Salvia: The Exile. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 She walked through the fourth gate and it too slammed shut behind her, and she heard the lock go home with a final click. Behind her was the maze of gates and fences that she had just been forced to walk through. Fresh in her mind was the indignities that she had just suffered – but she had no explanation for them. Ahead of her, a grey pathway stretched between stone walls on one side and steel bars on the other. The only thing she could do was walk down it. Even the door into the building at the end of the path was made of large grey blocks. The guards’ voices echoed in her head.
“So this is the new Roku, is it?”
“Wonder how long this one will last?”
“Better get it ready then.”
And then the new clothes, the cutting of her hair, the casual violence towards her. But what did it all mean? She went into the most gloomy room she’d ever seen. And for a moment a memory teased at the back of her mind: a memory of colour, of light – but it faded as quickly as it came. Five unhappy-looking children sat at the table. Some of them turned their faces towards her as she entered, some of them didn’t. None of them spoke. They waited in silence. Everything in the room was made of the same grey blocks. For some reason, she felt that this should worry her, but she couldn’t remember why. She looked at the children, with their strange masked faces.
“So who are you?”
Each one spoke briefly and quickly, one after the other.
“Ichi.”
“Ni.”
“San.”
“Shi.”
“Go.”
And the way they answered her made her realise: these aren’t names, they’re numbers. “Excuse me,” said the one who’d said she was Ichi. “Please may I ask, are you the new Roku?”
Shi turned to look at Ichi as she spoke, as though she shouldn’t have opened her mouth at all. Was she the new Roku? That was what the guards had said. Thinking of the way they had treated her, she ground her teeth together. But who was she? And what was she supposed to do? She sat down at the table with them.
“And what makes you think I am the new Roku? And what does the Roku do anyway?” This time it was the little fair girl next to her who spoke.
“The Roku looks after us. It cooks our meals.” “And it tells us when we are naughty,” said Shi.
At those words a look of great sadness passed over Ichi’s face. Through the small barred window, she could just see a glimpse of sunset sky. It was probably time to eat – and these children did look a bit young to be cooking for themselves. Every surface in the cooking area was thick with grease and dirt. Something in her revolted at the thought of preparing food on a mess like that. When she’d finished cleaning, it didn’t look much brighter, but it no longer smelt. There was food in the cupboards – she didn’t feel up to getting to grips with a strange stove, so she went for making something cold. All the while, the children sat, still and silent at the table. “You haven’t answered the rest of my question. Why do you think I am the Roku?”
“You wear its clothes,” said one of them after a long pause.
“And you are here,” said another. “No-one comes here except the Roku.” She put the food on the table for them.
“What do you mean, I wear its clothes? Was there a Roku before me? What happened to her?”
“She died.” Go’s voice was emotionless. “She threw herself into the sea because she couldn’t stand it any more.”
“The one before, something happened to her because she went out without a mask on. I think she died too.”
“They all go away.” What was it those soldiers had said? Wonder how long she’ll last? What had somebody got her into?
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“The Roku hasn’t said we may eat yet. If we eat before being given permission, then we are naughty.” The children filed out after eating, without speaking again. They seemed to know what they were doing, and she left them to it, her mind so confused that she didn’t know what to think. It was dark outside now, and all she could see was a confused mass of fences and a dim light burning on another low building. She caught at Ichi as the girl left.
“Where do you sleep?”
“Over there,” said Ichi, pointing at the light across the way.
“And where do I sleep?”
“In there.”
She went through the door at the end of the room, hoping to find a bed and a bedroom. A bath, a toilet and a rolled-up sleeping bag met her eyes. She was too tired to protest. She simply crawled into the sleeping bag and fell asleep on the hard stone floor. That night she dreamt – dreamt of an island covered in trees with bronze and golden leaves, and a tall golden column of stone pointing skywards in the middle of the island. The wind was blowing from the sea, and she could smell the faint spicy scent of the trees. Then her dream changed, and she was walking towards a lighted pavilion, through another forest, underneath a starry night sky. There were flowers and trees all around her, and lights burning softly among the trees. And she was happy, and free – and different, somehow. But the dream faded as she woke and shifted, trying to get comfortable, and all she had in her mind was a sense of losing something beautiful. She slept both badly and late. It seemed the children went to school: they left before she had finished cooking their breakfast. They seemed to take going hungry for granted. She ate alone, hugely hungry, and no wiser than she’d been the day before. Then she went out of the building, into the daylight, and stood and looked around. There was not a plant or a flower to be seen – not so much as a blade of grass. Everything was grey: grey stone, grey cobbles, grey metal bars, another grey building, grey walls. Where was she, and what kind of a place was it? She walked over to the other building, along a path with high walls on one side and metal bars the other. It looked exactly like the one she had just left, save that it had two doors instead of only one, one door at each end. She went to the far end first and through the door there. A narrow corridor greeted her eyes and little cell-like rooms with stone-built beds in them: and again, she felt that she should be worried by all this grey stone, but she couldn’t work out why. This was probably the boys’ side: there were only two beds. There was a third room, containing a chest of drawers – and a potty. Had these children lived here all their lives? The chest of drawers contained clean versions of the clothes the children were wearing, another set of her clothes and two of the ugliest nightdresses she’d ever seen. Also more bed-linen. Going through the other door, she found three beds this time – and no chest of drawers. There was a small bathroom each side as well – and a wall between the two halves of the building. She stood there, trying to make sense of everything. She didn’t recognise where she was. She didn’t know what she was doing there. She didn’t know why she was in charge of five weird children. She looked down at her body and thought: I don’t even recognise these dark patterns on my arms and chest. She didn’t recognise the heavy metal bracelet on her wrist either, and she couldn’t take it off to look at it more closely. And yet she had a feeling that it was terribly significant. On her way out, she spotted a small mirror on the wall behind the door. She looked long and hard at herself. Only the eyes were familiar. And as she gazed long and hard into her own eyes, little by little some of her memory began to return.