Hey all.
I'll be reformatting the story to make the chapters longer so I'm not quite as squashed toward the end. The content for the new chapters 2 and 3 is the same as chapters 2-3 and 4-5, respectively.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Content is rated for mature adult (MA) audiences only. Reader discretion is advised.
-Nyroc
My mind races as I go through possible solutions in my head, but no amount of strategic practice could have prepared me for this. We could tag-team the man and woman supervising us and make a run for it, but they are armed and we are not. That, and there's nowhere to go. We're at least a week from the nearest village, and even if we somehow survived the barren, icy wasteland, there's nobody who would take us in. They'd probably kill us on sight.
Still, I wonder if maybe that would be better than this. Then, we would die at the hands of strangers, instead of at the hands of friends.
I can see the same dilemma racing back and forth in his eyes as well, but we both know there is no way around this. There is no escape. There is no way to save both of us. There is no way this ends well.
There is no mercy in Hiretsuna.
All four of us stay in that dark, cold little room for so long my nails grow past the ends of my fingers. That's never happened to me before because Mama always kept them neatly trimmed. I chew the nails down until they hurt.
None of us have eaten anything since we got here. Ataeru and Sileny talk to each other quietly, but Kotori is too tired to play clapping or drawing games with me. Her tummy is always growling now. My tummy hurts sometimes too, but I try not to let it bug me.
My shoulder feels a little better lately. It doesn't really hurt that much anymore, but it itches real bad sometimes. But when I try to write in the dirt on the floor my arm starts to hurt after a while where they put that hot metal thing on it.
Whenever I try to make pictures in the dust, the boy Ataeru always tries to make me use my bad hand. I don't like it. I try to tell him so and he draws a picture in the dust with lines. It looks a little like a girl on fire. He keeps saying the same word over and over again. I just shake my head at him because I don't get it. He keeps calling me that word that I don't like, and when I tell him I don't like that, he points to the hand I write with. He says that word again, and I get it. Writing with my good hand is bad here.
From then on I try to write with my bad hand, the one that doesn't hurt. It's hard, but Ataeru stops calling me bad things and I like that.
The girl Sileny is quieter than Ataeru, and now I don't think they're brothers and sisters. She's nicer. She draws pictures on the floor for me and says words to go with them. I think she's trying to teach me how to talk like she does. The words feel funny in my mouth.
Even with the talking and the drawing, the days are long.
When the big man comes back again I'm so hungry and thirsty and tired I can hardly see in front of my face. I don't feel so good. He pushes me like he always does and I walk until I'm in a big yard with a metal fence and a lot of other children like me. The snow on the ground is cold on my bare feet. The big man shoves me to a little table with a few other children and leaves to go get the other three from my room.
In the middle of the table there's a wooden box. I see little bits of fuzz poking out of the cracks in the sides, and there's the tip of an ear sticking out of the top of it. Bunnies! I love bunnies.
Once everyone's outside in the big yard, grown-ups come over and open up the boxes. Everybody gets a bunny. Mine has grey fur and a white patch around her little pink nose. She's so cute.
Then the grown-up by our table pulls out shiny metal knives and sets one by every one of us children. Big brother taught me never to touch knives, but everybody else is picking them up because the grown-ups are telling them to. The metal is cold against my hand.
And then the man by our table does something real, real bad.
He takes a bunny out of the box and puts it on its back on the wooden table. Then he takes the shiny metal knife and cuts its belly open. The bunny squeaks and kicks at him, and its white fur turns red. The bad man keeps cutting it over and over again until the bunny's insides start to come out. Then he stabs the knife through the bunny's belly and leaves it there, stuck to the table. The bunny keeps kicking and squeaking and splashing blood everywhere until it finally stops moving and dies.
Then, the bad man points to a boy at my table who looks a little older than me. The boy looks down at his bunny, then up at the man, then back at his bunny. And then he picks up his knife and he does the same thing.
All around me the world starts to spin and fill with screaming bunnies and blood smell and shiny metal knives. I feel like I can't get enough air.
The bad man tells me something in his words and I don't get it, but he points to the knife in my hand and then to the bunny and I feel like I'm going to fall over. Big brother told me never to hurt anything unless it's going to hurt me. This bunny hasn't done anything bad to me. I shake my head at the bad man. He yells at me, and I put the knife down and hold my bunny close to me.
