by Ava D. Dohn
* * *
Ishtar looked up from her half-eaten bowl of fruit, angrily glaring at Symeon. “Enough! You are playing folly with me. That I know. This...” She threw the bowl on the floor. “grows nowhere near my home! The sun warms not my wall in the heat of high day. Indeed! Does the sun rise at all in this darksome place, the fire and wicker lamp my only lighted companions? Oh yes, the cock crows beyond this room. Or is it but a game played in my mind? Give me answers, for my patience is frayed to the limit!”
Symeon motioned down with outstretched hands as he attempted to calm the moment. “Look, please my little child, you were asleep many days. The healers recommend just another day or two, and you shall be up and about as good as new. Just…”
Ishtar jumped up shouting. “I am as good as new! Better! You are not truthful with me. My mother you have not delivered here. The door is always locked after being lovingly shut behind you. Every time I request my leave, you feign excuse.”
Symeon begged, “Please, just a little while longer.”
“No little while longer!” Ishtar screamed, charging Symeon. “Outta my way!”
Symeon reached out, attempting to block the girl’s advance. Ishtar slammed up against him, her eyes bulging in surprise when Symeon’s resistance stopped her up short. Wild-eyed, the girl backed up, hands high as if preparing for combat. She squinted, suspicion echoing on her tongue. “An old man I see, but with the strength of a stallion. Have the healers also cured you of your joint pain that has so long crippled you?”
Excitedly motioning Ishtar to stand back, Symeon tried to calm the child. “Only a day...! A day! I promise. Only a day...”
Hearing the commotion in the other room, Hannah opened the door to see what the matter might be. “Hello.” The woman called out cheerfully as she swung the door wide.
Symeon glanced over his shoulder at hearing the door creaking upon its hinges. Ishtar wasted no time, taking advantage of the distraction. Plunging forward, she shoved her uncle aside and dove for the doorway, piling into Hannah and slamming her back against the doorpost.
Hanna grimaced in pain from the hit, but kept her wits about her, preventing the girl from escaping. A struggle soon ensued. Ishtar was not going down easily, and Hanna refused to surrender to the onslaught. Determined to get away at all costs, the child held nothing back, clawing, slapping and punching her attempted way to freedom. Hanna took it all - a bruised rib, bleeding lip, and other minor injuries - holding back in her defense for fear of harming Ishtar. She planted herself firmly across the doorway as the girl continued to pummel her with fists and screaming abuses.
In desperation, Ishtar grabbed hold of Hanna’s upper garment and yanked backward, throwing Hanna off balance. As the woman stumbled forward, reaching for the door to keep from falling, the garment tore from her shoulders, ripping one of the prosthetic breasts away in the process. Catching herself up by clutching the door handle, Hanna looked into a shocked face of a young girl seeing for the first time the woman’s youthful beauty.
Ishtar might be shocked at what she saw, but not into inactivity. Seeing an opened doorway, the girl charged past Hanna and bolted into the adjacent room, only to be stopped up short at seeing a half-naked man sitting at a table with bright, blazing fires of every color on it and upon the wall in front of him. Screaming, terrified, Ishtar lunged for a knife lying on a table in another corner of the room.
Holding it high, she threatened, “Get outta my way, or I’ll stick ya!”
The man threw his hands up, smiling, as he nodded toward the further door. “No harm, missy. No harm...” He shot a warning glance back at the other doorway for Hanna and Symeon not to interfere. Ishtar did not hesitate. In a heartbeat, she was out the door and away.
In a flash, Symeon was across the room, Drorli catching him up short. “Let her go, my friend. She’s not the first to take that path.” Watching helplessly as his child disappeared into the thickets across the street, Symeon cried out after her, “No! Honey, please come back!”
Taking him by the arm, Drorli led Symeon back to the small table that Ishtar had stolen the knife from. “Sit, my friend. The girl’s fine. Gives her a chance to stretch her legs a bit...”
Symeon whined, “She will get lost, maybe hurt, or possibly hurt others.”
“Come, now.” Drorli patted Symeon on the shoulder. “She may become lost, already is, but we won’t lose her, not with all the preparations we’ve made.”
Hanna stepped into the room and over to a mirror on the wall. Examining a swollen bruise and cut lip, she mused, “Feisty one, she is! Hadn’t seen that coming...” Then pulling her upper garment off, she began picking away at removing the remainder of the prosthetics. “At least, I won’t be saddled with these anymore. Ugly and old I once was, and never again do I wish to be! I like the new me, or should I say the young me, like the way I look and the way others like the way I look.” She chanced a flirting glance at both Symeon and Drorli.
Symeon’s fear for Ishtar still flooded his mind, he thinking of nothing else. Hanna looked up at him while tugging at a sticky piece of the prosthetic, reminding him of the earlier precautions taken. “She’s fine, dear. Eurawha explained all the preparations that were made for your child, expecting her to be a pill.”
“She’s no pill!” Symeon cried, then confessing he wasn’t sure what a pill was.
Hanna ignored him. “Eurawha has informed us both that the entire district is prepared, designed for newcomers. I’m sure that everyone concerned is, or will be notified of the girl’s escape. Then there are all the hidden machines in yonder fields and forests that will be watching and listening for her.”
She placed a finger on the back of her lower skull. “And don’t forget the little… little…”
“Chip...” Drorli volunteered.
Smiling, Hanna thanked him. “Little chip that was inserted under Ishtar’s skin. Everything will be fine.”
Symeon continued to complain, picking up on blaming himself for the girl’s escape.
Drorli laughed, stopping him. “Come now, friend, as I said, she’s not the first of your kind to have made tracks across the stream and into the distant hills. It’s not your fault. Truth be said, little hope we had that you could carry it off with the girl. She’s a smart one, snoopy and suspicious, that’s her nature. I‘ve studied her makeup and history.”
He patted Symeon on the back. “The village is deserted, just the three of us here at present. Besides the tracking systems, such as those machines there are doing at this moment…” he pointed toward the viewing screen on the wall, “we have all sorts of things we can do to keep your girl away from danger - sights and sounds that will keep her where we want her.”
He pointed toward the opened doorway. “There are strange and wonderful animals living in that wood which just may give our girl the willies, but they are totally harmless, I assure you. Ishtar will be fine.”
Walking over and closing the door, Drorli invited Symeon and Hanna to take a ‘look see’ at exactly what their recent charge was doing. As they watched her on the viewing screen, he offered, “We’ll give her a day or so to get settled down a bit. A few nights alone in the wild might make her a little more willing to accept that we intend her no harm.”
