by Emma Hamm
“They’re terribly ill.” She kept saying over and over again. She was the only one who’s face was uncovered. The goblins were not letting her forget that.
As another person wandered away, skepticism clearly showing on his face, she turned to hiss at them. “My face has to be uncovered. One of us has to be the human in the bunch.”
“They don’t know there are anything other than humans.” Ruric grumbled under his breath.
“Let’s keep it that way, shall we?” She angrily hissed before turning back to keep the crowds of people away from her goblins in the corner.
The train was an utter nightmare. There were too many bodies, there was too much noise. Not to mention that every now and then the train would turn at a right angle and a beam of sunlight would splash into the sidecar.
If only there had been another way to the City. But they hadn’t any time to waste. Too much time had already been wasted.
Ruric and Jane had managed to tunnel their way out after the sandstorm. They had been hard pressed to find the other two. The tents had been buried under nearly a foot of sand. But as the moons finally rose to the peak of the sky, they had pulled the other two goblins from their tombs.
None of them had been interested in getting on the train. They had nearly bolted when they saw the metal beast chugging towards them.
Jane didn’t know how the old thing was still running. Rust peeled from its sides and the wheels shrieked loudly when the brakes were turned on. However, it was the only way that the people in the mines could be transported to the City. There had never been any reason for her to head in that direction.
Until now.
“Excuse me. Ma’am?”
She looked down. The smallest woman she had ever seen was standing very close to her. In her hands was a skin of water that was being held towards her. “Looks like you and your kin could use this more than I.”
“I can’t take your water.” She said quietly and pushed the skin back towards the woman.
“I must insist.” The wrinkles upon the woman’s face deepened. “I remember coming to the City the first time to be healed. The Doctor is a good man and he knows many cures. Your family will be well again.”
“Thank you.” Jane said.
A saucy wink from the small woman made a smile crack the sullen corners of Jane’s mouth. “You got to get to the City first there love. We’re all looking for the same thing.”
Jane could breathe once more when space was given to her. The further people were from the goblins, the better she felt. There would be a riot in here if they saw even a glimpse of the creatures hidden beneath the cloth.
As much as these people were willing to help each other, Jane had seen what they did to others. The tattooed deserters sometimes accompanied the miners on the train. They managed to catch a ride in hopes that someone at the City would cast pity upon them. Even being sent to the mines was better than the horrors that awaited people on the sands.
She clearly remembered the haunted looks in the eyes of those people as they waited for the train. Stories would always surface afterwards. People would say how they weren’t meant to be on the train. How they would be thrown from the side if they were found.
Jane didn’t know if there were any truth to the rumors, but she certainly didn’t want to find out whether they would do the same to the goblins.
The train was nothing like what she had imagined. But then again, all the children from the mining camps used to dream of being on this metal beast.
Jane’s mother used to bring the children to watch others get on the train. Her mother would hold a cloth over her face and wave at them.
“They’re going to a better place.” She used to whisper to them. “Someday, my children, you will be on that train.”
Jane scoffed at the thought now as she passed the water to the goblins. If only her mother could see her now. Surely the woman would be rolling in her grave to know that her daughter was here to take something out of the City.
It was a beacon to light to so many. Even those who were too ill to ever leave the mining camps would push others to go. Everything good was in the City. Peace. Hope. Health. Love.
Jane had always assumed that people were building it up to be something that it wasn’t. There was no way that any grouping of people got along that well. The City was going to be a big let down. Still, that didn’t stop her from pushing Luther into making his way towards the gilded light of the stone City.
Now she regretted it.
“Jane.” Ruric said quietly, gesturing with his hand for her to come closer. “There are some watching us.”
“I know.” She responded.
Ruric nodded in response, his eyes swallowed by the darkness of his pupils. “They appear to be desperate.”
Her eyes drifted towards the group of skinny youths that had been watching them for much of the ride now. They were halfway through their journey, and at least one of them had always been staring directly at her small group.
She knew what they wanted. There were sick people here, easy to steal from. Pickings were easy on the train because no one wanted to fight back. They were so close to the end of their journey, people would allow them to take the clothes off their back. Nothing would stop them from getting off this train.
She let out a long sigh.
“They’re going to try something.” The low grumble from behind her warned that the heat was also trying the goblin’s tempers. She had no desire to see their anger raised again so soon after the massacre.
Jane splayed a hand out towards them. “Let them approach us.”
“It is unwise.”
“That is how it is done here.” She said quietly.
“I do not trust it. There are too many females here who could be harmed.”
Anger sparked inside her. It burst higher against the heat in her body and the discomfort that was already making her irritable. “There are too many people here. Period.”
Ruric heard the tone in her voice, and his eyes drifted over her tense muscles before lowering once more to the floor. They had agreed that the goblins wouldn’t attempt to raise any suspicion. Whether Ruric agreed with her that there were too many people or too many women, the goblins would not raise a fight.
