Under The Willow Root

“So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.” --Stephen Hawking

The next day, I make my way through the garden torn between excitement and fear. What if Sadra told someone, or what if someone followed her? Or, worst of all, what if she’s not there? The thought makes my stomach twist uncomfortably. I want her to be there. Yesterday she smiled at me, laughed with me like we were just two girls. Like we were equals.

She’s there. She beams at me and rushes over to give me a hug. I smile back, my lips trembling. Sadra chatters something at me and turns to grab a pile of clothes hung over the barre. It’s a set of the trouser-skirts she wears along with a wrap-around sleeveless shirt. I discard my skirts and change into my new outfit, wiggling excitedly at my newfound freedom of movement. I bend over backwards and put my hands on the smooth stones, then bring my legs over. I come upright to see Sadra gaping at me.

“Again,” she says eagerly. “Again.”

We dance together as we did the day before, but this time Sadra ends each of her demonstrations by pointing out an object and saying it’s name, or pantomiming an action and giving me the word. When we’re nearly finished, she gives me a word and I point to the object or perform the action. It’s not ideal, but some instruction is better than no instruction. I wonder why no one else has tried. How has it not occurred to my masters that I could do my job better if I learned the language more quickly?

Sadra and I meet every day to dance and learn new words. My vocabulary grows like a snowball. The more Sadra teaches me, the more I pick up on my own, which lets her teach me more, and so on. Ismeni is thrilled with my progress, but Dove is more reserved. I think she suspects something. That makes me nervous, but it’s not like she can tell on me. In any case, I won’t stop my lessons with Sadra. My time with her is the only thing in my life that I can call my own.

My awareness and sense of self comes back and, with it, my memories. At first they come in dreams and flashes, then appear at need as if they never left. It can’t be coincidence that I started to get better when I began dancing and that I improved even more when Sadra started teaching me. I wonder what it means. They only way to find out, I decide, is to learn enough to start asking questions...somehow.

After a while, though, maybe a month after we begin our lessons, we hit a wall. It’s hard to make progress without interaction. There are only so many things to point at in the garden, after all. Sadra seems to have the same idea. One day, she ends our session by pointing to herself.

“My name is Sadra,” she says, and points to me.

I stare at her uncertainly. I know her name is Sadra. What is she getting at? She knows I can’t speak. I touch my mouth and shrug. She taps my chest insistently.

“Give me your name,” she says.

I shake my head. I can’t. She knows that.

“Try,” she insists. “My name is Sadra. Your name is...”

Now I get angry. Doesn’t she think I would tell her if I could? Does she think I’m doing this on purpose? I brush her hand away and start to change my clothes. She snatches them away and holds them out of reach, her face set in determination. I try to grab them back and she skips away.

“Your name,” she says again.

I scowl at her. Dove is going to whistle for me at any moment.

“Your name.”

I breathe heavily through my nose with my lips pressed together tightly. What right does she have to demand that I speak? Like it’s more important to her than it is to me. I want her to shut up. I want to strangle her.

“Give me your name, Blue.”

That’s not my name. Every time I hear Ismeni or anyone else say it, it irritates me. Coming from Sadra, my friend, it hurts. And it makes me angry. I glare at Sadra, fists clenched and breathing hard. I feel like something in my stomach is trying to claw its way out.

“Ssss...”

I hiss through my teeth, my face screwed up with the effort. I feel like I’m trying to juggle or pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time, like I’m trying to do something that my brain just doesn’t want to do. But I want to do it. I want it so badly it hurts.

“Sss...ssa...SASHA.”

My mouth drops open in shock and Sadra’s eyes go wide. Then she lets out a whoop of excitement and seizes my hands, dancing around in a circle and chattering at me. I don’t catch it all, but one phrase stands out, and I think I understand it.

“I knew it!” she cries. “I knew it.”

“Sasha,” I say again. I pound on my chest excitedly with my palm. “Sasha!”

“Sasha,” Sadra says firmly, and squeezes my hands.

