Children of Swan:The Land of Taron, Vol 1: (A Space Fantasy Adventure)

by Coral Walker

  “Brianna, Brianna, it’s me, Jack!” the boy cried once more, his voice cracking as he swallowed a sob.

  Bagi’s face darkened. Growing up with a man who often wore the same expression, Cici knew its significance — he was offended by his daring, noisy slave.

  He thrust his hand into a pocket, scrabbled impatiently and brought out a small bottle with a long neck. By its shape Cici could tell it straight away what is was. Sino, the silence potion, one of father’s inventions of course. What else could it be?

  Bagi gestured, and two brawny men with bulging arms rushed over and hunkered down beside the boy.

  Cici took her leave. In the corner of her eye, she caught the kicking legs of the boy. With unhurried steps, she walked on until she was out of the hall and standing on the platform overlooking the grand arena. An acrid smell wafted its way to her. She sniffed, sticking her tongue out to taste it — nothing. The smooth pearly teeth flashed into her mind, and for a while she was thinking of his deep blue eyes and his cracked voice calling “Brianna”.

  He was too noisy, and it was a good idea to keep him quiet, she thought, sucking in a deep breath.

  +++

  A few steps away, a thick pillar, painted colourfully with a life-sized dancing girl and an abstract background, started to rotate with a low rumble. A muffled cry escaped from behind the pillar.

  “Swing your body! Left, right ...” a man shouted orders, and the sound of a whip cracked the air.

  The pillar droned on. The white girl she had seen earlier appeared, barefoot, standing on the narrow rim of the revolving pillar. With wrists and ankles shackled by metal bands to the pillar, her body movements were restrained, except for her hips and torso. Two blunt-tipped stubs on the pillar, one on each side of her waist, alternated in a mechanical movement forward and backward, forcing her into a rhythmic swinging motion.

  It’s Brianna, Jack’s Brianna.

  She was having trouble to follow the rhythm and flinched each time the stubs prodded her. Her eyes were misty and her face tense. She looked utterly distraught, not appreciating the situation. It was one of the most prominent pillars in the complex, admired by hundreds in the audience. To be in that position, you must have a face and a body to match it.

  “Pretty, isn’t she?” a voice came from behind.

  Bagi bowed and apologised as Cici turned to him. “Sorry, my Lady, I didn’t intend to offend you by saying another woman was pretty. I meant that for her kind, the ones that we can enslave and sell, she is of the rarest. My wife, Leana, you might still remember, she used to be one of your maids. I thank your Ladyship for permitting me to marry her.”

  He bowed again and continued, “She said she is as fair as the fairest flower that grows on Mount Tarata. It’s silly of her to say that. You cannot compare a person with a flower. They are simply not of the same kind.”

  “Leana said if we dressed her in a pretty dress, we might sell her for a handsome price. I said no, she is already pretty enough. But then you see how she looks in that dress. Leana was right this time. As soon as we got her in that dress, Gridilo was around her like a fly. He was delirious. You didn’t see him because he went to fetch more of his golden coins.”

  It was a bold dress, Cici reckoned, pure white, a matching colour for her pale skin. Dangling from her waist, various knick-knacks and colourful metal rings clicked and clacked as she swung. Even her hair had been thoughtfully prepared, knitted into braids blended with creamy ribbons and golden threads. It was Leana’s work, bold and striking, Cici thought bitterly. Leana, who had minded her since she had been born, used to dress her. Since Leana had been married off, according to her father’s will, to a man she had never met, she had hardly seen her.

  Bagi coughed, lifted a hand to his bulging chest and rubbed it. “There ...” he spoke low and slowly as if speaking with reluctance, “... is an offer for that Ertharan boy, my Lady. I thought I should inform you ... err ... in case your Ladyship is interested.”

  “How much?” Cici said flatly. She had seen this coming. From the start, she had made no attempt to hide her interest. It was annoying that Bagi was still making an effort to get more out of her. If he wasn’t the husband of Leana ...

  “Him, hmm ... my Lady, what good taste you have! Teilo is worth 4000 golden coins. You saw him on the rails last time, didn’t you? He was twice a winner. For the Ertharan boy,” he licked his lips, “Leana said a rare boy like him shouldn’t go cheaply. You can’t expect such a thing to fall from the sky often. 5000 golden coins, my Lady, that was what Leana suggested.”

