The sleeveless knee length dress was coarse and tattered, and had the stench of piss and body odor about it. I’m sure I wasn’t the first to wear it, and I doubt that it had ever been washed.
“Please, answer me just one question,” I whispered, pulling the filthy loose fitting garment down around me, covering my nakedness.
For a moment his harsh exterior seemed to melt away. “Ask,” he replied in a quiet tone.
The words came hesitatingly. I wasn’t at all sure I was prepared for his answer, yet I could not remain ignorant. I would know the terrible truth one way or another. “Where am I?”
The smile that came to his face was disquieting. “Nowhere you’d want to be,” he replied, turning to one of the other wulvers. “Take the wench to da tunnels. She might as well discover what’s in store fer her.”
Chapter 2
No time was wasted in getting me ready for my new life. I was led back out into the stone corridor and into another cavern room, one full of steam and smoke. As best I could tell, it was some sort of iron works, a blacksmith’s shop. There I was fitted with my ankle shackles. They sat me down, placing my right ankle into an open metal ring setting upon the smith’s anvil. From the ring a heavy chain ran to another ring. A muscular wulver beat the ring into shape with a crude heavy hammer. His blows upon the metal rang loudly in my ears and made the skin on my leg ripple with every swing. I was certain that he’d screw up at least once and hit me and not the metal, but he didn’t. Within a minute he had closed that shackle tightly about my ankle. Then he did the same to my left ankle, closing it within the metal ring on the other end of the chain. What strange restraints, no locks. Then again, locks were only needed if the shackle was to be taken on and off of the prisoner. These weren’t, these leg irons were to become a permanent part of me. The chain joining the two bands was long enough to allow me to walk but not to run. Then again, I figured that was the general idea.
I was escorted by another wulver through a maze of what appeared to be natural caverns. The caverns were lit by the same sort of crystals I’d seen when I first arrived. Here most of them were mounted upon black poles made of the same sort of metal everything else here was made of. I’d never seen anything like these crystals. They were about the size of a football and they glowed from deep within. I have no idea how they work, even now.
It was about ten minutes before we arrived at a place where about a hundred young people like myself labored at the crack of the taskmaster’s whip. They all wore chains like mine and worked with picks, sledgehammers, and shovels to cut from the stone walls a dozen new side tunnels and rooms. The broken up rocks were then loaded into some kind of hopper and wheeled away.
“I’m sure yer familiar with simple tools, wench,” said my wulver escort. “You’ll be making new tunnels and new rooms with them. You’re going to get real good with them tools or you’re going to die quickly. The choice is yours. Consider this as what yer people call on the job training. You’re task wulver over there will tell ya what to do, but more often it will be his whip that does da talking.”
My escort told the task master that he had a new piece of working meat for him. Yes, those were the very words he used to describe me; working meat. What could we have done that made him hate my kind so much?
Then I joined the ranks of a group of young people carving out a new chamber from the rocks. Like myself, none of them could speak above a whisper.
“Welcome to Hell,” whispered a thin blond haired boy at my side, gazing toward me with deep blue eyes. He appeared to be about my age, dressed in a tattered gray tunic. His hands were dark and calloused and several scars marred his once handsome face where flying rocks and the whip of the wulvers had struck him. It wasn’t difficult to start up a conversation with this boy, a boy by the name of David Tomlinson.
“I knew you were coming,” he whispered, between the swings of his pick. “You’re Andrea’s replacement.” For a moment his mind seemed far away, his eyes unfocused. “She was such a nice girl, but she wasn’t strong enough for this place. The wulvers, damn them, took their whips to her every time she stopped to catch her breath. Yesterday she just collapsed. They beat her again and again, and when she didn’t move, they just hauled her away like she was garbage. God, I hope she didn’t suffer too long.”
I thought back to the girl in the cell I’d seen right after I’d gotten here. Was that Andrea? “I’m sorry about your friend,” I replied.
I followed the lead of the others, shoveling a heavy load of rocks into the waiting hopper. Even with the damp heat of this place, a chill ran up my back. What sort of place was this? What could I or any of these other young people possibly have done to be sentenced here? Was it just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was there something more sinister about our selection? I thought back to what Kiera had said to me while I was in that glowing ball. She had done this to me. Yeah, but how? How had she gotten that kind of power, a magical crystal ball? And who had taught her how to use it? So many questions, no answers.
“The drells have taken everything from us, even our voices,” David whispered. “They have very sensitive hearing, you know, they can’t stand loud noises. They couldn’t have our screams of pain hurting their precious ears. They work us to death in this hell, and when we’re no more use to them, well, we end up on their dinner table.”
My next question was the most difficult one, the one that had been on my mind for hours. “David, do you think we’re in Hell?”
David looked deep into my eyes, I know he sensed my fear. His hand reached out to mine. “I don’t think so. This is a terrible place, but it’s not Hell. If you’re in Hell you can’t die again, can you? People die here every day and they don’t come back.”
I looked around at the suffering souls about me. There were people of all races here, a melting pot of pain. “But who are all of these people, where did they come from?”
