Terribly Lottey

  Horrors, horrors. And just thought nothing could get any worse. Doesn’t that usually make things worse?

  I was summoned to the upper part of the Mansion this morning. Right after milk hauling. So out of breath, and rather sweaty, I made my way up ten flights of stairs to find a smiling Lady Jyne.

  And I knew immediately.

  “Oh, dear, so glad you are prompt.” She held out her arms welcomingly, but I did good to stay ten feet away.

  “Milady,” I said with a terribly forced curtsy.

  What an evil smile, is all I could think. What an evil smile.

  “I’ve done you great honors, poor wretch. You have been given the honors of serving me.” She sat her flat rear on an orange settee.

  I started swerving forwards and backwards, though hardly noticeably. I wasn’t really shocked. I was traumatized.

  “Don’t look so grateful,” she puckered.

  “Can’t help my emotions.” I kept my eyes on her, trying not to look insubordinately. I wasn’t sure if I came across correctly.

  Her eyebrows V-ed. “Poor wretch,” she repeated, though louder and little tyrannical. She straightened her back. “I am kind. I have pity.”

  “Oh, I’m perfectly capable of my own pity, thank you.”

  Jyne looked stunned.

  I kept my gaping eyes locked on her and curtsied automatically. “Thanks, thanks, many thanks, your ladyship.”

  We stood for five or six seconds, just staring at one another. But it seemed like five or six minutes, and it was beginning to become awkward.

  “May I tend to my duties, ladyship?” Oh, how bitter the words.

  Jyne seemed to snap, and she shrugged arrogantly. “I suppose you must. You are to be in the garden at two o’clock every other day, and every Sunday you are to bring me every meal. And– you may accompany me on some days for my daily ride.”

  Oh, no horses, I wanted to drone. Instead I nodded and scurried back down ten flights of stairs to find Ryse had tracked mud all over the hall.

  “Oh, you muck-head!” I screamed, jerking the mop from the hall and preparing to mop quickly. It was my job to keep the kitchen and hall floors clean.

  At ten till two o’clock I washed my face and changed my frock to tend Jyne while she sat in the garden. When I arrived, she was already sitting there, a light blue parasol over her head. She looked fat, even though she wasn’t.

  “There you are,” said her shrill voice. She would make an excellent mother. “You are late.”

  “My watch must be slow, milady,” I dragged the words off my tongue.

  “Fix it.”

  I took one of the overly large fans and started waving it.

  “Have you absolutely no memory?” she exclaimed.

  I made a face. She didn’t see me.

  “Slower, dear, slower! You’re going to blow me away.”

  I slowed it down. “That’d be terrible,” I said without emphasis.

  “Don’t smart me, girl. I’ll give a warning. Out of kindness.”

  Oh, how kind of her. I rolled my eyes. My arms moved mechanically.

  I gazed out into the distance, and for once I noticed the sky. It had been a long while since I had taken notice of it. Before now, I hadn’t had the time. It wasn’t gray, thankfully. It wasn’t purple. It was a normal color, a medium blue. It wasn’t strikingly blue, and there were no clouds.

  All of the sudden I saw stars– but they weren’t in the sky. They were around my head, and I was on the ground. I then realized I hadn’t gotten distracted and was waving the fan in Jyne’s face.

  Outraged, I jumped up and threw the fan across the yard. “You don’t hit me!” I shrieked, and hit her hard in the nose. But as soon as I did, I felt sick and dizzy and wanted to run. I could see the whip, and knew it would be coming soon.

  “Mothherrrr!!” Jyne screamed, so high pitch and abnormal– and quite childlike– that it was almost funny to watch. But, oh! The louder she was, the more nauseas I got.

  The servant girl across from me had her fan suspended in mid-air, looking at me in complete astonishment.

  I picked up my fan, started to back off, and then dropped it again. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt as if I were about to be mauled by Jyne the angry tigress. She sat up, for I had knocked her to her back. Her nose was crooked. I gasped, half laugh, half shock, and choked on it. I’d be lucky if she didn’t lunge forward and rip my own nose off.

  I noticed Ryse chopping wood, rather far off, but he was watching me. He had probably seen the whole incident.

  I knew apologizing wouldn’t help, and I knew that as each second passed I was getting closer to my own agony. My head throbbed where she had walloped me, and I felt a lump rising.

  Lady Jyssel came running from the mansion, holding her skirt up and looking very ruffled. When she saw the scene before her, she dropped her skirt– and her chin. She ran forward and smacked me across the face before taking Jyne into her arms.

  My cheek smarted.

