I heard the pained cry come from a klee who was still twenty yards from the wagon. He was on the ground, hurt. I saw that both his back legs were bleeding. He could barely crawl forward using his front paws. A tang was slowly creeping up on him, ready for the kill. It approached cautiously, in case the klee still had some fight left. Lying next to the injured klee was his wooden weapon, but he was too weak to use it. The cat was doomed…unless somebody helped him. I glanced to the wagon to see the gars were hiding underneath. The klees were standing next to one another, weapons up, ready to defend themselves. None made a move to save their friend. I had a quick thought of the gar who died to save me. It felt wrong not to try and do something to help the injured klee. Before I had the chance to chicken out, I ran for the fallen cat. Stupid move, I know. But I had to do it. There had been enough killing.
“No!” Boon yelled.
As I think back to that moment, I wish I had listened to him. Things would have turned out much better. But there was no way I could have guessed at the horrible consequences my actions would have. My plan was to grab the cat’s weapon and try to fend off the tang. I hoped that if the other klees saw that I was putting up a fight to save their friend, they’d come and help us both out.
It was a totally stupid plan.
I ran to the klee and scooped up the weapon. But as soon as I lifted it up, another tang leaped from the cover of the tall stalks. It had been hiding, waiting for a golden opportunity like this. It lashed out with its scaly tail and whipped against my hands so hard and fast, it felt like I was hit with an electric shock. The wooden weapon was knocked out of my grasp. What an idiot. Now the klee and I were both in trouble. He was injured and I was defenseless-with two tangs standing by, ready to attack.
I heard a sound that can be best described as a whistle. Whatever was making it, it came up from behind me fast and whizzed past my ear. It felt so close I ducked, expecting to get hit in the back of the head. An instant later I saw what it was.
Kasha. She had thrown her lasso with the three stones tied to the end. The stones spun like a buzz saw, flew past me, and wrapped themselves around the neck of the closest tang. Kasha gave a sharp yank on the rope and I heard a sickeningsnap. She had broken the tang’s neck. If I wasn’t so relieved, I would have been totally grossed out. The beast fell. It was dead before it hit the ground. But there was still one more tang to deal with and Kasha no longer had her lasso.
The tang made the next move. He didn’t attack me, or Kasha. He pounced on the injured klee, the easy prey. The lizard jumped on the cat’s back and locked its jaws around its neck. The cat reared up and tried to shake the tang off, but the monster would not be denied. The klee was already weak from having lost so much blood. He didn’t stand a chance. I watched in horror as the cat fell to the ground hard, with the tang’s jaws still clamped on its neck.
I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. I whipped around, expecting another tang attack. But it was Kasha.
“It’s over,” she said sadly. “We have to go back.”
It may have been over for the poor klee, but not for us. Other tangs were still sniffing around, looking to do some damage. We had to get out of there. The two of us ran back to the safety of the wagon. I stole a quick glance back at the battleground to see that the tangs were finished. They got what they came for. I watched as the few remaining tangs dragged their victims back into the tall stalks. Most were gars, but of course, there was the one klee. It now suddenly made all sorts of sense to me why the klees chose to build their world in the trees. The tangs were merciless marauders.
I wasn’t sure of what to do when we got back to the wagon. I still had to act like a simple gar, so I decided to hide under the wagon with the survivors. But I didn’t get the chance. As soon as we approached the group of klees, Durgen stepped forward and slapped Kasha across the face. Everybody was so stunned, they froze in place. Including Kasha. Durgen stood in front of her, his eyes fixed on her in anger.
“You sacrificed a klee to save a gar?” he seethed. “Are you insane?”
Uh-oh. Kasha had saved me, but it looked as if she was going to pay a price for it.
“He was as good as dead when I got there,” Kasha said, not backing down. “If I tried to save him, we would have lost both.”
That might have been true, but I wasn’t so sure. Durgen didn’t think it was true at all. He hauled back and slapped Kasha again. Kasha barely flinched. She was tough. She took the hit but stood tall.
