The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  Deborah stared helplessly at the stupid tray.

  “And put down those bandages!” The doctor’s voice rose with impatience. “A mop and bucket will be more use for what you have to do.” He pointed to a door that opened into a utility room.

  With trembling hands, Deborah grabbed a bucket from beneath the sink and filled it with water.

  “Disinfectant,” the voice barked, and muttered something about filthy Ignorants.

  Deborah picked up the plastic bottle next to the tap and squirted a dose of evil-smelling gel into the bucket. The doctor watched with a disdainful curl of his lip.

  “Through the doors at the end of the ward. And be quick, it’s like an abattoir in there.”

  Deborah gulped as the doors opened briefly to let out a white-coated figure spattered in blood and carrying what looked like a meat cleaver.

  “Sanitation,” one of the doctors shouted before letting the doors swing closed behind him.

  Fighting back a desire to be sick, Deborah walked the length of the ward, trying not to listen to the moans and laboured breathing of the sick men. Suddenly she felt it, taking her breath away, the pulsating muttering of the shadows. It was here, inside! The evil that lurked in the darkness was here, all about her.

  Her feet dragged slowly, as in a nightmare, and she stopped at the door to the secure ward. With a trembling hand she knocked and a guard opened. She said nothing; her mouth was too dry. She just held up her mop and bucket. The guard nodded and let her in.

  The doctors and nurses left, leaving only the guard and an orderly in a room that contained six beds, of which only two were occupied. The blood had run almost to the door and formed a pool beneath one of the beds where a man lay, attached by the wrists to the bed frame. One leg was heavily bandaged from the knee downwards, the white of the dressing beginning to stain pink at the end of the leg where his foot had been.

  The man’s face was pouring with sweat, and his breath rasped through clenched teeth. The idea that the anaesthetic had been at best perfunctory made Deborah feel sick. The guard leaned over the bed and peered with interest at the bloody stump. Deborah watched in horror as the prisoner tried to raise himself on his forearms and kicked out with his good leg.

  The guard raised his hand menacingly. “You going to be a good boy, now? Or shall we bring back the nice man with the cute little axe? Well hold still then,” he shouted.

  The prisoner raised his head and fixed the guard with a look of pure hatred, but he lowered his leg and lay still. With a shiver of revulsion, Deborah dipped her mop into the pool of blood. The orderly held up a syringe and squirted a small quantity of liquid into the air, then grabbed the man’s thigh and plunged the needle into it. The man hissed through clenched teeth and tried to pull away. The orderly ignored him and turned to Deborah, shaking his head in mock despair.

  “They never think of other people when they run away, do they? Nor the mess it makes for you women to clean up.” He winked and said to the guard, “That’s my shift finished. He’ll be out cold in a minute or two. Fancy a stroll outside to see Thor’s patrol? They’ve got in some siroya confiscated from one of the Ignorants in the kitchens. They know how to brew powerful booze, the Ignorants, I’ll give ’em that, and this stuff is the dog’s bollocks!”

  The guard chortled and called over his shoulder to Deborah, “When you’ve finished clearing up in here, you take your bucket and report to the supervisor of B ward. They’re a filthy lot in there, always plenty of muck to clean up.”

  Gurgling like a pair of drains, the two men left, and Deborah went back to her grisly job. The prisoner’s breathing grew gradually more regular, and he stopped tossing from side to side. The walls of the ward seemed to vibrate with an audible pulse, or perhaps it was the racing of Deborah’s heart. She dabbed at the splashes under the bed and moved round to the other side. Only then did she notice that the prisoner in the next bed was watching her. She ducked her head and mopped vigorously, clattering the mop in the bucket. She could feel the prisoner’s eyes boring into the back of her head, and her movements grew more energetic, more flustered, until, leaning a little too far to reach under the bed, her headscarf slipped to one side revealing a lock of red hair.

  The prisoner shifted over onto his right elbow and gasped in a whisper, “Deborah?”

