by Julia Fine
Before I could explore myself further, I heard a noise just outside. I did not have time to try to replace the bandage, but curled back into my corner and resumed my previous position, closing my eyes halfway so I might seem to be asleep but still observe my situation. I’d read novels in which prisoners conned their captors in just such a way, and I racked my thoughts for lessons to remember. All the while I struggled to breathe slowly, to breathe deep.
The sounds that I had heard came from two figures who entered the room dressed toe to finger in white uniforms, wearing goggles and masks that hid all but their foreheads.
“Look, she’s lost her bandage,” said the first. “We’ll have to tie it tighter after this.” How did I know that voice, a drawl both foreign and familiar?
“She’s looking peaky,” said the second. “You think we’ve taken too much blood?”
“She’s breathing, isn’t she? We’re doing fine.”
My stomach dropped. With half-closed eyes, I looked again around the room and found two small windows, recently cleaned, framed very high on one wall. Pink puffs of insulation were tucked into the unfinished ceiling.
One of the men came over, lifting my hand, which, with the cuffs, brought the other up with it.
“A shame.” He sighed. I could feel the bumpy texture of his gloves against my skin.
Suddenly a sharp pain pierced my sore arm, and my eyes flew open. The man had inserted a large needle into the pink juncture at my joint, a needle that led to a long tube, through which my blood was now spiraling, collecting in a glass jar the size of one of Mrs. Blott’s canned blueberry jellies. My heart rate rose, pumping the blood faster, filling the first inch of the jar.
The man with the needle was looking at me through his plastic goggles. His blue eyes met mine. I could not help myself. I screamed.
He was startled, and his confusion gave me time to act. I yanked my arm away, leaving in the needle and its cylinder but detaching the coiled tube.
“Coulton, do something!” He ducked around to catch my flailing arms, squeezing until a fount of blood exploded from the truncated needle. “Hurry!”
“I’m doing it,” said the other man, presumably Coulton, his back to me so that it was impossible to see exactly what it was that he was doing. I flailed and kicked and yelled, doing everything in my power to escape the first man’s grasp.
“Matthew!” I cried. “Peter!”
The man held my arms with viselike hands, twisting at my skin, pressing with cruel fingers. It became harder to fight him; my body, with the blood I’d lost, grew tired.
“Hurry up, would you?” he hissed.
Coulton chuckled, lifted his mask, and I saw he was the man from the hotel. How had I not realized? He was grinning, his dead tooth gleaming, his stubbled cheeks glowing with success, hands planted on his hips as he surveyed his small kingdom, and I suddenly hated myself for my obliviousness. I’d seen this man, not long ago, outside the Holzmeiers’ shop in Coeurs Crossing, finishing a delivery, shaking hands with Rafe. That red logo on his chest, the one I’d overlooked in passing, announced affiliation proudly: BEAUFORT LOGISTICS, in curled red script. That glimpsed handshake . . .
I swallowed hard. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t.
As Coulton readied a syringe filled with clear liquid, to my shame lifting my dress to find my thigh, I gave one last wrench of my body, called out for help one last time.
“Peter!” My throat burned. “Rafe!”
Then the liquid went through me and I felt myself soften, felt sleep fall like a blanket across my mind. I turned my head to shoot a final glare at my audience, and saw the first man remove his mask as well.
He balled his fists into his pockets, his face harsh, his mouth a line. His eyes would not meet mine. He was nodding at Coulton, reconnecting my tube. On his gloves were red starbursts of my blood.
As unconsciousness took me, as my body felt remote and old and nothing, I whispered his name again: “Rafe.”
My Father’s Hand
The black-eyed girl stands at the edge of the forest, watching for Peter’s approach. He has not seen her. He navigates, he thinks, by the angle of the light, though in truth he is wandering blindly, the black-eyed girl guiding him to where the women wait for him, the black-eyed girl preparing to open the wood.
“I told you he would come,” hisses Mary, standing back in the group of seven women who flank their new leader. “A fool, like all the rest of them, deserving of his lot.”
“Don’t say such things,” says Imogen.
