How do I also tell this kind of story without resorting to some of the things that I felt weren't where her story should take her? (ie. childhood sexual assault.) It's not that I fear writing about this topic, but rather the one thing I AM certain of is that this story hinges more around an understanding that even the more gentle aspects of slavery are wrong.
Not every slave in this world endures horrible abuse...and that simple fact is the terrible creeping insidiousness of the institution that she fights with later in her life. I imagine so many people brought up this example to her as to why she is foolish for wanting to abolish the whole institution as a successful business practice. Surely there are good masters and well-treated slaves that are exceptions to the rule? She was, for the most part, one of those exceptions and to this aspect she can speak most thoroughly.
I realized the answer to my writer's block was in the fact that this lack of understanding of the worst of things IS her flaw in this early stage of life. She dreams of better things even when she knows she should accept what she has. This kind of dreaming in this kind of life has consequences for everyone, not just herself.
Once I realized this, the story began to flow so much better!
RATING: G
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Djali tore from his chrysanthemum haunted dreams with a jerk, his head rung like a bell from someone wrenching him by the shoulders.
“Djali, wake up. Please!”
“Kallie…what?” He managed to ask, barely recognizing Kalara through the crust of sleep over his eyes. The resistance of his eyelids and the dimmed lamps above hinted at the ungodly hour it was.
She only turned, beckoning him with a strange quickness in her voice. “Just follow me. I have something to show you.”
Kalara led them through familiar work tunnels, a single pebble of a glowstone temporarily borrowed from a lantern lighting their way. Spinel wouldn’t be happy if he saw her with that, but the silent purposeful intent of her steps and the way she clutched his wrist and pulled him along as they walked made him think twice about poking fun at her. Even he knew when to be serious. She led them to a nook they often hid for mealtimes. The small, circular loop of an inlet carved from natural erosion was the perfect space to get away on a busy day. She stopped there, kneeling and running her hands across the cavern floor like a lunatic.
“Kallie, what are you…?” He didn’t have time to finish his question when her fingertips found the edge of the rock she’d been using as camouflage, pulling up the large piece of slate to reveal a cache dug into the floor.
Djali’s jaw dropped when it dawned on him what he was looking at. “You’ve been stealing food!?”
“Yes. Here and there in the market, from grocery trips, old food from stands. I’ve stashed enough for the both of us for a few weeks journey, by my count. Enough to reach the main route…” When she turned to him, her green eyes were wide and glistening in the dim light. “Djali…I can’t stay here. We have to go! I even have enough coin in here to bribe a driver…”
In truth, she’d been idly planning to escape. It had become her hobby. She’d been nursing a fantasy that one day the two of them might steal away and see the markets of Chiaroscuro and the crystals of the Glittering Desert together. It’d only been a child’s fantasy, but it comforted her to entertain it even just a little. But now? The thought of leaving had become a reality. In truth, she had no idea if the money she’d been gathering was enough to even tempt a driver. All she knew was that it was all she had in the world.
“Aaay…” Djali slapped his hands to his bedraggled dark hair, taken aback at first, but then he smiled and laughed. “You’re joking. Come ooon!”
“Please!” Kalara shook him again by the shoulders, her voice adamant. She caught his face in her hands and pressed her forehead to his, her body quivering with tears that stopped his smiling instantly. He saw the wet drops fall onto the stone below their feet.
“I can’t stay. You have to understand. Lady Sahlak lies. That place…it’s full of monsters!” The words poured out along with her tears. He’d never seen her so afraid, not even when she first arrived a fresh new slave sold to their master. Djali let her talk. He didn’t know what else to do. So shocked was he by the flood of emotion he’d never seen from her that it didn’t occur to him to offer the comfort of his hands on her shoulders till a few moments later.
“Spinel is going to sell me. I need to be gone before then. You know the tunnels best...” She took his cheeks in her hands and locked their gazes, Djali unable to escape her surety. “You have to come with me. Please! Please! I don’t know what else to do…”
He sighed heavily. What could he do? There was no saying no. He’d known her long enough to know when her mind was made up, but this was a dangerous path. They could be punished, sold off, or worse. He’d seen the worst of it with his own elder brother, the only kind of family he ever remembered having before he came to Spinel. His brother had stolen something valuable from their previous master and run away without him. Back then, he had been dead weight, too small to keep up with his brother.
