Sunrise Gate

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The silence was killer. Locked inside the cart, time passed slowly as I was left to myself; the outside world the only entertainment. The journey from Ebonhawke to the northern mines is long - several weeks even by cart. Of course there were breaks for when the coachmen and guard set up camp in the plains to sleep and eat, but for the better part of the day we traveled. And traveling meant I was left on my bench, hands cuffed behind back while the guards sat up front in the fresh air.

The journey began with anticipation, excitement. I knew the destination would be horrible, but the trip there would be an opportunity like none other. For the first time in my life I would see the lands far outside Ebonhawke’s grasp. I had the energy to enjoy these thoughts, enough energy that at night I couldn’t sleep, my thoughts flooded with what was in that jungle or what was past it and where the Nords lived and what they looked like and if I’d see New Rah. But the jungle never came. Instead a sea of dust and rock filled the view out of my window and I sat there with a constant need to shift and twist and tweak my body as the pressure on my wrists was immense and soon enough the world outside ceased to exist as the scraps and scratches nipped with pain at every movement I made.

I remember the first night being so easy, my thoughts aloft and energized. Nothing specific. Just a happy night. But the following nights I see in far more detail. The second night I tried to lay on the bench, exhausted from a day of sitting very straight trying my best not to slouch, as doing so would tweak a wrist and dig deeper into my cuts.

Just lay on your stomach, you’ll make it. My first idea. But the attempt did not work, the bench not large enough to fit my body on my stomach. I have to sleep sitting up. Is this by design? The sleep deprivation set in quickly, this thought constantly nagging for an answer. It’s torture. They made it this way to break you before you are even put to work. I didn’t sleep for the first few days. When we stopped the guards let me out of the cart to eat alongside them, but I was kept under heavy watch. Where we were or what it was like out there I can’t recall, however, as all I can remember is the sweet rush of joy that came over me when those cuffs came off to eat. The release of stress and strain and relief it brought to let my cuts breathe in the wind. I ate very slowly at these times, stretching my time out of the cart as much as I could before the guards would take my food away and extinguish the fire.

I became desperate enough, however, to relieve myself right at the end of eating just to stretch the break a little longer. It was humiliating. They sent me behind a boulder or a bush and they would watch from a distance but constantly call. There wasn’t always something to go behind to my great dismay. But they were required to watch me and one guard insisted they at least look away, “give her some damn privacy. She never did anything wrong.” I learned soon his name was Eren, but that’s all he would tell me.

The other guard, the coachman, refused to look away, “following strict orders. Prisoner stays in sight,” he would say to Eren as he stared at my back from the cart while I went. He refused to let Eren put on the cuffs, knowing Eren would never tighten them. So he did instead. And he threw me into the cart to put a wrap on it all, smiling at the searing pain it brought as I tumbled to the floor.

The days drew on long like this, the insomnia growing to my head. I began to see things. People in the distance would stand and watch and I would call the them, “Come closer!”  They never responded. Only the coachman’s hiss and death threat came, fully aware there never was anyone in the middle of the plains. But they were so real. A mother standing next to her child, holding a basket of apples in one arm while holding the child’s heart close to her as they stood still watching. A worker covered in dirt, his pick thrown over shoulder, his jeans worn at the knee while he slanted his cap over his eyes. They felt real.