Closed The Posture of the Key

[Philomena]

Minnie lay in her bed, heavy with sweat. Her box of papers was locked, her satchel folded into her scarves, and she wore only a thin white shift, flesh-pink now with the damp of a broken fever, and a red linen scarf around the car on her neck. She was exhausted. And yet... it was a different exhaustion. Almost... almost a healthy exhaustion. It was the exhaustion she had felt, for instance, years earlier, when she had struggled her Gypa to sleep at a milkless breast, and after three hours, he had lay quiet and serene in his cradle, at last. That feeling of shaky well-being. She reached her right hand to her face, and touched it. She was cool. Her hand was steady, and did not shake. Even... the skin felt different. She found herself suddenly, powerfully thirsty. The joints of her knuckles were still hard and swollen, but the red blush of infection was not faded: it was simply gone. She coudl practically feel the fluid draining from between the tender bones. And she could see them. She reached in shock and nearly poked her eye: she was not wearing her spectacles, and yet... she was only fuzzy in her sight! Not enough to read comfortably, but she could see again!

She reached her other hand up... and stopped. The velvet glove on it. The memory, of a sword, of rotten flesh, of sacrifice. She pulled her sleeve up, and the tender, vulnerable-soft flesh of her inner wrist had never looked so beautiful. Gingerly, as if touching a beautiful wild bird, she touched the velvet glove with her white hand. Stroked it softly. Her mind was lost, wandering, the first reaction it could formulate was wonder at the fineness of the fabric - there was no velvet in her university silks, and she'd never owned cloth so fine, and beautiful.

//Minnie-Wren. It is secret. Remember. There is dark coming, there will be hard things. Remember your promises, Minnie-Wren.//

She stroked the glove again - no. It would look suspicious. No one would believe that she, with her cheap clothes and poor style, would wear it. She would keep it somewhere sacred. She took the rich silk and rolled it up tightly, and slid it beneath the dress of her Qalayan prayer doll. Then, she took the key to her locked box of books from where it hung behind her bookshelf, hidden away, and unlocked the box, and put the prayer doll inside, then relocked it, replacing the key. Then she went to her drawers, and pulled out a pair of her white, cotton, reading gloves, sliding them on her hands... the bronze hand felt strange, nimble, both her and not-her. She stopped with the glove half on it, and touched the Qalaya mark atop it. Traced it with her fingers. Reached down and licked it, like a child with a glass marble. Her hand felt like living metal. Strange and foreign and intimate beneath her mouth. She shook her shoulder, and pulled the glove on, and murmured softly, "Oh Qalaya... Qalaya, my mother... I will write this down... I will write this down..."

And she would have.x

[Philomena]

The knock on her door was terribly polite. Demure almost.

"Doctor Lefting? Doctor Lefting, may we come in?"

Minnie froze. This was a voice she did not know. And we? No one visited her. A student? She had to remind herself, no... she had no students this term. The University had not assigned her classes, paying her on retainer, under the assumption that she'd be dead before their first exams.

"Who is it?" She gasped, and her voice modulated - it sounded like herself, the phlegmy rattle gone, the hoarse destruction of her throat washed away like bladder wrack after a good clean storm.

There was a pause.

"Doctor, we're from the Infirmary, to check on you..."

The infirmary? No, that was impossible... a group? Never. The old madame of the infirmary, she knew Minnie. She would never send a group without warning her, not when she'd been so sick, and not a man at the head, which she knew intimidated Minnie.

The voice came through the door again, "Doctor, are you alright? Can you open the door?"

Minnie rushed forward, and threw the bolt, quickly. This was wrong. There was something very wrong with this. She looked about the apartment wildly.

"Doctor, really... you are unwell... unlock the door, let us come in and help you..."

Minnie turned back and forth wildly, grabbed her spectacles, smashed them onto her face quickly.

Another voice came, harsher.

"Philomena Lefting, open up! In the name of the Regents of the University! Open this door!"

The door to the shop. It wasn't used, it was usually locked, but it was there, behind her clothes rod. She shoved the clothes aside, and looked at the door. It locked from the other side. She gathered up all the strength in her tiny, exhausted body and threw herself into the door.

This effectively bruised her arm, but made no impact on the door itself. She backed up, stared around her wildly. On the bookshelf, was one of her notebooks. No! It was one of her oldest! One that had held her last years with Lanie. She had taken it, before the dream, had lay and tried to read it, incapable with her faded eyes. She had instead simply lay with it in her arms, then... she must have set it on her shelf when she rose?

She gasped, and grabbed it quickly. There was no time now, to lock it away. And the chest! What if they took it! What if they took her notes away!

"Break down the door! Break it down!" The angry voice came again.

She hugged the book tight to her, and cringed backwards, stupidly, stumbling back through the clothes. She slumped backwards against the shop-door, and slid slowly to the ground, the book held to her chest like a talisman. Her mind, wild with fear, clung to the book itself. The title glared up at her in angry red letters: "A Sailors Book of Common Eypharian." She'd never studied the text, which had big batches of missing pages. She had stolen the book from a rag-n-bone, when she was just a little girl, and used the margins of it for her diairies then, clogging the corners with her cramped, tiny hand.

"Qalaya.... Qalaya, protect my books... Qalaya protect my books... oh please, oh please Qalaya... please. Dont let them hurt my books..."

