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She comes toward me, and without any change in the emotion displayed on her face, she grabs my hand and pulls me outside. The moment my feet meet the grass again, I take a deep breath, soaking in the oxygen, the freedom.
The door of the cell I was in closes behind me. Two menacing guards standing beside it, almost as if to warn me not to try anything or they will throw me back in there. I gulp, and the woman lets go of my hand.
“Hello, dear. My name is Gertrude. Follow me,” she says.
I don’t know why I do what she says, but I do it anyway.
Is it the need to know what’s ahead? Or the fear of what will happen if I don’t comply?
I’m not sure. My emotions are a jumbled mess right now, and not even I can get through this tangled web of feelings bogged up inside my heart.
My mind is too occupied right now to even remotely consider the implications of me complacently walking along with her. It’s the first time since I came here that I’ve had a good look around. There are wooden houses everywhere; some so small they could fit maybe three people max and others so large they could house up to ten people. There are pebble stone paths throughout the grounds to connect each house to one another, with a few larger concrete buildings in between.
Around the houses, children play happily with dolls and wooden cars, and other home-made toys. Some men chop wood in sync or herd a bunch of sheep along the road while others converse around an open fire while having a drink. Women are tending to young babies hanging at their breasts while they fold laundry, others are sweeping the pebble path, or are washing up clothes, filling kegs with water, and there’s even one cooking a pot over an open fire in the outdoors.
None of them seems aware of my presence, of me watching their every move. It’s as if they’re blissfully unaware of the difference in their lives and my perception of it.
Because it’s as if I’ve been transported back in time about three hundred years or more.
Everywhere I look are old instruments, such as washing bins with the metal to scrub the clothes, bars of soap instead of chemicals, no electrical sockets or wires anywhere, or any modern clothes on any of the women and children. In fact, I can’t find a single modern-day device. No phone, no tablet, no laptop. Nothing.
Do these people live in the Middle Ages?
“Come,” Gertrude says.
I stare at her with my mouth opened, momentarily frozen to the ground, shook by everything I see around me. She taps my arm, pulling me out of the haze.
“I won’t say it again,” she says.
I nod and follow her toward one of the larger huts in the middle of the grounds.
Is this going to be my next prison?
As we walk closer, people around us are starting to notice me. They stop doing their work and stare with narrowed eyes and furled brows as though I’m a stranger invading their land.
I wrap my arms around my waist while following Gertrude, but they still look at me as if I smell bad or like I’m less than.
I don’t like this feeling even though, in my mind, I know it shouldn’t bother me.
None of this should … except me being here.
I should run.
I should fight.
But they’d stop me if I tried. I can tell from their bold gazes and the way they clutch their tools. They mean business, and I’d better not try to disturb the status quo … whatever it is.
What in the world did I get caught up in?
Who are these people, and what do they want with me?
A part of me wants to scream and shout, to tell them to back off and ask what is wrong with them. Why they dared to take me as a prisoner. But another part of me knows that if I do this, I will be punished. And I don’t want to be in that cell anymore, in that darkness, naked, with nothing to do or see.
No matter how evil it is … I prefer this over what I had.
No one could convince me to give in, to submit … but that man could. With a single touch, he managed to persuade me to put on the clothes that I’d been resisting since my arrival. They formed the link between my prison and the outside world, freedom.
And now I’m wearing them … and they cling to my skin like a chain wrapped around my body. It’s only a different kind of prison after all.
“In here,” Gertrude says, glancing at me over her shoulder before opening the door to the hut. She points inside and waits beside the door. I swallow away the lump in my throat and step forward.
