Tithe

by Claire Vale

  He looks another moment, his fingers still wrapped tight.

  I close my eyes, breath in deeply, breath out, drawing on his strength, his warmth. When my eyes open, he’s satisfied with what he sees and releases my hand.

  Muscle-throat barks the order and we’re walking again in our stuttered, awkward manner. I shoot hard, cursed looks at any guard who dares to meet my eye.

  You won’t come to any harm. That’s what Kane told me. Are the Alders not aware of how callously, how cruelly, their guards treat their prisoners? If they are aware, if they condone all this, then Kane’s definition of harm differs wildly from mine.

  We round the corner of the last clapboard unit and the entrance to a tunnel that cuts into the hills is right upon us. It looks like the mouth of a hungry beast, stretched wide open by a framework of crude timber. We aren’t given a moment to consider the dire consequences, we’re marched straight in.

  Electric bulbs are strung from the cave-like roof, casting gloom and inky shadows all around us. Some kind of raised iron track runs alongside the rocky wall to my right. The air becomes cooler, clammy, as we trudge deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast. The tunnel twists and curves and I keep waiting for the next bend to open up into… I don’t know what, I don’t know what I expect, but wherever we’re headed, I hope we get there soon. The ground is uneven and when one trips, we all pay the price. My ankle is chaffed and I swear I can feel an ugly yellow bruise developing on my thighs and my spirit is wounded.

  The day has barely started, and I need it to be done.

  We’ve been advancing at our stumbling pace for about fifteen minutes when the tunnel sprouts into three forks. The iron track stops with a large, rectangular trolley sitting on the end of the line. Apparently it’s also the end of our companionship with the other groups, limited as it may have been. I don’t get a chance to catch Gabe’s eye before we’re separated, the black-haired guard barking at our heels as he orders my group down one of the narrow forks.

  We’re forced into a staggered formation, but it’s a short walk before the tunnel dead-ends. The ground is littered with fallen rocks of all shapes and sizes and in between, my footfalls sink into stone gravel and, in some places, patches of sand so fine, it feels like walking on a silver dust cloud.

  Our task for the day, the guard informs us. “Clear these rocks. I want that trolley full before lunch, or there won’t be any lunch. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Sir,” the beady-eyed man says.

  The rest of us follow his example.

  The guard retreats and I look from Chris, to Olly, to Sean. Just walking in this narrow tunnel is a mission. How on earth are we supposed to do it while lugging huge rocks?

  The man crowds closer. “I’m Mike,” he says in a hushed voice, looks at me. “Are you okay?”

  My eyes scowl at him in silence.

  “No, we can talk here, just quietly,” he tells us. “The guards don’t like it down here. They’ll rotate shifts, so there’s always one keeping watch in the main tunnel, but that’s all.”

  My lips stay firmly pursed. How has he already forgotten the rule we all just learnt the hard way? Or maybe he’s a mole, planted here to lure us into another beating for the guards’ sinister pleasure!

  Olly clearly doesn’t have my trust issues. He introduces himself, then says, “Is he serious? We have to fill that trolley?”

  “Not alone,” Mike says. “All the teams fill the same trolley. It’s not too bad, we’re usually a lot fewer people than we are today?” There’s a question in the look he sweeps across us.

  It goes unanswered.

  “We’d better get to work,” Sean says, sounding about as enthusiastic as I feel. “My stomach needs lunch.”

  “Yeah, sorry about breakfast.” Mike offers what seems to be a genuine grimace. “We weren’t expecting you.”

  If he is a mole, he’s good. And I’m no longer so sure he is, but I still wish everyone would shut the hell up. The sight of Gabe collapsing on his knees plagues me. The responsibility of his outrage on my behalf weighs on my shoulders as we arrange ourselves and the clumsy chains around a clump of rocks.

  I scoop up a handful of small stones.

  Chris attempts to lift a rock of massive proportions and drops it in a puff of curses and dust that tickles my nostrils.