The prayer came weak and snivelling. The door on the other side of the room cracked and flew open, and boots poured into her room, fifteen men, a mixture of Wave Guardsmen and strange men in white coats and trousers. Minnie huddled in her corner, her knees up, the soft cloth of her university silks in front of her, the old and tattered book held tight to her chest.x

[Philomena]

//No! No! Damn their eyes and petch a god! I'm not a child, I'm not going to die like this!//

With a courage that, from the outside, looked remarkably like clumsy stupidity, Minnie pulled herself to her feet, shakily and pushed her way out from between the dresses, pressing her spectacles up with her metal hand, and stared around the room. Any one of the men had poured in were three times her size. Seh clutched her book tighter, and spoke, the fear making her angry voice squeak as she spoke.

"What in the name of Qalaya, Eyris, and your mothers' tired cunts do you think you're doing in my home? Get out! Get out!"

She kept her hands over her breast but advanced on the nearest, a man in white, with a heavy cudgel. The man looked at her, and something strange entered his face- she recognized it. Fear. Terror even. She shrank back. This was wrong, this was very wrong.

"She's advancing! Get her!"

And he swung his cudgel then, hard, at Minnie's face. Minnie screamed, but the scream was cut off when the wood struck her face in an immediate smear of pain. She felt the skin of her inside cheek split against her teth, and coughed on blood. A tooth came out and clattered against the floor - a canine. She realized she was falling. She gripped the book tighter, as she struck the floor. A boot struck her, hard, in the back. The her spine thrilled, trying desperately to extend beyond its natural extension, and the book flew out of her arms.

"You won't cast nae magic on me, y' petching loon!"

Minnie gasped, and began panicking, her lungs finding no purchase on the air.

"Burn it! Burn it! Its not safe!"

"What else ye hidin', missy, then?"

A man with a torch picked the journal-book up, and threw it on Minnie's desk. Minnie leapt forward.

"No! No! No! Qalaya, Qalaya! Qa--"

Her voice was cut off by a sudden yank at her neck - one of the men had caught hold of the scarf around her, and pulled hard at it. It jerked her back quickly, sending a wave of sudden nausea through her. The angry red scar on her neck lay open to the view of the room. There was a moment, where suddenly she realized the reality of what was going on, when the air struck chill against the sweaty skin of her scar. Her stomach wrenched again, and her hand flew up to cover her neck.

"A mark on her neck!"

But, for the rest of her life, then, she would consider the next part a divine miracle. Later, when she was alone, it was this simple moment that gave her, in retrospect, comfort, that made her feel that she was not abandoned, that somewhere, someone wished her, still, to have a story: one of the men in white jumped forward, and grabbed the torchman's arm, pulling it back.

"You damn, Wave Guard fool! Leave the book alone, you dun even know what it is! It coul' 's easy be summat of a glypher's work, and you open it wrong, or set it alight an' we all get buggered. Petching idiots..."

The book was pushed, admittedly none too gently, to the back of the desk.

"The gloves!"

"The dress!"

She was thrown to the ground again, and she strained, "No, no! Stop! Help! Help! Someone! Oh Qalaya! No!"

A knee landed in her belly pinning her to the floor, then, and a rough hand went to her wrists, to pull the glove off of her left hand.

//Promise... I promised... I promised... Qalaya help me, Qalaya... please... help me...//

Minnie reared all of her strength. The man was pulling at the glove, and she formed her hands into tiny, ineffectual fists, then let out a banshee scream, pushing up and punching at the man's chest. She leapt forward with her neck, catching the corner of the man's cheekbone in her teeth, and and biting hard at it, tearing the skin, tasting blood, and the nauseating feel of a little shred of detatched flesh. She could feel blood pour over her from the man's face, leaving her smeared with it, and he leapt back from her, involuntarily. Sick and dizzy, she threw herself to her feet, "Qalaya! For Qalaya! Back up! Back up!"

One of the men welled a small electric ball of light in his hands, and threw it at Minnie. It hit her chest with a sudden, terrifying blast of energy. A shock. She'd never felt electricity before, and the way it entered the heart with an undeniable instinctual terror, left her eyes wild. Her body began to jerk and writhe spasmodically, and she could hear her voice, screaming, screaming, screaming, but it was as if it was from a distance. Then. The electricity was gone, but she kept writhing, her body fighting to regain itself.

The gloves were torn in shreds from her hands, and one man gripped the bronze hand cruelly.

"What the petch is this!"

They tore off the bodice of her dress then, to reveal a body covered in clumsily painted words. Mara was gone, now, she had been gone, and Minnie had to paint herself, with the shaking hands of a weak, sickly woman.

"The petching gutterslut! Wash it off, its like a summoner's marks or glyphs! Wash it off!"

A pail of water was brought, and thrown over her bare breasts, and cruel hands rubbed the skin raw, fighting the words off with the fierceness of hate. The hands threw her over onto her belly, smashing her face into the wood again. Another bucket fell over her back. She moaned, the twitching finally beginning to pass. Someone had found a coarse pig's-hair brush and was scrubbing wildly at her skin, leaving bloody scratches over her scarred back.

Steel came next, her arms pulled behind her back and shackled in a tight pair of djed shackles. Her hands and wrists were small, and the shackles had been modified to fit them - this had left the edges raw, with rough unfiled metal that dug cruelly at the skin. Her ankles were pulled up behind her buttocks then, and shackled into rings at the other end of a short chain.

Finally, though her voice was hardly in her body, a fat cloth was stuffed in her mouth, and tied in with a gag around the back of her head.

"Well done, boys... well done. She'll be safe now."

