Once again, he dreamed of dappled sunlight.
If he looked up, he would see snow-covered mountains far in the distance.
He sat on a sun-heated rock, his fishing line trailing in a mountain stream in his homeland.
Why?
Why did he have the same dream every night here in the slime-smeared bowels of the earth?
The stream—it was so beautiful. Tree branches lazily stretched over the water. Come autumn, their leaves would weave a tapestry of red and gold across the stream.
A withered leaf, its life force spent, fluttered onto the water’s surface, casting a small shadow on the streambed while it was swept away.
Someday, that will happen to all of us.
Resignation pierced his youthful heart like some divine revelation as he watched the leaf yield to the torrent.
Was that what drew him repeatedly to this same swift-flowing stream?
Van grimaced. If that’s the case…then I’m a fool.
Strangely, he never dreamed of the battle along the banks of the Kashuna River, where Zolian forces had crushed him and his men like twigs in a vise. Van had loved his comrades like brothers and, during his waking hours, graphically recalled how they were cut down before him. Yet he never saw them in his sleep. He never dreamed of the foul, greasy net that had snared him as he stood, alone and spent like a worn-out rag, in the corpse-strewn field. Nor of the events that had led to his incarceration in this horrible place, a salt mine of Aquafa.
However, there was one face that surfaced in his dreams at times. That of the first man he ever killed—an officer astride a magnificent steed bellowing instructions from behind his troops. The desperate fight in the mountains of Van’s native land had only just begun. From afar, the man had seemed the epitome of an arrogant Zolian commander. When Van had skillfully cut him off from his forces and charged his flank to put an arrow through his breast, the man’s head jerked backward. As the Zolian’s helmet toppled off, the face revealed had been far younger than Van envisioned. The Zolian’s youthful countenance as he stared in fascination at the arrow protruding from the links in his armor. The surprise in his eyes—Am I really dying?—followed by the certainty—Yes, I’m dying. The man’s grimace of fear and agony. All these images remained seared in Van’s memory.
Van had gone on to kill countless men in the ensuing conflict. Eventually, death became commonplace.
And here he was, confronting death once again.
Two months had passed since Van’s imprisonment in this hellhole, where the survival rate was at most three months. Mine slaves toiled like ants, descending deep into the earth to fill their baskets with rock salt. Then they trudged back to the surface with the load biting into their shoulders, continuing the process all day. At night, they slept shackled to iron pegs buried deep in the rock wall. Come morning, the routine began again.
When he arrived, Van had thought that if he kept kicking the base of the iron pegs he was shackled to, they would loosen eventually. Yet they were embedded so deeply into the rock that no matter how many times he kicked, they never budged, and his body, pushed to its limit on the barest of rations, soon had no energy to spare.
Was his mind now preparing to give up, dragged down by his weakened physical state?
Fool…
How could a tree mercilessly felled in its prime possibly resign itself to the fate of a withered leaf? Van wasn’t young, but he was still only forty. He should have possessed the guts to keep fighting this yoke until he expended the last drop of life, and his body was worn to the bone.
But within the emptiness lurking at the bottom of his heart, he found only the barest thread of attachment to living. Perhaps that void would provide some comfort when he slipped at last to the bottom of the mortar of death, a reminder that this was all his life had come to in the end. Futility screeched and twisted in his gut at the thought, making him want to laugh, or weep. Yet he did not wish to choose death.
If ever Van did elect to die, he could surely find many ways to do so, but he did not want to give in to the pain and take his own life. He knew he must persist until the last spark within him faded.
He heard the quiet, rhythmic knocking of the ventilation fan that sent a meager flow of air to the dark recesses of the mine. Stirred by a groundwater-propelled wheel, it pushed the air down a long series of wind boxes. That feeble breath was the slaves’ link to life. Sooner or later, the day would come when Van would hear it no longer.
Behind his closed lids, he saw a thin stream of clear water. A small voice whispered, “Clickety-clack, clickety-clack.” A toy waterwheel turned—the waterwheel he’d made for his son. Van recalled how his own father made one for him ages ago. It made only a faint splashing noise, but his son provided the sound effects, mimicking a real waterwheel. The boy’s breath, faint and soft, brushed against his upper arm.
Light filtering through the trees danced on the dry alabaster rocks on the far bank of the summer river. Birch bark dazzled white. Delicate green leaves fluttered, whispering in the wind.
His son looked up, then touched him on the elbow and pointed into the woods.
Ah…
A deer. A flying deer. A pyuika.
A buck stood in the dark green shadows among the trees. It was past its prime but surprisingly large. Its antlers climbed up to pierce the sky like leaping flames.
Van rose, took his son by the hand, and approached the great animal. Its form wavered like a heat haze, threatening to vanish at any moment. Gripping his son’s hand, he whispered, “Could it be…?”
Van’s eyes flew open. A scream sounded from somewhere. The beautiful light fled, and Van was yanked back to the foul stench and darkness of reality.
There it is again… Quite far off.
The ground beneath the mine’s surface was like a beehive, riddled with chambers left by salt extraction. The sound Van heard did not come from any of the slaves shackled on his level. He heard their voices continually. Morning, noon, and night, the chamber was filled with groaning, weeping, and bestial howls that could hardly be called human. The sounds were so constant that they had faded into mere background noise. The noise Van just heard was different, however. Perhaps that was why it had penetrated his consciousness.
Urgent cries echoed hollowly, piling to create layers of sound. Voices screamed in terror.
At first, the sounds had come from the upper tunnel that led outside, but the commotion rapidly descended farther down.
What is that?
Frowning, Van sat up just as the slave shackled nearest to the entrance of the shaft rose, dragging his chains. He saw the man’s figure, silhouetted against the torchlight from the main shaft, jerk back, and he heard him shout. A shadow slid like dark water into the chamber.
A dog…?
Van thought he saw a flash of fur in the wavering light, but it was too dim to discern the thing’s shape clearly. It resembled a wolf but appeared smaller.
An ossam?
Ossam were fierce and vicious mountain dogs native to Van’s homeland. The creature’s movements seemed similar. But what would an ossam be doing here?
The shadows of the slave and the beast merged in the doorway, and a scream rented the air.
The man sleeping beside Van bolted awake and peered into the darkness. Turning to Van, he called, “Uriya ki? Ono, logi?” but Van couldn’t understand a word. Almost all those working in the salt mine were either Zolians sentenced to death or slaves from conquered lands to the south. Van doubted that anyone else here came from Aquafa.