by J D Morganne
8
“Did you think about this? Do you ever think?” A woman’s exasperated voice hovered in a plain above Jaxon. Though angry, it was like the clouds, and he wondered if he was dead.
“Help me or not?” Jaxon knew that voice, the man who had knocked him out earlier.
“She ain’t gonna like this,” the woman said. “What happened to his leg?”
“Grab that. Help me pull.”
Whatever the man had shot him up with was like ice in his blood. Jaxon fought it to no avail. He staved off the drowsiness fruitlessly, setting to memory what he could: out of the forest, red dirt, hills, lanterns, mountains. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was in a small room, lying on something hard. His eyes wandered over a scattering of old paperback books across a hardwood floor. Spicy wind blew through a gray curtain, sheathing a small circular window where he lay and rattling an old tin can chandelier.
His eyelids were too heavy to hold open. He slept.
―
Jaxon’s celbuds hummed, as if searching for a signal, and woke him. He opened his eyes wide and went to cup his hands over his ears, but wooden handcuffs jerked his arms down. The terrifying fact, which came to Jaxon about the same time his vision did, was that he was in foreign territory, shackled to wooden bedrails. There were people, too. People he knew nothing about. Dangerous people. With brown skin and eyes like the fire Crimson soldiers used to impress girls.
His celrings were gone. He searched but didn’t see them on the crate beside his bed or the windowsill, where a potted plant distracted him for a few seconds. A couple days ago he’d been wishing to see real trees and plants and now that he had, they terrified him. He used his shoulders to wipe his wet eyes, sucked in a deep breath and exhaled. The bandages all over him were sticky and tight, leaking with an opaline gel. Someone had covered his burn and set his arm too. He couldn’t move it, but they’d cuffed it anyway. New pain pulsated beneath bandages on his head and leg. Bandages? Around his leg? What in the hell? He’d hurt his ankle trampling through that forest, but he hadn’t broken his leg. When—how—had that happened?
“E-excuse me.” The cotton against his skin was as soft and clean as his pillow. Someone had changed his clothes. That meant they’d touched him. All over him. He took deep breaths to placate the bile billowing in his chest. He could breathe now, though he didn’t know if that should relieve him or anger him even more. “Hey, excuse me?” Jaxon yanked at the cuffs. “Is anyone out there?”
He knew they understood him and, judging by the creamy light leaking in from the hall, he knew someone was out there. But no one came. When he couldn’t fight the cuffs anymore, he kicked the bedrails, to no avail.
“He has tantrums, like a child,” someone said, from the hall. It was a woman, but her voice didn’t sound familiar. “I don’t have time for this. Send Ria in to calm’im down.”
“She ain’t goin’ in there until he’s good,” the man from the forest said.
“Then get your ass in there. You know, you never liked cleanin’ up your toys… but you always managed to bring a new one home. Remind me—I can’t remember what happened to the rest of your broken toys.”
“You took’em in a wagon to Mt. Garrida and threw’em off.” The man sighed, annoyed, and Jaxon got the impression this wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. Kidnapping, that was.
“I did,” the woman said. “I remember now. So make the next words that come out of your mouth have meaning, brainless, little brother. Or, Dear Mother Earth, I will knock some sense into you.”
Silence dragged for minutes, before the door creaked open. A woman watched her feet as she juggled a medical bag, a tray of wooden cups and a pitcher of something Jaxon hoped was water.
Oiya,” she said.
Jaxon tensed. Her skin was like the man’s, but that wasn’t what puzzled him. He gaped at her thick, yellow ropy hair, tugged into a ponytail long as her arm.
“It’s good to see you have some of your strength back.” She grunted when she set the bag down first, then the tray. Her accent was subtle, made her appear softer. Jaxon tried, but couldn’t stop gaping at her. She stared back at him from wet-sand-colored eyes. “I’m Ariana,” she said, finally. “Aria’s fine.”
Jaxon was floating in the clouds every time she spoke.
“Here.” She reached into the pitcher and pulled out an ice cube.
