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This day began like all the others: the grate of the bolt on the cell door, followed by the sound of metal bowls sliding across the stone floor. The food held no interest. Others would eat it.
She closed her eyes and returned to the wasteland of her mind. Little snippets of images and sound floated by, erratic clouds pushed by a light wind. A man’s face. He kept saying a word she couldn’t understand. Another face, warm and smiling. The smell of sheep. Something blue with legs.
Her head still throbbed, though the place near her temple was less sore now. She’d hoped that as the pain dulled, answers would come rushing back, that she would know who she was, what she was doing here. Wishful thinking. Asking her cellmates did little. One of them didn’t know her name. The other demanded her boots in payment for any answer.
She’d never been brave enough to ask any of the attendants. Most of them frightened her. If she admitted to them she didn’t know who she was, they’d never set her free.
If she could just remember her name. That would be a beginning. Once she knew her name, she could start to find the other missing pieces. There were so many of them.
What she’d discovered so far was of little comfort. The solid stone walls around her belonged to a mental asylum called Bedlam. Tormented shrieks rent the air at all hours. All mad people here, one of her cellmates had told her.
“Little miss?” a voice called.
She opened her eyes. One of the attendants, the nice older one, stood inside the door, his hands full of empty bowls.
“Did ya eat?”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “Ya got someone to see ya, missy.”
A woman entered the cell, then halted in front of her. The visitor knelt and peeled back the light veil she was wearing. Her eyes were hazel, and her hair brown, with some gray at the temples.