We reached a small court where two buildings leaned toward each other like tired men sharing a secret. Laundry lines crossed above, dripping last night's rain onto the stones below. A door with scuffed blue paint stood half-ajar. Jareth pushed it with his foot, and it swung inward, complaining softly.
"Inside," he said.
I stepped through. The room smelled of old wood, iron, and a faint sweetness that clung to the rafters—dried apples perhaps, or yesterday's tea. A narrow table sat under a window. Two chairs, both mended more than once. On a shelf, a clay cup with a crack that had been stitched with metal. Everything here had lost a fight at least once and kept going.
Jareth shut the door and set a small iron kettle on a brazier. He lit it with a practiced flick, then leaned his hip against the table and studied me as if I were a problem carried home from the market by mistake.
"Sit."
I obeyed, easing into the less-broken chair. My ribs complained; the chair answered that it was doing its best.
He poured water when it grumbled, tipped a pinch of leaves into the steam, and slid a cup toward me. "Careful. It bites at first."
The heat climbed through my fingers and settled somewhere under the bruise along my side. I breathed it in, and the world quieted by a fraction.
Jareth watched me over the rim of his own cup. "I meant what I said earlier. You'll need a name. Without one, shopkeepers won't trust you, neighbors will whisper, and the Watch will have an easier time pretending you were never here."
I looked at the window glass, fogged by kettled breath. Words came slowly. "A name… chooses a person, or a person chooses a name?"
"Both," he said. "But this city starts believing the one it hears first."
I tried to find anything inside me that felt like a true word. Shapes rose and fell, old labels I had once been called by beings who don't use mouths. Those weren't names a street could carry.
Jareth scratched his jaw. "Some take the name of the first place they slept. 'Gutter Tom.' 'Bridge Mal.' I wouldn't do that to you." He squinted. "Others carry their father's. You got one of those?"
I shook my head.
"Then there's the ones who pick a blade-sharp thing to sound harder than they are. 'Hook.' 'Stone.' That'll get you into fights you can't finish." He drank, grimaced at the heat, and put the cup down with care. "Best is a name that lets decent folk say it without flinching."
I held the cup. Steam ghosted my face. A word slipped into my mind and sat there, patient. I turned it over, unsure if it had come from the room or an older place.
"E—" My mouth stalled. The word scattered like startled birds. I closed my eyes, followed the feeling back, and tried again. "Eli."
Jareth's expression didn't move for a breath. Then one corner of his mouth ticked. "Eli, huh?" He tested it against the air, against the walls, against the chair mends, and the cracked cup. "Short, honest. Folk won't trip over it. You certain?"
I listened to the way the syllable sat in my chest. It didn't claim me fully—no single sound could—but it did not lie. "Yes."
"Eli it is."
***
Narrative POV
Names in a city do more than call a head to turn. They open doors, close others, write a person into ledgers and memories. A nameless mouth can be ignored; a named one is harder to erase. Jareth knew this. So did the Watch, the mill, and every landlord who ever counted beds by coin instead of by breath.
Narrative POV END
***
"Eli," he said again, as if to teach the room. "Now. Eli, what else are you? Any work you can do that won't fold you in half?"
I searched memory and found fragments of skills that had no place here—shaping wind without air, walking where there is no direction, speaking to stones in the language they used before mountains learned to kneel. None of that would lift a crate.
"I can carry," I said. "Slowly." I flexed my bandaged hand. "I can learn."
"Learning pays poorly at first," he said, but there was no unkindness in it. "There's a man in the north lane, needs crates moved by the river—barrels, mostly. He'll hire anyone with bones. He pays in copper and curses. The curses are free."
I nodded, unsure if a nod meant agreement or hope.
Footsteps crossed the hall outside, then paused just beyond the door. A woman's voice, the same one that had scolded from the window earlier, slid through the gap.
"Jareth," she said without greeting, "Lys at the corner saw you bring someone in. Again. You'll have the street collector at your door if you keep opening it for strays."
Jareth didn't answer at once. He stared at the door until the wood remembered it was a door and not a mouth. "Morning to you too, Lira."