Their previous master was nowhere near as kind as Spinel. The next morning, Djali was just old enough to remember his brother lashed to a post in the market square, nearly naked, and scourged in front of everyone. For days, they left him to starve till he was delirious and singing songs of repentance. He never saw him again after they took him down from the post.
From then on, Djali knew the good fortune of his survival. He wore a smile, content to find happiness in dark places with kinder masters others might dream of having once he came under Spinel’s ownership.
“Djali?” Kalara looked at him with pleading eyes, disturbed by his silence.
“No…” Came the quick answer just under his breath.
“Djali, please!” Kalara was wrenching his shoulders again.
“No…you don’t understand what they’ll do to you…” He spoke with such seriousness that belied his age, from a dark place he never liked to visit. His refusal set her to beating his chest haplessly. It hurt, but he took it anyways and finally contained her arms in a stern embrace. She shivered for a long time in his arms before she finally took a step back, her chin fixed, her eyes wild and adamant again.
“If you won’t go with me, I’ll go alone.” The emotion twisted in her brow, turning her sadness into anger. “…I know what they’ll do to me if I stay…and that’s enough! You’re the safe one. You’ve always been safe with Spinel. He likes you.” She didn’t mean for those words to be weapons, but they pierced him like daggers, anyways. Enough so that he winced at the accusation.
She turned to leave, probably to try to run away right then and there knowing her, but his hand whipped out of its own accord and caught her wrist.
“Wait…” He couldn’t believe what he was saying, but she was right. He did what he needed to do to be safe, to please a master who had been kinder to him than any other he’d known, to smile and make himself indispensable. In this, he had succeeded.
But what he couldn’t do was watch her leave with such hate for him, this rude, serious girl that had somehow become his best friend.
“Give me three days.” Djali pushed the words out with a heavy sigh, knowing that he was sealing his own fate. “I’ll plan the route.” If she had a chance, even a slim one, it was a better chance if he was with her.
He’d barely had time to finish speaking before Kalara had pounced on him with a hug so tight that it squeezed the breath from him. There weren’t any more words after that, only the two of them embraced quietly in the darkness for what seemed like an eternity.
“You’re getting tall, you know that?” Kalara sniffed, finding the nook of his shoulder was a nice place to lay her head and forget the world for awhile. They’d both grown in the time since she’d first come, her from the joyless, serious girl and him from the smiling, stupid boy.
When they finally let go, they were children no longer, any innocence they both had sacrificed to the utter acceptance of the horror that was their possible future. Djali only knew deep down that no matter what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be good, not that he could tell her that.
Did he ever have a choice in the first place? He wondered if this was the true power of women and smiled despite himself.
*
The next morning began as usual to the tone of the morning bell. The chatter of the Scraps followed a simple breakfast, a morning blessing from Spinel for good fortune, and the assignment of routes.
Djali fulfilled his duties as Spinel’s steward, fetching his books, minding his laundry, and paying extra special attention to the assignments of the schedules for the runners for the next work cycle. Sure enough, there would be the perfect opportunity to steal away into the outer tunnels if they could wait until the workers were exploring the sapphire deposits on the east side of the caldera, a good distance away from the route he had in mind for their escape.
Kalara cried tears of joy when he told her an opportunity had presented itself so soon. The sound of that happiness filled the void her words from before had left in him.
The bells continued the cycle of their day, chiming in mealtimes, break times, and yet another night. He could tell when he passed Kalara in the barracks that every day weighed on her like years.
“Do you believe we could be Dragons?”
The question caught him off guard as they huddled in the corner of Kalara’s stall before lights out. When he had no answer but a confused glance, Kalara continued.