The bad man pulls the bunny from my arms and puts it in the box, and then he drags me up to a big table in the front of the yard. There's a big stick in the middle of it. He takes my short brown dress off over my head and pushes me up onto the table. He uses rope to tie my hands to the big stick.
My knees shake because I'm cold and I'm naked and everyone is staring up at me. All I can think of is that bunny. The bad man wanted me to kill the bunny, to hurt it. I don't get it. Why would
All I can feel is pain. My back hurts. There's a whole straight line of hurt that goes all the way across my
Another line of fire goes
Another big hurt pain
Ano
Another
Anoth
Another
An
Another
Another
.
.
.
.
.
My toes are very cold when I start to breathe again. I can't see anything because the hurt all over my back makes it not possible. All I see is white. I think the bad man cuts the rope off of my wrists, because I fall down on my knees. Then I feel something cold in one hand and something warm and soft in the other.
I open my wet eyes.
The bad man gave me my bunny and my knife back. He crosses his arms over his chest and stares at me real angry.
He still wants me to hurt the bunny.
Everybody watches as I push the bunny down on the wooden table I'm sitting on and dig the shiny metal knife into its soft grey fur. Everybody watches as I do it again and again until it screams at me and kicks so hard its guts fly out and hit me in the chest and belly and its blood sprays across my face. Everybody watches me stab the knife into the bunny and the wood and watch as it kicks and screams and dies. The world is quiet and smells like blood. My face feels wet and my lips are dry and cracked and salty.
The bad man pulls me off of the table and puts the dress back over my head. The itchy cloth burns against my back. He pushes me into a line of children. I wait until my toes feel like they will fall off, and then a grown-up girl takes my hand in hers. I want to cry because her skin feels like a fire to my cold hand.
She turns my arm over, takes her shiny metal knife, and cuts a line into my wrist. I yell at the hurt of it. She pushes me after the other children, and the bad man takes me back to the room I share with the three others. When he's gone, I hug my knees against my chest and cry while Kotori brushes my hair with her fingers.
I want to die.
It hasn't been a whole day when they come to get us again. They take us to a different yard and we throw rocks at wooden boards painted with dots and rings. The children who hit the middle of the dots get to go to a line where two grown-up girls give them little bowls that look like they have food in them. The children who don't hit the middle of the dots keep throwing rocks until they hit them. The children who miss the painted rings all the way get hit across the shoulders or back with a stick that's long and is as wide as my thumb.
I miss for three hands and two fingers. I can't count that high by myself. My body hurts bad because they keep hitting me on my back where they hurt me earlier.
After a long time I hit the middle of the dot and I get a little bowl of something brown. It smells a little like the bean paste Mama used to put inside of her dumplings. I eat it fast because it's warm and I'm so hungry. It tastes bad, but I don't care.
When we leave the yard, the grown-ups cut another line in our wrists. That makes two.
By the time my nails go past the tips of my fingers again, I have forty-three lines cut into the arm that I'm still learning to write with. I know this because Ataeru can count that high and he told me so. I don't know how many days have passed since we got here. The lines go all the way up to my elbow now.
I can see the bones in Kotori's chest now, and the little bumps on her sides from her ribs. Ataeru and Sileny are starting to look like that too. I wonder if I'm getting that skinny. I know that I'm hungry all the time because we only get food on every fifth exercise session, and that's a little bowl of brown stuff. It used to taste bad, but now it tastes like the best thing I've ever eaten because it's warm and fills my belly. For a little bit, I can be full.
Every morning they take us outside before sunrise and make us run around and around and around a fenced yard until the sun reaches its highest place in the sky. It hurts my legs and my body gets so cold because it's cold outside. I run until my feet crack and bleed. A few of the children have toes that turn black and break off like icicles. That scares me a little. I don't want to lose my toes.
When we're done running for the day, I cough and cough and throw up because I can't get enough air, but it's okay because my tummy is empty and so there's no food to waste, just yellow water that foams on the snow. Big brother taught me never to be wasteful. I scoop up snow with my hand and let it melt on my tongue while I wait to get another line on my arm, because the snow is cold and I'm thirsty.
When I get to the end of the line, it's the bad man this time. He turns my hand over and cuts a line right into the bend in my elbow. It hurts and I flinch, but I stopped yelling and crying a while ago. Now I know what's coming when they pull out the shiny metal knives.
They take us back to another yard. They make us kill bunnies again, but they let us keep our knives. This time, they make us cut the lines ourselves. I don't cut deep enough and they make me do it over again, but at least they don't tie me to the pole and whip me again. Last time they gave me ten whippings. I know because Sileny counted the ugly marks.
