Burnt Page 10

  There was no accounting for time in the wagon. The way it faltered and stretched since first waking in that tent was a new experience. Time always seemed so solid. Ordered. Constant. Now it was fickle and chaotic. He was exhausted and hungry and sore, but he started that way. With only the occasional flicker of sunlight penetrating the mobile prison since they first shut it up his body was his only gauge. And it was worthless. So, when the wagon lurched again – causing the inevitable crack against his much abused skull – and slowed to a stop, Kaie couldn’t guess if it was a few hours or several days later.

  He hoped the latter. He prayed to every god that might listen that he was as far from what was left of his hope as possible. He was going to face life knowing what Sojun did for him. He would vomit up his lies for the remnants of his family, knowing that it was supposed to be Jun giving them hope. He couldn’t face the ghosts of their home, see the ruin of their lives. Platitudes wouldn’t work there. There everyone would see in an instant what a coward and failure he was. He couldn’t even save his best friend when the way was centimeters from his fingertips.

  There were people waiting outside the door when the wagon opened. Of course they were. He was a prisoner now. Kaie was one of the closest to the door, by luck and design, so he was among the first ones the heavy men grabbed when they reached into the blindly blinking mass.

  Their hands were hard and unforgiving as they jerked him forward, ripping him away from the clinging children. The boy holding his hand refused to be removed for a moment. He tried to shout something, he wasn’t even sure what, to make the kid let go. The hoarse cry wasn’t enough. One of the men caught the boy’s head in a backhand that echoed in Kaie’s teeth. The boy fell backward and was swallowed by the mass of bodies. He couldn’t even remember the kid’s name. William? It didn’t matter. Not anymore. He was sick with certainty that he would never see those terrified eyes staring up at him again.

  Free of his anchor, Kaie was jerked out of the wagon. Before his own eyes could adjust to the change in illumination, the instant his feet touched earth, more hands grabbed and tugged, propelling him onward. Shapes and blurred colors flowed past through the haze but Kaie was in no hurry to see clearly. Nothing good was coming.

  The sound of cloth ripping and shock of air against his bare body nudged his instincts out of their stupor. Despite his resolution to cling to blindness as long as he could Kaie rubbed at his eyes.

  He was in a room. It was huge – easily four times the size of his house back home – and built from some wood he didn’t know. Pure white with no seams he could see. The floor felt like stone to his bare feet but it was a solid slab and impossibly smooth. It slanted slightly toward the center of the room but the incline was subtle. He wouldn’t even notice if it weren’t for a hole in the stone there that drew his eyes like a magnet. Part of him, the part still trying to fit all the pieces of his puzzles together, longed to run his hands along this stone and the white walls; figure out what they were and how they existed. But there was no time for indulging that curiosity.

  There were nine other children with him. He didn’t recognize any of them by name but all were part of his family. In a calmer time he would likely recall each of them and their parents as well. Now he just watched numbly as they were each stripped of their clothing while a bone-thin woman frowned and scratched a paper with a piece of charcoal. Most tried to cover themselves from her harsh gaze but a couple were like him – simply too numb to respond.

  When she was done with her appraisal she gestured to the big man stealing their clothes. He tossed his armful into a huge pile in the far corner and grabbed the small boy at the end of their line, dragging him out the door directly across from Kaie. The woman followed on their heels.

  Eight of them stood in their line. The kid beside him, maybe eight years old, whimpered and turned toward the pile. Kaie dropped a hand on his shoulder before the boy could step out of line.

  The boy looked up at him, his wide, terrified eyes almost indistinguishable from the ones Kaie watched fall back into the wagon. Kaie wanted to do nothing. Let things unfold how they would. It was easier. But he just couldn’t. This was his family and that was supposed to mean something. Those eyes demanded he care.

  The memory came back to him in a rush. This was the little boy running down the village road chasing a chicken. It was the boy who leapt for the bird and missed horribly, landed in a mud puddle and instead of crying like many children would, burst into loud and contagious laughter. Kaie tried to summon up a smile for that boy. “Sorley, right?”

  The boy nodded.

  Fourteen eyes were on him now. He didn’t even try to hide the blush. How could he? His brain scrambled for words, any words. A moment ago he was satisfied simply remembering the kid’s name. Now they were all expecting something great, something to steel their spines and make all of this humiliation and horror better.

  “This sucks, right?” And there it was. His great moment of leadership. Even Sorley stopped his whimpering and gave him an incredulous look. Kaie laughed nervously.

  “Yeah. I’m brilliant. Look, I can’t say anything to make it better. No one can. But we get through this, then the next thing, and the next. Somewhere down the road, somewhere we can’t see just now, it gets better because that’s how life works and because Mother Lemme never forgets her children. But you have to be strong. Just like she was when Kosa came for our blood.” The words were heavy on his tongue.

  “Let them take whatever they want from you, do whatever they want to you. We are Zetowan. We don’t act out of violence or fear. We know our goddess is guiding everything. We know she’ll be at our side when we need her. That they can never touch. So long as you believe it.”

