Chapter 3
This would make for a shitty story, I thought ruefully. 'Girl transported to a magical world – immediately imprisoned and dies of hunger, exposure, dehydration. It was somehow both anticlimactic and clichéd.
My second day in Thedas merely felt like an extenuation of the first; not only was I pushing twenty-five hours without sleep, but I continued to hang uselessly in my little cage, without any sign of rescue.
As I'd feared, there was no sign of Bennick-the-ass's captain. In fact, not a soul came or went through the prisoners' compound all day. It had only one entrance, serving as a thoroughfare to nowhere, and apparently the army did not have many prisoners, so no one new was hauled into join our raggedy ranks all day.
I suppose it made sense, I begrudgingly pondered, when I realised that my initial plan of yelling something attention-grabbing at the next guard or soldier, I saw might take longer than expected. The army was still mustering and based on the bustling noise from the camp around us, spirits in the ranks were high. As yet not many had tried to desert and required locking up.
Those who had already been imprisoned did not speak to me, and I reciprocated in kind. They were a hollow-eyed assortment of men in threadbare tunics adorned with crests I didn't recognise. I think the man closest to me – mercifully several metres away and separated by more empty cages – might have been dead, because he'd been dangling in the same slumped position motionless since my arrival.
The thought bounced off my exhausted psyche without leaving much impression. I'd encountered the dead before – early in med school in dissections for Anatomy 2000 – but I suspected my indifference now had more to do with sleep deprivation than stoicism. This is going to be fun to unpack in therapy.
The thought of school distracted me for a little while from my physical discomfort. What would they say if I ever got back to the real world? It had been Friday the night I'd gone to sleep in my bed (much too early for someone my age, as Keira repeatedly pointed out), which meant today was Sunday, and I'd be expected back in the hospital tomorrow.
Surely by now Keira would've reported me missing? She'll definitely have called home. I scratched at the burns running up my forearms, as an unpleasant idea occurred to me. They'll probably assume I've hurt myself. Killed myself. Walked into the fucking ocean or something.
If I ever made it back, I'd have a lot of explaining to do, and zero answers that made sense. I slipped my feet through the bars below to rest my cramping legs, then realised I'd unwittingly mirrored the position of the maybe-dead man and pulled myself up to stand. My short stature, at least, meant I didn't have to stoop.
"Hello? Anyone around?" I yelled over the nearby fence. "I have important information!"
My voice cracked and was barely audible over the surrounding camp's din, even to my own ears.
Nobody came for nobody.
On the second day of my imprisonment – third in Thedas… Monday in the real world… Why are you keeping count, girl? – I caught a falling leaf which carried a drop of morning dew, and I lapped it up like fine wine. Then I ate the leaf.
I'd finally slept, albeit only for a few short hours the night before. My arms were beginning to blister and hurt like a motherfucker. That was a good sign: it meant only partial thickness burns. The risk of infection, while concerning, felt like a problem I'd only have to worry about if I didn't die of thirst: dewdrops off leaves weren't going to sustain me for very long.
I wonder if the bacteria in Ferelden are the same as those on Earth.
In addition to the burns and my seemingly omnipresent headache, my neck was now spasming painfully after spending the past several hours craning it upwards to watch for more falling leaves. I wished I could reach the ground, where the scattered remains of my little saviours who'd drifted out of reach now looked like an appetising feast. Whatever psychopath had decided that hanging cages were a good idea had earned a special place in my mental ledger of people deserving vengeance – right below Bennick-the-ass and the soldier, Linde.
It wasn't until that evening, when I was near-delirious, that I finally saw someone enter the prison compound: a woman dressed in white robes accented with gold, carrying a tome in one hand and a bucket in the other. The bucket was filled with water.
In other words, she was an angel.
'Here!' I wanted to say, but my raspy voice and parched throat instead produced: "H-aach."
I coughed dryly and made scrabbling gestures through the bars as the angel glided with agonising savoir faire from prisoner to prisoner, intoning words I couldn't make out and offering a drink of water to each, from a tankard she refilled in the bucket. The gentle sloshing was enough to drive me crazy.
"Pl… please…" I whispered, when finally, it was my turn, but before she quenched my thirst, the angel sang.
"I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade;
for there is no darkness, nor death either, in the Maker's Light;
and nothing He has wrought shall be lost."
She raised the tankard, and although I tried to snatch it and drink greedily, her grip was firm, forcing me to press my face between the bars and drink only as she offered it. I was terrified she'd stop me before I'd sated my thirst, so I held her wrist in desperation, and watched her closely over the rim of the cup.
