To Surrender Way

Part 1: There is only one truth about time in prison. Interrogation, and waiting

The walls of my cell are comprised of a total of 22 stones. No one stone is the same height or width. The Tapalanie prison is inefficiently built, painfully built.

Who would be able to live with themselves for erecting a prison? Slaves - only a slave would dig their own grave.

Every hour the guards announces the time. They do this to make time slow for us. But sometimes they mess with us and repeat the same hour over and over again. Gruel is more regulated. Now there are only two times. Porridge time and slop time.

The first week, when I was still recording the hours, I tried to be an indolent - a sweet, disgusting, submissive beggar. I thought they would have a hard time beating me, perhaps they would take better care of me. But, I am less than a dog, a trespasser. A Triset - And here, all Trisets are either rebels or are related to rebels.

The guards look at me like I have beaten their dog, they beat me worse than that. They think I have secrets because my brother, Kasil is with the Northern Triset Freedom Alliance. Days, hours, years, lifetimes - I am already dead. They keep just enough of me alive to search for more secrets. Secrets which are not mine to give. If they were mine I would, and be done with it all, and beg them to kill me. But they are not my secrets to give.

There is only one truth about time in prison. Interrogation, and waiting to be interrogated - sharp pain - dull pain.

They're are all bastards. I never hurt anyone, or did anything other than be Kasil's little sister. They better kill me before they let me go because if they ever let me go, I am going to go to the NTFA and tell them to do what they will with me for I am already dead.

It's nice to be dead. You can't feel anything. Even pain seems like it is far away. Of course my brain is fracturing a little bit. I kind of enjoy the sensation of it cracking.

I have been burned, beaten, cut and drowned. Lots of drowning. Two of my fingers have been broken. Every single one of my toe nails have been pulled.

But the truth is, is it could be worse. I will give them that. They don't touch me like a woman, they touch me like a bag of flour. And at least there is some food, and they haven't undone me yet. They will, but by the time they do my brain will be a spider web. I won't feel anything. Little Maleena, who does what she's told, who obeys her father, who loves her mother, who is supposed to marry Benthar - the son of her father's business partner, who likes to read and eat green tapyra and salty kintie and who could spin and sing - she will soon be gone.

I can't decide if I would prefer to make it quicker, or to make it slower. I have outlasted most of the other women who were gathered up in the same raid. I've known them by their cries. No one uses their name anymore. We are numbers. I am c3742. I don't hear of the 3800's anymore. I am the smallest number. But that means that there were b's and c's - plus 3741 more women before me.

"It's 1300 ladies. 1300." A guard announces. He swings a bat as he walks down the hallway. Each doorway rings and I flinch as I hear the echoes getting closer. We are all holding our breath. "1300...Whose turn is it today?" The bat rings out every two steps. The guards have developed a rhythm - they know it helps with the suspense.

We are waiting for the bat to pause, to stop, for a door to open.

Bang. One and Two and Bang and one and two and bang. He's getting closer, speeding up just perceptible. I feel like he is running towards my cell. "1300, which one of you mice are going to eat the cheese today?" The guard asks. I breathe steadily in through my nose and look at my favorite spider. She has strung a beautiful little web in the corner. One and two and bang. Almost to me.

"They can't hurt you little bird," My brother Kasil whispers in my ear.

"Yes they can." I mutter back. I don't care if he is real or not real. His presence is just one little lovely crack in my brain. I am no longer alone.

Kasil crouches beside me, he looks at me as if he is trying to tell me something I need to know, like he is trying to shake me awake from it. One and two and bang. "Little bird, you have wings."

I laugh at him. Not real. My brother has always been handsome and persuasive, but logical. "I am not a bird." The guard is so close I can almost smell him.

Kasil leans in close to my face so that all I see are his eyes - his bright, blue eyes - the kind that could convince anyone of anything with their sincerity. "If you can't fly away from here. Fly away in here." Kasil taps my chest. I feel him like I feel myself, but he is right. His eyes are my sky, and I can even shut the sky out, fall through the darkness.

"Winner, Winner little mouse." The guard bangs on the door of the cell behind me five sharp times. "C3867, it's time to go to confession." The woman screams. I float in my brother's eyes, they are good honest eyes. He is right. I am free. Free of my body, of my pain, of my cell. "Shut up, no squeaking, it's to early for that now."