I burst into tears. It’s the first time I’ve heard my name in six months, at least. I don’t even know how long it’s been. Sadra puts her arms around me and rubs my back, which only makes me cry harder. When I’ve cried myself out, she gives me my dress and helps me with the ties when Dove’s whistle sounds. Now more than ever we can’t let anyone know. Before I leave, I turn and give her one more hug.

“Sadra,” I say, and she grins.

“Yes,” she says. “Sasha and Sadra. Sounds good together, doesn’t it?”

“Together,” I repeat, stumbling over the word. It’s hard to make my lips and tongue work the way I want them to. It’s like they’ve been asleep for months and are just now waking up.

When I meet Dove, she takes one look at me and pinches me hard. I yelp and then freeze, staring at her in horror. She gazes back calmly enough, but I can see the fear in her eyes. So much for keeping this a secret.

It occurs to me that maybe Dove has been keeping secrets of her own. She never looks as empty as the other slaves I’ve seen. I open my mouth to ask her...I don’t even know what I want to ask her. Something. But she slaps my face before I can make a sound.

Dove presses both of her hands against my mouth and then makes the slashing gesture for “No.” Her eyes are wild with fear. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from her. She makes the gesture again and steps back. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. When she opens them, her face has assumed its normal, blank expression.

I copy her, trying to make my face as smooth and neutral as possible. She reaches out and pinches me again. This time, I don’t cry out. She nods and, after another deep breath, leads the way back to Ismeni’s rooms.

We complete the rest of our duties for the day and then go to sleep as if nothing happened. When we wake up the next morning, it’s the same. For all I know, Dove might have forgotten the whole thing. She doesn’t react when I disappear into the garden, and she doesn’t stir when I whisper to myself under the covers at night.

Over the next few weeks, however, I begin to suspect that she hasn’t forgotten anything. She pinches and pokes me at odd moments, giving me a minor heart attack each time I barely stop myself from making some noise of protest or pain. As I get better at keeping quiet, I realize that’s the point: she’s helping me practice. I remember the fear in her eyes and wonder what would happen if anyone found out the truth about me.

I try to ask Sadra about how I came to be here and why I couldn’t speak, but my attempts to form questions and her attempts to answer leave us both frustrated. Instead, I pour my energy into learning as much as I can and dancing as much as I can. Ismeni, as far as I can tell, doesn’t suspect a thing. She often talks to Dove and me while we work, chattering away about this person’s paramour or that person’s son’s fiance’s horrible mother, but it’s clear she doesn’t expect us to answer her or even understand. It reminds me of the way I used to talk to my dolls when I was little.

As autumn turns to winter, Ismeni begins taking me with her sometimes to visit friends or see a play. I don’t like leaving the household. There’s too much to take in, and too much happens that I don’t understand and can’t explain. The unreal lighting at plays, the lamps that burn with no flame or oil, the way Ismeni’s outfits and makeup subtly change between one breath and the next, the gravity-defying cakes at banquets...it all seems to just happen, with no cause underlying the effect.

One time I could almost swear I saw a pocket mirror fly to its owner’s hand, though I know someone must have just tossed it. Another time I thought I heard Ismeni talking to the air--and the air was talking back. But I know she was just talking to herself, because she can’t have been talking to me. Still, the number of times I catch myself imagining things disturbs me a little. I think it must be because I can’t talk to anyone but Sadra. Maybe my mind is just keeping itself busy.

The outings aren’t all bad, though. In our city, which the inhabitants call “the City of Roses,” the arts--beauty itself, really--are revered. Houses, theaters, even market stalls are built in elegant lines and decorated with paintings and sculptures and gardens. At every gathering of friends, there’s music and dancing, performed sometimes by hired professionals trained by the same Temple that trained Sadra, but more often by and for each other. I’m tickled to find that Ismeni is a terrible dancer, though she has a lovely voice. When she sings she holds the entire room captive--I’ve never seen anyone so much as blink until she’s done.

