Gift of Gold (The Year of Churning Bloods) (2 page)

***

Huddled together with the rest of the new Grimlar trainees, I took my first nervous steps into the camp and blinked at the blinding sun. Hot, dusty plains with deeply cut ravines stretched out in all directions. Bordering this was a towering wall of smooth, speckled rock, so unfathomably tall that I couldn’t see the top. It took me a few seconds to realize that this massive wall reached around the entire area, making it seem as though the entire camp was built in some kind of giant stone crater. I was about to point this out to someone when we suddenly stopped at a block of nasty-looking wood and stone buildings. Sitting on the splintery decks outside were a bunch of older kids staring aimlessly off into the distance.

“You lot!” the elder bellowed, now rushing over to correct the situation. “Why aren’t you working?” The four kids who had been lounging on the deck nearly fell over as they struggled to jump to attention.

“W-w-we’ve got d-day passes,” The skinniest boy replied with a terrible stutter.

“Show me,” The elder demanded in a challenging voice.

The stuttering kid didn’t move right away. He glanced at the three others who nodded quickly and began to dig through their pockets. After a while they each produced a thin wooden strip with some elaborate engravings on it.

The elder frowned and took the strips before pointing a quivering finger at them. “I haven’t seen any of you idiots work for more than a few hours! Which elder would be stupid enough to give you all day passes?”

“Puh-puh-puh-puh-puh,”

The darker skinned Ickle-bit held up a finger to stop the stuttering boy from hurting himself. “Professor Wenchenberg,” he told the elder in a calmer voice.

“That figures,” the elder said angrily. “While you’re all here, at least make yourselves useful and show these new Ickle-bits around.”

“What’s there to show them?” The largest ickle-bit muttered under his breath.

The elder blinked in disbelief, then focused in on the trainee who had spoken out. “Excuse me?” the elder asked, taking three large steps forward.

The large ickle-bit flinched and instinctively leaned back. He looked at the others in desperation, but they wisely stayed silent.

“It sounded like you just talked back to a high ranking official,” The elder said, now within licking distance of the large ickle-bit.

“I didn’t mean to... All I meant was...”

The boy’s stammering was cut off by a fierce backhand slap from the elder. The large ickle-bit went flying to the ground and nearly sliced his head on the edge of the deck. The elder kicked him for good measure before taking two steps back. “Get up,” he hissed impatiently. “Look me in the eye while I’m talking to you.”

The large ickle-bit clambered up onto his thin little legs and reluctantly looked the elder straight in the eye. I noticed that the boy was now trembling from head to toe.

“You will show these ickle-bits around, even if it means pointing to rocks. You will do this because I ordered you to. Understand?”

The boy nodded quickly.

“Speak to me goddamnit!” The elder thundered in outrage.

“Yessir, I will sir,” the ickle-bit said, still nodding very quickly. The elder nodded before turning on his heels and briskly walking away.

The transformation in the older kids was startling. As soon as the elder was out of earshot, they suddenly got this fierce little look in their eyes like they just got five years older. They introduced themselves so quickly, I forgot all of their names within seconds.

“You lot’er probably wondering how y’all got here aye?” the large kid asked, stepping forward and coughing loudly. Everyone including myself nodded very quickly. “Well, the short answer is that you’ve been bought.”

“Bought?” another kid asked as if that was some kind of joke.

“Yeah, bought,” the older trainee replied forcefully. “These Grimlar’s go ‘round the whole kingdom and buy up all the orphans. Y’all are orphans yeah?” To my surprise, everyone around me nodded for a second time. The kid gestured towards one of the buildings before coughing and spitting on the ground. “These are the Clog bunkers. You pick a bed and stick with it. If you’re lucky, you might get a wall or two to yourself.” All of the people around me began to crane their necks to get a better look inside, however the other trainee interrupted them by loudly clicking his fingers. “Y’all won’t spend too much time here though. Out there’s where you work.” He looked out to the dusty clearing beyond the buildings and clicked his tongue a little. I squinted and sure enough, I could make out about a hundred boys my age all working off in the distance.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“They’re smashing coal,” another trainee responded without looking at me. “‘Dem fields are full of metals and coal and such. We dig it up, smash it up, and send it back to the outside world.”

“Don’t people know about this?” I wondered angrily. The other kid laughed weakly but didn’t smile.

“Nah, they don’t know,” he told me sadly. “Even if they did know, what would they do ‘bout it? It’s cheap stuff. It’s good for them.”

“What are king’s exams?” A kid beside me asked real suddenly. The older trainee nervously licked his lips and seemed to unfocus his eyes a bit.

“Y’all see that wall over there?” he asked, pointing out towards the fields of coal. At first I thought he was talking about the smooth crater wall that went way up, but as I looked closer I could see that there was a different wall. This wall was brick and went up nearly four stories.

“What’s behind it?” a kid behind me asked, tilting his head to one side.

“The Forest.”

“A forest?” the other trainee asked in disbelief.

“Not
a
forest!” he responded irritably. “
The
Forest! It was grown by the Grimlars to test the abilities of their trainees. If you live five years here, you get thrown in there and you gotta get back out in a week. You can’t do it if you don’t have anti-magic.”
              “What happens if you fail?” I demanded, locking eyes with the other ickle-bit.

