Neeka Featherstone

by R. J. Lucas

  “I don’t think we have to worry about Blue Demons,” says Papa.

  Ambrose and I look at each other, our shared sense of skepticism obvious to Papa.

  “No one has ever made it back to Eden from the Dread Wastes,” Ambrose says, his hope fading. “And the Blue Demons are probably a big part of the reason why.”

  “Look,” Papa says. “We’ll be fine. We just need to stay focused and aware. Just because no one has made it back to Eden doesn’t mean no one has ever survived. There are civilized outposts in the Dread Wastes where outcasts are welcomed. Hopefully, we will find one.”

  “We are going back to Eden,” I say, surer of that fact than anything else in my life.

  “Neeka…” Papa starts.

  “We can go to the outposts first. Rest up and get some supplies, but then we make our way back to Eden,” I interrupt Papa, trying to make my voice steely and cold. “Solomon will get what he deserves one way or another.”

  Papa puts his hand on my head and strokes my hair. He looks at me, his eyes heavy with sadness.

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” he says.

  Papa lies back and settles in to get some rest. Ambrose does as well, but before he closes his eyes, he whispers to me.

  “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for taking me with you and not leaving me to die with the others.”

  I nod at him. I don’t know how to respond so I just put my hand on the side of his face and smile. Sometimes that’s better than saying anything.

  I crawl over to Papa and try to make myself small enough to fit into the crook of his arm. We both stare up at the sky full of stars. It’s amazing how it can be so dangerous and deadly in a place so beautiful.

  Once Ambrose begins to snore, I finally feel like Papa and I are alone. I like Ambrose, but there is a way Papa and I talk to one another when no one else is around.

  “What are the stars?” I ask Papa. I have asked him this before, and he knows what I want him to say.

  “They are free. They give us direction and hope. Their brilliance is an example for us, that says we can shine as bright as they do when the time is right.”

  “When do you think it will be my time Papa?”

  “You never know. It could be years, or it could be tomorrow. So always be ready to seize the moment when it presents itself.” Papa squeezes my shoulder, pulling me closer.

  “I’m ready Papa. I’m always ready.”

  Ambrose stops snoring and Papa looks over at him.

  “He’s stopped breathing. Better go push him over on his side.”

  I crawl over and roll him over. Ambrose snorts, catches his breath, and farts.

  “Holy goatnuts!” I exclaim, back-crawling to Papa. “It smells worse than the gas clouds of Gehenna.”

  Papa laughs.

  I snuggle back into the crook of his arm and slap him playfully on the chest. “That’s not funny Papa. I think the smell is getting worse.”

  Papa belly laughs harder and makes me laugh too. As the joking settles, we become quiet and a little solemn.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “I’m scared.”

  Papa doesn’t say anything for a brief pause. He just leans over and kisses my forehead. “We’ll be fine,” he says. “Besides, I thought you weren’t scared of anything.”

  “I’m scared of spiders,” I say, recalling an incident that happened when I was young, and I found a spider in the toilet and cried hysterically while Papa captured it with some of his research notes and tossed it outside our dwelling. Papa chuckles and I imagine he is recalling the same memory.

  “Well, as long as we don’t see any spiders, we’ll be fine.”

  Papa always knows how to make me smile. I close my eyes and drift off to sleep.

  9 - The Fat Man

  A light tapping on my skull wakes me. The flared barrel against my head is cool and the metal edge bites the skin of my forehead. I look over at Papa who also has a blunderbuss pointed at him. Several bandits stand in a circle around us. It feels like we have only been asleep for a moment, but the sun is bright, and the fire is nothing more than embers.

  The bandits seem to be everywhere, digging through the cart, searching the boulders for anyone else, standing nearby and laughing at us. It seems like there are a dozen of them, but I know there can’t be more than five or six. One bandit has a scarred eye, and he squints at us through his good one while he barks orders.

