There were a few stops over a long period, which felt like two or three days to Amanda. At the first stop, water and food were offered; on the second, water, food and a little freedom outside the wagon's cage.
Amanda enjoyed stretching a little, trying to sit there for hours, curled up and crying.
A few minutes later, she would have preferred never to leave without putting up a fight.
Those things, those monsters took her out of her cell just to make fun of her.
They tied her to an old, slashing bark tree, letting her spend the night in the cold, bleakness of what looked like the expanse of a desert. The next morning, they killed one of the buffaloes they had captured along with it, they prepared its meat and, after eating, they beat it a lot.
Amanda has never been beaten by anyone in her life. She remembered the only time her father had raised a hand to her, being a naughty child, but as soon as he learned his lesson, he had apologized, promising he would never raise his hand to discipline her.
In all that madness, she had no idea why they beat her. Not because they laughed, asked her to react, to manifest the "great powers of ankhamu"... Tied up, or being cornered by tall, strong and evil creatures, there would be no way for any human being to react.
She only stopped being harassed on the fifth day when the things that had captured her reached a town near the sea. She heard one of the reptilians call Tereb.
Now being dragged tied to a rope, Amanda could see a strait opening like an hourglass. Strange birds flew above a city wedged between two sea beds bathed in emerald-green water, and the smell of the sea swirled under the girl's nose, salty and damp.
From far away, high up in a shack with her captors descending to the gate, Amanda glimpsed houses made of yellow brick, covered with shingles made of straw or plants from the surrounding arid region. Also, she saw, squinting, her eyes swollen from being beaten, hundreds of boats floating in the sea of murky green water. The boats were all like a modern world, although many looked like ships with long sails flapping in the wind.
Entering the city, pulled by one of the things, the girl half-opened her mouth when she noticed how houses were joined and glued together, a proximity that seemed inevitable and the city was not separated by the streets. There was an interconnected world, houses were shared, without any privacy from the lives of urban residents.
"Walk!" complained the guy pulling her by a rope.
Curious, Amanda noticed the rough architecture. Something she would date from something before Christ. Although, there were lots of neon-looking lights everywhere, glowing indigo blue or red. A few technological creatures walked as well, though they looked like automaton bodywork in one of her boyfriend Rafael's silly sci-fi movies. Many of the little metal things were square like little London telephone booths, with legs that reminded the girl of locusts. They moved strangely, picking up garbage from the city, or giving information, or serving as a toy for two human children.
As much as there were a million things to see, his captors didn't give him permission to explore the city, not even with his eyes. They pulled her so hard, Amanda tripped over her own feet, off balance. She did not fall, due to the jump she took, to regain her balance. She realized seconds later that they wanted to humiliate her, to provoke. They were laughing, despite admiring her skill in not going to the ground.
Even though she was humiliated on the way to a street in the center of two houses, she sensed the arid air and red earth. How she saw Mars figures in internet images. There were beasts (aliens?) and also humans. Most of them were creatures, few humans were around, so that as they passed, many townspeople stared at her. They whispered to the people beside her, and pointed in her direction.
"It's a zophet," she heard one lizard woman tell another that she had the blue skin of a teddy bear. "Siran has a zophet!"
Amanda followed, letting a look in her direction. Another person whispered the same thing, as if a captured human were a feat.
"What will her price be?" he heard someone say, and turned his head in that direction.
"Price"? She thought, startled. She blinked hundreds of times, finally realizing that she was indeed being taken to be sold and that this town must be a great slave market.
"What will her price be?" he heard someone say, and turned his head in that direction.
"Price"? She thought, startled. She blinked hundreds of times, finally realizing that she was indeed being taken to be sold and that this town must be a great slave market.
With her heart beating wildly in her chest, Amanda was surprised as they passed through a narrow, cramped, busy hallway. She looked up, listening to dozens of voices mingling with the gust of wind on fabrics passing across the ceiling. Screams, laughs and screams from street vendors like a street market in São Paulo. There were lizard children climbing the great wooden structures that reminded her of muxarabis, climbing as they laughed and dressed in coarse cloth, to reach the interconnected terraces and shout at each other.
"We got a boat, Siran!" said the guy Amanda always saw carrying a club. He'd gone ahead but hadn't noticed. A snake's smile took over his gecko face. "They're leaving for Nydra right now.
Siran, the leader of her captors, shook his head. He was way ahead. He glanced over his shoulder at Amanda, and nodded with a glint in his reptilian eyes.
"Great," he said with a certain good-luck humor in his tone. "We'll leave now. First, however, Enmesir will stay and send Nydra a whispering orb saying that we are carrying... exotic merchandise".
