by Jason Letts
But it seemed the call for sleep was more pressing at this moment, and he listened as they settled in around him. He froze when he felt someone come closer and put pressure on his bed, but it was only to use it as a stepping stool to the top bunk. Regardless of how quiet things got or how safe he thought he was, the rattling, shaking feeling pervading him would not permit him to fall asleep.
The bell to get up rang soon after that, ushering in an unbroken stream of torment that would make Will wonder if the witch had indeed given him a harsher punishment than death. Instead of meeting the other guards in the common room for a quick breakfast, there was nothing available that would assuage his hunger. A few inhabitants still had food from yesterday’s mealtime, but he knew better than to make any attempt for it.
They marched to their various workstations, Will knowing enough that he would take Neeko’s place in the mines. On the way down he saw Mary and Jeana beginning to stack the wood his old landscaping team had chopped up. But it wasn’t until he got there that he realized Gloria would be supervising him, causing his already depleted hopes to plummet.
She didn’t hesitate to give him the hardest, dirtiest, and most grueling jobs. Instead of using the carts, he had to drag pieces of ore up by hand. If he didn’t work hard enough, she told the other workers to punish him for it, and they treated it like something of a game. Even Kevin and his tan companion sat back against the slope and watched Will swing a pick axe against the rock. If he started to slow down, or even if he didn’t, they would throw rocks at his back.
Taking one swing, the axe met a momentary puff of smoke, deflecting it from the rock completely.
“You’ve got to swing harder than that!” Kevin taunted right before a fist-sized rock hit Will in the back. Will glanced over his shoulder, unsure of who had thrown it.
“It’ll help you build muscle,” the other man laughed.
Will wanted to bring up Clara or Mira. He wanted to say he’d gone to Mira’s birthday party at his house and tell him to snap out of it. But he knew nothing was going to get through to him in the midst of this pleasant diversion. By now they had Clara on the drugs again, and so she couldn’t be counted on for help.
Gloria made sure everybody got a chance at him. Her every word a scream, she never sent him into the same mine twice. He would trudge into the dark, unsure of what or who he would find down there. If they didn’t make him do their work for him, they jousted him with their pickaxes.
“Oh, sorry,” someone said, bumping into him hard and forcing him to fall against the jagged rock walls.
Bruised and battered, Will could barely walk away when the morning shift ended and it came time for temple services. His legs wobbled and he tried to keep himself from swaying so he wouldn’t worry Mary and Roselyn. They stood together in the back, as far away from Arent’s stone statue as possible.
“How are you holding up?” Mary asked. “I kept an eye on you this morning. It looked like a hard time.”
Will didn’t know what to say. He nodded, and Mary put her hand on his back to comfort him. Roselyn just pursed her lips, and he wished she could say even one word to him. He didn’t even know how she felt, if she forgave him, or what she thought about anything that had just happened. Soon it came time to sing the prayers, but the entire time Will just worried about what would happen after.
Service ended and everyone in the temple headed to the clearing where the day’s ration of food, as always, hung overhead in a large barrel. A rope partitioned everyone off, molding them into a circle so much like the one they naturally formed the night before. Will knew if he didn’t come away with something they would have nothing to eat. Even Roselyn and Mary looked more troubled because they too had to finally engage this sick ritual.
Neeko stood by one of the buildings, looking like he was having the best day of his life. Cleaner, well fed, and in charge, he crossed his arms and stood watch over the crowd with pretentious distinction. Gloria came to his side, and the two started having a conversation. Will suspected it was about him, and he tried to get closer, but soon his attention was diverted by two of the forge workers.
The same people tended to walk away from mealtime with the lion’s share every day, and these two guys had actually gained weight during their time at the mountain camp. They had pulled Roselyn and Mary out of the way so they could box in Will, and they started to squeeze and jostle him while the witch came out and prepared to dump the rations. There was some other commotion going on, but Will knew he couldn’t take much more abuse.
“Come on, guys. Let’s just do what we’re here to do,” he pleaded.
“That’s what I was doing last week when one of you ransacked my stuff and stole the knife I made. Was it you?” goaded one of them, towering down over Will.
“No, it wasn’t. Please!”
But Will felt an elbow crack the back of his head, and he sprawled out from between them. He fell over just as the food and the rope dropped. Everyone behind trampled over him, stepping on his legs and kneeing him in the back as he tried to get up. Turning his head, he saw the two girls coming up to help.
“Just get in there!” he said, waving them on and staggering to his feet.
Roselyn and Mary tried to slip into the crowd toward the food spilling out and bouncing along the ground, making little headway. Breathing heavily, Will gained some momentum and charged head on at the frenzy. He knocked over an off-balance competitor but then tripped and fell to his knees.
Peering through the stomping legs and crawling bodies, he caught sight of apples ricocheting around. He actually felt the cool oozing of grapes beneath his knee, but they were already smashed beyond recognition. Crawling forward, he glued his eyes to the apple, which accidentally got kicked out of someone’s grasp, bobbled, and was knocked even closer.