“You don’t know that!” he bellowed. “If there was a chance to save him, you should have taken it. But you didn’t. And why? To save… this?”
Durgen grabbed me by the back of my neck and held me up in the air, my feet dangling a few inches off of the ground.
“It is an animal, Kasha!” he shouted in anger. “An animal!”
He tossed me down hard. I wasn’t ready for it and my knees buckled, sending me crashing onto my shoulder. I wasn’t so quick to get back up. I didn’t want him throwing me around again.
“That klee was your friend,” Durgen continued, his voice softening. “You chose this animal over a friend.”
Kasha looked down. I think it finally hit her that someone she cared about, a fellow klee, had died.
“I did what I felt was right,” she said softly.
“And I will do what I think is right,” Durgen said angrily. “Turn the wagon around! Back to Leeandra!”
I looked to Boon. His eyes were wide and scared. He knew exactly why Kasha had chosen me over the klee, but he wasn’t about to say anything. How could he? I stood up slowly and looked at Kasha. She walked past without looking back at me. I guarantee she was having second thoughts about what she had done. The trip back to Leeandra was grueling. The wagon was full of blue apples, so we gars couldn’t ride. I think the only reason we got to ride out here in the first place was to save our strength to pick the fruit. Now that our job was done, the klee foragers couldn’t care less if we even made it back. Boon drove the wagon again, while I walked behind it with the few surviving gar. Kasha walked behind us with another klee. Durgen and the last klee walked in front of the wagon. If we ran into another band of tangs, I don’t think anybody would have had the strength to fight.
The walk took a few hours and it gave me time to plan my next move. I still had to find Seegen. I figured the best way to do that was through his acolyte, Yorn. If Seegen was on Second Earth, I thought that maybe Yorn could send a message to you guys, and you could tell Seegen to return to Eelong. It was a weak plan, I know. The chances of you guys finding him were pretty slight. I couldn’t imagine a jungle cat wearing a tunic walking through the streets of Stony Brook. He’d either be shot, or captured and put in a zoo. But I couldn’t think of anything else. I was too tired.
Thankfully, no tangs attacked on our return trip. When we finally made it safely inside the gates of Leeandra, I figured I would ask Boon if I could stay with him. I was pretty sure Kasha wouldn’t want me around anymore. But as soon as the gates closed behind us, my plan went right out the window. Durgen grabbed me by the neck, again. It was getting very, very old. He dragged me away from the group. Boon leaped down from the wagon and jumped in front of him.
“Uhh,” he said with a nervous laugh. “What are you doing?”
“Have the rest of the gars unload the wagon at the transfer station,” he ordered. “Then return the wagon to the corral.” He kept walking, dragging me along with him.
“Yeah, sure,” Boon said. “But what are you doing with Kasha’s gar?”
Durgen stopped and looked back to Kasha, who stood by the wagon. Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t say a word. When Durgen spoke, it wasn’t to Boon, it was to Kasha.
“This gar cost me a dear friend,” Durgen said bitterly. “I’m going to make sure I get some value in return.”
What was he talking about? Was he going to eat me or something? Kasha took a step forward.
“You can’t,” she complained. “He’s my gar.”
&nb
sp; “Not anymore,” Durgen spat back at her. “I’m selling him to the handlers.”
“No!” shouted Boon.
“You can’t!” Kasha added.
Durgen gave me a shove. Boon caught me. Durgen went nose-to-nose with Kasha, saying, “And how exactly do you plan on stopping me?”
It was a standoff. Kasha didn’t back off. Neither did Durgen.
“What are the handlers, Boon?” I whispered nervously. “Are they going to eat me?”
“Don’t worry,” Boon whispered back. “We’ll get you out of there.”
He didn’t get the chance to say any more. Durgen stepped back from Kasha and grabbed me again. I had had enough. It was time to stop fooling around and start taking charge of my own destiny. I pulled away from Durgen and stood facing him, trying to look as defiant as possible.
“I am not an animal,” I declared. “You don’t own me and you sure as heck can’t sell me.”
