The Ward Crucible: Even the strong will be broken

by Grayson Crew

  Fathers and Sons

  Hiro’s class ends and I get up to leave.

  “Back in your seat,” He says, pushing me back into my chair.

  I knew this was coming and I’ve not been looking forward to it. Looking down at the ground, I see his white sneakers in front of me, bright against his dark suit.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asks in a deeper voice than usual.

  I don’t say anything. He crouches down until he’s looking up at me. His shirt sleeve rolls back just enough that I see his watchband.

  There’s a gold engraving on the underside. It looks like a bird with wings spread out inside a ring.

  “I know what you’re doing, West,” he says, refocusing me. “It’s stupid and you’re not stupid. I don’t want you to do this. Listen to me, son.”

  Son. He called me son. No ward is ever called son. A rush like a wave roars through me and my muscles go limp, like some key that was keeping me wound up has suddenly been untwisted.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. Now my lips are quivering and I’m shaking. I hide my face because I’m making a complete moron of myself. Why can’t I stop shaking? I squeeze my fingertips into my scalp to make it stop, but it doesn’t.

  Hiro waits quietly. For seconds, minutes, years.

  “I don’t want you to do this,” he repeats.

  “I know,” I say with my head down.

  He stays silent because there’s nothing more either of us can say. He’s right. But, I’m not going to change my mind. I’m leaving and I’m leaving with Jael.

  The Morning Of

  I count the weeks, then days until the auction. It’s the morning of. Now I’m counting hours.

  I watch Jael cut through the waves as I wait for her to finish. She climbs in front of me and wraps around herself tighter than usual. She’s quivering.

  “This is it,” she whispers. I pull close until I’m against her.

  Time’s up. We’re separated and led to the Auction House entrance.

  Sold

  The stage is set. We stand in place, staring forward as the auctioneer opens the auction.

  One round comes and passes, as does another. The final, third auction opens.

  Jael is called to the auction block. She stands in the center, alone.

  Even though I knew it was coming, my blood goes cold and thick, like it’s solidifying in my veins, stopping my heart, stopping my breath. My number comes next.

  The guards come and lead me to the block, standing me next to her. Other wards flood in around us, all of them from higher years.

  Jael looks straight ahead, her eyes are dim, but knowing.

  I look to Hiro, he looks back with creased brows.

  The bids are placed and the numbers climb for all of us. Jael and I have the same bidder.

  “This auction is closed,” announces the auctioneer. Guards lead those with bids toward the exit. One of them walks toward Jael.

  He takes her in one hand and me in the other. I look back to see Hiro one last time, but can’t find him.

  We step from the dim light of the Auction House into the unlit exit beyond.

  II

  RUN

  Cargo

  Through the dark hall, a single light bulb hangs from a frayed wire. The higher-level wards are draped with robes and led to the left. Jael and I go with the low-levels to the right.

  The corridor opens to a freight elevator, which lifts us to a section of the docks I haven’t seen before. Sunlight burns across the dusty slope as we’re led to the only ship in port--A gray beast against a yellow sky.

  At the dock, one by one, we cross a plank to a door in the side of the ship with a wheel on it. When the guard turns it, the air groans as the door slowly slides it open.

  Inside, the steel corridor tightens and descends until we’re at what must be the bowels of the ship. I’m pushed into a chamber with no light. Against the wall and pressed against another ward, I hear the door shut and lock.

  As wards, we’re told that we’re born in chains and that we’ll stay in chains until the day we’re sold. But it’s not true. The chains I’m going into feel thicker than any I’ve felt before.

  Someone starts to sob. I feel between the wards and push my way toward Jael. Something like a roar bellows through the space.

  My stomach rises into my throat as I feel us dropping, then rising. My ears pop. Jael clenches my hand.

  The roar gets louder and louder until there’s no more sobbing, no more voices. Just the sickening drop and rise of the floor as the ship cuts through waves, leading us closer and closer to the next chain.

  Seasick

  By the time the door reopens, the roaring has dropped to a hum. A flashlight is tossed in along with a single mug of water. I pass the jug to Jael without taking a sip.

  She drinks a little, then passes it on. In the new light I can see there are shelves on either side of the room, which isn’t even wide enough to stretch my arms out in either direction. A few buckets are on them, but nothing else.

  When the first ward throws up, it’s clear what the buckets are for.

  Together

  The door opens again and a handful of wards are pulled out.

  Every few hours, or at least what seems like every few, the door opens and more wards are removed until it’s just Jael and I left. She curls up in a corner and I press up beside her.

