Benjamin Tate - Well of Sorrows

“No food,” one of the guards said gruffly. “And no water.”

His mother shot him a glare. Colin couldn’t see it, but he could feel it in the way her hand stilled against his face.

And then his father pulled her back, crouched down on his heels and took Colin’s chin in his rough hands, leaning far enough forward that Colin could meet his eyes. “You’ll be fine, Colin. It’s only a day. Remember that. It’s only a day.”

Colin couldn’t read what else he meant, what he sensed his father was trying to say, but he nodded anyway, blinking back the sudden inexplicable tears.

His father released him and stood. Without saying a word to the rest of those gathered, he put his arm around Colin’s mother and led her away, heading back toward Lean-to. The rest mumbled amongst themselves, shaking their heads or narrowing their eyes at the guards, before breaking away.

Karen was dragged away by her father.

Colin kept his head raised for the first hour, so that the wood didn’t cut off his breathing. But his neck and shoulders began to ache, until eventually he couldn’t hold his head up any longer, and he slumped forward, turning so his throat wouldn’t rest on the lock itself. His wrists began tingling, the lock cutting off the circulation to his fingers. He twisted them in place, the holes large enough he had room to wriggle, and that helped. But the armholes were raised slightly, not quite in line with his neck, and soon he could feel his upper arms tingling with numbness, the sensation gradually seeping down toward his elbows.

The afternoon heat began to settle in. He could feel the lock against the back of his neck, could feel the sweat gathering between his shoulder blades, sliding down the curve of his back, beneath his arms to his chest. It dripped from his forehead, from his nose, slid into his eyes where it stung and touched his lips with salt. Flies buzzed around his head, landed with tickling feet on his hands, on his face, and he couldn’t brush them away. A prickling sensation began in his shoulders, the sudden need to move, to shift position, to scratch or fidget, spreading from a tingling itch into an incessant urge.

He began to struggle.

A small movement at first. A shifting of the arms that sent sheets of pain up through his elbows and into his wrists. He’d left his arms hanging loose for too long. They’d gone completely numb. The sensation was maddening, and so he shifted his seat on the stump And almost screamed, white hot pain flaring in the small of his back. He jerked away from it, his shoulders hitting the lock, rattling the bar over his neck. He hissed as his muscles protested, screaming from his neck all the way down to the base of his spine. He tried to straighten, to relieve the tension there, but was brought up short by the lock.

He cried out, a short, sharp sound.

And then he began to flail. Anger coursed through the frustration, through the stinging of the sweat and the ache of muscles. Anger at Walter, at the Proprietor, at Portstown, at his father for dragging them across the Diermani-cursed Arduon to this bloody coast. He gritted his teeth and thrashed in the lock, jerked back and forth, the wood creaking, a growl starting low in his throat, catching fire with the anger and growing, rising into a bellow of rage as he fought the lock, as it refused to budge. Fresh sweat plastered his shirt and breeches to his sides, stuck tendrils of hair to his forehead. He threw himself back and forth, tortured muscles seizing, cramping, sending white-hot flares through his calves, his sides, his neck and thighs. Jaw clenched, the bellow rose into a cracked roar, rose higher still as he heaved against his constraints And then it broke, trailing down into broken sobs as he collapsed against the lock, heaving, exhausted, sweat streaming from his chin.

When he’d calmed himself, he heard one of the guards chuckling, the sound low, barely audible. Colin tensed, breathing harshly through his nose.

The niggling sensation in his back hadn’t gone away.

He struggled with the lock twice more before sunset, tried to break free, to move, and each time he collapsed at the end in exhaustion, his roar of hatred dying down into painful sobs. When the guards laughed the third time, he didn’t even react. He was too tired. His throat was raw, his mouth dry. It tasted of dirt and sweat, sour with dust.

Night fell, and with it the temperature. The patrol that had stood around him all day decreased to a single guard. Colin didn’t think he could sleep in such an awkward position, but around midnight he woke to someone whispering his name.

“Colin. Colin, it’s me, Karen.”

He moaned, blinked his eyes against the moonlit darkness, tried to shift his head but cried out at the twinge in his neck. “Karen?” he croaked, the name nothing more than a wheeze.

“Yes.” Her hands touched his face, his cracked lips. She swore, her hands retreating, returning again with a wet cloth. She scrubbed at the sweat and dirt that had dried against his skin, the pressure increasing as she grew angry.

“Guard,” he managed in warning, and heard someone else kneeling down beside Karen, could barely pick out the second figure in the darkness.

“I found her watching during the day, from the corner of one of the mercantiles,” the guard said, and Colin recognized the unshaven guard’s voice. “Told her to come back tonight, while I was on duty.”

Colin would have wept, but Karen set the cloth aside and produced a skin filled with water. “Here,” she said, tipping it up and squeezing it, a stream of water splashing Colin in the face. “Drink.”

Colin swallowed as much of the water as he could, greedily, most of it dribbling off his chin to the dusty ground below. He drank as if he hadn’t had water in months. It tasted sweet. Cold and wet and delicious.

Until his stomach started to cramp.

“Careful,” the guard said, his hand pulling the skin away a moment before Colin puked everything he’d just drunk into the dirt. Spasms shook Colin’s body, aches shooting warning pangs through his stomach, back, and shoulders.

When the urge to vomit subsided, the guard said, “Now let him drink again, but slowly this time. And not too much. He won’t be able to keep it down otherwise.”

Karen wiped Colin’s face again, then let him drink again. She took the skin away before he was ready. Satisfied, the guard grunted, then stood. Colin heard him moving away in the dark.

Water sloshed as Karen set the skin aside. He heard her settling back onto her heels. Her voice was further away when she spoke.

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?” he asked, his throat still raw, voice gravelly.

“Did you attack Walter?”

He would have shifted uncomfortably if he hadn’t been closed up in the lock. He wanted to lie to her, tell her it was a mistake.

“Yes,” he said finally, and hung his head.

He expected her to leave. He expected her to be disappointed with him, as his mother had been.

Instead, she shifted forward, raised his head, and after a careful moment, leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

It was awkward, and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

When Karen withdrew, Colin blushed. He listened as she began to gather up the cloth, the waterskin, her motions quick, nervous. She stood.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, when they release you,” she said.

She hesitated a moment, then left, footsteps receding in the darkness.

He fell back asleep with his cheeks still burning.

And woke hours later, abruptly, when someone punched him on the back of the head, hard. He cried out, jerked back, forgetting that he was trapped in the lock. Wood brought him up short, scraping his wrists, his neck, drawing blood. He spat a curse, one he’d heard his father using on a regular basis. Someone laughed, was joined by a few others. Colin listened carefully, picked out four people in the darkness.