So ended my only glimpse of anything resembling a normal childhood. From there I was deposited into the main slave quarters, in the company of some thirty or so others. It was a large, wide building with dirt floors, portioned into small roofless cells. If it sounds as though I am describing a barn for the housing of livestock, that may be because that's precisely what it amounted to. Only here, the livestock in question was human, and the locks were much sturdier.
I didn't warrant a full cell, of course; such luxuries were saved for the contributing slave families, not unattached, untested little nuisances like myself. I merited nothing more than a pile of straw in a corner, and I had to fight to keep even that.
I was what was referred to as a seed slave, a young slave bought very cheaply off the block for his or her future potential. A healthy, strong slave in their prime was a thing of value, and could bring a heavy weight of silver at sale. But the younger slaves, those who wouldn't be capable of hard labor for years yet, could be had for a fraction of the cost.
Since the cost of feeding and housing a slave, even for years, was little more than a pittance, clever owners bought the younger slaves at a bargain price and waited for them to grow up into the hard working slaves they truly desired. A bit of a gamble, but most owners thought it a sound investment, even if they lost a few on the way.
Such was my lot. I was even more expendable than most other slaves, for they at least had their own value protecting them to some extent. As Mother Mera had suggested, I kept my head low and tried not to draw attention to myself. I did as I was asked without question and as well I was able. I quickly learned that, while I wasn't really expected to make much of a contribution, I was still very much expected to work. And work I did.
What can one say about life as a slave? I suppose, at its heart, it amounts to constant, backbreaking labor, day after day, with never enough of anything. A life with no rewards, nothing to look forward to but another day of work on the morrow.
But is that really so different from, say, the life of a farmer? Or any vocation, really, if one scrapes off enough of the gilt?
Yes, of course it is. Don't be a fool. Slavery is an abomination and I despise it as I despise nothing else in this world. I despise it as only one who has lived through it can.
A seamstress, or a farmer, or a merchant might work hard long hours to put food on the table. I don't deny it. And they might well do the same thing again the next day. But if the day after they come to work exhausted or ill and can't work as hard, well, they probably won't take home as much coin that day. Unfortunate.
But if a slave happens to have an off day, there is every chance they will be dragged out behind a barn by their hair and whipped until either they start working harder or they stop breathing.
Make no mistake, to a slave owner, a slave is not human. A slave is an animal, a piece of property, like a goat or a plow or a shovel, with no more value than the work it can produce. If a shovel is bent, one doesn't coddle it and ask it to try and do a better job tomorrow. One takes a hammer and starts beating the blade until it straightens out and works properly. A slave is treated with much the same consideration.
And the worst part, the very worst part, is there are many slaves who, after years of such treatment, come to believe that they deserve nothing better.
There is no life more grueling, no life more brutal than that of a slave. And among slaves, there are none with a worse lot than those forced to work the fields.
Which is, of course, precisely where I ended up.
That isn't to say our lives were completely devoid of enjoyment. We had our pleasures, our own hopes and aspirations. Mostly though, we slaves had each other.
There were bullies, as there are everywhere. And against the owners and other free workers, every slave was on their own.But though we had very little, none went completely without if there was any at all to spare. Children were not allowed to starve, or to freeze--which was fortunate for me, as a slave's dinner was dependent on how much work they accomplished that day, and at the beginning I accomplished very little. I was forced to live off of what little the others were kind enough to share.
But I did try. It was only that I was small, and I didn't know the proper way to do anything. I spent long, lonely days and nights there at the start, exhausted from the unaccustomed labor of the fields. I went days without speaking a word to another living soul, not because I was too shy to approach the other children, but because I was simply too tired to call forth the effort to be social.
Eventually, my exhaustion faded to a constant, bearable level, and the faces around me stopped being the faces of strangers, and started to take on the aspects of real people. And it was at that time that I made my very first friend.
His name was Scratch, and it was a name that fit him like another layer of the irritated skin in which he was covered. I don't know if the boy suffered from some manner of body rash or a permanent infestation of bed bugs, but he never ceased his enthusiastic scratching. He even scratched in his sleep.
