Demon Runner

What Suga remembered of when the English came, was that she was young enough to show them how fast she could run.

She was four or five at the time and racing the goats through the tall grass was a joy her parents had forbidden her for a reason she never quite understood.

Suga did not remember what the one woman who wasn’t a soldier told her parents, but if she closed her eyes, she could see her mother and father fighting for Suga as she watched them passively from the arms of an Englishman.

A soldier struck her father on the back of his head when he tried to attack them with a hoe. Suga looked back once and saw her mother writhing on the lawn outside their mud-hut home, tearing her hair out and wailing for the old gods to save her baby.

But no matter how hard she tried, Suga couldn’t remember their faces.

She wondered if that made her a bad daughter.

She felt Jimmy’s warm hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently.

She reached out; her eyes still closed and pushed it away.

“Suga, are you awake?”

She turned her head away from where she imagined him squatting, looking down at her with those blue eyes full of useless compassion.

She had made it clear to the stupid suddha boy that she had no time for the likes of him; but taking a hint was not Jimmy’s strong point.

He was still calling her.

Suga threw a fist; claws drawn, punching a hole in the rotten log above her head. She felt the mushy wood sink and a wriggling in her claws that was probably a woodlouse.

It shut him up.

When she opened her eyes, Jimmy was gone.

The prisoner in her claws turned out to be a millipede. It was dead now. Suga pulled it free and flexed her fingers, retracting the claws, grimacing at the pain.

The plains that preceded the tiny village of Wellassa, scrolled down the hillside at her feet, painted in shades of sunlight and cornflower. Suga could smell the pollen, soft and milky in the breeze.

She sat up, groaning as the pain in her calves returned.

Out of the undergrowth almost a mile away, a spotted deer nosed through the vegetation. The petrichor rose from the damp earth stained with morning, leeching into Suga’s nostrils as she watched, hunched against a tree trunk, shrouded from the deer’s vision.
If she wanted to, Suga could slice her hand across the deer’s flanks before it had time to swallow its mouthful of herbs. She squinted at her fingertips. She could imagine sinking her claws into the soft underbelly, tearing it open.

If she wanted to.

Suga leaned over her knees and pulled up her trouser sleeves, rubbing the ache, wishing it away. The runners’ shiny metal casing was visible in places where her flesh had not quite closed. She tried to stretch her sore ankles, but it was near impossible with the runners still inside her feet.

Suga felt about the outside of her knees for the levers and pushed, drawing a rattled breath when the runners emerged from the cuts on her under-soles; half a dozen spikes protruding from a metal pedestal in each leg, powered by a clockwork engine enabling the legs to move at incredible speed.

The pain had never gone away. Not once, since they had first inserted the runners inside her legs more than four years ago, or maybe a thousand; Suga had lost count.

She recalled what Jimmy said about the runners.

He said a lot; but then he made life easier, even if he was all talk.

It was Jimmy who built the straps for the runners, fashioning them out of his own leather belts.

They wore the leather casing over their legs, from heel to kneecap, protecting the damaged skin from attacks, infections and the terror of tropical mosquitoes.

Jimmy had also replaced the machinery that connected the runner to the knee, switching the pewter clockwork prongs with a smaller set made of copper. He declared it reduced the amount of toxins released. He was their official mechanic and their source of sunshine.

He’d suggested they embrace their new nickname with pride, the day Jai came crying after the Matale children’s catcalls.

Demon Runners, Suga thought, suited them well. Clockwork-enhanced soldiers: created by the British Raj, but used as weapons against them.

They weren’t human anymore.

At least Suga wasn’t. She could not be, not after all the pain she had withstood at the Factory after she was taken from her parents.

“Adoh Suga?” Rama, the oldest of the runners in Suga’s pack was limping over to her from the direction of the village.

He paused to catch a breath; the uphill trek hard on his legs when the runners were sheathed. His long oily hair was slicked backed in tight braids. His large forehead made him look much older than his twenty years.

“What you do to this bastard, huh?”

The other children followed Rama into the little copse.

Shreya had her arm wrapped around Jimmy’s neck, dragging him along. She and the boys were laughing. Jimmy sported a forlorn pout and refused to look anywhere near Suga. As they drew nearer Suga could see the tear-stains.