His stomach screamed for it, but his rational brain didn’t trust even her.
“You can’t have anything to eat or drink yet. You suffered major dehydration, but we’re going to get something good in you soon, yeah? This’ih make you feel better for now.”
There was only one thing that would make Jaxon feel better and that was getting home. How long had he been there, asleep?
“Here.” She would’ve shoved the ice in his mouth if he didn’t snatch his head away. She dropped it on the tray and rubbed her hands over the front of her apron. “Well, it’s here if you need.”
He curved his urge to down the whole pitcher. Instead, he dared to speak. “Where… am… I?” He had to think back to his classes, think back to what Kenner had called it that day in the hall. He was sure he’d seen it on one of the holoposters flashing on the kid’s wall. Obedience. Love. Wealth. And… of course!
“Knowledge,” Aria said. She reached to touch his wrists, but Jaxon jerked, making her put her hands up. They had done enough touching. “Okay, I get it,” she said, with a gentle smile that might have tamed the hungriest beast. “Hear you loud and clear. We don’t wanna hurt you.”
“Speak for ya’self,” someone said, from the door. The man from the forest stepped into the room, toting his rod and a roll of paper. Sprinklings of dried mud hopped from the toes of his boots. “I wouldn’t mind hurtin’ you. You don’t know the problems you caused.” His blond eyebrows were at odds with his tan skin.
Jaxon didn’t know anything anymore. Everything he’d ever known was in another Door and it felt lightyears away.
The man dropped his newspaper on Jaxon’s lap. Knowledge Periodical- Tiyeert Labor District, Aprii 524 ED. Someone had captured a grainy photo of him trudging through the forest and slapped it on the front page.
“Don’t listen to Nano,” Aria said. “He’s harmless.”
Nano? What kind of name was that?
“I was wrong to think you was important,” the man she’d called Nano said.
What stupid thing was he going on about now? Jaxon hadn’t asked him to bring him to a room that wreaked of mothballs. He didn’t ask to be important. He didn’t ask Crimsons to throw him in their Door. The memory was almost as painful as the skin sizzling on his ribcage, the throbbing in his leg. “What happened to—what’d you do to my leg?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Nano chuckled. “I broke it. Gettin’ you back here.”
“Getting me back?”
“Are you a parrot?”
They both spoke Old-World English, but his dialect was hard to understand on top of his adenoidal voice.
“I lied,” Nano said after staring at Jaxon for a complete eight seconds. “The ground broke it.”
“But he was the one controlling the ground,” Aria corrected.
Jaxon was right. What he’d seen wasn’t a dream. They could manipulate earth how he manipulated fire.
“I guess you could say that in a complete backwards kinda way.” Nano turned his eyebrows up at her. “A little responsible.”
“When he says a little, he means one hundred percent.”
“Kay, look I was tryin’is new trick I learned where I bend my fingers like this and separate’m like”— He stretched his fingers out to demonstrate— “like this. Get me?”
“He used his fingers. We work with our feet.”
“I said I was tryin’ a new trick. I made hands and they moved you, but see, the problem is that I gotta control each one individually… but… I had to move fast enough to get back to our side of the forest too, so like..
. one of the hands didn’t want to let go of your foot, but the other hand kind of had you super tight…”
“Poor choice of words,” Aria said, with a chuckle. She offered Jaxon the ice again. He accepted. It was only water, and the cracked skin on his lips craved it.
“Aaaand… snap.” Nano broke an invisible stick. “My manipulation is always a work in progress.”
“Hon.” Aria’s sweet voice shut him up, something Jaxon was grateful for. “He gets it.”
Nope. Jaxon didn’t understand anything he said. A weightlessness swooned in his head that made it hard to care. He was thankful because the pain was gone, but he still had no answers. “What did you—did you—?”
“Medical melatonin. You need to sleep. So, we can change your bandages.”
“No, please.” First, Nano had poisoned him with a dart. Now, she was drugging him with ice. Already they had proven he couldn’t trust them. His tears wet his ear and pillow. He didn’t want to sleep.