  Sorley’s lower lip trembled. Kaie sighed and turned back to face the door. How did he expect any of them to believe what he knew were lies? Where was Mother Lemme when her people were attacked? When her voice was dying in the vault? When Sojun was getting the Lunin latched around his neck? The gods didn’t care what happened to them.

  The indrawn breath was slight. Kaie expected another whimper. When it didn’t come, he glanced to his left.

  Sorley was standing there again. Back straight, shoulders back. Past him, the other boys held themselves the same way. They didn’t look like vulnerable little boys anymore. They looked like men, like Zetowan, waiting for their goddess to guide their paths and shape the world. Kaie didn’t know what to think. His words weren’t inspiring. They were the same things their parents told them every day, rehashed and cheapened. But there they were, proud and brave. What else changed?

  The man came back into the strange room carrying another armful of cloth. The small boy wasn’t with him and neither was the skinny woman. There were four others though. Three more men and a woman followed him in, all of them lugging large metal buckets sloshing with liquid in either hand.

  The first man’s dark eyebrows rose when he looked at them. Kaie suspected it was for the same reason his own did a moment before. But the only comment made was a grunt.

  A second later a splash of cold water struck him with a force that made him stumble backward. Kaie gasped. Then he shouted. It wasn’t just water rolling down his face and shoulders. His head itched, like insects were crawling all over it. The same sensation rolled over his entire body. Dark red hair spilled out across his feet.

  In just a few moments every bit of his hair was on the ground, rolling toward the middle of the room. It joined browns of all shades, mixing and vanishing down the hole waiting there.

  All eight of them were now completely hairless. The grunting man tossed them each some of the cloth in his arms as the bucket carriers left. Kaie caught his. Sorley didn’t, and had to scramble to pull it off the damp floor.

  They were pants, sort of. Not the comfortable hide ones he wore every day of his life. These were made of some different material, something soft, thin and useless for walking through woods or staying warm. Kaie and the others put them on anyway. They were b
etter than nothing.

  The man grabbed Kaie’s arm and jerked him out of line, gesturing for the others to follow. He was pulled out of the room and dragged down a hallway to another strange room. It was identical to the last one. Except this one didn’t have a pile of clothes. Instead, there was a fire pit built into the wall itself. Made out of red and brown stones, it held a fire hotter than any his family would consider keeping in their homes, sucking the chill from his body in an instant. The smoke rolled up through a tunnel of the same stone leading right through the roof.

  There were dark stains on the strange floor. But those didn’t bear thinking on.

  The thin woman was waiting for them there. She scuttled right to him, her sharp black eyes narrowing as she drew close. “You are the one called Kaie?”

  He swallowed hard, trying to sort out what was going on. “Err…yes?”

  She pursed her lips and nodded. Then she pressed her stick of charcoal against the top of his hairless head and drew a big X. Kaie lifted his hand to touch it, but she slapped it down. He got the message but couldn’t begin to guess at the purpose. Once she was satisfied that he wasn’t going to try again, she nodded to the man holding him and left.

  His captor released him and followed. Again, all eight boys were alone and clueless as to what was expected of them. This time there was no whimpering. So that was an improvement. They were all looking at him again though. Waiting to be fed more garbage about the benevolent gods. Or just wondering about the X on his head. He couldn’t tell. Either way, before he could think of anything to say someone else joined them.

  This time it was a woman, though she was no smaller than their last captor. She wasn’t alone. Two other meaty men trailed in her wake as she headed straight for the fire pit. She was thick and unimpressive, the scowl she sent in their direction falling short of intimidating; it just seemed a part of her, like it was her natural expression. But the long metal bar in her hand, that was intimidating. She shoved it into the fire, leaving it there until the tip turned bright orange. When she pulled it out he couldn’t look away from the odd shape at the end of it.

  He didn’t understand at first. He knew something bad was coming from that glowing metal bar but there was nothing to prepare him for what she intended. When the men appeared on either side of him, grabbing his arms and pressing him down, it didn’t immediately register that their actions were connected with her. When she reached down to place her free hand into the middle of his back, pinning him against the floor, things slammed into place. His struggles and screams came far too late and accomplished nothing. And when she pressed the cherry metal against the flesh of his right shoulder, his world exploded in scorching white fire.

  Seventeen

  Kaie only knew he passed out when he was woken up. Cold water fell down on him, thrusting him back into consciousness with sputtering and flailing. His hair…but no. This water didn’t itch. And there wasn’t any left, in any case.

  The woman and her metal bar were occupied at the fire pit. Of the other boys, only two were still standing, all blood drained from their faces. He was grateful, in a grim way, that he was first and wasn’t enduring that extra torment.

  One of the two men was standing over him now, bucket in one hand and a thin white cloth in the other. Seeing that he was awake the man tossed him the latter. Kaie nearly mistook it for a towel. Though it was made out of the same material as his new pants, it wasn’t at all the right shape for clothing. While it was more or less the right size for a shirt, there was only one part that could be considered a sleeve.