  “Thanks,” I mutter at him, because it’s also occurred to me that I’m just as liable to be punished for the general talking whether I participate or not.

  “It looks lighter than it is,” he says.

  “It looks the size of a boulder.”

  He flexes a bicep at me, grinning, some of his old self shining through. “This bad boy can handle boulders.”

  I swallow a laugh, and it feels good.

  “Hey,” he says as he selects a more reasonable rock, sending me a sideways look, “I feel shit about earlier. I’m really sorry, Senna, I’m such an idiot.”

  “No, you’re not,” I say, then, to hold onto the light mood for just a moment more, I change that to, “Except when it comes to boy stuff.”

  The grin returns, creasing into the edges of his warm, brown eyes. “Hey, are you insulting my flirting skills?”

  “Never,” I declare solemnly. “I was referring to the showing off. If you don’t have the muscle, don’t do the show.”

  “If you two are quite done…” Olly butts in, holding up his rock. “The rest of us are growing callouses.”

  I can’t tell if he’s serious or joining in the humor, so I compromise with a smile and say, “Ready when you are.”

  We fall silent as we walk (shuffle) along the narrow tunnel to the trolley. Sure enough, the black-haired guard is there, lounging against the wall with a smirk I dearly want to slap away. We drop the rocks in and make our awkward way back, my ankle scrubbing the cuff with every misstep. I’m getting better at syncing with Chris, but it’s impossible to avoid the odd jerk and yank.

  As soon as we stop again, I go down on a knee and adjust the cuff as high up my calf as it will go to examine the skin. It’s not broken, just red and tender, but the anklebone is puffy.

  Chris comes down beside me, takes a look. “That looks sore.”

  “I wish there was a way to keep this higher,” I say, relishing the brief respite.

  “I have an idea.” He tugs his t-shirt off over his head, exposing tanned skin and a ripped torso.

  I know what he’s about to suggest, and I feel bad about taking the shirt off his back (literally) but my ankle feels worse. So instead I tease, let my gaze flicker down his chest, “Is this part of those flirting skills you mentioned?”

  “Nah…” His head is bent as he rolls the t-shirt into a thick rope and wraps it around my ankle. “I don’t do that anymore, remember?”

  I do remember. It stopped around the same time Gabe and I shared our first kiss.

  Chris glances up at me. “Not with you, anyway,” he adds, injecting humor with a slow wink that doesn’t quite translate into the way his gaze lingers before he continues binding my ankle.

  I should quit. Leave it alone. There have been moments, a couple, where I wondered if our flirtatious banter was more harmless for me than him. This is one of them.

  But the truth is, I miss this fun side of our friendship and right now I’m desperate for any scrap, any small reminder of the way things were before my life turned into this. “I knew it. You finally realized you were all hot air and talk and no action.”

  He tucks the ends of the material in and leans back, looks at me.

  I smile, encouraging a witty remark that doesn’t come.

  “Something like that,” he says, no smile. “Try it now.”

  I release the cuff and it pretty much stays, sits above the thick ankle bracelet Chris has fashioned. “Thank you,” I whisper. “This is amazing.”

  “You’re welcome.” His eyes soften into mine, lessens my nostalgia for the old us. The new us isn’t too shabby.

  On our next trip to the trolley, we enc
ounter Jessie’s group, have to wait for them to tip their handfuls.

  Our gazes meet in wordless conversation as she passes.

  You okay after what that bastard did?

  Never better. I smile. Nod. You?

  She rolls her eyes, and that’s all we have time for before she has to keep up or get yanked forward.

  After our fourth trip to the trolley and back (it feels like our hundredth), the mood has cranked down to misery. I don’t recall when I last felt this exhausted, especially after doing so little. It’s not the work, though, it’s mostly the coordinated effort required to gather rocks together, walk together, tip together. And something else I can’t quite place. Maybe it’s just the air, too thin, too clammy, too claustrophobic. And my eyes are scratchy. My throat is grit, so parched, I’d scream and earn myself another sting of that baton if I thought it’d come with a swig of water.