  Deborah started and almost dropped her mop. The prisoner sat up straight, his eyes wide with astonishment.

  “I was right. It is you!”

  She had been recognized! Now he would call the guard and they would take her back to her cell, or worse. She swung round to face the man, her mouth open ready to plead with him to be silent, when the familiar blinding flash of a vision exploded around her. The man was no longer in a hospital bed but leaning over a child’s cot, his arms outstretched to pick up a child, a little girl who was bouncing up and down, laughing. The man was smiling, and the child raised her hand to touch the bristles on his cheek. The child was Deborah.

  She stared at the prisoner, stared at his hollow, malnourished cheeks, at his straw-dry, russet brown hair. His blue eyes were like none she had encountered before…except possibly in a far-off memory.

  “Father?” she cried in a tiny, little girl’s voice that had been hers the last time she called that name. “Father, is it really you?”

  “Ten years,” the man said, his voice breaking and tears filling his eyes, “but I knew I would see you again. For an instant I thought you were your mother, you look so like her. I was half-expecting—” He shook his head to clear his eyes. “But this is what she meant. This is why I am here.”

  Deborah caught hold of his outstretched hand timidly, scarcely daring to touch it. The dam broke, and with a great cry of relief and joy, she threw her arms around his neck. There were a million questions on her lips. Was he ill, maimed even? Where was her mother? How could they get to her? What had her parents done? But as she struggled to ask them all at once, her father put his finger to his lips. They both cast their eyes in the direction of the prisoner in the other bed, but he was snoring in a deep, drug-induced sleep.

  “We haven’t much time. In all these years, I have prepared what I had to say to you. If there’s any time left you can ask me your questions.” Her father took a deep breath as Deborah plumped down on the bed beside him, squirming but silent. “You must go to your mother. She is waiting for you, Outside. You must find the way yourself, unlock your memory, find your way back before the war, when the Hemisphere was still just a brilliant idea, remember Providence when it was just a huge building-site. Find the door the workmen used, that they forgot to block up when the Hemisphere was finished. It is still there, but forgotten.”

  “But where—?”

  He placed a finger on her lips. His eyes had a haunted look, as if he too could feel the presence of evil all about them, undermining the foundations of the city. He frowned, struggling to remember. He sighed and shook his head. “It was too long ago and I am too tired,” he murmured. “But it is there, she found it, your mother, in the wasteland behind the Ignorant quarter. Ask their old ones, they have only ever half-belonged to Providence; they stick close to what they remember of before. Go quickly and go silently. They say the Serpent Witch is closing in, and I don’t know whether to be afraid or to rejoice.”

  “Who is—?”

  Her father frowned. “Who knows for sure? Maybe Abaddon, the evil Serpent. Maybe the good Green Woman; probably both. The Elders fear everything beyond the confines of Providence. They know the stories the Ignorants tell about the Green Woman who will free them from bondage. They know about Abaddon, the angel of the bottomless pit, king of the demons and the desert chaos. The desert crawls with evil, the creatures of the demon king. But more than Abaddon, the Elders fear the Green Woman.”

  He paused and Deborah felt excitement surging from the pit of her stomach to set her toes, her fingertips, and the roots of her hair tingling. “But why? I don’t understand. How could anything be worse than the king of the demons?” />
  “Because, dear daughter, the Elders must choose between one or the other, and their Wise God has more in common with Abaddon than they care to admit. The Green Woman is the descendant of Mother Eve, and she is the keeper of the Memory of the world. When she releases the memories of all that was good and magical, they will sweep away the Elders and their corrupt regime. The world Outside is changing. She is ordering the chaos.” His voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “Your mother escaped because she has the Memory, Deborah. She must be the Green Woman—no other explanation is possible.”

  “Mother?”

  Her father nodded. “And you must have inherited the Memory, too.”

  “Me?”