  Lady Jyssel wailed in horror at her daughter’s now appalling appearance. I had ruined the perfection of her face. She looked at me with the most burning eyes I’d ever seen, as if I were the dirt that ruined her best ParKeshan rug. “You wretched slug! You filthy dragon feces! Oh, how you’ll wish you’d never been birthed! Oh!”

  I was dumfounded, glued to the ground. I didn’t know if I should run, or wait to receive my punishment. I was no cowardess, but I also was no fool.

  I wheeled and ran. No one stopped me, either.

  The rest of that day I worked as hard as my learning body would let me. If I was going to be whipped, toiling over my duties would be much worse if I had more to do.

  No one has spoken to me all day long. Keelei and Ursula don’t look at me at all, Freniar ignores me, Fredoi gives me looks of sympathy, and when Ryse looks at me– he looks worried. Why is everyone acting this way? I know I made a near fatal mistake, but I would cope with it as best I could. It wasn’t everyone else’s problem. When I asked Ryse what was wrong with everybody, or what was wrong with me? He sighed and told me if I didn’t get all my duties done today, to let him know if he could help. I looked at him strangely, but that was all he would say on the matter. On any matter, really.

  They are acting as if I am already dead.

  I have thought it over– Jyne and Jyssel would kill me. It was inhumane. Of course, so were the two of them, but… it seems terribly illogical to murder the servant who does a better part of all the duties. It’s obvious I’ll be punished.

  Isn’t it?

  I haven’t been summoned. I haven’t been told to meet anyone anywhere. Will they murder me in my slumber? Oh, that one will make it hard to get to sleep, but not that it’s ever easy.

  I just don’t know. And not knowing makes me nervous.

  No, I was not murdered in the middle of the night. But I’m not sure if I was better off because of it, or worse.

  I was awoken in the middle of the night. By a man I have never seen before. He was hideously tall, and his skin was blacker than the berry sulfur. His eyes stood out like mushrooms, and I was given quite a startle when I opened my eyes to see him hovering above me. He covered my mouth with his hand, and gently helped me out of bed. I thought that maybe he was going to help me to escape. So I followed him, quite like a puppy. He made a motion to be quiet as we made our way out of the curtain rooms. I saw Keelei sleeping, so peacefully, next the three other girls. She would never have punched her mistress in the nose.

  We passed Ryse in the hall, who pretended to be asleep. But I could see him watching carefully through slit eyes.

  The night air was warm and smelled pleasantly. I wanted to speak to the giant of a man, but I was afraid, and didn’t even know if he’d answer. He hadn’t made a sound. So I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to.

  We walked at least a hundred feet into the jungley woods before stopping.

  “I am to leave you here,” he said finally.

  And just like that, he left.


  I was unsure of what to do, so I didn’t do anything. I stood exactly where he had left me, starting to get very anxious. And I started wondering… why had he left me? And I started to think that maybe it wasn’t for the best. I just hoped the reason he had left me wouldn’t hurt.

  It was dark– so dark. I couldn’t see more than three or four feet in front of me. The trees were thick and no stars filled the skies. It was eerie, and waiting in an eerie place is very eerie. Especially when I had absolutely no clue what to expect– a man with a sword and a painted mask could jump out of the bushes and attack me and it would be just as startling as a kitten suddenly grabbing my ankles.

  I wanted to sit down, but I was afraid. So I stood. I locked my knees for a few minutes, but that made me woozy. The air around me spun. So I bent my knees, but that only strained all my sore muscles. I wanted to wail. But a loud noise would disturb me, even if it was my own self. And it might alarm anyone or anything around at the moment.

  Please, I thought. Whoever or whatever please come and get it over with! I had been waiting for a quarter of an hour. There wasn’t even a sound of anything lurking about. And that made things all the worse.

  “Boo,” someone said.

  I must have jumped ten feet in the air.

  “This is your punishment for the cruelty you have inflicted on the Lady Jyne. May you never forget your sins.”

  I couldn’t make out the voice, nor see the body it came from. If in fact it did come from a body. What did it mean? The voice, what was I supposed to make of that? I was so frightened my knees were hitting each other. It hurt. This was certainly punishment enough! But I waited, for I knew this couldn’t be all.

  And it wasn’t.

  The picture that had always flashes through my head– well, I couldn’t see it. But I could certainly feel it. What else could sting like a million bees and a million mouths spitting a million shards of glass? I fell to the forest floor, gasping for breath, feeling the grass and dirt making its way into my mouth. It tasted bitter.

  Then again. A blow.