The black-eyed girl ignores them; she’ll be finished with them soon. She hums a low note, and raises one arm. Peter’s gaze follows, neck stretching back. He sees the swirl of sky, amassing clouds that smell of rain. He rubs two fingers under his glasses. He sees the women. Sees the black-eyed girl. He stills himself, breathes deep.
“I’ve done it,” Peter whispers, filled more with awe than fear. “I was right! I knew . . . I knew it! Maisie, my darling! How long have you been in here? More importantly, do you know where here is? What you’re caught in . . .” He pauses, sensing that something is different. These are not his child’s eyes. “My daughter . . . Could you . . . Could you be?”
“The girl you’ve raised to be so docile?” The black-eyed girl’s tone has no inflection; her voice is low and harsh. “The girl you’ve gelded? The child whose purpose you’ve concealed?”
“You’re not . . .” Peter’s voice quavers. He coughs. He is not prepared for animosity. He expected to be lauded as rescuer, the lost women to bow or praise him, to cry ghostly tears of joy. He expected his child to blink up at him, her green eyes his own, whispering Father, you have saved me, I forgive you all your faults. “I will not let you harm my daughter.”
“No. It’s too late for that,” says the black-eyed girl. “You’ve done the harm yourself.”
“She is a child,” Peter says. “Give her back to me at once. I don’t know what you are, what you’ve become here in this forest, but its remedy is surely not the conquest of my daughter, her corruption, the betrayal of her free will. All those things that will—” He pauses, because the black-eyed girl has stepped forward. She has inhaled the stink of the Blakely women and exhaled a low, guttural note. It stops Peter cold. He should feel excited, having completed the ritual, yet he only feels unease.
“You are too late,” the black-eyed girl tells him. “I have you.”
“Well, I think that’s quite a stretch to say that you—” Peter cannot resist the belaboring of semantics. Finally, something familiar. He has not been had, this plan has been his all along: to trace the spirals, find the passage, help his daughter to escape. He did not think to find her kidnapped, transformed so fully, surrounded by such foul-smelling women in such fascinating attire. If they simply set the child free, he will help them. Peter will do all in his power to join their cause. The girl will be left out of it, and all will soon be well. His rhetorical powers, his evidence . . .
“You see here, I found you. I completed the rites, followed the ley lines. I opened the wood.”
He is interrupted by the black-eyed girl’s humorless laugh. “You? You’ve done nothing. And there is nothing you can do.”
Peter frowns. “Well, if there’s nothing to be done, I don’t see why we should keep arguing.” He means this as belittling, but it comes across as sullen. The women sense him teetering, peering over the edge at the distance he might fall.
Alys steps forward. The others try to mask their surprise.
“The child’s power is growing,” says Alys, looking only at Peter, ignoring the tittering behind her, the black-eyed girl’s stare. “The door will be unlocked.”
“I’ve already unlocked the door,” Peter says, frowning.
“No.” Alys is stone-faced. “You have not.”
Peter, lost in thought: The door, he thinks, the borders. Rules made to be followed, lines drawn not to be crossed. He must remind the child, the real child, once he has found her. He must reit
erate the lessons he’s conveyed throughout the years. Must reinforce the boundaries. Much to be done. He turns to take his child and go, certain that once free from this wood she’ll return to her previous form.
But the black-eyed girl is not obedient. She is not Peter’s daughter. She knows nothing of human morality, nothing of empathy or ethics, nothing of borders. The black-eyed girl knows only the unflinching path of nature, the electricity of hunger. She cocks her head, she licks her lips, she takes a slow step forward.
But before she can act, Alys raises a dirt-blackened hand. A vine spirals up from the ground and arrests Peter mid-step, curling around his ankle, yanking, so that he plunges forward to the ground. His top teeth hit the lower with a satisfying crack. The vine lengthens, continues to coil, snaking across Peter’s torso and noosing his wrists. It rolls him onto his back, so that his head hangs crooked. Wide leaves grow up around him like a cloak.
