1. Amelie #2
Wren’s jaw twitched at the lack of control he had. I was the oldest and would turn twenty-five in just a few months, but Wren wanted to take care of the house. He’d tried so hard to fill our father’s big shoes since he left, but he was still just a little boy.
“Fine,” Wren bit out as he went for the stairs to leave.
On a normal day, Wren wandered the perimeter of the Whispering Forest to collect berries and herbs.
Only the perimeter. No one would dare to cross the tree line.
It was the beginning of harvest season, though, so he would spend the morning foraging, then help the farmers in the fields in the afternoon.
I directed the two younger boys to get dressed and followed Wren into the kitchen downstairs, where he loaded up his satchel with his Palace issued tools.
“I’m going to find something sweet for him to have at dinner,” I told Wren, fidgeting with the back of the chair. I had over ten years on the kid but he wasn’t a dreamer like me and Hansel. He’d let his light fizzle out long ago.
“Don’t get his hopes up,” he replied without looking my way. “You need attention from the Palace like the mice need more holes in our walls to live in.”
I looked to the wall in the living room, noting that the mice absolutely did not need another hole to burrow in.
I’d been caught stealing from the bakery a few times, but the guard that seized the goods always let me go.
He was older, probably around my father’s age.
Of all the guards, he was the only one who never hurt me.
Even when he caught me committing a crime and most of the guard’s had hurt me for doing a lot less.
“I’ll be safe, I promise,” I lied, and Wren knew it.
There wasn’t a way to be safe in Holleberg.
As ironclad as my heart had become, my body wasn’t as strong.
Our rations had dwindled to almost nothing, so I always gave the majority of mine to the boys.
A few pieces of stale bread, warm slices of meat, cheese that often had mold already crawling over it, and murky water.
“Taven has us off early tonight because of the colder weather. I’ll be home around the same time as you,” Wren announced as he threw the satchel over his shoulder and walked out the door, not sparing me a glance as his head dropped in submission to whatever his day was about to entail.
Two sets of feet came up behind me.
“Ready.” Hansel dramatically swept his arms down his body showing off the outfit he chose for himself.
I turned to see him wearing a striped shirt with holes in the neckline and jeans that had dirt stains all over them. The frayed hem at the bottom threatened to unravel completely if he stepped on them wrong. Tildan was still in his jammies, and I couldn’t be bothered to change them.
“Very handsome, birthday boy. Let’s get you off to school.”
After getting Hansel dropped off and Tildan to Magda’s, a family friend who watched the baby during the day, I went back home to get ready for work.
I pulled on a skirt that was two sizes too big and already dotted in shoe polish and pulled my cream knitted sweater over my head.
My shoulder was entirely exposed in it, thanks to the gaping hole in the shoulder from the time a guard threw me to the ground for no good fucking reason.
Grabbing a ribbon from the clay dish my father made for me, I blindly braided my frizzy, dark chocolate hair.
If you lined me and my siblings up, it would look like a quill running out of ink on the paper.
In the mirror, I noticed my swollen lip and fresh bruises.
Blood vessels had burst throughout my cheeks and added a purple hue to the dark circles covering my right eye.
My eyes were the only thing left that had any light to them.
The deep blue color accompanied by the streaks of gold that ran through them were the only thing about me that I thought was pretty.
People always told me I looked like my mother when she was younger. You’re a vision, Amelie. Just like your mother, they’d say. I blocked the thought of being my mother’s replica as I stepped into her room to visit her before I went to work.
“Hi mama,” I announced only to be polite. Her sickness made her catatonic. She wouldn’t speak or even acknowledge my presence. She was a ghost of the woman she once was .
I rolled her each way, putting a clean set of sheets on her bed and throwing her soiled ones in a hamper.
Her hair was matted on the side from where she’d been lying since last night.
I did my best to brush it and put it into a new braid.
Then I stripped her down to wash her body.
If I was catatonic, I think my children having to wash all my bits and pieces would be enough to bring me out of it.
She was diagnosed with Melancholia last year by the village healer.
After losing father she was distraught, but then she nearly died delivering Tildan.
She’s been in this bed ever since. The healer said it was common after having a baby for a mother to lose herself for a while.
But this was extreme, this was neglect. Not only to us, but herself.
My mother was a radiant, lively woman. She and my father could make the air in this home feel like breathing in magic.
My father loved to swing her around the house as she accompanied their dancing with her singing, badly, I may add.
But nonetheless, their joy drowned out the sounds of our rumbling bellies and soothed the bruises on our bodies.
