Everything hurts. I work and I work and of course I work. And it's hard and it's stressful and it's frantic and it's dizzying. Going and going and going.
And I miss them. I miss my kids, my best friends' kids. And I'm absolutely terrified for them. I don't want them to meet the same fate I met. I can do nothing to shield them from their fate. Our lives are in the hands of the Towerpeople.
I'm wiping down a counter at a dizzying pace. I'm making sure I don't miss any spots, leave any streaks.
And I'm so worried about them, I feel so helpless. I hope they can at least keep themselves alive. Or maybe that's not what I hope.
Because as terrible as this is, all this never ending constantly degrading work, I remember how much more terrible it feels when you're a child, all alone, and you're doing this same work. Children need adults that love and care for them, that they have a connection with. They need the adults that raised them. Our children need us.
I sigh as I leave the table sparkling and polished and shining. And I move to the next table. There are so many. I hate them all. Why do the Towerpeople need so much? I start wiping.
I can't forget my childhood. How much it hurt, how much it burned. I can't forget how I saw such similar pain burning in the eyes and the faces and the words and the histories of my other friends.
I remember how much adult work isn't meant for children, how much this much labour of this type isn't meant for anyone.
I wonder if I'll be able to see any of the children at church. Pavlin's quiet voice that holds such precious words. The way Mafalia loves every speck of nature she can find. The way Andronicha holds a grace about her that even the most degrading of work cannot lessen. The way Levi looks up at the sky. Probably not. Most children are sold to different cities. To different worlds.
And I'm wiping down windows now. The cold glass needs to be kept clear and pristine like crystal because they accept nothing less than perfection.
And I remember how much it hurt to never be accepted, never be seen, never be really seen as a person, by the only people who were around, who were old enough, to be your guardians.
They're children, just children, just little baby children. Them being slaves doesn't do anything to still the fact that they're children.
I'm bending low to sweep the floors. I'm running out of time. I'm always running out of time.
I thought foolishly that I was done feeling the worst of my grief. I was done feeling the unimaginably dark, unbelievably vast all-consuming cavernousness of cold, poisonous hurt. But it turns out that I wasn't. How cruel fate is. How much I hate it.
And at the end of the day I feel an aching, aching emptiness in my chest, in my stomach, in my throat.
And I remember that all of the dear, young, incredibly fragile children have been torn not only from their parents and aunts but also from their siblings. And I can't I just can't.
And I miss my kids so much. I don't think I can live without their brightness in my life.
My dreams are restless that night.
——
It's dark. Damp. Muggy. Humid. Too warm, even though it's night time. I can't sleep. Grief and stifling heat and sadness and hopelessness grind me awake. I hate feeling hopeless. I'm often hopeless. But never this much. But deep in the darkness surrounded by these four stone walls I feel as if I am enveloped by death itself.
I'm not the only restless one. Katapa also can't sleep. She lies beside me, head lifted. It is just the two of us gazing at each other's faces in the darkness. The dark of her eyes. The subtle curve of her cheek. The way her black hair looks somehow darker than black in this lack of light.
She is a picture of grief. A mother weeping for her children. I imagine so am I.
We look at each other, just look at each other in the darkness. So much unsaid between us. The air between us is thick with all we have no idea how to verbalize and no idea how to rationalize. We are in a grave, buried under the earth. We are in an underworld, overflowing with hurt. Her eyes mirror my own. And in them I can see sorrow deeper than the universe. I do not know how one woman can even hold so much sorrow.
She brushes a strand of hair away from my forehead with her gentle fingers. She puts her hand on my cheek and I hold onto it. There's something holy about the way she holds me. About the way I hold her. I wish I could say it lifts the pain but it doesn't. It simply makes us better able to see it. To understand it.
I wish ... I wish my kids were free. Not just that. I wish all the kids were free. All of them are actually our kids. All the children who have to live beneath the heel of the Towerpeople deserve freedom. The ones ripped from their families deserve freedom. The ones who still have their families but still have to toil away in factories and fields anyways deserve freedom. The kids do and the young adults do and the adults do and everyone deserves freedom. Our people grieve. They toil. And suffer. They are held in chains. Crushed under unbearable weight. Dehumanized under the lash of the Towerpeople. Made to live lives worse than death.
Wow my thoughts are running free. They're running wild. They're raging like wildfire in dry prairie but they're running wild. In a way they never have before. In the holy vigil Katapa and I hold I find a rage I never knew I had. Find a power I never knew I had.
