D. MacHale - Black Water

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.”

“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.”

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.