The Tale of Sarah

The air around the bench was saturated with the weight of new knowledge. Even the birds had gone silent as if to mark the break in history. The three of them—Andy, both of Laura, and Marie—sat or stood in a geometry that made perfect sense only if you understood how newly formed planets drifted, uncertain if they would collide or fall into orbit. Arabella stood to the side, respectfully.

Laura was no longer crying, but the shock hadn’t left her. It had merely gone subterranean, pressing against the frozen surface from below. Both of her bodies sat with hands in their laps, fingers interlaced so tight they must have ached, faces angled slightly down but not bowed. It was a pose Andy recognized from the night after the river, when they confirmed to him that Laura was gone, and he had sat exactly like that for the entire night, vainly seeking her through the missing bond, and rehearsing a reality he could not make himself believe.

Marie was a little off to the side, but not out of range. She stood with her arms folded so hard across her stomach it looked like she might snap in half, shoulders hitched nearly to her jaw. Her expression was a study in contradiction: set and fierce and utterly lost, the look of a person who had finally found the object of a lifetime’s grief and didn’t dare touch it for fear it might evaporate. Andy knew the feeling. He would have offered her comfort, but he could sense in the way she kept her eyes fixed on Laura—never Andy, not even once—that comfort was not just unwelcome, it was structurally impossible.

Arabella was the first to move, but she did so with a delicacy Andy had never seen in her. She stepped from the dappled light into the clearing, her hands clasped not in the courtly way she usually favored, but loosely, uncertain what to do with themselves. “Would you all care to come inside?” she asked, her voice so soft it barely rippled the air. “There’s a private space. If you prefer to talk in there.” She said it as if she expected everyone to say no, but offered it all the same.

Dinah, who had been at the periphery of the scene, nodded without waiting for an answer. “I should check on the other patients. You know where to find me.” Her manner made clear she understood this was not her conversation, and would never be. She approached Marie as if she might be dangerous, then laid a quick, awkward squeeze on her shoulder. Marie didn’t flinch or return it, but after Dinah walked away, Andy saw her right hand creep up to the spot as if she had to verify it had really happened.

The walk to the office was short but felt like an entire episode of history. Andy rose, helped both of Laura up (she accepted it without protest from both bodies, both hands cold in his), and then, without thinking, drew them in on either side of himself. It was a visual that would have been comic in another context: the tall, stubbled man in the middle, flanked by two versions of the same woman, one on each side, his arms outstretched around both. But here, it was necessary. The bond was doing its work, he could feel it—a slow, constant thrum, like the vibration of a cello string after the note itself had faded. Grounding her, anchoring her, like it did for him.

Laura was not dissociating. She was just interior. He could see her cycling through the new information, refusing to let herself fragment. He squeezed both of her a little tighter, and both leaned into him the tiniest fraction, as if agreeing that for now, being held was the only way to keep the pieces from flying apart.

They walked in silence for a while, just the sound of feet on moss and the hush of the wind through the leaves. After a dozen steps, Laura spoke. She didn’t look up, didn’t modulate her voice; the words were raw and uneven, as if she’d torn them out in the moment.

“I came here afraid you’d be hurt by whatever you found out,” she said, not to anyone in particular. “And instead I found out more about myself than I ever thought there was to know.” The words hung, unprocessed. Then, quieter: “I have an aunt.” Her voice broke on the last word, her eyes darting to Marie. She said it in a way that was all test, like she was pushing on the glass to see if it would hold, or if she’d fall through into another, newer world.

Marie, who had been walking just ahead, stopped dead and turned. The expression she wore was careful, but the seams were showing, voice a little broken around the edges. “By blood, I’m the only one,” she said. “But you should know…” She looked down at her shoes, then back at Laura, eyes landing equally on both faces, as if trying to fix their place in her memory. “The other women in the shack were family, too. Not just to me. To your mother. They were with her when you were born. We all helped, in whatever way we could.” Marie’s voice was dull, refusing to tremble. “They held you as a baby. Cared for you before the show finished, and we all went back to the real world. You have more than an aunt. The women of our harem loved you.” Her face went tight. “They were your aunts in everything but name.”