Hours pass, tack and slop and then gruel and then tack are served. C3867 comes back. Endurance torture. I don't mind it as much as the quick pain. The slow pain I can slide into and become. If I am the pain, then the pain is me, and I am myself.

A strange amnesty descends through my being as the waiting begins again. My neighbor should be happy, she has survived, now others will take their turn. C3867 doesn't cry only whimper. I don't feel empaty for any of us anymore. I can't afford pity, and besides pity is a cruel way to think of someone else. Instead I send a prayer to my favorite that spider that the little mouse sleep and dream in Kasil's eyes.

"Grow wings little mouse, grow wings."

Part 2: Click. Clock. Scratch. Brack. Ark. My door is making sounds

Click. Clock. Scratch. Brack. Ark. My door is making sounds. The unlocking sounds. But there is no: "One and two and..."

"C3724 against the wall" a guard yells with a rough voice yells through the door. A routine has been broken. It jars me from my mat and I leap flat against the wall, suddenly alive and shivering. No crevices, no corners.

The bright light from the hallway nearly blinds me as the door opens. From the corner of my eye I can see that there are two of them. Such shiny, unblemished uniforms, the gloss of them makes me wince. Boots as shiny as pistols and mallets and knives.

"c3724 meet c3889," a shivering form half stumbles half falls onto the floor of my cell. I recognize her instantly. Benthar's twin sister Paloma is shivering on her knees. I am instantly shocked at how thin her legs look peaking out her pale smock of a shirt, covered in fresh, lurid bruises. Dried blood stains one side of her face, and a large, poorly stitched gash runs the length of her shoulder to her right.

Paloma and I had never really seen eye to eye. I am simply an obligation to be added to her household- an outsider, an intruder. And even worse, I might someday surpass her, in her brother's eyes.

"Why?" I gasp. What is she doing here? What does this mean for the rest of my family?

"There's been another attack," the guard barks at me. I shiver like a good little mouse,

"Your kind disgusts me. Trying to take what you don't own." His spit lands on my thigh - his disgust feels warm and slippery, the way other outrage feels.

I am tempted to tell him that he too is just a number. All guards wear a name tag with a number. This is how we know them. Zd1350. Another glossy man. They all look the same.

"Everyone will have a roommate soon," he menaces.

I can't help the pity I feel - mean ugly pity. My father would be so ashamed.

The guard bends down and reaches for a mattress outside the door. "Here you go." He grunts as he hefts another thin cot into the room. The mattress slams against the toilet, and then slumps into the corner. A blanket and a pillow soon follow.

"You listening to me?" ZD1350 is very close to my face.

"Yes sir."

"I can't hear you!" His breath smells like stale vutton meat..

"YES SIR" My chest aches from the effort.

"Good...You should be thanking me. Now you have a friend."

I shiver against his hot breath, I can feel the odor of vutton in my nose and on my cheeks, and also the curve of my lip. I can taste his breath.

"Thank you, Sir,"

He leers at me. "Poor, mad, little girl. Triset trash." He grabs my halo of ratted brown curls, and jerks me to him. "You're lucky I don't throw you to the rocks below this forsaken place."

Part 3: One and two and bang. Bang bang bang.

Click ark brak clock clock click. The door locks behind us. It's a fine door, heavy and solid. There is nothing good left between me and the other side of that door.

Paloma's forgiving hands flutter above my face. "Maleena. Maleena, oh what have they done to you?" I shudder from the contact. I haven't been touched with kindness in a very long time.

"c3724. I am c3724. I am the smallest number." I find the words. There they are, maybe a truth she can understand. I am not Maleena. "Maleena has mouse wings. You should find your own mouse wings. Kasil ask Kasil, he brought them to me."

Paloma is no longer touching me. She stares at me horrified. I want to explain to her about the cracks, my beautiful lovely cracks. She reaches toward me again, but I can't help but scurry away from her

"Kasil is not here," Malena's voice is calm and even. "It's just you and me. We've got to find a way to get out of here."

"Benthar? Is Benthar dead?"

Paloma exhales sharply. "No. no he is not."

