4. Capture

“The mouse has a friend,” Maligo murmured, his hot breath tickling her ear. He called out in a loud voice, “Come and see this oversized fruit, Renda.”

He hauled Tien out of the cart, his fingers biting into her armpits. Then he thrust her into a heap on the ground. Tien lay immobile where she had landed, still cocooned in her sheet. She began to shiver uncontrollably, her heart slamming against her ribs. How could her heart beat so fast, she wondered, when she felt it would stop in terror? The sheet was torn from her. Blinking and squinting, she looked up at her captors.

“An Aryk girl!” Maligo crowed, his black teeth gleaming.

He stood over her, hands on his hips, his booted legs spread apart as though he still rode his goat. Tien could not drag her eyes from him. She stared as though mesmerized. Maligo was a short, swarthy Raseen, broad shoulders with almost no neck. He had tied his plaits into a knot, and their spikes fanned his head like a peacock’s feathers. Three silver dots formed a horizontal line on his sweaty brow.

Tien’s eyes flickered fearfully to the other Raseen who now joined Maligo, and she met Eunaat’s startled gaze. Held upright by Renda, Eunaat gaped first at her, and then at the cart, comprehension dawning on his face.

“We’ll take them both with us then, shall we?” Maligo was saying to Renda, who seemed to be his superior. “We can put the girl on a cart with her kin, en route to Tira.”

“Let me look at her.” Renda pulled her over to one side, pulling her head to one side so he could examine the mark just under her jaw line. Tien trembled under his scrutiny, but after a moment, he swung her braid back. “Use your eyes man,” he called out to Maligo, as he dragged her back to the cart. “A lesser Tiran girl with a nasty case of head lice, no more. She has no mark.” He tugged the scarf back on her head.

“Oh. My mistake.” Maligo was grudging.

Renda began to walk away. “We’ll take them both to Tira,” he called back over his shoulder.

Maligo scowled at his retreating back. “All right, scratchy. You heard him. Let’s go.” As Maligo grasped her shoulders with his hard fingers, something inside Tien snapped.

She clapped both hands over her ears and the scream that she had been trying to swallow down for the last few minutes exploded from her throat. The shrill pitch of it surprised even her. Caught off guard, Maligo loosened his grip. Tien instinctively fled.

“Oy, stop!” Maligo pelted after her. Catching hold of her tunic, he threw her to the ground and stumbled over her legs. “Now you be a good girl, alright,” he panted, lugging her back to the cart, his breath sour in her face. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll behave…Hey!,” Maligo broke off, as Eunaat barrelled into him, his fists flailing wildly. “Stop, little man,” Maligo gave a surprised chuckle, but Eunaat did not appear to have heard him. “Ok, that’s how you want to do it, eh?” Maligo’s tone had changed. “I don’t feel so soft and peachy anymore.”

He let Tien slump to the ground. In a blur, she saw him raise a short black stick. A blinding spurt of light crackled out from it, striking Eunaat in the centre of his forehead, He slid motionless to the ground. Tien didn’t stop to think. She pummelled up at Maligo with her own fists; tears pouring down her cheeks. She wasn’t aware that Maligo had raised the baton again, until a jarring pain consumed her, radiating from her spine to her fingertips and toes. Loud buzzing filled her ears and seemed to pour out of her.

“Careful, Maligo,” someone was shouting. “Enough! She can help us with information about the Aryks that she transported for. Phan will have your neck if she dies….” Then mercifully everything went dark and still.

***

The little girl scampered down the path, a stitch cramping her left side. Dry puffs of peppery dirt rose from her scuffed footprints, as she darted past the villagers in the main street. She cast an anxious glance over her shoulder. It was hot in the midday sun, so the child kept to the cool shadows of the lime trees. There was only one street for business in Pojabe; the other paths led to uniform clusters of round mud–plastered houses. Each group of huts encircled an open courtyard.

Rubbing the cramp fiercely, the child trotted down the short lane to her home. She passed beneath the low archway and stood still, panting; letting her eyes adjust to the dimness inside. The dirt floor of the single room was neatly swept. Clay water pots and a leather bucket were stacked up next to the door. In the centre of the room, a thick wooden post supported the thatched roof. Five hammocks hung from three smaller posts that were set into the wall on the far side of the house. The end of each hammock was roped to the centre beam. A small table and five stools took up the rest of the room. Sunlight trickled through the old thatched roof, sprinkling the floor with beads of light.