At first both Dove and I go on the outings, but soon Ismeni starts leaving one or the other of us behind. It confuses me. If Ismeni needs help, why wouldn’t she take both of us or at least choose the more experienced slave--or thrall, which I’ve learned is the more accurate term.

“Dove is getting old,” Sadra says when I ask her. “She bought you to take Dove’s place, you know. She only takes Dove to palace functions now. I imagine you’ll start going when Ismeni thinks you’ve learned enough to not embarrass her.”

“Old?” I ask dubiously. “Dove not very old.”

“Well, she is for a thrall,” Sadra said with a shrug. “She must be fifty at least. I’ve never heard of a thrall living much past fifty-five.”

“Why?” I cry, aghast. “Why they die?”

Sadra shrugs. “Why does anyone die?”

“So Ismeni die too? Fifty-five?”

“Don’t hope too hard,” Sadra says with a snort. “When Ismeni dies, Orean will probably sell you or give you to his sister. Anyway, Ismeni will live long past fifty-five, unless a rival poisons her or something.”

“So why Dove die?”

Sadra looks at me curiously. “Oh, I see. That’s what you were trying to ask me a few months ago, wasn’t it? Or something like it.”

At my nod, she continues, “Thralls are different. They just don’t live as long. They’re not...not real people. That’s what everyone thinks, anyway.”

“Less than masters,” I say bitterly.

“Not just less,” Sadra corrects me. “Not. To Ismeni, you are a doll made flesh. Nothing in here. No…” she taps my chest and says something that I gather must mean something like heart or soul. “Thralls can’t speak, can’t learn more than the most basic of tasks. They’re not people.”

“But I do,” I protest. “I learn. I speak.”

“You do,” Sadra agrees. “And we have to keep that a secret. People like Ismeni don’t want to think that they’re doing anything wrong or bad. And I’ve heard things…”

“What things?” I ask curiously.

“Nothing definite enough to be worth your peace of mind,” Sadra says, shaking her head. “We just need to be careful.”

We continue our exercises in silence for several minutes before I ask, “If thralls not real people, why look like people? Why bleed like people? Why eat like people?”

Sadra launches into some kind of explanation, but there are too many words that I don’t understand. The most I get out of it is something about thralls being made rather than born.

“But I am born,” I say indignantly. “I have...had...a mother. Her name Lara. She was person. I am person.”

Sadra stares at me like I have two heads, like I’m something unnatural and terrifying. Then she shakes herself. “Forgive me. I know you’re a person...but, as far as we know, I’m the only one who does. And we need to keep it that way until we’re sure it’s safe. I’ve been trying to find out if there’s anyone else like you, or anyone who’s heard of someone like you, but...well, I haven’t found anything yet.”

“I am person,” I mutter again. Sadra’s look of horror flashes across my mind and I feel my chest tighten. “I am person.”

“I know,” Sadra says gently. “I know that, Sasha. I’m sorry. Tell me...tell me about your mother.”

I explain that I was young when she died and instead tell her about Baba Nadia and my friends. But when I try to explain how I came to be here, my limited skill with the language gets in the way. Frustrated and tired from stumbling through our longest and most complicated conversation to date, I fall into Russian, my first language.

“Ya khochu domoy. I want to go home,” I say miserably. “You’re telling me that I’m not even a person, that I’m a toy. I hate this place. I want my friends. I want my house. I want my own goddamn clothes. I want my grandmother.”

Sadra backs away, looking like I’ve slapped her. “What did you do? What shadow did you put on me?”

I blink and ask in her language, “What?”

“What were you saying?”

“I talk,” I say. “In my language. Russkom. Your language hard.”

“Your language?” Once again Sadra goggles at me. “But you couldn’t speak before I taught you.”

I roll my eyes. “Because I have no voice, I have no words?”

“You’re right,” Sadra says after a moment with a little laugh. “That was silly. Sasha, there’s so much I don’t know about you. Hurry up and learn to speak properly, would you? I want to know everything!”

“I try,” I promise.

I keep my promise. I listen carefully to whatever I hear over the course of the day and whisper new words to myself at night. Sadra and I make it a point to spend at least a few minutes each day talking about something abstract or complicated. It’s difficult and uncomfortable, but it pays off, just like any kind of hard work.