  “You, your mother, her mother too. It’s in the bloodline, from Eve, the first mother. Your mother was the first to understand what her visions meant. The others before her probably thought they were mad.”

  “So, the things I see, they’re…real? Memories of things I’ve never seen?”

  “Bright, growing things? Green places, sunlight, people? Trees, clouds, birds?”

  Deborah’s eyes opened wide as realisation dawned.

  Her father’s face lit up with an eager smile. “They are all memories, memories you can make real.” The brief smile faded. “You must find your mother, Deborah. She needs your help; the Memory is a heavy burden. Help her to bring back the memories of the world as it should have been, and destroy this rotten regime. Go now, before the Elders use you as a hostage to stop your mother’s work.”

  “They call me Serpentspawn, Father,” she whispered.

  Her father reached out a hand and gently touched her face. He shook his head to clear the tears that misted his eyes. “I’m sorry, little girl, I’m sorry the plan didn’t work. When the Elders found out about your mother, we tried to leave, tried to get Outside, across the desert and to the mountains. But we failed, you and I. Only your mother managed to escape, with the unborn baby she was carrying.”

  He lay back with a groan of pain, struggling to catch his breath. Deborah waited, breathless, and gripped his hand tightly. She struggled to clarify her fuzzy early memories, her mother’s bulky shape, the slow way she walked that used to make the child Deborah boil over with impatience.

  “What baby?” She watched his face expectantly, waiting for him to speak again. But he just lay there, white and drained. It was all too much for her to take in. “But why.... but how...where will...?” she stammered.

  Her father touched her cheek again and smiled. “You will know the way when you find it, just use your memory. You will remember things you have never even seen before. Just try, learn to know yourself.”

  “But why can’t we go together? Why can’t you come with me?”

  He shook his head sadly. “I have been ill, so ill I thought I would die. So ill they brought me here.” He gave Deborah a rueful smile. “I am probably the only prisoner in the One-Gated House the Elders can’t afford to let die. But I am still too weak to walk far. We would be caught before we even left this ward.” Deborah started to protest, but her father put his finger to her lips again. “Time is too short; you must leave now. The Elders are looking for you. I have heard the whispered rumours. They are preparing something, something monstrous. Evil is already here, I can feel it.”

  “All the more reason then to—“

  “Soon, I promise. There are strange times coming, Deborah. The Ignorants have felt the change. The people are waking from their trance.” His eyes shone. “Only yesterday they brought in a woman for sedation who was insisting she be given back the son who was taken from her years ago. Imagine if all the mothers rose up and claimed their rights!”

  “But what about us, you, me, and Mother?” Deborah almost screamed, completely indifferent to what the other citizens of Providence thought about anything. “Are you sure Mother is still alive? Did she have the baby?”

  Her father’s face clouded over. “All I know is the Elders are afraid, and they want to keep hold of her daughter as a hostage. Your mother must be alive. The world is hurtling towards the abyss if she is dead.”

  Deborah tightened her hold on her father’s hand. In all these years of loneliness, she had built a shell that protected her from the barbs and taunts that were flung at her, even by her givenfamily. Instead of the thin, sinewy hand of a sick man, she felt again the strong grip that had once enfolded her own tiny child’s hand. She remembered holding onto a single finger as she trotted by his side, long ago, when they were still a family. Her father returned the pressure of her handclasp. She knew he shared the same memories.

  “Go now, daughter. Find your mother. The times are changing, and I must get ready to move with them. Whenever you are afraid, know I am right behind you, wherever you are I will find you. Now go, before the orderly comes back to give me my injection. Go to the basement where the cleaning staff keep their equipment. Mix with the women leaving at the end of the afternoon shift. Follow them to the Ignorant quarter. Someone will help you find the door. Go through the desert by night, head north, and make for the mountains. Take care, Deborah. Now go! Until we meet again.”

