Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,21

me from . . .” What? Life? The world? “. . . those who would do me ill.” Mama had told me that the man who had killed my mother had also tried to have me killed, but she had saved me. “Yet, someday, I must go out into the world, and I do not wish to be thought strange. I wish to be ordinary. I’m not mad, after all, like Bertha Rochester, who needed to be locked in an attic.”

I wasn’t mad, was I? What if I was and I only didn’t know it because of the level of my dementia? Did madwomen know they were mad? Or did they think they were sane, and it was the world that was off-kilter? What if everything, my tower, the trees, even the squirrels were all figments of my mad imaginings?

But if these were my imaginings, why would I not imagine something else, something better?

“Am I mad? Is that why you keep me here?” I twisted my neck to see her, for she had moved behind me.

“Of course not, darling Rachel.” She reached to stroke my cheek and, simultaneously, to move my face so that I was not looking at her. Yet I detected a strange expression on her face, an expression like panic. “It is not you who are mad but the world, Rachel.” She reached for my hairbrush. Even though she no longer had my special brush, she sometimes brushed my hair when she came, for old time’s sake. But this time, the brush caught on a knot. I clutched my head.

“Ouch! You’re hurting me!”

“I’m sorry, my dear Rachel, so sorry. I do not wish to harm you. I only . . . you must stay here a bit longer. Perhaps you do not trust me.”

“Oh, no, Mama. I do trust you.” Up until this minute, I had. But why was she becoming so agitated when all I wanted was a few answers to my questions. If she intended to release me, I would need to know.

“I only want what is best for you. I only . . .” She broke down, crying. “I can’t lose you, Rachel! I can’t. I have already lost so much.”

Her face looked so old and sad that I began to weep too. I wept so easily lately, wept reading books, even books I knew very well.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I don’t want to leave. I am happy here with my books and with . . . you. I just wondered . . .”

“What, Rachel?” Her face was stormy. “What is it you wonder?”

“It’s only that the books I have, I have read so many times. Not that Mr. Dickens and the Brontë sisters do not seem like old friends, but I thought, perhaps, there might be different books, newer books.”

It is not what I wanted. I wanted what I had said I wanted, to know what year it was. To know who I was. To know where I was and when I would be released. In many ways, I could see I was becoming a young lady, old enough to marry and have children perhaps. In other ways, though, I was a child, a child who knew nothing and had everything kept from me, and I was sick of it. But I was also trapped, trapped and at her mercy. I couldn’t have what I wanted, so I would have to settle for newer books until I found a way.

She paused in her brushing, and I heard her take a deep breath in, then out. “Oh, is that all? I can get you new books, all you want. How thoughtless of me not to realize that an intelligent young lady must have some occupation for her mind. What sort of books do you want?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what kind there were. “I want books . . . that show what it is like to be human,” I said, “because I am not sure I know. And if the author is alive, I would very much appreciate it.”

“Very well,” Mama said. “Should we have dinner now?”

I nodded. Our days were a routine pattern. She came to visit me in darkness. She brushed my hair. We ate dinner, played chess or cards. I sang to her and played the harp. I had taught myself to do both, and I practiced day and night, even if it was only to please her. She said my voice was beautiful. That used to be enough.

But then, I stopped