Chapter 2 #5
connectionless and adrift. I had no one. I thought of my ex, I thought of our home and all its thick lacquer, glass everywhere,
not going anywhere, not saying anything, two clouds built up and smooshed against the walls. I was fired. I had lost my job,
all my savings, lost my partner—boyfriend—boyfriend who I was starting to call my partner like a business partner, a transaction,
failed, declined, lost him, lost my self-respect, lost two dogs, lost my sanity or, more accurately, lost track of time.
The door to my cell unlocked with a thud and swung open. Men I had never seen before entered my squalid space and surrounded me. One of them asked me a question in a language I didn’t understand. The question was repeated, in what I believe was French. Then it was repeated one last time in English:
“I said why are you crying?”
“Huh?” I hadn’t even noticed. I tried to wipe my eyes but scraped my cheek against the thick shackles. I lowered my head in
shame and the first thing I noticed were the man’s shoes. They were leather and well-made. Stitched and studded with adornment,
pointed at the toes. Clean. I looked up.
The man standing in front of me was a mass of contradictions. Old, sallow-faced, painfully skinny, but engulfed in layers
of fine clothing that upholstered him not like a wizened turtle, but like an exoskeleton. A barrel of tunics, robes, shirts,
vests of leather and metal and thickly woven fabrics gave him an automaton body on top of which rested his shrunken, aged
head. He was wealthy, obviously, and maybe to be wealthy meant to be saddled with it, to wear your net worth on your person.
The lord waved off the guards on either side of me and stepped closer. From a pocket in his cloak, he withdrew a small square
of fabric and handed it to me. It was a swatch of black fabric, soft and stretchy, finely woven. It was mine. There was half
a Reebok logo on it. It was a square cut from my black running shorts.
“Where did you get this?” asked the lord. “What kind of material is this?”
“This is from my running shorts,” I said. “It’s . . . I don’t know, polyester or something? A spandex blend? I’m from the—”
“Yes, I know, you’re from the future,” he said in a mocking tone. “I can’t have you running around my estate saying things like that. You’ve made people very
uncomfortable. Now tell me where you came from. Tell me if you want your life spared.”
“I’m from the future. I don’t know what else to say. I have nothing else—”
“OK then let’s say you are. Where in the future are you from? Even a time traveler has to come from somewhere.”
“I’m from here!” My voice was breaking. There was an audience of onlookers behind the lord. “I’m British. I’m from right down
the street. I live here in Greenwich, I work in Canary Wharf—or at least I used to. I was a dog walker—that dog! The weird
dog with the long hair—that’s my dog.”
“A long-haired hound, yes.” The lord was unfazed. “I’m familiar with the breed, they’re nothing special. I’ve seen plenty
at court before, which is why I’m asking you again, one last time, where did you come from?”
My hope was fading. The iron chains dragged on the shackles, cutting into my wrists. I had genuinely nothing to say. If Matilda
the dog was deemed nothing special yet she had been out running free all this time while I had been imprisoned, then surely
that made me less than the least. And maybe it was the intimidation of the lord—the vibrant dyes in his fabrics, the gray
locks of hair that hung coiffed under his cap—and the desensitization of all I had been through—the loss of identity, the
physical taxation of living here, of being human in such a primal, impersonal thrashing—that I felt like it was true.
“I’m nothing,” I said. I was crying again.
Or maybe I had been crying the entire time.
I noticed Simon and Wulfric among the hushed faces of guards and servants behind the lord.
“I don’t belong here. I’m not a soldier, I’m barely a passable servant.
I was born here—in London, farther west, then moved even farther west, then came back to London for university, France sometimes for holidays, Spain, never Denmark, I’ve never been there, I don’t speak Danish, if that’s what you think I am, I can’t speak anything.
I’m not anything. I’m nothing. I’m truly nothing. ”
When my arms slumped to their sides in final defeat, they slumped too far. The wide neck of my tunic pulled too much to the
side. A glittering, fat diamond revealed itself.
Everyone gasped and my heart sunk. I tried to shrug my shoulder to hide it but it was too late. It was over. The lord narrowed
his eyes and smiled. He stepped forward and came inches from my face and towered over me not because he was taller but because
I was slumped over, shortening myself, shrinking away. I showed no resistance, only a flinch, when he reached into the neck
of my tunic and grabbed the dog collar. The crowd murmured in hushed, excited tones, sharing theories and disbelief. I felt
the disappointment of Simon and Wulfric, the cruel inevitability of their life paths. The lord remained calm and slick, almost
meditative as he inspected the fake crystals, the cheap gold plating, the thick leather and nylon. His cold fingers rubbed
like wet reeds against my bare shoulder. He stared into my eyes. He stared back at the collar. He exhaled slowly and withdrew
a large, curved knife from his belt. He held it up to my neck.
“Don’t worry, everyone,” he said over his shoulder. I closed my eyes and winced, waiting—I couldn’t even accept my end with
valor, with open eyes. But the lord didn’t hurt me. With one jagged yank of the knife, he cut the collar off me and turned
around to face his subjects. “The man is correct. Believe everything he says. He’s nothing.”