Reaching out for it, Will leaned over as it danced just out of reach. People were all around, nudging him in the side and milling around in the hunt for other goods. Lunging forward, his fingertips grazed the apple before a foot came down on his hand, making Will howl and scream.
As the foot ground his hand down, tiny fluorescent specs came tumbling out from under a pant leg, frightening Will into ripping his hand away. Looking up, he could just see the wheelman from the mine laughing down on him with a dead rabbit in one hand and some figs in the other. Will worried he might try to further abuse him, but there was enough commotion to drive him away.
All around people started to disperse with their winnings. Roselyn and Mary chased around the remaining scraps of food, which were scooped up and carried away by other people. They both converged on a healthy head of cabbage, sure it was theirs until little puffs of white smoke appeared right in front of their faces. It felt like walking into a door. It slowed them down enough for Jeana to swoop in and grab it. Kevin quickly joined her, and they started to run off with armloads of food.
“Please!” Mary called out. They would be left with nothing if Mira’s parents didn’t give up what was more than enough for the two of them.
“Any friend of Mira’s is a friend of mine,” Jeana laughed, as they continued to scamper off into the woods. There was nothing left to run for, and the two girls stood in the nearly empty clearing.
Lying on the ground, Will heard a pair of footsteps coming toward him. Immediately knowing it wasn’t his friends, he put his forehead down on the cool, moist ground and tried to find the strength to endure it.
“It’s not as much fun to participate in as it is to watch, huh?” Neeko said, squatting down. No matter how sympathetic his voice sounded, Will knew better than to buy it. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the ground.
“Don’t worry, Will,” Gloria added. “You won’t have to put up with this much longer. Soon I’ll get to touch you, just like I always wanted.”
Her words chilled Will, but he stayed still, desperate not to provoke them further. They walked away, crossing paths with Roselyn and Mary, who meekly tried to avoid eye contact. Neeko and Gloria gave them d
isdainful glances.
“Come on, get up,” Mary said as she and Roselyn each took an arm and lifted Will. He brushed some of the pine needles off, and together they looked over the vacant clearing. Scattered scraps had been smeared into the muck; nothing would be salvageable.
Facing the certainty of a hungry day, the three of them climbed the hill to find some solitude for their lunch hour. Passing bunks and trees, they envied the others preparing their earnings over small fires.
Making it all the way to the small cliff past the mines, they had finally covered enough distance to be safe from others’ eyes and ears. Will gingerly settled down on a tree stump. Roselyn dropped down onto the grass and started picking at it with forlorn angst. Mary stood, crossing her arms and keeping her eyes on both of them.
“If we don’t do better tomorrow, we’ll be eating just as much as we will today,” Will muttered, lowering his face into his hands.
“Eating? What about living? Will, they want to kill you, and there’s nothing to stop them from doing it but the witch’s silly order. I don’t know how much patience Gloria is going to have, and I doubt she’s going to go around with a checklist and make sure everybody had their chance at you,” Mary said, frustration and sadness in her voice.
Roselyn looked ay Will and shared a concerned gaze.
“What do you think?” Will asked, but Roselyn just shook her head and looked away.
“Do you still have your drawings?” Mary asked her, and Roselyn pulled out the folded sheets of fabric and handed them over to Mary. She flipped between them, shaking her head and becoming agitated.
“It just kills me there’s nothing we can do but just wait for them to rescue us. How much longer can it take them? Seems to me like we’ve been here forever. It can’t be much longer now before Vern comes to get us out of here.”
Taken aback by her last comment, Will gave her a hard look for a moment. He reached out his hand, and she gave him the drawings. Without looking at them, he folded them along their well-worn creases.
“Why just Vern?” he asked, confusion scrunching up his face.
“Oh, well, you know. He’s not the type to just let things go when there’s something to be done. He’s got to take charge and be a part of the action, right?” she stammered, becoming flustered.
“OK,” Will acquiesced, and then he unfolded the fabric to take a look at the drawings. Seeing Roselyn’s representation of the metal pillars and their nemesis, without a face, hanging between them, Will felt his own anger stirring. The shard of the diamond carafe cut into Aren’t chest. Will didn’t realize he had started to clutch the fabric, feeling out of nowhere like he wanted to tear it. Finally he cast it aside to take a deep breath and calm his senses. Something solemn in his eyes, he tried to convey it to Roselyn.
“I’d seen those metal pillars and helped to carry them out to the caravan, but I couldn’t figure out what they were for. You knew more than I did, Roselyn. You figured it out all by yourself. I only knew it had something to do with a big propeller, powering the ship. I was running up to tell Clara, but you already had this. I don’t suppose you got to tell her about it?”
Roselyn shook her head, and Will leaned back. They’d managed to figure out everything there was about the ship’s engine, but there was no way to tell Mira about it. Now they only had so much time before things in the mountain camp went from bad to worse. Faced with the prospect of his own death, Will knew he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to leave Roselyn to endure it without someone who loved her.
“Maybe they’re already on their way. There’s no way for us to know when they’ll arrive,” Mary posed, conjuring a hopeful note.
Will had Roselyn’s drawing in his hands. Dragging his fingers over the creator of all this hateful torture and this strange machine, he felt his patience break and his animosity boil.