Katapa's eyes look deep into me, into my very soul like she often does. She's drowning in misery. I am too. Burning noxious chemical oceans of it. But she's with me and we're drowning together, so at least she can hold my hand through it.
I'm angry, angry, angrier than I've ever been before and that's saying an incredible much. I'm angry enough to burn the world down. And I swear on the fire and the water and the earth and the sky that I will find a way to.
There are thousands of us. Millions. Living and dying and toiling and grieving and suffering and hurting and worrying and missing and screaming inside. Millions of us with our necks stuck under their feet. Millions of us who are torn apart inside. Millions of people who are torn from their loved ones.
Katapa's face hovers over mine. Her eyes hold a fearful but also smouldering rage. Not at me but /for me./ Against all the forces that hurt us. Against all the forces that hurt our people. She's angry too.
Give my people what they need and safety and to be seen as people and respect and kindness and compassion and equality and love. Our people deserve so much better.
I'm done being meek, submissive, trying to survive in this world. I'm fucking done.
"Nan?" Her voice is soft and warm but also it flows like tears. It's the first word she's said to me since the children were taken. The first word she's been able to say.
"I'm going to fucking kill them. I don't know how but I am."
"Good for you. I want to help." It's what I expected her to say. I saw the rage in her eyes.
"How though? How the fuck? Do we have any power?"
"Nan the towerpeople are the ones who tell us we don't have power. I know you don't really believe a single word they say, deep within your soul. It's because they're wrong, Nancee. They're wrong about everything about us. And they're wrong about power. We have more power than they know. It's just hidden."
"You're right."
We stare at each other in silence for a while longer. Still awash in our chemical ocean. Still dripping with misery. Still wrenching our hearts out but there are sparks in her eyes and there are sparks in mine too. There are sparks that we are willing to kindle. In her eyes I see oceans rising to swallow cities. I see fires burning to crumble towers. I see death. And I see life. Growing up from burnt ground like seedlings in the spring.
It is madness, whatever we are planning, but everything inside us is already madness. This is the madness that makes sweet love to hope. It is exactly the type of madness I long for.
"Nan, the Fates control everything. They won't let us be happy."
Yes the Fates. They have the ultimate power. They control everything. But I look at the darkened eyes in front of me. Eyes that are darker than any night. Darker than any blackness. And I realize, universe and eternity, us slaves have more power. We have enough power to burn the world down and build it anew.
"Kata you control more than you know."
"You think we can take on the Fates even? Because I'm thinking. If we take on the Fates we'll be free once and for all. Everyone will. And the towerbastards will get their reckoning."
"We can. But how do we get to them?"
"The churches say that They exist in the minds and hearts of believers just as they exist in everything. If you want to get closer to them you have to look in your believing heart." Her words are thick with sarcasm but also thoughtful in tone.
"Those are just metaphors. Or ... are they?"
"Are they? Think. Who upholds this system? Who gives the Fates power? They say that the Fates uphold the system but truly it's the towerpeople acting to keep everyone in their place. The Fates are the manifestation of the hatred and greed in their hearts. The Fates are the manifestation of everything they are. They exist in the hearts of the towerpeople. In the hearts of the believers. And they move and shift and turn the world from there."
"Kata. You're so wise. If we kill the Fates do you think it will kill the system?"
"It will. The Fates are the magical manifestation of the towerpeoples' spirits. If we can kill their spirits the system is all but dead."
Everything is still and silent around us. A weeping, bleeding world tensed in waiting.
"How do we get to the Fates?"
"Nancee do you believe in magic?" Hearing the way her whispered words soar through the silence, I do. Seeing the way the darkness settles over her hair, over her eyelashes, I do. I believe in Katapa. I believe in the slaves. I believe in our magic.
"Kata. I do." My words are soft and solemn.
"We'll use our magic."
As we conspire hushedly in the dark of these stone walls I ... I feel uninhibited. Like I could run and run and never stop running. Like Levi always wanted. Sweet Levi. Sweet all of them. If we kill the Fates we'll free everyone.
"I don't know much about what the Fates are. But there are things I know. I've told you. And I know. But they're definitely creatures that thrive on worship, thrive on belief. They have the power they have because people venerate them. I think they can be reached by reaching into the minds of the believers."
"But we're not really believers, we're only forced to be. This means that there is no way they live in our minds, as much as their terrible shadows reach out to us. We definitely need to go into the mind of a towerperson. I'm thinking Niamus. I really hate him."
