by Kelly Napoli
***
Eventually, she lost her voice, and the screaming ceased.
Eventually, she lost her strength, and the thrashing ceased.
Kiethara lay there, listless, and watched with uncaring eyes as people moved all around her. Men bustled back and forth, children as well as adults were tied up and sent into cages, and then the wagon lurched forward.
Then she heard the most beautiful sound. It broke her from her insane trance; emotion and awareness returning. She heard the sound again and smiled.
It was the rustling of leaves.
Kiethara shook her head, trying to clear it. She used the bar next to her to pull herself up into a more modest position. Oh, she needed to get her thoughts in order. She needed to understand where she stood now.
First, she was alive. That was more than she had expected at this point. Second, she wasn’t very badly injured. Only her hands, which she now realized had been whipped. But nothing, thankfully, that would stop her if she ever got the chance to make a run for it.
Third, the moving wagon most likely meant that they were leaving Nikkoi. At this point, she had been so desperate to leave the thrice-accursed kingdom that she accepted it whole-heartedly, even if she was leaving it in a cage.
That was about it for the positive outlooks she could conjure about the situation. There were other, less agreeable things to consider.
To start with, she had no magic. She was unable to use the one weapon she had never been without before, which made her completely powerless to her enemies.
To add to that, she was not in the forest. She was alone and quite lost in unfamiliar environments; not to mention, she was at a complete lost on how she would ever return to the forest.
And to top it all off, she was at the complete mercy of everyone and everything around her. It was as though she was trying to fight her way through a large ocean without drowning, but the currents kept grabbing her and pushing her in the wrong direction.
Despite all that, what really bothered her was the cage. She could forget everything else if she just wasn’t locked in a cage. She couldn’t think of a more degrading, susceptible position to be in. It went beyond humiliating.
“Are you all right?” a small voice to her left asked.
Kiethara jumped. She turned her head to the left to see there was another cage next to hers. Behind the rusty bars sat a young, extremely thin little boy who looked to be only six or seven. The boy had sandy colored hair, warm brown eyes, and numerous freckles that were sprinkled over his cheeks and nose, accounting for all the times his face had been kissed by the sun. Underneath the freckles was skin as pale as a sheet, with heavy bags etched under his eyes. He seemed to be dressed in rags, tatters of what used to be a shirt and a pair of short trousers.
“No,” she whispered in a dead voice, but she gave the boy a small smile.
The boy coughed, but his smile told her it had been meant to be a chuckle.
“I suppose none of us are.”
Kiethara scrutinized the boy. She felt such a strong stab of pity. She knew why she was here, but she couldn’t believe that someone would have locked up this small child…He should be running through the streets of his kingdom, laughing and playing with the other children, just as Kiethara had saw the others do yesterday during her brief spite of freedom.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Desan,” he answered. “Yours?”
“Kiethara.”
They were quiet for a minute, listening to the sounds around them. The rocking of the cart was, truthfully, making her drowsy. How she longed for her hammock.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“My parents died and I don’t have any relatives that want me. What other life is there for me? It wasn’t like I had much of a choice,” he told her, a bit bitterly.
“You could have run,” she suggested.
“And starved?” he challenged.
“I suppose you’re right,” Kiethara had forgotten that some people could not grow their food as she could. Well, at the moment, neither could she…
“Well, what about you?” he asked.
Kiethara bit her lip. What could she tell him? She didn’t know if she could trust him with the truth and she doubted he would believe it, even if she did.
“I did not mean to pry,” Desan said quickly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, no, it’s not you, it’s me. My story is very complicated.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s just say I was forcibly taken from my home, but then I got away from those villains. But then I got caught by these people,” she described.
“That doesn’t sound too complicated,” he commented.
“I’m sparing you a couple of horrid and confusing details,” Kiethara smiled. Desan grinned back.
“For a captured boy, you still have a bright smile,” she noted.
“Well,” he said. “I’m not going to get myself anywhere by moping around this joint, am I?”
Kiethara grimaced. Her screams had gotten her nothing but a sore throat.
“Also,” he continued, looking at her shyly. “It’s not so bad when you’re not alone.”
She blushed at his words. He was so sweet, so innocent; she had a sudden urge to protect him. Where this motherly instinct had come from, or why it surfaced, she did not know. But it was there now, making her look at the boy with tender eyes.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s much better being with someone than without.”
She was suddenly aware that hushed voices had started up behind her. She turned and, to her shock, saw more cages with people in them. Her cage and Desan’s were positioned right at the end of the wagon, giving them the view of grassy plains and light blue skies.
“Tell me about your family,” she suggested to him a whisper, all too aware of the other slaves behind them now.
“My dad was the best!” the boy declared proudly. “He was a farmer, and a mighty good one! We always had the best crops, see, until one year. Mamma got a terrible disease and Pappa got busy watching over her. I tried to do what I could, but I couldn’t do that much because I was too young.
“Then some bad weather hit us, making our harvest mighty pitiful. Soon Pappa caught what Mamma had, and we couldn’t afford a doctor. They just kept on getting worse…
“My dad really lost it when my mum died. The neighbors came over and buried her in a far off valley, or so they told me, so her spirit could rest in peace. But Pappa kept saying he kept seeing her everywhere. I never saw anything…and then he passed, too, and that was that. I was too lost in my own grieving to do anything about his body, so the neighbors came back and took his body just like they had taken Mamma and went to bury him in the same field. They talked for a good long while about what to do with me, but in the end, they just stuck me here,” he finished.
“I’m sorry,” Kiethara whispered, trying to hide the lump in her throat.
“You didn’t do anything,” he said with a shrug.
