sing, sweet nightingale
i.
He tells her she's pretty. He says so every day, every single day.
Of course, he says other things besides; no man is truly a stuck record. She is his caged bird, his pretty little caged bird (and she used to look to her lark for comfort, but nowadays she can't help but think how similar their situations are).
She shudders when he touches her. His fingers are long and skeletal; they bring down death like the seven plagues and they're on her shoulders, sometimes in her hair, her lovely yellow hair. Her mother had yellow hair, he says. Her mother was pretty-
-"but you're prettier, Johanna, dear."
ii.
Her lark doesn't sing anymore. Maybe it never sang in the first place. She can't remember.
The silence hurts sometimes, a crushing pain round her heart like a vice. So she starts singing at the window, fingers picking slowly at her needlework and blue eyes – her mother's eyes – looking out at the humans below.
She lures him with her singing, that boy. That impossibly pretty boy. Though they've never spoken his stained-glass smiles (so perfect and heart-breaking) make her feel far prettier than she does with the judge.
iii.
She quite likes playing the tower princess, knowing one day somebody's going to save her.
iv.
He doesn't tell her she's pretty anymore – rather, he claims she is no tower princess, not even a lady, for a lady wouldn't play with hearts on strings so. He says that she's crazy. They all do, the people that keep them (all of them, all the girls) huddled up in corners, eyes wide with fright.
Her yellow hair – her mother's hair – becomes knots more than anything, black bags under her eyes, lips cracked and face dirty and feet bare. Hands round her knees, rocking back and forth, back and forth…
She wonders idly whatever became of her lark.