The Fourth World: Ch4 Part 4

“What are we going to do with her?”

“She’s a spy!”

“I knew we weren’t safe here…”

Muffled voices awake me. The immediate blackness again from covers my eyes and it scares me. Why can’t I see anything? I feel my hands brushing themselves against a rough fabric where my face lies, so I know they have put something, a bag, to cover it. Or to cover what my eyes should be seeing.

“She’s awake!” someone whispers.

“How did she even find us?”

“Whatever. I say we kill her.”

Panic strikes me. They are talking about me. Kill me. I’m the one who snuck into a place I shouldn’t have entered. I’m the one who followed him here.

Him.

Sky.

What is he doing here? Why isn’t he freeing me?

I try looking at myself from outside my fabric. The same gray clothes, black bag covering my face… There is no way he could recognize me.

I start shouting, frantically needing to see where I am. Who is talking. What they’re doing.

“Sky?! Sky where are you?!”

It’s only a few seconds later that I realize the sound coming from my mouth is not what I’m hearing in my mind. They have also covered my mouth, making it impossible for me to speak. I feel my chest moving up and down heavily, and I try to break free from the chair I’m tied to. Fear drains in on me. I am trapped.

“Give her a shot to make her sleep! Come on!”

I agitate myself even more, banging my knee against a table, sending a sharp sting of agony rushing through my veins.

“Why don’t we just talk to her, I’m sure we could reason… Make her see like us, maybe just let her go and leave it all behind us…?” a sweet suggesting voice suddenly fills me with calmness, but it doesn’t last long.

“Shut up!” Everybody seems to shout at the voice.

“I swear, why did we even let him into this group?”

“I thought we agreed to kill all trespassers, what are we waiting for?!”

“Kill, kill.” I really do hope they would stop saying that word, “Okay then, Lou, since you’re so eager to take lives away, tell us how exactly you would proceed in this?” I don’t think I want to hear this girl’s answer.

“Well, my mother used to kill rabbits holding them by their ankles and hitting them with a large blow to the head…”

I feel myself swallow hard, my throat remaining dry. She was obviously not finished, but the man who had asked her how she would kill me interrupted her, clearly not having been affected by her comment as I have.

“Okay then, there is still one thing I’m just not quite sure about… I hope you could shed light on it for me. Where, I ask, would we find a giant in order to hold her arms and legs apart?”

I can hear the girl Lou starting to stammer a good comeback but I don’t get to hear what she’s come up with since someone else saying, “No, seriously, if we were to get rid of her, I would suggest enclosing her in one of our narrow storage rooms. And, according to my calculations, it would probably take about 36 hours for the oxygen to run out…”

“Come on, if you consider the height and area of the storage room you would be smart enough to know that it would take her approximately 4 days to die. It’s basic knowledge.”

“Oh really? What about the weight of the prisoner?”

“The weight?!”

After that people start bellowing and arguing about my weight, whether I’m 55kg or “What the hell are you saying? She’s maximum 52!” and I don’t know anymore whether I’m scared, confused or even just the slightest amused at the scene. I prefer my ‘kidnappers’ to fight about my weight rather than ways to kill me. I don’t know from where it’s coming from, but part of me wants to laugh, almost all fear suddenly drained away. I realize the people on the other side haven’t the slightest clue of what to do, just like me.

“Everybody shut up!” It’s the stern voice that shuts off all the amusement in my mind. “God, we just need to figure out what to do okay?” He pauses for a second. “And no more talk about killing for goodness sake, we’re not like them.”

I can slightly hear some annoyed mumbling, probably from the most eager to kill me, Lou, “And no more talk of killing for goodness sake…” she repeats, in a high pitch, mimicking her leader.

The silence doesn’t last long. Soon enough, they are all back to disputing and shouting about their various ways to confront me. Confront me. As if I’m some kind of danger?

“Make her think this is a dream!”

“She’ll return here to find out, you idiot, then we’ll be back where we are now.”

The leader, I’ve now recognized is sitting on my left, lets out a long sigh and I imagine him burying his head in his arms.

I stop trying to make out what they’re saying. Instead, I listen for voices, trying to concentrate on his familiar, melodic voice.

To my surprise, there is one voice I do recognize, but it’s not his. It can’t be his. It’s too rough. Husky, reminds me of an edge of a cliff. One side beautiful and full of nature and the other rocky and jagged, a vast emptiness beneath.

But Sky’s is higher, always sounds like he is thinking of something other than what he is saying, his thoughts always one step ahead. Distracted yet spirited like the melody of a bird. It sounds like…

“We certainly can’t let her go now.”

Sounds like that.

I move up and down, trying anything to let him see through the black cloth and into the friend he’s grown up with all his life.

But there is no use.

“That’s it. Hand me the anaesthetic.”

My mind activates its engine. There has to be a way for him to realize who I am.

And then I know.

I bend my neck down, moving my chin close to the rounded collar of my shirt. Unable to use my hands I manage to pull down the top of my shirt just enough to feel the shape of my collarbone brushing against my chin.

I feel a sharp sting of a needle starting to enter the skin of my arm, letting go of any hope I had that Sky had understood what I was trying to show him.

“Stop!” my drooping eyes open wide. Silence falls in the room and all I can hear is his confused whisper, stuttering my name. “Ember?”

I hear a chair scraping against the soiled floor and trembling legs running towards me. I feel his hands, as rough as sandpaper, and the chewed nails grazing for a second against my neck as he unties the fabric loose from my head.

The last thing I see are his amber eyes growing brighter as he slaps me hard on the cheek to try and get me back to them.