“Why you make our baby cry?” Shreya grinned, pulling Jimmy’s tall lanky form down to her height, almost strangling him. “What you do, you heartless demon?”

“Suga so mean!” piped little Hari, the miracle child.

He didn’t know why he was so special, but Hari had survived the implants at a very young age when the rest of his batch died within the first week. His grin was empty; he had lost all his baby teeth during a skirmish in the Matale Mountains.

Suga pulled the levers back and the runners slid into her feet.

Around her the Demon Runners were laughing at Jimmy.

Rama scratched his beard, eyeing Suga with a small smirk. “This is why you give up on Suga, Private Rudolf.” He advised Jimmy. “Why a Demon Runner? If you want to marry Ceylonese girl, there are nice ones in the village. Or wait ‘till we take back Kandy from your people. Then you can have a princess or council daughter.”

“I heard the Disawe’s daughter is beautiful.” lisped Tissa. He nibbled on his tongue, stained crimson from beetle quid. He was thirteen and the only one of them who knew how to read English; a fact he boasted about every day. “He hides her in the palace because he is friends with the king.”

Rama reached out to hit him on his head. “Fool! Where’d you pick these things up, eh? The Disawe don’t have daughters. Even he did, he can’t hide them in the palace any more than you. He is a traitor.”

Suga got up and walked away.

If Keppetipola Disawe did have a daughter, would he hide her away? Or would he insist she fought in the rebellion alongside everyone else?

Would he not care; just as he had no qualms about sending seven-year-old Hari and ten-year-old Jai to the front during ambushes, straight at the English muskets, not knowing when a stray bullet would end their young lives, no matter how fast they could run.

Suga had no love for the rebel leader.

After all, he had been in the English military until the latter stages of the uprising. He had switched sides so easily so who was to say he would not do so again? Run back to the foreign dogs the moment they offered him something shinier.

The reason Suga stuck around was for the shiny things.

When the Disawe freed them from the Factory, Suga’s first instinct had been to run.

But she did not know where.

She stayed, ready to leave at any given moment as she listened to Keppetipola Disawe welcome the little pockets of Demon Runners, inviting them to use their gift to fight for the freedom of their country.

“I have liberated you,” Suga had the speech memorised. “Now go and liberate your country!”

Suga did not join in the drunken cheers. She planned her escape that night but stumbled in on looters in the Factory Warden’s chambers, stuffing jewellery into bags.

For the first time in her life, Suga had a purpose.

All the spoils of war she collected from corpses were coins and other items of value; lockets, clocks on chains, gold, silver. They waited for her in a shed not too far from the banana plantation behind the village. Waited for the day she returned with whatever she could steal in Kandy.

Suga had heard it was the richest city in the kingdom. Robert Brownrigg, the governor himself, brought over trunks of valuables. The palace was home to the crown jewels of the Nayakkar Kings and a roof completely encased in gold.

Once she got her hands on some of that, Suga would kiss this bloody rebellion goodbye and head home to the parents whose faces she couldn’t remember.

Maybe when they see what she brought with her they would forget that she had metal sticking out of her legs and hands, forget that she went away a child and came back a freak.

Maybe they would even forgive her.

Rumours had started spreading of how the end seemed near for the rebellion, especially the speed with which the Disawe and his fellow council were taking down the English trading routes leading to Kandy.

“My friends, we are now closer to our destiny,” The Disawe spoke to them the night before as they prepared for the Taking of Wellassa. “We are closer to freedom! Closer now, to throwing these insufferable foreigners from our beloved nation and taking it back. For the Sinhalese,”

The Sinhalese in the crowd hooted in reply, “For the Tamils,” The Tamils only nodded, some attempting to raise their fists but thinking better of it midway.

Suga watched with hooded eyes, sprawled on a gunny bag in the midst of Rama and the other children.

She wondered if it was possible for the rebels to defeat the English in this state. Though none of the Council seemed willing to acknowledge it, there was a deep rift growing between the rebels, one painstakingly fed into the history of the island by English propaganda.

In the beginning, the rebels were less concerned with their ethnicity and more determined to gain their freedom. But lately there was a lot of friction. People whispered in corners.

Who’s going to rule once we’ve chased the English away?

