5. Meera
Any day now. We’ve got to be close.
It’s what I’ve been telling myself to ease through the pain. The cuts on my arms haven’t stopped stinging—I suspect some of them may be infected—and the way this cage rocks, I have a pain in my side that never seems to go away.
How long have I been on this slow-moving caravan? The hours feel like weeks. The days feel like years. And the constant overbearing sun pours down on me. My body feels disgusting and covered in sweat, my hair matted with blood and dirt.
The cage shuffles as we move up a mound and I brace for impact, doing what I can against the impossibly tight shackles bound to my wrists. But as we slide down it, my ribs are forced into the splintered wood once again.
I can’t cry out in pain. They always go after the loud ones first.
I don’t know why I’m still hanging on. I’ve seen several of my friends taken prisoner who gave up along the way, finding jagged objects and knives to end their suffering, or just escaping the caravan to jump off steep ledges.
I don’t know what’s left for me in this world. When I sleep at night, I still remember the horrors I witnessed—remember that many of the people I cared about most are gone.
That’s if my stomach doesn’t keep me up, of course.
The caravan stops briefly, and I realize that it’s feeding time.
I remember keeping pets and watching farmers with their livestock. This humiliating ritual is a reminder that we’re little more than animals to them.
I can hear the footsteps growing closer. I tighten my wrists as if there’s any hope of escape—as if I could possibly attack my captors.
How am I still fighting?
“A tiny sliver for the tiny lady,” the xaphan says, bringing another pitiful bowl of gruel beside my cage. “Try to make it last.”
I frown down on the dish, knowing that anything I say will be misinterpreted.
I wish he’d just go away. Instead, the xaphan grins down at me with his damaged, chipped teeth.
“Oh, don’t look so sad, little girl,” he says. “You know that if we feed you more than that, we’ll fatten you up. And you don’t fetch as much in the market with a gut on you.”
I want to spit in his face. I want to take the chains bound around my wrists and whip him with them.
But as he closes the cage, I’m completely neutralized.
He makes his way back to position in the slow-moving caravan. Part of me swears they’re poisoning me, or that they’re messing with my food. The other day, I thought I saw an eye in it.
But then I heard that prisoners succumbing to starvation can start to see things that aren’t there, so I’m not even sure I can trust my senses.
No. You’re probably just seeing things.
I lean down with what little room I have in the cage and bring my face into the bowl. The food is unappetizing and hard to stomach, but I try to stomach it anyway.
“Can I please have some water?”
Across from me, I see a woman in another wooden cage, just within speaking distance. Her voice is dry and hoarse, but she cries out frantically.
I expect that the caravan will start moving soon, but the woman calls out even louder.
That’s when I hear familiar footsteps trodding back toward me. Only this time, the xaphan is brandishing a long, flowing whip.
They share a look, the xaphan reasserting his power, and the woman peering through the bars, her curly red hair obstructing her vision.
Before I know what’s happening, the xaphan brings the whip back, slapping hard against the woman’s wrist with precision. Even from a distance, I can see a small trickle of blood fall to the cage floor.
“Now we don’t like damaging the cargo,” he says, as the woman gapes at him speechlessly. “But if you don’t shut up, there’s a lot more where that came from. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”
I want to stand up for her—to reinforce that clearly, they’re not giving her enough water. In truth, I’m just as parched as she is. I just know to keep my mouth shut.
But I don’t know what good it will do. They don’t consider our voices. I have no power over him.
Once he’s out of ear range though, and the caravan has resumed moving, I know I can’t just not say anything.
“Hey,” I call out, looking both ways to make sure I’m not being watched. “I know it might not seem like it, but we’re going to be okay.”
She looks amused. Gripping her wrist, she offers me a wry smile.
“Oh, yeah,” she says, no liveliness to her words. “We’re going to be just great.”
I smile solemnly in return.
Abigail was her name. I faintly remember it now.
Her father used to operate a small store in town.
