by C M Weller
Sahra lost sight of Darvan after five moves along the line. She finished up near the front with all the other rats, looking around at them as if they knew anything. They just looked back, equally lost about what was going on. Nobody who was standing in lines was bleeding or very still. Those had got taken into another room.
Four different Kuins entered, then some Barbas with the big guns, who set themselves along the wall Sahra was facing and made sure everyone could see their guns.
Then came the sparkly masters.
Masters in big clothes. Sparkly clothes. Bright colours and dangly things that caught the light and bits of clothes that just hung or flapped about when they moved.
And the sparkliest, brightest, flappiest one had a whole bunch of human pets. All redheads. Each one had been bleached, and then had something else done to make sure they got freckles in patterns. All were wearing not very much, but it also sparkled and flapped when they moved. Their red hair was all fancy. Done up in tricky knots that made Sahra's eyes hurt just to look at them.
Two were twins. Identical, and had sparkly collars and chains held by the sparkliest of girl masters ever. One carried a pretty bowl and the other didn't carry anything.
The master holding their leashes was the Majestrix herself. The master of the masters.
Sahra looked at her toes.
The Majestrix had funny shoes. With pointy bits that made her taller and showed off her painted foot-claws at the same time. She went down the line as far as some ten-year-olds, and then slowly walked back, past Sahra, to some littles who were just past being toilet trained.
Sahra peeked. She was talking to the Kuins, who had come over all shy in front of a master half their age or less.
While they were talking, the Majestrix gave something from the pretty bowl to the pet who was not carrying anything. This pet chewed it like they didn't like it but daren't say so, and then held it out on his tongue.
The Majestrix, cool as ice, bent over and kissed the stuff right off her pet's tongue. She was touching lips and everything! And everyone else was pretending not to see it.
Sahra was sure she was the only one who saw that pet shiver as if he wanted to throw up.
Then the Majestrix picked up a tiny little redhead girl and smoothed her hair. Another pet held out a box with collars in neat lines in it, and the master of the masters tapped one with a claw.
The bowl-less twin looked sort of happy to put the collar on the little girl. The little girl didn't look too happy. She was crying for her mama, by the looks, and got handed from one set of arms to another until Sahra couldn't see her any more.
The Majestrix and all her pets left in a cloud of sparkles, all walking as if they had no hurry to be anywhere.
More glittery masters came, and some took a group and some took just one. Each put a collar on the humans they chose.
They were going to be pets? Why?
All the redheads went first. And then all the almond-eyed, dark-haired ones. Then all the brown-skinned. Except for the older ones, they got left behind no matter how pretty the masters thought they were.
Suddenly, Sahra had some claws around her arm. A younger master, not much older than Paul, had Sahra in her grip and was jumping up and down and dragging Sahra towards an adult. Her father, another rare male Barba, had an argument with - Sahra peeked - his daughter and pulled out his payment card.
This got more bouncing from the daughter, and it got Sahra a collar that they put on a little too tight for Sahra's liking. She coughed and pulled at it for what seemed like forever before anyone let it loose a notch.
Her new owner was bouncing as she moved, tugging on the leash and Sahra's collar as she went. Sahra tried copying the young master's bouncing step, and found it worked best when she kept time with her new owner.
Something made them all stop, though, and the Barba took the leash from daughter, who still bounce-stepped along. The Barba walked all normal.
Sahra didn't understand. She'd just been keeping pace.
Maybe some other masters thought it was funny to see a girl and her new human slave bouncing along in step. Maybe Barba-father didn't like his pets - or his daughters pets - to bounce.
Sahra kept her eyes on the floor and let the leash tell her where to go. She wanted to look around, but this was a master place. There were masters everywhere.
A sudden turn, and the space smelled like soap and chemicals and something like the flowers from the big room where all the plants were, only without the poo-smell of the garden bed. It made her nose itch.
Suddenly, there were humans. Their clothes stuck tight to the skin and were all bright colours and shiny without being sparkly. They must have been talking, but the second they knew Sahra was deaf they just talked to each other. And very quick talking, too.
They got rid of her sheath like it was garbage.
They put her in a tub of bubbles with hot water in and scrubbed her down until all her skin was red and her fingers and toes were all wrinkles. Then they pulled her out and rubbed her down with fuzzy cloth and blew warm air real fast over all of her.
One ran a fine comb through her head.
The new sheath they had for her was shiny and really white and felt like plastic. Then they put her into a funny chair and washed her hair again, combed it again, and put some really nasty-smelling stuff in it and wound it onto tubes. Others were doing weird things to her fingers and toes. Rubbing the nails with things, poking dirt and bits out of the corners and putting paint on them.
There was a mirror above her. Sahra could see that they had painted her hair orange. She could also see her new master-owner flipping through pictures on a tablet. Barba-father on one side and a different, flappy-clothed master on the other, both pointing at things.
When they were done painting her nails, they strapped her hands and feet down and stuck her head under another thing that blew air around her head.
She would be glad when the chemical smell went away, for all that it smelled like something on fire. Her tummy really poked at her and the humans in charge of painting her laughed.