When we get back to our room, I use the knife to carve eight lines into the dirt on the rock wall. One for each bunny I've killed.
They take us outside again after we've gotten our breath back to normal and wiped the blood off of ourselves. They make us run again. Back and forth across a field, as fast as we can, over and over and over. I'm a little happy that I'm one of the faster children. But then I start to get tired and they keep making us run. I run and run until I throw up again, and then I keep running. My whole body hurts. My feet are bleeding again when we finally stop.
We cut our arms again and go straight to another fenced area. There are wooden posts wrapped with the kind of cloth that we're wearing. The kind that used to hold Mother's rice and yams in the bottom of the pantry. There's fluffy stuff beneath the cloth. I think it's the fur from all of the bunnies we've killed, but I don't know.
We line up in groups and take turns hitting the padded posts until our palms hurt and our arms shake. The grown-ups teach us how to make our hands into balls to hit harder. I ask Ataeru what it's called in his talk, and he tells me it's a 'punch'. I think my big brother told me that before.
A grown-up girl who I know as Mouseface comes over and hits the backs of our hands with a stick for talking. A red line shows up on my skin, and I know that it will bruise before dark.
When it's my turn again, I punch the post until my palms and knuckles tear open and start to bleed all over the place. A grown-up who has no eye on one side of his face pulls me away from the post and sits me with a group of children who all have bleeding hands. I bury mine in the snow to make them stop hurting.
They make us line up again and we do push-ups and sit-ups and things called 'planks' for a long, long time. I've done push-ups and sit-ups before. I used to do them with my big brother. I'm good at them, but we do so many of them that I can't do any more of them. When I fall onto my belly, Mouseface hits me across the shoulders with her stick. When I can't do another sit-up, the boy without an eye hits me in the shins until I do one more, and one more after that. When I balance on my toes and my hands and push my body up into a plank and I hold it until my belly droops to the ground and my arms shake, the bad man hits me across the backs of my legs until I make my body straight again. My whole body shakes and hurts, but we do the sets again and again and again until I can't even get up when they tell us to stop.
They make us do punches again. A few of the children throw up.
They make us do sit-ups and push-ups and planks again. A few children faint like me.
Mouseface pulls me up to my feet and cuts my arm for me and helps me and Sileny get back to our room. We leave bloody footprints in the snow.
My toes are blue and my feet are cracked and bleeding. My fingers are blue. I can't feel anything at all with them, even after I warm them up with my breath. I think maybe the feelers in them died. My body hurts and shakes from being tired and cold. I have bruises everywhere. I can hardly stand the pain in my back.
Sileny's fingers and toes are blue now, and some of the cuts on her arm are puffy and red and covered with yellow scabs. She cries whenever I try to look at them. I say a prayer that her toes don't fall off and that her arm stops being nasty.
Kotori's breath stinks like blood and rotten meat. When she lets me look at where her tongue used to be, there are black and white and red and purple spots all over the back of her mouth. I don't think it's good.
Ataeru looks the worst of all of us. The tips of his ears are black, and he has dark purple circles under his eyes. When he coughs, blood comes out. It used to be just a little, but now it's getting to be more and more. His knuckles are so hurt from the punching that I can see the bones in places. The arm with all of the cuts on it has little green and red and purple lines all over it like little tree branches. I think his fingers and toes are going to fall off.
We curl up and try to sleep, but none of us are well enough to dream.
I don't know exactly how long it's been since they brought us here, but I think it's been about a year. The snow got thicker, then thinner, then melted a little. Little sprouts of plants poked up through the white for a while. Then the snow got thicker again and the plants were buried and I guess they died. It's snowing right now. I think it's fall or winter again, but it's hard to tell because there's always snow on the ground here.
The cuts on my arm aren't just on my arm anymore. They went all the way up to my shoulder on the inside, then started a new row of them on the outside. They're like that on the other arm too, the arm I used to write with but don't anymore so I don't look like a witch. Ataeru says that's the side that's left, but I can't ever remember which is which. The cuts go all the way across my back where my shoulders are and make little lines on my collar bones. Mostly those are just dark little scars now. I made most of them myself, because the adults told me to. Ever since we all ran out of room on our arms and shoulders and chests, we've been making them on our legs, the ones that Ataeru tells me are correct. Or maybe it's right. I can never remember the word for it. I don't cry or pull away or even flinch when I get my cuts now. They hurt, but I don't show it.
