Chapter 2

H abitually, for the last five years, I'd wake up and scan about the room. It seems like only yesterday that I had wiped the tears from my nephew's eyes and left my home for the last time. The circular room was bare and a terrible draft snuck through the hairline cracks of its dull grey stone. When I first arrived, only a large canopy bed with carved teak posters and matching armoire occupied the room. To lessen the severity of my perpetual isolation, I did all I could to create a home in the uninviting space.

Next to the neglected mantle sat an ornate wooden rocking chair with cushions that had lost their fluff years ago. Black velvet curtains draped over a window whose exterior glass was coated in a thick film of dust. Faded oriental rugs with pale grey and green hues provided some shield against the gritty stone flooring, but the frigid air still numbed my toes.

A large bookshelf, housing books with marbled front covers and faded leather bindings, leaned against the wall opposite the window. When I arrived at the tower, the shelves were bare. After my first night, however, when the existential dread of my confinement forced me to my knees in a melting heap, I awoke on the dusty, dark floor to find the case packed.

So many texts squeezed on each shelf that the knotted, varnished wood buckled slightly in the center. It was as if I had willed the books into existence simply from my tears. I never spoke of how the books miraculously appeared, and neither the guards nor my chambermaid seemed to notice.

A small knock on my door announced Hela's arrival. I groaned and slammed my pillow over my face. Another knock came, this time more forceful. Gods, she was relentless. She'd continue knocking until sheer annoyance and frustration alone drew me from the warmth of my bed.

"I'm awake." I tossed the thick down comforter aside and stepped on to the icy floor.

Brow wrinkled with irritation, I swung open the door to greet the small, bulbous woman in the corridor. I learned quite early in our acquaintance that Hela was an insufferable woman. Her small beady eyes drowned beneath swollen, crimson cheekbones. She possessed a beaklike nose, constantly running and red, and permanently puckered, chapped lips. She always wore her mousy hair in neat plaits coiled above her head. She wore a large grey shift and matching overcoat that buckled just above the waist. A wide leather belt was strapped around her midriff with such constraint that her broad belly looked as if it were about to burst through the iron buckle.

"Ah, Lady Elpis. It's a chilly one this morning. Best you bundle up, dear. How'd you sleep?" Her shrill voice resonated throughout the room with a sickening sweetness. Its tone never lowered from that high, piercing octave. She spat with each consonant she spoke, requiring her audience to take a handkerchief or tissue to their slightly damp face.

Every morning she'd enter as if a bright, gleaming smile could melt the snow from the entire realm. She stepped to the window and threw the heavy black drapery open with a forceful whip of her thick arms, the skin sagging low and gelatinous beneath her biceps. Light bounced off scattered dust particles in radiant beams. Blinking, I forced my eyes to adjust to the winter morning sun and wiped the crusted sleep from between my lashes.

"Fine thanks, Hela."

She glanced over her shoulder and beamed a toothy, rotting grin my way.

Upon my arrival at the tower, Hela was the first and only person I'd seen. She had placed my hand in her sticky palms and relayed to me the strict rules and regulations of my sentencing. I remember vividly her crooked yellowing teeth as she recounted the number of lashings I'd earn myself if she caught me breaking even the slightest of rules.

"Coffee." Hela placed a cracked china saucer on the side table tucked between the rocking chair and the window. The bitter aromatics spread through the room in tendrils of steam as warm liquid poured from Hela's cracked carafe into the saucer. The scent of freshly brewed coffee was the only thing that made my sentence somewhat bearable.

She motioned for me to sit. I draped a thick woolen throw over my shoulders as I headed for the chair, clicking my tongue in irritation. Hela stepped behind me and began brushing through my hair. The pulls of the comb were rough and impatient. I sipped my coffee, trying not to shake the saucer with every wince as the wooden teeth of her comb snagged in my unkempt hair. Hela's sausage-like fingers scratched against my scalp and I hissed as she pulled the roots tightly into a plait mirroring her own.

When she finished, my eyelids stretched unnaturally high on my brow. She tucked the final loose hair behind my ear and asked, "Have you forgotten what today is, ma'am?"

The spray of verbiage was a warm, slimy mist against the nape of my neck. I jerked away from her breath and pushed myself up from the chair. Forcing a small smile, I shook my head and stepped into the bathing chamber to wash the film of sleep from my skin.

I, in fact, did not forget what day it was, having already started counting down the minutes until the final chime of midnight. Today marked my twenty-third year of existence. How I had managed to survive twenty-three years, I couldn't begin to know.

