“You won’t be the first, Grot.”
“I’ll be the worst.”
“Yes, perhaps you will be.”
She let loose with a cry of frustration and snapped the whip again. The lash struck the bars and fell away once, twice, again and again, her rage feeding on itself. In her rage the end of the whip actually struck her across the cheek twice, but she didn’t even notice. The cage rang loudly. Even the sound of iron was enough to bring me pain, but I forced myself to keep from wincing and showing weakness. I thought of Livia hurting this girl day by day and my anger grew. I imagined Grot out on the water in a small boat, hunting her mother with nets and spears. Diving morning after morning, hoping to find the right siren to kill.
The ringing of the iron continued for a long time. Then a voice like the fairest song came from the cavern entrance.
“Sister.”
Grot seemed to know the voice although she had never heard it before. She didn’t turn to face it, but the muscles of her body locked and her hands tightened around the lash and the curved iron blade. “You return.”
“I saw him watching me in the field today, while I was with my human family. I noted his eyes were sad and bemused, and I decided to follow. I tracked him to Limwelt, through the crowd at the hanging, and then beyond to this land. The moment I breathed the air here I remembered my life from before, when I was a baby. I remembered the swapping, and I could guess why he had come to watch me with such pain in his expression.”
“If you could guess that much, then you must have guessed the rest. You must know what hate I hold in my heart.”
“I suspect.”
“And still you sought me out?”
“I had to once I realized what had happened to you.”
Grot wheeled, her weapons ready. She glared at Eva, the red welts swelling. “We are not sisters. We’re closer than that. You are what I should have been. What I would have been except for him.”
“I’m as much to blame as he is. I was aware, even then, when we were newborn and traded away.”
Grot nodded, her heavy scarred face pooled with shadow and hate. “So be it, then, you are to blame. As much as he. For an unfair trade.”
“A necessary one,” I said, but they both ignored me.
Grot’s powerful forearms flexed as she tightened her grasp on the blade. She approached Eva, hunkering low, almost crawling across the cave floor as a mewl escaped her. Inch by inch she covered the distance between her and her sister, her other self. Time seemed to grow playful again. It stopped and started and rushed past. I grabbed hold of the iron bars in frustration and screamed in agony.
“You coveted my life,” Grot said, proffering the knife. “You may have what remains of it.”
“I didn’t covet your life, sister,” Eva said, refusing the profferage. Instead she placed a hand to Grot’s cheek and softly stroked. “I didn’t steal it. We grew to follow our own courses. You were denounced and maltreated.”
“Kill me.”
“I’m not here for that,” Eva told her, the smile to light the world tugging at her lips. “I’ve come to bring you back home again.”
Grot looked up, but gazing upon Eva’s beauty only hurt her worse. She averted her eyes and raised her free hand to cover her eyes. “What’s this you say?”
“You’re coming back with me to the other side of the wall. You’re going to meet our mother and father and siblings. We have three brothers and two sisters. We’ll teach you.”
“Teach me what?”
“Happiness. Friendship. Love. Family.”
“I cannot learn that. I cannot even hear that,” Grot said, tears sluicing from her eyes.
I nearly said it was impossible, that only my family could go traveling. But here was evidence to the contrary. Clearly Eva had the ability as well. For all I knew all of our people did, and the elders in their wisdom decided long ago to damn only one family to being cruel thieves.
“You will learn it. I will help you. We all will. Now come. Take my hand.”
“Is that what you have to offer?”
“It is my first offering.”
Grot stared at the blade for another moment, and I wondered what would happen next. Might she lunge? Might she dismember? Might she reverse the angle of the knife point and self-disembowel? The moment was ugly, the expectation too dreadful. The moment after the moment was full of relief as the knife fell from her fist unused, and she reached, inch by inch covering the distance, until she and Eva clasped hands.
Then I watched them leave, walking down the length of the tunnel together, listening to the echoes off the cave walls as their voices took on sisterly whispers. I heard tittering and giggling. I heard joy.
Neither thought of me still trapped in the iron cage, and I couldn’t blame them for that. Too much of their lives had already been stamped by my thumbprints. I wished them well on this new odyssey and supposed, in some fashion, I would see them again beyond the wall.
I got to my knees and began to dig. It would take at least two days, maybe three or four, to be free again. Perhaps the earth would scrub away my sins the same way my Da hoped the river would wash away his. Harella was used to my travels and the twisting of time and probably wouldn’t come looking for me carrying a pot of hog’s head stew to ease my hunger. Myself wouldn’t show with a shovel and a compulsion to assist. Myself was waiting for me somewhere farther down the path. I was alone except for the dark secrets of my blood and duty, digging, digging, scrubbing, in preparation for freedom and, with less grace than melancholy, much more damage.
THE SCREAMING ROOM
by Sarah Pinborough
IT HAD BEEN QUIET for too long. She knew that because the serpents whispered in her ears as she slept, awakening memories of when the world had been different. A time before the island, so long ago that most days she barely remembered it at all. Only in these dreams would it come back to her. She had been someone else then — a rare beauty, admired and desired by all. Men would ache for just one glance from her to them alone. Days of love and laughter and constant attention. She’d known her power and she had reveled in it. So many, many moons had passed that she barely recognized herself in the dreams. A stranger’s pale arms and slim legs and long blond hair.
The rising sun baked away the chill of the night, and she opened her eyes and sighed. The snakes settled into coils against her scalp, their voices hushed to a gentle hiss here and there. She let one hand run in and between them, enjoying the cool scales that curled momentarily around her fingers. It wasn’t their voices that she needed to fill the endless silence. She needed a new singer. It had been an age since she’d been sung to, and she ached for the music. She stretched across the vast bed and ran her hands over her rough body. The softness had gone, replaced by sinew and thick muscle, and her skin was coarse. What magic started, salt water had finished. There was no bathing in milk and water anymore. Now she swam in the ocean’s firm grip. As the centuries passed she came to prefer it. Funny how things changed.
Finally, she hauled herself up and rolled her head around her shoulders, easing away the last of the night’s tension. She looked down at herself and smiled. She wasn’t doing bad for a woman of her age. The snakes hissed, and she allowed herself a small laugh. She still had her sense of humor, and unlike in that land of the past that her dreams took her to, now when she had a man’s attention, she knew she had it forever.
In the night more plaster had crumbled from the ceiling, but she ignored the dust that had settled on her sheets. When this part of the palace was ruined she would simply move to a different set of rooms that weren’t being destroyed by the plant life that ate its way through the cracks, or hadn’t been beaten down by the wind. There were centuries more years of living to be had from this prison fortress. Centuries more silent existence with only the occasional singer to ease her pain. Sometimes she wondered if the loneliness might drive her mad.
The sea sent a breeze dancing through the open windows, and she pulled a silk wrap free from the arms of
