Finally! At last! After all these long years! Editing on the later chapters has been done, and editing on the earlier will soon be underway. Answers should be questioned, my dear reviewers!
The morning came long before I expected it, and I soon found myself slipping behind the changing screen in our tiny, shabby green room. The purple-and-black uniform of The Troll’s Eye was, although I knew not how, even scantier than I’d feared. There was no mirror for me to see myself clearly in, but merely looking down, I noted the skirt that came to rest almost a hand’s breadth above my knees, the purposefully holey stockings, and the scandalous neckline of the ‘dress’ I now wore.
When we reached the base of the stairs – Triedtha dressed also in the short-skirted uniform – I found the tables already filling with people. I had only just tied my hair back with a black ribbon from my travel-bag when Sir Harolk strode over to us. “They order their food at the bar before sitting down,” he explained, slightly short of breath. “See those double-doors behind the bar? That’s the kitchen, as I didn’t have time to show you las’ night. The cook’ll give y’platters with little wooden pillars stuck in the middle, see? The number on them will match the one there’ll be on the table, but that one won’t be shaped like a pillar – pyramids, instead. D’you get it?”
I nodded, strangely free of all nervousness. It was simple, wasn’t it? Triedtha took the lead this time as we slipped behind the bar and into the kitchen.
“Oh, there you are at last! Welcome to the kitchen, ladies. Y’ain’t gonna see none like this anywhere else,” bellowed a thin, rather gaunt-looking man from his place by the oven. He held a knife in one hand, and the other had what looked like animal blood on it; for a fleeting moment, I was reminded of some strange version of a murderer, only he had to be stabbing bread, for the knife had crumbs on it, and naught else. “Hare’s the name, and wharrabout you?”
“Oh,” I said, pulling free of my odd thoughts. “Mari – er, Hannah. This is Triedtha, but Dai for short. Most don’t know how to pronounce her name, so she goes by Dai.”
Triedtha gave me a look that I interpreted as Where in all of Ape’erafer did you get that story? But might have been something less complimentary.
“Hannah and Dai, eh? Well, we can’t be caught idlin’ away in here while the customers starve – Harolk’d have my skin! Take these platters and get out there, and good luck t’you.”
The morning went by as easily as I suppose I had expected it to. Mostly I was smiled and thanked, if even for simply delivering their food, and sometimes the occupants of the table ignored me completely. Once or twice one of the men would try to trip me, or shout things after me that turned my face a rather sickly burnt red color, and I cursed my short skirt many times before sat down at last in the kitchen. Hare gave me two reasonably large bits of bread and a slice of slightly undercooked meat for lunch, but he had little time for talking – he had to eat quickly and then cook again, and I did not begrudge him the difficult job.
“So,” said Hare as Dai and I stumbled for the final time that night through the swinging double-doors. “Dinner out there‘s over, and I’ve already got most o’ the dishes done. D’you want to eat an’ then tell me about yerselves, or the other way ‘round?”
I rubbed the sleep that had already begun to creep into my eyes out again, not so offended by his shameless nosiness as I might have been a day before. “Dinner first,” I said firmly. “I mightn’t live to see another sunrise if I was expected to tell you aught concerning myself before having a morsel of food in my stomach.”
Dai nodded in silent agreement, still rather out of breath from her last trip out of the kitchen – one of those ‘nice’ farm boys we’d spoken about just that morning had grabbed hold of her skirt, and she, knowing Sir Harolk would not appreciate hearing that one of his new serving-maids had bitten or slapped a customer, accidentally dropped the thin - and fortunately empty – food-platter onto his silly head. Hare brought us both an apple and other leftover tidbits, and waited quite patiently for us to finish eating to ask any questions.
“Let’s start with age. Always fun, innit? Twenty-three, if I’m a day, laydeez. An’ you, lovely Miss ‘Annah?”
I blushed only slightly, after but a day here already accustomed to much worse than such a small compliment. “Sixteen,” I lied, perhaps imagining that cutting two years off my age would put across to him how very little I needed any man’s attentions. He did not appear surprised, but turned his gaze on Dai. She was fidgeting slightly, having all but inhaled her dinner by then.
“Thirteen,” she said quietly, but her eyes stayed on her fidgety fingers.
“’Kay. An’ how about hometown? That’s a good un. Earlkonic from the first, I am, an’ proud.” He beamed most infectiously at me, and I managed the slightest smile back.
