The sun beat down on the top of my head; it was a dry heat that seemed to want to cook what remained of his flesh beneath the heavy linen bandages. The swaying of the wagon finally stopped when the horses' hooves struck the stone pavement of a city that defied any logic of proportion he could remember. Ahead, the walls rose like artificial cliffs, granite blocks so immense they seemed to have been piled by weary gods, and not by those tiny beings swarming at their feet. He felt like an error of scale, thrown into a world without a manual. The noise of the metropolis was a constant attack: shouts in languages that sounded like birds, the metallic beating of hammers on anvils, and the unbearable smell of thousands of bodies crowded together in a boiling heat.

  The leader of the caravan, the gray-bearded man who had seen me crush a bandit's skull with his bare hands, approached with hesitant steps. He held out a leather pouch that clinked with a solid weight. When i took it, he felt the metal inside and realized, by the volume, that this was the price of the fear and salvation he had provided. Skewer, the little man who had adopted me as if he were a colossal guard dog, jumped from the wagon with a smile that showed the lack of some teeth—some that I suspected he lost fighting with pigs—he pulled me by the sleeve of the grimy rag; I descended, feeling the stone floor vibrate slightly with the jump; unfortunately, I drew looks of pure terror wherever I passed.

  — Tourism doesn't seem to be the strong point of this place.

  They walked first through the high districts, where the marble shone so much it hurt the eyes and the air smelled of flowers and pure wood incense. Watching the silk figures parading there; they seemed sculpted in luxury soap, with skins that never saw a day of work—a strong wind seemed capable of knocking them down. I felt like an oil stain on a white carpet, a creature of torn skin and exposed metal teeth hidden under old cloths. At every step, he had to hunch over so as not to hit the carved wooden eaves or the lanterns hanging from the balconies, feeling a growing agony for being in a place that seemed built for children, perceiving my discomfort, began to guide me away from the shine, toward the shadows leaking down the city slopes. The landscape changed as we descended; marble gave way to raw stone, then to rotten wood, and finally to dry mud and debris. The scent of flowers was replaced by the acrid smell of coal smoke, open sewers, and the metallic smell of blood from butcher shops; it was the periphery, the intestine of the metropolis, where the houses were tenements stacked in impossible ways, looking like deformed honeycombs about to collapse onto the mud of the streets.

  In this place, the people were different. They were emaciated creatures with paper skins and deep eyes that shone with the hunger he knew well. He saw children with soot-stained faces and men with poorly healed scars, all moving with a desperate slowness; as strange as it was, I felt a strange connection with that misery; I was also a remnant of something, a tool used and discarded that now only tried to find fuel to keep functioning. Hunger returned to gnaw at his insides, a void that seemed to consume his own organs to sustain the slow healing of his flesh. We stopped before a wooden counter that shone from so much grease accumulated over the years. The place was little more than a hole in the stone wall, where a cauldron bubbled with something dark and dense that exhaled a heavy vapor of spices and cheap meat. Skewer placed some coins on the wood and gestured, pointing to a bench that seemed about to break. I sat on a bench, hearing the protest of the wood under the weight, and observed the movement around me. I was an absolute stranger, an illiterate in a world that wrote in black and winding strokes that made no sense to my mind. While they waited, I looked at my hands wrapped in linen strips; beneath the cloths, I could feel the rhythmic pulse of his nerves and the heat of the flesh trying to close the gashes opened by the drone in Malta. We sat and enjoyed some food in cheap clay and wood bowls; when we finished, I left behind the small counter where the grease and the smell of cheap food still floated in the air.

  The little man who had adopted me as if I were a dangerous and valuable pet, walked by my side with an energy that he could not understand. The small guide gestured toward the darker streets; I knew we needed to find a place to close our eyes and rest. We walked and soon left the busiest part of the periphery, where the noise of voices and the sound of clashing metal were constant. The city was a mountain of white and gray stone that seemed to crush whoever was on the lower levels, with paths of dirt and rotting wooden planks that creaked. The air there was heavy, saturated with the smell of coal smoke, open sewers, and the metallic odor of too many people living in spaces that were too small. While crossing a particularly narrow alley, where the sunlight could barely penetrate the overlapping wooden structures, something happened. It was a movement so fast that even my sharpened senses took a second to understand. A small, dirty hand shot out from behind a pile of broken boxes. Before he could react, he felt the dry tug on his belt. The leather pouch, full of the coins that the caravan leader had given him as payment for the spilled blood, vanished.

  Time seemed to stop for a heartbeat. Then, a wave of heat rose through the chest, a pure, red, and blind rage; I hadn't survived all that just to be robbed by a shadow in a filthy hole; my legs exploded in motion, the heavy rubber and metal boots struck the ground, crushing stones and throwing mud everywhere as he launched himself after the thief. To be two meters tall hunting a rat in such small alleys.

  — Filthy place.

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  I turned corners with such force that the shoulder hit the wooden beams of the houses, making them groan and shed dust. The thief was small and incredibly agile, moving with the desperation of someone who knows every inch of that misery; I, on the other hand, saw only a blur running in front of me, a smudge of rags that took the only thing that guaranteed survival in that strange world. The chase was noisy and violent; I could not dodge the obstacles, I went through them. I kicked handcarts, knocked down clotheslines, and ignored the terrified screams of the people who threw themselves to the sides so as not to be run over by something that was a mass of shadows and two purple dots that passed like a gale; the sweat dripping inside his cloth mask, mixing with the dry blood, and the rage kept the lungs working even when the air seemed to be missing.

