Water filled my lungs. I couldn't breathe. I was drowning. I was choking sticky fluids. I was covered in filth and bruises. Drugs and needles constrained me, causing me to cry out from within for death or someone to save me.
Nasty hands reached out for me, pulling me down into sucking pits of muddy despair. Desperation filled me and the black sludge of helplessness and powerlessness filled my mouth, my nostrils, my eyes, my ears. It suffocated me and made my chest heavy, as if someone was sitting there, squashing the air out of me. There was the dreadful feeling of being stuck in a spider's web unable to do anything but watch the spider approach, knowing your end was near.
Cries of pain and fear from the other prisoners scratched at my ears and pierced my head with reverberating echoes. The laughter, grunts and ridicule of the enemy who had caught us followed sinisterly, commanding us to beg for our lives, beg for reprieve, beg for mercy.
Mercy came to one woman when she went mad. They cut off her ears, gouged out her eyes, tore out her hair. They sliced off her nose, chopped off her tongue, pulled out her fingernails. They broke all her toes, broke all her fingers, dislocated her jaw. They skinned her alive, dissected her breasts, cut all her tendons. They pierced through her rectum, crushed her pelvis from the inside out, and threw buckets of salt water on her. Finally, after two or three days of this awful torture did she die. I didn't know how she managed to survive that long.
Nobody dared to beg for mercy after that.
I could only patiently bide my time and wait for an opportunity. I survived with the hope that tomorrow, it might end. I had waited and waited, hoping that someone would come and save me, but nobody had. The only good thing was that I had been through something like this before. I knew how to handle it. Knew how to make it less painful.
At the hands of my own people, they were not gentle. Neither were they kind. Their eyes had gleamed with madness and the desperation to grow stronger. To them, I was not a woman. I was just a tool. A supplement to strengthen them. And if I didn't satisfy them, they were cruel. I couldn't move and I was weak. Yet they barely fed me or let me take a break to drink. At any one time, there'd be at least three or four in the room, using every hole I had available.
I felt I was covered with indescribable and intolerable filth. Like garbage juice and composting sludge. It stank. It stuck. It soaked into the pores, clogged up the nose, filled the nose and mouth with its stench. No matter how you gagged or coughed, it only made its way deeper and deeper into the lungs, rotting the guts and clinging to the tongue with a repulsive taste. The more you tried to get rid of it, the more it stuck, like booga that you try to flick away or sticky faeces.
Drowning. I was still drowning. Sinking into the mire. Just like that time Chad had abandoned me and I had fallen into the sucking pool of icy water. Except instead of the icy pool, it was a drum of decomposing sludge or sewerage. Sinking, choking, suffocating. Tumbling, falling, dying.
Torture and humiliation. Rank food and dirty water. There was no where to turn. I had escaped but now I had been caught again in an endless repetitious nightmare.
I was forced and conditioned and could only watch while my body worked separately from my mind or my own mind was stolen from me to be bent to the will of abhorrent and loathsome 'masters'. I wanted them dead. I wanted to shoot them and use them as target practice. If only I could break free. I'd use my own head as target practice if I could.
My prayer to be useful had been heard. I was now useful. But I was just a tool. Not a woman. Not a person. Not even a thing. Just a pleasurable tonic for my captors. I had no rights, no gender, no name.
The people who loved me could not hear me. The people who cared about me were entangled in life or death fights of their own. It was everyone for themselves. Everyone could only look out for themselves and I had no one to blame except myself for being so weak.
The light was dim. It was dark. It was a never ending night. There were no stars. The sky was overcast with that heavy, oppressive foreboding that bore down to crush those beneath. The room had shrunk. The air was stuffy. I couldn't breathe. I felt sick. I felt stuck. My ribs and lungs were burning. My hair was torn. Only tufting. My skin was bare. It was hot. It was cold. Glass and tearing, lightning and stabbing pains attacked all the areas of my body.
When I threw up, I was beaten.
When hungry, they said I'd already eaten.
When I fainted, I was still beaten.
Who could save me from this pit?
