The Nethers

by M. E. Parker

  The whisper of the crowd turned into chatter as they inched toward the couple. Myron couldn’t take his eyes off the auction, noting that even in his grandfather’s stories of married people and families and the like, twelve was much younger than he’d expected a husband to be.

  “This here woman, seventeen, maybe eighteen. Very healthy. A prize for sure.”

  The crowd erupted into a frenzy, calling out items to bid before the auction even started. A drudger shoved the woman to the front of the platform, the boy chained to her dragging along with her.

  “Work the pedals. I’ll get the sail ready.” Rounder tightened the rope on the supplies.

  The scene on the platform stole Myron’s breath. He reached for the telescope in Rounder’s belt.

  “What are you—” Rounder’s hand clamped down on the empty spot on his belt where the telescope had been.

  The blur of the heads in the crowd whipped by in the lens as Myron centered the telescope on the auction platform. He closed his left eye and honed in on a vision that reminded him of his first day in Jonesbridge, after the stretcher, the first time he saw her—the brave girl who fought the guards with confidence, as if she had a chance of beating them. He would never forget her face, though, with time, his memories had blurred her features the way the telescope had.

  “Sindra.”

  Chapter Nine

  The telescope dropped from Myron’s hand. The jumble of bidders pushed toward the merchandise—the love of Myron’s life and the twelve-year-old kid claiming to be her husband. Myron leaped from the landship, navigating the crush of people who were offering as much as ten gallons of water, metal, wheels, vehicles, boilers, and all manner of valuables.

  “Sindra!” Myron cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Sindra!” She didn’t hear him over the noise.

  “Myron.” Rounder pointed toward the southwest. “We don’t have much time,” he yelled.

  “Sindra!” This time Myron sucked in a deep breath and bellowed her name. She glanced up from her fixed gaze on the ground.

  “Myron?” Her eyes came to life.

  The auctioneer paused his call. “Well, listen to that. She talks after all. But that won’t lower the asking price.” The auctioneer held his hand above his eyes as a visor, squinting in Myron’s direction to see who’d interrupted the auction.

  The crowd turned to look at Myron. He ran to the landship, untied the knot, and took inventory of everything he saw. “I’ve got water,” he yelled. “Eleven gallons. Blankets. Food. Books. Whatever it’ll take.”

  Rounder jogged up behind Myron and clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “No he doesn’t. That’s not his stash. No bid.” Rounder fought to keep his hand over Myron’s mouth and keep him under control. “What the Chasm are you doing?” he whispered in Myron’s ear. “We’ll find you a girl if that’s what you want. This one’s too expensive.”

  Gah-té and Mah-ré watched Myron struggling. They looked at each other and came up behind Rounder. Gah-té reached into a bag and crumpled a handful of dried leaves between her fingers. She spat into her hands, mixing her saliva and the leaves into a green mud, while Mah-ré tapped Rounder on the shoulder. When Rounder turned toward Mah-ré, Gah-té came up from behind and cupped her hand filled with the mud over Rounder’s nose and mouth, holding it there until he released Myron and fell to the ground with his eyes closed.

  Myron eyed Rounder in a ball at his feet.

  “Going once,” the auctioneer bellowed. “Going twice.”

  “Ten shotgun shells,” Myron yelled. The crowd gasped.

  The auctioneer nodded. “We have a big spender.”

  “Eleven,” a voice said from the other side of the mob.

  Myron stood on his tiptoes for a look at who had outbid him and then dropped to his knees behind the landship. Three Jonesbridge ghosts sat in a steam wagon with their eyes on Sindra.

  “This just got interesting.” The auctioneer stroked his patchy beard and studied the new arrivals. “Got some rich Alliance interlopers what want a go at this lovely.” He strode over to Sindra and raised her arm, and the boy’s raised with it. “Yes sir, this is what you want? She’s yours if you’re offering a shotgun to go with those shells.”

  “One shotgun,” the ghost yelled.

  Myron reached for Rounder’s shotgun, and keeping his head down so the orange shirts couldn’t see his face, he held it over his head. “I’ve got one too.”

  “Come to think of it, you don’t see a woman like this here carpie every day. Maybe I’ll keep her for myself.”

