The rocking of the cart as it bumps over the unsteady roads at first nearly makes Relmaríndë sick, though she recognizes that this is due more to anxiety—to sickness of heart—than to any amount of vertiginous movement. After all, she bore the rocking of a ship on the waves for more than a month with little problem. But then she was free. Then she had her husband by her side, the confident remembrance of the past, and hope for the future. Now these things are so far removed that she can barely call them to mind, and she is left with hardly more than a sense of profound desolation, of being cast to the gutter and forgotten, and being taken up instead by those who neither see nor care for her, but strip her of her freedom and intend to cast her into a place of misery as yet unimagined. And her prayers for light and consolation are met with silence, a silence to which she has long become accustomed and in which she has learned to hear a deeper voice; and yet now even this she cannot hear, her mind and heart too filled with the buzz of anxious questioning, an interior cacophony that she cannot seem to surpass or bring to quietude.
Day passes into night and the caravan stops in a wooded clearing a couple dozen yards off the road. A few crusts of bread are passed in through the bars of this portable prison, and the three women share them as equally as they can. After this, a skin of water is given which is only half-full, hardly enough to satisfy the ravenous thirst of a single person, nonetheless all three of them. Now that the rocking has ceased, Relmaríndë takes a moment to look around the cart; the woman who when Relmaríndë had first entered had her face buried between her knees, a petite woman small in both stature and build, appears young, hardly at the beginning of adulthood, and she grieves at this. The young woman also seems to have no interest in conversation, or even little capacity for it, as she responds to Relmaríndë’s words, when she addresses her, with no more than a sigh and a nod of the head.
The other woman, however, who appears older than Relmaríndë by perhaps ten or fifteen years, is more than willing to talk. Her demeanor is indeed an evident contrast not only to the reticent woman but to Relmaríndë herself. While the latter desires to sink into silence and to process everything that has happened to her, to pray and to seek light and clarity in the face of the maelstrom within her, the older woman seeks companionship. Recognizing that the two can exist together, the silence and the word, the prayer of the heart and the sharing of hearts in speech, Relmaríndë accepts this companionship and is relieved to experience it.
Her graying blonde hair matted and dirty, her pale skin beginning to wrinkle with care and age, and her clothing hardly more than rags, the woman nonetheless still has a presence that is markedly intense, as if she refuses to yield to the apathy that her situation seems to demand. “It appears to me that you do not hail from the land of Vælíria,” observes the woman, turning her body toward Relmaríndë as she speaks, her figure only subtly visible in the dim light of the fire that burns a dozen or so feet away from the cart and filters in through the rough canvas fabric covering them.
“How do you come to that conclusion?” asks Relmaríndë. “I have hardly spoken.”
“Words are not alone in revealing one’s origins. Your appearance is far different than all those I have met in my life until now.”
“You are right in your assumption. I hail from Telmérion,” says Relmaríndë.
“Do all of your people look as you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The glow in the eyes, and the youthfulness of flesh and face.”
“You are very perceptive. Though I recognize my looks are notable, I do not make a habit of paying any attention to them myself. And little either do others have cause to remark on them.”
“So they are out of the ordinary even for your own people?” the woman asks.
“Simply said, yes. Though I belong simultaneously to two people.”
“And you receive these looks from one people and not from the other?” The woman’s enduring curiosity and questioning surprise Relmaríndë, though they do not make her uncomfortable.
“That is the case.”
“A special people indeed they must be,” says the woman, and then, after a moment, she adds, “If we are to be companions in bonds, is it not fitting that we share our names with one another?”
“Verily. My name is Relmaríndë, and though among my ancestral people we do not use surnames, my name in marriage is Illómiel.” An expression of subtle emotion passes quickly over the woman’s features at the mention of Relmaríndë’s marriage, though it is unclear precisely what emotion thus expresses itself. “And what is your name?” asks Relmaríndë, when the moment has passed.
“My name, in your language, is Lily,” she answers. “That is the first question that you have asked me, and it was but a response to my own suggestion. What I wonder is why you answer my questions so patiently without the slightest reference to the miserable situation in which we find ourselves. If I were you, I would be pestering me with all kinds of questions: Who has captured me? Where are we coming from and where are we going? What kind of bondage is this and what am I to expect?”
