Then I open my eyes.
I find myself gazing up at a ceiling that’s nothing at all like my ceiling back home. It looks as if it’s made out of the kind of vibrant, polished wood you’d expect from floors in some old but posh mansion, rings and whorls showing faintly in the chestnut-brown grain.
And it’s not just the ceiling. I ease my head to the side and take in the rest of the room. The walls and, yes, the floor gleam with the same wood, other than a finely woven rug that covers a patch beside the bed.
I am lying in a bed, one with posts of a darker wood carved with intricate fern leaves, a spruce-green sheet covering me to my shoulders, a blanket in the same hue woven with silver embroidery folded at the foot. Matching curtains in a heavy fabric hang on either side of a window. Sunlight streams through it across the rug and one corner of the bed.
I blink and blink again, dizzy even though I’ve barely moved. I’m not home, but I’m not in my cage. Is this a dream? A startlingly real one that my captors will shock me out of at any moment with the clink of a glass of lukewarm water or a dish of jumbled food scraps hitting the floor? How—? Where—?
The memories of my last waking moments rush into my head in a flood. Opening the cage—the unexpected noises. The four unfamiliar men-who-aren’t-men gathering around my cage, questioning me… threatening me. Dragging me out.
Did they bring me here? Why would they put me in a room like this? Why did they want me at all? They were looking for something—something about a “tonic.” That must have been what my captors were putting my blood into. Why anyone wanted that tonic, especially enough to steal me away over it, I still have no idea.
The monsters who’ve kept me all this time won’t be happy about my disappearance. I remember how loud the leader yelled at the sharp-edged one the time early on when he wasn’t so careful with his torments and I spent a day retching up everything in my stomach. She’s not here to be your toy. We need her alive. Find something else to play with before you destroy everything we’ve gained.
I recovered from those injuries, and the sharp man resumed his playing after a short period of penance, but it was always clear: having me alive was important. Having me was important, period. And now they don’t.
What will they do to steal me back?
Different images flash through my mind. Shudders of color and sounds blot out the room around me. Scarlet on dusky green, a scream, a fleshy tearing noise, the stars swaying overhead—
When I’m aware of my body again, it’s trembling, my breath coming in short pants. My heart is racing as if I’ve just run a mile full tilt. I feel like I might vomit now.
I roll over and press my face into the pillow. It’s real. A delicate lavender scent tickles into my nose. I send my mind off to another of the photos I printed off of a landscape I dreamed of visiting one day—a vibrant green landscape with little hills rising in whorls like miniature castles—until my breaths and my pulse even out. Then I dare to open my eyes again.
How can I think about the future when I don’t even understand my present? The simple act of breathing bewilders me. When was the last time I tasted outside air rather than the stale, lifeless stuff in the room that held my cage?
At least eight years, by the scars on my hip. Eight years since I breathed fresh air. Eight years since I felt sunlight. Eight years since I set eyes on anything outside.
I’ve accomplished the first of those things. A desperate urge grips me to achieve the other two before anyone can come and take them away from me all over again.
I push myself to the edge of the bed and discover in the process one more thing that’s different: I’m wearing clothes for the first time in forever. A loose, sleeveless nightgown hangs on my emaciated frame, the fabric thin but smooth. When I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, the narrow band of lace at the hem gathers around my knees.
Someone put this on me, maybe one of the strangers who dragged me from my cage. It’s hard to feel embarrassed about that when the alternative would have been lying here naked. Some person here cared enough to restore a bit of my modesty.
Out of nowhere, tears prick at the corners of my eyes. I blink hard and inhale deeply, my fingers curling around the edge of the mattress.
The bandage on my wrist is gone too. I study my arm for a moment without quite processing what I’m seeing before my thoughts catch up.
The cut where my captors took my blood—it’s gone. The skin is sealed over, only a faint pink line where it used to be. How…?
There are too many questions I can’t answer. I lift my gaze toward the window again. That one goal I can achieve on my own.
My skinny calves and feet jut from beneath the nightie’s hem, the right foot with its unnatural crook in the middle. I haven’t stood up in over eight years either. The thought of trying right now makes my pulse stutter. Thankfully, the window is close enough that I can reach the nearer curtain without leaving the bed.
I tug the heavy fabric farther from the frame. There are two panes of glass, one raised almost level with the other, letting the breeze whisper in. I lean forward to get a better view.
For the first several seconds, the sunlight is so dazzling it whites out my vision. It falls across my face and paints my skin with warmth. As my eyes adjust, my cheeks pinch with an unexpected movement of my mouth.
I’m smiling. How long has it been since I last did that?
Based on the view, I must be on at least the second floor of this strange wooden building. Beyond the window, fields mottled with green and a sicklier yellow stretch out toward a darker mass of trees. To my right, a dozen or so small structures dot the field. I’m not sure whether to call them houses, although I can make out doors and windows. The outer shells of the buildings look like massive stumps with the bark filed smooth, rising to a curving peak as if some immense giant came by and twisted off the rest of the tree.
The sun I found so bright is only just coming up. Its rays sear the forest’s treetops.
East. That way must be east.
It’d be a lot more useful to know that if I had any idea which direction my real home lies in.
The sound of footsteps carries through the opposite wall of the bedroom. My heart bashes against my ribs, and I shove myself all the way back onto the bed without thinking, propelled by a surge of panicked adrenaline.
My hands skitter across the sheet, but I can’t see anything around that I could use to defend myself if I needed to. Other than the bed with its covers and the window, there’s only a small table on the other side of the bed that holds an empty ebony bowl and a tall wardrobe too far away for me to reach in time.
A man opens the door and walks in, coming to a stop just inside. It’s the one I thought of as a grizzly bear with the scar through his left eye. He somehow looks even bigger than before, his massive frame nearly as tall and broad as the doorway he passed through.
He’s wearing similar clothes to those I’ve seen on my captors, his grass-green shirt showing a hint of chest and the snaking line of a tattoo behind the lacing at its V neck, the sleeves loose from the shoulders to partway down his forearms where they narrow to grip his wrists, his black slacks fitted to his muscular thighs and calves.
A leather sheath hangs from his belt, the glinting hilt of a dagger protruding from it. My fingers tense around the sheet instinctively, as if the weapon makes any difference when he could do more than enough damage with those fists and feet.