by J. Naomi Ay
Sehron shook his head. “Save your son, Pedah,” he said under his breath. He turned his eyes on the friends who surrounded him. “It is as it should be. Makiri-ka te la’at, you are blessed.”
A woman’s scream carried up the hill to where we stood and was joined by another and then another voice. The Mishaks were raiding our village, breaking down our doors and invading our houses. Smoke wafted from the valley as the Mishaks set our homes on fire. Our women and children were dragged out into the streets, and then it was Rekah’s voice that pierced the chaos, that rang in my ears louder than any other.
“Senya!” he screamed. “Senya save me!”
A Mishak had my son. I was nearly on my horse, but my brother had beaten me to it and tore down the hillside. It was so dark, and Rekah was only four years and was frightened. Pedah's horse was dark chestnut, and in the night he looked black.
“Senya!” Rekah cried, and lasers burst from Mishaks across the village and then Pedah was on the ground, trampled by his own horse's legs.
Now we were all mounted upon own horses with light swords ablaze. We were mad to be riding into this trap, but we had no choice. The Mishak who held Rekah released him and Rekah ran to my father. There were laser bursts from all around us as we raced down the hill and parried and deflected them, striking and slashing until all I could see and smell was blood and fire. My good horse crumpled upon his feet and died beneath me and still I continued to fight from my own feet. Then suddenly, there was silence and a Mishak voice cried out that he was taken, and they began to clear from our village. I was left standing alone among dead horses and dead brothers. I turned myself around in a circle and gazed at what had become of my home. There was my wife weeping over my brother whose eyes were open but did not see, whose mouth was open but did not breathe. There were Mishaks standing before my father who held my son in his arm, covering his eyes so the child would not look. There was Sehron on the ground at their feet, bathed in a pool of his own blood.
“Prince Akan sends his greetings King, and thanks you for taking such good care of his nephew,” a Mishak spoke. “He wants you to know that now it is his turn to foster his nephew and he will not, unfortunately, be attending University.” He indicated to the others to take Sehron away, and they lifted him and carried him through the village toward their trucks. My father looked in my eyes and did not speak, but I knew. The time had come. I raced after the Mishaks although they raised their guns to me.
“I will go with him,” I cried.
“Stay in your village, Karut,” the leader said. “Hunt your rabbits and grow your corn and fuck your wife.”
“I will go with him,” I repeated.
The Mishak laughed at me. “He ain't going anywhere nice, Karut.”
I threw myself to the ground and make obeisance at his feet. “I beg you let me go with him.”
The Mishak kicked me with boots and steel toes.
“Let him,” another said. “What do we care? There will be room enough for two when we get to there.”
“Alright,” the first one replied and someone grabbed me from behind and slapped cuffs upon my wrists. They checked my torn and blood stained clothing for guns or knives and then I was tossed in the truck. Sehron was tossed in after me and crumpled into a ball where he landed. The doors were shut and we left Karupatani. I don't know how long we travelled or how far. I believe at some point our truck was loaded into a freighter, and we left the planet. Sehron did not awaken the entire time. It was dark. I looked him over as best as I could, feeling his skin for wounds, finding clots and burns on his chest and back. He was hot and clammy, and his breathing was shallow and labored. I lifted up an eyelid and was not surprised to find his eyes a pale grey-blue color absent any silver light. He would live. I knew this with certainty, and I knew also that my brother was dead.
