Ink Raindrops

“Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.” –Ambrose Bierce

The single room at the top of the third floor tower was a shocking, horrible, baby-girl pink, no matter which way Melody tried to look at it, or how much of a face she made in an attempt to arrange the sight into something pleasurable.  The grand high walls, the sea of ornate bedding, and even the fox-fur slippers she wore to bed greeted her with a radiating sense of color that overwhelmed her delicate senses and left her wishing to hold her nose in defense.  Hopeless, she cast her eyes downward for the rug — the single vestige of whiteness in a maze of rose and fuschia — and took a deep breath.  With luck, or God’s help, tonight would bring the promise of a swift egress from her personal pink hell.

Sinking, defeated, into a comfortable pink armchair, she let out her breath in a classic sigh; a token facet of every single noblewoman in or out of the King’s Court was the sigh.  If you didn’t have it at the ready, you just weren’t prepared for the trials of court, or so the other girls said, behind fingertip-brushed mouths and breathless giggles.  It was one of the many things they said this way that left Melody with a bitter taste in her mouth.  What those girls sold their souls and hearts for was natural to her; the beauty she displayed was no artifice, no feeble attempt to disguise an otherwise plain or homely face.  However, the gifts of meekness and subservience that they had in her place seemed to brush like a pair of warm, heroic lips across the nape of her neck and then flee in terror before she could manage a blush.  Part of her wished very, very much for that tempting kiss to last, and to continue into other, less courtly behavior that the other girls would, no doubt, know all about — but most of her wished instead to wait, to find the one true meaning of the word “man” — and at the same time, the reason behind the madness that seemed to lurk just a hair’s breadth away from the behavior of her peers.

Then again, she reminded herself with a bitter laugh, she wasn’t a noble at all.  Perhaps understanding only came with the blood.  Her mind wandered as she leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes to block out the pink disturbance before her.  If her father, a kind merchant with a hand for toy crafting and grain selling — not to mention warfare in the defense of his beloved city of Banewick — had not died, then she would not be sitting in a manor house at all, let alone a manor house with an offensive amount of pink within its walls.  Madam Morrist, bless her, had not even bothered to go with red; the brothel image just might be preferable as far as Melody was concerned!  Instead, just to raise the girl’s ire and discomfort, she had chosen pink for the lady’s plush bedroom.  The woman knew how to wrinkle every stitch of fabric she touched; Melody had decided that long ago, the first time that Madam Morrist — her grandmother, in title only — had entered her line of sight.

That cold November morning, with the bitter rain coming down in sheets, she had heard the sharp knock at the door and run, tripping over book piles and toys and skipping past the antique furniture that decorated the great House of Morrist, to admit the visitor that she knew would be coming to see her.  Instead of the man with the loving laugh, twinkling eyes, and clothes that smelled of gunpowder or foreign spices by turns, she found a different man with a thin line for a mouth and a cold, impassive gaze in his eyes.  Without stopping to breathe, or to let her do the same, he informed her with a crisp salute that the Lieutenant Ronald Morris would not be returning from the line of duty.  What was left of his body, after the Goblins took their share by right of war bounty, was handed to her in a small envelope, sealed with the strange man’s spit and stamped by the King’s Court with a note full of empty condolences.  He was gone before she had found her voice enough to ask why.

He had always been a man for the people; she had known that since the day she was born.  She herself had a deep love for people and their unique differences borne of his teaching and guidance.  When the Goblins had come to threaten the city and every man, woman and child within its confines, he had been the first man to step across the line and into the King’s Court Army.  Countless others followed in his wake, but he had never forgotten the example that he made, and had never allowed himself to be anything less for the people that needed him.  To protect that which he held most dear, he’d said years ago, and Melody had cheered him on, believing in the wild fairy stories of the time in which wars were fought without blood on the backs of dragons and fairies.  With his death, the Goblins were routed, but that would not heal the heart of that which he held most dear — not in the least.

A single tear rolled down Melody’s perfect cheek, but she had fallen asleep with her thoughts and did not notice the flaw.

