Her Life Is in My Hands

I open her cage early, before the sun's completely up. She sleeps so peacefully, so prettily. Her violent turn when she remembers where she is has been the main reason I don't wake her up anymore, but today, I'll have to risk it.

I tread in carefully, daintily, and carry her gently to the car. Miraculously, she doesn't wake. I strap her into the back seat, reverse out of the cabin's square wooden shed, and start to drive.

The constant hum of the engine stirs her around halfway there, tickles at her eyes, and the innocuous bump on a pothole is what eventually makes hers shoot open.

'You carried me,' she says. She's still in the blue sundress, with an added woollen jacket and pants for today's trip. I can't bring myself to change her into something else. 'Why didn't you knock?'

I shrug from the front. 'I thought it would be more romantic.'

She rolls her eyes, then suddenly they're alert again. 'Where are we going?'

'For the walk,' I say. 'Like you asked.'

A pause. Maybe she thought I would never deliver. That stung. 'And where, exactly, is that?'

I grin. 'How about we make a game of it? You get three guesses. I'll get you a nice dessert if you win.'

A wan smile flashes below her perfect blue eyes. She thinks she won't be with me long enough to earn a dessert. 'I...' she falters, eyes the floor. 'I don't even know where we are.'

'You know that's not completely true,' I say. 'You've seen outside -- I didn't border all the windows. You must have some idea.'

'You didn't take me out of state, did you?' In the rear view, I see the edge of hope limn her face and her voice. Nabbing her while staying close enough to the crime scene would be an obvious faux pas. I don't know why she expects I'd take such little effort with her.

'I did,' I say.

All the longing and belief in her face dies, and I shiver with that same, intoxicating feeling I knew the first day I took her, except it comes all in a heady rush. She slumps, like an old flower, and lies limp against the window. With a public outing like this, I've had to tint them the colour of pitch.

'What's the matter?' I can't help it. I have to say it, to experience her sorrow and drink in her fear. Maybe she'll even risk stating why. It's so cruel, and everything I love about her.

'Please never ask me that question again.'

'Hmm?' I feign ignorance, but I'm waiting on her every word.

Her eyes seem to loll, but for a flash of a second they're as sharp as I've always known they are. She picks out the sturdy pines and firs, the streets and houses down the valley we're driving around, the light dusting of snow. 'We're in the mountains, clearly, but those trees are imported, and there are few states that accept them. And the fact we're high up enough for there to be significant snow this time of year, I'd estimate...'

She guesses it completely. First try. I'd always teased her as smart, but I hadn't expected this. The moment she sees my rear-view reflected reaction, she loses that intuitive spark almost immediately and goes back to sighing into the now-frosted window. She's tipped her hand -- if I was ever going to underestimate her intelligence, it wasn't going to happen now. I think I heard her mutter a swear.

'Very good, darling.' Just because she's foolish enough to blurt the right answer, doesn't mean she shouldn't be praised. 'We'll be there in a few minutes.'

Soon, I've pulled up to the place, the forest's entrance this little a cave-like opening into a wintry, frost-tipped tree line. Moss and root-work creep out like an invading green sheet. I park, open the doors, then retie her wrists in front of her and clip a leash to her collar.

The walk is sweet and meandering. I curl a hand over her leash, loose, so unless I pull on it she might forget I stood beside her. Think she's anywhere else in the world. A ghost of a smile crosses her as century-old oaks hem our path towards a cliffside and ferned canopy shelters us from the weak, morning sun. It's the first time I've seen one from her. I hope, illogically, that I will garner one from her more often.

We come to the edge of one trail, railing protecting us from a fatal roll down the cliffside and into the snow-capped, wintry valley beyond. The leash tightens a little, as she steps forwards and watches the golden morning in its paradoxically icy colours, breaths in the freshness of the air as meaningfully as her first breath. Her breath steams the air in gentle huffs, and I remember exactly why I chose her.

And then the noise begins. Two voices, possibly hikers, echoing from a distant break in the trees. Just walking twenty seconds could probably get you there. My slave jerks out of her peaceful contemplation to see I'm frozen in place. If there was ever a moment to choose, to gamble everything on, she couldn't have hand-picked it better.