Suga let her gaze wander over to the Disawe, bent over a roughly drawn map of the Eastern Mountains. He was listening avidly to Headman Marikkar describing the landscape to Lord Duraisami.

Who would betray them first?

Not that Suga cared. Before the betraying began, she would be well on her way out of there.
Keppetipola Disawe finished his strategy meeting and began to speak to the councillors. The rest of the rebels dispersed.

Rama stood and taking his cue the rest of their Demon Runner pack did as well. Rama looked down at Suga and then at the Disawe who she was watching.

“You coming Suga? Past lunch time already and I only had a coconut shell of rice before.”

Suga dismissed him with a wave.

The Disawe was nodding at something the Headman was saying. His eyes were half closed and Suga could see from the glimmer in them that the Disawe did not trust him.

What did you see in us? The day you broke into the Factory?

Are we just machines to you?

Will you give us freedom?

Or will you have us put to death?

Suga could imagine that scenario well.

There was nothing the Ceylonese loved more than a good public killing.

Death did not scare Suga.

She had seen more than her share of it during her days in the Factory.

Two years, for two whole years she had been paralysed.

It shook her even now, just thinking about it.

The Factory had always smelled of death, mingling jovially with the pungent aroma of formaldehyde. It was the taste that remained in the back of her mouth after her nightmares woke her. Suga trained daily, waking up before the rooster crowed and going to bed before sundown.

Tired as she was, Suga was happy, she supposed. Happy to run, happy to gobble down any and every meal concoction the surgeons brought her. Plates of multi-coloured fruit shipped in from all over the Orient. White rice and dhal, coconut milk, peahen soup and gotukola broth.

The scientists peeled back her calves like ripe bananas so they could taper the runners to the bone. After that, the calves were sewn back and the skin grafted loosely to keep an eye on the healing.

The raw ache kept Suga awake all night, even though she had been shot through with coca, the sedative that knocked her cellmates to the brink of death.

Though the pain persisted, Suga healed in the expected time frame.

She was wheeled out for tests and had even run a short distance, thrilled at her heightened speed and the sense of entitlement that came with it. Entitlement, a feeling she did not know she would possess.

Suga did not remember when the paralysis hit.

Maybe she was trying not to.

But it came with no fair warning as she did all her rehabilitation exercises, drank all her warm milk mint and honey, peered at the clinking clockwork before she went to sleep that night only to wake up and find that her legs no longer responded.

Suga did not panic. She tried to raise herself off of the floor after she had rolled down from her hardboard bed.

She tried several times.

And it was then the terror hit her.

She had to be carried thrashing and screaming into the medical ward and strapped down onto a metal table with leashes. She hammered her head against the bedrail until she bled from her nose, the viscous liquid blotting her face.

At least that was what Rama told her. The truth could have been worse. Suga had no memory of the details, though the fear was still fresh in her heart.

After she coughed up bile and globules of blood, Suga had fallen silent.

She would remain this way for two and a half years.

For Suga, it felt like an eon; lying there, covered in bedsores she could no longer feel, her legs limp and useless, her clothes, soiled and crusted.

She shuddered at the memory.

She did not know what made her fight back after those two long years.

She had sat up in bed one night and used her aching claws to cut her bonds. She tried to roll off to her feet but was sprawling on the cold floor instead, stunned by the fall. She pushed back on her hands, her claws scraping silver trails, her arms shaking until she was sitting on the floor, shoved onto her knees for support.

Suga fell several times. She fell until there was a sickening crunch and her nose connected with the hard cement.

The officer on night duty found her, coated in blood, still struggling to rise. Unable to help her himself, Private Jimmy Rudolf called Rama, who happened to live in the nearest cell.

Rama told her later that she insisted they leave her alone, she had cried that if she did not try to stand up today, she would die.

Helpless, Jimmy and Rama had withdrawn, watching Suga tumble over and over again, gurgling in small breaths through her broken nose.

When it seemed like Jimmy would faint from hysterics, Rama had called the wardens and Suga was drugged and tied back in bed.

The Head Warden had come to see her the next morning. Suga could try to walk using the exercise bars, she had said, if she promised to stay in bed the rest of the week.

It was her next six months at the bars that unknowingly initiated her into the group of Demon Runners that she would later call her pack. They were the youngest of the various pockets in the Factory; children of slaves and minor labourers. The offspring of the lower castes.