Nodding in understanding and a little puzzlement, Relmaríndë manages to say, “That would be the most ordinary response. But I suppose I am too preoccupied at the moment in order to voice those questions.”
“What could preoccupy you apart from the questions that I mentioned?”
“It is those very questions…among others of a more interior nature. And I also think that part of me is afraid of the answers were I to ask. I did not realize it until this moment, but a part of me thinks that the less I know, the better shall I feel. I see now that it is probably foolish to think such a thing. But deeper than that, another part of me simply feels defeated…like there is no point in asking. I have been preoccupied trying not to suffocate in my own thoughts and feelings.”
“Even in speaking of your pain and confusion,” Lily says, “you speak with remarkable reserve. You speak quietly of feeling a sense of defeat when others would cry out and weep in despair.”
“Do I? I do not mean it that way. For me they are the gravest words that I can use. For in a mere matter of days I have lost the very trajectory of my life and all the bonds that once held me; I lost my reason for coming to this land, and I lost my husband and all of the other companions with whom I set sail from Telmérion many weeks ago. And this last turn of events has set a seal to all the rest: now I have lost my very freedom.” Relmaríndë falls silent and exhales deeply, as if speaking, after all, has helped to ease her burden a bit or at least has given it some external expression, allowing her to bear it with greater interior freedom. “So forgive me if I do not seem much inclined to ask questions of you in this moment.”
“No, I understand,” says Lily. “Each one of us deals with grief in our own way. Some of us rage against the injustice, crying out and protesting; some of us grasp anywhere we can for the possibility of understanding or of fighting; and some of us sink into silent reflection, seeking a deeper peace and clarity under the tumult of events. You are simply one of the latter.”
“It seems to me the most important thing to do at present,” remarks Relmaríndë, “though there is certainly place for the former two as well.” And then after a pause, “And what good would protesting bring about? Is there even a way to resist? If there were a way, perhaps I could embark upon it.”
“I have seen many fall into darkness of this kind throughout my life, and I have known many in bondage of other kinds as well; and it is my conviction that there are only two options in such a situation: either one resolves to resist, externally or internally, or one is utterly defeated and loses oneself in the darkness. It appears to me that you are already resisting, whether you know it or not.”
“How long, may I ask, have you been in such bondage as this?” inquires Relmaríndë hesitantly, not sure she either desires to know the answer or shall benefit from its knowledge.
As if intuiting precisely this fact, Lily says simply, “Long enough to have learned a thing or two about resistance.”
At this, the young woman who has until now remained silent raises her head and says, in such an unexpected way and with such intensity in her voice that the two older women are startled, “I thought we were all newly taken. So you have been in this situation before? Tell me what I can do to get out!” And with this it seems that her energy is entirely spent, and without even awaiting an answer she buries her face again in her arms and pulls her knees closer to her chest.
“Poor dear,” begins Lily, taking this momentary opportunity to at last attempt a gentle step beyond the young woman’s defenses, “we shall do everything we can to get you out of this predicament, and ourselves as well. You can be assured of that. But first tell us your name, that we may be with you now, as we can, even in your captivity.”
“It does not matter anymore,” remarks the young woman.
“Quite the contrary. It matters more than ever. Above all things, do not allow them to strip you of your name, for then they have already won.”
“I-it is Vanya.”
“Vanya. Thank you. I am Lily.”
“And I am Relmaríndë. And she speaks the truth. We are much older than you and have had more experience of life; thus, if an opportunity arises or if we can seize upon one, know that we shall first of all seek to aid you in escape. What we can do, we will do.”
The woman looks up again, directing her gaze first upon Lily and then upon Relmaríndë, and then, as if unable to hold their reciprocal looks, she lowers her head again. But even so, she speaks, “You would help me escape even if you were to remain behind? I find that hard to believe.”
“There may yet be a way for all three of us to find our freedom,” says Lily. “And until then, let us take some small measure of courage in the fact that we are together and not alone. It is the lonely heart that is broken, but together it may be saved.”
“Your words mean nothing to me,” Vanya retorts. “Console yourself with truisms all you desire, but the reality speaks for itself.”
