No Man's Land

[TaLi63372]

The mud-covered girl had spent most of the recent night in the gravel ditch next to the road. She had shivered throughout the night. The sharp stones digging through the soaked cotton garments as bacteria-laced muck and dung coated her skin. In the shadows of the trench, she was safe from eyes of the occasional rider and oxen cart that moved along the road towards the capital. The unknown beasts that lurked in the forests avoided the openness of the road and thus left the filth-covered girl alone.


It was her no man's land.

 

[TaLi63372]

The morning sun broke over the eastern mountains crashing down upon the surrounding dark forest. Ghosts, both real and imagined, fled from its warm light and retreated into the deep thickets. Despite the warming morning air, the twelve year old girl trembled uncontrollably. Her thin, emaciated arms were wrapped around her shins as she remained in her tight ball. Brown eyes remained tightly shut even as the songbirds crept out of their nests and sang their chorus.

She gradually stirred and opened her bloodshot eyes. Unwinding herself, she lowered herself to a muddy puddle and drank from the unclean water. The cold water felt good on her raw throat and quieted her stomach. She was past the point of pains of hunger, but the fullness the water brought to her shriveled stomach was of some comfort to the child. Her grungy skin was glazed as sickness within stoked an inner furnace. A low-grade fever began to take a firm hold.

Encouraged on by a will to survive she began to crawl and stumble through the muck towards Britain. The road would have been much easier to walk along, but the ease to hide kept her close to the trench. Thick d-ring appeared to be surgically embedded in-between the bones below her elbows and knees. These rings would occasional snag on the growing shoots of cattails or wayward branches. Even the slightest pressure on the rings elicited a gurgling noise of pain from her throat.

Tears cascaded down her cheeks as she moved along the road, stumbling through the exhaustion, fear and the further decay of her fragile health.

 

[TaLi63372]

The sun climbed the sky until its light hung directly overhead. Several times, sounds of approaching traffic caused the girl to clamor for the relative safety of the ditch. Each time she pressed her body as low as she could into the muck. It wasn't much past spring and the cattails and water reeds were still relatively sparse and low to the ground. She held her breath, shaking among the clouds of buzzing mosquitoes as she waited for them to pass by her hiding spot.

Each time they moved past, consumed in their own conversations to take any notice of the bundle of rags and flesh at the bottom of the ditch. After a couple minutes of silence, the girl would pull herself to her feet and continue her march.

Hours past slowly as the sun kept its vigil on the girl. A mile outside the city, the girl found a torn and tattered monk's robe on the side of the road. She pulled it over her head with careful attention not to snag the rings against her sore joints. The adult robe blanketed the emaciated child's frame. She reached down and tore at the bottom of the robe with grimy nails until it was short enough to keep her from tripping. Her hands were hidden deep in the dark holes of the sleeves as the immense hood threatened to cover her face. She reached up and rubbed the sleeve against her face and began to walk again.

As the sun began to descend towards the west and the shadows stretched long, the girl entered the City of Britain. She stuck close to the water as she moved deeper into the city. The docks were always bustling with some activity, but the lure of drink and women had coaxed many of the sailors to poorly lit rooms. The smell of baking bread percolated through the alleys to the girl as she came to the mouth of a large river. She turned north towards the smell, but froze when a woman with long, brown hair stepped in front of the Blue Boar Tavern. She wore a pair of glasses with a blue dress as she wiped her hands on her green apron. She shouted out across the river at noone in particular, "Soup will be ready shortly. All are welcome. If any of ya'll cause me any lick of trouble, it'll be my foot up your ass." The woman gave one last look around and then went back into the tavern. The girl stood there as if ready to run and hide. After several minutes the smell of food pulled her towards the flickering light of the tavern as caution gave way to more primal needs.

 

[Thom]

The moonlight coming through the windows of the infirmary made the girl look almost lifeless. The only indication she was actually alive was the slight rise and fall of her breathing and the occasional sniffle. She had a death grip on what remained of the loaf of bread she'd been given earlier before leaving the soup kitchen in Britain. Thom had watched her sleeping for an hour or two before drifting off himself, still sitting in the floor nearest the door. Gillian had left to care for Xavier and get a few hours sleep at home.

The sound of the girl coughing woke Thom from his light sleep, and he opened his eyes just in time to see her sit up and look around. He climbed to his feet, and walked over slowly to sit beside her on the bed. A cold cloth was soon pressed against her forehead, causing a slight shiver to pass through her frame as she lifted her arm to wipe her nose on her sleeve. He frowned slightly and gathered a cloth for her to blow her nose on. Several unsuccessful attempts later he finally got another cloth out, miming what he wanted her to do. Her effort was rewarded with several large globs that seemed to home in on the bread still clutched protectively against her chest. He shook his head and gently took the mostly clean cloth from her, wiping up as much of the mess as he could manage before lifting his own cloth up, encouraging her to blow again while he held the cloth.

