Under the Willow Root

Chapter 7

It's almost a relief to realize it. I simply don't have the energy to worry, to care what happens next. It won't change anything, and worry is just one more discomfort on top of countless aches and pains. I've lost everything, and I'm probably never going to get it back, so whatever comes next--let it come. I don't care.

With a sigh, I give myself over to the fear and confusion, the hunger and pain, everything. I barely notice the passing days and nights. I accept everything that happens--or doesn't happen--with the same tired resignation. I take what little food is given to me without wondering when it will come again. When my stomach cramps and my head spins from hunger, I take that, too.

I don't even care that Pouter sometimes manages to swipe my bread crusts. I rouse only to stretch out on the grimy, disgusting floor when suddenly the majority of the women disappear weeks later. They must have been sold, but I can't seem to remember how or where or when. I don't remember much of anything.

With room to lie down, I can truly sleep. I want to sleep forever. I don't even want to wake up for food, and the guards have to jab me with a spear to make me eat. It seems to happen more and more often. At first I think it's simply because I'm asleep in between, but eventually I realize that the guards are in fact feeding us more. They even introduce some kind of carrot-like root to accompany the stale bread.

I almost don't want it—I want to stay in my little bubble of apathy where everything is simple and blank. As I slowly recover a little of my strength, my awareness returns and with it the knowledge that my situation isn't one I particularly want to be aware of. I'm still hungry all the time, but now I have just enough energy to want to not be hungry anymore. And I'm awake enough now to be afraid, not just of what's going to happen to me but of what has already happened to me. My hip bones jut out like the prows of two tiny ships, and I can see each individual rib arcing over the hollow cavity where my belly used to be.

I feel like someone has thrown a bucket of ice over me as I look at my hands and arms and realize that they look like my grandmother's did as she lay dying. I wonder if my apathy-bubble was actually something more sinister. How close did I come? How long have I been like this? The thought scares me so much I actually welcome the hunger pangs and headaches because it means my body is growing strong enough to make its demands heard.

For the first time since those early harrowing days, I take an interest in where we are and what's happening. There are only six of us left, and I can't help but notice that we are all young and at least moderately pretty, or we would be if we weren't filthy and dangerously malnourished. I start to think about what that could mean for us and hastily turn away from that line of thought.

Pouter, unfortunately, is still here. Her long blond hair is no longer blond so much as a dull sand color, almost brown, and it hangs in lank, greasy tangles around her face. I reach for my own hair, then decide I'd rather not know. But of course I can't avoid it forever, tangled around me as it is. It's just as hideous as I feared. Normally a glossy chestnut, my hair now looks—and smells—like something you might find smeared on the bottom of your shoe.

As we proceed along the road to wherever we're going, our rations improve in quantity, if not in quality. As the weeks go by, we slowly put some flesh back on our bones until we're merely scrawny rather than frighteningly emaciated. We live like animals, wallowing in our own filth and gobbling down whatever we're given in the space between one breath and the next.

Not everyone recovers. Though we now receive enough food to look superficially healthy, long weeks of starvation have left us sick and frail. After a night of rain, one of the girls begins to cough and shiver. Two days later, the guards pull her corpse from the Cage and leave her on the side of the road while we look on with dull, listless eyes.

I begin to have trouble remembering things, but that doesn't surprise me. I barely remember that I'm human some days. I get confused easily, and sometimes I think that I've always been in this cage, that it's a perfectly natural place for me to be. The images in my dreams start to lose focus, and it's not until I dream of Baba Nadia and wonder for a second who she is that I realize something is seriously wrong.

I go back to counting the treasures in my box, just as I did when I first woke up in this miserable place. My name is Sasha. I am—I was—a dancer. My grandmother is dead. I might be crazy. I painstakingly rebuild my reality piece by piece, fitting facts and memories together until I know who I am again. Sometimes I have to shove bits back in place as they come loose, and sometimes I start from scratch.

My crumbling sense of self is more frightening than anything else that's happened so far, even my brush with starvation. I wish I could talk to the other girls. It would be so much easier if I could put who I am into words and make it real. As it is, "me" is nothing but an idea, with no more substance than the thoughts in my head. It's hard to hold onto with no one to help.

I've found that if I let my mind wander, I lose bits and pieces from my treasure box at an alarming rate, and it takes a long time to gather them up again. With nothing to do but watch the trees turn into fields turn into hills and back again, mile after mile, it's not easy. I force myself to go over the facts that hold me together every time I catch myself slipping. I turn it into a game, retracing my steps backward through time, all the way back to my earliest memories. Each time I do it, I try to remember more details.

The combination of boredom and fear is unbearable. Fear drives me to repeat the facts of my life over and over again, and boredom catches my thoughts like sticky tar. I feel like it's tearing my mind in two. But I keep going, mostly because I'm terrified of losing myself again but also because there's simply nothing else to do.

The nights have gotten considerably warmer. We still huddle together at night, but it's not so cold that we can't sleep at least a little bit. I'm never next to Pouter, who seems to dislike me as much as I do her. I'm not sure what it is about her that annoys me so much. I don't begrudge her the food she stole from me while I was...not myself. It's not even the fact that she tried to steal from me that first time. It's just something about the way she looks. Every time I see her stupid, pouting face, I want to slap it.

I realize that this not a good reason to dislike someone as much as I dislike her, but I can't help it. I try to remind myself that I don't know her, she's probably a nice person, etc., etc. Anyway, why shouldn't she pout? If ever there was a situation to warrant a good pout, this is it.

It's no use. Maybe it's the strain of being constantly hungry and afraid and bored and tired, but her every move pisses me the hell off. Every shift of position, every yawn, every cough seems petulant and somehow snobby. Even the way she eats annoys me, though I'm sure I inhale my food with just the same frantic energy. But I don't shamelessly stare down the other girls with such a greedy, resentful eye as they eat, as if their food by rights should be in my belly instead of theirs.

Definitely not.

By the time an opportunity presents itself, my irrational loathing of this girl is so ingrained that I don't even think twice. The wagon stops and one of the guards hands out our standard fare. Pouter, still groggy from her beauty sleep, is just a hair too slow in snatching up her bread and mystery root. Without even blinking, I scoop up both and shove them into my mouth before she so much as twitches. She glares daggers at me, and I can't help grinning back mockingly around my bulging mouthful of her food.

Pouter lunges at me, only to be stopped by a spear thrust in front of her. I know her frustration shouldn't make me happy, but it does. Maybe I'm a terrible person, but oh, it does make me happy. If I had a voice, I would laugh. Her face is red with fury under its layer of grime, and I can almost see the steam coming out of her ears. Karma's a bitch, I think at her. Stupid twat.

This little victory, small and petty though it is, lifts my spirits for a full day before reality puts me firmly in my place. We reach the top of the latest large hill or a small mountain and roll along a ledge which affords a magnificent view of farmland peppered with what I suppose must be small villages and farmsteads. But crawling up the side of the mountain, practically right underneath us, is a city. Somehow I know this is our ultimate destination. Our long journey is almost over, and it dawns on me exactly what that means.

By this time tomorrow, I'll be a slave.