A fat, scowling chef bought plenty of girls for the bakehouse, and a skinny woman with gnarled fingers and black nails took a bunch of boys and girls to the greenhouse. Many went willingly, but a few struggled, crying and dragging their feet. The threat of being vaporized kept them moving. One soldier needed servants for the king and passed a bag of gold to the Auctioneer to buy several big boys.
Between patches of mist the purple sky rolled from lavender into violet, and the dim sun deepened its blue as time beat on. An orange moon slipped over the woods and rose in the sky. It seemed like I’d spend another day with Charlie in the corral, but at the last moment, a tall woman in a green-hooded robe walked closer to the edge of the platform. In one swift movement she pulled her hood off to fling back curly, black hair that streamed down to her waist. Her skin glowed pearly white and her blood-red lips stood out like ribbons on snow. I feared her beauty more than the Child Collector’s hideous face. Beautiful people had more power than ugly ones.
“Come along, then,” the Auctioneer prodded the woman. “Got some good strong ones here for power mill work. See any you like?”
Finn could be at the power mill! Having faced my fear of lightning to find my friend, something drove me on. I came here to rescue Finn, and there was no turning back. In trusting Charlie’s words that Finn could be at the power mill, there was only one thing to do.
I shot up my hand. “I’ll go.”
The kids took in one giant breath and widened their circle around me as the Auctioneer raised both eyebrows and shook his stick at me. “A volunteer? Now that’s a first. You Reekers really are dumb.” The guards joined him in laughter and the cadmean beasts threw their snouts in the air, no doubt having fun at my stupidity too.
But the woman remained silent, staring at me with her head cocked and black eyes piercing mine.
“What are you doing?” Charlie tugged on my shirt, but I shook him off.
“I’m not staying here. I came to get my friend.”
He let go of my shirt. “It’s safer in the pit.”
“Maybe, but there’s no way out. There could be a way out somewhere else.”
He didn’t respond, and then his hand crept up too. I shook my head at him, but he only raised his hand higher. We were partners now.
The woman’s stare bounced back and forth from me to Charlie.
She flicked a long finger at both of us, claiming us as her power mill slaves, along with fifteen other boys, and then she disappeared like a ghost through the haze. Was she the energy god?
We were ordered to climb the steps, and in doing so found ourselves surrounded by guards on the platform. My new world grew bigger as I stood high above the comforting pit I’d chosen to leave. A dirt road wound away from us into the woods, taking with it the thrumming of horse hooves galloping away. The wind’s fingers pushed and pulled at me as the kids below watched and waited.
Trees loomed around us, their splotchy birch bark glowing against the purple sky. Some twisted branches spiked upward while others sloped toward the ground and buried themselves in the earth as if hiding. I clenched my knees together to keep standing and watched the remaining sea of faces in the auction pit to focus on anything but where I might be going. There stood Red. She nodded at me, her face pinched, rapping her knuckles together. Back to the bunkhouse for her. Was she the lucky one, or us?
“Listen up, Reekers,” the Auctioneer rasped out. “If you don’t work hard, your new boss will send you back and I’ll lose money—the Child Collector loses money.” He dragged himself forward, his stick clack-clacking on the wood floor. “And we never lose money. And if you do get sent back, you’ll be cleaning out the castle sewers with the rats. And these aren’t like Earth rats.” He picked his teeth with a ragged nail, pulled out a mushy lump, and peered at it, as if considering its worth, then chomped on it in delight. “These rats are as big as cows with tails to whip you and teeth to gnaw your tender noses and fingers.”
He laughed with a snort but had a coughing fit and had to stop, and then waved to the boy with the clipboard. “They’re all yours.” Standing close to him, the boy now looked older than me, maybe thirteen. He smiled at me again, but this time I had no smile to return.
The giant foxes snapped at us, rounding us into a tight circle. One of them brushed its thick tail against my leg, its enormous jaws level with my head. Razor-sharp teeth threatened to bite me in two, along with a mouth that could swallow me in one greedy gulp. The stink of raw meat blowing around me in the breeze made me choke on the throw up that rose in my throat. It burned going back down, and I pulled in my stomach, trying to make myself look less appetizing.
The Auctioneer and the clipboard boy took a step back. The kid mouthed something to me. What did he say? He mouthed it again. It will be okay. It sure didn’t feel okay.
“Here they come,” Charlie whispered in my ear.
A dark swarm swelled in the sky. Dozens of wings fluttered and a cool wind swept toward me in waves. I rubbed the crystal in my pocket crazily, wishing hard to make the birds disappear. It didn’t work.
“The korax,” Charlie said in a cracked voice. “Hold on tight. I saw a kid fall just before you got here.” He smiled to reassure me, although he nervously bounced a curled thumb to his mouth. “But he squirmed a lot. Screamed too. Broke his leg. They took him off to the bunkhouse doctor.”
Charlie certainly had guts for wanting to come with me.
As the swarm drew closer, they appeared as monstrous black ravens with a giant wingspan that filled the sky’s empty spaces. Their massive beaks opened and closed with gurgling croaks, but it was their eyes that terrified me. They burned a bright green, shooting us with a mean glare as they torpedoed down. Chanting words echoed across the dark land: light bringers, light bringers. Imagined words? The whirring of wing beats throbbed in my head as they grew closer, matching the beat of my own thudding heart.
The cackling screech of these mutant birds slammed through my ears as their beaks opened on giant hinges, and tongues like fat worms squirmed about in cavernous mouths. Screaming kids pushed up against me on all sides as a rancid wind roared over us. The words light bringers stabbed me over and over, and I cupped my hands to my ears. The other boys stampeded around me, shoving, yelling, but the guards pushed us back, vapes hissing. We had nowhere to go, not with monsters and men on all sides.
“Wh-what do I do?” I grabbed Charlie’s arm.
He gripped my arm back−just as scared as me. “Well, don’t squirm, that’s for sure.”
I nodded, terrified.
“And don’t scream.”
One of the korax swooped in. Giant talons clamped down hard on Charlie, and then he was gone. His long legs swayed up and away. Something nabbed my collar and pulled me off my feet. A scream stuck in my throat as I rose into the air. All around me screaming kids dangled from talons as long as my arm.
With every move of its wings, a stench, like something half-eaten, crawling with maggots and buzzing with flies, wafted over me. The puke in my throat threatened to come up again, but out of my side vision birds flew below me with their captives, and I sure didn’t want to puke on anyone. We left the auction pit lights behind and flew into the dim nothing. Everywhere in front of me legs swung below feathered black blades that cut through the air in the misty gray.
We skimmed the tops of trees that stabbed upward as if to shred me with their fingers. Pointing my feet up away from them was the one movement I dared to make. If I startled this flying beast, it might drop me to be shish-kebabbed on giant toothpicks. I remained frozen, hoping this flight of terror took me to Finn. Old dreams of flying came to me, of floating out of my bedroom window and soaring over the woods back home. But not here. Not now. Not in this evil place that took my world away.
After a few minutes, a light glowed ahead. It grew larger and larger until it spread across an area as big as a football field. Power lines ran back and forth around a humongous brown building and fed into a big box on the roof. A fat, misshapen chimney hiccupped smoke that hovered in a thick cloud, and soft light gleamed from the building’s windows. A faint chooga-chooga noise grew louder until it became almost deafening, a steady pounding over and over.
Chooga-chooga Chooga-chooga.
The swarm dove down into this sound.
We had arrived at the power mill.