by Shade Owens
“So this is our life?” Fran said, her words coming out with an awkward lisp.
I still couldn’t believe Murk had knocked out her tooth with her elbow.
Pam shrugged. “I’ll be dead soon.”
“Do you two ever stop talking?” Sammy said. “You’ve been bickering all damn day.”
“Only because of her,” Fran growled, casting a hateful glare in Murk’s direction.
“Well, get over it,” Sammy said. “If you knew anything that didn’t involve you, you’d know that Murk’s Rainer’s sworn enemy and she was the leader of an entire village.”
Pam’s eyelids went flat. “And we’re supposed to care about that because…?”
“I’m just saying,” Sammy said, “the bitch has been through hell and back. Two chicks were even talkin’ about how Murk was tortured for months… Like, really bad.” She lowered her voice. “I’m just sayin’… she isn’t someone you wanna mess with.”
I was surprised to hear this coming from Sammy, who always acted like she wasn’t scared of anyone. She played with her eyebrow ring and stood still when two Northers came toward us, their heavy equipment making chafing sounds as they walked.
One by one, they started tying us up at the ankles.
“What if I have to pee?” Fran whispered, now tied to another dozen women.
“Or take a shit,” Pam added, looking pale.
“You shut your mouth and hold it in,” came Alice Number Two’s voice.
Fran grumbled something. “That’s not always poss—”
“Then you piss yourself,” said Alice Number Two. “But not on the bed. The wood will soak it up. And Kasey doesn’t have time to make more platforms right now. She’s busy enough as it is. You have enough slack to roll over and do your business in the dirt. Besides, most people don’t shit at night. If you do, I feel bad for you.”
Bile rose in my throat. How was anyone supposed to live like this?
No one said anything, no doubt thinking precisely what I was thinking—that being killed was more merciful than being forced to live a life of slavery here.
With dry lips and a parched mouth, I lay down on one of the poorly constructed platforms. Who was this Kasey person? Their builder? If so, she sucked. It was as if she’d taken rotten wood from the jungle, sanded away the roughest spots, and tied them together with crisp vines. Every time I repositioned myself, the logs underneath the large leaves moved.
Not only that, but every time someone moved too much, someone else would shout at them to stop, likely because the rope was yanking at their ankles.
So I lay there awake all night, staring into the darkness overhead, wondering how frightened Ellie must have been to learn I was captured and taken away from the Cove.
* * *
By the time the sun came up, I felt like I hadn’t slept in a week. I shivered, wanting nothing more than to pull my legs up to my chest to preserve some of my body heat, but I knew if I did that, the rope would pull someone’s shackles and I’d be yelled at.
The last thing I wanted was to make enemies, so instead, I froze all night.
“Let’s go!” came an authoritative voice.
It was a Norther’s voice—the voice of someone who believed themselves to be superior to all living creatures on this island. “Now!” she growled, her voice carrying through the forest’s trees.
Everyone slowly sat upright on their platforms. If I’d had to guess how many women we were all together, I’d have estimated sixty or seventy. Although it looked like a big crowd, especially given that we were all tied together, it wasn’t all that much compared to how many women used to be here.
One by one, we formed a line, and the Norther slipped the long rope that connected all of us out from our shackles. Both ends had been tied to a tree, and before bed, all of our knives were collected and counted.
“If you don’t return this knife to me at the end of the day, you’re dead,” Alice Number Two had warned us yesterday. “Literally,” she’d emphasized. “The Beasts will tie you up at the front of the city for everyone to watch and cut your limbs off one by one with one of these knives.” She smacked one of the serrated bone knives in the palm of her hand. “It isn’t a clean cut, either. You’ll understand when you start trying to cut through the elephant’s skin with one of these.”
It hadn’t looked like she was joking, and I’d swallowed hard at the thought of it.
Psycho Northers was all I could think.
