by J. A. Rock
I dreamed often about a maze. About paths I knew I shouldn’t take. A beast caught in tethers of vine, snorting and bellowing; men struck together like flint. Babies stolen from their cribs and dropped like morsels into a waiting set of jaws. And sometimes another current of thought seemed to join those dreams, like a stream meeting a river, creating a liquid wishbone. Someone else’s dreams seemed to flow into mine, making them swell with images that were not my own.
In the months before we were all to turn eighteen, a quiet settled over us. We rarely spoke of what we intended to do after we left Rock Point. Kenna once said she’d heard people got paid to box in underground rings, and she joked that she would do that. It might not have been a joke.
One night I was in the parlor with the three of them. “What’re you gonna do when you leave here, really?” I asked.
“Awf.” Kenna shifted in her high-backed chair. “You remember I told you about my time with the sheikh in the desert? When we were lost and our camels had bumbled off and the heat woulda fried your tongue if you stuck it out of your mouth—”
“Kenna. I’m trying to be serious.”
“I’m only saying I might return to the desert. I’ll take a better map with me this time though.”
I crossed my legs and folded my hands. “Bitsy. Any thoughts?”
She was braiding threads she’d pulled from her clothes. “Uh . . . I’d like to blow this place up.”
We all stared. She glanced up at us.
“What? I’d make everyone evacuate first.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said.
Bitsy went back to braiding. “I might leave Bessie Holmes inside. I dunno, I just want to see this place become smithereens is all.”
“You know . . .” Kenna perched in the chair, drawing her knees up to her chest, wobbling slightly. “I’ll probably try to get married. In title only.”
“In title only?” I repeated.
“I don’t want to be in love or keep house. But it would be nice to be with someone who had money.”
“Being rich is overrated.” I wasn’t sure where my words came from, since I had once drooled over the illustration of treasure in A Conversation with the Minotaur.
“Then you can give all your money to me for the rest of your damn life.” Kenna wobbled again. “We could always find out what the old batties here think we’re suited for.”
“What do you mean?” Bitsy asked.
Kenna shrugged. “They have records on all of us. They write down our skill sets and our personalities. They make note of how many times there’s interest in adopting us.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
She draped her arms over the back of her chair. “I got ways.”
Bitsy had looked up again, a quiet intensity in her gaze. “So where are the records?”
“In Rollins’s office. I’ll bet they got all kinds of stuff in there. Maybe the story of those girls who went over the cliff.”
“We ought to have a look sometime.” Bitsy flipped the thread braid back and forth in her fingers. “I want to know if anyone’s thought about adopting me.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Two years ago, I’d have delighted in knowing I was too repulsive to be adoptable, too skill-less for the world outside of Rock Point. Now I wasn’t so sure I wanted tangible evidence of my unpleasantness.
“You there. What are you gonna make of yourself?” Kenna asked me.
“I’d like to run away and live wherever I want.” I’d make my bed in the town’s schoolhouse, the library, the museum, the ice-cream parlor. Every day would be different; my scenery would be ever-changing.
Kenna raised her brows. “Well, I suppose I dare you, right after this, to go out and do that.”
I thought of the hole under the fence. I could. I could run now. Get Alle to come with me. Start a life somewhere else. “I’d miss the Dark Tales,” I said.
Kenna looked at Alle. “And you?”
“I’ll get a job.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know.” Alle’s voice sounded strained.
“You could be an assistant!” I didn’t think about the words. “To a magician or something. You’re beautiful enough.”
I can still remember her expression—baleful, wounded. I had meant only to compliment her, but when I look back I see my words were stones in her pockets. How it must have sunk her to be thought of as an accessory to someone else’s reign. But I didn’t feel entirely guilty. Part of me thought she needed to understand that if she was going to be a cache of secrets, if she was never going to let on what her true strengths were, she would have to accept being cast as an apprentice. But that day, which ought to have been a memory of friendship, has become more bitter than sweet.
