Awake - Book One of the Spinner's Curse

Chapter Eleven: Strength

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                                                    Chapter Eleven:

                                                           Strength

 

            Weeks passed. Spark brought me a blanket, telling me I'd have to hide it. It was thin, scratchy, and had fleas, but I used it. I stored it beneath my pallet for the times when Mort came to visit. Mort came often. During the winter months, he had nothing better to do than torture me. Some days he whipped my back, sometimes for what felt like forever. He always stopped when he saw blood. They didn't want me to scar.

 I clung to this knowledge. Whenever the pain became too much I bit myself: on the shoulder, on the palm, it didn't matter. I bit until I could feel blood. I would wipe it on myself, which would force him to stop and take me back to my cell. Mort was stupid. He should have gagged me. That way I couldn't force myself to bleed, but he liked to hear me scream. The sound of my tears gave him some sort of sick elation. Some days he’d make me scream until I was hoarse. He’d leave me alone after and will bring me warm soup. That way, I would be able to scream again.

             Spark, too, brought me food. Between the two of them, I did not go hungry. I shared with Ryler. Since my capture, it was as if they had forgotten him. Occasionally Mort would go into his cell and kick him, laughing at Ryler's grunts of pain, but apart from that, he left him alone. Spark brought him food too, but not as often as me. We knew I was Mort's favorite.

              Ryler didn't speak to me. I wondered if he even could. The girl who had taken care of me, the one with the sad eyes, never came back again. She never came to wrap Ryler's jaw, as I knew it should have been. I wondered if it had healed wrong, I wondered if he would ever be able to speak again. I also wondered if he simply didn't want to speak to me.

              Did he blame me for being here? Did he know it was my fault? Sometimes I cried more from the guilt of this knowledge than I did from my wounds. Some days I would plead with him to speak to me, only to be greeted by silence. I would hope they had released him and I just hadn't noticed, until I would find the bowl I set between our cells empty, and I would know he was still there, refusing to answer, or unable to.

             I would escape these thoughts by returning to my memories of him. Of the times when he could still speak. Of the times when he would sit us around a fire in the square, telling us fables none of us had heard before, stories he had made up or heard through-out the years. There were stories of fairies, witches, and dragons, of knights with valor and princesses that needed rescuing, never knowing whom it was that sat among our group, never knowing that some of the stories were true. That one or two of them were actually my ancestors.

*        "Please, Ryler, tell us a story." It was dark and all of us were crowded onto the crates that littered the square, our bellies full from dinner. In the middle of us, Ryler lit a stack of wood. We all knew this meant he was going to tell us a story. We all secretly hoped it would be our favorite, for each of us had one, even me. I had only been among the thieves for a few weeks and Ryler had already bewitched me with his ability to spin tales.

          He chuckled at us, obviously pleased by our eagerness. "Alright," he yelled, as if we were torturing him, "any requests?" All of us began talking at once, some shouting above the din. Ryler grinned mischievously. He raised his hands up, a signal for silence. We all sat, quiet, waiting for his next words. "How about a new tale," he asked. We all cheered. New stories were the best, because they satisfied everyone.