I had accompanied Sivo enough times that I didn’t need to feel my way in the dark as I descended. I didn’t need to skim my hands along the dank walls, where moss and bracken grew between the cracks. I knew where to place my feet. I knew the precise moment to duck at the low threshold. I knew where to squat in the circular room, where to clasp the latch that led into the antechamber and to another door—this one on the ground floor.
Closing the door to the antechamber behind me, I disrobed in the cold, inhaling the moist, moldy air. My fingers trembled slightly as I unlaced the ties at the front of my bodice and stripped off my gown, my uneven breath a whisper in the chill. Everything had to go, right down to the ribbons in my artfully plaited hair and the slippers on my feet. Perla insisted on the ribbons as though we were still at court, where things like coiffed hair held meaning. Instead of here, where there was only the passing of days. Existing and not living. Fresh resolution swept through me.
I hung my garments on the peg near the door, my bare skin puckering to gooseflesh. I donned the appropriate attire, always left in this room that smelled of bracken and earth. It was a precaution. Dwellers possessed an excellent sense of smell and we didn’t want the aromas of the tower—baked bread, crushed mint and leaves, and beeswax candle—that clung to our everyday clothes attracting them. My hands found my outdoor wear easily. I reached past Sivo’s bigger garments hanging on the peg next to mine. Thanks to Perla, mine were less worn than his, the doeskin jacket not as soft as Sivo’s. Tonight they would see some use.
My palms skimmed over the supple leather of my snug trousers. The fabric was ripe and well seasoned. Sivo had seen to that, rubbing and dragging the clothes through leaves and dirt until they smelled as pungent as loamy earth.
I plucked a satchel from where it hung on another peg and then picked my weapons from an array on the shelf. A knife for my boot. A sword and scabbard at my waist.
A distant, almost imperceptible sound pulled me up. Angling my head, I listened, picking out the noise. It wasn’t from within the tower. Sivo wasn’t awake. This sound floated from Outside. I heard it almost every day from my perch on the balcony. One of them was moving about. Perhaps more.
I stepped closer and touched a palm to the solid stone wall. Several inches thick, it was sturdy and reliable. It kept us in and them out. And yet Perla still worried. Always she worried.
I listened longer. I was good at listening. Waiting. Knowing when to move. Sivo said it was my gift. The thick, cloying dark made picking out sounds easier. Sounds and smells lingered, never seeming to dissipate.
After a few moments, I decided it was only one creature dragging its feet over leaves. Its tread was a steady staccato of shuffling thuds. I could count them one after another. A beat hovered between each footfall with no other overlapping of footsteps.
The dweller breathed in that way they did with deep saws of wet, fizzing breath passing through the feelers squirming at its mouth.
I waited for it to pass and move deeper into the forest. Satisfied that it was too far now to hear me when I emerged, I unbolted the door in the floor. There was only one visible entrance to the tower. The most obvious way in and out. We rarely used it in case anyone was ever watching the tower and waiting to see someone emerge. Another one of Sivo’s precautions.
Clutching the metal hoop in my fingers, I swung the door open, grateful for the silence of the well-oiled hinges. I descended into the tunnel, mindful of the slippery moss as I secured the door over my head, making certain it was shut firmly.
Lowering my hands, I turned, grinding the heels of my soft-soled boots into the slick stone floor. I hastened through the tunnel beneath the tower, slowing as I neared the end. Lifting my hands, I sought the dangling latch for the secret door above. Seizing it, I climbed up the few footholds in the rock wall, and waited in the dripping dark, listening for any nearby sound.
After several moments of silence, I unbolted and pushed open the door, sliding out into the night. I eased the hidden door, flush with the forest floor, shut and covered it back up with leaves and dirt.
Rising, I inhaled a freeing breath. Life buzzed all around me. No tower walls hemmed me in. A murder of crows squawked, tearing through the air with wildly flapping wings. Frogs croaked. A monkey scampered in a tree above, jumping from limb to limb, clicking its tongue down at me. Blood-swollen insects buzzed and chirped. One of them whizzed past me, its wiry legs brushing my shoulder. Perla thought they carried disease, but they never bit us. They were so fat and well fed from feeding off the dwellers. We were paltry temptations.
The wind rustled through branches and leaves, lifting the tiny hairs that framed my face. There was no time to savor it though. I needed to be back before Sivo and Perla woke.