Enmesir put his hand on his shoulder, releasing the rope he was holding when carrying Amanda.
"It will be an honor, Siran," he replied, stretching like a soldier saluting. "I will wait patiently for your return."
Clava, as Amanda decided to call him, caught the rope as if it might run away. She wanted to say something foul-mouthed, but her lips were still swollen, and she couldn't speak much.
"I hope you got a good deal." Siran turned. "The girl still seems to me just a weak zophet."
As he walked away, his huge coat, which he wore like a pirate's coat, danced behind him like a tail. Amanda began to suspect that reptilians were prone to piracy. And their products were lifes.
Pulling it back, they proceeded without much conversation towards one of the great ports of the city.
They turned a corner into one house, and again the next, and walked slowly through a women's house by a well. Clava, who kept the rope shorter, chuckled at the strange geckos who wore fine robes like odalisques. The creatures smelled so bad, Amanda almost threw up.
"They smell sweet," observed one of the captors. "But they are expensive...".
"You're a miser, Annan," chuckled his companion. "When we return, I will spend my leisurely afternoons with the most fragrant ladies in Tammera.
Amanda wished she could have raised an eyebrow. Everything there, except for the smell of the sea, smelled so bad it almost made her want to wear an astronaut outfit!
Soon, Clava jerked her down a curved street, down an alley, under an archway. They passed through the interior of a house where a blue creature was preparing food on a wood stove, and followed it along a short flight of stone steps. Buildings were completely shared, close and poor. Siran ahead stopped at the beginning of a winding alley, too narrow for them to walk side by side.
Then, passing through that strait, they reached the harbor. A small building made of wood and stilts, full of small fishing boats everywhere. A lot of people were passing through, besides the square automatons carrying large boxes.
Amanda realized that the biggest boat looked like the one they were going to board, Clava pointed that way, without anyone asking where she should go.
The ship was a narrow thing but large, with a triangular-shaped cabin in the center with small windows. At the front, the bow bent like an ornament; a lantern hanging in the shape of a ball swayed with the movement of the sea. The rest, it seemed to her, would sink soon.
"Oh, welcome!" A reptilian swung excitedly toward them.
Siran shook his head but moved toward the Martian reptile. Amanda passed the one eye that wasn't swollen to the creature; it was a chubby thing, with short white hairs where the chin was. His reptilian mouth had said something, so the boatman answered Siran's other question by blinking unevenly:
"I don't know what they want in Nydra." He held up his hands, speaking louder. "But it's going to be expensive. The way there goes through Abyss Bay, no sailor wants to go near that place. Even shipless pirates like you, Siran, should avoid that route."
"My ship has been taken by that damned zophet from the capital!" snorted Siran. "With the money I'm going to win with this girl, I'll be sure to buy ten fleets and invade the capital through De'Nile to pillage and burn all the zophu. Then I'll make sure to blindfold that little Dynasta bitch to the most sadistic son of a bitch I can find.
"What's this zophet in there?" the Martian sailor asked, looking at Amanda's sorry state. "I've never seen you hurt merchandise like that before..."
Siran didn't respond. He grabbed the reptile by the collar.
"We have no time to waste. We leave now!" he ordered, pushing the man away. "The sooner I sell the zophet, the sooner I will retrieve my esteemed Servant of the Wind."
His henchmen agreed, all starting to set sail on a ramp. They didn't talk much except when it was to make fun of Amanda. They climbed into the boat, pulling Amanda's rope last, as soon as they finished helping the boatman load the goods onto the boat.
****************
Amanda did her best to ward off the fear she felt, but for the next two days the fear remained gnawing and burning.
The vessel was quite clean, but the basic hygiene left a lot to be desired when ten men, one woman, tons of goods that seemed illegal are crammed into a space of one hundred seventy square meters.
On the second day, when they escorted Amanda to use the bathroom, which was actually a bucket that had been placed in the basement, she thought she saw a Martian rat. At night, tied to the bow in the open and exposed to the spray of the sea, she was startled by strange insects that frantically fled into the shadows beside her. She had even heard from some of the crew that the kitchen was full of those nasty little things.
Still, she accepted dinner. Her stomach was empty, she could barely remember who she was, what her name was, where she came from. What the hell was going on.
Her only surprise was that Siran had come to enter her food. He sat beside her, giving her the freedom to eat with silverware. Amanda had noticed that reptilians ate raw meat and had no sense of humanity. They fed like snakes, gradually swallowing the food. She vomited the first time she had seen them feed.
"Anankha cooked for you, zophet," said Siran.