I can talk in their language now. It's still hard for me to understand sometimes because the words are so different and a lot of times the adults and some of the other children talk really fast. But I can usually do it okay. Kotori still doesn't try to talk, but she can use her hands to tell me what she wants. The adults don't let me talk to her in our language anymore. I'm not allowed to use it.
I'm faster and stronger now. I can run two hundred and twelve laps around the big yard in one hour. I know because I can count that high now in both languages. Ataeru taught me how to. I don't throw up anymore when we run. I always hit the painted targets in the middle. I broke my first padded post two sessions ago. The adults gave me an extra helping of food for doing so good. I can do three hundred sit-ups without stopping. I can do fifty-six push-ups. I can hold a plank for four and a half minutes. I can do sixty leg-lifts without getting tired.
When we look at ourselves now, we're still skinny, but our muscles stand out under our scarred skin. Our cuts don't get infected as much anymore. We usually don't get sick anymore. The ones who do get sick are dead within six sessions.
Sixty-three of us have already died out of the hundred and fifty-two that began. Ataeru and I counted them. Sileny and I keep track of the dead next to where I used to tally the number of bunnies I hurt and tortured and killed. I got up to seventy before we moved on to other things. Lately, the adults have provided us with birds, fish, and mice. Once we had cats. That was harder because they fought back. Mine gave me a scar right across the bridge of my nose.
When the adults come to get us for our target session, they tell us that we're not going to use rocks this time. We're going to use our shiny metal knives. The man with one eye, who Mouseface calls Riktor, shows us how to hold the knives by the blade and throw them. I miss the first few times and they hit me in the shoulders with their long, thin sticks. On the sixth try I hit the bottom of the outside ring. The knife hits the wood by the handle and falls into the snow. My forehead wrinkles up in confusion. I don't get it. Riktor's knife stuck in straight by the blade. What did I do wrong?
Riktor smacks my shoulders with his stick, and I run to go get my knife and bring it back. I hold it by the blade and get ready to throw it again, but Riktor stops me before I can. He moves my fingers to a different grip. He tells me to bend my wrist more when I throw. I do and it cuts my fingers open, but the knife sticks into the wood by the tip. It stays for a second before it falls, but Riktor doesn't hit me again. I need to practice so my arm gets stronger.
The sky is black when they tell us to stop because we can't see the targets anymore. My bare feet went numb a long time ago. My fingers are full of cuts from the first few throws. I can see my breath even in the dark. I can't feel my ears or my nose. We line up to go back to our rooms. I get down onto one knee and carve a line across my shin with my shiny metal knife. It's a lot deeper than usual because my hands have no feeling in them. Blood trickles down the front of my leg from the wound in five thick lines. Mouseface tells me to pack snow on it and I do. The bleeding stops an hour after we get back to our room.
All four of us sleep together in a pile to keep warm. All of us are too tired even to dream.
When they wake us up again before the sun rises, the cut on my leg is angry and red and it hurts a lot. The scab cracks and the cut starts bleeding again once we get into the big yard. I pack more snow on it, but that doesn't help with the bleeding. Mouseface tears a strip of cloth from the bottom of my dress. I blush a little because now the dress is above my knees by a few inches, and Mama taught me never to show my knees. She wraps the cloth around my leg and ties it tight. The cut stops bleeding after a few minutes, but it still hurts when we start running. We run for four hours. I do eight hundred and fifty-five laps. I got faster.
My toes are blue and have no feeling when we stop. My shin is covered in blood because the cloth bandage is leaking. I don't feel very good because I can't breathe. My head is swirling around.
Mouseface comes over to me and makes me sit with my head beneath my knees until my world stops tipping all over. When I feel better, I go with the others to do sit-ups and push-ups and everything else. I'm more careful when I cut the next line in my leg. This time, it's not deep enough, so I do it over and over again in the same spot until it's just right.
We go to kick posts again. Now, they look a little like people and have faces drawn on them. Then we sprint back and forth, do more push-ups and planks and sit-ups and other things, and carve more lines into our legs. Then we wait to get our little bowls of food because it's been five sessions.
Riktor stands in front of us and tells us to wait to eat. He shows us how to dig through the snow until we get to the dirt underneath. He shows us how to dig up enough to fill our hands twice. It's hard to do because the ground is frozen solid. He tells us to mix the dirt into our food.