It was sometime during the fall that the business with Rocky Bottom started. Alle and I had a room with a good view of the prison, and one day I found her on her knees by the open window, her arms folded on the sill, calling out, “I don’t know yet!”
“Who are you talking to?” I set my lesson books on the desk and walked toward the window.
She turned to me with an exhilarated smile. “He’s an inmate.” She looked back out the window. “He’s talking to me.”
It wasn’t something I would have expected her to be thrilled about, but she seemed ecstatic. I knelt beside her and gazed out the window. On the second floor of the prison, in the third window from the left, a face was visible. He was too far away for me to make out his features or expression. But he squeezed his fingers through the narrow space between the window bars and wiggled them.
“That’s Rocky Bottom.” She said it almost proudly. “He’s in there for murdering three people and throwing their bodies in the river.”
“Lovely.” I waved back at Rocky Bottom. He yelled something, but I didn’t catch what. “What’d he say?”
“You . . . are . . . beautiful!” he yelled louder.
“He thinks you’re beautiful.” Alle glanced at me, another smile flitting across her face. “He’s not wrong.”
I put a hand on the back of her head and stroked her hair. Something I’d been practicing over the last few weeks—casual contact. I still felt clumsy most times, but it gave me such a thrill to touch her.
She leaned out the window, cupped her hands around her mouth, and hollered, “I have to go now! Good-bye!”
Rocky Bottom waved his fingers between the bars again.
Alle shut the window. She walked over to her bed and flopped on it. I shifted round to look at her; a sharp bit of something on the floorboards scraped my knee through my pants. “What are you talking to prisoners for?”
She slid her hands back and forth on the cot and then gripped handfuls of sheet. “He might know somebody.”
“Know who?”
She tilted her head toward me. “Somebody I’d like to know.”
“How come you never tell me anything I want to know?”
“I just gotta . . . I gotta confirm some things. Then maybe I can tell you.”
I grumbled, but I let it go. She seemed more relaxed than I’d seen her in ages, and I took the opportunity to climb onto the cot with her and run my hands over her body until I saw goose bumps on her arm. She smiled at me. Got up before I could say anything and left the room.
In the days that followed, I sometimes found her kneeling by the window, staring out at the prison. Or I’d come into our room to find it empty, the window open, a draft rolling in.
I grew some dark chin hairs. I tried to pretend I didn’t mind them, but they did make me self-conscious. I feared it was my punishment for making fun of Van Narr’s mustache for the last year.
Denson worried about wrinkles, though she wouldn’t admit it. I enjoyed watching people check out their own reflections, and noting where their eyes were drawn first. Denson spent a fair amount of time investigating the lines between her eyes and around her mouth. And there was one day I’d caught her outside the reading room, trying to gathe
r her hair into a bun, little wisps escaping. She’d muttered in frustration and said, “It’s getting so fine.”
One afternoon we were supposed to go to town for ice-cream sundaes. Bessie Holmes was busy fixing up the prettier girls, instructing them how to act around boys. Some listened eagerly, and some rolled their eyes.
Everyone was in a mood. Bitsy was playing chess with Rina and griping about the cold. “Who gets ice cream in this weather? Let’s get cocoa, you lumpy boxes.”
Kenna came into the parlor wearing an honest-to-God skirt—black with a bit of ruffle at the bottom. It was paired with a yellow blouse that made me want to warn her not to get too near the kitchens or Tamna would mistake her for corn. But a glance at her face stopped me from joking. She had black makeup smudged unevenly under each eye, and her lips were rouged slightly. Her hair, which was longer than it had been in some time, was pinned up.
Bitsy looked up and her mouth fell open. “Oh. Heavens.”
“I know, I know.” Kenna waved us off. “Laugh all you want. But when I was on the Gordon-Wargar islands . . . Oh, shit, I can’t do this.” She started to take her hair down.
“No, no.” I grabbed her wrist. “Leave it.”
She actually looked better without makeup. But she’d made the effort, and I wanted her to go out feeling confident.
