![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I am rudely dragged out and dumped on the ground, banging painfully against iron bars. Other cages hit the ground, and I find myself staring into the emerald eyes of Taine as he straightens as much as the cage will allow. His skin seems more normal, but he winces and a small moan escapes his lips as the sun washes over his face. Someone yells a command and a cloth is thrown over his cage. Moments later, someone opens my cage and tugs me out onto sand, dragging me upright. Blinking, aching, I try to make sense of my surroundings.
Hot, wet, heat. Virulent green vegetation. Pale sand. Someone notices me looking and answers my unspoken question. “
Taine seems to be in the best condition. The others tumble weakly onto the sand, faces wan and pale. Then they go to the Kaer’s cage. He is slumped sideways, wings crumpled in his too-small cage, eyes closed, ivory hair matted with dirt and sweat. He doesn’t fight as they pull him out, lies limply as they unhook his hands. I wonder at their lack of fear, and want to scream as they unwind the wire binding tattered wings. He doesn’t move. But as they stretch his wings out to their full span and try to catalogue the damage, he explodes. In a moment, two guards are dead, throats ripped out by his bare hands, and another is down howling as he clutches his pulped arm. The others scatter and he takes off into the sky with a whoop of triumph, damaged wings pumping to keep him aloft.
It is almost too quick to see. Something shoots out of the trees and barrels into the Kaer’s rising figure. They plummet toward the ground. At the last second the attacker pulls up out of the dive, but the Kaer’s damaged wings can’t pull him up in time and he crashes into the ground in an explosion of bloody sand.
Nobody moves. The attacker spirals down, spread wings folding as it – she – lands on the sand beside the man who seems to be the leader. My eyes flick from angular Kaer features to a thick silver collar around her neck. Finally, I stare into her perfectly blank gold eyes, and I shudder. The man pats her hair as one might a well-trained dog. “Good Keira,” he says, and smiles in a way that chills my blood.
Battered, the male Kaer drags himself upright and looks at his attacker. His eyes widen, and he makes a strange chirruping noise. She makes no response. He moves closer, reaches for her. She moves and he falls again, bleeding from his nose, his eyes dazed as he stares up at her. She doesn’t move again.
Her appearance has broken something in him. His head goes down and he doesn’t resist as two men approach warily and snap a collar around his neck, or as others step forward to examine his wings. I watch his lowered eyes as they move to the others, placing collars on their necks, but there isn’t any trace of defiance left, just the occasional wince as they probe his wings and smear salve on festering scratches. I am ignored.
After an hour, they call into the woods and line us up without tying us. No wonder. After the display earlier, no one will try to run. The sun is sinking already, and even though Taine walks with a limp, he seems considerably stronger, but it is unnerving the way he licks his lips as soldiers walk by, sizing up a potential meal.
I am sure now that they are soldiers. The uniforms they wear mark them as nothing else. And I wonder what kind of place would have soldiers? And what kind of government would allow it? Then I think of the blank eyed Keira, and wonder if, perhaps, here, humans govern themselves.
It seems too good to be true.
I find myself next to the Selkie, her nostrils flaring, doe eyes slightly glazed. “Where are we?” she asks me softly, as our line begins to move into the jungle.
“
She shakes her head. “No. No, that can’t be right. We must be somewhere else, somewhere inland…” She looks at me. “There’s no one here.”
I stare at her. “What do you mean? I’m –“
“No. No Selkies. Nothing. Not even a whisper. They should be within range if we’re on a coast, but there’s nothing. It’s as though I’m the only Selkie in the world. But that’s…impossible…” She looks at me, eyes blank, and I have the feeling that she’s spiraling into despair that she doesn’t know how to deal with. I try to remember something about Selkies and Pods, but all I can remember is that they live in groups, and that doesn’t help. I look away. I’ve never been good at handling emotional breakdowns. Not that I’ve had anyone to share emotions with in years.
There are stories that, in the old days, there were things called families with two people who could have as many as five children. Now, relationships are nearly impossible, and if you’re lucky you’ll have one child who survives to the age of thirteen. I’ve heard it’s better in the country, but even during my brief relationship with a male two years ago, we didn’t consider moving. The one time I got pregnant, we ended it in less than a week, and the relationship soon after.
Two weeks later, he was killed in a Kaer clan war.
I look back at the others and observe Taine walking next to the Kaer, his hand resting on his shoulder in a peculiarly friendly manner as he talks in a hushed voice. I catch the sounds of the Kaer language, with its harsh consonants and birdlike sounds, but can’t hear the words clearly enough to even get an idea of what he is saying. It doesn’t seem to be reaching the Kaer, though, and he looks down steadily, wings folded docilely as he trudges through the forest. It’s almost pathetic, but mostly it’s a relief.
Finally Taine throws up his hands and strides away. He glides up beside me and I tense, glancing at the Selkie. She is staring straight ahead, her eyes perfectly round and her lips pressed together so tightly that they are white. Her nostrils flare and she seems to be trying not to cry. I look away, embarrassed, and am forced to meet Taine’s narrowed eyes. Before I have time to sidle away, his hand is firmly on my shoulder as he leans in to whisper to me. I freeze, terrified. He laughs softly in my ear. “Don’t worry. I won’t kill you, yet. Willingly or not, you paid a blood price that saved my life, and that makes killing you a little harder. I just want to know who that slimy piece of winged scum was and who she is to Keearh. And how you got her to turn on Clan.”
I blink. “They weren’t separate clans?” I ask, incredulous. I’d assumed that they were enemies, though in retrospect that would make the Kaer – Keearh’s – behavior very strange.