When they learned how much Suga despised aid, they helped her by staying out of her way and being charming and cheerful and self-deprecating as Suga began to find her arms growing stronger, larger, cords of brown muscle rippling as she pulled her body up onto the metal poles, her knuckles bruised and white.

#

Her face was wet.

Suga drew her sleeve across her cheeks and blinked her stinging eyes at the horizon where evening approached, slowly bronzing over the landscape. There was a pair of sambhurs grazing in the plains, bigger and less wary than a deer.

She watched how the buck moved parallel to the doe at all times, shielding her from possible threats.

When Suga met Jimmy, he called her, ‘Lalla Rukh.’

She only managed twenty steps without holding the bars and the sudden proclamation made her lose both her count and her balance.

She fell with a thump on her backside, scowling at the pale English boy.

He had taken to watching over her, ever since she had returned to rehabilitation.

Rama claimed he was the new soldier assigned to runner guard duty in their section. Though the rest of the guards came and went, Jimmy was a permanent fixture to the delight of Shreya and Tissa who always loved a good tease and Rama, Suga suspected, though he feigned disinterest.

Jimmy walked over to her and put his hands under her armpits to heave her up. “I understand now what Thomas Moore was implying by oriental women being tulip-cheeked.” He said, moving his hands down to her elbows to steady her.

He was standing close enough for Suga to see tendrils of the ocean in his blue eyes and count the dusting of freckles on his nose. She shoved him as hard as she could while maintaining her balance and that was the only time, she saw him register surprise at her rebuffs.

He was there that evening, following her wherever she went.

He spoke to her all the time.

At first Suga ordered him away, even grazing his cheek with her claws once when she hit out at him, but found that allowing him to stay required a great deal less effort than getting him to go.

He had come down from England in the last boat. New soldier; assigned to the Factory after he became the sole survivor of a Kandyan guerrilla attack on the banks of the Mahaweli River. He was a lover of poetry.

Suga failed to comprehend the enchantment in a bunch of useless words strung together like a seashell necklace, conspicuous and insubstantial, but the English boy swore by Shakespeare, by Milton and by the modern Irishman Thomas Moore whose latest work about a Mughal princess was not yet famous, but very soon would be, or so Jimmy believed.

Suga never responded to Jimmy’s endless declarations. She barely understood him sometimes.

She wondered how she could be rid of his constant company but to her chagrin found he had been appointed guard to the rehabilitation chambers during her hours of therapy.

He watched over her as if she were a new-born.

She would see him flinch every time she fell and when she cried out in pain; the eyes that welled up with tears were his.

Suga did not understand how a stranger could feel for her this way. It felt too intimate. It felt wrong, dirty in some way but at the same time comforting, like a breath you were holding in suspense. These kinds of thoughts left her edgy.

She punched him hard once for trying to help her get up.

The bruise stayed for a week, adding a bit of rosy colour to his otherwise pallid features. It did not deter him one bit, though he seemed to have learned his lesson where touching was concerned.

He never touched her again. Instead he told her his life story.

Jimmy was an unwanted child.

His parents had been very successful in the fishing industry until his birth. Jimmy’s father, for whom he was named, drowned when his boat hit a storm off the coast of Dover.

Witnesses claimed the waves had been over ten feet high, a sign of the wrath of Poseidon.

Within weeks, one of Jimmy’s brothers, the only one in the family to be accepted into a university, died in a fire.

After the tragic death of his sister, just two years his senior, strangled by her own blanket, Jimmy’s family and neighbours began to believe that he was cursed and should be got rid of as soon as possible.

His mother left him and he grew up in an orphanage owned by his maternal uncle, who never ignored a chance to tell Jimmy of the misfortune he had brought down on otherwise kind and God-fearing folk who had done no wrong.

As soon as he was old enough to enlist, Jimmy was packed off to the military and shipped out to His Majesty’s eastern colonies.

“It is hard, to know you have a family but find no place amongst them.” He told her one particularly hot evening, sitting a good metre away from Suga who was sprawled on a patch of sunlight, too tired to move.

Fat flies buzzed lazily overhead, fanning her streaked face with their tiny wings. She could smell the sour perspiration she knew was gathering on his flushed cheeks and shirt front. It was a scent she synchronized with solace, a scent around which she unwittingly let her guard down.

