Alice in the Hourglass

I wasn't supposed to be here. Not in this fragile, screaming body. Not in this cold, cave-like space reeking of damp stone, burning tallow, and blood-soaked cloth. Not in the arms of a woman whose face I barely saw before exhaustion took her away. Not cradled in pain and fear, surrounded by strangers who could not begin to understand what I was, let alone what I had lost.

And yet, here I was. Alive.

I couldn't move much—not properly. My limbs were weak, barely more than useless stubs. My vision was blurry, my skin oversensitive to the chill in the air. It was infuriating. I had my mind—every thought, every memory from before was still there, perfectly intact. Every nightmare, every lesson, every last detail of the old world. But my body? It was helpless, vulnerable, unformed.

And worst of all, I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying.

The woman—my mother, I realized, however briefly—had screamed through labor, her voice hoarse with pain. I could tell she was young, too young, perhaps, and frightened. But beyond that, I had nothing. I didn't know her name, her story, or why I was here. Only that, from the way she held me, she was afraid.

Not just afraid of the pain. Afraid of me.

There was something in her eyes—something haunted. A flicker of dread when she looked at my face. As if she had seen something there she didn't understand. Something she was warned about.

I had only a few moments in her arms before someone else entered the room—a man, judging by the voice. He spoke, low and urgent, but I couldn't understand the words. They might as well have been static for all the meaning they carried. Harsh syllables. Ancient cadence. Not my tongue.

Then, she was gone. Taken from me just as I had been given to her.

I cried, not from sorrow, but from the shock of it all. The cold. The disorientation. The overwhelming barrage of sensation after lifetimes of nothing.

I didn't know how long I drifted in and out of consciousness. Sleep came too easily, dragging me down again and again, forcing me under just when I began to orient myself. My body—so weak, so unfamiliar—needed it, demanded it. But my mind rebelled. Raged. I wanted to think. To act. To do something.

The next time I was fully aware, I was being carried by the woman who birthed me. I wasn't sure how I knew—instinct, maybe—but it was her. The shape of her steps, the beat of her heart, the smell of her skin. Somehow, my newborn senses remembered her.

The smell changed first. Gone was the damp stone. The air here was crisper, tainted with the scent of wood smoke, wet earth, and animals.

We were outside. A village.

I could hear it. The distant sound of voices—some raised in conversation, others hushed in suspicion. Laughter. The rhythmic pounding of a hammer on metal. The occasional bleat of livestock and the rustle of wind through thatch.

Then, I was passed over to someone else. I felt the shift in warmth, the broader chest, the slower, more methodical breathing. A man.

I tried to focus, to catch any thread of meaning from the sounds he made. The words were rough, spoken in a tongue that felt distant yet familiar—like echoes of something I should know but didn't. Not modern English. Older.. Something closer to the roots.

Latin? No. Germanic, perhaps? Something from the old world for sure.

Damn it.

The best I could do was listen. Study. Build a foundation.

The man holding me shifted, and for the first time, I got a look at his face. A priest.

The robes, the worn cross hanging from his neck, the calm but wary way he held me—this was a man of the church. A man who had seen many strange things, and who now held something stranger still.

I wasn't in some peasant's home. I had been brought to a monastery or a local chapel. A place of silence and judgment.

I tried to move, to shift enough to see more, but my body barely responded. Every movement was a monumental effort.

The priest noticed and murmured something low, almost soothing. His eyes, dark and thoughtful, studied me carefully—as if searching for some unspoken answer. As if he was waiting for something to happen. For me to speak. Or to burn.

I was being judged. Not with cruelty. But with caution. A kind of intellectual suspicion. A weighing of risks.

He turned his head and called out to someone.

As he did, I saw her depart. My mother, cloaked in black and bound in white, turned away and disappeared into the night. I understood immediately: she was a nun, she had been ordered to send me away. Whether for my protection or hers, I couldn't yet say.

Another voice answered. Two people. Man and woman.

I tried to lift my head, but my body refused to cooperate. Instead, I waited, barely able to make out the vague shapes of two figures standing before us.

More words. More meaningless sounds. But the tone—that, I understood. Uncertainty. Doubt. Caution.

