In Her Element

Almyra opened her mouth, in indignation and possibly to protest, but he interrupted her with “You are not to converse with them, nor ask them any questions. They will not answer you if you do. You will be sent whatever is necessary.” He made an about face and marched out of the room with his head held high, his back stiff, and his shoulders back like any dignified soldier would and locked the door behind him with an audible click.

Almyra turned to face the girls—probably random village girls pulled off the cobbled streets—and was utterly shocked and horrified at the stark terror that showed on their faces. Behind the fear was the compliance of someone who knew her fate—most likely a more horrendous one—but could not do anything about it.

They stared back, surveying her as one would a blank canvas. Then the door opened again and a tub made of copper, some pails of water and a large sack were put on the floor of the room by a few younger boys. The boys all stopped for a moment to look at Almyra, and she felt slightly unnerved by the blank looks in their eyes, with only the occasional spark of excitement. When they left, once again locking the door behind them, the girls immediately set to work.

They stripped Almyra before she could even think of a way to stop them, and they had her in the tub and were pouring the water over her before she could think to cover herself. They scrubbed her until her skin felt raw, combed her hair free of knots until she felt like her scalp was on fire—if it was even still attached to her head, that is.

It was all done quickly—a blur—and Anita found herself remembering the last time she had gone through this: the day of her ball. She knew though, that the suffering she had experienced then was nothing compared to what was surely coming to her now. The sense of foreboding that she had felt this morning had settled heavily at the bottom of her stomach like a wrongly digested meal that refused to come back up.

Fully washed and towel-dried, Almyra was held still as the girls pulled a gown over her head and laced and straightened it with as much vigor as when they had washed her. Her hair was brushed back nicely and left down and unadorned, curling slightly at the edges as it dried.

The maids stepped back, and Almyra stepped cautiously up to her mirror. The sight she saw was astonishing: the gown was a deep purple, pure silk, with a tight bodice that flared at the waist and had bell sleeves. The neckline was low—lower than the gown that she had worn at the ball and lower than Anita thought her mother would ever have let her wear, but other than that, the cut of the gown was ordinary and simple.

The designs on the dress, however, were a whole different matter. Someone with exceptional skill had threaded tiny stitches of blue, green, red, and yellow through the dress in a seemingly nonsensical manner, but with closer inspection, patterns began to appear. Enticing flames danced, lofty waves crashed into foam, grass and trees swayed, all blown by a terrible wind. The colors, each so vibrant in their own right, should not have been put together, yet they meshed with perfection. So perfect that Almyra felt uncomfortable in the gown, but she could not take it off; the unmistakable sound of someone unlocking the door was heard and once again a handful of young men barged in. As they caught sight of her, they each averted their eyes and kneeled. Almyra shifted uneasily on her feet, unsure of how to react, of what to do.

She had nothing to worry about—she had no choice in that matter of what to do. The lads stood, two of them taking hold of her arms, the others besides one leading or following as they led her out of the room to an unknown destination, an unknown fate. The last thing she heard was whimpering, pleading and the sharp cry of the maids before the door closed behind them. Almyra jerked in surprise but steeled herself to her own inevitable fate and moved further with her head held high.

They left her alone in a room that was empty of all character, the walls and floor bare, the entire room bare, save for the wall-to-wall carpet, the chair that Almyra sat in and a small torch in a wrought-iron bracket. She wondered if she was to stay here for a while, where they might hope her spirit would break if she were to be alone for long, or if this was a temporary place and they would come for her in a few moments. The enormity of her situation was having an effect on her and she began to shiver—if they intended to break her, it may very well work. Her only source of light—the torch—could not reach the corners, and she began to hallucinate, thinking of all the things that could be creeping out of the corner to steal her away, to steal her life. She lost track of time as she sat there alone, yet she knew it could not have been too long for she did yet feel fatigued.

Realizing that she could be in the room for a long time before anyone would come to get her and, unable to take it anymore, Almyra started to think up of ways to get out of the room. It would have to be without the help of the Elements; they required the assistance of nature and there was not much in the closed off room without any windows. The only thing available was air, and she required that too much to waste it, which ruled out Fire, for it used too much oxygen, and Water, since pulling it from the air required too much work and would leave it dry.

That left her with nothing; wind itself could do nothing without much force behind it and Earth was totally out of the question. So escape was not an option. And so she was left to think. To think of all she was missing locked away here in this citadel. She was sure her time was closer than ever, and she was afraid, wishing for her mother in a way that she had not in a long time.

Almyra felt a sudden burning sensation on her neck and she touched the birthmark there, feeling a strange heat as it flared. It had never done that before and she wondered what it meant. Danger, obviously. Or perhaps it reacted to her fears and emotions. They both made sense and they both worried her, and there was nothing she could do.

She stood up and walked slowly until she reached the door. She tried to look it over, but could barely see more than the shape of the door. Remembering the torch, Almyra backtracked to get it and struggled to get it out of the bracket. She then used it to go over the door to see if there was any crack she could use to escape. She wished she could have just burned the door down, but it was made of some material that was unknown to her and did not seem flammable. Even if it was, she thought as she walked back to her chair, she might not be able to control the fire enough so that it would not trap her in the room and cut off her oxygen before she could escape.

The door must have been very thick to mute out the sounds of approaching footsteps, or perhaps she had been too engrossed to notice, but either way, the scraping sound of the door opening startled her. In that moment, she realized there had been no doorknob turning, because there was no knob, and in the back of her mind, she knew there had been no knob on the outside either.

So how had they opened the door? How had they locked her in?

This thought process took all of a second, or perhaps two, before Almyra dropped the torch as the opening door shocked her. Another second and the torch hit the carpeted floor, as Almyra watched in what seemed like slow-motion. Yet another second and it dawned on her that a fire on a carpet was most likely to spread, and she shot out her right arm, closing her fist as she did to contain the fire in that one spot.

It might have stayed there, to give her enough time to either stamp it out or gather it back onto the torch, had it not been for the now fully open door somehow letting in a draft that caused the fire to jump in a sudden manner that made Almyra lose control. In the short amount of time that she had controlled it, the Fire had built up its pressure that now caused it to explode with a force that knocked her off her feet.