Rough hands and bayonets force us out of the car and onto a platform. A vacant track across the way is overshadowed by far-off mountains rimmed with what look to be pine trees. We seem to be on the edges of a city within Kalykan borders. An aged ivory-colored stone rampart, partially obscured by our train, sits behind us. There are hundreds of people disembarking from a dozen cars all along the line of the train yard. Each person emerges, blinks rapidly at the first light they’ve experienced in days, and hops down onto the gravel.
A Caican guard stands every few fathoms, guns held at the ready. They are lined up like fence posts, dressed identically with light gray trousers and navy jackets. They nudge and prod us toward some distant goal, their rifles pointed skyward.
“Where are we?” A woman’s voice permeates the air in a panic. “Give us the name of this place.”
There is no time to even listen for a response before we are swallowed by a throng of thousands packed together so tightly that I feel a constant pressure in my chest. I am propelled from every side toward the front of the train, and yet more unfortunate souls join our retinue with each moment. Every time we pass a new cattle car, I’m reminded of a kicked anthill with an endless stream of ants pouring out to join the procession.
I grab Emily’s and Sarah’s hands.
We are temporarily relieved of some pressure when an old man in front of us trips and is trampled. The sounds and confusion are loud enough that his screams can’t be heard.
What must Emily be feeling? With only four senses to draw from, is the horror of this experience somehow lessened? Does she even understand what’s happening? I peek toward her and immediately realize my folly.
She’s terrified. Tears stream down her pallid face.
And why wouldn’t she be? She views the world from my hip. Everything must look larger to her. What I perceive as maybe a thousand souls herded together, she perceives as millions.
A pair of Kalykan soldiers—each with a snarling, snapping dog on a leash—approaches, and the throng parts.
“Two lines,” one of the dog-wielding soldiers says. “Men to this side. Women and children to this side.”
He delivers these lines unperturbed, as if they he has recited them a hundred different times.
“We will not let them separate us,” Sarah hisses, then tightens her grip on my hand.
I stare with incredulity as a man throws himself to the feet of the approaching soldiers, pleading, “Please, let my son come with me. He’s just a child. My wife is gone.”
The way he suddenly falls to the ground frightens the dogs. With tails wagging and hackles raised, they snap at the man, who jerks back in response.
Reining in his dog, one of the soldiers glares at the man and reiterates the instruction: “Men to this side. Women and children to that side.”
I spy the top of a distant chimney puffing smoke behind our train and, upon further inspection, notice the checkerboard pattern of buildings and streets. Where is this? Where have the Kalykans taken us?
“Nolan, are you listening to me?”
I’m in shock. My tongue feels fat in my dry mouth, and I choke on my words, unable to respond.
A short distance ahead, there are a little over a dozen soldiers with repeating rifles who are flanked by a woman on horseback. She whittles away at a piece of wood, shaping it to look like a bird.
The horsewoman is dressed differently than the soldiers. Her gray pants are tucked neatly into nearly knee-high riding boots the shade of black butcher paper. Her white shirt is striking against the backdrop of despair. A flash of gentle purity but a stark contrast to the night-black lavaliere around her neck. But, really, it’s her grip that gives her a frightening look. She grasps her wooden project with licorice-colored gloves and furrows her brow in concentration. I wonder if the little piece of wood will snap in her hand.
Behind the horsewoman and mass of soldiers, I spy a crossroads where our fellow conscripts are divided. One path veers into the city, where all the women and the young are being marched. The other line continues forward, toward another train sitting parallel to ours. Men are being forced into it, and it’s upon seeing this that fear prompts a hard question I’ve been trying to avoid: How am I going to keep my family together?
“Nolan, you aren’t listening,” my wife snaps, but I don’t want to say anything until I know what to say, until I’m struck with a brilliant idea. It’s going to come. It must.
Something that will take my family and I to safety.
A sudden pull at my left hand makes me realize my daughter wants me to let her go.
I sternly shake my head no, but she uses her one free hand to attempt to communicate. It starts at her belly button and gestures upward and then outward: Separate?
