“Dammit,” whispered Daz. “Oh well. Your own fault, kid. You shoulda moved faster. Now, you’re caught.”
She set the rifle flat on the floor and slid it into the space behind Dad. A heavy wooden door creaked open. Wisp pulled the blanket up to cover herself, curling her body tight against Dad, left knee across his lap, her other leg straight beside his. She tucked her head under his left arm and threaded her right arm around his back, squeezing herself into him.
Hard boots clomped on the stone floor of the outer chamber.
“What’s all the damn yellin’ goin on?” bellowed a man. “Someone askin’ for a good attitude adjustment?”
Dad… please protect me.
Negotiations
-26-
Dad’s cold skin offered little comfort.
Her fingers kept slipping over his back, unable to get a good grip on the sweaty, bloody mess coating him. The outer room fell silent save for the squeaking of chains and Kit’s muffled sniffles. Wisp’s breathing echoed in the stony space between her face and the wall. She squeezed herself into Dad.
Something inside him murmured.
“Was it you?” bellowed the man outside.
“No,” whimpered Kit.
“Sounded like a kid yelling,” said the marauder.
Another unsettling noise churned within Dad.
“I didn’t yell,” whispered Kit.
“You know what we do to slaves when they don’t do what they’re told…”
A sharp metal-on-metal clang broke the quiet, startling Wisp into squeezing Dad tight.
“I didn’t. I didn’t!” shouted Kit.
The high-pitched whine that started coming out of Dad grew into a breathy, fluttering gasp… only it hadn’t come out his mouth. Wisp, her head stuffed under his arm, face trapped in the hollow between his back and the wall, bore the full brunt of his gaseous disaster. She had once compared his ngh to a weapon, but a fart from the Other Side made everything else he’d ever done in the outhouse smell like flowers.
She convulsed, fighting the urge to throw up. Bile leaked out of her mouth, but she kept her jaw clenched, her whole body shuddering from the effort. If she puked, the marauder would definitely catch her. He’s―she gagged―trying to protect―she retched. Me. Not even a Tree Walker would want to be anywhere near that smell. It could wither plants brown in seconds.
The marauder laughed. “Good one. Hope it stinks so you can stew in it.” He waited a few seconds. “What’s wrong, mate? Nothin’ ta say back ta me now? Heh. ’Bout time you learned ta keep your yap shut.”
“And you…” said the Marauder. “You’re awful pretty.”
Noma’s voice shook. “I’ll do whatever you want me to if you let me be in the same cage with my son. Please…”
Wisp tried to hold her breath.
“You’ll do whatever we want you to, because we tell you to.” The loud clank happened again. “You’re meat now, you got that, slave? You don’t get to make requests.”
Silence came at an inconvenient moment. Wisp needed air now. Of course, the cloud floating around her didn’t exactly qualify as air, but she couldn’t hold her breath any longer. Whatever went on in the outer room didn’t involve words, so she forced herself to let her lungs empty as quietly as possible out her nose before breathing back in her mouth. Still, she gagged, and nearly threw up.
“No!” shouted Kit. “Stay away from my mother!”
“What are you gonna do about it, termite?” asked the marauder.
Metal clanked against metal again and again, though not as hard as before.
Unable to bear the smell in the confined space anymore, Wisp pulled her head back and risked a peek out from under the blanket. A tall, fat marauder stood by Kit’s haven, banging on it with a metal-capped club. He appeared to be trying to hit the boy through the bars, but the kid jerked his hands away or shifted his legs fast enough to avoid contact.
Wisp eased herself off Dad and lay flat on the floor beside him, still clinging. She stretched her legs out together and gathered the blanket off to the side on top of herself, hoping to look like a rolled up lump of cloth beside Dad that didn’t have a skinny girl hiding in it. She pulled the stinky fabric up to her eyes, glaring at the man tormenting a little boy while Noma pleaded and begged him to stop.
Maybe these people are right. Those aren’t havens… Dad made the Haven with love, to keep me safe. Marauders are mean. She narrowed her eyes. That’s the difference between a cage and a haven: love.
