Viola

Night

She did come back some time later. Any stray rays from the sun had long since passed below the horizon and the chills of night air tormented me. There were sheets on the bed, but my chains were not long enough that I could reach any corner. There were also curtains on the bed, but they were ties against the bedposts out of reach. I was wearing only my thin nightgown.

I was surprised to see her. I had assumed, for some bizarre reason, she would not sleep in the same room as me. I was also chained to the bedpost, and I feared greatly what a lawless person like the Lady Captain would do with me in her bed.

Maybe she sensed my fear and was a more sensitive creature than I had thought, or maybe she analyzed my chilled state and was a crueler creature than I had thought, but either way, she released the chains from the bedpost.

But the Lady Captain would not let me go that easily.

When I would not move off the bed, she pulled and my wrists were tugged across the room. I was then forced to either walk or endure being dragged across the bare wooden floor. I walked.

She led me to a panel I had not noticed before with obvious hooks for chains. There was a pillow underneath it. Not knowing what else to do, I sat.

The Lady Captain removed her eye patch to reveal a functioning eye underneath, saw me, then winked.

Maybe she had a tic.

She removed also her coat and hat, but not her boots. As she sat down beside me, I noticed one of her legs was pegged. This prosthetic, I figured, did not hide a functioning appendage beneath.

I refused to look in her direction. In honesty, the Lady Captain did interest me, but in the way a spider is very, very interesting to a fly in its web. Staring straight ahead, I determined she was some kind of holy test, a she-demon for me to thwart.

"What's your name, then?"

I enunciated every syllable with a haughtiness I copied off my eldest sister. "Madeleine. Louise. Durand."

She may have asked me more questions, or she may not have.

Out of indifference, I fancied, I answered no more. But I knew, sickeningly, it was out of fear.

The she-demon sitting near me sighed and rose, an abomination I could only raise my chin at and ignore.

She removed her boot and I was mildly surprised she possessed toes instead of hooves. Then she spun to sit with her back to me and removed her shirt. Under it was strips of fabric I assumed held her breasts flat to her chest when she ran or jumped. The Lady Captain's back was muscled toughly, the like of which I had only seen on dock-workers or our kitchen servants. I forgot I was not supposed to look at her, but then the she-demon stole a glance back in my direction.

Heat rushed to my cheeks.

Evidently, her ungodly power of sight allowed her to see my expression and she smiled slightly, then turned to face me. She bent down to finish her task and then I realized and believed wholly, fully, that enemies to God walk on Earth. Her task was to unbind her breasts.

I was jolted back to playing in an orchard at fifteen, seeing a group of boys a few years my senior climbing trees and picking apples. They had removed their shirts and I both wanted to and didn't want to look away. I was sixteen, accidentally walking in on a servant's bath. She had looked at me, startled, and I remembered making eye contact with the rest of her body without meeting her eyes. Then I had fled. I was seventeen, going to balls and marveling at the men in their tight pants and women with their low necklines. I was eighteen now, too old for such nonsense and here I was, flushing as some devil in pirate costume faced me without a shirt.

My eyes slammed shut after I reminded them several times.

But I had already seen too much.

That night, I prayed more fervently than ever that Perseus would come and rescue me from Cetus.

He did not.