From the Earth
Arwen knows it’s morning because she can hear the bird outside.
The window is boarded over so she’s never seen it, but its daily trills and warbles have become the voice of a friend.
In her mind it is dark red, its eyes beady and bright like pinheads, its tail tufted with flashes of gold.
She knows the reality will be nothing like this—brown, most likely, and small, better to escape the eyes of predators—but she likes her fantasy bird better.
She has learned to take small pleasures where she can.
Rising from her thin mattress, she struggles out of her nightshirt and into the cold pile of clothes from the floor.
They haven’t been changed in a week, and are soiled and musty smelling, the knees of her sweatpants browned with dirt, the shirt gaping beneath the arm where the stitching has come undone.
She sniffs at herself but can’t tell what is her and what is the clothes.
It all smells the same—of filth and fear.
Once the bird has started singing it is never long before they come with her breakfast. The faces change but the meal is always the same: thin porridge with a spoonful of oversweet jam, a single piece of toast charred black at the crust. Sometimes they bring her fruit juice, but usually it’s only water.
She hasn’t had tea or coffee since they put her in here and locked the door.
They say she has to avoid caffeine for her own good, that they’ve seen others screaming from the cacophony it stirs up—but she believes that, secretly, they enjoy denying her things.
Arwen doesn’t have a clock, but she has grown used to the timings, and breakfast is later than usual today.
She lies back on the mattress. Her stomach growls, the bed frame answering with creaks and sighs as she shifts to get comfortable.
The boards dig into her bones, and not for the first time she thinks she might as well be lying on the bare earth.
Sleeping in dirt and clay with worms for sustenance I dream.
She digs her nails into her palms. The voice is early today, unlike her keepers. He has become more active in recent weeks. Stirring, reaching out.
Three sharp knocks on the door and the scrape of a bolt being drawn back. The click of tumbling locks. When it opens there are four of them outside, silhouetted in the frame. A woman and three men. The woman steps forward.
“Here. Time to eat.”
Arwen has seen her before. Their family is small enough that she knows them all by sight, if not by name.
Arwen remembers being jealous of the woman’s tumbling ginger hair once, a long time ago; now it is streaked with gray.
She’s not a tall woman but she is strong, her arms muscular and toned next to Arwen’s stick-thin limbs.
Arwen imagines her digging the soil, turning the thick, black earth with a spade.
She barely remembers what the outside looks like.
“What—” she asks, struggling to push herself upright. “What’s your name?”
The woman stops, places the tray with the porridge and toast at the end of the bed.
“I’m Christie. We’ve known each other for years, Arwen—don’t you remember me? I used to teach you sometimes, when you were little. On the bench in the vegetable garden. We read books together.”
She does remember, at least in flashes. Bright pages of pictures, walking animals, a family of pigs.
Something about a talking train, and a friend of his, another train, who was bricked up in a tunnel for breaking the rules.
That story always scared her; the possibility of a life kept captive.
Her reality has blunted its edge, she finds.
“Why am I kept here?” she blurts. Something about this woman has opened a door inside her. “Am I being punished? Did you lock me away because I’m wrong?”
The woman—Christie—shakes her head and smiles.
“No, dear. You’re not a prisoner. You’re special—you’re the one He’s chosen. He speaks to you, and through you, so it’s not safe for you to be in the outside world. You’re here for your own protection.”
Arwen thinks this over. She doesn’t feel protected.
“Do you mean the voice in my head? The ghost who speaks to me?”
Christie is backing out of the room now, stooping to lift the bucket of Arwen’s nightsoil as she goes. She turns before they close the door and slide the bolts into place behind her.
“No, kittlin,” she says. “Not a ghost. You hear the voice of God.”
* * *
Arwen was seven, maybe eight, when they first took her to the room.
It was a game, they said. A place just for her.
She deserved a place all to herself because she was special, and special girls got special things.
