The Hourglass

by Donaldson, Casey

  “I got caught stealing. Not that I actually stole anything. It’s a long story.”

  “So apologise. Make big eyes and promise to be good blah blah blah,” replied Abby, unconcerned. Sarah realised belatedly that she should have expected this response. Abby had always been somewhat of a small-time thief. She nicked small cheap things that would never be noticed. Most of it was just junk and Sarah had never understood why she risked it all.

  “No Abby, you don’t understand. I got caught by a soldier.” She lifted up her sleeve and showed her the tattoo.

  This time the look on Abby’s face didn’t make her want to laugh. It was full of horror and pity. Abby’s open mouth made a few motions, like she was trying to say something, but nothing came out. She gave up and moved to sit near Sarah instead. They sat that way for a while, not saying anything, and Sarah decided that she was glad that Abby was there after all. She was glad that somebody else knew, and what’s more, that they understood.

  “My cousin used to work on a prison ship,” said Abby eventually, breaking the silence that had grown comfortably around them.

  “Oh yeah?” replied Sarah numbly.

  “I asked her once,” said Abby, glancing at Sarah out of the corner of her eyes quickly, “what I should do if I ever ended up there.”

  This time Sarah turned her head to look at Abby.

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said either be very popular, or very unnoticeable.”

  Sarah blinked in surprise. Abby suddenly looked a lot older than she was. Then the effect disappeared as Abby leaned over and gave her a quick hug. Abby scrambled to her feet and ran towards the staircase.

  “You better come back and visit me!” she demanded. “And bring me a present!”

  “It’s a prison ship you idiot!” yelled back Sarah as Abby’s head disappeared from view. “Not a cruise ship!” She shook her head, as if clearing her thoughts. “And they wouldn’t even send me there anyway, they’d send me to the farms,” she added in a mutter, but it was no good. Abby was as good as gone.

  Sarah stayed there until it started to get dark, her mood plummeting with the light. She stood up. She had to go home.

  It was time to face her mum and uncle.

  ***

  Sarah took a deep breath and opened the door. Her mother and uncle were sitting at the table, their faces grave. She knew, before they even opened their mouths, that they knew. The tears that she had managed to put off since the tower sprung back up, threatening to spill over her cheeks.

  “Oh Sarah,” said her mother so quietly that she nearly missed it, “what have you done?”

  Chapter Three

  The Trial

  The next three weeks passed in a blur. For Sarah time seemed to slow down and yet go too fast at the same time. She would find that whole chunks of the day just seemed to go missing. It was like she was sick, although she knew that there was nothing wrong with her physically. Then it was the day of the trial. She stood in her best clothes before the judge. There was no jury. Just the judge, her mum and uncle, and some stranger who was there for the next hearing, all squished into a small room that smelled like left-over soup. The room was stuffy and humid. The judge was a large man who had sweat marks staining the chest of his robes. He looked tired and miserable. He probably hadn’t had a break all day. Sarah watched the judge intently as he read silently through her offence. She drew in a deep breath. Any moment now he would ask her to speak, and she would again offer to work for the pie shop owners for as long as they wanted without pay.

  “It says here that you were found with the stolen possession in your hands.” He raised an eyebrow in her direction.

  “Well, yes, but-”

  “And that you were caught fleeing from the crime scene?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “So you are pleading guilty?”

  “Yes! No, wait, no! I had the pie but I didn’t steal anything. It was given to me!” She said it quickly, pushing the words out before he could cut her off again.

  “Yes,” said the judge, perusing the document in front of him again. “A boy, who you can’t identify, stole a pie for you, and then disappeared into thin air.” His voice was flat.

  “It’s the truth. The owner can tell you that a boy was there.”

  He returned to the document. The sweat running off his forehead was causing his glasses to slide down his nose. He pushed them back up absentmindedly.