They lapsed into silence, but it was not an awkward one. Strangely, she felt rather calm. Not rigid with fear or shaking with frustration. It was as though she had decided just to drift along now, not fighting the rough current that held her.
“What about your family?” Desan asked quietly.
“My mother,” Kiethara started with a faint smile. “She was a wonderful person. Love radiated off of her; I can still feel it in the air when I’m home. It was impossible for you not to love her. Well, except for one man.”
“Who?”
“Gandador,” she blurted out without thinking. She put a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Desan’s eyes widened in horror.
“Gandador?” he whispered, as though he was afraid the man they were talking about could hear them.
“Yes,” Kiethara sighed. “He killed my mother when I was very young.”
“What about your daddy?”
“I-I never knew my father,” she said qui
ckly.
“I’m sure he was a great man,” Desan said.
Kiethara smiled softly at the boy. Maybe her father had been a great man at some point.
“How old are you?” she asked him.
“Nine, I think.”
Nine. That was surefire proof that the boy hadn’t had a square meal in years. He was so small, so thin.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Fifteen.”
They continued their small conversation, asking random questions. Just the sound of another friendly voice was a comfort they were grateful for. Neither of them would let the conversation die out, even though the voices of the others behind them had ceased hours ago. It was only until the sun was low in the sky and the wagon stopped did they finally fall quiet.
Voices, mostly male, rang out with a multitude of other noises. It was quite a while before anyone came over to their wagon. Desan’s cage was opened first, and they made him stick out his limbs so they could tie him up. Desan shot her a small, fearful look before the man grabbed him and tossed him onto the grass behind the wagon.
It took several painful minutes and three strong men before they were finally able to tie Kiethara up. Annoyed, they tossed her a little too roughly into the grass. She scowled back at the as she scooted towards Desan, grimacing when another man kicked her as he passed by.
“There’s no point in fighting it,” Desan told her.
“I know,” she sighed. “I just want them to know I’m not one to be messed with.”
Everyone, including several of the slaves, was watching her with wary eyes. Many of them had already inched away; the men that guarded the group all had their eyes on her.
“Well, they know that now,” he mumbled.
Kiethara then noticed three women walking towards them. The one in the front was the one who had caught Kiethara’s attention. She was tall, a bit plump, and was wearing an expression that promised violence. Her black and gray hair was pulled back into a tight bun and her plain brown dress already had the sleeves pulled up. Her beady eyes swept over the slaves until they narrowed in on Kiethara. Kiethara stared boldly back.
“We’re here to wash,” the lady declared.
The guard grunted his approval.
“I’ll take that one first.”
Kiethara didn’t need to ask who that one would be. She had made a spectacle of herself, but only because she was prepared for the challenge.
The man came up to her and cut the ropes binding her legs. Kiethara rose unsteadily to her feet, staggering slightly.
The woman grabbed her impatiently and steered her away from the group.
“Wash?” Kiethara asked, anxious.
“Speak only when spoken too,” the woman said, giving her a sharp prod in the back as she led her to the outskirts of the camp.
Kiethara picked up the sound of rushing water. They had to walk several more yards until she could see it. By what was apparent in the dimming light, it was a wide, deep blue river, giving the impression that it had some depth to it. A few people were already wading in its waters.
The lady holding on to her led her to the right, toward a more vacant part of the stream. Without pausing, she marched them at the same pace into the middle of the river.
Kiethara cringed when the icy water made contact with her skin, but she managed to keep her legs moving until they were waist deep. Despite the temperature, it felt good to have the cool liquid rush over her, wiping away the grim she had been collecting for days now.
“We’re washing ye, so people will buy ye,” the woman answered at last, relenting.
Kiethara’s stomach dropped. Maybe she didn’t want to be clean.
“Under,” the lady ordered, pushing down on her shoulders. Kiethara sucked in a gulp of air before allowing herself to be submerged.
Underneath the surface, it was cool, quiet; the water was numbing. A hand pulled her up and her fears and aches came back as soon as her head broke the surface. The woman grabbed the hem of her dress and yanked it up. Kiethara gasped, instinct jolting through her, twisting out of the woman’s grasp.
The woman pounced, tackling her into the water before dragging her up by the hair.
“Don’t even think ye can get away with something like that when ye with me,” the woman hissed. “We got men on horses, and dogs to tear ye into bits.”
The woman continued—a little more roughly—to pull up her dress. She couldn’t take it off all the way with Kiethara’s hand tied up, but she managed to push it up as far as it would go. The woman pulled a rag out from the bodice of her dress and dipped it heavily into the water before she began to scrub her down. Kiethara cringed at every touch, her pride withering in response to the debasing process.
“Ye not used to being touched,” the lady observed, “Ye haven’t been a slave for long.”
“No.”
“But ye don’t look rich,” the woman mumbled, shaking her head. “A bimbo, that’s what ye look like, and certainly not from around here. What is ye story?”
“My business is my own,” Kiethara replied shortly.
“Not any more, it’s not. And ye better get used to it, too.” the woman warned.
The lady finally stopped scrubbing Kiethara. She turned her around and used her plump fingers to brush through the giant knots in Kiethara’s hair. When she was done, the woman took up her hair and piled it on top of her head, tying it there.
Kiethara’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Did her hair now resemble that of the normal girl she had spied on in Nikkoi?
The woman walked her back to the group of slaves. Desan, who had been looking frightened and lonely, brightened when he saw her walk up. She smiled back, hoping that he could not read the despair in her eyes.
They were once again unceremoniously stuffed back into the wretched cages they had been brought in, with no food or water. Kiethara internally kicked herself for not drinking any when she had been in the river washing. Foolish mistakes like that could get her killed.
Again, the nightmare marched on.
