Eventually, they did find something familiar, or Egret did, at least.

They had traveled up a road wider than most in the Maze. Handsome though it promising. A wide road in a land of narrow lanes had to lead somewhere. Instead, the road soon tapered until it became like all the rest. They kept on it, hoping it would broaden again, but it never did. Every road has an end and this one ended at a darkened house, old like Boss's, built before the Maze grew up around it. Unlike Boss's stately manner, this house's better days were far behind it. Broken windows covered by rough planks of wood, an unkempt garden with a graveyard for ceramic tiles fallen from the house's roof, a rotting fence covered by neon graffiti visible even in the dim light.

"Oh, Handsome!" Egret's eyes grew wide. She gripped the gate. "Look at it. It's beautiful, just like it was in my dream!"

"Your dream?" Handsome's gaze traveled from his sister back to the house. Throat closing, he staggered backwards.

The abandoned house was gone. Or rather, it had become something entirely different. Multicolored lights strung up between the fence and the house's porch illuminated the sweetest house Handsome had ever seen. Sweet, literally. The walls were comprised of what appeared to be hard-crusted bread or a biscuit of some sort. Swirling trails of icing danced up the corners of the home, outlining its walls and windows along with the roof. Peppermint pinwheels dotted the pathway, which the children soon found themselves walking upon. Handsome left his better judgement, the one that said this could not possibly be happening, out on the street.

"The doorknob is a sugar plum!" Egret poked at it gently when they'd reached the threshold.

Handsome peered into a pretzel-framed window. The inside of the house was hidden behind a striped curtain. It should have occurred to him to question the fact that Egret knew what a sugar plum was. She'd certainly never eaten one. Handsome was used to grasping the tastes of foods and other things he'd never actually had—it was part of his power, and a cruel part at that. Egret shouldn't know such things. Nevertheless, he couldn't make himself care. He was in his sister's dream, but what did that matter. It was the tail end of a ripe mango day after all. This must be a ripe mango house.

With hope in his heart, Handsome raised his fist and knocked on the bread door. It cracked open. An old woman with glassy eyes peeked out at them.

"Hello, I'm Han—"

The door flew wide open. "Come in, come in, children. I'm so glad you've finally arrived."

Handsome pushed Egret's hand down just as she was about to take a finger to the frosting-coated doorway. The woman observed them, her pale weathered lips kept in a straight line that could have indicated either annoyance or amusement.

"How did you know we would come here?" Handsome had just enough awareness left to wonder.

She guided them inside and closed the door. They stood in a darkened alcove that quickly gave way to a candlelit kitchen. "I knew because I dreamed of you. That's what we dream-makers do, don't we, Egret." She pointed to a wooden bench set between a table and a wall of shelves. Each shelf was lined with jars of assorted sizes, and each jar contained a different candy—gumballs, gummy bears, chocolate covered caramels.

The children sat. This woman knew what they were—what Egret was. A dream-maker. Neither Handsome nor Egret had had a label to give the emerging skills Egret was beginning to display. All Handsome's efforts had gone into hiding her ability from his parents, not exploring what it was. But now they'd found another like Egret.

"I'm called Rika, by the way. Are you hungry?" Rika placed two bowls of steaming soup in front of them. "Eat up and you can choose a few sweets." She pointed to the jars behind them.

That was all they needed to hear. Both children gobbled down the soup and then turned to the wall of candy. Several bonbons later, Handsome remembered his manners. "Rika, can we do something in exchange for the food we've eaten? We can clean up, sweep, do dishes..." His voice trailed off as Rika came to gaze down at him.

"You'll do something. Not to worry about that, child." To Handsome's surprise, she grasped his throat with cold, nobly fingers. Pointy brown fingernails pressed into tender flesh. "Open your mouth."

Not knowing quite what was happening, Handsome complied.

Rika nodded slowly. "You're a rare one, but your abilities are ungroomed. I can make you powerful."

Pinned as he was between Rika's hand and the wall, Handsome should have felt trapped. Instead, he tasted the dawn of a new day, another ripe mango day.

Hope.

He thought about the last few days, how powerless he'd been. Rika may be strange, but she'd fed them and now she was offering him the power he'd been without. "I want to be powerful."

She laughed, a long, belly squeezing laugh. Egret smiled and took Handsome's hand, but her grasp was tight, her palm sweaty.

"Come, children." Rika gestured for them to follow her out of the kitchen. "I'll show you where you'll sleep."

#

When Handsome woke the next morning, he found a breakfast tray laid out next to his bed. Croissants warm from the oven, fresh strawberries, honey, hot tea. Before he ate any of it, he made sure the day was still as he'd tasted it before going to bed in the wee hours of the morning. He smiled when mango settled upon his tongue and then got to work obliterating that taste with his breakfast.

Egret was standing by their hostess's side helping the woman in the kitchen by the time Handsome emerged from his room, empty tray in hand. "Put it down on the table," Egret told him. "I'll wash it for you."

Handsome narrowed his eyes. Egret wasn't one to do chores willingly. But of course, she must be trying to repay Rika's kindness. Rika, who had this incredible house, who was so selfless and loving and motherly.

Mother. Handsome tossed the word around in his mind. "Egret, shouldn't we..." They should go back home, home to their real life, to their real mother and father. That's what they'd been trying to do, he was pretty sure. "We should..."

Again, the words slid away. The glass from the wall of candies glistened as it caught sunlight through the window above Rika's sink.

