“You can’t!” Kasha added.
Durgen gave me a shove. Boon caught me. Durgen went nose-to-nose with Kasha, saying, “And how exactly do you plan on stopping me?”
It was a standoff. Kasha didn’t back off. Neither did Durgen.
“What are the handlers, Boon?” I whispered nervously. “Are they going to eat me?”
“Don’t worry,” Boon whispered back. “We’ll get you out of there.”
He didn’t get the chance to say any more. Durgen stepped back from Kasha and grabbed me again. I had had enough. It was time to stop fooling around and start taking charge of my own destiny. I pulled away from Durgen and stood facing him, trying to look as defiant as possible.
“I am not an animal,” I declared. “You don’t own me and you sure as heck can’t sell me.”
I thought this would blow Durgen away. I saw the shock on his face. I doubted if he had ever heard a gar speak a full sentence like that, let alone right in his face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other gars looking at me in awe. The only ones who weren’t shocked, of course, were Kasha and Boon.
Durgen reacted in a way I didn’t expect. He laughed. “Well.” He chuckled. “A gar who believes he is more than a gar.” He put his hands on his hips and said, “I have bad news for you.” He hauled back and hit me with the back of his hand. Hard. It was such a surprise and came so fast, I had no chance to duck or to block it. He hit me square on the side of the head. I saw stars. And colors. I don’t think I was knocked out, but I lost touch with reality. Things got fuzzy. I remember being grabbed again, and dragged. It was all a blur. Whoever was dragging me wasn’t gentle about it. I remember being knocked around a few times, and hitting my head again, which didn’t help matters.
I remember things getting dark. Not lights-out dark, just darker. I remember wondering if night had fallen. I stopped moving, too. Wherever I was being taken, I was there. It felt cold and a little damp. I probably lost consciousness a few times. I couldn’t tell for sure. I don’t know how long I was out of touch like that, but I do remember my first clear thought. I remember thinking that wherever I was, it smelled insanely bad.
My eyes opened and I focused for the first time since I didn’t know when. It was still dark, but it wasn’t night and I wasn’t outside. I registered stone walls and a high ceiling with an interesting pattern on it. At first I thought it was a checkerboard, because there were boxes floating overhead. That was weird. I laid on my back looking up at this strange checkerboard, trying to make sense of it, when a klee appeared overhead. It wasn’t a checkerboard after all; it was a grid. The cat walked on top of it and looked down at me.
“Welcome home,” the klee said with a sneer. He poured a bucket of water down through the grid. I didn’t have time to react and got hit with a wave of smelly water. At least it woke me up. I sat up, blowing the disgusting water out of my nose, and looked around. I was in a large, dark room with stone walls; the high ceiling was a grid made of crisscrossing bamboo. It was a cage of some sort. And I wasn’t alone. Lying against the walls were a dozen other people, gars, looking ghostly white and sickly thin, as if they hadn’t had decent food in months.
I looked at one of the gars and asked, “Where is this?”
“This,” he said. “End of life.”
JOURNAL #17
(CONTINUED)
EELONG
Iwas in prison.
I don’t think that’s what the klees called it. To them, this was a holding pen for animals. Nobody here had committed any crimes, except for being born a gar. To the wretched gars I shared the dungeon with, it was another added bit of cruelty to their already miserable lives. At night the gars huddled against the slimy stone walls, hugging one another, trying to share what little body heat they could generate. During the day, the sunbelt beat down so relentlessly that I now know what a lobster feels like when it’s being boiled. And no matter what the time of day was, the smell was vicious.
Along one wall was a water trough dug into the stone floor that we were supposed to use as a bathroom. Nice idea, with constantly running water and all. Trouble was, the water wasn’t running fast enough to take everything away, and the klees never set foot inside the dungeon to clean up. So it was like living inside a toilet. Making things worse, the running water gave the cell a damp feeling that cut to the center of my bones. I felt like one big toothache.
There was one wooden door with a barred window, where I could see klee guards walk past. The only cushioning we had to make the hard floor more comfortable was dirty hay that had probably been dumped there a century before. The stuff smelled so bad I never sat on it. I chose to be uncomfortable rather than nauseous. There was no ceiling, only the bamboo grid that was beyond reach. At least this open ceiling made it possible to see the sky and catch a breath of fresh air. It was good to see the stars at night, clouds drifting by during the day, and the band of sun as the day wore on. Unfortunately it also meant that when it rained, we got wet. At least it helped wash the stench out of the cell.
The food was a joke, though maybe that’s a bad way of putting it because there was nothing funny about it. Every so often a klee would appear on the grid above and dump down a load of fruit. The shower of food would hit the stone floor and smash to bits. It was a rotten way to be fed, but the gars didn’t care. They scrambled to pick up every putrid crumb they could find. Some even licked the stone floor afterward. I had no idea what most of the stuff was. It all smelled rank. At first I couldn’t bring myself to eat, especially after what I saw on that farm with all the dead tangs. But after a while I got so hungry I didn’t care anymore and joined the feast. I didn’t die. Obviously.
From what I’ve written so far, you may be wondering how long I spent in this hole. The fact is, I’m not exactly sure. When I first woke up, I didn’t think I’d be there for long, so I didn’t try to keep track of time. But after a few days I figured I’d better start getting my head together, so each time it got light, I scraped a notch in the floor with a small chunk of rock. But even then, I didn’t know how long a day on Eelong was. Was it twenty-four hours like on Second Earth? Or forty-eight? Or twelve or…whatever. Time hasn’t had a whole lot of meaning since I left home. But as I think back on the gruesome experience of being trapped in that cell, I can guesstimate that by Second Earth standards, I spent at least a month in there. I’m serious. A month. It was a month too long. I’d be kidding you if I said it didn’t change me.
With each passing day, I got angrier. I couldn’t believe that klees could treat gars so inhumanely, especially since I discovered the gars weren’t dumb animals. I’m not saying they were playing chess with the klees or anything. Far from it. But they could think, and they had feelings, and they had a lot more to offer Eelong than what the klees gave them credit for. It wasn’t right.
I was also angry at Durgen for sticking me here, and at Kasha and Boon for not getting me out. I was afraid they had abandoned me and left me to die. Most of all, I got angry at Saint Dane. Not that I needed any more of an excuse for that, but he was the real reason I was trapped in this cell. And with me out of the way, there was nobody to stop him from tricking the klees into destroying their own territory.
As long as I’m being totally honest, I have to admit that I was getting mad at Uncle Press, too. He was the one who got me into this Traveler mess in the first place. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably be eating a pizza with you guys and catching the Yankees on TV. Or the Jets. What season is it, anyway? Instead, I sat in a putrid prison, grossed out by my own stench, wondering if this was my last stop. Morbid, aye? Sure, but why not? There was nothing else to think about. I had already counted the stones in the walls (8,462), done every math problem I could think of, and even came up with my own lyrics to that old song “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” since I never understood the real lyrics anyway. Tell methat’snot desperate. While Eelong edged closer to disaster, I was stuck in a sewerlike prison, helpless, hungry and making up mind games to keep from going insane.
I shouldn’t rant so much about my own feelings, but I’ll say one more thing. Once I finish writing this journal I’m going to put the horrible memories of my stay in the gar dungeon away in a safe place. I’ll get over it, but I won’t forget. And when it all goes down with Saint Dane, I’ll bring this nightmare back and use it for strength against him. Bet on it.