I thought this would blow Durgen away. I saw the shock on his face. I doubted if he had ever heard a gar speak a full sentence like that, let alone right in his face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other gars looking at me in awe. The only ones who weren’t shocked, of course, were Kasha and Boon.
Durgen reacted in a way I didn’t expect. He laughed. “Well.” He chuckled. “A gar who believes he is more than a gar.” He put his hands on his hips and said, “I have bad news for you.” He hauled back and hit me with the back of his hand. Hard. It was such a surprise and came so fast, I had no chance to duck or to block it. He hit me square on the side of the head. I saw stars. And colors. I don’t think I was knocked out, but I lost touch with reality. Things got fuzzy. I remember being grabbed again, and dragged. It was all a blur. Whoever was dragging me wasn’t gentle about it. I remember being knocked around a few times, and hitting my head again, which didn’t help matters.
I remember things getting dark. Not lights-out dark, just darker. I remember wondering if night had fallen. I stopped moving, too. Wherever I was being taken, I was there. It felt cold and a little damp. I probably lost consciousness a few times. I couldn’t tell for sure. I don’t know how long I was out of touch like that, but I do remember my first clear thought. I remember thinking that wherever I was, it smelled insanely bad.
My eyes opened and I focused for the first time since I didn’t know when. It was still dark, but it wasn’t night and I wasn’t outside. I registered stone walls and a high ceiling with an interesting pattern on it. At first I thought it was a checkerboard, because there were boxes floating overhead. That was weird. I laid on my back looking up at this strange checkerboard, trying to make sense of it, when a klee appeared overhead. It wasn’t a checkerboard after all; it was a grid. The cat walked on top of it and looked down at me.
“Welcome home,” the klee said with a sneer. He poured a bucket of water down through the grid. I didn’t have time to react and got hit with a wave of smelly water. At least it woke me up. I sat up, blowing the disgusting water out of my nose, and looked around. I was in a large, dark room with stone walls; the high ceiling was a grid made of crisscrossing bamboo. It was a cage of some sort. And I wasn’t alone. Lying against the walls were a dozen other people, gars, looking ghostly white and sickly thin, as if they hadn’t had decent food in months.
I looked at one of the gars and asked, “Where is this?”
“This,” he said. “End of life.”
JOURNAL #17
(CONTINUED)
EELONG
Iwas in prison.
I don’t think that’s what the klees called it. To them, this was a holding pen for animals. Nobody here had committed any crimes, except for being born a gar. To the wretched gars I shared the dungeon with, it was another added bit of cruelty to their already miserable lives. At night the gars huddled against the slimy stone walls, hugging one another, trying to share what little body heat they could generate. During the day, the sunbelt beat down so relentlessly that I now know what a lobster feels like when it’s being boiled. And no matter what the time of day was, the smell was vicious.
Along one wall was a water trough dug into the stone floor that we were supposed to use as a bathroom. Nice idea, with constantly running water and all. Trouble was, the water wasn’t running fast enough to take everything away, and the klees never set foot inside the dungeon to clean up. So it was like living inside a toilet. Making things worse, the running water gave the cell a damp feeling that cut to the center of my bones. I felt like one big toothache.
There was one wooden door with a barred window, where I could see klee guards walk past. The only cushioning we had to make the hard floor more comfortable was dirty hay that had probably been dumped there a century before. The stuff smelled so bad I never sat on it. I chose to be uncomfortable rather than nauseous. There was no ceiling, only the bamboo grid that was beyond reach. At least this open ceiling made it possible to see the sky and catch a breath of fresh air. It was good to see the stars at night, clouds drifting by during the day, and the band of sun as the day wore on. Unfortunately it also meant that when it rained, we got wet. At least it helped wash the stench out of the cell.