Laura took this in with both faces. She didn’t say anything, but Andy felt her steady, as if the admission had placed a stone at the center of her gravity. He held her a little tighter, and she let herself lean, just for the moment.

Marie turned back to the path ahead, shoulders so high they nearly hid her ears, and kept walking. Andy saw the way she blinked hard, and then kept her face averted for the next twenty steps, like she was forcing herself to walk through fire with her chin up.

Arabella’s Director’s Office was not like the hotel’s other offices: no glass, no spectacle, just old wood and papers, as if the air itself had been carefully aged to hold the gravity of private matters. The desk was massive, dark, its surface bare except for a bone-white legal pad and a pen she spun idly as they filed in. Arabella stood behind the desk at first, then—seeing the three of them, seeing the state they were in—she moved the chair out from behind, set it at the head of a small oval conference table, and sat. It was a deliberate move: I’m not the judge. Just a participant.

Marie sat before Andy or Laura could choose seats, landing on the far side of the table with a clatter that sounded like she’d dropped in from a high place. Her hands stayed in her lap, but the tension in her neck made every muscle on her arms jump. She fixed her eyes on Arabella, not cold, but with the **** focus of a person who had one question and was afraid the answer would be taken from her. Laura sat next, both bodies side by side, which made the curve of the oval a little crowded, but neither moved to give the other more space. They sat with backs straight, hands on the table, and Andy sat beside them, close enough that his knee touched Laura’s. He didn’t look at Arabella until the last moment, afraid his voice would tremble, afraid he’d ask the wrong thing. But then Laura’s left hand found his under the table, squeezed, and it steadied him enough to speak.

Andy found his voice first. “I need you to tell us,” he said, keeping his eyes on the seam of the table, not daring to look up yet. “Everything. From the start, if you can. Don’t skip any of it.”

Arabella nodded, once, as if she’d already rehearsed the request and was grateful to have it made aloud. She put her hands together on her lap, fingers steepled but not still, and looked at each of them in turn: Marie, Laura (both), and finally Andy. Her green eyes, usually steady as a ruler, flickered just a little before she began.

When she began, her voice was gentle, but not soft. It was the tone of someone reading out a sentence they had composed long ago and rehearsed every day since.

“Greg came here a good man,” she said. “Not perfect, not always kind, but capable of it. He and Sarah arrived together—they’d been dating nearly a year. She was younger, twenty-two to his twenty-four. He thought the invitation was a mistake at first. Sarah, a bit less so. She said she’d never win, but hoped to learn something, maybe make a wish for the two of them if it all worked out.”

Arabella’s hands pressed flat on the pad in front of her. “He didn’t want to participate, at first. I was experienced in how to handle recalcitrant Masters, and gave him every opportunity to indulge. He refused to play the game in the first round. He spent every moment trying to shield Sarah from the process. He did not take advantage of the women, not even once, at first. Instead, he tried to organize an escape. The Audience loved it. It scored off the charts, especially among certain demographics.”

She paused. Andy realized he was holding his breath again.

“It failed, of course. And the rules were clear. Punishments were given to all the women involved in the attempt. Greg blamed himself. But something changed in him as a result of this. Perhaps the punishments made him see the women differently. Or maybe his self-loathing externalized.”

Arabella looked up at Andy and Laura, and Andy was surprised to see an ache behind those green eyes. What had she witnessed there?

“As the weeks went on, Sarah became the harem mom. She tried to protect the other Contestants, insofar as she could. She took up the burden, and even offered to take on transformations that hurt the others. It was not allowed, of course, but she didn’t know and still offered.” She looked at Laura as if to convey the kind of woman her mother had been.

