Ancient, Ancient

“You must forget there was ever anything called home,” a voice whispers. Your voice. I feel a gasp of panic explode in my head. You can’t ask me to forget home. I won’t forget home; I won’t forget you. Anger chases away the panic. Grandfather, with his reckless lessons and self-righteous speeches. Doesn’t he know what everyone whispers behind his back? That one, they say, pointing their chins at me, that one gets his wildness from his grandfather. Is he punishing me for being like him?

My arm swings up in an arc, muscles twitching with memory. It’s the block I should have thrown in my last Royale, the arm flick I could have used to knock away the razor and avoid getting cut. The repeated sway of my arm is numbing, like a narcotic. For a few blissful seconds, I’m not on a long desert walk to enslavement—I’m nowhere.

After my arm grows tired, I let it fall limp by my side. I notice two small mounds rising from my chest. Breasts. I touch them with the back of my hand. My sleeve rolls back to reveal the ridges of a scar on my forearm. I push the sleeve up further, there’s a crude X burned into my arm. When I look up at the woman in front of me again, I understand why I’ve been staring at her. It’s not her neck I’m looking at, I’m staring at the scar burned on her back—the top edges of an X visible above the scoop of her robe.

I peer ahead. An indigo-draped figure rides a camel. The set of his shoulders tells me that he decides my next breaths. Whip gripped in hand, lazily swatting air with a motion that cools him and flaunts his power all at once.

What has Grandfather done?

I step out of the snaking line, and look back. My gaze is darting around, looking for more guards when, thwack, something hard cracks against my jaw.

I don’t fight the fall. I don’t even feel the impact when my body crashes against the hot sand. I lay there, motionless, aware of nothing except the sun’s searing heat and the parade of feet stepping over me as the women plod on to their terrible destiny.

I can smell death rising with the heat around my body. It smells like decay, a tinge of sticky sweetness mixed in with a rank earthy scent. I feel a blow to my side, then another. I allow my body to rock with each kick. A thought rips through my mind: If I die here, will my life end? I would rise and fight, but why? Whether I lay here until death claims me, or I stand and walk toward my own slaughter, I will die anonymous and unloved. No one among these trillions of grains of sand can see my true face, and no one knows my name.

“I know,” your voice says. “I know your name. Come home.”

At first I feel a flush of pleasure: you want me. Then that bitter rage flares again and extinguishes my pleasure. You want me, and I am powerless to join you. Coming home is not up to me. This is Grandfather’s game.

The army of feet trod on, kicking up tufts of dust, coating my face with grime. The sun is so merciless that the blazing heat begins to feel physical. The idea of releasing my grip on life is seductively sweet.

“But we have not yet tasted each other,” you whisper.

A small sound that doesn’t know if it wants to be a laugh or a sob pops in my throat. Not even your voice— with its melodies and catches—can stop me from thinking about committing my body to the earth. I want you, but I also want to break into a million pieces and melt into the sand. I want to stop the procession of roughened heels and downtrodden women. I want to die.

“Dance,” you say. Your voice has taken on a depth I have never heard before. You have pushed beyond laughter and flirtation, scattered gravel and broken glass in your voice. Then I understand. You mean not to entice me, but to compel me. You are trying to awaken the warrior in me.

Another kick catches me. Pain implodes in my side. My body lifts up from the ground, then falls limp. A captor yells something over me—something rumbling and fast. More of them come. They turn me over. I don’t blink. I’m not even sure that I’m breathing. I lay face up, eyes glassy and blank, limbs splayed crucifixion wide.

You want me to rise, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to rise from a bed of my own blood, from a stretch of earth made soft by the pummeling of my limbs. I don’t know how to stand and dance, not even for the Royale. Not to join a caravan of the enslaved, not to travel toward a tomorrow of torture and death. No, not even for you.

“You will dance,” you say, and suddenly violent retching tugs at my throat. Grandfather’s magic must be stuck or broken, or else it’s incredibly cruel. Something is pummeling me, piercing my skin with pinpricks. I don’t know if it’s another time shift, abuse from my attackers, or you trying to rouse me.

I lift a weak wrist and for a brief second there is relief. Then the pain returns—like a million tiny axes chopping at my organs. I throw open a thigh to ward off the trembling. There is no faith or courage here, just feverish desperation as I move through the Royale.

I imagine Grandfather’s unsteady fingers working to bring me back. A gritty moan rustles in my ears. At first I think it’s my voice winding out over the sand flats, but then I realize it is you, reaching down deep to pull out a wailing too gutbucket for your small frame. It is the straining in your voice that hooks me. I tilt my head back and gulp down deep raggedy breaths. I open my mouth; nothing but dry rasping comes out. I work at it anyway. I search for a part of me that is unbruised and untouched by pain. I open my mouth again, struggling to thrust out a mangled yell that can match your wailing. Then the sands of time grind at my bones, and everything goes dark.

“You have the things?”

I blink and look around. My body lurches forward. For a few brief seconds, it feels like I’m hurtling through space. I grab onto a pole overhead, than drag myself back to standing.

“Keep tight! What were you thinking?”

I look at the person speaking to me and almost gag. I look away, but a glance around the room sickens me further. The room is crawling with mangled people. No facial feature is where it should be—limbs are attached at odd angles on all the wrong parts of the body. I force the muscles in my face to be still. Then I look again. It is a man speaking to me, was a man. Now I don’t know what he is. He has eyes on either side of his mouth, and his nose sits at a violent tilt. The space where his eyes should be is covered with a huge, lumpy scar. Even as I am battling revulsion, I can see that his oddly-placed eyes are flicking appraising glances, sizing me up.

I look around again. Through the narrow mesh platform beneath my feet, I see more of them—the mutilated—packed in like cockroaches. There are so many of them that they look like rashes or rust corroding the metal walls. Besides the revolting people, everything in the room is metal—metal walls, metal poles, metal mesh flooring.

When I look up, a few droplets of wetness fall into my eyes. I shake my head and blink it away. I look up again. A clump of blistered kids are wedged between the overhead poles and the ceiling. The realization rises in me slowly: I must be disfigured too. I look down at my body. I see my shoulder just beneath my chin, and my arm jutting out from where my chest should be. What kinds of freaks are we?

When next I look at the man, the air around me seems unstable. The fearsome roar that rings through the room starts to echo in my ears. My eyelids droop, and my muscles start to go slack. The man opens his mouth, a tiny wet hand emerges. He wipes the bottom of my nose with it. A moldy scent bursts in my sinuses, and my eyes pop wide open.

“You gonna make it? Ain’t no short trip!”

I nod mutely, revolted and relieved.

“You have your things?” he asks again.

I shrug. He squints at me. I can tell he thinks I’m a waste of time.

“You know about the things, right?”

I shrug again, this time nodding.

He turns his head and opens his mouth. Out comes the hand again. It feels along the pole we’re hanging on. He picks at something flat that’s stuck there and rips it off. I hadn’t noticed it before, but only one of his arms ends with a hand, the other ends with a foot. He only has one standing leg, and it’s keeping him balanced on the platform beneath us.

He waves it under my nose. It’s an old tattered label.