The food was a joke, though maybe that’s a bad way of putting it because there was nothing funny about it. Every so often a klee would appear on the grid above and dump down a load of fruit. The shower of food would hit the stone floor and smash to bits. It was a rotten way to be fed, but the gars didn’t care. They scrambled to pick up every putrid crumb they could find. Some even licked the stone floor afterward. I had no idea what most of the stuff was. It all smelled rank. At first I couldn’t bring myself to eat, especially after what I saw on that farm with all the dead tangs. But after a while I got so hungry I didn’t care anymore and joined the feast. I didn’t die. Obviously.
From what I’ve written so far, you may be wondering how long I spent in this hole. The fact is, I’m not exactly sure. When I first woke up, I didn’t think I’d be there for long, so I didn’t try to keep track of time. But after a few days I figured I’d better start getting my head together, so each time it got light, I scraped a notch in the floor with a small chunk of rock. But even then, I didn’t know how long a day on Eelong was. Was it twenty-four hours like on Second Earth? Or forty-eight? Or twelve or…whatever. Time hasn’t had a whole lot of meaning since I left home. But as I think back on the gruesome experience of being trapped in that cell, I can guesstimate that by Second Earth standards, I spent at least a month in there. I’m serious. A month. It was a month too long. I’d be kidding you if I said it didn’t change me.
With each passing day, I got angrier. I couldn’t believe that klees could treat gars so inhumanely, especially since I discovered the gars weren’t dumb animals. I’m not saying they were playing chess with the klees or anything. Far from it. But they could think, and they had feelings, and they had a lot more to offer Eelong than what the klees gave them credit for. It wasn’t right.
I was also angry at Durgen for sticking me here, and at Kasha and Boon for not getting me out. I was afraid they had abandoned me and left me to die. Most of all, I got angry at Saint Dane. Not that I needed any more of an excuse for that, but he was the real reason I was trapped in this cell. And with me out of the way, there was nobody to stop him from tricking the klees into destroying their own territory.
As long as I’m being totally honest, I have to admit that I was getting mad at Uncle Press, too. He was the one who got me into this Traveler mess in the first place. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably be eating a pizza with you guys and catching the Yankees on TV. Or the Jets. What season is it, anyway? Instead, I sat in a putrid prison, grossed out by my own stench, wondering if this was my last stop. Morbid, aye? Sure, but why not? There was nothing else to think about. I had already counted the stones in the walls (8,462), done every math problem I could think of, and even came up with my own lyrics to that old song “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” since I never understood the real lyrics anyway. Tell methat’snot desperate. Whi
le Eelong edged closer to disaster, I was stuck in a sewerlike prison, helpless, hungry and making up mind games to keep from going insane.
I shouldn’t rant so much about my own feelings, but I’ll say one more thing. Once I finish writing this journal I’m going to put the horrible memories of my stay in the gar dungeon away in a safe place. I’ll get over it, but I won’t forget. And when it all goes down with Saint Dane, I’ll bring this nightmare back and use it for strength against him. Bet on it.
Besides describing the horrible conditions, there were a few things that happened during my stay that I need to write down before I forget them. When I was first thrown into the dungeon, I hadn’t had any real contact with gars, other than in that wagon on the way to our ill-fated farming expedition. But now, stuck in a confined space, I was officially a gar. I wanted to know more about them. It wasn’t easy. They were afraid of me, and maybe a little bit loony from being starved and imprisoned. (They didn’t have the outlet of making up lyrics to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Poor them.) They didn’t accept me. Most kept their distance, cowering in the shadows and shivering with fear, as if I would hurt them. It took me a while to realize why. Even though I looked like them, I was way different. I was taller and I walked with the authority of a klee. These little guys were always a little hunched over and afraid of their own shadows. To them I was a freak. When I made a move to pick up some fruit that had been tossed down, the gars would back off and let me take what I wanted before helping themselves.
A few times I heard them whispering to each other. I’d try to join in by saying something simple like “Hello?” or “My name is Pendragon.” But they’d immediately shut down and scamper away. It didn’t help that I tried to stay in shape. I constantly did sit-ups and push-ups to keep my muscle tone from going south. But every time I’d start exercising, the gars would huddle together and look at me like I was performing some strange ritual. After a while I gave up trying to communicate with them. It was too frustrating.
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