amber blane ; seven fin

Murphy said it was the right thing to do back when all this started. 'Course I think he just tends to forget how much he loves money. Or maybe back then it was the honest truth: people needed us to do the things they couldn't do themselves. The things they weren't allowed to do themselves. But then things changed, like they always have a funny way of doing when the Foxes are involved. So now I don't know what we are really doing here.

Basically, people who come into contact with Murphy or anyone who has done business with him can separate their lives into two neat little pieces: before and after. Because anything might happen, and say what you will about his methods but one thing I can say for sure is that the man makes magic happen when he's inspired.

They picked me up in Ten with no parents, no money, no food, and not a hell of a lot of hope. By that time they were already pretty established back in Nine: Murphy and Seven and Fig and Hornet. Bastards and criminals, stains to their district, they were called at one point. And that's saying something about a district whose entire fabric is built upon smears of the most nefarious kind. Why they insist on going back there so often is beyond me; once I ducked through the fences of Ten, I swore to myself- and to them- that I would never return. And I never did.

They said they helped me because I was in need of it, that it was pure luck I had so much experience with navigation. That's what tracking cattle for miles and miles through thickets and hills and a palpable summer heat will do for a girl, though. I told 'em I would take 'em anywhere except Ten, and they never asked anything more or less of me. But I do get lonesome here in Seven when they go back to Nine to tend to their business. Seven gave me my new name- he gave us all our new names. Well, 'cept Murphy, but that's cause he's too damn stubborn to change it. He forged all the paperwork, made it so Amber Blane had always been the quiet girl who lived alone in the woods, the only surviving granddaughter of Katherine Blane, who left this shack to me in her will. They gave me more cash than I could ever know what to do with, so most of it is stuffed under a loose floorboard in the kitchen.

And I sit and I wait for them to show up in the dead of the night like they always do, with some new lost soul hoping for me to guide them home. A father of two who is trying to get back to his sick wife. An older sister who needs to make it home in time for her younger sister's wedding. A heartbroken young man who has already missed his Dad's funeral. Once I even helped a lovestruck couple trying to escape their predesigned fates back home.

In those times when they show up, in those times when my compass is in my hand, things are different. I'm in charge, which ain't something I ever really liked to be. But I can feel it, the eyes on me as I walk. The held breath when I speak. I hold their fate in my hands each time we duck through those fences, even Murphy's. Especially Murphy's.

If I'm honest, I can't decide if its more scary when they wake me up in the middle of the night, or how scary it is going to be when they don't.