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 themarid, 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.
Dear Barbara,
Our blessings continue to grow. Willem has been awarded a fullscholarship to Colorado State to study cryptobiology. This Saturday, he willgraduate as valedictorian of his high school class. We hope you’ll be able tomake it to the ceremony. It’s been a while since we’ve seen you, and we wouldlove to surround him with as much family as possible on this joyousoccasion...
—from a 1992 letter by Judith Vandekampto her estranged sister
Delilah
I spent most of the next two days in front of one of the tall, narrow windows, staring out at fresh air I hadn’t had a whiff of since my trip to Vandekamp’s office on my first full day at the Spectacle.
Since we’d arrived, most of my friends had been assigned chore duties and several had been requested for engagements, but Rommily and I had remained stuck in the dorm. I recognized the brutal boredom and frustration from my weeks in a menagerie cage, but my captivity at the Spectacle came with all new problems.
I couldn’t study many of the security procedures from the confines of the dormitory. Beyond that, an odd kind of survivor’s guilt had turned every moment of my friends’ mysterious engagements into a new kind of torture for me.
Each time one of them came back in the middle of the night, covered in bruises, cuts or bite marks, I felt as guilty for being spared the same abuse as I was frustrated by my inability to help them.
When lunch came on my third day at the Spectacle, Lala brought over a tray for each of us and sat next to me by the window. The food was healthy but bland—a boiled egg, a slice of tasteless white bread, a handful of raw broccoli and half a boiled sweet potato—and I ate though I had no appetite, because I knew better than to let my body weaken along with my spirits.
I’d forced down most of my sweet potato, a tasteless trove of vitamins A and C, when motion from outside caught my eye. I looked up to see a windowless delivery truck emerging from the woods at the back of the compound on the very narrow gravel road our cattle cars had probably traveled. The truck bore the Spectacle’s logo on the side, but had no other distinguishing characteristics.
The driver backed toward the dormitory, then he and another handler got out of the cab and headed for the rear of the truck. They were joined by Woodrow, who held a tranquilizer rifle, and Bowman, who used a key to unlock and unchain the cargo doors. With the other three handlers armed and ready, he opened the back of the truck and stepped to the side, as if he expected something within to explode all over him.
“What’s going on?” Lala peered through the glass over my shoulder, and I realized that our fellow captives had gathered around the other narrow windows.
“I think we’re getting new company.”