We arrived in the night of this place, and I was ushered by our captors into a processing center. It was a huge and ancient prison, and the guards were not people of Rehnor at all but men whose skin was tinted blue. They spoke a language that sounded like gurgling to me. I was stripped and searched again. I was washed, and my hair was shaved away. I was given worn grey trousers and shirt to wear. Then I was put in an ancient cell with bars for a door and stone walls. There was no window. It smelled of urine and other bodily fluids and vermin scampered across the floor. There were two cots with thin mattresses each with a small blanket and a hole in the ground to use as a toilet. There was a pipe from the wall which dribbled water when the stopper was pulled. There were men in the cells around and across from me and they called and whistled at me in languages I did not understand. Twice daily I was given a dish of grey mash to eat and a cup that I could fill with the rusty water that dribbled from the pipe. In the day, I was taken to the laundry where I washed by hand filthy towels and linens. My hands were raw from the boiling water, and I felt I was half the size I was before from lack of food, but I did not care. I tried to ask where Sehron had gone, but no one answered. No one understood me. No one spoke Mishnese here. Akan had safely hidden us away.
After nearly two months’ time, Sehron was brought to my cell and laid on a cot. His eyes were grey and stared blindly at the ceiling. His hair was shaved and like mine had grown only a few inches since then. He was painfully thin, his bones jutting from his shoulders and chest as mine must have been. The men in the cells across from us made noise and banged their cups against the bars.
“Sehron?” I whispered. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head ever so slightly.
“You are hurt? Your wounds have not healed?”
He shook his head again and turned away from me. He thought I could not see the tears that fell from his useless grey eyes. He did not eat the gruel we were given although I tried to feed it to him as if he were an infant. In the morning, I was released to the laundry but he remained unmoving on the cot. In the afternoon, I returned to find him still there. I lifted up his blanket to see his wounds, to see how he had healed. He made a noise such like an animal and cowered from me, his own brother-uncle. Now I knew what had been done to him. I was in a fury. I was enraged. My burnt hands and weakened body were nothing to what cruelty had been inflicted upon my brother-nephew. I vowed to kill whoever had done this. I flung the gruel against the wall and it made a mess as the tin plate clattered to the floor. I paced the small cell and contemplated what I had to do. I was not sent here just to witness. I was sent here to help, to protect him. I was only a man, I reasoned, one man with no special powers. In my mind, I saw Sehron as he was only a few short months ago. He was astride his crazy black horse and his hair was long and wild as he galloped across the meadow with his light sword ablaze. He could move mountains then simply by willing it. He could change into the great black eagle and rip out a bear's heart. He could do it again if he grew strong. I could not rescue him, but I could make him strong again so he could rescue us.
“Eat,” I commanded and taking the one remaining dish of gruel, I forced a spoon into his mouth. He turned his head from me. I held his head flat against the mattress and shoved the spoon between his teeth. “From now on,” I declared. “You will eat both plates in the morning. I will only eat mine at night.”
He tried to shake his head but couldn’t because I held him tight and forced another spoonful in his mouth.
“You will get strong again,” I said. “And you will kill the men that have done this to you. And then, we will get out of here and we will go to Mishnah, and we will kill Akan.”
Tears dribbled from his eyes, but he swallowed and swallowed the next and the next until the dish was done. I gave him a cup of water from the pipe and held his head while he drank.
“I'm sorry, Tuman,” he wept. “I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault,” I whispered and held him as if he were Rekah. I remembered a time several years ago when I was angry at him for an unknown crime and he begged me for forgiveness. Was that time now? Why was I angry when it was never his fault?
&n
bsp; “You're here because of me.”
“No,” I said.
“Pedah is dead because of me. All of them are dead because of me.”
“Pedah, all of them, are dead because of Akan and his Mishaks.”
“I should have just given up. Pedah would be alive.”
“No,” I snapped. “You will never give up. I won't let you.” And I shook him. “Stop crying! That's enough. You know what you need to do, so now do it.”
“Let me be,” he whimpered and pulled the blanket over his head, curling up on the cot like a baby.
In the morning, I refused my gruel and left the plate beside his bed. I went to the laundry and listened to the odd gargling voices of the other prisoners and I didn't give a whit what they were thinking or saying.
When I returned in the afternoon, Sehron had eaten both plates. He was sitting in a corner of the cell chewing on something with a long hairless tail.
