Still facing the severed hand, Claudia slipped from the chair to the ground. She stood and then, unsure, took a step. Still fearing traps, she held her breath and her eyes slammed shut. The floor stayed firm beneath her feet. In the end, hunger wasn't as easy to stoically ignore as she had imagined. Her legs were sore from being still so long. Her back was stiff and had begun to complain. She decided it was better to take her chances with the room.  

The food over on the table looked sublime, and perhaps something useful would be written on the slip of paper. Claudia almost convinced herself that it might give her some clue of how to break free. It was a pleasant thing to believe, and it hurt no one for her to foster such elusive dreams.  

So Claudia moved with tiny, frightened steps as if by not moving her feet too far apart she would trick the floor. She stopped and removed her shoes. An urge drove her to feel the floor. She held her brand new slippers in her hand and took two more steps. Her fingers opened and released the shoes to the floor. Her eyes were wide as a gazelle's, and she poised to run as they hit the ground. But it had occurred to her that she might need both hands free, so she let the shoes fall. Then, even as they tumbled, it occurred to her they might set something off. 

They didn't. 

Her eyes brushed the door-frame where an hour before she had noticed claw marks. They remained, and something that looked suspiciously like a fingernail was protruding from the woodwork halfway down one of the desperate scratches.  

As painful as all the cuts and bruises covering her, a memory surfaced. Julien's voice echoed from the soft, secret places of her mind. "Your hands are so dirty! Mother's going to be mad."

"Soon, I'll be out of this house, and Mother won't be able to touch me. Is there water in the basin?"

"Were you digging for worms?"

Claudia took two more steps. She stopped. Perhaps she would need her shoes. There were any number of things that would slice her feet if she ran over them. The two steps back to the shoes were daunting. Claudia found she could not make up her mind. 

How was she supposed to decide what was more likely to kill her-- being barefoot or wearing shoes? How to solve that sort of dilemma was not included in her education. She didn't know where to begin. Just the attempt to think about survival already had her so confused she was worse off than when she began.  

She gave up on the shoes, and told herself she wouldn't regret it. Too bad she knew herself to be a liar. Claudia took the remaining three steps to the table. She grabbed the bread and brought it up to her mouth. Then she paused, questioning her earlier conviction that it wasn't poisoned. Perhaps nothing deadly but something painful. She lowered the loaf, and tears sprang again to her eyes. I can do anything I want but it's all far too likely to lead to my death. 

Claudia thrust a shaking hand at the note, and she picked it up, and opened it.

"Welcome, feel free to eat what you like and to explore the town. Unlike the others, you will encounter this need not be a permanent residence for you. I've told you the lesson I require you to absorb. Enjoy your vacation, my love. I will come for you when you've proved you possess the obedience proper in a woman."

Claudia stared down at the neat print, and then with a cry of rage, she threw it across the room.  

The bravery of anger gave her the strength to devour the bread, a handful of grapes, a pungent country cheese and the glass of water. She would need vigor to escape. How she was going to get out of this place was vague and blurry. Also, blurry was where she would go after her miraculous escape. The only thing that was clear in her vision was the look of horror on his face when he realized she had flown his trap. 

She stalked across the room, no longer creeping like a frightened child, retrieved her shoes and her wrap from where they lay on the chair. Then she went across the room to the door, and she set her hand on the handle. It was vaguely warm, warmer than the room around it. Claudia stopped herself from turning it. She took a step back. Visions of an inferno swept before her eyes. What if she opened that door and fell into hell? She could feel the flames covering her, eating away at her flesh. It would burn through her skin, and then the fat and muscle underneath would slough off of her like wax off a candle. The smell of burnt flesh brushed her nostrils. She stared down at her hand trying to convince her mind that her skin was still pale and smooth not black and charred. 

"You'll burn in hell for this."

Claudia cast her gaze about, but no one was in the room with her. "I'm going crazy, hearing voices..."

More to make her mind still than from any desire to trust whatever lay outside, Claudia thrust the door open. She found herself facing a long dark hall that looked nothing like her vision of hell. Candelabras spotted the walls of the passageway. Some were lit, and others were not. Directly across from her doorway was a fireplace. A fierce fire burned there and sent ghostly shadows dancing over the stone walls. Claudia stepped out of the room into this hallway and immediately started off, away from the blazing fire and the severed hand lurking behind her in the room. 

