Gift of Gold (The Year of Churning Bloods) Read Free

pointing to rocks. You will do this because I ordered you to. Understand?”
     
    The boy nodded quickly.
     
    “Speak to me goddamnit!” The elder thundered in outrage.
     
    “Yessir, I will sir,” the ickle-bit said, still nodding very quickly. The elder nodded before turning on his heels and briskly walking away.
     
    The transformation in the older kids was startling. As soon as the elder was out of earshot, they suddenly got this fierce little look in their eyes like they just got five years older. They introduced themselves so quickly, I forgot all of their names within seconds.
     
    “You lot’er probably wondering how y’all got here aye?” the large kid asked, stepping forward and coughing loudly. Everyone including myself nodded very quickly. “Well, the short answer is that you’ve been bought.”
     
    “Bought?” another kid asked as if that was some kind of joke.
     
    “Yeah, bought,” the older trainee replied forcefully. “These Grimlar’s go ‘round the whole kingdom and buy up all the orphans. Y’all are orphans yeah?” To my surprise, everyone around me nodded for a second time. The kid gestured towards one of the buildings before coughing and spitting on the ground. “These are the Clog bunkers. You pick a bed and stick with it. If you’re lucky, you might get a wall or two to yourself.” All of the people around me began to crane their necks to get a better look inside, however the other trainee interrupted them by loudly clicking his fingers. “Y’all won’t spend too much time here though. Out there’s where you work.” He looked out to the dusty clearing beyond the buildings and clicked his tongue a little. I squinted and sure enough, I could make out about a hundred boys my age all working off in the distance.
     
    “What are they doing?” I asked.
     
    “They’re smashing coal,” another trainee responded without looking at me. “‘Dem fields are full of metals and coal and such. We dig it up, smash it up, and send it back to the outside world.”
     
    “Don’t people know about this?” I wondered angrily. The other kid laughed weakly but didn’t smile.
     
    “Nah, they don’t know,” he told me sadly. “Even if they did know, what would they do ‘bout it? It’s cheap stuff. It’s good for them.”
     
    “What are king’s exams?” A kid beside me asked real suddenly. The older trainee nervously licked his lips and seemed to unfocus his eyes a bit.
     
    “Y’all see that wall over there?” he asked, pointing out towards the fields of coal. At first I thought he was talking about the smooth crater wall that went way up, but as I looked closer I could see that there was a different wall. This wall was brick and went up nearly four stories.
     
    “What’s behind it?” a kid behind me asked, tilting his head to one side.
     
    “The Forest.”
     
    “A forest?” the other trainee asked in disbelief.
     
    “Not a forest!” he responded irritably. “ The Forest! It was grown by the Grimlars to test the abilities of their trainees. If you live five years here, you get thrown in there and you gotta get back out in a week. You can’t do it if you don’t have anti-magic.”

              “What happens if you fail?” I demanded, locking eyes with the other ickle-bit.
     
    “Nobody knows,” The kid said under his breath. “Some say you get taken out of the camp and put back into the real world. Some say different.” He shook his head abruptly and stared at us as if he forgot we were there. “If you wanna be a Grimlar, you have to get to tier four and survive one of those exams,” he added darkly.
     
    “Tier?” I asked suddenly.
     
    “Yeah, tier,” the other kid said quickly. “The Grimlar trainees all get a tier to tell them how they’re doing but ‘cause we’re ickle-bits, we’re tier zero. Getting to tier one just means showing a couple of elders you can use anti-magic, but after that, I think you’ve gotta take some