“Nobody knows,” The kid said under his breath. “Some say you get taken out of the camp and put back into the real world. Some say different.” He shook his head abruptly and stared at us as if he forgot we were there. “If you wanna be a Grimlar, you have to get to tier four and survive one of those exams,” he added darkly.

“Tier?” I asked suddenly.

“Yeah, tier,” the other kid said quickly. “The Grimlar trainees all get a tier to tell them how they’re doing but ‘cause we’re ickle-bits, we’re tier zero. Getting to tier one just means showing a couple of elders you can use anti-magic, but after that, I think you’ve gotta take some kind of test in the school.”

“What’s the highest tier?” I said loudly.

“Gods, don’t you ever shut up?” the other trainee asked while covering his ears. “What’s your name anyways?”

“Jacob,” I said flatly. “Jacob Ofpacis.”

The other trainee sighed. “Well if you have to know Jacob, it goes all the way up to tier six. At that level, people call you Caterwaul. There can only one Caterwaul at a time.

“Who's the Caterwaul now?” I asked, forgetting to keep my mouth shut. The trainee shushed me so suddenly that I nearly leapt back a half meter. He looked to either side before cupping his hand to his mouth and leaning in real close.

“Caterwaul Lorenzo,” he whispered. “But you gotta be careful, because he can hear you wherever you are.”

“What? That’s impossible!” I declared, looking into his eyes for confirmation.

“He’s the Caterwaul. He can do anything,” the trainee replied as if I didn’t understand. “It’s said that he can lift up an entire river just by lifting his hands. There’s no stronger aqua warlock anywhere in the world.”

The trainee jabbed a finger in another direction and pointed out a grand palace with pointed towers, blinding white arches and hundreds of cool blue windows. It was a building so fantastic, I wondered how I could have missed it. “He lives in Castle Lambalitrate with the tier five professors and elders. He rules over us and he watches every little thing that happens inside of his camp.”

“But how can he?” I asked earnestly.

The trainee didn’t respond. He only shook his head slightly. “I dunno,” he admitted, turning around. “That’s really all you need to know about the camp anyways. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have some well deserved rest we need to attend to.”

***

             
It’s now five years since that day and five years since I made that promise to find Preston only to leave it painfully unfulfilled. As I mentioned before my name is Jacob Ofpacis, although for the longest time I wasn’t really sure what to call myself besides miserable. Miserable because I had been taken in by the Grimlars, and miserable because I had lost my only friend. Despite my despair, I continued to survive, although that was more because of a small sliver of luck which made its way into my life.

It was a day not long after I had entered the camp and I was mining minerals. My inexperienced young hands were blistered from the grip of the pickaxe. I desperately wanted to stop. However the looming glare of the elders overrode any pain my body was experiencing. After a while, I began to notice that one of the elders was watching me with unusual focus. Trying to look inconspicuous, I snuck a peek at the observer.

              He was a man made up of sharp sides and angles. A man with expertly trimmed facial hair and a balding scalp, with only a trace of black present in the follicles. He had a gaze that seemed to lack any colour, but still managed to deliver deep sincerity.

From that day on, he continued to watch me work, as silent as the moon but as penetrating as the sun. For weeks he watched and some days it seemed to me that his gaze was almost challenging me. It was encouraging me to press on while at the same time offering me the option to lie down and fade into the rock. While that man was watching, I found determination and strength I never realized I had.

              After the man had been watching for nearly a month, he approached. As I watched him glide over the empty desert canvas, I gaped in apprehension. Had I done something wrong? Was I in trouble? His feet slipped silently over the debris, keeping time with the slow rhythm of the pelting picks hitting the ground around me.

              A string of recurring taps accompanied the man’s movement. I noticed that he walked with a metal tipped cane. The elder approached without any sideways glances, looking completely indifferent to my obvious nerves. His gaze met mine only briefly, before he cocked his head to one side and walked unusually close to me. His leisurely tempo was broken by the clatter of a thick wooden strip which fell to the ground. Before I could even consider returning it, the sharp-angled elder had already stridden off several paces. I recoiled with disbelief when I saw what had been dropped before me.

It was 10 credits worth of day passes.

              In the concentration camp, day passes were created to make Ickle-Bits work faster. Every time an Ickle-bit did some work, they could get a few day passes should they be the one that worked the best. Some died, recklessly trying to be the lucky one to get a single pass. Others played dirty by stealing resources or bullying others into working for them. Never had an elder ever given me one, much less ten. There was no doubt in my mind that if the Grimlars saw me with this, they would assume I had stolen it. If anybody else saw me with it, they would try to take it from me. I had to return the credits somehow.
              The siren signaling the end of the day rang suddenly, causing hordes of hungry ickle-bits to rush for the canteen. Just as I was about to enter, however, I saw the sharp-faced elder slowly observe his surroundings, then calmly stride off. Abandoning my position in line, I sprinted into the streets of The Clog to look for him. While my arms pumped and my chest inflated, I continued into the deep depths of the corridors and crooks. His feet flew alongside his fluttering cape, as his slow stride turned into a brisk walk. Building after building he effortlessly evaded me as my spindly little legs tried to fling me ahead. Rounding another corner with inconceivable ease, the sharp faced man almost seemed to be enjoying the chase.