Page 40 of Spiders in the Grove

Instinct compels me to shoot up from my chair, but I know I can’t; I have to sit here, watch Naeva practically dragged to the center of the stage by her elbow, and do nothing to help her. This is no ordinary bid—it’s not a bid at all—and everybody in the theatre knows it; not only because of Naeva’s refusal to cooperate, how unbroken she is, how much fight she has in her, but also because of the way she’s dressed; the blood on her white gown; the bruises and blood on her face and mouth. A hush falls over the crowd, three hundred stunned faces staring up at the spectacle as it quickly unravels right in front of my eyes—Naeva is in serious trouble.

The man shoves her to her knees; she falls face-first onto the stage floor; her hair spilling all around her head. Tears shoot from her eyes as she raises her head and looks out into the crowd. But she’s not looking for me, I know—she’s looking for somebody else; her wide, frightened eyes darting in every direction, scanning the faces of onlookers watching her with sick fascination.

My heart beating in my fingertips, I can barely stay in character; I glance down at Sabine, and although she’s not supposed to make eye contact with her master unless given permission, she can’t help it. She’s as confused as I am; when she saw Naeva last, Naeva was confident and calm. So, what happened?

Joaquin steps up, and Naeva, seemingly already familiar with his punishments, recoils from him, but she knows better than to try running. On her hands and knees, she looks out at the crowd again, searching desperately for that one particular face; the one she wants to see before she dies—Leo. Upon grasping this realization, my heart falls into my stomach.

Joaquin raises a hand in gesture to the crowd, and the few whispers lingering cease at once.

“This, ladies and gentlemen,” Joaquin begins, “is the face of a slave who betrayed her masters. We were going to punish her the old fashioned way, but I have decided that you all”—his hand sweeps in front of him at the crowd—“our wonderful buyers, who trust us and spend a lot of money on our product, should be given the full experience, a rare, exclusive first-look inside our procedures; this way you know exactly what you’re getting when you buy from us; you know how strict our training is, how…unsympathetic our punishments”—he turns from the crowd and looks down at Naeva—“and how brutal our judgments when it comes to thieves and runaways.”

Naeva sobs into her hands.

“And here we thought Frances and Iosif were going to be the exciting part of the night,” Cesara says, smiling widely. Then she looks over at me, and her eyes linger. “Does it…bother you that she’s up there, Lydia?” she asks, suspiciously.

Oh, is my apprehension showing? I snap out of it quickly, and place my hand on Cesara’s wrist upon the table. “Why would it—Oh, wait…”—I look at Naeva on the stage again—“…is that the girl I met on the way here?”

Easily believing the act, Cesara grins. “Yeah, that’s her.”

“What did she do?”

“Well, I only know what Joaquin told me in a rush earlier.” Cesara explains. “He said he could’ve sworn he’d seen her before—apparently, this girl wasn’t forced here; she came on her own.”

My eyebrows crumple. “Why in the hell would she do that?” I ask with light laughter.

“That’s the part I don’t really know,” Cesara says. “But she was a slave years ago at another one of the compounds, and she was supposed to be given to Joaquin, but she escaped before that could happen. It was a big story then; everybody knew about it; she’s actually kind of famous—famous by association, anyway.”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why escape and then come back years later to the same place—unless she’s here for revenge; maybe she never forgot about what happened to her here; maybe she’s here to kill everybody.” Oh wait—that’s me.

Cesara chuckles. “That’s some theory,” she says, “but if that was her plan, by the looks of things it didn’t work out too well.” Then she says, “But there’s a lot more to it. Joaquin wouldn’t confirm or deny it, but there was an intruder on the grounds earlier, and I think it was Leo Moreno.”

I stiffen, but only on the inside.

“Who’s Leo Moreno?”

Cesara looks lost in thought suddenly, her expression soft and…dreamy, if I can call it that.

“He was an underground fighter,” she says, her voice laced with admiration. “Was famous all over Mexico; nobody could beat him, and anybody who tried either ended up a vegetable, or dead.”

I remember the story Naeva told me about Leo; it’s interesting to hear about this man from an admirer, rather than the woman who loved him.

“You look like you wanted to fuck him,” I point out with accusation.

“I did—wanted to, anyway,” she confirms, and her honesty surprises me. “I mean, you won’t find many women around here who didn’t want to fuck him”—she twirls a hand at the wrist—“but that’s past-tense; he lost himself when he met that girl. It’s a shame, really; Leo had everything, but he fucked it all up for her.”

You mean he gave it all up for love. Any woman would be lucky to find a man like that…

Joaquin grabs Naeva by her hair and pulls her to her feet; the crowd watches attentively; and not one of them seem uncomfortable, further proving this is a Den of Devils. No, wait—I was wrong; there are two people in the crowd whose faces and body language indicate they’re very much uncomfortable, further confirming in my mind they might not be who they’re pretending to be.

Dante rubs the palms of his hands nervously against the legs of his pants; he wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist; it appears he’s practicing some kind of breathing technique, his shoulders rising and falling to the rhythm of his mouth as it forms an O and breath is expelled in two-second intervals.

And Frances Lockhart—now I know for a fact that woman is no more a buyer of slaves than I am. She stands up as Joaquin shoves a gun underneath Naeva’s chin, and she shouts, with her hands out in front of her: “Stop! I-I want to buy her; I-I’ll outbid everyone in this room!” She wants to buy her to save her, just like she did those thirteen girls sitting around her, huddled close to her, just as Sabine is to me. It all becomes so clear now—and my job here just became that much more difficult. I don’t know who those two are, Frances and Dante, but in some ways they’re just like me. Unfortunately, they’re nothing like me when it comes to knowing what the hell they’re doing, and how deep the pile of burning shit they stepped into.

“Sit down, Miss Lockhart,” Joaquin kindly tells her. “This one is not for sale.”

Please sit down, Frances…if you don’t, if you continue letting your real-self bleed through that brittle façade, you’re going to give yourself away, and you won’t make it out of here alive. Please. Sit. Down. I bite my lip.

Slowly, Frances takes her seat, and relief floods my body; she sits with both hands on the table in front of her, her face devoid of that spoiled little brat she came here as, and I just hope everything else that is happening can distract everyone—especially Joaquin and Cesara—from her glaring mistakes.

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