  Olly breathes out noisily and kicks out, sending up a plume of dirt and silvery dust with the toe of his boot.

  We all cough and splutter in the aftermath. Fine particles dance in the dim beam of yellow light from the dangling electric bulb. Some of it settles, but now that I’m noticing, I realize it’s been all around us the whole time, probably kicked up by our endless shuffling to and from. No wonder my throat and eyes are bathed in grit.

  When Sean can talk again, he clips Olly on the shoulder with a not-too-light punch. “Cut out the temper tantrums.”

  “This is stupid,” Olly grouses. “What are we doing, anyway? If they want us to clear this place, it would be far more efficient without these damn chains.”

  “They don’t mean for it to be efficient,” Mike says. “Our only purpose here it to sweat and hurt. They have their own specialists amongst the miners, engineers, drillers, and yeah, a crew with proper equipment to transport the ore and clean up the mess.”

  Olly’s not placated. “That’s even more stupid. If we have to do hard labor, why not make it useful?”

  “How long have you been here?” Sean asks Mike.

  “Nine weeks, two days.” He grins. “Five more days to go, then I’m done.”

  My jaw drops. “Nine weeks?”

  “What are you in for?”

  Mike looks at me. “Once you get through the first day and night, it’s just about keeping your head down and doing your time. The guards have their petty rules, but they don’t get mean unless you break them.”

  He doesn’t answer Sean’s other question, but fair enough. We never answered his about what we’re all doing here.

  My stomach figures it must be getting close to lunchtime and I’m measuring the fullness of the trolley with my eye as I drop in a cluster of small rocks (nearly there, another load from each team and we should be good), when shouts echo from the left-most fork in the tunnel.

  “Help!”

  “Guard! We need help!”

  My heart slams into my chest. I don’t recognize the voices, don’t know which team/s are in that fork.

  The black-haired guard has rotated out, in his place the one with that tattoo on his neck, but it hardly matters, they’re all the same. The guard pushes away from the wall without any sense of urgency, unclips his baton—what? does he honestly think he may be walking into an ambush?

  “Help!”

  “Stay.” He points the baton at us as he passes. “Do. Not. Move. Or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  I grab Chris by the arm. “It could be Gabe.”

  “It could be June,” Olly says.

  Sean curses. “It could be Mai.”

  We eye each other, reach an anonymous decision between the four of us.

  Unfortunately we’re chained to a fifth member and Mike digs his heels in the ground as we attempt to follow the guard. “Are you mad?”

  No, but I’m getting there, and it’s not the bat-shit crazy version of mad. “We have friends in there.”

  “We’ve taken a vote,” Chris tells him calmly. “You’re outnumbered.”

  “There’s no vote,” Mike hisses at us. “When a guard orders you to stay, you stay. Have you kids not learnt a damn thing today?”

  Olly reaches down to grab the chain between him and Mike. “I’ll snap you off your feet and drag you if that’s what it takes, but we’re going now.”

  Mike stares him down, and I’m wondering just how much of a kicking, screaming fight he’ll put up, when the guard returns with a body draped in his arms, blond curls tumbling down.

  “No,” Olly mewls. He struggles forward and we move with him, even Mike. “What happened? Is she okay?”

  Dread pinches my breath. The guard looks set to walk right on by us, ignoring Olly, ignoring all our shock-bleached faces.

  “Please,” I beg of him. “Is she okay?”

  He stalls, throws a scowling look at us. “She passed out. Probably just needs fresh air and water.”

  Passed out… The tightness in my lungs eases. Exhaustion. Dehydration. I can relate to that. The air in these tunnels is so damn dry, so damn dusty— “Wait!”

  The guard has picked up his long-legged stride again and I run after him, forget completely about the chain that yanks me back. My foot slips out from under me and I go down, landing on my butt with a jolt that shudders up my spine.

  Another rattle of chains turns my head. It’s Gabe’s group, shuffling into view. I take a moment to study him, assess whether he’s hurt. Of course he isn’t, it isn’t him, it’s June who’s hurt.

