"It sounds nice."
"You take what you can get."
Sullha looked down at her own glass. The lemonade had a film of pulp at the bottom, and she swirled it absently before taking another sip.
"It's strange how the familiar feels safe even when it is not, and the unfamiliar feels dangerous even when it's the safer thing."
Her mother looked puzzled. "What is unfamiliar?"
"The world outside the enclosure, outside the island."
Her mother looked lost for words, which wasn't surprising. She usually didn't have much to say.
The wind moved through the laurels that grew along the wall, and in the distance a child shouted.
"There is no outside world for us, Sullha. We are here, and we are not leaving."
"What if you could?"
"We cannot."
"If you could, though, would you want to leave and see what's out there?"
Instead of answering, her mother looked at the yellow liquid while moving her thumb along the rim of the glass. She lifted her head, and her gaze drifted to the line where the courtyard met the perimeter wall.
"I would want to," her mother said.
The words were quiet enough that Sullha had to lean toward her to be sure she had heard them correctly.
"You would?"
"Don't look so surprised." She sighed. "Of course, I would like to see what's out there, but I know it will never happen and I don't indulge in fantasies. It just hurts too much."
Sullha hadn't expected this. She'd expected the dull deflection that her mother used as a shield, the small flat dismissals that had been her response to Sullha's every attempt at connection.
"What if I told you that there's a way?" Sullha said quietly.
Her mother looked at her. Really looked at her. It wasn't the vacant stare she was used to. She saw something behind her mother's eyes that she'd never seen there before. It wasn't hope exactly. It was more like the rekindling of a fire that had been almost all out, and then someone had stirred it with a stick and a small red glow appeared in the ash.
"How?" her mother asked.
"I am not sure yet. But if a door opened, would you walk through it?"
"There are no open doors."
"If there was?"
Her mother kept looking into her eyes, her mouth pressed into a thin line, as if expecting to find a better answer in there. Failing to find it, she looked down at her glass, then up at the sky, then back at Sullha, and the small glow in her eyes was still there, banked but not extinguished.
"I would rather die trying than die not trying." Her gaze lingered on Sullha's face for a moment longer, and then she looked away. "But that's just talk, Sullha. No woman has ever walked out of this enclosure alive. They take the dead ones somewhere else to bury them, and I am not even sure they bother to bury them properly. Sometimes I think they just throw the bodies into the ocean."
Sullha shuddered. It hadn't occurred to her before that the dead women didn't receive proper burial, that even in death they were disrespected and mistreated. She would have to ask Yaaf about that.
"There might be a way, Mother, and I'm not just saying that to hear myself talk."
Her mother looked at her again, the glow in her eyes brightening, and Sullha could see the slow recalculating that was happening behind them.
"You are nineteen," her mother said. "What do you know about doors that suddenly open?"
