Chapter Three

He asked her to leave and she stayed. She asked him for help and he refused. The impasse that followed was one that lasted for several weeks, two stubborn entities deadlocked. Girl had taken to living in the room where she'd first awakened, sleeping on the cold metal slab that the Doctor didn't seem to mind lending out to her, so much as he didn't realize she was still there at all. She'd been trying to sleep for days, but stray thoughts kept her awake, and the rumbling of machinery was something to which she wasn't accustomed. It took her hours to drift off into slumber, and when it did, the dreams that took her were almost as strange as the world she woke to.

She knew she dreamt for what she saw was at first too natural and beautiful to be the stark empty place of the tower. Her thoughts swam circles and followed paths forgotten by her consciousness to places that she thought she'd lost to the darkness. The color and the sensations were at once too wonderful and too fleeting to describe or dwell upon, but she did recall feeling warmth. She felt the presence of others, perhaps those she'd left behind, and though she didn't know their faces, she recognized their existence and it stilled her doubts. As her sleep deepened, her mind sifted through thought after thought, until the world of color and movement that she'd stumbled upon was replaced by one that gradually became more calm; cooler, emptier. She stood in a world of white, hardly any shadows or contours to distinguish between the ground and the horizon and her eyes squinted at the harshness of this new place. She turned in all directions, hoping to find vestiges of life but found nothing but the white, a shroud much like the darkness she'd fallen through to reach the tower. Fear gripped her heart and she stopped turning, trying to calm her roiling emotions. She had finally slowed her breathing when she felt the presence of someone else.

She turned once more to see someone who hadn't been there moments before. She saw the back of a woman with long copper hair. Her garb was strange, but familiar somehow—sturdy leathers and fabrics worn tighter to the contours of her body. She had the appearance of one accustomed to moving swiftly and easily, her lithe frame strong, well-balanced. She carried small knives, strapped to the outside of her thighs with strips of black leather similar to the vest she wore. Her stance was formidable and her very presence exuded power—and danger. An inexplicable anger and fear rose in Girl, different from before. She wanted to see this woman's face. Who was she and why was she so armed? She strode forward only to have the woman begin walking away from her, leaving perfect droplets of red on the pure white ground. Girl stopped to stare at them in alarm, thinking at once that this must be a bad omen, and looked up again to see this woman without a face disappear into a white mist so bright it became blinding. Dismayed, Girl looked away, but the light seemed to follow her, envelop her, until the brilliance forced her to wakefulness.

She awoke with a bright crystalline light blazing above her head. Gone was the woman with the copper hair and the mist. In their place was the stark ceiling of the room in which she'd learned to call her own. She sat up on her slab, rubbing her eyes. It hadn't been days, but a few weeks before her leg had finally decided to mend, and the resulting time spent laying on the hard slab had left her muscles and joints sore. Her mind had been playing games with her as well, mixing the elements of her current surroundings with snatches of memories. She could hardly discern one from the other and they often left her wracked with confusion when she awoke each morning.

"Girl!" she heard the doctor cry out from the other room. So he had remembered she was there. She closed her eyes and sighed.

"What!" she called back, stretching her aching muscles and hopping down from her slab.

She walked into the lab, and stared at the Doctor balefully. These last few weeks, he'd done nothing but advance his own research and ignore her almost completely. Had he finally changed his mind?

"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, keeping her voice as light and neutral as possible. Really she was irritated.

"I thought I told you to leave!" he responded.

"You tell me that everyday and everyday I refuse," she retorted.

"Do you see those metal rods and joints over there?" he asked, pointing to a pile of discarded metal bits.

She raised an appraising brow. "Yes I see them, what do you want me to do with them?"

"Take the cloth on the table over there and oil them. All of them."

Her lips tightened into a thin straight line. "That could take days. Why did you throw so many parts away in the first place?"

"They didn't fit the way I wanted so I let them rest there. I might be able to use them after all. Maybe I can find a use for you as well, if you're so determined to stay."

Was this an invitation?

Girl scratched her head. There were easily thousands of parts and pieces to be sorted and oiled. When the doctor said he'd allowed the pieces to "rest" he'd really meant stacked in a tremendous heap.

"Does that mean you'll help me find a way to leave? That's what you want, isn't it? Me to leave?"

"I'll think of something," he mused.

That wasn't exactly a no, Girl thought hopefully.

"Where would you like the oiled pieces?" she asked.

He turned for the first time in the conversation and casually flipped a hand to no specific location. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

She stalked over to the pile and restrained an urge to kick it.

Oil. The rag. Right.

With rag and canister of oil in hand, she set to work on the meticulous and menial task of oiling every single piece. At first she aggressively ran the cloth across the metal, releasing days of frustration through her hands, forcing her anger upon each new piece. After a while, however, she exhausted her arms and rather lazily pulled the cloth along at a sustained, sluggish pace. Her pile of oiled pieces was still rather small for all the hours she'd been working, and it made her grimace with loathing. Just what was he going to use these for?

He'd been tinkering with phials for quite some time and she cast an irritated glance in his direction. Each phial was a different color and the consistency of the fluids within were all different as well. He claimed he was no magician, but there was something not quite right about whatever was in those phials. When asked, he'd been evasive in his answers.

"They're medicines. Food. Drinks from the outerworld."

To each answer, she'd yawned. He was such a liar, even a blind could see that. A deaf too.