Amanda noticed that there was some of what looked like flour, some grain with a strong smell. She picked up her fork, savoring the meat—but she didn't choose not to ask what it was and how it was fried.
"Your face is much better after two days." Siran tilted her face, looking up at him with her snake eyes. - Impressive. Zophu are... fragile. Any of your kind would surely die with the courtesy of my men. We are stronger than your race, girl.
She wanted to ask a lot of questions, but there were so many that she had no idea where to start. Before dinner, as she felt the cool breeze off the sea, Amanda was concentrating on not despairing at the thought of her parents. Many days had passed. If she asked how her parents were doing, if the police were looking for her. Would her face be stamped on the TV screens while they looked for her? It would just be another missing person case.
Or would she have died while she slept?
"You're not one to talk much." Siran caught her eye as she envisioned various scenarios of her disappearance in her mind. "You didn't even say your name... Your favorite phrases are "violence breeds more violence." This is a little disappointing.
"What difference does it make?". Amanda replied with her mouth full. "My name is not important to you. You're going to sell me to some idiot, so I'm just an unimportant commodity".
Siran narrowed her snake eyes.
"Your self-preservation instincts speak for themselves, quite unconsciously," snorted the lizard man. "You will be marked as a slave, with a very powerful halo seal. But I'm going to give you some advice, however little I'm interested in what's going to happen to you after that.
He got up.
"Don't give anyone your real name," he said in his hissing old voice. "I know you are a 'baby'. You were reborn a few days ago, and were not guided by the soft asses of the Divine Fathers of Tathra. Aiy even warned me about his coming into the world. Certainly, aware that upon awakening on this planet, now is the best time to capture you and sell. "
Amanda let a piece of meat slip from her mouth onto her plate. Then, a little queasy, she realized that an end had been prepared for her in a way that wouldn't look suspicious.
Amanda let a piece of meat slip from her mouth onto her plate. Then, a little queasy, she realized that an end had been prepared for her in a way that wouldn't look suspicious.
Well, it didn't make sense, she was a nobody. All you had to do was cut her head off, keep silent and no one would know she had been abducted.
Still, she was curious about the plot of the monk who promised herself that one day he would give her a slap. Why did he choose to set her up? Why make a fake kidnapping and sell her as a slave? What did he fear to the point where he couldn't kill her?
"Why should I hide my name? she questioned amidst so many questions in her head, peeking into a corner as she dismissed her own noisy voice from her mind.
"There is a curse all over this world," the lizard man replied, crossing his arms. "Ren is how we refer to the name. The real name. It is the vital part of being on your journey through life and the afterlife. It's a window to your soul. To understand it better, it is enough to know that the Creator god created the world by saying the name of all things. And all things can be manipulated or misrepresented.
He nodded, running a hand over his wispy beard.
'In addition to the matru,'' he thought better of what he was saying, 'that is to say, demons stealing bodies to inhabit zophu just like you, use the holy Bergelr Halo to curse each other.'
"Sorry..." Amanda frowned. "Ber... what?
Siran had an expression on her face very close to the expression a komodo dragon would.
"You could call it halo," he snorted. "Our denominations differ from the Capital. Many words in East Tammera are different, but the meanings are the same. In Coptic glyphs they are called heka.
Amanda frowned, not understanding.
"The Divine Fathers use their knowledge of plant herbs and practice heka. They dance in the moonlight, or perform rituals in temples." Siran chuckled.
"You mean this thing is some kind of alchemy?" The girl's mouth twitched.
"Alchemy?" Siran pressed her snake lips together, laughing loudly. "That's the word of the Dagdites, but it's not that. Alchemy for the Dagdites is like a folklore to explain the existence of the silcaras in the sea. They would call them sirens, but they are just silcaras.
Amanda had no idea what he was talking about. She understood even less. What the hell was a silcara?
"Heka is just an energy that resides in the whole being," Siran replied humorously, "like your soul in modern terms."
He lost his temper and his charging eyes glinted in the lantern light shining behind Amanda somewhere.
"Only people like you, an ankhamret, have the complete freedom to tap into these energies." She identified a hint of envy. "The gods have given the ankhamu the freedom to tap into this spiritual energy, while the Divine Fathers who have little access to the energy use it to curse. To my people you are just heretics.
He lowered his head, looking back at her as if he were a dragon ready to devour her.
"I wonder what I could do with as much luck as you..." He had a tone of closing.
He turned away. The conversation just ended.
Amanda watched him with her mouth open. Where did she have any luck?
She was so lucky, that suddenly, tied to the front of the boat, she was hit by a strange and sudden storm. The sky turned so abruptly gray as dawn approached, it looked like a hurricane was about to hit them.
