Believe it or not, staring at the ceiling stones was more fun.
3.
At the end of the first day, there came a noise at the door. It was the beautiful Miss Daw. Behind her was Sister Twitchett, the school nurse.
“Am I to be released?” was the first thing I asked them. To me, it seemed as if I had already been in the cell for as long as would serve any purpose, as long as could be imagined.
Miss Daw took out a tiny tape recorder of a type I had not seen before; it played a crystal disc that shimmered with rainbows instead of a cassette. When she pushed the button, the sound of her own violin music filled the cell. It was one of these intricate things by Bach, all grace notes and mathematically symmetrical themes and counterpoints. Even though my powers were off at the moment, and my higher senses were dim, I could still tell it was flattening space in the area around me.
“I didn’t know you could do that with a recording,” I said. Again, no answer from either of them.
Without speaking, the Sister took out a hypodermic, rubbed alcohol on my elbow, found the vein with her needle, and gave me an injection.
The first of several.
They no longer trusted us to drink our medicine, and I am sure the doses were larger. I grew faint from the medicine, and they dressed me and put me to sleep in the cot.
I wish the drug had knocked me out. After they went away, I spent most of the night unsleeping, feeling sorry for myself, and fearing that I would roll off the cot in the night and choke to death.
4.
Two days went by, then three. The only person I saw was Miss Daw. She would appear at the door, holding a bowl of food and a beaker of water, dressed in some smart outfit of plum or burgundy or palest rose to bring out the color in her peaches-and-cream complexion. On the third day, there was a fresh roll of toilet paper on the tray.
She would pick up the bowl from the previous meal, which I was supposed to have washed with my limited supply of washing water, and carry away the chamber pot.
In the evening, she would come by with a bucket of warm water, lead me over to the drain, undress me, and give me a sponge bath. I wore the same nightgown I had before, and the same school uniform by day, plaid skirt and white shirt. They did not have any prison tunics, I suppose.
5.
The only fun thing I did on the third day was trying to use my trick to decrease the mass of the collar. I waited till just before Sister Twitchett and her nightly hypo were due, figuring that Dr. Fell’s foul drug would be weakest at that time.
I found I could move a few of the plumb-straight world-lines, which ran from the collar toward the core of the Earth, to the left or right. This did make the collar lighter, but it now wobbled unexpectedly on my neck, shifting weight oddly, as if it were on the deck of a pitching ship, even though my body was firmly on shore. That hurt more.
A fourth day went by. A fifth.
Miss Daw was always dressed nicely, as if for a social call. I do not know which was more ill-suited to a dungeon; her high-heeled pumps and sleek semiformal dresses, topped by tiny Continental hats pinned to her hair, or my schoolgirl’s uniform, knee socks and jacket and with a bow in my hair. And heavy iron collar and chain. Let’s not forget that. At least I did not have to wear that dumb necktie.
I complained about the collar to her. She was clearly under orders not to talk to me but, when I talked about chafing and bruises and raw spots around my neck, she nodded. “I’ll see what I can do, dear.”
That was the only human voice I heard for days. That one comment. “I’ll see what I can do, dear.”
And that was my life.
No, he wasn’t kidding. Yes, they put me in a jail.
And jail was boring. Bee, owe, are, eye, an, gee. Boring.
6.
I began to find other things to think about. I wondered how old I really was.
You would think I could have at least established a minimum age, right? I mean, count how many winters since you started having your period. Find something you know happened the summer before that, and the Christmas before that.
One problem was, I did not know, when I was young, that I was supposed to start counting. I did not even know people had ages, till I came across the idea in a book I read when I was young. I started keeping track then, but how old was I when I started reading? There were no younger kids around to measure myself against, except for Colin and Quentin and Vanity. They started reading younger than I did.
A person who had met a hundred five-year-olds, and had them clearly identified, knows what a five-year-old looks like. At what age do boys grow beards? A normal person knows the answer, or at least can give a range of dates. All I had to go by was Shakespeare’s speech about the ages of man given in As You Like It. When I was young, I thought I would know when Victor had reached the age of being a soldier because he would start having strange oaths on his lips.
What age is a girl when she develops breasts? Nine? Twelve? Twenty? All I knew is that Vanity had them before I did, and I thought they would get in the way of swimming and wrestling.
I did not know years had numbers until we came across them in a more modern history book. Herodotus and Thucydides didn’t have dates in them, aside from so-many-years since so-and-so. No dates are given for anything in the Bible, except, “Augustus ordered all the world to be taxed…” Or “When Herod was governor of Syria…”
We had lessons, but we did not have grades. I could not say to myself, “I must have been in grammar school when I read Euclid and college when I read Lobechevski…” because I did not know when other students read things.
