The Voyage
by Abby Jackam
The true purpose behind my accompaniment on the voyage did not become clear to me until it was too late. I clung dearly to my mother’s side as the men led us into the belly of the ship, its monstrous size engulfing us in shadow. I didn’t fathom that by boarding that ship, it would be my last time setting foot on land, but one is rarely privy to that sort of knowledge when they are in the moment, and I was no exception.
Whatever language the men spoke, my ears were not accustomed to it. I’ve heard it spoken before, a rough language like hooves scraping against stone, but I’d never managed to pick up the dialect. My mother knew little as well, only familiar with the harsh sounds that exuded from their mouths as they hurried us below the deck. I glanced up one last time at the open sky, somehow knowing in my heart that I might never see that shade of blue again.
Mother nudged me onwards. Her eyes scanned the dark pit we were herded into. She was watchful, always had been, but of course, she had to be. She was my only protector in this world after my father was taken from us. I hardly knew him, only truly knew of him. His absence made my mother's presence even more treasured to me. She would protect me. It was a fact I had known since the day I came into the world; a tangible truth I carried inside me. Wherever we went, wherever we were taken, we were together, and that was a comfort greater to me than any other.
When the ship departed from land, my mother and I huddled close together. She tucked me into her side, wrapping herself around me like I was a baby, breathing out quiet words of bravery as we sat in the dark. The vessel rocked back and forth as it cut its path across the ocean, to where I wasn’t sure. I quickly grew sick, wishing the men would come back down and allow us a moment or two on the deck. A few lungfuls of fresh air would do me good, but my mother told me to stay quiet. It was impossible to truly know their intentions, she said. Better to avoid them than to risk their eyes settling upon you.
I was unsure how long we’d been at sea. In the stomach of the ship, it was hard to judge time. Had we been here for weeks, sitting in the darkness, hardly moving from where we cowered, or worse, had it only been a few days, and our journey was far from complete, while our suffering felt endless? I asked Mother, but she didn’t know either.
The men didn’t completely leave us alone. They came down once a day to bring us food. The slop they gave us was a disgrace to what I’d had before, but my weak stomach cared not for flavor, only sustenance. Sometimes the men gave me more than Mother, but I always shared it with her. It was the times in between feedings that grew dull. I found myself half hoping the men would return, if only to provide me with something other than the darkness.
Without meaning to, I’d grown accustomed to life in the pit. I had Mother, I was occasionally given food, and after a spell, not even the ship’s swaying bothered me. I adapted to the boredom of days in darkness, although the wish for a glimpse of sunlight never faded away. As I dozed in and out of sleep beside Mother, the shade of blue I’d stolen a glance at painted my dreams. Dreams of a life back on land, a life I didn’t know would not be mine again.
The innocence of sleep was stripped away when the men came for my mother. I cried out when their rough hands pulled her away from my side, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. I wailed, kicking and struggling against the arms that pinned me to the ground, fear burrowing deep within my flesh. The men were much stronger than I, easily holding me down on the filthy floor. My mother’s eyes were frantic, her sobs drowned out by the men’s loud voices. They were taking her up the stairs, pulling her further away from me, the furthest we’d ever been apart. I screamed again, begging with all my might, but it was no use. The men didn’t care. Mother shouted out once more, a wish for me to be brave, but then she slipped from my sight, gone. The men released me, shoving me back against the wall, and, curled into myself, I cried. I cried for my mother, for the life we’d known before the men and their cavernous ship, for the feeling of her kiss on my cheek. I cried, but my mother never came back.
I’d never been alone before. In the darkness, I whispered false words of courage, trying to be brave like Mother had told me to be, but I still shivered with fear. Please, I begged to the empty pit. Please. But I wasn’t sure what exactly I was asking for. My mother’s return to my side? An end to the darkness? A life along the rolling countryside, open sky above me? Whatever I pleaded for, I knew I would not get it. My words sank into the black, forgotten, and unfulfilled.
It was not long after that the men came for me. When they stole me from my corner, I did not fight them. I tried to be brave, even as they prodded me up the stairs, even when my questions about my mother went unanswered.
Wherever the men were guiding me, I could smell it before I saw it. The rancid scent of fear and rot flushed the courage I’d stored up out of my body, and I began to tremble with a terror I had not known possible. The men didn’t notice. They pushed me onward, ignorant to my pleas to be taken back to the dark pit. Nothingness would have been preferable to what I found inside the foul room.
I saw her hair before anything else, a sight I’d known all my life, but not in the place I had always known it to be. The beautiful curls she’d passed down to me had been shorn off, thrown in a matted heap on the floor. Her body, what remained, was strung up on a hook, chunks carved out by one of the men, his clothes splattered with my mother’s blood. The same blood that ran through my veins, now soaked into the wood, drained from her carcass. My mother was disembodied, her remains scattering the worktable, filling the cooking pot. A lump discarded in the corner revealed itself, with much horror, to be her head. Her watchful eyes that had spent so much time ensuring my safety were now dried out and indifferent in death.
I could no longer maintain the semblance of courage I’d tried so hard to keep. On seeing the brutality of my mother’s last moments, I shrieked and cried out desperately for mercy. But as with my mother, the men had decided my fate long ago. They had brought us along on their voyage for this very purpose. We were nothing to them, only livestock to be slaughtered and eaten. I was always meant to be in this room.
The butcher slammed me against the chopping block, his sticky hand pinning my face. I fought back with all the force in my small body, but the man and I both knew what was to happen. One hand held me down while the other wielded a knife, one that had taken my mother’s life and so many others before her. One that was arcing down to take mine.
The foul room had one quality that did not scare me. There, carved into the wall, was a small window to the outside world. Its presence was my only source of comfort in that final moment. In between the man’s forceful fingers, I glimpsed that allusive shade of blue right before I returned to the darkness.
Abby Jackam is a writer and artist from Washington State. She is currently a media journalist for Trill Mag and a contributor for Show Snob. In her free time, she’s working on her reading list, drinking tea, or writing her novel.