Mundahlia (The Mundahlian Era, #1) (32 page)

Bane sat me on the floor and tied the slack to a metal bar where a large man sat. Watching to make sure I didn’t try to escape. Within seconds the vibration of the motor starting up from beneath us shook the craft and spurted some water as the ferry set into motion.

“Here,” Bane said, throwing a small package at me. It hit my head and fell to my lap.

“Eat up,” he winked.

I would have tossed it back at him, aiming for his face, but the fierce growling of my stomach overpowered me. I hadn’t eaten in the days we’d traveled across states, and he’d forced me to do my
business
on the side of the road. I used my tied hands to pick it up, unwrap it, and bring it to my mouth. I hesitated at first—it smelled foul. Like a smelly cheese. I bit into the stale bread that had a slightly moldy taste to it. Whatever was in the center tasted inedible, but I forced myself to take another bite. It was disgusting. Like bad tuna mixed with rotten eggs. The others were heavily in conversation, laughing about something I didn’t understand, and speaking in a different language that I couldn’t quite make out.

“Sukatesti mumbaji hanjarougi,”
Bane laughed. Whatever they were talking about—it was about me, because when I glanced over at them, they seemed to laugh and stare. They were seated at a table. Perfectly set, with cutlery and all, and got waited on by servants, who served them food that looked raw. A large bowl of fresh red meat that they all picked from.

Willa saw me peering and threw a square piece of the red meat at me from her seat. It hit my cheek, leaving a wet, bloody stain behind. Now I know how a caged animal feels, being thrown food instead of being fed normally.

“That
’
s some genuine human,” she said, eyeing me trying to distinguish the type of meat on my lap. “Fresh too. Give it a taste.”

“Quick wasting the food on the animal!” Bane scolded.

They got into a short argument. To avoid it, and any more food being thrown, I laid across the floor and closed my eyes to think of when things were going great.

What’s happening?! Why can’t I breath?! I’m suffocating!
I awoke coughing and out of breath on the floor shrouded in a thick grayish cloud of fog
.
It blocked the sight of anything past it and around us, as though we were traveling through a grey and hazy world.

Once the fog began to grow less dense, I saw that the sun was barely rising up. Gleaming an radiant orange light and lighting the ocean water from black to a navy blue. It was morning.

The ferry hit land, causing the passengers to slightly shuffle against each other. I heard distant sounds of people chatting amongst each other. And once I saw Bane, sitting on a cushion in front of me, grin wickedly as an odd-looking man dressed in armor came to the side of the stationed vessel, I knew we had reached Mundahlia.

...

It was different from the world I lived in. A lot different. I couldn’t really see the full scene through the small metal cage I was thrown in carried by horses—or horse Mundahlians, but I saw enough. There were people in all forms. Animal, human and hybrids. It looked like a tropical island that was caught in the old English village times. Small market places with stands of food, or fresh fruit—as well as small little shop stands of people selling funny looking jewelry, candy, and other small items—lined the trail. There was even a group of Mundahlians performing an act for a large crowd that cheered every time something funny happened. It looked like a big flea market to me, until we passed through the actual village, where there were now buildings that appeared to only upgrade in the material that built them as we went further in. Mundahlians lined the dirt road and filled the small stone-crafted eateries and more little shops. In the very, very distance, almost looking like a mirage, were tiny islands with many huts built on them. Some destroyed, others well-kept, and some in-between. Jett’s friends and family must have lived on some of those islands. All of the citizens were segregated to their own islands, or so I’d been told.

This whole kingdom looked as though it were taken right out of an old historical novel. Then, I saw it, towering up ahead. The castle. A large stone building about the size of a small city within the village. It had a large gothic gate keeping all people out, and those inside in. A Victorian-styled prison. With high towers and massive thick walls that nearly touched the sky. Bane, his sister Willa, and Paul rode in the carriage upfront, which had come to a halt just outside the massive gate.