Once or twice, we were let out to play with some of the children in nearby Abertwyi. Mrs. Wren organized a game, or something. If, during our chatter, some topic came up from schooling, the village children simply seemed like bumpkins to us. Even children much older than us seemed not to know grammar, or languages, or geometry, or logic, or rhetoric, or astronomy, or electronics, or the sciences. I met a boy I was sure was older than me, once, who told me that the Earth has weight because of the spin on its axis. I asked him if things were weightless at the North Pole, and he was stumped. Other boys we sometimes played ball with talked about people they wanted to be like when they grew up. I had never heard of any of them. Were they sports figures, perhaps? Rock-and-roll stars? But they did not know who Admiral Byrd or Sir Edmund Hillary or Yuri Gagarin were. They never heard of Sir Ernest Shackleton. They thought Captain Cook was a character from Peter Pan.
They seemed to know a lot about how to cheat on tests, they knew all about their computers and electronic games, and they knew about the characters on television. We were only allowed to watch the television in the Common Room once a week. Headmaster said it would rot our brains if we saw too much.
I just could not believe that everything the Headmaster said was a lie. So much seemed to be true. I believe what he said about television, for example.
But when I added up memories, and counted events, I knew I was older than the fourteen years he gave me. Unless my puberty was very late, I doubt that I was actually twenty-one.
But, thinking back, I realize that Headmaster Boggin certainly must have lied. I did not envy Vanity when she started having her period, and frankly I was not that much enamored of growing up to be a pale sissy like Miss Daw. And if I could control my body so much as that, why hadn’t I always stayed stronger and faster than Colin and Quentin? It was absurd to think that I secretly desired to be defeated, overpowered, and outmuscled by men.
That thought cheered me for a while. Then a haunting memory rose up in my brain. I remember Grendel Glum saying he had done something to me, influenced me with his willpower, to make my secret desires exactly so.
7.
On the fourth day, despite the drugs, I was able to get my fingers under the collar and push my neck slightly into the fourth dimension. Not enough to get it off my head, mind you, but it made the collar seem slightly larger. The iron had the faintest blue sheen to it
when I did that, and the faintest red sparks glinted like fireflies around my fingertips. (I could place a point of view a few inches to my left, half an inch into the “red” direction, to glimpse this.)
It must have set off some alarm, because Miss Daw came to the door almost immediately. She set up her music player, and had it play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
On the fourth and fifth day I had music. That was nice, I suppose.
Whenever the disc got to the same track, and played the Schiller poem from the middle of the Ninth, however, and I heard the German voices singing about the Joy of Man, light, free notes rising and rising to unimpeded glory, I cried again.
8.
On the sixth day I begged Miss Daw to speak to me, but she shook her head and looked pensive. I asked her if I was to be allowed to go to Chapel tomorrow; I needed to pray for my soul.
That got a reaction out of her, a little smile with her head tilted to one side. “I had not heard that you were especially devout. In fact, I have heard rumors to quite the opposite effect, if such rumors can be countenanced.”
Two dozen words, or more! An oasis after the endless sand dunes of silence.
“Everyone gets religion when they are in prison, Miss Daw.”
That answer perhaps was too flippant, for she smiled a gracious but cold smile, and began to turn away.
“Oh, please!” I said. “For the love of God, please! Even if you don’t believe me, even if you think it’s just a trick to get me out of this horrid room, please Miss Daw, please, isn’t it simple decency, simple plain English decency, to let a girl who thinks she is about to die go pray?”
“Who has told you such a falsehood, Miss Windrose? No one is going to kill you.”
“Who told me otherwise? You won’t talk to me!”
She looked around the cell; a soft, sad look came into her eyes for a moment. She was thinking that I had been waiting for days for some execution, tormenting myself with a fear that was utterly false, a fear she could have alleviated with a word.
“Well,” she said, “I will see if you can be taken up to the Chapel tomorrow. You do not have the energy relationship in the moral direction a person devoted to his God normally manifests. Your relational structures are extensional rather than intentional, and form nodes going into two time-directions, but not toward eternity. This type of atrophy is typical of atheists and agnostics. But—take heart, my dear, do not be so downcast. The forms must be observed. That is why we have forms to begin with.”
“Then I can go to Chapel?”
“I’ll see what I can do, dear.”
My lip trembled. “That is what you said about this collar…”
“That will be looked into.”
20
Company, of a Sort
1.
That Saturday was the worst, and also the oddest. After long hours of watching the square of sunlight from the barred window crawl West-to-East across the floorstones, Miss Daw and Sister Twitchett came to the barred door, unlocked it, and let themselves in. Miss Daw was carrying a dress on a hanger, protected by a plastic sheet and smelling of lavender.
Miss Daw gestured to me, indicating that I was to put on the dress she had brought. Because I was tired of silence, I pretended not to understand her gestures, “What? I beg your pardon? Is something wrong with your voice?”
“You must don this, please,” she said. Miss Daw has a voice like silver crystal, soft and pure.
Anyone speaking after Miss Daw speaks sounds like a crow. Sister Twitchett spoke after Miss Daw. “Put it on and no back-talk, or we dope you up and dress you ourselves. Save us work, if you heed.”
After being spanked by Boggin, merely disrobing in front of two school staff did not embarrass me. My shirt and jacket unbuttoned along the front; I wasn’t wearing a sweater or anything else that had to be drawn over my head. Soon I was standing there, just in the iron collar, a swaying ‘U’ of slack chain leading away from it.