The passage seemed to go on forever. No doorways came off of it that Claudia could see, and after walking until the fire and its light had all faded away, Claudia faced the stone expanse of floor and walls with only flickering shadows. As she went, Claudia felt the stones at hand level hoping to find something. She didn't even know what she prayed to find. A secret lever that opened a door to let her out? A window blind that rolled up and revealed the outside world?

At last, she located something, though nothing she could have expected. Claudia found a window. She almost missed it as it was on the opposite side of the hallway as she was. It was just a simple pane of glass, and it revealed hard packed dirt and rocks. Claudia moved over and stared with dry, angry eyes. 

A laugh burst forth from her. And because there was no one there to speak to, she spoke to herself.

"He buried me alive."  She laughed again, a high desperate sound containing no mirth. Her eyes were too bright in the meager candlelight. "I'm buried alive in a mansion."

Only he'd called it a town. Could this maze like prison be that large? A vast hell just for her.

Claudia spun around to face the empty stone corridor. Not hell, no, not that. Hell was one stairway further down. Claudia sprawled in a puddle of skirts beneath the window. She folded her dirty hands in her lap.  

She tried to think logical thoughts. To think her way out of this situation, but either she was not very good at thinking or this was just a problem too large. The only thing she could latch her mind around was the fireplace. There was a fire in it, and the smoke had to go up. That meant there was some tunnel upwards. Perhaps, she could use it to get up? Of course, she wouldn't fit. Claudia was not built like a chimney sweep. But what else did she have to do? 

She turned around and began walking back the way she came. "I know, I know. I am a fool to even think of fitting up there. But I can't do nothing." She held her skirts up indecorously high to allow her to move faster.  

A breeze crossed her ankles.

Her bare feet sent her brain no signals, but her ankles felt the shifting of the air. Claudia tried to throw herself to the side. It accomplished nothing; the new floor board slid from beneath her as well. She jammed her fingertips into the crevices of the wall as she slid.

Time slowed around her, not enough for Claudia to plan or reason, but enough for her to feel her terror. Only blackness yawned beneath her. Death waited cackling down below. Claudia flung out her arms, and her bloodied fingers found the edge of the floorboards.  

She hung there by her fingertips. Any moment the floor would come crashing upwards and slice her fingers from her hand. Then she would be left entombed beneath the hallway. Her mind stalled. The seldom used organ was no use. 

Luckily for Claudia, her body was better trained. Her legs swung against the wall, and she propped as much of her weight as she could against her leg. Then using her bare feet against the wall and her arms she began to haul herself upward. Had she been only the weak, helpless creature her parents thought they brought up,  she would have hung there until her fingers gave out, and that would be the end of her story.  

She was not what she was raised to be. She had spent the past year climbing down her trellis and off of balconies. She rode horses bareback and clambered up and over walls. Her body was better primed for emergencies than anyone knew, least of all Claudia.  

When she had her elbow up on the floor, she used it to drag her body up to safety. She lay there wide-eyed and silent. She waited for her mind to catch up with her body. When it did, she sat up, and stared down into the black hole that only just failed to further entomb her. There was nothing terrifying inside. The flat stone floor displayed no torture devices but against one wall a skeleton sat in its final repose.

"Just far enough down," Claudia said, "that if I fell in I couldn't climb out. Is that what happened to you?"

The skeleton gave no reply. 

Claudia stood and brushed herself off. She smoothed her hair and rearranged her skirts. There was no point in trying to go back that way. Who knew when the floor would come back up? The other direction it was. 

She turned. The hallway was long and dark. Claudia lifted her fingers and set them against her corset. Her fingers left a bright red mark on her already dirty dress. Her new dress. The best she ever owned. Now it was ruined. No amount of washing or mending could fix what it had endured. I shall have to get a new dress; Claudia thought. It's too bad; I barely got to wear this one at all.

* If you like the story, please go ahead and hit the fancy little star and let the world and me know you appreciate it :) Thank you all for reading. I'm getting a better response than I hoped! Constructive comments are always welcome or almost any other type of comment you wish to make.