“They’re not coming to rescue us,” Will snapped at her, swallowing to force a kinder tone. “This is what Mira wanted to find out about. Her attention is on the ship, the Savior, and the carafe. She doesn’t even know where we are or how to get here. Not once did she ask Clara for us to get information about the defenses here. We’ve never even thought about how exactly they would break in to break us out. It all comes down to this one basic fact. If we want to get out of here, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.”
Roselyn, Mary, and Will gave each other long looks as they accepted the truth of his statement. For so long they had garnered the hope they would be swept away in a fantastic rescue mission. Their problems would be swept behind and they would depart this awful and wretched hole.
“But…how could we do that?” Mary gasped. “We can’t fight our way out. There are these things in our ears that will explode if we try and get too far away. People are watching us.”
Will flipped to Roselyn’s other drawing, the one of Mira and Clara. Though they had started as just a copy of what he had etched onto the Makara dice, Roselyn had embellished it into a full caricature. Though both girls had been faced with impossible odds and unceasing turmoil, both had managed to survive. The drawing gave him a surge of hope and stoked his excitement.
“There’s got to be a way we can do it,” he declared, smiling. “It seems like we have nothing, and there are so many obstacles, but there’s got to be one hidden possibility that will take us away. Let’s put our minds to work and think of it. We can cut off an ear and escape during sleeping hours. Something!”
He hoped to inspire the girls with his optimism, but he couldn’t tell how well it was working.
“I’m not cutting off an ear. And where would we even get a knife?” Mary refused, crossing her arms. But she tossed her hair behind her back and started to nod. “OK, but we can start trying to figure it out. There’s got to be something we can learn about the witch to help us. Maybe we can find a way to take Clara with us too.”
“Do you think if we were trying to help free Clara, Kevin and Jeana would give us some assistance?” Will considered, but Mary immediately started shaking her head.
“No, they are both so consumed with their grievance over how Mira treated them that they’ll never do anything to help us,” she said, and Will gave her a long stare until she finally caved in. “But we can try to talk to them again, I guess.”
Roselyn looked optimistic and excited too, and she put her hand to her chest, gesturing about herself. Will and Mary gave each other a look.
“See if you can find learn about any weak points in the perimeter,” Will suggested. “If we were going to make a run for it, which way would we go anyway? It’d be nice if we didn’t leave only to get lost forever in the woods.”
She seemed contented with that task, and Will sighed inwardly. He knew full well they would get to the caravan trail and follow it out, if they were able to escape, but he didn’t want to leave her without something to do. He tried to stifle the thought that if Roselyn still had her power she could allow them to just waltz away in the safety of her beautiful singing.
“We’re going to find a way out of here,” Mary resolved. “If our friends aren’t coming to us, we’ll go to them. No one should have to put up with this kind of life, whether they like it or not.”
Chapter 9: A Lucky Break
A loud rapping shook the stiff wooden boards of the door to Vika’s hut. Crimshaw stood there, trying to peek through the cracks and listen for any movement inside. Pounding his fist against the door again, he waited for an answer and began to think about the possibility of breaking down the door.
He chose instead to stick his head through the window, but when he turned he saw the sloth hanging out of it and staring at him with its little eyes. Caught off guard, he put his hand to his goatee and regained his composure. Impatiently tapping his hand against his leg, he turned back to the door.
“Open up, Vika! I know you’re in there,” he shouted.
Putting his eye right against a crack in the door, he swayed to get as much access to the dim interior as possible. Scan
ning back and forth, he saw the baby’s empty pen, the table, and a nicely made bed. But just behind the foot of the bed, he could see a bulge of hair, and his eyes grew wide when he saw Vika peeking around the side.
“I can see you! Now open up or I’m coming in.”
“Oh! Is someone there? My dang hearing’s failed me again,” Vika howled, getting up from behind the bed. She had little Knoll in her arms and the baby appeared to be sleepy.
She came over to the door and took several steps back after opening it. By the time Crimshaw could see her, she was standing nearly in the center of the building. Still just outside of the doorway, he rolled his eyes and let his head list to the side a little.
“Let’s just make this quick. I don’t have a lot of time. Is he showing yet? Do you have any idea of the boy’s power?” he asked.
“Well, no, not one tiny bit. But it’s funny you should ask though because normally you would expect to get a little hint of something sometime around this time, but there hasn’t been a whiff or a clue, which is strange to be sure, but it must all be part of the plan of our wonderful Savior whose will be done. Am I right? There’s just no telling, and I’m starting to think it’s one of those social gifts we wouldn’t see until he comes of age…”
Every word of Vika’s endless rambling stuck Crimshaw like a tiny pin. It wore on him and became increasingly obvious she would be perfectly content to rattle on until the child was just as tall as she was.
“Enough!” he snapped, and she shut her mouth and wrapped her arms tighter around her child. “I get it. You haven’t seen anything yet. But I’m starting to think you aren’t in a good position to detect any traces of his power. Look, you don’t have to be against us taking him. He’ll be given opportunities, a chance to be part of something. Just listen to the prayers.”
