It had been two days since the ball, and I had not been called on once by Illy. It was a Wednesday now, and Ebony had encouraged me to go out to the market that day, so I might get some books and things to fill my room with. My suitcase of belongings from before I had been sold was brought to me, and consequently I now had a couple things for my room. But there wasn't much in the suitcase. Besides a couple childhood relics, my phone, and a few changes of clothes there was nothing. I checked my phone, and to my surprise I learned we had cell service and wifi, which I had not expected of the valley. I had a couple texts from friends asking if I was still allowed to communicate with them and where I had ended up. I figured I couldn't tell them the reality of any of it, and wasn't sure if I was allowed to so I left the phone on my bedside table for later.
If they got no response they wouldn't be surprised. At this point they hardly expected one. Willingly entered legal slavery had been common for a long time now. The only requirement were that you signed yourself away by your own will and at a suitable age to do so. It was normal, and I had lost a friend or two to it before. There was a boy named Clifford whom I was friends with a while back, and he had signed simply because he found life too complex for his taste, and was much more content letting someone else control and value him. It had worked out wonderfully for him, and we had met up a month later as his master allowed, and he said he loved the lifestyle. But I lost touch with him after that, busy with school and such. There was no use thinking about it now.
I dressed in a summery blue and white dress that was patterned with fluffy clouds to look like the sky, slipping a large sun hat on my head, and taking a black purse I had brought with me, I made my way into the parlor, but found no one there. I went up the stairs and came to the door of the drawing room, in which I could hear talking, so I opened it slowly. Inside I found Illy conversing with a lady, but they stopped as I entered.
"I do hope I'm not intruding," I bowed. "Master, I would like your permission to go out today, to the market, if it is your will to allow me to do so." Illy turned and ran here eyes up and down my outfit, as if scrutinizing it.
"Take all you want from the cash box in the hall," She said finally, "And I permit you gone until sunrise as long as you throw a cardigan over that dress. Get two escorts from the guards at the door." I was unsure why I needed two escorts but I obliged. She turned back to her guest and I slipped out the door to find the cashbox. Inside lay an array of golden coins and hundred juble bills, though I hardly knew what a jubly was worth. Luckily the Silver twins were walking by just then.
"What is a Jubly worth in dollars?" I asked, "relatively of course."
"One Jubly is one dollar," They said in unison, and continued on their way. I did greatly wish that they might be more friendly but it seemed to be in their nature to be shy. I looked back at the box and realized there could easily be seven thousand dollars just in the box. I took two hundred with a couple coins for change, though I was unsure how much the coins were worth. I threw a white cardigan over my dress in my room and grabbed my phone mainly by habit before starting out to say goodbye to Ebony.
I knocked and entered their room, "I'm going," I said.
"Have fun," She called excitedly from where she lounged on the bed.
"Do you know how to arrange an escort?" I asked, "The Princess told me to get two."
"I'll come help," She said, leaping up and starting out the door. We opened the door out of the parlor and she lead me through a winding of hallways and staircases until we came to a large box office in front of the great doors we had entered through when we first came. It felt so very long ago, though it was probably around a week in the past.
"Two escorts and a small automobile for Sapphire, first slave of the Princess Ilustra Caedis." Ebony said authoritatively to the man in the the office. He punched something into the computer.
"Should I not walk?" I asked Ebony. She laughed.
"You can't walk that far or you'd have no time to shop," She replied, "Relax, everyone who takes trips to town gets a small automobile and an escort or two. Royalty and nobility get carriages."
"Your automobile is out front," Said the man in the office, and a couple servants pulled back one of the double doors to me to exit. I walked out into the cool air of the night and approached the old looking black automobile, it's shiny surface glossy like new metal, although it sat in an older frame than I had ever seen in person. I pulled the back door open and waved to Ebony as I got in, watching her disappear behind the large door as it shut.
"Where to?" Asked the man in the driver's seat. The car glided forward in complete silence and it almost scared me.
"The Market," I replied, sitting back into my seat. We almost slid down the stone road and shot out the gate as it opened. I inspected my escorts. They were both tan with short black hair, black suit pants, and button up shirts with bowties. One was a woman and both sat with a grim and unreadable expression on their face. They looked like how I imagined CIA, with their black shades and disgruntled silence. As we pulled up and I hardly noticed since the windows were shaded so heavily and the car so silent. The bustling market was lit up by what seemed to be thousands of colored lanterns of all shapes and sizes that spanned the partitions of the building all around the street.