"Don't 'morning' me. You know what it is. Levies went up again last week. They'll count anyone not nailed to a trade and make us all pay for him. The Duke bleeds us, and you invite another cut."
Jareth sipped, setting his cup down carefully before he replied. "He's called Eli."
A snort. "Today he is. Tomorrow he'll be gone with your bread and a blanket. They go. They always go."
"I didn't ask your counsel," he said quietly.
"You never do. And still the street pays," she said, and her steps faded.
Jareth rubbed his eyes. "Neighbors."
I studied the door. "She is… worried."
"She is tired of paying what others can't," he said. "So are we all."
***
Narrative POV
Rumors crawled faster than rats. Levies rose in increments, like rain filling a basin; each coin pulled from homes like Jareth's made another home slip under water. Some said soldiers were mustering on the border. Others whispered the Duke built a temple of bright stone to please a jealous power. No truth, only cost. In that arithmetic, every extra mouth counted as a debt.
Narrative POV END
***
Jareth cleared his throat. "Eli, if you're to keep your place in my doorway, there are rules."
"Rules."
"Work when you can. Don't steal from my table. If the Watch asks your business, it's mine: you're helping me with errands. You don't speak to collectors. You don't sleep in the lane where they sweep before dawn. And if someone asks you to come with them to the mill for 'day labor,' you don't. You run."
The word pressed against the inside of my skull—mill—like a hand knocking from the wrong side of a door.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because people sent there stop being people," he said. The sentence looked like it had cut him on its way out. "You'll hear they pay in bread and a bed. They pay in forgetting."
Silence settled between us. The tea cooled.
He lifted the kettle, rinsed the cups with the last heat, then placed them upside down to dry. "We'll try for work by the river tomorrow," he said. "Today you'll rest and try not to look like bad luck."
"I don't know how to look like good luck," I said.
He almost smiled. "No one does. They just pretend better."
He moved to a corner where a folded blanket lived on a stool. He unfurled it and tossed it my way. The fabric smelled faintly of smoke and clean rain.
"Thank you," I said.
He waved the word aside as if it were a fly. "If you want to pay me back, don't make me regret it. Start with that."
A knock rattled the door before I could answer. It wasn't the polite tapping of neighbors. It was a knuckle that believed it had the right.
Jareth stiffened. He moved to the door, cracked it, and squared his shoulders in the gap.
Two men stood in the hall. No torches, but the same posture I had seen in the street: boots that expected the stones to be grateful. One wore a leather strap across his chest with a small brass plate. The other carried a ledger under his arm.
"Jareth," said the one with the plate. His eyes slid past Jareth's shoulder, trying to count the room. "Routine tally. We're confirming occupants for levy assessment."
"Nothing's changed," Jareth said.
"Everything changes. That's why we check." The man with the ledger flipped it open. "Household size?"
"Just me."
"Neighbors said you brought someone in."
"Neighbors talk," Jareth said, noncommittal.
The plate-man leaned a fraction closer, testing the air. "We'll need to look."
Jareth's jaw worked. Then he stepped aside a finger's width—just enough to be polite without being helpful. The plate-man peered in. His gaze touched the cup, the blanket, my face.
"Name?" he asked me.
I heard Jareth inhale, crisp with warning.
"Eli," I said.
"Eli what?"
"Just Eli."
The ledger-man clicked his tongue. "Strays take short names so they're harder to garnish."
I watched the word garnish hang in the air like a fish on a nail.
"Trade?" the plate-man asked.
"Helping me," Jareth said.
"With what?" the ledger-man said, pen ready.
"Errands. Lifting. The sort of work no one else wants to bend for."
The plate-man considered. His eyes returned to me, measuring whether I was worth ink. "You sleeping here?"
"For now," Jareth said. "He needs a roof a day or two to stand straight. After that, he earns or he goes."
The pause that followed was long enough to break a cup if set on it. At last, the plate-man nodded once. "Two days. Then we tally again." His voice thinned to a warning you could smooth with oil if you had any. "Don't make a habit of turning your place into a refuge. You know the orders."
"I know the orders," Jareth said.
They left. The hall swallowed their steps and returned to ordinary footfalls.
