Nada's Escape

46- Sanctuary.

Despite my determination not to be a worm I allow Alex to measure me across all sorts of bizarre distances. She says we should keep up pretences and begin to get me geared up. I make up for my compliance by asking a barrage of questions about how Norgara works.

She then takes me to the marketplace to gear up on the non-battlefront, sifting through clothing from second hand buckets until my eyes ache from boredom. Alex insists I need all sorts of other knick-knacks: wooden spoons and coat hangers, all of which she packages into large shoulder bags. Lugging them back to her little house I marvel that I've spent my whole afternoon with Alex.

"I had better be going..." I broach, calculating the quickest way to Finley's bungalow.

"I was actually hoping you'd take a walk with me." Alex replies, turning from her open front door. I raise my eyebrows in incredulity but Alex only surveys the street with cool brown eyes. So quickly I would have missed it with a blink, she taps the side of her nose. I wonder if Alex had only scratched her nose as she relieves me of my bags and firmly takes my arm.

Alex walks me briskly to the gardens, pressing her lips together harder with every one of my hedged questions. I shake off her arm as we enter the lavender field I'd ran through yesterday. Even in the falling light it is clearly deserted and I use the opportunity to round on her with my frustration. But Alex is ignoring me, mindfully stepping between the rows of plants. She stops at some unknown signal and crouches, searching through the bush before her.

A gap yawns in the ground underneath the bush and I slink forward curiously. I see she's opened a trapdoor hidden by the bush; but where could it lead all the way out here? She throws me a black strip of cloth and my heart sinks. Though I had expected something clandestine a gaping hole in the earth and a blindfold are a little too gothic for my liking.

"The sanctuary awaits." Alex says cryptically, "You won't find your way through the tunnel labyrinth, regardless, but this is extra security."

"And why should I?" I demand, hands on hips.

"I thought you'd like to know the girls who didn't make it out of Seven are remembered. I'm taking you there; to a safe place, free from Huntsmen. It's not something Finley can show you. Only Seveners or Daughters of the Hunt have ever been there." Alex's voice is as soft as the dusk sky and some of my starch melts away. It doesn't sound like a trap. If she wants to do me harm, wouldn't it have been easier to poison my lunch or stab me with a clothes pin?

I nod and tie the blindfold under my ponytail at the back, feeling the way with my feet and my nose. Sweet lavender overwhelms me, undertones of fresh earth and as I feel gritty steps under the soles of my sandals a mineral scent tickles my nose. Alex's hand on my arm directs me and despite her calm instructions, anxiety starts to eat at me. My sandals scuff up dust at a corner and I inhale it with a wrinkled nose. Turn after turn with no sight I begin to feel dizzy and nauseous, questioning why I agreed to this.

Five or ten minutes later Alex whispers that we've made it and I pull off the blindfold with shaking hands. Alex sets a lit candle on a wide circular bench running around a basin of red and gold veined sandstone. A statue of a kneeling woman rises from its middle, head cast down in sorrow, sword hilt poking over shoulders strongly carved. She's a warrior there's no doubt about that but also contemplative and sad, as if she mourns that she has to be a warrior.

"Warrior Mage." Alex nods to the statue and seats herself on the bench. I take in the rest of the chamber and the large pocks in the sandstone walls that stretch on into the darkness. The roof arches above my head, the pocks spaced too regularly to be natural, despite their rough-hewn look.

"The Warrior Mage? It's different from the pictures," I say, turning back to the fine carving of the woman, so different to the picture Percival had given me.

"The Warrior Mage as a symbol is genderless. All things to all Huntsmen and women. Here only the female part of the Warrior Mage is welcome." Alex answers, observing the wall before her. I process this, thinking of the cloaked woman in my dream. It makes sense that the Warrior Mage might have several faces for the Huntsmen, though I can't see why their deity would care about me either way.

I notice an envelope lying in the basin under the statue, elegant script across it saying, "Even in the darkness, Hope matters." It seems placed and significant, like an ever-burning candle in a church.

"The water stopped flowing here when the curse started. The Huntswoman who showed me the way told me she believed that it would only flow again when the curse was broken." Alex explains and my perspective shifts. The statue is a fountain, dried up now.

"And the letter?" I ask.

"The water will flow and eat the letter when the curse is at its end. It's a victim's account of a most horrendous wrong..." Alex's voice falters. I reach down to the letter, thinking I'd better give Alex some peace from my questions.

"No don't open it like that." Alex interrupts, "Careless. With curiosity." She places a hand on my arm. "Knowledge is a heavy burden. See this first." She guides me deeper into the chamber, taking the candle in her other hand.

"Each hollow with a handprint in it is a life cut short. At first it was just Huntswomen taken by the curse." Alex explains, and I see that every deep pock in the rock has a black handprint in it and a name carved under it. I run my hand over one, wiping dust from the hollow.

"Then Seven was created and termination took lives too." We walk by hundreds of hollows and then the hands turn red. "And then there was this atrocity," Alex brushes the stone by the red-marked hollows. I notice there are no names here, just anonymous hands and my heart grows cold.

"You remember everyone else, why not these?" I ask.

"Some things are better not remembered too well, lest someone try it again." Alex replies cryptically. The chamber continues into the darkness, more of a corridor I guess, filled with these bizarre hollows. The handprints stop after the red ones I notice. I fear to touch the walls now, in case the weight of death slips off into me but I do examine the cut-off. A single black hand print up near the ceiling catches my eye.

The caption grounds me, Jayne Parkes. I'd known somewhere deep inside I'd see her name but it still ached to know what had happened to her.

"The last one. Only nine women know the way here. We would like you to become a guardian of the way too." I swallow a lump in my throat and turn to Alex, her face ruddy in the candlelight.

"Then why the blindfold?" I ask.

"I wanted to give you a choice. You can decline this way and the secret's still safe. I can bring you if you want to come by anytime." I feel like for the first time all day Alex is properly looking at me.

"I... don't know." I whisper, "Can we go now?" My throat feels as dry and dusty as the cave walls.