The child cocked her head as the sound of laughter and voices drifted in from the courtyard. “Mama!“ she murmured. Tien crossed to the window and stood on her toes so she could see out.

Several women sat around a pile of unspun wool. Mama was fanning a small coal stove under the shade of a neem tree. Haim toddled after a ball fashioned from cloth and string, a soggy piece of bread clenched in one fist.

Tien looked back towards the door. She had made it safely this far. Not wanting to chance being seen from the lane, Tien dragged a water pot to the window. She turned it upside down and clambered onto it. Then, hoisting first one leg and then the other over the window’s edge, she lowered herself down into the courtyard.

The good-natured prattle of the women did not skip a beat, but some raised their eyebrows and looked across at Tien’s mother.

“Ah Sumina, who is this little monkey coming to visit you?,” lisped one toothless old lady.

Tien scuttled into Sumina’s outstretched arms, burrowing her head into her mother’s embrace like a lamb. In Mama’s soft strong arms, she felt safe. After a few moments, Tien wriggled free and looked up into Mama’s hazel eyes, before settling onto a corner of a brown sisal mat.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” said Sumina. She broke off a piece of hot bread, and blew on it before handing it to Tien. “Mmmmm.” Tien nibbled around the edge of the bread slowly to bide time while she figured out what her story would be.

“Are you sick?” asked Sumina. Tien considered for a moment.

“No,“ she decided aloud, remembering that being sick meant you had to stay inside all day.

“Did you forget your lunch?” her mother persisted. Tien shook her head. No, in fact that part had been so exciting, she had stopped under the first tree on the way, and eaten it all. “You haven’t left anything else behind, have you?”

Tien darted a look at her mother. Did she suspect? Surely not. Earlier, she had come back to fetch the string ball that she had ‘forgotten.’ But then she’d spent the rest of the morning hiding in the scrub just out of town, and capturing grasshoppers as pets.

The rustle of a crisp skirt and hurrying footsteps sounded close by. Tien’s cheeks paled. She had been so careful, making sure that she had not been followed.

“Someone else to see you, Sumina,“ one of the women called. Tien ducked behind Mama just in time. She gripped the back of her mother’s tunic with trembling fingers, as a young lady entered the courtyard. The women rose in welcome. Tien did not dare to peek around her mother’s back. As long as her eyes were closed, she knew she was invisible.

The visitor smiled at the women, greeting each one in the traditional manner. ‘How are you?’ ‘How goes your family?’ ‘How are your crops?’ They murmured the appropriate responses warmly, gesturing for her to share a mat.

When they were all seated, the woman turned to Sumina. “I have come to leave a message for your daughter.”

“Ah. Well I will be sure to tell her, when next I see her,” Sumina assured her. As she crouched behind her mother’s back, Tien listened with every part of her body.

“The children are practising for a harvest drama next week, and Fanzine told me to tell Tien: ‘There cannot be a cabbage patch with only one cabbage. Please come and be the cabbage patch with me’. ”

“I hope Tien gets this message in time, Miss Roovil,” Sumina said. “It sounds rather urgent!”

“Yes,” Miss Roovil agreed. “And I do hope that Tien does not miss the parade for the new students this afternoon. Each student will be carrying a flag.”

Tien’s jaw dropped. A flag? She marvelled. I can carry a flag? Just for being new at school? It was too thrilling!

“Miss Roovil, I can carry the flag,” she cried, bursting from her hiding place.

“Oh, hello.” Miss Roovil looked very surprised. She smiled at Tien, and then gave a puzzled frown. “Do I know you?”

“It is I, Tien,” said Tien, standing up straight so that Miss Roovil could see how big she was. “Today is my first day at school.”

“And it is mine too! I am on my way there now. Shall we walk together?”

Tien nodded. She looked at her mother, and tears welled up in her eyes. Now that she was a big schoolgirl, she would not be able to help Mama with her work. Poor Mama. She threw her arms about her tightly, and felt her mother kiss the top of her head. Then she let Mama go with a loud sniff, and wiped her eyes.

Bye, Mama. I have to go and show Fanzine how to be the cabbage patch,” she said with a watery smile. Tien’s head began to throb; waves of pain pulsed through her temples. She tried to rub them, but her hands would not move. Mama’s face faded into a blur and the women’s voices grew faint. As Tien’s eyes fluttered open, the huts and courtyard vanished. Oh no! Real tears slipped through her lashes as she realized it had all been a dream. That day in Pojabe was a lifetime ago.

© 2006 by Shelly Taylor