No Fury

Now: Fifty Three

I do not know long it takes the human body to starve. I do know that it takes two days before the hunger turns to apathy.

I do not care if I eat, or if swaddling Anne in every blanket I have means I am also slowly freezing to death. I worry only that my body will stop feeding my daughter's, and even this fear turns cloudy as we both grow sluggish, sleeping for long stretches.

This is how it ends, I think. Maria has figured it out: the easiest answer is to simply let us starve. And why not? But then why did she bother to keep us alive in the first place? Why did she bother to take my daughter, if only to forfeit her entirely?

Perhaps Maria ran out of tiny red dresses.
I laugh, mad with hunger, and gaze at the thick red pile in the corner.

Maria is dim, she is foolish. She is no wartime mastermind. And surely, Harry believed her tedious and lazy qualities meant she would be incapable of causing trouble.

In times of conflict, wisdom comes in doses of an ocean, rather than a spoonful: Harry is a young king, an inexperienced king; for the first time in her life, Maria has a tiny bit of power and plans to wield it like a sword. But she lacks the muscle for it.

I, however, do not.

You came to my home.
You married the man I have loved since I was small.
You had to witness his most private love for me, and for that, I am sorry.
But you stole my child.

I whisper the words into the darkness, "We are going to get out of here."

~~

On the third morning without food, a small hooded figure runs down the stairs, arms wrapped around a bundle. I believe it to be a hallucination until the figure pulls a ring of keys free, fumbling madly, dropping the keys, and beginning again.

No hallucination would be so clumsy.

I push back into the darkness against the wall, clutching Anne.

It is not Zayn. It is the body of a woman, and terror grips me at the thought that Maria has come.

The hooded figure finally finds the right key - long, like the bones of a finger - and slides it in, turning.

The door creaks open and slams shut behind her with a loud clang and the figure falls beside me, spilling the contents of the parcel from her arms before pushing back the cloak's hood.

Mary.

I choke on a sob, launching myself at my sister and pulling her toward me.

Light bursts behind my eyes when I feel her arms, solid around me. It is the explosion of relief, it is the world collapsing in grief.

"Och," she cries, sobbing. "You are so slight! You are starving here! It is black; I cannot see you, oh, Catie. Oh, my lord!"

I laugh grimly at this: I have been here for weeks. I could see her face perfectly in the darkness.

Shaking together, we let out our grief until we are breathing in tandem, sniffling into one another's shoulder, slowly quieting.

"There," she whispers. "Oh, it is so good to hold you. Are you all right?"

I shrug against her before sitting up. "I am quite terrible, in fact, but seeing you is like watching the dawn break."

"Aye," she says, rubbing her nose on her sleeve as she looks around us. "This is . . ."

"It is awful," I agree. "How did you get down here? I haven't heard voices in so long, I worried everyone had left."

She shakes her head. "A guard named Zayn gave me his keys. He said you have not eaten in days."