The black-eyed girl nods at Alys, saying nothing. The others hold their breath until the girl has fully left the clearing, until all sound and all scent of her is gone. Relieved, they erupt into a boil of nervous laughter, and disperse without talk of when they all will meet again.
Their world is changing, and they cannot yet predict it. The wood shifts shape before their eyes. The tree that now holds Peter will grow tall.
20
At first I refused to admit the reality of my situation. I was not, I assured myself, trapped here. I could at any time call out for Rafe and he would come to me, explain that this had all been some fantastic misunderstanding. Peter would arrive at any moment and we’d laugh about how frightened I had been, how I had imagined myself a prisoner. In preparation for that moment, entirely overwhelmed, I tried to force a laugh, a chuckle, any familiar sound to make light of what had happened, to show anyone watching I was in on the game. Instead, I vomited my lunch into a corner and then cried myself to sleep.
WHEN NEXT I awoke, I was determined to be more resilient. Certain I could save myself, I concentrated all my energy on unleashing the shackles at my wrists. I shimmied until my skin was raw, hoping to find some angle that would let me slip out of them, at which point I imagined I might do the same with the door. When that plan failed, I chipped a tooth trying to break the hinges, and the rawness left behind by the missing enamel shocked me into recognition: I was stuck here. I was entirely vulnerable. My skin prickled, and I began to sweat despite the chill of concrete floors and bare walls, the whoosh of the indifferent fan clicking in the corner. After a moment, whatever warmth my rage instilled in me abated, and I curled onto the lumpy cot, shivering.
I wished myself curled under a quilt at Urizon, Marlowe nestled beside me, listening to the familiar patter of rain on the roof. I wished myself holding a blade of green grass in the forest, the ground soft and buoyant beneath me, the trees guiding me home. I wished myself sitting in Mrs. Blott’s kitchen while she boiled water for tea, could almost see the strain of the apron stretched around her waist, the bob of her gray bun as she assured me she could cure whatever ailed me.
Of course she couldn’t help me now. Mrs. Blott, my mother—neither hid in the high ledges of the narrow windows, ready to spring forth and grant my wishes. Marlowe did not, as I prayed he might, come snarling and scratching outside my prison door. Matthew and Peter did not pound down the cellar stairs, demanding retribution. The forest did not stretch itself to claim me. There was nothing organic on which I could use my body: the room was cleared of every trace of dirt or germs, let alone any wooden joists or cabinetry. The only life here was my own.
My own, and then Coulton’s when he appeared to make his harvest, coming up suddenly behind me while I slept, wrenching my bruised arms to gather blood. His breath was sour, and his mass increased the temperature of the normally cool room. He had a greedy energy that sucked in those around him, a current of charisma that was difficult to fight. The first time he came I was too shocked to speak, too hazy from the drugs and the blood loss to process what he was doing. I thought I must have been imagining things. Why would he want my blood? He’d taken too much to merely be testing it. But the second time he came, I saw I had not been mistaken.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked outright, trying to sound reasonable, as if I were just a casual acquaintance asking about the weather or what we were having for dinner. “If you tell me, maybe I can help you.”
“What, now you’re cooperating? You don’t fool me, you little savage.” Coulton smacked the cuff of a rubber glove against his wrist and stuck his needle in me with no other warning. I gasped. “That’s what you get.”
“Please, you don’t have to do this,” I whispered. “Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
“Have to?” Coulton leaned toward me, stroking my cheek with a gloved finger. When that finger reached my lips, he pressed down, hard. “Have to,” he said to himself, smiling.
AT HIS NEXT appearance I spat at him, hoping he’d be frightened by me. I had no clearer idea of what he was doing, but from the precautions he took when he approached me I assumed that the dangers of my body were clear. When he chuckled in response, I tried to trip him as he moved toward me with his needle, tried to yank my arm away when he relaxed his grip. Failing that, I turned away from him, scowling.
“Where’s Rafe?” I said, staring at the wall, my voice weaker than I wanted it to be. “I need to talk to him.”
