Time is nothing in the dark. I never realized until this moment how much I depend on the sun. I usually wake shortly after it rises. The rays of light warm my blankets and body until it’s too hot to stay in bed. I fall asleep staring up at the sky through my window, the light of the moon silver and calming. Now that I’m without any sense of the outside world, I realize that I have no natural sense of time. How long have I been here? Hours? A day? More? It couldn’t be that long. Still everything blends together. I am only brought out of my stupor when the train starts to slow down.
“What’s happening?” Evan asks me. He managed to fall asleep for a while. The wrinkles of my coat are pressed into his cheek.
“I’m not sure.”
When the train stops, the other captives stand up against the walls. The man with the curly gray hair motions for us to do the same. The door creaks loudly and then opens with another groan. The man with the black braid is standing at the entrance.
“Five minutes!” He barks and hits the floor of the train with the butt of his rifle.
We shuffle out in two single file lines. Evan and I are at the back of the lines. I can’t see much out of the side of the train. I know it’s night. When we jump down, we land on soft grass. I am expecting to be in the Forsyth, to be surrounded by trees. Instead we are in open land, the eastern prairie, without a tree in sight. I’ve never seen anything like it. Gone are the thick clumps of trees, the dark woods, the shady leaves. Our little clearing is nothing in comparison. Tall grass stretches out for miles. It ripples in the wind. I follow the movement with my eyes, up a hill and out of my sight. This must be the great prairie. It runs from the eastern border of the Forsyth to the ocean. When you get further north you reach mountains and the salt water lakes. I’ve never been that interested in the East. The books I’ve read have always been about the myths, the Forsyth, the Hillanger tribes of the west. The west in particular fascinates me. Now I wish I had given it more attention.
“Wow,” Evan says. “It’s so empty. Looks like you could just run in it forever.”
If only. Currently we are surrounded by guards. They create a circle around us, using the train’s door as the starting point. Our train car is in the middle of a long line of compartments, the backs practically touching the fronts. The rest of the train stretches out on either side. It’s not like the gleaming silver trains I’ve seen in my books. It is rusting and dark gray. There are no windows, just metal boxes connected in a row. Ladders with missing rungs are attached to the back of the cars in front of us. I can’t see the back of our compartment, but I’m guessing there's one there too. It looks like there are doors in the back of the compartments as well, smaller than the large sliding doors on the sides.
The prisoners stay in the circle of guards. One gets too close to the edge and is shoved back, hard. I can’t take my eyes off the braided man. He is easily twice the size of most of the guards. I didn’t know humans could get that tall. Some people are stretching their legs, walking in tight little circles. Most are going to the bathroom. Somehow it doesn’t seem strange to me. I supposed we all have accepted our new position, our reduction from equal humans to prisoners, cattle. How quickly it happened.
Before long, the braided man fires his gun into the air. “Back into the train,” he bellows as he reloads the rifle. No one in the Forsyth uses guns. They take too long to load. If you miss an animal with your first shot, you’d never reload in time. As we walk back, I try to take in as much as I can about the guards, the trains, the prairie. It’s impossible for me to know where we are in the prairie. It is too dark and land too uniform. There is no hint of any of the eight cities, not that I could tell them apart. The train too doesn’t give me information. I see the tracks up ahead, but the grass is too tall for me to follow them for long. I count six guards, though I’m guessing that there are more in the train.
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“Get in,” the braided man grunts to me. I’m the last in line. As I step up, he shoves me forward. I slide onto the floor, landing awkwardly on my arm. I hear the door creak closed and then lock. Evan and I go back to sitting against the wall, his head on my shoulder. The train doesn’t move though. What I think are hours pass by and still nothing.
“What do you think they’re waiting for?” Evan asks.
I have an idea, but I don’t want to tell him. I think they’re out getting more people, snatching more of us from the woods. I jump when I hear the door unlock.
When it creaks open, the braided man shouts, “everyone stay down!” A moment later a person is thrown into the compartment. They hit the floor with a thud. The figure is hooded and I can see a trickle of blood running onto the floor from under the hood. The door is still open, although the braided man is out of sight. Everyone in the train is keeping their heads down. I want to do the same, but Evan’s focus is on the figure.
“Are you alright?” He calls out. There is no response. Apparently my brother has no regard for his own life. He crawls over to the still figure and pulls off the burlap hood. The small girl, no more than eight or nine, underneath the hood is unconscious. The blood is coming from her nose. Evan shakes her gently. “Can you hear me?” When she doesn’t respond, he turns back to me. “Javin, we’ve got to do something!”
“What’s going on in here?” The braided man reappears at the door, his rifle slung over his back and a hand on the twisted metal scabbard of his sword.
“She’s really hurt,” Evan says before I can stop him. We shouldn’t be talking to this man. “She needs to see someone or I don’t know if she’ll make it.”
The braided man reaches into the train and grabs Evan by the neck of his shirt. His long arms make it so he doesn’t even need to step into the compartment. He shoves Evan back against the wall. I wince when I hear his head hit the metal wall. If I were Evan, I would lower my gaze and keep quiet. But I’m not.
“What about the girl!” Evan shouts at the braided man.
“Leave her,” he snaps. “You’re all as good as dead anyways.” And with that he slams the door closed and locks it loudly.
As soon as the door is closed, Evan is back next to the girl. I on the other hand can’t tear my eyes away from the door, staring at the spot the braided man stood a moment ago. I’ve felt anger before. I’ve felt rage. This is different. A strange calmness has overtaken me. I feel very aware of every inch of my body, the sounds I am hearing, the sights, the smells. It is a desire, something I’ve never felt before. Something more than anger. I want to kill him, the braided man. And I swear that someday I will.
“She’s breathing!” Evan announces.
I turn towards him, released from my moment of strange clarity. Evan’s head is near the girl’s chest. I crawl over to him. “Maybe she’s just unconscious.”
The man with curling, gray hair comes over to us. He places two fingers along her neck. “Pulse is alright,” he says. “Let’s give her some time. It’s a rough fall for someone so little. Here, let’s bring her over to the back. It’s warmer there.”
I scoop the girl up which is a bit difficult with my hands still bound. Evan helps me carry her to the back and the man with the gray hair sits down next to her.
“I’ll keep a close eye on her,” he says, checking her pulse again.
We go back and sit against the wall. Evan isn’t looking at me. He is looking at the girl. The words of the braided man echo in my mind. You’re all as good as dead anyways. It no longer matters if that’s true or not. We’re not going to wait around to find out.