Hope…
Oh what a funny and deceitful feeling.
A single blaster bolt rang out and Jannis felt the direction her arm was being jerked rapidly shift. Vick’s face met the concrete with a wet and grizzly thud, and he crushed the bundle of Jogan fruit as his body crumpled right in front of her.
She was forced to skid to a violent stop, and the speed at which she passed her friend had pried her hand from his. He was now lying face down, motionless on the ferrocrete street.
Jannis quickly rushed over to his side and lay herself over Vick’s body as the armed Quarren rapidly approached.
“You little scamps. I’m sick and tired of dealing with your kind.”
He raised his blaster with his good hand, clearly with the intent to fire again. But at that moment, Jannis heard the clanking of plastoid boots behind her, and the two white clad soldiers from the gate maneuvered around she and Vick to apprehend the Quarren shooter.
The vendor seemed to have no intentions of being arrested, and he took off back down the street and into an alleyway. One of the troopers followed close on his heels, but the other paused for a moment.
She heard him sigh through his helmet, “I’m sorry kid.” Then he opened a pouch on his belt and pulled out a roll of gauze.
“For your knee,” he said, tossing it down to her before following after his fellow soldier.
Jannis had barely seen any of this transpire as her eyes were filled with a screen of salty tears. The purple juice from the Jogan fruit began to turn red, and Jannis quickly rolled Vick over to reveal that he had fallen on his own small shiv.
For the next few moments she heard him whimper the word “Mama” over and over again, but Jannis had no idea if he was calling out for his birth mother, or the woman who had raised them.
She gripped at his hand furiously as he finally stopped breathing, and the crowds began to step out into the streets once more. As before, some approached to see if they could help, but the bracelets that both the children sported quickly turned them away.
“It’s not fair!” Jannis screamed out, crying on her dead friend’s chest, “it’s not fair… first Mama, and now you. Why did you have to do that, Vick? Things were so perfect…”
Forcing herself to regain some of her composure, Jannis weakly stood to her feet and attempted to pick up Vick’s body, but she could barely even make it budge. Tears poured down her face as she attempted to drag him inch by inch down the street. After making almost no headway, however, her strength gave out on her.
She could only sit and stare at what was once her only friend in the world, tears of despair drenching her bloody, tattered sundress.
Some pedestrians watched her effort in bemusement or pity, but no one helped as she let go of Vick’s hand and sobbed, realizing she was going to have to leave his body on the cold, hard, unforgiving streets.
She had all but forgotten what hope felt like as she weakly trudged through the busy street, out of the guard-less gate, and down the path that would lead her back to her benevolent master.
She was no longer in any hurry, and her shoulders drooped low as she slowly walked along the forlorn pathway. The sun was now setting behind the Lothal rounded mountains, and as the light began to wane, so did her spirit.
The only thing she could think of was the days before Mama had disappeared. When all of them had been happy.
Through exasperated sobs, Jannis hummed the familiar tune that she had sung happily every day before, but now it’s words held seemingly no meaning in her heart.
“I wake up, ready for another long day.
It’s the same old thing, but I won’t grow tired.
I will work for the master ’til I can say.
I’m free, and I’m retired.”
She climbed the porch leading into the manner, her disgusting brown chemise now ripped and ragged, coated in Jogan juice and blood. Her arms were bruised and her legs were bleeding.
It took all of her might to swing open the large doors that led into the master’s dining hall. And she collapsed down onto the floor before using the robust table to lift herself back to her feet.
Baron Urul Kaligraph was rubbing the sleep from his eyes when he was startled by her entrance, and his well rested guests looked towards their host with confusion.
Bruthus and Strathos were standing on either side of the master’s chair, and Sheev quickly rushed over to help her to the Baron’s side.
“What happened, my dear?” he said, looking back towards the door, “someone tell Vick to fetch the first aid equipment.”
“Vick’s dead…” Jannis murmur mid exhale.
“What?” The Baron leaned his ear in towards her.
“He’s dead! Vick is dead! He went into town with me, and he tried to steal some fruit, and someone shot him, and he’s dead.”