  Alone

  When I wake up, there’s a light in my eye.

  “West!” I hear Jael scream. I reach for her but grab air.

  I hear the door shut and the light’s gone. Grabbing the flashlight, I sweep it around the room.

  No one.

  I beat the door. I scream. I throw what I hope is an empty bucket at the walls.

  Nothing. Just like that and any remaining hope I held shatters. I’m alone.

  The floor drops. Only this time I don’t stop falling.

  The New World

  When they come back for me, I’m sitting with my legs crossed around a flashlight that’s pointing toward the ceiling. I’ve been flicking it on and off. On and off. Like a soothing rhythm. I don’t look at them. I don’t think they really look at me either. Grabbing my arm, they pull me out of the room.

  Up some stairs we come to a bright opening. As we get close, a wave of salt air courses deep into me, stirring up the muskiness in my lungs and making me cough. When we go through, hazy light wraps around me. I feel it more than see it.

  The deck we’re standing on is wet. I can see the sailors going around the cramped deck scrubbing it clean. They come in and out of a fog that rolls around us, swirling with white sunlight.

  The guard shouts into the fog below and a man with a tattooed face and chest climbs up a ladder. Words are exchanged and I’m passed along to the new man.

  “Down the ladder, go to the front of the boat,” he says.

  The boat nearly tips when I step onto it.

  “In the center!” he shouts.

  It wobbles some more as he settles in at the back. He pulls a string on the motor until it starts up, then we’re moving. Both my hands are gripping the cold sides as we plow through the rolling waves.

  Salt sticks to my face as the spray spreads around me. I taste it. The salt is different here, not as strong.

  The water is smooth now and we’re slowing down. In a matter of minutes the light fades until we’re surrounded in darkness, with points of flickering orange light scattered all around.

  The fog rolls away before me like a sheet being pulled off a bed. Dark green and black rocks jut from the dark, clear water around us and tower upwards into nothing. The splash of the boat’s wake echoes around us.

  Torches come into sight, hundreds of them, lighting up what must be a cavern--one that could fit a whole facility.

  Pinholes of white light pierce through holes far above in the cavern roof, lighting up pockets of lush foliage, dripping down the walls in a cascade of green and purple.

  The engine gets q
uieter as we come to a dilapidated wooden dock. Another tattooed man tosses a rope from the dock to me.

  “Tie it off,” says the boatman.

  I look from spot to spot for something to tie the rope to, then see a notch to my side and tie the rope to it.

  Marked

  On the dock they lead me to a row of corrugated metal shacks--more like large containers. A skirted man comes out of one carrying a bucket. When he passes, the rank smell from the bucket makes me cough. He tosses it into the ocean.

  “Mark him,” says the boatman to the dock man.

  The dock man takes my arm and leads me into one of the lit shanties. Inside, yellow torch-light bounces from wall to wall. There’s a wooden table in the center, pretty low to the ground with a tray next to it. There are small strips of wood with lines of needles on the end.

  “Lay down and don’t move,” he says, then hands me a piece of wood. “Bite on this.”

  Taking one of the needles he dips the tips into a bowl of ink, then takes a small baton in his other hand. “This’ll hurt,” he says and places the bit between my teeth.

  The first puncture, above my eye, makes me clench down on the bit. He repeats the process along the left side of my face. I count the seconds, and the punctures for each second. I don’t need the bit anymore, I clench my fists instead. My eyes water from the vapors of the ink.

  “Finished,” he says. After I sit up he spreads open a wide fabric. It looks like maybe it used to be white, but it’s not anymore. There’s a symbol on one side, a dot inside an arch.

  “This is what you wear here. Watch what I do, then do it.”

  He wraps the cloth around his waist and between his legs, then unwraps it and tosses it to me along with a coarse shirt.

  “Put it on, then go see the overseer.”

  I don’t know who the overseer is, but I know better than to ask questions. I try to fold the cloth the same way he did. It’s not right, but it’s staying in place. The shirt itches. I feel along my face where the skin is raised from the tattoo. It’s a half circle around my eye, with a line going down from above my brow to my cheek.

  The Overseer

  Outside the hut, I think that maybe Jael is here too, but the more I look around, the more I can see there are only men.

  One of them comes over. His skirt is longer than the others and his tattoo more elaborate.

  “You’re in my unit,” he says. If you work hard and do what’s told, you’ll move up. You don’t speak to me, you don’t ask me questions. You just listen and work.”

  He grabs a torch and moves away from the water and behind the filthy camp till we’re at a series of tunnels framed by round wooden poles.