It's gross, but I do it anyways because I know I'll get hit if I don't.
Riktor makes us put the snow back over the holes before we eat. It tastes worse than usual because of the dirt, but it makes my stomach much fuller. I don't mind it so much then. I swallow snow after it. I can feel its cold all the way down to my belly, but I don't care. It washes down the dirt and keeps me from being thirsty.
Thirty-nine sessions later, the cut on my leg is red and puffy and angry and it hurts to touch. It still bleeds and it drips cloudy yellow slime. The skin around it is streaked with little black lines that look like ink on wet paper. I squeeze the blood out of the bandage and wrap it tighter this time to make the cut stop bleeding. My skin is covered in a thin layer of cold sweat.
Sileny tells me that it's infected. She says I'm going to die. She says that I should tell Mouseface or Riktor about it. I tell her to be quiet because if they find out, they'll kill me. There was a boy a few weeks ago with a cut like mine, and after he told them about it he didn't come back. We saw them carry his body out into the snow.
After our morning run, I'm dizzy again and I throw up. My whole body is shaking. I sit down in the snow with the others and shiver, hugging my legs to my body.
I see Riktor after a few seconds of looking. He has a long scratch on his arm that's pretty deep. He digs dirt out of the ground with his shiny metal knife and mixes it with snow in his hand until it melts and turns into mud. Then he smears it across the cut.
I make another cut in my leg before they take us to throw our knives again. While I'm waiting for my turn, I take the bandage off of my leg. The cut is still oozing yellow goo. I use snow to clean it away and numb it. Then I dig up dirt like they taught us to do for our food and mix it with the snow like how Riktor did. I frown when it doesn't melt because my hands are too cold. I breathe on it until it turns watery, then mix it into mud. I smear it onto my cut. The mud is cold, but it feels much better as soon as I put it on. I cover my hole with snow and put the bandage back on over my cut.
I wait for another few minutes and take my turn throwing my knife. Riktor and Mouseface and the bad man watch me throw. I don't hit the middle, but I don't miss either. My knife sticks farther and farther into the painted wooden target the more times I throw it.
When we're done and we make our cuts, now over my knee, we walk through the cold snow to a new fenced yard. It's mostly clear of snow and there are plants sticking up out of the ground. Mostly they're little shrubs and grasses and flaky things that Sileny tells me are called 'lichen'. There's a tree to one side with leaves that look like needles and that is a little taller than me.
Mouseface tells us what every plant in the yard is and what it's used for. She tells us not to forget. We practice saying what they are and what to do with them over and over until I know what everything looks like and does. She shows us a plant that she calls Nightbreath. She tells us never to eat it or put it on our wounds because it's poisonous.
She shows us a plant that has little green buds at the base of every leaf. It's called Witchwood. She tells us that if we take the buds and chew them up and put them on our wounds, it'll draw the poisons out of our blood. I think about the cut on my leg with the inky black streaks. When Mouseface and the bad man look away, I pick as many buds as I can in the few seconds that I have and shove them in my mouth. I hide them under my tongue so that they won't find them. They taste bad, but I don't care. I think I'll die without them.
When Mouseface is done teaching us about the plants, we cut our legs and line up to be taken back to our rooms. Riktor pulls me by my arm, but he doesn't take me to my room. He takes me down another hallway and into a different room with a wooden table to one side and a fireplace on the other. The room is very warm, and my toes start to thaw a little bit on the rock floor. He picks me up and sits me on the table, then unties the bandage on my leg. The mud is mostly cracked off because the yellow goo and blood has made it gross. The cut stinks.
Riktor smiles just a little bit and walks over to the hearth, then pours hot water from a black pot into a bowl. The cut burns when he starts washing it with a clean cloth and the hot water.
"You saw me doing that earlier with the mud, didn't you?" he asks me in his language. I nod my head up and down at him. He smiles again. "I saw you doing it during target practice."
Riktor frowns when he sees the inky black streaks. He looks up at me, and his face is serious. "How long has it been like this?" he asks.
I shrug my shoulders at him because I don't really know how many days and because I still have all of those buds underneath my tongue.
He looks at me for a long time. Then he holds his hand out near my chin.
"Spit it out," he orders.
I obey. I let all of the little buds fall out of my mouth and into his hand. He looks at them for a while.
"Gods," he finally says, real quiet. "You're a good little thief, aren't you?" he asks, looking at me. It's not much of a question.
