Creaking of her quarter’s heavy stone door
startled Tinara. Someone struggling to push open the massive rock appeared
before her blurry vision. Not sure who was coming in, she reached to the floor
to find her wooden dagger. To her surprise a woman, definitely not Antri, but
just as pale with her brown hair wrapped with torn maroon fabric entered.
At first, the laid up pregnant
teenager went unnoticed as the woman pushed a metal cart with wooden water
buckets and a pile of old grimy washrags on its surface. Tinara’s inner child
could barely contain her excitement while her young adult-self had hundreds of
questions to ask. Never had she been given the opportunity to interact with
another woman besides Antri. Tinara was so curious; she started with a simple
greeting.
“Hello!”
Tinara’s unexpected voice caused the woman to knock over one of the water
buckets. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you!”
The slave woman, whose rotted teeth
shown as she cracked a smile of embarrassment, lifted the empty bucket from the
floor, “Um, its okay. I didn’t know anyone was going to be in here. That old lizard just told me there was a mess
that needs to be cleaned up, so here I am.”
Even then
her smile brightened Tinara’s day and therefore she smiled back, “You must be
talking about Slithor.”
“What, you
know that ugly decrepit thing’s name?”
“Of
course,” gazing at the splattered fruits and meats around the room, Tinara
continued with herself now embarrassed, “he’s the one who brings me this food.”
Not all that excited about having
to clean it up, she replied, “I see! You sure are eating pretty good up here!”
“Do you have a name?” she reached
to shake the nervous slave woman’s hand. “Mine is Tinara.”
“I’m
Penelope,” Tinara shook her hand and immediately recognized how dirty and rough
Penelope’s hands were, “I’m told it’s a bit old fashioned, but um, that’s the
name I was given nonetheless. Well it’s nice to meet you, Tinara, but I really
shouldn’t make small talk. I have to clean this place up in a hurry or they’ll
kill me!”
Penelope got down on her hands and
knees and scrubbed the floor like her life depended on it.
Tinara’s curiosity didn’t allow her to let Penelope to clean
in peace.
“What do you mean, old fashioned?” asked Tinara as if the
term is foreign to her vocabulary.
“Well, I
was a small child when we were brought here. One of the ladies who looked after
me said it comes from a time long ago before the Empire was formed, which is
why it’s old fashioned.”
“I think
it’s a nice name.”
“Thanks. Hey, how old are you,
Tinara?”
“I don’t
know, Antri told me I was a newborn baby when we came here. Since then she’s
lost track of time.”
“Really?
Then you have no memories of the Empire of Earth, do you?”
“No, but
Antri told me all sorts of stories. She even drew me pictures on some tree
leaves she stole from Venomous’s quarter.”
Memories of Antri’s thievery caused
Tinara to dig through the straw in her bed. She burst into laughter when she
unearthed a fistful of papyrus, the same used to inscribe Melonite archives,
with childlike scribble all over them.
“Here, I still have them. Take a
look. Is this what the empire looks like?”
Penelope burst into laughter of her
own while evaluating the awful artwork. Tinara was instantly displeased with
the slave woman’s reaction to her caretaker’s drawings.
“Why are you laughing? Is something
not right?”
“I’m sorry,
Tinara, but these are terrible!” Penelope tried to stop laughing, but couldn’t.
“It looks like a kid drew them! Your caretaker is a horrible artist!”
“Stop
laughing; and don’t say bad things about Antri either!” an offended Tinara chastised.
“Oh, I’m
sorry, Tinara,” Penelope released her last bit of laughter, “but the Empire of
Earth is much more beautiful a place than these pictures can show you. However,
if this is all you have, hold on to them dearly; at least it’s something.”
“I’ve dreamt about it though; about
what it may look like, but I guess I’ll never really know, huh, Penelope?”
Eight seconds of awkward silence
briefly superseded their chatter. Answerless, Penelope simply got back to what
she came up there for in the first place, but of course Tinara couldn’t stay
quiet for too long.
“How many years have we been here?”
Penelope dropped the fruit
covered washrag into a bucket of filthy water, “I have something to show you.”
Hidden beneath her garment’s
collar, Penelope excavated a dull silver necklace with the pyramid shaped
locket. She popped it opened and revealed a glowing display of constantly
changing numbers and words that Tinara recognized from Antri’s teachings.
