Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [57]
“Oh, yes,” the man said, “he was hungry and angry and filthy and sick, and I believe his heart stopped beating in the night. If we go on like this much longer, my heart will stop, too.”
“How much longer do we go?” Lyaa asked him.
The man shook his head.
“I have heard stories…”
“Stories?”
“About events like this.”
“Events?”
“These ghost traders—”
“Ghosts? Pale-faced men?”
“Yes, like these men.”
“And where do they come from?”
“That doesn’t matter,” the man said. “What matters is where they take us.”
“And they are taking us where?”
Lyaa listened to the rasping of her voice even as she felt the soreness while she spoke.
“Across the waters,” the man said.
Lyaa felt her heart sink into her bowels, her heart bathed in her own piss and shit.
“Is it a long journey?”
“Long enough,” the man said.
“What is on the other side of the waters? Is there another world?”
“It could be Paradise, or it could be filled with demons.”
“I am glad my mother is not with me,” Lyaa said.
“You should be,” the man said. And he inclined his head toward her.
“Yes?” she said.
“This man, who has fallen?”
“Yes?”
The man suddenly howled like a dog.
“He is my father!”
How she wept! Wept and wept! Out went her sullied heart, and her hopes bathed in her filthy fears, and she wept and wept again, and finally, finally, finally, at least for that night—or was it day? she didn’t know—she closed her eyes and even as she clutched in her right hand the small pouch with the stone her mother had given to her many mornings ago she drifted away from the bench where she lay enchained. Not even the stone could anchor her. Oh, my poor grandmother, neither living nor dying, but simply floating in her own odor and imagining she had been transported to a peaceful place even as the ship carried her to her hellish Paradise or splendid Hell full of demons. Whichever the other shore turned out to be, Lyaa longed with all her heart and strength to reach it alive.
No dreams, as far as we know, not in this round sleep. She awoke sharply in the dark to the jamming of water against wood, and beneath that larger motion and the noise of groaning sick and aching and sleeping captives all around her a tickling sensation at her ankle.
She sat up, glanced down, and saw the gray shadow gnawing at her.
No!
She kicked, and the animal fell away into the shadows. Her chest tightened, she could scarcely breathe. Her heart roared like the ocean on the other side of the timbered cabin wall. Quickly she used her hands to assess her state, ankles bleeding, toes, one two three four five, one two three four five, intact, knees, and her precious part, stomach, chest, present and aching.
The pouch with the stone she had worn around her neck?
Gone!
In a confusion of misery and great care—the stinking bench had grown slippery with her own residue and fluids—she leaned down and trying to keep herself balanced peered at the body of the man who had died and found rats gnawing at his flesh. Her gorge rose and she splashed vomit onto the floor, though the rats paid little attention, so intent were they upon their feast.
Better dead flesh than live! Fresh meant nothing, decay meant everything! Oh, they would love this voyage from the land of the living to the land of the dead! The rats would love it. And the captives and the crew would hate it worse than death.
She reached down and felt around on the filthy floor, unable because of the chains to stretch much further than the end of the bench. Here, she felt the cloth of the pouch. A rat nipped at her fingers and she flipped it aside. Before she could reach for the pouch again the rat returned. Once more she flicked her wrist and sent the animal sailing into the dark. With a deep intake of breath and a stretch beyond anything she thought she could summon up she found the pouch and clutched it in her hand as she pulled herself back onto the bench.
The pouch was empty!
Ay-ieee! It was as if her own heart had slipped from her chest!
It took a while for her to regain control of her