I’m just as eager to learn about Sadra as she is to learn about me. I’m especially curious about her position in the household. It’s fairly obvious that she’s Orean’s mistress, but what I can’t understand is why Ismeni seems to be powerless to stop it when, in nearly all other matters, her word is absolute law. It just doesn’t seem like her to tolerate her husband cheating right under her nose.

I’m not completely sure I understand Sadra’s explanation, but I think she tells me that she’s a priestess of some kind, or at least a member of some special order--something to do with dancing and the Temple where she was raised and trained. To have a member of this order bestow her favor on a household is considered a great honor and not something that Ismeni can contest.

Sadra also laughingly tells me something about dreams and Orean not getting what he thinks he’s getting, but I don’t understand it. She calls herself a Dreamwhisper. I don’t know if it’s to do with the priestess business or if it’s a pet name or what, and her attempts to explain get us nowhere. Eventually we both give up and I file it away as a question for another day.

I constantly worry that our meetings will be discovered, but they never are. No one ever comes near our corner of the garden, not even Dove. I wonder, though, if she knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Whether she knows or not, she never makes any move to stop me when I leave her by the pool. She sits and stares into the water just as she always does.

Dove’s pokes and pinches continue, but the force behind them seems to decrease ever so slightly. Maybe she’s easing up because I’m better at not reacting, but after what Sadra told me about Dove getting old, it worries me. I can’t tell if she’s getting weaker because our duties don’t require much physical strength to begin with. Does she take a little longer to get ready in the morning? Does she struggle a bit to get up from her chair in the eating room? Do we walk a little more slowly on our way to the baths? Maybe. I can’t be sure. The only thing I know for certain is that I don’t want her to die.

“What do you mean, you couldn’t do the test?” Emily demands, rubbing her already bloodshot eyes. “Why not?”

The doctors exchange a glance which I immediately interpret as shifty. I want to warn Emily and tell her that they’re frauds. The real doctors left ages ago and these people are only pretending. I can’t tell Emily though because she doesn’t understand me when I talk and she wouldn’t believe me anyway because the fake doctors look exactly like my old doctors. I know, though. I know they’re only pretending.

“We think...there may be...we don’t know,” one doctor confesses. “Something keeps going wrong with the MRI. It won’t work on her. We’ve called the manufacturer and they’ve sent three different people to look at the machine. They swear there’s nothing wrong with it and it worked just fine with every other patient before and after Sasha. We’ve tried five times. We can’t explain it. It’s almost like...like something’s interfering. Something about Sasha is disrupting the magnetic field.”

“I don’t get it,” Emily says flatly.

“Neither do we,” the second doctor murmurs, and the first doctor shoots her a dirty look.

“We’ve called the manufacturer--again. I’m sure they’ll find the problem,” the first doctor says. “We’ll get her in for another CT scan later this afternoon. In the meantime, there are some simple tests we can do to try to determine what areas of Sasha’s brain have been affected.”

Emily says nothing but steps aside, gesturing helplessly to my prone form. The talkative doctor sits beside me and starts asking me stupid questions that I can’t answer. I do a little better when he asks me to point to the ceiling and the floor or point to my feet, but my limbs feel heavy and the simple requests make me feel stupid. It makes me want to scream...so I do. I scream and scream until Emily chases the doctors out of the room.

When she comes back, Emily slumps in her chair and cries. I want to reach out and hold her hand, but my arm doesn’t move. I want to tell her how much I love her, but all that comes out is an animal moan that only makes Emily cry harder. I close my eyes so I don’t have to look.

My eyes snap open. I gasp for breath as I stare into the darkness, trying to slow my racing heart. What was that? It was so vivid--so much more vivid than any of my dreams or even the flashes of memory that used to sometimes overtake me. I haven’t had one in months, and I’m sure that what I just saw wasn’t a memory. But what was it?

