Mallory's Melody

Chapter 36

DIANA MADE THE MISTAKE of thinking it was over before it was. She'd thought it was the end when William released her from captivity and swore her to secrecy. 

She'd thought wrong.

"You promised to let me go!" Diana yelled as Michael pushed her into the black van. She'd been unwittingly walking through the halls of Starlight when he pounced on her and bound her in the same ropes she'd been released from seconds ago. Seconds ago, too, she thought she could fight him, that she had the strength to wave him off her. But now she saw that was an impossibility. He was stronger than her, faster, heavier. Every blow she gave him appeared to be as soft as a feather falling to the ground. His wide girth swallowed the harmful quality of her punches, his cheeks seemed indomitable to physical impact, as though in the place of bones, was a shock-absorbing metal guard. One way or the other, Diana had given up on trying to fight him. It was as William said a while ago—

You cannot fight fate.

Yet this wasn't the kind of fate she was expecting. This wasn't the sort of life she had in stock for herself, being gagged and bounded in chains like a worthless animal, and being thrown into a van in the same worthlessness. She'd always had high hopes for herself, believed so stubbornly that she would inevitably be a star someday, a person as priced as the plethora of gold trophies she would later have. Who would have thought that she would move from the avowed position of being Starlight star to the ignominious one of being a captive?

"Where exactly are you taking me to?" Diana asked. He'd blindfolded her, but she knew, by the unevenness beneath her, that they were on the move. For the first time, Diana felt truly afraid. The future had never looked so grim and uncertain. It took up the same amorphous darkness as she was seeing now. Being a person who thrived on the invention of strategies and who liked to know where exactly she was headed to, this was almost intolerable. The worst kind of slave to be, her father had once told her, was to be a slave to uncertainty. It was the worst form of captivity because you never knew where exactly the path to freedom was. You never know what direction to go through. Everywhere you turn, uncertainty followed. And Diana sat humbly, a slave to uncertainty, a slave to Michael and William and her thoughts and everything capable of enslaving her. She was helpless, shattered, broken. She was subdued.

"I'm not telling you where," Michael said, in the jaunty, teasing tone of children who thought they were smart but weren't. He turned up the volume of the radio and began singing along with it, as though to reinforce his not telling her anything. She sat silently throughout the drive, her ears nearly bleeding from Michael's unpleasantly croaked voice, and even when he stopped singing and pulled her out of the van, she could still hear his sour voice, a taint in her memory.

"Why are you doing this?" Diana asked. Michael grabbed her elbow and hauled her along with him. The crusty sounds below her feet told her they were walking on leaves, and the damp, nature-tinged air made it overt that they were in a forest. Hoots and howls of animals she couldn't quite pinpoint tore at her ears.

"Doing what?"

"Why are you treating me like this? You and William. I never did anything to deserve this sort of treatment."

Michael laughed. "Think again, then." He yanked her in his direction. "We all like to believe we're the victims, Diana Gilbert. Like we're the innocent ones and every other person is the villain."

"You are the villain!"

"I guess that makes two of us, then."

"What?" Diana stopped moving. Something about what he said cut deep into her heart. That was the most demeaning thing anybody could ever say to her, that she was on equal footings with an abductor like him. "I'm not the one busy tying up people in ropes and taking them into only God-knows-where."