The Hollow World: (Pangea, Book 1)

by Michael Beckum

  “Nova, you don’t understand…”

  “Get off of me!”

  “Nova! Take my damn hand!”

  “I am not your slave, your servant, or even your friend! Leave me ALONE!”

  “Nova!”

  Silence. In the darkness I could feel her moving, but couldn’t see her, or find her.

  “Nova! Pease! If you won’t take my hand, watch out for Hajah! Please, Nova!”

  Silence.

  “Nova, answer me!”

  Still nothing. Now I was becoming frantic. I pulled the chain dangling from my neck, working my way forward.

  “Nova, please listen to me!”

  I pulled myself along, stopping only when Milton lagged behind and the chain tightened, stopping my momentum.

  “Milton, hurry up!”

  The chain quickly went slack, and I again moved forward. Before long I felt an arm, covered in hair.

  “Who’s touching me?” I heard Bruk ask.

  Ice froze my veins. My heart stopped, my soul shattered. Nova was no longer between me and Bruk. And Hajah was gone.

  “NOOOOOOOOOVVVAAAAAAAAA!”

  * * *

  MY MISTAKE

  * * *

  Nova was gone, and with her the vile Hajah and half a dozen other prisoners. The guards, racing back with torches held high saw it too, their rage ferocious and violent. One woman smiled and laughed briefly when she saw how many had escaped and a panther man punched her full in the face. This started a small explosion of activity as others came to her defense, and additional panther-men had to be summoned to quell the outburst.

  Eventually the tiny uprising was put down, and the Angara turned their anger on one another, their fearsome, bestial faces twisted with heated embarrassment as they accused one another of being irresponsible. Eventually they stopped being angry at themselves and fell on us, beating mercilessly with spear shafts, and axe heads. They killed two near the head of the line before one of them realized they were making things worse, not better, by eliminating even more of their catch of slaves in a way that would only make their masters angrier.

  As quickly as it had begun their leader put a stop to the brutal slaughter. Never in all my life had I seen anything more primitive or horrifying than that outburst of bestial rage—and I thanked God that Nova had not been here to be any part of it.

  Bodies hung at weird, twisted angles along the tightened chains, blood leaked everywhere, and the stench of death and vacated bowels was revolting and horrifying. I admit I was scared, and saddened by the events, once more facing the way these people viewed their short lives. I no longer judged their need to take whatever pleasure their brief and tragic existences offered—the instant any such pleasure was offered. For the first time since arriving in Pangea, I wished I was back cleaning floors in my boring, old night job.

  Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me each alternate one had been freed. How had he done it? Or had he? Was he even capable of something so clever, of stealing the woman I loved? Or had it been another in the string of captives who’d masterminded the escape? And why only every other person?

  The commander of the Angara was investigating, searching the area, inspecting the abandoned collars and links. He quickly discovered that the rude locks, which held the neckbands in place, had not been forced. They'd either been deftly picked, or simply unlocked.

  “Hajah the Wily,” grumbled Bruk, who had been moved to be next in line with me. “He took Nova as vengeance, and she went because you would not have her.”

  “Because I… because what?” I asked, amazed. “What do you mean ‘I would not have her’? I wanted Nova more than anything!”

  He looked at me closely for a moment.

  “I doubted your story that you came from someplace so far away; that you didn’t know our customs,” he said slowly, still studying me carefully, “but I can’t really imagine any other reason why you would be so cruel to that poor girl. You honestly don’t know how you’ve offended her, do you?”

  “I honestly don’t, Bruk,” I answered, precisely. “Please explain it to me.”

  “It’s understandable,” Bruk said, shrugging. “We have all made love to girls we don’t really want to mate, as girls who don’t want to mate with us, have done, as well. And when faced with having to either admit our love, or let go, we… well…” he shrugged again, “… we are men, after all.”

  “Believe me, Bruk, I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

  He sighed, heavily, and explained.

