Into Gray Wood

23

Chapter 1

Before continuing to weave a winding path down the steep, jagged hill, she stopped, closed her eyes tightly, winkling the thin skin of her eyelids, and tried to focus. Then she crouched, eyes still shut, hiding her body among reeds and soft cattails that sprung up from the rocks all around. She had to rest her wobbly legs for just a moment to regain some balance. This was the hardest she had worked them in years.

She took a moment to regulate her harsh breath. It was so quiet out here. It was too quiet. Her ears were going numb from the lack of vibratory support, no blanket of noise to keep the anxious thoughts at bay. Her breath cooled and slowed. Now there were not even enough sound to remind her that she was still alive.

Bloodhounds began howling, but they were on the other side of the hill and with the wind going the other direction her trail would be difficult to trace. She still had time to get away but she needed to think quickly.

Which way is next? Which way should I go?

She had fantasized aloud, a few times before, to anyone who would listen. She told them how badly she wanted to escape and just what she’d do when she got that chance. ‘I’ll get a little plot of uncharted land,’ she would say, ‘where no one bad will ever find me.’ The true inexistence of such opportunities now stood plain-clothed in front of her eyes, and it was mortifying.

The other prisoners had warned her it wouldn’t be an easy task, and so far it was not. In fact, it may already have been the hardest thing she had ever even tried to do; not the journey itself. That hadn’t even begun. She had dashed those first few yards on an instinct more than anything. Now the real difficulty came. Just to block out the past and to cut out the lingering, sticky doubt and its constant, dreadfully heavy companion, guilt.

She had done a few bad things, cruel things and most of all stupid things in her still young life, but she was certainly innocent of the charge that put her in that prison, and many more bad things had been done to her there. These acts, these lapses in judgment one might call them, were not forgivable, let alone forgettable.

A thousand types of fear clung damply to her wrists and weighed down her ankles heavier than the shackles she had just escaped. She was actually paralyzed, almost numbed by them. The only available sensation was the prickling cold on her bare forearms and legs. Her chest began heaving uncontrollably, I will be nothing but a laughing stock by the end of this, she said to no one but herself. Speaking had only slowed her sobs slightly. I will be caught again. They will just send me right back and everyone will see how weak I have become. He will see. He will be disgusted. She licked an oozing cut on her upper lip and thought about the man who had given it to her. It was a months-old wound, but one she had continued to pick at. …if I even survive.

It was impossible to know if any of the patrolling officers would notice she was missing. Women died and were dumped in pits unceremoniously every day around that prison, and few, if any written records were kept on them. The hounds could have been howling to be fed. They might not have picked up any scent at all. She had to hope this was true.

She opened her weepy eyes to look down at her browned dress, still wet from the ‘bath’ they gave them, and traced the name that was stitched in light yellow above her right breast, and wondered what matron laborer might have sewn it. Abigail.

Like many babies born in Litheria, she was given a name from the time before time, before the earth stopped spewing fire from its belly, and the land masses settled, and just before the sun had been bumped out of place by a new, rogue star.

Columned lists of what were believed to be people’s names had been recovered. Next to their names there would be several more columns filled with numbers and then more names of people, and some seemed likely to be places. Most of these parchments, if they could be called that, were badly damaged by sun or water, ripped or burned, and so it was a challenge for priests and scholars to determine their exact significance. Still, this naming tradition veined deeply as quite a few large estates retrieved the family names of those who had resided in their place before them.

Books recounting major events like The Stellar Replacement did survive the era, though it was very difficult to extract a clear story of who these people, the writers and readers of the books, had been, as the content of their stories was all too specific. No one could say what they were like and it was impossible to know what happened to eradicate most of them. All that was known was that something happened. Something was destroyed. Whatever that something was, its impact spread across the whole world. To whom and how this demise began were the missing parts to the story. Folklore said it started softly with a single heartbreak and overtook the earth as it grew.

Luckily, or unluckily, at least a few of those elders survived and proliferated after that clean break into the new civilization, the new beginning, all those years before. Language had been stagnant enough among survivors of the time that contemporary Litherians could read it easily. With the exception of a few phrases, it was almost identical to their current tongue. And the even more ancient texts on which these elders based their learning were easily decoded with the use of books of translation which Litherian priests also kept close at hand.

The elders’ scientias had taken a few strange turns in discourse and were far too laborious to replicate, not to mention largely unnecessary. Manuscripts mentioned moving photographs and calculations and tools that could only be reduced to black magic. Abby had heard someone speaking about rebuilding a design they had seen at her academy, ‘It would be so expensive,’ they said, ‘you’d have to tax the bottoms into starvation, but frankly, I think it would be worth it.’ She shuttered at the thought.

