Vessel

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

Copyright © 2015 Lisa T. Cresswell

VESSEL by Lisa T. Cresswell

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published by Month9Books

Cover designed by Whit & Ware

Cover Copyright © 2015 Month9Books

I cannot live without books.

Thomas Jefferson

To the brightest stars in my galaxy,

my family and dearest friends—

I love you forever.

A Class-X solar storm, the likes of which humankind had never seen, erupted from the Sun on April 18, 2112.

They had nineteen minutes.

Nineteen minutes until the geomagnetic wave washed over the Earth, frying every man-made electrical device, blacking out entire continents and every satellite in their sky.

Nineteen minutes to say goodbye to the world they knew forever and prepare for a new Earth, a new way of life.

All digital data was lost, all the knowledge of the centuries past gone in an instant. Unable to feed themselves without technology, humans began to die of starvation and disease. At first thousands, then millions, and, finally, billions died. The survivors fought amongst themselves for the scraps until there were almost none left.

Year 2165

Master Dine’s kick sent me sprawling into the wall. Pain bloomed in my shoulder. That was nothing new, but my
billa
slipped dangerously close to falling off. I grasped at the awkward headgear, a giant tent designed to hide my ugliness.

No one must see,
I thought.

“It’s too hot, you stupid chit,” Master Dine yelled.

At seventeen, I was officially a woman and had been for a while, but no one gave a slave girl that recognition.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he said. The clay teapot I’d been using to pour water over Master’s feet lay shattered on the floor. “Clean it up, chit.”

I silently seethed as I collected the pieces. I wasn’t a chit. I was Alana, a name I’d given myself and no one else used. I cursed him under my
billa
, something he’d never hear through the dark, black drapes shrouding me from everyone. I prayed Mother Sun would do terrible things to him, something that didn’t make me feel any better.

“When you’re done with that, go help Master Tow. He’s expecting you.”

“But your bath?”

“I’ll do it myself,” Master Dine spat at me, as if he didn’t trust me, as if I hadn’t been washing his feet every morning since I was old enough to hold soap.

Master Dine was one of the oldest men in our village at almost forty, too mean to die of flu fever like most old men. He’d caught it once or twice, but it only seemed to make him more determined to live.

“Yes, Master,” I whispered and ducked out of the room with the remains of the teapot. I threw them in the garbage pit behind the house as I left for Master Tow’s. I’d have to make a new one later. I wondered when I would find the time to gather the clay from the riverbank, which was a fair walk from here. Where was here? Master Dine’s village was called Roma.

Master Dine reminded me constantly I wasn’t from this place—my eyes too almond-shaped, my hair too black, and my skin too yellow to be from Roma. My looks didn’t stop him from slinking into my room in the darkness to have his way with me. I was his, bought from my own parents in a faraway place, he always said. Even in the dark, he made me cover my face. I closed my eyes anyway. Maybe if I couldn’t see Master Dine with his lazy eye and crooked teeth, he’d cease to exist.
Please, Mother Sun, make it so.

***

I walked down the dirty footpath toward Roma’s center market square, past the mud and stone houses scraped together with whatever the inhabitants could find. It was early yet; fog still clung to the base of the mountains and dripped off the trees’ new leaves. Winter was breaking at last. Mother Sun had saved us again, but we always knew she could destroy us if she wanted to.

I didn’t mind wearing the
billa
so much when the weather was cool or misty like this morning. It trapped my own warm breath around me like a cocoon. It made doing chores outside awkward, though. Master Dine kept me primarily for house chores, although I was allowed to shop on market day, and he occasionally lent me to Master Tow. Tow had no wives and probably needed his house cleaned.

Master Tow was a young man in his twenties, still undecided on a wife. Suitable women were rare in Roma, so he was faced with the prospect of waiting until certain girls came of age or traveling to the next province for a wife. The expense of a wife was more than Tow really wanted, so he borrowed me from time to time. It was an arrangement he had with Dine, made possible by Dine’s first wife, Mistress Shel. Shel hated my position in her house as a sort of third wife, a standing I could never truly attain even if I wanted to. It was Shel who had disfigured the right side of my face years ago. It hadn’t stopped Dine’s visits to me, just made him more discrete.