I shrug my shoulders again because I'm actually kind of scared of him.
Riktor sets the buds into a little bowl to the side and points to my leg. "How long?" he asks again.
I chew on my bottom lip for a couple of seconds before I tell him, "A few days, I think. Forty two sessions."
He watches me carefully with his one eye, then frowns. "That's seven days," he tells me. He traces one of the inky black lines with his finger. "Do you know what this is?"
I shake my head side-to-side at him, and he says, "This means you have blood poisoning. It means your leg is very badly infected. You can die without medicine if you have this. Do you understand?"
I nod. "Yes."
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, sir." After a few minutes, I ask him, "Sir? Are you going to kill me now?"
He looks surprised. "Why would I do that?"
"That's what happened to the other boy that had black streaks by his cut."
Riktor frowns. He waits for a little bit, then shakes his head side-to-side. "His wound was much deeper and far more infected than yours, and had been for much longer. He also wasn't as strong as you are."
"So he was going to die anyways?"
"Yes, he was."
"Oh... but I'm not going to die?"
"We're hoping that you don't."
"Oh. That's good."
He nods at me to show that he heard what I said, then points to the little bowl full of buds. "Do you know what this is?"
"It's Witchwood, sir," I say.
"Did you steal this when nobody was looking?"
Heat covers my cheeks, and I bow my head in shame. "Yes, sir."
"We didn't even notice. Good job."
I blink up at him. I don't get it.
"All of us adults have been Hiretsuna pawns for a long time," he tells me, "And it's very difficult to steal things from us. You took those buds right from under our noses. It means you could be very good at thievery." He smiles then, just a little bit. "We just have to work on your lying. It's no good if you get caught stealing just because you can't come up with an excuse."
I nod again, understanding most of it. There are some words I don't get.
He hands me the bowl of buds. "Chew these up into a poultice and then pack them onto the wound. Try not to swallow."
There are enough Witchwood buds to cover my palm. I put them into my mouth and begin to chew. My nose crinkles up because they taste bad, but I keep chewing. Once they're mushy, I spit them out and pat them down onto the angry red cut. It hurts a lot, but it also feels kind of cold even though it was warm when I spat it out. Riktor hands me another bowl. It's full of mud.
I take it and use the mud to cover the Witchwood mush. Once it's dry, Riktor gives me a strip of clean white cloth. He shows me how to wrap the wound tightly without breaking apart the mud and Witchwood.
"That should help detoxify the wound and clear up the infection," he says when he's all done. Then he asks, "What's your name?"
I stop myself before I can tell him, because my name is from my language and I'm not allowed to talk in that.
"You can tell me," he says, quieter this time.
"It's Kurai," I say.
He nods at me. "I'm Riktor."
I nod back and tell him, "I know. I heard Mouseface call you that."
His lips turn into a big grin and he laughs as he picks me up and takes me down from the table. "Mouseface, huh? Ciela will be absolutely ecstatic to hear that one."
I don't get it. What's a see-luh? There are so many of his words I don't know.
Riktor takes me back to the room I share with the other three. When we get there, I look at him.
"Sir?" I ask as he unlocks the door part of the metal bars, "What's a... a Hiret... Hiretsuna pawn?"
He holds the door open for me and locks it after me, then watches all four of us children for a long time with his one eye.
"It's what you're becoming. It's what you're going to be when you're done with your training, gods willing," he answers. His voice gets quieter. "All of you better pray that you don't find yourselves in their favor."
Then he walks away.
I don't get it.
I visit the warm room with Riktor twice a day for twenty days, once after our run and once after our last session. For the first few days he cleans my wound and replaces the poultice and the mud and the bandage. After that I can do it myself while he watches to make sure I get it right.
After the twenty days my cut has stopped bleeding and dripping stinky yellow slime, and the inky black streaks have mostly gone away. It doesn't hurt as bad now. It's still red, but Riktor tells me that it will go away in time as the wound heals. He gives me a little roll of white bandages and a small bag full of Witchwood buds so that I don't have to come back. I keep them in the cell I share with the others, but I ask them not to touch it. They don't.
Sileny is sick again. When she coughs, her whole body rattles with it, like her bones are clinking together. It sounds like she has water in her chest. Kotori starts coughing the same way ten sessions later. Then it's me, then it's Ataeru.
