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33
I awake to a scuffle. There is shouting in a language I don’t understand. My head is heavy and when I open my eyes, black hands pluck me from the bed and drag me to the kitchen. I am pushed face first to the ground. My cheek burns from scraping the stone. A foot presses down in the middle of my back.
More words I don’t understand.
Then Tolliver begs, “Please, please don’t.”
I hear Kava cry out and twist my head to see what is happening. One of the masked men has a hold of Kava with a knife to her throat. Angus is crushed beneath all the furniture that is shoved away from the door. His eyes are closed, and he isn’t moving. Panic claws at my dull mind.
“We don’t know where the people of Ellery are,” Tolliver garbles. Another man has him pushed against a wall with a forearm pressed against his neck. I squirm looking for Hollis. She is gone.
“Hollis,” I squawk. “Where is Hollis?” My temples hurt from the pressure inside my head and on my back.
The man holding Kava says something and drags her out the door.
Tolliver yells after them and his captor does a quick move, yanking him off the wall and whirling him around so that his arm is twisted behind his back. He pushes Tolliver out the door.
Strong hands grab me by the collar and haul me to the balcony. I don’t fight the man in black escorting me down the stairs, so he doesn’t throw me down the way Tolliver’s captor does.
Tolliver tumbles down three steps and hits the landing hard. With two hands, the man rips him from the floor and pushes him toward the balcony railing and yells something in his face, probably warning him not to struggle or he will throw him over.
I take a deep breath, keeping my pounding heart under control. Tolliver makes eye contact with me and his confession comes flooding into my mind. He is Ellerian. I can’t even think about it right now. I shake my head adamantly at him, warning him not to fight back. Tolliver relaxes his muscles and complies.
It takes a long time to descend all the way to the ground floor, but we don’t stop there. The masked men escort us down the stairs leading to the dungeon. We walk swiftly through the hall of prison cells lit with torches.
Hollis wails at the end of the hall and my insides twist as Tolliver and I are thrown into separate cells.
“Hollis, are you okay?” I yell to her. My shoulder hits the hard ground and pain jars me. Her screaming cuts through me, forcing me off the floor as the man in black locks the door and leaves. “Hollis, are you hurt?” I yank at the cell door. It doesn’t budge. She doesn’t respond. I must find a way to get to her. Pacing around the dark cell, I inspect all the shadowy corners for some way to escape, dig or pry. There is no window. There is no other exit.
“Hollis,” Tolliver calls. “Hollis, please stop.”
She continues to cry uncontrollably. Her voice echoes so loud it garbles in my ears.
“Hollis,” Kava says several times unable to calm her down.
Eventually, her weeping slows.
I push my face between the bars hoping to see the cell she is in. The one across from me is empty. “Hollis,” I say with a scratchy throat. “You’re okay.”
“No, I’m not, Ledger!” Hollis screams at me sounding like a wildcat. She weeps for a moment and says, “We’re not okay. We’re locked in a prison. You saw what happened to that person that got locked in here with no water.”
“I just meant—”
“I know what you meant, and I don’t care,” she growls. “We’re all going to die down here.” She sobs. I imagine her rocking back and forth, holding herself.
Not saying anything for a long time, our predicament churns around us like rising floodwaters. Hollis is losing it. Angus is missing. Tolliver is Ellerian. And we’re locked in a dungeon. Sadness ebbs at the edge of my vision and I refuse to give it a chance to flow through me again. Gritting my teeth, I think, I’ve got to find a way out of here. I can’t shut down. I won’t.
***
Day 305
Two days the men in black masks have left us down here without food or water. My head aches with thirst. Shortly after they locked us up, they dragged Angus down and tossed him into the cell across from me in a rumpled heap of brown clothes and red hair. He woke up on the second day with a huge lump on his forehead.
Footsteps echo from the stairs and scuff down the prison hall toward us. I scoot away from the door to avoid being seen. Something metal hits the floor outside my cell and scrapes against the stone. It’s a bowl of boiled grain. I scramble to the bowl and eat it without taking a breath. The moisture of the gray mush soothes my dry throat. I finish it quickly and my body aches for more. I sigh, thinking about the fact that I desire this nasty slop that I’ve been sick of eating since the second week on this island.
“Thank you,” a female voice says from the end of the hall. Probably Kava.
“You are welcome,” the guard responds with an unfamiliar accent.
“Wait,” Tolliver calls. “You speak our language?”
“A little,” he says.
“Why are you holding us?” Tolliver asks.
“I am not. My master is.”
“Will you let us go?”
“I cannot,” the guard says.
“We are starving and my friend, he is hurt.”
The man pauses and says, “I am sorry. Master wants payment.”
“Payment for what?”
“We supply Ellery with,” the guard stops for a moment then continues, “Items they need. Difficult to find. We find. Ellery pays much.”
“But they are gone,” Tolliver says.
“Yes, and he want someone to pay,” the man says.
“Why don’t you tell him we don’t want the items?”
The guard walks up the hall, stopping near my door and replies, “I cannot.” He is covered from head to heel in black, with black boots and a black mask. His eyes are far apart and when he looks at me, I shrink back from the torchlight.
“He can have Ellery. We will get off the island, and he can have it. The whole thing. That can be his payment,” Tolliver says.
The man snickers. “He already took it from you.” He continues to the stairs.
“Wait, please,” Tolliver calls.
The sound of his footsteps fades into the darkness.
