Sarah said nothing.
“You have held out longer than the others,” Thornwood added musingly. “Elizabeth broke entirely by her third month. Hannah became catatonic by her fourth. You are approaching your fifth, and you remain lucid, observing your own dissolution. It is quite impressive.”
Five months. The time had collapsed into an unbroken continuum of degradation.
That night, back in her room, Sarah tried to pray. Not to the master’s God, who seemed deaf to the quarters, but toward the memory of her great-grandmother—the woman who had survived the Middle Passage, who had kept her original name intact despite everything.
If any part of you is anywhere, Sarah thought silently into the dark, do not let me disappear.
No sign came. The cicadas droned outside; the house remained cold and still. The realization settled over her that Thornwood would win, and when her utility was exhausted, she would share the fate of Elizabeth, Hannah, and Rebecca. She would be reduced to a line in his ledger and wiped from existence.
Then, in June, Thornwood made an error.
He had returned late from an outing and drank heavily during their session. His speech dragged, and his movements were clumsy. He set Sarah to transcribe passages from his research volume onto clean paper, but when he stood to refill his decanter across the room, he left the journal open on the desk before her.