  “Hmm,” he mumbled to himself. A bit louder he said, “yes, one was in the vicinity, but she doesn’t claim that he stole from her. Only you.”

  “Let me work-” began Sarah in desperation, but she was cut off by the judge’s raised hand. He removed his glasses, rubbed the space between his eyes and put his glasses back on. “You are sentenced to three months on the prison ship Anoscosa.” He hardly looked at her.

  Sarah swayed on her feet, the world dissolving around her. She vaguely registered the sound of her mum gasping. He didn’t even let me finish, she thought as someone, the bailiff maybe, guided her out of the stand. He didn’t give me a chance to speak.

  Then her mum’s arms were around her, and her uncle was wrapping them both in a big bear hug, and then she was being pulled away. No, she thought, confused, I’m going the wrong way. My family is over there. She struggled in the person’s grasp. There was a wheeze as her elbow struck her captor’s stomach. She made it a single step before something sharp was stabbed into her neck.

  Then the world went black.

  Chapter Four

  Cellmates

  Sarah woke up in a small room. The roof above her was blurry around the edges and her right hand trailed against the floor, her arm having fallen off the camp bed she was lying on. She swung herself up into a seating position and immediately regretted it as the urge to vomit surged throughout her abdomen and rose up her throat. The room swam before her eyes and she clutched the edge of the bed to steady herself. After a moment she recovered enough to look around. The room was a metre by a metre and a half. The thin camp bed was the only thing in it. A small, high set barred window and a metal door broke up the monotony of the cracked, yellowing plaster walls. Her neck was throbbing slightly where they had stabbed her with the needle and she poked at the site cautiously. To her relief it didn’t seem like there was any damage. Sarah stood up gingerly and went over to the window. If she stood on her tiptoes she could just see outside. Not that the view was particularly interesting, just a small, dirty, empty alleyway and a blank wall. She tried the door next. She knew it would be locked, but the temptation was just too great. She jiggled the handle. It was locked. She sighed and sat back down on the camp bed. Five minutes. That’s how long her trial had lasted for. The number buzzed around in her head like an angry wasp. In five minutes her entire life had just changed. She was going to be sent to a prison ship. How could that have even happened? she thought angrily. Surely it was a mistake? All the small time offenders got sent to work on the farms. That’s what the councillor had told her. She had spoken to him for ten minutes the day before the trial. He had looked tired and harried, like the judge. He had told her to try and argue her case to work back what she had stolen, but if that didn’t work then she would just be sent to work on the farms for a while. He had seemed to miss the part where she had told him that she was innocent. Now that she was sitting in a cell she decided that she wouldn’t have minded working on the farms. Sure, it was meant to be hard work, but they reportedly fed you well to keep you fit and working. The prison ships, she had been told, were where they put all the really bad criminals, the ones they couldn’t risk escaping. She closed her eyes. Apparently she was now one of them. A small sloppy pie that she didn’t even get to eat and she was now a danger to society. Thinking of it made her miserable, but there was nothing to distract herself with and so she gave into the temptation to feel sorry for herself and wallowed in self-pity for a while. Forty minutes later, just as Sarah was starting to wonder if they had forgotten about her, the sl
ot in the door to her cell slid open to reveal a pair of brown eyes. The eyes scrutinised her for barely a second before they disappeared and the slot was slammed shut. A moment later the door swung open, squealing on rusty hinges. A woman with severe looking hair stood in the doorway. She wore a guard’s uniform. The woman motioned with a jerk of her head for Sarah to follow her out of the room.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the communal cell.”

  “The communal cell?” repeated Sarah apprehensively. All of the horror stories she had ever heard about crowded prison environments came back to her, and she shivered.

  “You’ll wait there with the other prisoners until the bus comes to pick you up.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Am I really being sent to a prison ship?”

  “Yes.” The guard looked bored.

  “Why not a farm? I was told I would be sent to a farm by the councillor.”