It had been a beautiful, crisp, clear day all afternoon, sunny and warm, but now dark clouds came down from the sky to touch the sea, and the wind seemed to pound. Even if she was on Mars, it looked like the sea, storm and thunder were a terrible combination.
"...It's the Bay of the Abyss!" Amanda heard, wiping the water from her face.
She narrowed her eyes, whipped by the wind and rain, seeing the presence of the lizard that owned the boat and Siran step out of the cabin, where not everyone could fit there. They were arguing.
"Couldn't get your rudders out of the typhoon?" Siran shouted angrily. "Why don't you install an engine on this damn thing?"
"Engines are expensive!"
"Boss!"
Suddenly, Amanda's heart nearly jumped out of her chest. She held on to the edge, watching all the sailors aboard scream in panic, pointing toward the wind and the rain, which fell sideways so hard it felt like needles. Forty-foot waves began to rise slightly, rising to dizzying heights to descend sharply. Amanda felt her own face go pale in front of the storm.
She swallowed hard, realizing the waves were bigger than the boat. This was not a very big ship; it resembled a rather large version of Charon's vessel, The Boatman of Hades, according to Greek mythology. It would be completely swallowed up by the waves that came and went, growing taller and closer.
When the ship rippled in a violent movement of the rough sea, Amanda feared for her life.
And suddenly, to her dismay, thunder ripped across the horizon, followed by a rumble that shook the world.
"Behmote!" someone rumbled amid the instructions and despair of the crew on board who ran everywhere.
Amanda looked in the direction a Martian lizard pointed, and her heart leapt out of her body. She first felt the blood rise to the center of her forehead, then she let out a squeak of fear as the gigantic figure of a gigantic thing lit up in the midst of the giant waves forming higher and higher.
Just as she finally stopped shivering, a second thunderclap in the midst of the sudden storm lit up the figure of something that looked like a huge whale. A whale so big it could be mistaken for an island. And not just an ordinary whale. For a moment, Amanda glimpsed crablike claws in place of fins, a carapace like one of a colossal beetle.
Shouted her captors, and even Siran, who she considered a cold and calculating creature.
Siran was the first to jump into the lifeboats, yelling for his henchmen to abandon ship.
They all started either jumping into the sea or looking for other boats. However, there was only one, and he hit the sea violently when a wave hit him.
With thunder streaking the sky again, and the gigantic sea monster leaping a little farther onto the dark horizon island, Amanda realized that its impact on the water would overturn the boat.
"Don't leave me here!" she screamed in desperation, pulling at the rope they tied around her wrists.
They left her to die, trapped in the bow.
Her face washed with rain and tears as she tried to free herself. She looked to the horizon, but the wave of the huge creature was so close, Amanda couldn't remember what had happened the second they had thrown her into the violence of the sea.
Amanda didn't know what could be worse since she saw that light in the back of her wardrobe: being treated like a witch by fanatical priests, kidnapped by reptilians or being thrown to the bottom of the sea...
The boat spun, and she now drowned. She couldn't breathe and gave up trying when she realized her efforts were in vain.
Closing her eyes to the sad end of her life, Amanda felt deep in her soul the pain. She would die on Mars without her parents knowing where she was; without having been able to meet with Rafael; she would never attend her mechanical engineering graduation ceremony in a few weeks.
Then such intense violence shook her in the dark depths of the sea. She was flung away, feeling her hand loosen. Her lungs screamed with the need for oxygen, while her body thrashed like a fish jumping out of water.
As soon as she hit the sea again, she found a torment generated by all the violent sea currents. For an instant she felt her mind slip away and her entire vision went dark, but her survival instinct made her wake up again. She stomped her feet and pulled at the water with her bound hands, desperate to find even a little bit of air.
The sea churned wildly, but she remembered all the swimming lessons she'd taken when she'd decided to become "fitness" — but she ended up giving up for the first piece of chocolate cake that appeared in front of her.
She reached the surface and inhaled deeply, gulping water with the air. The water in that sea was very salty, and she also found the oxygen a little more burning.
He barely had time to breathe, though. The giant thing they called Behmote was still attacking a shoal of huge fish just below Amanda's feet. She saw them unintentionally, though she couldn't be sure of anything. They looked like lightbulbs jumping out of the water for pure survival instinct.
With a swipe of the creature's husky head, Amanda was hurled away, slamming her back against something hard like wood. She heard a dull and hollow sound before screaming in pain, and felt as if her head was going to split open.
She closed her eyes and didn't open them anymore...
...not in the world of the living.