It was after her father’s death that she had been forced to accept Madam Morrist’s iron will and foul breath into her ancestral home.  The woman arrived at the door with all the pomp and circumstance of a queen, and yet the cloud of stink, magic and displeasure that followed her left those watching in the streets with a sudden urge to bathe.  She had announced to a tear-stained Melody that she was her father’s mother, come all the way from Carrickberg in the North, thank you very much, and to carry her bags up to her room at once.  It had all gone downhill from there.

It seemed that her father had been sending small amounts of money to assist in the daily living expenses of his mother, and with his death came Madam Morrist’s inability to continue paying taxes on her Carrickberg-in-the-North home.  It was only the right thing to do, to allow her aging grandmother to live in the home that was once her son’s, and to govern the young child in her father’s absence — but there were the comments, the frightening words and horrifying curses that the woman threw in the presence of Ronald’s daughter.  She said so many things about Ronald himself that Melody often found herself locked in her room for kicking her aging grandmother, or for pulling out handfuls of her white and straw-like hair in retribution.  What right had this she-devil to condemn her father for dying, when he had left Melody herself alone to suffer her company?  It wasn’t fair at all.

Now that Melody was soon to come of age, it seemed that the old woman wanted nothing more than to be rid of the supposed problem that Ronald had left her.  Truth to tell, Melody wanted nothing more herself.  However, it was clear to her that her grandmother intended for her to suffer; to pay for the trouble she had been over the years and months since her father’s death, even though she had been too young to make a decision as to whether or not she should stay in her grandmother’s company.  The coming-of-age party that Madam Morrist had funded (with part of Ronald’s remaining gold, of course) and aided her granddaughter in becoming beautiful for, all stood as a painful reminder of just how many birthdays Melody had spent without the warm birthday song sung by her father’s deep baritone.

If Madam Morrist, and perhaps Melody too, got their wish, a suitor capable of stealing the heart of one of the city’s most beautiful bachelorettes would knock upon the door sooner, rather than later, and whisk Melody off to a new life, free of her foul grandmother and every nasty insult she had ever flung at the name of Ronald Morrist.  Leaving her cherished home would be difficult, she imagined, but it seemed a fair price to pay for removing herself from the old woman’s clutches.  After all, what would she need her own home for, with a loving husband to give her something grander than her father ever could have?

That led her to the biggest fear of all, the one that had occupied her mind for the two weeks leading up to this day — her eighteenth birthday.  If no suitor came, she would be forced to endure her prison again, for days, weeks, months — or even years longer.  Since her father’s death, she was no longer the social creature she had once been; all her friends had grown up, married, and had children without her.  They assumed she was dead, and for all intents and purposes, they were right.  Who would notice the name Morrist in the locals now?  Even if they did, why would they care about anyone other than Ronald?  Their hero was dead.

Waking from her troubled sleep, Melody shifted in her chair and listened to the sound of her stiff, proud back crackling in protest.  It had been too long since she was able to relax; she had not relaxed since the day that her father died.  Perhaps she could indulge, in the arms of someone that could take her away from the main reason she could not and would not find a way to do so beforehand.  Once she was married, the world would open up in ways that she’d only dreamed of for years — if only she could find a willing husband.  The agonizing wait had begun.

“I was always taught to respect my elders, and I’ve now reached the age when I don’t have anybody to respect.” –George Burns

A pair of fine silver spectacles, fitted with the smallest of reading lenses and buffed with the finest of cloth, slid down the thick and gnarled nose of Maraude Morrist, Madam of the House of Morrist.  Sweat poured fresh from her wrinkled brow, her graying hair falling free of its savage pinning from the exertion she endured.  Running down the hallways of the House of Morrist was preferable — perhaps even hand-scrubbing the chamber pots within the whole of the House was preferable! — to the difficulty she faced just a hand-span in front of her.  Luck, however, was with Madam Morrist, for she was anything but timid, and problems tended to flee in terror before her presence.  Problems were wise, indeed.

“Straighter then, missy!  Ye’ll never get th’ waist ye want slouchin’ like a guy!”