“Have you ever seen one of these
before, Tinara?”
“No!” she
replied awestruck. “What is it?”
“It’s a calendometer. It keeps track of time.
Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, you name it and its all there.”
“Wow! How
does it work?”
“Well, it’s
quite simple really. See this dial?”
“Uh huh…”
Tinara had no idea what she was looking at, but still expressed a deep
interest.
“All I have
to do is point it towards the sky during sunrise and then again at sunset, turn
the dial so it records the information then it calculates days, months, and so
on based on the time interval between day and night. It also stores previously
recorded information so you could compare the current time zone with other
locations. For instance, if I want to know the date and time on the Empire of
Earth, I just go into the memory index and find the data; see here?” the
technical explanation went right over Tinara’s head, yet she still listened
with open ears, “but here’s the craziest thing about it; in our time on Melonon
we’ve been taken to several different parts of the planet to do work. Every
chance I have, I record information just to get a general idea of just how
endless or days and nights are. Then one day, I decided to compare all of the
Empire of Earth’s time data with what I gathered here. And do you wanna know
what I found out? Melonon’s sunrise and sunset, no matter where you are on the
planet, will match identical to one of the nine districts on the empire, which
means that the time between the two planets runs parallel to each other!”
“I see.”
“I’m not making any sense to you am
I?”
“Oh no,
it’s not that; I was just thinking. Is it possible for that thing to be wrong?
After all, Penelope, we’re in an entirely different
universe. Please forgive me. I’m not the smartest person I’m sure, but
wouldn’t it make more sense for time to be different also?”
“A
different universe, huh? Then I guess anything’s possible. To tell you the
truth, I can’t believe this thing still works. The capacitors mustn’t have run
out yet.”
“What’s a
capacitor do?” asked Tinara again as the vocabulary was new to her.
“Capacitors
are storage devices for energy. The calendometer harnesses solar energy, you
know, from the sun. Are you following me so far?”
“Yes,” said
Tinara with a smile.
“Okay, then it transfers that
energy into twelve capacitors, one for each month. The calendometer can operate
up to a full year without additional power from the sun. Whenever they take us
from the Oblivion Cell to work on the surface I’m able to let it charge. I have
to be careful though. I keep it hidden so the lizards won’t take it from me or
worse. I’ve had it for quite some time now.”
“It must mean a lot to you, Penelope.”
“Yeah well Seru, the woman who
looked after me when we were brought here, gave it to me on my fifteenth
birthday. She said it was the only piece of the Empire she had left and she
wanted me to have it. Then she died…” Penelope started to tear up, “Anyhow, I
can use it to find out how old you are! Let’s see. Ah, wait a minute it’s
easier than that.”
“What do
you mean? You said it was simple. So far it doesn’t sound all that simple to
me!”
“Oh relax,
Tinara!” Penelope laughed when she returned the imperial relic to its hiding
place. “I figured out that we’ve been on this planet for seventeen years, if
you were a newborn when we came then you’re obviously seventeen years
old!”
“Seventeen?”
the new information excited Tinara. “That would mean that Murderar is seventeen
years old too!”
“Murderar,
as in King Murderar; what does he
have to do with anything?” Penelope continued to clean.
“He’s the
father of my hatchlings,” she said unhappily. “That’s why I’m here and not down
in the Oblivion Cell, supposedly. For some reason I was… chosen to give birth
to his heirs, but I don’t know why.”
“What! You
actually know which one of these monsters is the father of your babies? Six
times now I’ve been impregnated by God knows probably six different snakes! I
wouldn’t even be able to recognize their ugly faces if I seen them. So you’ve
never been in the Oblivion Cell?”
“No, well
except for when Antri and I tried to escape. Obviously we were didn’t make it.”
“Hey, that was you? Yeah! Now I remember. You and that
other woman ran past my cage. We were all routing for you! We hoped you’d get
away although we knew you wouldn’t make it. You and your caretaker are like celebrities you know?”
“Celebrities,
what are they?”
“You know;
you’re kinda like heroes to us. Your courage just for attempting that was
something we’ll never forget! Your caretaker, Antri right; where’s she now? Why
isn’t she the one cleaning this mess up?”