Kit dodged the club for another minute or so before he burst into tears. At that, the marauder stopped and laughed, taunting him for being a little girl. Noma glared at him. The marauder thrust his arm into her cage, grabbed a fistful of her tattered shirt, and pulled her face against the bars. He forced his lips to touch hers, held her there for a short while, and let go.
“Later, I gonna have somethin’ for you ta do.” The marauder laughed again, bonked Kit’s cage with the club one last time―making the boy flinch―and walked out.
Too angry to remember to duck, Wisp watched him go by. When the door slammed, she threw the blanket off and looked at Dad. She couldn’t leave him here with these monsters. He had to be with Mother again. That one marauder had taunted Dad, so at least some of his bruises had to come from that monster’s club. She blinked away the bleariness of the stink, crawled over to the corner, and puked up a few mouthfuls of bile. Once she regained her composure, she grabbed her rifle and walked to the cell door.
Daz made a soft whistle. “Wow, kid. I thought you were in trouble there. Guess it’s darker in here than I thought.”
Her sadness had gone so deep it had become something else. Not truly anger, but not exactly resolve. The future would hold a great many tears, but not until she had the safety to set them free. She gazed down at her hands and arms, smeared with Dad’s blood, and flicked a tiny beetle off her stomach.
“I will bring you home, Dad.”
Kit curled in a ball sniveling while Noma tried to comfort him from a distance.
Juliana and Tavin whispered at her, asking for help.
Wisp squeezed past the bars, ignoring them all while pulling her backpack on. She padded up to Daz’s cage and peered down at him, rifle held sideways, her finger braced on the frame above the trigger. “You were wrong. The monster didn’t catch me.” She turned on her heel and walked over to the hanging cage containing the man who’d offered to carry Dad. “You said you would help me bring Dad home if I let you out.”
The man extended his arm out, hand open. “Yes. Name’s Falo.”
She stared at his hand, thinking of that greeting Zen taught her, but didn’t quite trust he wouldn’t try to grab her rifle. “I’m Wisp.”
“Don’t know a handshake?” asked Falo.
“I don’t trust being grabbed by a person in a hav―cage who doesn’t want to be in one.” She shivered at a fleeting memory of waking up trapped in her Haven. Without Dad to let her out, it had kind of felt more like a cage than a sanctuary. She refused to think what might’ve happened to her if she didn’t know where he kept the opener.
“Fair enough.” Falo lowered his arm. “I won’t hold that against ya. You are kinda small, so being afraid of grownups is understandable.”
“How old are you?” asked Wisp.
“Thirty-one or two.” He shrugged. “Don’t really know. So, you’ll do it?”
She glanced at the room’s only door. “If you promise you will help me carry Dad. But if I let you out of there, I can’t really protect you from the Tree Walkers.”
“No problem. I can handle a bunch of walking trees.” He smiled.
“Probably some nonsense that guy made up so she went to bed on time,” muttered Daz.
“No. They’re real. I’ve seen them. Like, all the plants and vines and roots in the forest stand up and come running after you.” Wisp shifted to glare at him. “And if you say bad about Dad one more time, I will leave you here.”
The man shot her a sou
r look, but stayed quiet.
She faced Falo again. “Say you promise.”
He appeared ready to roll his eyes, but kept on smiling. “I promise I will help carry your Dad if you let me out of here.”
Wisp looked at Kit. “I’m going to let him out, too. He should be with his mother. My mother went to the Other Place when I was only two.”
“Please…” Noma grabbed the bars of her enclosure, pressing her head to them. “Let us go home.”
Kit shifted in his hanging cage, hiding his face, still sniffling from the marauder harassing him.
“All right.” She looked from Kit to Falo. “Mother is watching you. If you break your promise, you’ll be bad.”
He put a hand over his heart. “I would never dream of ‘being bad.’”
“Where’s the opener?” asked Wisp.
“The what?” Falo tilted his head.
She poked her finger in the keyhole. “The opener. To make the haven open.”
“You mean the key?” Falo shrugged. “I don’t really know. Probably with that big moron who likes to make little boys cry.”