  “Stay calm,” Papa says. “Don’t do anything rash.”

  I sit up and look around, the barrel no longer pressed against my head. I realize a few of the people standing nearby aren’t bandits at all, but prisoners, looking thin and defeated with lock-collars around their necks. The bandit holding the blunderbuss on me leans in close and sniffs my hair and smiles. His wretched breath escapes between yellow-stained teeth and I gag.

  “It will be fine, Neeka,” Ambrose says, noticing my anxiety. He smiles at me from where he sits with his back against a large rock. A short blade pressed against his neck. The bandit holding it searches Ambrose’s pockets for treasure.

  “Get those two locked up and hooked to the other prisoners,” the one-eyed bandit says, pointing his stubby finger at Papa and myself.

  “What about legless here?” asks the bandit next to Ambrose.

  “Dead weight,” replies the one-eyed bandit.

  The bandit stands and slides the blade, in one quick motion, across Ambrose’s throat. Blood flows freely as a strange, airy sound escapes the mortal wound. It’s like it isn’t happening. The moment feels like a dramatic performance and they are going to tell me, at any moment, that none of this is real. But it is real.

  I scream and crawl over to Ambrose. Looking into his face, his expression is slack and his eyes search for something invisible. He turns to me with a pitiful gaze, and then…he relaxes. I hold him in my arms, sobbing.

  When I feel the steel collar clamp around my neck, the anger I felt for Solomon, the same anger I felt toward the bandits at the drop site, floods through me. I turn and kick the blood-soaked blade out of the hand of the man who killed my friend. I move with lightning speed and another kick shatters his calf. He drops like a rock. Blood runs down his boot and as he pulls back the leg of his pants, the source of blood is revealed. Bone has ripped through the skin, its jagged tip pointing horizontally as if giving us directions to some ghoulish destination.

  The other bandit jerks on the pole connected to my collar in order to restrain me, but I somersault over the pole and kick him hard in the face. Blood sprays across the group like graffiti paint and he falls to the ground unconscious, likely dead.

  “Hey, hey, hey! You might want to rethink your next action,” the one-eyed bandit says, holding a blunderbuss to Papa’s head.

  The knowledge that he will kill Papa as thoughtlessly as his fellow bandit killed Ambrose stings me enough to cease. I calm myself as another bandit grabs the pole and connects it to the collar of another prisoner. Three other prisoners stand in front of me, all separated by a six-foot pole that keeps them a little more than arm's reach from one another. Papa’s pole is connected to my collar and we stand there in single file.

  Caught…like fish on a trot line.

  The boss reaches down and feels the neck of the bandit I kicked in the face.

  “He’s dead!” he says, almost smiling. He turns to me, pleased, and says, “Maybe you’ll fetch more than I first thought.”

  He ties my hands together with a leather strap and repeats the process with Papa.

  “Let’s go, boys,” he yells. “And don’t forget the cart.”

  “Wait boss.” The bandit with the shattered leg tries to stand but stumbles to the ground. “What about me?” he whimpers.

  “Dead weight,” says the one-eyed bandit and shoots the injured man. “Now let’s go. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  As we walk along, I notice the three other prisoners in front of me. Two of them are scrawny men, most like
ly from half starving out here in this wasteland. The one in the very front is the big bruiser, the same one in our group on the airship.

  I try to whisper to Papa but one of the bandits hears me.

  “Shut your hole little girl before your Papa becomes dead weight.”

  I know he is serious, so I stay quiet.

  We walk for at least four hours when I finally see something that appears to rise from the earth, on the edge of the horizon. As the structures become clear, I can see it is a small settlement. I notice a few insignificant buildings and a large one at the center. It looks like an arena of sorts. All the buildings are made of scrap metal, weathered wood, and other scavenged materials.

