(Note: Hey guys, sorry the chapters are so short. This story will have a lot of chapters, but it's the only way I can keep adding to the story frequently. Bigger chapters would just take me too long right now and I want to keep writing this story as much as I can! I hope you all enjoy!)
THE LOST BIRD
CHAPTER SIX
Evie sighed down at the little chunk of hard bread in her hand, her stomach churning with distaste.
She lifted her hand, in an attempt to bite at the bread, but looking at the hard and pale dough, her hand dropped again, twisting over, as if looking at it would make it any more appetising to her.
"First day? You're going to find it hard, here..."
A weak voice sounded from behind her. A scrawny looking woman with a skeletal face stared back at her. Her shrunken and gaunt face had dark patches under her eyes and her nose was long and pointed. What was left of her hair was thin and patchy, a light brown colour that looked dirty and dull. She did not wear a shirt, her breasts hung freely, if they could be called that. Two hanging flaps of skin were a better way to describe them, Evie thought. And every inch of her pale and papery skin was littered with bruises and cuts. The woman was sinking her rotten teeth into her stale bread, never taking her bulging eyes off Evie.
"I'm sorry?" Evie raised an eyebrow, playing with the bread in her hands.
"Eat. You're going to need your strength." The woman moved closer, scrambling from the bucket she was sitting on to take her place on the log beside Evie. Evie almost winced when she saw how skinny the woman's arms were – her bones poked through her skin. The woman was, quite literally, wasting away.
"I'm not hungry." Evie said, feeling her stomach turn at the sight of the skinny woman. Gingerly, Evie held out her bread. "You take it. You look like you need it more than I do."
The woman's eyes bulged again, before she snatched the bread out of Evie's hand without hesitation.
"Thanks, friend." She said, attacking the bread ravenously with what little teeth she had left. "You're new?"
Evie nodded.
"Where'd you come from?" The woman asked.
"Slave trader." Evie had never known anything else but slavery, but she had been fortunate. She had grown up in a small village, where her owner liked her enough to treat her like her own daughter. She had never known who were parents were, where she came from, or even what her real name had been. Her owner, Rebecca, had been a kindly old lady, with a sweet smile and a kind heart. She had passed away a few weeks ago, and without an owner or home to call her own, the authorities had placed Evie back into the slave trade, and she had been sold to Megalithia without question. Megalithia was as far east as east went, a few miles inland from the Eastern coastline. It was cold, wet and miserable.
First and foremost, it was a work camp. It was a complex system, hundreds of acres of land, surrounded by electric fences that could roast you alive. There was a deadly coal mine, a few acres of farmland and crops, and an abbatoir.
The several acres of farmland were ran by hundreds of slaves, from the slaves tending the owners of the Farm in the house, to tending the animals to working in the fields. Evie had been assigned to the fields, the most laborious and unforgiving of all the work, to dig and till all day, tending crops and clearing pests away, but tomorrow she could be needed elsewhere. Some slaves were fixed, but Evie was what they called a "Wanderer" – useful anywhere, no matter the job.
"You're young and fit now, but you'll need your strength tomorrow." The woman said, and Evie gave a small nod. Seventeen, though she perhaps looked a year or two younger than that.
"How long have you been here?" Evie asked. The woman opened her mouth to speak, but then began to choke on her bread. Crumbs flew out of her mouth, and Evie politely tried not to notice as she felt something small and wet hit her face.
"Four years, I think." The woman replied, before continuing to devour the bread as if she had never eaten.
"Four?" Evie felt the shock hit her face.
"And I'll be here longer still. There's no way out, unless it's at the end of a sword." The woman added meekly, and Evie grimaced.
"No way out? At all?"
"Not unless you want to end up like those poor bastards." The woman pointed at a dead tree in the centre of the camp; from its biggest branch hung three dead bodies. Women, Evie guessed, judging from the shape of them. Their skin was blackened and rotting away, not that she could smell it; everything stank in this place.
"What did they do?" Evie turned away, her voice dropping to a low murmur.
"Fought back." The woman replied simply, before leaning closer. Her eyes flickered down to her hands, and Evie looked down at the woman's hands too. She pointed diagonally from where Evie was sitting, and when she looked, Evie saw that the woman was pointing to a tall and well-dressed guard. He was handsome alright, the sort of blue eyes that girls melted at when they saw. His teeth were white and straight, and he seemed the sort of guard to be a gentleman to everyone.
"That one is the most dangerous sort of man." The woman whispered into Evie's ear.
