John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

And the little altar boy? Because he did not seem to age, I wondered if he, like Lelaps the dog, or Sister Twitchett, was one of their creatures, disguised as a human boy and here as part of the stage scenery. After all, I never saw Jack except on Sundays, and he did not seem to live in Abertwyi. The local children didn’t know him. Maybe he was a homonculus, and was kept in a box during the week in Dr. Fell’s lab.

I did not tell them I was a prisoner. Instead, I knelt and prayed.

Yes, I prayed. Why not? The advantage of being an agnostic over being an atheist is that I always had the possibility of being wrong, and could still entertain the hope that the universe was better organized than it appeared to be.

But I did not know to whom to pray.

What if Henry Tudor had been wrong and God was Catholic and not Anglican at all? What if Paul had been wrong, and God was Jewish just like He had been in the Old Testament, and hadn’t repealed any of the Old Covenant Law after all? People always said that God did not care about denominations. Everything in His Holy Book said that He cared about denominations very much. What were the Pharisees, so earnestly and bitterly criticized by Christ himself, if not a denomination? Why spend page after boring page describing the vestments, dietary restrictions, and sacrificial animals sacred to the Chosen People, if these things were trivial? Why kill the guy—I forget his name—who was trying to straighten out the Ark of the Covenant when it fell over?

Well, I wanted to pray, and I did not think it right to pray to Archangel Gabriel, not this time. It was time to pick a God.

For a while, I thought I really ought to pray to the God of the Koran, and become Mohammedan. For one thing, the Koran was written after the New Testament, the same way the New Testament was written after the Bible, so it might be a more developed form. Also, the Mohammedans seemed to be more devoted to a simple and severe form of worship, and did not clutter up their monotheism with saints or trinities.

Two things stopped me. First, I had no idea which direction Mecca was in from Wales. South and East, I assumed. Second, I did not know if women were allowed to pray.

Even as I was kneeling and thinking all these flippant thoughts, a prayer rose up in me as if of its own accord. I whispered very softly what was in my heart.

“God of Abraham, who led the Israelites out of bondage, and freed the slaves from the cruelty of the Pharaoh, free me. Free my friends. Lead us from this Lion’s Den, and let us find our home, our families, our friends. Lead us from this alien land to a place where we belong. I beg you. You saved Moses and his people. Save me. Amen.”

It was not as if I can take credit for making up what I said. It came out more or less without any effort on my part. Nonetheless, afterwards, I actually thought it had been a pretty clever thing to say. I mean, the God of the Christians and the Jews and the Mohammedans, whichever one He is, all of them are the God who saved the Israelites from Egypt. Right?

Miss Daw was watching me. I saw her eyes focused in a direction I could not see, and saw the slight frown crease the perfect whiteness of her alabaster brow.

Dr. Foster, as it turned out, simply raised his hands and began the closing benedictions. “May the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and give you peace…”

We had skipped one or two hymns that were posted on the notice board, the recitation of the Nicene Creed, and the part of the service where we call responses to the prayer. I do not know what that part is called, but it was my favorite part when I was much younger.

Anyway, what Colin used to call the “crapshoot of the Foster Amnesia” sometimes led us to go through two services in a row, if Foster lost his place late on, and started again from the top. At other times, the “crapshoot” cut the service time in half, as it had done today.

Fell and Daw ordered me to walk ahead of them down the path, around the corner, and to the door beneath the bell tower. The entrance to the cell was less than a dozen steps from the main Chapel door. The cell was part of the same building, which may have been one reason why I had been allowed out.

There was still snow on the ground, but it was patchy. Apparently the weather for the week I had missed had turned mild. It was chill, but it was a crisp, refreshing chill. A week ago the early winter had seemed late winter, and December days were getting February weather. Now, early winter seemed like late autumn, and December air had an October feel to it. Like the realization that I had never missed my friends for so long a time, I realized that I had never gone for so long without seeing the weather in my life, either.

The trees had no leaves on them but, after my long confinement underground, they seemed as bright as any trees in spring. The clouds were few, and very white, and the sky was high and cool and blue.

I walked slowly, thinking that my prayer had not only not been answered, but that the service, by being cut short, had sped my trip back into the gray brick cube of my cell.

I tried to look in the fourth dimension. My visions and senses were still utterly blocked, as they had been from the moment yesterday when Glum had come to drool on me. I could not even remember what hyperspace looked like. I was a girl, an entirely ordinary girl, wearing an iron collar I could not take off, because that was the way Glum wanted it, and his desires could change reality in a way I could not sense or resist.

A tall black man, either a Negro or a Pakistani (I had never seen either in real life, and was not sure which was which) came suddenly around the corner. His hair was loose and lay along his shoulders like a girl’s, instead of being wiry, so perhaps he was a Pakistani. His face was more handsome than the face of a statue. He wore a long powder-blue coat, with blue trousers and black boots beneath it, and he walked with his head hunched down, as if he (in this fine weather) were cold, and his hands made deep fists in his pockets.

We bumped directly into each other, and he brought up both his hands to catch me by the shoulders before I fell off the path.

“A thousand pardons, Miss,” he started.

If he had just had his hands in an oven, they could not have been warmer. It felt good on my arms.

I grabbed the metal collar around my neck with both my hands and tugged on it, trying to show him it wouldn’t come off. I said, “Help me! Please! Call the police!”

He looked a little startled. Without letting go of my shoulders, he looked up and said, “Telemus, is this one of yours? This is Phaethusa?”

Dr. Fell said, “This is Miss Windrose. She is not my responsibility. I did not take her out of her cell. And that is not the name I use here, thank you.”

My heart started sinking.

The black man looked at Miss Daw, “You, then, Thelxiepia?”

Miss Daw stepped forward, her gloved hands folded at her waist, clutching the tiniest possible pocketbook, her high-heeled pumps clacking on the pathway. “I will thank you to unhand the young woman. Proprieties must be observed.”

He said, “You keep her in the cell? That cell? The one Corus and I are cleaning?”

Miss Daw did not answer, but gave him a stiff look, as he still had not released me.

I said, “I don’t know who you are, but I didn’t do anything wrong. I am not whatever they told you I was. I’m just a girl. I’m really nice, once you get to know me. I’m not a monster and I don’t like being locked up, and won’t you please help me? I’ve never done anything to you. If you ever got caught by our side, and I could get you out of a cell, I’d do it! What’s your name? I’m Amelia! I really am a person, just like you!”