I realize that I am one of the only men standing in a line full of women and children.
How is this even real? How can a place like this even exist? Families are being stripped from one another. Why hadn’t anyone warned us?
My legs are shaking.
I’m shoved from behind, and all I smell is a rancid odor coming from an angry voice.
“You’re going to get us all killed,” says a weathered-looking woman driven by the fury of the situation. But before I can respond, my wife holds up a finger to her and looks at me.
“You’re not leaving us, Nolan.”
But the realization has always been there deep inside, from the moment they stuffed us in the train: this was always going to be our destination.
“Maybe she’s right. I can’t put you or Emily at risk.” I feel my heart rending as I say the words. They feel like a betrayal.
“Nolan, you are not leaving us. Do you understand me? You’re not!”
This incites a rage within the woman behind us. “If he doesn’t leave,” she says, defiantly, “I’m going to call the guard.”
“Shut your mouth, you old hag!” My wife is all too happy to meet this threat with rage of her own. “And mind your own damned business.”
My daughter, with years of experience picking up on my wife’s mannerisms, notices that something is amiss. Her eyes dart between her mother and me. I try to calm her by signing, It’s all right.
It doesn’t work.
The haggard woman is on the cusp of yelling for the guard when an even louder voice at the head of the line takes precedence.
“I won’t let you take them!” a man screams at a young-looking soldier. “You can’t tear us apart. You’ll have to shoot me, you bastard.”
Behind him stands what I assume to be his wife, who cradles a boy on the precipice of tears with his arms wrung tightly around his mother’s chest. The woman slowly strokes the boy’s chestnut hair, but I can’t be sure who is comforting whom.
The soldier responds to the man’s harassment by menacingly raising his repeating rifle into a firing position. But this just antagonizes the distressed father, who in turn urges the procession of ragged bodies to attack the armed guards.
“We can take them! We outnumber them,” he shouts. “Let the world learn of Kalyko and how they treat those they conquer. They can’t kill us all; come on!”
The argument draws the attention of the dozen soldiers populating the area, and they set about raising their rifles to their shoulders. Some point them at the man causing the commotion. Others point them at my family and me. Across the open area, the horsewoman hasn’t even looked up from her carving.
The crowd recoils, anticipating a shot, and there’s a moment where I find myself caught between the dread of too many people. Those at the front of the line push backward to distance themselves from the troublemaker. Those at the back push forward, unaware of the violence that awaits them.
The man at the center of the conflagration continues his desperate hollering. One of the soldiers, a lean man with sunken eyes, brings the muzzle of his rifle to touch the man’s chest. The father’s reaction is immediate: using his straightened right hand, the father swats the rifle away and, in the same motion, grasps the barrel of the weapon. He pivots his left leg between the soldier’s groin and kicks upward. The Kalykan falls to his knees and lets out a yelp as his weapon is removed. Not missing a beat, the man straddles the Kalykan and rains down aggressive blows with the butt of the rifle.
Yet it isn’t the sound of pummeling that catches my ear, but rather the subtle jingle of spurs behind us. I realize the horsewoman is absent from her horse. Seemingly appearing from the shadows, she grabs the collar of the man and tosses him aside with ease. The motion is so sudden, fluid, and effortless that even the Kalykan soldiers flinch in response.
It doesn’t seem possible. She moved so quickly that not even her own men were aware of her presence until after she had disarmed the threat. The woman approaches the stunned prisoner, places a knee on his neck, and holds his right arm between her legs. A pathetic gurgle fills the air.
“Remove his weapon,” she calmly commands the soldiers.
More silence.
“Now.”
The stern word serves as a starting point for time to begin again, and the Kalykan soldiers rush to do as they’re told.
The young soldier—the original owner of the repeater—pushes himself off the ground, eyes dark with hatred. It looks like someone had rearranged his nose sideways. The Kalykan painfully looks about for his weapon and, finding it in the hands of a peer, snatches it away with a curse. He shuffles over to where the horsewoman has the father pinned to the ground, stumbling a few times, and aims his rifle at the man’s exposed head.
