“Well?” The boy asked. “Do you want to play?”

Eluvie blinked. And blinked again. The room around her was crammed with objects - a wooden table with three chairs, a shelf full of cooking implements, a stove, books, sacks of grain. And in front of her, the boy - Chirad - stared with wide, brown eyes.

“Oh!” he smiled. “Your eyes are working.”

Eluvie glanced around the room again. Her last memory was of being stuffed into the tub for the fourth time. To comfort herself, she had taken to counting down the days until her next examination. Three days until she faced the rulers again. Three days until she was questioned about her dreams again. Three days until she got rid of Madam Ria.

“Well?” The boy asked again. “Don’t you want to play?”

“I don’t,” Eluvie said. “I’m very tired.”

The boy frowned. “You can’t be tired in a dream. Please.”

“I am tired,” Eluvie said. She had been tired for days. “I’d rather sit here and talk.”

She was already sitting, she realized, on a wooden bench flush against a wall.

The boy’s expression turned sad.

“I have questions,” Eluvie said.

She had hesitated to question him before, believing that every fact she knew about him put him in further danger. But the few facts she had already learned were powerful and her situation was precarious. She needed to know more.

She stared at the boy’s wings. They were different from hers; light and transparent, with a pale yellow tint.

She lifted her eyes back to his face. “What are we called?” she asked. “Are there more of us? Besides your parents, I mean. What else can we do? I know we can change into… well…”

The boy was watching her with a strange expression. When she stopped, it morphed into a guilty one.

“What?” she asked.

He hesitated for a moment, then said, “We’re not supposed to talk. Papa says I can’t talk to you anymore. And I can’t answer any questions you ask. We can play, but I’m not supposed to answer any of your questions.”

“I’m not asking questions about you,” Eluvie said. “I want to know more about myself.”

The justification was flimsy. Everything she learned from him could provide a hint about who he was. But that would only be relevant if she ever gave him up. She had no control over that. She could only gain as much information as possible to protect him and herself.

“I can’t tell you anything,” the boy said. “Well, except, he asked me to give you a message.”

Eluvie straightened. “What message?”

The boy scratched his head. “It didn’t make any sense, but he said that it was important. He said that I should say, ‘heaven builds the path’.”

Eluvie frowned. “Heaven builds the path? What does that mean?”

The boy shrugged. “He didn’t tell me. Let’s play, please? We can go fishing?”

Eluvie sighed. The boy’s father was frustrating, but wisely cautious.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She looked around the room again. This dream was a blessing. She knew that she was still in the tub but, while she remained here, she could not feel its burning. If only she knew how to come here at will.”

“How do you start this dream?” she asked.

The boy took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “It starts by itself. And don’t ask questions. Papa will be angry.”

Eluvie let him pull her out of the house. She didn’t know when the dream would end, and that cast a pall over the entire experience, and she had to submit to a child’s idea of fun, but the sight of the sky and the wide-open horizon outweighed those inconveniences.

***************************************************************************************************

Eluvie lay on the ground, gasping for air, tears running down her face. She was shaking so badly that the attendants had trouble drying her off.

But she was happy. She had made it.

“We don’t have time for this,” Madam Ria said. “Get her dressed and bring her down. Drag her if you need to.”

The words lifted the last of the weight off Eluvie’s shoulders. She had not miscounted. It was the seventh day.

She barely moved as they obeyed Madam Ria’s words. They stuffed her into fresh clothes, lifted her to her feet, and dragged her out of the bathroom. She helped them as much as she could, but it was very little.

When they left the room as usual, Madam Ria walked ahead of them. Eluvie spent all her strength listening for the woman’s footsteps, calculating their distance. She was not strong enough to do what she planned, but there was still time. Her only concern was that Piri and Bitu had not accepted her gift. If they had not, then removing Madam Ria would do her no good. If they had not, she would need a new plan to trap them. And that would be difficult to do while Lady Mirab’s punishment continued.

She prayed. She was doing it more often lately. All the strength she prided herself on was not enough to endure this.

Down in the clinic, Amu weighed her and took her blood as usual. He did so quietly, thankfully aware of the gravity of her situation. When he was done, he patted her head and whispered that everything would be okay. Eluvie’s response was a sudden murderous feeling toward him.

They lingered for a few minutes after the examination was over. Eluvie used the time to collect herself, and when it was finally time to go, she was strong enough to stand unsupported. Her muscles still shook, and her first steps were uneasy, but she held herself up with naked willpower.

They left the clinic and headed toward the grand hall. Eluvie followed the directions she had given the attendants, hope warring with pessimism within her. She found the first pillar, brushing it with her fingers as they passed, and then began counting the steps.

She reached the fourteenth step and then dropped to the ground. Her hand found the gap between the stones and ran along the entire line. She did it twice, for certainty. The diamond was gone.

She was on her feet before the workers could help her up. Madam Ria scolded her, but even that could not dampen her joy.

One task down, she thought, one to go.

She was not foolish enough to believe that her hold over the attendants was unbreakable. She had merely created an opening. She still needed to survive until it was a fully open door.

As they approached the staircase, her heart began to pound. She had lived this scenario so many times in the past. She had imagined herself killing every one of her captors in so many ways. But imagination and reality were never fully in sync. She knew where to stand and how to aim. But heaven still had room to spoil the plan.

She counted the steps. There were nineteen from the intersection’s first tile to the foot of the staircase. Would she need to adjust, she wondered? She was tired and taking smaller steps. She counted her next few steps and found a landmark. It was fine. She was only off by inches. Madam Ria was four paces ahead of her, blocked off by two of the attendants. The action would need to be quick.

Time seemed to speed up. She was twelve steps away. Then, eight. Her stomach seized up. She couldn’t do it. She would fail. Then, she was in position and her body moved by itself. She took two large, quick steps, pushed between the two workers ahead of her, reached for Madam Ria’s back, and put all her strength into one powerful shove.

She wobbled a little but remained upright. And just as the seconds before had sped by, the seconds after seemed to go on forever.

Madam Ria shrieked. There was a thump when she collided with the steps. And then another. And another. Eluvie forgot to count the seconds. When the sounds stopped, all that was left was a cold silence and an empty hole in Eluvie’s chest. Unwelcome tears spilled from her eyes. There was no relief, no joy, no sense of justice. There was only simmering anger and an infuriating sense of incompleteness.