Mouths to Feed

By Skylar Smith

       “Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine,” Sky counted to herself. “C’mon, gimme one more.” It’s nearing sunset, the buildings casting longer shadows with every passing minute. The dusty cobblestone street was becoming less crowded, most people already home for the evening after a day working in the inner-city district.

       “Have anything to spare?” Sky asked as she extended her clay bowl toward a passerby. The woman didn’t break stride, ignoring her as if she didn’t exist. Sky sat back with a sigh against the stone wall. Today, there wasn’t much to sigh about, though. The weather was great, the sun’s heat blunted by thick clouds save for a few hours in the early morning, and she’d even found an empty wooden crate to sit on.

       “Have anything to s—”

       “Sorry, can’t help you,” the passing man said with a slight turn of his head in Sky’s direction. He picked up his pace as if she carried a disease he might suddenly contract.

       Sky usually didn’t stay out this long. The others will be wondering where she is if she’s not back by dark. I’m one mark from sixty, though, Sky thought. Much more than I’ve ever collected in one day.

       Much needed too. It’d been a bad week, and starvation was becoming a serious problem. Of course, Sky could go a couple days without food, but the little ones…they needed this money to survive. This thought had Sky on edge all day. She saw every rejected donation as a failure, and one less mouth fed back home. Yet she had no reason to be hard on herself, for she was ignored just as much today as any other day, actually much less so! She had tried to attribute it to her desperation, but she really wasn’t doing anything differently. More people just seemed to…care today.

       She didn’t want to stop now, but the unlit backstreets of Gruxel weren’t a safe place for someone like her. She began to sweat from anxiety. Gotta make one last attempt, she thought. There were only a few stragglers left on the street, all walking briskly, obviously sharing Sky’s opinions of the city after dark. A woman approached, head set forward, walking determinedly. Sky stood up with her bowl extended.

       “Please, miss, do you have anyth…”

       The woman had already made it a few steps past her. Before realizing what she was doing, Sky ran to catch up with the woman and wrapped her hand around her wrist. The woman spun around, jaw hanging open as she stared at Sky’s hand on her bare skin. Sky does the same, eyes widening with shock at what she’d just done. The woman looked up, meeting Sky’s eyes, her eyebrows furrowing as her expression changed to incredulity. Sky let go as if she’d just burnt her hand.

       “I-I’m sorry,” Sky sputtered.

       “How dare you touch me, you little rat!” the woman seethed.

       Sky had failed, in her blind rush toward the woman, to notice her attire. She wore a long dress of black and light green. The skirt bottom reached down to just above her ankles. Her hair was held up with an elegant black hairpiece, a matching designed ornament on a black chain around her neck. Her arms were lined with expensive bands of various metals, reflecting the setting sunlight in a dozen different directions. Very high class. Very big mistake.

       “I…I just..” Sky trailed off, feeling utterly confused at what she’d just done. She turned to run. The woman grasped her arm, jerking her back. Some of the marks in Sky’s bowl spilled onto the ground.

       “You’re not going anywhere!” the woman said through gritted teeth. She’s stronger than she looks. This isn’t good, Sky thought. Authorities would be arriving soon. Sky’s heart began to race.

       “Please, I’m sorry!” she pleaded. “I just need this money to feed my family! They’ll starve without it!” 

       “You think to feed your family with money gained through antagonizing those who actually work for it?!” The woman was yelling now, her grip tightening. Some heads began to peek out of nearby doorways and windows. “I should have your hand chopped off! That’ll give you a real reason to pester people in the streets all day instead of finding a real job!”

        Coming from someone in her social class, this was not an idle threat. Sky dropped to her knees, feeling the beginnings of tears forming in her eyes. “I’ll give you everything I’ve earned today!” she begged as she began reaching for the scattered marks on the ground with her free arm. “Take it all! Please, just let me go!”

        “Everything you’ve earned today?!” the woman screamed, sounding as if Sky couldn’t have offended her more. “I earn more marks in one day than you’ve earned your entire—” she suddenly cut off as a flash of green light lit up Sky’s periphery near the woman’s relentless grasp.

        Sky froze, feeling the woman release her arm, and hesitantly looked up to her face. Every aspect of the woman’s body language had changed. Her eyes had softened, eyebrows relaxed, lips curved up into a gentle smile. Her hand was outstretched, offering to help Sky up from the ground.