While handing me the knife, she didn’t let go before adding, “It’s happened twice already, and no matter how much of a monster you think I am, believe me when I say it isn’t fun to watch. Don’t become a statistic.”
“You, newbies,” came Alice Number Two’s voice. “To the elephant, now.”
And we were back at it again as if stuck in some alternate reality—the kind in which every day repeats itself over and over again. Legs quivering, I made my way to the elephant’s carcass and started hacking away.
One meal per day, I thought. How was that enough to get us through these days? I was starving and sick to my stomach, yet I’d have to wait until the evening to finally get food in my stomach. How long would we be at this? Surely, not long—the meat was probably close to spoiling out in this heat.
By the time the afternoon sun started heating our backs to an uncomfortable temperature, the cut on my face started throbbing again. When Alice Number Two walked by, I called out to her.
“Alice Numb—” but I cut myself short, realizing how stupid I’d been.
She turned around so quickly her reddish-brown hair swept through the air. “What did you just say?”
Shit.
“Numb. My face. It feels numb.”
It didn’t feel numb at all—quite the opposite, actually. But I had to convince her that something was wrong with my face if I wanted Mashi to help me get rid of the infection.”
Her glare slowly disappeared. “Oh… Right. Yeah, go.” She threw her thumb out in Mashi’s direction, and I nodded before jogging away.
As I did, the shackles bounced up and down, hitting hard against my ankle bone. So I stopped, grimacing. I understood now why Alice Number Two had warned us against running.
When I reached Mashi, she sat in the dirt with a basket of vegetables and funny-looking leaves in front of her. Her dark, narrow slits for eyes rolled up inside puffy bags.
“Yessss?” she asked, her voice nasal.
Her eyes were so narrow it was impossible to tell if she was even looking at me or if they were closed.
“I was told you could help me,” I said, pointing at my face.
Without a word, she raised a finger and nodded slowly, reminding me of some wise, ancient sage. She reached into another small basket behind her, her movements slower than pouring molasses, and extracted a small round bone filled with a dark green powder.
What was that? A knuckle bone? A piece of spine? It was the size of a golf ball… Maybe a rodent’s skull.
She held it in the air, waiting for me to grab it.
“What is this?” I asked.
“You cut scab,” she said. “Add water. Put. Put on face. Turn to paste. On wound.” She pointed at my face, her finger dancing in the air as if she’d drunk ten cups of coffee.
“Right over the scab?” I asked.
She shook her head, her black helmet hair barely moving at all.
“Take off. You treat under. You treat infection. Then. Only then scab come back.”
I fought the urge to touch my face. I was afraid to know how bad the cut was. And now that it had become infected, there was no doubt in my mind that I’d be stuck with some unsightly scar.
So instead, I ran my hand over my shaved head, feeling little prickles poke my fingers. It was already growing back—a soft fuzz on my head.
Once the scar had healed and my hair grew back out, would everyone recognize me? Was this infection saving me?
“Privyet,” someone said. It came out sounding like Pree-vyet
.
With the small golf ball-sized bone held in my hand, I turned toward the voice.
Seated across from Mashi was another person I’d completely forgotten about—Olga. In both hands, she held a hand-carved wooden bowl filled with seeds. My eye was immediately drawn to her wrinkled wrist where that Russian tattoo was printed: numerical digits, which I’d learned meant she was imprinted at a Russian orphanage.
She’d been the one to care for the Northers—the Orphans—who’d crashed in that plane after being cast away on this island as kids.
She made a come-hither motion with her index finger, though it looked more like she was scratching the air with those long, curling fingernails of hers. I took a few steps forward, hesitating. Her shaggy, salt-and-pepper hair hung on both sides of her face, covering most of her fruit-stained shirt. What did she do with that thing? Take it off and use it as a strainer? It was filthy.
“You need clean,” she said, her accent as thick as it was the last time she spoke to me. She pointed at my face, and I became self-conscious about my wound.
