Silver: Part 1

Picture Challenge

Picture 1    Picture 2

Note: Dante and Vergil are NOT related.  In the story, per interpretation of the artwork, Vergil is significantly older than Dante.

   I had arrived with the inspectors to assess the damage of the city and its prisoners.  There wasn’t much left of it.  Not after a week of sustained bombings and small arms fire that finally drove the allied forces back.  The acrid smell of the gunpowder and smoke was still heavy in the air.  The city and its people had the misfortune of being on key terrain, after we had shifted the location of our Capitol.  The city had been once beautiful.  As a child, my mother often took me there to do nothing more than just walk through its stores and look at the gardens.  As a man returning to that same city - there were nothing more than smoldering piles of rocks and blackened things that were once animals or human.  

    "Sir," one of the captains said as soon as my vehicle parked in the only spot that was cleared of rocks and debris.

    I nodded at him as he saluted.  I did not return the salute.  He dropped his hand and gestured for me to follow him toward the check point of the make-shift pen made from wire fences that held the cluster of huddling, crying children.  Most of them were young - too small to be taken by the allies for their armies.  

    "There were only sixty-seven, sir," the captain said and showed me his clipboard.  "Ages from six to fourteen."

    "What were your orders?" I asked him. I tucked my gloved hands into my pocket, suddenly aware of the bitter Autumn cold.  The children were mostly bare-footed and were without jackets.  

    "The girls are to be sent to the North.  They will take it from there.  Some will be sold, some will just be raised to do domestic duties," he said.  "The boys...some can probably be sold.  The others will be sent to the Prison Camp with the adults and their lives will just run their course there."

    "Send them all to the Camp," I said.  

    Although I knew a bulk of our military funding had come from these sales, I had never approved of it.  Small children had become delicacies for those that had been wealthy enough not to be directly involved with the war.  Little trophies they sampled and threw away.  It was not uncommon to see mutilated and used bodies of small children that had washed up on shore when they were thrown carelessly into the ocean from the boats.  Easier than burning or burying the bodies.  The bodies were finally burned by commercial services that provided this, after the Empress became irritated by the unsightly bloated bodies on the beaches.  I had always been bothered that we could not have a war, man to man, without trading humans in for the ammunitions and guns.  And it was something that the Empress had always teased me relentlessly about.

    "But the Empress specifically asked -"

    "I know," I said and cut him off. 

    "I'm sorry sir," the Captain said and tried to show his sincerity by lowering his eyes.  "I know how you feel about...this."

    "Feel about what?" I said and pushed past him to walk up closer to the pen.  "There's no honor in this."

    "I'm sorry sir," he said again.

    I panned my eyes over the children as two officers stepped through them, randomly pulling them up to eye level to study their faces that were smeared with dirt and soot.  After the inspection, they were separated into two groups.  The girls and the boys.  Two flat bed trucks came and the girls were loaded up into them, huddling and sobbing as they called out to their friends and brothers for the last time as they were driven off.  Two more trucks came.  One would head toward the Camp, the other would head toward the Market.

    "There’re twenty-seven of them," the Captain said to no one specifically.  

    I was turning to leave, not wanting to place any face with the fate they would be given when a young boy cursed at one of the officers in his native tongue.  He was a thin-framed boy with platinum hair.  I walked up closer to hear him speak.  He was frantically explaining to the officer pulling on the arm of a toddler that the baby's arm was injured from a burn and for him not to pick him up by it.  The baby screamed, his feet kicking.  I found myself mesmerized by the scene somehow.  The boy was pulled back and away by others but he shook them off and ran up to hit the officer.  The punch never connected but the lieutenant was startled enough to let go of the arm and allow the baby to run back into the huddle.

    "Goddamn it -- " the officer slapped the boy with the back of his hand, the force of it hard enough to send him sprawling backwards.  He grabbed the boy by his shirt and lifted him back up, his hand curled into a fist.

    "Stop it," I said.  

    The officer's fist stopped mid motion.  Like him, the others were equally surprised that I had spoken.

    "You will do as your job requires.  Hitting children is not one of them."

    "Y...yes sir..." The officer said and lowered the boy back down on the ground and backed away.  The officer gave me a curt bow.  "I am sorry to have offended you."

