I watched curiously as Gráinne ran me a hot bath scented with small lavender flowers. She told me they were from the garden and today we’d be allowed to go outside to see it. She called it “Sun” day. I suppose you find ways to amuse yourself when you’re trapped in a place forever.
Tears welled up again as I shut the door to the bathroom, removed my clothes, dropped them to the floor, and slipped into the silky water. The key lay in a heavy lump against my chest, the leather string struggling to rise to the surface of the water. If I asked her about the key—what she was trying to keep secret, what it unlocked—I’d have to tell her who I was. I soaked in the water a long while, mulling it over.
Gráinne tried to offer me some of her clothes, but she was half my size. Clearly, I’d taken after my dad’s empanada-eating side. I put my own dirty clothes back on and slipped into my shoes. They were mine.
Mine becomes a sacred word when everything is taken from you.
For hours, Gráinne alternated between staring into space and pacing the floor, anxiously waiting to get outside. I was as anxious as she, but only because I was fixed on the idea of escape, and getting outside put me one step closer. In the meantime, I wanted to ask so many questions but held myself back. If I blew her mind completely, she’d not be able to answer any of them. For now, I set to carving my first mark in the floorboard with the nail that Gráinne used for her moons. It was the spiral I carved. The one emblazoned across Finn’s chest that had enticed me from that first moment in the hospital when I saw it peeking from under his shirt. I swallowed the fertile germ of hatred so it would grow strong and choke off the love.
Every moment with Finn had been a lie. He knew what he was and obviously knew what I was. I saw he had a secret, but I’d underestimated the significance. I’d seen little balls of secrets in nearly everyone around me. Giovanni had tried to warn me as well. But my stubborn heart had heard only one truth and clamped its ears from all others. My heart was at home with Finn. How could it be so wrong?
Pain poured into my bloodstream. I tried not to let myself feel, but I shook so violently it hollowed out my bones, leaving me empty as tears dropped onto the wood beneath me, soaking the spiral.
I clawed the itch of my rage with every scrape of the metal into the wood until the carving was complete. My first. How many more goddamn spirals would there be? My eyes scanned the floor covered in Gráinne’s moons. The horror and injustice of it sickened me.
My hand found an engraving, and I lay my palm over its rugged surface, wishing I could erase it, take just one day from Gráinne’s captivity and give it back to her. Red fury and sorrow mixed to form a powerful new emotion I couldn’t name. I’d never felt it before. It jangled inside against the cage of me, slammed itself against my ribs, threatened to break me apart.
I was suddenly bombarded with images. They were alive. Palpable. They rose up and swirled around me, then inhabited me.
Gráinne closing her eyes, turning her head away as Clancy sucked her aura from her.
Gráinne falling to the floor, weak and desperate to be free. Slipping into unconsciousness with thoughts of my father sleeping on a couch with her baby, curved as a dewdrop, asleep on his chest, rising and falling with his slow breathing.
Tears seeping from the corners of her eyes, pooling onto the wooden floor. Her mouth uttering silent words as she carved this first moon with her fingernails. Blood soaking into the grain.
The room returned to now. My palm burned with fire. I snatched my hand away from the floor and the visions stopped, but the smoldering feeling lingered. I hissed and turned my hand over.
Centered in my palm was Gráinne’s moon, churning and swirling, beating in time with my erratic pulse. Black curling lines stretched up my hand, climbing my skin like a twisted vine, stopping where the blue lines of my veins met my wrist.
There was a quick knock on the door. I stuffed my hand into my pocket, fingering the little nail nestled there. The door opened a split second later. My heart faltered when I saw the man I’d come to know as Griffin looking a bit worse for wear. A plum welt swelled fat on his upper cheek.
I scrambled to my feet, wishing the nail was a foot long so I could drive it into his beady eyes. But my visions of violence halted when I saw the large knife sheathed at his side. As if he needed a knife to keep us in check. We were his for the taking, and by the smug look on his face, he knew it.
Gráinne ran past me. More than once that day, I’d had to stop her from banging her head against the wall as she leaned on it with her knees drawn up to her chest. It would’ve been so easy to slip into despair myself, but she needed me to be strong for both of us. She needed me to get us out of here.
I didn’t move. Griffin patted his knee like he was calling a dog. “C’mon. You wanna go for a walk?”
Bastard.
Curiosity and the desire to escape won out, so I followed Gráinne down the long, dark corridor that slanted sharply uphill as we neared a turn. I understood with sickening horror why the hallways slanted up so sharply. Our prison was underground. The skylight over the bed was at ground level. We were literally buried alive.
Griffin walked behind us. We turned left toward a glass door with sunshine streaming through it. I poised to bolt for it. But it would have done me no good. Griffin had to punch a code into a security keypad for the lock to recede and the door to slide cleanly into its groove in the wall.
“Have fun,” he said, pushing me forward. The door slid closed behind us.
“He’s going to let us be out here? Free?” I asked, but Gráinne was already running, her arms outstretched like a little girl’s.
It didn’t take long to realize why we were left to roam this garden unsupervised. Impossibly tall slabs of smooth green granite perched atop a concrete wall around the entire perimeter. The tops of trees could be seen outside the walls. It gave the illusion of a vast forest that ran on forever. Barbed wire coiled along the top of the wall. I turned away.
The garden, I had to admit, was a surprise—all bubbling fountains and lily-covered pools. One large hunk of the granite wall even had water flowing down its flat surface into a basin at the bottom filled with darting orange fish. I ran my hand over the slippery stone, letting the water flow over my newly tattooed palm and trickle to the crook of my elbow. Something about that made me want to cry.
I turned away from the weeping wall and found Gráinne in a small cutting garden, plucking stems and gathering them into a large woven basket. She must be the reason there were fresh flowers in our rooms. I wondered how much of this garden was her doing, remembering the image of her digging in the daisies at my childhood home. I left her chattering away to the flowers like they were her only friends. I supposed they had been.
I ran my hands over every corner of the granite wall, looking for a possible chink in the armor. My mind furiously scraped and scratched for solutions. There had to be a way to protect ourselves from people who wanted to take our spark. Every creature in nature had some kind of defense mechanism. Camouflage, thorns, even something as small as a horned lizard could spray blood out of its freaking eyes. What was the Scintilla’s defense?
A shady place under a weeping willow in the center of the garden curtained me from the world for a moment. I leaned against the tree, gaining strength from its life force. I appreciated that we were allowed outside in such a pretty place full of the sounds and the texture of nature. But as Mami Tulke would say, “You can sprinkle glitter on a turd, mija, but it’s still a steaming turd.”
I knew then that I’d do whatever I could to get out of here. I’d barter and plead. Beg and proposition. But I’d never try to love my way out. I’d rather die than give away more pieces of myself.