Chapter 3 Life Begins
LIFE BEGINS
Iwake slowly, pulling myself from a heavy darkness. The air is thick and smells of smoke. Thankfully, there is no pain other than what I remember. My mouth is filled with the taste of blood, which seems to be from a bite on the inside of one cheek.
I rise slowly from a flower-print-covered couch. There is a boy lying on a couch across from me. I consider trying to wake him, but he sleeps the sleep of the dead, his mouth slightly open and his sides rising and falling slowly.
Looking around the room, I see two other boys deposited on a couch and an armchair, both deep in sleep. Deciding that even if I could wake them, I don’t really want to. I examine the room instead.
The ceilings are high, and the entire room is painted in pastel shades that are highlighted by the dim light filtering in from the large window.
My eye is caught by a painting on one wall of the room, and I walk closer to it.
Examining the painting makes me feel unexpectedly sad.
I don’t know exactly why, but the trees, animals, and landscape depicted in the picture seem foreign and like a utopian idea in the middle of this garish room.
As I look at the painting, I find myself experiencing a very different type of pain than what plagued me the day before. I have lived for such a short time that I don't know where this feeling comes from, but it makes my chest hurt. My eyes sting with tears, and I try to understand the feeling.
Even as I look at the painting, I hear stirring behind me. Then I begin to hear voices.
“Where’d tha girl go?” asks one slurred voice.
“She’s right here,” says another clear, quiet voice.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and he guides me to turn away from the wall. Seeing my tears, he directs me to one of the couches, sitting me down upon one of the other boy’s legs. As my eyes meet the bright blue of his, he says kindly, “Are you ok? Why are you crying?”
All I can respond with is a slight shake of my head.
His expression as he looks at me is soft and slightly concerned. “I’ll leave you here to talk with Fem; this is more his area of expertise than mine,” he says kindly. Then the blue-eyed boy rises and roughly punches the shoulder of the boy beneath me.
To the side of the room, I hear the third boy rising.
He was sleeping sitting up in a large brown armchair.
His face is narrow with high cheekbones and a dark complexion.
Long black hair sticks to one cheek. His eyes are still squeezed shut as he runs a hand over his face.
Then, groaning, he pulls himself to his feet and stumbles from the room.
I turn to look at the boy underneath me, and he looks at me through half-closed eyes. His hair is brown and cropped short to his head. He turns his head away from me, but I can see that he wants to say something.
Suddenly, I believe I understand what it is, and I pull myself up off the couch, freeing his legs as I walk to the window.
As the boys rise, I keep my back to them and look out at what I can see of the city through the thick smoke in the air. I again wonder how I know what any of this is, but that knowledge seems unimportant, and so I decide to ignore the thought for not the first nor last time.
After a few moments pass, a hand touches my shoulder again, and the boy who led me from the painting is at my side. He offers me a cup of something, and after a moment of hesitation, I take it.
“Did you talk to Fem?” he asks.
I shake my head, not sure what or who that might be.
As he sees me looking at the cup in my hand, he says, “I brought you coffee. Good, strong coffee.”
I examine the liquid in the cup. It is dark and looks like mud. As I try to decide what to do with it, he touches my arm, and without consciously meaning to, I look back up at him.
“You don’t need to worry,” he says quietly.
“We know what you are, and there is no need to be ashamed. One of my friends was addicted for a time and was without money or a place to stay. We have found those without support in the past, and now that our circumstances allow, we try to help.” He nods slightly, still holding my eyes, and then, dropping his own, walks back toward the couches.
As I hear him speaking to the others behind me, I try to decide how to tell him I don’t know what he means.
Deciding that now is not the time or place, I look worriedly again at the cup in my hands and then, not knowing what to expect, take a small drink.
My concerns, it would seem, were entirely granted.
Coughing and spluttering against the taste of whatever poison this is, I badly wish I hadn’t tried it.
Hearing surprised exclamations behind me, I turn and see three faces looking at me. The tall one looks at the blue-eyed one and, laughing, says, “We always told you that you make awful coffee! Are you trying to poison her?”
He comes to my aid, taking the cup from me and rubbing my back. With a stunning smile on his face, he says, “My name is Lent. That’s Fem,” pointing to the one I sat on, “and Reem is the dashing fellow who tried to kill you with his coffee.”
Reem frowns and, grumbling quietly, begins to leave for the other room.
“No, no old son,” Lent says, rising from beside me. “Let me make the coffee, and you stay here to play host to our guest and get Fem off his ass.”
Blushing slightly, I look down at my hands.
Reem says something to Fem about making himself useful. Then he turns to me and asks, “Would you like me to show you to your room so you can freshen up?”
Looking up at him, I nod again, unable to keep the enthusiasm from it.
He grins, awful coffee apparently forgotten, and then I follow him out of the room.