  “An ugly girl like Nova…”

  “What are you talking about? Nova’s not ugly.”

  “That’s very noble of you to say, but…”

  “It’s not noble. It’s honest. Where I come from, Nova would be seen exactly as she is named, ‘Nova, The Beautiful’. She’s the most attractive woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Bruk again studied me silently, eyes moving back and forth across my face, searching, until a slow grin spread over his.

  “You truly believe that,” he said.

  “YES!” I yelled.

  “You do, don’t you?” asked the woman who had been linked beside me in Nova’s place, the woman we’d been captured with in the monkey-man arena.

  She was very pretty, though older, and a bit heavy, and she smiled at me with a radiant hopefulness I didn’t really understand.

  “Yes, I do,” I said firmly, thoroughly confused, turning back to Bruk. “How is it that you don’t?”

  He winced.

  “Her nose is small,” he said, “her eyes too large, her lips puffy like she was beaten too much as a child; she is thin, her breasts are too large, like a pregnant woman…”

  I laughed.

  “And that’s unattractive to you?” I asked.

  “Yes!” he insisted.

  “And everyone in Pangea would think this way?”

  “Everyone but you, apparently.”

  “Do all men where you’re from,” asked the woman beside me, “do they see beauty where others see… someone not attractive?”

  “Are you asking…” I said, starting to understand, “are you wondering if men where I come from would find you pretty?”

  She lowered her eyes shyly, and smiled, nodding just a bit.

  “Yes,” I said gently. “You would be considered extremely lovely where I come from. Any man would be proud to have you beside him.”

  She flushed and her eyes lit up the way Nova’s had when I’d told her how beautiful she was to me.

  “Isn’t that right, Milton?” I said, noting that my friend was staring at her nervously.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, shaking himself out of his daze. “Quite lovely. Very, very attractive to… well… anyone where we come from. Understandable, really. You are rather beautiful. Striking, really. Hard to imagine anyone prettier.”

  She turned to Milton, and assessed him, apparently liking what she saw. The older man was not unattractive for someone his age, and though he hadn’t seen a gym since his teenage years, his time in Pangea was toning him up, and making him—well—certainly a whole lot more attractive to this woman who had probably been ignored her whole life.

  I turned my attention back to Bruk.

  “Please tell me what happened between Nova and I,” I begged.

  “Well,” Bruk began, scratching his thick beard and grimacing as he tried to sort his thoughts. “Nova the Beautiful is legendary among the Nyala—we are in the same extended tribe, she and I, on the plains of the Sa Fasi. Our clans are close together, though I'd never met her. From the moment she was born, so the story goes, her father loved her dearly, and when some men in his tribe called her ugly and made jokes about her as a child, he named her ‘beautiful’ because—as a father will—he truly believed it. Gudra, The Ugly only claimed her because he wanted to be king of the Nyala, and maybe because other women wouldn’t have him, but mostly to be king. No man or lover would challenge Gudra because—and Nova knew this—because unless a m
an wanted to rule Sa Fasi, and not many did, she was not considered worth fighting for.”

  My chest tightened. I felt an unbearable pain in my stomach as I remembered some of the things she’d said to me. If I’d not only hurt her in some way, but played into her belief that she was ugly…

  “So when you wouldn’t claim her as yours,” Bruk continued, “Hajah… obviously…”

  “What do you mean; ‘when I wouldn’t claim her as mine’?”

  “You really are from very far away,” Bruk said, amazed. “Sex on Pangea—or at least my part of Pangea—is consensual, most of the time. Obviously not always. Sometimes you just don’t want to. We have ways of asking—simple signals—and usually a rejection means you simply go away and ask someone else. Nova sent you those signals many times, but you never responded. We assumed because you thought as we did—that she was too ugly.

  “I… no,” I said, saddened. “I just… I didn’t know, Bruk. I didn't understand… and I… I was afraid. We don't have sex in front of people where I come from.”

