Chapter 6: The Hall of the Walled
The antiseptic had come. The guard. A silent, hulking shadow. He’d tossed a brown bottle through the open cage door. It had rolled to her knee. The liquid inside was the color of rust. She’d poured it on the burn. It had fizzled. A white, angry froth. The pain was a sharp, bright cousin to the burn itself. She hadn’t screamed. She’d bitten her lip until she tasted copper.
Night was a long, aching blur. The island sounds. The throb in her thigh. The ghost-taste of rot in her teeth. She slept in fits, curled on the hard floor, the cage door still gaping. An unspoken test. She didn’t cross the threshold.
Dawn came gray and damp.
Footsteps again. Thornton. He wore crisp linen today. Light pants. A dark shirt. He looked refreshed. He looked at her like a stain on his perfect morning.
“Out,” he said.
She crawled. Her limbs were stiff, protesting. She emerged from the cage on her hands and knees onto the cool tarmac. She kept her head down.
“Stand.”
She got to her feet. Wobbled. The world tilted. She locked her knees.
He walked a circle around her. Slow. Appraising. “Filthy. You smell like a dockside whore. We’ll fix that later.” He stopped in front of her. “Today, you learn about permanence. About your betters. Follow.”
He turned and walked toward the main house, a low, modern monster of glass and steel carved into the cliffs. She followed, three paces back, as taught. The guard fell in behind her.
They didn’t enter the living areas. Thornton led her through a side gate, down a path of crushed shell that bit into her bare feet. To a separate, older structure. It looked like a forgotten chapel. Stone walls. A heavy, iron-banded door.
He produced a key. Turned it. The lock thudded open with a sound that echoed in her stomach.
The door swung inward.
Cool, still air washed over her. It smelled of dust. Of stone. Of something else. Something sweet and stale underneath. Like old flowers and damp earth.
“In,” he said.
She stepped over the threshold. Into dimness. The door closed behind them with a final, weighty sound. The guard remained outside.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust. The space was long, narrow. A hall. High, vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. Marble floor, veined gray and white. And walls… the walls were not plain.
They were lined with niches. From floor to ceiling, every few feet. Each one was fronted with a thick, seamless sheet of glass.
And in each niche, a person.
Her breath hitched. Stopped.
They were women. Emaciated. Skin stretched over bone like parchment. Hair long, matted. Eyes wide, unblinking. They stood, pressed against the glass, their bodies frail and pale in the low light from hidden sconces.
They were alive. She saw chests rise and fall in shallow, desperate flutters. Saw fingers, nails broken and ragged, slowly moving against the transparent barrier. Not pounding. Just… scratching. A soft, relentless skritch-skritch-skritch that filled the silent hall.
Each niche had small, discreet openings at the top. As she watched, a mechanism clicked. From a copper pipe above one cell, a slow, brown slurry began to drip. It rained down onto the occupant—a woman with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. The woman tilted her head back, mouth open. She caught the drops on her tongue. Swallowed with a painful-looking gulp. The slurry smelled, from here, like old porridge and something sour.
Another click. In a different cell, a clear tube dispensed a stream of liquid that was the wrong shade of yellow. The woman inside didn’t even look. It soaked her hair, her shoulders. She just kept scratching.
“The Hall of the Walled,” Thornton said. His voice was calm, a docent in a museum. He walked slowly down the center of the hall. “My collection. My failures. And my triumphs.”
Anne couldn’t move. Her feet were rooted to the marble. Her heart was a trapped bird beating against her ribs.
He stopped before a niche containing a young man. His ribs were like a washboard. A faded, scarred brand marked his shoulder—a symbol she didn’t recognize. His eyes tracked Thornton.
“This one,” Thornton said, tapping the glass. The man flinched. “Disobedient. Thought his will was his own. He’s been here… oh, five years now. He understands his will is mine. It’s all he has left to understand.”
He moved on. Anne followed, dragged by an invisible leash of horror.
“They are sustained. They are clean—the cells have waste reclamation systems. They are kept in a state of perfect, perpetual need. A lesson in dependency. In boundaries.”
He turned to look at her. His dark eyes glittered in the low light. “You see the walls? The only walls they will ever know. Their world is exactly this big.” He spread his hands, indicating the niche. “It is all the space their existence requires.”
He walked up to her, stood so close she could smell his soap, his cigar scent. It was clean. It was worse than the hall’s smell.
“You trembled yesterday,” he whispered. “You felt revulsion. You felt pain as something bad. These are luxuries. Feelings for people. For things with a future.”
He grabbed her chin, forced her to look down the long, terrible gallery. “This is a future. One of them. A future with no choices. No sun. No cage door left open. Just the glass. And the drip. And the scratch.”
He released her chin. He gestured to the far end of the hall. There, one niche was empty. Clean. The glass sparkled. The floor inside was dry. A single, unmarked space.
“That one is being prepared,” he said. His voice was casual, conversational. “It gets a fresh coat of sealant every year. To keep it ready.”
He looked from the empty niche to her. Held her gaze.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “your training begins in earnest. You will learn service. You will learn labor. You will learn to be useful. The degree to which you learn… will determine if you ever see this hall again as a visitor. Or as a resident.”
He turned and walked back toward the door. “Look at them,” he commanded, without turning around. “Look for five minutes. Then the guard will bring you to the wash house. You have the stink of fear on you. It’s vulgar.”
He left. The door opened and closed, leaving her alone in the whispering, scratching silence.
She looked. She couldn’t not look.
The woman with the slurry in her hair caught Anne’s eye. Her scratching fingers stopped. She pressed her whole palm against the glass. A silent, desperate greeting. Or a warning. Her mouth moved, forming a word. Over and over.
Please.
Anne stared. The burn on her thigh pulsed in time with the woman’s silent plea. The fish guts churned in her memory. The cigar’s hiss.
This was a wall. Not of stone. Of consequence.
She understood. Finally, truly understood. The cage had been an introduction. This was the syllabus.
The guard entered. Took her arm. His grip was tight. He led her out, back into the blinding, merciful sun.