It feels like there's cloth stuffed into my chest, and when I cough, it sounds wet. Sweat covers my skin. It pulls the warmth out of me and makes me shiver. Kotori and Ataeru have dark, dark circles under their eyes. When Sileny coughs, little bits of blood come up.
We all cough now. I hear it up and down the halls outside of our cell. I hear the adults talking in quiet voices. They curse sometimes.
The next day, they don't make us get up before sunrise to run. We all sleep.
Mouseface comes into our cell with wood. She makes a triangle with it near one of the walls in our room. She makes the triangle into a pyramid. Then, she makes signs with her hands. She blows on the wood, and it comes to life with fire.
I've seen my father do that before.
Mouseface leaves, and all four of us get as close to the fire as we can without being burned.
I can feel every part of my body except my fingers and toes and the tips of my ears when Mouseface gets back. They're warm, but I think the feeling in them is never going to come back. Mouseface makes us stand up, then she makes us push the far wall as hard as we can for as long as we can. She tells us to do it over and over.
I push the wall over and over and over. When I'm cold, I go to the fire. When I'm tired, I sleep. I change the bandage and poultice on my leg. It's not very red anymore, and the inky black streaks are almost all the way gone. I sleep again. Then I get up and push on the wall more. It never moves, but it makes my muscles less sore than when I'm just sitting and not doing anything. When I cough, my whole body shakes and hurts.
I push the wall and sleep and try to stay warm for a long, long time. I lose count of how many times Mouseface or Riktor or the bad man come in to put more wood on the fire.
Finally, finally, my coughs stop shaking my body. They stop being wet. The sweat dries on my skin and doesn't come back. Finally, I can breathe again.
The next morning, they take us running, but they tell us just to be easy and to walk if we have to. They've never let us walk before. After we're done, we cut our legs and line up and go back to our rooms. Sileny and I count the missing children. Seventeen of us have died. I do the math in my head.
Out of the hundred and fifty-two that started, eighty have died. There are seventy-two of us left.
I feel very, very small.
Several seasons come and go after the sickness passes, and more of us die. I mark down another tally for the little boy they carried out this morning. He makes ninety-one. I am one of sixty-one.
I feel smaller than I did before.
When I see the dead children carried out, I don't cry or scream anymore. My face is a blank stone, cold and unfeeling. I say prayers for their souls and prayers that Ataeru, Sileny, Kotori, and I don't join them.
We are strong now. We are fast. We are power and grace. We do not cry when we kill. We do not flinch when we are hit or cut or burned. We are becoming well-oiled machines that function quickly, follow all orders, and ask questions only when we're told to.
We are learning to steal from the world and from each other without being caught. We are learning to lie without being detected. We are learning to move unheard and unseen. We are learning to melt into shadows. We are becoming ghosts of this world; we are becoming silent, cold, and only half-present, walking somewhere between the living and the dead.
We are becoming predators designed to stalk, kill, and vanish before the prey realizes that it is dead.
We are learning the art of perfection.
The time for our running has doubled since the sickness passed. We train from two hours before dawn until three hours after dusk. The time for sleep is short.
The food that we are given has increased; we are now fed every fourth session, rather than every fifth. Ataeru believes that it's because there are fewer of us to feed now. I have to agree with him. My muscles have grown stronger with the food. I can train harder and longer now. We're also allowed to talk quietly while we eat now. Mouseface says it helps us get used to the language.
"Kurai," Sileny murmurs to me, "How long have we been here?" Her voice pulls me from my thoughts.
I shrug my shoulders and use my fingers to scoop hot brown bean mush and dirt into my mouth. I don't feel like talking to her, since she ran faster than I did this morning. I'll have to beat her tomorrow.
Ataeru rolls his eyes at us and mumbles something about girls before he gets to his feet and walks over to Riktor. He used to be afraid of the man, but now he's as comfortable with him as the rest of us are.
"Riktor, sir, how long have we been here?" he asks.
Riktor and Mouseface both look at him. Riktor looks thoughtful for a long time.
"Why do you ask, boy?" Riktor finally replies.
Ataeru jerks his thumb over his shoulder at us and tells him, "They wanted to know." What a rat.
"Kurai, Sileny. Come here," Mouseface calls.
I let out the sigh in my chest and follow Sileny to stand in front of her. Mouseface crosses her arms over her chest.
"Time is not something you should dwell on. You are here until we release you. The passing of seasons matters not. What matters is experience and rank. Do you understand?"
Sileny and I both nod our heads up and down at her. She dismisses us with a wave of her hand. I hear her scolding Riktor quietly as we walk away.
