Talitha Koum

Chapter 14

TALITHA KOUM

CHAPTER 14

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Julie woke and wondered why there was a walrus sitting on her head.

She shook it. There was no walrus…!

She opened her eyes a slit. She looked around.

She was tied up, sitting, with her back to a pole inside a tent, which measured about twenty feet by ten. Tom was here as well. He too was tied up, but just with his hands in front of him and not to a pole. He was lying on his side, facing her.

“Tom!” She breathed out in a hoarse whisper. “Tom! You all right?”

She frowned and then tilted her head to match his. “Tom?”

Tom didn’t respond. His eyes were open for a few seconds, and then closed, and then open again for another few seconds. They were swimming in and out of focus for the moments they were open and definitely not registering anything even then. He was breathing in rasps. And he coughed once or twice. He was saying something, muttering every now and then in wisps. The words sounded something like, “I’m sorry…please…”

She frowned. She tried to edge in closer. “Tom…” Her throat caught and she had to cough.

Julie dry swallowed and found her throat down right gummy. Her lips were dry and cracked in several places. She looked at Tom. He wasn’t doing much better. His hair was matted down here and there with blood and his right eye was bigger than the other one from swelling.

“Tom…”

A man stormed into the room. He stood for a moment and glared at the two of them. He moved in and checked to see if their bonds were tight. Seeing that Julie was awake, he smiled at her and muttered something to himself. He laughed.

He left the quarters again, laughing and then giggling to himself.

Julie followed the man out with her eyes. Through the flapping open of the door, she could see that it was already dark out. Night had come. They must have been here the whole day.

She turned toward Tom. He was still out of it. Still muttering to himself.

She shook her head.

Another man entered the tent, different from the one before.

This one was an ox.

Julie put this man at six foot five and three hundred pounds. Three hundred pounds of shoulders and no neck. This heftier one checked Tom up and down and sneered. He swatted Tom’s head lightly and chortled. Tom didn’t appear to feel it.

The man turned to Julie. He moved in to a crouch in front of her. Grinning, he tilted his head. He regarded her. Julie shrank away from that glare with a shudder. The three teeth that the man had left amid his swollen gums were the colour of soot.

The man freed her from the post, though still bound by the wrists, and then lugged her toward the door.

“Tom!” Julie threw her head back to shout at Tom but he made no reaction.

She broke free from the big man and ran toward Tom. She was caught up again in a second. This time, the man lifted her entirely by the waist so she didn’t touch ground.

“You!” Julie tried kicking him but it just glanced off.

The man threw her to the ground like a toy.

The wind was knocked out of her. As she recovered, the man came at her again and dragged her out of the tent by her hair.

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