***
Deep under the loins of the mountain were secret tunnels, dug by men as well… different men than those who built the mountain. They were just recently completed, so fresh that the packed earth still fell off the sides of the walls in small, wet clumps. The tunnels were damp and cold, reeking of rancid ocean water.
A trap door opened and spilled the smallest amount of light through the darkness of the tunnels and a slight man dressed in a white robe stepped back from it.
“One by one…you must get into the tunnels,” he urged, scanning the ornate room of his home, packed with silent, ghostly faced people. His daughter was at school and he had closed his clinic for lunch. His time was limited.
People began to scurry down the ladder…into the tunnels under the mountain. As their feet hit the bottom of the tunnels, their shoes filled with cold ocean water, and they began to run.
“Hurry,” the man implored to person after person, actually shoving some of them down onto the ladder. He looked over his shoulder every now and then, as if he were expecting someone.
“The Purification Law passed today. You must get out of the city.”
He would offer directions to some of the people as they scrambled down the ladder. “There will be dragons on the other side…to take you to Harcourt.”
As he pushed another person onto the rickety ladder, he became desperate, wondering if he would finish in time. It was easier with the children. He could just pick them up and almost give them a toss. As he lifted a girl, perhaps six years old, the same age as his daughter, his breath came to him in sharp gasps. The middle of his chest curled into a tight ball. It could be her, he thought, a shiver running up the spine of his back. It could be her.
Finally, the last person vanished safely into the tunnel, and with shaking hands, he closed the door behind them, covering it with a rare Persian rug, an antique left over from before the Great Wars. He took a huge breath, composed himself by wiping his hands over his long hair, sweeping it back into a tight knot. Slowly, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he opened the door to the clinic without ever eating lunch, pasted a smile on his face and called for his next patient.
Deep beneath him the people ran, as they were told. It was difficult, and the water slowed them at times, their shoes now filled with mud, leaking out the sides as their toes squished between it. At one point a small boy tripped and fell. His mother screamed, over and over again, but she was unable to stop for him as the crowd violently pushed her forward, a massive movement that seemed to have a mind of its own.
“Morti…Morti…” she hollered with panic, again and again, desperation and fear echoing off of the mud walls. But there was no response. The tunnels thundered with their movement, but the mountain stood firm and nobody from above heard them as they tumbled along like underground vermin.
They were ordinary people. With once ordinary lives.
Although most of them had never seen each other before, they had three things in common. They were all Light Skinned. They were all unmarked. And they were all literally running for their lives.
At Six…