Of course, I could reminisce about those times, when I’d stop by as a child and he’d offer me a discount or a free piece of meat to sample. And she’d just look down, watching the sales from the top of the stairs, where her bedroom was.
She was like a ghost.
But he’s dead too.
And she probably doesn’t need to be reminded of that. Just like I don’t need to be reminded of my family, and of everything I lost.
“You’re a strange one, Meera,” she says in response to my long, contemplative silence.
“If there’s anything I can do to help,” I start to offer, trailing off. “...I could give you some of my water if it would help.”
She shakes her head.
“No, you’re just as bad off as I am,” she says. “I can’t take your water. It wouldn’t feel right.”
I nod in response.
She looks at me as though studying me.
“What makes you so sure we’re going to be okay?” she asks.
I can’t hide my surprise at the question.
“Oh, I don’t know. It just feels like the right thing to say in situations like this.”
She shakes her head. Her eyebrows furrow.
“That’s not it though,” she replies. “When you said it, you weren’t just reassuring me. There was confidence in it.”
I try to prop myself up as we climb another incline. She clutches her wrist, still wincing from the pain.
“So what do you know that I don’t? Why aren’t you scared for your fucking life, like the women who tried to run out of here, and wound up dead?”
I shrug.
“I guess I just know that if we’re their ‘cargo,’ they’re going to lose too much of us in transit the way they’re treating us,” I suggest. “Two of us have died of starvation.”
She nods.
“Mary and Ellish,” she says. “I knew them well. Terrible loss.”
“...Four have tried to run off, but failed,” I continue, emphasizing with a solemn nod that I agreed. “Our numbers are dwindling. If they don’t start feeding us better, they’re going to wind up on the bad side of whoever’s paying them to move us.”
Abigail leans in closer, as though to whisper. A whisper couldn’t cross the threshold though.
“I heard his name is Gorran,” she says in a hushed voice. “They say he works out of Ikoth. Claim he doesn’t give two shits about any of us.”
This seems doubtful to me.
“He doesn’t care about us… yet he’s paying these people to move us. Yeah, I don’t know how much I’d trust that information.”
My stomach gurgles, the food clearly having a negative impact on my body.
The terrain changes rather suddenly, and I realize that we’re rolling forward, not on mounds of dirt and makeshift streets but on stone pathways. Clearly, this area is much better maintained.
Which doesn’t bode well for us.
On one hand, I’m glad to be rolling along smooth surfaces, rather than clutching on for dear life, trying not to injure myself against the poorly maintained cages.
On the other, I can see the silhouettes of buildings in the distance.
We come to a stop suddenly, even though we’re not in the town yet. From the looks of it, our destination is still a ways away.
That’s when several xaphans come trodding back, their footsteps resounding against the hard stone ground.
At the very least, these xaphans look kinder than the one who neglected and beat us.
And what’s far better, they’re no longer bringing back portions of inedible gruel. Instead, I see braised meat and fresh water.
“Auction house is just ahead,” one of them says to me, opening my cage and leaving the dishes on the floor. “That means we need you to look a little less pathetic, so you can make some demon happy.”
I look at Abigail, my eyes widening as if to say, ‘See? I told you.’
But this is not what I had in mind. Because as long as we’ve been traveling, and as much as I’ve deceived myself, we’ve never been close to our destination. Not like this.
That means my windows have grown awfully small. Soon, I’m going to be sold to somebody who will doubtlessly treat me even worse than these xaphan extremists. If I don’t find some way out of these bindings and away from my cage, then my last hope will be gone.
And, as the group of muscular xaphans slams my cage shut, I know that I stood no chance of overpowering them—that I am nothing to their strength.
If I try to run, I’m going to be killed just like the others—shot by a stray arrow, or driven to my death at the base of a cliff.
Any day now. We’ve got to be close.
What hope was I clinging to? Why did I think we would be better off at our destination than on the long, unforgiving trail there?
I take comfort that at least Abigail has water, as she sates her thirst, and I try to imagine the devastating life waiting for me ahead.
And I don’t know why I’m still fighting.