“Aye, that it does,” Lily replies. “I apologize if I made light of our situation.”
“I…” Vanya sighs, rubbing her eyes as if to dispel unwelcome thoughts. And then, in a different tone which is hardly more than a whisper, she says, “Thank you for introducing yourselves. It is good to know your names.”
“And it is good to know yours.”
† † †
Close to two weeks pass as the caravan travels to the northwest, and, if the subtle sound of the waves is anything to go by, they never depart far from the coastline. The women are not allowed to leave the cage for even a moment, and they are forced to relieve themselves in a bucket which is then passed to one of the slavers on their next stop, though in the meantime they must live with its stench. The women take to abstaining as they can from taking care of such matters until the caravan stops, though such stops are infrequent, only once or perhaps twice a day. But considering the meager food and water they receive, there is little for them to pass nonetheless, and soon the body’s urge has all but completely disappeared. Yet far worse than the physical frailty that they experience due to the lack of nourishment and the inertia of constant enclosure in a cramped space is the dullness of mind and heart, the subtle exhaustion that threatens to engulf even the life of the inner person. This experience deepens Relmaríndë’s understanding of just how deeply man and woman were meant to live in contact with the world of the senses, with the richly layered tapestry of the cosmos and of life itself, with hours passing in succession each with their particular meaning and purpose, and to find in the contours of life the means through which heart and existence become a gift both received and given, and thus fully free and fully alive. Even if one may find in solitude, in stillness of body and purposelessness of action, a deeper contact with the very invisible wellsprings from which the cosmos itself is born, and to which it shall return, the contact of the heart alone is not enough, for its seeks also to clothe itself in flesh and in life, in choice and in action, lifting the world closer to its origin and its purpose precisely through enacting what is seen deep within the heart, just as the heart’s seeing, inversely, is born most maturely through a life beautifully and vibrantly lived.
Yet neither of these is accessible to Relmaríndë now, and she finds not only meaningful action and bodily movement taken away from her, but also an encroaching feeling of inner suffocation, a kind of numbness in which her thoughts move in narrower and narrower circles, gradually overtaking her. And when she looks into the eyes of her companions in bonds, she sees that the young woman is already much further along this path of degradation, having little within her to resist it. Lily, on the other hand, is a mystery inscrutable, and her interior world is almost entirely unreadable with the exception of a certain persistent light in her eyes and a presence in her countenance and her words which reveal that, whatever narrowing her long time in servitude has caused within her, it has not snuffed out the interior life entirely, and perhaps even has deepened it by urging it on to a point, to the essential, to the bedrock foundations of life and meaning.
The first eventful change in their journey comes whenever the caravan passes through a village. Why the slavers do not make a point of traversing around it Relmaríndë does not know, but she seizes up the opportunity without thought or hesitation. Hearing the bustle of an open-air marketplace or town square through which they pass, and Stagrímur crying out, “Wild and dangerous beasts! Step back and give way that we may pass through!” Relmaríndë presses her face to the canvas covering the cage and calls as loudly as she can, “We are not beasts. We are slaves! Please, someone help us!” She continues to call out in this manner until the canvas flap is thrown back. Her hope is immediately dashed as Stagrímur’s angry face greets her; and, before she can react, he swings a cudgel directly down upon her head. Blinding pain courses through her and a flash of white light, and then everything sinks into blackness. Her body goes limp and her legs buckle beneath her; and, before the loses consciousness, she she feels arms wrap around her from behind.
When she wakes it is in darkness, and only after a few moments is she able to discern the contours of Lily’s figure leaning over her, while their other traveling companion is curled in a fetal position in the corner, sleeping deeply. “It was worth a try,” Lily says to Relmaríndë, pity and understanding in her voice. “I have done likewise numerous times. But you must understand that slavery is legal in some provinces of Vælíria, including the one in which we now find ourselves. Even if someone was inclined to liberate us, they would find little support in the law or government of the land.”
“How can such a despicable practice be legal?” asks Relmaríndë, trying to sit up but stopping immediately when pain pierces through her head.
