Pitch dark. Nothing is here. Disembodied voices. Laughing? Conversing? What are they? Shadows. Beasts. She was floating in space. Feeling left her arms. 

A slow sensation of skin meeting leather came up in Sal. A familiar rattle and squeak. She was laying in her side or higher ground. Clip-clopping of horses’ hooves. A scratchy sheet over her neck. 

Sal slowly opened her eyes to see through the grain of the fabric. Useless. Useless in the darkness of the night. The constables will take her to ruin. Will they take her to the barred room again? To the dark room? To the Sgr. Cuorre? She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can only hear and nothing more. 

Lea’s voice. Her high steely voice remains clear in Sal’s mind. ‘ Let me go. Let me go. Sal! Hang on.’ Useless. Her voice on deaf ears. She can’t hear them anymore. Shout for help. No one comes. Alone. 

But who was she to dare?

The ink left on her hands, the reversed letters she could have deciphered. “ Delivered to you by this week.” Did Sgra. Edihna mean a Sunday or a Saturday? It was a Friday today. How stupid of her. The heirloom was never in the Casa. Signora knew that from the start. 

They were the sheep to slaughter. 

Was she laughing now? Happy? Like a witch from a children’s tale? No, she did not. Her evil was a moment of spite. 

Sal, she spited someone too. How is she any different? 

If only she stayed put. Perhaps punishment was needed. Sal welcomed the feeling as the carriage rocked violently and knocked her down to the floor. Voices yelled and grunted and cursed around her. Clang of metal. The door creaked. Moonlight reflected on the floor when someone pulled the sack from her head. But he was quickly gone. A grunt, a struggle. The voices faded as if far away. 

It was quiet again. 

Outside the carriage, men strewn on the ground, others on the chariot. Are these the punishers?

Sal stood in front of no one. No response. The men lay still like dolls. Dolls can’t take her prisoner. 

All around her are trees. All the same trees. Sal walked, wandering. Should she come back to the Casa? 

Sal walked, wandered wherever the light is strongest or a faint dot of lamplight fools her eyes. The woods are vast, circular. She only went where her feet took her. Then, came a rustling, a strong new sound amidst the silence. 

Sal followed the sound to a small stream with its long line punctuated by a small obstacle. Someone lay by the shore of the stream.

It was a man wearing dark clothing, his cape hung behind him like a mattress. By the small of the moonlight, one could see. 

Sal approached. 

The man laid face down on the shore. Perhaps a person could breathe underwater like this? Minutes passed, the man lay unmoving. Only then did the iron smell made itself felt, like when she bit her mouth by mistake and she’d taste the blood on it. By the small of the moonlight, the man’s body lay on the rocky shore, his head submerged on the water. Sal dipped a finger on it. 

“Stop!” Someone yelled. 

A man lay sitting on the ground. The familiar gait, the same voice. Ren sat acoss the shore, one hand clutching his left arm. 

Sal stood idly, watching the moon light his features, stuck in time.Something blotted the sleeve of his perpetually white shirt. Sal approached, focusing on his left arm. 

Ren took off his hand from his arm, showing Sal the dark, sticky mess on his palm on his shirt from an ugly gash across his arm. “I’m fine.” 

He produced a kerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his arm with his able hand and teeth. 

The ugly red line must have dug deep, carved into his flesh. Red mess on his clean shirt. Blood, something from inside slipping out. Broken. But he was a fairy, how could he be broken? 

Sal stood a distance away. The man looked up at her, paused, before continuing “That man attacked me with a knife, but he tripped on the rocks. He must be dead.”

Sal turned to glance back at the man before stopping herself. He’d look different. Now. He won’t look like a doll. He’s a dead man. The image will slowly burn into Sal’s head. The wide cape covering his body, like a shadow that took Lea, like the shadows that were the men lying in the carriage. 

Sal closed her arms around her knees. Dolls, no mice. They don’t number in tons. They number in thousands, thousands of them. 

“I’m scared.” She wants to say but Ren is broken too. 

As horses’ clip-clopping rattled off in the distance. They would see her. They would find her. 

But perhaps they must have seen Lea and Ro. They are fine right? Strong people that they are. 

As the sounds grew louder, Ren grabbed Sal by the wrist, coming closer, whispering in her ear. “ You’re scared, we can’t stay here.” 

Sal didn’t move even as Ren dragged her away. Her feet planted on the ground. Where would be that star closest to the Casa? Would they still be there? 

“We have to go, hurry up.” 

Sal started in a small voice, “I left them there. There were bad men with them.” 

Ren ran a hand across Sal’s shoulder. 

She flinched. 

“The bad men must be all gone. If you’re still doubting, I’ll go check for them tomorrow, okay? “ Ren spoke in a whisper. 

“Alright, I understood. I’m sorry.” Sal felt his hand cold, clammy. Unusually cold hands even in the night but no, she was thinking too much about it. How could she doubt him?

Ren led her to a horse. He assisted her before riding himself, his only able hand manning the handle. Amidst the surprise of being bumped from the rough side, something stuck with Sal. Ren’s shoes were wet.