His hand tightens painfully on my shoulder. “Didn’t you bother to learn about Clan markings before catching him? They both have golden feathers braided into the right side of their hair. I’d bet anything that if you could see her tattoo, they’d be the same. They’re Clan. But even if they are, that wouldn’t make him stop fighting.” He glances at me, emerald eyes chillingly cold. “Betraying clan is like your father killing your mother. It’s a betrayal, but you hate your father all the more for that betrayal.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I say weakly, and almost decide to protest my innocence again, but remembering his earlier reaction, I close my mouth. “Why do you care?” His eyes get colder, if that’s possible.
“Ah,” he says, “So you think that because we are not human, we have no compassion, no ability to forge bonds? Is friendship the province only of humans, then?” I realize, too late, what his too quiet, too reasonable voice means, and flinch.
“That’s not what I,” I try to say. He tramples over me, ice cold eyes matching his hard voice.
“You do a bloody poor job of it, from what I’ve seen,” Taine croons. “Murdering your own kind. At least we vampires, in our heartless cruelty, are smart enough not to do that. Keearh is my friend and has been for a long time. I care what happens to him, and it worries me when I see him listless and without fire that he should have, no matter how exhausted he is. You have done something to him, and I will – know – what.” His teeth are clenched together, his nails biting into my skin. I swallow hard and feel a rush of giddiness and a sudden, unfortunate urge to giggle.
“I don’t know,” I say helplessly. “Really, I don’t. Maybe you should ask him. Ask him what I did to him, I can’t remember.” I start laughing hysterically. He stares at me in disgust, but I can’t stop even as some small, rational part of my brain declares me completely insane. He sighs heavily and lets go of me. I sag limply into the Selkie and she collapses like so much cooked pasta. I fall heavily with a mouthful of mud. Taine helps the Selkie up, and is already talking to her in the crooning, humming language of Selkie. She looks at him with dull eyes, but seems to at least listen. I drag myself up, mud-spattered and soaking, and trudge onward, wondering what will become of us.
It is getting dark when we the canopy opens. I can’t see anything, but I hear the Dryad’s cry of disgust and Taine’s uneasy mutter. I try to look and see something large, hulking, and concrete. It reminds me of a towering beast about to swallow us all. Belching from pipes in the top, greasy smoke rises into the sky. I can smell the stink of oil and fire from here. If I could compare it to anything, it would be the factories of pre-Collapse United, but this is much more than a picture.
“Do you like it?”
I wheel around, startled, and meet the cold eyes of a tallish, heavy-set man. Keira stands behind him, hands folded and eyes lowered in a strangely demure fashion. I don’t take my eyes off her as I answer, warily. “Sir, I don’t know what to make of it.”
He chuckles. “You will, soon enough.” He notices my gaze and laughs softly again. “Scared of my pet? Don’t worry. She’s well trained.” He snaps his fingers and Keira glides up beside him, eyes still lowered. He strokes her ice-blonde hair and smiles at me. It is a werewolf’s smile, all teeth and savagery, no mercy at all. “She won’t attack unless I tell her to, and I’m sure you won’t give me reason to do that.”
I shake my head, mutely. “Sir,” I say warily, “If I may ask, why are we – why am I here?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I shall have to ask someone about that. As for the others…” He winks at me. “It’s no more than they deserve, isn’t it?”
It isn’t an answer, but I’ve thought the same, myself, about the werewolf and Keearh and Taine and maybe even the Dryad. But I have to wonder about Aliah, and can’t help but think of her blank, dull eyes.
At the doors of the gigantic concrete monster, we are separated for the first time. Keearh is shoved through solid iron doors. He looks up once before they close, and his golden eyes are frighteningly dull. I hear the angry hiss of Taine’s breath, and try to make myself smaller. Taine, they lead off in one direction. The werewolf is pushed, still struggling and snarling, into another iron cage like the one for Keearh. I can hear her crashing into the walls long after the doors close. Her howls of rage scream through my ears.
The man who spoke to me calls forward some human women who corral the Dryad and the limp Aliah between them. Another walks beside me. I listen with half-an-ear as she babbles, telling me that her name is Sarah and that I’ll love it here and how wonderful her life here is. It reminds me, strangely, of the War propaganda we heard about in school, the adverts on the televisions that told how wonderful the government was and how the War would make everything better. I get the same sick feeling in the pit of my stomach now as I did then. I force myself to smile and nod, and think, Surely this must be better than back in the city, where I could be killed or eaten at any moment?
Most of me is not convinced. I interrupt Sarah’s babbling to ask, “Where will the others be going? What will they do here?”
Sarah’s face falls a little, and her grin is more rigid. “That is none of your concern. You will be taken to your apartment and given new clothes. It will be comfortable and safe, and you can shower and eat before you come before the Head to be inspected. Now, there are a few rules you must follow, for your own safety, of course –“
I cut right over her. “Where are they taking the Others? What will they do here?”
Her grin is nearly a rictus now, her eyes wide and frightened. “- do not go out after dark, don’t pass the boundaries of the camp – there are security guards, you’ll know where the camp ends – don’t eat more than one helping at meal times –“
I stop. “What are they going to do to them?” I hiss. Sarah shakes her head violently.
“No. You do not ask, do not question, the Head knows all, the Head must control all the body or the body cannot work, we will die…” She buries her face in her hands. A moment later, she looks back, the grin back on her face and her eyes carefully blank. “The Selkie and Dryad,” she says briskly, “Will be taken into personal service, as will, likely, the Vampire. The Others will be held in safe enclosures until they have repented their sins and are ready to join the Resistance. Now, shall we go to your rooms?” Her brisk tone brooks no argument. I do not ask again.
But I wonder, if that was the only answer, what is Sarah so afraid of?