"Well how the fuck are we gonna do that?"
"If we stand up to him to his face that would be a death sentence."
"So? If we succeed it's not like he can actually kill us."
"We wouldn't get close enough to carry out whatever ritual we'd need to do."
"If we could get to his sleeping chambers."
"With what key?"
"What if we poison him? Like not poison-poison, just something that makes him pass out at an inopportune moment."
"Oooh you might be into something."
"So you know my mother was a herbalist." More sadness enters her voice somehow as she says this, something I didn't think possible. She deeply misses the mother she was dragged away from.
"Yes. She was. Wherever she is she still loves you. Wherever she is she's looking out for you."
"Yeah. I fucking miss her so bad. But I'm glad she got to teach me some of her knowledge. It's a pretty basic concoction, a sleeping mixture. I can't get the plants here though. I'll have to ask someone who has access to the outside."
"We could ask one of the people who work in the fields. I'm sure no-one would think we were using it on the masters."
"Yeah it makes sense to have trouble sleeping after our loss. It's quite sour though I'll have to mix it in with spiced lemonade or something."
"Thank you."
"Should we wake the others?"
"Let's tell them tomorrow, I think."
———-
I am exhausted and that makes work all the worse. I know if I don't work properly I'll get my food rations cut in half and universe that would hurt.
The hurt of missing my children, of worrying for them, doesn't go away. If anything the second day is worse. It breaks me inside to think of how my children must be breaking all alone in front of unfamiliar towerpeople. But still I have something that I didn't have yesterday.
Anger and newly-kindled hope light their own kind of fire within me. Something I can get energy from. And I appreciate it. I don't think any of my people have felt this before. Except for all the rebellious heroes of stories who tried to stand up to the masters. Unlike them we will win. None of them had what we have. Which is each other. Togetherness. And a parent's protectiveness.
But the hope doesn't take away the grief. It doesn't take away the fact that I know sweet tiny Mafalia is out somewhere being terrified and and being yelled at or maybe even beaten and wanting her mother.
It doesn't change the fact that Levi is out there somewhere and people are looking at him like he is a fucking insect or something and he isn't able to run to one of us at the end of the day and be consoled.
It doesn't change the fact that Pavlin doesn't know where their brother and sisters are, doesn't know when they'll see them again. Doesn't know what fate awaits their siblings or parents or anyone they know.
It doesn't change the fact that Andronicha's fire might be going out. The fire that I thought nothing could extinguish. The steel-hearted, brilliant fire that kept our own fires burning through the long nights.
It still doesn't stop hurting.
It still doesn't change the fact that we all are the dirt beneath the shoes of the ones who are just so fucking high up. Fuck.
——-
Night. I collapse like a ghost onto the floor. I'm so dead-tired. Yet I still have to find strength. I still have to find strength from somewhere.
"My whole life is misery," Lilith exclaims with a cutting edge in her voice. So she is angry too. Good.
"Guys my boo and I have a plan. We're going to kill the Fates."
Anderei and Lilith are staring at us with wide eyes.
"We have to try. They are the ones who made this whole stupid system allegedly they're the ones we need to get rid of in order to stop it."
They continue looking bewildered but are clearly at least somewhat enticed by this plan.
"Look inside you," Katapa starts with her ever-smooth voice, "the rage, the love. The adoration, the bravery. The latent power. We can fucking do this, I know it." Wow that was inspiring. Lilith and Anderei think for a while.
"I agree. We can do this. We have to. It's our shot at freedom." Lilith sounds determined. Sure of herself.
"It's everyone's shot. At something more." Anderei sounds almost dreamy. Good.
We tell them the plan we have so far. All that we talked about the previous night. Then Kata and I go to sleep, leaving them to mull things over further if they so wish.
————
We set everything into motion. Lilith's aunt had taught her a spell for looking into the minds of others. This was years and years ago. But still it was simple enough that she remembers it. You have to make an unbroken circle around the person. And you have to speak three truths about who they are in their soul. You have to concentrate your energy towards going within them. And then you will see what is inside their mind. To go in one's mind we had to modify the spell somewhat. The spell gets its power from speaking the truth of what someone is. For it to get more power, get all the power there is to get, we must speak all the truths of what a person is. And with the spell charged, we must focus our will on not just seeing but going within the mind of the other person. And it should work.