Our Abigail was now stood on a crag, midway, facing its base near the crooked cliff that overlooked the shore, her back to its peak where the stony prison was, dark, the color of steel. Its construction was handsome, even she had to admit. The dungeon, or cellar, some called it, where the prisoners were kept, had been dug right out of the crag, the rest was a sturdy pile of rock and brick at the bottom that transformed upward into towering, wispy concrete standing starkly against the greenish clouds, like it had been finished by the gods’ powerfully delicate fingers, and for all she knew, it had been. The building alone would have been quite tall, but it was also built well above sea level, and so the prison dwarfed the cliff to its west and surveyed all the flatlands that led to the Woods at its southeast.

She hadn’t had a chance to look at it when she arrived. Abigail had been brought here by carriage all those years ago, and the filth-covered curtains were drawn. She could still remember the trembling voices of the three other women who had sat with her. They’d all been ambushed, but somehow each knew exactly where they were headed. None had the opportunity to gaze upon the prison they were to live in, but were all smart enough to know they should be terrified. All they knew was that it was uphill. The coach slanted, the driver cracked his whip, horses whinnied, and they began their final ascent to the prison, a place that was rumored to carry a higher death toll than the war in Eastlund.

Another lucky discovery lent from the time before were maps of a kind of study of building evidentially called architectura, and so Litheria with its many problems never suffered from being unable to measure or to build almost unimaginable structures.

The materials were different now. Buildings from those ancient times used heaps and heaps of glass to catch light. All of those buildings had been destroyed many centuries ago, and the strange contraptions found in them had been melted down and used as an alternative to ore. Some thought this a pity. They could have been studied at academy, or in the very least, housed at a monastery, but those first survivors must have been desperate to rebuild after their glass houses crashed and broke. As it turns out, glass does not keep a person warm in winter.

Now it was preferable to use stone, hardwoods, and brick, and mortar, things that were sturdy and opaque. Many others of the old scientias might have been irretrievable, but Litherians made good use of all sorts of architectura. A few of the richer cities even had running water, and electricity to compliment their grand buildings.

Abigail remembered hearing a priest say once that the state of Litheria was quite unique. He said that architecture was how one built a world, and that is why they were special. He went on to explain, in what she considered to be a doggedly boring manner, that although they hadn’t known exactly what happened at the close of the time before, he felt very strongly, based on his long hours of reading and exhaustive studying, that their current civilization so perfectly mirrored their ancestors. ‘Each region and culture,’ she remembered him saying, ‘that comprises a subset of this great land, I think, reflects an era belonging to our forbearers.’ Abigail couldn’t remember this priest’s name or exactly what he looked like, but she did remember him giving that bizarre speech and thinking all the while that he was a bit off his kilter. He was the sort of person who would often say ‘there is no such thing as a coincidence.’

Being in prison changes one’s notion of sanity, though. For Abigail it was no different. Things that once were once commonplace like spending a few extra coins on cheese or ale or paper, now seemed ridiculous. She could have saved that. Maybe it would have amounted to a bribe to get a reduced sentence, or, who knows, instantaneous freedom. Any crazed idea would do to give her slight hope. Contrarily, thoughts once considered undeniably absurd could be called well enough understandable. She and the other captives would nod sympathetically when hearing that a woman had bashed her own skull against the wall to which she was chained so hard that she died almost instantly. Bless. Lucky for her.

In the time before many more people were alive. They all crowded into the same places and hurdled together and fought. Of course Litherians fought. They also had what was often referred to as a culture of hopefulness. They had the hope that they wouldn’t revert back to such extreme barbarism as was written about in their ancestors’ books. But with the Queen gone, hope was dwindling.

Reopening Dunslar Prison, a women-only institution, had been an illegal endeavor, but while the Queen was on an extended campaign in Eastlund, Litheria fell into the control of a dozen or so landowning families whose reputations distinguished them. Generally, it took more than a parcel or two to qualify as a landowner of consequence. It took more than military service too. It even took more than a traceable family name, because, while that did help, there were hundreds of those. It came down to having enough money and a willingness to agree with those other landowners. That was the most important thing.

Some of those who qualified were war lords; others were merely prudent with coin and with an eye for trade. A few had large farms or owned quarries. Some were a combination of the three. They were not uniformed tyrants. In fact many were perfectly lovely and often generous folk, but they did have a common, specific idea of how things ought to be. Things ought to be under their supervision simply because they had earned it. It actually made perfect sense when argued in the high courts. The cases brought to them were few, farmers wanting to be taxed less, or wanting to gather at the town hall more frequently, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Republicanism was ineffective when gifted to a mob of criminals. That was the only argument a landowner and his pet magistrate needed. They had earned their keep and so their families, who all had a history of varied responsibility and notable successes, were charged with guiding the whole flock. Really, who better to do the job when the world was crumbling? Who would be more suited to do the Queen’s job in her stead? The answer of course was plump, male, heads-of-house with some silver to spend and a strong hesitance to do anything for one’s self, or, occasionally, their lounging wives could send a letter of encouragement, written in between grand parties.

Needless to say, most landowners would undoubtedly benefit from the absence of unruly girls. Unruly young men could be sent to training camps and prepared for the carnage of battle into which they might channel their unruliness, but women were a more trying enterprise. For that, for the daintier sex, they had Dunslar Prison.