“I know I look like a tart.” She glanced miserably at me. “But seeing as I do want to get married in title only . . .”
“I understand. Only, it’d be a real piece of rotting rind who likes you just because you’ve got makeup on. You know? But you look nice.”
“I don’t. I look like I’m trying to be everyone else.”
Bitsy suddenly slammed a rook onto the table. Everyone in the parlor jumped. Bitsy lolled in her chair, sliding it back from the table. “Ohhhh, God.” She rolled her eyes and blew her bangs out of her face. “I am so tired of thinking about where we’re going and what we’re supposed to be. Can I just play a game without listening to everyone in the damn world feeling sorry for herself?” She turned to us. “I’m starting to think the murderers in the prison next door would be better company than all of you. They may be going to hell, but they’ve had some fun along the way, huh?”
Alle stood. I watched her hurry from the parlor, and I waited a moment before exiting and heading upstairs to find her.
She wasn’t in our room. I stood there, staring into the small mirror in our closet, when someone rapped on the door. “Thera?” Denson’s voice. “May I come in?”
I sighed. “Yes.”
She pushed the door open and stepped inside. I faced her. “Are you all right? I saw you run up here. I know you’re supposed to be heading to town soon.”
“I’m not going.”
“Any reason?”
I took a couple of deep breaths. “Since you are the only person here who’s ever really been honest with me, maybe . . . Could you tell me something?”
She waited.
“I’d like to know about Allendara. The reason you and the other staff act afraid of her.” I didn’t want to learn about Alle this way. I wanted her to trust me, wanted her to tell me her secrets. But if she was going to be so closed off, and if Denson liked doing me favors, then why not ask?
Denson’s mouth tightened. She pulled out a handkerchief and coughed into it. I wouldn’t dare tell Alle’s secrets. Wouldn’t tell about her talk with Rocky Bottom. But I wanted Denson to understand I knew something was up.
Finally Denson folded the handkerchief and tucked it away again. “I am not at liberty to disclose other girls’ histories.”
“I’d like you to make an exception.” I sounded as adult as I could manage.
“Would you like knowing I was gossiping to other girls about you?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“I see.”
I tried another tack. I furrowed my brow with all the sadness I could manage. “I only want to understand her better. To be a better friend.” I collapsed on the edge of the bed and slumped my shoulders.
Sure enough, after a moment, Denson was by my side. “Thera.” She spoke with a near-conspiratorial urgency. I leaned slightly closer to her. “Perhaps it is time you worked on understanding what you want. For yourself.”
This surprised me, but I said nothing.
“I know Dr. DuMorg has probably talked to you about your future, but it wouldn’t hurt to think, really think, about the best path for Thera Ballard.” Her voice was rough, as though she was holding back tears.
“That’s a hard thing to know,” I said tentatively.
“Tell me what you want.” She sounded so sincere, and her eyes were so gentle, that I became inexplicably angry. How was I to know what I wanted—and if I knew, why would I tell her? She who had the power to disappear, to disperse my secrets, to side with my enemies. She was a prison guard and I a prisoner, and she could walk away.
I considered telling her the truth—that I wanted freedom, a life spent wandering wherever I chose, bound to no one. I wanted to watch her try to deal with how improper a dream it was—how different from what the other girls wanted.
But I suspected it was a dream Denson might admire, and I saw a better game to play. A game that would take my mind off how much her question frightened me. With effort, I softened my own expression. Glanced at the floor, then up at her. “All I want is a home.” I let my voice tremble. Oh, I did a whole lost-little-girl circus. “A family. I want to feel like I belong somewhere.”
Denson’s shoulders went slack. She rolled her eyes upward, and I thought for a second she hadn’t bought it. But then she put a hand on my hair. “I know,” she murmured. “I know, dear.” The word sounded all wrong coming from her. She was not sentimental enough to pull off dears or sweethearts.
