Girl of Iron and Magic

2.

11 YEARS BEFORE THE WAR

For the first seven years of her life, Lotte lived in silence.

She heard. She heard it all. Even if she didn't wish to.

She could not speak. The words, broken, disfigured, were locked inside her. Everything entered, she was as absorbent as a dry sponge, but Lotte's mind was a whirling prison from which nothing could escape.

Lotte's first memory was standing in a stuffy room with two women. She was scarcely more than a toddler then. They spoke above her head as if she wasn't there, calling her an "it" and "this Lotte". They wished to throw her outside, to the streets of Raidox and its ill fates. They didn't in the end. They were somehow forced to keep her.

She stood below their noses, gazing from one to the other. One woman was round, but sturdy and the other had narrow eyes and a wrinkled mouth. Neither was familiar.

She had no memory of anyone before them. No yearning for a mother, no ache of separation.
"You must forget me," someone had said. And after that Lotte was new, with no past.

She was in a small boxy room with drab grey carpeting and a low ceiling. Lotte looked towards the window that overlooked a small round courtyard overgrown with weeds.

There were children there. She knew that they were human and that she was...not human. But how this knowledge came to be inside her she couldn't remember.

Later, she learnt that the place was an orphanage. One of Lord General's failed attempts to appear humane. The round woman was Mrs. Hummund, who taught the children how to read and write and make small sums. The other woman, the one with slitting eyes was only ever known to Lotte as House Mistress.

The children feared House Mistress's cane. She always found reason to punish them, especially Lotte. House Mistress punished Lotte just for existing. And she bore these beatings like everything she did—in silence.

Mrs. Hummund, in contrast, liked Lotte best. Lotte listened and obeyed and never spoke at all, especially not out of turn.

"If only they were all like you," Mrs. Hummund would say with a sigh. She didn't much care whether the children learned during her lessons, only that they would remain well-behaved.

But Lotte did learn, ravenously.

When Mrs. Hummund taught the shapes and sounds of letters, and the words they formed, Lotte hoped that she could write them, and ease the tension of unsaid things. She learnt to read with ease, silently moving her lips for every sound until letters became words, words became sentences, sentences turned to paragraphs and pages and books. Stories became her knowledge.
Lotte drew every letter perfectly, as crisply as Mrs. Hummund herself, but when she tried to form them into words, they would shatter on the page. Whether short words or long, she knew what she wanted to write, but none of it was legible. Everything was still trapped just the way it had always been.

Hours upon hours, Lotte spent trying to break free, her vision blurred by hot, angry tears which she didn't dare to shed. The papers were worn thin, her pencil turned to a stub.

"You can't be so wasteful with our writing equipment," House Mistress had scolded before letting the cane taste Lotte's skin. The pain was indistinguishable from the cramped feeling in Lotte's chest.

Once a week, the children were given brushes and colours and told to paint. Lotte had never cared much for this. The paints were weak and runny, they smelt like chemicals and all she ever managed to make was a mess. On the day everything changed, she entered the class late, walking gingerly after a "meeting" with House Mistress and her cane.