  “She’s my wife,” the boy beside Sindra yelled.

  With the butt of his weapon, the drudger struck the boy from behind, just above the knee, causing his leg to buckle. “Enough. This carpie’s your foggin’ wife. You told us already.”

  Gah-té spat into her hands, mixing another batch of green mud. Her mother, who’d occupied herself during the stop by crafting a jade ringlet, fell back, eyes closed as Gah-té covered her mouth and nose with the mud as she’d done to Rounder.

  Seeing her mother unconscious, Mah-ré stood as high as she could get on the landship. “Dosh kani!” she yelled.

  All eyes in the crowd turned toward Myron and the twins. The auctioneer turned in the direction of the orange shirts. “Unless you got two Gapi girls to add to your bid, sale goes to the young man in the desert glider.”

  Gah-té and Mah-ré held hands and walked toward the auctioneer, glancing back at Myron.

  The head ghost cocked his shotgun. “That girl up there has an Industry brand. She’s ours.”

  “You should’ve held onto her, then.”

  “Who’s going to stop us from taking her?”

  “Her new owner, I reckon.” The auctioneer pointed to Myron. “And—Megan.” He chuckled as he said her name.

  Myron slipped on Rounder’s work gloves to hide the Industry brands on his hands as the auction drudgers began the process of offloading everything Myron had paid for Sindra: eleven gallons of water, almost every drop Rounder had, one shotgun, all the shells Rounder had acquired at the depot, two blankets, five candles, a rope, a tarp, four shanks, a spare wheel, ten chunks of copper ore, a bag of prairie bread, six iron spikes, a figurine of a dancing woman carved from smooth black wood, and an amethyst gemstone. After the auctioneer loaded the goods onto the seller’s wagon, he clamped Mah-ré and Gah-té in irons and handed them over to a man with a stub for an arm and a deep scar that ran the length of his face from the top of one side to the bottom of the opposite side, making a ridge through his nose.

  Myron ran up to Sindra, hugging her. The chains between her and the boy rattled. The boy yanked Sindra back and gave Myron a shove.

  “Don’t touch my wife.”

  “She’s not your wife.” Myron pushed the kid back so hard that he fell, taking Sindra with him.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Sindra? Is this true?”

  “Myron. I can’t believe you’re here. I never thought I’d see—”

  “Sindra, is it true? Are you married to this kid?”

  Sindra’s gaze fell as she nodded.

  “What? How—”A fist pummeled Myron from behind.

  Rounder, still groggy, punched Myron across the face. He pushed him to the ground, striking him over and over.

  “Myron.” Sindra yanked the binding chains, pulling Nico with her. Rounder fell back. Myron stumbled to his feet and backed away, wiping the blood from his mouth.

  “What did I tell you about thieves? What?” Rounder grabbed Myron by the throat. From behind, Sindra kicked Rounder between the legs, doubling him over. He moaned and fell to his knees. “You gave them everything. You stole it and gave it to them.”

  Myron took Sindra’s hand. “I know her. She…we are—” Myron would have said they were in love, finally united and that they might take official vows in the eyes of the Great Above, but looked at the twelve-year-old kid chained to her in a dozen places and realized that his dreams had flus
hed again. “She’s Industry.” He showed Rounder the back of Sindra’s hands. “Like you and me.”

  Rounder stood up, and grabbed Sindra’s hands. He glanced at them, dropped them, and hung his head, returning to his empty landship where the twins’ mother had awakened. She screamed her daughters’ names, wailing, raising her hands, smacking Rounder in the back of the head over and over. Rounder took the blows, pointing to Myron and Sindra.

  “I’m sorry.” Blood sprayed from Myron’s lips as he spoke.

  Rounder sat in the landship, head bowed, rubbing his face, mumbling a half-Gapi rant, but Myron caught enough of what Rounder said to understand their predicament. Without supplies, they were stuck in Megan’s Point.

  Chapter Ten

  “This is easy. One of them’s already in chains.” The Jonesbridge ghost said as two others stepped up to Rounder’s landship. They inspected Sindra’s hand, then Myron’s. “Two runoff slogs. Some major shirking going on here.”