“But the transformations built up. Sarah’s, especially. As Leah said to Emily in her first season, being the Master’s girlfriend gives a Contestant a lot of inbuilt advantage. So the Audience wanted to see Sarah become something else. There were weeks where her only transformations worked around reinforcing her obedience to Greg, or make her dependent on his approval. When she resisted, the system penalized her in ways that made some of the other contestants believe it was better to toe the line.”

Andy noticed Marie’s hands were white at the knuckles, gripping her own arms tight. Laura sat very, very still, both bodies matched perfectly, as if they were two halves of a clock, watching the sweep of the second hand.

“Greg didn’t want it. Not at first. He spent two or three rounds trying to game the system, always looking for the loophole that would get Sarah out, get them both home. But eventually he realized this was not working. And on the other hand, it was jeopardizing the chance of one of the women getting the Wish and using it on his behalf. When he finally broke—when he realized the only way to get out was to accept the changes, use them, please the Audience, and work within the system—he started asking for more. I do not mean only more transformations. I mean more power.” Arabella’s eyes flicked to Andy, and for the first time, she looked scared of what she was about to say. “I let him have it.”

She said it flat, like a doctor reading out a terminal diagnosis.

“I thought—because I was made to think—that there were three types of season. In one type, Master and Contestants worked together harmoniously, and there was no need for an external threat. The harem would coalesce naturally.” She looked at Andy as if to say, this is what you have built. Then she continued, “The second type was a little different. Master and Contestants, united against a common threat: the Host. I have hosted seasons like that, in my previous lives. But I was no longer that Host.” She looked down. “The third type is internal strife. Master versus Contestants, or Contestants versus each other. The Host as an aiding or hindering ****. Greg was becoming excited by the game, and the women were pulling away from him emotionally. So I believed the third type of season was the shape his season would take. The object was to give the Master advantages, and let the Contestants overcome him together if they could.”

She paused, looking apologetically at Marie. “At the end of the third round, Greg received a transformation allowing him to write ground rules for the harem. Absolute rules—what could and couldn’t be done. Not just sexual, not just physical, but behavioral. Specific for each woman, or general for all of them. I permitted it. The Audience voted for it in overwhelming numbers.” Arabella shook her head, just a fraction. “With all my experience and the memories of my siblings as well as mine, I should have known better. It was the single worst error of my tenure as Host.”

The silence that followed was so complete that Andy heard the clock on Arabella’s wall tick, then tick again.

“The women tried to fight back,” she continued, “but at this point, the game was stacked. Each transformation that came through was more punitive. The Audience for that season enjoyed watching the women suffer. By round four, Sarah couldn’t speak in certain contexts unless Greg permitted it. By round seven, when he was around, she couldn’t initiate conversation with any of the women without a direct prompt from him, unless she was speaking in the role of housewife. By the end, she could not say no to anything Greg wanted. She became a **** in all but name.”

Marie made a small, strangled sound at this, and Laura whispered, “How long did this season go on?”

Arabella winced. “More than nine months. The Audience loved it: Harem Hotel has always had a dedicated audience for payback or domination-based seasons. My Producers... In terms you can understand, only one of my Producers led this season. It was an experiment. They demanded I extend the season. Raise the VP cap to graduate, add more rounds, more challenges. Rounds became longer, accommodating more drama, more humiliation. It was the longest season I ever ran, and the reason why, unlike some of my colleagues, I will no longer tamper with VP assignments or thresholds once a season is begun.”

Andy opened his mouth to ask a question, but Arabella pressed on.

“Despite the length and the damage,” Arabella said, “the women still tried. They made little places for themselves inside the rules. They built their own rituals, their own routines. When Greg **** all of them to wear house uniforms, Sarah sewed extra pockets in every apron and hid notes for the others to find. When Greg banned them from eating sweets, Renee and Colleen learned to make fake cookies out of protein powder and sugar substitute. They learned to bend his orders, so long as it brought no pain to Sarah. Even at the end, the women found warmth.”