In the midst of the swamp wherein I was sinking, I heard the powerful words of the judges and the name of authority from that One on high. It pierced through the gloom. Light streamed through the dark.
In wonder, I looked up at the miracle. A sun had risen in the midnight darkness, breaking through the heavy clouds. A moment. A hope. I could breathe.
Hands reached down and pulled me up. The miry clay refused to let me go. It clung to me. Stuck to me and pulled.
It was a tug of war.
I held onto the arms that were holding me. I held them tight, determined not to let go. Letting go or losing my grip was not an option. If I let go, I would be done for. There would be no escape. I might be forced to wander these awful, nightmarish halls for the rest of my short life.
A second pair of arms lent strength to the first, but the stinking mud refused to resign or surrender. It crept up my body. It seeped into my nose and mouth. It refused to let go.
All three of us were in a desperate state when the mud boldly began to try and creep up the helping hands and pull them down with me. Terrified and horrified, the three of us sought for the only help we could seek in our situation. We reached out to the power from on high. Namely, the Creator.
A word of power was spoken and its power resounded. The mud shrank back in fear. The golden light from above grew stronger and more intense, forcing the mud back bit by bit until it very, very reluctantly released me.
By this time another pair of hands, even bigger and far stronger than the previous two, reached down for me. These arms radiated a power and authority that burned the mud and forced it to retreat and retreat and retreat for fear of being destroyed. I wanted to cheer for the aura and golden strength to burn the mud up for good, but it didn't happen that way.
In a way, I understood. The memory monster could only be fully vanquished by me, as it was a creature of my own making in a way. One day, I would be strong enough to kill it and burn it until there was nothing left, but now was not the time, or I might never walk out of the shadow of those memories and heal the wounds caused by trauma. I sighed. There were no shortcuts to this type of healing.
The golden arms lifted us all three and I heard a voice I had not known, but recognised from the echoes of him that had been left imprinted within the language of the noble judges of the tribes. He spoke my name. Just that one word, but in that one word was everything I needed.
Somehow, just by speaking my name, I felt the full force of his love wash over me and through me. Freed from the mud, I had more time to look around. I saw a pool of his blood and realised with horror that it was sacrificial blood. It was blood that had been shed or sacrificed in a blood covenant. Blood that had been shed for me. Without anyone saying it, I could recognise it, because the blood carried a gleam of power beyond all I had ever seen before.
That was a blood covenant! Why and who was he that he would shed so much blood for a covenant for someone as dirty as me?
You may not know what a blood covenant is or means. In my tribe, it was the ultimate contract, promise or agreement that could be made. The most holy and sacred and unbreakable of all covenants and contracts, because when a blood covenant had been made and life blood had been shed, it meant the Courts of Heaven, the Land and spirits of the Land had been called upon as witness.
A blood covenant in our tribe required a life to be sacrificed so that the life blood of the dead would speak for us and be witness to the Land and the spirits of the Land, because it was the Land that would accept and drink the blood, and because blood was considered spiritual in nature. The life blood, being spiritual and exposed to Heaven, would then represent us in the Courts of Heaven to have the terms of the blood covenant to be written and sealed there for posterity. If the covenant was ever broken, the party who broke it would be destroyed by Heaven. If the covenant was kept and both parties fulfilled their roles as written in the covenant, Heaven would bless them.
For a person or a man to willingly lay down his life as part of a blood contract would make it the ultimate blood covenant of all blood covenants. The animal used for a blood covenant was usually an innocent animal who had no sickness or blemish so that its blood would be an unbiased carrier and witness to the covenant. For a man to do it, it would require the man to be innocent, sinless, unbiased and most of all, willing. Because a man, unlike an animal, has his own true spirit. And if a man died, his spirit could still seek justice from the Courts of Heaven if he were wronged. Therefore if a man died to cut a blood covenant he had to be willing. As for sinless… was that even possible?