While she was watching him work with the mysterious substances, she noticed him beginning to turn and resumed her attention to her own work. For a few minutes there were no sounds besides that of her cloth swooshing across metal. She waited, she could feel his eyes on her back, knew he wanted to say something, but merely waited for the words to come.

Come they did, slowly, painfully, as if they were being pulled out of him by chains.

"I imagine you'll be needing food," he began. "There's also something I would like to speak to you about."

She whipped around, surprised—astonished even. He was offering her food? It was better than having to steal from his stores as she'd been doing for the last few weeks without his knowledge. Maybe he'd offer her something better than the stale bread and dry cheese he kept in the crates in the back. The thought filled her with excitement.

"Of—of course!" she replied, and immediately after his back was turned to her again, she scolded herself for sounding so enthusiastic.

He set his phials aside and walked out of the room. After living in the tower for a few weeks, she understood that he wasn't about to ask her to follow. She practically threw down her cloth and ran across the room to do so. She followed him down a corridor past several closed doors, and finally stepped into a lit chamber with a square table and large wooden crates posing as chairs.

He rummaged through a drawer and withdrew a small handful of fruits. Seeing them awoke in her a memory.

"Risa fruit!" she gasped with delight. They were sweet and tangy, full of juice.

His eyes widened and after he set the fruits down on the table, he pushed his glasses further up his nose.

"So you do know what these are?"

"Yes!" she exclaimed, pleased that some of her memory was returning.

He settled down onto a crate and sat cross-legged. She sat on the other crate, and eagerly—more eagerly than she wanted to seem—accepted the fruit he shoved across the table toward her. She sunk her teeth greedily into the fruit's soft skin and relished the juice dribbling down her chin. She didn't care what peculiar looks the doctor might give her, she was simply happy to be eating fresh fruit. Fresh. The thought brought her back to reality. She studied the doctor very seriously.

"Did someone deliver these recently?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "They just deliver things. They don't stay long."

"Does anyone know I'm here?"

He shook his head wearily. "They had no interest in my work."

"Oh."

She had lost interest in the fruit all of a sudden. It was the taste of false freedom.

"What?"

She looked away. "I was just thinking about what the world 'out there' is like. I really don't remember much of it at all."

His eyes got an unusual spark to them. "What do you remember?"

She shrugged and her eyes took on a distant cast. "I remember mountains so tall that when you stood at their base they seemed to blot out the sky. I remember snippets of faces and places—cities mostly. Wooden homes and small villages."

"That sword you carry, you were trained to use it?"

"I—yes, I believe so. I don't think I would travel with a sword at my waist if I wasn't."

"You must be one of them."

"One of them? Who are they?"

The Doctor had a strange look on his face. The look a small child gets when they have a secret they know they're supposed to keep but can't contain any longer. "Do you remember the name of the country that surrounds this tower?"

Try as she might, Girl couldn't remember at all. "No," she answered.

"Eblan. Kingdom of the ninjas."

"Ninjas," she repeated.

"They use swords like that, I think. If you 'fell' into the chasm around the tower, you had to have come from there."

"Then it's close!"

"Well, it's not far," he amended.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Again he seemed to fidget on his chair with that smug, eager expression. "Because—I—might have use of that weapon of yours."

Both brows shot up in surprise. "My weapon?"

Now he was sitting forward, his hands on the table as if to propose a business arrangement. "If you could remember how to use that weapon, maybe you could do something else for me."

She made a skeptical face. "How's that?"

"There are…creatures in this tower. Some of them have special abilities and properties. In…in order for many of my projects to work, I need samples."

"Samples of what?" she pressed.

"Blood."

"Blood?" she asked.

"There is no better way to learn about something than from its blood. I haven't had a delivery of samples in quite some time and my research will get behind without them. If you were to remember how to use your ninja craft, or whatever it is your people do, you could retrieve some for me. Perhaps you might find something to help you find your way home again."

Now this was unexpected. There was some merit in his proposal, but she could sense the real purpose. He just wanted her to do the difficult work for him. He was too afraid to go after the samples himself. He was, after all, unarmed and, as far as she could tell, old.

"Fine. I'll do it, but I want a blanket. Also, you had better promise me you'll find some way to send me home. I don't have my life to devote to machines and strange fluids."

"You'll do it?"

For a moment, Girl thought he might jump up and start clapping his hands like an excited child.

"I want a blanket," she persisted.

"Yes, yes. You'll have a blanket," he assured her, nodding emphatically.

"And a way home?"

"I'll think of something. I promise."

She screwed up her features and glared at him. She hoped he'd make good on his word. In the very least, she'd be able to learn the lay of the tower, perhaps figure out the passages while she went looking for "samples".

"I may not remember who I am or much of where I come from, but I do know one thing, and that is I don't like to be taken for granted. My help isn't cheap. Your research for my freedom," she warned.

"That's all very good. I'm sure this will work out well for the both of us. Now hurry up and eat your food," he prodded.

"Why do I have to hurry?"

"As you said, there are lots of pieces to oil and it could take days! I need them ready as soon as possible!"

The reminder of the work she'd just left behind brought her blood to a boil. She fought the urge to roll her eyes. She fought the urge to scream. You'd better keep your promise, old man, or I'll find a different use for that sword of mine than collecting samples, she thought bitterly, while ever so slowly eating the rest of her fruit.

………………………………………………………..

Thanks again for reading and reviewing! And yes, I have a ninja obsession :)

Till next chapter

myth