Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The room is quite spacious, but plainly decorated.
Faded spots occupy the walls where paintings would have hung and the scuff marks of furniture that once filled the space litter the floor.
What is left is a large four poster bed, which I am sure, gets bathed in the light of the stained glass window when the sun is setting.
To the left there is a tall wooden bureau and a lattice room divider with a clawfoot copper tub perched behind it.
Directly in front of the round window is a little desk with a chair that I am currently fantasizing about sitting and painting at, but am met with the reality that I will probably not have time or access to paints in my new prison.
Ugh, how have I gotten myself into this mess?
I run and flop onto the bed, the softness of the mattress hugging me like a cloud. A little moan escapes my lips from the bliss of having a bed after many nights on the cold, hard ground. Maybe I will just stay up here, hiding in the blankets for the rest of my miserable life.
I wish I could just dissolve into mist, tossing away all responsibilities and just becoming one with the water cycle. Alas, I am solid and living and have others relying on me.
Visions of Marissa and where on Earth Oleander may have taken her are clouding my mind when a little tap tap tap on the door brings me back to the present. It is so faint that I wonder if I am just hearing things and settle back into my cloud of misery.
Tap tap tap, I definitely heard it that time.
“Hello? Um…you may enter?” I say, sitting up and hoping it isn’t anything too menacing waiting on the other side.
“Ooo hello, I heard another human had arrived and I wanted to see for myself!” The head of the little girl I had briefly seen earlier in the day pokes around the squeaky door.
She looks to be around ten years old and has two messy braids hanging down her servant’s uniform, a plain, grey pinafore with a white blouse underneath. I am surprised to see a human so young in this realm and cannot fathom how she got here, surely not through the same Gate as I.
“I’m Lillian,” she says, hopping fully into the room and spinning around, wide eyed-mouth open, looking in awe.
“I have never been up here before, this must be our little secret or Mistress Smudge will surely tell on me,” she whispers, skipping over to where I am seated on the bed.
She seems so trusting and happy for someone who has experienced what, I imagine, has been a difficult life if she grew up here. I can’t see a brand on either of her wrists so I wonder whether she is here of her own free will.
“Hello Lillian, I’m Nuria, it’s very nice to meet a fellow human,” I say, holding out my hand for a shake, telling a lie that comes easily to me as it was only a few days ago that I discovered my true heritage.
She beams up at me and grabs my outstretched hand with both of hers and shakes our joined hands wildly. My hand is now her prisoner.
“Oookay, well I believe I am meant to be heading down to the kitchens soon. Would you accompany me?” I ask, laughing at her enthusiasm as I try to pull my hand away from her, but she holds on tight with a big toothy smile.
I notice one of her front teeth is either half grown or chipped which gives her a sort of harmless and comical demeanor.
“First you need to change into your uniform and actually, I probably shouldn’t accompany you because then Smudge would know where I have been, silly!
I have to go find my brother Jacob, anyway.
He is probably lurking around the stables.
Smudge needs him to run an errand for her in the village,” she says, finally releasing my hand and skipping over to the bureau.
She pulls out a grey uniform with a long sleeve white shift and tosses it on the bed.
“You should hurry so she doesn’t get mad.
You do not want to see an angry kitchen Gromlin.
Not a pretty sight. anyway good luck on your first day!
” she says as she bounces back towards the door.
“Wait! Lillian… how did you end up here if you are human?” I ask, concern written in my scrunched up eyebrows.
“I can’t remember, you’d have to ask Jacob,” she says, turning back to the door. She lets it slam on her way out.
I flinch at the sound and hope she doesn’t get herself caught for it, but I have a feeling she has her ways of sneaking around this mansion fairly undetected.
Kitchen Gromlin?
I am left in silence, wondering what they might look like.
I can already feel that a Lillian sized hole is left in the room.
The slight comfort of a normal, albeit tornado like, human interaction with a child gives me a momentary sense of ease and I am reminded of Marissa at that age.
So similarly lively and friendly, making everyone love her.
But the feeling of nostalgia is quickly traded for dread when I look down at my uniform laying on the bed and I start worrying about the thought of what sort of work might lay ahead of me.
