tumbling without strangling myself. (In fact, I had done them more to overcome my fear of strangling myself than anything else.)
So I kicked off my shoes, put the little crystal disc between my left toes, stood on the cot, and wrapped a little bit of the slack chain around my shoulder, so that there was no weight on my neck.
Then I clutched the chain tight in both hands, and swung. Up, not far enough, back down, kick the cot, up the wrong way, back down, kick the cot again, and up again…
This time I was high enough to put my pointed foot through the bars of the cell window, and turn my foot sidewise. Ow ow, clang clang. My whole weight jerked back against my ankle; I was holding myself rather high off the floor, just on the bar I had hooked my little foot around. It hurt my ankle.
There was a tiny crack in the window where the fresh (cold) air came in, and I could see the little gray branches of a leafless bush beyond. This was a basement window, at ground floor, and I knew that this side of the Chapel had bushes all along its length.
I lifted my other foot. That was harder than it sounds, since I was holding the chain with both hands (so it would stay slack against my neck) and had to keep my other foot tense and hooked around the bar.
Try putting a little crystal disc through a mail slot with your toe sometime. It is not easy.
But it is not impossible.
Then, point my toe, swing back, step onto the cot, unwind the chain, sit down…
Sister Twitchett was back at the door, which had, by the way, been left standing wide open this whole time. I rubbed my feet with my hands, as if I had just slipped off my shoes because they were pinching on something.
I smiled at her. “Forget something…?”
She scowled, went over to the bucket, and pulled the (now empty) disc player out from under it. I had, of course, splashed water all over it, and bent the little pin that held its door shut, so that she could not open it to see that it was empty.
She put it on the shelf and clicked the button. I had doused the thing in water so that she might think the thing was shorted out. But she did not even pause to notice that no music was coming out. She just locked the door and scampered away.
7.
It was later. I did not have any clock except for the sundial of how far across the room my little square of window-light has traveled. After sunset, however, it is just a guess until it was time for Twitchett, and my evening injection.
There I was, lying on my back, idly swinging the chain from my collar like a vertical jump rope, sweeping out a football-shaped lozenge in midair.
I admit I was feeling rather relaxed and pleased with myself. I was getting out of here tomorrow, right? I had squirreled away a disc of Miss Daw’s music, in a spot under the bushes around the Chapel. By tomorrow, if we held classes as normal, there would be some free time after Dr. Fell’s tutorial. What was Monday? Molecular biology. Of course, I hadn’t read the assignment, not since two Mondays ago. If only Miss Daw had let me get some books from the library…
I lay watching the chain spinning, spinning.
Back to the status quo, Dr. Fell had said. Special arrangements, Mulciber had said. Anything I learned I would have to learn over again, Miss Daw had said…
As certainly as if a soft, cold voice had whispered it in my ear, I knew. They are going to erase your memory.
8.
Everything you now know will be gone.
How far back? Ten days, at least, maybe more. What we overheard at the meeting, Vanity’s secret passages, Quentin’s discovery that he could fly, all of it would be gone.
The you who existed as once you were ten days ago will still be alive. But the you who is here now, will be dead, dead, dead. And none of these thoughts you are thinking now will survive. These thoughts now in your head, this chain of thought and memory, will come to an end, and stop.
Phaethusa will be gone, and only Amelia will remain. Her memory will be amputated, and she will be bewildered if she notices a missing week, but she will never even know what was taken from her.
This thought shall perish with the others.
9.
The morning when we made such a mess in the kitchen, making our own breakfasts for ourselves; that hour which, out of all the hours of all my life I could remember, was the brightest, that would be gone, too.
10.
I watched the chain swinging out its smaller and smaller circles, describing a spindle, then a cone, then a swaying line. It swept out a decreasing volume, then nothing.
I thought of people who might help, like ap Cymru or Lelaps the dog. But I had no way to get out of the cell to find them.
My thoughts skittered in circles like mice, smaller and smaller, looking for some way out of the trap I was in. Some way out of the trap. Some way out. Some way.
But there was nothing more to think. The more I thought, the more I would have to lose.
23
1.
That night I had a dream. A man stood by the head of my cot.
He wore a breastplate of bronze, set with figures of men and swine. His helmet was made of large square oblongs of white, as if the teeth of some animal had been sewn atop a cap of bronze. In his hand was a spear but, instead of a spearhead, the shaft was tipped with a thin spine, like the stinger of a stingray.
Beneath his helmet, he had neither eyes nor mouth. Dried blood ran down his cheeks and chin. His armor was streaked over with running brown stains, and the gore had rusted the metal in places.
He said, “In life, I was Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Circe. You are my aunt, for Circe is the daughter of Helion. I slew Odysseus and knew not whom I slew. In penance, Queen Arete sent me to guard Nausicaa, her