  “Best get used to the layout now,” he says. “You start work when the first light cracks through the cavern roof and finish when I send word. If you take a break, if you stop, you get a day in the box. Another worker is in there right now.”

  We crouch lower until the overseer--I assume he’s the overseer--stops.

  “This is as far as I go.”

  He pushes me forward into the darkness, then goes back the way we came. There are torchlights and the sounds of metal against rock.

  The Mines

  I approach a group. They’re hammering metal spikes into the stone walls. Someone else is putting the rocks that get chipped off into a bag.

  “Give him a spike,” says one of the men, “Show him what to do.”

  The spike is cold and heavy for its size. The hammer is heavier.

  “You put the spike on the wall, like this,” says a man, “But you gotta have an angle, like this. Now hit it with the hammer. Dump the chips in the bag.”

  I miss on my first swing with the hammer and hit my knuckles. The next swing lands a little better and some chips fall, but I don’t keep it up.

  By the end of what must be a few hours, my fingers are bruised and starting to swell. I wonder if Jael is doing the same thing and how I can find out where she is.

  “You stop, you get the box,” says the man.

  My mouth is dry, my forehead is cold and my stomach is groaning. The insides of my fingers, where I’ve been holding the spike, are covered in burst blisters by the time a man calls out that we’re finished.

  The rocks we mined get tossed in bags which get dragged out to the camp where a group sifts through it. Then someone else pounds whatever they sift into a powder. The overseer takes the sacks of powder out on a boat. The rest of the rocks get tossed into the cove to make more land for the growing camp.

  Bugs

  At the camp, there’s a fire under a kettle with boiling rice. Someone else is roasting a fish that looks like a snake along with some seaweed.

  We eat silently around the fire, then I’m led to one of the shacks. There’s nothing in there, just corrugated metal walls with a tarp as a roof. Five other slaves have made pillows by rolling up their skirts. They pull rice bags over themselves for sheets.

  “Welcome to Dovehaven,” says one of them while tossing me a sack.

  I lay against the wall. At first it’s just uncomfortable, but then come the bugs. I can’t really see them, but I can feel them, nipping on me like they’re crawling into the cracks of my dry skin.

  “Eventually, you won’t feel’em no more,” says the man closest to me, then turns away.

  Her Hands

  Breakfast is a sticky ball of something white.

  “What is this?” I ask another slave.

  “Rice balls. Get used to it. Just think of the hands that make it. . . seems to make it taste better.”

  “hands?”

  “The girls, they work the rice fields, not too far from here.”

  Maybe that’s where they put Jael.

  “I got a girl there,” he grins. “Been mine for . . . oh two years? five years? who knows. Time don’t work the same way for me anymore.”

  “You mean you see her?”

  “Not so loud with that,” he says, lowering his voice. “It’s a bit of a swim, and if they catch you they’ll do something sick for sure. The overseer can be quite . . . oh what’s the word . . . creative.”

  “What direction?”

  He chuckles. “Last guy went, never came back. I bet he hid under the ledge, then went in the wild. Poor fella.”

  “What ledge?”

  “Low tide. On the cavern wall, there’s a ledge where if you swim under you come up to an air pocket. I been in once. Pretty big. But don’t know where it goes. I’d rather face the overseer than the Whispers."

  What are the Whispers?

  Clean

  As the weeks pass the thought of escaping gets thinner. My stomach is always growling, my tongue is cracked, my hands are calloused and bruised and the soles of my feet are blistered.

  But that’s not what gets me most. It’s the bugs every night, crawling around me. At first they just left little marks, but now it’s a rash spreading across my back and my thighs. It never stops itching. And there’s no good place to clean it.

  The bathroom is a bucket that gets dumped into the same cove we bathe in and drink water from. Nothing is clean.

  The Hanging Man

  Today, when I go to get my rice, there’s an emaciated man stretched between two poles. His toes barely touch the ground and there’s a sack over his face.

  “That one tried to run,” says a slave next to me.

  When I come back at the end of the day he’s still there. The next morning, still there.

  “They’re going to leave him until he dies,” says a slave. “But don’t feel bad for him. It’s better for him to die.”

  That makes me sick.

  “You don’t know, because you’re new. But don’t worry, you’ll learn. You see, he listened to them Whispers when he was out there—listened for too long. Those things’ll send anyone into madness. Ain’t no coming back from where he went.”

  Breaking Down

  Today, I can’t keep up with the others. Maybe it’s that I can’t stop thinking abou
t the guy hanging outside, or maybe it’s because the rash is becoming unbearable. Every move cracks the skin on my back and side where I sleep.