    The boy blinked at me.  I thought I saw him mouth "thank you" in his language.  A knot had formed in my belly and suddenly, I wanted to be out of that place.  I turned and left.  As I was driven away, the last thing I saw was the white-haired boy being led by his arms toward the truck that would take him to the market.  The knot in my stomach tightened so much that I nearly threw up.  Instead, I asked for the Inspector's whiskey flask and drank until the alcohol numbed what was in my belly.

    I thought about the boy for most of the day.  I was not even certain why I did.  I was not sure, even as I checked out a car and drove down to the Market's hold point to look for the boy.  I wanted to talk to him. I don't know what I wanted to say to him but perhaps I would know when I saw him.

    It was well after midnight when I arrived.  The hold point used to be an abandoned textile factory.  I had driven by the factory often, traveling between headquarters.  I had never tried to imagine what this place would be like inside.  And once I stepped through the door, the mere scent and the sounds of misery colored the images that had always been in my head, but had refused to acknowledge.  Even as someone who had taken thousands of lives through a mere spoken order, I have never come to terms with the faces that came with the defeated.  Whatever is, will be - a simple rule of the war that I had accepted long ago, even if I did not care for it.

    The officer on duty led me toward the bay that held the boys that had came from four different locations.  These were the   ones that had not gone through physical checks to screen out the diseases that might be passed on to their perspective owners.  

    "May I ask why you are here?" The officer asked finally, as he fumbled through his keys in his pocket.  When I didn't answer, he quickly added.  "It's just that...well, we don't get visits from someone from the Command Section, ever.  I hope we haven't -- "

    "Just keep your mouth shut about me being here and you won't get any more visits from the Command Section."

    He nodded and inserted a key that was marked with "13-2".

    "It smells terrible in there - open sewer," he explained as he unlocked the iron door.  

    "Why is there an open sewer inside a building?"

    "Too much work to install toilets," he explained sheepishly.  "The overhead doesn’t want to spend the money or the time."

    He reached into his pocket and retrieved his handkerchief.  When I refused it, he used it to cover his own mouth and nose and the door opened.  The smell was thick with stench of shit and urine.  The open sewer he spoke of was a flow through trench that was used as the boys' toilet in the far side of the bay.  At night, the boys were shoved into what looked like cages that were used to hold animals with a few blankets strewn on the floor for bedding.  They were curled up against each other as they slept.  Some woke and were careful not to be noted of their wakefulness as they watched us walk past.

    "I am looking for a boy that came in this afternoon from Gizelle," I said.  "He might be about twelve or thirteen years-old."

    He shook his head.

    "Platinum hair and blue eyes," I said.  

    His eyes lit up and he nodded, his pace quickened to lead me toward the end of the block.  

    "I remember him because he was...well, he was punished by the lieutenant that brought the group in."

   I frowned.  It must have been the officer who had wanted to hit the boy.

   "I want his name," I said.  "Find it in the log."

   He looked confused but he nodded. 

   "We...had to keep him separated and in a small recovery room," the officer said when we came to the end of the hall where there's two oak doors with a four-by-four feet of barred window.  He flipped on the light and looked through the window and said that was the right room before he fished out another batch of keys. 

   "How badly was he hurt?"

   He shrugged. 

   "I really don't know, sir," he said. "My assistant told me that he might need at least two weeks before he could be looked at by any buyer."

   He unlocked the door and opened it.

   "Stay out here," I said and went in.

   The boy was still sleeping, lying on his stomach with the thin blanket pulled around him.  At least they had given him a cot to sleep on.  His face was slightly flushed.  I bent down and felt for his forehead.  He was burning with fever.

   "Pa...pa...I am happy...you are....still alive...." the boy whispered.  A small smile appeared over his small mouth.  He was still sleeping. 

   I unwrapped the filthy blanket off him.  I grimaced at the sight of the spots of blood that had soaked through his shirt and pants.

   "Papa...let's go find mama...and go home, okay...?"

   I lifted up the shirt and found his back scored with thin bloody lines that had been made with a cane or a thin whip.  The flesh that was not red, was blackened and purpled with congealed blood.   

   "God..." I whispered.

   "Let's go...home, okay?" he said again but this time, beads of tears were spilling out of his closed lids.  "Please...I'm cold..."

   "Okay," I said softly.  "We'll go home."

   I shrugged off my coat and wrapped it around his body as I scooped him up into my arms.

   "We'll go home now," I said to him.

