I am no longer bound. My arms lie free on soft linen that smells of nothing, not of sweat, not of meadow, not of lavender. It smells of nothing at all. The walls are white, too bright, and the light casts no shadow. It does not fall through windows, for there are none.
I blink. The room is furnished kindly enough. Two soft armchairs, like the ones in Marit’s living room. She calls them wing chairs, though hers is bright and colorful. These are white. Between them a small table, and on the walls hang cheerful little pictures, much like those in Marit’s house. It feels almost homely, were it not for the chill, which comes not from wind but from machines I cannot see. They stand to my right and left, humming, whispering with twitching lights, like unseen creatures.
Beside my bed, the head of which has been raised so I may sit upright, is a small table. A woman showed me how to draw it close or push it aside. Upon it rests a tray with a bowl of soup, a piece of soft bread, and a cup of tea.
I draw the table toward me and the present dissolves into images of the past. Matthes and I, after a night when we never let the fire die, the furs tangled. Alina, barefoot, shoving a jug of milk and a hunk of bread toward us on just such a table. She giggles, climbs into our bed, and the three of us eat together. The light falls through the small window, warm as honey. Or the sick man, to whom such a table would have spared the effort of rising to eat. I see it all before me, and yet here I sit, alone, in a world that is not mine.
Before me stands a woman in a pale-blue garment that reminds me of paper. Her eyes are steady, her silver-blond hair bound tight in a knot at the back of her head. Her voice is cool, yet not unkind.
“Good day, Sina. Do you understand what I am saying?”
I meet her gaze. “Yes. Where am I? Where are Marit and Katja?”
“The two women are not here. You are in a safe place.”
She sits across from me and makes a note on a small flat piece of black glass. I have seen such black glass before, in Marit’s house. One was very large. Marit pressed a button on a small black box, and suddenly, instead of the dark glass, great swallows appeared. They were loud, fearless, even when one reached for them. One could not touch them, as though the glass kept them safe. I know the smaller black glasses as well, from which voices speak though no one stands nearby. Once I called “Hello,” and Katja’s voice answered me.
I long to go back, to Marit and Katja’s house, where the wind smells of sea, where bread tastes of warmth, where voices come from open mouths of those who look at me.
“There is no need to be afraid,” the woman interrupts my thoughts, crossing her legs. “We only want to speak with you, and to make sure you are as comfortable as possible. How do you feel today?”
I raise my hand. “I must… mingere, this body calls for rest…” I falter. “I need a bowl.”
Confusion crosses her face. “You are unwell? You need a bowl to rest?”
“No. I must pass water.” I hold her gaze.
She sets aside the dark glass on which she was writing and rises. “I will show you the toilet.”
My eyes widen. “I will not sit upon that pit of hell.”
Her brow furrows. “It is only a toilet. Very clean. Nothing will happen to you.”
“That may be so. But I will not sit on such a hole. I have borne much in your world, but that I cannot.”
She hesitates, then presses a barely visible button in the wall. Soon another woman enters, dressed all in white, pushing a kind of chair on wheels with a pail beneath it. I take it without a word and go into the adjoining chamber.
With the bucket in my hand I return. “Where is the window?”
“There are no windows here. Fresh air comes through the climate system. And that…” She gestures toward the bucket, doing her best to hide her disgust. “…just leave it on the floor. Someone will take care of the sample.”
“Sample?” I set the bucket down and sit back on the bed. “What do you mean by sample?”
“We want to examine your water. To make sure you remain stable.”
I sink into this enchanted bed that rises and falls at a touch. I am tired. Even that short walk has drained me. “Are you a quack or a healer? Or both?”
Her smile is warm and empty at the same time. “Something like that. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dr. Ulla Vogel. I am a neurobiologist with a medical license. Responsible for neurocognitive integration research.”
A male voice spoke as if from nowhere: “She does not understand, Dr. Vogel. Please use simpler words.”
I flinch. My fingers clutch the bedding as though it could protect me. Hesitantly I make the sign of the cross over my chest. “Holy Mother Mary… in your world even the walls have voices?”
Laughter, men and women both, somewhere but unseen. Spirits. My eyes dart across the room. “I hear them. Yet I see no one. What kind of place is this? Are they the ghosts of the dead, or are you fools? Are you witches, jesters, or only children in disguise?”
