Johara's Choice

Chapter 1

Johara sat on the windowsill and looked out over a rectangle of water bordered by box hedges and pruned bushes. She could spend all day absorbing the dazzling sight of the River Erd on its journey to the sea or basking in the beauty of the lands beyond the Pol Bridge. On many an occasion, she had considered all the interesting facts of the sultanate she could see from the window. Her attention, today, was directed elsewhere.

Although her eyes looked over the palace walls past the city perimeter to the landscape beyond the river, her mind hovered in a realm of darkness. The shadowy blanket of murky thoughts encroached on her senses and squeezed out her will to do anything. She ought to let the musicians in for her dance lesson, but getting up from where she sat was too much effort.

So, she stared out over the land without seeing it. Her mind was fuzzy. She could not grasp any of the thoughts that floated there. Rounding them up was too much effort as well.

She sat and waited.

Could something pull her mind from this place of twilight? What could possibly tear her eyes away from the beauty she knew was there but could not see? Often, she would consider the freedom of the birds, those she could glimpse from her tower window, but not on this day. She was severed from the blue by the fog in her mind.

Through the haze, Johara heard her mother's voice. Usually, she would be the dutiful daughter, listen, nod her head at the right moments, and intone, "Yes, Mother," with deep reverence when all was said and done. Pleasing her mother was an exhausting constant in Johara's life. The sultana believed only in perfection, and although Johara tried, she never seemed able to bring a smile to those stern lips.

On this day, lethargy held her captive. Not even her mother's judgement could bring Johara out of the void. What did it matter? For as long as the fifteen-year-old could remember, all she did was try to please her mother and father—and for what? The sultana's back stiffened more with each passing year. Head held high, she glided through the halls Johara could barely remember from her childhood.

Meanwhile, the days weighed on the sultan's shoulders. Johara watched her father's hair sprinkle with salt. She observed the woes gouge their way onto his face and snuff out the last vestiges of the smile she held dear. His eyes never sparkled anymore. They were leaden with worry.

Even if she had wanted to, Johara could not draw her mind out of the endless chasm. How long had she been here? She could hardly remember a time before she was brought into the tower—for her own safety, they said—to stop the prophecy.

Vaguely aware of her mother's departure, Johara could not even bring herself to shrug. It did not matter. Nothing mattered. She was bound to this tower with nowhere to go and without purpose in what she did. Her whole life was meaningless. Dance instructors, music teachers, language tutors, and more were intended to keep her active, busy and pliant, but for some reason, she did not care a fig. It all weighed her down and threatened to drag her deeper into this well with unscalable walls.

What was the point of anything? Even staying in the tower and doing as she was told did not seem to lift the cares that put steel in her mother's spine and dragged down at her father's being. What had Johara done? Their whispers about the prophecy made no sense to her. It could not have been something as silly as that—after all, the believers of the True Faith did not hold with magic and such nonsense. So, what was the real reason for her cage?

The abyss inside said there must be something at fault with her. Perhaps her father wanted a better child. Johara knew she was a disappointment; that was obvious in the downward turn of her mother's mouth every time the sultana looked at Johara.

There was movement beyond the arch into the antechamber. What was it again? Oh, yes. Dance. Johara could not even say if there was a purpose to all the endless activities. She had been locked away in this tower to rot because her parents insisted it was important for her virtue—not that she knew what that meant. Then again, purity was really important to her mother. Perfection. Purity. Inflexibility. Everything had to be Mother's way.