“After we
were caught; I haven’t seen her since,” Tinara’s face sunk. “At this point I
don’t know if she’s alive or dead. All I know is I miss her so much.”
“Wait, you tried to escape and
you’re still alive? They didn’t throw you down there with the rest of us? Wow,
you must be really important!”
“I don’t
feel as though I’m any more important than you or anyone else.”
“Well, you
must be,” after finishing the floor, Penelope started on the door and wall.
“Think about it, they didn’t put you in the Oblivion Cell and out of all the
women; you were chosen to carry on a
royal legacy. The rest of us, we mean nothing to them. We’re just biological
soldier factories! They come and go as they please; taking away from us
everything that makes us who we are! I’ve given birth to twenty some-odd
children. I’ve lost count it’s been so many and I’m still young and fertile so
I know I have a long road ahead.”
Sympathetic ears listened as Tinara
realized that her situation was nothing compared to the women in the Oblivion
Cell.
“They kill us you know,” a tear
trickled down Penelope’s cheek, after we’re no longer fertile or when our
bodies had enough, they kill us; burn us alive in their giant furnaces. Death
and suffering is all I see now; only about half of the women who were brought
here still remain. So how does it feel to be important now?”
“I don’t
know. I haven’t really thought of it that way before.”
“Well you
should; and when you find out, embrace your importance… as long as you can. It
may save your life.”
“Do you
really believe that, Penelope?”
“Yes I do,
Tinara, very much so,” she responded while scraping meat from a crack in the
wall.
“I’m not so
sure I do. I keep asking myself if this is the life God intended for us to
live? Lately, I’m beginning to think
that maybe it is. I don’t understand it, but I can only hope that somehow some
good will come from it.”
“Hold on to
your faith and never let go. You lose that, next it’s your humanity; then
what’s left, huh?”
With Tinara left at a loss for
words, Penelope gathered her cleaning utensils and dumped all the broken bowl
pieces in a waste bin on the cart.
“I’m all finished now,” said
Penelope with a hint of sarcasm. “I must go before that Slithor character comes
looking for me. I thank you for making that horrible mess; talking with you
gave me a chance to escape reality for a moment, although that’s all we talked
about mostly. I see you’re in your last trimester. Good luck with your babies
Tinara. Goodbye now.”
“Wait!” the
pregnant teen desperately pleaded, “don’t go just yet! Please stay as long as
you can! I have more fruits in that bowl over there and there’s fresh water in
the basin if you’d like to take a warm bath! I also have some clean garments
that Antri made for me; you can change into one if you’d like! Oh, Penelope,
please stay a while longer! I’m in debt to you for sharing yourself with me!”
“Tinara,
you’re so kind and I’m glad to have met you, but I can’t accept these things.
They’re yours and they were placed here for you only. Remember what I said;
embrace your importance ― as long as you can.”
Penelope rummaged in her collar to
retrieve the calendometer again. She rested the imperial timepiece in Tinara’s
palms then closed her hands around it.
“I want you to hold on to this for
me,” insisted Penelope.
A jaw
dropped Tinara couldn’t believe it, “but I can’t, it was a gift to you —”
“I know,
but one way or another, God will allow our paths to cross again someday and
when that day comes I want you to give it back to me. Can you promise me that?”
“Yes,” she
said unsure of herself. “I promise.”
“You may
look at this device and think it’s nothing but a hunk of metal with fancy
numbers, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a representation of our home
world, the Empire of Earth; it’s a small piece of where we come from, our
heritage, and who we are as a people. If I can’t give you that Tinara, then I
have given you nothing at all.”
Penelope hugged Tinara, kissed her
forehead, then pushed her cart into the torch lit hallway, but again the
seventeen-year-old stopped her.
“Penelope!
I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Yes, what
is it?”
“I need you
to promise me something now. If you see Antri down there, can you tell her that
I love her and I miss her?”
Penelope
smiled, “I promise.”
“Thank you.
Thank you for everything!”
“The
pleasure was all mine.”
Tinara sadly listened to the wheels
of Penelope’s cart bang against the uneven cobblestone floor. She listened
until it could no longer be heard.
She
played with the calendometer all night long. Tinara cherished it knowing that
it was a token of a new friendship.GET YOUR COPY TODAY!
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