  “Three.” The other ghost lifted Rounder’s hand.

  “Three? Whore’s hairpin. The shirker motherlode. And some kid as a bonus.” He grabbed Sindra’s and Nico’s chains and began leading them away. The other one pushed Myron behind her.

  Rounder lifted his head with a smile. “Thief!” He stood and pointed to the three orange shirts. The crowd grew silent, except for the slowing creak of the windmills, and the lights flickering off and on as the power supply diminished.

  The head ghost raised his shotgun to two approaching drudgers, not seeing the four behind him. “She ain’t your property.” The drudger pushed Sindra and Myron back in the direction of the landship.

  “Yes she is. They all are.” He tapped the back of his hand. “They bear the mark of Industry.”

  “That don’t mean a bit of shat here.” Four more drudgers arrived. “Megan’s is the only law here.”

  “Not for long,” the head ghost quipped.

  Now outnumbering the ghosts ten to one, the drudgers escorted the ghosts to a wooden door behind the auction platform.

  In the fracas, the twins’ mother had gone in search of her daughters. Myron heard her screaming their names, and each time he heard them, her cries stung Myron with the reality of what he’d done.

  “I’m so glad to see you.” Sindra did not make eye contact with Myron.

  “Who is this kid?” Myron gave Sindra’s young husband a push on the shoulder.

  “His name is Nico. And it’s not what you think.”

  With the striations of purple and pink from the setting sun, in the chill of the desert at night, the breeze came to a complete stop. The blades of the largest of the windmills groaned to a halt. The lights of the town blinked off, leaving violet silhouettes of a growing crowd in the town center.

  “Power!” a deep voice yelled from a high window on the west side of the stage.

  Shadowy figures shuffled through the crowd to a steam locomotive on pylons five feet off the ground, something Myron had taken for an ornament. They stoked the smoldering coals in the firebox, shoveling in fresh fuel while another man filled the locomotive boiler with slick. The wheels on the locomotive turned, and, instead of pulling the weight of a train down the tracks, the churning wheels of the suspended locomotive powered the electrical generator turbines.

  A puff of smoke came out of the locomotive chimney. The wheels sped up as two men shoveled coal into the firebox. A whoosh of steam released as the familiar chug of a locomotive pushed a roiling cloud of smoke out the chimney, which settled on the stage in the still air and flowed into the crowd as though a fog had rolled in.

  Lights popped on one by one around the town center, all aimed at the bandstand. A floodlight, tinted green, switched on over the bandstand, growing brighter until it exploded into a shower of glass and sparks. One of the men feeding the locomotive its coal dropped his shovel and ran into the building behind the stage. He returned minutes later, positioned a three-story ladder against the central support of the tent over the stage in the town center, and replaced the bulb.

  The Gapi merchants closed up their market stalls, shuttering the windows and locking the doors. They dispersed while everyone else headed toward the town center. Vendors and their apprentices joined stable hands and laborers, families, wanderers, and drudgers cramming into the plaza, vying for a spot near the platform, until they spilled over into darkened alleyways. Children sat on parents’ shoulders. Overflow perched atop their stalls for a better view as the sun dipped below the horizon.

  A hoarse whisper from the crowd began chanting Megan’s name. “May-gun. May-gun.” Two voices, then three, joined in, until the throng in the center of town chanted in unison, “May-gun, May-gun, May-gun.” The smell of rot onion and rat wine filled the air.

  “Supplies or not, we gotta get out of here. Megan’s coming.” Rounder pulled at the landship, trying to dislodge it from the people leaning on it for a better view of the bandstand.

  The chant grew louder until it erupted into a deafening roar when a column of flames shot up from a pipe on the back of the bandstand.

  “Oh, no.” Rounder rubbed his face. “What did I say? One foggin’ doughnut. In and out? I know that’s what I said. Now we got nothing. No supplies. No water. No shotgun. And—” The thunder of the crowd smothered Rounder’s words.

  The steam, the lights, the crowd, spiraled together around Sindra’s face, whose jaw fell when she saw the spectacle.

