The Land of Shadows

Chapter Eleven

At first, it didn't feel real. I was still weak and malnourished and without energy. And at first, I thought it all was a hallucination. I would have been okay with that. Matt wasn't my enemy, not really. He just wanted my help, and he had been looking after me.

But when the door opened and Ishla, my court psychian, walked in, I knew it wasn't a hallucination. I was back at home, where, for a while, I'd longed to be. But now I longed to be in my prision, although it was no longer one to me. I was silent as Ishla looked over me and gave me the medicines I'd need to recover, ignoring her worried looks.

When Zachariah came to visit, I was moody and withdrawn to the point where he left as fast as he could find an excuse. I was bitter, my emotions mixed. I didn't want to be here, but at the same time I did. Mostly, though, I wanted to be back at Matt's castle.

That first day I ate very little, not in the mood for nourishment. Ishla had warned me about eating too much considering how malnourished I already was, and speculating that whatever food I'd been given was what caused this. She's diagnosed me with food poisoning but left something unsaid to me. I didn't care. I was restless and took weak to do much of anything, until I got the idea to take a bath by myself.

I threw back the covers and swung my legs over the bed, standing up carefully and slowly, one hand gripping the bedpost. I felt a little woozy and weak, but overall I could do this. Stripping off the gown someone had dressed me in, I step into the adjoining bathroom. I don't bother to lock the door, but I do shut it before starting the water. While the water was running, I looked at myself in the mirror. It was a floor-length one on the back of the door, and no place I went in the small bathroom could I escape my reflection.

I was thin. My cheeks were hollow and sunken, my skin stretched taunt over my bones. I could see my ribs, and when I turned my back and glanced over my shoulder I could see my spine. I was paler than I'd ever been in my life, my skin almost translucent. My once-full auburn hair hung stringy, and it was greasy. I was, in short, unhealthy, and unpleasant to look at. That was without the scars. There were some that had been there before the months of torture, like the one on my ankle from when I was a child, and the one on my hand where I'd cut myself cooking. But the biggest one was Matt's insignia, burnt into the flesh on my stomach. I could see what he'd done to me, and I could see that it wasn't pretty, that I wasn't pretty because of him. But I will couldn't bring myself to hate him.

I turned away from my reflection and turned the tap off, sinking into the steaming water. As I curled up, the warmth seeping into my bones, I let myself cry. I wanted to hate Matt, and everyone else. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to want revenge. But I couldn't hate him. I couldn't be angry. And I couldn't quite bring myself to want revenge, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn't even see the sense in continuing this war.

I lay there feeling sorry for myself long after the water went cold, until Ishla burst through the door. "You should have asked me if it was okay to bathe alone, ma'am. You could have died," she said sternly, already bending down to help. I curled against her, surprising both of us, but her old arms circled around me anyway. "Ishla, I don't want to be back," I whisper brokenly, struggling not to start crying again. "I want to still be in Matt's castle." She sighs heavily, kissing the top of my forehead. Ishla had been the court's healer ever since I could remember. She was a jack of all trades; a healer, a nanny, an advisor, a chef, a teacher. Anything she needed to be, she would.

"Child, have you ears of Stockholm Syndrome?" Ishla asks in her familiar, old, creaky voice. I shake my head. Grabbing a towel, she helps me stand and wraps it around my body. "That's when a prisoner slowly begins to associate with their captor," she tells me, drying me off with such gentleness, like she was afraid I would break. "And you think I've got that?" I ask, watching her as she went about her work. I almost felt like a child again, with Ishla getting me ready for some important event. "Honey, I know that's what you've got. There's no getting around it. I don't know if you'll ever be the same. But it is what it is, and I can't go back in time and save you. It took us long enough to find you as it is. Matt covered his tracks very well. But I will get you better, Allie. I swear," she assures me as she dresses me, her steady presence comforting me.

After she'd dressed and fed me, Ishla put me to bed, telling me one of the long-forgotten stories of my childhood until I fell into dreamland.