  He swallowed, his hand again rubbing his chest.

  “How much is she?” With deliberation, Cici raised her voice.

  As she looked, the white girl missed a beat. Her body jerked as the stub pushed into her waist. Cici smiled, enjoying the spectacle. She met her eyes, crystal blue just like Jack’s, and saw her lips slightly parted as if she were about to speak, but they soon closed, pressing tightly together.

  She couldn’t talk. Sino, what a clever invention to keep a lousy slave quiet.

  “1000 golden coins.” It took Bagi a while to come up with a price. “Gridilo would be mad with me if he knew I had sold her.” He licked his thick lips.

  Her gaze wandered back to the pillar. There was no longer Brianna, the white-faced girl, but a lifeless drawing of two dancing girls, one after another, coming and going, endlessly.

  “5800 for both!” Bagi cried.

  “Deal! You will have 5500 by dusk. Get the boy washed and changed.”

  “Of course, my Lady, we’ll do whatever you say.” Bagi smiled, nodding his head. His chunky fingers started rummaging for something in his pocket and reappeared flourishing a ring with a red string bound to it.

  “This was found around the neck of that Ertharan boy. I thought you might like to keep it, my Lady.”

  With her fingertips, Cici took it. The string was plain and filthy, and in a flash of disgust, she almost threw it away. The ring was solid and of a size too large for a boy’s finger. On the flat side of the ring was etched a picture of a targar and a bokwa looking fiercely at each other ...

  Pondering, she let it roll into the palm of her hand.

  Bagi’s voice spoke again, “Would you like me to pack him off and send him to you?”

  “No,” Cici said as she raised her gaze and fixed it on the spinning pillar. “I want him to be in the first game of today. Do you think you can see to that?”

  Bagi murmured something about the toughness of the game, how fierce Teilo was and the rigid one-survivor-per-game rule. “You’re throwing 5000 golden coins away, you silly rich girl!” he seemed to be saying. Cici grinned, laughing it off. Bagi would not understand that Teilo was the reason to put Jack in. She had to put things into perspective. She must, or she would end up with nothing.

  “By the way, Teilo is Prince Mapolos’ asset.”

  “Is he here?” Cici jumped.

  “Not yet, but I reckon he will be soon. Also, Prince Marcus was supposed to attend but cancelled this morning.”

  Her heart missed a beat.

  “What about the girl?” Bagi asked.

  “She’ll stay there and watch the game,” said Cici.

  12

  Wash

  The long hall he was in was almost identical to the previous one. Shining metal plates used for confining prisoners were installed neatly along a high wall. Half of them were occupied by red-skinned youths, arms and legs shackled to the centre of a metal plate. Blue-skinned people dressed in gaudy clothes strolled around, gaping at the fettered youths as if they were articles in a museum.

  The plate he was shackled to was a double-sized one. A solemn-faced boy, sturdy and half a head shorter, was already there. He stood stiffly, taking no notice when Jack was pushed in with him.

  A living statue, Jack mocked inwardly.

  Surrounding them was a low wall with a wooden gate to keep the water in. The wet floor was grooved like a spider’s web, and all the grooves head
ed towards a hole in the centre for water to exit. It was a place for washing. Feeling uneasy, Jack glanced down at the T-shirt and jeans he was wearing. Scrappy and torn, but at least ... they were there.

  The wooden gate creaked open. A sluggish, slant-shouldered youth with red skin shambled in. With a blank face, he went straight to the solemn-faced boy and started to strip him off.

  Jack’s uneasiness was growing, and the wandering people started gathering. It was hard for him not to peek. Furtively he hoped the same thing wouldn’t happen to him.

  The boy’s clothing was a simple piece of linen, tied together with a fabric belt. Once the belt was untied, all the other clothing could simply be pulled off.

  The slant-shouldered boy moved on to Jack. With a pair of dull eyes too scared to look up, he appeared no more than ten years old. To Jack’s surprise, he too had metal bands on his wrists.

