Samuel pressed his palm against his ribs to see if the area felt bruised. It was tender. He winced. He shook his head as if to empty his mind. There was no use complaining or thinking about it. He had a job to do. He picked up the dishes, emptied Atia’s bucket, and examined her leg. It had been a while since he’d paid the old wound much mind. The tissue had grown back, but the giant teeth gashes circling below her kneecap were filled with fresh flesh and pockets of pus. He patted the area with a damp rag. When he was finished, she inched her knees up to her chest and pulled her thick hair over her left shoulder and across her collarbone. She seemed content to wait for him.
Samuel pushed his thumb behind his ear, fiddling with the end of his glasses.
“Did you hear all of that?”
She said nothing.
“My father hit me. He was trying to get in here. Do an exorcism. Do you know what an exorcism is?” Samuel didn’t wait for an answer. “My father’s convinced you’re a demon. No. That’s wrong. He thinks you’re possessed by one. Or something like that.” He rubbed his temples because his skull was still throbbing. “He’s losing it.”
Atia petted her hair with her stubbed arm.
Samuel shook his head. “He could’ve been killed. The sheriff had his gun out. I don’t know. Maybe he was bluffing. I hope he was. I don’t understand him. My dad, I mean. I never have. I’ve lived with him since I was a baby, but I’ve always felt alone.”
Samuel looked into Atia’s eyes. If she wasn’t a demon, then what was she? She was fast. He’d seen how quickly she could move when she tried. The mayor and the sheriff were convinced she was strong, but he’d never witnessed her doing anything exceptional in that regard. She did bleed black. Her slit pupils were unordinary to say the least. Her torso was covered in horrendous scars. She was missing her girl parts and half of one arm. Why? What did it all mean?
Once, when he was a boy, Samuel saw a spotted salamander with two tails near the lake’s shore. And there was an old logger who had an opening in the center of his top lip that reached up to his nostrils, and from what his father told him, the man was born like that. Animals and people could be born with deformities and abnormalities. What if Atia was merely like them? Human, but different. Unique.
Samuel pushed his back again the wall.
“All of this,” Samuel said with a sigh, “because nobody can figure out what you are.”
Atia tilted her chin up, her teeth barely visible inside her slightly agape mouth. Her nose wrinkled, and her cheeks bunched up in a way that showed some sort of thoughtfulness. She lowered her neck and pointed to the hope chest.
Samuel got up and ran outside of the cell. His fingers fumbled as he unlatched the clasp on the wooden trunk. Was she trying to communicate with him? Why now? He dug through the clothes until he found the sketchbook and the small pack of pencils. As he got back into the cell, Atia sat with her knees lowered and her hand outstretched. He gave her the sketchbook and put the pencils down by her thigh. She propped the book against her flat chest and delicately turned pages until she came to a blank one. Near the top end of the page, she scribbled three letters that were so small he had to squint to see them.
Z E I
Samuel watched as Atia shaded heavy lines alongside the word, forming a rectangular border around it. She angled the pencil near the base of the page and drew furiously. His eyes absorbed everything as fast as they could. A steel door, similar to the one outside of the jail cell, guarded an empty room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were surrounded with some sort of bubble-like padding. Each individual pad was cut into a diamond shape, almost the same as her pupils. The room was illuminated by artificial light, a single electric bulb mounted above the door. Near the upper end of the door was some sort of rectangular box with individual numbers in order from one to nine. On the floor was something like an iron grid, the thicker bars lined with some sort of thin material that looked like netting. Around the room appeared to be tiny beams of light that ran across the floor.
Atia added a mattress to the corner of the room, the ends of the bedframe looking nearly like the prison bars. She put down the pencil and lowered the sketchpad onto her stomach, rubbing the fresh skin on her leg with the heel of her other foot.
“I don’t understand,” Samuel said.
He leaned closer and shoved his glasses back up. It did little good. Whenever he bent down, the frames slid down his nose. Atia scooped the pencil back up and began to draw more. She added a young girl lying on the bed, her long hair sprawled out wildly across the sheets. The girl was small, like Atia, and seemed to be near the same age. Samuel bent down farther, his nose nearly touching the page. He held his glasses in place. She had both of her arms.
She curled the pencil between her fingers and tapped the girl in the picture.
“Wait. Is that supposed to be you?”
She gave a soft nod. He studied the picture carefully, sucking in every detail he could. The room’s design was something foreign to him. It nearly looked like a prison cell, only the technology seemed far more advanced than anything he’d seen before. Perhaps it was from one of the ancient buildings that had survived the blackout. Still, the Laevis Creed strictly forbade the preservation and use of exceptional technology. How could she have seen such a place?
“What is this?”
Atia circled the engraved Z E I several times over.
He concentrated on the picture, wanting badly to make something out of it.
“I don’t understand. That’s not a word I know. Is it an acronym? Does it stand for something? If you could write out something more, like more words or a sentence.”
Atia sat up, the pencil clutched in her palm and her eyes staring coldly back into his. Her hold on the pencil made it resemble a knife. The sketchbook had fallen to the ground. Samuel held up his hands in surrender. She wasn’t going to hurt him. He knew her better than that. She wasn’t the demon everyone thought she was.
“Wait. I’m sorry. I want to understand.”
She flicked the pencil across the cell and hobbled to the barred window, her hair bouncing out from behind her shoulder.
“Z. E. I.” Samuel rubbed his arms. “ZEI. Zei? Is that your name?”
She kept staring out the window. She nodded.
Samuel swallowed. He was dumbfounded. “Your name is Zei? I knew it! You’re so much smarter than they think you are. But … why didn’t you tell me that sooner? I want to call you by your name. Why did you let me call you something else?”
She didn’t respond.
“You could’ve written it or spelled it in the dirt.”
She shook her head, her jaw clenched.
She was telling him no. Maybe she wanted to write more but couldn’t.
“You can’t read.”
Samuel felt stupid. His father had taught him the alphabetical letters and the sounds corresponding to each one. It was a cleric’s responsibility to read the scriptures. Only clergy, politicians, and those wealthy enough to afford an education could read. What use did a logger or farmer have for reading? It wasn’t as if they could afford newspapers or books. Samuel’s ability to read and write was something he’d taken for granted without even realizing it.