"You know what happens to snitches, Ataeru?" Sileny hisses at him.
When he turns to face her, he looks a little confused. "What?"
"They burn in hell for all of eternity."
Kotori arches an eyebrow at Sileny as we sit back down. She brings her hands in a circle around her, then she touches her left hand to her ear. She bunches her fingers around her and makes three invisible dots in the air, in a line going up and down. She wants to know where Sileny heard that.
"Mouseface told her that," Ataeru tells her. He doesn't seem to be bothered by what Sileny said.
A tiny smile comes to my lips. Every time they refer to the woman, they always call her Mouseface. It's funny because I'm the one who started calling her that, and now everybody in our class, in our sect, calls her that when she's not around. I just hope that she never finds out it's because of me.
"I'm serious," Sileny warns, "Snitches burn in hell for all of eternity. The gods don't look with favor on the cowardly."
"I wasn't snitching," Ataeru replies, calm as ever. "Riktor asked why I wanted to know, and I didn't know why you guys wanted to know in the first place."
I frown at him. "I didn't want to know, Ataeru. Sileny asked me, and I didn't know. There's a difference." It's getting easy for me to speak in their language, but I'm starting to forget my own. It's kind of strange, really.
Ataeru shrugs at me, which makes Sileny start to fidget her shoulders back and forth like she does when she gets mad.
"Still. We could've gotten in big trouble."
"Oh, bite me, Sileny."
"You know I will."
Ataeru glares at her and reaches up to hold his shoulder. The last time Sileny bit him there, it left a red and purple mark for days.
There is a resounding smack as Kotori hits both of them in the back of their heads, silencing them. I laugh because it's so effective. I guess that's why she does it so much.
We are back in our cell for an hour when Ataeru talks again.
"Kurai, how long have we been here?" he asks me.
I send a glare to him and cross my skinny arms under my chest. My ribs poke at me through my clothes. "Oh, no," I tell him, a bit of a pout coming into my voice. "We're not going through this again."
His lips pull down into a frown. "You're the only one who actually counts the sessions," he points out.
"He's right," Sileny agrees. Kotori nods.
I sigh a little bit through my cold nose and let my head lean back against the stone wall. I raise my hand and point to a little pile of black dust that was fire a few seasons ago. Kotori fetches a small stick of charred wood and hands it to me. I stand and use the walls to work through the problem. I use my right hand. I'm becoming used to using it for everything now.
We've been here for three thousand nine hundred and six sessions. 3906.
We have six sessions a day. 6.
I divide by six like my mother taught me. I'm surprised I still know how to do it.
We've been here for six hundred fifty-one days. 651.
There are seven days in a week, so that means we've been here for ninety-three weeks. 93.
There are fifty-two weeks in a year. 52.
I subtract. One year, forty-one weeks. 41.
I divide, then subtract again. One year, one half year, and fifteen weeks. 15.
Tired of the calculations, I drop the charcoal to the stone floor and sit down. I lean back against the cold wall next to Kotori.
"We've been here about a year and nine months," I say. My voice is stuck in my throat, so it comes out like a whisper. I look down at my hands. I can still see the black powder on my fingers through the darkness. All of the sudden I can't breathe because my throat is tight and my chest hurts and my stomach is trying to eat itself. I close my hands into fists and try not to think about what I'm thinking about.
"Do you think they miss us?"
Sileny's voice puts words to my thoughts. My chest squeezes hard in pain.
"You mean our families?" Ataeru answers her, but only after a few minutes. He shakes his head and crosses his arms over his chest. "I don't have a family."
Kotori is quiet in the darkness beside me, but the stiffness in her shoulder tells me that she doesn't feel well.
"Kurai?" Sileny asks quietly.
Even though they can't see me, I shrug my shoulders and hug my knees to my chest. I feel sick to my tummy as I reply, "I don't know."
Ataeru laughs at me, and blood rushes to my face. I tell him to shut up, but he doesn't. He keeps laughing, so I reach over and hit him in the face.
He gets quiet.
"That wasn't funny, Ataeru," Sileny says quietly in the dark. "What happened to them?"
"I don't know," I say. The air puffs out of me in one breath. My heart hurts.
"How do you not know?" Sileny asks. I see her head tilt in the dark.
I lift my shoulders up-and-down in a shrug and whisper, "I just don't know."
I want to cry, but I don't let myself. We aren't supposed to cry.