Just then, the guard turned and caught Evie staring at him. She quickly turned away.
"Why?" Evie whispered, suddenly afraid. She kept her gaze down, but her eyes wandered back.
"He's the one you don't expect to be a monster."
"He looks ... normal... Friendly, even." Evie responded.
The woman chuckled. "You aren't going to last five minutes here, girl."
Evie said nothing, and got to her feet, wandering past the other hundred or so slaves who were eating, through the gate and towards the fields.
The guard at the gate eyed her suspiciously, one hand on the electric baton at his hip, one hand supporting the cigarette he was puffing on.
Slowly, the other slaves followed her, making the half a mile walk towards the fields in their threadbare shoes, not a word spoken among them.
Later that night, Evie found herself lost again. The guards did not care where the slaves slept, or whether they did at all, as long as they were quiet.
There was no shelter in the slave camp aside from a bunker that housed around 100 slaves. There were well over 1,000 slaves in Megalithia, and a small guardhouse every half a mile for the guards to use, but slaves were not permitted unless the guards required their "services".
She had managed to find a small crevice along the edge of the camp, where the gates stopped and a jagged cliff-face bordered the edges instead. The rock was crumbly, dripping with rain and covered in moss and insects, but she clambered into the small crevice anyway. There was just enough room for her, if she tucked her knees up, but it was warmer and dryer than the stone ground that most of the slaves slept on. Some slept in the mud.
Death rates were high.
When Evie huddled up against the edges of the cave, tucked inside a small crevice just big enough to shield her from the wind, she pulled her ragged shirt up her chin to stay warm, rested her back against the hard rock, and prepared for a night of little sleep. The position she was in provided the perfect watch of things going on around her. She could see, the guards patrolling, and the mouth of the mine in the distance.
Evie watched for a little while, until she saw two guards casually stroll up to a sleeping girl, rip the sodden blankets off her and drag her, kicking and screaming into the guardhouse. People were awake, they saw what was going on, but they were powerless to help. There was nothing they could do.
The woman screamed for hours. She begged for them to stop, pleaded, said she would do anything.
And when she came back out of the door, the two men dragged her broken body along the floor. She was so battered and bruised that it was difficult to see whether she still clung to whatever life was left in her body or not. But if she had to guess, Evie guessed that she was already dead. They treated her as if she was. They dragged her to the tree, and hung it with the others.
Evie slept with one eye open after that.
XXX
It was three days later before Evie saw the scrawny looking woman again. Today soup was on the menu. It was watery and Evie was sure the meat, whatever it was, had a funny taste, but still, it was warm, and it seemed to help combat the bitter winds that crashed down upon them, and had been for the last 12 hours. It was almost a blessing to be sent into the mine instead of the fields.
Evie had been in the field for the past three days, and it wasn't until she sat down to pour the soup down her throat that she saw the woman again. Tipping the soup into her mouth, Evie moved over to join her.
"When you said I'd find it hard here, what did you mean?" She whispered to the woman, who cast her eyes over to Evie's bowl.
"Eating better today, aren't we? Drink up, drink up." The woman replied blandly, and Evie did as she was told, forcing the scorching soup down her throat until it hurt. It was so hot, but Evie was famished, and the burning was better than the icy winds.
"Good." The woman smiled, showing blackened teeth.
Evie tried her best to smile back.
"You'll find it hard here because you're young."
"I'm young?" Evie felt her eyebrows raised.
"Young, pretty, fresh-faced. You're the kind they normally go for. And even if they don't get to you, you're such a skinny and scrawny thing that the work just might kill you."
Evie felt a shiver go down her spine.
"You mean... the men?" Evie whispered softly, and the woman looked up from her bowl slowly, giving her a sullen nod.
"Do they all... end up there?" Evie nodded towards the tree. Evie saw what was left of the colour in the woman's face fade.
"Not all. Some don't make it that far." The woman slurped at the soup, speaking in a gentle voice. "My son used to work at this camp too. They took him too, and he fought back. They..." She broke off, her bottom lip trembling. Evie reached out and placed her hand on the old woman's wrinkled little arm in comfort.
The woman looked up. "Keep your head down, girl. Work hard, and if they come for you, close your eyes and think of somewhere better."
Evie found her mouth had gone dry, but she swallowed anyway.
"We're going to die here, aren't we?" She said slowly.
"Of course, girl." The old woman laughed. "Ain't no way out."
Evie saw the "Monster Guard" from a few days ago, and cast her eyes down at the ground.
"There's always a way." She said, staring at his boots as he walked past her.
XXX