Minnie lay half-naked and bleeding from her wrists, her back, her face, her mouth. Her spectacles were cracked, and she could hardly move. Her jaw felt stiff, and burned now with sharp stabs of piercing pain from her broken tooth, where it ground against the cloth in her mouth. She tried to speak, and the movement of her tongue made her gag a little, which reawaken the nausea from earlier. She craned her neck around wildly. But there was the box1 And no one paid it any mind. There was the book, left on the desk, now.

In her mind, she prayed desperately.

//Mother Qalaya, thank you for saving my books, thank you for saving my books… please give them to someone safe, please, keep them out of the archives. Oh Qalaya… Qalaya dunny leave me now…//x

[Philomena]

The Wave Guard marched along, but it was the orderlies who Minnie could see. They had had the decency to pull a sheet around Minnie, before loading her restrained body into a wooden charrette, with two tired, grey ponies harnessed to it. The ponies cantered along, now, with stout, meaty legs, one of the white orderlies driving, and two others sitting posted on either side of Minnie's prone body.

Minnie felt so many different pains, they melded into a great, illegible smear. Minnie tried to close her eyes - the glasses with their cracks gave extra power anyway to the headache welling in sharp, rhythmic stabs from her broken tooth, and from a disturbingly muffled ache from her jaw, which was slowly growing stiffer and more swollen as the night progressed.

She lay in the cart, then, trying to tease the pain apart, trying to pick things into simple, recognizable pieces, not out of a simple desire to catalogue her miseries - though her relationship with pain did leave her with the vague morbid desire for categorization - but more to try to help her focus. This was vital to her. She could feel a buzzing coldness in her jarred brain, an urgent desire to sleep, to let go. And she refused to do so: she had not written it down, yet, she would forget, forget the words that Qalaya had spoken. Yes, yes, think through every organ. The ankles were an easy place to start. Ring round them slowly, feel the bloody jabs of unfiled iron, where they cut at her flesh. She rotated her ankles, slowly, claustrophobically, pressing them at the sharp points. Yes, the pain said. Yes, there is still something here. You are still real.

Her knees next. One felt, now that the adrenaline was passing, as if it had been wrenched badly in the falls and rough handling. She focused on the feeling of overstuffedness, and the dull aching joint… Then her hands - but no. That she could not consider, and her mind tried to flee from it, for she could feel, strange and wrong, like crumpled paper, the queer skin of her left, the shredded remnants of her promises to her mother and god. It was safer to go the channels of stinging flesh and lose strips of torn flesh on her back, the symphony of knife-sharp stabs along the irregular channels.

Then she started. Something wet and diffuse slapped against her face, and the sickening scent of decay overpowered her nostrils. She strained, opening her eyes in a panic of nausea, the overpowering scent of death and an angry sea. The smeared tarry flesh of black-rotten bladderwrack splattered inside her nostrils, and she jerked in a breath of panic, drawing the filth high up in her nostrils, throwing her into coughing, that jarred her ribs in painful ways. The coughs raced up her throat, and found themselves trapped by the ball of cloth gagged into her mouth, and she gasped, which pulled the clothe back into her throat, making her gag and struggle against the impediment to her airway. She tried to cringe, and it pulled against her shackles, driving the steel into her flesh.

She heard shouting in the street over her racking cough, turned her face as far as she could, to see one of the orderlies swinging a billy club hard against a sailor-woman with another bundle of the stuff in her hand. A few more wads of it flew through the air, over Minnie's head. Another hit her in the exposed expanse of her belly, leaving a smear across her dingy sheet.

"Back all of you, bloody mongrels! In the name of the University, the Guild, and the Lord of Council! You clear this damned road, or we'll clear you off of it!"

"Petchin' murderer!"

"String her up, 'en! Cut 'er face! Whack 'er good!"

"You'll all clear off, or we switch the billies out for blades, eh? You get the petching shyke out 'er this roadway!"

"What's she in for?"

"She killed a baby!"

"Nonsense. She were gonna murder the Regents!"

"All of 'em?"

"Dark magic, if the barmy-keeps are haulin' her off, I reckon!"

"Pull the wheels off the lorry! We'll petching take care the gutterslut, right here in the street!"

The sickening thud of wood on flesh filled the air over her head, and Minnie squeezed her eyes shut. The whistle of steel withdrawn from a scabbard rang, and the crowd fell back, though another wad of bladderwrack wove through the slatted cart-sides, to smack Minnie full in the face. It jarred her tooth, making her cry out in pain. The crowd roared its approval at this, and the guards pushed them back bodily. The cry pulled the black muck in her nose down into her throat, and her stomach lurched, pushing desperately to find some content in her stomach to expel. She lurched in a series of heaves, sending a jet of strong, dehydrated acid up her throat. It struck the gag, and could not escape, and forced its way instead in a fiery line up her soft palette and out her nostrils, send her into a body panic, unable to breath.

The Orderly grumbled irritably in front of her, "A bunch of damned animals, petch 'em all." One of the other orderlies kicking the wrack down toward the tail of the cart, and seeing her struggling to breathe, yanked the gag off her lips. She forced the cloth out of her mouth and heaved again, the sickening flavor of the rotten leaves and soiled fabric still in her mouth, her whole back desperately pressing at her diaphragm, straining her constrained shoulders. Her mind whirled, the sharp pain in her wrists and ankles taking over her screaming sense of the practical, and making her jerk wildly, desperately against her restraints.

"Qalaya! Qalaya!" Her voice screamed, screamed in a madwoman's cry - the queerness of it grated on her own nerves, the raw throat burnt with acid and the dry parched sickness of her mouth combining to send her cry shrill and grating, "Help me! Help me!" The cry was too hard, and her diaphragm began spasming against her stomach again.