Her words come in and out of focus. I find myself staring at her hair. Long, thick, coarse, wavy black hair - like her brother. I'd never realized before how beautiful she was. But of course she was beautiful. I could swim in the violet of her pupils, just a glint, a spark. Without meaning to my hand has extended to her hair. The hair of a man, I was promised to. Even here that promise follows me.

"Please, it's the cracks. They don't like to be touched," I try to explain. My hand is now laying flat on the side of her hair, I can't help but stroke it ever so lightly.

"Maleena, did you hit your head? Did they give anything to you?"

I shrug, "Cracks don't grow smaller." I don't really care about her question. Paloma inches even closer and catches my hand with hers. I try to pull away. But she holds me steady. I endure her touch. But I can help the deep moan. She releases me. Stands up and drags the mattress sitting unceremoniously on top of the toilet to the side of my mattress.

Kasil's eyes are blue. Blue like the sky over a desert. A desert can swallow someone whole, take them away, take them far away from here.

"Maleena, lay down beside me." Out of habit, I obey, laying on my side so I can watch her hands. She drapes a blanket over the both of us, and I wonder what time it is in the real world if she is tired this close to after gruel.

On the stone floor, I am anchored. My thoughts are sharper on more even ground. "I'm still here." I whisper to her. She smiles at me the way she would a child. "Maleena is still here." But I can see the severity of our situation, the hopelessness of it is beginning to dawn on her.

"We thought you were dead," she whispers - her eyes focusing on the corners of our cell.

"I am dead. It's better to be dead."

Part 4: Cages within cages. I have named all the stones in my cell

One and two and bang. Bang bang bang. "Oh look, two little mice snug as a bug in a rug. Wake up little mice." I am vaguely aware of the fact that I am being dragged across the cell.

From her place on the floor Paloma begins to scream, "Stop. No. Please don't." The guard drops my foot, and advances on her. He grabs the collar of her shift and hauls her up against the wall. I've never been beaten by the same man in here. Whoever runs this place is smart, none of us ever get to become individuals to our guards.

The guard slams Paloma against the wall. Her shift becomes tangled in her thighs. She screams and he tightens his grip. I see the back of her head bounce against the wall.

"You don't tell me what to do," he growls.

She slumps forward, unconscious. A curtain of black hair hides her features. The guard turns back to me. I am standing, now, wrists extended.

I am a good prisoner. A good girl. He grunts in approval and shackles me. I look at Paloma, her hands limp, feet limp - bruised legs awkwardly splayed, her shift falling at weird angle, exposing the bone of her clavicle. Benthar would be angry with me for abandoning his sister - his brave twin - fierce Paloma.

Traitor. I can hear the judgement in the larger numbers' moans.

The guard walks behind me, a steady shadow - I wonder what color his eyes are, and what he looked like when he was young. Did he have friends, what was his first kiss like. Was there once a girl like me. Maybe there is still.

I hope Paloma doesn't have a concussion. Not good to hit your head and have no one to keep you awake.

There are one hundred doors between me and the interrogation room at the end of the hallway. No one wall the same. Cages within cages. I have named all the stones in my cell, memorized the shape and size and texture of each one. You find entertainment where you can.

Today, there is a serviceable table in the interrogation room with two chairs. Usually, there are two chairs. The guards never seem to notice we have the same chairs.

Zd2764 is now in front of me, unshackling me. "I've heard of you," he says. There is a small sideways smile on his face. "I've reviewed your file. I feel sorry for you. I think you might know nothing."

It's a trick. I can tell by his smile - slow, anticipating, rolling the punch line over in his ungainly jaw. It's better to not respond unless asked a direct question. "Maybe you were just born to the wrong family. Maybe you know nothing about the attack on Mandagar. Maybe your brother, your father, your mother's uncle - Maybe they tell you nothing. But unfortunately for you all this means is that you don't know what is important and not important. This is how they live in front of you in plain sight." Zd2764 paused with fake pity, "So what this really means is that you might know everything, and you just don't know it. And that is where I come in."

"What is your question?"

"Ahhh. Reasonable I see," he gets up and from a dark corner pulls out a pitcher of water. I want to know about your brother when he was younger. Who were his friends."

"All my brother's friends are either dead, or in a work camp." I answer. "You have their names."

"We both know that not all your brother's friends are dead. But you know that any name you give will be used to issue a warrant. So you tell me nothing."