Emily was there...I haven’t even thought about her in ages. I squirm uncomfortably in bed, as if I can wiggle away from my guilt. And what about Melanie and Tara? Do they miss me? What do they think has happened to me? Am I dead? Missing? Or am I actually in a hospital bed breaking MRI machines and making Emily cry?

I suddenly remember about my mother and my heart almost stops. My mom had a neurological condition and it killed her. Do I have the same thing? Am I imagining all this? I pinch myself so hard I’m sure it will leave a bruise. It hurts. A lot. But what do I know? Maybe imaginary bruises hurt just as much as real ones.

I toss and turn in bed, alternately kicking the covers off and then wrapping them around myself. In my agitation my body can’t seem to decide if it’s hot or cold. Every time I close my eyes, I see Emily’s haggard, tear-stained face and feel like a terrible person for not trying harder to get back to her and to my friends.

But if the vision I just had was real, I am there. I’m there and I’m putting Emily through hell. She doesn’t deserve it, and she shouldn’t have to be responsible for me. She’s not my mother or my sister or my aunt or anything. But of course Emily feels responsible because I have no one else, and she knows it.

I don’t know which is worse: the idea that I really have disappeared through some kind of worm hole or the idea that I’m a drooling, moaning mess in a hospital bed. The thought torments me until Dove, fed up with the creaking and squeaking of my bed, leans over and smacks me with her walking stick. It catches me on my branding scar and I hiss in pain.

I rub my hip and glare at her but try to stay still. There’s a couple of hours yet until we have to get up, and I resolve to get a little more sleep and then talk to Sadra as soon as I can. If I’m hallucinating now and have been for the past year, so be it. I can’t do anything about that. But if I have gone...somewhere...I can try--I have to try--to get back home. So that’s what I’ll do.

I feel better now that I have something approaching a plan. I manage to fall asleep, but it’s not deep or comfortable. Disturbing and nonsensical dreams make true rest impossible. I wake up feeling like there’s a dumbbell rattling around in my head. It’s all I can do not to groan out loud as I drag myself out of bed.

I go through the morning routine in a daze. I fall asleep in the warm baths and again in the steam room. I don’t even bother pushing away the little fox as it attacks my face with kisses on the way home. Its master, as always, acts as if Dove and I are part of the scenery. So does almost everyone else, but for whatever reason--teenage hormones and vanity, I’m sure--it hurts more when it’s a hot guy ignoring me.

Ismeni is snappish and cranky when we wake her up, complaining about everything and finding fault with whatever we do. She’s been like this more and more often lately, and normally I don’t mind. She saved me from a life of prostitution or worse. She can be as crabby as she wants and I’ll still kiss the ground she walks on. Today, though, I struggle. I’m exhausted, and my desire to get into the garden and talk to Sadra is like a physical itch.

Ismeni’s sharp rap of her fan on my knuckles as I reach for her breakfast tray doesn’t faze me. Her ear-ringing slap across the side of my face, though, takes me by complete surprise. Only Dove’s “training” stops me from blurting out some expression of shock. I have no idea what the slap was for. I wasn’t even doing anything--I was still straightening up from trying to clear her tray.

Ismeni slaps me again, hard enough to make me stagger and fall. I resist the urge to raise a hand to my face. I keep my features still and smooth, like glass. Dove watches me with impassive eyes. I have to imagine her approval and compassion, because her face shows nothing at all.

I bow my head and try to back away, but Ismeni pulls me up to sit beside her onto the bed. She strokes my hair and kisses my face where she slapped it. Tears run freely down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Blue. I didn’t mean it.” She hugs me tightly, sniffling. “I wish you could understand. It’s been two years and there’s still no baby. And as long as there’s no baby I have to keep trying--and I hate it. I hate him.”

Ismeni begins to sob in earnest, clutching me like a teddy bear. I look helplessly over her shoulder at Dove, who shrugs and sits on a stool to wait. I wonder what the big deal is. She certainly doesn’t seem to want a baby, exactly. She needs a baby--an heir, I guess. But heir to what?