People bustled hurriedly about with big baskets and bags, some perching boxes on their heads. I had often seen my mother ferry things around on her head and even do house chores with a stack on encyclopedias on, but never known where the habit came from. When I asked she said it helped with posture and encouraged me to do the same, but urged me not to tell others about it as they would consider it strange. Now I knew where the habit came from. My escorts quickly shifted down into big gray cats and slinked along behind me as I set out through the bustling streets.
My presents seemed to set a path through the crowd and clear the street around me, and I would say it was a wonderful atmosphere if I could not feel the stares of passers by and the murmurs about 'dance' and 'mirror' that seemed to float up and echo all around me. When I entered shops the keepers were tense and the people funneled out so if I spent too much time, I would be alone in the store, but I kept it from ruining my trip. I bought a bright colorful lamp and a multitude of books, and my escorts were obliged to give up their slinking cat forms, with gray tails held level with the ground as they crouched slightly and resume their human forms, each with a stack of books. The woman took the lamp.
As the sun began to light the horizon I started back for the automobile and we started back along the stone slab road. I bought a couple etiquette books, a latin book and dictionary, a few history books, and a novel, as I felt it might reveal more of normal life and fantasy in this world. It took only a hundred and fifty of my jublies in total. When I returned the doors were opened for me and I took the books from the escorts and placed them on my head, balancing the extras and the lamp on two outstretched arms like a waitress does when overloaded with orders, my purse hanging from my elbow. The escorts seemed rather taken aback by my ability to balance and forgot even to object to my carrying the load.
I retraced my steps to Master's quarters and could not help but notice that some of the sections of marble castle I went through seemed a bit run down, and in places, even dusty. I finally reached the door to the parlor and opened it with my elbow, letting it swing open and corralled it shut with my hips as I entered. Illy stared at me and laughed as I closed it behind me.
"Didn't you want help with all that?" She asked.
"Why?" I said, "I can do it myself just fine." She clinked the bell on the table six times and the gold twins rushed in clad in pajamas and looking rather tired. They were probably sleeping, but had came to the call anyway.
"You didn't have to," I protested as they took the packages from me, almost falling over from the weight. It occurred to me that I had just been carrying a host of books and a large ceramic lamp which probably weighted more than I did in total, without breaking a sweat at all. I supposed then that I had done the same since childhood, and really the only difference between me and the Princess in strength, was grip. I never griped hard on anything, but I could push and pull just as much as she might.
"Well I want your company," She said, setting down her stuff and waltzing over to me in fluffy white robe. She grabbed me by the chain and pulled me up after her, staring up the stairs to leave the drowsy golden twins with my stuff. It took a while to reach the top of the stairs and when we did she tossed me on the bed like a rag doll and dropped her robe right there before I even had the chance to look away. She wore a deep purple lacy set of underwear, and I could see her form very clearly now. A bit too clearly. Her pale skin towered up in curves of just the right proportion, but unlike her voluptuous mother, she was more lanky in nature, I felt redness rush to my cheeks. She was pretty, no doubt about it, but not the evil pretty I saw so often now, but something else entirely.
"What?" She asked, noticing me staring, but she didn't seem at all annoyed by it. She turned to the dresser and threw me a white button up shirt that smelled like her, ordering my silently to put it on. I slipped out of my cardigan and dress with as much conscientiousness as I could manage and pulled on the shirt, taking it in my hands to button it. "Don't button it," She said softly. I didn't know why, and could not help but feel my heart race at the command, but I left it open, revealing the soft blue cotton fabric of my sports bra. "Any questions to ask before we sleep?" She asked, pulling the cover over herself as she slipped into bed. She had tied her hair in a ponytail with a silk ribbon and I couldn't help but think it suited her well.
Why did she want my shirt open? Why did she want my company? Why did she want to sleep together? Was this normal? I felt my mind going to places it shouldn't for the sake of my ability to meet her gaze and not redden further I pressed myself to remember anything I could have ever wanted to ask. "Am I allowed to contact my friends or use my phone?" I asked. She looked at me strangely as though she almost didn't understand, and I realized that it was likely she had never had friends. She was the monarch of a kingdom, born to be an heir, any any sort of honesty with anyone might cause her horrible troubles. She must be lonely, I would have been when faced with the same proposition.
"You may contact friends readily but tell them nothing that doesn't make sense in their world," She said, "As for lovers or exes, delete their numbers now or you'll have no phone at all." I wondered why she specified that.
"I've never had anyone of that sort," I responded shyly.
"Really?" She asked surprised, "You can't of not had flings with anyone. You're pretty as a doll, and plenty enticing." She smirked, tracing her eyes up and down my torso. I felt embarrassed, but figured it would do me no good to keep the truth from her.