“You wouldn’t know where if I told you, or I assume you wouldn’t, but I’m actually Jharriman – well, Dai and I are, both.”
This, somehow more than my age, he raised an incredulous eyebrow at. “Really, now? I’ve never seen such a light-haired, pale-skinned Jharriman in my life, ‘Annah.” He chuckled as he said it. Light-haired?
“You—” I cut myself off abruptly, clutching a thin strand of my hair. “Did you say blonde, Hare?”
“Yes, I believe I did. Is there a diff’rent word fer it, where y’come from?” He smiled innocently at me, a little patch of auburn hair slipping over his right eye.
Blonde, blonde, I thought, staring at the honey-colored hair clutched in my fist. My hair is not blonde. With an overly theatrical yawn, I turned slightly to look at Dai. “I think that’s enough questions for one night. Would you like me to leave the door open for you, so you can stay and talk to Hare for a bit, Dai?” I asked with forced calm, rising slowly.
“Oh, no,” Dai squeaked, taking hold of the crook of my arm so she could stand, also. “I’ll come now. See y’in th'morning, ‘Are?”
He nodded. “Of course. You’ll sleep well fer me, won’t you, ladies?”
Dai giggled, and at her genuine happiness, I forgot a moment my predicament.
“You know we will, Hare. Good night, then,” I said brightly, and pushed through the kitchen’s swinging doors.
***
“He was nice, I think,” said Dai as I shut the room’s door behind me. “Not t’be trusted s’soon, o’ course, but nice.”
“Dai.”
“And y’did right there, not tellin’ him anythin’. He migh’ be some spy from some’ere, f’r all we know.”
“Dai! Will you please listen to me for a moment?” I asked, and she seemed to catch the strain in my voice, for she sat up on her pallet and looked solemnly at me. “I can’t live in the same house, work in the same inn as you without… without telling you the truth.”
“Truth?” A faint frown hovered ‘round her brow, and her lips were pursed as she waited for me to explain.
With a deep, shuddering breath, and a second’s hesitation, I told her. I forgot the thinness of the walls, forgot the fact that anyone walking by could most likely hear my voice, and told her the entire story of the prince and the duke and the kings.
“I kissed him, you know, Dai. I kissed him, and yet I’m never quite sure why. Perhaps – perhaps because he treated me like a child, like something that might hurt itself at any second, and so you must be very careful with it. I remember, it felt very strange, like being set afire, and then jumping into a great, deep, ice-cold lake. He – he put his hand to the back of my head, and then…”
Dai’s eyes as she listened were wide with thoughts of wild adventures and a future that I knew could not be – romance, robbers, pirates, kings and knights. But what about my sad tale she took to, I could not guess. My forced marriage with royalty, or the prince that had shunned me, so handsome and so cruel. “And then,” she whispered, voice thick with eagerness. “And then what?”
“Then all the light was gone, and I was frozen. A voice spoke in the darkness, a few simple words that I cannot now remember, and then I remembered no more.” I brought the story finally to meeting her on the road, and she thanked me – not for the first time – for saving her.
My gaze strayed to the window, and it reflected a face – and yet, it wasn’t my face at all. The thin, sharp nose I was so accustomed to was gone, replaced by a small, rather button-like one. My eyes were the color of the sand at sunset, a sort of yellowish-brown, and my lips were thinner, smaller. The hair of deep cocoa that I had always kept long and smooth was now only just past my shoulders, an unkempt mop of blonde.
“He tol’ me abou’ that – an’ not t’tell you, too,” whispered Dai, as though afraid I would be angry with her.
“Told you what?” I held a hand up to my face, waggling the stubbier fingers and wondering how I hadn’t realized the changes before.
“Tol’ me that sometime soon you’d look a lot diff’rent, an’ none else but me’d no’ice. Sir Wimbledon did, that is, an’ then ‘e sed you couldn’t ‘ear ‘im, an’ not to essplain ‘til you no’iced yerself.”
“Aimthaer… I underestimated you, milord,” I whispered, looking out the window and into the deep sky. For a fleeting second, I fancied I heard his little chuckle, and a warm breeze from nowhere, like an affectionate caress, slipped across my cheek. I sighed softly to myself, and then looked over one shoulder at the straw pallet, decorated by a ragged gray blanket. “Sleep, Dai. We’ll have plenty of time for questions and answers tomorrow.”
Wouldn't we?
So there. And don't tell me I didn't warn you, because of course I didn't. Remember, I realllly don't need nitpicks, but honest advice is quite welcome.
