Sentience, page 18
part #1 of Farm Land Series
“Hold still, cow,” said a harsh voice near my ear. I twisted about and saw another face I didn’t know. I was not likely to obey his command.
My arms and legs flailed, writhing against their hands. I twisted and turned, trying to free myself, but I could not. They picked me up and carried me from the water. I felt their feet find dry land, where their bodies stood firm and unwavering as they held me, struggling against them.
“It can’t understand you, Peter. It’s an animal,” said a voice. “Just chain it before it gets free.”
I smelt the iron scent of the shackles, and although I knew not what these things were, the smell was so like the scent of the bars in the Factory that I knew no good could come of them. Guttural noises of panic came from my mouth as four people held me to the floor, kneeling on my chest. The air inside me was expelled in one great breath, leaving my already weakened body dizzy and pathetic. I felt iron as it clamped around my neck, and bound my wrists and ankles together. Blackness filled with bright dots of colour was overtaking my mind.
Bereft of air, I tumbled into unconsciousness.
When I awoke, I felt as though I couldn’t open my eyes. There was no strength in me. I lay on something that was not the ground, but wasn’t as comfortable as the woven blankets of the villagers either. For a moment I thought I was back in the village, but as my throat contracted with thirst, and my muscles screamed with pain, I remembered I had been found, and not by friends.
“I think it’s awake,” said a voice. A man. I kept my eyes closed and didn’t move. I could feel iron around my throat, against my wrists and ankles. I was a prisoner, and a thought followed that made my heart beat with pounding fear; I was a prisoner of the flesh-eaters.
“Where did it come from?” Another voice, a woman’s, drawn with fatigue, yet enlivened by her interest in me.
“Who knows?” said the man. “Some of them live wild. The hunts pick up cows that get loose and breed in the forest. Usually that meat is saved for the rich, and I’ll tell you this; wild meat fetches a high price in the markets.” He let out a laugh. “We’ve found a way to get through the rest of the season, Mary,” he said. “No more scraping, no more making one meal last a whole day. We’ll live like kings for the rest of the monsoon, and come summer, we’ll have enough to send the kids to the city and get them into a school. Get them out of this life.”
“It does seem a good opportunity, Peter,” said the woman. “But won’t we have to share the sale price with the others?”
“Even so,” said the man. “There’s enough here if we bargain hard. Paul will come this evening to talk about it.”
“I don’t have much to feed him with,” said the worried voice of the woman.
“Never you mind that, Mary,” said the man, his tone victorious. “He has as little as us, but soon enough, we’ll have all we could ever need.”
He laughed. It was a clear sound, a happy sound, but it struck dumb terror into my heart. It was true; I had been washed downriver and found by flesh-eaters. But they did not mean to eat me themselves. They meant to sell me to the highest bidder, to make their lives easier.
Remembering the conversation I had heard in the mind of the other flesh-eater in the market, I knew enough to understand that as ‘wild meat’, I was worth more than if I had come from the Factory. Wild caught was tastier than factory-farmed.
I shuddered. My mind raced, trying to think of a way to escape. Perhaps I could Reach, find a way into their minds and have them set me free. But that exhilarant thought was followed by another less pleasing; there was more than one of them. I could not possess them all at the same time. If one set me free, the others would capture me.
I froze as I felt a presence come towards me. A little finger prodded my arm, warm breath brushed my cheek. I opened my eyes and looked into a small face. Large, blue eyes widened. The heart-shaped face of a pallid child stared at me, her mouth open in wonder.
She stepped back as my eyes opened fully and I flinched away from her, drawing my aching body backwards. The chain around my neck clinked. I was bound to a wooden stake. The mat on the floor was dirty, as were my clothes and hair. As I drew back from the child, I winced, feeling my torn, strained body spasm in pain.
“It’s not in very good shape,” said the woman in a curious tone.
“No,” said the man. “We might have to speculate to accumulate here.” He turned to her. “If it’s healthy looking and fed up a bit, it’ll fetch a better price.”
“We barely have enough to feed ourselves,” said the woman waspishly. “We can’t afford to give it our food.”
“It will pay off in the end,” said the man rubbing his nose and sniffing. “Give it the scraps.”
“Scraps are what we eat, Peter,” said the woman, her tone fraught. He scowled, and she threw her hands into the air. “Alright,” she said. “We’ll do as you say, but this had better pay off this time.”
“It will,” Peter said, looking me up and down. “It has to.”
My eyes darted about, grazing over the woman, the man and the child, their house, and the land around me. The crude shelter that I lay under was made of rotten wooden panels. Next to it was a house, not like those of my village, but square, built of clay brick, with a roof of reeds. It looked as though it might fall down at any moment.