  “Well, she took it as you not liking her enough to see past her looks.” Bruk said, equal sadness in his voice. “Until after the Hakchata attack, when she just couldn't leave you alone any longer. You see, forcing someone to have sex with you means you are claiming them. They are yours, and yours alone for sex, and children, and whatever else you may want—but not for love.”

  I remembered Nova rolling on top of me with such intensity and desire, and wondered if that’s what had happened between the two of us. She had claimed me.

  “What if you don’t want to be claimed?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. If no other person is interested in intervening, then the coupling means the one you have joined with is yours—as you became Nova’s.”

  She had taken me. Again, my head felt light, and my heart hurt. I was hers. I was hers.

  “So what does that mean?” I asked. “Nova is my mate?”

  “Not exactly,” Bruk said, cautiously, “though it often works out that way. I think she just did it because other women were looking at you, and considering doing what she did, and so—in the heat of the moment… and because she loved you…”

  “She did love me.”

  He shrugged.

  “What did it mean?” I asked. “What did she do… when she… when we…?”

  “She made you her property. No request was made, no acceptance given, so in the eyes of the other women here…”

  “You are a desirable man, Brandon the Mack,” the new woman told me. “Bruk is right. Others were considering you as a partner. It is not entirely as Bruk says—custom means less when you are far from home and not likely to be seen, or caught—but in front of us, Nova was staking a claim. And we respected that.”

  I looked at her, then at some of the other women in the chain, and wondered about my desirability. A woman I’d heard called by the name ‘Shalla’ on the other side of Bruk had been eavesdropping on the conversation, saw me looking at her, flushed red, averted her eyes shyly, and nodded in agreement.

  “It’s true,” she said, quietly.

  “But…” I said, surprised at my desirability, “we’re not married, Nova and I? Or ‘mated’, or whatever you call it?”

  The woman and Bruk both shook their heads. Shalla flushed even redder, and continued smiling.

  “Being officially mated involves ritual,” Bruk said, “formal requests of the parents and…”

  “Gudra’s Endevak head.”

  “Yes. But often the parents die before the children are ready for marriage, and so this other method has come to be. It gets complicated because Gudra has made a formal request, Nova’s father still lives, and you are technically Nova’s sex slave…”

  I laughed, when I wanted to cry.

  “…and it gets more complicated when someone tries to force a coupling,” the new woman said, “and another person—man or woman—steps in.”

  “The way Hajah tried to take Nova, and I punched him.”

  “It was very exciting,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, turning to face her, “What is your name?”

  “Elia,” she said. “Elia, the Unfortunate.”

  I studied her, and knitted my brows in confusion. I was going to have to ask about this naming thing in Pangea. But later. Not now.

  “When a man of Pangea intervenes where another man is trying to take a woman,” Bruk said. “the woman belongs to the victor. All the rituals of marriage go out the window.”

  “Well…” said Elia, staring at Bruk with obvious disapproval. “Who the woman belongs to—or doesn’t belong to— has more meaning to some than others…”

  “Well, where I come from,” Bruk said, becoming annoyed with Elia’s persistent interruptions, “when a man has tried to hurt a woman, or take her against her will—as Hajah was intending to do—and another man—you, Brandon—steps in and makes clear that this woman is not to be mistreated, you are announcing to the world that you wish to protect this woman, whether for the moment, or for life depending on what you do next.”

  “It’s gallant, and all,” Elia said, once more irritating Bruk, “but sometimes it’s staged so people can work around parents, and it’s far from binding, unless it happens in your village, or near people you know, who are aware of what’s happened, and even then…”

  “Nova the Beautiful belongs to you,” Bruk interrupted, then directed his next comment directly at Elia. “It is what she believes, which is all that matters here!”

  Elia recoiled from his obvious anger, not out of fear so much as to avoid being spat on. Bruk’s yelling had gotten a little moist. Her eye roll said plainly that she hadn’t changed her opinion just because she’d been scolded.