The street climbed up, up, toward the University and the crowd swelled as it went, though it was dark out. The police pushed back, and this made more noise in the crowd. Minnie struggled to see again, but it was a blur, the pain in her head swallowing her sense inside of it, leaving the world as smears of color, as the light wind on her face and her shivering skin, as the burn of salt in her open wounds, as the roar of sound. She withdrew instead, squeezing her eyes shut, but her other senses just sharpened, grew more insistent. Everything around her - the screams, the smell of vomit and bladderwrack, the jar of poorly sprung cart against cracked ribs and a searing head, the taste of death on her lips and tongue - everything called to her: "Panic! Panic! You're only a child." And she lurched, and fought against this urge.

//No… no… no, no, no, no, no… I have promises… I have duties. I must keep my promises.//

The crowd grew as the people grew angrier, the police swinging in loud repeated staccatos of truncheon blows. the crowd pressed in the narrow street. A flowerpot flew down into the cart from an upper story window, crashing next to Minnie's head with a terrifying crash.. Minnie jerked, a piece of terra cotta scratching at her neck as it flew off, and she screamed again, her own body jerking around the floor of the cart, the pool of acid and bladderwrack smearing across her eye and hair on the left-hand side. The crowd roared an approval.

The sounds of scattered catcalls began to coalesce, to form instead into the terrifying chant of a crowd. Simple, animal, hungry chanting. Hungry for Minnie herself.

"Gutterslut! Kill the bitch! Gutterslut! Kill the bitch!"

//You hear them, Minnie Lefting, you hear them! This is where you've come! This is what we are, now!//

She tried to slow her hyperventilation, began, with a quiet, shivering fervor to recite the passages of speech she was trying to remember, to write.

"Your hand, Philomena, the dead one. Place it there on the stone," she murmured.

The sound of unified voices made them carry farther. Others began to show up. University students, young and foolish, and full of the revolutionary hatred of the young. Some of them were drunk. A few carried staves, wood-axes, chair legs. The weapons less of a battle than a nasty brawl. Torches appeared with the conjured power of magic within the crowd. the shouts grew sharper, crueler.

"Gutterslut! Kill the bitch! Gutterslut! Kill the bitch!"

Handfuls of bladderwrack began to pelt the side of the cart again. The crowd pressed the police close in to the cart walls.

//Shut up! Shut up, gutterslut! Shut your eyes and hide, shut your eyes and run away, little coward.//

She murmured, "Yes, I know. I don't say much, not anymore, but I hear, and I remember."

A few stones struck the cart, now, heavier, shivering at the old timber walls. a midsize one snuck through the cart wall and struck an orderly, sending him tumbling over, to land heavily on Minnie, his muscled buttocks crushing her calves.

And then, the first axe struck.

It was a weak blow, reaching over a guard's head, a guard who then promptly punched the butt of his truncheon into the man's face, sending a spray of blood across the crowd and throwing him to his back. The crowd screamed, then took back to the chant.

"Gutterslut! Gutterslut! Gutterslut!"

The animalism of a mob devoured them, and the word came out like the a howl of rage, a word that, given flesh, would kill, kill without remorse or sense. The policemen grew less angry, and more frightened. The truncheons were traded for swords, but the people were too close, to pressed in for these to be of much use.

"Remember… remember… remember" she forced out of her lips. IT cam through as a cry, but she hardly noticed this now, her mind wheeling wildly around her head.

//Remember what? Gypa, who you've tied to your petching name? Qalaya who you've betrayed the very day she came to you? Lanie? Oh yes… remember Lanie. You remember Lanie, you filthy, dry-cunted trash. Remember Lanie, brave enough to die for you, while you lay here in a cart, whimpering like petchy-assed child!//

"REMEMBER! Remem… remember…" Her eyes burnt, with acid, and weak and tears and dehydration. Her body shook visibly on the floor of the cart, she kept pressing the word out again, and again, but her body shook too hard now to say it aloud.

They stood now at the foot of a hill, and atop it, spectral and pale in the late light of stars, stood the Asylum. The crowd pressed so close now the cart could no longer move, the steady ponies rearing and bucking wildly. A woman grabbed one of the ponies and clambered atop it, a kitchen knife in her hand. The driver stood and kicked a hobnailed boot into her face with a howl of fear. The crowd began to shake and pull at the cart. The cart shivered.x

[Ignotus Everto]

A deep, sonorous voice cut through the rage of the crowd, magically amplified beyond its normal bounds.

"SIIILEENCE!"

Ignotus Everto could melt into a crowd when he so chose. He could reduce his profile, blunt suspicion, and dampen doubt. This was not so now. The wizard's appearance was as sudden and electrifying as a thunderbolt, his force of presence palpable in the air. Those around the cart froze like frightened rabbits. The drunks, the instigators, the criers for blood, all of them found their words frozen in their mouths by anxiety unexplainable.

Those following the whim of the crowd, themselves besieged by waves of doubt and shame, slowly simmered down, their stokers silenced. The Hypnotist himself almost seemed to glow to Minnie, though it could very well have been a trick of the light. Ignotus was standing at the peak of the hill, dressed in his formal wear, right hand extended out to rest upon his cane, authority draped around him as a second cloak. Though his dead face, fixed in a furious frown, showed little, he was not quite as impenetrable as he would have liked.

Despite the fact that he had succeeded in quieting the crowd, that feat in and of itself cost an enormous amount of Djed. He may as well have been performing Reimancy. In addition, it was no small task to locate and identify the rabblerousers. A slight twitch in the jaw and an exceptionally strong grip on his cane were the only indicators, however.

