The Healer

“Please… Wake up…” a voice pleaded. In her dreamy state, Acacia thought this was strange. Am I asleep? Is this real? She heard the voice call again, this time more clearly. She felt herself returning to awareness, although she did not know she was unconscious in the first place.
“I don’t want you to die…” It was the girl in the cell opposite her. She blinked, clearing her vision. The girl was crying.
“Don’t cry.” Acacia coughed. Her throat was raw and dry.
The girl gasped and raised her head from where it had been cupped in her hands. “You are alive!”
“Yes… Although I’m not sure how pleased I am about it…”
“Oh, I am so sorry. That man did that do you, didn’t he?”
Acacia nodded.
“It seems they are preying on whomever they can find for interrogation. That is what he did to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes. He didn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t know the answers to his questions.”
“And it has cost you dearly.”
Only now did Acacia look down at herself. Her entire side was covered in blood and scrapes. Her middle was bruised and cut as badly as the girls’, if not worse. Her clothes were torn and stained with red splotches. She imagined that her head had not yet been abused enough to have lost hair, though. “Yes, it has.”
Moments passed as she sat, thinking. We have to get out of here, she thought. She tried to sit up, and sucked in a breath as her bruises and cuts flared. Bearing the pain, she dragged herself to the wall and rested against it, staying in sight of the girl so that they could still speak. Her entire body shuddered from the shock of her pain. She raised her hand over her stomach, ready to heal herself. No! She thought, If I heal myself then the man will notice, and then who knows what he will do with me. Perhaps he would force me to be his healer. The girl looked at her, concerned. What had she been about to do? She seemed to concentrate deeply on her wounds before suddenly loosing her thoughts. “What’s wrong?”
Acacia hesitated. Could she trust this girl with the knowledge of her power? perhaps, but not yet.
“I have… something I could do to fix this. But not now. Not here. It would be too dangerous to even speak of it here. Maybe when we get out-”
“‘Get out’? Are we going to escape?”
“Shh! The sentry!” She paused, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Hopefully. But I do not know this place; I was not paying attention when they took me for interrogation.”
“I do. I have been here for weeks. I can show you most of the layout of this place.” She then took her own manacles, rubbing the metal against the stone floor of her cell and leaving a white mark. She began to draw a map; first she outlined their cells and the corridor separating them, then moved on to the area with the interrogation room and areas that Acacia had not yet explored. “down that way,” she pointed down the hall where the two guards had come, opposite the door Acacia had been brought through before, “there are only more cells and a door that I’ve only seen non-prisoners go through. But through the door that the interrogation room is in, there is no exit. That means that the exit must be through the other door. If we can get through there, we can get out. We just have to get out of these cells.”
Acacia looked down and thought for a moment. If no prisoners have gone through there, maybe its a storage area, she thought. “Has anyone come out of there with any sort of supplies?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. When you were brought in someone came out with the manacles.”
“You see, I think that it could be a storage room. If it is, then there is a possibility that there will be less guards than we thought.”
“You’re right! Not to mention that there might be more places to hide.”
“Right. But our main problem is getting out of the cells. We can’t sneak our way out of the cells; they are too secure, and it would take too long for us to even try to grind through the bars. Someone would notice.”
“But what else is probable? Neither one of us stands a chance against the sentry, the guards, and the interrogator.”
“Maybe not, but if we can confuse them, we can do something.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure. We’ll just have to think about it.”
Silence formed between them as they thought. The sentry passed by them twice, making sure each time that his hard glare hit every prisoner for one long second. Acacia found it difficult to think clearly. I must be concussed, she finally thought.
The girl seemed to all at once buzz with excitement. “I’ve got it! I’ve got something to help us!” She reached for what looked like a flaw in the sewing, opening a flap and removing a small, flat bag. Quickly she returned it to its nearly invisible pocket. “It’s a sewing kit. I carry it around in case my dress rips in the middle of the day.”
“How is a sewing kit going to help us? Mending our clothes hardly seems like a useful thing to do.”
“We won’t use it to mend anything; we will use it to get past the guards! There are-”
The sentry was passing by just then. He pounded a fist against the girl's door, snarling. “Shut your mouth! I’ve heard one too many words out of you, and if I hear any more I’ll be sure to let the Interrogation Master know that you need an extra session. And you!” He turned to Acacia, scowling. “You’d do best not to defy him again. He has much more than brute strength that he can use on you.” After a final glare at each of them, he moved on, and both girls looked at each other silently. Instead of risking speaking, the girl removed the sewing kit again, opening it and pulling out two pins. She held them up, then demonstrated her idea. She pointed to the needles, then to her own eye, making a poking motion. Acacia almost gasped. What she was suggesting would be gruesome, bloody, and difficult. Such small needles would require them to be extremely close to the guards. Then the girl closed the kit and returned it to its pocket, still holding the two needles. She plucked a few hairs, wincing slightly, and tied one of the needles onto her arm, between her body and her limb. The other she held firmly in her hand, looking both ways to be sure that the sentry wasn’t near. Then she tossed it lightly towards Acacia’s cell. It landed just outside of the bars of her door. Cautiously she reached a hand through as far as she could with the manacles still on, rolling the needle closer to her. She glanced in the direction that the sentry had gone, hoping with all her might that he wasn’t coming. The needle was almost close enough to grab.
A hand grabbed her wrist. Terror filled her as she looked up. A young guard held her with an iron grip, but his face was almost soft. Her confusion mixed into all of her other feelings to make a tangled mess, and she wanted nothing other than to scream or cry. What would it be? Another torture session? Maybe the Interrogator would decide it was time to use the other tools at his disposal, as the sentry had suggested. The guard held up a finger to his mouth, urging her to be quiet. “I’ll help you.”
Acacia was dumbfounded. What? she thought vaguely.
“Look, I haven’t heard much but I’ve heard enough to know what you two are trying to do. I’ll help you. I hate this place. I’m only here because my father forced me to work here.” He looked down at the needle under her fingers. “That is clever, but you’d be lucky if you can do anything with it. They are too careful here for that to slip by the other guards. I have another plan, but it will require all of us to make sacrifices. You two will have to go at least partway through another interrogation session. That is when we’ll escape. For now, just wait; don’t try to stab anyone yet. I can persuade the Interrogation Master into changing a few things, but be ready. I won’t be able to come back to warn you when it’s time.”
He let go of Acacia then, and she quickly pulled her hand back into her cell, the needle poking her palm as she clenched her fist. Nodding to both her and the girl, he returned from where he had come, down the hall that the two girls had planned to escape through.
“What the hell was that?” The girl was just as surprised as Acacia.
“That… was a possible ally.”

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