Jareth closed the door and leaned his forehead against it for a moment, as if it had been holding up more than wood. "Two days," he repeated, not to me but to the air. He turned. "That's more than some get."
I felt the weight of the number and didn't know where to put it. "If I earn… it is enough?"
"It buys breath," he said. "Which is the smallest coin the city takes."
He sank into the chair opposite and looked at me with something like reluctant acceptance. "Eli. Say it again."
"Eli."
"Good," he said. "Now it's not just in your head."
***
Narrative POV
The ledger would note one additional mouth, two days' grace, and a name that might be erased with a wet thumb. Yet a name spoken twice in a room has a way of sticking to the walls. If the plate-man returned and asked the chair who had sat in it, it might have answered, "Eli," without knowing what a chair is for.
Narrative POV END
***
Jareth stood, restless. He crossed to the shelf, moved a tin, moved it back, then gave up pretending to be busy with his hands. "When you said 'Eli,' where'd it come from? Hear it somewhere?"
I tried to follow the path back. "It was there when I looked. Like a step in a stair I hadn't seen. I stood on it, and it held."
"Hm." He rubbed the scar along his thumb. "There's an old story—my grandmother used to spit it at us when we pretended not to hear our names. Says some names come from higher than the roofline. Says if you ignore the right one, it'll follow you like a stray dog until you feed it."
"Does this city… believe stories?" I asked.
"It believes whatever costs least to believe," he said. "Stories are cheap until they get someone killed."
He pulled a crust from a paper, broke it, and tossed half to me without looking. I caught it on reflex. He watched that.
"At least reflexes work," he said. "We'll need those."
"For crates?" I asked.
"For everything."
Silence stretched. The room listened to the building breathe. Somewhere above, a child stamped a rhythm as if teaching the floor a song. A door shut. An argument started; it sounded old and well-rehearsed.
A thought pressed at me, slow and unwelcome. "Jareth—" I stumbled on the name, then set it right. "Why did they give two days? They could have said none."
"Because the plate-man has a mother who'd box his ears if he didn't," he said dryly, then softened. "Because I've carried sacks for him on the riverside when his back went bad. Because sometimes people remember you're a person. It doesn't last. But sometimes."
"Sometimes," I echoed.
He pushed back his chair. "Enough sitting," he said. "If I let you rest too long, you'll grow roots. Come help me fetch kindling two streets over. It's a way of being seen doing something that looks like work."
I rose. The bruise along my ribs protested like an old neighbor, but I found balance before it could convince me to sit again. Jareth opened the door, and the hall's stale air nosed in.
He paused with his hand on the latch. "Eli."
"Yes."
"If someone calls you by that outside, answer. If they use anything else, keep walking. You belong to the one you answer to."
I let the sentence settle in my bones. "Understood."
We stepped into the corridor. A child peered from a doorway, hair sticking up like straw, eyes wide. "Who's that?" the child asked.
"Friend," Jareth said, and the word, small as it was, touched something in me that had not been named yet.
The child considered this, decided it cost nothing, and vanished.
We took the stairs down. The building smelled of damp mortar and cooked onions. The street met us with the honest noise of morning: wheels, voices, the metallic cough of a lantern being extinguished. Jareth nodded toward the east.
"This way," he said. "And keep your head up. People believe those who look like they belong."
"I don't know how to look like that," I said.
"You will. Or you'll learn to pretend."
We walked. The sun found the upper bricks and made them look like something a richer place might be proud of. The lower stones stayed the color of hands. I matched Jareth's pace. When he slowed for a puddle, I slowed. When he lifted a palm to greet someone, I mirrored the motion a beat late, like learning a dance you haven't heard the music for.
At the corner, Lira watched us from her stall. She weighed my new name in her eyes and found it lacking. "Two days," she said, not to us but to her ledger of grudges.
"Two days," Jareth agreed, and kept walking.
I kept pace beside him.
***
Narrative POV
A name had been spoken, the door had opened, and the city—reluctantly—made room the width of two days. It was not safety. It was not even a promise. It was a line scratched in chalk before the rain. But sometimes that line holds long enough for someone to learn how to draw another.
Narrative POV END