Delilah
The day passed in a blur of sleeping mats, food trays and community showers. In the morning, handlers came in to select several ladies to perform chores. In the afternoon, more handlers showed up to escort those who’d been requested for “engagements,” including Simra, two of the long-term resident shifters and Finola, the younger of our beloved sirens.
They missed dinner, then lights-out, and while I waited for them to return, I could only stare up at the ceiling, listening to the soft breathing all around me, trying not to imagine what Finola’s “engagement” might be like.
Finally, hours after lights-out, the dormitory door opened and three slight female silhouettes plodded inside, each carrying a familiar bundle of folded clothing. They headed straight for the bathroom, and when the automatic light came on, I saw that their skin seemed to sparkle.
Finola was shaking all over.
I stood and picked my way through the maze of sleeping mats into the bathroom, where I froze in revulsion.
All three ladies were covered from head to toe in glittery gold body paint and little else. It took several seconds of horrified staring for me to distinguish the straps of a skimpy bikini disguised by the paint on Finola’s back, but the smeared handprints all over her were more than obvious. And they came in several different sizes.
The moment Finola saw me in the mirror, she burst into tears, and for the first time in my life, I had no idea how to help. I couldn’t ask her what had happened, because I couldn’t speak. I tried to hug her, but she dodged my touch and gestured at the messy body paint.
“Just take a shower and go to sleep,” Simra whispered to her, which was when I realized they hadn’t been muted yet. “That’s all you can do.”
Finola moved toward the open bank of showers, where Simra and the shifter were peeling off their sticky bikinis and stuffing them into the laundry chute on one wall. While they stood beneath the flow of water and began scrubbing at the body paint and pulling hairpins from their elaborate, curly updos, Finola tried in vain to untie the straps of her bikini top while tears left faint trails down her sparkly gold cheeks.
I gently brushed her trembling fingers away from the knot. She dropped her arms and swiped at her face with both palms. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Tears blurred my vision as I worked at the tacky gold straps. I couldn’t ask what had happened. I couldn’t ask if she was okay. I couldn’t reassure her that it was all over now, and that she could still get several hours’ sleep before dawn. I couldn’t even get her some water from the fountain or one of the sinks, because I didn’t have anything to put it in.
When I finally got the strap untied, Finola shrugged out of her top and shed the bikini bottom, then joined the other half-clean women in the shower, as they pumped handful after handful of soap and shampoo onto their palms from the dispensers bolted to the shower walls.
They needed loofahs or washcloths, but we were given neither.
While Finola showered, I searched for something with which to write, since I had no access to my voice. Soap from the dispenser provided little contrast on the floor, and hand sanitizer was utterly useless. But as I scanned our tiled environment, I noticed the strap of a bikini top caught on the edge of the laundry chute. I seized the material, but most of the paint coating it was more sticky than wet, so I had to dampen it under the faucet in one of the bathroom sinks.
By the time Finola came out of the shower, I’d written two questions in paint on the floor for her to see.
Are you okay?
What happened?
Simra’s eyes widened when she saw the writing on the floor. “Huh. I never thought to try that. But she’s not allowed to tell you what happened.”
More frustrated than surprised by that revelation, I groaned, yet no sound came out.
Wait... If I could get around my collar’s restrictions by writing, why couldn’t she?
I held the damp bikini up to Finola and mimed writing with my index finger. But fresh tears welled in the siren’s bright green eyes. “Delilah, I can’t read.”
Which meant she couldn’t write either, and that was true for the vast majority of the menagerie’s captives. It was probably also true among the Spectacle’s prisoners. Except for Simra, who’d grown up in freedom south of the border.
I held the bikini out to the marid, silently asking for her help, but she only frowned. “I don’t know what happened to her. I wasn’t with her tonight. But she’ll be fine.” Simra glanced at Finola with a look that was part sympathy and part demand for the siren to buck up. “There’s no other choice.”
Finola insisted that she was okay and confirmed that her collar wouldn’t allow her to talk about her engagement, then she helped me wash the gold paint off the floor with trembling hands.
Only after I’d tucked her into bed with both her blanket and my own draped over her to help her stop shivering, did I realize that there was a deeper significance to our inability to communicate—one that Rommily would have understood well. With our collars preventing me from speech entirely and her from revealing the details of her engagement, Finola had no outlet. She was alone with the trauma, cut off from her friends and honorary family by a brutal wall of silence.
And she would be, as long as she wore that collar.
Vandekamp’s information embargo was far crueler to those who lacked basic education, however, the writing work-around gave me hope. I’d found a weak link in his electronic chain, and it couldn’t be the only one.
The rest of my night was mostly sleepless, as my thoughts raced with the possibilities. What else had Vandekamp missed? How else had he underestimated us? How big of a blind spot had pride in his own technology given him?
When the sun came up hours later, I finally noticed an empty sleep mat and realized that only one of the two shifters who’d left with Finola and Simra had made it back to the dormitory.