“I guess that's good.” I swallowed hard and tried not to retch. “Protein, yes?”
He shrugged. For a moment, I saw a shadow of who he was and would become again.
The next day he was well enough to come with me to the laundry. He stood beside me and washed the linens and soon his hands were as red and swollen as mine. In the evening, the blue guards came and dragged him from his cot. He returned in the morning and refused to leave his bed again for several days.
I made him eat the gruel and drink the vile water, and when he was well enough, he caught the rats in the cell and ate them, as well. Days and nights passed, and I could not say how many but it seemed like an eternity. Then, one morning, I looked at him and he turned to me and gazed upon me with the silver light.
The prison closed. We were there nearly six months. Three guards were killed during the night by a great beast. The rest of the guards quit and refused to re-enter the compound. We were transferred to the child moon of Rehnor and assigned to work in the quarries. The Lord Governor there was a Mishak and known to be a friend of Akan. His wife was distantly related to the Kalila family. I did not know if the Lord Governor knew the identity of his new Karupta prisoners. I was known only as Tuman, and my brother was Senya. I suspected the Lord Governor did know, but Akan had paid him well to keep silent.
It was better in the quarries than the laundry although it was always dark and I craved the sun. Senya was indifferent to it. We mined the ores and loaded the rocks into carts, and it was back breaking work, but we ate well so we could stay strong and work hard. Both of us had filled out again. Our muscles had grown big and rock solid, and our hair was long and tied in plaits. We worked from six to six and then we returned to our cells to eat and rest. It was the same every day. We were given a pittance of wages so that we might buy cigarettes or candy or if we are truly lucky, Horkin from a guard. Senya bought the Horkin and shot up as often as he could. It was the only way he could get through the day. I gave him my money to buy as much as he needed. I prayed that he and I would think of a way to get out of this place. He was strong, but we were trapped in an air bubble on a dead moon. His eyes were bright, but there was a madness to them, and he rarely spoke. When he did it was only in the Street Mishnese of his youth. He never spoke of the future or alternate dimensions or metaphysical travel. That boy died with my brother.
The whores came every month, and we could use our coins to buy them. I did because I missed the touch of woman even if I might have her only for a few minutes. Senya was so beautiful they would give themselves to him without a coin, but he had no interest. He recoiled in the corner of our cell and cringed if any one should touch him.
“Your brother is crazy,” one girl said to me. She gazed at him the entire time although it was I who filled her. “But he is beautiful. He looks like the dead MaKennah.”
“The MaKennah is dead?” I asked. “How do you know this?”
“Oh,” she said still gazing upon him but not seeing him. “He was killed many years ago by the Karuts because he wanted to come back to Mishnah and they wouldn't let him. I guess you didn't know this because you were here.”
“Who said this?” I demanded.
“Oh,” she thought for a moment. “Prince Akan. That was why he attacked the Karuts. He punished them good.”
I cried and then I prayed that my father if he still lived would discover where we were and call Captain Loman to rescue us. I prayed that my wife and children remembered me. I prayed that I would change my mind and would want to return home once I was released. I was twenty-nine years old when we came to the Child Moon. I was thirty-nine, when we left.
17
Katie
Once when I was about nine years old as I was climbing a tree in the park behind my elementary school because some bratty boy had dared me to do it, I fell down and broke my leg. I was wearing my fuzzy Ugg boots which was not only the height of fashion in those days but very warm. Unfortunately, they had no grip on their soles and as soon as I got up to my destination branch and let go with my hands, I went crashing to the ground. School had let out for the day, so no teachers were around, but my girlfriend had a cell with which she called her mom while the boy who had dared me to climb to that dangerous height ran off certain he would catch it for having killed me. My girlfriend's mom rushed me to the emergency room and waited until my own mom arrived. Then, due to the severity of the break, I had surgery. I spent one woozy night in the hospital and was released the next day cast in a very heavy and awkward apparatus with orders not to move from my bed for a minimum of two weeks except to get up and use the bathroom.