"But you ask anyway because it is your job." I am sorry for him, poor little clone. At least I could see my bars, and my place in a series of multiplications.

The guard's reaction is so swift, I do not have time to react as the back of his hand slams into the side of my face. I jerk back in relief. Pain, I can handle pain. But talking opens up the cracks. "I am trying to save lives!" He growls. "You are what is standing between me and saving lives."

I almost laugh at him, in his bright shiny clothes. I wonder if it is the clothes that make him feel like he is on the right side of history. But right sides don't always wear the best clothes. He hits me again, and I taste warm iron blood. My blood. I have decided to love the taste of myself, the taste of my family - our people. "We are the same. I have truth.

You have truth."

I brace myself for another hit. But there is none. He is considering me, with his clenched jaw. "There are so many things I could do to you. Would you like me to describe them to you in detail?" He might have been handsome if it weren't for the shaved head and ugly uniform. What would he say if I was a regular girl? A pretty girl, who lived next door. What would he say? Maybe - Would you like me to describe what I would do to you in detail.

The thought makes me giggle.

"What's so funny?" He asks, leaning back - analyzing me.

"You have no leverage. You are the one who is trapped." Zd2764 gets up and disappears into a corner. When he steps back into the light I see that he is carrying a thickly, curved knife, sharp enough to skin a sietre.

"I can hurt you."

"Yes. But I have mouse wings." He considers me with an unreadable expression. "The body never leaves this place. It's already happened in the future, no stopping it. I am dead. As you say, anything I tell you might be important, and what's the life of a dead woman."

My brother Kasil is my older brother, the same age as Benthar. He was the bright promise of our family - touched with passion and rage.

"I suppose you are right." The guard concedes. And then as almost a casual after-thought of a gesture he runs the tip of his blade from the tip of my elbow to the top of my wrist. The slice is shallow, but the knife is sharp. I barely feel it.

With removed disinterest I watch the blood begin to drip down my arm. "But on the other hand, I might find a new way to break you," he sneers.

Without warning, he raises his hand and quickly slices my other arm, this time a little deeper. I gasp. Tears spring to my eyes and he swims in front of me with his cruel, disinterested sneer.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"I haven't decided yet. I'd rather not. Do you want to share anything about Kasil's friends from school?" The tip of his knife is now at the edge of my throat.

I look straight through the guard. I feel the fractures, the spider veins of reality. I can tell I am bleeding badly.

My head feels light. But I find the right answer. "Kasil didn't have many friends. We didn't get to go to school that often. Papa needed him too much for the trading post. He had two friends. Meslavave and Petere. Meslavave died of the red fever two years ago, and Petere drowned at sea. Which you know."

"They both were smugglers. They both had help. Your family is the common denominator. There must have been others." The tip of the knife is now on my throat. He stares intently at my neck. I contemplate falling onto it's lovely edge -a pristine edge that would slide right in.

My arms are now covered in blood. "When he did go to school, he was well liked by everyone. Are you going to interrogate all his classmates?" I continue to fish for information that wouldn't hurt Kasil.

Suddenly I realize that there is a lot of blood. I slide back into the blue. Don't worry big brother. I almost smile at my guard. He might give me a relatively painless death.

Bleeding out is not so bad.

Part 5: I have been promised to Benthar Corinthias

I have been promised to Benthar Corinthias since before I was born. I think of the story of my engagement often, and now when there is no one coming to save me, I think of how I have always belonged to someone.

I wonder how they will tell the story after I am gone, how they tell it now. What does Benthar say to my father? And my father to him?

I know the story by heart. Tendil Corinthias, Benthar's father was an apprentice of my grandfather, Isquan Zeefaroh. Grandpa Zee ran an import/export business.

Tendil and my father, Ephesus, grew up as brothers. Grandfather Zee's business began to fail. The captain of one of his trade ships had been stealing from him.

At the time, my father and Tendil, were young men who had no aspirations of taking over the business. But when my Grandfather sat them down, and admitted he was on the verge of bankruptcy - there was really no choice, and so Tendil took over for the Captain, and my father fired every clerk in the office. Then they mortgaged the ship my Grandfather had spent half his life purchasing and moved all their ledgers and boxes of paperwork into my grandmothers dining room.