Under the Willow Root

Chapter 21

I keep my promise. I listen carefully to whatever I hear over the course of the day and whisper new words to myself at night. Sadra and I make it a point to spend at least a few minutes each day talking about something abstract or complicated. It's difficult and uncomfortable, but it pays off, just like any kind of hard work.

I'm just as eager to learn about Sadra as she is to learn about me. I'm especially curious about her position in the household. It's fairly obvious that she's Orean's mistress, but what I can't understand is why Ismeni seems to be powerless to stop it when, in nearly all other matters, her word is absolute law. It just doesn't seem like her to tolerate her husband cheating right under her nose.

I'm not completely sure I understand Sadra's explanation, but I think she tells me that she's a priestess of some kind, or at least a member of some special order--something to do with dancing and the Temple where she was raised and trained. To have a member of this order bestow her favor on a household is considered a great honor and not something that Ismeni can contest.

Sadra also laughingly tells me something about dreams and Orean not getting what he thinks he's getting, but I don't understand it. She calls herself a Dreamwhisper. I don't know if it's to do with the priestess business or if it's a pet name or what, and her attempts to explain get us nowhere. Eventually we both give up and I file it away as a question for another day.

I constantly worry that our meetings will be discovered, but they never are. No one ever comes near our corner of the garden, not even Dove. I wonder, though, if she knows. I wouldn't be surprised if she did. Whether she knows or not, she never makes any move to stop me when I leave her by the pool. She sits and stares into the water just as she always does.

Dove's pokes and pinches continue, but the force behind them seems to decrease ever so slightly. Maybe she's easing up because I'm better at not reacting, but after what Sadra told me about Dove getting old, it worries me. I can't tell if she's getting weaker because our duties don't require much physical strength to begin with. Does she take a little longer to get ready in the morning? Does she struggle a bit to get up from her chair in the eating room? Do we walk a little more slowly on our way to the baths? Maybe. I can't be sure. The only thing I know for certain is that I don't want her to die.

* * *

"What do you mean, you couldn't do the test?" Emily demands, rubbing her already bloodshot eyes. "Why not?"

The doctors exchange a glance which I immediately interpret as shifty. I want to warn Emily and tell her that they're frauds. The real doctors left ages ago and these people are only pretending. I can't tell Emily though because she doesn't understand me when I talk and she wouldn't believe me anyway because the fake doctors look exactly like my old doctors. I know, though. I know they're only pretending.

"We think...there may be...we don't know," one doctor confesses. "Something keeps going wrong with the MRI. It won't work on her. We've called the manufacturer and they've sent three different people to look at the machine. They swear there's nothing wrong with it and it worked just fine with every other patient before and after Sasha. We've tried five times. We can't explain it. It's almost like...like something's interfering. Something about Sasha is disrupting the magnetic field."

"I don't get it," Emily says flatly.

"Neither do we," the second doctor murmurs, and the first doctor shoots her a dirty look.

"We've called the manufacturer--again. I'm sure they'll find the problem," the first doctor says. "We'll get her in for another CT scan later this afternoon. In the meantime, there are some simple tests we can do to try to determine what areas of Sasha's brain have been affected."