She said the last part gently, as if trying to place the memory somewhere it wouldn’t get lost. Then her expression shifted, just slightly, the way it did when she was about to say something she had rehearsed and still hadn’t found a way to make easier.

“When Greg discovered what they were doing—the notes, the cookies, the small rebellions—he didn’t punish them directly. That would have been too visible. Instead, he realized something had changed. They were no longer prisoners alongside him. They were against him.” She paused. “He engineered the eliminations of Nancy and Carol. Subtle sabotage—withholding information before challenges, small rule violations that cost them points, manufactured infractions. By the time either of them understood what was happening, the VP deficit was unrecoverable.” Arabella’s voice stayed level, but her hands pressed flat on the desk again. “He did the same to Sandra, later. And each time, he came to me and offered to design their elimination transformations himself. As a kindness, knowing of some I had designed myself.” The word landed like something dropped from a height. “The Producer requested I accept. They were intrigued. They believed, perhaps, that this man showed Host potential.”

Arabella closed her eyes. “Sarah loved the women. All of them. They had all become sisters, if not by blood, by shared trials and grief of survival. She never stopped. When Nancy, Carol, and later Sandra were eliminated, she wept for days. She told Greg to his face that the game would destroy him, too. And, in the end, it did.”

Marie blinked hard, and Andy saw the water finally break the edge.

“What about Laura?” Andy said, barely more than a whisper.

Arabella smiled faintly. “During that first round, Sarah was the only woman he was intimate with. They had, after all, been together for nearly a year, and it was difficult for him to restrain his appetites when surrounded by so many women. And they loved each other, then. Laura was conceived then, although Sarah only came to realize she was pregnant a few weeks later.”

Arabella folded her hands again. “She was born in the eighth month. You helped deliver her, Marie, with Colleen, Sandra, and Kimberly.”

Marie’s breath caught. She looked at Laura—both faces—and something in her expression broke open, not with grief but with something older and more complicated. “You were so small,” she said, almost to herself. “You came out screaming. Colleen kept saying, ‘she’s angry, she’s perfect, angry means perfect,’ and I wrapped you in my cardigan because we hadn’t—“ She stopped. Started again. She pressed her fingers to her lips for a moment. “I held you before Sarah did, just for a minute, while Kimberly helped her. “And then we gave you to her, and she—“ Marie stopped. Started again. “She didn’t say anything. She just looked at you. Like you were the only real thing in the room. She wouldn’t let go. She just kept saying your name.” Marie pressed her lips together. “We hadn’t known what to call you until that moment. She looked at you and said Laura, and that was it.”

Arabella, quietly, said, “The Producer made a show of it. Broadcast the final hour.” A pause, small but weighted. “I watched the whole thing. When Sarah said your name, I had to step away from the feed for a moment.” She said it simply, without apology, as if it were merely a logistical detail. “You were the first baby born here since the beginning.”

Laura’s hands gripped Andy’s so hard the tendons rose like cords.

“Greg came in after,” Marie said, her voice flattening. “We thought — I don't know what we thought. That it might change something. That he might look at you and feel something that wasn't about himself.” She shook her head. “He stood in the doorway. He looked at you — just looked, for a long moment — and then he told Sarah she'd better not lose her figure. He didn't come back that night.”

Arabella’ s gaze dropped briefly to Laura — both of her — before she spoke. “Sarah had already asked me, before the birth, to protect her daughter if she could not. I could not refuse her that.” A pause. “So when Greg came to me that same night, I told him the truth: that a child conceived and born inside the Hotel was not an ordinary child. That she had a path ahead of her that had already been set in motion.” Arabella’s voice was quiet, almost conversational. “I also told him that the Producers take an interest in such children. That anything done to obstruct that path — abandonment, harm, removal — would be noticed. By parties with considerably longer memories than mine.” She let that sit for a moment. “He didn’t ask me to elaborate. Men like Greg rarely do, when they understand the shape of a warning.”

