Her body trembled when she took the step onto the top of the low wall. She didn’t know if it was from three days of not eating or simply fear. It could be adrenaline coursing through her, refilling what was systematically emptied. She was trying to shed the shell they built up around her to stifle the being she was when she’d first stepped into the sprawling building attached to The Tower. Wind blew up around her. The cold bit into her skin and threatened to force her down from the edge. It wanted her back in The Tower. It wanted her to behave.
She remembered the heat of her breath against her face, caught in the space of her arms and legs, swirling across her skin as she released it. In those breaths, she had power over the wind. She could take the frigid air into her lungs and release it as warmth. Without another thought, she closed her eyes, wriggled her toes until they hung over the edge of the wall, and jumped.
The air held her for a brief second. In that moment, it felt like she almost flew. Then she plummeted, the ground reaching up to claim her. She could have just released herself into it. It would have been so easy to just let that be the last moment, to finally take herself away from The Tower and the people in it. A voice inside her said it would be vindication. She couldn’t be their tool anymore. If she let the ground take her, they would have nothing left to use.
But another voice took over. She would no longer be their tool, but she would have been turned into a weapon against herself. This would only be handing to them now what they would have done to her soon enough. Her usefulness was dissipating. It wouldn’t be long until there was nothing left of her that they wanted, and they would give her over to the ground anyway. Her choice was to rob them of what remained of her or to give herself the chance for more.
The choice was made before she heard the voice.
Sister Abigail. Sister Abigail. Sister Abigail.
It called above her, sliding from chilling calm to inciting fury. She was expected to respond the instant she heard the name. Even though it wasn’t hers. Even when her body was too weak to hold her up. Even when her voice turned to powder. This time she wouldn’t respond. She didn’t pull herself up and take the painful steps toward the sound of the voice. She dropped to the ground and dragged herself to the nearest hedge. She didn’t call out to them, so they knew she heard them. She whispered to herself, to the ground, to the bushes, to the wind, to the reality beyond the walls, that she was done.
Coarse branches tugged at her dress and cut down to her skin, but it meant something different to her now. The pain didn’t push her down. Each puncture and scratch gave her back a piece of herself. That pain was hers. Her body was hers again.
She pressed deeper into the hedges when she heard the voices coming louder. They were out of The Tower now. Heavy black boots were only a few feet ahead of her, but none of the men noticed her. Dark hair became part of the branches. They kept calling out for her. But it was a name she would never respond to again.
Sister Abigail. Sister Abigail. Sister Abigail.
It wasn’t her name when she walked into The Tower, and it wasn’t her name as she clawed her fingers into the soft dirt to pull the rest of her body beneath the hedges. She had no name. Her own was stripped from her in the two years she spent behind the walls. It was still waiting for her on the other side of them. When she got beyond the stone, beyond the darkness, she could have it back.
Tiny sharp shards of stone and earth filled under her fingernails as she dragged herself closer to the wall. She stared at it every day from the window of The Tower. Every chance she had to hesitate and stare out over the grounds, she looked at the wall. It surrounded the grounds, a bigger, more oppressive version of the barrier of the tower ledge. No one on the outside saw it that way. They didn’t know what it held.
The voices behind her were getting louder as the last remnants of sunlight disappeared. Long shadows stretched across the grass and deepened beneath trees and around the smaller buildings scattered among them. It was her chance. She pulled herself out of the row of bushes surrounding the main tower and up to her feet. Her legs shook, but she didn’t stop. There was no option left now. She wouldn’t let them bring her back. She would make it to the wall and the bars of the iron gate she knew her bones would fit between, or the last thing she would ever feel would be the grass.
The voices were gone, but she knew they weren’t. The men had only gone back into The Tower. Any second now, they would turn on the light, a bright beam that swept across the grounds and dissolved away every shadow. She’d have nowhere to hide and nothing to protect her.
The cobblestone path leading from the gate wound to the side, looping in a wide arc to keep it far from The Tower. Anyone following it would first get to a gatehouse. If they got beyond the first, there was another. Beyond that, the path led closer until it finally reached a garage far out of view. Where no one would see people getting out of the car. Where no one would find the car even if they were searching for it.
She stayed off the path until the grass gave way to the cement edge around the stones. The beam of light burst around her, casting her own shadow across the path. It stretched away from her like it was going to separate and try to get to the gate before her body. At least then, part of her would get beyond the grounds. They were coming for her. She couldn’t hear them, but she could feel them. Their eyes on her back were like hot pokers.
Her hands hit the cold metal of the gate. She turned her body to press it between the bars. There were people beyond The Tower. She didn’t know who they were or where, but she knew they were there. If she could find them, she had a chance.
Her fingers wrapped tightly around the bar in front of her. And her body trembling, barely keeping overwhelming shakes of terror and emotion in check, she wedged herself through. The metal pressed against her, exposing more of her skin to the cold night air. Finally she pushed through, and her body cracked against the sidewalk. She scrambled to her feet again and ran until the adrenaline was gone, and she collapsed to the cold cement of a dark, dirty alley. She didn’t care. She rolled to her back and stared up at the stars.
She had her name again.
Chapter Two
Now
The necklaces are almost identical. They’re as close to being exactly the same as the variations in the colors swirling through the pendants allows them to be. I’ve been sitting on the couch staring down at the necklaces, one rested in each palm, for almost an hour. Bellamy mailed them to me a few days after the second one came from Feathered Nest, but I’m no closer to understanding them now than I was six weeks ago. They mean nothing to me. No matter how often I take them out of the bubble mailer she sent them in or how long I stare at them, I haven’t come up with anything else. There are no memories attached to them. Nothing comes up when I look at them or flip them back and forth in my palms.
I don’t look up when the front door opens. Sam comes in with a bulging brown paper bag in one hand and a cupholder in the other. He kicks the door closed behind him and carries everything over to me.
“I thought we agreed,” he sighs, setting the bag and holder down on the coffee table.
“We agreed I wouldn’t obsess over them all day,” I point out. “I still have hours ahead of me before I’ve done that.”
“Emma. You need to put them away,” he tells me, coming around the table to sit beside me. “It’s not doing you any good to spend so much time staring at them. Besides, you’re supposed to be on a break.”