“You must be joking,” the Baron scoffed and pulled a Holopad from a pouch on his chair. Jannis watched his expression change as he saw Vick’s tracking beacon ping lifelessly from the town.
The Baron set the Holopad back down on the table, and stared off into the distance for a moment.
Through the tears in her eyes and the dirty matted hair hanging in front of her face, Jannis looked back up to see how the master would react.
That was when she felt something strike her face.
It was the back of the master’s large hand.
“You incompetent fool!” he screamed before striking her again.
“Vick was not just some slave. He was incredibly valuable. A thoroughbred.”
His hand struck her with a wallop.
“I spent a fortune purchasing the two of you off the black market so I wouldn’t have to go through the Empire or those pitiful Zygerrian traders.”
The fourth blow saw Strathos take a step forward in distress, but the Baron pulled a gun from his chair and aimed it at his large bodyguard. “Don’t you dare, Strathos. This rat is not worth your sympathy. Her incompetence cost me a potential fortune, and she deserves so much more than a few meager blows.”
Jannis was now sprawled out on the floor, and she saw Sheev wince and look away every time the master struck her.
She wondered why he didn’t do something to help, but also wondered what he could do that Mama or Vick or even Strathos could not.
The guests had now exited the room and presumably departed after the Baron’s brutal outburst. Jannis lay bruised on the floor as the Baron delivered one final, anguishing blow.
“And that’s for embarrassing me in front of my friends.”
He dabbed the sweat from his fuzzy face with his dirty dinner napkin. “It looks like these expensive tracking bracelets did not serve their intended purpose. I suppose it’s going to take a combination of chains and good old fashioned discipline to keep you in check from now on.”
He grabbed her face and looked at it intensely, “now that Vick is gone, you’re my most valuable possession. I can’t have you escaping or dying on me, Jannis.”
He exited the room with his body guards, and Sheev walked over and picked her up. He cradled her in his arms, and for the first time in her life, she saw the stern Phindian shed tears.
He carried her out towards the shed, but half way through the yard, she pushed away from him. “I can go the rest of the way,” she whimpered weakly.
“It’s no bother,” the butler said.
“Please Sheev,” she said and weakly squirmed out of his arms.
He set her down in the damp grass and watched as she painfully stood to her feet.
“I’m sorry, Princess Calypso,” he said quietly behind her, but she spoke nothing as she limped her way into the shed.
As soon as she closed the door, she collapsed on the splintered wood floor, and the blinding moonlight shone through the ugly cracks in the wall, illuminating all of her bruises and soon to be scars.
She dragged her body over to her mat on the floor, and pulled the roll of borrowed gauze from her dress pocket. She loosely wrapped it around a number of places on her body, but it ran out much quicker than she had hoped.
She lie there, curled up and in pain, whimpering softly as the drafty, despondent wind howled throughout her small home. She felt a fear and loneliness that she had never experienced before, and she knew this would not be the last time she would be consumed by such emotions.
What she didn’t know that night was that the master would only grow stricter and more angry for the next six years.
She didn’t know that every where she went, she would be chained outside like a dog.
She didn’t know that Vick’s body would never be recovered, most likely dragged and tossed into the local landfill like a sack of garbage.
She didn’t know that Sheev would attempt to revolt soon after, and would disappear just as the others had.
However…
She also didn’t know that in only a few years time, at the age of sixteen, two young Pykes and an inexperienced smuggler would come to her rescue. That they would pluck her from captivity and give her the wondrous life she had always dreamed of. That she would get to be a part of something bigger. That she would fall in love with a young man with a similar upbringing. That she would be happy once more.
And that her life from that point on would never be the same.
She did not know these things as she lay on the unforgivingly hard floor, crying out in pain and singing herself to sleep.
“I wake up, ready for another long day.
It’s the same old thing, but I won’t grow tired.
I will work for the master ’til I can say.
I’m free, or I’m…
expired.”
***
Jannis Calypso’s story will continue in Immortal Devotion – The Spiral!
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