“Isn’t the sun too strong?” Jimmy whispered. “Shall I block the window with something?”

She responded as usual by turning away and woke later to find him sitting across from her, shading her face with his open palms.

“Watching her struggle so hard to live, it makes me think of myself.” He told Rama once when the older Demon Runner teased the boy about his budding affection. Suga was strapping on her gear protectors nearby, secretly listening in. “She inspires me to try to live.”

Suga did not know what to make of that.

For the most, Jimmy just confused her.

He made her wonder if there was more to life than merely existing.

Sometimes, she dared to see hope in his shy smile and blue eyes.

Then he said things like, “Olive skin and tulip cheeks, hair as black as raven feathers,” and she wanted to rake her claws across his face.

#

The Uva Rebellion reached its decisive battle in the plains of Wellassa, chilled crispy by the unforgiving October winds.

Suga did not know how strong the rebels were, but Jimmy said Keppetipola’s army numbered over twenty and a thousand.

The Disawe was hell-bent on meeting the English reconnaissance in the Wellassa plains even though both Lord Duraisami and Councilman Madugalle were against it.

They claimed that while the Demon Runners gave the rebels an advantage, the English intelligence knew of it now and for sure, must have figured out a defensive counter-plan.

But the Disawe was adamant. Speed was their advantage.

Later Suga wondered about his blind faith in the Demon Runners.

Was he so fascinated by their advanced mechanical ability, he was blind to all else?

Or did he despise them so much he could not wait to sacrifice them?

As dawn approached over the blushing hillside, scouts arrived at the camp.

The Governor’s reinforcements were making their way across the plain towards Kandy.

The anticipation of the kill sent shock waves surging into Suga’s brain, sparking it to life.

She could feel her legs reacting to the adrenaline rush; she switched the gears in her knees, rearing to go.

Rama was checking their straps and their cowhide protectors, as he did every time they went into battle. He gave Suga a customary onceover but bent to check every lock on the two little ones.

Jimmy Rudolf hovered around them clutching an oil tin, muttering to a giggling Jai and a disapproving Tissa that he wished he could come with them.

“No one trust you.” Tissa pointed at Jimmy’s face pockmarked with mosquito bites. “You white boy.”

“But he make great secret weapon, no?” Jai countered. “You should be runner too, Jimmy. Suckers won’t fight you because your white skin and you could kill them all.”

Rama shoved Jai playfully. “Jimmy never said he was on our side.” He threw a wink in Jimmy’s direction.

“But he not against us either.”

Rama nodded, smiling outright. He ruffled Hari’s thatched head. “Yes Hari, he not against us either.”

Shreya pulled a stalk from a nettle bush and looped her hair through it. “That’s why the Disawe didn’t kill him, no?” She tossed back her ponytail and jerked her head in Suga’s direction. “The only thing Jimmy good for is romance Suga.”

Jimmy sidled up to Suga, his eyes on her. She knew he was checking her straps so she deliberately turned her legs away.

“I wish I could come with you.” His breath ruffled strands of hair onto her cheeks.

Suga turned to throw him a dirty look.
Jimmy held her gaze for a couple of seconds and had Suga been someone else she would have been dazzled by just how blue his eyes were. How was it possible? How could eyes be the colour of the ocean?

“You can do nothing. Just go back to your people.”

That was the last she ever spoke to him.

The Runners were left at the top of the hill, hidden amongst the trees as the Disawe and his army headed down, crouched underneath the tall grass, moving towards the reinforcements, a small contingent of soldiers coming from the Port down south.

At a yell from the front, the rebels charged, taking the English by surprise.

Suga leapt from the underbrush and started to run. Around her the rest of the Demon Runners bolted out like arrows from their hiding places and whizzed across the plains.

Suga grimaced as the gears clanked to life in her legs, propelling her forward with rapid thrust. She let the momentum lift her in the air and attacked the first soldier in her vicinity with both her heels and her claws.

She felt the spikes bite into the soft flesh and warm sweet-smelling blood enveloped her fingers.

The feeling gave her an elation she savoured and had longed for since her first battle.

She cart-wheeled back onto her feet and raced across to the other end of the dirt road where several cavalrymen were making a run for it.

