Livia Lone (Livia Lone #1)(9)

Livia and Nason were last. Nason was crying again, clinging to Livia. As two of the men pushed them toward the box, Livia, desperate, said in Thai, “Where? Where we go?”

Both of the men laughed. One of them looked at Livia in a way that made her want to cover herself. They shoved Livia and Nason inside, then stood blocking the doorway.

Livia looked around. There was nothing bad inside the box, at least. Actually, there was nothing at all. Just a few plastic buckets. But the emptiness was itself somehow terrifying.

Two of the men came inside and handed out more rice crackers and water. All of it was gone in seconds, and the men handed out more. While the children ate, one of the men gestured to his crotch, then to his backside, then to the buckets, grunting with each gesture. Livia understood. The buckets were toilets. They were going to be in this box for a long time. She fought back panic.

The men backed out and closed the door behind them. A quiet wail went up at the sound of bolts scraping into place. Nason stood trembling and clutching Livia, who held her and tried to keep her bearings in the dark. But after a moment, she noticed it wasn’t fully dark. There were holes cut along the top of all the walls. For air, she realized. But the holes were letting in a little light, too.

She made her way carefully to the door, Nason trembling by her side, and tried to open it, but of course it was useless. She tried to think, to figure out something to do.

“Who speaks Thai?” she called out in Thai. There was nothing but the sound of sniffling and quiet sobs in response, so she called out again, “If you speak Thai, answer!”

She heard someone say, “I speak Thai.” The Hmong boy, she thought, recognizing the slight slur from his swollen lips. Kai.

Someone jostled her. Livia resisted the urge to shove the careless child away.

“Listen!” she said. “We have to be careful, how we move. Or we hurt each other. You understand?”

“I understand,” Kai said.

“You are Hmong?” Livia asked.

“Yes, Hmong.”

“Then say my words in Hmong. And ask in Hmong who speaks Akha, Lisu, Karen, or Yao. You understand?”

Soon they were communicating simple messages translated from one language to another and to yet another. There wasn’t much to say—Walk carefully so you don’t step on people who are lying down; the buckets are for toilet; calm, we have to stay calm. There seemed barely any point to it, but it helped to feel there was something to do.

No one knew who the men were or where they were taking the children. One sobbing child reported that she had heard about men like these, that they took children to eat them. Livia could feel panic steal through the space as the message was translated and repeated. She said in Thai, “That’s silly. If they want to eat us, they feed us more—make fat.” That seemed to calm the panic a little. She hoped it was true.

After that, it grew quiet again. Livia wondered if there were other people on the boat, people other than the men. Maybe people who could help them. She picked up one of the buckets and told the children she was going to bang it against the door. Maybe someone would hear and help them.

“No!” the Yao boy said. “Stupid idea. Don’t make men angry.”

“No,” Kai said. “Good idea. We try. Try something.”

“Make men angry bad!” the Yao boy said.

The other children murmured support for whichever side they favored. Livia decided to just do it. She wished she had a heavy stick or a metal bar—it would have made a louder sound.

She slammed the bucket against the door once, then a second time with more confidence, then a third time even harder. The Yao boy yelled at her to stop, but it felt good to do something, anything, rather than just waiting.

Immediately after the third bang, she heard the sound of the bolts scraping. She stepped back. The door opened, silhouetting the figure of a man outside. She couldn’t see his face, but she thought it was one of the three who had taken her and Nason. He said in Thai, “If you make noise again, we whip you. All of you.”

The door closed and the bolts scraped back into place. There was no more noise after that, other than the sounds of quiet crying. The Yao boy said, “I tell you! You stupid girl! Get us all whipped!”

At some point, Livia lay down with Nason on the cool metal floor and managed some sleep—a fitful sleep in which she dreamed she and Nason were being chased in the forest by monsters, horrible monsters with the bodies of men and the faces of tigers. Nason screamed and Livia heard one of the man-tiger monsters roar as it pounced—

She jerked awake and glanced around wildly, frightened and disoriented. Nason was clutching her and wailing and everything was moving, swaying. Some of the children had fallen down; others were still on their feet, their arms spread for balance, their eyes wide with terror.

“Why box moving?” Kai cried out in Thai. “Why?”

“Box alive!” someone else called out. “Going to eat us!”

The words were repeated in other languages, and in seconds the box was filled with a terrified cacophony of unintelligible cries.

“It’s not alive!” Livia shouted. She could feel the box swaying as it moved. “They move it, with a machine and a string. I saw. I saw before.”

Some of the children repeated her words in other languages, but it was useless—the rest were too frightened to listen or understand.