He leads me past the painting, which I brush lightly with my fingertips as I pass.
I walk out into a wide entry space and then follow him along a narrow hallway.
From there, he directs us down another hallway and to a closed door.
“This will be your room," he says, looking at the door instead of me while he thrusts his hands deep into his pockets. “There are towels in there, and I will have one of the house employees bring in a change of clothes.”
As I reach for the knob, he turns on his heel and makes his way back in the direction we came from without looking at me.
I open the door and step into the room. It is dressed in black and white with traces of red as though two crows quarreled in the depths of snowy woods. The bed, which is large and more than dwarfs me, is flanked by two large cupboards, and there is an enormous black rug on the white marble floor.
It would feel cold and clinical except that it is a bit worn around the edges with bare wood showing where paint has rubbed off. The linens are threadbare, and there are small stains on the cupboards. There is also a connected bathroom with a clawfoot tub.
Going to the bath, I turn both knobs on the faucet and undress. As I remove my clothes, I see just how dirty they are, and register that I have not changed since falling in the street.
No wonder the boys looked at me oddly.
As I climb into the tub, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and freeze. I guess I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea what I looked like, and up until now, it didn’t seem to matter.
Mismatched eyes stare back at me, one blue, the other yellow.
They are set in, what I take to be, a plain face, but it is framed by waves of pale pink hair that is currently tangled and wind-knotted.
I reach my hand up to it, running my fingers along the length of it, but it doesn’t magically turn brown or black as I have seen on others.
Still staring, I drop my hands to my sides and examine the rest of my new body. Still unsure how I come by this knowledge, I feel that I am pretty but certainly no beauty.
Even as the importance of being different fades, I settle into the hot bath. The hot water slowly sinks into muscles that, without my realizing it, were tense and sore. I slowly relax, pain draining into the hot water even as the dirt and grime do.
I nearly fall asleep, my tongue playing with the cut inside my cheek, before a knock on the door pulls me back to the present. I jump slightly at the sound and quickly sit straight while calling out to ask what they want.
“Lady, I’ve brought the clothing that was requested for you. May I bring it in?”
I call out for her to enter and watch as she walks into the bedroom.
She is dressed in a neat grey outfit and walks with a quick confidence.
She sets a folded pile of clothing on a chair beside the bed.
Then, without saying or doing anything else, she turns and leaves, closing the bedroom door again.
As the door closes, I begin to wash myself, quickly scrubbing the last of the dirt from my skin.
Freshly washed and slightly pink from the scrubbing, I open the drain and step from the tub onto a fluffy towel.
Finding another towel hanging nearby, I wrap myself in it.
Then I find a brush and slowly begin to pull it through my hair, pulling apart the knots and wincing as it tears at my scalp.
Finally feeling better, I move back to the bedroom and examine the clothing left by the woman.
The pile on the bed contains a short and silky skirt that, when pulled on, falls to only my knees in loose waves.
There is also a tailored shirt with short sleeves and a standing collar, as well as long socks that cover each of my legs entirely.
There are shoes, but some part of me refuses to put them on while in the house.
I tie my hair up loosely with a ribbon and pick up the shoes before leaving the room.
I slowly find my way back to the room with the floral couches, only to find it empty. After wandering for a bit, I find Fem and Reem arguing quietly in a nearby room with a single large table. I turn at a motion at the edge of my vision and see that Lent has joined us.
“Hey ho you two,” he calls to the two arguing. He is carrying a tray of food and drink.
Fem and Reem go quiet, but then slowly begin back up with their argument in hushed tones as Lent carries the tray to a short table near the wall.
“Here, eat,” he says to me while grinning. He begins to serve himself.
I drop the shoes on the floor and walk to the side table.
“Take this,” he says while setting a plate in front of me, “and help yourself. That is the syrup, and this pitcher here is juice. If you don’t like that, there is water in this glass bottle.”
I pick up a fork, spear a couple of pieces of bread, place them on my plate, and dump the syrup on them. Then I carry my plate to the large table. I’m already tearing off pieces of bread and putting them into my mouth as I drop onto a chair.
As I eat, the other two stop their argument, and Reem leaves.
Fem takes a plate and, after heaping it with food much as I have done, he drops onto a chair across from me.
Lent finishes first, after stuffing his face too quickly for manners.
I eat nearly two full plates and sense a quiet shock from Fem, but ignore it.
Finally full, I rise from the table and make to leave in the same direction as the others, but Lent stops me. “I need to go out on an errand,” he says. "Would you like to stretch your legs and accompany me?”
“I would like that.”
“What do we call you?”
For a moment, I’m not sure what I might be named, but then it comes to me and I say, “Chaosta.”
He grins at me and says, “Welcome to the mansion, Chaosta.” Gesturing to me to follow, he leaves the room. I trail behind him from the room, through the entry hall, and out the front door.