  As we approach the gates, we are met by a fat, bearded man. Our arrival has obviously interrupted his lunch, as crumbs and red sauce ooze down his big, gray beard. He holds a half-cooked leg of teyrelsk in his hand, and a piece of slimy skin falls from it and lands on his belly. He flicks it from his shirt and greets the one-eyed bandit with a slap on the shoulder.

  “What have you got for me today?” he asks as he walks over to the group and sizes us up.

  “It’s a fine lot,” boasts the one-eyed bandit. “I’m sure the big guy will win you plenty of quill!”

  “He’s probably the only one. The rest are a sorry looking bunch,” the fat man argues. “They are hardly worth the collars around their necks.”

  “What are you talking about?” says the one-eyed bandit. “It’s one of my best hauls in months.”

  “Is your good eye not working? The only ones worth anything is the big bruiser and maybe this plaything here.”

  The fat man reaches toward me to caress my cheek with the back of his hand, and I recoil. His laughter is cold and mocking. I can tell he’s used to getting what he wants.

  “Oh, she’s no plaything,” the one-eyed bandit says, like he is talking about a prized animal. “She took out two of my guys in three seconds.”

  “Is that so?” says the fat man as he scratches his scruffy face, crumbs dripping from his beard. “Nevertheless, I’ll give you a hundred quill for the lot.”

  “A hundred? The big guy alone is worth a hundred and the girl is worth thirty at least.”

  “Yeah, and the rest of them are nothing more than bait.”

  “Ok. One-hundred-twenty quill, but I keep the girl.”

  “How about one-twenty, and I keep the girl, and you keep your life.”

  The one-eyed bandit sighs and wipes the sweat from his grimy forehead. “Fine, one-twenty it is,” he says, stepping closer to the fat man and throwing out his open palm.

  The fat man passes him a small pouch and flicks a dismissive hand. Their eyes are hard and for a moment, I wonder if there will be a standoff between them, but the fat man has made his position clear.

  The bandit raises an eyebrow and stares at the fat man for a moment while feeling the weight of the coins. Retrieving one from the pouch, he holds it up to get a better look. Sunlight glints off the small, rounded surface and I notice Lord Solomon’s mark. It stirs up a rage in me once again.

  As the bandit and his crew finally walk away, the fat man waves his guard’s closer. They instinctively know what to do as they herd us toward a large pair of double doors that have seen better days. In a gross display of theatrics, the fat man bangs twice on the doors, spins around with his arms spread wide and says, “Welcome to Arcmire! I think you’ll like it here.”

  As the doors open, the fat man chuckles and takes another sloppy bite of his teyrelsk leg. An instant later, I feel an elbow slam hard into my back as the guards shove us forward.

  Cleanliness is obviously not a priority here. If the trash and rotten food particles littering the corridor isn’t a dead giveaway, the stench sure is. The guard opens the door to a large cell, removes our collars and shoves us inside.

  Several prisoners pace the floor while others sit on a bench at the back wall. Papa takes me by the hand and rushes me off to a corner away from everyone else.

  “Don’t look them in the eye,” Papa tells me.

  “I’m not afraid of them, Papa.”

  “Well then, imagine they are spiders.”

  10 - The Half-Masked Girl

  The cell is dank and musty and surrounded with bars that are stained and rusted. Bales of straw have been tossed around to absorb the smells, but it just makes everything worse. A dozen or so men are in the cell with us, and looking around, I realize I am the only female.

  The other prisoners are in varying physical states. Some of them are wounded and worn out while others are in good condition. It makes me wonder how long some have been here.

  “Let’s sit,” I say to Papa as we move toward the rickety bench. A man is sleeping nearby, and our movement wakes him. He grumbles and turns over, curling into a slumber.

  I notice a cut on Papa’s hand and wipe the blood with my sleeve.

  “Stop it, Neeka,” he says. “I’m fine. Nothing but cuts and bruises.”

  I continue to look him over like a mother hen worried about her chick and I notice the sole of his shoe is torn loose.

