Chapter 9 #3
“It’s perfect. Exactly what I needed.” She took another sip to make her point. “My head is feeling even better today. Another doozy of a migraine has been successfully averted.”
Martha cringed as though in pain. “Migraine?”
“Terrible headaches. Makes your head feel like someone’s taking a sledgehammer to it.
Sometimes they blind me, make me puke, and mess up my balance so I can’t even walk a straight line.
Thankfully, I don’t get them very often.
Usually when I’m stressed—or if it’s that time of the month.
You know, a hormone-kind of thing.” Lyla could tell that the poor girl really wanted to understand and be helpful, but was only catching and processing about half of what was said.
The difference in centuries and realities made communicating as difficult as speaking in another language.
Probably best to simplify all answers. “The coffee is wonderful, and so is the tea. Please tell Mistress Tern, thank you—again.”
That seemed to make Martha feel better about everything in general. So much so that she even smiled. “Will ye be helping the hatchlings today, then?”
“Martha!” Albionna flew out from behind the screen with the baskets of wool puffs and folded rags from the privy. She shoved them into the maid’s hands and stamped her foot. “See to replenishing what our lady’s needs with yer maw shut, ye ken?”
“No, no, just no.” Lyla firmly rapped on the table that held the teapot, coffeepot, and a platter of odd little golden cookies that she hadn’t tried yet.
“Speak freely around me. I need as much information about this place as I can get, and don’t worry, I won’t get you into trouble with Magnus. Anything you say is safe with me.”
“Everything is fine, my lady,” Albionna insisted, but her hard look at Martha as she shooed the girl away said otherwise.
She nodded at the plate of cookies. “Cook sent her best light biscuits since ye were feeling poorly last night. If they’re not enough to break yer fast properly, she said to let her know, and she’ll be more than happy to send ye a heartier platter. ”
“I’m not much of a breakfast person, thank you.
Cookies and coffee are plenty. Now, tell me, who are these hatchlings, and how can I help them?
” These two might as well learn she meant what she said.
Lyla took a cookie, dipped it into her coffee, and nibbled on it.
The rich buttery sweetness almost made her groan.
“Well?” She waved the half-eaten treat like a conductor’s baton.
“I assume hatchlings must be baby dragons? What kind of help do they need?” She couldn’t imagine how she, an average human with no mystical skills or fire-breathing capabilities, could be of assistance to the offspring of such powerful beings as dragons.
Albionna barely shook her head, her expression even more pained than Martha’s. “We canna say, mistress. Please ask us no more.”
Lyla set aside her coffee and brushed the cookie crumbs from her hands. “Has someone threatened you? Tell me who, and I’ll make them sorry.” If there was one thing that rubbed her fur the wrong way, it was someone being bullied.
Thankfully, the maid frowned and seemed genuinely shocked. “Oh no, my lady. No one at Kindred Fortress has ever mistreated us. This is the best possible place in the realm to serve.”
“Are you sure, or are you just saying that because you’re afraid?” Lyla waited, staring into the unusually big brown eyes of the young woman, watching for any sign that she felt threatened.
Albionna smiled. “I swear, my lady, and Martha swears so, too. Do ye not, Martha?”
Martha paused her towel folding and nodded. “Aye, my lady. I swear—and Albionna only scolded me to guide me because I’ve never been a lady’s maid afore. She meant nothing mean or cruel.”
“You know I’m going to have to ask Magnus about the hatchlings?” Lyla wasn’t threatening, but she couldn’t bear it if the babies of anything were being mistreated. “He’ll wonder how I knew about them.”
Albionna glared at Martha as though ready to wring the girl’s neck. “Well, then. Tell her ladyship, and then ye can go downstairs and tell Mistress Tern what ye’ve done.”
Her eyes filling with tears, Martha drew herself up and marched closer.
“The sickness has spread to the eggs, making the hatchlings fail before they’ve even had the chance to break free of their shells and draw their first breath of air.