A blood covenant was a covenant usually performed between equal parties, requiring equal exchange. If someone had performed the ultimate blood covenant for me, it was unfair on the stronger party, because it would be unequal. I had nothing to give. What did I have that could be given in exchange? Who was I that someone would willingly die for me?
I was confounded.
I wasn't the only one.
Looking around, I found Shigure and Homeward Bound standing on either side of me. They too, saw the blood and had recognised it for what it was. Then I realised that they too, were a part of the blood covenant. The blood had also been shed for them.
Since when had we had a part in an ultimate blood covenant of such importance, power and inequality? As partakers in the covenant, surely we ought to know?
I found that the three of us were dressed in elaborate tribal ceremonial costume. It was a costume I only recognised from the tribal stories but had never seen before - the official costume of the noble judges. It had the tassels on the corners and patterned knotted strings on either side of the headress with a coloured precious stone embedded in the padded chest piece.
Shigure and I had the same coloured precious stone. It had red and silver swirled together. Homeward had a blue and yellow gem. He was a judge too? I hadn't known that.
The strange thing was that we were all filthy. All of our clothes looked old, travelworn and torn. They were covered with thick dust, encrusted with mud and all manner of things. I was the worst. It looked like I had been dragged through the mud, which if I thought about it, wasn't wrong.
We were all covered in injuries and wounds. Some wounds were still open and bleeding, while some wounds had festered.
And we stank. We stank so bad that I wanted to throw up.
There was a river in front of us, but to get to the river, we would have to go through the blood. The river looked beautiful. It shimmered in the light and was so clear that the riverbed could be clearly seen. I itched to rush over and jump in.
"Children," said a man on the other side of the river. He was clothed in white and shone with such a bright golden light that I couldn't look straight at it. It made my eyes water. He exuded power, authority and great majesty.
What troubled me was that he had the same aura as all the sacrificial blood in front of us. I was certain that this was his blood and that the blood said that he had definitely died in order to cut the blood covenant.
Homeward Bound and Shigure exchanged glances.
"It's real?" Shigure asked.
"You're real?" Homeward blurted out at the same time.
"I'm real," answered the man and I was faintly able to make out his smile. He was answering an internal, unspoken question of theirs, I was sure. I didn't understand why both men were trembling and their eyes were burning with a combination of tears and a fire of yearning desire.
"We can…" Shigure stammered. The first time I had ever heard him stammer.
"Are we allowed to…" Homeward stuttered at the same time.
Both men were pretty in sync with their reactions. They couldn't even finish their sentences.
Suddenly, they both dropped to their knees and bowed their faces to the ground in a deep kowtow.
"Majesty!" they both exclaimed in awe.
I stared with confusion and my head cocked to one side.
Shigure belatedly remembered me and dragged me down onto my knees.
"Bow down," he said in a low voice full of passion and excitement. "That's the king of all kings, the judge of all judges. He's the true head of our tribe and our lines of tribal judges. The Firstborn of the Resurrection. We're his subjects."
"That's the Creator?" I asked in disbelief, recognising the description. "He's real?"
"If not, why would the words of power carry so much authority and weight?" Homeward muttered. "Hurry up and bow!"
I followed the way they had prostrated themselves and also called out, "Majesty."
"Rise," said the man from across the river.
I couldn't quite reconcile in my head that he was the Creator. It didn't make sense. His blood said he was dead, but he was obviously alive to be standing there on the other side of the river. Shigure said he was the Firstborn of the Resurrection. What did that mean?
For a person to properly die and then be resurrected from the dead, what kind of unfathomable power would that require? A price must have also been paid. A price bigger than anything I might be able to imagine.
And him being the Creator no less. What Creator would die for his creations? Would a potter die to protect his work? I thought about it hard. There were some that would, I supposed. Those rare passionate few who put their all into creating perfect masterpieces and treated them like their babies, crying over every one that was broken. Was this Creator like that?
In that case, did he see himself as our father? He had just called us 'children' earlier.
While I was still thinking, I heard him say, "Come."
Shigure and Homeward Bound who had been fidgeting by my side, shot off like arrows from a bow before I had even gotten back up onto my feet.