When I first arrived at the tower, I vowed I wouldn't see eighteen. I did everything in my power to assure that I fulfilled that promise: squeezing through the rusted metal bars mounted to the window to leap from the hundred story tower, scraping paint particles off the walls to brew into a deadly tonic, even shattering the small mirror into shards to slit my skin.

Each attempt was fruitless because of the enchantment bubbled around the tower. The wounds I inflicted healed immediately, the bars shrank around my abdomen, and the paint particles simply fizzled away in my brew. I received lashings from Hela's thick leather belt after every failed attempt. My sentence was forever. I'd remain in this tower until my hair turned white, my skin wrinkled into grey, and my soul eventually faded into nothing.

When I turned nineteen, I had given up on my promise, falling into a hopeless, never-ending cycle of mindless fury and inhibiting sadness. Sometimes fits of rage burned through me so fiercely, I smashed furniture and slammed my fists into the stone walls until my knuckles bled. At the sight of red splattered against stone, I'd begin pounding even harder until the mangled mess of bone and flesh no longer resembled my hands. As soon as the skin broke around white bone, the wounds miraculously closed and I'd begin again until my muscles cramped with exhaustion. I'd slide down the wall and rock myself to sleep in a cold puddle of my blood.

Sometimes I'd feel sadness so deeply and become so paralyzed I had to look down at my limbs to reassure myself I hadn't turned to stone. Hours in bed turned into days that turned into weeks. Self loathing and pitiful grief consumed every part of me. Nausea washed over me at the thought of food, and my throat closed at the thought of drink. Just as I reached the point of withering into nothing, my sternum almost skeletal and my lips dried shut, the atrophied muscles would swell back to normal. The hollows around my eyes would grow shallower and shallower until they disappeared all together. When I finally willed my legs to move, I sat up and moved about the room as if I had just awoken from a restful sleep.

When I turned twenty, acceptance hit me so abruptly it felt as if a knife had plunged directly into my chest. My lungs contracted and pushed my breath out with a whoosh, refusing to expand again. The already too small chamber seemed to shrink around me until I crumpled. I folded myself into a tight ball, pulling my legs up to my chest and gripping my knees with white knuckles. Heaving and gulping for air, I begged my lungs to expand, pleading with the organs inside a body that had become so alien; the fleshy feel of it encasing my soul was unrecognizable.

Everything broke into pieces. Sheer panic took hold and didn't let go until everything that defined who I was fell away and I simply ceased to exist. My emotions froze over like the winter night air, leaving me a lifeless shell of my former self. Floating around the chamber like a spirit stuck in an endless haunting, with no peace in sight, I never did quite recover from the shock that had shoved itself down my throat.

Now, here I stood, one year older.

I turned the faucet all the way to the left and splashed a palm full of water across my face. A crisp numbness webbed over my cheeks from the harsh cold. With my eyes still closed, I blotted away adhered beads of water with a scratchy, faded towel. Not until slight tingles poked beneath the surface of my numbed brow did I open my eyes and look in the dirty mirror. The reflection staring back at me was a monstrosity. Dark circles were bruised under dull eyes that had once glinted like sunlight dancing atop a crashing wave. Cheeks bones, sharply geometric, but never entirely skeletal, reached high on my face.

"Lady Elpis," Hela scowled behind me. She stood in the door frame, hands on her hips, a dribble of saliva glistened on her chin. "You know the rules. Never walk away from me while I'm speaking to you."

I sighed, throwing the towel on the counter beside me. "Sorry Hela, I'm not really in the mood for conversation today."

"I simply don't care what you're in the mood for. Rules are to be followed no matter how we're feeling. Would you kill someone if you were simply feeling angry?" She unclasped the belt around her waist, letting the rolls of her rounded midsection free.

"I guess it depends on the person," I smirked, brushing by her. Sweaty fingers gripped around my biceps, pulling me back into the bathing chamber.

Hela's eyes lit up, fire blazing behind her pupils. "Did you just back talk to me?"

The moment she pulled the belt from its straps across her overcoat, I knew what was about to happen. It was so frequent these days. When you're constantly shrouded in self hate, inflicted pain grows tiresome. These daily lashings were more of a chore than they were a punishment now.

"I've grown bored with your constant nagging, Hela. If you're going to hurt me, just get on with it. I can assure you that nothing you do feels worse than what I've already done to myself," I hissed.

She tsked and shook her head, motioning to kneel before her. "A rule breaker must always be reprimanded. How else will they learn?"

I stared at the wooden hair brush resting on a rickety table beside the bathtub. Hela moved as fast as a slug. I'd reach it before she could straighten the leather against my back. My palms itched at the thought of beating her bloody with its blunt wooden handle. I could kill her where she stood, bash her skull in and dispose of the evidence out the hundredth story window. She would be unrecognizable by the time I finished.