They would wait instead. As Jane suspected, the gang of thin boys waited until nearly the last minute before they made their way towards her group.
Their hips swung in a tell tale confidence that meant they would make mistakes. One fiddled with a blunt knife at his hip, another spit towards her as they stopped not three feet from her back.
“Pity to leave the train with so much clothing on your back.”
“I suppose.” She answered quietly. Her eyes didn’t move from the still forms of the goblins.
“You could leave your clothing with us. We’ll keep a good watch on it. Only going to get hotter once you get off the train. The lines’ long.”
“We’ll keep our things with us. My thanks.”
A prick against her spine warned that the boy with the blunt knife was leaning into her now.
“I don’t think we was giving you a choice.”
His hot breath only added to her discomfort.
She was seated on a crate, her weight leaned forward onto her knees. Her hands hung limp and her breathing was carefully measured.
Jane did not want to appear worried. She didn’t feel as though she was in danger. Instead, she was just angry. There were so many things that could have gone wrong on this trip, and so many things that had gone wrong. A few little boys on a train trying to rob her blind weren’t going to stop her.
She didn’t move.
“You’ll be taking that little prick away from me now.”
“Oh really?” The boy chuckled from behind her and Jane watched as Ruric raised his head slightly.
She jerked her chin towards the goblins. “Those three are dying from a highly contagious disease.”
“And we care why?”
She shrugged a shou
lder. “It killed our whole village. Wiped everyone out in three days. Started with a cough, so we didn’t think nothing of it. Next thing we knew, there was blood coming out of every crack that it could and creating more to slip out of. Dead the next day. The only way we could find it spreading was through the blood itself.” She tilted her head so she could see them. “You cut me, or any of them, and you expose everyone on the train to a disease that will kill them in three days. Less for some of the younger ones.”
Her voice carried, and everyone on the train stopped.
The boys nervously looked at each other. They were just children. As Jane slowly turned, she could see how thin they were.
Her world had always been so sad.
“Go on with you.” She said quietly. “If we find what we’re looking for in the City, our clothes are yours.”
They obviously didn’t know what to do with that information.
One of the older boys whipped his hat off of his head and scratched the base of his skull. “Well we’ll be holding ye to that then.”
Jane nodded. “I would hope you would.”
As the boys drifted away, she turned back towards the goblins and raised an eyebrow towards Ruric.
The goblin didn’t say anything at her challenge. He was impressed at her handling of the situation, and stunned that somehow blood had not been spilled.
If there was anything a goblin knew, it was the scent of a fight. They had all tensed in preparation. They were created to spill blood and had been honed in battle since they were very young. Ruric was part of a warrior class, he did not know how to be a peacekeeper.
Yet somehow this small human had managed to do just that. Words were her weapon, and Ruric knew well how sharp those words could cut.
He nodded in her direction.
Shusar grumbled, but turned to hide his face against the side of the train car once more. The tension slowly eased.
A beam of light flickered through one of the cracks and struck Jane across the face. She could see the reflection of the City through the small crack.
They were close.
A soft scampering sound pattered next to her and a small child pressed itself against the crack.
“Mama!”
“Hush child.” The woman grabbed onto the child’s chubby arm and wearily plucked her from the ground. “We’re almost there.”
The burble of sounds grew as the train started to slow. Even the grinding scream of the breaks couldn’t quiet the people who were plastered against the sides.
They all wanted to remember their first glance at the City.
All but Jane and goblins were clustered around each crack to see the sun set behind the metal building.
“Everyone off!”
The shouts started before the train had finished stopping. The sides of the train car busted open and people slid from inside. Some fell onto the ground, others jumped to safety.
The goblins stood up, their balance uneven as they stared at the ground that was still moving.
“Come on!” One of the boys shouted at them, waving his hat in the air. “You gotta jump! It doesn’t stop!”
Jane took in a steadying breath. She looked at Ruric and linked her arm in his. Shusar took her other arm and Illyrin stood behind the three of them.
“We’re here.” She said. The words were yanked from her mouth by the wind.
They all seemed to hesitate until Illyrin growled from behind them.
“Here.”
His strong arms linked around all of their waists and as one they lept from the train.
The people from the train made camp on the edge of the City that night. They set up tents around the area like a makeshift town. The less fortunate simply laid themselves out upon the sands and tried to sleep.
“What now?” Ruric whispered in her ear.
Jane shook her head. She hadn’t thought this far. If she was being honest with herself, she hadn’t thought they would even get this far. There were so many things that could have killed them, and yet somehow they managed to live.
Now she had to get inside the City. She had to find her siblings. She had to find the goblin boy. She had to get him out.
Ruric’s hand spread wide against her back as her knees started to go weak.
“Do you need to sit down?”