I have to figure out a way to escape. I have to find where Oleander took Marissa. Perhaps I should get to know this Jacob person; Lillian said he has access to the stables. I think that he may be my only ticket out of here, as I change into my uniform.
Find Jacob, find Jacob, find Jacob…
I hurry down the steps, not wanting to be late for my first shift, but stop at the door to the white room, my curiosity at what lies beneath the white sheets momentarily taking hold of me. Was this Oleander’s room?
I crack open the door, hoping to have a little sneak peak, but my plan is foiled by a varg with his back turned, standing guard at the door to the drawing room. Ever so softly, I shut the door, hoping he did not see me.
Great, they are having me watched. I huff a breath through my nose. Any plans of escape will be near impossible if I can’t get past the vargs.
I turn to the door of the kitchens, pausing to take a breath and steel my nerves.
Ok Nuria, play along. You will get out of here but for now, just try and fit in.
I creak open the door to peer around it but am met with a long dark hallway made of stone that slopes down to another door.
I rush down there and swing the next door open, thinking there will be more hallways and more doors but am met with a kitchen full of pointy-eared green creatures staring at me.
Kitchen gromlins…
“What is the meaning of this?! Trying to scare us half to death! Come down here!” A stout Gromlin with a bumpy nose, hair tufting out of its ears and a frilly apron yells at me, waving their rolling pin in the air.
With a quick glance around, I notice the kitchen itself is quite large with a long wooden work table in the middle of the room, two stove tops with six burners each and a big wood fired oven.
The room appears to be half underground but there are thankfully two windows high up on the walls in the back of the room as well as steps leading up to a door to the outside.
To the left there is another set of steps leading up to a door that perhaps goes to another part of the house.
Off to the right there looks to be a store room and beside it a door half slanted into the floor which must be the cold cellar.
I guess there are no refrigerators in this realm.
“So sorry, it’s my first day and I didn’t want to be late.” I wince, looking down at the snarling creature.
“Harrumph, well you would do better to not frighten gromlins. You’re lucky it didn’t flip us all over the edge,” she bristles and I wonder what she could mean by that.
“I am Mistress Smudge, also known as Chef, to you. I was only informed this morning that I would be having an addition to my crew so we have a special job for you,” she says and I can hear the other gromlins chuckle, there’s an inside joke I am missing.
“If you would kindly go down into the cellar to peel and thinly slice all of the onions that would be greatly appreciated. Master has a lunch scheduled tomorrow with a lord and his family from a neighbouring estate and all of these onions were gifted to him from their farms. He wishes for three different dishes using them so chop chop, off you go,” she says, smiling and tapping the rolling pin in her palm as she walks away.
“Back to work, the lot of you!” she snaps and the rest of the gromlins scatter to their various duties.
I can cut some onions, no problem, I think as I pry open the cellar door. I am met with an icy blast of air and am shocked at how chilly it is as I walk down into the dark room. There is one candle lit in the far corner but it is enough light to illuminate the mountain of onions piled on the floor.
“You’re joking!” I say out loud and someone slams the cellar door closed behind me.
I hear a muffled call say, “Don’t let the cold air out!” I am left in the dimly lit food dungeon, by myself.
The monotonous task allows my mind to wander and I can’t help but dwell on the betrayal of Oleander. The flow of tears brought on by the onions paves the way for actual tears as I sit in my rage and embarrassment.
How could she? Was the connection we had all in my head?
What did she want with Marissa…or I guess, me, anyway?
She mentioned The King wanted me for my powers but how could anyone know what I can do?
Was my mother an Etherealist? I could drive myself crazy with all the unanswered questions.
All I know for now is that I am stuck in this place and doubt I can get any answers while sitting in a cellar.
When I finally emerge, cheeks tear stained and eyes all red from the onion fumes, I notice it is dark outside and there is a delicious smell emanating from the oven. My stomach gurgles as I inhale deeply.
“I never want to see another onion again in my life,” I say, mostly to myself, but the nearest gromlin chuckles from its work station.