The Crazy Woman

By the eighth day, I had finished one full tally mark on the wall and started another.

I made the marks with a splinter.

Five lines.

Then two more.

Seven days? Eight?

It was hard to be sure.

I counted everything.

Thirteen beams.

Forty-nine chain links.

Six hundred and twelve pieces of straw before I lost track.

The man—Garrick, I remembered the trader calling him—brought food twice a day. Always bread. Sometimes water. Never enough.

At first, I refused.

After the third beating, I stopped wasting strength on gestures no one would see.

I ate.

I drank.

I slept when my body shut down.

I planned.

The chain needed a key.

The door was locked from the outside.

The walls were old but thick.

No window.

No loose board wide enough for my shoulders.

I had no weapon except the splinter, and Garrick was twice my size.

So I waited.

Waiting was not surrender.

Waiting was sharpening myself.

On the ninth morning, Garrick came without food.

My body went cold.

He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

His hand moved into his coat.

I turned my face away, bile rising in my throat.

Then I heard metal.

Click.

The chain fell from my wrist.

I stared.

Garrick laughed.

“Good girl. You behaved better than expected.”

He grabbed my throat before I could move.

His fingers closed around my windpipe.

The room blurred.

“Don’t mistake this for freedom,” he said. “You can walk in the yard. That’s all.”

My nails scraped at his wrist.

“If you run, I kill you.”

He squeezed harder.

“Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I keep you alive and teach you what running costs.”

Black dots swam before my eyes.

Then he released me.

I collapsed, coughing.

“From today, you eat with the family,” he said. “You’ll meet my boy.”

My boy.

My future husband, according to the men who bought and sold me.

I followed Garrick outside.

The sunlight made me dizzy.

The house was larger than I expected but poor. Mud walls. Rough timber. A low roof patched with tin. The yard smelled of smoke, animal waste, and boiled grain.

A few steps from the shed stood a kitchen.

Inside, a table held white bread, salted meat, and greens.

Real food.

My mouth filled with saliva so fast it hurt.

Then something grabbed my pant leg.

I looked down and nearly screamed.

The crazy woman crouched at my feet, hair hanging over her face, eyes fixed on the table.

Garrick kicked her aside without even looking.

She rolled once, then crawled to the doorway.

“Food,” she whispered.

Garrick picked up the smallest piece of bread and threw it on the ground outside.

“There. Take it and get out.”

The woman pounced on it.

She retreated to the threshold and ate with both hands.

“See her?” Garrick said to me.

I said nothing.

“That’s what happens to women who don’t learn.”

Across from me sat his son.

Caleb.

He was large, maybe twenty, with a boy’s slack mouth and a man’s body. His eyes wandered around the room without settling.

He smiled when he saw me.

Not kindly.

More like a child seeing a toy.

Garrick slapped the back of his head.

“Eat.”

Caleb ate.

So did Garrick.

I waited until both of them had started before picking up chopsticks.

No.

Not chopsticks.

A bent metal fork.

My mind corrected itself uselessly.

I took only the greens closest to me.

They tasted like dirt.

They tasted better than anything I had eaten in days.

After the meal, Garrick pointed at the dishes.

“Wash.”

I stood immediately.

“Yes.”

The word tasted like ash, but I said it.

He smiled.

Maybe he thought he was breaking me.

Let him.

Broken things were less guarded.

“Crazy woman,” he shouted, “take her to the river.”

The woman flinched at his voice.

Then she stood, head low, and grabbed the empty bucket.

I followed her out.

For the first time, I saw other women.

At the river, they crouched along the bank washing clothes, carrying water, scrubbing pots.

None of them looked surprised to see me.

A few glanced at my face.

Then looked away.

No men were there.

Only women with dull eyes and hands cracked from work.

The crazy woman pointed to a clearer patch of water.

I washed the bowls quickly.

She filled two buckets and carried them with a shoulder pole.

Her body was thin, but she moved with the exhausted efficiency of someone who had done the same task thousands of times.

Back at the house, Garrick and Caleb left for the fields.

For the first time, I was allowed to move around the yard.

Not freely.

Never freely.

But enough.

I memorized the layout.

The chain room stood nearest the front gate.

Kitchen on the right.

Main room in the middle.

Two bedrooms behind it.

The yard wall was partly mud, partly brick.

Behind the bedrooms, strangely, there was a narrow passage—barely a meter wide—between the wall and the house.

I slipped into it when no one watched.

My heart hammered.

At the end of the passage was a back gate.

It was not properly locked.

Only loosely fastened.

My hands began to shake.

I lifted the latch.

Beyond the gate was not the road.

Not freedom.

But for one breath, it felt like heaven.

A slope rolled down from the house, covered in wildflowers.

Purple, yellow, white.

The mountain wind moved through them like water.

And in the middle of that impossible field, the crazy woman danced.

She was barefoot.

Her torn skirt spun around her knees.

Her arms rose and fell like wings.

For the first time, she did not look mad.

She looked like a ghost remembering she had once been alive.

I stood frozen.

Minutes passed.

Maybe more.

Then she stopped.

Slowly, she turned.

The sun was behind her, hiding her face.

But I felt her looking at me.

Really looking.

Not with the cloudy animal eyes from the kitchen.

With clear, human fear.

Then she ran.

She stumbled up the slope and vanished beyond the flowers.

I stayed there long after she disappeared.

I did not understand then.

That woman was not mad.

She was hiding.

And soon, she would be the reason I lived.