Wisp raised both eyebrows. “You don’t know? How couldn’t you know where the opener to your haven is?”
Falo held up a finger. “First, it’s a cage, not a haven. We are captives, not… being protected. Second, we’re captives. They don’t want to let us leave. The entire point of these things is so we can’t get away.”
“I knew where Dad kept the opener for my Haven. He put it up on a high shelf under a can so the Tree Walkers couldn’t find it.”
“Sounds like he didn’t want you to escape,” said Kit.
Wisp spun to glare at the little snot. “That’s not true! He wanted to protect me. I had to go in the Haven when it got dark because of the Tree Walkers. And in the day, I always had to stay near Dad so he could keep me safe. He got upset if I wandered too far away.”
Noma gave her a pitying stare.
“Kid,” said Daz, “The only time people put other people in cages is when they don’t want them to escape. Lockin’ you up in a cage wouldn’t protect you from any Tree Walker things… it would make it easier for them to get you since you can’t run away. They’ll just reach in the bars and get you.”
Wisp shook her head hard. “No. Dad made the Haven from love. They can’t break that.”
Tavin whistled. “Wow.”
Noma’s pitying stare grew more intense.
Daz’s gruff expression fell flat, almost sad. “Whoa.”
“Just get the key and we can get outta here,” said Falo.
“Where is it?” asked Wisp.
“The fat pig marauder has it,” hissed Julianna. She thrust her arm out, pointing at the door. “Out there.”
Wisp’s reply stalled in her mouth at the sight of bleeding rope marks on the woman’s wrist. “All right. I’ll get the opener. Maybe these are cages, not havens. The marauders don’t want to protect anyone.” She looked at Kit, who’d finally stopped sniffling. The boy seriously needed a meal soon; she could make out every rib on his sides. “I’ll let you out.”
“Great,” said Falo.
“Remember, you promised. Mother is watching you. If you break your promise, you’ll be bad.”
She approached the door on the far wall.
“Oh… better not be ‘bad,’” muttered Daz, with a hint of a chuckle.
“Stop it,” hissed Juliana. “The girl’s lost her father. Have a little respect.”
Tavin groaned. “And hey, if that girl can help us, why make her angry?”
“You should just get lost, kid,” said Olim. “You’re only gonna wind up caged like us. Run, get away while you can.”
“Shut up,” snapped Julianna. “She’s gonna help us.”
“I have to bring Dad to the Mother Shrine. I can’t leave him here.”
“Don’t be stupid, kid. Get out of here before you wind up dead.” Olim cringed. “You are pretty, and young. Do you have any idea what these marauders would do to you? Run away!”
She flicked the safety off the rifle, and faced the door. “No.”
Black Magic
-27-
Wisp grabbed the knob and pushed the thick wooden door out of her way. It swung out on creaky hinges, coming to a stop against a cinder block wall on the left. The captives all fell silent.
Twenty feet of corridor lined with empty, dented metal shelves led to an open doorway peering into another room aglow with firelight. She crept forward, bare feet silent on the concrete, and stopped at the end where it connected to a large, square room.
Orange glow and shadows danced across the walls from a fireplace in the wall to the right. The big marauder who’d menaced Kit reclined on a dingy sofa, feet up on a coffee table while slurping brown goo out of a bowl with a spoon. He faced the fire, which put his right shoulder toward her, but she stood far enough behind him that he hadn’t yet noticed her. A scent similar to boar meat, laden with a heavy vegetable essence filled the air.
She padded into the room, swinging left to stay out of his field of view. Coarse fibers from an ancient carpet crumbled under her feet, dry and brittle. Behind the sofa, a single door on the left wall stood between two tall cabinets with the words ‘Utility Room’ on it in white. The left one had no doors, revealing shelves holding coils of rope and bundles of chain. Straight ahead, another passageway opposite the corridor to the haven room offered a view of stairs leading up to the first floor.
The marauder’s spoon scraped the bowl in a random series of clinks between satisfied mumbles. She walked up behind him close enough to spot a jumble of openers hanging on his belt. His metal-capped club lay beside him on the sofa. The keys did not appear in any way vulnerable to theft.
