There’s nothing but peace as I sway back and forth. I’m in the saddle of a horse. The wind parts for us as we thunder past farmhands working the field. The horse is eager to go faster, but I must rein him in for fear of Emily losing her grip on my midsection.
I become lost to the moment and the rhythm of the gallop. I feel like I am a child on a great oak bough, being rocked gently by Mother Spring’s gentle breezes.
Slightly forward …
Slightly backward …
The glimmer of the lake shimmers on the horizon to the north. I promised Emily that so long as she finished her chores, she could swim with the other children. When the lake finally pierces my vision, I turn, expecting her to grace me with a smile, but she’s gone. All I feel is agony pressing on me from every direction. A cruel claustrophobia. Nameless suffering in the pit of my stomach.
I awaken to a scream. A rough hand covers my mouth.
“You’re all right,” a voice says to me in the darkness.
The screaming abruptly stops. There’s a wetness behind my ears, and I realize I’m bleeding. It feels like someone is repeatedly stabbing me in the eye. The source of my pain exists on the right side of my forehead. I can’t see the gash, but it’s like my heart pumps blood just to leak it out.
The rumbling seesaw of movement feels familiar. I’m on a train. Again. There’s more light this time as it seeps through boards not properly laid into the walls. It’s like the light pierces my very skull. As it flickers though the boards, so, too, does it seem to flicker through my head. I can’t tell if the train is passing something or if my vision is that badly damaged.
The energy it takes just to assess my surroundings drains me. With every rattling clack, I move farther away from my heart. Emily, Sarah. Where are you? What city were we in? My eyes close, and I take solace in the blackness that comes before I drift to that deeper place, where torment can’t affect me. A painless utopia. It does not happen suddenly. Rather, it’s like the tide, a gradual onset so minuscule that even if I tried to pay attention, I’d miss it.
I do not dream. There’s nothing to dream of. No memory. No worries. No pain. No existence. Just the comfort of the void.
The primal sound of hammering coaxes me from my consolation. There are other sounds blended in the background, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re just noise lacking the definitive clang of the hammer. My mind focuses on the notes, as if I can see the sparks created the moment it strikes its quarry.
The pounding of my head springs forth with each new clang, and the rest of my body slowly comes to life. I’m standing. No, I’m being held up by a man whose grip provides strength my legs cannot. We’re moving again, but not on the train. He’s holding me up, and we’re walking in rocky dirt.
I stare at the man, trying to adjust my eyes, and I can tell he’s saying something to me, but his voice just blends in to the sounds. All I hear is the sledgehammer.
One turns to two, two to three, then dozens. They sound different. Some fall hard while others fall soft. You can hear the contrast in the notes they make.
“Where are they?” I try to speak out loud. Instead, all that my lungs can suffice is a breathy sound that no human would be able to make sense of.
The man who holds me gently starts to shake me. I can tell he’s trying to get me to pay attention, but I do not understand his words.
That’s when I see them, nearer to the horizon than to me: hundreds of men working on an unfinished railroad that snakes between rounded, yellow-green hills. Some men lift sledgehammers over their heads and strike downward with force. Others use shovels to pack dirt in the necessary spots. They’re all dressed the same: plain white shirts with beige, muddy pants. Kalykan guards sit atop horses to watch their progress, like vultures after a host of soon-to-be carcasses.
“I can’t keep holding you up forever,” a voice says to me.
I must be in a nightmare. Once again, I stand in the heart of a line packed with probably a hundred souls. All look to be men. The line snakes though the entrance of a crumpled city freshly bombed with canons. What’s left of the curtain walls fills me with a certain sadness. They look to harken back to the ancient times of Ghent, remnants that somehow remained untouched for thousands of years. But before I’m able to adjust my eyes, the man who holds me suddenly lets me go, and like a waterfall, I collapse.
“Seasons damn it,” he says with an annoyed tint to his voice.
I try to stand, but my feet disobey me. It’s not that they don’t work; they’re just slower than I’m accustomed to, spurred on by a disconnect between my mind and body. I can feel those in line behind me closing in. Growing tired of the charade, the man helps me up.
“I swear if they shoot me because I’m helping you …”
Yet his actions contradict his words, as he is kind enough to lend me his shoulder for stability. I’m about to thank him, but a greater fear takes precedence. Sarah. Emily.