  “Well, now you’re being sent to the ship.” The guard’s words were delivered with a sense of finality, making it clear that it was the end of the conversation.

  They exited the corridor and passed through a room where a bored-looking guard sat at a desk, before arriving at a second room full of cells. The room was long with cells lined along the left-hand side. They were larger than the cell she had been held in only two minutes before. Each cell was identical. Three of the walls were the same, yellowing, cracked plaster. The fourth wall, which faced the corridor, was made of thick, transparent plastic, open at the top and bottom by a thin strip. Sarah looked apprehensively inside the first cell as she waited for the guard to open it. There were two other girls already in there. The first girl was sturdily built. She was wearing cheap clothes and had a lot of bracelets on one arm. The girl could have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-one. It was hard to tell her age any more precisely due to the unwavering expression of dislike she was directing at Sarah. Sarah blinked in confusion and looked away awkwardly. She didn’t feel brave enough to return the stare. The girl had strategically sat in the middle of the bench that took up the entire side of the cell to Sarah’s right. While it still would have been possible to sit on either side of her, it would have made them just that little bit too close for comfort. Sarah got the distinct impression that if she asked the girl to move along the bench to make a little more space, it would have been taken as a challenge. By the simple act of sitting that way on the only bench, the girl had claimed dominance over the room. The other inhabitant was a tall, skinny girl with bony legs who sat on the floor with her back against the wall at right angles to the bench. She looked to be about seventeen. She was picking at her nails in a nervous, agitated manor, and ignored Sarah completely. Abby’s words of advice drifted through her brain; either be very popular, or very unnoticeable. Sarah glanced at the two girls as the guard gently shoved her through the door and locked it behind her. She wasn’t going to win any popularity contests with these two. Unnoticeable it was then. She sat down on the floor in the corner of the cell, the furthest away from the two others that she could get. Her back was against the wall opposite the bench, her right arm pressed against the transparent wall. She soon discovered the problem with this arrangement, and why the skinny girl had chosen to sit where she had. Sarah was now in the direct line of sight of the angry-looking girl on the bench. She considered moving so that she would instead face the skinny girl, but she didn’t want to look like she was easily intimidated.

  “What did you do?” demanded the girl on the bench.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t be a frag. You know what I mean.”

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders. She supposed she did. “I stole something. I got caught.” She tried to say it like she couldn’t care less. There was no way that she was going to admit that she hadn’t stolen anything, and that what they said she had stolen was a sad-looking pie. That wasn’t about to strike fear or respect into her enemies, and she had a feeling that this girl was not going to be a friend.

  The skinny girl looked at her for the first time. “What did you steal?”

  “Why are you in here?” replied Sarah, deflecting the question with one of her own.

  “Marland burnt down a building,” interrupted the angry girl. She smirked at the skinny girl, as if daring her to protest. Sarah looked at Marland, horrified. What with so many people living so close together, fires were a serious threat to the city. They spread in a blink of an eye, destroying everything in their path. Marland interpreted the look and blushed guiltily.

  “It was just shed,” she muttered.

  “Why did you burn it?” asked Sarah, before she could stop herself.

  “She wanted to get back at her mum,” replied the angry girl, butting in again. Marland just hung her head and didn’t say anything. Sarah was finding the angry girl’s interruptions annoying. Could she not just mind her own business for ten seconds?

  “Well, what did you do then?” demanded Sarah, a bit more forcefully than she had intended.

  The angry girl raised an eyebrow in mock surprise, but answered anyway. “I stabbed a guy.” She paused to savour the effect. It was clear that she had been looking forward to saying that. Sarah tried to keep her face as neutral as possible, but at least some of her expression must have leaked through, because the girl smirked in satisfaction. “He was trying to rob me,” she continued, without anyone asking her to. “He thought he could intimidate me, wave a fist around in my face and expect me to just faint at his feet or something. You should have seen his face when I pulled out my knife and stabbed him. It was hilarious. The stupid fragger.”