Her owner was eating something, in her reflection in the mirror. The same something the Majestrix had made one of her pets chew for her.
Funny long bugs with thick back legs. Black ones with long, long curvy feelers.
She didn't want to chew those for her owner. The only black bugs Sahra knew were cockroaches and they were horrible. Someone once said a friend of a friend of a friend of theirs had eaten one on a dare and got so sick they died.
She was never going to eat any black bug. No matter what anyone said. Or chew one for anyone else.
Yuck.
One of the humans in charge of painting her noticed Sahra's face and figured out the cause. Then she put some kind of cool mask over Sahra's eyes, making her blind and deaf.
And hungry and bored.
And scared.
And lonely.
Sahra tried everything to stop the tears coming out. She was already too thirsty and her head hurt from the inside and all she had for company was an angel in her head singing one forever note in praise of God.
And then there was a warm, human hand on her shoulder. One of the strangers painting her had seen how scared she was and let her have a hand as company.
Sahra relaxed. Even though she knew Mama was far away and missing her and Darvan and anyone else caught up in the bomb... Sahra pretended it was Mama's hand, there.
Sahra also wished God would help Mama feel better for knowing Sahra and Duvi and anyone else she missed was okay. And she wished someone would find Simy and look after him. She didn't want him to be alone. Even if she never saw him again.
The mask and the straps and the thing over her head went away. The humans in charge of her helped her take off the sheath and pressed her against the wall with a sheet of plastic. Cold chemicals prickled against her skin in weird patterns.
I'm a pet. I'm someone's pet.
She didn't feel very much above any
one at all. She felt worse than ever than when she was a tunnel rat. Her owner was making her to look pretty and not do a lot else. At least when she was a rat, she was doing something useful.
They strapped her into a frame and did her front and face with dark chemical spots and plastic with pattern holes in. One word that Sahra could read on the painters' mouths looked like sten-sin. No. Sten-sil.
Was it what they were doing? Or something they were using?
They strapped her head in so they could pattern her neck up.
Her owner was turning her into a fake redhead. With freckle patterns all over.
Sahra's feet hurt. Her joints creaked. Her whole body felt stiff and she could swear that her tummy was trying to eat up the rest of her insides.
And something on her head was feeling hot in a wrong way.
It took them way too long to take her off the frame and put her hair through another wash and back into the tubes and the weird helmet on a post thing that blew more air all over her.
Her nails were a colour of red Sahra had never known. Not even when baby David had had a bad bottom rash and nearly almost bled because of it. Not even on the flowers in the big plant room.
Her new 'freckles' were also red. A deeper red than blood. They stood out like sores on her skin, but they didn't itch or burn.
They finished blowing air on her head again and took the tubes out of her hair. Then they marched her into a room full of clothes and her owner and her father.
These were not sheaths. These had wiggly bits and bits with holes in and sparkly bits and dangly bits and flappy bits and way too many colours for Sahra to count. And they were all sizes. Even for grownups.
Sahra had to stand with her feet on special patches and her arms straight out so that her hands were at the same height as her shoulders. A light shone all over her and something got the attention of the flappy male in charge of the whole place.
Sahra's owner did some pointing and jumping at something wobbly and wide and covered in sparkly things and other bits with holes in. It was in a kind of pink that made Sahra angry just looking at it. It made her want to punch someone. It had long tubes where the arms should go and Sahra figured it would snag on just about everything.
But before that... thing... got put on her, the flappy-dressed male put her into tiny little pants like she was a baby, and a really short sheath not long enough to cover her butt. Then the horrible hate-sheath with the cloth tubes to cover her arms. And lots and lots of master's talons plucking at the hate-sheath.
There were holes in the whole thing. Holes made to show off the pattern 'freckles' on her hide.
Next, they fought her feet into weird cloth tubes and shoes made for her feet. Both in shades of the hated pink. The cloth tubes had wobbly bits at their one hole, and made her legs match the sheath.
Sahra would rather look at anything, even black bugs, than look at this stupid sheath.
Barba-father and Sahra's owner picked out some other things. Some flappy and shiny, some almost covered in strips of shiny-flappy cloth. One was plain and looked soft. Some were covered in laces. Some were all wobbly everywhere. One had every colour there was and more than a few that weren't.
Sahra could not feel the floor under her feet. Could not tell if there was slippery stuff underfoot or not. She could barely walk when her owner took up the leash and began to run with her in tow.
Once again Barba-father stopped them and took the leash while Sahra's owner bounced on ahead.
They stopped at a place that smelled of all kinds of good food and made Sahra sit on the floor while they took a table.
Food came. Master food.
Sahra's tummy was outright punching her, now. She imagined it must have been making a ruckus because talons started pointing and one master at another table put their hand down with some food in it for her.
It was a black bug.
She shook her head.
Sahra's owner got up and talked to a different master behind a sort of long table that went all the way across the room, near a wall. There was lots of pointing at Sahra. She tried to hide from it and peek at her owner at the same time. It didn't work so good. Either she saw the pointing or she couldn't see her owner through the hair that they'd turned into bright orange springs that wanted to tangle.