        “Here now, young man,” she said, “I’m terribly sorry if I’ve caused you any trouble.”

       Sky took her hand, ignoring the ‘young man’ comment. A common mistake. She didn’t look like a girl, with her oversized brown shirt and tattered brown pants which hid all womanly features. Plus, she kept her hair cut very short. Long hair gets in the way.

       Once Sky was to her feet, the woman reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out three marks. “I hope this is enough to feed your family for a little while. Nobody should ever starve. That breaks my heart to hear,” she said with what sounded like genuine empathy.

       “Thank you,” Sky said slowly, still confused about the whole situation.

       “Now, you better hurry back to your family. It’s getting late!” the woman said as she turned to leave.

       Three marks? From her? I can count on one hand the amount of times someone has given me two marks! And after that? Wasn’t she about to have my hand removed? I don’t understand, Sky thought. No time to stand and wonder right now, though. There was only a little sunlight left.

       She quickly gathered the scattered marks back into her bowl. With the three from the woman, that made sixty-two for the day. The most she’s ev—

       Wait, Sky thought, these marks are purple.

       Sky had been so disoriented during the interaction she hadn’t even realized. These were purple. Worth one hundred times more than the yellow marks in her bowl. She now had three hundred and fifty-nine marks for the day. The same amount would normally take her three weeks to collect.

       Sky looked up at the woman walking away, who now strolled at a leisurely pace. The woman turned her head to glance down a darkened side street, and Sky glimpsed a wide smile on her face, as if she was suddenly no longer worried for her safety. What had caused her sudden change in mood?

       Focus, Sky thought. She needed to move. She stuffed today’s profits in her pants pockets and took off down the street. She now carried a dangerous sum of money. And the sun had set.

​

                                                                                      *   *   *

​

       As she ran through the darkness, Sky didn’t know what was louder: her footsteps on the cobblestone or her heart thumping in her chest. This seemed like a good uncertainty to have. Years of travelling on nothing but bare feet, and layers of calluses later, Sky had mastered the art of lithely maneuvering her way through the Gruxel backstreets without a sound. The sunlit Gruxel backstreets, that is. She hoped whatever thieves were now lurking in the shadows tonight couldn’t hear her heart knocking against her chest wall.

       These alleys were much narrower than the inner-city market streets she spent most of her time during the day. The buildings were also much taller, shifting from mostly single-story shops and tents to living quarters that were three—sometimes up to five—stories tall. Normally, Sky would be able to stroll at a slightly-faster-than leisurely pace through these streets, the daylight exposing any potential thieves. But this was the West side of the city. Well, the new West side. The poor side. Not even the city guards cared enough to patrol out this far west, so close to The Divide.

       So Sky ran. She ran as though she could outpace the sun’s setting, bringing it peaking back over the horizon, banishing the criminals she kept imagining in the darkness. Her left hand was beginning to ache from firmly grasping the marks within her pocket, preventing them from rattling together noisily and—more importantly—from falling out while she ran.

       How long have I been running? Sky thought. Fifteen? Twenty minutes? She had never run the entire journey from her hideout to the inner city before. It usually took around an hour when walking at a decent pace. Even in the near-total darkness of these unlit streets, she could tell she only needed to run another few minutes before she could feel safe.

       Her lungs were burning, and her legs felt weak, but she was filled with a new source of energy, knowing this part of her journey would be the most dangerous. More thugs and thieves always roamed around closer to The Divide: the border slicing was used to be the grand city of Gruxel down the middle, separating the poor from the hopeless. City from ruins.

       Sky knew it would be smart to slow down and calm her breathing to better listen for footsteps, but she just wanted to get to safety as fast as she could. She could not afford to slow down, quite literally. She was probably the most valuable moving target this road had ever carried.