“Do not try to move for a while,” says Lily as if giving voice to her pain. “Be grateful that he did not break your skull.” And when Relmaríndë has settled back into a resting position, “Slavery is legal because it is not called slavery. No leader of our land would say in public that the capture and selling of individuals is an acceptable practice, and in fact they would outright condemn it as abhorrent. They rather speak of the poor ûrandi who need indentured servitude in order to thrive, finding their security and livelihood through devotion to a master. It is just part of the hierarchy of life in which some require masters as truly as others need servants.”
“You do not speak in jest?”
“I do not, though it was not always this way. But you must also understand that not all servitude is as bad as you might imagine. I myself had a master for years who treated me not unlike the rest of his household. Apart from my lack of freedom to leave or to choose another life for myself, my responsibilities and experience were not unlike what one would find in contractual employment.”
“I would think that an exception,” says Relmaríndë.
“Whether it is or not, I do not know,” replies Lily. “But there is certainly also great evil and injustice in the practice of slavery in our land beyond the obvious: the curtailing of an individual’s freedom and their being treated as the property of another. Men are often forced into grueling, back-breaking labor with little rest or nourishment, and women are often…well, forget I said anything.”
Feeling sick, Relmaríndë whispers, “I understand.” But then, unable to resist the question that arises within her, she asks, “Is that legal?”
“It is legal when it is freely chosen by the woman herself,” Lily explains, the expression in her voice veiled, almost as if there is too much sadness here for her to allow the emotion to betray itself. “When it is forced, it is illegal in all the provinces of Vælíria. But in practice the question is rarely asked, of either individuals or of brothels, whether the women give themselves freely or under compulsion to their masters.”
“I do not know what I would do if that were to be my fate,” Relmaríndë says quietly. “I would rather suffer death than give myself away in such a manner.”
“But being the weaker sex, we are often given no choice in the matter, not even a choice between death and degradation. It would be a mercy to be killed, but instead we live on, unable to resist and unable to flee. And as debased, as violated as our life may appear in our eyes, it remains something sacred, a trust not our own, which we have no right to end by our own hand.” With these last words Lily betrays more concerning her own experience than she had intended, and as she shares a quick glance with Relmaríndë, both women know that this is the case. They sink together into heavy and sorrowful silence. And soon pain and exhaustion overtake Relmaríndë and she lets herself slip again from consciousness into a deep sleep, one punctuated by nightmares that leave her drenched in perspiration and chilled to the bone by the time the first light of morning comes.
† † †
Nearly another week passes and then the second significant event on their journey occurs. Relmaríndë is stirred from her thoughts by the sound of large doors swinging open on rusty hinges, and then the cart bumps roughly over what seems to be a wood-planked bridge. Then it comes to a halt. Voices sound around them, though they are unable to make out more than snatches of their words and conversation. But soon enough the canvas covering is pulled off the cage and the three woman, hidden for so long in half-light, are exposed in the brilliant light of the midday sun. Looking around, Relmaríndë sees that they are in the bailey of an old castle or fortress, its stone walls cloaked in vine and moss and crumbling away in places after centuries of weather and wear. The instinct for escape surges through her and she casts her gaze about for options; yet she recognizes that it is hopeless. The great doors to the castle swing shut and are barred with a heavy reinforced beam, and then, a moment later, one of the slavers stands at the back of the cart, thumbing through the ring of keys attached to his belt. When he has found the fitting key he unlocks the cage and ushers the women out of the cart and onto the packed earth of the yard. They stand blinking in the light and trying to regain the steadiness on their feet that after these weeks of inactivity they seem to have lost.
Inspecting her surroundings, Relmaríndë sees three other carts similar to their own and from them emerging other groups of slaves, one of young men and two of women of various ages. All in all there are fourteen persons enslaved in this caravan, and their expressions range from terror to resignation to anger and all the shades in between.
“After the inspection keep the groups together and move them to the upper chambers on the north wing,” cries one of the slavers. “We leave for the city at dawn tomorrow.”
Herded like cattle by dozens of armed men, the captives cross the yard and enter the castle through a wide front entrance, where, in a high-ceilinged chamber, they are forcibly stripped of all clothing or possessions to which they have managed to cling since their capture. Made to stand side by side with weapons held to their chests and archers standing at ready should any resist, one by one they are inspected for any item they may have managed to hide during the prior denudation. Her cheeks burning hot with both anger and embarrassment as she covers her breasts with one arm from the leering eyes of the slavers and her groin with the other, Relmaríndë hears Vanya whimpering beside her. Sensing that the young woman is about to break and to do something that could endanger her, she whispers, “Be strong, Vanya. Be strong. We are with you.”
