Ten Years Ago
Threadysunlightstreaksfromthe lone crack in the cave ceiling, signaling me to get up before the brutal guards arrive for their morning rounds.
My back aches from the beating they gave me yesterday for being slow to get up. The fever made it hard to move, and I waited too long to get off my mat. It’s a mistake I don’t want to make again. Rolling from my sleeping mat is a struggle. My body aches from the illness all the way to my scalp. My bones feel like they’re rubbing together as I gingerly rise on cramped feet. Pulling the threadbare blanket tightly around my shoulders, I shuffle through the maze of sleeping bodies on the ground to the pool at the far end of the cave.
The fire pit beside the water is lit, ready to light the way and offer heat for any human wishing to bathe. The thought of getting undressed is almost as bad as anticipating another beating. I know it will be painful and take mental strength to get through. The pool is fed from condensation and rain that filters from cracks and crevices in the cave ceiling. The ice cave system below my feet keeps the stone floor a constant near-freezing temperature. Sometimes, ice forms around the small pool, but if we have enough wood to keep the fire burning, it chases the freeze away.
We’re almost completely out of wood and the orcs haven’t brought more. The fire won’t be enough to warm me after I bathe, but hypothermia is a risk I accept. I need to get this fever to break. The water is so cold that perhaps it will shock the illness out of me, and I won’t die of it like the others. Breaking the fever might allow me keep food down and finally regain my strength.
My hands shake as I unlace my thick coat and strip it away. Cold air claws at my threadbare inner layers and I tremble so hard, I nearly stumble.
The guards barked and prodded at me yesterday for moving too slowly in the mines. If my father hadn’t hidden me away in the dark tunnel with his jacket and cap, I would have passed out and the guards would have dragged me down the death tunnel to the pits. They didn’t realize I was gone for several hours, which I spent dozing until I had enough strength to reappear with my ice pick in hand.
We’re being driven deeper and deeper into the underground ice caves in search of a fresh supply of crystals since the tunnels above have been depleted. The farther down we go, the colder it gets. Several of our people have died in the past weeks from the illness related to the temperature.
I’m not sure how much more of this life I can take.
The hopelessness of each day has worn my emotions to a nub. The illness is killing me. And to make it worse, Tor hasn’t visited me in three days and I’m slowly dissolving into madness with worry that he was caught.
Stripped to my shift, I force myself into the water. Shaking, I stumble and pitch forward onto my knees, gasping as ice water razors over my hot skin. I don’t move. The splash and shocked gasp may have drawn attention and I don’t have the strength to fight off the guards or endure their taunts while they watch me bathe in nothing more than a worn out, hole-filled slip of fabric.
The drip, drip, drip of water rolling off the cave walls and dropping into the pool overtakes the hushed breathing of sleeping people. No shuffling feet. No derogatory name calling. The guards didn’t hear me. Pushing myself to move, I crawl on my knees to the deeper section of the pool and sit on the bottom as the water rises below my jaw. Maybe this bath will kill me. If I can’t get warm enough when I’m done, it’s a likely scenario.
Would Tor know if I died?
No one knows about our clandestine meetings or the friendship we’ve formed over the last three years. How we’ve managed to keep it a secret is a miracle. He says it’s because we’re meant to be together, and the fates are looking out for us. I don’t waste energy thinking about reasons or theories. My body and mind are exhausted by the time he comes to me at night on the other side of the gate. Tor always looks strong and well-fed and clean. The orcs around here are. It’s us humans that suffer in these mines, slaves to the beasts who realized forcing us to do their heavy work was more advantageous than killing us.
My father often curses the day he and the others came through a time rift discovered deep inside what he calls the Grand Canyon. Two sizeable groups of early explorers entered the rift and never returned. My father, mother, and their team entered the rift to look for the others. The orcs were waiting and captured them the way they had the others.
She didn’t know she was pregnant with me at the time. How her pregnancy survived after she was forced into brutal physical labor is another miracle. The birth killed her, and my father was left to help me navigate life in this harsh new world.
I didn’t know anyone else my age until Tor peeked through the bars at the end of a tunnel the guards used to drag dead humans to the pits. I was looking for anything useful the last body might have dropped on its way out and there he was, a gray-green skinned orc with huge brown eyes and thick black hair, gripping the bars, staring at me.
He’d startled me, but I wasn’t apprehensive. We appraised each other for a long time, weighing and assessing the threat in each other. I could never have come through the bars to cause him harm, yet he’d appeared trepidatious, as if I had some magical powers I could use against him.
As the seconds ticked away, so did the shock of seeing him there, and my eyes roved over him in the dim light from my torch. As my mind became familiar with his appearance, my pulse picked up in my belly grew tight. Long silver chains hung from the lobe of his pointed ear. Thin braids decorated with metal bands hung throughout his thick mane, and a light dusting of a beard covered his jaw with four vertical lines shaved into the side. That’s when I realized he wasn’t just any orc. He was the Orc Commander’s son.
“You shouldn’t be here,” were the first words I said to him.
“I am Tor, and I do what I want.”
Those ten stubborn words started an unlikely friendship. I was eleven when I met him, as best I could tell from my father’s rudimentary way of keeping time by scratching marks into the cave wall. Tor said the orcs didn’t measure the length of time lived. Life just was. You’re born, you die. You live in between. I imagined him to be a few years older than me, though our bodies were so different that there was no way to tell. He admitted he wasn’t yet grown and hadn’t gone through the trial of war that would make him a man and allow him to take a mate…
Three years he came to me almost every night to share stories and companionship between the bars. Along the way, something changed with us. Our bond became stronger, and it was harder and harder to be apart. Then one day, he gave a voice to what was happening to us. He called it love.
“You will be my wife one day,” he said.
“A human and an Orc Commander’s son? Impossible.”
“Promise me.” His hands gripped mine furiously over the bars. I like to see him smile, so I agreed.
“I promise.”
After that, my heart would cry when he left. Now I ache in the most agonizing way when he’s not here and I count down the minutes until darkness falls and I can sneak into the death tunnel to see him again. His absence these past three days is almost more than I can bear.
“Alta!”
My father’s urgent, hushed voice calls from behind the fire.
