Rapunzel Must Die: A Persian Retelling by Eli Gardner

Author:Eli Gardner [Gardner, Eli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abra Kadabra Ink
Published: 2023-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Mina

Mina was transferred.

Her stay in isolation, it seemed, had been completed.

Mr. Madani stood outside her cell door, paper cup of coffee in his hand. “Get up,” he shouted, “you are being moved.”

Mina had been dreaming of her father, and the way he would disappear after dinner under a steady stream of cigarette smoke. The way he would carry around the glass ashtray and move it from here to there. She wasn't much for people who smelled like smoke, but she found it comforting in her father. She was dreaming of these little things, of him pointing to the shadow box on the wall that housed his prize possession—the shepherd staff—passed down through the generations, just as Davud’s was from his. Of the way her mother was constantly dusting the ash from all those cigarettes off the piano keys.

But Mina stirred, and Mina rose when she heard the words from Mr. Madani. She was to be moved. Another game of uncertainty, she thought as she swung her feet to the floor. She had no choice but to see it through.

Mina gasped in pain as she put her whole weight on her still swollen feet. She hadn’t gotten out of bed much since her beating and if she had to move, such as times when the food trays were shoved through her slot, she dragged herself across the chilly floor. For a little, the coolness of the concrete eased her pain, but it would return with a vengeance whenever she did move, as it returned now.

“Hurry up,” Mr. Madani said impatiently. “Or I will drag you out myself.”

Mina sucked in her breath and stepped forward, biting down on the inside of her mouth hard, to distract from the pain, until she tasted blood. At least she didn’t have to worry about putting on her shoes. Those had been confiscated from her when she was inprocessed. She now left the room with her soiled socks in her hands, the only thing she had to her name.

Mr. Madani wrinkled up his nose as she stood before him. She was a week without a proper shower, and she knew she smelled of nervous sweat, adrenaline, and urine. Her clothes hadn’t been washed, and she felt stale and grubby all over.

“How does it feel,” Mr. Madani said coldly as if reading her thoughts, “to be just as filthy and unworthy on the outside as you are on the inside?”

Mina smiled, the taste of blood still on her tongue, and she recited a few of her father’s favorite lines from, Shahnameh. “The world has seen so many men like you, and laid them low. You will reap the consequences of what you sow.”

She poured her anger into the words. She laced them with rage and justice. If she had any magic in her whatsoever, she prayed that her words would become a curse. She wanted that so badly for him.

For a moment, the guard with yellow eyes seemed unsettled. Mina doubted he knew the source of her words.

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