“There are people here from all over the world,” replied David, scanning the group, the familiar sorrowful faces. “I’m from California, but Camron over there is from Scotland, Jennifer is from Brazil, and Jade is from Singapore. They never send older people here, and we don’t live long enough to grow old.”
I looked about to see if the task wulver was listening. “Has anyone ever tried to escape? I mean, there’s gotta be some way out of here.”
I saw the look of hopelessness even before David spoke. If there had been a spark of hope in his heart this place had killed it. “Impossible, these wulvers are careful, I mean real careful. They keep us under constant guard all the time. Look at those anklets you’re wearing. Do you think you’re going to get very far in those? And how the hell could you ever get them off? Even if you could escape, where would you go? You’d be stumbling through dark tunnels, no food, no water, shackled, crossing paths with God only knows what. Many times I’ve heard things howling out there in the dark beyond the light of the crystals. Ciudaches, the wulvers call them. I don’t know if the wulvers made the name up but they’re real alright, I’m sure of it. When they get to howling like they do sometimes even the wolvers tremble. These ciudachs are afraid of the light. That’s what the wulvers tell us anyway. Wander away from the light and you’re ciudach food. But even if a ciudach didn’t get you how could you escape? You’d be wandering around in total darkness, you might step out into some bottomless pit or maybe just get lost and starve to death. Believe me, as bad as it is, we’re better off right here than wandering around out there.”
The crack of a whip across both our backs ended the conversation. I was unprepared for the sharp stinging pain it brought to my soft flesh.
“Ta work, ya lazy things!” yelled the task wulver. His eyes seemed red in the light of a nearby crystal with an unusually crimson glow. His sharp white teeth gleamed from beneath his black lips. “We have a quota ta meet. There’ll be na supper for any of ya if ya don’t meet it.”
I felt the rough handle of the shovel in my hand. I squeezed it tightl
y. For an instant the pain inspired the anger that might have driven me to swing the black spade at this monster’s hideous head. Yet I quickly rethought the urge that would surely have led to my death. I had to chill, despite the heat, despite my pain. I moved to scoop up the scattered rocks on the floor before me, dumped them into the hopper.
I think the wulver had anticipated my possibly emotional reaction, because he had stepped back a few paces. He eyed me carefully for a few minutes. I think I had somehow amused him, while disappointing him at the same time. I tried not to return his stare, tried to work all the harder. In time, he walked away. I was very thankful for that.
The hours passed slowly as we continued to hack away at the hard rock wall in front of us. I had never imagined being a part of something like this. Oh I’d seen films in social studies class about the slave labor camps of Stalin and Hitler but I’d never imagined actually being a part of such a thing. I was hurting all over but I didn’t dare to stop.
The hours dragged on. Our task wulver cursed at us, applying his whip to our backs for the littlest things. The fear of his lash drove us to our limits.
It was hours before we were finally given a few minutes to sit down and gather our strength. Several wulvers brought around ladles of water, allotting each of us a few precious sips of the cloudy liquid, along with a slice of mushroom bread. It did little to satisfy my hunger.
Yes, I played sports and I played hard but it hadn’t prepared me for this. This was way beyond even the roughest volleyball games I’d ever played and it just went on and on. The hours of back breaking work that followed that all too short break were agony. My soft hands were blistered and my legs and back ached when the wulvers finally called an end to our labors.
They gathered us together in the main tunnel. A long chain was run through a metal ring attached to our right ankle shackles, joining the hundred or so of us together into a long human chain. We were driven like cattle through the gray caverns, our ankle shackles clanking and rattling all the way back to the slave’s quarters where we were, one by one, unshackled from the others and tossed into our cells.
Most of the laborers had a cellmate, always the same gender as themselves, but not me. I had a cell completely to myself. I wondered if that were a blessing or a curse.
My cell was almost bare, containing only a small metal pail for human waste, and two stone shelves cut from the rock for beds. Upon one was a roughly woven brown blanket and a flat stone for a pillow. I gazed through the bars and into the now silent corridor. Across the hallway, a young dark haired girl of about ten or eleven stood at the bars of her cell. She stared into the corridor with sad dark eyes that seemed to cry out for help.
“Hello little girl,” I whispered.
She turned to look in my direction, but her blank stare seemed to look right through me. Her long hair was gnarled and filthy, sprinkled with dust and small bits of sand. Her skin was very pale and her left cheek bore a long partially healed scar where I imagine she had been struck by a sharp rock or the whip of a wulver. It was terrible what they had done to her, dressing her in filthy rags, locking her away in this place. My heart nearly broke at the sight of this innocent and frightened girl, whose childhood had been taken from her.
I did my best to smile at her. “My name is Debbie, what’s yours?”
After a moment, her eyes seemed to focus on me, and her mouth moved just a little bit, but there was no sound.
“Her name is Gwen,” whispered her cell mate, walking up to the bars and placing her arm around the pitiful child.
Gwen leaned her head gently against the tall young woman’s breast. “How could those monsters have done such a thing to an innocent little girl? They expect nearly as much work from her as they do from us, and she’s just a child. My name is Marci, Marci Daniels. Welcome to Hell.”