  For ten years the barrier that Deborah had built around her emotions had kept out the hurt of abandonment, had protected her from the snide comments and jibes of those who had replaced her parents. She thought she was strong, tough enough to take whatever abuse the world of the Elders threw at her. One short conversation and her defences had crumbled. She had opened up to let her father in; it was almost more than she could bear to be cast off again. A real live father was surely better than a mother who might not exist, one who made even the Elders tremble. She was afraid, but she knew she had no real choice. To stay was to accept a sentence to a slow death.

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Deborah forced herself to smile and let the shell close up around her again. Clasping her father for a last time to her cheek, she left the secure ward by the door the orderly had taken.

  Chapter 19

  Hera was beginning to think they had forgotten all about her. The small room had begun to feel almost friendly when, at the end of her second day of punishment, she was released and escorted to the principal’s office by two Black Boys. As she hurried, half-running to keep up with them, her heart beat wildly.

  School detention’s over now, she thought, this is where the real punishment begins.

  The principal’s door opened and Hera blinked. Panelled in dazzling white, the room caught and reflected the daylight that entered from the huge bay window. The effect was of a room suspended in the air, hovering above the grey city and peering like a searchlight down every narrow street and into every tenement doorway. She shivered. The city held no secrets from the men who occupied these high rooms. They were all exposed; every gesture out of place, every unauthorised sentiment was monitored. How did Deborah think she could so much as take a different route to school unnoticed?

  The principal rose and motioned to Hera to approach. Never had he looked so menacing, never had his grey eyes pierced so deeply, never had his immaculately white robes made him seem more inhuman.

  “I have just one question for you.” Principal Anastasias spoke softly, but the softness was like a low growl. “Where is your friend Deborah Givenchild?”

  Chapter 20

  “Ssshh now, and hold still. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  The voice was calm and steady, and there was a hint of humour in it. Zachariah was set on his feet and he leapt like a fish. He thrust his hands upwards, over his head, pushing his way out of the sack. He struggled with the drawstring, lashing out with his fists at the hands that tried to steady him when he stumbled. The hands were not deterred, and Zachariah found his arms were pinned tightly to his sides.

  “Well, I’ve met some ungrateful beggars in my time, but you take the biscuit, son!” There was no mistaking the laughter in the voice this time.

  Zachariah took a deep breath to calm his hammer-pounding heart and looked about him. He blinked though the light was anyth
ing but bright. The roof of hewn stone and earth was supported by stone pillars, reminding him of the Gothic-inspired architecture of one of the temples. On each pillar was a bracket where a wavering light flickered, and the landscape of pillars, lights and beaten earth stretched away deep into the darkness. To Zachariah this was a vision of madness, a hellish nightmare, and he had no idea where he could possibly be.

  He stared about in astonishment, curiosity finally getting the better of his fear. He stopped struggling and asked, “Where is this?”

  His arms were released, and his captor, a big man, a giant with curly brown hair and beard, and eyes that twinkled with amusement, stood back to look at him. The big man jerked his thumb towards the ceiling. “Up there’s Providence, and down there,” his thumb pointed downwards, “that’s where the Elders say your Wise God dreams up his infernal rules and regulations.”

  “And this is No Man’s Land?”

  The big man grinned. “I’ll have you know, son, that this is Our Land, the Dananns’ homeland.” He held out a great paw and grasped Zachariah’s hand. “I’m Ezekiel, and if you promise not to thump me again, I’ll take you where you can get something to eat. Then we’ll find you a place to sleep.”

  Zachariah looked long and hard at Ezekiel and the warm smile that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and mouth. He had not much experience of the finer aspects of human nature, but he was pretty certain he was in the presence of a good man now. He smiled, a smile of relief and trust, and returned Ezekiel’s handclasp.

  * * * *

  As they walked along, sometimes stooping where the roof dipped low and sometimes wriggling through narrow tunnels, Ezekiel, in his deep, good-natured voice explained about Underworld.

  “So, only the Ignorants know about this place?” Zachariah asked.

  “That’s a Providence word. We prefer Dananns.”