Dr. Vogel steps closer. “Everything is all right. No one wishes to harm you. The others…” She points to a red blinking light in the corner. “…are only watching. Through a kind of mirror. Like a window one can look through.”
“A window without light.” I shake my head. “A gaze without eyes. That is against nature.”
I sink back into the pillow.
“We are scientists, researchers. People who search for new ways to heal disease, to prolong life.”
“Ah… then you are alchemists.” I let the word slip out softly, almost reverently. “In my time they were men with glass flasks and books of herbs. They said they searched for the gold within all things. ‘They push the borders,’ Brother Fidelis said. But this…” I glance around. “You are strange. But good.”
I sit up. Dr. Vogel pushes the small table nearer, and I lift the cup. “This is…” I sip again. “A brew that tastes like the shadow under an old tree. Bitter, but protecting.”
In the soup swim potatoes, carrots, tiny green points I do not know. I bite into the bread.
“I see you feel a little better. Your vital functions are stable for the moment.”
I do not understand every word. “What have you given me?”
“Something you may remember.” She points to the cup. “Milk thistle.”
“We called it Mary’s leaf. I gave it to mothers after childbirth. And to those who carried too much bile.”
“We would like to ask you some questions. Only if you are willing.”
I take another spoonful of soup.
“Sina… you were executed in 1489, correct?”
It grows quiet within me. “I suppose so. Yet here I am. How can I have been executed?”
The alchemist clears her throat. “Well, to explain that to you… I do not think it will work. You were executed. That is documented. Between your execution and this day more than five hundred years have passed.”
I stare at her. The words float, refusing to take shape. “Does that mean… that countless winters have gone by?”
“You might say that,” she answers after a pause. Her eyes hold mine, as though she means to draw something ancient, something hidden, out of me. “We are not only interested in what happened before,” she says softly, with an undertone that cuts beneath my skin. “We want to know… what was the time between? What lies between your last breath… and this moment? Is there life after death?”
I close my eyes. Deep within, a whisper stirs, like a memory trying to rise but blocked by a veil. “I do not know. There was something, I can feel that. But I cannot say what.”
“Or perhaps there is nothing at all,” murmurs another voice from the wall.
“All is done by God’s will,” I answer.
“So you do not remember?”
“You may ask as much as you please. But I do not know. Whatever lies beyond death… does not belong to this world.”
“You wish for your old world back?”
My smile is faint, like a memory. “I wish to walk barefoot on warm straw. To hear my daughter laugh. To plunge my hands into bread dough. To hear the crackle of the wood oven. But all of that is gone.”
“What we wish,” she says, “is that you tell us what you believe yourself to be.”
I lift my head. “I am a human being. I love. I grieve. I remember. I fear pain and pray in sleep. I am nothing special. And you, young voice in the wall, who or what are you?”
I take another sip of tea, then rise and step before the wall. “I know more of life than you with all your black panes and glowing tablets. You ask me of death, but have you ever lived?”
“You surprise me, Sina,” I hear Dr. Vogel behind me. Her voice still controlled, yet beneath it I sense something new, the faint pull of true respect that warms her for a single moment.
I glance upward. “Your world smells… wrong. Mine smelled of earth. And blood. And sometimes jasmine. It was not always beautiful. But it was real.”
“Do you feel strong enough to come with me? Or would you rather rest?”
I meet her gaze. What if this is the way back to Marit? Perhaps they will lead me to her, or out of this white cage. “I will come,” I say. My voice sounds more resolute than I feel.
I follow her through a narrow passage, past doors without names. At the end a red door. She places her hand upon a panel, and the door opens without a sound.
The chill strikes me at once. And yet it is as though I step onto ground I once knew. Dust. Stone. Memory. Rough-hewn walls. Chests, sacks, wooden crates.
“Here we walk through centuries,” Dr. Vogel whispers. “Much has already been destroyed. But this… this may mean something to you.”
Her words drift past me until I see what she lifts from a lone chest upon the table.
She holds out a linen dress embroidered with flowers. Alina’s dress. And Matthes’ trousers. And last, my own skirt.
I clutch the fabric, press it against my chest, breathe it in. Summer grass. Laughter. Loss. A tear between worlds.
And then the single thought, my last anchor, the one that keeps me from losing my mind:
They are still here.