The bark of the shot echoes in the sky; a red dot appears in the prisoner’s forehead.
A howl of outrage and pain pierces my ears, and I witness both the murdered man’s wife and boy fall to the ground, overcome with grief. The sound is so primal that all who hear it instantly know it for what it is.
“Shut them up.” The Kalykan is pointing at the pair to emphasize his meaning, but no one moves. All are still cautiously eying the horsewoman. Her knee remains at the neck of the dead man. Did she even flinch at the sound of the rifle crack?
I see a blur of movement: obsidian-colored flashes of a glove wrapping around the Kalykan’s throat. The horsewoman lifts him a few feet into the air and effortlessly slams him to the dirt. Somewhere at the end of the motion, she had drawn a knife and now holds it to the man’s neck.
“I did not order you to do that,” she growls.
The Kalykan struggles to get free, but she just pushes the knife down harder on his throat and applies more pressure.
“Have mercy,” the Kalykan manages.
“That option was taken from you when you shot him.” She points to the body with her free hand.
The Kalykan’s eyes widen, like he’s found some truth new to the world. The woman takes her free hand and applies more pressure on the blade. She grits her teeth, and I watch as the Kalykan’s legs flail; the knife cuts him deeper than he’s probably ever been cut before.
“Cass!” A new shout pierces the air.
A man with the same livery, black gloves, and steel-toed knee-high boots rides toward us atop a chestnut mare, stopping just short of the horsewoman. His voice is raspier than you would expect from someone his age, but there’s a clear familiarity between the two as he sits forward in his saddle.
“What’s all this?” He gestures broadly toward the scene.
She relieves the pressure of the knife on the Kalykan’s throat, and somehow, against all odds, I realize he’s still alive.
“Well?” urges the new rider. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”
The horsewoman begins to stand, but digs her bootheel into the downed soldier’s hand. A loud crunch can be heard as she ascends.
“Ah, you fucking bitch!”
She pays the insult no mind and turns to answer the new rider’s question.
“The usual military incompetence,” she grunts, clicking her blade back into its sheath.
The Kalykan scrambles backward awkwardly. He can’t decide whether to clutch his throat or cradle his broken hand. He looks like some sort of creature you would encounter in a children’s story that warns not to make a deal with the troll underneath a bridge. Crooked nose. Broken hand. Bloody throat.
A soldier nearby tears a rag off the back of his foraging cap and moves to place it on the Kalykans neck.
“We’ve been summoned,” the new rider says to the horsewoman. “The big man wants a word with us.”
The horsewoman stalks back toward her prey. She stares at the downed soldier and allows the moment to stretch. She’s like a snake hypnotizing its kill. The Kalykan can’t do anything but clench his teeth and tremble. Blood continues to leak from his face and neck, dripping to the ground. The compress he was given is now painted crimson. When it seems like the moment can’t go on any longer, she pierces it by whistling. Her horse trots over. It must be at least sixteen hands tall and served her purpose if she meant to intimidate the man. She grabs its reins without looking behind.
“I’ve memorized your face. The way you stand. The way you cower. Pray you do not cross me again.”
And with that, she mounts her horse and gallops away, alongside the other rider.
It doesn’t take long for the line to start moving again. I look at my wife, wanting to drink in what I believe will be our last moments together, but she’s occupied, trying to calm Emily.
My daughter points to the body of the murdered man and holds her left hand flat, gently tapping it with her right index finger. She seamlessly transitions this into a motion where she turns both of her index fingers like a screw and then slaps her chest with a flattened hand: Will this happen to me?
No, baby bear, my wife signs back, shaking her head worriedly. Your father and I won’t allow that to happen.
She picks Emily up in the way only a mother can and looks to me expectantly. But before I have a chance to fill the silence, the putrid odor of the old woman’s breath behind me fills my nostrils.
“Guard. Another one, here. Come here,” she calls, viscously pointing at me, her index finger jabbing through the air like a meaty pike.
