Chapter 3 - section 3

I tried to cover myself with hands and arms. I offered up a futile, feeble, clearly not understood explanation that died midway through. The piggies were embroiled in some sort of an argument, obviously, over me. The driver headed up one side while the flower-earringed woman grunted and growled in response. Their language became more and more fraught with rage until the driver pointed his spear gun at her.

A tense moment of silence ensued as they stared one another down. I held my breath, uncertain which one to root for, but suspecting it was the woman. With a dismissive grunt, the driver turned his back on us and moved to unhitch the llamas. We had reached our destination.

The female piggy muttered something that set the rest of the frozen wagon into motion again. Each pig grabbed up some goods to unload. For an instant, I dared to hope that the woman had defended or perhaps saved me as she threw a tanned llama hide at me to cover myself with. When I glanced quickly at her eyes, however, there was nothing held within but a dark suspicion.

Under the female’s watchful eye, I disembarked and waited while the wagon was unloaded. Once everything was off and piled up, the pigs that had handled the unloading moved under the vehicle and did something there that caused the walls of the wagon to pivot and be removable. In an ingenious design, the entire wagon was broken down and reassembled as a stall beside another similar structure. The wheels were hidden behind the counter and with alacrity, the piggies stacked the produce inside.

The small workers were fast and nimble, in spite of their fleshy appearance. Clearly, they were clever and quick of mind as well, even if their view towards nudity was more censorious. I watched with undisguised interest, wondering what they intended to do with me next.

Once the woman who had taken charge over me was satisfied, she plucked at the blanket covering me and grunted a command. Uncertain of her intent, I moved in the direction she had plucked. She gave an encouraging nod and grunted again. Following such cues, she led me across the village to a small dwelling.

My stomach gurgled and I inquired hopefully, “Tak?”

The reaction was not one of amusement this time. I had lost all privilege of levity with my inadvertent indecent display. Guarded and suspicious, the woman gave me a long stare before she nodded curtly. Relief coursed through me. I could handle any number of difficult situations, but an empty stomach would limit me severely.

The woman shuffled around me to open the door. Then she circled back around me, pointing to the interior. I crouched and peered into the darkness. With surprising force, she shoved me from behind. The unexpected touch had me stumbling for balance and the movement sent me headlong. As the door slammed behind me, I realized that I had been pushed straight into a straw-lined, low-ceilinged cell.

The proportions of the room were awkward for me. The ceiling was too low to stand without hunching and the walls of the cell were only about two and a half paces long each. If they left me in here for any length of time, I was going to be in serious need of a chiropractor. The interior walls weren’t dirt as I initially expected, but on tactile exploration, turned out to be made from some sort of dark stone. Tactile was pretty much the only kind of exploration I could make, since with the door closed, the lighting was extraordinarily dim.

Grumbling at my lack of food, I settled down on the straw, keeping the hide around me. Clearly, someone was out to get me – both in the cosmic sense and the more literal sense. I ran over my mental checklist of woes. Missing sister? Check. Unknown assassin after me? Check. Social gaffe in a new world ending in my imprisonment? Big old check. But the absolute killer, the true insult to injury, was my empty stomach after a promise of food. I really didn’t think things could get much worse. How very wrong I was.