She pulled against the shackles. They were iron, with their anchors deeply buried in the wall. Her hands were far apart, so one hand couldn’t free the other. Same with the feet. She had weapons hidden on her, but she’d been too dizzy and stunned to use any of them, and Jenger hadn’t even looked.
“What is the first thing?” she asked herself.
First thing always: restore mind.
Strangely enough, Bear had taught her that.
Close eyes. Shut off all surroundings. Make mind shallow, peaceful, like puddle of water, calm surface, like mirror, unmoving. Still. Concentrate on mirror, picture self in mirror. See oneself as one is: hand, shackle, hand, shackle, foot, shackle, foot, shackle. What is reality in this situation?
When she’d been with Precious Wind and Oldwife, coming through the forest, what had been the reality of that situation? Something winged might have been looking for them. What would the winged thing see, or smell, or . . . ?
If they were in the open they could be seen, certainly. If they were under cover, they couldn’t be seen. They could be smelled, but only carrion birds hunted by smell. They could be heard. Owls flew at night, and they hunted by sound. Vultures hunted by scent. Eagles and hawks hunted by sight. It would be night, so most likely it would be an owl. Horses didn’t sound like deer, they breathed differently. She had to convince the horses they were deer, just for a while: they’d have to lie down instead of sleeping standing up. Deer often lay down, horses more rarely. They wouldn’t eat while they were lying down, so there’d be no munching noises. They’d crush the greenery a little more, however, lying on it, and the smell of the crushed forbs would reinforce the idea of animals lying on them, if smell mattered. Sound would, so their breath would have to come a little faster; smaller animals breathed faster. Then, too, the trees’ trunks would be a little warmer lower down, as would the soil around the roots, which meant the sap would move differently in the trees around them. Probably birds could not hear sap move. The horses had emptied themselves just before they’d reached the grove, so if smell mattered, the smell was over there, not where they were among the trees.
So she had reached into horse minds, searched deeply to find their monsters—every creature has its own monsters. She had evoked their possible presences, convinced the horses for their own safety that they needed to lie down, not eat, breathe lightly. Hide. Be quiet.
As for Precious Wind and Oldwife, that part was easy. She’d actually had cats with her, actually had a chipmunk whose job was to tempt the cats into moving around a little, while the cats themselves made little cat noises. Wildcats weren’t that different in smell from other cats, if that mattered. The tree they slept under was dead, and there’d be the same warmth beneath it from cat bodies as from human ones. The owl would hear the chipmunk moving, hear the cats, sense the warmth perhaps. She remembered staying awake a long time that night, mentally telling Oldwife not to snore, and on that night, the old woman had breathed almost silently.
In this case, hands and feet in shackles, she didn’t have to convince a tree or a horse or an owl. She had to convince herself.
What was the reality of her situation?
Her hand was too big to come through the iron bracelet.
Why was it too big?
Because it had all her fingers on it.
Suppose she could convince herself it didn’t have all the fingers in one row like that. Suppose the hand had only two fingers, the little finger and the ring finger. In her mind she saw them separating from the rest of the hand. Too bony to separate? Bones are too real. Convince yourself the bones are flexible, like a willow wand. She could feel it happening, feel the hard bone deciding to become more supple. Somewhere down her arm another brain was actually telling her hand what to do. It wasn’t her brain, not her big brain in her head, but another, smaller brain, down the arm, one of several little brains like a string of beads down her arm, a little necklace of brains saying, Let’s pull our arm out of this shackle very gently, softly, then let the other part of the hand become equally soft, equally pliable, and out it slides, slippery, easily, the two parts of her arm caressing one another, rubbing away the soreness where the shackles had chafed the wrists. . .
We dreamed this, she told herself. We dreamed of the tree branches splitting just like this. The roots reaching down and the branches splitting. . .
Now, now the other hand, it’s already moving, the hand splitting painlessly, the wrist opening down the center, the flesh rejoining seamlessly, the arm bones gone, all gone, the arms coming out of the shackle, out of the sleeve. Now the feet! Too bad, feet are in boots, so we have to divide inside the boot and leave the boot behind when we come out of the ankle shackle. Now the other leg. Now all that’s left is the head, but we don’t need to worry about the head, the arms and legs can unfasten the thing that’s holding the head. No key, just a pin in the shackle, quite enough to hold a prisoner unless the prisoner has eight extremities and a skull that has suddenly gone soft and malleable and a lot of little minds up and down her body and has decided to leave the clothes where they are as her body oozes out of them, then off of the