Arabella's expression didn't change, but something behind it did. “He had expected the season to make him wealthy. Masters typically leave with resources — money, connections, advantages the Producers build into the contract as incentive. Greg had maneuvered throughout the season as though those rewards were guaranteed, as though they were owed to him.” A pause. “They weren't. He returned to the world with the same blue-collar life he had left, and the women bound to him, and nothing else. He never forgave any of them for it, but particularly blamed Sarah, and Laura’s birth.”

“There are rules that govern what those who pass through the Hotel may do, once they leave it,” Arabella said, her voice quieter now, as if reciting something older than herself. “No Contestant, no Master — no one born of this place — may cause the **** of another who has passed through it, or was born of it. It is the oldest rule we have. The Hotel exists to transform. Not to destroy.” She folded her hands. “Greg understood, eventually, that I was watching. That there were limits even he could not cross without consequences he could not undo. It did not make him ****. But it kept certain things from happening.”

Marie put a hand to her mouth, the lines around her eyes broken by tears. Laura's faces went pale, then pink, then white again, cycling through the colors in a way that reminded Andy of someone holding herself together through pure will.

Andy asked, “What happened to the rest? Afterward, I mean?”

Arabella’s next words were almost clinical. “Greg took all the money all the women in the harem had in their savings. Claimed it was owed him. He left Harvey, Illinois, where he and Sarah had been born. Made his way to Warrenville, where no one would know him, where there were less eyes, less social cohesion. It would be easier for him to handle his harem there, and the land was cheap. He believed that, being closer to Chicago, he was one break away from making it. They lived together for several years, but Greg became ever more controlling. He rarely physically hurt Laura—he was, in his own way, afraid of her, and I did not disabuse him of the notion before I released them all—but he kept Sarah on the same leash he’d built in the game. Tighter, even. Out of spite, no longer out of love.”

Marie’s voice cut in, flat and hard. “The rest of us were in a shack. By the river. He put us there and told us to stay.” She didn’t look at Arabella when she said it. “We weren’t allowed near Laura. Weren’t allowed near Sarah without him saying so first. Sometimes he’d come for one of us—when he wanted something—and then we wouldn’t see him again for weeks. He’d look right through us after. Like we were furniture he resented owning.” She stopped. Her jaw worked. “He’d had all these ideas about what his life was going to look like. Chicago. Money. Something. And none of it came, and we were still there, and I think he blamed us for that. For existing. For being proof of what he actually was.”

A silence. Then, Arabella continued. “After Greg gave Laura the scar, Sarah wanted to leave, take Laura with her. She knew he was too unstable, but the compulsions from the game were too strong. She stayed, even when she knew it was killing her. When Laura died—“ Arabella stopped, as if composing herself.

The moment stretched. Arabella looked at Laura, and Andy saw it in her eyes. Instinctively, he pulled Laura close, both of her. She didn’t resist. She trembled.

“When Laura died,” Arabella said, “Sarah lost herself. Laura had been the only thing she was still holding on to — the proof that something good had come from all of it, that someone might escape. When that was gone—“ She stopped. Her hands pressed flat against her thighs. “Greg took it differently. He had never loved Laura, not really. What he felt when she died was closer to relief. And then, I think, permission. He became worse after. Much worse.”

The silence that followed was not empty. Andy felt Laura’s grip tighten — both of her — and heard the small, involuntary sound she made, barely a breath, the kind that comes before crying or after it. He looked at her. Both faces were turned slightly away, toward some middle distance, and he recognized the expression: not the hot, accusing grief he had seen from her early in the season, the grief that had needed somewhere to land. This was different. This was the grief that had nowhere to go. He pulled her close, one arm around each of her, and felt both bodies lean into him at once, and he wished, with a helplessness that had no bottom to it, that he could reach into her and take the pain out — Sarah, alone, holding nothing — and carry it himself instead.

