Page 20 of The Memory Wood

Abruptly, Elissa decides to do something about the vomit, and drags the wash bucket across the cell. She doesn’t have a sponge or cloth, so before indecision paralyses her she unzips her dress. The compulsion to clean has filled her head. Everything else recedes.

Struggling so frantically that she almost rips the dress, Elissa peels off her cotton vest. There’s no way to free it from the chain connecting her to the iron ring, but she doesn’t care about that. Dunking it in the bucket, she slops cleaning solution over the floor. Elissa works with an empty head, sluicing and scrubbing, squeezing and swilling. By the time she’s finished, she’s used up far more of the solution than she’d intended and the front of her dress is soaked.

Worse, she’s shivering. It’s colder in here than she first thought. Without her vest, the chill is far more acute. As the fog of her mania lifts, she realizes the extent of her foolishness. How could she have rated a clean cell over basic warmth? There’s no way she can wear her vest again until it dries; and in here that might take for ever. Dismayed at justhow badly she has hobbled herself, she wrings it out as best she can.

Miserable, Elissa huddles on her knees. Holding out her hands to the candle flame, she focuses on her breathing until her shivers begin to subside. Around her, shadows dance like slinking wolves.

Then she hears something that originates not in this room but beyond it – the sound, unmistakable, of metal bolts being drawn.

VI

For a moment, all thought abandons her. Like a wild animal, she charges away from the door. One foot kicks over the candle holder, plunging the chamber into darkness. Her chain snaps taut. The manacle bites her wrist, yanking her off her feet.

The pain isbrutal. Convulsing, Elissa curls into a ball. She clenches her eyes shut, telling herself that if he thinks she’s asleep she’ll be safe, that he won’t hurt her.

With a squeal of rubber seals, the door swings open. Through closed eyelids, Elissa sees a pinkish glow and knows a torch beam is swabbing the room. It settles on her face, and even though her breathing is ragged she tries to feign sleep, forcing her shoulders to rise and fall in long, deliberate movements.

Finally, serrating the darkness, comes her jailer’s voice: a whisper, still, but no less sharp because of it. ‘I know you’re awake. There’ll never be anything, ever in this life, that you can conceal from me. Take as long as you need to learn that lesson, but for your own comfort I’d advise haste.’

In the ensuing silence, Elissa hears nothing but the rushof her blood. For the first time she notices a smell: not the sickening sweetness of spoiled poultry but the richness of cooked food.

‘When one has a visitor it’s polite to acknowledge them, or did your mother never teach you that?’ her jailer asks. ‘Time to open your eyes, Elissa Mirzoyan, and see what is true.’

He won’t be fooled, so there’s no point maintaining the pretence. And yet she cannot prise her eyes open.

‘I brought you something to eat,’ he says, after a long silence. ‘Something to drink, too.’ His tone has changed: there’s a scratch of displeasure that wasn’t there before. ‘By your silence, I assume you don’t want it. No matter. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly you remember your manners. Perhaps a little fasting will hasten their return.’

Elissa hears the scrape of his heels. Moments later, the soundproofed door thump-whooshes as it closes. The deadbolts rattle home.

Immediately, her eyes spring open.

It’ll be interesting to see how quickly you remember your manners. Perhaps a little fasting will hasten their return.

Does that mean he’ll be gone an hour? A day?

A week?

Elissa sits up straight in the darkness. Her right wrist throbs. When she touches it, her shriek of agony bounces off the walls – the pain is extraordinary, as if she’s brushed a raw nerve. There’s a wetness there, anopenness, that’s terrifying. Just now, when she scrambled away from the door, the manacle’s sharp edge bit into her flesh. The damage is far, far worse than she’d thought.

Supporting her metal cuff, she tries to locate the overturned candle holder. Adrenalin has fried her brain. For a while, she’s so jittery she can’t even call up her mental chessboard. Her muscles twitch, stray pulses of electricitysending them into spasm. Fireflies dance before her eyes. Disoriented, she crawls back to the iron hoop. Even then, she can’t calculate her facing. Is the door to her left or her right? The lack of clarity is paralysing. For long minutes she kneels before her sunken anchor, as if it’s a totem from which she can receive guidance.

Finally, an idea breaks through the chaos of her thoughts. The four squares that surround the ring might be empty, but if she can find the soaked floor from F5 to G4, she can realign herself. Within moments she does exactly that. Slowly, a little of her composure returns. Holding the manacle clear of her injured wrist, she begins an exhaustive re-examination of the floor.

At B7, overturned but miraculously unbroken, she finds the holder. The candle itself has rolled loose, so she crawls to G7, lights a new one and screws it into the dish.

Once again, the shadows retreat. This time, the bobbing yellow light reveals something ghastly: her right arm, from fingertips to elbow, is entirely sleeved in blood. The manacle has cut her wrist almost to the bone, the flesh parting like a set of red lips. Blood flows freely from the mouth, dripping to the floor in heavy spatters.

In the movies, when someone suffers an injury, they tear a strip from their clothing to bind the wound. But Elissa can’t tear her dress. Either the fabric’s too strong or she’s too weak.

Her vest lies near the iron ring, filthy and wet. She daren’t use it as a binding. When she casts around for alternatives, she notices something she’d missed until now: her rucksack, in which she’d stashed the food and the last of her water, has vanished.

Cold, hungry and in pain, she’d thought her situation could grow no bleaker. And now it has; immeasurably so. As well as her food and drink, she’s lost her Stauntons, herbooks, her notepad and pens. Worst of all is the loss of Monkey. However hard she tries to tell herself he was just a knitted sack, she can’t dismiss what he represented. Inanimate or not, he was her companion in this. Now that he’s gone, she’s truly alone.

Huddling close to the candle, Elissa listens to the slow drip of her blood and her stomach’s empty gurgle. Really, she should blow out the light and conserve her supply, but who knows how much longer she’ll possess it? Earlier, she’d scolded herself for drinking so much water. Now, she’s glad she did. She thinks of her mum, and when that becomes too painful she thinks of Monkey; and whenthatbecomes too painful she closes her eyes and thinks of nothing at all.

VII

In the end, it’s not a week before her jailer returns, perhaps not even a day, but it’s a lot longer than a few hours. In his absence, her tongue has become a blister. By the time she hears the clatter of deadbolts, only a finger’s width of candle remains unburned. Its flame wobbles as the door squeals open.

---