The Chateau (Chateau 1)

He shook his head. “Simple behaviors earn simple rewards. If that’s something you really want, it’s going to take a lot more than obedience.”

“Then what’s it going to take?”

He wasn’t wearing gloves like he did during the day, so his large hands were visible, covered in veins, the skin slightly cracked because the winter air dried out his skin. He rubbed his thumb into his palm. “Build up to it. Start small.”

I didn’t want to start small. “The only thing I want is my sister. I don’t care about a book or music.”

His hood shifted up slightly, like he’d stopped looking at his hands. “I know what you’re doing. I strongly advise that you don’t.”

“I just want—”

“You can’t escape. You’re going to get yourself killed. Your sister too. I know your life doesn’t mean much to you, but can you live after seeing your sister hang, her dripping blood turning the snow red?”

The image came into my mind and immediately made me sick.

“You can make a life here. It’s not the life you wanted, but you can appreciate the little things that bring you some joy. You work all day, just like normal people, and then you go home to a warm bed with books by your bed and crumbs in your sheets from the items that you earned.”

This brainwashing attempt no doubt worked on other people, but it wouldn’t work on me. They poisoned minds into accepting their conditions, into accepting the loss of freedom, to make them believe they should strive for approval, to work harder to earn the life that shouldn’t be dictated by someone else in the first place. “This bullshit might work on the others, but it won’t work on me. I know I deserve freedom, I know I deserve more, and these late-night talks and veiled kindness won’t change what I know in my heart to be true. Years could pass, and it wouldn’t change anything. But I don’t expect to be here that long…so it doesn’t matter.”

He was still as he stared, his reaction impossible to decipher without a face. He could have threatened me into submission, come to the bed and made my face bloody because of my outburst, but there was no retribution.

Maybe it was just a ruse to make me feel comfortable with him, or maybe he really had no ill will toward me. Maybe he was different from the others. Or maybe he wasn’t. “I have to protect my sister…and I will.”

6

Red Snow

He came for me the following morning, but he didn’t rush me to get dressed. He let the door creak wide open so the light could reach up the floorboards into the small cabin, but he stayed outside, waiting for me on the porch.

I pulled up on my boots and jacket and walked out.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking in the direction of the clearing, two wisps of smoke coming from his hood.

I walked with him.

He was slightly in front of me, never walking directly beside me, like he needed to lead me in the right direction, when I’d taken this walk enough times to know the way. “Today is the Red Snow.”

I stopped in my tracks, my foot stopping in a puddle of melting snow. It’d been sunny for the past week, so the warmth of the rays had eaten away at the piles of powder. I suspected more snow was on the way, that it would pile high with the next storm.

He must have realized I’d stopped walking because he turned around to look at me. “It’s not you.”

I’d been on my best behavior since I’d been punched in the face, because I had bigger objectives than getting beaten. The meals were good and the lack of confrontation comforting. I worked hard because I wanted them to forget about my existence altogether. Bethany and I had short conversations at lunch, and I learned as much information as possible about this horrific reality. “You know who it is?”

He nodded.

It didn’t matter who the victim was, whether she was a snitch, whether she would stab me in the back at the first opportunity; she was a person who deserved to be outside this camp. The knowledge made me breathe so hard that my lungs burned with the cold and my eyes watered, only to dry out instantly because the air took the moist film away. “How can you live with yourself?”

“I have nothing to do with it.”

I marched toward him. “But you can stop it.”

“I can’t stop anything, even if I wanted to. It was necessary, because without an incentive to work, no one did their jobs well. Now, they all work like their lives depend on it—which is what we want.”

My temper flared, and without thinking, I shoved him hard in the chest.

He took a step back, anticipating my attack, and he grabbed me by both wrists and stopped the momentum, pushing me back slightly over a puddle in the dirt. His hands squeezed me tightly, digging through the material of the jacket and right into my flesh.