Another kick catches me. Pain implodes in my side. My body lifts up from the ground, then falls limp. A captor yells something over me—something rumbling and fast. More of them come. They turn me over. I don’t blink. I’m not even sure that I’m breathing. I lay face up, eyes glassy and blank, limbs splayed crucifixion wide.
You want me to rise, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to rise from a bed of my own blood, from a stretch of earth made soft by the pummeling of my limbs. I don’t know how to stand and dance, not even for the Royale. Not to join a caravan of the enslaved, not to travel toward a tomorrow of torture and death. No, not even for you.
“You will dance,” you say, and suddenly violent retching tugs at my throat. Grandfather’s magic must be stuck or broken, or else it’s incredibly cruel. Something is pummeling me, piercing my skin with pinpricks. I don’t know if it’s another time shift, abuse from my attackers, or you trying to rouse me.
I lift a weak wrist and for a brief second there is relief. Then the pain returns—like a million tiny axes chopping at my organs. I throw open a thigh to ward off the trembling. There is no faith or courage here, just feverish desperation as I move through the Royale.
I imagine Grandfather’s unsteady fingers working to bring me back. A gritty moan rustles in my ears. At first I think it’s my voice winding out over the sand flats, but then I realize it is you, reaching down deep to pull out a wailing too gutbucket for your small frame. It is the straining in your voice that hooks me. I tilt my head back and gulp down deep raggedy breaths. I open my mouth; nothing but dry rasping comes out. I work at it anyway. I search for a part of me that is unbruised and untouched by pain. I open my mouth again, struggling to thrust out a mangled yell that can match your wailing. Then the sands of time grind at my bones, and everything goes dark.
“You have the things?”
I blink and look around. My body lurches forward. For a few brief seconds, it feels like I’m hurtling through space. I grab onto a pole overhead, than drag myself back to standing.
“Keep tight! What were you thinking?”
I look at the person speaking to me and almost gag. I look away, but a glance around the room sickens me further. The room is crawling with mangled people. No facial feature is where it should be—limbs are attached at odd angles on all the wrong parts of the body. I force the muscles in my face to be still. Then I look again. It is a man speaking to me, was a man. Now I don’t know what he is. He has eyes on either side of his mouth, and his nose sits at a violent tilt. The space where his eyes should be is covered with a huge, lumpy scar. Even as I am battling revulsion, I can see that his oddly-placed eyes are flicking appraising glances, sizing me up.
I look around again. Through the narrow mesh platform beneath my feet, I see more of them—the mutilated—packed in like cockroaches. There are so many of them that they look like rashes or rust corroding the metal walls. Besides the revolting people, everything in the room is metal—metal walls, metal poles, metal mesh flooring.
When I look up, a few droplets of wetness fall into my eyes. I shake my head and blink it away. I look up again. A clump of blistered kids are wedged between the overhead poles and the ceiling. The realization rises in me slowly: I must be disfigured too. I look down at my body. I see my shoulder just beneath my chin, and my arm jutting out from where my chest should be. What kinds of freaks are we?
When next I look at the man, the air around me seems unstable. The fearsome roar that rings through the room starts to echo in my ears. My eyelids droop, and my muscles start to go slack. The man opens his mouth, a tiny wet hand emerges. He wipes the bottom of my nose with it. A moldy scent bursts in my sinuses, and my eyes pop wide open.
“You gonna make it? Ain’t no short trip!”
I nod mutely, revolted and relieved.
“You have your things?” he asks again.
I shrug. He squints at me. I can tell he thinks I’m a waste of time.
“You know about the things, right?”
I shrug again, this time nodding.
He turns his head and opens his mouth. Out comes the hand again. It feels along the pole we’re hanging on. He picks at something flat that’s stuck there and rips it off. I hadn’t noticed it before, but only one of his arms ends with a hand, the other ends with a foot. He only has one standing leg, and it’s keeping him balanced on the platform beneath us.
He waves it under my nose. It’s an old tattered label.
“Mmmm-mmm!”
It takes me a few seconds to realize he can’t talk and hand me the label at the same time. I grab the label.
“Not going to ask. Why you don’t know what we’re doing here is none of my concern. How you got on the transport without knowing about the things ain’t my trouble.” He looks around. “But you better learn fast. There ain’t no return trips. At the end of this, either you’ll get out or you’ll die.”
I can tell by the hard edges of his words that he meant to scare. Instead I’m thrilled. Could this finally be the end?
“You need three things. Three. You got them?”
I began to feel around my body, awkwardly learning how to use my rotated arms.
“Pocket the label.”
“What?”
The guy’s eyes roll up like I’m useless. “Pocket the label, it’s your pass.”
I look at the label. It’s grimy and stiff. Though it’s ripped I can read something on it: “Regiment Green: Disrespect on a cellular level.” Reaching around my hip, feeling for my back pocket, my hand catches on an opening in my clothes. It’s a pocket. I drop the label in and feel around the rest of my clothes. I’ve got pockets all over.
I poke around in the pockets, unsure of what I’m looking for. My fingers happen upon something stiff in the fourth pocket. I pull it out—a shiny black feather. The man makes a weird fluttering sound with his mouth. I imagine that wet hand flapping against his moist jaws.
“Don’t show me. Don’t show anybody except Him when you get there. Got it?”
I nod and keep feeling around, but the rest of the pockets are empty. After I check all my pockets twice, I realize that my fingers are covered with grime. I put my hand back in a pocket and pinch at the bottom. When I draw my hand out, there’s something grainy sticking to my fingertips. I hold my hand up to my face—desert sand. I start grabbing pinches of sand wherever I can find it.
“Tighten!” the guy yells.
I grab on with two hands. The transport dips, then turns sharply. My feet fly off the platform, and a burning flares across my palms where they rub against the overhead pipe.
I hear a yell, then two bodies drop down from above. The yelling fades and is replaced by a sinister hissing. The air fills with smoke, and a high-pitched wailing rings out.
“Don’t lose your grip,” the guy mutters.
“What’s down there?”
“Engine.”
Fear bubbles up in my throat, but I choke it back down. I focus on the impossible task of filling one of my pockets with sand. When I’ve piled all the sand I can grab into one pocket, I let out a relieved exhalation.
But the guy breaks into my relief. “You need three things. Two’s no good. He won’t send you if you don’t have three.”
My thoughts run around my mind in panicked loops. Who is this person and where will he send me? Will this take me home? More moisture falls on me from above. I’m suddenly aware of my armpits and my crotch. They are soaking wet, my entire torso is wet—I am terrified to the bone.
Suddenly I know what my third thing will be.
“What if I want to bring liquid? What can I hold it in?”