Page 36 of Freeing Hook

I get the feeling I said something wrong. Now I’m the one with heat creeping up my neck.

Not knowing how to repair it, I toss the jerky through the bars of the cage. “I’m sorry to be impolite,” I say as Tink’s eyes trace the jerky bits plopping to the floor. “I just figure if I put my hand through the bars, I’m not likely to bring it back again.”

She nods to my missing pinkie as if to reinforce my point.

“Exactly,” I say, cleaning my throat. “I’m not keen on losing any more of my phalanges.”

Tink crinkles her nose as if the way I speak has an odor to it. Again, my neck flushes.Fingerswould have done just fine.

She wastes no time in snapping the rope restraints I secured around her wrists last night. Good thing this cage is made of stone, though it still brings gooseflesh to my arms to consider how this cage might have been formed.

When she picks up the jerky, she sniffs it. Fair, since I poisoned her last meal. I watch her turn it over in her hand, contemplating. There’s a stubbornness in the set of her jaw. She doesn’t have to speak to tell me she doesn’t want to eat the food I offer her. It’s written all over the pride in her stance, her eyes.

But her throat bobs in shallow waves as she swallows. Probably clearing the saliva pooling in her mouth at the scent of meat.

When I was a child, I read a book once about the relationship between the body and the brain. The author, a scientist, posited that most of the time, the body allows the mind free rein. But even this is only an illusion. Because as soon as the body deems the mind no longer capable of making decisions in its best interest, the body takes back the reins.

The author listed examples such as shipwrecked sailors eating their friends once starvation set in. The way, if you hold your breath too long, your body will make you pass out, then reinstate breathing.

When this phenomenon had been simply text on a printed page, I’d eaten it up, soaked it in. Wished for nothing more than to study such cases myself. But when Tink’s resolve not to eat the food offered by her captor breaks, it’s nothing like reading from a textbook.

The textbooks never mentioned the self-loathing in a person’s eyes when they lose control of their body. Never mentioned how broken a person could look. When she consumes the jerky, she does it with such violence, one would think she was punishing herself.

I have to glance away and remind myself I didn’t cause her hunger.

But I did cause the red stripes across her thighs, already healing because of the magic in her blood. That doesn’t stop the faint red lines from pricking me in the side, drawing blood of their own.

For Wendy. I did it for Wendy.

Somehow that doesn’t seem enough.

Through the bars, I pass the flatbread I brought for myself. She quickly snatches it up, like she’s worried I’ll take it back.

When she’s done, I clear my throat. Her ears flick, so I know she heard me, but other than that she ignores me.

That’s fair. “I’m sorry about before. I didn’t realize that you couldn’t answer me.”

Tink’s spine goes rigid. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say too, though I can’t imagine why. It’s only the truth.

“I brought these,” I say, pulling out the writing utensils. “Are you literate? I mean, can you read and write?”

The look Tink flashes insults with more precision than words ever could.

“Right, I’m sorry,” I say, keenly aware of how much apologizing I’m doing. Carefully, I push the journal through the bars, followed by the quill and ink.

For a moment, I think she’ll refuse to touch them. But then she crumples up the leaf I wrapped the bread in and tosses it at my face.

I don’t manage to catch it before it smacks me in the glasses.

Tink yawns, picks the journal and quill up, dips the quill in ink, and begins writing. My heart races in my chest, the adrenaline of an idea, simple as it is, fueling my body, making my limbs quake.

I feel as if I’m on the edge of discovery, my excitement for learning battling with the possibility that the information Tink holds about Wendy’s fate might pick me apart from the inside, leaving me empty. Remind me of the failure I truly am. Incompetent to accomplish my one purpose—protecting my sister.

When she’s done, Tink blows on the sheet to make the ink dry faster. I have to blink to make myself stop fixating on her full mouth before she notices. Then she snaps the journal closed with one hand and offers it to me through the bars. I take it, flipping it open to the first page, chest brimming withanticipation. As soon as I glimpse the contents of the page, my excitement pops like a balloon at the carnival.

Tink can write, that’s for sure. But not in any language I recognize. The characters are neat and precise, but they’re not any alphabet I’m familiar with.

“But you can understand me, can’t you?” I say.

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