“Vat happened to you, child?” she said, patting the dirt beside her. “Come. Olga take care of dat ugly cut on face.”
CHAPTER 5
“What the hell happened to you?” Sammy asked, staring at me as if I’d shoved my entire head up the dead elephant’s ass.
What did she care? And why was she even talking to me? We weren’t friends. If anything, we were still enemies. She’d helped Hawkins drag me to this awful place.
I hope you’re proud of yourself, I wanted to say. For following Hawkins into a life of slavery. She’s probably dead now, by the way. Either that, or they’re torturing her back there—and then I’d point toward the back of the mountain where Murk had been strapped by her arms and tortured.
But I kept my mouth shut. What was the point?
Fran and Pam turned their old, ostrich heads my way, too. Olga had warned me that there might be some swelling, especially after Mashi’s paste was applied. She’d also warned me about the redness. Maybe it was a good thing that I looked like a freak—sure, people might look at me funny, but at least no one would recognize me.
What mattered was that she’d assured me the infection was cleaned out. She said if I hadn’t taken care of it, it might have spread farther on my face and gotten into my eye. She’d gone off for almost half an hour about how one of her orphan girls had nearly lost an eye because of an infection.
It was only when Alice Number Two came swearing at me that Olga hurried what she was doing and sent me on my way.
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” said Alice Number Two, now standing in front of all of us. “I don’t want to be chasing after you guys all day. This is my job, okay? You think I like this?”
She ran two hands through her dull, orange hair, and when her fingers got stuck, she pulled them out so aggressively I was surprised no strands fell out.
“I’m not even supposed to be here…” she continued. Was she talking to me? Or all of us? Even Sammy stopped cutting into the elephant’s hind leg to listen to Alice Number Two. “I mean… I was so close. I shouldn’t be here. Everyone was running… They were all following that Brone girl. She ignited something in all of us. It’s like she gave us the courage to do something about this shitty nightmare.” She let out a broken laugh, but it was obvious she was doing it to keep from crying. “I was so… close.” She reached a hand out and clasped the air in front of her as if catching an invisible insect. “But then that fucking leopard turned on me… On me! Out of all people. I wasn’t even trying to protect that stupid Beast. It turned on me for no reason.”
She swallowed hard, a bulge rolling down her throat, and shook her head at the sky. “Why am I even talking to you? You have no idea what the hell I’m talking about. You’re all a bunch of newbies.” She threw one hand in the air, stabbed her walking stick into the sand, and turned around. “Waste of time… Total waste of time.”
When she disappeared behind Smith’s tool tent, Sammy hacked her knife against the elephant’s femur bone and looked at me. “Sounds like this Brone chick did everyone a favor.”
Why hadn’t she said anything? She knew who I was. Why was she protecting me?
“Do they want to use the bone for anything?” she then asked.
Murk pushed her way through, her arms soaked in blood and her hair flattened with sweat atop her head. “Just leave the bone. Alice said they’ll get someone else to come clean it up after.”
It was the first time Murk had said anything since yesterday.
When she caught me staring at her again, she looked away.
Did she honestly not remember me? Or, was she only trying to protect me?
Either way, I hated the feeling.
She sawed away, elbow coming in and out at her side, until a piece large enough was ready to be torn away from the bone. A ripping sound filled the air as veins and tendons snapped, and Murk pulled off a piece large enough to cover her entire torso.
She walked straight toward Bear, and several women moved out of her way.
“Big piece for such a weak woman,” someone blurted out.
I turned around to see a face I’d have recognized anywhere—it was black and full of white speckles across the cheeks, forehead, and chin, almost as if a snowball had exploded in her face.
Snow Face.
The woman who, along with her clan, had bullied me and my friends—the one who’d threatened us all at knifepoint, warning us not to cause any problems inside the city. And what had I done? I’d caused the biggest problem of all. I’d worsened this place for the slaves who’d stayed behind.
“Leader of scum,” said Snow Face.
