Chapter 17: Lord Galax

Mimbi woke up with a sudden jerk of the iron cage. A young girl of about seven who had fallen asleep with her head on Mimbi’s legs also woke up, scared by her sudden movement.

“Where are we?” Mimbi said to no one in particular. There were twelve other girls in the cage with her, but no one answered. No one knew.

The road where they had stopped was narrower than the one they had been traveling on, and the trees’ lumbered over it, making it hard for Mimbi to tell the approximate time. She was hungry, thirsty, and she longed for a bath.

As the Hova escorted the prisoners towards the wall, a routine had settled in among the captors and captives. Every two hours or so, a Hova would come around to give the girls water, some fruits they picked up along the way, and they’d select one of them to feed off. Mimbi had been lucky that she hadn’t been selected yet. Four girls from her cage had already been fed off, and they bore the stained wraps that marked