” She jerked a hard nod and continued, “The younglings are barely strong enough to emerge, and their cries are weak and pitiful.”
Horrified, Lyla rose from the makeshift tea table, rounded the pools, and headed toward the door. “How can I help them? What do I need to do?”
“Ye are the prophesied healer,” Albionna said. “Music heals dragonkind. That is why the vile Kcirred cast a curse upon the land. Every instrument capable of making a healing sound crumbled to dust years ago, and any time another of any kind is built, the sound it makes hurts the ears.”
“Can no one here sing?”
The maid shook her head. “Whenever we try, nothing comes out of our mouths. ’Tis the curse.”
Lyla had never missed her ability to sing as much as she missed it now.
She’d never seen a baby dragon, but it was a baby.
How could anyone attack babies? She wondered if whistling would work?
Or maybe some sort of humming? Maybe she could do that.
She looked down at the thin robe she still wore.
Before she could help anyone, she needed to get dressed.
“Does anyone here have some clothes I could borrow?”
“Borrow?” Albionna stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I wove an entire wardrobe for ye, my lady.”
“Albionna is the most gifted of all the seamstress Selkies,” Martha said.
“Seamstress Selkies?” Lyla fixed a hard look on Albionna, doing her best to guilt the maid into a confession. Seamstress Selkie did not sound like a human. “Care to tell me anything?”
“I do not.” Albionna stuck her sharply pointed nose higher in the air. “Might I suggest a simple, everyday kirtle rather than one of the finer gowns—if ye intend to see to the hatchlings. The young ones are sometimes a bit…messy.”
Lyla laughed. “Yeah…human babies are sometimes a bit messy too, and I don’t know what a kirtle is, but if that’s what you recommend, then let’s do it.
” Hopefully, a kirtle was a pair of coveralls or something.
She wondered if she’d be crawling around caves to get to the eggs.
She hoped not. Severe claustrophobia wasn’t a problem, but minor attacks of panic about being able to breathe were real.
“First, the shift,” Martha said as she stripped away Lyla’s robe without warning. She held up what looked like an old-fashioned white cotton nightgown with a drawstring neckline and long bell-shaped sleeves that had strings hanging from the gathered cuffs.
“Then, the kirtle,” Albionna said, holding up a dark navy dress with straps instead of sleeves. It laced up the back, which would make dressing or undressing herself a challenge.
Lyla ran her hands across the soft, heavy fabric that couldn’t possibly be cotton. “What is this made of?”
“Wool, my lady.” Martha held out a pair of white stockings and smiled. “But these are the finest silks. The chief said they were to be so.”
After donning the stockings and trying to get used to the feel of ribbons tied around her knees to hold them up, Lyla slipped on the delicate shoes that were suspiciously similar to those at the spa in Seven Cairns.
Seven Cairns. If she ever got back there, she’d be giving Keeva and Mairwen a piece of her mind.
What right did they have to kidnap her and send her into this mind-blowing black hole of strangeness?
She tamped down her anger. Now was not the time.
She’d think about them later. Now she had to finish dressing and find those baby dragons.
“And now the panties?” she asked, waiting for one or both of the maids to produce a pair of antique bloomers.
“Panties?” they repeated in unison.
“Underpants? Underwear? Bloomers?”
Their looks remained blank.
“Something to cover my butt in case the wind blows my skirts up?” Lyla lifted the gown and the shift, revealing the nakedness of her thigh and flank.
Albionna shook her head. “Ye are dressed, my lady. All we need do is brush yer hair and pin it however ye wish.”
How could this place be so magical and advanced in some ways, but so backward and thirteenth-century-like in others?
It didn’t make sense. Lyla threw up her hands, admitting defeat.
“Just brush it out. I don’t like it tied.
That always makes my head hurt, and with it starting to feel better, I don’t want to derail that. ”
Again, they eyed her, obviously disapproving.
“You’re not braiding or pulling my hair back. Get over it.”
They both curtsied and again, in unison, said, “As ye wish, my lady.”