The world tastes and smells poisonous. My tongue feels heavy, coated, my head aches, and I struggle to make sense of it all.
I still hear my mother’s voice, soft as moss in the shade of the old elms. Smell the world, child, she often said as she cut herbs at the edge of the forest with her sickle. The spirits of nature are sent by God. They show you what heals and what destroys. Do not trust your eyes alone. Use your heart. And your nose. They do not lie.
But this world and its scents I do not know, or only barely. Even the captured winter smells different here.
“That is a refrigerator, not a winter world, Sina. And it is made of metal.”
There is so much in Marit’s house. The chambers are called rooms: a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom with a bed soft as heaven itself. All of it new, foreign, yet touched with something faintly familiar. I am no longer afraid. I still do not fully understand what happens around me, but I know now that this place is unlike anything I have ever known. Here they use metal instead of iron, and that much I have grasped.
I even dared to climb into Marit’s blue carriage. I saw the world through glass all around me. Strange knots and buttons in front of me, black and metallic, and a wheel that Marit turned. She strapped a belt across me, bindings are not strange to me, but when the carriage began to vibrate and roar, when the world rushed past so fast, I had to close my eyes. My stomach rebelled. With my eyes closed, I could think more easily of what I love most in this world: my little family.
There was that day, years ago, with Matthes and Alina. The room glowed with the light of evening. Freshly cut rushes lay beneath our feet, green and cool, carrying the scent of the earth right into our home. From the iron pot above the fire rose the smell of cabbage, beans, and a trace of caraway. Brother Fidelis stepped through the door. “Hmm. God’s ways have led me straight to you. The fragrance reaches even through the rafters, up into heaven’s own hall.”
We invited him to share our meal. He loved being with us. To Alina he was like a grandfather, a teacher, a friend. The sea had taken both her grandfathers far too early.
That night Matthes sat on the bench, his long legs heavy from the day’s labor, but his eyes gentle, smiling. He set a plate and a cup before the monk as he tried to explain the stars to Alina. He and Fidelis could have rivaled any wandering minstrel. With their wooden spoons they drew little wagons and belts of hunters in the air.
Alina, her front teeth missing at the time, laughed so hard she could scarcely breathe. She pushed a strand of wheat-blond hair from her face and repeated every strange word they taught her, as if learning a spell.
“When you grow up, you will find your own star,” Matthes said, kissing her cheeks. Fidelis lifted her into his arms. “And you will find it by seeking the North Star first,” he told her.
It was one of the few moments in my life as sweet as honey: the scent of cabbage, the golden flicker of the pine-splint lamp, the whisper of rushes like the distant sea.
Now I am here, in a room where the light shimmers opal green, like a piece of heaven caught and trapped.
“The doctor is a good friend of mine, child. Do not worry. He is a cosmetic surgeon, usually takes only private patients. But he is curious about you, Sina.”
I sit on soft leather. Here, it seems, everyone must be rich. Its shape reminds me of an altar, except it is not stone, and the chamber hums with a strange sound.
“This is a modern examination table,” Marit explains. “It moves up and down. Women come here to have their bodies made smooth again. And the humming is from the air conditioning.”
I try to understand why women would want to smooth their bodies. I know women whose backsides bear welts from their husbands’ belts, yet all of them were firm, strong. The leather beneath my fingers feels soft, almost comforting.
This is no rack, I tell myself. This is a healer’s house. Still, my heart beats like a war drum.
I look down at myself. A short white garment, soft, trimmed with flowers and cut sleeves. It feels pleasant, smells of lavender and something I do not know. Then the blue trousers—Marit called them “my daughter’s jeans.” At first they felt confining, but now they are comfortable. Here women wear trousers, it seems. Only the clumsy white shoes she gave me, strapped like instruments of torture, I refuse to wear. Barefoot is better.
Kind Marit stands at my side, a gift from God against my being lost. Her voice is soothing, though it reaches me as if through water.
A man in white, this doctor, pushes a strand of hair from his forehead as he studies me. His eyes are kind, but the cold metal needle he presses into the crook of my arm reminds me of the iron clasps in the dungeon.
“Only a few drops of blood,” Marit whispers. “They need a sample, so we know who you are.”
The vial fills ruby red. I look away. Too much blood has been spilled in my life already. Not only mine, Alina’s too.
The image rises without warning, like a shadow sliding across the sun. A swarm of gnats dances in the golden dust of evening, as if trying to pierce the silence. Summer dust drifts in the air, and beneath it something heavier, darker. A dress the color of the sky. A hand so cold my heart seems to stop. Voices pressing in on me like a crown of thorns, voices I know, yet sharper, harsher than ever before. Eyes that cut through me. Words hurled like stones. A chill at my back, and somewhere close, far too close, a face of stone. I cannot go further back. Not there.
A sob breaks loose in my throat. The present floods back. White light. A sharp smell, like lye from ash and lime, mixed with the faint tang of sea buckthorn and dried daisies, and the steady hum of the healer’s room.
The doctor examines me. He murmurs something to Marit. Still, I understand him: “Judging by the skin tone, cirrhosis of the liver. A slight ascites would match as well.”
I do not grasp all of it. But unlike the healers I once knew, this one seems to understand what he is saying. Something is wrong with me.