Still, I let her stroke my hair, and I ignored the guilt that drifted like scum on my surface. If she wanted to see me as someone in need of comfort and rescue, I would let her. And if she loved me in a way she oughtn’t, I would offer her just enough to keep her shut up in dreams. When her fingertips brushed my ear, when I felt her breath near my cheek, I didn’t protest. I leaned closer. Her lips met my cheek in a quick shiver of a kiss.
The first time it snowed that year, we were all up early, our faces pressed to the large, dirty window of the parlor. You could look down the line of girls and see the muted wonder in their eyes, in parted lips that didn’t dare smile. We were skilled at tempering excitement with wariness—all except for Kenna, who whooped and banged on the glass to make an icicle fall from the molding. She was the first out the front door, racing across the perfectly white yard and leaving a trail of dark footprints behind her. We all followed, and we continued to trek coatless through the drifts and to throw snow at one another, even when Bessie Holmes yelled at us to come back inside.
I pulled Alle down into a drift and was surprised when she retaliated, pinning me and stuffing snow down my shirt, laughing as I shrieked. She grinned, her hair brushing my cheeks. I’m sure I was a sight—my nose running, my eyes watering from laughter and cold.
“Awf!” Kenna shouted at us. “You two BDs, quit your wickedness.”
I sat up immediately, shocked. No one had ever accused Alle and me of anything untoward, but I suppose it was always something I feared, even if I tried to pretend I didn’t. But when I looked at Kenna, she merely threw a snowball in my face and went off to harass the other girls.
Later, Alle and I went for a walk around the grounds, the snow soaking our thin, patchy shoes.
“Hey,” I said quietly, long after my toes had gone numb and I’d grown tired of walking. We were completing our umpteenth circle of the grounds. I felt her gaze on me, and I forced myself to continue. “Do you think you will stay on here?”
“I don’t know what I’ll do.”
The white world around us was so lovely—the branches heaped with little walls of snow, drops of ice clinging to the broken end of twigs. “I’m going to try to go somewhere and live as I please.” I pau
sed, trying not to think too hard about my next words. “You could come with me, if you wanted. We could help each other.” I didn’t dare look at her. But she stopped walking, and I was forced to stop too.
When I finally glanced her way, she wasn’t smiling. But she didn’t look disgusted either. She stared at me with a caution that made me feel, for a moment, dangerous. “Do you mean it?” she asked.
“Of course.” I was puzzled.
“I need you to really mean it. I don’t have anywhere to go, and I’m not skilled at getting things for myself. So I’ll go with you, if you promise we’re going together. Otherwise I’d just as soon work here, in the nursery.”
I could’ve burst into a reckless dance that would have obliterated the peace of the snowy world. “We will be together! I promise. We’ll figure out how to live, and we won’t need husbands or parents or anyone telling us what to do.”
She grinned, shyly at first, then more boldly as I took her hand. “All right, then.”
“We’ve got a plan.”
“Well, it’s not much of a plan.” She knocked me lightly with her shoulder.
I pulled her against me and kissed the side of her neck, not caring if anyone saw us. “It is a plan. Our plan is to be together, and you’re not going to be sorry, because I’m going to take care of you.”
She stiffened slightly, and I wasn’t sure what part of my speech I was supposed to be ashamed of. So I was, for a second, ashamed of all of it.
She turned to me. “Together,” she repeated, her dark eyes seeming once again to hide the most important things from me. She could mix laughter and sorrow in a way I could not. But we had all the time in the world stretching before us, time enough to learn each other’s secrets. The sun under its veil of cloud had tinted the snowdrifts a gentle blue, and I felt valiant. My dreams that night were not of the beast or the maze, but of the wide world, and the million homes I might make in it with Alle.
I wanted to give Alle a symbol of my promise. During craft hour each day, I braided yarn into a circle and stuck little charms in it—coins and knickknacks I’d found or taken from other girls long ago. I set the yarn circle on my head to test it out. Looked at my reflection in the window. Alle sure as hell wasn’t going to look like a princess in this, but perhaps that was all right.