"Peace, child," the angel said, smiling gently, blue eyes patient and calm. Her hair was deep chestnut brown, longer than mine, perfectly straight, and when hurriedly inhaled between sips of water, I caught the faint scent of sandalwood. For a moment, I wrestled with the crazed impulse to reach out and touch it.
Don't.
The angel let me drain the cup, then refilled it and handed it to me.
"Thank you," I gasped between sips, trying to force myself to drink more slowly, as she wanted. "Thank you."
"All sins are forgiven; all crimes pardoned;
Let no soul harbour guilt;
Let no soul hunger for justice."
She sang the hymn softly and warmly, and I suddenly felt overwhelmed by gratitude. I started crying.
I've never been particularly religious. Granny went to church every Sunday, but with Mum and Dad we went only on special occasions. It was a small piece of family tradition afforded very little reverence, which of course I railed against as a teenager. By the time I finished school, I'd formalised my protest by becoming an atheist – a woman of reason, or so I liked to think.
Keira still believed, I knew, although she didn't practice religion with much gusto, which was unusual for my sister, who tended to do things with a lot of gusto or not at all, unlike me.
As such, I felt somewhat dishonest when I handed the twice-emptied tankard back to the angel and awkwardly said,
"Praise the Maker."
She smiled again, and surprised me when she leaned closer, reciting a verse from memory rather than the tome.
"Truly, the Maker has called you, just as He called me."
She spoke quietly, with an air of mischief that I didn't understand. I knew nothing about Chantry scripture, but I felt an urge to say something, so I squinted through the dimming twilight to read upside-down from her open tome.
"By the Maker's will I decree;
Harmony in all things."
She stepped back – to my chagrin – her expression surprised, and I worried that I'd caused offense. Her words were not unkind, however.
"You can read?"
"I can read," I said, stupidly.
"How unusual," she eyed me curiously, and it dawned on me that literacy must not be particularly common among lowly city elves – especially those found in cages. I shook my head slightly, feeling as though the life-giving water she'd given me had woken me from some sort of stupor. Focus!
"I shouldn't be in here," I gripped the bars tightly, with a renewed sense of desperation for freedom. "I was lost in the woods. The soldiers picked me up and said I'd be questioned, but they just left me here. It's been days."
Instant, heart-wrenching regret filled me when I saw the look of curiosity fade from the angel's face, to be replaced by an expression of distant sympathy – the look of someone tolerating a beggar.
I was begging, after all. Begging because I didn't know what else I could do. Should I tell her what I knew? Would she think me insane? What do I say?
"I can't set you free, child."
She stepped back, picking up the bucket.
"Please don't go," I babbled, holding back the urge to start sobbing again. "Please."
"By the Maker's will I decree…"
"No, no stay, please!" I wailed. "Please stay!"
"Harmony in all things."
Stupid, stupid, stupid! I scared her off!
I dangled helplessly from inside my cage, banging my forehead against the bars until my vision swam. Another golden opportunity for freedom, wasted! In my desperation, I'd squandered the attention of the angel.
What should I have said? What would win me freedom? The Archdemon?
It's on its way, but everyone either already knows that or wouldn't believe me.
Teryn Loghain would betray the king. The battle of Ostagar was doomed to fail.
It hasn't happened yet. Throwing around accusations is more likely to get me executed than released.
Then what? My memories of the game suddenly felt fuzzy, and I couldn't focus with everything else swirling around in my head: the headache; my burns; gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach; the face of the angel, in the instant when I'd seen her curiosity evaporate.
Pathetic.
Four days in the cage… no… five. six? I'd lost count when my sleep schedule stopped obeying the sun and moon and again-sun: now I drifted in and out of consciousness with no particular regularity. I usually put up little resistance except around dusk because that's when the angel had last appeared.
She'd not made another appearance, however. I idly wondered if she'd perhaps been a hallucination. A hallucination inside a delusion, what a lark.
Last night, while waiting for her, a guard arrived instead – the first I'd seen in all my time a prisoner. I'd called out to him, of course, asking for food, water, and ranting about information I needed to share with the king, the Grey Wardens, Teryn Loghain, anyone. The sour-faced brute had ignored me. He wasn't even bringing food or water. Instead, he trudged up to my maybe-dead neighbour – who unsurprisingly was actually-dead – emptied the cage with the undignified boredom of a man labouring, then dragged the corpse away.
