“No,” Chayne replied, sounding disgusted. “Even with an extra drop of it—which is all I dare give her, because I was warned that too much will make a woman’s brains go funny permanently—I can’t make her do that. But it doesn’t matter, because . . .”
Chayne lowered his voice, so I leaned a little closer to the window, still not daring to move my feet.
“. . . I put three drops on her tongue, give her a glob of that mixture we feed her when we aren’t stuffing her with the offerings, then close her up and wait a bit. Once the drug is working, I can spend hours in her mouth, with her tongue lapping and licking. And I know just how far to open the lever for the right tightness.”
“And then she does that?” Dariden asked, sounding breathless.
Chayne laughed softly. It was such a cruel sound. “Well, swallowing is what she does, isn’t it?”
They left Dariden’s room, and I said a hasty prayer to every goddess and god I could think of that they wouldn’t come around to the back of the house and realize I had heard them. My prayer must have been answered, because they left the house through the front door, and I was able to slip in through the kitchen door and reach my room undetected.
My father was a good man. I was sure of it. How could he have raised a son who would think such horrible things were exciting?
Is your father truly a good man? some part of me asked. He goes to The Voice’s house with moody cakes when he’s unhappy about something. Does he really not know what he’s forcing her to eat?
He couldn’t know. Couldn’t. But if he did know, that might explain the worry I had seen in his eyes over the past year.
I had kept my secret for five years, dutifully making the moody cakes when my mother felt I needed to visit The Voice, and just as rebelliously eating the cakes myself. During those years I learned that eating pieces of regular cakes and breads that we made at home and gobbling the pastries I bought at the bakery with my spending money absorbed the worst of the effects of the Black Pustules. I still got them whenever I ate a moody cake, but they weren’t as big or as painful. On the other hand, I had plumped to what my father had initially, and teasingly, called a wifely figure—meaning my fat-softened body was not the sleek shape a man looked for in a bride but accepted in a wife after the babies started arriving. After all, a man had to make some sacrifices in order to have children.
Then Tahnee blundered one evening when she told my mother she hadn’t seen me at The Voice’s house at a time when I should have been there. Realizing her error and believing that I must have been sneaking out to meet a boy and had used The Voice as an excuse, Tahnee did her best to deny her own words, but her suddenly vague memory about where she had been on a particular evening didn’t fool my mother, who then saw my days of being slightly ill in a totally different way.
After that, I had an escort for each visit to The Voice’s house, and when I watched the caretaker feed her the moody cake, I felt sick inside—because I felt better. But until I made the trip to Vision, I still didn’t know why.
3.
Dariden was wild to go to that place that was considered an unnatural city and something even more, even stranger. In the end, I was the one who went to Vision with Tahnee and her parents.
Despite my mother’s efforts to control what I could eat when I was in the house, and despite the bakery, in an effort to help me regain my maidenly figure, agreeing not to sell me anything unless I had a note from one of my parents (which I never was given), my body remained stubbornly plump. My father, in an effort to be helpful, had taken to whispering to me whenever he escorted me to visit The Voice, “If you don’t stop your foolish eating, you’ll end up looking like that.”
She was huge. When her mouth was forced open to receive an offering, her eyes disappeared within the folds of fat. It hurt me to see her and know I was adding to her pain. It hurt me to hear my father say something so cruel to the daughter he professed to love.
But on the particular day that led to my going to Vision, Chayne was the caretaker on duty when my father whispered his encouragement—and I had what the healers described as a mild emotional breakdown.
I screamed. I wailed. I wept. I sat on the floor and howled with a pain that filled the visitors’ room and frightened all the grumpy-faced children who wanted to feed a moody cake to The Voice so they could leave and be happy, happy, happy while she . . . while she . . . In the end, I went with Tahnee and her parents because they had already planned a week’s stay in Vision and I could share a room with Tahnee—and also because when my brother offered to escort me, I started screaming that he fornicated with barnyard animals and molested small children, and every time my father got near me I began making guttural noises that, my mother told me when I was calmer, sounded like they were coming from a savage animal.
My mother was correct about that. Something was building inside me, and I didn’t know why. All I truly knew was that I hated the village I lived in and hated participating in something that not only violated another person, but violated something in myself as well.
I needed to escape, but I didn’t know how.
Sometimes all it takes is a change of vision.
4.
The journey to Vision took two days of steady travel, the only breaks being those required to rest the team of horses. At times, the hills were so steep, we had to get out and walk, because it was all the horses could do to pull the weight of the coach and our luggage up the incline. But when we reached the crest of the last, gentler hill, we looked down on the strange glory that was Vision.
It was a patchwork city that spread out across a vast plain, backed by old, rounded mountains cloaked in the restful green of living things. Some parts of the city dazzled the eye, while others seemed lost in shadow—and still other places must have been farmland and pastures. Not one city, but many. And so much more than I could have imagined the first time I saw it.
So we descended the hill, passing the last crossroad that would lead to other places. After that, there was no destination but the city, which was reached by a bridge that had a peculiar but carefully made sign posted a coach’s length before the bridge itself: ASK YOUR HEART ITS DESTINATION.
Upon seeing the sign, Tahnee’s father muttered about the need to avoid the “peculiar” folks that inhabited the city. Then, in a heartier voice, he reassured his three ladies that we would not be visiting any of the peculiar places.
But I looked at the sign and, even though I thought it was foolish, shaped my answer as the horses stepped onto the bridge: Escape. Freedom. Answers. If my heart had a destination, it was shaped by those three words.
At the other end of the bridge was another peculiar sign: WELCOME TO VISION. YOU CAN FIND ONLY WHAT YOU CAN SEE.
As I read the sign, the sun went behind a bank of clouds and everything turned dark and chilling. Then the sun returned and the world looked fresh and dazzling—and not quite the same.
Since I was on this journey because of my lack of mental health, I didn’t ask if any of my companions had witnessed those same moments of dark and light. I just watched the city as we journeyed for another day to reach its center, barely listening to the comments of the other people in the coach. And while we journeyed, I considered the significance of the words if that sign meant exactly what it said.
The first two days, I found nothing of interest and tried not to resent the hearty comments that came too often about how a change of scenery could do a person good. I wanted a change of scenery. I had been searching for that change for two days.