Blood - Chapter 5

The Ultras bent and collected things, placing them into a kind of box that was flying. Andia blinked. The box wasn't on the ground but hovering above it. It had no legs and no wheels. It moved about with them, following them like a dog but it wasn't alive. She couldn't stop looking at the creatures. So beautiful and calm looking, moving and pointing things out to each other. She looked hard at their faces but their mouths were not moving. She strained to hear but no noise came from them. Not like if four of her people had been collecting wood or food together. They'd be laughing and joking and talking. Andia realised her eyes were as open as they could be, as though she wanted to let as much of this sight into them
as possible.

Suddenly she saw a little coney break out of the brush just near her and hop hop across right in the direction of the Ultras. Andia had to cover her mouth to stop herself shouting out to scare the coney so it would run, its little white tail flashing and flashing a warning. She turned to look at Sej.

He was watching the little coney too. He put his finger to his lips. They watched and saw the Ultras notice the coney, hopping and hopping and observe its movemnets. They turned to look at each other and one nodded. The other raised its hand and made a gesture like a throw. Nothing left its hand, Andia was sure of that but something happened. The coney seemed to hop against something and bounce back, like a wall that you couldn't see.

Sej and Andia stared as the little coney jumped against the nothing and tuned and bounced off another wall of nothing. Like it was in a trap. Andia's heart was banging and she could hear the blood beating in her ears. She felt sick as she watched the Ultra who had made the throwing gesture walk slowly over to the coney and bend and pick up the air around it. The coney lifted too.

Andia's head has started shaking then and she knew she had to get out, get away. She started wriggling backwards – panicking to get out of the brush. To get home to safety where she was supposed to be planting her seeds. She wasnt so careful, she wasn't watching Sej. She backed out until she was free and turned and ran. Away from the Ultras. Away from the invisible thing that could trap a coney. Things were not what they seemed. She ran and ran, across the thin cover of trees and towards the thicker wood where she knew her way. Where she belonged. Where she would be safe and she was almost there – not slow and careful so she didn't make a sound but fast – fast as wind – fast as the fleetest horse, faster than her father and she was nearly there in the darkness and the safety when she saw them.

More Ultras who turned to look at her as she ran – she zig zagged away from them and towards the trees and that's when she saw one raise its hand and make that same throwing gesture. She screamed for Sej to help her, to save her, she screamed as loud as she could so her father would hear her and come. He'd kill the Ultras, he'd take her home but then she heard a terrible whooshing coming at her – like a great thing thrown through the air and that's when she hit nothing. Like running into the trunk of a tree – and she fell. Bruised. On her knees.

Then she realised all the sounds had gone and she couldn't hear air and trees and birds. She covered her ears and stood up. Dizzy. Her head spinning and each way she tried to go she met with a wall she couldn't see. As solid as wood, as the face of a cliff. And as she hit at the invisible trap with her fists she saw the Ultras slowly coming towards her – four of them – she looked wildly around for Sej, looked back the way she had come but there was no sign of him. She screamed and screamed as the Ultras came nearer and nearer. She started to feel light headed – her hearing closing down – her vision like she was looking into a dark cave. And just there on the edge of her vision, she thought she saw Sej – climbing like a monkey, hand over hand up into a tree and as she realised he was safe her eyes went black and she didn't know any more.

Andia thinks that soon Dot will come again. Sometimes Andia speaks to her. She's worried if she doesn't use her voice it might disappear like an Ultra's. Maybe she'll turn into one of them. Perhaps that's what they do, she wonders, catch people and turn them into Ultras.

These aren't the only ones, she knows that. Nomad traders come to her home – they bring salt and spices and cloth and trade for seeds and coney skins and tiny bright pieces her people find sometimes in the ground and in the water. It's always exciting when the Nomads come because they bring news too. There's always a feast to celebrate them – a big animal roasting over the fire – everyone gathered and when the eating and the music is over there comes the bit that Andia likes best – the stories. The Nomads have wonderful stories and the people gather round the glowing red embers of the fire, everyone together. Mothers, fathers and children. Older ones like her, bigger ones who haven't wed yet and the little ones who snuggle on their mothers' and their fathers' laps and try to stay awake to hear the stories.

This is how she knows. The walled place near them, the one she is in now, isn't the only one. Nomads say they pass them everywhere. Steer wide round them with their caravans of animals loaded with things to trade. They pitch up their pointy tents well away from the places they call 'cities' and make sure they avoid any Ultras.

One time they came, Andia heard them tell of seeing more and more parties of Ultras outside the walls of the cities. Searching, collecting. They had a tale of seeing the Ultras catch a human and take it away and the last time they came they had one with them who said he'd been caught but escaped. The Nomads had found him exhausted and dying from lack of water. They saved him and he told them stories of being inside the city. How they had kept him with a couple of others and one had been aggressive, had fought the Ultras all the time, attacked them angrily whenever he could and wouldn't stop and one day they came and took him away and he never came back.

All Andia's people listened open mouthed.
"They'd done him!" The Escaper said. He knew because later the Ultras had brought back the angry man's clothes to give to him and the other human. Even thought the Ultras had cleaned the clothes the Escaper said he could smell blood.

"You can't ever wash out the blood of a human," he said. And all the people listened shuffled and shifted uncomfortably and several of the little children cried because everyone knew it is the worst thing to kill a human.
The other thing the Escaper said that Andia remember is that in the Ultra city there were some humans. He called them Solvers and they were there to mend things.

"They weren't like us," he said, "from out here – they were made inside the city." They did all the work for the Ultras – made the machines work. The Escaper was the one who said the Ultras talked without using words you could hear and they could see you even when they weren't in the room with you.

Andia looks around the room. All the walls are smooth as worn stone – even where the door opens. She doesn't know where they can see in.
All she has in the room is a place to sleep and a place to eat. She misses home. Her mother, her brother, her father, the fire, the freedom of the forest space. Fresh air. She hasn't shown Dot any sadness, any missing. She doesn't want to be taken and done, for Dot to be washing blood out of her clothes and giving them to someone.

She's made a little row of people from the sticks and they stand beside her sleeping space where she can see them. She looks at each of them and names them and tells them stories in a tiny whisper every time she lies down to sleep. She hates being locked in the room, longs for the air and the talking and singing. Longs to be able to plant her seeds. They are still there, folded in her waistband. Safe. She knows that as long as she keeps them safe she will get back to the forest and finish her work planting them.