Vision in Silver(43)
A shiver of pain followed by relief. No one to listen, but they whispered in the dark, craving the euphoria that would get them through the next barrage of images.
Don’t you want a name? Don’t you want to live?
How was she supposed to know if she wanted those things?
Every night they cut themselves and whispered in the dark. Then, one night, before she began to whisper, the girl saw a glimpse of herself in a vision. So she gritted her teeth and endured the agony of an unspoken prophecy. The pain ate her up inside and she wanted to scream and scream and never stop screaming. But she said nothing—and saw herself with sheets of paper and many colored pencils.
When she was young and learning to make letters and write words, she would draw the images from the day’s lessons. So much joy from such a simple thing.
The Walking Names said she was diluting her ability to see prophecy, and she needed to be broken of this bad habit. They had special gloves made that kept her fingers laced together so she couldn’t hold the pencil. But drawing gave her a different kind of euphoria, and it was so hard to resist making a little sketch whenever she had a pencil.
So the Walking Names withheld the paper and the pencils. They fed her pap that had no flavor, depriving her of the variety of taste and texture in food. When they had stripped her life of every possible bit of pleasure that was available in the compound, they cut her for the first time to show her the only pleasure that girls like her were allowed to have.
They made her afraid to touch a pencil or paper. But that night when she swallowed the words of prophecy, she saw herself drawing. She saw the look on her own face: joy.
She’d almost worked up the courage to ask for a pencil and paper when the other girls arrived. The mommy girls who looked sick and wild, abandoned by their old keepers and found by creatures to be feared above all else.
You’re safe here, the new keepers, the Intuits, said as they settled the mommy girls in the other four beds.
They meant well, but they weren’t experienced keepers.
The girl sat up, shivering.
The sound of something dripping.
Maybe one of the sinks in the room with the toilets? If she turned the faucet, would the dripping stop?
She got out of bed. Her bed was closest to the door; the toilets were at the other end of the room, past the rest of the beds.
Drip, drip, drip.
All the whispering had stopped.
Drip, drip, drip.
As she passed the next bed, her foot slipped.
A smell in the air. She remembered it from the compound, when her head had been covered as they took her away from the bad thing that had happened there.
She turned and rushed toward the door, patting the wall to find the light switch. The other girls would be angry when she turned on the overhead lights, but she didn’t care. She needed to see.
She squinted as light filled the room. Then she looked at the floor. She looked at the girls in the beds who were past being overwhelmed by images and expectations.
They didn’t want to live, she thought as she stared. They chose this instead of trying to live.
Easier to choose this. How much longer could she keep struggling to understand this place, these people? How could she learn what they wanted her to learn? She knew where to find the sharp objects. She could do what the other girls had done and . . .
She remembered the image of herself with the sheets of paper and colored pencils.
The girl pounded on the door and screamed. It wasn’t until she heard people shouting and running toward her that she tried to open the door.