It never bothered me a great deal, but I did make a certain point to keep a few feet away from him, most times. In case whatever he had was catching. But that was the only distance between us. Otherwise, the two of us were as close as brothers.
I think he was a year older than me, perhaps two, though neither of us was ever sure. Like me, he was an orphan.
There is a special kind of bond which forms between two children who are so desperately alone, much like that, I think, which forms between two soldiers who have stood shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield. We were more than friends, we were comrades, and it was us against the cruel, uncaring world. Every day we worked the fields together, and life was not so terrible.
By my second season on the farm I knew the routine quite well, and I knew, that above all other things, I hated prickle corn season.
Now, I'll never make the argument that prickle corn is anything but delicious. It can be cooked on the cob, roasted, mashed, or any of another thousand or so methods of preparation. For many, it is an absolute staple of their diet, and a treat besides.
Oh no, eating it was just fine. Picking it was the nightmare. The husk of prickle corn is, as the name implies, covered in a coat of sharp, prickly thorns. Adult slaves, or those young slaves with parents to provide for them, protected their fingers with gloves, and the thorns were nothing more than a mild nuisance.
But for the unprotected fingers of a luckless little slave child, it was a slow, inescapable torture. Those children without gloves or the means to have them made were still expected to pick right along with the others. It was not unusual for a child to walk away from the field with fingers slick with blood.
Scratch and I, orphans that we were, were some of the worst off of the lot. Gloves? Pah. Of course we had no gloves; we barely had clothes. It wasn't just our hands that suffered, wading through that prickly jungle.
And we made it worse for ourselves, for we were stupid.
"You've got a bit of a scratch there, Scratch. Looks like you're bleeding again," I noted, nodding towards a long tear on the back of his hand. I grabbed another ear of corn by the thick silk tassels, deftly removed it from its husk, and stuffed it in my bag. My fingers were nimble, and I was able to avoid the worst of the thorns, most times.
"Yep, 'spose it does. Makes sense that it looks it, too, 'cuz, ya know, I am." His tone was a bit surly, even by his naturally surly standards.
I smiled to myself and shook my head. "Only just a few drops, though. Barely worth bleedin' at all, gonna do such a half-assed job of it. Bit pathetic, you ask me." As I spoke, I took one of my fingers and deliberately staked myself on a long, nasty thorn. Then I held up the finger proudly, where a good sized bead of red sprouted up in short order. "Now that, that's bleeding done right."
He eyed my upraised fingers with obvious scorn. "Well, see, that's why nobody don't ask you nothing. You're dumber than a box of stupid. How dumb you gotta be to make yourself bleed on purpose?" He shook his head. "That's right foolish, Telth." A moment later his face scrunched up in an impish grin. "But if you were gonna do it, well, I reckon you'd want to do it like this."
Without so much as pausing for thought, he took his entire hand and stuck it into the prickliest, thickest patch of thorns in sight. Then he twisted it around a bit for good measure. The hand came out scratched and bleeding in a dozen places, with some of the thorns still embedded in his skin.
Still not satisfied, he held up his hand, grabbed his arm by the wrist and started squeezing. Blood welled out in a bright red rush.
Now, this was well done. I was mightily impressed by his show of reckless bravado. But of course I wasn't about to let him know it. Instead, I kept my face neutral and raised an eyebrow. "Well, see, that's a spot better. I admit it. If I had me a granny, and she were here, I suppose she'd be right dazzled. But as I don't, and she's not, and it's just us menfolk here, I 'spose I better show you how to do it proper..."
The situation progressed predictably from there. By the time the dinner bell finally sounded, we were covered in blood, our clothes were ripped into even less appealing shreds than they had started, and we were laughing uncontrollably. The other slaves looked at us as though we were crazy. Maybe they were right. Or maybe it was the blood loss.
In any case, the beating we earned that night, turning in our bags of blood covered corn, was no laughing matter at all.