  “Wait!” I scream, and this time the guard hears the frenetic panic in my high-pitched voice and stops, glances at me over his shoulder. “She has asthma. You need to get her proper care. At once! She may have trouble breathing. Oh, the herbs. In the front pocket of her jeans. There’s a pouch of herbs that might help. But you have to get her to a doctor. Please!”

  “What are you talking about?” Olly demands.

  My eyes jerk to him. He looks confused. I’m confused. “I’m talking about June’s asthma. This could be more serious than just fainting.”

  “June doesn’t have asthma.”

  I stare at him. She never told him. She trusted me with her secret when she didn’t even confide in the guy she planned to marry. What have I done? Nothing, if I’m right about her paranoia. Everything if she’s right.

  But she promised.

  She promised she wouldn’t let it get to this.

  The guard props June against the wall and strides up to us. Her head sags to one side. She looks like a rag doll there, limp and lifeless. My breath constricts. What is he doing? Why is he leaving her like that?

  I glare at him as he bends a knee in front of me.

  He digs a tiny key out of his cargo pocket. “You’re coming with me.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Olly grinds out.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m paired with June,” Olly says. “We’ve already lodged our intention. It’s my right.”

  The guard’s gaze bounces between us, then he makes a swift decision. He unlocks the cuff at my ankle. “Come on.”

  I don’t need the order. I’m already on my feet, running over to June. I don’t get near her, though. The guard hefts her into his arms and we’re moving at a pace that I have to jog to keep up with, a definite sense of urgency in him now. The shift in me is as sudden as it is unexpected. I still think the guards here are needlessly cruel and brutal, but I’m grateful for his urgency. I’m relieved he takes me seriously. I know he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure June is safe. In the space of minutes, he’s gone from guard to guardian.

  As soon as we emerge from the tunnel into daylight, he lays her gently on the ground, on her side.

  “Check her breathing,” he issues to me in one breath, radios for help in the other. “I need medical transport at Mine 103. Stat.”

  She’s deathly pale. Deathly still. So many emotions are coursing through me, but I don’t give in to any one of them. I just go through the motions, numb, purposeful, not feeling anything at all.

  I place my
ear near June’s airways, listen for the sound of life. I hear a faint wheeze, something that resembles blowing through a broken whistle. It doesn’t sound particularly healthy, but it’s nevertheless reassuring. I reach into her pocket for the pouch of herbs, loosen the string tying the neck closed and hold it under her nose.

  The guard kneels beside us, his gaze narrowing on the pouch. “Does that help?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admit. “She once told me it does.”

  He gives a short nod, his mouth set in a stern line.

  “How long before the jeep arrives?” I ask.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he says. “They have to drive up from the compound. But it’s a medical transport, fully equipped to deal with any emergency on the spot.”

  “Thank you.”

  He looks at me, gives another nod, then we go back to watching June. Her eyes flutter open and hope blossoms in my chest. She’s going to be fine.

  “Hey,” I say gently, “how are you feeling?”

  Her eyes close and it’s a long, horrible moment until they flutter open again. She struggles to push herself up on an elbow.

  “Take it easy,” the guard says.

  Her eyes flash to him, wide and alert, and I see the full realization of her situation play out on her face. She glances at the pouch in my hands, at me, at the guard, at the pouch again…her mouth quivers and she sags to the ground again, as if we’ve somehow sapped the last of her strength.

  “June, I’m sorry.” I am, sorry I spilled her secret, sorry I had no choice. “You passed out. I didn’t know how bad it was. I had to say something. I didn’t know what else—”

  “I’m sorry,” she cuts in, her voice a breathless whisper too quiet to hide the rattle of air that comes out with it. “I knew I was in trouble, but I thought if I could just make it through to lunch.”

  “Shhh…” I take hold of her hand, lean in a bit. “Save your breath, and your strength. You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine,” I stress, meaning more than just her health.

  I look into her eyes, willing her to believe, and I think she does. Her quivering lips hitch, just the tiniest fraction.