Javin did not know if he fell or rolled his way into this gray land. When he stepped past the sunflowers, it felt like running downhill, but he quickly lost his footing. Then he tumbled down a slope before the sensation of free falling washed over him. He lost sight of Seal early during the ordeal.
Was he in a giant underground cave? He had plopped into the middle of a dry grassland. The arid land made him feel thirsty. He reached for the water bottles in his backpack. After a sip, he inspected his bag to make sure nothing broke from his tumble. He needed to find Seal so they could escape from this crazy place. It would surprise her father when they told him his farm had a cave under it. Maybe he could sell tickets and they could all become rich.
As he looked around, he realized it must be the largest cave ever, so high it had its own sky. Things weren’t adding up. How could a cave have a sky? And if it had a sky, where were the stars or the moon or clouds? How could an entire sky be the same color?
“How hard did I hit my head?” he asked himself.
He inspected everything while he walked through the dead grass. There were stones and larger stones, and larger stones that eventually could be called boulders. He was glad he hadn’t landed on those. Short and tall tufts of grass, all different shades of brown, sprouted from the ground. He tried pulling some out, wondering if the roots were edible but some of the grass blades lived up to their name and sliced into his fingers. He decided not to test them further.
He lifted rocks and found nothing underneath. He knew by watching the Discovery Channel you may find a grub to eat. If he found one, he wondered if he would eat it. Maybe if he spent weeks down here. He thought about the time he tried to taste an ant. It tasted like sour liquid. If he found one, he would skip those altogether. If it came down to eating an ant or starving, he would choose starving. Even his curiosity had limits.
There really wasn’t much left to see after exploring the dead grass and rocks. He walked towards the distant hills. Finding a high point would help him attract Seal if he could build a fire. He thought it just as likely she would have the same idea. They only had to find the right high point together.
After an hour of walking, he became bored. His shoes were filled with tiny rocks, which infiltrated through the holes on their sides. He emptied them. He missed his red shoes. They reminded him of his dad’s old shoes his mom still kept.
While Javin never knew his dad, he missed him. He asked his mom about him, and she would tell him stories and he would repeat them to anyone that would listen. He told them like he experienced everything firsthand. He knew his father was a good man who loved him. His mom would say. “He’d wake you up every time he got home late, and I’d hit him because it would take two hours to get you back to sleep.”
After clearing out his shoes, Javin talked to himself to keep himself busy. “You have rubber balls,” he said, “but nothing to bounce them against.” He tried entertaining himself by throwing one high in the air a few times and letting it fall into his unzipped pack, attempting to catch it behind his back. He missed the ball every time and had to chase it down. He stopped, deciding this would only make him tired and thirsty.
I wonder how long I need to go missing before my mom calls the cops? Maybe she would wait longer than the average parent for extra quiet time.
“You’re being a pest,” she’d say, when Javin was trying to entertain her and make her laugh like his dad used to. She smiled when she said it, but his teachers called him a pest too, and they never smiled. “You can act better, maybe,” he said aloud. “When you get out of here.” His mom used to say that, too. ‘You can act better.’ But usually that was no fun.
He continued toward the hills. They seemed far even after walking a long time. He wondered if the babysitter survived. He hadn’t told Seal that their sitter was Jenn’s cousin, the girl Seal had punched. The girl that had set Paintchip on fire. You always found people in this part of South Dakota were related, or friends, through the same church, and if not, they all still knew one another and each other’s business.
He kept the babysitter distracted to keep her from getting revenge on Seal. But she appeared to be a true professional. “Good for her,” he said, “my charm could not even sway her.” It must be a good payday to look after the two of them.
Javin called out, “Hey Seeeeaaaaal!” He yelled loudly over and over but his throat became sore from the dry air. He drank a little more water. She’s barefoot, he knew that. “I should keep an eye out for toe prints.”
He scanned the ground while he walked, but saw only dead grass, and rocks. “SeeeeEeeeeeeaaal, come out and plaaaAayyyy,” he sing-songed. His shoe suddenly scudded on a surface, harder than the one he had walked on for so long. The inches of dust thinned with each footfall and eventually he walked on a solid surface, like concrete.
Javin walked in circles and found two boundaries parallel to one another. He walked along the edge of one before walking over to the next edge. “Yup, perfectly parallel.” He had found a road. “Now we’re cooking. If I was barefoot, I’d walk on a road with fewer pointy rocks and all roads lead to somewhere!”
And if Seal found it, they would end up in the same place, he hoped.
***
Butcher Briggs never tired. He ran faster than any living man. It took him two days, never stopping, to find the area the two had arrived. It had been decades since anyone else had been allowed to enter the Hunting Grounds if they were not fully dead. He checked to see if the way was still open. Just to be sure. It was not. He would have abandoned the Sisters and made his own way into the world above. The boy would have remained safe if so. But such was not the case, so he began his hunt.
Butcher Briggs excelled at tracking. He found the disturbed earth and round marks where Javin played with his ball. The tracks still glowed faintly. The living left a lingering presence. He smelled the tracks to make sure it smelled like boy and not girl. This was the right path. This would be too easy. He hoped for better sport. Oh well.
Briggs grew up hard. He rode with his kin in the 1860s while the Wašíču killed themselves in the east during their Civil War. During that time, his people expanded their territory against their enemies, as they had done for decades, but when the war between the Wašíču ended and their tall, long armed bearded chief died from a traitor’s bullet, they turned their full attention to the plains, home of his people.
The Lakota fought their war to push the invaders out and Butcher Briggs joined in. He lived up to his name, taking the lives of their enemies at many battles. Others might prove their bravery through counting coup, the practice of touching your enemy and not killing them, but not Butcher. He never understood the practice meant to demoralize and prove your prestige. Briggs did not waste time. He killed. Although he had a sadistic edge and, if he had time, taunting his victims was part of the fun before he committed his murder.
After his kin signed a treaty and lost his taste for war, Butcher Briggs made his way east into the Dakotas to make his own chaos. He claimed to kill any pioneering family he found, be they old men, women or children. His reign of slaughter ended when he tried to rile up resistance against the US army. His disdain for the People, thinking they could get away doing nothing and taking gifts from the Wašíču, made him cruel against his own. He vowed to teach them a lesson. But after he killed two at the camp, others ganged up together and bashed his head with rocks and left him to die in the wilderness.
That is how Bishop Briggs came to the Hunting Ground. Here, things were no different. The Paleskins enslaved The People. They fed off the dead ancestors and used them to mine the gems and metals they craved for their own petty status and protection from a sun that never came. The newly dead were plentiful in the early days but had slowed considerably in the last many years.
Butcher Briggs proved not such an easy target for the Paleskins. He lasted years on his own, and killed them and his own kind, stealing food and possessions, before finally attracting the Sisters’ attention. His ruthlessness and strength, not yet drained by years of existing here, would be useful to them. They turned him into one of them after a long, hard fight.
He, as far as he knew, remained the only of his kind turned Paleskin. Now he worked for the Sisters, tracking runaways and rebels.
As he followed Javin, he came upon the same road. He knew his hunt would be over soon. His reward would lead to his freedom. When he returned to the living land, he could do anything he wanted. He might even have the power to kill the latest Wašíču chief and rule over this land called America. If the Sisters did not desire that rule first. All he needed to do was kill a simple boy.