Characters belong to Stephenie Meyer although not much in this story resembles anything you've read by her.
Chapter Four.
Long I Lay In The Ground
One was born pure gold.
"Do you not see? Can you not see?" she asked plaintively, becoming more and more forlorn as they couldn't see. Over the weeks she took to shrieking and could not be silenced.
"Do not come near me! I destroy everything I touch!"
Eventually she silenced herself, being rendered so hoarse that her voice failed her. After that all they could see was a woman grown gaunt from the exertion of screaming, and from lack of nutrition despite force-feeding.
Another could fly, and broke both legs attempting to prove it when the watch on her proved lax and she escaped and clambered to the roof. Restraints were required to prevent a recurrence.
Another still put out her own eye with her own hand. "The beauty is too much for me, I ache so," she had muttered. If anyone had had an inkling they might have seen this as the warning it was.
I could hear the tumult coming from the place all day, as could everyone in the vicinity, and I could imagine the horror behind the walls. Nights were quiet, once the laudanum had been administered, and probably the staff would have liked to dose it out in the mornings as well, but the scant money available wasn't sufficient for that. Probably the staff would have liked to be able to offer mercy to the unfortunates and give them enough laudanum to keep them quiet for good, but questions would be asked if all the inmates of a Bedlam were to expire at once.
So the piteous noises continued, yet amidst the cacaphony one thing stood out. Day after day, gentle and bright through the chaos, came the distinctive beat of a singular heart. Some of my kind find themselves drawn to particular scents, some are attracted by beauty, though we are all beautiful. I had yet to be attracted by anything, until the first fluttering thump came to me, followed by its accompanying second. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
In a women's insane asylum, my unknown attractor was most likely to be female. During the days I spent listening, I surmised that the owner of the heart was not hysterical, as the regular constancy of the beat barely changed come nightfall, other than a peaceful slowing. This meant no drugs. Perhaps My Heart was a staff member? A medical practitioner? A clinician? An administrator?
Visitors were allowed, though rare. It is highly distressing to be amongst the insane, for their eyes may roll up in their heads, they may touch their private parts in public, they may howl or gibber, or they may do nothing untoward at all. For safety's sake, I believe the lunatics are bound by their wrists and ankles to chairs, and if they froth at the mouth or defecate as they sit, at least they cannot reach the person who has come to call on them.
I didn't know the name of the person I wanted to see, so how best could I arrange to get in the door? Perhaps I could construct a persona who might visit such a place in a professional capacity, in order to conduct an inspection. "I am Dr. Such and Such, from your sister hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and I have heard of the work you are doing here. I believe tongue depression and gagging can be very effective measures during severe convulsions. Do you find this to be so? I wish to tour the premises."
There are no women doctors in this unenlightened age.
"I am the director of an institution in San Rafaello, California. We have implemented a staff training procedure which has resulted in fewer assaults upon staff by residents. I would like to meet all your staff, and subsequently all your patients in order to assess whether the program might work for you."
"My aunt has begun to wander in her mind. Her physical health remains good, but she no longer recognizes familiar faces, and she makes strange and unexpected utterances, and she throws her food. We find ourselves unable to give her the care she needs - would you have a bed here for a sick woman who cannot quite be in society any more?"
It doesn't matter what I say, I just yearn to get within those high stone walls, through the heavy iron gate. I will be guided once I am inside by the magnetic pull of who I want to find.
Dressing myself in as conservative a costume as I can procure from a dressmaker's shop in the town, I make ready. My hair is short, and curls lightly around my earlobes. My shoes have buckles, and a low heel. I wish to appear unostentatious and unremarkable, as flamboyance will not admit me entrance.
Electing to advance my cause with the second ploy - the one promising fewer outbreaks of violence upon nurses and aides and cleaners - I gain entry and an audience with the manager.
He tells me some of these women used foul language, some engaged in licentious behavior, and some were even guilty of having refused to perform housework. That is how they have found themselves in the asylum. One woman with twelve children actually refused her husband his conjugal rights! Many of the residents are considered so mentally ill as to be beyond salvation.
"Admonishments are ineffectual when dealing with the deranged," I murmur. "Stronger methods are called for, yes, I am absolutely in accord with your observations."
The manager is a misanthrope, who cares nothing for the charges of his facility, has no compassion, and whom I suspect derives a nasty and secret pleasure from their humiliation. Once I have captured my elusive quarry, the manager's head will roll.
"May I see the grounds?" I ask, though I have no interest in the grounds. My Heart is somewhere nearby.
The grounds don't amount to much, expansive though they are. No-one seems to have thought that trees and plants and flowers might inculcate any sense of tranquility in a troubled mind, and there is no seating and no attempt at landscaping. I think of Britain, and the work of Capability Brown - long ago now but still fresh to me - and I recapture the sense of verdancy and possibility and order and cycles, and each separate part acknowledged and necessary as a valued segment of a functioning whole.
But here, I hate this horrid place and what is done here to women who are simply overwhelmed by discovering that their girlhood of having to help around the home has led to a womanhood that offers them nothing more, and that their agitation and protests have not freed them, and have in fact have led to their being pronounced mad. Some have sought superficial refuge in their madness, some are helplessly sunken into it, some are here for no reason at all, other than that they have mystified people around them.
And thus, I find My Heart. She is a tiny sparrow, a canary, a nightingale whose pulse sings to me and whose blood I hear beyond and above all others. She's in the garden, a wildflower amongst tame and cultivated blooms, and I know her when I've yet to see her. I would run, knowing her to be close, longing for my first glimpse of the girl-woman for whom I will smash down these walls of indifference and stone.
"Ah, this is Alice," the manager informs me, and My Heart's name is nothing and everything - fitting and incongruous. How can a name be representative of somebody? And yet those few letters encapsulate the creature who raises her glance to me. Alabaster-skinned, sable-haired, amber-eyed, fey and winsome. I loved her without having seen her, and now I am enchanted. She is thin and I am breathless.
"Hello, Al-ys," I offer gently, not knowing how damaged she may be, but hoping from the strength and greatness of her heart that she is not damaged at all.
"Alice knows the future - don't you, my dear? You know things before they happen?" Miss Something-or-Other says in a patronizing voice.
"I know I will go with you," Al-ys says to me. I know she will, too. She and I are mine and hers.
There are formalities - I go through some form-signing under my assumed name, and I say I will submit my report and recommendations.
"And who holds guardianship over the girl Al-ys?" I enquire. "Those who claim to recognize portents are of particular interest to me. I would be most appreciative of the opportunity to study her further. Whose permission need I obtain in order to take her away with me?"
Apparently Al-ys's parents signed her away long ago. She claimed she saw visions of things that were yet to happen, and she detailed events and occurrences to her doubting family. When her predictions proved to be correct they determined in their small-mindedness and superstition that her premonitions were advice from the devil. Appalling as it is, I - a complete stranger - am given permission to take the girl Alice Brandon away with me. There are no checks made of my references - which are fabricated - or the details of my upbringing, education and employment, also fabricated.
I stand at the forbidding gates to my love's erstwhile prison, and to my amazement and delight, tiny Al-ys, with her steady drumbeat for a heart, stands with me, ready to face the world.
.
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Hey, just saying - last night I got my highest reader count ever - 611! - wow. Thank you so much.
And only one person commented! Lady Dragona, I salute you.