The Dunslars were an ancient family. In the olden days they were given large sums of money from the King and Queen to maintain stability on the western coast, as the militia often patrolled other boarders. Times were tough, war was on, and thievery was common then. The women imprisoned there were almost always guilty of that. A large proportion of Litherian men had been killed in battle in the Northeast. Their wives and mothers and sisters were left to fend for themselves and their children during a draught.

During this time Dunslar developed a reputation for employing extreme measures of discipline, and the officers stationed there took pride in it. It was extremely effective at keeping prisoners, and outsiders, in line. Beatings were a favorite, as were scarification, tattooing, and their specialty, branding.

Depending on how badly the inmate was behaving, the brand would be placed on increasingly humiliating body parts. Capta the wound always read. The more rebellious girls had multiple marks. If it was a first offense, it might be on a limb, or across her abdomen. If it were a second or third time, it was not uncommon to mark her genitals, breasts or forehead.

Things eventually turned around, as they often do. Litheria successfully defended its border, and the rains returned, and the harvests were plentiful. Queen Qualia took the throne and decreased the funding to prisons and to the troops, which were no longer needed in such numbers during a time of peace. Soon the prisoners had served their sentences and there wasn’t any need for a prison.

That didn’t stop the Dunslars from wanting to be helpful. And of course there were quite enough widows after the conflict that needed assistance whether they were willing to accept it or not. Nearly half the adult female population was either widowed or unmarried. For these reasons, the Dunslar family insisted that though it was peacetime, the home front was still at risk for anarchy, and their prison should not be appropriated.

Then the Queen got pulled away from her duties to Eastlund. Eastlund was a poorer country, and so scattered and unkempt that the very name Eastlund was not its own. Eastlund was a Litherian name for a place that called itself nothing, though they spoke the same language. It was always cold and there was little fertile land. They did have quarries, which went unused much of the time because their skills to build were not matched by their neighbors to the west. Whenever there was trouble stirring; riots, farmers’ rebellions, it was at the eastern border. Another conflict had reared its head.

With the Queen gone, new stringent laws were written. The laws were primarily a deterrent against the robbery that had been so common during the last war. They were also meant to keep free women safe from those who might prey on them and applied to free females of all ages, married, unmarried, and widowed. As one decree read,

"On the impending return of our warring heroes in Eastlund, let us make way for them. They must be rejuvenated, reminded of a peaceful but productive life in the homeland. Daughters: do not tempt them into fornication. We must sharpen our etiquette to show them the way. We are not so whorish that we would belittle ourselves as the girls in Eastlund do. These men have fought for us and now ours is the burden of assimilation."

Propriety was of the utmost importance, or so it would seem. The most recent census had revealed that the working population was on the incline. While chastity was the public virtue, and an enforceable one meant for the prevention of a multiplying hoard, the unlocked doors of landowners would reveal an array of sexual preferences, both consensual and otherwise.

Then more laws were written for women. There was to be no consumption of ale or spirits. No riding, nor walking, through the many rural pastures or flatlands (and certainly not the Woods) unaccompanied (permits were sometimes granted to servants on errands, but never to free ladies of the house who would only wander). No eating meat before noon (women who did so were perceived to be of a lower station, and made more susceptible to predation by dregs). In some villages, there was to be no laughing or talking loud enough for your neighbors to hear, because, if a drifter were to hear a woman laughing or singing or conversing, he would be tempted to come and have his way with her and her livestock. This law was problematic for those in small, close houses, but lucky for light sleepers and those who hated or envied their neighbors…Suddenly the prisons were full again, and the Dunslars were contented to achieve fashionable usefulness.

It was peculiar. The Dunslars’ prison revival received overwhelming, nearly unanimous support from courts across the countryside. The reason was not so shocking. Many landowning men went so far as to volunteer their precious time to the local magistrate to help in writing the new laws. Most of the courts and their magistrates were faithful to Queen Qualia and would not have been moved just for them, but eventually a very high number of landowning individuals, who absolutely had a say in the conduct of peoples living on their property, came forth with complaints and threw absurd amounts of silver and gold around to get new laws edited, approved and officiated in a timely manner.

Truth be told, it wasn’t that all of these current prisoners were notably rebellious. Most of them hadn’t enough time on their hands to have a say in local politics, few caused riotous scenes during tax collection. What most had in common was that they owned something valuable, or something that seemed of value, and so their existence was a kind of communal obstacle. They deterred Litheria’s betterment by keeping such things to themselves. There was an argument to be made against their privacy, particularly if they owned a small parcel of land or livestock that could be used for farming but was not. Litheria still had enough hungry children and soldiers that this did not look to be honorable management of property. Those with husbands or grown sons at least had guidance to do what needed doing, if even they only planned on doing it.

Ann Frit was the first new prisoner at Dunslar. In many ways she was fortunate to have been the first. She may have been lonely, but she had avoided the disgusting conditions under which the prisoners were presently kept. She was not made to writhe in her own filth for so long that