She hacked and spat a glob of mucus on Murk’s bare foot.
Murk ignored her and dropped her slab of elephant meat on a pile by Bear, who nodded and grunted.
What had she meant by that, anyway?
Were all of Murk’s people now considered bad for everything that had happened? Was that why they’d released Murk into the general population? So that others would constantly harass her?
“You think you are so strong, but you are nothing,” Snow Face continued, her thick accent making her sound native to this island.
Either that or she was shipped here from another country—maybe even a third world country.
When Murk didn’t say anything or even bother to look up at Snow Face, two tall women as black as Snow Face threw their arms out in front of Murk like a bunch of preteens bullying a geek in high school.
“Get your arms out of my face,” Murk said.
Snow Face’s two guard dogs were so tall they made Murk look like a child.
Murk let out an irritated sigh. “Are we really going to keep doing this every day?”
“You were her leader. You did this. You are responsible,” Snow Face continued, her black, soulless eyes narrowing on Murk.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Murk said calmly, more at the tall bodyguards than at Snow Face. “Now move.”
Without saying anything, Snow Face took one step toward Murk and backhanded her across the face, sending Murk down onto one knee. Snow Face then raised her overly long leg and kicked Murk right in the face, a loud click resonating around us.
“Hey!” I shouted, charging toward Murk’s bullies.
With a bowed head and a twinkle in her eye, Snow Face smiled up at me. “What do we have here? Another one of your people?” She stepped over Murk and stood face-to-face with me, her bony black shoulders looking brown underneath the afternoon sun.
Her lips, thick and pale, stuck out so much it looked like she was pouting.
I wanted to say, Back off, polka dot, but then I realized something—I wasn’t Brone. I couldn’t be. Right now, I had to be someone else… someone who didn’t have the courage to stand up to someone like Snow Face.
So I bit down hard on my tongue, the pain making me wince.
Don’t say anything, don’t say anything, do
n’t say anything.
“Brave girl,” Snow Face said. “You look familiar.”
“Yo, fuck off, you stupid splatter face!” snapped Sammy. She came toward us like a girl pulled right out of a rough neighborhood—arms flailing over her head and fingers pointing at Snow Face as if firing invisible bullets out of her fingertips. She came up to Snow Face, craning her neck back to look her in the eyes, little skin rolls forming at the back of her neck. Their height difference didn’t seem to bother her in the least. “You wanna start shit? ’Cause I’m ready. Right now.”
Her nostrils flared so wide it was a wonder she didn’t fly away with them. I’d never seen Sammy this angry before. It was like watching a steam cooker tragically explode.
At the same time, Hawkins’s other two women—Scorch and Dibs, I’d learned were their names—came up beside Sammy with arms crossed over their chests as if to say, You mess with Sammy, you mess with us. They weren’t as thickset as Sammy, but with their shaved heads, tattooed skin, and fearless scowls, it was enough to make anyone think twice.
Snow Face, along with her two guard dogs, smiled at us before walking away.
“What the hell was that about?” Dibs asked.
She then offered Murk a hand, but Murk ignored it and forced herself up with a pained wince. She rubbed at her reddening jaw and angrily tore her knife out of the sand. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, we did,” Sammy said, fists still clenched. “You may have been a pain in the ass as our leader, Murk, but you were still the best leader we ever had.”
CHAPTER 6
The sound of wood cracking carried across the city before Zsasz’s obnoxious voice came within earshot. One by now, heavily armed Northers wearing fur, metallic shoulder plates, some even chest plates, came marching out with swords fastened to their sides.
What was going on?
“Out of the way!” Zsasz shouted.
“Out of the way!” Rebel repeated, reminding me of some dumb Chihuahua trying to be a Doberman.
The massive gates continued to open until out came several women wearing typical suede clothing. Unlike the rest of us, they looked clean and well-fed. Some of them even smiled as they stepped out into the city, hands held up over their brows to block the early afternoon sun.