Maybe I can pretend to be dead, I thought. Maybe that's what the other guy was doing all along?
I gave it a try, letting my feet drift in the wind and – for a time – enjoyed the small freedom of maybe-death, but the task eventually proved burdensome. Pressure sores had formed where my rear end rested on the metal, since I no longer had the energy to squat, crouch, or stand in the cage. Every few hours, my maybe-death was interrupted by the need to adjust my position before the pain became unbearable.
Then the blisters on my burnt arms, which by now were becoming calloused, began to burst, and I gave up on the façade in order to lick at the fluid that leaked out.
Sorry. Gross. Gross.
I'll add Sour-face to the ledger.
Still in the cage… a lifetime of days… sometimes nights… I gradually spent more time unconscious and less awake; I think….
"You lied, elf."
I'd worked out my maybe-dead neighbour's secret. Genius! No water, dehydration. Dehydration; hypernatraemia. Hypernatraemia; reduced level of consciousness.
"Oi! Are you listening to me?"
Reduced level of consciousness, maybe-death! It was easy, of course, to feign death while unconscious. I figured out your secret, neighbour.
"The kennelmaster doesn't remember asking you for any flowers."
Maybe-death; Death. No, wait. That wasn't right. Death.
Perhaps my neighbour was a step ahead of even himself. You sly dog. What better way to fool the living into thinking me dead, than to die? Death. What a visionary, that ragged man had been, taken away too soon by my cruel captor. I've learned your secret. When Sour-face removed my maybe-dead body, I'd follow in my neighbour's footsteps. Death. It was enough to bring a tear to my eye, which I greedily snatched up on the end of a blackened finger and drank. Death.
"She needs help, Linde."
The voice of my angel.
"Angel," I greeted her, hoping to make a better impression the second-time around.
"She's delirious."
"Fetch us water, elf," a familiar voice said gruffly; Linde, the soldier from Bennick-the-ass's cohort. As I remembered, she had a lot of nerve, and this confirmed it. Don't order me around. I'll fetch water over my dead body.
"You're on the ledger," I said. My eyes didn't seem to be working correctly. I couldn't see, but I heard the sound of feet, then another that I knew intimately: a bucket of water. One of my favourite sounds. There's another elf? Fetching water?
"What's she talking about?"
"She's delirious."
"Yeah, no shit."
"Drink," said a third voice, whose owner I didn't recognise. The elf? I'm an elf. She pressed a cup to my lips, and I dutifully drank.
"You won't get many answers out of her now, Linde. We should have done this sooner."
"Deena's right," said the angel, and I stopped drinking to swivel my head in her direction.
"Ar lath ma, vhenan," I said matter-of-factly.
The elf – Deena – stiffened, and I despite my blindness, I could feel multiple sets of eyes fixed on me.
"What did she say?" Linde demanded.
"I don't know."
"Don't lie, elf."
"Maybe she's Orlesian."
"That wasn't fucking Orlesian."
"It's just a phrase. It doesn't translate. It can mean a lot of things."
"So, she's Dalish?"
"No."
"Enough!" the angel interrupted. "Deena, fetch her some food, please. The sooner she's fed and rested, the sooner she can answer questions."
I felt the elf stand up and hurry away, the sound of rustling fabric giving me an inkling that we were inside some sort of tent. Out of the cage. That's what matters. I nodded.
"I don't think she can see," Linde said, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence as we waited for Deena.
"What?"
"Uh huh," I nodded again, confirming the soldier's assessment.
"Oh, Maker's breath," the angel sighed in exasperation.
"She won't be much use to the Bann if she's blind," said Linde, and I imagined her shrugging. Then I imagined punching her in the face. Not in front of the angel.
Their conversation was cut short when Deena returned, and I felt something that felt suspiciously like food pressed into my palm. Further investigation – shoving it in my mouth – confirmed it, but I swallowed before my tongue had time to register the taste. Another bite. The texture reminded me of the dress I'd been wearing since waking up in the woods. Dresses aren't food. Another bite, except there wasn't another bite – I'd finished it.
"Slow down, cousin," Deena said, and I felt another piece of whatever-it-was given to me.
"Sorreugh," I replied, already chewing.
"I can't watch this," Linde exclaimed. "I'm due for patrol. I'll be back after sunset. She'd better be… better, by then."
"She won't," said Deena. "She needs time to recover."
"Hmph."
A/N: Thanks again to Judy for the review and those who have followed or favourited Family Trip. Next chapter out in a week.