  When he sat there staring at it rather than put it on the man grew irritated. A moment later the cloth was yanked out of his hands and shoved down over his head. He winced as the fabric brushed against his right shoulder, but he refused to cry out again. The man’s twisted smile seemed to be waiting for just that and he wasn’t going to give the satisfaction.

  The shirt was odder than he initially realized. He was correct in his estimate. There was only one sleeve. The neck simply continued on to swallow his arm and half his chest, leaving them bare.

  Done with him, the man moved on to the next boy. Kaie was left with nothing to do but watch as one after the other each boy was treated to the same as he was. The last two boys received the searing metal against their right shoulders and he was subjected to the scent of melting flesh once again.

  It was finished in short order. Each boy was handed a pair of soft shoes. Then they were all being pulled back to their driven out the door like the cattle. Once again Kaie was first out and held by the arm with a grip that brooked no argument.

  At the front of the building he was handed off to a scowling woman wearing a shirt and pants like his own. The cut of the shirt was a bit different, covering her chest more effectively than his own, but otherwise they were the same. Not like the other men and women handling them thus far.

  The woman appraised him with an unattractive squint and a sniff of irritation. “You’re Kaie then?”

  It was making him nervous, how concerned they all were with his identity. No one else was getting charcoal on their foreheads or being asked their names. But what was the use in lying now? He nodded.

  She sniffed again then scooped up two bags from the ground and dropped them into his arms. One of them smelled distinctly of meat and set his mouth watering. The woman gestured to her left. “Stand there. You lot are hard to tell apart when you first get out.”

  Kaie did as he was told, waiting patiently while she handed out two bags to each of the other boys. Then she grabbed his arm, just like the others before her, and steered the line away from the building.

  He didn’t see much of the place. There were some buildings in the distance to the north and a clump of trees too organized to be natural to the southwest. Most of what he saw was massive fields of corn and wheat – ones that took his breath away. The woman didn’t give him much of a tour. She marched them past the wheat field, to the east.

  The whole area was a mockery of a village. Homes, twelve of them, built into a large stone hill. They were all built out of a shoddy, pale wood that looked for all the world like it was pieced together in an hour. Only two walls for each building, the back of the houses using the hill and the front covered up by large, worn animal skins. There were odd stone constructions, looking a lot like the strange tunnel coming out of the fire pit in the room he just left. There were two for each house, one on either end, and a few of them were spewing out smoke.

  There was a well between the sixth and seventh. The road leading to it from either direction was little more than mud. There were small patches of green between some of the homes. He couldn’t see for sure but they looked like gardens. Sad, small little gardens.

  The woman directed him to the first house.

  “This is East Field,” she said to the group. “This is where you live. You’ve got food for half a month. You will not receive more until that time is up. Don’t ask for it. Don’t steal from your housemates or anyone else. Don’t leave your homes unless someone comes to get you. Don’t fight and don’t burn down your homes. I am Boss Josephine. If you need anything, find me. Don’t need anything.”

  Then she shoved him through the hide wall of the first building.

  It was even smaller inside than out. A big part of that was because the building was divided by a shoddy birch screen and some carefully hung blankets. But he didn’t doubt it would be a small space regardless. There was hardly room for two people to lie down. For the first time, Kaie was grateful that he was small.

  Across the room a form stirred. He didn’t notice the unconscious body when he first took in the space, but he couldn’t miss it now. He didn’t recognize her when she first crawled out from underneath the four blankets. Her head was bald and all the color was leeched out, leaving her skin as pallid as the strange clothes they were both wearing. But when she turned her dark hazel eyes on him Kaie saw all the features he spent his childhood memorizing. “Amorette!”

&nbs
p; Her eyes filled with tears and in an instant she was on her feet and flying into his arms. He folded her in against his chest, noticing the painful pull in his shoulder and taking great care to avoid hers. For a while they just stood like that. He felt her tears spilling onto his new shirt and the shudders running through her small frame as she cried but there was no sound to accompany them.

  He wished he could cry with her. It felt wrong that he wasn’t. She was mourning their family, their lives. He should be joining her. Sojun surely would be in his place. But Kaie couldn’t summon up the tears. They weren’t there. He was just empty.

  She pulled away slowly. He would happily keep her wrapped up in his arms. Maybe forever. But he could see the questions on her face, in her eyes. Stupid of him, to think he would be enough. That she wouldn’t ask the question that would rip him up all over again. And then she would hate him, because he couldn’t even manage to cry.

  “Where is he? She told me…That woman who came to see me, with the big dress, she said she would give me Sojun if I cooperated. She said she wanted you. I didn’t think…”

  Kaie dropped his gaze. “He took my place. She came for me. Like she told you. But he wouldn’t let me go. He made her take him instead.” He should tell her the rest, the part where he was offered the chance to give the two of them some small piece of happiness. The part when he hesitated. The part where he didn’t stop it.

  He didn’t need to tell her. Amorette knew. He could hear it in the way her breathing caught, the way she leaned away from him, the way she pulled back into herself. She knew them both, better than anyone else. Better than they knew themselves. Jun said it all the time. He was right.