"Will somebody explain to me," Ignotus demanded, "Why we are behaving like a rabble of Sunberthans?"

The response was not long in coming. "The Mussy wanted to kill Maria!" a voice shouted hoarsely.
"No ye dolt," another snapped, "She were goin' to blow up the Regents."
"You're both mad!" a woman piped up, "She tried to strangle Ms. Hurston!"
"She's a murderer!"

"She is ill!" the Nuit retorted, a faint hypnotic pulse rippling through the crowd. I agree with this man. He is reasonable. He is the logical one. "Why do you think she is being brought here, instead of to the sea?"
"But-"
"I care not!" he shouted, "I refuse to stand and watch us make a mockery of ourselves! What are we?" the Hypnotist asked, his cloak sweeping outward as he threw his left hand out to his side, "A pack of ravenous dogs? Willing to abandon every standard we hold ourselves to the moment we smell blood?"

Silence then. "Our dearest Philomena has suffered greatly from her sickness," Ignotus continued, "And more than her strength has been sapped from her. She is not a criminal to be hanged, she is a sick woman who fell in with the wrong sort! She deserves your sympathy, barring that, your pity, not your hate!"

"Aye, but she still tried t'kill people, addled or not!"
"Even so! Is this how we operate? Is this what civilization looks like?!" Ignotus asked, sweeping his gaze across the mob. "Mob rule? Murder in the streets? In Sunberth, maybe! Here, never! We are Zeltivans!" he roared, stamping his cane on the ground. "We are the last bastions of wisdom and tolerance in a world filled with barbarians! This is not our way!"

They left in turns. Those closest to the cart, coincidentally affixed by Ignotus' gaze, slowly let their weapons fall to their sides and pushed their way out. Those at the fringe let up a while later. The crowd loosened slightly then, and the guards had room to breathe once more. Eventually, a half bell later, the crowd dispersed, its constituents milled their way home, and the cart milled its way to its destination again. "Thanks Ignotus..." one of the orderlies muttered as they passed by him. "Speak not of it." the Nuit replied languidly. As they fell behind him, Minnie found the thought popping into her head, "He saved me..." A suggestion accompanied the wizard's words. Entirely subliminal. More an investment for the future than anything else. He can be kind. He's on your side. But Ignotus was gone, then. Vanished back into the University proper.

"Did you see that?" one of the Wave Guards at the rear said to his compatriot as they left the Hypnotist in the dust. "Aye. Petching surreal..."
"How they all just... Stopped?"
"Aye. Like he'd bewitched them."
"You don't think?"
"Well, he is a witch..."
"Witches are lady wizards, you blasted fool!" the guard said with a smirk and a friendly shove.
"Aye, but he can be a lady if he wants, can't he?" the other one replied, chortling.
"Mus' be a perk!"
"Next you'll say ol' Iggy's out seducing our men and draining their blood at night..."
"It could happen!"
Their laughter was cut off by a solemn voice intoning,
"We're here."

[Philomena]

A crank of a key ground behind Minnie' back, and she was pulled to her feet, the link between wrists and ankle gone. Her shoulders and hips burned at the sudden release of tension, and she exhaled, heavily. Her hair, loose, clung to the side of her face, wet with acid, and her eye burned with it. The sheet hung loosely about her, but one of the orderlies pulled it tighter around her.

"Just in case, 'en. Some o' the folks dunny deal s'well with a bare-chested lady, eh? Alright, Doc. You want that vomit-rag in your mouth, go ahead and make a shifty move or a single damned sound."

Two of the orderlies took her biceps in their hands. She tried to walk, but her legs were rubber and her feet lead. She could hardly move her left knee. The two men held the weight of her up, dragged her along as well as they could.

The stairs were old and creaked difficultly under the weight of two fully grown men and one flesh-wasted woman. Minnie breathed raggedly. The silence deafened. The thought kept floating insistently up: "He saved me. Why? Why would he save me?" But she pushed it down, hard. There was other things to worry about. This was not her first beating, though it was the first so severe, or on so old a body. But still, the little instincts of the whipped child took hold: conserve strength, stay passive. Give no further excuses for an attack. Be helpless, small, insignificant. She hung her head slackly, ceasing to even try to carry herself. Just focusing on breath, on fighting more spittle into her mouth to try to rinse the flavor from it. Her mind hiccuped, began to panic, again. She jammed her wrist hard against a sharp point of metal, focused on the warm bloom of pain from it, focused her whole mind into the sensation, calming herself as best she could.

//I am not a child. I am not someone else's pawn.//

The doors of the Asylum opened into a lobby - the building hadn't always been an institution. It had once, years and years ago without counting, been a home of some considerable wealth and stature. The lobby showed this, but in a sad butchered way. It was an entrance hall of a grand old fashion, with a broad staircase and stone, polished - though now much scuffed - floors. But years ago, a strong curtain wall had been built almost smack down the middle, and peppered with a series of heavy, ugly wooden barred doors, giving the room a queer off-centeredness, as if the house were slowly being devoured. Minnie herself was lowered into the threadbare remnants of what had been a fine, damask armchair, once, but was now little more than a relic.

The room was not filthy - it was well-kept even, in the manner of one fighting desperately against poverty. The floors were meticulously kept, but the cracked stone grimy with accrued age in its seams. The windows were clear and dustless, but what had once been a beautiful mosaic of colored light, was now a half-dismantled image, patched with wooden plugs and squares of cheap plate glass. Even the chair smelled, not a whiff of dust, but of decay, of the natural dissolution of fiber.

