Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
But I wasn’t good.
I went outside and I played in the mud. There was mud everywhere. It rains so much now the crops won’t grow because their roots get flooded. A lot of people are hungry, but my mother and my father don’t allow that in their house. They feed their friends. They take care of people. They take care of me too. Not many people have children anymore, but they made me, and they love me.
“Charlotte Eloise Fullman!”
That’s what my mother says to me when I’ve done something bad.
She said it earlier today when she found her floor covered in footprints from me and the dogs, and then she said I better make myself scarce else I’d feel her rattan broom across my legs. I’ve been under the table since then, more or less. It’s warm here, near the fire. I like to sleep here sometimes. Even have a little pillow.
My pillow has the red on it.
They’ve been taking my father’s friends out, but they’ve left my mother and my father here in the kitchen. I can see her feet near the stove. I want to crawl out and wrap my arms around her legs and have her tell me everything is going to be okay, but I’m too scared to move. The mess is going to put her in a very bad mood. I’ll wait until she has it cleaned up, then I’ll come out. Until then, I’ll stay quiet, and I’ll try very hard not to get any of the wet red on me.
It’s getting harder. Little rivulets of the stuff are starting to run through the cracks and crevices between the brick that makes up the floor. It is making its way toward me on all sides. I don’t dare shift. I don’t want the man with the shiny boots to notice me.
“We’re free men and women, that’s who we are,” my father says. “And no amount of your colonial brutality is going to change that. It doesn’t matter what you do here, you won’t take our freedom.”
“Your freedom doesn’t exist, and it never has.” The man with the shiny boots is not talking with anger. His tone is quite flat, as if he is just speaking some kind of truth that my father and his friends don’t know about. “Your freedom is the same freedom any animal has. The freedom to be hunted, and the freedom to be killed. You’ll experience the full breadth of your freedom today, old man.”
“Please, spare him,” my mother says. I almost don’t recognize her voice, because she sounds scared in a way I’ve never heard her sound scared before. My mother usually says things like “Have you washed your hands?” and “Go brush your teeth,” and sometimes, my favorite thing, “Are you hungry?”
She doesn’t beg for the life of her husband. She doesn’t get scared of anybody. She is the mistress of her domestic domain, and there is mess on her floor.
“Women should be quiet,” the man with the boots says. “Women should know their place. You were made to serve man, and man was made to serve the Galactic Prime. That is the natural order of things.”
There is a loud bang, and I hear my mother wail.
There is more red, but this time the red flows with little pieces of white flecked bone and squishy gray stuff. It all comes closer to me, a growing river of pieces and parts, things nobody should ever see. I know what it is, but I tell myself it is not what I think. I tell myself this is just another messy party. I tell myself it is all going to be okay, even as my mother’s wail cuts through my consciousness in a way I will never be able to forget. Her scream becomes part of me. Lives at the core of me. Makes me who I am.
I won’t mess up again.
I won’t.
Echoes of the past follow me into the future as I creep forward, coming closer and closer.
“They have a human. I have a human.”
I pause as I hear voices. The one who just said they have a human sounds like Shan. He has a very particular tone to his voice, a sort of careful elocution and simultaneous roughness. He looks like he should be stupid, but I don’t think he is. I sense a double cross, even at a distance. I hear a difference in his tone.
“She’s lucky you found her. We’re lucky you found her. We need to keep these humans under our control.”
“They keep leaving that ship. The one I’ve got is looking for the ones you and Thorn have,” Shan says.
My eyes widen. He’s talking to the big purple flying one. He’s led me right to the very saurian I needed to find. This is perfect. If I can hang back and somehow avoid being seen by Shan and follow Avel, I’ll be led right to Captain Raine, and then to Captain Sullivan.