Page 66 of Elvenbred

“Where do I …?” she stopped, hating the uncertain tone in her voice. This Overseer, this minion, was not fit to clean her stables … and she sounded like a child wheedling sweets.

“Eat? Sleep?” He finished the question for her.

She nodded.

“A cot will be brought to you. One cot, one pallet, and one blanket. The Beast squashed the last cot and ate it and the blanket. Play nice, and perhaps a change of clothes. You wash under that sluice there. Pull the rope down, to start the flow, let go to stop. Water goes down the drain. Wash your waste away the same way. Or spread it for the Beast. Your choice.”

“I … I sleep in here?” she asked.

“Until it squashes you. It doesn’t seem to like us much, and it takes it out on whomever is dumb enough, or criminal enough, to get put in here.”

She looked at him, appalled. He raised a hand before she could say anything else.

“Don’t even think about asking for mercy. By the time you land here, those doors are closed. You don’t leave this cage, except via the sluice.”

She exhaled. “I was going to ask how I am supposed to make it move.”

“Of course,” he replied skeptically. He held up the control rod, easily twice the size of the others she had seen, and a good more durable looking. It looked to be made of bronze, was as wide as her thumb, and nearly two feet long, with one end discolored, as though it had been scorched or burned. She had the metal image of plunging the discolored end into his eye. The creature shifted behind her with a sound like a giant rock being dragged over gravel.

The Overseer must have seen something in her expression. He stepped further back, his smile gone. “You use that to make it move. There’s a different color on each of the rods. That corresponds to the colored button on the rod. Push that color and the Beast moves away from that direction. You need to use the rod to keep it moving to burn the waste on the floor and get fed, but using the rod on it hurts it and makes it mad.” He did smile, then, like a gladiator about to take out a helpless opponent. “You’ll note there is a certain fine line you need to walk, which is why we tend to go through Beast-keepers at a pretty fair clip.” He grinned broadly at something he saw in her expression.

“You also need to fully comprehend what I just said, because I’m not repeating myself.” He spat on the floor inside the cage. “The cot will get here when it gets here. If it isn’t here when you want to sleep, then sleep on the floor. No ration until you fill the ash box. And don’t forget to shovel shit in front of it for it to eat.” He slid the control rod across the floor and through the bars, also well out of her reach. He laughed as she scrambled after it, then turned on his heel. A door opened in the wall in front of him and at the end of the aisle between the two rows of large animal cages. The Overseer and his helpers went through. It closed behind them with a dull, heavy thud.

Rod dangling from her hand, she watched the Beast without moving. She became acutely aware she was holding what the Overseer said hurt it … and its likely response sooner or later would be to try and eliminate what hurt it. She elected to go for “later.” She raised her palm towards it to show she was friendly, and slowly, very slowly kneeled down and placed the control rod on the floor. She made a “no” gesture, spreading her palms and backed away from it.

After a moment of shifting in place, it settled, and she backed up until she felt the bars of the exit against her spine and shoulder. Much much too close together for her to squeeze through. Only then did she make a closer survey of the room.

It was round, completely round. I suppose that makes sense. You wouldn’t want that thing to get stuck in a corner only to have it get enraged when you tried to guide it out. Or provide a place for a person to try and squeeze where it can’t squash you. The barred wall had a notch nearest the exit, one just big enough to hold a cot; the floor was raised about a step and a half there. So … I guess that keeps the Beast from eating you while you sleep? Or something. She really couldn’t see that the thing had a front or a back, but its shifting and moving suggested that right now that the thing was more or less pointing into a neat pile of straw mixed with manure, and that behind it was a longish trail of what looked like coarse ashes. And it wasn’t moving towards the manure. Which was bad. It also wasn’t moving towards her. Which was good.

Eyeing the ash, she thought that there was probably just enough to fill that box. Her stomach growled at the thought, despite the stink of the manure. She carefully put the rod down in the alcove, picked up the shovel, and went to work.

She’d gotten the box about half full—and the creature had moved about a hands’-breadth in the “right direction”—when the door opened. A stony-faced guard carrying a blanket in one hand and a wooden-framed cot with a canvas bed in the other. He shoved both partially through the bars. By the time she’d dropped the shovel and staggered towards him, he’d already turned and was leaving. Well, at least she had a place to sleep that wasn’t the floor.