“No.” She said quietly. “I need to get in there.”
“How do we get in?”
“I don’t know.”
His eyes narrowed. Though the rest of his face was covered by cloth, she could tell that he was angry with her.
“You what?”
“I don’t know how to get into the City.”
He stepped towards her, physically pushing her backwards. Each step seemed as though she was backing away from a mountain.
“You brought us here. You don’t know how to get in?”
“Not for sure!” She stumbled as her feet sank into the sands. “It’s a random selection! Not everyone gets to go in.”
“How else do we get in?”
“We don’t. That place is locked down.”
“Every place has a second way to get into it.”
“Not this place, Ruric. There is no other way to get into the City other than that door.” She pointed towards the small rectangle that the goblins would have to duck to go through. “They designed this place like a fortress. No one gets in and no one gets out.”
Ruric stopped pushing her long enough to make eye contact with Shusar. They spoke quietly in the goblin language for a moment before the smaller goblin drifted away from the group.
Jane watched him leave with concerned eyes. “It’s not wise to split up.”
“Wise?”
She turned back towards him. “We need to stay together. You don’t know where you are here. You could get lost.”
“We will manage.” His voice was little more than a low rumble. “You lied again.”
“I did not lie.” She pushed a palm against his shoulder. Jane enjoyed the moment of satisfaction as he moved backwards a step. “I told you I could get you here. And I did.”
Ruric shook his head and moved to settle down onto the sand with Illyrin.
She stood staring at the two of them, her hands planted on her hips. Somehow the idea of doing nothing was even more frustrating than not knowing what to do.
“Well?” She said loudly, waiting for either of the goblins to look at her.
Neither of them did.
“What are we going to do?”
There was a heavy moment of silence before Ruric finally answered her.
“We are going to wait.”
“For what?” Jane couldn’t help but raise her voice into a shout.
There was a glint of light that reflected from deep within Ruric’s eyes. “For Shusar.”
She settled heavily onto the sand next to them. “Right. We’re going to wait for a goblin who has never been here to come up with some kind of miracle that will allow us to somehow get into a City that has been locked down for hundreds of years.”
The goblins didn’t flinch at her ramblings. This only served to make her even more angry.
“Right, we shouldn’t ask the other humans who have been here to see if there’s a trick to getting in. That maybe there might be some kind of bribery that we could pull. Nothing along those lines of course?”
Again, there was no response. The goblins seemed to have gone into a trance as they stared a foot in front of them at the sand that shifted ever so slowly in the wind.
Letting out a huff of breath, she pulled her cloak off of her shoulders and bunched it underneath her head.
“Fine. I’m going to sleep then. Wake me when the sun rises or Shusar somehow manages to find some kind of miracle.”
Jane squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the silence of the goblins. She hadn’t thought that quiet could be loud, yet here she was wishing that one of them would shift their weight so that her ears would stop ringing.
She had difficul
ty falling asleep. There were too many thoughts running through her mind and Jane wanted them all to quiet down.
They had travelled all this way and just beyond those walls were the answers to everything that they sought. Perhaps the goblin boy that had been stolen was already inside. She shuddered to think of what the people in there would do to him. She had seen what the goblins did to humans.
Somehow Jane didn’t think the response would be all that different.
Simon could be in there as well. The man who she had come to think of as something like a brother, or perhaps something more, who had betrayed her trust in the end. Jane hadn’t wanted to think about him at all since the bloodshed in the caves.
He lingered like a shadow in her mind. He would forever remain the symbol to her that humans and goblins would always have sides that called for death or destruction. The only answer he could see was red and streaked with pain.
She opened one eye. The goblins hadn’t moved at all. Not even an inch.
Sighing, she shifted again. Jane spun in a half circle until she could stare at the glittering lights of the City.
She had to admit, it was beautiful. The light from within seemed to spear upwards into the night sky. There had to be so many lights to banish the darkness from above the City.
What were her siblings doing in this moment?
Her hand passed over her mouth at the thought. She hoped they were happy. She hoped that they were peacefully sleeping in a comfortable bed with bellies full.
Willow stood at the entrance of the tunnel. She had spent the day outside with the strange creature the raiders had delivered. It was old, she could tell by the wrinkles around its eyes. But it was sweet.
The giant had walked circles around her for a while before they both had wandered off for adventure. Willow had hopped from large footprint to footprint as the beast meandered through the sands.
She had told it stories along the way. Muttering about sandcats and fairytale creatures that had always made her jump in the middle of the night.
The beast didn’t seem to mind her stories.
Eventually she had been forced to turn around. The City had been so far behind her that she wasn’t certain she would return in time.
She left the creature with a heavy heart. This was the first time she had been outside for a very long time. The sands felt good against her bare feet. The sun blistered the skin along her shoulders. But they were both exhilarating in their way.
