by Sandra Lang
* * *
I wake in the dark. There is a pounding in the back of my head that throbs with each heartbeat. The floor is uncomfortable and strange. It is smooth and cool to the touch. I feel along the strange surface without moving my body. This material does not give. It does not feel like the wood our platforms are made of. Nothing about this place feels right.
Slowly I sit up. Blood rushes out of my head and my vision starts to blur, not that I can see anything anyway. I brace myself against the wall and feel the same strange surface. I hear a repeating sound, an echo. It sounds like footsteps, but again, I cannot recognize it. It gets closer and closer until it stops.
Something scrapes in the direction opposite of me. A loud creaking sound, like that of the trees during a storm, erupts as a bit of light filters in toward me.
“Are you awake?” a distinctly male voice says in the trading language. The light is shoved toward me. I shield my eyes which have gotten used to the darkness surrounding me.
“Are you going to cause trouble?” the voice asks.
“Where am I?” I manage to say through my fear. My own voice sounds foreign to my ears.
“You are on a ship, madam. Are you going to cause trouble?”
“I suppose not. What ship am I on? Where am I?”
“You are on the Trade Wind, miss. Follow me please.” The light leaves what I can see is a small room that shines in the candle light.
I struggle to stand, feeling every ache and pain I did not know I had. I bite back a yelp of pain as the world spins and I collapse into the hard wall shoulder first.
“Are you all right in there?” The light moves back into the room.
I reach up to my head, hoping to stop the world from spinning. My hands feel sticky and wet. The smell of blood reaches my nose. “No, I am not all right.”
I slump further down the wall. The light slowly fades and I am enclosed in darkness again.