She took a moment to sort out the cot. The thing had a pair of round poles pierced with holes through which cords ran, back and forth, in a sort of lattice. The thin canvas sack held straw, already dirty by the smell of it. She set the cot up in the niche, then picked up the control rod … carefully, with just two fingers and held it away from her at arm’s length while making an expression of disgust. She suspected the pantomime meant nothing to a creature without any eyes, but it cost her nothing to try, and perhaps somehow get her message through. She had been here a quarter mark, as they measured time here, and so far, it hadn’t mashed her to jelly. She counted that as a win.

She set the rod on top of the cot, before going back to shoveling. Her belly rumbled again, and the thought of food made her mouth water. How long after I fill the box am I getting fed? That was all she could think about now. Well, that, and how much she ached and how much she longed to lie down on something that wasn’t stone.

The process of filling the box took longer than she expected, and she anticipated that given her situation, “full” meant full, and not almost full. She had gotten it to within an inch of the top when the thing stopped shifting around, and settled in. She nearly cried in frustration, before going back over its trail, as close as she dared to its bulk, and tried sweeping up the grains and grit left behind. That work proved hard, and the rough floor left her with abraded fingertips, but she blew and brushed enough onto her shovel to close a bit of the gap. Still not enough. She felt her eyes stinging, and then a hot tear etching itself through the grime on her cheek. Her stomach rumbled again. So hungry. She needed to make the damned thing move without making it angry.

Maybe … maybe it’s really, really stupid. She picked up the shovel again, and moved to the “head” end where the manure was. Sure enough, there was a gap about two hands wide between the end of it and the next pile of manure. So if I can’t make it come to the food ….

Slowly, carefully, she got a shovel as full as she could of the muck—and even more carefully, packed the stuff up against the “front” end.

And jumped back so abruptly that every bruise and muscle screamed. Her cottage-sized cell-mate lurched towards her. She dropped the shovel when it moved again, then tripped over the handle as she went to open up some distance. The creature moved to the muck, opened its mouthparts? and extended a pair of delicate looking tentacles that it used to draw the muck towards its mouth, which it then ingested with a soft slurp. A creature the size of a house made of rock, with a mouth and a front end … which if it followed the usual pattern in how creatures were organized … should have a back end at the other end that produced the ash. So, the best way to scoop up what came out that end was to lure it to move away from the small mounds it left behind. Perhaps she could do away with the control rod, if she could coax it to move. She piled more just out of reach of its mouthparts. It shifted to follow, exposing another pile of ash. Success! She could steer it (somewhat) by using its food to lead it around.

She exhaled a deep sigh of relief. She’d gotten it moving and eating, and all without irritating it. Picking the shovel back up again, she went to work. A few more steps, a few more piles, then around its bulk with the shovel to fill the box. She loaded it to the very top, then a bit more, to ensure the ash mounded enough. They could refuse to feed her because they chose to … but not because she had failed to follow their damned rules.

Now that it had started, the creature continued along the path she had set for it. She grew momentarily alarmed that it might expect her to continue laying out a trail for it, but it got to the end and settled down, its underside scraping the floor as it came to earth.

She stared at the entrance to the … stable … for lack of a better word, and waited for the guard to return, and take away the box. She got up twice to drink as much water as she could hold to try and stave off the hunger pangs, which led in due course to needing to relieve herself. She had never really had a shy bladder … back in her world she hadn’t a shy anything but the lack of privacy and the close presence of the Beast … Creature … what it was made her feel awkward and uncomfortable. Still, it had to be done. She suspected that if they were telling her the truth, she would be in here a very long time and would need to get past feeling awkward as she used the drain.

She didn’t have a good way to mark out the time, but she didn’t doubt that marks and marks had passed. She had tried to lie down and go to sleep at one point, but the hunger kept her awake. She drank as much water as she could hold, but it reached a point where that hadn’t helped. Instead she alternated between pacing and sitting, while she waited to find out if she would be fed and tried not to think about food.

After what felt like an eternity, she heard the outer entrance open, and a guard she hadn’t seen before entered. He carried a mop and bucket.

He looked at her in surprise. “Oh, you’re not dead. We had a bet. I figured you’d be a blood smear by now. Loren said you’d make another night.”

“It’s night now?” she asked.