  Bruk struggled to regain his composure, turning back to me.

  “You fought to protect her,” he said, “and this takes precedence over Gudra’s gift. You had beaten Gudra without having to face him.”

  “Which would have been ideal in her eyes,” I said, realizing.

  “Yes. He could have her, but he would have to make a formal demand to fight you for her; her father would never approve, and anyway he’s on the other side of the sea. With one, quick action, you could have made Nova your mate for life.”

  “But I didn’t. I fucked it up because I didn’t do something. What Bruk? What did I do wrong? I need to fix this.”

  “You would have to find her, first.”

  “I will scour all of Pangea to make this right, Bruk,” I said, and Elia gasped in delight. “What do I have to do?”

  “You have to do what you should have done when you punched Hajah. You have to claim her, or release her. Had you taken her hand and held it up for all to see, then placed it over your heart, it would have shown your desire to make her your mate.”

  “It is kind of romantic,” Elia said.

  “Or if you’d raised her hand above her head and dropped it,” Bruk continued, “it would have meant you didn’t want her for yourself, and she was now free of any obligation to you. You were simply protecting her, and she owed you nothing for the act. By doing neither you have insulted her in the most degrading way a man can insult a woman.”

  I glanced at Elia, who looked pained.

  “It’s a bit old fashioned,” she admitted. “But it is very insulting,”

  “She is now your property,” Bruk said.

  “Well…” Elia said, dismissing Bruk.

  “She is now your property,” Bruk repeated, angrily, more to her than me. “But not as someone you would want for your own, not even to have sex with, but only as a servant, or a toy for any other men or women who visited you that might wish to entertain themselves with her in some way. No one will ever want her as their mate after she’s been so insulted…”

  “Unless she escapes, and runs away from the insult, and you.” Elia said.

  “Which is what she did,” I said, sadly. “Why did she have to escape? Why not just tell me what I needed to know to fi
x it?”

  “She is ugly,” Elia admitted. “I am ugly, but not as ugly as her. She probably took what you did as an inability to admit your love, publicly.”

  “She knows I don’t understand your ways.”

  “In the theater of public opinion,” Bruk said, “it is not what we know that matters, it is what others think.”

  He was right. It was the same on the outer world. I guess this is a universally human trait. I stared at him, furious with myself, and utterly humiliated over what I’d done.

  “No other man,” Bruk said, then rethought what he was going to say off Elia’s expression, “no other man who had witnessed what you did could even take her honorably if he wanted, unless he believed he could kill you in combat. And because she is not pretty, no one will ever want to risk their life for her.”

  I stood silent, my expression saying it all, and Bruk put a hand on my shoulder, though it offered me no comfort.

  “The rest of us thought you cared for her,” Bruk said, “but couldn’t get past her ugliness to take her as a wife.”

  “And she thought the same,” I said, heartbroken. “My, poor, perfect Nova. Nothing could be further from the truth. I didn’t know, Bruk! Elia! I honestly didn’t know!”

  “I believe you,” Elia said, smiling, sadly.

  “And I question your taste,” Bruk said, “but I also believe you.”

  “Not for anything in this world would I have hurt Nova, ever, in any way. I don’t want her as my slave. I want her—I want her as my—” I stopped. An image of that sweet, funny, smiling, beautiful, innocent face floated through my mind on the soft mists of imagination. “My wife. My mate. My friend. My companion. My lover. If I’d known I would have held up both her hands, placed them both against my heart and never let them go.”

  Elia sighed, happily, and put her hands to her mouth, moved. Bruk smiled.

  “Lips can lie,” he said, “but when the heart speaks through the eyes it tells nothing less than the truth. I know you meant no offense to Nova, the Beautiful. I can see that, now. But it’s not me that you have to convince. The shame will stay with her for a long time. Maybe the rest of her short life.”