Eyes Like Sky And Coal And Moonlight (17 page)

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That is the price of disobedience,” Adrato said sternly, and shook me once or twice. His demeanor impressed me so gravely that it would not be until I was an adult that I fully realized that in some cases, the price of obedience might prove still more costly. I was free then, as I said, and a child. I did not understand many things, and so I swore I would always obey, lest I meet Bozni’s fate.

Part II

My early education—anticipation of a hunt—a raid in the night by Shifters—my capture—our journey

We children were taught mathematics, which I took to with great delight and facility of mind. We learned nothing of the written word, but we were taught to calculate with cabi, which means “counting beads,” carved of ivory and strung on cords.

The arts of hunting and self-defense were also taught to us. When a Centaur youth came of age, he or she would kill a lion in order to receive the tattoos of adulthood along their arms and chest. As the day for my hunt came nearer, dreams of what was to happen filled all my nights. I made two spears for the purpose and Adrato promised me an iron knife for the occasion.

But a week before the ritual was to take place, a slaving clan of Shifters—who sometimes walked in two-legged form, and other times ran as hyenas—attacked us. Our traders had left that morning, and our attackers must have been watching for that signal. In the darkest hours of the night, they set fire to several huts and shouted angrily beside the windows, thrusting spears inward at the sleepers, before withdrawing.

In the confusion, amid the noise and flames, I ran in the wrong direction, fetching up against a fence and knocking myself sharply on the head. I reeled away into the darkness outside the village walls and was seized by rough hands, which pulled sacking down over my head, obscuring my vision and binding my arms. I kicked out, but my captors quickly secured me and I found myself trussed and thrown on a cart with several others. We tried to ascertain each others’ identities, but savage blows rained down on us with imprecations and commands for silence. The cart trundled into motion and we rumbled away.

The next few days we traveled in this manner. My companions in captivity were revealed as three other youths, ranging in age from myself, my age-mates Tsura and Kali, and an older boy named Flik. We tested our bonds, but our captors were evidently well-experienced at their brutal profession. They watered us and fed us with grain porridge, but so little that we were weakened by hunger and tormented by thirst, along with biting flies that crawled over us as we jostled along in the miserably hot sun.

Sometimes I tried to convince myself that my family would come for me, but at least a week would pass before our traders returned from their mission. They were the only ones brave enough to dare searching for us, but by the time they were set on our trail, it would be cold.

Part III

We are taken to market—I am sold to a new master—our journey and its hardships—a garden feast—the Sphinx’s name—we come to Samophar and are taken aboard ship

We were taken to a market in a city. None of us had ever seen such a place before and there were sights and sounds and smells such as I had never witnessed. The buildings were made of clay brick, laid together so snugly that no mortar or cement was necessary. Some buildings were built on top of each other, and stairs meant for no centaur led up and down the outside.

Here we were sold, each to separate masters. Mine fastened me in a coffle with other beings: a Sphinx of that city that had committed murder, two Djinni, and a snake-headed woman whose race I did not know. Oxen drew the cart to which we were shackled, and chained on it was a Dragon, not a large one, but some eight feet in length. A small herd of goats marched behind us in turn, intended for the Dragon’s sustenance.

We traveled northward for three days, during which I picked up a scattering of my comrades’ languages, and they of mine. The Dragon, as it chanced, spoke the Sphinx’s tongue. As they talked back and forth, I listened and tried to make sense of what they said. I could not assemble the Dragon’s words into meaning, but they drove the Sphinx to silent tears. She wept all day and well into the night, and did not speak again for days.

I had never seen a Sphinx before and when at last she could be coaxed into speech, I gave her my name and tried to learn her own. But my companions informed me that no Sphinx speaks their name outside their own kind. I was much amazed at this strange practice, for it was the first time I realized that it was not simply places that differed from those I had known, but customs as well.

The Djinni were kindly disposed towards me, saying that I reminded them of their own child, who had been sold away from them. They tried to give me a portion of their food, but I refused it, even though it tempted me sorely. They were as hungry as I, and I had no right to deprive them. Even then I thought it unfair that one creature should eat while another starved, before I had seen how bitter injustice might be.

On the second day, we came across a village that lay in ashes. Its living inhabitants were all gone, but here and there in the blackened ruins were corpses: long-armed Apes and Centaurs like myself. Our master allowed us to forage in the gardens, although we were kept chained together, rendering walking laborious. While much was trampled, I found some yams there and put them in a sack I found to one side, along with stalks of sugar cane, two lemons, and a handful of orange fruit that I had never seen before, sized to match my thumb tip, thin-skinned, and full of a sour savor. We roasted our pickings in the guards’ fire that night, and considered ourselves to be dining as well as royalty.

The next day we came to a seaport, which a passerby told us, in answer to our entreaties was Samophar. Here the larger buildings were made of white stone and the streets underfoot were paved with yellow brick. Fat-bellied ships rode at anchor in the harbor and we realized that our owner intended to sell us away from our homeland.

I had never seen so much water. I stared at it, imagining crocodiles beneath the glittering surface. At the docks, we were passed over to a ship’s master. I witnessed other slaves being loaded onto the ship, and saw the weeping of several families being parted.

Here a sad incident came to pass. The two Djinni were chained together and contrived to jump into the waves. The woman drowned before they could be drawn up out of the water and the husband was savagely beaten by the sailors, angry at the trouble he had afforded. Try as I might, despite the blows aimed my way, I could not force my way up the gangplank at first, but the Djinn’s blood, his cries, forced me, lest I push them to such lengths, for I knew they would have no mercy.