“Auntie always said we could.” Kalara fiddled aimlessly with the charcoal between her fingers she’d used to adorn the wall across from them with crude drawings. “Before she sold me, she said I should ‘walk my path well’ so that the ‘next life will be kinder’. We could be Dragonborn, if we lived our lives well and did what she said.” She tossed the charcoal to the side, as if giving up on such childish decorations and dreams all at once. “…I think I’ll never be one, at this rate.”
“I don’t know…” He honestly didn’t. He never really had time to ponder religion with so much work to do. He couldn’t imagine what it might be like to be Dragonborn, one of heaven’s chosen. What would it be like to be rich and powerful with the ability to spout fire from his nose or control the rains or grow the tallest tree or suck the air out of a man’s lungs? Supernatural feats of wonders flitted through his imagination ending in no more than the sureness that they were just fantasies woven by devout little old ladies who told themselves that to sleep better at night.
“…do you think I’d make a good dragon?” Djali fluffed his hair so it stood up in the middle like a fin and turned to her.
She couldn’t help but laugh weakly, even as the tears squeezed from her eyes. She looked to her crude drawing of the sun and the crystals of the desert. “We’ll see them soon…” She said more to herself than to Djali, clinging to that hope.
The next day came the bells, the morning blessing, the supply assignments. Midday, however, Djali made his way to Spinel’s workroom just in time to catch Kalara’s name being spoken. Instead of entering, he hovered, unseen, by the entry.
“…such a shame to lose her. She had promise. A very quick learner, that girl.” Spinel sighed, frustrated and tight-jawed as ever. “Gather her contract and have it ready for tomorrow.”
When Spinel looked up to see who was at the entrance, there was no one.
Djali found Kalara at the end of her shift, his smile nonexistent as he pulled her aside.
“We’re leaving tonight.”
*
The echoes of the city cryers singing the farewell prayer to the Sun ushered in the evening. Street runners went by each glowstone lamp sliding the shutters closed to dim the cold lights. When darkness fell and Spinel and his workers blew out their last candles, the shadows of two children crept past the main workroom’s doorway. Djali knew their nightly routine enough to know the proper time to excuse himself to bed and retrieve Kalara.
They quietly crept to their lunch spot, gathering the supply cache in two bags, each of them carrying one across their shoulders so they could distribute the weight evenly and move as quickly as possible. Leaving a day early meant that camps set up around the perimeter hadn’t been moved to the far side yet. Security details patrolled the tunnels to make sure no thieves or saboteurs could meddle with the Iblan operation in the area.
The two of them crept like rats, slinking in shadows around patrol campfires and huddling in dark corners while the soldiers passed, the nightly complaints of the sentries echoing around them as they held their breath, as if they were playing some kind of childish game. But this was no game. Every stop for a patrol felt like the end of their journey, but somehow they were able to move on! Kalara could swear the air had started to smell fresher, cleaner, tantalizing her with the thought of surface air. She could almost smell the sun-bleached sand of the desert!
Everything began to unravel when she fell just one step behind Djali in the utter darkness of the upper tunnels. She lost his grip, stumbling blind for a moment long enough to find a slant in the floor. The slippery stone and the sudden shift in the floor was enough to send her falling.
Her ankle bent, tendons popping with sudden sharp pain, and she fell with a startled scream. Gravity threw her downward, her body tumbling out of control till she thought she was surely going to roll off into some unseen trench and die! Luckily for her, she came to a rough stop against another wall instead of the freefall of a pit. She heard Djali’s panicked voice calling down to her and saw his figure illuminated by their stolen glowstone a moment later as he nimbly skidded his way down.
“Kallie, take my hand!” He balanced himself like a mountain goat against the slope and reached for her. Just as he did, they heard the none too distant call of an alarm being raised!
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” A stream of curses spewed from Djali as he helped her to her feet and they struggled in a panic to get up the slope. The state of her ankle made her slip again and again, Kalara crying in pain each time she put any weight on her foot. Somehow, they managed to scramble their way back up the slope and stumble their way further into the tunnel.
So close now, Kalara could smell the night air! Every step felt like fire and left her crying and panting with the effort and frustration. They weren’t moving fast enough…and it was all her fault!