   He rolled his head against my chest and loosely held to my shirt as he fell back into deep sleep.  I left the damned place with him.  I would get him home.  But it would be his new home. 

    "I was told that you found a little wounded kitten," Antonia said as she sat up on the bed, pulling the red silk sheet around her waist.  She gestured for a cigarette.  I gave her the one I had been smoking and walked to the desk for another one.  

    "Little white kitten?" She said again, when I didn't answer.

    "I did," I said and pulled a fresh cigarette from the gold case.

    "Very unusual thing for the mighty "ice demon", no?" She said with a giggle and took in a long drag of the cigarette, letting it out slowly through her nose.  "What was it the boy did to melt that frozen heart of yours?"

    I shrugged and lit the cigarette.  

    "What would you do with him?"

    "I don't know," I admitted and took a seat behind the desk.  

    "Why did you bring him here?"

    "I don't know."

    She took another drag from the half-smoked cigarette and rubbed it out into the crystal ashtray on the night stand.  

    "The Empress would not be pleased.  He is a liability, after all...being from one of the conquered cities," she said and slipped out of the bed.  After a brief debate in her mind, she decided not to drag the sheet with her.  "But then, you could get away with anything..."

    Antonia came to me and squeezed herself between the desk and my lap facing me.

    "Being her lover..." she said and pressed her mouth over mine, giving me a lingering kiss.  "And mine..."

    "I need to go to a meeting," I said and caught her hands as they reached for the button on my pants.  "The Empress would certainly be displeased to learn that I was late because I've been fucking her cousin."

    She laughed. 

    "Ice demon indeed," she said and gave me a kiss on the cheek.  "Perhaps she would ask you about the little foundling too."

    I rubbed out the cigarette and pushed myself away from the desk.  I lifted her off my lap and placed her on the desk top.  She yelped when the cold surface of the desk top made contact with her bare bottom.    

    "Maybe," I said and picked up my shirt off the floor.  I dusted it off and looked it over for any marks Antonia's make up might have left behind before I slipped it on.  She watched me dress for awhile then jumped off the desk and padded off to the shower.  As usual, I left without saying good-bye to her.

    The meeting with the Empress and her staff was as usual.  Although my visit to the holding point was brought up, the issue was not discussed.  Before I left the headquarters for the week for a two-week break at my estate, the Empress gave me a disapproving look but said nothing. I was grateful.  I didn't have anything to say.  I left as soon as I was dismissed.

    It had been five days since I had retrieved the boy. I had sent him back to my estate under the care of a physician.  By the third day, the fever had broken and the boy was strong enough to walk by his own strength.  He had not eaten nor spoken, however.  The doctor had said the boy spent much of his time sitting in the darkened closet of the bedroom.  Occasionally, he would crawl out for drinks of water or to use the toilet but he'd returned to the small closet and lie there, instead of the comfortable bed in the same room.

    It was five in the late afternoon when I entered the manor.  The doctor had met me at the front door as I shrugged off the coat.

    "He is still the same," he said and shoved his hands into the pockets of his house coat.  "He seemed to be fine now...although he is still weak.  He won't eat."

    I shoved the coat into one of the servant's arms and walked toward the stairs.

    "He will," I said.  "Prepare a setting for him at the dinner table."

    Although I sensed the doctor's impending protest, he held back and said nothing.  

    I made my way up the spiral staircase and toward the guest room.  I waited outside the door for a couple of beats, listening for movement before I entered.  The room was empty.  I took off my uniform jacket and draped it over the bed before I went to the closet across the room.  I contemplated knocking first, but somehow I thought I would feel ridiculous if I did.  I opened the door slowly and wide enough for the light to spill into the small space where he sat huddled with his arms wrapped around his knees.  He did not look up.

    "Are you afraid?" I said and crouched down.  "You don't have to be."

    He glanced up but he didn't move.

    "This is your new home now."

    He pressed his forehead to his knees and let out a sigh.  

    "I don't..." he said in a small voice.  

    I put my hand on his head, tentatively at first to gauge his reaction.  When he didn't brush my hand off, I stroked his hair.

    "You have to be strong," I said.  "Live through this difficult war and become who you are meant to be."

    His shoulder hunched and a moment later, they began to shiver.  His sobs were stifled, choked down.  I continued to run my fingers through his hair while he cried.

    And it would be years later before he cried like that again.