“You’re safe.” She sounded like his mom. When she brushed his cheek with her finger, he recollected calm nights at the park, four-years-old, crunchy glass soil beneath his shoes, his mom screaming for him to be careful. He remembered his mom’s arms, her last hug, a kiss goodbye as if they were both sacrificing their love for Obedience. He remembered feeling lost and alone. And, as his eyes closed, he realized he was that again.
Lost.
Alone.
9
Nano and Aria, or someone, had moved Jaxon. He was still restrained, and his bandages were fresh and clean. Even the strands of hair that brushed his cheek smelled like strawberries. He went to swipe them away, but his hands were bound. He wasn’t going to fight them this time. Aria had been right about him using his strength. He had close to none in him.
A bright sun casted yellow light across the hardwood floor and Jaxon’s legs. His skin pricked where it touched. Obedience’s sun was bright, but not as hot. Here, distant mountains and trees painted viridian silhouettes against azure blue. There were no glowing signs or blinding streetlamps.
Awestricken, Jaxon leaned on his elbow to get a closer look, but a stabbing pain ripped through his side. His face twisted in agony, as he cringed back. He stuffed the pillow beneath his side and willed himself not to think about the pain. It struck him every time his stomach growled. He thumped his foot and tried to think of anything to take his mind off it. He needed water to counter the sandpaper taste on his tongue, but his bladder ached with the need to release. He closed his eyes tight and thumped his foot harder. It smacked against something squishy, which squealed and came alive at the end of his bed.
Were there monsters everywhere in this Door? His hands were bound, but he had his feet. He could lock the thing between his legs. Before he could crush his already broken leg more, a light popped on. Jaxon was grateful to find Aria standing in the doorway.
“Bucky.” She dropped her shoulder with a sigh. “Been looking everywhere for your raggedy self.” She yanked up the sheets and pulled what looked like a pig into her arms. A stone horn protruded from its head. It squealed and tried to shake out of Aria’s grip before finally settling. “Sorry,” she said, yawning. “He gets weird around strangers. This is the third day he slept in here.”
Third day? “How”—
“Long have you been asleep? Altogether since the last time you woke uuup-hmmm?” She puckered out her bottom lip as she thought. “Six days.”
Jaxon sat up. Whatever bumps and bruises he had obtained getting through that wicked forest were gone, but the aches, the torment of his body failing him, was different altogether.
“Okay,” Jaxon said. “Do you have a”— He took a moment to search for himself. The room was almost as big as his apartment and riddled with glass figurines and snow globes on handmade wooden shelves. No toilet, though. He’d take anything that would hold liquid. He held his hands out and nodded toward the cuffs.
“Sure you can handle that? You ain’t gonna knock me out, is you?”
Confusion poured over Jaxon. Where he came from, women were reflections of Kamiaka. He’d never hurt a woman if he didn’t have to.
Aria unlocked the cuffs. “The Emiir asked me to come and check on you,” she went on. “She wants to see you.”
Jaxon tried to rub the soreness from his wrists. “Could I use”—
Two more voices interrupted him before he finished. One of them was Nano’s. He didn’t recognize the woman.
“Did you drink water with that?” Nano said to her.
Jaxon bit hard. No. He couldn’t hear anything about water or any other liquid. He tapped his foot harder.
“Of course. I had to prepare for Ulai, too. It was a Reaper Pepper. Their slogan is: Will burn through your soul.’”
“Needs work,” Nano said. “And doesn’t sound like anything I want near my tongue.”
The woman laughed. “He’s up,” she said in the same strange accent Aria had. There was no one like Aria in Obedience, but Jaxon wondered if there was anyone like this woman in the world. Her wide hips jiggled when she skipped to his bedside, accentuated by a bright yellow belt around her small waist. Buzzcut blonde hair complimented her round face.