"We should what, Handsome?" Egret dried a dish and placed it into a cabinet.

Handsome paused. "We should ask what Rika would like us to do today."

Now Rika turned to him. "Today we teach you to be powerful, dear."

#

There wasn't so much teaching as there was Rika fussing around Handsome, chanting this and that. She had Handsome lie on her couch and then waved musky sticks of incense over his body. "You think you've embraced your gift, Day-Taster, but you haven't even begun. We need to open you up."

Handsome didn't see how incense and chanting was going to achieve that, but he let it go, laying there for hours while she did her thing. Egret hovered in the background, sweeping cobwebs off the ceiling. When the lunch hour came, she brought them both cucumber sandwiches cut into the shape of hearts.

The next day went very much the same, and the day after that. Soon, Handsome forgot anything existed for him to concern himself with outside of Rika's strange candy house. Egret never once asked for Mama. She dutifully cleaned and cooked for Rika while Handsome received his treatments, which is how he thought of them.

Before they'd been there two weeks, the treatments began to pay off. Mango days became much more nuanced. What he'd always thought of as one flavor days became layered. He could tell instinctively that a sour milk day had bits of fresh milk, chocolate milk, curdled milk, cheese. A day could go in a number of directions if he paid close enough attention to it. He could tell when precisely on a bad day things would actually go bad. It was no longer a matter of waiting; he knew now.

Rika revealed this all to him. The days were never actually sour milk days, they were all mangos mixed with broccoli days inside of Rika's house. Sour milk came to him as a concept, as potential. It wasn't just the day he was tasting: he could taste the flow of time.

One night, following a long afternoon of treatment, Handsome lay in bed, exhaustion consuming him. Amazing that he could be so tired even though all he did each day was lay around and eat. Egret, on the way to her own room, knocked on his door and then slid inside, closing it behind her. "Handsome, are you awake?"

She came over and crawled into bed, nestling up next to him. It reminded him of something. Hard concrete floors, adults with tempers, a tiny girl whose big brother protected her from the world.

"Handsome," she whispered. "This is a bad place, like Boss's, like Lev's. I know you can't tell, but I can. You can taste things, but I can see them. You have to listen to me."

A child will come up with the most unbelievable tales, Handsome thought as his sister spoke. In Egret's unbelievable tale, Handsome was being held captive by a dark force, a force Rika wielded. It had begun the night they'd arrived. All had seemed perfect, but perfect wasn't something that really existed. Rika's house was no exception. Egret had gone along with Rika, hoping, and in fact, believing Rika wanted to help them. She'd been under Rika's power as well, a power that had transformed Egret into a servant.

"Do you really think I want to cook, Handsome? I've never cooked before coming here and yet I know how. I can bake bread, I can pluck a chicken. I don't want to pluck chickens!"

Handsome, meanwhile, was being transformed into something Egret was still trying to wrap her head around.

"You're being a little dramatic, don't you think? She's just training me to use my ability better. And it's working!"

His sister sighed. "I'm going to tell you what I saw, even if you won't believe me. I spied on Rika last night."

"You didn't! Egret, that's no way to repay her kindness."

"It was accidental spying. And anyway, just listen!"

Egret claimed the accidental spying occurred while sweeping the hallway outside of Rika's room. She noticed the door cracked open.

Inside, Rika stood facing the blank wall opposite her bed. If Egret hadn't seen it with her own eyes, she doubted she would have believed it, but it happened, she swore it had. The wall transformed into a swirling, gritty mass, like the surface of a cesspool during a hurricane. It was a wall, just a wall, but it was more than that too. Egret didn't have a word for it. All she knew was that Rika had stretched out her hand and reached inside. Inside! A low keen could be heard from within the wall. Egret strained to hear it. It was... human.

The wailing died as Rika shook her arm. Gradually, she pulled it from the wall, and with it came a small globe of silvery light. As soon as she was free of the wall, the swirling ceased. The wall became no more than a wall again, and the silvery light spun and spread, covering Rika like an umbrella. Rika raised her head to it, her face placid. She opened her mouth and the light poured in. A moment later, she became again just an old woman standing in her bedroom. Only not quite so old. Egret noticed more shine to her hair, the wrinkles in her lips smoothed out. She wasn't young, far from it, but she had gained a youthfulness, a vitality.

What just happened? Egret had no idea. But one thing she knew for certain was that she should have moved away from Rika's open doorway sooner.

"You're frightened by what you just saw but you're curious as well."

Egret jumped as Rika's earthy voice caressed her ears.

"There's no reason for you to be afraid, little one. Our kind have a creed we live by. We will not harm each other and if our paths happen to cross, which is rare, we help however we can. That's what I'm doing for you. I'm helping you. Perhaps you didn't realize you needed it."

Egret had needed help, but not this kind, or at least, she didn't think so. She wasn't sure what the woman expected from her. "Me? I thought you were helping my brother."

Rika howled with laughter. "Your brother has a powerful gift. And that is good. The more power he has, the more power we will be given when the time comes."

Egret shook her head, not understanding.

Rika took her by the shoulders. Her touch was motherly. Without meaning to, Egret melted into it. Nothing Rika said could make her feel anything but safe. "Your brother is our food, Rika. When he is properly cooked, we're going to eat him."

Author's Note: That's not at all a terrifying statement to leave off with, is it? 

The next post will also be the story's conclusion, so as you can imagine, the situation is escalating rapidly! 

Thank you for reading! Stay tuned to find out Handsome and Egret's fate...