Her arms were unlocked, and she had the sudden urge to flail them outward, to feel the full extension of them, to cringe them in front of her swollen mouth. She bit hard on her lip - harder than she intended, bringing blood from the parched surface, resisting the urge, and the orderlies pulled her arms forward, and chained the djed shackle on each, with a stout iron chain, to the arms of the chair. Her ankles they left attached to each other. Slowly, carefully, Minnie started to rotate her shoulder joints, open and close her shaking hands.

//Breathe… breathe… breathe… they will come again, don't give them a reason, they will come again, be empty, harmless.//

She closed her eyes. A new sound entered the room, an incongruous one - the tap-tap-tap of hard, sharp, boiled-leather heel-soles against the stone floor. A woman's voice rose across the room, a low, eminently calm voice, a voice so calm, it was impossible to imagine other emotion creeping into it.

"Marvell. The glasses, if you please."

"Aw petch…" a hand quickly snatched the spectacles from Minnie's face, just as she turned to try to see the new entrant into the room, "Sorry, Madame, it were a rough grab. She resisted, and there were trouble wi' a mob on the way o'er I dunnay why they dumped the bitch with us, honestly."

The woman approaching now… it was hard, because between Minnie's eyesight and the shearing pain in her skull, made it hard to focus, but Minnie could at least tell that she was tall, pale. White-pale hair, and a white, loose jacket to her knees, over her other clothes.

"Marvell. I'm sure the patient is sufficiently frightened already without the reminder. What is this sheet?"

"Her dress, madame. She 'ad some manner of writing on 'er. IT were nae no glyphing mark, but the Wave Guard, you know. They weren't ter be soothed, you know."

"Ah."

"Excuse me, ma'am… I.. canny I have m' speckles back?" Minnie croaked the words weakly, "My head… and… the glasses, they make it easier, to look, and …"

"Hush, Dr. Lefting," the voice returned quietly, with eminent calm, "I'm sorry to refuse you, but you'll understand, I'm sure, we can't leave metal and glass on you. It would be too dangerous, should you grow upset at yourself. If it comforts you, you may shut your eyes. Or I can have one of the gentleman retrieve a blindfold?"

Minnie blinked, swallowing hard, "I am… I am in th'asylum?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so, Dr. Lefting."

"Do I… I know you?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not. I attended your lecture series on Melancholy in Poetry, years ago, in my student days. I'm sorry to have us meet again under such unfortunate circumstances. I'm Madame Killory, I am the chief healer here. I'm here to see us find you somewhere safe to rest. Recover, a little, hopefully."

"I dunny un'stand. I… I was probably a bit daft near the end, aye, but I dunny know why I'd be…"

"Hush now, Dr. Lefting. There's no use in that for now. We don't want to upset you on your first day, now do we? Now, can you tell me your full name, doctor? Do you think you can do that? If you can be a very good girl, we'll get you to resting soon, alright?"

"Philomena… Philomena Lefting… I am a … the last name is made up… is that aright? I made it when I wen' a' Uni, they needed a las' name --"

"Yes, that will do. And now think hard, do you know what year it is, Doctor?"

Minnie blinked, "Its…Its 512… no… no, it just… it just changed? I was sick. I think it just changed. 513."

"Very good doctor. Now… I want you to stay very, very calm, alright? I want you to rest and be a very good girl."

"A good girl…"

//Why is she speaking to me like this? No… no, I won't be small… I won't…//

"Are we ready to be good and calm?"

"Yes, Madame, I'm entirely calm." The quaver in Minnie's voice belied the untruth of this.

"Doctor? Do you remember writing this letter to have Mr. Everto murdered?"

The woman quietly showed a piece of paper to Minnie. A letter. A… a letter. She wrinkled her brow, and spoke quietly, "Qalaya's dirty fingers… I… oh gods around me…"

The doctor nodded quietly, and drew from a pocket of the long-jacket a wax tablet, and wrote quickly in it with a stylus. Minnie started, and her hands went taut on the arms of the chair at the familiar, comforting sound of writing, "Madame… madame, could I…"

She stopped. No. No, she couldn't ask for paper. She couldn't, she knew she couldn't. What would she write? She would write about Mother Qalaya. She would write about her hands. She would write what she had promised to write. And this healer would read every word, the orderlies perhaps as well, perhaps, even, they would let Everto read it.

"What is it, Doctor?"

Minnie wrinkled her brow, and shook her head, murmuring very quietly, "Water… water. Some water."

The doctor, frowned at this, and her face, even in Minnie's unfocused observation, took on a concentration for a moment.

"Doctor… that's enough for tonight, hmm? Why don't we get you to bed, alright? Now, the orderlies will have to get you cleaned up, make you safe to stay here. But no one will hurt you, unless you force us to, alright? You be a good girl, and we'll have you all taken care of. And I'm going to ask you to do something for me, too, alright?"

"Yes… madame?"

"I'm going to ask you, very nicely, to please not try to hurt yourself either, Dr. Lefting. Can you promise me that?"

"I can't promise things… not anymore."

"Perhaps you can affirm it? Do you want to hurt yourself?"

Minnie closed her eyes. Yes. Yes, very much. Almost like she needed to breathe. Almost like she needed to write. Digging the burrs of the metal into her wrist, as she'd done in the cart, pushing a fingernail into her thigh, biting a lip, gods, even striking her face with the heavy shackles - all of these sounded clean and familiar. Like honesty. Like control. She was in pain, too much pain, already. But it was different. It was pain from the outside. She had no control of it. Pain of her own: that was something she could focus into. That was something, she could trust, as she could always trust it. And she felt what this was, she realized it for what it was, at that moment - an escape. A retreat.