“Silence!” cries the man nearest to Relmaríndë, prodding her chest with the tip of his sword until it breaks the skin and blood begins to flow. “Speak again and the words will be your last.” And with a crooked smile, “And move your arms, or they will be moved for you.”
Even if she desired to resist, she dos not have a chance, as the two men inspecting the captives at this moment reach her. One pulls her arms from her body and holds them in an iron grip while the other inspects her body and all of its orifices for any object that she might have thought to conceal, though whether this is actually a search or a mere show of power and domination, a mere act of humiliation, she does not know. As much as she tries to restrain them in order to appear strong for Vanya who stands next in line, tears spring to her eyes and flow freely down her cheeks. And then it is over, though her pain continues as her heart goes out to Vanya in compassion, and she undergoes her suffering as if it were her own. Indeed, in this moment some inner capacity in her heart, some ability of the Velási blood within her, is unleashed, and a torrent of fear and anguish and shame and confusion washes in upon her from the prisoners around her, and following shortly upon it and compounding it, the apathy and greed and lust and sick delight of the slavers. Were it not for her desire to support her companions in pain during this moment of trial, she would collapse to her knees. Instead she stands more upright, turning her head to look at Vanya and nodding in encouragement and care, as if to speak silent words of consolation. And because of the bearing that precedes and carries this simple glance, it has a mysterious efficacy, and Relmaríndë is able to discern a shift in the features of the young woman, a subtle strengthening of her resolve and a taste of the interior freedom of which she has been totally bereft until this moment, as of someone drowning whose head at last breaks the surface of the water.
After Vanya, Lily undergoes the search with stoic indifference, though Relmaríndë, with the sensitivity of feeling that grips her in this moment, feels the reverberations of the woman’s heart more deeply than she yet has, and she tastes both her bitter and prolonged suffering and also the light of hope that lives unbroken within her. Relmaríndë’s mind and heart spontaneously follow the thread of this hope in memory and imagination, in the deep places of the heart, to its source; but the thread is cut before she attains to its end, and the anguish of the next person in line flows in upon her, absorbing her attention. In a few minutes more it is all done, and the captives are clothed in poor garments of sackcloth and ushered through another set of doors, up a spiral staircase, and down a dark hallway before being locked in rooms with the same companions with whom they had shared their cages on the road.
† † †
“That was…horrible,” says Vanya when they have been left alone in the darkness of their cell. “And did you hear? They send us to the city tomorrow. It must be Aelthýrin, correct?”
“Aye,” says Lily quietly.
“They intend to sell us?”
“Aye.”
As her eyes adjust to the darkness, Relmaríndë looks around the room. It is empty save for a few tattered blankets piled in a corner and a high window on one wall, through which indirect light slants into the room, the only source of light in their stone prison.
“I know of this fortress,” says Lily, “though I have never been here before. It is a well-known stopping-place for the slave commerce between the south and the north, and where almost all captives are held in detention before being sold in Aelthýrin or transported further to Vælaróma or elsewhere. However, before this castle fell into disuse in prior centuries, it was known to house many noble warriors who performed great deeds written of in lore or sung in songs. Perhaps some of the virtue of these men and women long passed still lingers in the ancient stones of this place.”
“What good are songs and stories at a time like this?” asks Vanya in a quiet voice. “What good are the memories and remnants of people long dead?” And then, catching herself, she adds, “I am sorry. I should not speak in such a manner.”
At this moment they hear the jangling of keys and the click of a lock, and then the door swings open. A torch momentarily illumines the darkened room and the form of a man appears long enough for to him to set a platter with three plates on the floor and then to again withdraw, securing the door behind him. On the plates is food enough for each woman to eat until satisfied.
“What is this?” voices Relmaríndë. “Why do they feed us now?”
“I suspect you know the answer,” says Lily, taking the platter and distributing the plates to her companions. “But that does not matter. Let us eat while we can and regain some of our strength. Yet eat slowly, so the food does not make you sick. It has been long since we have eaten such an amount.”