Now? My mother’s body was a vessel. A part of her soul died with my father, whatever she had left was mopped up by the healer after Tildan’s birth.
Her lack of contribution to Holleberg brought her rations to barely a bite per day.
Not enough to share with the rest of us, and not nearly enough to sustain her.
I grabbed a chair and sat in front of her as she continued to stare through the wall of her room. Her hand was icy as I grabbed it and brought it close to me.
“It’s Hansel’s birthday today.” I was talking into an empty abyss. “He really wants a cake, but I know that he’d want you to get up more than any variation of a cake I could come up with.”
Tears formed in her eyes, a sign of life I hadn’t gotten from her in months.
“I know you’re hurting, mama. But we need you. The boys need you. We miss you and papa the same, but you’re alive. That’s not right…” I trailed off, choking back the cotton in my throat.
The dam broke. Her tears fell in a steady stream down her cheek. She pulled her hand from mine and tucked it back into her body.
Her rich, dark hair was graying, and her eyes were no longer an exact match to mine. Mine might not hold a lot of hope, but they weren’t entirely lifeless like my mother’s.
“Please, Mama,” I begged her once more. She curled into her body, trying to hide away from my words.
A tear slipped from my eye, but I wiped it away quickly. Everyone here was bruised and beaten. Whether it was one’s soul that’s been battered or our body, the marks are all the same so there’s no use in crying about them.
I shoved the chair back into the corner as I stood and left her with my plea, then strode out the front door with my ripped satchel.
It was a rather short walk to work. I kept my head down and tried to avoid catching the attention of the guards. Since the last time I stole some vegetables from a merchant’s cart, I’d been under the Palace’s watchful, dangerous eye.
Approaching the bakery, I peeked through the dusty window and noted where the sugar was stocked and exactly where patrons needed to be standing in order for me to swipe it.
There were a few smaller jars rationed for the villagers to buy.
I’m sure it was cheaper too. My wages from working at Henrik’s were still being garnished by the palace to pay back my father’s funeral costs, so stealing was my only option.
The imaginary pennies I dreamed of in my pockets wouldn’t suffice.
The rich were getting richer, and the hungry would only get hungrier.
A sinister feeling tickled up my spine, accompanied by the clop of large footsteps and the putrid smell of a rotting soul.
In the reflection, a tall, fat figure stalked up behind me.
I turned on my heel away from the window and picked up my pace, hoping to create distance, but with each of my steps, two more hammered down quicker behind me.
The thud of my heart in my ears now also joining the race.
Henrik’s store was one more block down. I kept my gaze tunneled in on the faded green door and the shards of wood protruding from it.
A large hand collapsed over my shoulder and pushed me with such force that it was a miracle I stayed on my feet. Twisting enough to see which of the guard’s it was, my heart ripped against my chest at the sight of the same man responsible for my freshest bruises.
“What do we have here?” He plucked the tied-together strap of my satchel off my shoulder.
“I don’t want any trouble.” I scrambled backwards.
This guard in particular had hurt me before, many times.
He’d beat me, taken parts of my womanhood I’m not sure I could ever have back, spat on me.
Broke my collarbone, bit me. Someday, I hoped a version of him would visit me in my dreams where I could beat him once and for all.
Only five more steps. That’s all I had left and I’d be under Henrik’s watchful eye. They wouldn’t hurt me in front of him.
The greasy man pushed me again, but this time it closed the distance between me and the splintered door to the shoe shop. I swung it open and tumbled inside.
“Amelie–what…” Henrik assessed the situation quickly and schooled his features to address the guard standing in the doorway with his eyes locked on my body. The guard’s eyes were dark, sinister. Void of humanity.
“I’ll take it from here, Rad. Thank you.” Henrik’s voice was stoic.
Rad narrowed his eyes at me but relented and closed the door behind him as he started toward the palace.
My eyes couldn’t stop watching him walk away.
I needed to know he was gone for myself.
I let the second tear of the day fall from my desperate soul and got to my feet, eyes still on him.
Rad turned back toward the shop, a smile spread across his face, and my stomach folded in on itself.
I tore my eyes away, praying to a God I knew never heard my pleas that Rad didn’t take my stare as an invitation.
“Sorry,” I said while sniffling back the ball in my throat. “Where should I start today?”
Henrik eyed the new bruises on my face and took a deep breath before letting us move on.
“Head to the back. Finish up those soles on Mr. Brandhuft’s boots. Then shine up the orders going out tomorrow.”
I nodded and went straight to my station in the back. The rest of the day, I took out my frustrations on the bottoms of the helpless boots and hoped these soles would tread lightly in this hell we lived in.