They’d put her books in a box in the corner, a hand-stuffed bear someone had made by her pillow.
Somebody even painted flowers on the wall above her bed, although they have peeled and faded now.
They locked the door at night to keep the bad things out.
She had cried at being apart from her family, sleeping alone for the first time in her life.
Even the ghost had stayed silent for a week or two, as if they’d somehow managed to block him out with their boards and nails, their locks and bolts.
Sometimes she’d hear footsteps outside the door as she sobbed into her pillow, but they always went away again.
During the day they would smile and say it was all okay.
It didn’t feel okay.
She remembers being pleased when the voice finally spoke to her again, the deep rumbling within her head that seemed to vibrate up through her bones, gravelly and rich.
Wait , it said.
This is not the time but the time is soon.
I am coming.
* * *
Christie lays her lunch tray on the bed, smoothing the sheets with an open palm.
A cheese sandwich, chopped cucumber and tomatoes from the garden.
Arwen tucks into it with graceless abandon while Christie watches.
The older woman has become her most frequent visitor these last few weeks.
Arwen doesn’t know if this is simply luck or if Christie has asked for this, but she is happy to see her.
Some of the others scowl at her, brushing at the dirt on her clothes as if it’s her fault they only change them once a week, scolding her when she drops crumbs on the floor.
If it attracts rats then she’d be happy of the company.
Christie isn’t like that, though. When Arwen speaks, she smiles and listens to her; she brings treats sometimes, a handful of walnuts already freed from their shells like tiny brains, a small cake flavored with ginger and honey.
Arwen’s box of books has long been removed from the corner, since she started throwing them whenever anyone came through the door; but one day Arwen brings an encyclopedia and they look at the pictures together.
Giraffes, monitor lizards, centipedes. The surface of the Moon.
She hasn’t come bearing gifts today but the sandwich is good and fresh, the tomatoes bursting with sweetness. Christie smiles as she watches her eat.
“It’s nice to see you have your appetite again,” she says, once Arwen is finished.
“We were worried when you started losing weight. It’s hard being the chosen one, I know—your life isn’t like ours.
But you should know that you’re loved. We all love you here and look up to you.
It’s only because you’re so special that we have to keep you apart. ”
Arwen doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t feel loved.
As bright as Christie’s smile is, it cannot turn this room into anything other than a prison.
The bed is hard and unwelcoming; when her bladder’s full she has to piss in a bucket.
Arwen wants to scream at her that none of this is right, she has done nothing wrong, that the ghost only speaks to her because she is locked in this room, going crazy.
But she has said all this before, and it only earned her more solitude. Instead, she says, “When will I see the outside again?”
Christie looks away for a second. When she looks back, she’s still smiling, but it’s different, like she’s practiced this.
“Very soon. Very, very soon. Have you heard the voice recently? Is it getting stronger?”
“He is,” Arwen says, scratching at her arm until the skin raises in red welts. “I hear the ghost most days. He’s tired from sleeping, but he says it won’t be long now. He says he can feel the insects tickling him awake.”
She thinks she might have given too much away, but Christie looks pleased.
“Good. That’s very good. I’ll talk to the others, and maybe we can take you out of here soon. Would you like to walk in the open air again?”
Arwen nods so hard it makes her head hurt.
“I’ll see what I can do, then,” Christie says, standing and lifting the tray from the bed. “The fields are looking beautiful at this time of year. We can take a walk to the well. Do you remember?”
She nods again.
“It’s a deal then, kittlin. I’ll speak with them. Let’s go up to the well.”
* * *
Arwen starts counting the days after her chat with Christie.
She knows not to expect too much, but she can’t help herself.
The last time she left the room must be, what, two years ago?
Three? She keeps a mental image of the outside world locked in her mind, but even that has become unreal with its lurid greens and blues.
She might see her bird! Wouldn’t that be something?
She knows it will be nothing like the scarlet songbird she’s created in her head, but still—knowing it’s real will compensate for that.