Note to Self: Solitary confinement is much more fun when you’re three.Tacking this latest picturized revelation to the slab of wood nailed onto the wall with the dozens others I’d written in the past two weeks, I heaved a sigh and leaned heavily back into the old nursemaid’s rocking chair Sameer brought home when I but a year old. The sigh felt good, so I did it again. I kicked my feet back and forth; I slapped the armrest; I banged my head on the wall.
Restlessness filled every bone, every vein, every muscle. My body longed for movement, my brain for stimulation. I had played every game my room could offer at least ten times each, from lock-picking to memorization of item location. I had done so many floor presses and flailing jumps and punches and kicks I was ready to take on the Antonese Civil Army.
Taking a lethargic look around my bedroom turned prison, my eyes alighted upon a trunk. Not every activity had been exhausted in this room. Maybe every legal one had, but I didn’t even exist, so the law didn’t pertain to me did it? And after all, most of the things I did weren’t legal. Sometimes I wondered if
I were even legal.
The trunk had been locked ever since I could remember. When I was five I’d asked Papa what was in it. He’d just been about to tell me when Ma swooped down and forbid him to, reminding him that they’d agreed not to allow her to have it ‘til she was twelve; after all, did he want his only daughter to decapitate herself? Maddeningly, as he did 99.9% of the time, Papa agreed with her, and Ma ruled. I’d never gone against him.
I was still six years away from being twelve, but now, locked in my room, there was no way anyone would know what I was or wasn’t doing. I had been shocked when neither Ma nor my nurse was forced upon me in the room as they had in the past, but apparently this latest outbreak, dubbed in our village as the Sleeping Syndrome, was so virulent that it was safe to be around no one. A notamas would check in to see if I was dead at some point in the day, but it wouldn’t know what I was or wasn’t supposed to be doing. Even if it did see me with a forbidden weapon (which it had to be –I couldn’t decapitate myself with anything else), no one would pay attention to its claims anyway. That was the only reason Papa let them know I was here to check on in the first place.
I scooped up my ring of lock picks and inspected the padlock Papa had rigged on the trunk. It was of the highest quality, the kind of lock only Papa could get. It was going to take hours to get into the thing, but I had time. I could have used the lock filer I had stolen from Sylas, but even a defectos would have seen that, as I’d no way to fuse the metal seamlessly back together.
It took me, judging by the lighting sunlight threaded through the small cracks between my shutters and the window frame, the good part of an afternoon to get the tumblers to fall into place. I stopped once to eat and drink, another to take a bath, and once more as I glanced up to see a notamas check in on me before I finally cracked it.
I almost had it when a deep bell tolled. This was not the sweet clock bell of the village, but the harsh, unfeeling toll of death. The Sleeping Syndrome had claimed another victim. One of these death bells was positioned atop each household. I adjusted my hearing as it sounded to track where the vibrations in the air cam from. It was loud, so it had to be near. My tracking stopped dead just meters from my room. My hands, still clutching the picks, jerked, making the lock
click! open. However, my heart had tuned out all but the sound of that bell. Each bong pierced a hole right through me.
It was our bell. Someone of my family had died.
More to come. Once I type it up.
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