       She squinted into the darkness as she ran, and thought she could see the dark outline of the low wall—or what used to be a wall—that designated her finish line in the distance ahead. Her breathing heightened as her anxiety spiked. Almost there. C’mon, almost there. Don’t slow down. No time. No time. Just a few more streets and—

       Something hard hit her shin and she reached out with her right palm as she felt herself falling toward the cobblestone. She skid to a halt, left hand still gripping the marks in her left pocket, right hand burning. Sky could feel the warmth of blood dripping down her fingers as she rolled over and sat up, searching for whatever had tripped her. As if straight out of her worst nightmare, a dark figure was walking up to her, arms extended. She was lurched to her feet by her tattered shirt. The man now inches from her face was not big, but even he had no trouble controlling her emaciated form.  

       “What’s the hurry, boy?” His breath was putrid, and Sky did not want to think about what he might have had for his last meal. “Running back to your friends after a good steal? You should know better than to be out this late.”

       Sky knew better than to scream for help. That would only attract more starved people willing to hurt children for some food. She would rather be hungry than dead. Instead, she struggled with her free hand, not daring to remove the other from her pocket. But it was no use, she was not creating even an inch more of space from his evil smile full of crooked and missing teeth.

       “What have you got for me tonight, eh? Show me what’s in that pocket o’ yours and I won’t have to hurt you.”

Sky stared back, eyes wide with fear and determination. She was not giving this up to him willingly. It represented too much for the others back home.

       “Show me!” the man said as he slammed Sky’s back against the nearby building wall. “Now!”

       Sky did not budge, tensing all the muscles in her left arm, guarding the most sacred thing her pocket had ever held. The man ripped his right hand away from her chest and gripped her left arm, trying to yank it free of her pocket. Sky gritted her teeth as her fingers were slowly removed from their cotton safe hold.

       Then she saw another dark figure, bigger than her aggressor, quickly approach from behind and pull the man back with one smooth motion and throw him to the ground behind. Before she could react, a much meatier hand was wrapped around her neck, again pinning her to the building wall. “Marks. Now,” the new thief said with his opposite hand held out, open-palmed.

       Her surroundings were beginning to rapidly darken even more than they already were as Sky struggled to get oxygen to her brain. She had no choice but to weakly lift her hand to deliver the large man’s food marks for the next month, at least. She wouldn’t die today. She couldn’t.

       But then the original thief, as if in answer to her inner pleas, delivered a punch to the larger man’s stomach. He doubled over, releasing his grip. Sky slid down to the ground, taking deep, haggard breaths, her vision again filling with the dark outlines of the objects around her. Two of them were now wrestling not far in front of her, and she quickly snapped back into reality and used their scuffle to create space from the thugs. She stumbled around the corner a couple buildings down, feeling too weak to go any further. She tried to quite her breathing, although she was still trying to feed air back into her lungs after being choked so forcefully. She could hear the men struggling as they tried to overpower one another. And then there was silence. Piercing silence, and Sky’s raging heartbeat.

       She looked up at the stars in the night. That always seemed to help calm her in times of stress. Whether it was the vast blue sky filled with clouds, or the black canvas glittered with specs of white upon which she now looked. Just as her heartbeat began to recede from her eardrums, she heard the faint scuffling sound that could only be feet on cobbles. They were getting closer around the corner. Sky held her breath and knelt down, feeling for something she could use as a weapon. Her hand, now beginning to throb with pain, found a piece of rubble a little smaller than her palm. She slowly stood as the footsteps approached, and raised her right arm. As the figure rounded the corner, she swung down with all the strength her weakened self could muster and—

     And she stopped just in time, inches away from a young boy’s face. “Cob!” Sky exasperated as she let the piece of rubble roll out of her fingers onto the street.

       “Sky!” he returned, eyes and mouth wide open with the fear and shock of finding and then almost being killed by her all at once. “Dust and I have been looking all over for you. We were so worried that you’d..” He shook his head slightly, “Oh, by Qhilvolt’s Mercy,” he said as he wrapped Sky in a tight embrace. Sky returned the hug with her right arm, realizing that her left was still stuffed into her pocket, fist clenched over the marks. She slowly opened her fingers, the marks sticking to her palm where they had dug in. I may have to wrap both hands, she thought as she attempted to straighten out her fingers painfully.

       Cob backed away, still gripping her shoulders. “C’mon, let’s get you home. I told Dust I’d meet him back there in an hour.” Sky nodded, and then looked up to the stars once again, wondering if anyone was up there watching out for her. She inhaled deeply, and then turned to follow her rescuer home.