Below decks I found myself amidst a throng of other captives, including dog-men from the east, Ghouls, several Griffons, a family of Harpies, Ogres, Unicorns, and a Rakshasa. Above decks, I could hear the roaring of the Dragon as it was chained into place and we set underway.

Part IV

The voyage—we are rebuked by the sphinx—I am given a new name—the fate of a cyclops

Brutality was a common practice of the Human crew towards the cargo. They affected to despise the Beasts they conveyed, and yet they used us venially as they desired, particularly the Ogre women. Few of the crew did not undertake such practices, either with each other or with the miserable captives in their care.

We were given a measure of gruel and water each day, which our keepers were not careful to hand out. Some bullies among us made it their practice to take the provisions of those who were sick or otherwise unable to defend what was rightfully their own. After a few such incidents, though, the Sphinx spoke to us. Those who could understand her words rendered them into other tongues and others translated them in turn so a constant subdued whisper spread outward from her throughout the cramped hold.

She discoursed most remarkably in her deep, grave voice. She said as thinking beings we owed each other civil treatment and that it was the duty of the strong to protect the weak from the worst of our common oppression. She looked at each face in turn with her great brown eyes and some faltered under that stare.

After that, the bullies seemed abashed. From then on we kept better order among ourselves, despite the taunts and jeers of the sailors, who were angered by such behavior. It was as though it were a reproach that their captives might act more civilized than they. But we knew that without such acts, we had nothing.

Not even our names were our own. During the journey we were given new names, chosen by the Captain from a book which he carried as he walked the levels below decks, trailed by two sailors, pointing and giving each the appellation by which they were to be known from then forward.

The sound he gave me seemed strange and unrepeatable. Phil-lip. But the sailor behind him paused and said the name aloud to me and made me repeat it back until he was satisfied and moved on to the next Beast. Phil-lip. Resentment blazed in my chest, for it was not my name, not the name by which my parents and beloved siblings had known me. Was that not part of who I was—my very innermost nature? My name. Phil-lip.

But I did not give voice to my objections, for I had seen the example made of a resistor. A monstrous Cyclops, who was incongruously soft-spoken to the point where one must strain their ears to hear him, proved quite adamant on the subject of his name, refusing the one given him—Jeremy—and was beaten till he “should acknowledge it,” which rather proved to be the point where he fainted and pails of sea water thrown on his face failed to revive him. He died two days later.

As the days passed, the realization struck me that I was moving away from my home, and that even should I escape my servitude, I would find myself in a strange land, where I knew no one to help me. Despondent at the thought, I refused to eat and gradually sank into a deep melancholy. It was evident that the sailors cared not whether I lived or died, but the Captain, who had a financial investment in his piteous cargo, forced them to shift me up onto deck in the sunshine and wind. I was placed towards the aft of the ship, in a somewhat sheltered spot, with several other invalids also deemed to be in danger of being carried away by their maladies.

One of these we knew doomed. A tree spirit named Malva faded with each mile stretching between herself and her tree. The Captain swore greatly upon discovering the nature of her malady, for the seller had deliberately not warned him. She was the sweetest of souls and it was painful to watch her skin grow dull where once it had been luminous. The strands of her hair fell prey to the sea winds, which snatched them away day by day and bore them who knows where.

After a week and a half of this existence, Malva finally breathed her last. The captain lost no time disposing of the corpse overboard and I forbore to watch, lest I see the gray sharks that followed us quarreling and tearing over the body.

The Ghouls pleaded to be allowed to dispose of the corpse, as they did each time some unfortunate passed away. The Captain said he did not like to encourage their habits, and for the most part they were denied fresh meat except for such occasions as they were able to hide someone’s death below decks.

In doing so, they did not have to hide their activities so much from the sailors, who paid us as little attention as they could, as from their fellows, most of whom objected to the thought of being disposed of in such a gruesome wise, although those entirely resigned to their fate said they did not mind being eaten by the Ghouls.

Once again, Providence stepped in. Prompted by a chance fondness for my form and face, another being intervened and saved me from following Malva’s dreadful fate. The cook, Petro, was a fat man who had once worked in a racing stable. He confided in me that his great desire had been to be a jockey, and that when at the age of twelve, he had realized that his frame would outstrip a rider’s dimensions, he had run away to sea in despair.

Only Petro’s nursing me with what fresh fruit he had stored away kept me alive. He took me as his pet, and delighted in asking for stories about my village and the Beasts I had encountered in the course of my travels. He was fascinated with the equine part of my body and would groom and caress it, while avoiding that part which seemed Human to him.

I went so far as to offer him my real name, but he shook his head and insisted that I must think of myself as Phillip from now on, else I might expect to gather unnecessary punishment on myself.

He explained to me that the world was divided into Humans and Beasts, and that the Gods had given Humans dominion over Beasts, which meant that such creatures could not own themselves, and only be the possession of Humans. He would have offered to buy me, he assured me, except that I was far outside his meager savings. He spoke of the highness of my price as a good thing, because it ensured that someone wealthy, who would be able to maintain me well, would be my purchaser.

The Dragon was kept at the very back of the ship, which was reckoned less imperiled by its flames. Most of the time its jaws were kept prisoned, but at dawn and dusk, they would release its mouth to feed it a goat from the dwindling herd and let it drink its fill of water. The diet did not suit its bowels, and by the end of the trip, the back of the ship was covered with its gelid feces, despite the sailors’ best efforts to keep it scrubbed free of the substance, which burned bare skin exposed to it.