"My mother was strict and worried constantly. She never allowed me to spend the night anywhere but home and always alone. I wasn't really all that out there of a person anyway. I was academic, and most peopled didn't approach me, thinking me uptight or uninterested." I said. She looked at me strangely and settled down into the pillows.
"Any other questions?"
"What was," I said, stopping myself midway to consider if it was a good idea to asked, "What was my mother like?"
"Rosetta?" She asked, and I nodded. She let out a sigh and turned to look at the ceiling. "She was beautiful. In a strange way, she had an energy about her that was never lacking and a kindness never failing to prevail. She had these charms beneath her veil that seemed never enduringly intriguing, but never pulled upon one roughly but with the gentle flow of the clearest of streams." She seemed to speak as if halfway between a dream and reality, "but it was all ripped away."
"What was it my mother even did?" I asked, "She betrayed the Queen's engagement right?"
"No, more than that." Illy said, "The armies went to get her and bring her to the dungeon. I have no doubt they would have waited until she had her child to kill it before her and then her along with it," She said, making me shutter at the thought, "But Rosetta couldn't bear that. She tried to flee but was confronted by the Clementia family, her uncles and aunts, and the elders of the family as well. They formed a sort of blockade, but she was so fearful and distraught she lost all reason. She poisoned a hole in the line, sickening many of her family members and flying through as a raven. She soared higher than any other could go and flew for days, leaving only a single black feather in the caught in the window of her home for show."
I grimaced in horror, "Then," I asked, stuttering, "Did she kill them?"
"No," Master said softly, "Rauzire poison doesn't work that way on immortal creatures. If the rauzire does not forgive the person they have given the malady, the person will stay in agony for eternity until killed by another party, if they are forgive, the victim returns to heath, and in the rauzire dies, the victim will suffer until put out of their misery by another."
"Then are they still sick?" I felt sick at the thought.
"No," She replied, "Your mother forgave them about five to seven years after the event, depending on the person, but they were taken away from their children and cannot get that time back." I pained me to think that my mother was capable of such things.
"Couldn't she have pardoned them earlier? They were her family."
"Your mother loved you, She loved you enough to abandon all that made her safe and comfortable. She loved you enough to kill for you. For the species that reside here, Caedis is a refuge. In the rest of the world, you'll spend your whole life afraid your secret will get out, and scared to death of what will happen when it does. You'll never be able to be honest with anyone but yourself, because death and ridicule will follow if you do. You'll always be alone. Caedis is the only place these people will ever be honest, and the only place they will ever find others like them. Your mother loved you enough to leave all that behind. She could not forgive them until the wound was old enough to be let go of, and although I'm sure she tried, she wasn't able to succeed until the moment she did."
She loved me more than that, I thought, but shook off those memories. I realized it now. This place was as it was because it was the only way it could exist. To escape ridicule is to be completely honest, and for these people, that was to tell your gruesomest secrets to all that were around you. They were forced into the necessity of inflicting death and pain upon others, but when they banded together they had to be honest about their voluminously bloody ways. This was the best they would ever have, named for murder and spilled blood, because that was their reality, and to make it moral, they had made it public. They had done away with shame.
Their world was a brutal one by nature, in every aspect, and each and every one was struggling to make it less so, and make sense of it. We were all tugging on strings, trying to find the reigns to this vast and dissonant planet. We were all failing, but some people had better strings than others, and we gripped our strings with our life, trying to contain the world to a painting small enough to be understood by our eyes.
I felt a distance between me and Illy, and uncomfortable rift between us now, and wished for something to say to make it better, but found nothing. After a while her face went limp and her cold skin adopted the lifeless pallor it had had all along, but now displayed in full. She was asleep. I felt lonely on my side of the bed, so I rolled over and pressed up next to her, lifting her limp arm up and onto the small of my waist, praying she would not remember this. She was cold to the touch, but in strange sense I felt warmer touching her than far off, so I stayed. In my sleepy drifting head, I could have sworn that I saw a soft smile graze her faded red lips, and her hand tighten a little around me, but it must have been sleep settling in, for I'm sure she wouldn't of done that.
She was uncharacteristically kind that day, as though she had tired of her malignant facade early and thrown it aside, resolving to honesty, but this put a rift between us I disliked greatly, and so I almost wished her peculiar sadistic side back again, if only so I might be pinned to the the wall again, or receive a nibble to the neck. It was a strange desire, and I attributed it entirly to oncoming sleep, and the enticing nature of the vampire.