She smiled and one blue eye, one yellow, smiled with her. “Oh, you’re right. He’s a cutie… with all that swelling gone.” She had the same accent as Aria, though a bit richer so her round lips puckered when she stressed her syllables. “You win that.” She must have had her own sun since everything seemed to glow, even her skin, like Naomi’s bedazzled shoes. She pulled out three gold coins and dropped them into Aria’s hands. “You got some rusies coming from Beck, too.”
“She’d never admit it,” Aria said over her shoulder.
“Man, I can’t stand women, I swear,” Nano said, shaking his head. “My man is sittin’ right there and y’all talkin’ about him like he’s on a different planet. You offended? It’s okay to tell’em to shut up.”
“Nano said we wouldn’t think you were cute because… you’re… different-looking,” Aria explained. “But… well…. Eshauna sided with him because she felt bad for him.”
Nano sneered. “Because I’m a god and mere humans know what’s good for’em.”
The woman she had called Eshauna snickered, but Aria rolled her eyes. “He’s not a god.” She began to rock her pig in her arms.
Eshauna bent in front of Jaxon. He tried to scoot away from her supple breasts, which she was shoving in his lap. “Black eyes?”
Brown, he wanted to say. His eyes were brown.
“Your name, handsome?”
Jaxon didn’t know her or why he should tell her his name.
“Not gonna talk?”
If he chose to speak to her, it wouldn’t be to tell her his name. He had more pressing issues, like getting back his celrings and taking a long, needed piss.
“He’s seen enough new faces,” Aria said, in Jaxon’s place. “He wants his questions answered too.”
It was like she was in his head. She was saying all the things he couldn’t.
“We’ll take you to the Emiir,” Eshauna said, finally.
“She means… Emiir means Commander. Our Commander’s lookin’ forward to–um”— She looked to Nano for the words, but he only laughed— “meeting you.”
Nano laughed again, prompting Aria to shove his arm.
Jaxon couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted less. He had answered to his king, his queen. He had performed his responsibilities without argument because he cared about people. Now, his fate was in the hands of another leader in a Door everyone thought was empty.
Nano helped Jaxon into a wheelchair that was too straight for his aching side. They were making it clear how many choices he had.
He hadn’t taken time to look at Nano before, but the hall light reflected off every bulge of armor. It covered most of him. The rest of him was bound by leather strings—holding close pouches, canteens and weapons—and fur. Real fur. From an animal. A piece of bone held together the green fa
bric wrapped around his feet. He’d never seen shoes that looked like leaves.
His chair jerked, throwing him out of his head.
“Shoot, yersoeme.” Aria flattened the rug the chair had pulled up with her foot.
The bedroom Jaxon had come from was the only room on that floor. Nano unlocked the door at the end of the hall and stepped into the open air of a bridge.
Jaxon’s adrenaline spiked. He might’ve slept for days, but he felt like he was coming out of the forest all over again. Now, they were sending him back in.
“Relax,” Aria said. “It’s right there.” She nodded to the open door at the other end and didn’t give him time to protest before she was on her way again.
Old train tracks supported the wooden bridge, holding it together. Jaxon smoothed his fingers over the ivy growing on the exterior rails. Drums raged into the early morning hours, fiery lanterns flickering in pace with rhythmed undulating. People were having a party below. More people. Jaxon’s mind-fog cleared the longer he was there. No curfew hours. No skin-to-skin contact laws. These people had no control.
Aria slid open a divider at the other end of the bridge. Nano took over pushing for her, leading them all into a candlelit hexagonal chamber. Lambent, red flames glinted from decorative wall sconces, votive candles and intricate glass chandeliers. The hardwood floor was lit with violet and pink hues from the sunset pouring through high windows.
From the floor-to-ceiling were more books than Jaxon had seen in his life. Naomi would give up her whole life for those books. Kenner would give up his life to live in the middle of what he would call history. Jaxon wasn’t interested in giving up anything, but that was the least of his concerns now. Sitting before him, on a vintage loveseat, her boots kicked up on a square table, was a woman. Emiir, Jaxon presumed. She brought a sheet of transparent paper closer to her face.
