The Phoenix People

Chapter Six

Waiting in the laundry cart was a terrifying time. Minutes stretched into hours, which in turn elongated until they felt like days.

"Have you ever actually done this before?" I finally hissed toward Handmaiden-for-Alexia's cart.

"I told you, I've been cooped up in the palace grounds for the past five years. The boy who takes my letters uses these carts to get them out, that's all I know."

"But how will the person carting us out know we're in here?"

"All your talking, that's how," Handmaiden-for-Alexia snapped. "Is your face covered?"

I stared up at the dark ceiling far above us and frowned. "I wanted to wait for us to start moving. I can't breathe when my face is covered."

"So move the clothes around until you can," Handmaiden-for-Alexia ordered annoyedly.

I sighed and set to work, placing layers of clothing over my face with cleverly hidden airways leading to the surface. When I was finished, I tried to hold completely still along with remembering to breathe through my mouth - Lowborn clothes might not have held the diseases I had been warned about as a child, but they reeked.

Exhaustion began to invade my mind until I could think of nothing but sleep. An enticing idea wormed its way into my brain: when I woke up, the nightmare that was my new reality would be just that - another one of my morbidly concocted nightmares. I was sure of it.

With that, I drifted into blissful slumber.

*

I was woken by the rattling and jolting of my bed.

I had always been slow to rise and start thinking coherently. As I lay on my bed, buried completely underneath my bedcovers with my eyes still closed, I thought, maybe this is an earthquake. I suppose I'd better get out of bed and see what's happening. Earthquakes were a somewhat common occurrence, after all, and protocol stated that for your own safety, you had to be in the magically reinforced hallways as they were occurring.

And then it all came rushing back.

I am in a laundry cart being wheeled away to the Lowborn revolution headquarters and I fell asleep, oh gods, how could I have fallen asleep - 

The cart stopped. I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut tightly.

"Laundry loads," a bored-sounding older woman said in a monotone, probably to the guards at the inner gate. As we picked up our rattling cadence, I noted, poor security. I should get that updated. Then I remembered that if security was tighter, I would have been discovered along with Handmaiden-for-Alexia.

Like I said - I was never quick to wake.

A voice spoke, low and urgent, and it took me a moment to recognize it as belonging to the older woman wheeling my cart. "Stay still, as if you are dead. Move, and you will be."

I started to sweat at the fear her words concocted within me. This plan was insane! Why hadn't I just ignored that damn folded rug before my wardrobe?

The cart rattled onward, the path getting progressively bumpier until the clothes above me were flopping wildly around. Several times, I had to carefully and quickly readjust the fabrics to hide myself, heart pounding all the while. The woman had, after all, made it very explicit what would happen to me if I was seen.

My stomach soon began to churn. My dress was plastered to my skin from sweat - the day's heat, the smothering clothes, it all increased my uncomfortableness and nausea.

Finally, we slowed and then stopped. "Where is that damn wagon?" the old woman muttered. She then made a satisfied clucking sound in the back of her throat that I prayed signaled the arrival of the "damn wagon."