Amaria, a field slave who often does tasks in the house too, kindly takes up our offer of delivering the necessary herbs for the sleeping potion. We don't tell her what it's for. We talked about whether to tell her or not. We decided not to though Lilith and I are still not sure about that decision. We want to keep her safe in case anything goes wrong. Still though, she deserves to know what she agreed to.
The way she looks at us, and her tight yet mischievous smile, tells us that she has caught on to more than she was telling, though.
Katapa mixes the leaves and roots and stems and shoots together carefully, while Lilith prepares a blend of spiced lemonade that will hide the taste well. I'm not here for this but I do watch the clock for until it is time to begin. When the clock hits half past seven I smile tightly. Mischeviously.
Niamus orders his post-dinner snack of delectable treats just when he normally does. I sneak into a closet just outside his door, the meeting place we had agreed upon. Kata strengthens herself and brings the tray full of food - and of lemonade, and of poison, to the man who won't be our owner for much longer.
If we are found we are dead. But a chance to destroy the system is absolutely worth death. We would go to death with our heads held high. It's not like any of our lives are worth living anyways.
Katapa lets herself into the closet where the rest of us are. We take a minute to charge our spiritual energies. In the way that Lilith's aunt had taught her. We all hold hands and softly hum and whisper our intent, so low only we can hear.
Anderei gets a broom from the closet and pretends, just pretends, to sweep that hallway that had already been swept.
He peaks into the spacious room that the towerperson sleeps in. And he finds the man passed out on the silver and red couch.
And he calls the rest of us in.
We see the man lying there framed in silver and red and we look at each other. Lilith's eyes are decked with anger and hope and even amusement, and she gives me a smile that is equal parts tragic and victorious. Anderei's eyes are disbelieving. But they also look like the thing he's always had faith in finally happened. He looks around, at us, and his eyes are filled with a lowburning confidence. And there is the smallest trace of a smirk on his lips. Katapa looks resolute, oh so resolute. Like nothing can change her mind now. Nothing can change my mind either.
I take the key from his pocket. I turn the lock.
We are more we are more we are so much more than they think we are. And we have each other. We always have each other and we always will.
We smirk. We hold hands. And we stand there, hand in hand, in a circle above our passed-out so-called owner who is at our mercy now.
———-
Here we are. At the moment of truth. In a room which feels like a trap, in a mansion that feels like a trap, in a circle with people who give us the freedom and the frigid energy of cold rushing rivers. Of green growing plants.
We stand in a circle. Hands clenched tightly, lips set resolutely, gazing at each other in disbelief, in terror, in grief, in hope, and in overwhelming anger.
We shut our eyes tight, feeling nothing but our hands together. We didn't think this part of the plan through to be honest. But that is okay. Because we know what we have to do.
We have to get to the core of Niamus's heart. The core of his beliefs, of his thoughts, of his dreams. We have to get into his religion. We have to get into his very towerish soul. And from his belief, his worship, we can find the Fates. And fight them.
We share our consciousnesses with eachother. I close my eyes and I see nothing and everything all at once. It is dark, a void. But a void that connects everything, a void that seems to be vibrating and buzzing and silently singing with the souls of every slave. It feels, it feels, it /feels/ so overwhelmingly beautiful and devastatingly miserable and so unyieldingly hopeful all at once. I am in some kind of space where the hearts of slaves can reach out and hold me. I swim through a dark void, a beautiful void of warm-cold love and each other. The ringing voices of all the slaves. The hope, the fear, the terror, the trauma, the rage. The voices of our children and their twisting sorrow among them. The voices of all children and their twisting, twisting sorrow among them. The voices of every parent and grandparent and child and sibling and friend. All of them. Glory, glory, glory to us. Glory glory glory.
We have to call him out for who we is. We want to call him who he is. We have to call him and name him in order to gain access to who he is. To gain access to what he believes. To gain access to Niamus himself.
"Bigot," Lilith says out loud. I remember the way he says our names. With a smugness beyond smugness, a disdain beyond disdain. And I feel happy to be able to call him out.
"Egotist," Katapa states. I remember how much he basks in the gilded praises of other towerpeople.
"Undeserving," Anderei says. Bold. True. I like it. I remember when Niamus and I were children together. He always seemed to get the best of the best while I got the scraps. He had rest and food and education and attention and compassion and kindness and beds and clothes and everything. While I existed in the edges of the world. I always felt like I was undererving. Undeserving of respect and equality. Even when I knew better, the sheer intimacy of how these life experiences got rubbed into you took their toll. But now I feel something break. I hate him. I hate him for what he did to me, and for what he allowed his family to do to me. To all of us.