I won’t be able to steal those unless he’s asleep. Or gone to the Other Place.
Wisp pulled the rifle up and set the butt tight to her shoulder, aimed at him, and moved her finger onto the trigger. “Let the people out of their havens.”
The marauder coughed on his soup. He choked for a second, wiped his mouth on his arm, and twisted around to look at her. “Oh, you’re cute… where’d you come from, girlie?”
She lined up the iron sights with his face. “Let the people out of their havens. Or give me the openers. They’re grownups… well except one. Grownups don’t belong in havens because Tree Walkers don’t take grownups.”
“Hah. Aren’t you a strange little sprite?” He set the bowl on the coffee table. “Too damn skinny to work. Ain’t got no shape to ya, but that gold hair of yours. You gonna be real pretty when you get a little older. Don’t worry, honey. I’ll keep ya nice and safe until ya ripen up.”
“I’m not going to ask you again. I’m trying to be polite. Open the havens.”
He swiped the club from the cushion and wagged it at her. “Now, I’ve been accused o’ bein’ dumb before, and maybe my ears ain’t the best, but I almost thought I just heard a little girl give me”―he poked himself in the chest with the club―“somethin’ that sounded a whole lot like an order.”
“I didn’t give you anything.” She shifted her jaw. “Open the havens or I’m gonna send you to the Other Place.”
Whispers came from the prisoners, mostly comments about how she’d been careless, gotten caught, and their chances at freedom had died. Tavin couldn’t believe she spoke to the marauder like that.
He snarled. “You askin’ me to give you a hard lesson, girlie.”
“No.” Wisp started to squeeze the trigger, but hesitated. With the stairs so close, more marauders would probably hear. She edged to her right. “I don’t take lessons from monsters. Open the havens, now.”
The man’s eyes flared. He growled and loped around the couch, reaching for her with his open hand. She ducked, scurrying into the corridor to the haven room, then whirled to keep the rifle trained on him.
“Oh, you’s not too smart, huh?” The marauder laughed. “That’s a dead end. Ain’t no way out. Or maybe you learn yer lesson. G’won back ther
e. That’s yer new home.” He grinned, stalking after her. “You ain’t got no meat a’tall on ya, can’t rightly”―he slapped the club into his open hand―“teach ya the lesson ya need, but maybe if you’re real sweet like, I’ll change my mind ’bout your attitude needin’ ’justment.”
“You will open the havens or you will give me the keys.” She backed up, inch by inch, into the room.
The captives all stared at her from their havens, except Dad. He continued gazing into nowhere.
“Kid, what the heck are you doing?” whispered Daz. “You keep antagonizin’ him, he’s gonna break your neck.”
The marauder slammed the door behind him and walked closer, pointing his club at her. “Pick one and I’ll open it for ya. Pick good; yer gonna be there a while.”
“No. You will open them all.” She continued retreating, leading him as deep into the room as possible. The farther she got from the stairs, the less likely anyone would hear the shot. Even better, he’d closed the door. With inches left between her back and cinder blocks, she widened her stance, sliding her right foot back to brace herself.
“You ain’t bein’ sweet. You mine now, and you gonna do what you is told.” He stormed toward her, raising his club. “Now I gotta teach ya some respect. You gonna learn, girlie.”
Bang!
The rifle kicked her back, but she held her ground. A small hole appeared in the marauder’s chest; a wide spray of blood painted the floor behind him. His charge lurched to a halt, the club flying from his hand to smack the wall beside her with a metallic clatter. He wheezed, teetered on his feet for a second, and careened over, hitting the floor with a meaty slap.
Gasps came from all the captives, even Daz.
“What was that noise?” whispered Olim. “I can’t hear anything.”
“Black magic,” said Juliana. “She killed him with a stare.”
A woman in a ground haven who had not yet spoken snickered. Straight light brown hair hung down over a black cloth shirt. More loose, black fabric covered her legs all the way to her boots. She peered at Wisp past the bars, shaking her head with an eye roll as if calling the other captives idiots.
The Forest Beyond the Earth Page 24