  I thought I had blacked out, but I realized I had just shut my eyes. And I couldn’t open them.

  So much pain was a shock– I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and certainly couldn’t speak– blood was sucked from my head and I could feel it flowing out of my back.

  And again– and again– over and over. Until I really did black out.

  “You’re the worst one ever,” I heard someone say.

  I opened my eyes to a blurry world– and realized that someone was Ursula. She was wringing the water from a gray cloth over a little wooden basin.

  “Worst what?” I said, attempting to sit up. I was lying flat on my chest, barebacked. But a sharp pain circulated from my back, and then everywhere, setting the world spinning again. So much pain was confusing, and I couldn’t even stop it. That was new.

  “You haven’t woken up even once, until now,” she said as she dabbed my lashings.

  I cringed at the feeling. “Ow! Heavens, you’re making it worse!” I gasped.

  “You’ll be glad in the long run.”

  Wow. She was tending to me when I had been whipped for doing something totally idiotic– and I had known better before I had done it. There was a closeness I sense about the servants that wasn’t expressed. Could they possibly ever share it with me? I knew I didn’t deserve it. And… did I want it, really? Was I really wishing to be accepted by servants?

  Oh, to be full of so much uncertainty.

  “But you seem to be taking it quite well. High pain tolerance?” Ursula continued.

  It was at that moment that I realized just how much it hurt. Ursula saw it in my eyes, and handed me a chamber pot.

  I took it and vomited in it.

  “Don’t have much to give up, do ya?”

  I shook my head. Cold sweat ran down the side of my face.

  “'Tis a pity how she does things. Takes all you’re food from ya, and doesn’t let you have any more for three days. A horrid three days they are, too. There’s excuse to get off work for a servant of Jyssel’s– unless of course she favors ya.” Ursula looked at me. “I don’t reckon she favors you.”

  I shook my head.

  Lord– three days and no food. Three days, no slack on work, even with what seems to be a broken back. How absolutely terribly horrid. But– it was as if the facts didn’t really set in; I wanted to be distressed and panicked, for there was great reason to, but I wasn’t sure how. Some emotions I hadn’t had to deal with at the mansion, and now, everything was a new and terribly startling experience.

  Especially when it sank in.

  And it did, oh, did it sink in. It sank and sank and sank until it hit my toes. And it hurt, my toes hurt, along with every other part of my body. I had to wrench myself for every movement. And whenever I leaned back on the wall or a tree out of exhaustion, I’d jump forward with a yelp of pain. What a perfect punishment the two evil Ladies had thought up. I had to work through all the horrid pain and I couldn’t even rest, even if I had a chance to. Ursula told me they mean for it to be a humbling experience. But I told her I would not be humbled; no matter how hard they hit me, no matter how shocked I became, they couldn’t take my pride.

  The servants had no sense of pride. They had never been given pride; always too poor. It was an out of reach luxury that they really didn’t even want. But, oh; if they only knew. Pride kept me going. It kept my morale up. For every time a lady or someone above me foulmouthed me, I could just think of what I would say back if I were at the same position on the ladder of life. And it helped me from feeling hopeless.

  Though– how hard it was to not feel hopeless. I vomited every night, mostly bile or just air, from overworking and over exhaustion, and pain. It hurt so hard sometimes I’d just collapse. And I would sit, stunned, wondering such a simple thing could make everything so complicated. And it was amazing how much I could hurt and still stay conscious.

  So many days have passed. I don’t even count. There’s no point. Life doesn’t care if you’ve been a servant for four months, or four years. It's just as cruel.

  Nothing really differs from day to day, except Lady Jyne’s mood. I don’t converse much with anyone here– have found that’s really the style, I suppose.

  Oh, style; what a foreign and forbidden thing.

  Lady Jyne wears a full face cast. She has lilacs and irises woven into it, as if it will make up for her mummy like appearance. She is so awfully cruel– and I haven’t fought back again, not even once. I’m not sure that its fear that keeps me back, but wisdom. Wow, I’m wise. What a new concept.

  Sometimes I watch her eat her dainty little finger cakes, and try to remember what they taste like. But it’s terribly difficult. I try not to let her catch me gazing, for when she does, she just makes things worse. Sometimes she offers little bites to the other servant or servants, but never me. Oh, evil, evil. I often imagine sneaking one when her back is turned, and sharing it with Ryse.

  Freniar is throwing a party for all the servants. I hope I’m invited. I am a servant, after all, aren’t I? Although I do like to pretend otherwise. The truth can’t be changed, not likely. Not now. Not here. So it’s to be expected. What’s a servant’s party like, anyhow?