Thunder and Lightning

Part 4

The siren song washed over us as the Bitch warbled across the courtyard. Her voice was as cracked as the concrete, but it carried far enough. I turned my deaf ear in her direction and closed my mind to the song. In my head another, simpler tune rang, a nursery rhyme my mother had sung to me and my sisters in the time before the flood. Before the sirens took her and my father, killing them for being too old to breed. The whispers in the slave camp said they were trying to breed dragons. How they thought to do that, I didn’t know. Even the sirens had useless legends, but we would use these to our advantage.

Dimly, I noticed the song end and tried to pay attention like the somnolent men at my sides. Only I retained my faculties. The line of clumsy girls picked their way down the palace steps behind the little one in heels. She clacked down those grey steps in perfect time, her expression calculating. She swept along the line of us, her nose elevated and an expression of boredom on her face.

The others hung back, a gaggle of giggling geese wanting to ask a boy out in a historic high school. Except that the boys they tapped would die in the morning.

I found my ire building. Little Miss Heels let her eyes sweep over me, her face devoid of expression and I resolved to do all I could not to be chosen. A fighter would not be permitted near the precious little girls. I hawked up my disgust and spat it at the girl’s silver-clad feet.

She paused and lifted her skirt a little, revealing a shapely smooth leg to the thigh as the split widened. The splatter of spittle had fallen short to form a tiny puddle at her feet. A sly glance at me caught me by surprise and I straightened, trying to assume the zombiesque expressions of those beside me. Her smile spread.

A small hand went up in the air and the click of her fingers reverberated like a gunshot in the silence.

The first to respond were Gunter and Barak, marching smartly to her side. From their eyes, I guessed that I was not the only one unaffected by the siren song and the nods they both gave me confirmed it.

The clicked finger descended, like a drawbridge of old, pointing me to my doom.

The twins took my arms and marched me up the stairs, toward the darkness of the palace.

The click of heels behind informed me the girl followed us.

“You must choose more than one. These humans lack stamina and strength!” Madam Bitch shouted.

The clicking stopped. Her voice was as clear as Cyntia’s. “I have no desire for any of the others. This one must be cleaned, cared for and cossetted until he has sufficient strength to please me. Should he not, then I’ll choose another.” The clicking resumed, closer.

I didn’t know if I’d see daylight or my sisters again. “You have to protect them for me,” I said urgently as the darkness loomed before me. “If anything happens to me, please take care of my sisters.” I wasn’t too proud to beg.

I looked from one to the other and both men nodded. I breathed a sigh of relief as they dragged me to my doom.