Towering

carrying buckets of water from the blue waterfall to the plants. They all looked like they were staring at a television that wasn’t there.
    “The workers are happy,” Carl said. “See, they’re smiling.” He gestured toward a girl with a painted-looking smile on her face. Blond and blue eyed, she could have been Rachel’s sister. “Besides, we only want to talk to the girl. Zach was more than an employee. He was our nephew. Now, he’s gone so, of course, we want to meet his daughter.”
    “You expect me to believe that you kidnapped me and are holding me at knifepoint, all for some sentimental family reunion?”
    “She’s been taken away from us, hidden all these years. Who knows if she’s safe.”
    “She’s safe from you.” A guy my age walked by, looking straight ahead. “I’m not telling you anything.”
    “So you do know where she is?”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Then we’ll go with plan B,” Carl said, “lock you up and get the information from the old lady.”
    “The old lady? Mrs. Greenwood? But she doesn’t know anything about this, about . . .” I stopped myself before I said Rachel’s name. “She’s just a sweet old lady who lost her daughter. If she knew about the girl, her granddaughter, she’d be with her. She’d have taken her someplace.”
    “That’s what we always thought, assumed for a long time. But when you showed up, came to live with her, we realized she must know.” That was Henry. Carl gave him a hard look.
    But I said, “Why?”
    “Because of the prophecy. She had to know that the girl was the one who—”
    “Would you shut up!” Carl bellowed.
    “Why? You have him here. I’m the one who told you about him. Why should I shut up?” He sounded like a little kid more than an old man.
    “I don’t know,” Carl said. “Could it be because you’re stupid and always saying stupid things?”
    “That’s not nice.”
    “That’s not nice,” Carl imitated. He reached into his pocket and handed Henry something. “Do you think you could, for once in your life, open the door?”
    “I’m not sure I’m capable,” Henry said.
    “Do it!” Carl bellowed.
    “Okay, okay.” Henry squeezed past Carl and me to a small door in the wall. “You’re gonna put him in here?”
    “Think so?” Carl thrust me forward and into the room. It was gray, empty like my mother’s basement at home. “Let’s see if he changes his mind.”
    Again, with surprising strength for an old guy, he pushed me to the floor. While I was struggling to get up, I heard the door slam, the key in the lock.
    My arm throbbed like maybe it was broken.

Rachel
    Wyatt did not come, did not come, did not come. He had said he had something to do before he came, but that he would be here early. I took “early” to mean perhaps ten, perhaps eleven at the latest.
    But now, it was noon (by both my own clock and the strange, glowing one I had discovered on his telephone), and he had not come.
    Nor at one.
    Nor two.
    Mama always left me breakfast and lunch, feeding me, I now realized, as if I were a pet. I had been too excited to eat breakfast, and now, I was too excited for lunch. I longed to go, to leave my tower, to find him. But, though I might shimmy down my hair rope without him, how would I pull myself back up?
    Did it matter?
    Did it honestly matter?
    I had lived half my life, now, atop this tower, if you could call it a life, sitting here, reading, waiting for Mama. The only thing that had kept me alive, kept me sane all these years, was the thought that, someday, I would leave. Someday, I would be released or, if not, escape. I realized that that was why I had woven the rope in the first place, why I had hidden my ability to do so from Mama. I had done it not for the contingency that someone would rescue me, but for the certainty that I might wish to rescue myself.
    And now was that moment.
    Yet, I hesitated. Wyatt might still come. He had said he would. But if I waited too long to leave, it would be dark and colder. Then, I might never find him. I realized I had so little idea of the outside world that it was likely I would be unable to navigate it. Would the world be a pleasant place like the town of Hertfordshire in Pride and Prejudice or a war-torn one like the Paris in Les Mis é rables . Or, perhaps it would be like the horrific world portrayed in The Time Machine with predatory Morlocks seeking to eat gentle creatures like myself. Of course, Wyatt had told me no such thing