Thanks again for all your comments and encouragement. Please let me know what you think so I can keep improving the story! I'm not certain yet, but I'm thinking this story will be ten chapters with a possible sequel beyond that if I like where it ends up.
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Lucy tried to keep track of the days. It was difficult without windows. She counted the number of times she slept, but she knew that sometimes she got confused and lost track. The lights never went out and she wondered if that was the way they were designed, or if her captor was using them to add to her disorientation. By her best estimate, she had been inside the mountain for a week.
She didn't trust her calculations very much. It seemed like it had to have been longer.
Persephone didn't come every day, but she came often enough and her hatred of Lucy was consistent. Food was delivered regularly, whether Persephone was there or not, and more of it than Lucy was used to. The persistent, background hum of permanent hunger that she had felt on the ground was replaced with the feeling of always being cold. After a few days, Warder gave her a pair of brown boots and socks that almost fit.
It helped, but she was still freezing.
She missed the jacket that Grace had given her. It was never returned. She was grateful, at least, that he usually allowed her to wear clothes despite his earlier threat. She suspected it was because she constantly shivered, although she couldn't quite credit him with caring. Some nights, he stripped her of her clothes without warning before bundling her into the bed. She was warm enough with his body next to hers, but she felt helpless and angry to be forced to endure it. He spoke to her very little and when she asked questions now, he usually ignored them.
Once, watching him work at his desk, she had stood up and screamed at him. "I can't breathe in here! And I am going to freeze to death!"
He blinked at her, clearly annoyed at being disturbed, and then he had picked her up and placed her on his lap, going back to work as if she didn't exist. He was warm and being so close to him, she could hear his own, easy breaths and the weight in her chest did let up a little. She hated him for it and held herself still, refusing to touch him more than was necessary.
On the eighth or ninth day, Persephone showed up again. After a few hours of careless housework, she tied a blindfold around Lucy's eyes and led her towards the bath. Lucy didn't really need to bathe so often--she spent most of her time sitting still. The stone walls did give off a kind of odd dust that collected in her hair and made her skin feel strange. But it didn't smell. Still, she was grateful for the distraction and she wondered if this was why the luxury was permitted. Again, she reasoned that Warder was trying to soothe her, to keep her calm and tended, like a pet. She questioned again the wisdom of staying small and meek. But even if she were to rebel, what would it accomplish? She had learned the path to the room where she bathed, but she still had no sense of the rest of the mountain.
She had never seen an exit, even if there must be one somewhere.
She was not stronger than Warder or even Persephone.
She had no plan.
Feeling dejected, Lucy filled the tub with scalding hot water, aware of Persephone humming to herself in the other room. As she sank into the tub, she ran back over her calculations. Was it nine days? Maybe it had been ten. She did not know how long she had slept the first night. If it had even been a night. And--
She stopped. A horrible thought had just occurred to her. Her focus since being captured had been to stay calm and to keep from betraying the real reason she had been on the mountain. She had been so focused on this secret that she had forgotten that she had others.
If it had been ten days already, she had a week at most before she became sick.
Her recurring sickness had started when she was twelve. She had woken up in the middle of the night, burning hot and screaming. Her mother had struggled to calm or to cool her, eventually calling for Miles' father, who acted as the doctor for the islanders. He had diagnosed her with a virus and promised the fever would wane in a day or so. It had lasted for three, never seeming to ebb and flow as fevers were supposed to. She was so hot for so long that she should have died, but she didn't. At the end of the third day, crying to her mother, she wished that she would.
Then, as quickly as it had came, the sickness had receded. She was in low spirits for several days after, reluctant to leave the house or even her room. Things returned to normal and she tried not to think about the nightmares and the pain of the raging fever. Then, two months later, it had happened again in the same way. And again nine weeks after that.
The third time, her mother consulted with Gino as well as with the doctor. Gino had no medical training, but he was a talented historian. He considered himself a memory-keeper for the people trapped on the island, cataloguing stories of the world they could no longer access. He told stories about what electricity--television, lights, washing machines--had been like. He named Kings and Presidents and celebrated an endless stream of holidays. Lucy's mother asked him if he had heard of a sickness like this, a relentless fever that came and went, torturing the sufferer but receding with no apparent loss of function.
"He says it's nothing he's heard of," said her mother. "Probably nothing to worry about. It could be a consequence of life on the island. Maybe it won't come back."
The fever had broken by then, but Lucy was still in bed. That afternoon, Gino came to see her. Her mother left to bring them both something to drink and Gino pulled up a chair and sat next to her bed, his long face etched with worry.
"Your mother told me what's been happening," he said. "I'm sorry, Lucy."
"Doctor Linn said it might not come back this time. Maybe it's a virus or an allergy. He said I should start taking longer walks every day."
Gino darted a glance towards the door and then scooted his chair closer. "It will come back, Lucy," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, but it will. You have to endure it. In fact, you have to learn to hide it, even if it means pretending you're not in pain or locking yourself away. You can't tell anyone it's happening. Tell Dr. Linn that you're well."
"What? Why?" Lucy had asked. His tone was serious and sad. He looked almost wild, clutching at her hand where it lay limp against the blanket.
"I have heard of this before," he told her. "People were getting sick like you just before
they
took the island. It's survivable, but it recurs. I don't know for how long because everyone that got sick here is gone now."
"Gone, like, they left?" Lucy asked.
"They were all among the taken," he said, referring to the islanders who had disappeared when the mountain dwellers first took over the island. "Not everyone knows that detail. We kept it quiet. The governor at the time didn't want to incite panic over every ache or fever."
"What does it mean? Why is it happening? Am I going to die? Are they going to take me, too?" The latter seemed worse than death.
Gino was always so cheerful and hopeful. He stared at her now with pity. His disquiet was more frightening than what he was saying.
"I think you'll be all right," he said unconvincingly. "But you've got to hide it. And you should keep away from the mountain and anyone who sympathizes with them."
Despite the general hatred for the mountain people, there were some who urged an alliance. The island leaders maintained that this wasn't truly possible--that they were virtual prisoners and the mountain dwellers had never shown any inclination to change their ways.
Lucy had been sufficiently frightened. The next time she fell ill, she tried to hide it from her mother. In the end, she thought her mother knew, but chose to pretend. Over time, she learned to manage the pain so that she could go out into the town even when she was trapped in the worst of it.
Hiding in plain sight.
Inside the mountain, there was no hope of pretending. She was already weak from fear and lack of sunlight and air. Warder knew her every move. He saw what she ate, when and how she slept. He touched her often, sometimes casually and other times thoroughly, as if he were learning each bit of her skin by memory. He would notice when her body grew hot. He would hear her call out the nightmares that she was used to muffling into her pillow.
She could not be inside the mountain when the sickness gripped her. At her worst estimate, that meant she had five days to plan and execute an escape. Five days, and currently she was lying exposed in the bath, with Persephone guarding the door and no idea where she was.
Her predicament thus far had dulled to the point where she was agitated but mostly numb. This new revelation awakened a sharper kind of panic. With it came clarity. She had skills that Warder and his people didn't know about. This was a small advantage. And her behavior thus far had been mostly intentional. They did not suspect her to run. Even Warder had grown more careless. Where he used to swiftly lock the door, now he sometimes forgot for a time if he was in the room with her.