She let the spikes slice the tendons on a horse’s leg and the animal knelt so suddenly its rider was a tangle of red gore on a tree.

Her hands and heels were soaked, the cuts and bruises and disfigurations drowned in the blood of white men.

They were winning!

Suga saw a bullet.

She did not know if it was part of her ability, something that came with the heightened speed.

Though if thought about rationally, having clockwork gears in your legs should not give your eyes any power whatsoever.

The bullet sang in the air and went straight through Jai’s forehead like he was made of paper.

Jai’s eyes widened and diminished, red liquid gushed from the hole in his temple.

Suga could have sworn he was smiling as he fell backwards and lay very still until the flurry of war erased him from Suga’s line of sight.

A rush of shots echoed one after another when Suga realised it was coming from the cliff that faced the plains from the east.

She wondered what the Disawe would think of that.

Lord Duraisami had been right.

Suga saw a soldier aim a gun at Rama.

It was different from the usual rifles. There was a small hole the soldier held up to his eye, squinting.

The Demon Runners had not been the only advancements developed at the Factory by the English.

There had been many other experiments. Most useless, but some…

Oh? Suga thought. Precision pointers?

She spun towards Rama, her scream breaking into a million colourless pieces. She cut down anything in her way, whether they were man or beast, white or brown.

Rama!

She felt something hit her on the back of her head, jarring her teeth and blotting out all the light in her world.

#

Keppetipola Disawe’s head separated from the rest of his body in one blow of an axe.

Suga watched placidly as an English soldier picked up the rolling head by the hair, holding it at arm’s length so the sticky blood did not stain his boots.

The Disawe had been brave to the very end, gamely offering to tie up his hair so his head was chopped off cleanly. He asked for a prayer book and recited his gaatha; his eyes shining as if he was certain nirvana waited for him on the other side.

A lot of good it will do for you, Suga thought. The horses will still piss on your headless corpse.

The worst part of the whole execution was Councilman Madugalle.

He screamed and thrashed the whole way, begging for forgiveness, tears and mucus pouring down his face. He offered to give up secret information about imaginary Demon Runners and non-existent rebels and long-dead Yaksha witch tribes hiding out in the Matale Mountains.

Suga wished that it was Madugalle who had died on the battlefield and not Lord Duraisami. He would have done something. He would have tried to save them.

Not that he would have been successful.

Even the Disawe seemed to have forgotten about his super soldiers.

The English officials pretended they had no idea what the runners were, or why the Crown would require oriental slave warriors enhanced by mechanical means when the Crown had brave men of unquestionable loyalty, descendants of those that had always fought for King and Country.

Abominations, the runners were called, demons, unnatural beings.

Desecrators of God’s Will.

How would you know what God’s Will was? Suga argued, but only in her head.

Governor Brownrigg had come up to Kandy for the executions.

He declared that the rebels be wiped off the face of the earth and the Ceylonese people be forgiven, gracious as he was, gracious as His Majesty, their liege was, provided that they never attempt to betray their benefactors again.

He ordered the rice fields in Wellassa and other Uva villages allegedly involved, to be burnt to the ground, animals culled, the farmlands razed.

She thought about her parents.

About her pathetic dream to go back to them armed with her spoils of war.

They were probably dead anyway.

As they led Suga up to the block she searched for what remained of her pack. The grime-stained faces of Shreya and Tissa stared back at her but Suga’s eyes blurred over and she could not make them out properly.

She did not want to see them now, only remember them as they had been.

Wails of despair drew her gaze elsewhere, on to the pinched pink face of Jimmy Rudolf.

He had shouted out for the innocence of the runners. He had confessed to spending time with them, confessed to knowledge of their origins. Proposed to take the governor and anyone willing to the Factory. To where it all began.

“They should not be blamed for their fate,” he cried. “Spare them!”

He was held back by two of his comrades now, cringing and begging in a voice that had long lost its ability to form coherent words.

The soldier leading her kicked her hard on her clockwork knees, forcing a grunt out of her as she fell to the ground.

Before they laid her head on the block, she locked eyes with Jimmy. Silver gemstone tears cascaded from his ocean eyes; raw from crying they were almost bleeding.

His mouth moved, chapped ruddy lips forming three words.

Suga smiled.

                                        END