“Feast your sight on the offender! Gather the troops! A human has shed the blood of one of our own. The pact is broken!” Bane announced. “We will fight for total power, and win this time around!”

Two old women surrounded the cage. I’ve never felt more like I was in a zoo until now. Being observed and judged by someone on the outside.

“Oh, my,” One of them said, slurping on a piece of what I assumed was fruit. The sticky juices splashed all over me. These fruits in their hands were different than regular bananas or apples. Pink and prickly with a lime green center. Another, in the grasp of another woman—round and purple with an orange center.

“Savage!” the one with the pink fruit yelled.

“What monstrosity!” the one beside her added.

As the carriage resumed, they flung the fruit in their hands against the metal bars, drenching me with sticky fruit juice.

The tall gate screeched open, and the horses continued carrying us in.

Clack, clack, clack, cla-
We came to another stop. I saw the heavy gates be shut tight by a few men in purple uniformed suits, who after, stood still—guarding them.

Suddenly, there was a rumble. The horses up front began to shake violently, and in the moment it took me to blink, they had reverted to their human form. The cage slammed hard onto the floor and I fell on my knees. The men whom were horses just moments ago, came around and unlocked the metal door.

“Get out!” one demanded. I did as followed, stepping my feet onto the stone floor. We were in the courtyard. A large open area with a fountain in the center, leading up to the castle doors.

“What is this place?” I asked the other, hoping he’d be nicer than the other.

“What do you think,” He said curtly. “Congratulations on condemning your people to death because of your actions. Let it be known, that you—pathetic human—were the cause of human extinction.”

They took me by the arm—one on each side—and led me to a door at the side of the massive structure. A dark, angry looking man with a mustache opened up the door. “This is her?” he asked.

“Yup,” The second horse guy answered.

The man with the mustache looked at me and huffed. Asshole.

The inside of the castle looked like how I thought it would. The old stone walls and floors. A red carpet every where I looked. And Victorian styled wallpaper of greens, reds, whites, golds and silvers plastered on the walls that weren't crafted of massive smoky stone. It smelled of wine and dust, mostly dust. And through the light beams cast from a large window above, looked like someone had just been smoking. There were murals of peculiar looking creatures painted across the roof, and large portraits of men, lining a long hallway we had entered. Each containing the three forms of each of the men I assumed were the rulers before. The animal, the human, and the hybrid—all painted on a black background. All tigers, all men with long dark hair and a matching beard, and lastly—all Mundahlians belonging to the tiger clan.

We walked for ages down this hallway, which seemed like the longest hallway in history, until we finally came to the end. There was a chorus of chit-chatter seeping from behind the doors sectioning off this hallway and another room. Cool air escaped through the bottom and brushed against my ankles.

The guys each released one hand—still holding me firmly with the other—and pulled the golden handles. There was a rush of chilly air, and a blinding flash of white as they pushed me in and left, shutting the door behind them.

The room was unnaturally bright—I had to hold a hand over my eyes to shield them as I stared around the room. Different faces of Mundahlians, sitting in wooden pews on both sides, whipped their gaze to me as I walked cautiously through a narrow walkway—eyes following. There was a raised platform, with several pedestals going around half of the building, in front of me. Each with a gold, polished throne with red velvet seats atop of it.
Guess, that’s where I’m supposed to go.

“Human,” An elder man to the left mumbled to his friend that sat beside him. He had a salt and pepper beard and looked slightly cross-eyed.

“Really?” the friend asked in a quiet voice.

“Dead girl walking,” A young girl to the right followed. “What a shame.”

At the foot of the platform, another set of guards—abnormally large ones—stood straight and still. Almost motionless. They were shirtless and in black leather pants and matching combat boots, holding hammers and axes—larger than me—in their hands like they were as light as a feather.
Great.

The room was filled with various Mundahlians. Deceiving my mind by appearing as human. I panned the room in search of a face that wasn’t as bitter. None. All of these Mundahlians hated me for a reason that was purely fictitious. Bane wanted to blame me for his own doing just to win the crown.

