Soulbonder

Chapter 9 - Another Option

Shale slept little that night. Her mind was so fraught with questions about her past, that when the first rays of dawn light seeped through the dormitory shutters, she found herself paradoxically both exhausted and wide awake. The thoughts continued to impede her as she got dressed and brushed her hair. She descended to the ground floor corridor. Perhaps a training session in the forest would clear her head and awaken her tired muscles.

She opened the storage room door and crawled to the back wall, where she pushed the corner slab. But rather than sliding free, it remained rigid.

What in the name of Tarshara... She tried again, putting all her weight and strength behind the push, but it never even threatened to budge. Upon inspecting the area closer, she was dismayed to find a fresh layer of mortar caked within the seams.

"Careful back there," said a voice, "It's not quite set yet."

Startled, Shale sprang to her feet and veered around.

Zeera stood in the doorway, holding a cup of tea close to her chest. "Can you believe it? A loose slab in our holy building. Eleven only know how many years it was like that. Here I was, just letting the place fall to rot beneath my very nose. How shameful."

As Shale drew over to the other side of the doorway, she struggled to keep her emotions in check. Why? Why did Zeera take so much joy in making her life miserable. Shale did her work. Granted, she got lost in her imagination sometimes, but she still finished her tasks everyday without complaint. So what if she sneaked out before dawn each morning to stretch her legs? Who was she hurting?

But she couldn't voice the questions. She had to swallow them. Despite the injustice of it all and how much she wanted to scream, something held her back. Even after all these years, she still feared the senior SanMother.

Zeera knew it too. Her face wrinkled into a grin. "Now fetch the broom and start sweeping, sweeper girl."

"But it's-"

"Early, I know. Very smart of you to get up before everyone else to get a jump start."

Empty and tired, Shale retrieved the dustpan, duster, and broom without argument and started her day. As she passed from room to room, she could almost see the ghost of her future, following behind her, slightly slower. Even though decades more had passed for the ghost, she was still here, within these walls, sweeping the same route. She looked sad. Still her only joys came from the escape of her books and the tales she sometimes overheard from travellers. Her hair was grey and her hands were papery, but she had no stories of her own. She'd never lived them.

The ghost vanished and the present Shale was left alone.

That evenfall, she sat in the refectory over a plate of baked apples and oat bread. They disappeared from her plate without her remembering tasting them. They did not fill her. Nothing could fill that hollowness in the pit of her stomach.

After that, she was back in the prayer room with no memory of having walked there. Her broom was clutched in her fists as the townsfolk prayed and confessed. Already, it was night. Another day had passed by in her life, almost identical to all the others.

She suddenly felt lightheaded. Was the room spinning? The faces and voices all swirled together into a soupy mess. She wanted to go to bed, lay down, and fall asleep, just to forget about her dull life for a number of hours. But that would just mean waking and doing this all over again, and the same the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Feeling that she might be swept into the vortex the room had become, she held onto her broom like an anchor.

Eventually the episode passed as she managed to breathe through it. The swirling of the room stopped and the mix of faces focused into just one. From the pews, two piercing yellow eyes stared out from a hood of black silk.