I lay in my bed the next night, stiff and drugged with painkillers but hurting enough I was unable to sleep. Just before midnight, my dad popped in to check on me, refilled my water glass, and dosed me with another round of child size Vicodan.
“Leave your vid on if you can't sleep, Sweetheart,” he said shutting the door behind him and so I did, staring dully at the bright cartoonish pictures that played as reruns throughout the night until a light appeared in the middle of my bedroom as if a door was opening. Calmly I watched as a boy stepped through and the light disappeared. The boy remained there though, standing dumbly in the middle of my room and equally as dumbly, I stared at him.
“Allen is the next room,” I said for my initial impression was that he must have been a friend of Allen's. He looked about the same age which was at that time twelve years old.
“Are you having a sleep over?” I asked, guessing that he had gotten up to use the bathroom and gotten lost on his way back. I didn't recognize him. He had longish, wavy black hair and was dressed only in a pair of pajama bottoms. His eyes were shut tight. Perhaps he was sleep walking?
“Allen, Allen!” I called into the night. “Your friend is here!”
The boy sat down against the wall by my closet wrapping his arms around his knees as my father came rushing into the bedroom.
“What's the matter, Katie?” he demanded groggily. “It's three in the morning.”
“Allen's friend came in my bedroom by mistake,” I said pointing at the boy.
My father turned and looked at the wall and then rubbed his eyes.
“Allen's friend?”
“Yes,” I cried. “The one who is sleeping over.” Emphatically, I wagged my finger.
“There's no one sleeping over,” my dad sighed. “There's no one in here but you and me.”
“But there is!” I insisted. “He's right there.”
“You're imagining things, Katie Anne,” my mother snapped, coming into my room, as well. She was wrapped in her gold silk satin bed robe, and her hair was tied up in a knot on top of her head. I loved that gold robe and considered it the most beautiful garment I had even seen. When I was smaller, I would play dress up in it, putting my hair in a knot on my head and then adorning it with a paper crown. My mother would say I looked just like an angel without wings. I imagined my six year old self looked exactly like a princess.
“Could it be the Vicodan, Manny?” my mother asked, nervously putting her
hand upon my forehead to check for a raging fever.
“Probably,” my father yawned. “Let's try not to give it to her tomorrow.”
“Well who is the boy sitting there?” I demanded.
“There is no boy, Katie Anne,” my mother sighed. “It's your imagination. You don’t have a temp. Just go back to sleep and he will go away.”
“But I wasn't asleep,” I insisted. “I was watching Nick Jr. reruns. He's sitting right there still. I can see him.”
“Sweetheart.” My father perched on the bed and stroked my face. “All the medication you've been taking is giving you hallucinations. Don't worry, there is no one and nothing here to hurt you. Go back to sleep and we'll call the doctor in the morning and see if we can get you something else to take.” With that, he and my mother left the room and soundly shut the door.
“But!” I called after them.
“Shhh!” the boy said. “Don't call them back.” He said this directly into my head. The only sound in the room was the laugh track on the silly cartoon.
“Who are you?”
He pulled himself to his feet and walked toward me. As he came closer, I saw terrible bruises and wounds on his skin. His ribs looked as if they were bashed in and his chest had spots of purple, yellow and deep red. There was a wound just below his right shoulder that looked as if it were still bleeding and there was another one through his left breast that was puffy and red and still another just right of his belly button. His right arm was bent crooked and swollen.
I covered my mouth with my hand and tried not to scream.
“Are you a ghost?”
“Nearly,” he replied.
I made some kind of noise. You know, the kind you of noise you make when you're trying to scream, but no sound will come out.
“No, I'm not a ghost,” he said, probably noticing how my cast was shaking wildly. “But I'm sort of not really here either.”
He climbed into my bed and lay down next to me.