"No, madame. I will endeavor not to hurt myself."

"Very well. Mr. Marvell, here, will help you then. You'll need to be cleaned up, and we'll see what we can do about getting you dressed, and your injuries tended, alright?"

"A… a woman."

"Hmm."

"I would… I would rather a woman do it."

"Very well."x

[Philomena]

The woman was a tired, broad-shouldered creature, with a dark scar across her cheek, and an air of irritation. Minnie gathered she had been woken to tend to her. She unlocked Minnie from the chair and helped her stand. She was taken through a door to a small, stone room.

In the corner was a tub of tepid water, and the female orderly bodily lifted Minnie and placed her in this water, clothes and all. Three male orderlies filed in quietly to the corners of the room. The water was frigid, and smelled terrible, like lye and vinegar, and the minute it touchéd the abrasions of Minnie's back it sent lines of stinging pain across her body. She screeched, involuntarily, and the orderlies all went to an attention, the woman grabbing her by the neck and dunking her the rest of the way under water.

"Now, then, Goody, that's enough o' that! The madame said you was gonna be a good girl!"

Minnie gasped for breath as she was pulled free of the water, and coughed water from her lungs. The woman then reached over and pulled the sheet off Minnie's torso, and Minnie shivered in the stone-spring chill, still spitting up water. It tasted bitter in her mouth, and it burned at her eyes. She lurched forward as her throat began to burn as well, and the sudden movement startled the orderly, who dunked her again.

Minnie choked violently, and spit water with all the force she can muster, and started to cry. It bothered her that she started to cry, and she pulled back forcefully at the tears, but this only made it worse - the dam had been shut too long. She sat in the lukewarm water, coughing and spitting, and just sobbing, her body moaning, and rocking slightly, her nose running, her eyes streaming. It was an ugly, unromantic cry, and she was ashamed of it. The woman behind her ignored it. A crying patient was simply a patient, as long as they weren't fighting. The woman took an old, rough sponge, and started to scrub at Min's back, lifted her arms, jabbed hard into the hair of her armpits, down her side. The male orderlies simply watched, suspicious.

"Down with your skirts, then, Goody. There's a good girl." the orderly woman said the words with the same cursory irritation, and Minnie looked up and around in terror at the other orderlies. They looked back, impassive.

"Get on wi' it, then, you don't want me doin' it, eh?"

Minnie sniffed hard, still sobbing, and started to worm the skirts, the bloomers, the stockings down her legs. She realized she had no shoes on, and could not remember if she'd lost them, or had never put them on after rising from her sickbed. Her metal hand brush the skin of her thigh, and she sobbed louder, sat on it, in a stupidly active way. The woman sniffed, and Minnie felt her tug the tattered knots of her mostly unravelled braid, then heard the heavy thunk of a pair of shears. The braid fell in the water by Minnie's breast, and she started.

The woman growled, and muttered, "Come on, none on 'at, missy. We can't be 'avin' ye carryon' nae creepy-crawlers up there, can we now? Tain't none what'll care if your hair is pretty in 'ere."

The scissors snipped again, and again. Minnie melted down into the water, her eyes glassy and blurred, burning still with lye, her lips slack, her breathing quick and ragged. The surface of the water was covered with clouds of her, with ragged heaps of sinking hair, with her torn white dress and worn bloomers, with the long grey woolen stockings, half-floating just beneath the surface. The hair she had rolled into her own vomit fell in front of her. She stared woodenly at it, watching the matted strands unravel from each other.

//Remember, remember, remember.//

The sound of a strop sounded behind Minnie's head. It was a strange, unfamiliar sound, for she spent very little time in places where she might hear a man shave. The woman dunked Minnie again, but slower now, so that Minnie could close her eyes, her mouth. When she came up a wet, dismembered hank of her hair clung to her face. She felt it, but a numbness was melting through her, now, she hardly thought to peel it off, the left hand still under her bare buttocks, the right hand clutched to her chest. Her eyes were still crying, but a hollow, emotionless crying now. She was not a child now, or an adult. She was not enough of a human to be either. The razor scraped ragged streaks across her skull, dull and without any sort of cream short of the rough soap of the place. Each time it nicked her skin, Minnie started, the cringe not of a frightened girl, but of an animal being kicked, and the orderly would reach under and grab her chin and wrench it back straight, to take another swipe across her skull. The stubble was not cut flush to the skin - just enough to give a louse no sanctuary, and none too evenly at that.

"Now, up on your feet Mussy."

And she did. There was no fuss anymore. Vaguely, form somewhere in her brain, something balked at this, at standing nude in a shallow tub while strangers stared at her, without den the Names on her back. Her brain chewed on the information. Not even Mara had seen her like this. No adult, she considered, had ever seen her naked, not since she was very, very young. This would have bothered her. She was incapable now. She was no longer a human being, anyway. Simply a small, scrawny scrap of meat, being scrubbed and shaved and bared, and watched, very, very carefully. She resisted slightly when they tried to pull the left hand out from behind the right. But it was too late to matter. Too late to do anything about it, now. She released it after a quick cuff on her ear from the orderly.

The orderly pulled her out, and they bound a wrapper around her jaw, now tender and swollen, put plasters on her back and face. The knee was sprained, but there was nothing to be done for that, now. They pulled out a simple shift of rough linen, that did nothing to help Minnie stop shivering. And the orderlies took her hands. One took the right hand and frowned.