Marci was unlike the other slaves I’d spoken to. Her dark eyes held an intensity about them, and she had a special inner strength that you could actually feel. She caressed Gwen’s neck, attempted to comfort her.
Marci was very slender, yet muscular, and her scarred face still displayed a trace of the beauty and vitality it must have once possessed in abundance. Her chocolate brown skin bore many scars from the task masters whip. Her voice was much stronger than the others and she appeared to be older. There were even traces of gray in her dark hair.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Three years and nine months,” she proclaimed. “Longer than anyone else, and at the age of twenty-three, I’m an old woman.”
“I’m surprised that you’ve been able to keep track of the time,” I replied. “The others I’ve spoken to have lost track of the passing days.”
“The men might have, but we women have a built in clock, don’t we?”
I felt almost embarrassed not to have figured that one out.
“I can thank the Marine Corps for my survival. The Corps taught me discipline, and strengthened my body for this ordeal. My heart beats for the day when I will avenge the deaths of so many of my friends. On that day I’ll wash my hands in the blood of our enemies. I’ll find out if their blood is red like ours.”
Marci’s angry words and the fire in her eyes sent a chill up my spine. I almost felt as though she might one day make good on her vow against our taskmasters. “How did you get here?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
The long silence and the angry expression that swept across Marci’s face, told me that I had just made matters worse. “People around here don’t like to discuss the greatest tragedy of their lives,” she said, looking away, turning to her small cell mate. She placed her right arm around the child drawing her close. Her left hand squeezed tightly upon the bars of her cell door.
My words were faltering as I strained to get every bit of volume out of my crippled vocal cords. I tried to undo the damage I’d caused. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
Marci turned to me once more, her moment of weakness was gone. “It’s alright, it’s just that there’s not much to tell. I was on leave in Hamburg, Germany, just taking in the sights. I wandered into this curio shop full of all kinds of really weird antiques. I figured that I might find some neat trinket that I could send back to my folks in the states. There was this crystal ball setting on a table that caught my eye.”
“A crystal ball?” I whispered, as loudly as I could.
“Yeah, you know, the thing that Gypsy fortune tellers use to foretell the future. Well, anyway, I could have sworn that I saw a faint green glow coming from it, so I wandered over to take a closer look. I remember reaching for it and then everything around me going black. The next thing I knew I was trapped inside of it on my way here. Damn my curiosity!” Marci turned from the bars, and sat on her stone bed, followed by Gwen, who sat at her side. Gwen said something to Marci, but I couldn’t make it out.
I walked away from the bars and laid down on my stone slab. I’d said all of the wrong things. I figured that I’d done enough damage for one day.
It wasn’t long before the wulvers brought our suppers to us. A cup of cloudy water which smelled of sulfur, and a bowl of mushroom stew was our reward for a day’s work. It was all that stood between us and starvation. As I lay back on the stone bed, I longed for someone to talk to. I just didn’t want to be alone, not tonight.
I thought of my parents of my younger brother. How I wanted to be with them. Were they frantically searching for me, or wasn’t it like that at all? Maybe they were in mourning, in the midst of planning my funeral. I couldn’t be sure. What had happened to me? First I prayed and then I cried. I couldn’t help myself. It must have been about an hour before exhaustion finally overcame me and I finally fell asleep.
The next day I awoke to a loud clanging. The wulvers were walking up and down the corridor with black metal poles, hammering on the bars of the cells.
“Wake up ya damn lazy humans!” cried one of the wulvers. “It’s time fer work!”
In the depths of my heart I
had prayed that this place had been nothing more than a terrible dream, something that would slowly fade from my memory. I’d hoped that I might wake up at home, on my white canopy bed with my pink rabbit and my satin pillows, but I was still here.
“Oh God,” I whispered to myself, “not so soon.”
I rose to my feet. My arms and legs still ached from yesterday’s ordeal. I could still feel the sting of the taskmaster’s whip. Today it would begin anew, as it would every day from now on.
In chains we were taken back into the caverns to continue our labor. I guess we’d been working a couple hours when Lukor showed up.
“The head wulver has arrived to savor our suffering,” whispered David, bitterly.
“No talking!” yelled the task wulver, laying the lash across David’s back. I cringed to see his pain, shoveled load after load of rocks into the hopper, hoping to avoid the whip of the task wulver. Yet as I worked, I noticed that Lukor was watching me with some interest. Why didn’t he just go away and leave me be? A long time passed before he finally spoke.
“How is our newest slave girl doing today? I hope that da work agrees with ya.”
“I’m doing fine, thank you,” I whispered politely, wiping beads of sweat from my forehead. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of shoveling rocks. I hope you are well today, sir.”
For a moment, Lukor looked at me in disbelief. I wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do. He might have considered my comment to be rude, even impertinent. But he said nothing more. He turned and walked away. I returned to my work.
“Debbie, what was that all about?” asked David. “Were you trying to be cute, maybe trying to earn some points with that monster? It’s not going to work. I don’t think that thing even has a soul. Don’t you realize just how much we’ve suffered at his hands?”
The Realm of the Drells Page 3