“Oh, you need to, do you?” Coulton grinned, yanking me up from the cot. He walked me several feet, uncomfortably shackled. “Well, in that case, Your Highness, we’ll just summon him.” He twisted the top onto the jar of blood he’d collected and pulled the needle from my arm at an angle, so that it stretched my already sore skin. I opened my mouth to protest, but was silenced by a quick smack to my backside, a spanking somewhere between what Coulton might provide a lover, or a child. My lip quivered, but I was determined not to let him see me cry.
He left for a moment and then reemerged with a chipped blue plate holding a bit of bread, a small paper cup with several medium-sized pills, and a cup of cloudy water.
“Take the vitamins before you eat,” he said before slamming and relocking the door. “The food will help them stay down.”
I sniffed at the bread and pushed it aside. I dumped the pills in the broken toilet in the corner of my cell. The water my body would not let me refuse, so I drank it, despising every swallow.
TIME PASSED. AS I faded in and out of sleep, I noted the traveling shadows cast through my two windows, the revolving trays of pills I would not take and food I would not eat: at first a cold bowl of soup, then a limp salad, then some sort of soggy noodle.
They did not trust me with a fork, and seemed to know that I could not use my fingers, leaving me a small plastic spoon with which to avoid letting the food touch my lips. Its sides were sharp enough to slice the noodles into smaller bites, but not enough to use as a weapon.
Coulton came at various intervals to take my blood and scold me for my lethargy. At some point I realized he was drugging me. It was a struggle to keep myself alert. My next full conscious recollection was of his large bulk leaning over me, insisting that I eat.
“Rafe was right about you, wasn’t he?” Coulton’s face was covered, all but his eyes, which seemed to relish my confusion. “A feisty thing at first, but not to worry, we’ll soon break you.”
I snarled at him, refusing the hot broth he offered, refusing the small part of myself that was grateful for his company after all the hours alone.
“Up to you. Just remember that force-feeding is a nasty business. Better to take your lunch in through your mouth than a tube down your throat.”
I looked down at my arms, pocked with pinpricks and bruises, and imagined the rest of my body subjected to similar force. I’d read my histories, and I knew about the suffragettes who’d suffered in the city prisons, their hunger strikes stymied, their mouths clamped with steel, the phallic rubber wrangled down their throats to send the gush of liquid they’d resisted roilin
g down into their bellies. I shuddered.
Hating myself for my cowardice, I took the mug and drank the briny soup.
“There’s a girl,” said Coulton. He knelt and proceeded to prick me in the crook of my arm. One smooth strip of forehead shone between his goggles and the cap covering his hair—my one chance at escape, I thought, if only I could touch it. He whistled, ugly and off-key, and I imagined the squeal he would make when he discovered I’d outwitted him, would kill him. It would happen, I insisted to myself, it had to.
The soup was too rich for my empty stomach, and I’d downed it too quickly. I coughed, and it returned in an oil-sheened, salty bile, diluting the glass jar of my blood. Coulton raised his eyebrows, saying nothing. He poured his ruined harvest into the toilet, where it splashed up on the seat.
“We’ll try again in an hour,” he said before he left.
I STARED AT that toilet for hours, waiting for the moans that meant the moving of its pipes. I watched the crack under the door for shadows that could give me some clue to the space just beyond. I counted the same stains on the wall, praying that each effort would yield different results, that something about the room would somehow, magically, be different. It never was.
Each time I heard a body on the stairs I braced myself for Rafe’s appearance, but if he came it was only ever while I slept. The thought enraged me—Rafe standing over my prone body, Rafe’s gloved hands prodding me, exploring without permission. Rafe laughing at his fortune, my stupidity. Rafe’s shadow looming, sharp and twisted against the gray basement wall.
I thought relentlessly about the events that had led to my capture: what Rafe must have known, must have been thinking. I could not revisit our journey together without burning with shame. To think I’d imagined that Rafe cared for me romantically. To think I’d followed him. To think I’d abandoned my father to whatever unknown fate. For I was certain, with each day that passed, our quest had all been artifice—there was no ancient ritual, no task to heal the land. Rafe had baited that idiot story, knowing I’d not question it, knowing I’d bite, knowing eventually he’d have me on my own.