“Come child,” a frail looking old man with hair of white called from the foot of the stairs. He had glasses that hung at the tip of his pasty nose—looking over them to me and pointing a thin, almost skeletal finger. I headed to the short man, a face worn with years of life. When I reached him, he took me by the arm to a small metal raised area in front of the stairs, and told me to step onto it. He chained a metal link around my arms and attached it to the base.

“This is to keep you from running away, dear,” he explained.

“Where could I possibly go?” I told him. “I’m only a human, and I am in a room full of creatures that could apprehend, or kill me in seconds. Where could I possibly go?” I repeated.

He stuck his bony finger in the air, “That’ll be the last of it from you,
lassie
.”

I stood on the platform in silence for a few minutes, waiting for whatever it was I was supposed to be waiting for. Finally, men and women dressed in white gowns entered the door. Singing in unison as they walked to the corner and split into three separate rows. Their voices and song reminded me of Gregorian chants, only eerier—which I thought was impossible.

Then, the door at the top of the stage, behind the thrones opened. A chilly and thick fog spilled down the stairs and flooded the large arena sized room. It was then that I realized what this was. The courtroom, or their equivalent of it.

“All rise!” The old man beside me ordered the audience.

The royal children, I presumed, began filing down from each side, standing in front of the throne they were going to sit in. Del was right, there
was
a lot of them. Dressed in clothes of luxury. Clearly not like the rest of the Mundahlian who dressed in faded, raggedy attire. Willa, now wearing a vibrant green dress, stood at the seat closest to the right throne. The Queen’s. Bane opted for the one closest to the left—next to the King’s. The grandest looking throne of all. The choir shifted into another song. It was deeper and eerier than the one before.

The King, in his mundahlian form of a greying hybrid of tiger, and the Queen, in her human form, entered hand in hand—gracefully striding to their grand thrones. She didn’t look like Jett. And for a moment, even wondered if she were in fact his mother. The woman who was forced to sacrifice her happiness and marry the King all for her family’s safety. The audience behind me roared with excitement and applause. He let his wife’s hand go and held up a massive paw, the size of my head, to silence them.

“Please, sit,” he ordered, his voice—a mixture of man and growl. The crowd, his children, and the Queen perched themselves into their seats. He took his seat after, grasping at the arm rests for support. His face, even though it was that of a tiger, still showed humanistic qualities, such as the crows feet and wrinkles he had procured from the years he lived, and the patches of balding fur. His cheeks were droopy and his eyes were sunken in—he looked tired. As though he were now uninterested in everything going on.

“We are here for a reason,” he spoke after taking a few breaths. “That reason, is this human standing before you.” I felt the eyes of the people inside the room fall on me—daggers piercing my back. “This human,” he pointed, “has spilled the blood of one of our own.” His deep voice echoed throughout the room.

“That’s a lie!” I demurred. “Your son set the whole thing up!”

“
Silence!
” his thunderous voice rang, and I heard the rumblings of a growl in the back of his throat. “You will
not
speak until spoken to—or accuse my children for things they did not do!”

I couldn’t help but get that weird feeling I usually got when I was being scolded. If I had a tail, it’d be between my legs by now.

“You are all here today to witness the prosecution of the assailant...”

I tuned him out and focused on the faces of his offspring. They were all looking at me. Some with hate, some with doubt, some with kindness, and others with no expression whatsoever. But Bane, he had the face of amusement. He was enjoying me cower in fear. Taking pleasure in it.

I looked to the Queen. She didn’t seem like the rest of them. She had long tightly curled brown hair with matching eyes that lied beneath glasses. Faded smile lines from years of no use, and forming wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, made up the rest of her face. The face of a once jubilant woman trapped and aged in a morose surrounding. She looked out of place. She also had a look that said there was more to her story than just sitting by the King. A life that she once had and wished she could have returned to her. The Queen gave me a look of compassion as her glance met mine. Like she knew I couldn’t have possibly done it.