While they eat they speak little, each woman lost in her own thoughts. Relmaríndë’s mind and heart are still reeling from the intense moments of bearing that she has just experienced, and she is preoccupied by the effort to resist turning in upon herself in order to lessen or numb the pain, but rather to keep her heart open to others even when their proximity hurts.
Whenever they have finished eating the women share a few words, speaking about nothing of particular weight or import, though the very experience of simply being together and speaking brings some measure of solace to each. Then Lily, looking at her companions, says, “Would you like to hear a song? Being in this place makes me think of it.”
“If this place reminds you of the song,” says Vanya, “then perhaps I do not wish to hear it, as it must be a gloomy song indeed.”
“Oh, that is not the reason I think of it,” explains Lily. “It is rather simply the location itself and its past that stirs my memory. The song is not particularly cheery, but neither is it glum.”
“Then by all means, I would be willing to hear it,” Vanya concludes.
“I agree,” adds Relmaríndë. “Does this song have a name?”
“Whether it has a name, I am not sure,” says Lily. “But let me allow the lyrics to speak for themselves.” And so after a moment to collect herself, she begins to sing:
In ancient days as great war racked the land
Soldís the Deathless came, his sword in hand.
Though slain a hundred times he could not die
and drove back the oppressor who was nigh.
He came promising peace but bringing strife;
war he ended, with which our land was rife,
and for a short moment, a brief respite
all seemed serene, all seemed restored to light.
The sun shone brightly and the moon was fair
and children weaved ornaments in their hair.
And yet in the cradle, in the child’s bed
death came, unbidden, to the royal seed.
And he who united divided land
by might in arms and war, with sword in hand,
proclaimed himself ruler universal
with right of rule and judgment over all.
But an order of knights stood unbroken,
adhering to the old ways forgotten
by most people of our ancient land,
and though openly they could not withstand
their ways became legend, and legend myth,
until their name, spoken by ken and kith,
planted yearning hope for a life unknown,
of peace and liberty in fields unsown.
Irandiélistë Nerethion,
with burnished shield, and spear sturdy and long,
they fought not to supplant the unjust rule
but to protect innocents from the cruel,
without commission from the Emperor,
and unknown to him and to his power,
but in faithfulness to their ancient troth,
they stood still as bastions of light and truth
for ages untold ‘til from history
they passed, and lived no more in memory.
But in songs still sung of days forgotten
their legend is promise, life to quicken.
“Who were they, these Irandielístë Nerethion?” asks Relmaríndë after Lily has fallen silent.
“Precisely what the name implies: protectors of this world devoted to the god Nerethion and under his mantle. Of course we know little any more of fact or history beyond the echoes of legends long living only in song and verse. But I believe that they truly existed, and that under the legends is a profound truth not only about these righteous warriors but about our land and the memory of our past enduring even in the ages of the Empire’s domination. Indeed, I have cause to believe that precisely this ancient castle was their home, for legends speak of ‘a citadel by the sea, where the River Ista empties into ocean’s expanse.’ That is where we are, and, if I am not mistaken, even to this day this fortress goes by the name of Castle Istë. The men who have taken over it and appropriated it to their own ends little thought to change the name, not knowing the origins from which it comes. Indeed, few still living know that the river and the town Istáris further inland from the coast both owe their origins and their naming to these warriors of old.”
“What does that word mean: istë?” asks Relmaríndë. “Even though I am fluent in your language, I do not recognize it.”
“It is the old word for a knight or oath-bound warrior,” explains Lily, “or rather the plural of that word. The title Irandielístë Nerethion literally means ‘knights of Irándiel in devoted service to Nerethion.’ Thus we are not far from ‘Knight’s River,’ or such it was called in the old tongue.”
“You believe that the presence of the knights still sanctifies these halls,” says Relmaríndë, “and their spirit shall be with us when we travel up the river to the city tomorrow. Is this why you tell us of these things?”
“A meager hope, I know,” remarks Lily, “but I thought saying something was better saying than nothing at all. As long-enduring as our present suffering may appear in our eyes, it is but a short moment in the history of our people, and thus perhaps it may serve some good beyond our sight or comprehension, connecting the glory of our past with the hope of future restoration.”
