Page 45 of The Quiet
BAKER’S INTERACTIONS WITH the stranger lingered in her mind for the next few days, and in hope, she did practice her words. At first alone, and then to Marnie’s delight, she spoke in clipped, stuttering phrases to her as she healed from her wounds.
Baker started reading to Marnie in bed every night, curling up with her like one might a child, but hid her voice from everyone else. Clipped words began to grow into full words, and then broken phrases as the days drew into weeks. Marnie had to be guided now through the halls, and once her shadow, Baker became her safeguard, steering her away from Strike Yun’s room at every occasion.
Baker lingered near windows during her work, taking breaks from scrubbing the floors to look out at the city for the man in the long coat. She was convinced she’d see him again, determined even, and given to some hope that there were in fact still ROSE capable of navigating the public.
She began to imagine the ROSE again, creating forbidden stories in her head of them defeating and fighting the Strike. They became her heroes, and despite their deaths, sometimes she imagined Khalid and the others breaking down the doors, and coming to the rescue of all of the slaves. In her imagination, she gave them mystical powers they could use to fight the Strike. They could wield the elements and Khalid could suddenlycontrol fire. Baker found such freedom inside her own head this way, and through that, sparks of life.
After a few weeks, news was circulated that several ROSE had been found within the city. Baker heard only small comments, listening in eagerly, until news of their execution followed shortly after.
Baker heard the woman and two men slandered as rebels, seditionists and enemies of mankind, but all she could think of were the man’s words from the wagon. She did her best to focus on the man’s instructions, practicing her words still and balancing a borrowed coin over her fingers during mealtimes.
She still dropped it constantly as it was much smaller than the stranger’s coin. She was balancing it tediously over her fingers when commotion distracted her, causing it to clatter against the table before a group bustled in from the higher floors of the Grin.
Shouting and hustling echoed through the halls as slaves eating dinner stopped and converged around a body dragged in on the floor.
“Keep the pressure on, keep it on!” Jolie’s voice rang out, Baker inching closer to the scene as they stopped in the hall, streaks and drops of blood painted behind them.
Other slaves backed away one by one until it was only Jolie and a man working with her, applying pressure and exchanging wraps. They scrambled over the body with blood soaked hands, some watching somewhat helplessly as the pale mass bled out in front of them. It was a dark haired man named Klare with whom Jolie had occasionally spent her evenings.
Amiel had gotten the man, bite marks pouring blood out of his arms, long mangled claw marks visible through the tears in his clothes. It had been a gruesome mauling, and silence settled among everyone but Jolie. Jolie kept pressing clothes to his chest as the body, like the rest of the dead in the city, began to dissolve.
No one moved as the clothes, skin, and blood evaporated. Surrounding slaves didn’t flinch as it lifted from their fingertips, as if it had never been there at all. They had all seen this process before, but Jolie grew only more frantic.
She screamed repeatedly, reaching and grasping for the body and clothes as if she might preserve some fragment. The body vanished, and soon the blood faded from her arms, her clothes, her fingers and desperate as if to preserve some memory of it, she clawed at her own chest, drawing blood with her fingernails as other slaves reached for her arms to calm her down.
Jolie ran, pushing past Baker and bursting through the doors out in the courtyard. Baker followed when no one else did, standing several feet from Jolie who she discovered standing completely still several steps from the open door.
Chin up and tears pouring silently down her face, her eyes were no longer frantic but hard and distant, almost hypnotic in the way they focused out on the horizon.
Baker wasn’t even sure Jolie saw her and minutes passed wordlessly. Her breathing settled into such silence until it was as if she didn’t breathe at all. Her expression changed into something empty, but unlike the townspeople. She was empty in a powerful way, like a prophet prepared to share some high truth to which only the holy had insight.
Baker noticed the shrine at Jolie’s feet. It looked like a vigil where some of the slaves had gathered statues of the Strike they revered with candles burned through.
Jolie sank down in front of it with measured strength as if lowered down on a rope. Her eyes were cast to the statues, Amiel’s representation one of the highest among them.
“You know what they really are don’t you?” Jolie asked hoarsely, staring at the statues, and for a moment Baker thought she meant the statues. People had indeed carved these and many more and not by the Strike’s own request. As Baker watched, a deeper meaning dawned on her as she realized that Jolie meant more than just the stoic representations.
“They’re our sins,” she said. “They live off of all of those things we don’t want to feel, and we worship them for it, worship our own trash,” Jolie whispered, reaching out with a deadened hand and touching the heads of every single figurine. Her hand paused in the air and withdrew back into her lap before she moved them aside, and left an empty space at the top among them.
Baker began to count them as she’d done before, and confirmed that in fact all of the Strike were there.
Jolie lifted her finger up to her mouth, Baker not realizing she’d bitten it until blood started to pour down her hand. She lifted it over the space between Peter and Amiel’s statues and let the blood drip off her hand. Jolie let her hand linger there, red rivers streaming down her arm and her elbow before at last she reclined back on her feet, Baker sensing she’d done something blasphemous.
Baker scanned the area, knowing that the Bleeding Grin had ears everywhere, and Jolie, the most composed of them all, seemed to have fallen into insanity. She watched the blood drop into that empty space like an offering to an unseen god, a Strike that existed in secret.
Baker found herself hypnotized, for if all of the Strike did represent something they all worshiped, then that empty space spoke more deeply to her than any statue had. In that empty space, Baker saw silence. After death, it was perhaps more ultimate, the silence that followed screaming, the kind that lingered in the woods in between breezes, the kind to which she’d sacrificed her own life. Much like her, it was a witness, and in this moment, as Jolie spilled her blood into that space, Baker knew that silence saw it. Silence saw everything, and the world would always be accountable to it, always return to it.
Without another word, Jolie turned and walked back into the Grin. Baker was startled to find that a group had gathered in the doorway. It was a group that parted for her, a group that had heard all the words, a group that had seen Baker standing there listening to them.
Those eyes that watched Baker and Jolie return back inside the Grin were different eyes–eyes that no longer overlooked her, but watched her now whenever she entered each room. Days passed and those eyes remained, Baker relieved as Jolie returned to her solemn, composed self. Eventually, and much to Baker’s relief, routine soothed the world and eyes turned back to their normal things.
It was a week and a half before Jolie disappeared.
Baker knew better than to ask, and hoped that she’d simply been pulled away on a long trip. Baker looked for Jolie out each window she came by as she cleaned and performed her duties on the day that followed. As she held a tray, she was caught up staring out at the city streets. From the third floor, she hoped that maybe she might catch sight of Jolie, or perhaps of that man in his long coat. She wondered about Valentine. Soon, it felt like she was looking for an army of ghosts.
Baker kept her head down, carrying her tray as she stayed far to the left of the hallway and out of the way.
Dread rose in her stomach when a pair of black shoes appeared in her line of vision. Baker swallowed and lifted her head timidly. She was surprised that she didn’t recognize this slave, and imagined she must work exclusively on a higher floor.