And then, something else—a softer voice. Hesitant. Hopeful.

The woman spoke first, but it was the man's voice that held weight. His was deeper, slower. Unconvinced.

I was being given to them.

The realization hit hard, even through the fog of infancy. I was being passed off, handed over like a burden neither the nun nor the priest could bear.

The priest spoke again, his words measured, his tone serious. A warning. I didn't need to understand the words to know. Something about me wasn't normal. Maybe it was something neither of them could explain. But I was different. And different was dangerous.

The woman stepped closer. I felt her hands as she took me, her arms unsure at first but growing steadier. The warmth was unfamiliar, but not unkind. There was strength in her, I sensed it even through the haze. A quiet, stubborn strength.

Then, before I could see her face, before I could even try to understand why she had chosen to keep me, I looked back— The nun was gone.

The journey from the priest's quiet chapel to the cottage at the edge of the village was short, but it felt impossibly long. I couldn't see much, not really—just vague shapes and shifting light through half-closed newborn eyes. But I felt everything. The creak of a wooden cart beneath me. The cold air nipping at my cheeks. The tremble in the priest's hands as he cradled me.

I must have been swaddled tight, but I still managed to squirm. Everything was too big, too loud, too unfamiliar. My limbs didn't respond the way I wanted them to. I tried to move my hand and got a weak flutter from my fingers instead. It was like trying to play a game with the controls inverted—while blind, drunk, and wearing lead boots.

Eventually, the cart stopped. Voices filtered through the air—low, uncertain, muffled by thick walls and the distance of memory. A door opened. Light flooded in.

A warm fire crackled somewhere nearby. The room smelled of ash, wool, and old wood. Simple, but comforting.

Then, new arms lifted me.

She smelled of herbs and woodsmoke, of hearth bread and sun-dried linen. Her hands were small but calloused, and her voice—though I couldn't understand the words—was gentle. She cradled me as if she'd done it a hundred times before, but her voice trembled slightly when she spoke.

There was something about the way she held me. Not stiffly, not distantly. She pulled me close, pressing my tiny body against her chest like I belonged there. Like she'd been waiting for me.

A deeper voice rumbled nearby. His tone was wary but curious. I could feel the weight of his gaze.

The priest spoke for a long while. I didn't understand a word, but his tone was cautious, firm. He was warning them about something—about me, I suspected. The way I had arrived. The strangeness of it all. Perhaps he mentioned the nun. Perhaps he spoke of omens or signs.

I opened my eyes and blinked up at them. The woman's breath hitched softly. She said something to her husband, who leaned closer. I could just make out the shape of their faces: concern, awe... a trace of fear.

I couldn't see myself, but I could guess. My eyes, maybe. Or something in my presence. Whatever the cause, I had clearly unsettled them.

Still, they didn't turn away. The woman held me tighter, and her voice grew steadier.

She pointed to me and said a word. "Alice."

Obviously this was meant to be my name, whether they decided on it or my birth mother had given it to me was unclear. Though it did at least succeed in letting me know that I was female, which would surely be a handicap in such an era of history.

It sounded out of place in their language, an echo of another world. But she said it with care. With certainty.

The man murmured something in reply, low and gruff. Not quite agreement, but not refusal either.

The priest gave a final few words and stepped away. The door closed behind him with a soft thump.

And just like that, I was theirs.

Those first few days blurred together. My infant body needed sleep, and I gave in to it often. But every waking moment, I watched. Listened. Tried to decipher the strange new world I'd been dropped into.

The woman spoke to me constantly, though I didn't understand a word. She narrated everything she did—feeding me, wrapping me in cloth, rocking me by the fire. Her voice was warm, musical in its own rustic way. Gentle but firm, worn with patience.

The man was quieter, more reserved. But he watched me too. And sometimes, when Ingrid was busy, he would hold me awkwardly, like I was made of glass, and hum low melodies under his breath. Songs with no lyrics, only the memory of rhythm and sorrow.

I had no language. No power. No name of my own choosing.

But I was alive.

It wasn't much. But it was enough.

Enough to know I was safe.

Enough to begin.