Black Dove (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter Six

            “Hello? Can you hear me?” No. I don’t want to wake up from this sleep, where nobody disappears and nobody is dying. I don’t want to go back. But I can’t stay. Something is dragging me back up to the surface. I feel my body again. It feels like it weighs ten thousand pounds, and even lifting up my eyelids seems like too much work. I can’t open them. I can’t break this iron clad around me.

            And then I remember everything. The battle. The long trek through the woods. Kane. And suddenly my eyes open, and I’m blinded by a white light. Willison. I need to know that she’s alright.

            “I’m glad you decided to return to the lands of the living. We thought you were a goner.” I turn away from the light, and see a small figure sitting by my bedside. I’m in a room, and light is pouring in. I raise a stiff hand to my head and find it bandaged. I feel my shins bandaged as well.

            The girl crosses the room and shuts the curtains. I can see now. The room is small. The walls are made of stone. I am in a white bed. The girl sitting next to my bed looks young, blonde, and pretty.

            I feel like a heroine out of one of those chick flicks my mother used to watch, but I say it anyways, “Where am I?”

            She laughs, a bright sound that echoes off the stone walls, “You’re alive, for one thing. For another thing, you’re in the bowels of a shop, known as Hopestead.”

            “A…shop?”

            “Yep. A candle shop, which also sells other little trinkets. I’m Essalie, the owner’s daughter, but you can just call me Essie. Take out the ‘al’ part. It’s easier to say, and I don’t like the ‘al’ much anyways.”

            I shake my head a bit, trying to clear it. “I came in with someone. Willison. She was hurt—“

            “Oh, she’s here too. She’s a lot better then you were. I don’t know where you came from when you stumbled upon our street, but you were half dead already. She completely fine by now, except for the withdrawal.”

            “Withdrawal?”

            “Yeah, of course. Now she doesn’t have the Tarka Leaf.” Tarka Leaf? The drug had been invented fifty years ago using a mixture of several different plants and chemicals. Highly addictive, but also quite cheap. It had a blooming black market trade all over the world.

            Essie had been watching me closely, “You didn’t know? I thought you guys must have been friends or something, since you did save her life. If you had showed up even half an hour later, it may have been too late. You were both beat up real bad.” She leaned in closer, “So, you were a soldier? In the UPP? Poor you.”

            I open my mouth to agree, but then shut it. Poor me? Why had she said it with such a tone of hatred towards the UPP? Was she a UAF soldier? Had I been captured? The thought made me nervous. For all I knew they were torturing Willison as we spoke.

            “Essie, your mother needs you.” A deep voice from the door makes Essie stand up.

            “Father, she woke up.”

            I chew my lip. Was my torturing time about to come. The man from the door slowly slides into focus as he walks toward my bed. And I realize this is not the face of a torturer. He had grey hair, receding. His face was mostly unwrinkled, but I would have put him at about forty years old.

            “Glad to see you decided to join us.”

            “I don’t know if I am. Who are you?” I remained chilly. I didn’t trust any of them. My hands reach for my necklace, but it is gone, “Where did you put my necklace?”