Wonderment

The rough-hewn field stones that composed the tower wall almost started to feel soft every time she leaned against them. The effort of holding herself up was becoming so tiresome that it was preferable to lie on the dirt and straw floor than keep standing.

Lorna quickly piled up the straw floor covering, gingerly placed her outer garment over it, and started laying on the thin makeshift mat to ease the ill-placed rocks from digging into her skin. At least this was using far less energy than holding herself up against the wall, which had equally sharp stones cutting into her soft flesh anyway; plus, now she could look out the window. Due to their placement, high on the shaft, Lorna could only see through this one window and only while lying down.

Those few windows dotting the top half of the tower kept a day glow above Lorna and the other prisoners, if there were any, that is but didn’t actually shine any light down to the floor where it was dim or dark all of the time. Lorna had barely set foot in this odd little town before she found herself in this predicament. She couldn’t help but feel someone with power and purpose must have built this tower, but this is all it is being used for now! Had they recently converted this practically perfect building, or had it been gutted and used as a “jail” for some time?

She even noticed sawed-off logs embedded in the walls, where she supposed a floor, or as the case may be, a ceiling, may once have been. She spent hours imagining this tower refurbished and reconstructed as a beautiful library and laboratory, with intricately carved shelves lining the stone walls, and here, where she was laying, would be beneath a sturdy double-layered floor of wood and stone, her Lab. She could have a separate setup for refining plants, preserving ingredients, and mixing medicines.

She tried not to mourn the loss of her books and pouch of medicines, but they had taken everything, and she couldn’t be entirely sure, but she was pretty confident they burned the lot of it, calling the medicine she carried poison. She had wept over her precious books that first night but not since. Lorna could never recover those exact copies of her tomes; she was sure she could at least find replacements. More importantly, if this village didn’t need an apothecary, she would move on once this was all cleared up.

She wondered if they often imprisoned young ladies in these parts or if this prison usually held more “traditional” prisoners. There weren’t any others to compare herself to, so it made that line of thinking seem a spurious trail indeed. What even was a traditional prisoner? Now, she was a prisoner, so in someone’s eyes, she must fit the picture of a prisoner, or she wouldn’t be here. She dropped that thought progression; it was getting more and more depressing.

After a couple of days of these arrangements, lying on her makeshift pallet most of the day. Except for a few stretches to keep from cramping up, taking care of business, and “eating.” If you can call what minuscule allotment they provided her a meal. Lorna spent the day staring at the tiny patch of sky that had now become hers– disappearing into the wilds of her mind.

On the third potentially identical day, Lorna woke from a dazing nap of indeterminate length to notice a tiny figure. It was just a blur of motion, really. Rubbing her eyes and shakily pushing herself up onto her elbows, Lorna wondered out loud to herself,

“I must be hallucinating, right? I’m just going stir crazy,” and settled back down onto her side, absentmindedly drawing circles in the dust under the thin-trodden layer of hay while keeping the wall in her sight.

As Lorna watched the shape with interest but no expectation, a mouse started to clear in her vision. The petite beast was carrying something, a fresh, eye-achingly red, ripe strawberry on a bit of leader vine. As it scurried over ledge and brick, carefully and deftly hopping down the old wall of the tower, Lorna just watched with rapt fascination. She became more invested in this little creature’s journey down the comparatively treacherous path. Edging forward on her elbows, Lorna sat up on her knees.

Knocking a tiny bit of mortar out from beneath one of its scrabbling feet, the courier almost slipped. Lorna leaped up, gasping, hands outstretched, ready. The little courier righted itself. It managed to keep a hold of its juicy charge. So she stood back a little but stayed alert just in case. Lorna wasn’t about to let a loose stone take this determined little guy out on her watch.

By the time the mouse was at eye level, she extended a hand out to him, and shockingly, he hopped right into her palm. She was brimming with delight but trying to keep quiet. The guards stationed outside the door might have heard, and who knows what they would have done; she quite literally had no idea. They were a grey wall to her; this wall had more personality since she spent all day staring at it and talking to it.

What she did know was this mouse wearing a tiny vest carrying the tiniest leather pouch she had ever seen was not just holding a strawberry in its whisper small jaws. It was handing her a strawberry. Which she gladly accepted. You can’t look a gift mouse in the… whiskers? It tasted like the single most delicious mouthful of food she had ever eaten. She extended her index finger, and the little messenger grasped hold of it; she wasn’t sure of why since not a single day of her life had ever gone right, but Lorna felt at peace in this moment.

A little slip of paper, a scroll tied neatly with a single strand of a finger length of twine, all barely more than the size of a postage stamp, slipped from the satchel. As quickly as he was down the wall, her miniature messenger gracefully retraced his steps in the ascent. Turning, the visitor gave one last look down the wall of the soaring tower, and with a single salute blotted out by the glow of the setting sun, he disappeared back through the bars.

Looking at the bit of ephemera left behind, Lorna was shocked to find it had writing on it, “KeEp in WondeRMEnt of iT.” The text was strange and scribbly but still legible.

She wasn’t sure about this little prophecy's precise meaning, but she did. She held these words close to her heart. That wonderful little scrap, which she wrapped around her strawberry stem like the fancy paper around a bouquet, and her patch of sky held her heart in wonderment.

Every day, she let her eyes fill with the miraculous dreams that clouds bring. The soaring hope that rolls off the feathers of doves in their exemplary flight. When she sat up to take her meals, suddenly more flavorful and vitalizing than she recalled, she watched the ants at their toiling task with a renewed interest. They hurriedly chipped away at the mason work between the stones. How had she not noticed this before?

“What benefit could they possibly gain from damaging the tower walls? They aren’t made from an edible substance, are they? What do ants eat? ”

Lorna wondered such things as she lay on her bed made of cloth in a tower dungeon with a sign on the door that read “BEWARE WITCH!” day after day. The air permeated with the scent of fresh, soft hay, a comfort to her now.

Finally, her rescuing force had arrived. Her heart swelled, though she knew not why, as she heard the pattering of tiny feet, thousands of them, an army of mice—squeaking, a high-pitched choir capable of piercing stone just as well as the soul. Through the tower wall, they burst, stones falling in a shower around her feet. Not a single one struck her. Her saviors dug her shirt out of the few loose bricks that landed astray—picking her up on their shockingly strong tiny backs, sweeping her away as she stood tall– to a full view of her beloved sky.

K.B. Silver