FLOTSAM, Ch1: Darknesses

Описание: Hatchlings, Book I: Flotsam
Chapter 1
Book I: Flotsam Chapter 1: Darknesses
It was a new kind of darkness--a shock, for I had come to know darknesses so well. After all these dozens of fives and twos, I'd come to recognize in an instant whether I was waking to the common darknesses of a midnight beating, or the darkness of a burlap sack, or the comfortable darkness of my felted blanket on the packed dirt floor. Those were common
darknesses. There were uncommon darknesses too. The forced march in the Siberian night, the smothering darkness of a wet pillow, or the throbbing darkness of a cracked skull. But this new darkness, this was different altogether. This was a queasy, lolling and dripping wet, pierced by thumb-thick shafts of light, sprawled against cardboard box corners kind of darkness. With newness, fear. With fear, questions. Should I alert my captors that something felt wrong? Or should I shut up and endure? Endurance was so often the only choice, but when changes happened as they occasionally would, it was hard to tell if the Yakuts wanted me to speak up or shut up. I touched my head--it was bleeding. Had I already received a beating and would be beaten again for forgetting the previous beating? I touched my feet. They were not bound, and that is what made me speak up. “Hello,” I said in Yakut, “Hello, my feet are not bound. Will you bind my feet?” No answer. “Hello, sirs. I need to be bound. Do you wish to bind my feet, and hands?” No answer. Wrongness compounded wrongness, and I knew I had to do something. So I curled into a ball among the boxes and let myself be rocked by the lolling dark space.

(c) 2011-2015 by Nathan McKnight