Behind them, the red glow of a torch lit up the tunnels and the echoing voices became clearer. “This way. I heard someone this way!”
The sound of their pursuers made Kalara panic and she tried to push through the pain. Suddenly, she felt resistance against her grip on Djali’s arm. He had stopped suddenly, much to her confusion. She felt him adjust her in his grip, taking the bag from around her shoulder and moving it to his own. He turned to her and placed the glowing pebble in her palm.
“Take it and go back…” He closed his hand over hers, pressing her fingers over the stone. “…I’ll lead them off.”
“No! Djali!” She began to protest, but he cut her off.
“You’re too slow, we’ll never make it up the caldera!” He shouted, more serious in all his life than Kalara had ever seen him. “Follow the gold veins. They’ll lead you back. ” With that, his hands released hers. “Don’t forget me, Kallie!”
And then he was off sprinting down the tunnel like the best runner that he was, yelling and laughing nonsense to make sure the patrol heard him.
At first, Kalara was too stunned to move. She had just enough presence of mind to hide herself in the stalagmites until the patrol passed. She limped back, taking every bit of willpower and muffling her cries by biting on the collar of her shirt. She managed to retrace their steps following the faint glint of gold veins in the tunnel walls to make her way back to the Iblan mines, back to Spinel, back to her lonely stall with the other Scraps. Back to the horrible fate that awaited her.
And now she faced that fate alone without Djali…and it was all her fault.
What had she done?
*
The next morning settled over the Scraps with the painful exception of Djali’s empty stall. The morning bell rang, but Kalara stayed curled in her cot, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her bound ankle still throbbing. She hadn’t slept at all that night after binding her ankle with one of her belt sashes and praying that nobody heard her quiet sobbing.
She’d been awake when the patrol brought a shouting and kicking Djali through the main hall. She’d heard him bravely laughing and taunting them, saying he let them catch him and that he was tired of Spinel’s foul-smelling shits. She heard the crack against his jaw and the sputtering laugh that still followed. Then nothing.
Why did she make him do it? She should have gone alone, should have been the only one to get punished for doing something so stupid, so hopeless.
When Spinel’s weary attendant came to gather her, she reluctantly rose, barely registering his scolding.
“Where were you, girl? You missed your assignment today. No matter, gather your things and follow me.”
Numb and dejected, Kalara quietly complied. She wanted to ask what happened to Djali, to get some clue about his fate, but she knew doing so would cast suspicion on her. She remained silent.
It didn’t take long to gather the small bundle of clothing and crude combs that had been granted to her. She floated through a haze of hollow sorrow as he led her, limping as she went along. She watched the rough hewn floor as it passed beneath her feet, each step taking her closer to the inevitable fate she had tried so desperately to avoid.
She only came back to awareness when Spinel’s deep voice jarred her back to her senses with a question.
“Did you hear me girl? Iblan Farook is your new master.”
A plump older man stepped forward at that pronouncement and clapped Spinel on the shoulder, much to his annoyance.
“Sorry, old man, but the Plentimon favored me this year! And besides…” The man grinned and stroked his beard, the white whiskers lining his face and his fluffed unkempt hair making him look like a great smiling yeddim. “You have a terrible game face and an even worse sense for business betting slave contracts!”
Spinel grimaced even more deeply and handed Kalara’s contract over to Farook. “Just…take her and go.”
If the men around her seemed upset by her reaction to this exchange, Kalara didn’t seem to care or notice. She laughed aloud as Farook led her out of Spinel’s office while huge tears poured from her eyes. She wasn’t being sold to Lady Sahlak after all, but some other unknown entity. He could be a monster like the thing she saw at the brothel, or just another master with a grocery list. At her tears, Spinel rose to put a hand on her shoulder, saying something about how she would be treated well or he’d hear about it, but she didn’t care at the moment.
All she could think of was the high cost she had paid for nothing at all, the laughter she’d never hear again thanks to her insistence that Djali go along with her master plan.
She laughed and she cried while those thoughts tore her up inside like swallowed glass.
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