A way off was the river, and another hovel stood near it. These were the only houses I could see on this bank. Behind them were soggy fields, bearing the remnants of poor crops. Watery soil covered the land, and a boggy, unpleasant smell rose from the earth.
They are poor, I thought. These people were the ones Bracken had told me of; the ones with less; the ones who were lied to, to keep them under the control of the rich.
To one side of their houses, stretching behind us, was the forest. Across the water, far in the distance, although not far enough to bring comfort, were the rooftops of many, many houses. Too numerous to count, they stretched over the horizon, packed tight, their shoulders squashed together. Mingled with the misty rain was a smoky fog that emanated from the cluster of houses. Smoke poured from their roofs as though they were on fire.
I could smell the town from here; smoke and fug hung heavy with the funk of sweat… and death.
The child was still staring at me. Curious fingers reached out again to touch me and I flinched backwards.
“Frances,” said the woman sharply. “Come away. It might bite you.”
The child stood up, her lips pouting. She was older than I had thought, I realized. Her small frame was thin and ill-grown, but she looked as though she had lived perhaps nine years. “I like it,” she said. “Can’t we keep it?”
“It’s not a pet, Frances,” said the man sharply. “Don’t get attached. It will be going to market soon.”
“Come inside,” said the woman. “Help your brother with his reading. Soon you and he will go to the big school. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
The child bounced towards them happily. She took her mother’s hand, and the three of them walked into the broken house.
I slumped against the rotten wall of my shelter and stared at the chains. Iron bit into my skin. Rust covered them and their blood-stench filled my nostrils, like a portent of my own death.
I struggled to calm my heart and control my breathing. I was in terrible danger, but if they meant to feed and clean me for sale, I had time to find a way to escape.
I leaned back against the wooden walls and water dripped through the roof, onto my face. “Skye,” I whispered. “Bracken… where are you?”
I was too tired, too weak, too afraid to Reach. My mind fell into sleep before I could do a thing to stop it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Frances
“Here,” said a little voice, pulling me from sleep. I opened my eyes and blinked. Rain water covered my face and body. The air was warm and sultry, yet I shivered, my body cool, stiff and moist.
The girl-child was pushing a bowl at me, filled with broken, greenish, hard pieces of bread and torn shreds of tough leaves. I grasped it, feeling hunger overtake me with its sickness. I grabbed leathery greens and rough bread, shoving them into my mouth and chewing desperately, trying to fill my aching belly. Nothing tasted good, not like the food we ate at the village, but if my mouth cared about that my stomach didn’t. Flies buzzed about my head, but I barely bothered to swat them away. I was fixated on the food.
“Water,” said the child, thrusting another bowl at me. I dropped the food and lifted the bowl to my broken lips. Swallow after delicious swallow of cool wetness flowed down my throat. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
When I had pushed the last remnant of food into my mouth, I looked up at the child. Her face was pleasing; pretty, even though it was thin and pale. But skin was sunken in her cheeks, and her frame was wasted, emaciated. Although I was sure I looked no better, she had clearly had little to eat in the short years of her life.
I stared at her, and then at the hovels which stood slumped, dejected and beaten at the edge of the town. Muddy streams flowed about the houses, and limp plants trailed carelessly in the water. These people are poorer than even we in the village, I thought. At least we had ways to find food. They seemed to be slowly starving to death.
The child gazed at the empty bowls with satisfaction. “Daddy says we can’t keep you,” she said, her little lips pouting. “But I thought you’d make a good pet.”
I stared at her. “What is a pet?” I asked, my voice harsh as it broke from my bruised throat.
The child jumped backwards as though I had struck her. She gawped at me.
Perhaps she didn’t hear me, I thought.
“What is this place?” I asked, clearing my throat before I spoke.
“You can talk!” she exclaimed, her eyes so wide I thought they might pop from her head.
“As you can,” I said.
“I’m supposed to talk,” she said with a laugh. “I’m a person.”
“So am I.” I pulled myself up. She squatted, leaning back on her heels, staring at me with eyes full of wonder.
“You’re not a person,” she said, shaking her head. “Daddy said so. You’re a cow, an animal. Animals don’t talk. They are kept for meat. People own them.”
“I do not belong to you,” I said. “I belong to me.”
She shook her head. “Daddy says finders are keepers.”
“That’s not the rule where I come from. Where I come from, finders are helpers.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we don’t eat our own kind to live,” I said. “It means we help each other, and don’t hurt each other.”
“Daddy and Mummy haven’t hurt you,” she said, her tone defensive.