  Of course, all the blue-skinned people were free while all the non-blue ones were either prisoners or slaves. That was how this place worked.

  The button and zip on Jack’s jeans baffled and troubled the young boy. He pulled and yanked it. The green sentry on guard outside the low wall grew impatient. Pushing his way in, he slashed the jeans open with a sharp-edged knife.

  Jack’s eyes blurred. His tongue felt like a piece of rubber in his mouth; now he saw his clothes were gone.

  The ring! What about the ring?

  In a sudden flash of desperation, he struggled to look down. Under his eyes, his chest was pale and bare — the ring had gone.

  For a while, he was in a state of frenzy, darting his eyes wildly, searching in vain for the ring. There were roving feet and inscrutable faces everywhere, but no sign of the ring. Throwing his head back, feeling the cold touch of the metal plate, he shivered.

  Babies, the dead babies with creased skin curled up in the yellow liquid. How he wished he could curl up just like them.

  +++

  A bucket of soapy water splashed down over him. A brush scrubbed, burning the skin with each stroke.

  “Turn around!” the green-uniformed man ordered.

  Jack didn’t hear the click, but his body tumbled forward from the unexpected release.

  The metal plate must be magnetic, and the black box the man in green was holding must be the controller, switching the magnetic force on or off. Jack couldn’t help but admire the ingenuity and the efficiency of the device confining him. Although the place and the people look a few hundred years behind Earth in technology, they did have some clever gadgets.

  There was little time to stretch his stiffened body before the sharp point of a stick sank into his shoulder.

  “Turn!” the man shouted, poking the stick.

  Jack obeyed. For a brief moment, he was facing the other boy, who was turning at the same time. The boy winked.

  Being shackled face against the wall and not having to see the goggle-eyed, blue-faced people was a relief, but the discomfort from his flattened face and strained neck was almost unbearable. Worse still, his head was trapped in a position that he could do nothing about, and he involuntarily faced the other boy, who, to Jack’s annoyance, had only his hands shackled.

  A splash. Immediately, a brush scrubbed his hair and neck, banging his face hard against the wall.

  The boy winked again. The solemn expression he had worn earlier had been peeled off like an orange skin.

  “You are worth 5000 golden coins, no wonder they put a neck ring on you,” he said in a hushed whisper.

  He could speak as well. Jack was irked. 5000 golden coins sounded a lot, but what did it have to do with him?

  “C ... ci ... ci B ... Barloom ...” The boy muttered as he strained his eyes to read the words etched on his neckband. “Cici Barloom’s name is on your ring. Lady Cici has bought you. She is the fine young blue woman who came to see you earlier.”

  “Lord Shusha’s daughter, she’s a tough one,” he added, grinning.

  The young woman’s face flashed into Jack’s mind — her sweet chiming voice and her velvet blue skin.

  “By the way, I’m Teilo.”

  A silly gurgling sound escaped from Jack’s throat — he had forgotten his dormant tongue.

  “Jack, isn’t it? I heard you shout.” He stretched his back as the brush scrubbed it. “They don’t like slaves to make a noise, not the loud ones. The drug they gave you is called Sino. It sends your tongue to sleep for two days.”

  Another splash of water, clear water this time, and then the bands were unshackled. The keeper ordered them to turn.

  “The drug isn’t cheap. As long as you keep quiet, they won’t trouble themselves to use it,” he muttered before turning.

  The man jabbed Teilo’s shoulder with his stick, leaving a red mark. He must have seen him talking. In silence, Teilo held up his arms.

  They were shackled back to the wall, and two more splashes of clear water followed. After that, they were left alone, naked and dripping wet.

  +++

  As time went by more people came and went, dawdling and browsing mindlessly as they do in a marketplace, no lack of women and children among them. Now their cleaning was over; people started ambling in their direction.

  “Mum, we bet on Teilo, didn’t we?” a boy’s tender voice asked. He was not much taller than Bo. Scampering over, he struggled to climb onto the low wall. His mother, a young woman with hair tied neatly in a bun adorned with flowers, hastened over to help him.

