CROSSProcess, Part 4 by Billings Hildred M

Author:Billings, Hildred M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barachou Press
Published: 2023-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

six

One of them had to be strong. Only one could afford to lose her days to misery and grief.

If I take charge, then they might spare her. Sonall knew how this looked from the moment Graella refused to respond to their new housemother, an ugly, hunched-over wretch of a woman named Yenta. Mistress Yenta, as she insisted on being called, did not suffer ignorance or insolence. She wasn’t afraid to hit Graella on the face or throw her into a dark room by herself, with only a blanket to keep her warm and a bucket for her business. Sonall knew this was to break them.

Why couldn’t Graella be like him? Didn’t she hear their father’s last words?

Maybe this is what he meant. Everyone had whispered that Graella was a girl of finery, which would make her a lovely wife to the proper suitor. Yet she wasn’t cut out for hard work, let alone the traumatic loss of her family and the only home she ever knew. Her grief expressed itself in hollow wails that echoed in the hallways. The other “recruits,” while empathetic to how she felt, told Sonall to do something about his sister before everyone turned on them.

Because it wasn’t only the noise that abated when she finally cried herself to sleep. It was how they brought out the worst in Mistress Yenta, and how more of the drudgery new recruits faced fell upon the others. Even when Sonall tried to pick up Graella’s assignments, he was often too busy keeping her alive with his warmth and reassurances.

“Look, I’ve been with your family my whole life,” said Turly, the stableboy brought along in the raid. “Never had a problem with you or your sister, but she’s gonna get us beaten or worse. At least get her to stop crying. I can’t fucking sleep with her hollering down the hall. Sleep is the only damn pleasure I’ve had here. It sure as hell ain’t privacy or a hot bath!”

Sonall understood Turly’s position as much as he sympathized with Graella’s. Turly, like Sonall, was simply trying to survive. They had no idea what the mercenaries truly wanted with them. To make us one of them, probably. Sonall had a feeling that only happened after they weeded out the undesirables. Graella was on the fast track to getting dumped in the desert, and Sonall would rather die with her than lose her too.

“Come on.” Sonall stroked the top of his sister’s head as she flung her body across his lap. For the first time in a long while, she had cried the last of her tears. Instead, she was like a corpse, staring at the wall in her soiled clothes. “Please work with me, sis. We can do this together. I’ll find a way. They’re already letting us share a room, but if you keep acting like an invalid, I… I don’t know what they’ll do. I can’t lose you too. We’ll find a way to keep living. We might even find a way out of here and back home.

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