Read Online Whisper by Chris Struyk-Bonn - Free Book Online Page B

trapped in the camp, locked away in our forest jail, but Nathanael had told us as we sat around the fire and played games or listened to stories of the civilized world that he would always choose this forest jail over the town we’d been banned from. Why? we’d asked him. Why choose this seclusion?
    â€œPeople can be cruel,” he’d said. Perhaps Belen had allowed Celso to chain me to the ground because it was expected, because he was on the town council and had to set an example—even if that example was his own daughter.
    I lifted the flap covering the opening to the doghouse and felt inside. A worn, fur-covered blanket that smelled of urine and worms lay crusted and stiff on the ground. The blanket was beginning to disintegrate, becoming one with the dirt, but I pulled it out and shook it. As I wrapped it around my body, I remembered the violin lashed to my back. I pulled the strap over my head and held the case in my hands, weighing it, considering. There was nothing to do, no one to talk to, no baby to care for, no little sister or big brother to tease. Do I feel sorry for myself? I wondered. Do I crawl into the doghouse, curl around myself and weep?
    I opened the violin case, fit the violin against my shoulder and began to play. Light and clean, the notes lifted into the air and spoke of me staked to the ground. I didn’t play my mother’s lullaby or any of the other tunes I’d pieced together. I played a song all my own, and it came to me on the soft wings of bats.
    The door to the house opened and a rectangle of light stretched into the street, illuminating the rough, bumpy ground. David stepped out of the house and sat in the doorway, his shadow long and lean. My music mingled with the darkness and brought a bit of beauty back into my life. I don’t know when I finished playing, but David was gone from the doorstep by the time I put down the violin, and the moon was hidden behind the houses to the west.

Six
    â€œGet up,” said the voice as a boot nudged my side.
    I lay on the ground in front of the doghouse, the disintegrating blanket twisted tightly around me. I turned my head and looked up, squinting into the sky. The sun shone behind Belen’s head.
    â€œGet up.”
    My body felt cold and stiff. I’d slept on the ground all my life, but it had been layered with blankets. We’d collected them from the messenger’s supplies over the years, using them as mattresses and sometimes as coats. Here, on this ground, tentacles of cold had crept into my bones and I was stiff. My chest and stomach hurt where I had been hit. I stood, knees bent, my leg staked to the ground.
    â€œYou’ll make our meals, do the laundry, clean the house and bake bread to sell. You understand me?” He spoke loudly, as though my distorted features might somehow affect my hearing. I held tight to the blanket around my shoulders. A rumbling, which rose in pitch and shook the ground, started in the distance and seemed to come straight for me. A large rectangular machine turned onto the street where Belen and I stood and made its way toward us, relentless in its approach, as though coming to squash us flat. I stepped back toward the house and as far as the chain on my leg would allow me to go. I held my breath as it approached, but it rumbled by and drove down the street, past many more houses, until it turned left and its roar rattled to a stop. It was, I realized, a truck, with the letters SWINC in black on the side. I had no idea automobiles could be so big. Belen continued as though nothing had happened.
    â€œAnd if you run, the neighbor will shoot you.”
    Belen nodded to the house next door, where a woman with a puckered mouth rocked back and forth. She wore a polka-dot top with a flared skirt, and a long gun rested on her legs, a threat that lay dormant and cold. When I looked at her, she smiled at me; she had no teeth.
    Belen leaned down to my feet and unlocked the