Even though I didn’t open my eyes I heard the metal lock clanging and the untreated cage door creaking as it opened and I gained consciousness. I had fallen asleep still in Absalom’s strong arms, but he must have laid me down on my torn-off skirt piece, softening the hard-packed earth.
The man Sting’s rough voice spoke to another Sting, assaulting my ears. “They’re still asleep.”
The female Sting said, “Any news of their ransom, Damon?”
Damon?
“No, Maud, but don’t worry. I gave them a week to hand it over.”
Hand what over? And who was Maud?
Another voice joined their ranks. “Mr. Barklonie, what are the statuses?”
Barklonie? That’s my dad!
“They are well,” he said. Then six feet could be heard leaving, until all that was left was an echo.
I sat up strait as a board. I whispered urgently, “Absalom. Absalom!” He sighed in his slumber, unconscious to me. I shook his shoulder. “Absalom!”
At last he woke, though his eyes were red and unfocused. I still held an urgent note in my voice. “Absalom, Absalom, the ring-leader of the Stings, the guy, he’s my father!”
All thoughts of sleep left his expression in an instant as his eyes widened at an unimaginable rate. “What? He can’t be! How do you know?”
“I heard him talking to another Sting. Two other Stings! One called him ‘Damon’ and the other called him ‘Barklonie’.”
Absalom stared at me in a stupor.
“And Absalom?”
“Yes?”
“They said that our ransoms had to be handed over in a week.”
In a moment of silence, we imagined what that could be.
Absalom trembled. So did I.
“What if they want to turn us into Stings like them? I mean, if our ransoms aren’t paid?”
Something stirred inside of me, and it felt like a snake was slithering through my stomach. “Is there any way to stop them from over-powering our minds?”
“No.”
I gulped. “Maybe we should break the lock. Maybe . . .”
“Maybe we’d get caught by the two Stings guarding the door at the top of the stairs and at the mouth of the cave; haven’t you seen them?”
“No,” I admitted, embarrassed.
“They stand low to the ground in the shadows of the trees. It’s kind of easy to over-look them, I’m just an experienced hunter, and I notice things like that.”
“Oh. Well, we have to do something! Let’s go through one of those doors over there . . .”
“And run into ten times as many Stings?” he inquired, “I’d rather venture up the stairs!”
“We can’t just sit here!”
“Would you rather become Stings, or totally die?” Absalom asked.
I could feel my cheeks flushing with emotion. “I’D RATHER DIE!”
Absalom’s mouth hung open. I fell to my knees and shivered uncontrollably. “Aigneis…I just don’t want to...to see you get hurt.”
I lifted my head up and watched Absalom’s eyebrows join together above his liquid-green eyes.
Abruptly, Damon sauntered in and slid the key into the lock. Absalom and I immediately masked our emotions. I looked scornfully at my ‘father.’ His hair was matted, and he reeked with the stench of cigars. The tattoos that blacked-out his arms bore bloody swords, red-eyed snakes, human skulls and spindly spider-webs. They were gruesome. One woman-Sting with her superior air and her too-short skirt put our nasty ‘food’ in our cage as we sat there, as helpless as puppets.
*
I gripped Absalom’s arm and dragged him after the bird’s lead. I wanted to see what it wanted. In a while, Absalom walked beside me, though his eyes questioned why I was acting so strange.
Presently, we came to the entrance of a cave, the bird fluttered down above the steps located at the rear of the grotto. I pursued onwards. At the foot of the stairs, there was an extremely dimly lit room. In the center of it, there were the remains of dying coals. I could just make out the cage on one side, and the bird passing through the door opposite that side.
Through twisting passages filled with dust, we followed the gray bird, sometimes losing sight of it, but then catching sight of it again, and going on once more, until we crawled in a cramped tunnel to rest.
*
When my slumber left me, Absalom was sitting cross-legged with his hands palm-up in his lap; he was staring at his broad, strong hands. I could have sworn I had seen a gray bird perched on his shoulder for a second, but as soon as I blinked, it disappeared.
“Absalom. I had a dream; a bird . . . the Mississippi Kite, it led us through the passageways, it took us through where the Stings haven’t used the route for ages! Absalom, I think the bird, it wants to help us!”
“Yes, all except for the fact that it’s a figment of your imagination.”
“No, Absalom, if we take that way, we’ll be safe!”
“In your dreams you were safe. Isn’t it possible that in the real world, the Stings could use that way all the time? Or that that way might not even exist?” He looked up.
“Why do I even bother? You’re as stubborn as a mule! Stay here; you’ll become a nice Sting! I’m going home!” And with that, I took the rock out of my pocket and grabbed the lock through the bars. In a sharp movement, I smashed the key gem on the top of the padlock. There wasn’t any noise from the impact, but the lock broke in half.
Absalom’s eyes grew wide. “But now they’ll kill us for trying to escape!”
“No,” I said, “They’ll have lost us because we did escape, by this time tomorrow, I bet.” I marched out of the open door, and took the door across from the cave’s entrance, with Absalom creeping behind me, looking about all the while.
“So, do you remember every twist and turn you took in your dream?” he asked.
“Shhh.” I hushed. In the picture in my mind, the bird darted through the narrow, inevitable passageways. I followed it in the replay of my dream, but now with my feet really walking and my legs really moving, leading me onward, to freedom.
*
Eventually, Absalom and I came to a dusty room that was filled with furniture. Couches and lounge chairs littered the floor. It was a spacious room, and in one corner was a large lamp that no longer gave off light. “I know this room,” I breathed. “We’re close now.”
“Close to what?” Absalom asked, but I was already moving along through the door. Just as I had seen in the dream, there was next a room filled with a piano and a dance floor. In the next room, there were large machines with boxes mostly hiding them from view. I was almost through that room, also, when Absalom gave a cry.
Whirling around, I caught Absalom’s face in a look of utmost terror. He was staring at one machine. “It looks just as it does in the pictures,” he whispered.
“What does?”
“The MTGYA,” he said. I felt a pulse from the stone in my pocket.
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