Blunt pain at the back of my knees makes me see white. I’m shoved to the ground as my arms are restrained. The filth below rushes up at me as my head smashes into it. Dirt finds its way into my right eye and the canyons of my face. I feel the weight of a gun muzzle pressed against my back. In mere seconds, two more Kalykan soldiers rush to their comrades’ sides, pinning me to the ground. They kick up dust as they run, and I wonder if this will be my last image in life: my wife and daughter being dragged away through the dirt.
“Nolan!”
I hear my wife scream my name. Her cry is animalistic and brutal. From the corner of my ruined vision, I become aware of two little feet running toward me. Emily! No!
A soldier clubs my daughter in the gut with the stock of his rifle, and she hits the ground in an unnatural way. She rolls around, hands grabbing at air that doesn’t come.
I sob in the dirt. The sound that escapes my throat is wet and piteous. The names of my daughter and wife are made unrecognizable by blind fury and bottomless grief.
Around us the separation continues. Hundreds of pairs of feet pass us by, and I feel angry that no one offers us assistance. A fifth soldier approaches.
“Enough. We’re already behind schedule, and I don’t want more bodies to clean up today.”
“He was in the wrong line, sir. He could be a threat,” a young voice responds.
The fourth soldier takes a moment to look me over and then approaches. A boot presses down fiercely on my back, and I feel him tug upward on my pants.
“Does this look like a man willing to rebel to you?”
I realize I’ve pissed myself. Slowly, I feel the pressure of the muzzle on my back dissipate.
Freed, I crawl on bloodied hands and knees toward my daughter, who is now too frightened to move. I point toward my chest, gesture both of my hands in quick horizontal chopping motions, and transition that into pointing my right index finger toward my eye and then back to my daughter: I’ll come for you!
With Emily, it’s her hands, the way she effortlessly moves them from one sign to the next, that are the windows to her heart. It’s always been her hands. I feel at times watching her that I am witnessing perfection, so it becomes alarming when that moment of perfection becomes infected with sorrow and she signs, Don’t leave me, Daddy.
My collar is suddenly tugged, and I’m pulled away from Emily at the same time my wife arrives to collect my beautiful little girl.
I look to the soldier responsible for our predicament and realize he’s barely more than a boy. Maybe sixteen or seventeen.
“Please. Please.” I’m reduced to begging. “Just let me say goodbye.”
Frustration wears on his face, and there’s a moment where I think I’ve made a mistake in asking for this kindness. To my surprise, he allows it.
“Make it quick.” He half turns. It’s the biggest gesture of civility I have been allowed since capture.
There are no words that can express all that I want to say. It dawns on me that this might be the last moment I see either of them. This might be their last memory of me. I pull them into a hug and kiss both of their heads. I can feel their spirits break realizing the inevitability of our separation. The initiation of my kiss is what does it. I am the first to acknowledge that all hope is gone, and like domini tiles , their willpower folds.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a handkerchief. It’s embroidered with the emerald initials of my cobbler shop: It isn’t much, but maybe when times grow dark, they can look at this and find some solace.
I press it into my daughter’s hands and watch as she caresses the embroidered letters. With my left thumb, I touch my forehead and bring it down to connect it with my right thumb. I point at myself: To help you find me again.
I continue to sign so the Kalykan boy that watches me won’t understand. I’m going to find you. I pore into both of their eyes, ensuring they see my conviction. No matter how long it takes. No matter where you are. I’ll find you and take you to someplace safe.
The young soldier has had enough and interrupts the moment by snatching the handkerchief out of my daughter’s hands to inspect it. She grabs for it, but he just pushes her to the ground, like a hound quashing a young puppy who doesn’t yet know its boundaries.
It upsets me in a way I can’t quite put words to, and this anger must show on my face, for the young soldier, with a look of contempt, throws the handkerchief to the ground and advances on me.
The first blow of his rifle across my forehead hurts less than I was expecting it to. The second, third, and fourth blows are where the pain truly begins. By the fifth, I drift into darkness.