And my senses were already flooded by the overwhelming feelings of ... so, so many feelings. But now a raging feeling of victory, of cheering, singing, laughing and screaming victory, rises up and up and up. The strange space we were in seems to shift, to tense as if in glorious anticipation. Whatever this is it is working.
"Greedy," I call. He is. He is so greedy. Food, clothes, furniture, jewelry, sports, music, entertainment, women, horses, silver, gold, silk, velvet, things, things, things he wants more and more and the finest and the best. And it is us slaves who break our backs every day and often starve every night to get him his precious things.
And suddenly the sense of freedom, the sense of white-blind blizzard, the sense of breaking bonds floods us.
"Selfish." Anderei. The tips of my fingers tingle. My heart is melting in the best possible way and freezing in the best possible way all at once. Niamus though, had been taught to think that he was better than everyone. Everything he does he does in order to stroke his precious ego or sate his cavernous desires or to have, have, have, money or pride or things or praise or power or whatever, to have it for himself.
"Narcissist." Lilith. He is absolutely a narcissist he wants everyone to worship him.
"Big-headed." Katapa. I smile. That is exactly the word. The void or whatever it is around us fills with laughter. It is a wise, serious, joyous sort of laughter. Voices young and old, male and female and both and neither and more, all intertwined to make this glorious laughter.
"Pig-headed." Lilith. I smile. The feeling of escape within myself grows even stronger.
"Cruel." Me. The void around us melts and freezes and vaporizes all at once. It ebbs and flows.
"Heartless." Absolutely.
"Shallow." Yes. He isn't connected to anything except his elitism and his greed and his pride. He isn't connected to the universe in the way that the dirtpeople are.
"Thoughtless." Always. What we're doing right now is reaching out and feeling all the threads that tie all people together. Threads that connect us with love and hope and wanting and shared experience.
"Ignorant." Completely. We're reaching out to feel the threads that connect all the different people. And we're using them to lead us, to pull us into where we need to be.
"Prideful." Very. These threads are things the towerpeople don't know about. These ties of faith and love are things that they are ignorant of, things that are the secrets of people like us.
"Closed-hearted." Absolutely. He is. He never considered us humans. He never considered the teachings of his parents or his people to be wrong. He never once looked at us in a way that someone who is trying to learn, trying to know, looks. He has no room in his heart or in his soul to understand or care about the people he calls himself better than. He said he understood but he did not. And damn him.
"Uncaring." Incredibly. He has never spared any slave from the cruel eyes and the upturned noses and the power of the Towerpeople. Why would he? He's one of them.
"Self-righteous." The perfect word. Everything seems to ripple. The sense of truth, truth, overwhelming truth cheers inside me. What we have just made feels so right. The sense of escaping the physical world, of coming closer to our destination, strengthens.
"Gluttonous." Energy seems to be rising up from our feet.
"Disrespectful." Beyond. Words can't really express how much the "young prince" sucks.
"Wrathful." Terribly. How hard it is to live under his heel and the heel of his people. He ... he stole our kids. Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow is streaming in, seeping through every part of me. But there's indignation mingled in with the sorrow. The idea that the sorrow isn't deserved pervades and damn.
"Exploitative." Ever so.
"Liar." All of us feel connected with every other slave in this world. And the very threads of our reality seems to be both singing and screaming.
"Malicious." Our souls vibrate along with the life force of every oppressed being.
"Self-important." We clutch our hands tighter as reality itself starts wavering. We need to stay together through this.
"Bully. Always has been and always will be." Not just Niamus. Every person that has done as he's done, lived as he's lived.
"Materialistic."
"Self-absorbed."
"Remorseless."
"Sadistic."
"Hurtful."
"Apathetic."
"Egotistic."
"Ignorant."
"Prejudiced."
"Discriminatory."
"Wisdomless."
"Immature."
"Lazy."
"Pathetic."
"Bigoted."
"Spoiled."
"Terrible."
"Horrible."
"Absolute garbage."
"Evil."
"Not any better than any of the slaves." We say these words in chaotic semi-unison. I feel a deep reverberating feeling going through me. Something beautiful and terrible and so so so intrinsic. The world feels like it's cracking. The threads connecting all of us slaves, the threads connecting nature, they pull me pull me every which way until I am one with everything. Then I black out completely.
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