  Finally, he saw the thief enter a dead end, a narrow corridor surrounded by stone walls too high to be climbed and blocked at the back by an immense pile of organic waste and rotten furniture. I stopped at the entrance of the alley, blocking the only light that came from the main street; I was breathless, the sound of the breathing coming out like a hiss through the cloth. I took a step into the darkness of the alley, the boots making a dry sound against the debris. Under the shadow of the hood, the purple lights of the eyes shone like small lanterns in the dark. I was ready to deliver some blows to recover the bag, but, as I approached, the thief turned.

  It was a boy. A creature so small and thin that he seemed made only of bones covered by a pale and dirty skin. The boy threw himself on the ground, sinking into the mud and trash, and raised thin hands in a desperate gesture of defense. He began to scream, but it wasn't a cry of defiance; it was a high-pitched cry, loaded with a terror so deep that it seemed to rip the air from the child's lungs. He sobbed violently, tears carving clean paths in the soot-stained cheeks; I froze. All the rage disappeared in that instant, leaving only a corrosive cold in its place. I looked at the boy and felt a punch in the stomach that no enemy had ever managed to give. The boy was the perfect image of desolation. His arms were like dry twigs that seemed ready to break, and his ribs were visible under the coarse cloth tunic that barely covered his body. He was malnourished, with a swollen belly and the dry skin of someone who didn't know what a full meal was in a long time.

  But it was the eyes that paralyzed. The boy had deep purple eyes, with red tones that shone under the tears, a beautiful and mesmerizing color that seemed like a mistake on that face so punished by life. Those eyes were dilated by despair, looking at me not as a man, but as death itself that had come to get him. The boy continued to scream and huddle, trying to merge with the stones of the wall, the hands shaking so much that he could barely keep them raised. For that child, I was the monster of his nightmares, a creature come from the legends to punish him for trying not to die of hunger; an immense and heavy sadness fell, feeling disgust to look at myself. I stood motionless at the entrance of the alley, the shadow projecting itself like a stain of dread over the floor covered with mud and debris; I looked at the small creature huddled against the raw stone wall. The boy let out sharp and wet cries, a sound that seemed more like the chirping of a broken bird waiting for the final blow. His thin hands, little more than dirty twigs, were raised in a useless gesture of defense, shaking so much that the sound of his teeth chattering was audible even with the buzzing I had in my head.

  With a slow and deliberate movement, I began to crouch. As I descended, my knees made a dry snap—the sound that made the boy huddle even more, trying to merge with the cold stone and the scraps of trash. I extended one of the hands; when my fingers finally came into contact with the boy's shoulder, the vibration of the terror that emanated from the little one was transmitted directly to me—a physical reminder of how terrifying I must appear.

  I wrapped the boy in my arms, pulling him with a delicacy that I didn't even know I had. The boy hardened his body for a moment, the cry transforming into a stifled sob while he closed his eyes, expecting the pain. I stood up, balancing the almost non-existent mass of the boy against the chest. The weight was ridiculous, less than that of a military survival kit, a cruel evidence of the malnutrition that consumed that child. I left the alley with measured steps, feeling the deep purple eyes and red tones of the boy fixed on me, but even so, he was too afraid to turn his head. They were strange eyes, endowed with a beauty that seemed like a mistake in that setting of misery, overflowing with a despair that I rarely saw even in my years during the war. I walked through the dirt streets of the periphery, ignoring the smell of sewage and smoke that saturated the air. Upon finding Skewer near the wooden wagons, the little guide stopped gesturing immediately. His face, normally lit by a gap-toothed smile, became serious at the sight of the boy I brought, he began to speak quickly, pointing to the bag of coins he held in one of his hands; I just shook my head in a gesture towards the center of the city, indicating that we needed a decent place. The little mercenarian seemed to understand the urgency; he guided me through side paths to a raw stone inn, a building that, although simple, offered the isolation I needed to hide. After securing a room on the upper floor, away from the crude grumbles of the mercenaries who drank in the floor below. I placed the boy on a bed of animal skins, under the flickering light of a resin torch. The boy continued to look at him, the terror now mixed with an exhaustion that seemed to weigh on his thin eyelids. The room was small, with wooden walls joined by manual fittings and the persistent smell of dry straw and tallow. The first task was cleaning. Skewer brought a wooden tub full of water heated in the inn's fireplace. With a patience that I did not know I possessed, I began to wash the soot and mud from the boy's body. I saw the marks of hunger in every protruding bone, every mange scar and poorly healed wound. I tried to keep my own hands hidden under the cleaning cloths so as not to frighten the boy with the sight, but the boy, in his delirium of exhaustion, only observed the purple glow of my eyes in the middle of those rags. After the bath, I dressed him in clean linen cloaks that Skewer had managed to buy. The fabric was coarse, but on the body of that child, it felt like the silk of the porcelain figures that lived at the top of the mountain. Skewer brought a clay bowl with hot meat broth and pieces of rustic bread. The smell of the fat and spices flooded the room; I gave the bowl to the boy first. The boy ate with a desperate greed, hands shaking as he brought the broth to his lips; every movement gave me a little satisfaction to see the protein beginning to act on that little one; as he fed, the color began to return minimally to his cheeks, and the purple-red glow of his eyes became less feverish and returned to a red with touches of yellow. He finished eating; I pulled back one side of the skins of the bed and called him with my hand pointing to the bed; he followed walking hesitantly; he lay down; I covered him with the skins and watched leaning in the corner of the room while he fell asleep.