“Socks and shoes, too,” said Twitchett.
“Where are the others?” I said. “Are they dead? Are they back at school? Is Vanity safe?”
When neither one answered, I tore the clothes she held from Miss Daw’s hands and threw them on the ground. “I am not getting dressed or doing anything till you tell me!”
Twitchett looked frightened. No one has ever looked frightened of me before. She thought I was the monster from beyond space and time that Boggin said I was. I saw it in her eyes.
She said to Miss Daw, “Let’s open the window and leave. She’ll want to get dressed in the morning, after the snow blows in.”
Miss Daw said to me in a gentle voice, “The other students are quite safe, but they are confined in cells like this one. I would not allow anything to happen to you.”
(That was interesting. Not “We would not allow,” but “I would not allow.”)
Sister Twitchett looked at Miss Daw. “We were told, ma’am, not to jaw with her… ”
Miss Daw inclined her head to Twitchett with a tiny smile. “I would be in your debt, if you only told the Headmaster how cooperative Miss Windrose was. Need I say more?”
Twitchett frowned, but said nothing. Miss Daw put her little gloved hand on the other woman’s elbow, thanked her, and turned back to me.
I said: “Tell me what happened to them! Where’s Vanity?”
Miss Daw said in a voice as soft as ripples on a pond, “Once you are dressed, I will tell you.”
The dress was a peach silk affair, almost too sheer to be an evening dress. The bodice laced up the back, and spaghetti string ties ran over the shoulders. The bosom cups were made of stiff, reinforced fabric and decorated with black and white lace. The skirt was unpleated silk, with tiny darts at the waist, and a handkerchief bottom. The underwear, bra and panties both, were built into the inner lining of the dress, so that it clung very tightly, but with no sign of lines.
Black nylon hose came next, which were suspended from a hidden garter belt, also woven into the inner lining of the lower part of the bodice. Miss Daw knelt to fasten on slender stiletto heels.
“I can’t walk in heels that high,” I said.
“You won’t be needing to walk,” said Sister Twitchett.
The Sister brought over the stool and had me sit. Out from her medical bag, she drew several lengths of chain.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “What are those for?”
Miss Daw said, “This is not as bad as it seems. It is all part of the process.”
“What process? I don’t want to be part of any process!”
Miss Daw said, “I won’t let anyone harm you, child.”
Sister Twitchett rolled her eyes. I could almost see what she was thinking. The shape-changing monster looks like a girl, but it is not a girl.
Twitchett crossed my wrists in my lap and chained them together with a pair of handcuffs. A steel chain wound around my waist, so that I had to keep my wrists close to my navel. A second steel chain, about three feet long, dropped down between my legs. This attached to a pair of ankle cuffs that hobbled me.
Neither one had the heavy, cast-iron links of the collar’s chain. These looked machine-tooled, modern.
I had seen such a get-up before. On some documentary on one of the rare days when we could see television in the Common Room, our program had been interrupted by pictures of some famous criminal (I forget who) being led from a police van in handcuffs, with a belly-chain and leg irons. I think it was an American, because he wore an orange jumpsuit instead of a normal prison uniform.
This increased my hope and my fear. Were they about to transport me somewhere? If my friends were being transported too, I might be able at least to see Victor and the others. If we were all put in the same van, I could talk to them.
Maybe this was a party dress. I began to imagine that I was to be hauled before some ballroom full of guests, Mavors in a tuxedo and Lady Cyprian in a ball gown, with other gods and monsters present, so that Boggin could show them how rough
ly he was treating me.
Or maybe they were about to transport me more permanently. Boggin may have already failed, and the four of us were being sent to four destinations. Perhaps they had thrown lots for us. Maybe the Satyr or his faction had won me, and insisted I be dressed up before being sent along.
2.
While Sister Twitchett was kneeling down, stringing chains and locking locks, Miss Daw brought out a makeup kit of truly absurd size. It unfolded and unfolded again. There were more brushes than an artist would use, and lipstick, eye pencils, crayons, blushes, and creams. There were little tools and implements I had never seen before. There was a thing that had handles like a pair of scissors, but which led to a curved rubber pair of jaws, meant for clamping onto eyelashes.
Miss Daw’s hands were soft on my face, and I could feel cool touches where she applied various layers of base and blush. I had never worn lipstick before, but it tasted terrible. I also had thought lipstick was just gunk in a tube, but Miss Daw used three or four tubes, and a little pencil. There was something that tasted like spearmint, which she rubbed onto my teeth with her finger.
I was nervous when she painted my eyes, and worried when she kept putting her fingers too close, but I obeyed her instructions when she told me to look left and right, up or down. She brushed my lashes with a little comb the size of a toothpick.
She took out a powder puff and dusted my shoulders and the tops of my breasts where the bodice pushed them up.
Sister Twitchett was done with her chaining up long before the makeup was done. She packed her bag and I was left alone with Miss Daw.
Orphans of Chaos tcc-1 Page 29