  A spotlight hit the wall of steam over the stage. Dressed in a blue robe, Megan swept in on a rope swing, her long black hair wrapped around her neck. Sitting, legs crossed, she wore red shoes that drew the eye to her feet and then to the bare flesh of her legs. She arched her back and pulled up, sending the swing out over the crowd. Every eye followed her back and forth, higher and higher, as she absorbed the adulation. When the swing slowed, she hopped out and raised her hands.

  “How’s business?” Megan preened.

  The responses ranged from cheers to shouts that jumbled together in a collective affirmation that commerce was alive and well in Megan’s Point.

  A procession marched onto the stage carrying three bound men, the orange shirts from Jonesbridge that Myron had encountered after the auction. They dropped the ghosts at Megan’s feet. The frenzied crowd calmed. The town center grew quiet, except for the chug of the locomotive.

  Megan kicked one of the ghosts in the ribs. “These three cockrels were caught trying to steal—in my town.”

  The rabble cheered.

  “In my foggin’ town.” Megan tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Then, they questioned my authority. And do you know what these taint-licking shaggers told my drudgers?” She strolled across the stage, her robe gaping open to reveal a colorful scarf tight around her waist. “That this is my town—for now.” She whipped her arm into the air. “What should we do to them?” She cupped her hand around her ear and leaned toward the crowd.

  Voices erupted with ideas, shouting over one another which punishment they wanted to see. Megan held up her hand and nodded, gesturing to her drudgers. The drudgers attached cables to the bound feet of the three orange shirts. Another drudger turned a crank, and the three ghosts, bound and gagged, rose upside down over the stage.

  “The people have spoken. The Piñata it is.”

  A chorus of cheers mixed with hisses and boos.

  Myron glanced at Sindra. He could see in her eyes, in her tears and her smile, satisfaction at seeing justice done to some Jonesbridge ghosts, like those who’d caused her pain.

  Megan held out her hand. One of her drudgers jogged to a storage chest and returned with a weapon composed of a long wooden handle connected by a chain to a spiked iron ball. She pulled the sash from her robe, waving it toward the crowd with one hand while she spun the spiked ball over her head with the other. “Who wants first crack at the piñatas?”

  The three orange shirts, faces turning red from hanging upside down, squirmed and swung, trying to shake their bindings loose. Gagged with burlap, their muffle
d screams resembled grinding pistons low on oil. Megan eyed the sea of faces all pleading for a chance to join her on the stage.

  She shielded her eyes from the bright spotlight and peered to the edges of the crowd. “Are you out there, Jasper? I heard you were here. You can’t hide from me.”

  Rounder mumbled a string of expletives, hiding his face.

  “I know my best drudger is out there somewhere.”

  “I don’t work for you anymore,” Rounder shouted.

  “There you are.” Megan snapped in Rounder’s direction.

  Within moments, a crew of drudgers pushed Rounder up to the bandstand to the cheers and calls of the restless throng. Megan ran her fingers across Rounder’s chest while another drudger cinched a blindfold around Rounder’s eyes. “I’ve missed you, Jasper.” She rubbed her thigh up Rounder’s leg.

  “It’s Rounder.”

  “Rounder?” Megan emitted a long, open-mouthed laugh aimed at her audience. “How cute.” She placed the handle of the flail into Rounder’s hand. Two drudgers spun him slowly while the crowd in the background chanted, “Piñata! Piñata!”

  “I’m done killing for you, Megan.” Rounder dropped the flail.

  “You’ve said that before—yet here you are.”

  Rounder pulled the blindfold off his eyes. “This time, I’m done.” Three drudgers blocked his path as he walked toward the steps of the bandstand.

  “I heard a nasty rumor.” Megan pointed to the ground. Two drudgers hit Rounder in the back of the knee, causing his knees to buckle, kneeling him before Megan. “That’s better. On your knees.” She motioned to the audience for applause. “I know it can’t be true—that you’re working for Te Yah at Mesa Gap?”

  Rounder stared at the floor. “I’ve never even set foot in that place.”

  “You disappoint me, Jasper. Now, play piñata!” She stepped on his back and pushed his face all the way to the floor. “Yes?”

  “Will you let me go?”

  “If that’s what you want. But I know what you really want.” She straddled him, lowering herself onto him, whispering into his ear.