Nada's Escape

34- Symbol.

But tomorrow turns out to be full of sunlight crystallised through a crack in the curtains. A stranger stands by the door in the light.

"You're all you." I squint through bleary eyes for recognition but he leaves, closing the door with a little click.

Am I? I think. I check with my hands and my eyes. Yes. I feel like I've been delicately slotted back into myself. As if I am a wooden doll with newly oiled joints and shined faces. With a spring in my step I jump up into the calm little bedroom.

But now that I am myself are they going to kill me? The disguise is all gone and they know it. Before I can start scouring for a weapon I feel a calming presence on my mind. You're a miracle. They'll fight to keep you alive now. I somehow know the words are true, so I slip out into the hallway.

It's you, isn't it? The hallway is full of gauzy sunlight and sliding doors.

Of course. Words sink into my mind without catalyst. Thoughts from a familiar, calming presence: Finley. They're soundless and yet tone and emotion still brush against my mind.

They didn't punish you then? I ask.

Not badly. We Huntsmen heal fast though, but you know that. You technically doubled your height in under a week. I don't miss his avoidance of my question. My thoughts fly back to Darcell's punishment and my heart sinks for a moment. But then I slide a door open and fully take in the sight of the outside world.

I laugh to the fresh air. Yes I did. Pools meander across a courtyard weaving through patches of leafy shade. A few old Huntsmen recline in cushioned deck chairs. No one jumps up to accost me.

You're going to be alright. Finley whispers to my mind. Now we have the time to get you out. Properly this time. I smile both at his assurances and at the calm beauty of the surroundings.

I start to explore the white sunshiny courtyard complex. The boards on the tall fence are whitewashed but I still get the message. I'm being kept under observation. So I continue to observe. It's like some kind of retirement home. The back wall of the courtyard is textured sandstone with water bubbling, playfully catching the light.

I sense the shifting of air more than I hear the approach of more Huntsmen. Turning, I am surprised by the sight of Darcell, black t-shirt sucking all the shadows out of the surrounding curtains. His gaze is sharp on me even though his mouth slackens into a smirk. Just a faint pink smudge on his cheek betrays his near-death state only... two or three days ago? I'm glad he's healed, glad that he gave me the pills that have apparently saved me.

"Nada?" He tilts his head to the side. "You look... different," he muses. He lifts my hand to his lips before I can react and licks it. I snatch back my hand and scowl heartily. The white - clad Huntsmen that entered with Darcell hang back in the doorway, showing about as much surprise as a brick wall.

"What do you think you're doing?" I whisper, wiping the back of my hand frantically on my trousers. But Darcell doesn't respond. He is still frowning at my hand. Like he's never seen one before.

Finally, he flicks his gaze to my face, "I've never done that before." He places a hand before me and asks, "May I?" He still frowns at my hand.

I bite back retorts as rage bubbles under my skin. The whiteness of the place now strikes me as a dreamy laboratory. A place where you keep experiments like me. My fist balls and I line up my shot but the voice in my head stops me.

Play along, Nada, this is an important ceremony, it whispers in Finley's voice. Please. We'll get you out for real next time. I try to fight the numbing tug coming from that voice.

Not just me. I grate mentally, remembering my purpose.

Everyone. He whispers, his fading voice dragging my defiance along with it.

I'm already passing over my hand when I remember to give Darcell my best don't-you-dare-do-anything-stupid glare. Hands closing around my wrist, he's too enchanted by my hand to speak. Like it's made of glass he turns it, marvelling at the skin of my palm. He's holding it at such an angle that I can't see what has him so transfixed. I clench my stomach at the flutterings his index finger creates as he traces a shape there. The movement is mesmerising and my eyes follow it even as he retracts his finger.

Black liquid, cold and sticky, splashes across my hand from a vial. I flinch but Darcell's grip on my wrist merely tightens in response. None of the liquid falls though. Magnetized, it floats against gravity to pour back to the centre of my palm. I pull my hand back part way to watch the liquid swirling and congregating into a solid black shape. Like a bishop in chess. Where have I seen that shape before? Darcell breathes a prayer. I look at him, enraptured by such a simple, impossible thing. Him, who should have seen and done so many more impossible things.

While I ask my silent questions Darcell is holding my arm up to the Huntsmen behind him like I am the winner of a boxing match.

He looks up into me. "You're a Huntsmen".

"What?" I snap. I rip my arm from him and scrub away the liquid, half expecting it to have tattooed me. But it vanishes like it was never there and I huff, inspecting my hand for damage. A flat brown symbol is birth marked into my skin where the liquid had stuck.

"What have you done to me?" I gape. Darcell backs away, not even trying to placate me.

"It was already there I swear. I just checked if it was real magic. It's the mark of the Warrior Mage, no one could put it there but him. "

The floor drops under my insides. A Huntsmen? Finley's voice is in the back of my mind begging, but I pay it no heed. I am transfixed by the symbol, its meaning scrambling into place behind my eyes. A memory jolts through me of Marigold's lessons back in Seven. It's for a good reason they call him the fierce face of compassion. He isn't worshipped in temples or churches but in war rooms and armouries. Because the way to compassion isn't through thought or money or prayer, but through action.

Of course, the crude non-picture is etched into the gates of Seven. Just a pattern, I had thought. Scratched into the wall of my cell, in the copyright pages of the Huntsmen's book of Tales, embroidered around the edge of the blanket I'd just been sleeping under, even on Finley's leather bracelet, the one I'd stared at on every visit to avoid his enthralling gaze. So the Warrior Mage had been everywhere, only I'd never seen it.

It hits me that if this power is true, not just the usual Huntsmen garbage, that my badge of humanity has been stripped without consent. And I hate that.

Every fibre of my consciousness repels that thought. The sound of a scream starts way back in my head, faint yet. Then the volume turns up and up until the scream fills my body. Finley's voice tears at my consciousness to hold back but I am way past that. I am a screaming ball of rebellion against all the Huntsmen and so I fly at Darcell.

I shove him aside and ignoring Finley's voice dash past them all in a stream of red panic. I take every sentiment the head-Finley utters and do the opposite, fuelled by the rage of all this attempted coercion. I'm moving like a blur past the white-clothed men at the door.

Beyond them the corridor stretches and my vision flashes black and red. Along it a big wooden panelled door rears up. The wardens by the doors try to catch me in their gaze but I block that just as I physically block their grasping hands. I trip the first one and lock eyes with him as he falls, completely in control. The second gets an arm round from behind me and I kick out his knee. I rocket forward out his grip as he falls and then for good measure I thwack my bare foot down into the chest of the first warden.

I push through the doors onto an open path and whirl for a moment, a lost compass. The Huntsmen's buildings, the hulking academy and off over the rooftops a canopy. Yes the gardens. I flee towards them, a crazy girl wearing a white sheet night gown, trying to feel the humanity of my bare feet pounding the gravel.

The screaming rage clears as I enter the haze of greenery. The grass and the dirt beneath my toes feels the same. My lungs have the same ache as I suck in breath. Finley is silent in my head, but that space where I was hearing him is filled with the sleepy static of a radio just waiting to pick up an S.O.S. I go to that place again, where the lush and desert and sky all meet. It feels right, like the only place I can feel free whilst still so trapped.