  “Let me see your foot,” I demand. “You might have stepped on a rozkur and got poison rot in your foot.”

  “If I got poison rot in my foot, I think I’d know about it, thank you very much.” He is grumpy and worn out from the forced march and I know he is struggling.

  “I guess your feet are fine,” I admit. “though you should check them anyway. “

  “I think that fellow has the right idea, as a matter of fact,” he says while ignoring my statement. He points to the man curled up on the floor nearby.

  I stand and watch as Papa lays down on the bench and drifts off to sleep. I pace the cell, stepping over and around sleeping bodies, my mind racing with the events of the last couple of days. But my thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a deep voice behind me.

  “I remember you.”

  It startles me and I spin around ready to defend myself. It’s the big guy. The only other survivor from the airship drop.

  And then there were three, I think to myself.

  “Yeah, I remember you too,” I respond and push past him to the other side of the cell. I squat down over some moldy hay and pull out a few dry pieces that aren’t rotting. Hopefully, they will soften my slumber for the night. “You’re the coward that shot a man for a tankard of water.” I tell him.

  “No. I meant I remember you from back in Eden,” he says, stepping a little closer. “I caught you sneaking out of the Royal Garden. I yelled at you to stop, but instead, you took off running faster than anyone I had ever seen. It was quite impressive, actually.”

  I don’t say anything, afraid denying it would make him suspicious. Afraid confirming it is a trick.

  “I’m Braam, by the way,” he says and reaches out to shake my hand. “Braam Wrayburn.”

  “I don’t shake hands with killers,” I tell him and continue working on my makeshift bed.

  “I think survivor is the word you meant,” he says, squatting down and speaking to me as if he is trying to explain something complicated to a child. “Someone who survives.”

  “The poor man was running away, and you shot him in the back.”

  “Look,” he snaps, as if I’m being willfully dense, “how many of us are left from that drop? Three: me, you, and your father. That poor soul was as good as dead the minute his feet touched the ground. My only chance of survival was to get as much water as possible. I wasn’t counting on getting caught by these plugtails.” He stands in frustration with his meaty hands on his hips as he stares down at me.

  I know he is right about the man he killed. I knew it the moment I saw him…his scared eyes, his nervous tics. I probably knew it even before Braam. The quick death from a bullet might have even saved the man from the misery of dying from thirst and exposure, but I won’t admit that to him.

  “Besides,” he says. “I saw you kill a man this morning.”

  “That was self-defense,” I argue,
looking up at his hulking form without an ounce of fear.

  “Self-defense, huh? Isn’t that just another word for survival?”

  A guard opens the door and steps inside which brings me to my feet and quiets my standoff with Braam. He points out three guys and puts a collar on each of them before escorting them out of the cell. Braam and I know what that means, and it makes our argument seem frivolous. The three men are solemn and nervous. They know they will soon stare death in the face.

  I have yet to find any hay that doesn’t reek of sweat and urine and resign myself to the reality that I’ll be sleeping on the hard floor. I move to lean my back against the wall and sigh. Braam seems at a loss of what to do and decides to stretch the stiffness from his legs. He’s one of the more able men in the cell, but his fight yesterday and being captured by the bandits today, have taken their toll, even on him.

  “Were you a protector?” I ask him, not willing to admit that I remember the incident he mentioned.

  Braam nods. “I protected zones in every district. From Vanvale to Fairebourne to Coghaven. Did it for years.”

  “Funny way to describe it,” I say as I watch him fold his thick body onto the floor near me.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You protected zones in every district? I never met a protector that actually protected anyone. They’re all oversized brutes that do the bidding of Solomon. I don’t expect you are any different.”

  “Where I come from, someone like me has limited choices. I was born in Vanvale, a Middler by birth. A man of my size from Vanvale has two choices: become a protector or be forced to leave Vanvale and become a Pleb.”

  “Where I come from, I had one choice: to be a Pleb.”