  “Teilo, Teilo!” the boy chanted, attracting passers-by. The woman smiled amicably in Teilo’s direction. When her eyes drifted to Jack, her face turned purple at the sight of him. “Go, go,” she urged, turning to her son. The young boy protested, but she hurriedly gathered him up, half coaxing and half forcing, and hustled him away. The crowd echoed her response, making loud snorts of derision and turning their backs.

  It felt like being stripped again. The blue folks here don’t like white-skinned folks.

  It wasn’t the first time Jack had wished for a coloured skin. In the daytime, his parents would have the same skin colour as everyone else, but at the night their skins would turn to their natural colour — blue for Dad, and Mum a warm red. Bo’s colour changed too, but quite spontaneously, with no warning and no pattern — one minute he was pale, and the next he could be red, blue or a mixture of both. Only Jack and Brianna could do nothing with their skins, which were pale, dull and unvarying.

  “You are simply yourself. Colour doesn’t change you,” Dad had told him.

  “But why can you and Mum change your skin colour?”

  “We have some problem with our skins — they are different. We take medicine daily to make us look normal during the day.”

  He knew the explanation was concocted, and there was more to it than that. But as often happens, a question stops simply because it has been answered, however unconvincingly.

  Over the heads of the milling crowd and the lofty wall beyond, he could see the sky. Demarcated by the patchwork roof and open walls, it narrowed into a meagre strip, against which the crown of a magnificent tree was silhouetted.

  “Is that Brianna?” said Teilo.

  Taking no notice, Jack let his eyes stray further along the skyline, into the shady branches of the tree.

  “Do you see her, on that spinning pillar?”

  He felt a flicker of unease. How had Teilo come to know of Brianna? But then the shouts, the kicks and the struggles ... they came to him. No wonder Teilo knew her name. Everyone in that hall would know it too.

  What was Brianna to do with a spinning pillar?

  A distance away near the entrance of the hall stood a pillar, the only one he could see. It was indeed spinning.

  “Brianna’s on top,” said Teilo in an approving tone.

  Brianna on top of the pillar! It didn’t make sense!

  He fastened his eyes on it, straining them until they were sore.

  It was all very bizarre, but it was her, up there in the eye-catching white dress he had seen her in earlier.
How had she got up there and why was she swinging her body like a Chinese doll? So cunningly blended into the background that, to unobservant eyes, she was just part of the display.

  He would have paid to see her in that outlandish dress and doing a weird dance like that. She’d always been boyish and overbearing, and that was something he truly missed. He would love to take the chance, snapping pictures, tweeting the tweets, and then die laughing.

  BRIANNA GOODMAN, the Dancing Girl! HA HA HA, Blah Blah Blah!

  He stifled a chuckle, feeling his chest burning, his arms aching from being pulled so hard.

  “Soon we’ll be fighting in the arena,” said Teilo thoughtfully. “At least she’ll be safe from bokwas up there.”

  The wiggling, hissing, clawed serpents! Bokwas—that’s what those snake-like creatures with claws were called here. Was there going to be a fight with bokwas, and was Brianna going to be there to watch it?

  “She will be fine. I’ll take care of her,” Teilo talked as if Brianna was his, under his protection. Shackled like a log of wood, he must be insane.

  “Tyanna saw it.” The immense pride in Teilo’s voice was curious, and in awe he saw that the youth’s red face beamed at the mere mention of Tyanna’s name.

  The gate creaked open. The slant-shouldered boy came back in with folded garments under his arm. The garments he brought were similar to the ones Teilo had worn. They were made from a simple strip of coarse canvas fitted with laces and a neck hole. No doubt they were made that way — putting them on was as easy as an old shoe, even with your hands shackled. The tunics were unremarkable and colourless, but the collars around the neck hole, hard and stiff, were made from some coloured material — Jack’s was a jet-black; Teilo’s a rich purple. The final touch was an ample waistband, buckled behind, matching the colour of the collar.

  A roll of drumbeats resounded. On hearing them, people started scurrying away.

  “There are four holes in the wall where the large bokwas come in, so be aware. Get to the centre if you can. Never turn your back on them,” Teilo’s hushed voice found its way into Jack’s ears.

  The hall was empty now. Beyond it, a hubbub of noises was brewing into a deafening uproar.