"No, Lady Elpis. You know the punishment." She snapped her fingers, sweat beading beneath her armpits.

If I killed her, the Elders would send another. Someone worse, I was sure. The hair brush called my name, beckoning me toward the violence it held. I sighed again and dropped to my knees. As horrible as Hela was, I couldn't kill her. As much as the voice in my head screamed her battle cries, I wouldn't follow through. Aside from the lashings, Hela was harmless. A broken woman with a taste of control. Given her appearance, I assumed she'd had a harsh upbringing. Dealing out punishments was her way of coping with whatever monsters appeared when she closed her eyes at night.

She'd answer for her cruelty one day. Today, I was tired. I was sick of existing. Sick of fighting to live. I'd long ago given up, and as pathetic as I felt, as disgusted as I was, I couldn't find the energy to perform the deliciously violent acts that played out in my mind. So, I knelt before her and let her expose the flesh of my back to the cruel morning air.

Her breathing was ragged as she stepped back, readying the leather belt in her right hand. I shut my eyes and pictured my home. Vikar's round jade eyes looked through thick ivy as he crouched around the castle's courtyard, searching for winter mice.

When the first crack of her whip seared across my back, I began counting down from fifty. Losing myself in Vikar's joyous laughter as he discovered a nest of young mice huddled and warm around their mother.

Forty-nine. Crack!

Vikar stroked the pelt of the mother mouse, her squeaking babies rolling and nuzzling into the warmth of her belly.

Forty-eight. Crack!

I knelt beside him, watching the toothless grin widen as the mice sniffed at his finger.

Forty-seven. Crack!

The memory shimmered, throwing me back into a glimpse of reality.

Forty-six. Crack!

My body jerked forward on impact, skin howling against the cool air. I bit my lower lip, refusing to expel the agonizing pain from my body. I wouldn't let her hear me cry. Hela could feel powerful, inflicting pain across my back, but I wouldn't allow her satisfaction along with it.

Forty-five. Crack!

A tear rolled down my cheek, across my lips, and dripped from my chin. I watched it splatter against the tile, the water dispersing. What once was a perfect, spherical bead in the corner of my eye now scattered across the floor. I lost count as the whizz of the whip struck my back, then retreated and struck, then retreated over and over again. My flesh was moist as blood oozed from the open wounds and mixed with the salty tears now pooling at my knees.

"Have you learned your lesson?" Hela asked through shallow gasps. I imagined movement was hard with a body like a globe. It always surprised me how forceful her lashings were.

"Yes," I said, my voice a mere whisper.

Hela's heels clicked across the tile as she stopped before me and knelt to meet my lowered gaze. "It pains me to have to do that, dear. I wish you'd simply just follow the rules. It would make our lives much easier."

I looked up at the monstrosity disguised as a woman and nodded, unsure how to respond. Nothing would make it easier, because I didn't live. I existed. I floated through time in the palm of my jailers, helpless to their will.

"Now, your wounds will heal in a few minutes. I'll draw you a bath. You're soaked in sweat." She sprayed her words across my brow.

She stepped to the clawfoot tub in the middle of the room and turned the brass knob. The roaring sound of streaming water filled the room. Plumbing in the tower never produced entirely hot water. Its piping traveled up a hundred stories until it reached my bathing chamber. Losing most of the heat as it traveled upwards, the water would exit the faucet lukewarm.

Relative to the frigid temperatures outside, though, a soak still eased some of the shiver beneath my skin. Hela uncorked a small glass bottle of lavender oil and let a few drops hit the surface of the bath. Immediately, the bite of the oil pinched my nose and coiled around the room in lustrous tendrils. Waiting for the bath to draw, she re-looped her belt and smoothed her overcoat back in place. Smiling at me, as if we'd just finished a friendly conversation, she turned the knob back in place and started for the door.

"Lady Elpis, dear, happy birthday," she gleamed at me one last time before disappearing into my bedchamber.

I undressed my remaining clothes as swiftly as I could, gingerly rolling the dull ache from my shoulders. With a soft click of the door, I heard Hela quietly exit my chambers. Pulling the tight plait atop my head undone, I let my brittle black hair fall around me. I needed to cleanse myself of her essence completely. All reminders of the pain she so casually imposed. Happy birthday. The words were sour on my tongue as I sank into the water and stared at the ceiling, counting the stone tiles as if there'd be fewer than yesterday morning. Aside from the small brown spider who had spun her web in the fold where the ceiling met the wall, I was entirely alone again. I reached for the ragged sea sponge resting in a ceramic dish next to the tub and scrubbed time off my skin .