will."

"And stop eating the shells."

The smallest lowered his hands.

Some habits took longer to correct than others.

At the restricted stairs, the officer opened the gate for me.

I stopped beside the railing.

"Everyone alive?"

The reply rose through the building.

"Alive!"

"Anybody want to leave?"

"No!"

A voice from seventeen added, "QuietWings did last week."

"I stretched!"

"Toward the maintenance shaft."

"You sent the fox a hundred castles!"

"Ninety-nine."

"HarborSerpent sent more."

"Leave me out of this. The bird sent rockets."

The argument filled the stairwell.

I let it continue long enough for the officer beside me to start smiling.

Then I cleared my throat.

Every voice stopped.

"Any fighting?"

"No."

"Any damage?"

"No."

"Any intention of making me come down there?"

A considerably louder answer.

"No!"

I picked up my clipboard.

One line was enough for the report.

All present. Nothing broken.

On the fifth floor, Ash had left a parcel outside his door.

Inside was a knitted hat, badly shaped but soft, with two openings for dog ears.

A note said, For the burnt hair.

I carried it upstairs.

Seth put it on immediately.

"How do I look?"

"Warm."

"That's something."

He went to thank Ash at the end of his shift.

That afternoon, Wren and Nora visited.

Nora brought a drawing of the playground. In the middle stood a white creature with ears, horns, and so many teeth that there was very little room for its smile.

"That's you," she said.

"I thought so."

"Mom helped with the paws."

Wren looked embarrassed.

"I'm not much of an artist."

"The paws are good," I said.

Nora sat beside my cushion and showed me where she had drawn the new wall.

No water. No broken roof. No empty village.

Just a place she could go back to.

I asked Rowan to put the drawing beside her photograph.

Then I ate Wren's soup from the flowered bowl.

After they left, the sun reached its best angle.

A new employee stopped near the entrance, his badge still covered in protective film.

He looked at me, then at Rowan.

"Why does the Bureau keep a rabbit by the door?"

Seth turned away too quickly.

Rowan didn't.

"She's our gatekeeper," he said. "If she tells you something, listen."

The young man nodded politely, although his expression suggested he still had questions.

He could ask them another day.

From the kitchen, Martha called, "Pip! Chicken's ready!"

I rolled onto my other side.

My friends were close. My bowl was full. Beneath us, eighteen floors of creatures were discovering how pleasant an uneventful afternoon could be.

They could call me a rabbit.

As long as lunch arrived on time, I didn't mind.