“What’s the name of the city we just came from?” I try to gesture to the train. But again, my words come out broken, and the question flows past him. With my vision almost back to normal, I see that he’s an older gentleman with green eyes. He’s almost completely bald, the only remaining remnants of gray hair sprouting from the sides of his head.
“Where am I?”
His brow furrows in concentration as he listens intently to my question. “The front,” he says, looking around, clearly worried to be talking to me.
“What? What front? The city, what was the name of the city where they split us from our families?”
Frustration creeps into his features, giving him the look of a weathered father tired of being asked the same question by a child. “I don’t know. I just saw you were going to be left behind on the train, so I grabbed you. If you can’t get off the train, they just shoot you.”
I’m about to ask another question, but he continues.
“Look, the best thing you can do right now is shut your mouth, open your ears, and keep your eyes straight ahead.”
We’ve made it into the broken teeth of the fallen city, and I see that it’s not just buildings that have been bombed out, but people as well. Men wearing white shirts move hurriedly throughout the skeleton of the city, working together to pick up fallen bodies underneath the rubble from the bombardment.
A pair closest to us lift a vacant-eyed woman not much older than my wife. As they carry her past, I can’t help but look into her lifeless gaze. It’s like someone took away the thing that made her human and replaced it with emptiness. The burden of the body proves to be too heavy, and one of them accidentally drops her near a group of Kalykan soldiers who sit smoking and drinking coffee.
“You spilled my coffee, prisoner. You know what that’s going to cost you?” One of the soldiers stands, hand reaching for his bayonetted gun. These soldiers are different from the ones that I saw in the city where my family was taken. Whereas the ones we saw previously wore fresh uniforms of bright colors, these wear near-identical blue-and-gray garb, save their foraging caps, which they have swapped with helmets. Most of their helmets have been pocked and dented by bullet holes.
The men with the white shirts find themselves on their knees, begging for forgiveness. I’m unable to catch the end of the exchange because we continue our trek through the destitute city. The line does not follow a road. Rather, there is no road that can be seen; it has been completely blanketed with shattered pieces of wood and brick.
About every ten fathoms, a group of soldiers sits together. Two, usually. Sometimes three. Some try to sleep while others drape blankets over their shoulders, rifles peeking out.
A sharp pop echoes into the sky, and the progress of our line is immediately stalled. I follow my gray-haired savior’s eyes back to where the white-shirted prisoner dropped the body and realize he’s been executed.
“Keep moving,” a soldier who oversees our line hollers at us.
“You need to walk on your own now, lad,” says my savior. His face is showing signs he’s clearly strained from my weight. To my surprise, I find that I’m able to stand on my own now, though the man who has been helping me hovers behind me like my shadow in case I can’t make it. Each step hurts, like I have glass wedged between my toes.
“What’s your name?” I ask my savior.
“Caleb.”
“My wife,” I manage. “And my daughter …”
This line of inquiry irks Caleb.
“Stop,” he hisses. “Don’t draw attention to yourself. And if you must, do me the kindness of not drawing attention to me.”
Someone must know where they are. I need to think. There needs to be some identifying landmark that I can use to help jog my captured countrymen’s memories.
But all I remember is the look on my daughter’s face as the handkerchief I gave her was snatched from her hands.
Think, dammit. I need to think. That woman. That disgusting old woman who screamed to the guards. This is her fault. I hope they kill her.
I feel shame. The thought is hollow. Panic sets in. I tremble and become acutely aware of my heartbeat.
Why didn’t I pay better attention to the city?
A hand grasps my shoulder.
“The only thing you need to worry about right now,” Caleb says, “is standing on your own two feet.”
I look down and realize I’m barefoot.
What happened to my boots?
I take a quick look around and recognize that I’m the only person in line without any type of footwear. Someone stole them. My initial reaction is to scan Caleb, but he holds nothing in his hands. His own shoes are shoddy and full of holes.
What looks to be a Kalykan officer shouts orders to us as we approach a very large brick building that’s still somehow intact.
“When you get inside, strip off your clothing. Hold on only to your shoes.”
For the first time since regaining consciousness, I get an up close look at the conscripts in the white shirts, the ones not marching in our line. Something is odd about them. Each of them bears a mark on a different part of his body, though I’m unable to get a good look. They work with the Kalykans to usher us into the building. There’s a certain weariness to their actions. They won’t make eye contact with us and instead focus on whatever task to which they have been set.
