Flux

him.
    “I’m sorry,” he answered, “I don’t understand.”
    She said something else, then folded gracefully beside him. She lay down and pulled him down beside her, and at first his entire body was as stiff and tense as a board, but then he realized she only wanted to share body heat. She was filthy and she smelled awful—he supposed the same must be true of him—and she was too bony to offer much softness, but at least she was something, a small anchor in his flood of misery. They clung to one another like lovers might, but he slept no better that night than the night before.
    The next day was the same. The girl tried to speak to him sometimes, and he got weary enough of her shoving food at him that he actually ate a little of it: some mushy tubers of some kind and a few hard chunks of clotted rice. Her name was Sawarn—he could understand that much, at least—and he gathered from her gestures that she’d come from far away, perhaps to the south. He told her his name, which she couldn’t pronounce very well, and he pointed east, back over the sea. She wasn’t really pretty. Her eyes were slightly crossed and she had a receding chin but there was a liveliness to her, like a small bird, that few of the slaves possessed. He didn’t know why she had chosen to take him under her wing. Perhaps it was his exotic looks—none of the others were as fair as he—or his height.
    Late that afternoon two guards entered the enclosure alone. They cast their gaze about, assessing all the captives, until they settled on a very young woman—a girl, really—who had delicate features and who had been crying almost nonstop since Miner arrived. One of them grabbed her. She screamed and tried to struggle, and Miner considered going to her aid, but the guards brandished their swords and managed to drag her away without opposition. They brought her back later. Her eyes had gone completely blank and she was stumbling as she walked. Blood and other fluids were smeared on the insides of her bare thighs.
    The guards looked around again, searching for their next victim, but Miner made sure to place his body between them and Sawarn’s much smaller one. Perhaps he was successful in hiding her or perhaps they wouldn’t have been interested anyway, but it was a different woman they chose and then, when they hauled her back a while later, another.
    But there was nothing Miner could do the following morning, when several guards marched over from the direction of the low building. The man who accompanied them was not wearing a uniform, but his clothing was expensive and he had the air of a person in charge. He waited between the fences as the guards entered the enclosure and, one by one, dragged the slaves in front of him. Sawarn was one of the first they chose. They lifted her dress to her neck and made her turn about, then let the dress go and had her walk several paces back and forth. The man watched carefully, and he stepped closer when she was made to open her mouth wide. Then he nodded at the guards and said something to them, and they took Sawarn away, leading her to the building. She had just a moment to look back at Miner and call out what might have been a farewell, and then she was gone.
    After Sawarn, several more slaves were examined, and then it was Miner’s turn. The guards prodded roughly at him with the butts of their staffs until he stood, and then they led him over to the fence. The man gave him a long, critical look, his gaze raking over Miner’s body in a way that made it feel as if spiders were crawling over Miner’s skin. He gave Miner what sounded like a command, but of course Miner didn’t know what he was meant to do. The man frowned and repeated his command, more loudly. When Miner still just stood there one of the guards intervened, probably telling their boss that Miner didn’t speak their language. The man glowered and shook his head. The guards shrugged and shoved Miner away.
    They ended up taking away a total of about twenty people that afternoon. Miner couldn’t discern any particular pattern in which people they chose, except perhaps it was the livelier of the prisoners who were taken away. Eventually the two guards and the man in charge left, and then there was a long, quiet period as the slaves dozed or meandered or, like Miner, simply stared off at nothing.
    But then more pedestrians came by than usual, most of them better dressed than the dockworkers and fish processors who tended to