“In moments such as this despair seems more justified than such memory and hope,” remarks Relmaríndë, and then she smiles mournfully to herself as she reflects upon her words. “And who am I to say such a thing, who have been entrusted with the memory and hope of my people?”
Vanya rises to her feet and paces anxiously around the room, something that the other two women entirely understand. In fact Relmaríndë rises and paces with her, moving her body and stretching it after the weeks in cramped enclosure, although her physical weakness and fatigue make this difficult. As she passes under the window she hears a sound soft and subtle, at the very edge of hearing, and she pauses. “Are we above the ocean?” she asks at last. “Despite the thick stone that surrounds us and our height above the earth, I think I heart the crashing of waves far below us.”
“I suspect that we are, yes,” replies Lily.
Leaping to grab hold on the stone sill of the high window, Relmaríndë attempts to life herself up to look out, but her arms are too weak and she falls again to the floor, though not landing uncomfortably. After two more attempts she is able to accomplish it, and she indeed sees nothing out the porthole but open sky and undulating waves. With one further lift with her arms she is able to push her head far enough outside the window to look down. She sees that the castle is built up to the very edge of a rocky escarpment overlooking the ocean, its waves crashing against the stone.
Dropping herself again to the ground, Relmaríndë turns to her companions and says, “We are not as high as I thought we would be. It is perhaps thirty or forty feet to the ocean below. And seeing the window up close, I think, Vanya, that you might fit through it.”
“Are you suggesting that I attempt to escape through the window?” she replies, wide eyed.
“I am just mentioning the possibility. It would be very dangerous to jump from such a height, but perhaps we can lower you down a significant portion of the way.”
“How?”
Relmaríndë steps toward the blankets and lifts one of them, twisting it into a rope-like shape and then pulling on it as hard as she can. It holds. “Lily, will you hold the other end of this?”
Lily rises to her feet, clearly in agreement with Relmaríndë’s idea, and the two women together test the weight-bearing capacity of the blanket. “For someone as petite as you, Vanya, I believe it will hold.”
“You are truly serious?”
“Did you not wish to escape? And did we not tell you that we would do everything we could to help you do so?” asks Lily.
“That is right. It is certain that neither Lily nor I will fit through the window, but if even one of us can escape, then it is worth the effort.” Without waiting for an answer Relmaríndë begins tying the other blankets together, and by the time this has been completed she is confident that they can get Vanya to within fifteen or twenty feet of the water—still a dangerous distance if she were to enter it poorly, but possible.
“I-I will do it,” whispers Vanya, her face a mixture of relief and anxiety, “but only if you think I can.”
“I most definitely do,” says Relmaríndë. “Be courageous. We will help you pass through the window, and then you must hold on very tightly to the blankets while we lower you down. Whenever I call to you that we can go no further, or when it is clear that we cannot, you must plant your feet firmly against the castle wall and push off from it. Release the rope at the furthest distance from the wall that you can, then hold your legs together, straight downward, and tuck your arms to your side. Try to hit the water with your feet first. And the surf will be quite strong, so once you have entered the water try quickly to swim to the surface and to find a place where you can climb back onto the land. And then—”
“—And then flee,” Vanya concludes.
“Exactly.”
While Relmaríndë throws the end of the blanket rope through the window, Vanya, overcome with emotion, embraces Lily as if she were her mother or her dearest friend. This is followed shortly by a similar embrace shared with Relmaríndë.
“If I m-make it,” she says, shivering with fearful anticipation, “you shall have my undying gratitude. And I hope to meet you again that I may express it to you.”
“It will be reward enough for you to find your freedom,” says Lily with a final gesture of affection, a simple caress of her palm on Vanya’s cheek.
Then the two older women lift Vanya toward the window and help her to crawl through, leading with her feet. The last thing they see of her is her face looking through the porthole, beautiful and fragile in its vulnerability, and then her hands clinging desperately to the rope. And then they begin to lower her, slowly but deliberately, until there is no more blanket to spare.
“That is all, Vanya. Go!”
A few moments pass in which both women hold their breath in anticipation, and then there is a final tug on the rope, and then a release.