The girl kept on reciting those words, obviously withdrawing into herself, trapped
in another world.
Baski turned and walked past them out of the room. Danika blinked back tears as
she followed her, but Sally was openly weeping, unable to control herself.
“What does she mean by ‘no food, no bed’?” Danika couldn’t help asking.
Baski turned and her eyes held Danika’s. “Cone fed her very well before he took
pleasure from her body on the bed. It could have been Cone; it could have been any
guard; it didn’t matter. Most times they fed slaves before sex because they’d laugh
about the fact that they didn’t want to sex an animal only to release into its corpse.”
“Oh, Creator!” Danika could no longer hold her tears. That was so inhumane.
Every day, there was another reason for her to hate her father. How could he ever do
things like this? How could he be such a monster?
Baski nodded and started walking away from them. She was doing her best to
detach herself from it all. “She doesn’t want to eat because she fears what will follow.
No matter how much I try to get her to understand that she’s finally safe, she doesn’t
believe it. I’ve tried to get her to eat. It doesn’t matter; she won’t.”
She finished the last word by slamming the doorof another room in the small
house. Leaving Danika and Sally alone in the sitting room.
Sally started sobbing. “This is so terrible! This is so horrible! Oh, my princess, I
can’t imagine what Remeta is going through. She’s trapped in her head! She’s
trapped!” As she continued, she raised her hands and swiped her eyes. “I can’t
imagine what it would feel like being so trapped in the past! I do my best to not
remember that day in the courtroom, and that’s because I have you to distract me. I
have you to be there for me and that’s why I don’t think about it so much! She has no
one! She’s trapped! Trapped!”
Danika wrapped her arms around Sally as she cried, and her body shook with the
force of her sobs. Danika’s tears ran freely down her cheeks as she consoled Sally.
Finally, she pushed Sally away from her body. “Stop crying. You’ll fall sick again,”
she chided softly. Then Danika left Sally standing there and walked back to Remeta’s
bedroom.
When Danika entered the room, the girl wasn’t within sight, but Danika knew she
was behind the wardrobe. “Remeta?” she called softly, wiping the tears from her eyes.
Slowly, the girl pushed her head out from behind the wardrobe and peaked at her
from behind her mass of dirty, blonde hair. “Who’s there?” the girl’s tiny voice
trembled.
“My name is Danika.”
The girl flinched. “Sounds like the name of a queen.”
Danika let out a startled gasp, not knowing what to say about that. “I’m not a
queen. I’m your friend,” she whispered at last.
“Remeta has no friends. She is mad in the head,” the girl replied in that tiny voice
that squeezed Danika’s heart.
“You’re not mad in the head,” Danika tried to reassure her.
“That’s what they all say.”
“People say bad things about good people all the time. It’s because they are
jealous.”
The girl let out that empty laughter again. “Whoever is jealous of Remeta is mad in
the head. Remeta has nothing to be jealous about.”
“Oh, I think that’s a lie. Remeta is a very beautiful young girl when she bathes and
eats well. I bet it’ll make people jealous,” Danika supplied, even though she had never
seen the girl’s face before. But then again, Remeta was once a king’s slave. That must
say something for the fifteen-year-old girl.
Remeta shook her hair vigorously, causing it to wave all around her. “No bath, no
bed. No food, no bed.”
Danika teared up again. How could such brief words have the power to tear
through a person? “No, Remeta. There will be no bed again, ever,” she tried to
reassure her.
“Mama says that all the time. Mama lies. They still come and take me tomorrow,”
she whispered.
The past trapped the girl in her own head. “Please, look at me, Remeta. You see
that I eat really well and I bathe too, but there is no bed. I’m a… female like you.
There is no bed.”
Silence. Danika heard sniffles but didn’t turn, knowing full well that Sally was
standing by the door. Sally and Baski.
Finally, Remeta raised a dirty hand, pushed her hair out of the way, and peeked at
her from behind the wavy curls.
Danika got the first good look at the girl, and her thoughts were confirmed. Remeta
was an exquisite girl under all the dirt and bruises on her face. She let Remeta look at
her for as long as she wanted, and she could see the way the girl’s eyes widened.
“You’re royalty,” Remeta said so suddenly that she took everyone by surprise.
Danika was stunned, her mouth hanging open. She looked down at herself and saw
she was in a slave uniform. How did Remeta get that idea? Her eyes followed
Remeta’s and rested on the gold bracelet Sally had forced on her wrist before they
came out of the palace. The gold bracelet that she had from her time as a princess, but
she stopped wearing it after they enslaved her so she wouldn’t get punished. Sally had
forced it on her wrist to ‘make her more beautiful’ before they started this errand.
Now Danika raised her wrist, staring at the bracelet. She was tongue-tied.