By now I know that she and Orean are pretty high up on the totem pole, but they’re not royals and the only title that gets passed down, according to Sadra, is Prince. No dukes or barons or anything like that. No King, either, which strikes me as a little weird considering the country that rules the rest of the Empire is called “Kingsgarden.” Sadra says the last King was the original conqueror. Apparently no one could live up to the title after that, because there have only been Princes and the Council ever since.

Orean is a Council member, but membership isn’t technically hereditary. I guess it’s just money or property then? There must be a lot of it to warrant this much pressure to perform. Poor Ismeni. I think of going to bed over and over again with someone I despise and shudder. Maybe that’s why Ismeni saved me from the oily man--she knows what it’s like.

“What if that--female--gives him a son?” Ismeni chokes. “If it weren’t for that she could have him, and welcome. But what if there’s a child? What then?”

Even if I could safely speak to her, I wouldn’t have an answer. I have no idea what would happen. What is she so afraid of? It can’t be that bad. Can it? As always, I think, what do I know? Nothing. Maybe infertility is punishable by death or dismemberment. Everyone here seems pretty okay with slavery and torture, after all. Even Ismeni, my own personal angel of mercy, slaps me around without thought--and on a fairly regular basis, though usually not quite as violently as she just did.

Eventually Dove succeeds in peeling Ismeni off me and we get on with our day. When I finally meet up with Sadra, I’m bursting with questions. I spend my time at the barre thinking about what I want to ask first. Though I’m anxious to do something about getting home, my curiosity is piqued by Ismeni’s situation. And it occurs to me that maybe it should matter to me what happens to Ismeni--because if something happens to her, what will happen to me?

“Well, she certainly doesn’t have to worry on my account,” Sadra says when I tell her about Ismeni’s meltdown. “But a discreet visit to a Healer or a Bloodseer might not be a bad idea. If she’s barren she needs to know sooner rather than later.”

“Or what?” I ask. “What will happen to her if she doesn’t have a baby? Why is it so important?”

“Ismeni’s family is very wealthy,” Sadra explains. “She’s really the one with money. Orean controls it because he’s her husband, but if she dies childless, all her wealth goes back to her family.”

“I see why Orean wouldn’t like that, but why should Ismeni care?” I wonder.

“Because Orean is her husband,” Sadra says, looking at me curiously. Seeing that I still don’t understand, she says, “You’ll have noticed Orean is quite free with his fists?”

“He would beat her?” I cry.

“Probably,” Sadra says with a shrug. “Knowing him, I would say that’s the least he would do.”

“You don’t mean he would kill her?” I ask uncertainly.

“Well, no, that would be pretty stupid, considering he would lose all her money,” Sadra says. “But he can send her away to slowly starve to death in the country while he uses her money to invest or buy holdings in his own name. I’ve seen it happen.”

“And that’s allowed? That’s...that’s…”

“I think ‘barbaric’ is the word you’re looking for,” Sadra says grimly. “Things are changing--people are changing--but the law hasn’t quite caught up yet. Legally, Ismeni belongs to her husband as much as you belong to her. Orean can do whatever he likes to her and there’s nothing she can do about it. Her family could probably make a big enough fuss to save her, but it would be costly and embarrassing, and Ismeni is proud.”

I shake my head wonderingly. “That’s insane.”

“Things are different where you come from then?” Sadra asks.

I do my best to explain a few semesters’ worth of women’s studies, but it doesn’t go very well. Every time I answer a question, three new ones pop up. We end up talking more about things I always took for granted until I came here, like cars and sneakers and fruit smoothies. Sadra seems especially interested in electricity and computers. She says it’s a lot like something she calls “Light” that presumably isn’t the same as normal light, but I have to go before she can explain what she means. It’s not until I’m about to go to bed that I realize I forgot to ask her about her search for people like me.

I forget again the next day when we talk about the upcoming festival where Sadra will perform with the other dancers of the Temple. And the next day, when I tell her about my grandmother’s dance studio. And the next, when she tries to convince me that she can actually control people’s dreams and that she’s only slept with Orean once; after that, she made him dream it all. Now he believes he’s done all kinds of depraved things to her while she enjoys good food, pretty dresses, and an appreciative audience for her dancing.