"What's this, a ring?"

And he started worming it up her finger. She clenched the finger and looked imploringly at him, "No! No, please, please! Please leave it! I promise, I promise, I'll promise. Bring the healer, I'll promise. What could I do with it? I promise! I promise!"

The desperation in her voice surprised her. It made no effect on the orderly, "Right, sorry, orders of the house. WE dunny know what sort er' spell you might 'ave on summat like this!"

"Oh, no, nothing, nothing, its a reminder… oh… oh… no.. no, it… no it is…. oh gods…"

"You take it up with the doctor tomorrow."

But she knew, then, in her heart, she'd never see the ring again. It was enchanted, after all, they'd think it was a spell or something. It popped off her finger, and a coldness, and emptiness filled her up. Gypa was gone. She couldn't feel him.

"Gypa… Gypa… Gypa… no, no, no… Remember… Remember… I'm still here, my son... I'm still here."

She hardly noticed the walk. Somewhere in her mind, she realized, abstractly, that she truly looked like she belonged now, her body bony and half bent, and shaking, her lips gibbering the words over and over, her eyes wild and empty, and darting back and forth. They took her to a room. IT held a straw palette, a thin quilt. An iron champerpot. And that was all. There was no window in it, no chairs, no furniture, no washbasin. Or, what struck Minnie: no books. Not a scrap of paper. And she knew - she could not ask. She could not ask them.

The orderly led her in, and looked her up and down, bruised and swollen and frightened as she was, and he grunted in a shy sort of apologetic tone.

"Come on then, Doctor. Lay down. It'll all look better to yer in the mornin'. Dunny forget your promises, we would hate to restrain you."

And they bent and unchained the shackles from each other, leaving the iron bands on. And they went out the door, and shut it with a heavy clang. The light from the hall crept under the lower edge of the steel door. Otherwise, the room was dark.x

[Philomena]

The dark struck Minnie like a palpable slap. She rocked slowly back and forth on her feet. Exhaustion nipped at her, not only the strain on her body, but a primordial desire for escape from the overwhelmed depths of her brain. The pitch, and the emptiness of the room made her thirst to lie down, to sleep.

//Minnie-Wren… Minnie-Wren, not yet, not yet.//

"Lanie, Lanie-Mae. I have to sleep… I have to sleep… I have to…"

//Minnie, your promises, Minnie…//

"I have broken all of them. I have shown Mother's secrets, I have nae kept Wren safe, for he will come back now, I have… even you Lanie… even you. You will come back, and I will be here, and my body will end up in a pauper's grave, alone. Alone…"

//Shh…. Minnie-wren, did you forget? I always told you you were the one with a real goddess behind you. Did you forget what Qalaya taught you? You are not a child, now. You are not a child. Guilt, and hopelessness. Those are the escapes of a child. You made a promise. To write it down.//

"I have nothing, Lanie-Mae, I have nothing. I have only blood and a wall. I canny do that. The story is a secret. All the stories. All the stories, they are secret, they will make them break here…"

//Ask her. Ask Qalaya. She will answer, one way or the other, my Minnie-Wren.//

And then, Lanie's voice was gone. And Minnie took a breath, and shut her eyes, concentrating. She had none of the accouterments of prayer - the book, the ink, the quill, the candle, the doll. She had nothing, only a steel chamberpot, and a bed, and rough linen dress, and a quilt.

"I have lips. I have a heart."

And there, on the polished, cracked stones, she knelt. She yelped as she did, the pressure on her wrenched knee sending a jerk through all the constellations of hurt she carried. She sat sideways instead, leaning on the pallet, her hands clasped, her legs stretched out beside her. She began to shut her eyes. Then she stopped, remembering the face of her goddess. And instead, she let them fly wide, open, as broad and vulnerable as they could go. And through the stiffness of her jaw, she urged her quiet prayer.

"Qalaya, Mother Qalaya…

I… thank you for… protecting my books. I am… I try to thank you, I try, its hard… thank you, for letting me hear Lanie. I… she is not real is she? She isn't speaking to me, is she? She can't. Maybe its just the piece of her in me. I … I don't care. Thank you for it - if it is just memory, the voice, then it is your gift, too, no? Thank you. I need that little gift…

I need you, Mother Qalaya. I need help.

The Notebooks, they are in the Manor… please keep them safe. Please keep them secret or… or give them to someone who will do the work I've… I've failed at… I've failed… no, no no! I will not stop waiting, I will not… I will try. Oh petch, Qalaya, I'm trying s'hard, Mama. Keep them safe, please - I did all I can, I just could nae copy them fas' enough.

And… and my notebooks, please… I know they are nae s'important, but keep them safe. Keep them from those who would destroy them. Please? Protect them, the ones I ha' given to Wren, and the ones I ha' given to Goody Wright, and the ones in my home… keep them safe.

And, if it can be done... help my Gypa to know I am nae dead. Help him know I am still here.

And… and…"

She gulped softly, her heart worming its way softly up her throat. Finally she sobs out the end.

"Mother Qalaya, please… please,. please… I need to write, I need to write. I want to keep my promises, and… and I need to write. I canny trust my mind here. They'll twist it, they'll turn it. My memories will nae last. I need to write it down. Please. I… I dunny know how to do that. It must be secret, it must be kept from them. But I need to write. I canny… I canny do wi'out it now. I am too alone here. Please, Mother Qalaya, I'm… I wish I could speak better. But see my eyes. I know you can read my eyes, Mother. Help me, please."x