A movement a few yards to the right caught her eye and the apparition of her family faded away. There was a girl standing on her own platform and staring over at her, one of the Asian women. She had just come out of her own tree. Strange. For some seconds they just looked at each other. The girl's face showed confusion and panic and she was trembling all over. Did she herself look just as panicked and shaky as the girl? She wondered to herself. Then one of the dragons stepped up behind the girl, the brown-haired guy who had tried to remove Hirion's hand from her neck. The girl winced violently when he grazed her arm with his fingers.
When her face became dark and angry, Rachel recognized her: it was one of the girls who'd killed her own parents. She then watched impassively as the dragon boy, still smiling, wrapped an arm around her middle and kissed her on the neck.
Well, he sure was going for it! Yuck!
She turned quickly and went to the stairs. She felt no need to watch her neighbor having sex with a dragon, even if the girl hadn't looked particularly enthusiastic at the idea of being nailed by the guy and might need some assistance.
God—she paused on the stairs and took a deep breath. Her vocabulary had been better before, too, Rahel thought, a little horrified at herself. She leaned into the stairs, sinking down against the sanded, super-smooth inner wall of tree bark. She took several deep breaths and tried again to slow her racing heart, breathing deeply and evenly into the onset of panic. Involuntarily she imagined a place where nothing bad ever happened to her—with the exception of one particular night.
Her old playroom, at home, the home that was now ashes.
She saw her mother, coming in smiling with the ironing and then scolding her for the mess. Then her father, in the living room, stretched out on the couch with the paper and his regular evening snack of three rolls, halved and smeared with liverwurst.
"Can you get me a beer, dear?" he asked with a smile.
There on the stairs, she just nodded silently; yes, she would get him anything he wanted, if only he stayed—if only they all stayed.
She wasn't even aware that she was going down the staircase in the massive tree—it was as though she were on the old stairs in her actual home that led down to the basement. Tears obscured her eyes, but she couldn't cry. Still couldn't, although God knows it had been long enough since she last cried.
And with that thought she startled back to reality and found herself several steps lower. She took a deep breath, sat down on the step and blinked hastily before she made another concerted effort to calm down again. She breathed.
Why did she keep drifting back there? The psychologist who had seen her the first month after her parents' death had said it wasn't good for her to keep wishing this old world back into reality. She risked completely forgetting the here and now and sliding into a kind of trauma-induced schizophrenia.
But if she looked at it closely, the madness of having visions wasn't all that bad. After all, it was the reality that was ultimately more frightening, her future prospects lousy, as a convicted felon and tribute to the Dragon Islands. Taking refuge in the past now and then to see your family wasn't that bad, was it?
God, what she wouldn't give to have them all with her for just one more day. How happy she had been back then, without ever having appreciated it. Everything that came after had been pure hell.
"Mom..." she just whispered softly and shuddered with dry sobs, emotion she still didn't allow out all the way. After all, the guy had warned them about him, about Hiro—no—Hirion was the name of the Leader of the dragon clan; he was Hiro to his friends and she certainly didn't intend to count herself among them in the near future. Oh no, but wait—they were watching her! Watching everything she did, when she cried, if she tried to harm herself—and if she did, he would come back and tie her to the bed and then...
Oh God.
She hastily rubbed her cheeks so as to clear the scenarios that were now involuntarily playing out in her head. She didn't want to be raped and impregnated... not maimed and brutally abused and tied up, helpless.
It was fitting that she got the most brutal of the beasts. Obviously! Oh, why had she let herself be distracted by the huge brutes with their prize-fighter faces? If she'd been paying attention, maybe she could have avoided a fate with Hirion.
And why did Hirion go around saying that the German authorities had spread horror-story lies to all the girls? It was only the truth, right? They were going to keep them in order to, ultimately, produce offspring with them, that was that. But... today, at least, he was going to leave her alone. He'd said he had to go somewhere. So today was a grace period.
Her stomach growled anew, loudly, unmistakably. She stood up and continued down the stairs, arriving at the bedroom. Oh, wow.
An extremely broad, long, box-spring bed stood between two pillars carved from the interior of the tree. Hanging from them was a snow-white canopy of silk and great billowing loops of tulle—probably just a mosquito net for nighttime, she thought to herself, a little perplexed. She shook her head internally with a sigh. What on earth.
At the back of the room was a door. She went over and slid it open. There were actually clothes in there: shoes, boots, belts, softly gleaming pants and skirts of leather, lace, silk. There was also a large mirror that now reflected her own form, in all its sweaty, disheveled glory, her sheet-white face, the dark circles under her eyes—she truly looked like a zombie, she thought to herself and, without realizing it, began to comb her hair flat with her fingers. Her beautiful, long hair—her mother had loved it, had always brushed it out for her.
She divided her hair into three strands and braided a sleek plait that hung to her waist, but of course she'd forgotten her hairband at the airport back in Germany... in the bathroom...
She looked around for something to tie off the braid. On the bureau lay a few soft satin ribbons--what for, she shuddered to think. She took one, braided it into the ends of her hair, and knotted it at the finish.
Better, she thought, as she stared at herself in the mirror. She was still soaked through with sweat and looking exhausted, a lot like the junkie girl, she realized disconsolately. That's why he hadn't believed a word she'd said. Truly she hadn't even gotten to catch up on sleep after all those restless nights and harrowing days behind bars; not on the plane ride with the sedative that was offered. No, no peace for her. She had somehow to sleep—deeply, in dreams—to recover. She shook her head and turned away from her reflection. She left the bedroom, went down the stairs and found herself in front of an enormous bathroom all done up in white and cloud-gray marble, including the tub. Wow, but, what the hell? How had they gotten all this into the middle of a tree?