Sadra, I decide, has a weird sense of humor.

Finally, I remember to tell her about my unsettling dream-visions after a particularly upsetting one. In the dream, I was strapped to the bed with not just one or two but five doctors hovering over me and talking. The light was shining directly into my eyes, and it hurt. I was upset and scared and Emily wasn’t there to make me feel better.

“What do you mean?” Sadra asks after I explain. “You think you’re dreaming all this?”

“I don’t know,” I say helplessly. “Either I am, and there’s nothing I can do but wait and hope to wake up, or I’m not and I need to try to get back home.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Sadra asks.

I can tell she doesn’t mean it sarcastically, but it still irritates me.

“I have no idea,” I say shortly. “Weren’t you looking for people like me? Maybe I can start there.”

“There may be something,” Sadra says reluctantly. “I didn’t tell you because there isn’t much to tell yet. All I know is that there is some kind of committee or...or maybe a guard is more accurate. Some group associated with the House of Light and Shadow. When thralls go wrong they come and take care of the problem.”

“Take care of the problem?”

“I get the feeling it means they take the thrall away,” Sadra says. “To be killed or fixed somehow, I don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t found out much of anything, not even what makes a thrall ‘go wrong.’ But I have a feeling about that. What if it means a thrall becomes like you? And if there’s a special guard to stop it from happening, that means--”

“It does happen,” I finish. “Assuming that’s what’s actually going on.”

“I think it must be,” Sadra says, sounding a little more confident. “When slaves get sick or old or injured, they see a Healer. If they’re disobedient or lazy, they’re sold or beaten--but by their masters. It seems odd that for some mysterious, unnamed problem the most powerful institution in the realm comes and makes the problem disappear--mysteriously. Doesn’t it?”

“Very,” I agree. “But what’s the House of Light and Shadow?”

Sadra looks at me in surprise. “I’ve told you about the House before, haven’t I?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Or if you did, I didn’t understand you.”

“That has to be it,” Sadra agrees. “I can’t imagine it’s never come up. The House of Light and Shadow is in charge of Light--you know, what we use for power. I think it’s something like your electricity, but I’m not sure. I can’t do much with it myself. Only the very rich learn enough to do anything useful.”

“I don’t understand,” I say with a frown. “What do you use it for?”

“Almost everything,” Sadra says wryly. “At least in a household like this.”

“Like what?” I ask again.

“Well...let’s see. Lighting lamps and fires, lifting and fetching things, sometimes cooking. What else? Oh, glamours. Ismeni does love her glamours, doesn’t she?”

“You mean her pots and powders and things?”

“No, I mean the glamours. You know what I’m talking about,” Sadra says impatiently. She peers at me uncertainly. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

“You must, though,” Sadra insists. “You can’t have not noticed. I’m talking about how Ismeni decorates her face without the pots and powders. How she changes it whenever she wants?”

“Oh,” I breathe. “I thought I was imagining it. When you say Light is used to fetch and carry things...do you mean...”

“Oh, I can show you that,” Sadra says, looking pleased. “It’s about the only thing I can do, though, and I’m not very good at it.”

She holds her hand out and stretches it toward my dress where it lies draped over the barre. Before my disbelieving eyes, the dress rises into the air and floats jerkily toward me. My fingers tremble as I reach out and touch it. It’s real. There’s no string or...I don’t even know what else to check for. It’s really floating in the air in front of me.

“Take it,” Sadra urges, face furrowed in concentration. “I’m going to drop it in a second.”

I catch the dress as it falls and Sadra lets out a gusty breath. She laughs at my hanging jaw and wide eyes.

“You look like you’ve never seen someone use Light before,” she chides me. “But I know you have. Ismeni uses it all the time.”

“I thought I was imagining it,” I say again. “Light...it’s not electricity. We have another word for this.”

“What is it?” Sadra asks curiously.

“Magic.”