The next time she saw those stupid rebels, she was going to bite them.
A pet bowl turned up, carried by a brown man with bleached zigzags up and down his arms. There was rice and sweet potato, and carrots and beans and a little dark brown meat and red beans and, with a secret move from the zigzag man, chopsticks for her to eat it with.
Sahra's owner put a bib on her. And put on sharp little clips to keep her springy orange hair from going into the food.
Bless the sweet Lord for this bounty, she prayed inside her head, the only place she could actually hear herself. Maybe the angel singing the note in her head could take it along. And take the note with her.
And if maybe's got anything done, then Sahra may be the Majestrix herself, next Tuesday.
Sahra gave up on thinking for the moment and got on with filling her angry tummy. All her other problems could wait until she ate.
*
There were no more rats. And any survivors outside would smell their relatives' deaths in this room and avoid it like death was infectious. Eon flipped the switches back anyway. Just in case there were some stupid rats.
He pressed himself to the bulkhead, trying to pick up the subtle vibrations of slave-news, carried from mouth to rubbery mouth. Silence.
Either he was too far away or, more likely, there was another lockdown until someone figured out what had gone wrong with this bombing.
He could not go looking for her. He was not yet capable of enough stealth to avoid someone claiming him as their own. Nor enough strength to fight them off.
He would have to wait. And while he waited, he did everything he could to make himself strong.
*
Sahra was figuring the whole house out. There were two masters here. Barba-father and his daughter. Something special must have happened for the daughter to stay with her father instead of going to some female relative. There were a lot of slaves. Most of them were the almond-eyed folk who were fashionable some time before Sahra had been born.
They did all the work. There was a cook and a maid and a body-servant for Sahra's owner, who was just there to help the young master get into and out of her super-tricky clothes. There was a manservant for the Barba-father and a gardener-farmer who grew things in a small room for plants or farmed the insects that the masters loved to eat.
He also kept rats and mice on the dead bugs or food scraps the masters left. The rats and mice lasted longer than the bugs, so there were less of them. And they took up more space because they were bigger.
Sahra noticed something, though. All the humans in this place did not talk with their mouths. They made signs at each other with their hands. They made one to her, a hand flapping in and out of being in half while the back of that hand was stuck up to their foreheads.
They must have named her that.
Sahra was slow with the signs and couldn't get half of them. She watched anyway. When she was allowed to watch.
Her own duties seemed to be being a doll. Her owner spent most of her time playing with Sahra's hair or tugging at Sahra's strange and stupid clothes or swapping useless sparkly things for other useless sparkly things.
Sahra had a doll she'd made out of a piece of rag from Mama's sewing-box. It was a knot in one corner with a clumsy face drawn on the knot with a bit of carbon mixed up with wax. And it had, until she met Simy, been her secret best friend. Well hidden from mean or grownup hands. She shared it with the littles if they were feeling nice about it and she was feeling nice too.
Sahra's doll didn't have clothes. Or much of a body. Pretty much everything Sahra's doll had lived in her head with the rest of her dreams.
This young master had toy castles and tiny space ships an
d a whole room full of all sorts of clothes and useless sparkly things. And two beds all to herself, one full of soft things made to look like animals Sahra didn't know.
Sahra kind of liked the one that looked like a ball of fluff with a face and legs.
The other bed in the young master's room was hung all over with cloth so thin Sahra could see through it, and that sparkled too. There were funny-shaped pillows and lots of pretty cloths that the young master slept between.
And a big sort of pillow holding it all up.
Sahra had one big pillow on the floor. It smelled like cat, but not very much like cat. Which made Sahra wonder what had happened to the young master's last pet.
Her owner took off the hate-sheath and put on the soft plain sheath that was like wearing nothing. It didn't itch or poke or, like some really bad sheaths she'd got, crawl with tiny bugs. Sahra wanted to wear this one all the time. And not the others made to be trouble.
She lay down where she was told and let the young master cover her up with a big cloth that was covered in star-shapes of every colour that anyone had ever cooked up.
Barba-father did something the same for the young master, and rubbed her snout with his before patting her head and turning off the light.
Sahra listened for something - anything else- besides the one note. Did a concussion last as long as the whine? Would she die if she fell asleep? She had one being to ask, and He was not big on answers.
Dear God, if I should die before I wake, please send someone to help Simy and my mother? They're going to need it.
*
Three days. Eon thought he should wait the entire seven before thinking Sahra missing, presumed dead, and looking for a new human - or anyone - willing to help him. Rats - the non-furry ones - avoided this place. Something about 'haints' if he caught the distant shouts correctly.
"Hsst!"
Eon nearly jumped out of his skin. Sahra! In a high vent, naked as the day she was born, smiling and gesturing for him to come up.
"'S me. Sahra," she whispered. "Can't make a lotta noise. Y'awnup." She helped him with the one arm that was not keeping her steady and carried him up to a new, cleaner plateau.
For limited definitions of 'cleaner'.
Air vents got dust, which collected in lumps and drifts of fluff, dead skin, hair, and the small vermin that fed in them.
It was a puffy feast.