The necessary tasks out of the way finally he motioned for her to lay back down, miming sleep for her. He watched confused as she looked around and then crawled off the bed and into the corner of the room. A strange scraping sound accompanied her movements as she curled into a tight ball around the loaf of bread. Thom spread the blanket from the bed over her small frame before settling back on the floor near the door. As soon as her breathing deepened back into sleep he rummaged in the bag from the soup kitchen, removing the shirt and wadding it up. He carefully substituted the shirt for the snotty loaf of bread, watching to make sure she accepted it before turning and throwing it away.

 

[Jordan Thyme]

Brown eyes watched everything she did, unless there was bread nearby. And then they watched the bread instead. Like an animal in the wild, food seemed to dictate her movements. Had there never been a soup kitchen, she would still be curled up somewhere in a pile of mud and feces. Thom seemed to understand what was needed and for that she was thankful. He would have been a wonderful father to their little girl had she survived, his movements with their new patient proved it.

They were trying to keep it down. Curled up on the floor, a clean wadded shirt clutched tightly to her, they watched her sleep. There was no telling when the last time she’d seen an actual bed had been. It had to have been awhile if ever because the floor was not the selection Thom and Gillian had in mind when they’d brought her here.

“She needs a bath. All those layers of grime need to come off.”

“And food.” Thom chimed in.

“I’d rather do that after she’s clean. Her ingesting more dirt will make things worse not better.”

Thom shrugged slightly as if to say, Good luck with that. “How do you intend to get her to take one?”

“I’m going to have to show her I guess? I mean better it me than you. She and I have the same equipment.”

Showing seemed to be the only way to get things across. Gillian wondered if the girl was capable of speech or if something had removed that ability. Regardless, she’d tackle that later. Thom had found a way to communicate that worked for now. Wet and hacking, the young girl coughed in her sleep and stirred enough to look down at her hands. The jig was up, teddy loaf had been replaced and she knew it.

 

[TaLi63372]

The woman and man talked in the tiled room as she watched from the corner. Their words were foreign, but their tone was not. She could tell they were unhappy, but didn't know why. The looks they gave her made her more upset. The rings below her elbows had snagged when the woman had tried to remove the dirty, snot-encrusted robe. The tug has caused such pain that she screamed. Her scream wasn't human, the animal-like sound was unfocused, gargling roar due to the damaged cords. The pain of it was palatable.

Her robe was off now and she sat in the corner with an adult skirt and doublet that her malnourished form swam in. She had her hands protectively over the elbows as the bones still ached. Had she done something to make them unhappy? The concern turned to anger.

Anger at the situation.
Anger at not understanding them.
Anger at everything she had known.

The woman tried to placate her as she scowled. The woman looked like she might cry. Why should she cry? She doesn't have rings. Tears welled up in her own eyes as she wiped them with the back of her hand. The woman's tone was gentle again and proceeded to demonstrate how to step into the vessel of water. Were they going to eat her for making them unhappy? It held lots of hot liquid like the pots in the kitchen. She had seen parts of them in those pots. The ones who disappointed the doctor were not wasted.

She was angry at it all as she pulled off her clothes and threw them down on the ground. She half stomped to the tub and sat down abruptly in the bathtub facing the wall. Let them eat her. She hoped they would choke.

There was no being cooked and no being eaten. The woman put smelly stuff on a rag and wiped the dark from her skin. She put the stuff in her hair. She stared at the wall and she could hear their tones. She thought she caught the tail end of something that sounded familiar, but she hadn't been paying attention. They still sounded unhappy.

Anger changed to exhaustion as the bath came to a close. She just wanted to sleep. She wanted something other than than what reality had been. She was given clothes to wear and a new bread loaf. The man offered her a soft creature that looked like the beast the people in the city sat on. She took it. No trade. Up to the bedroom he took her to sleep. She crawled in the bed having learned what they wanted with that particular item.

In the night, she woke. For a moment, she thought she was back in the darkness. The others would take if they could. The bed felt so foreign and so vunerable that she crawled off it and into the corner. She took teddy loaf and the stuffed horse with her. No pillow. No blanket. She pulled herself into a tiny ball. Her thin, emaciated arms protective as she pulled her knees up to surround her treasures.

She shivered.

 

[Jordan Thyme]

“You can’t call her *that*.” Though spelling out the initials in the brand had gotten her attention, he was vehemently opposed to any kind of connection with that tag. “We can’t call her anything associated with..” He trailed off.

Gillian just looked at him. Thom was emphatic about very few things and the fact that he was now made her pause and consent. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand his reasoning. “Well what does she look like to you?” She gestured to the girl and at the same time tried to keep her voice lighter than what the emotion truly was so as not to frighten her.

“You’re asking me? You know how horrible I am at names.”

With a deep exhale Gillian began to rattle off a few and every time he answered with a shake of his head no, when she let him answer that is. “Liri?”
“I like it.”

“Liri, it is.”