How awful.
Though he didn’t sound angry. In fact, a smile prominently sounded in his voice when he spoke again. “No apology would ever fix the injury I sustained. The only way to remedy the situation would be to throw another cucumber my way.”
He laughed—the soft, merry chuckle filtered through the wooden partition between us.
I blinked again, confused whether he was mocking me. It was difficult to say for sure without seeing him. However, if we were speaking face to face, I’d probably just stay silent, like I often did. Not seeing the person I was talking to made the speaking part easier.
“You want another cucumber?”
“Please,” he said. “That’d be amazing.”
“So, did you eat the one I gave you last time?”
“Absolutely. It was delicious.”
I released a breath in relief—he’d eaten the evidence of my disobedience. Of course, just by talking to him, I was already breaking another one of Madame’s orders—she didn’t even like me speaking to bracks, not to mention anyone else.
“So?” her prisoner urged. “Please tell me you brought another cucumber?”
“No… I don’t have another one.”
The second cucumber I’d bought at the store that day I’d sliced into a salad for Madame’s dinner the very same night to justify my purchasing them. She often went through my store receipts to verify expenses.
“No?” His voice dropped with disappointment.
“You like cucumbers?”
“My dear human friend,” he said with a soft huff. “I hadn’t drunk or eaten anything for a very long time before you so generously dropped it in my eye. I can honestly say it was the best thing I’ve ever had in this world.”
“I…” I rummaged through my pockets. “I have a sandwich and a bottle of water.”
I’d made the sandwich from the leftovers of Madame’s breakfast after she’d left for the airport that morning. She never forbade giving her prisoner food. There’d be no harm in sharing my sandwich with him. I took it out and held it up as if he could see it through the wood.
“It’s an egg sandwich. We can share. Or you can have the whole thing if you want.” I would get dinner when we stopped, as Radax had said.
“Did you say you had water?” he asked hurriedly, greedily. If it was possible to sense someone else’s thirst through their voice, I just did. My own throat grew dry, and I had to swallow to even continue breathing.
I wrapped my fingers around the plastic bottle. It felt cool from the liquid inside. Refreshing. Just what he needed, I imagined.
Giving him water would be breaking Madam’s order. I’d done some things before I knew she would disapprove of. Or I’d skirted around her instructions and even slightly bent the rules sometimes. But I had never disobeyed a direct order.
“Would you share your water with me?” the prisoner asked sweetly. “Please? Just a sip.”
There was so much hope in his voice. I just couldn’t crush it. Madame wasn’t here, anyway. No one would tell her. Right? No one would know if I just gave her prisoner one tiny drink of water.
I blew out a breath. “Okay. I’ll share. But you can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t,” he said quickly. “You can trust me fully and completely.”
I didn’t know him enough to trust him, but he had nothing to gain from telling on me to Madame.
“Let me just figure out how to get it to you.” I got up, holding on to the edge of the crate. Its height reached just above my chest. Leaning over, I could reach the small, barred window in the crate's roof. “The bottle wouldn’t fit through the bars of the window. Should I just open it and tip it over so you could drink?”
“No.” He sounded anxious. “Don’t. You’ll risk spilling and wasting it.” To him, every drop of water was obviously precious.
“Okay. Just give me a minute.” I searched around for something I could use as a straw or a funnel, then remembered the bucket I had loaded earlier. Finding it, I pulled out a bundle of plastic tubes and untangled one from it.
“This should work.” The tube was almost as long as I was tall. I threaded one end of it through the opening between the bars. “Do you think you could use this as a straw?” I dipped the other end of the tube into the open water bottle in my hands.
Instead of an answer, the gorgonian sucked the air out of the tube, filling in with water. Within seconds, my bottle was empty. He practically “inhaled” the water in a few long, deep gulps.
“Wow. That was quick.” I turned the empty bottle in my hands, dumbfounded. How could anyone drink that fast? “You were really thirsty…”
“You have no idea,” the reply came in a slow, satisfied voice.
“Feeling better?” I sat back on the pile of canvas rolls.
He hummed contently, then asked, “Why are you doing this, little human? Don’t you know Ghata forbade giving me water? You work for her, don’t you? You’re one of her people.”
That was too many questions to answer at once. Especially since I wasn’t clear on the answers myself.
Did I work for Madame? I wasn’t formally employed, but I did things for her and followed her orders. I got no compensation other than room and board, which were a pile of rags to sleep on and whatever food I scavenged from the kitchen.
Was I one of her people? I didn’t belong to her the way the bracks did. Yet I wasn’t free from her, either.
The hardest question to answer was why I went against Madame’s direct order. I couldn’t even use the excuse that it was just a cucumber this time. I had given him an entire bottle of water.
“I… I heard you speak to her,” I started, searching for words. “I didn’t know she imprisoned people.”
No, that was a lie. I knew. Or I should have known.
Madame had imprisoned and displayed for money Zeph, the siren-man, before. But I had chosen to believe her lies that the siren wasn’t a sentient being, that he was simply a magical fish or a marine mammal from Nerifir and only visually resembled a human. It was easier for my conscience to accept his being locked in a water tank if he had no thoughts, no awareness, and no life to give up when she’d captured him.
Just like now, it would’ve been easier to pretend the gorgonian was some wild beast, too.
Except that beasts didn’t talk.
“It’s not right to keep people in a crate,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “Would you help me get out, then?”
I choked on my next breath at that demand.
Freeing him would be a much greater act of defiance than getting him some water to drink. Even if I had the ability to release him—which was questionable, considering he was locked in chains and I had no key—it’d have severe consequences. Death, most likely. For both Radax and myself.
“What scares you?” the gorgonian asked when I hadn’t replied.
Fear was an undividable part of me. I lived with that chilling, sinking feeling inside for so long, it had become my second nature. I could not imagine a life without it.
“Are you afraid of Ghata?” he insisted. “The one who the bracks call Madame?”
Madame was the source of many horrors. I’d witnessed her do things that would haunt me in my nightmares forever. I’d heard her brag about even worse things still.
She raised her hand to me often, almost daily. A shove, a push, a slap across my face were the norm. Lashings were frequent, too, with whatever she could grab when she was in a sour mood and I was close enough for her to take it out on me.
But what frightened me even more than what she did was what she could do. Madame had the power to hurt people far more than physically, and she could make the pain last for an eternity.
I cleared my throat again, finding just the right word to describe her. “She’s evil.”
A long sigh rose from the crate.
“That she is, my little human friend, that she is.” He didn’t pressure me to release him. And for that, I was grateful.