Laura didn’t fall apart. She sat with it. After a long moment, she said, very quietly, “She endured for me. And then I—“ She stopped. Started again. “She had nothing left.” Her eyes glimmered with tears.

Not it’s my fault. Just the fact of it, plain and devastating.

Andy pressed his lips to her hair and said nothing, because there was nothing to say, and she didn’t need him to say anything. She just needed him there, solid, while she held something that could not be fixed.

After a while, Andy asked, voice barely audible, “What happened then?”

Arabella looked at Laura, both faces, and the way she did it was nothing like a Host; it was the way a confessor might look at a penitent. “Sarah asked me, before she was lost, to keep Laura safe if anything ever happened. You read the letter, Andy. But I couldn’t watch over her constantly. There are rules, as ancient as I am, that say a Host cannot interfere with the real world during an active season, unless it has to do with the season itself. I couldn’t even watch, most of the time. But I tried my best. So when you… when you died, I didn’t find out until a month later. I grieved you. I grieved Sarah. But by then, it was too late.”

The air in the office was thick enough to drink. Andy heard Laura’s voice—both of them—but so soft it barely crossed the span of the table. “How long did you watch us?”

Arabella, after a long silence, said, “Every chance I could. Every second I could. I have hosted over three thousand, seven hundred seasons, on this world alone, under a dozen names. But this one… this was the one that mattered to me the most. Because it was the one I failed the most.”

She looked at Andy, eyes shining. “That is why I chose you, Andy Cooper. You and your broken heart and your impossible, ridiculous faith in lost causes. Because if anyone could rescue her, it was you.”

Andy had no words for a long time. He looked at Laura, both faces, and found her looking back, as if she wanted him to anchor her again, to build the bridge between them so she wouldn’t float away on the story.

Marie, quietly, said, “You should tell her the rest. About the others.”

Arabella nodded. “Of course. The other women—the harem—are here, too. All but one. Carol passed away, a few years after returning. But the others—the ones you called aunts, Laura—they are here. Most are in the Garden. You can see them if you wish. Marie came down to watch over Sarah, to keep her company.” She looked at Marie, and there was a softness there that Andy had never seen from her before.

Laura, after a long pause, asked, “Are they okay?”

Arabella weighed her answer, then said, “Some are better than others. But none are alone.”

There was a quiet, then. Not the empty kind, but the full kind, as if everyone in the room was catching up to the new arrangement of the world.

Laura broke, quietly, the way a person breaks when they have been holding something too long and their hands simply stop working. Not a sob—just a slow, soundless dissolution, tears sliding down both faces at once, and she didn’t wipe them away. Andy squeezed her hand and she let him, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at nothing, or at something none of them could see. “My Mom,” she whispered, “She hurt so much.”

Marie made a sound, low in her throat. She reached across the table and covered Laura’s free hand with both of hers. “She loved you, Laura,” Marie said. “She told me once—before the end—that if she could go back and choose it all again, she would. Every bit of it. Because you came out of all of it.” She paused, and her voice, when it came back, was rough with use. “When she saw you and Andy, when she understood what you had, she was glad, Laura. She was so happy. She dreamed that you could get out of all this. She would have endured any transformation, if it meant you would be happy.”

Laura’s breath caught. She pressed her lips together, and the tears kept coming, unhurried now, as if they had been waiting a long time for permission.

Andy pressed his mouth to her hair and said nothing. Arabella, at the head of the table, kept her hands flat against the wood and did not move. Laura didn’t speak. She just held on, to Andy, to Marie, to the fact of it—not guilt, but grief, clean and enormous. Andy could feel it, he could see it: her mother, alone in a house that only held hurt for her, holding nothing but the hope that someday her daughter could be safe, could be happy. That all that pain would be worth it.

He found his voice, at last. “Thank you,” he said. “For telling it all.”

Arabella inclined her head, her eyes glimmering. “You deserved the truth.”