So she runs, screams, runs so fast and desperately I don't think she noticed my grip slack from her leash. She makes it all the way to the trees before she turns, gazes back levelly, capturing in her memory the final time I look at her before she's free. The last time we're together, and I'm not behind bars.

Finally, it dawns on her. The sounds of the chatting couple have not come closer, and now that she's by the trees, she's probably picked up the static echoing and the looped dialogue from the receiver I planted at the base of an oak. She hides it well. Balls her hands tight in front of her, turns away and sobs quietly as I saunter over and get that wonderful picture of her on her knees. She can't bear to look at me, until I make her, and the look on her face makes me want to eat her up.

'Y-you did this?' she asks, even when she knows it's true.

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'I had to test you,' I say. 'I told you I knew you'd try to escape. I knew you wouldn't listen to anything else. I had to make the rules clear to you. Set the standard.'

Then she tussles out of my lazy grip as all her grief flows into anger. 'Why,' she repeated, an insistent snarl, 'Why did you have to give me hope?'

At this point her face is soaked and some of her hair is too. Her eyes are stained an anguished red. It's hard, but I drink it in, watch the copious, flooding hate wash over her. She needs to feel this, so when she plans her next escape, she knows what to expect.

I kneel to brush a sprig of leaf-litter from her perfect auburn hair. Then I hold her close. 'It's over now,' is all I can say.

'I suppose these mountains were always abandoned,' she says bitterly.

'Have been since I was a child.'

The worst of the betrayal is fading from her, and she's shaking less. My hug of her tightens. To her credit, she doesn't twist away.

'You tortured me,' she says in a whisper, her head drooping sullenly.

'I promise I won't do anything like that again.'

She unfurls her head from within her chest and wriggles up to look at me. Fat tears trickle down red eyes, some emotion I can't place woven into the fear. 'Is this what you want? To break me?'

'Of course not. You're perfect just the way you are.'

She laughs, though it doesn't reach her eyes. 'You don't want anything, but you'll threaten and snap at me until I'm just how you prefer. You've forced me to be polite when I want to spit at you. You've made me sit still when I want to scream. You've moulded me since the moment you took me, and you either haven't realised or are too callous to care.'

My grip tightens until she squirms. 'We've spoken about outbursts, darling. This is your one chance: are you sure you want to argue with me?'

One look and she mellows. The last time she showed disrespect, I had to make an example. The heart-breaking difficulty of that choice is only matched by the delicious shudder as she corrects herself. 'What I'm trying to say,' she says softly, plagued by an untimely shake, 'is how are you planning for this to work? What do you expect me to do my whole life? Cook and clean?'

I might've smiled if she hadn't been so mad. 'If that's what you like, I will encourage you every day. Pursue what you want, and I'll help you. Don't you see? I just want you to be happy.'

Her lips numb. I know what they're about to say, the suggestion alighting their tip, but she remains silent. Enough self-restraint to not cross me twice in one day.

It was time to leave.

With slave's little escape attempt, I could hardly reward her with more of the mountain view. The whole thing felt distinctly like a performance, and the guilt of my deception weighed like an ocean as I reclipped her leash and escorted her back to the car. Like a game, I felt a need to stroke her shoulder and console the loser, soothe her obvious, frustrated shuddering and cradle her fears away.

The car awaited us, a beast ill-suited to the chill and now swept up in a light dusting of snow. Best we leave soon, and miss the heavier cold that threatened to freeze the air by night. I tugged the leash and motioned to her sweetly, then retied her hands behind her and nudged her into the backseat.

'I want to be an artist,' she said after ten minutes driving. 'I want everyone in the world to see them.'

'We can do that,' I say eagerly. 'I'll have canvas and an easel in your room by tomorrow night.'

She shakes her head. 'I prefer digital art.'

My eyes narrow, and she suppresses a flinch from her seat. 'I can buy a tablet. But there's no internet in my cabin to share your lovely pictures.'

She takes a dreadful moment to sigh. 'I know.' It's said so blankly, practically rushed out, that I'm afraid part of her has died in its speaking. 'I don't care.'