“Not yet,” I said. “But they will.”
She shook her head. “Daddy says you are to go to market, and when we sell you, there will be enough money so we won’t have to be hungry all the time. Then, when the rains stop, Billy and me will go to school in the city and we can get jobs and never have to be hungry again.”
“You will do well from my death,” I said.
She looked puzzled. “You’re an animal,” she said slowly, as though I was very stupid. “That is what you are made for.”
“I am a person,” I said. “I was made to live in whatever manner I decide. And your family mean to murder me.”
“That isn’t a nice thing to say,” she said, her tone wobbling as though she might cry.
“What you are doing to me isn’t nice either,” I said. “You don’t own me. Your father doesn’t own me. You have no right to chain me up, sell me, nor to kill me, or eat me.”
“I told you,” she said sighing. “We aren’t going to eat you.”
“Others will.” I turned my face from her.
There was a pause. “Do all animals talk?” she asked finally.
I glanced up. “Look at me,” I said, willing her to understand. “Look at my hands, my arms and legs, my face… hear my voice. What makes me an animal and you a person? We are the same. The only difference between us is that I wear chains and you do not. If you wore chains and I did not, would that make you the animal and me the person?”
She laughed. “No.”
“What if I wore the same clothes as you?” I pressed, leaning forwards, the chain at my neck biting into my skin. “What if you had known me all your life? What if I talk like you do, sleep like you do, feel as you do, dream like you do?”
“Animals are stupid,” she said, although her voice sounded less sure. “Animals don’t care about things like people do. Animals don’t talk.” She frowned. “You’re not supposed to talk, you know,” she said, as though I were doing something wrong.
“And yet I do talk. And yet I feel, and I have things I care for,” I said softly, tears starting from my eyes as I thought about the village, about Skye.
“What?” she asked.
“Friends,” I said. “My family were taken from me, but I have friends who care for me and I for them. They saved my life and kept me safe. I have a man who loves me, as I love him… as your father loves your mother.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“That is because you have been told lies,” I said. “Your people eat mine. You have been told we are stupid, unfeeling, thoughtless… because that allows you to eat us without feeling bad about it. Would you feel bad if you ate your mother?”
Her mouth dropped open and her face paled. “I wouldn’t eat my mother,” she said in a little, soft gasp.
“Someone ate mine,” I continued. There was something within me, crying out, telling me if I could just get this one child to understand the awful truth, how much horror, how much loss and fear and terror her way of life caused, I might somehow break the pattern of this disgusting existence.
“Someone ate your mother?” she asked.
“Perhaps you did,” I said, my voice fierce. “Perhaps your mother or your father, or people in the town over there ate her. Perhaps they ate my brothers and sisters. I don’t know. But none of them were stupid, and none of them wanted to die. We clung together in the darkness, raised in fear and silence. We were told not to speak, but I did not know that was in order to make it easier for you to eat us. If I had known, I would have talked all day and night.”
The child was watching my face. “You are crying,” she said, her voice full of awe. “They said that you didn’t cry.”
“They said a lot of things that weren’t true,” I said.
The child looked at the floor. “Daddy says meat is good for us,” she said. “We can’t afford to buy much. We don’t eat a lot of it. But Daddy says it will make us strong. We can’t live without some meat.”
“I don’t eat meat,” I said. “Nor does anyone I know, and we are all strong, and we are all alive.”
“You don’t look very strong now,” she objected.
“That’s because I’m injured,” I said, “not because I’m weak.”
There was a shout from the house. At the door the child’s mother stood, calling her in. Frances’ head darted up at the sound and her forehead creased. “I have to go,” she said. “I’ll bring you more later.”
“Thank you for the food, Frances,” I said.
She stood up and then paused. “They said you don’t have names,” she said “Is that true?”
“My name is Holt.”
“That’s a funny name.”
“Your name is strange to me,” I said, wincing as I felt the iron bruise my skin. “But then, a lot of the things your people do are strange to me.”
“I’ll come back,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said and smiled. The child grinned at me.
“You’re funny,” she said. She looked as though she was about to say something else, but she turned and ran towards the house.
Her mother pulled her inside and cast a dark look in my direction before she closed the door.
I lay back on my rough shelter and tried to think. I had to get out of this forsaken place. If Reaching wasn’t practical, I would have to find a way to escape without it, but I needed to know where to go once I was loose.
How could I find the village? I had no idea where I was. Then a thought came to me, as though it had been wafting through the air: The river.
I had been taken downwards by the river. If I could follow its course with my mind, I would know how far I was from the village. I could find my way home.
If you can get loose, I thought.
I will find a way, I said to myself.