  Sarah didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say.

  After a moment the girl snorted and muttered, “yeah, I thought so.”

  Sarah felt her face redden. She wished it wouldn’t.

  “Oh look, you’re going all red!” shrieked the girl, as if it was the most entertaining thing she had ever seen.

  “Really?” replied Sarah sarcastically, “I had no idea.” Of all the things people did, she could never understand why everyone felt it necessary to point out that she was blushing. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know this, and it was obvious that she was embarrassed and that pointing it out would only make it worse.

  The smirk on the girl’s face disappeared fast. “What did you say, frag? Were you mocking me?” Her voice had gone hard and dangerous.

  Suddenly Sarah just couldn’t care anymore. All of the horrible events that had happened to her over the past few hours built up and overwhelmed her tolerance for other people. She stood up, slow and steady.

  “You know what? Yes, yes I was mocking you.” She took a step towards the girl, who had widened her eyes in surprise. “In fact, I-” She was cut off short as the door to the corridor opened and a guard walked through. The guard took in the scene with one glance.

  “Sit down,” she ordered Sarah. Sarah shrugged and sat back down. It was almost a relief. As much as she wanted to punch that girl in the face, she had also never hit anyone in her life and there was a high chance that the girl would beat the living crap out of her. With a look that warned them against any future bickering, the guard left the room to check in each of the other cells, eventually disappearing back the way she had come. By this point both Sarah and the girl were studiously ignoring each other. Marland continued to pick at her fingernails. Thirty minutes later the lights overhead flickered out. Sarah guessed that this meant it was time to sleep. Not that it was likely that she could sleep whilst a person who is known to stab people sat on the bench opposite her; especially as she had just succeeded in making her angry. For a moment she searched desperately through her memory, trying to recall whether the girl had anything near her that could be used as a weapon. She couldn’t think of anything, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Sarah sighed. It was going to be a long night, and she missed her family.

  The tears came unbidden as images of her mum and uncle sprang up i
nfront of her eyes. For the first time she was grateful for the dark. She didn’t want anyone to see her cry. She didn’t want them to think that she was weak.

  ***

  Sarah woke a few hours later to a foot pressed against her cheek. She hadn’t even realised that she had fallen asleep, let alone slid down the wall. She was lying awkwardly on the concrete floor, her arm trapped beneath her body. The foot ground into her face, causing her to wince in pain as her cheek scraped against the concrete.

  “Do you like that, frag? Do you like that? Huh?” hissed the girl.

  Sarah made a noise without meaning to. It was half way between a squeak and a groan.

  The girl chuckled. “Yeah, I thought so. So next time you go about being disrespectful, just remember that I always come out on top.”

  Sarah didn’t reply.

  “Do you understand me?” she hissed. She ground her foot in harder.

  “Yes,” gasped Sarah in pain. She felt like her cheek bone was about to snap.

  “Good. Remember it.” The pressure of the foot disappeared. Sarah didn’t move until she heard the girl return to her bench and lie down. Then she rolled over onto her back, her hands on her face, as she tried to work out the damage. To her relief it felt much the same. There was a graze on her right cheekbone where it had been ground into the concrete, but that seemed to be the worst of it. Sarah hoped fervently that the morning light wouldn’t reveal a boot mark on her face. The girl on the bench started snoring. A sudden desire to get up and do something awful to her swept through Sarah, but she didn’t move. She knew it would only make things worse if she did. How could I be so stupid, she thought bitterly, to make an enemy before I even leave the city. So much for following Abby’s advice about going unnoticed.

  “Hey,” whispered a small voice. It was Marland. “Are you alright?”

  Sarah wanted to just roll over and ignore her. If Marland knew what had happened, then she could have tried to help, instead of just watching. Sarah sighed; Marland was just scared. Besides, she wasn’t in a position to turn away friends at the moment, especially as she lacked the skills to make them in the first place.