It is not nothing, all this that she has done. Would she have done it had she been contented?

Leonora stands with her arms stretched over her head, hands grasping the iron bars on the small window of her cell. Tonight, the usual night sounds are absent. The owl that nests opposite doesn’t hoot as it sets off on its silent flight over the city.

Is it sheltering, hiding, hungry, like her?

When it sounds each evening, she imagines its silent flight, how it must inspect the growing wall each night, considering new places to nest, how it gathers food, the abundance of prey found in a thriving city, as opposed to the lack that is the fate of cities that are dwindling.

All day long the prisoners have waited for food, but none has come. As the day wore on, the water in her jug finished, too, and her mouth is dry. It has grown hard to swallow and every time she moves, the cell seems slightly off balance.

This time of day, when the life inside her limbs, trapped and unused for another day, makes her feel agitated, she takes flight in her mind, following the untrodden pathways.

What if she had left Lisbon that night, set sail with her daughter and her parents, what would have become of her? It is hard for her to get onto the boat, even in her mind. She does it, step by step. First, she simply grasps hold of her mother’s hand as she is on the shore. Then, she lifts her foot, puts one foot into the boat before flailing backward and returning to dry land.

She does not know whether these are dreams or wakefulness, for the next time she is in the boat, she looks down and sees that her daughter has grown still, cold, a waxen corpse, and she hears a great moan come from her as if from a stranger.

She rubs her forehead. She could have had a happy, contented life.

Perhaps.

And if she had, would she have worked so hard, done so much?