John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

That thought cheered me for a while. Then a haunting memory rose up in my brain. I remember Grendel Glum saying he had done something to me, influenced me with his willpower, to make my secret desires exactly so.

On the fourth day, despite the drugs, I was able to get my fingers under the collar and push my neck slightly into the fourth dimension. Not enough to get it off my head, mind you, but it made the collar seem slightly larger. The iron had the faintest blue sheen to it when I did that, and the faintest red sparks glinted like fireflies around my fingertips. (I could place a point of view a few inches to my left, half an inch into the “red” direction, to glimpse this.)

It must have set off some alarm, because Miss Daw came to the door almost immediately. She set up her music player, and had it play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

On the fourth and fifth day I had music. That was nice, I suppose.

Whenever the disc got to the same track, and played the Schiller poem from the middle of the Ninth, however, and I heard the German voices singing about the Joy of Man, light, free notes rising and rising to unimpeded glory, I cried again.

On the sixth day I begged Miss Daw to speak to me, but she shook her head and looked pensive. I asked her if I was to be allowed to go to Chapel tomorrow; I needed to pray for my soul.

That got a reaction out of her, a little smile with her head tilted to one side. “I had not heard that you were especially devout. In fact, I have heard rumors to quite the opposite effect, if such rumors can be countenanced.”

Two dozen words, or more! An oasis after the endless sand dunes of silence.

“Everyone gets religion when they are in prison, Miss Daw.”

That answer perhaps was too flippant, for she smiled a gracious but cold smile, and began to turn away.

“Oh, please!” I said. “For the love of God, please! Even if you don’t believe me, even if you think it’s just a trick to get me out of this horrid room, please Miss Daw, please, isn’t it simple decency, simple plain English decency, to let a girl who thinks she is about to die go pray?”

“Who has told you such a falsehood, Miss Windrose? No one is going to kill you.”

“Who told me otherwise? You won’t talk to me!”

She looked around the cell; a soft, sad look came into her eyes for a moment. She was thinking that I had been waiting for days for some execution, tormenting myself with a fear that was utterly false, a fear she could have alleviated with a word.

“Well,” she said, “I will see if you can be taken up to the Chapel tomorrow. You do not have the energy relationship in the moral direction a person devoted to his God normally manifests. Your relational structures are extensional rather than intentional, and form nodes going into two time-directions, but not toward eternity. This type of atrophy is typical of atheists and agnostics. But—take heart, my dear, do not be so downcast. The forms must be observed. That is why we have forms to begin with.”

“Then I can go to Chapel?”

“I’ll see what I can do, dear.”

My lip trembled. “That is what you said about this collar…”

“That will be looked into.”

That Saturday was the worst, and also the oddest. After long hours of watching the square of sunlight from the barred window crawl West-to-East across the floorstones, Miss Daw and Sister Twitchett came to the barred door, unlocked it, and let themselves in. Miss Daw was carrying a dress on a hanger, protected by a plastic sheet and smelling of lavender.

Miss Daw gestured to me, indicating that I was to put on the dress she had brought. Because I was tired of silence, I pretended not to understand her gestures, “What? I beg your pardon? Is something wrong with your voice?”

“You must don this, please,” she said. Miss Daw has a voice like silver crystal, soft and pure.

Anyone speaking after Miss Daw speaks sounds like a crow. Sister Twitchett spoke after Miss Daw. “Put it on and no back-talk, or we dope you up and dress you ourselves. Save us work, if you heed.”

After being spanked by Boggin, merely disrobing in front of two school staff did not embarrass me. My shirt and jacket unbuttoned along the front; I wasn’t wearing a sweater or anything else that had to be drawn over my head. Soon I was standing there, just in the iron collar, a swaying ‘U’ of slack chain leading away from it.

“Socks and shoes, too,” said Twitchett.

“Where are the others?” I said. “Are they dead? Are they back at school? Is Vanity safe?”

When neither one answered, I tore the clothes she held from Miss Daw’s hands and threw them on the ground. “I am not getting dressed or doing anything till you tell me!”

Twitchett looked frightened. No one has ever looked frightened of me before. She thought I was the monster from beyond space and time that Boggin said I was. I saw it in her eyes.

She said to Miss Daw, “Let’s open the window and leave. She’ll want to get dressed in the morning, after the snow blows in.”

Miss Daw said to me in a gentle voice, “The other students are quite safe, but they are confined in cells like this one. I would not allow anything to happen to you.”

(That was interesting. Not “ We would not allow,” but “ I would not allow.”)

Sister Twitchett looked at Miss Daw. “We were told, ma’am, not to jaw with her… ”

Miss Daw inclined her head to Twitchett with a tiny smile. “I would be in your debt, if you only told the Headmaster how cooperative Miss Windrose was. Need I say more?”

Twitchett frowned, but said nothing. Miss Daw put her little gloved hand on the other woman’s elbow, thanked her, and turned back to me.

I said: “Tell me what happened to them! Where’s Vanity?”

Miss Daw said in a voice as soft as ripples on a pond, “Once you are dressed, I will tell you.”

The dress was a peach silk affair, almost too sheer to be an evening dress. The bodice laced up the back, and spaghetti string ties ran over the shoulders. The bosom cups were made of stiff, reinforced fabric and decorated with black and white lace. The skirt was unpleated silk, with tiny darts at the waist, and a handkerchief bottom. The underwear, bra and panties both, were built into the inner lining of the dress, so that it clung very tightly, but with no sign of lines.

Black nylon hose came next, which were suspended from a hidden garter belt, also woven into the inner lining of the lower part of the bodice. Miss Daw knelt to fasten on slender stiletto heels.

“I can’t walk in heels that high,” I said.

“You won’t be needing to walk,” said Sister Twitchett.

The Sister brought over the stool and had me sit. Out from her medical bag, she drew several lengths of chain.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “What are those for?”

Miss Daw said, “This is not as bad as it seems. It is all part of the process.”

“What process? I don’t want to be part of any process!”

Miss Daw said, “I won’t let anyone harm you, child.”

Sister Twitchett rolled her eyes. I could almost see what she was thinking. The shape-changing monster looks like a girl, but it is not a girl.

Twitchett crossed my wrists in my lap and chained them together with a pair of handcuffs. A steel chain wound around my waist, so that I had to keep my wrists close to my navel. A second steel chain, about three feet long, dropped down between my legs. This attached to a pair of ankle cuffs that hobbled me.

Neither one had the heavy, cast-iron links of the collar’s chain. These looked machine-tooled, modern.