As we come closer and closer to the building, I notice that the men in our line are removing their clothes before entering. The clothes are tossed into two piles at the base of the building. New jackets, sweaters, and pants in one pile, and old garments that look like rags in the other.
The end is the same for us all: nakedness. Doing my best to not feel ashamed, I shiver, both from the beginnings of Brother Autumn’s chill and from the fear of what awaits in the building. Some choose to wear their shoes while meeting their fates, while others prefer to hold them in hand.
Upon entering the building, we become enveloped by darkness. Not true darkness, but it still shocks me when contrasted with the light outside.
My eyes adjust, and the candlelight from lanterns in the building reveals a long corridor. Yet where I expect there to be dozens of doors, there are none, save the one at the end of the hall.
Silence pervades, and my feet feel a cold slab beneath my toes. I bite my lip so that my teeth stop chattering.
Is that what’s happening here? Are the Kalykans leading us to our deaths?
It’s amazing to me that none of us even thinks to rebel when it seems like our lives might end. We come into this world bare, and it seems the Kalykans might make us leave it that way.
Forty more steps. I’m now close enough to see the door at the end of the corridor swing open. Each time it does, a soft hissing sound escapes, along with a man’s scream, and tendrils of smoke are illuminated by the light within. Then, two pairs of Kalykan hands appear from either side of the doorway, grab the next victim, and yank him into the room before the door slams shut. The whole thing brings to mind some great behemoth swallowing us, man by man.
Thirty more steps.
The door swings open again to claim its next victim; I hear a scream, accentuated by the shrill sound of wheezing.
Twenty more steps. Another scream.
I study the next man due to go through the breach and notice he holds a pair of boots in his right hand, and another pair of boots strung together by the laces are slung over his shoulder. My boots. Swanson’s made by my own two hands. I could never mistake them for someone else’s.
Anger rises within me. I’m moving toward him before I even realize what’s happening. It’s like my feet are moving on their own accord, even though my mind is telling them to stop.
Stripped men stare at me as I grunt past like some wounded soldier making his last stand, and eventually, I make it to the thief.
I move to grab my boots from his shoulder, but before I make contact, the door flies open and a charcoal odor causes me to recoil. I watch as two Kalykan soldiers steal my prize from me.
As they drag the thief into the room, the door swings back and forth like a pendulum. Each open swing hinting less and less what awaits inside.
Every fiber of my being tells me to retreat from this place, and I slowly back away. What was I thinking? Why didn’t I have this kind of courage when it mattered most?
A memory of the man with the hole in his head is summoned, and I realize that courage isn’t an asset. It’s better not to stand out, like Caleb said.
The man behind me pushes me after I accidentally collide with him.
Another scream.
I’m next. I’m at the front of the line.
Once again, the door swings open, and the two Kalykan soldiers grab me by the arms. They are opposites of one another: one is clean shaven and dark skinned, the other is fair and sports the onset of a bright red beard. The movement happens so quickly that I’m almost unable to process it. My natural reaction is to dig my feet into the ground, to use my heels as anchors so that I can fight against my fate, but the strength of these men is remarkable.
They drag me from the dark of the corridor to the light of the room, and my senses are overwhelmed.
The hissing is there, and I can feel the warmth of a fire on my face. A third figure stands with his back to me, and before he can turn to reveal his face, the other two slam my head onto a table, holding my wrists still at my sides.
“What do you reckon happened to his face?” The bearded one remarks.
“Dunno. Poor wretches. Makes you wonder why they don’t just have us kill them,” the clean shaven one responds. “I doubt this one makes it past a few weeks.”
The third figure moves over to what looks to be a large barrel of water and pulls a black branding iron from inside.
I recognize the symbol at the end of the iron—everyone in Ceneca would. It is the gammadon: the slave mark of ancient Kalykan lore. I struggle and flail in vain against the two soldiers.
“Keep him still,” the brander says.
He digs the branding iron into the embers, and I watch as the symbol gradually comes alive before my eyes with that orange glint only flames can provide. After what feels like an eternity, the one in charge of branding removes the white-hot metal from the fire. He shuffles behind me. I can feel the heat upon the back of my neck as the brander approaches.
The pain is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
I hear the searing sound a second before my skin first itches, then burns, then rips away. A blank patch of skin replaced by a mark of shame and bondage.
I can feel my skin stick to the branding iron as he peels it away from the back of my neck.
“There.” I can hear a perverse glee in his words. “Now you’re a proper prisoner.”