Notes from My Captivity(30)

Another footstep. Another. Slow and methodical. Closing fast.

I can’t stay. I have to run. He is coming, he is coming, and I plunge through the trees and the vines, branches scraping me, briars tearing at my clothes and face. Behind me, a crashing sound as the stranger pursues me. This is no animal. This is a human being. No bear or wolf or mountain lion runs that way. I’m shouting for my father, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” He needs to come back and help me, or I’ll be lost in these woods forever, pieces of me carried away by animals and birds.

I turn around and see him. I take in his features with a shock: young, bearded, hair around his shoulders, pale skin, eyes blazing, coming at me. I scream and turn back around, desperately trying to outrun him, but he’s gaining on me. He’s going to catch me.

“Daddy, Daddy, Dad—”

I fall off the edge of the world.





Eleven


Slowly I open my eyes.

I’m lying inside a hut. A rough blanket covers me. My right arm hurts terribly, and I pull it out from under the blanket.

I gasp.

My sleeve has been cut away. There’s a purplish hump between my wrist and elbow. The pain subsides, then comes back fiercely, and I draw in my breath, inhaling the scents of mulch, ashes, pine shavings, and something more pungent. The last odor is familiar. Suddenly I place it. Hemp. Strands of it are mixed in with the shavings on the spongy floor beneath me. Gritting my teeth, I manage to put my injured arm back under the blanket. My eyes adjust to the light coming through the windows, which are just holes cut into the walls. I look around the hut.

A table made of halved logs. Long, straw-covered benches on either side of the table and more benches lining the walls. Rolled animal pelts and spears stacked neatly in a corner. A crucifix on the far wall, next to a cold stone fireplace.

I try to rise, but the pain in my arm turns sharp and I cry out. The sound I made must have stirred someone, because I hear quick footsteps entering the hut and I hold my breath, terrified and helpless.

A girl stands over me. She’s older than the girl who appeared in my dream, probably at least sixteen. She is small boned and tiny and shares the girl’s delicate features and shy smile. Her hair is the color of sand and long around her shoulders. Her dress is made of sacking material, covered with patches of different colors, and reaches her feet.

She says something to me, in a language I immediately recognize as that of the little girl in my dreams: that strange, lilting collection of sounds, so much like the cooing of a dove.

“What?” I ask.

She giggles. Shakes her fingers in front of her in some kind of fit of delight, and motions to me with a tiny hand, then back to herself.

“I don’t understand,” I say, and again the giggles, the delighted squeal, the shaking of her fingers. Like a child playing in a sprinkler made out of language. She gestures, her hands motioning back to herself. She wants more words, and so I give them to her in a voice I hope sounds harmless and reasonable.

“My name is Adrienne Cahill. I come from America. We were looking for your family. Everyone’s dead.”

It must be my expression and my flat tone and the way my voice throttles on that word dead that makes her throw her hand over her mouth and look at me with wide eyes.

“Day.” She says, and I realize she’s trying to repeat it.

“Dead.” I say.

“Day.”

“Never mind.” I pull my good arm out from under the covers and point to myself.

“Adrienne,” I say. It’s strange how utterly calm I feel in her presence. She and her family might eat me for dinner, but right now, in this sliver of a moment, in this soft flood of window light, I feel welcomed and consoled. She radiates goodwill and seems just seems too friendly, too sweet, to have been a party to the murders at the camp. She might’ve helped carry off some of our supplies, but she seems incapable of harming anyone.

I say it again. “Adrienne.” I then point to her. “Kak tebya zavut?” What is your name?

She suddenly turns shy, sweeping up her arm to cover her face. Only a red-lipped smile is visible. Her lips move but no sound comes out. She takes her arm away and shrieks, “Clara!”

“Clara,” I repeat. She whoops, delighted, and points at me. “A-drum!”

“Right,” I say. “A-drum.”

She comes closer to study me, eyebrows arched. She touches the silver strand of the necklace Margot gave me, holds it between her fingers, and lets it trail until she finds the pendant. She touches the smooth jade with the first letter of my name inlaid in silver. There is nothing to compare it to in her world, perhaps, besides a stone polished by the river or the smooth shell of a fallen egg or the fangs of some dead beast her family cut up for dinner.

“My friend gave me that,” I tell her in English, and she laughs. I keep talking, trying to calm myself. “She said you didn’t exist. She’s going to feel pretty bad when I send her a selfie.”

A selfie, I think. A selfie in this world is something drawn with a stick on the forest floor.

She gently places the pendant of my necklace just over my breastbone, and releases a string of syllables in dove language that is so soothing my lids start to feel heavy. If I drifted off to sleep, would I ever wake up again? She touches a fingertip to my face, then leans forward bit by bit until she rests her nose on my neck. She takes a deep sniff and giggles. In the process, she touches my hurt arm and pain shoots off in ferocious sparks.