Madam Morrist’s hands seized upon a pair of loose cords as they slipped from her grasp, causing Melody, the young woman in front of her, to stifle a gasp.  The cords trailed up and into an ornate golden brocade work of art, complete with hidden nips and tucks to make any woman sigh with pleasure — in the shape of a corset, and the girl was already fighting to breathe in the wake of Madam’s prior attentions.  The old woman sighed, her broken teeth and wicked lips twisting into a mocking grin that did nothing to augment the questionable beauty of her face.  “Girls these days ha’ got nothing worth tying, if ye ask me.”

Melody glanced down from atop her fitting pedestal, and Madam waited on her haunches for a longwinded and noble apology — her favorite kind.  In the end, she found an utter lack of shame in the strong and proud line of the girl’s perfect chin, and the look she suffered was anything but meek and mild — it was in direct defiance of everything a lady ought to be.  It seemed she would not get to enjoy this after all.  “Say what you will, Madam Morrist, but nothing will take the sting out of your hands until the job is done.  Kindly finish it so that I might have the opportunity to take my last breath before I die.”

Madam Morrist felt the need to laugh, and did so with a gusto that left the dressing maids and the butler unsteady in their positions at the rear of the room, and left Melody guarding her delicate breath even closer in order to tolerate the stench of Madam’s breath at close range.  The impertinence of youth always nettled Madam to no end, and perhaps it always would. The entire city of Banewick knew well to keep their children apart from the woman, lest she visit her so-rumored “witchy” powers upon their hopeless offspring.  How little imagination they had, when it came to what they thought she could do!  Melody, to her immense disappointment, had little choice but to brace herself, and it brought Madam no end of pleasure to remind her of it.

“What do ye know of Death, pretty?  Only yer mind could tell ye.”  She punctuated the statement with a sharp tug on the cords, continuing her way up the length of the girl’s corset with slow and deliberate movements.  Her agile mind seized upon two incompatible desires at once; the first, to beat the foolish child into a newfound respect for authority, and the second, to mind her temper, as far as it remained feasible to mind.  The little crotchety voice in the back of her mind, which served as her conscience, reminded her that every moment spent at Melody’s side would bring her one step closer to her deepest desire.  The second thought, as always, won out over the first.

Melody was prepared for the tug this time, and maintained her composure over the old woman’s attacks.  “Only a witch could know what lies inside my mind.  Are you confessing, then?”

“Confessions are for priests, lovely, not for headstrong gits like ye.”

Having finished the last of the lacing, Madam relinquished the tied cords, feeling the joints and bones in her hands and fingers shift in ways that they should not comfortably manage.  The job that Melody had asked of her was complete, to the best of her ability — and what an ability she had!  Stepping back from the girl, she took a moment to look over her work.  Whatever Melody was or wasn’t, it was plain to see that she was the most beautiful creature this side of the River Tross, and that meant success, as far as Madam was concerned.

“Now every man, woman and child within a hundred miles will want to marry ye, for what ye’re worth.  I hope ye kept yer dowry in plain sight.”

“If any man can look at you and not tread on his coattails as he flees, Madam, I will be right happy to accept his courtship.”  Melody’s hands slid to her cinched waist, and in that moment she appeared to Madam as nothing less than a goddess on high, speaking down her retribution.  The eyes that had seemed beautiful before now radiated with a mixture of stored anger and tears of distress, lest she still find herself unworthy in the eyes of her suitors.  Her hair, a sable mane of pins and curls, left her pristine face open and haunting to anyone who chose to look; wretched, as far as Madam was concerned.  “Somehow I fear for the worst.”

“Nonsense, missy.”  Madam threw back her head and laughed again, relishing the tortured expression on the girl’s face.  “What man wouldn’t love a charming grandmother like me?  Ye’ll be worth every wrinkle and wart.”

Melody appeared unconvinced, and Madam shook her head, dusting her sweaty palms on the hem of her simple black robe.  “Come along then.  Ye’ll only be Miss Melody Morrist for a few more hours now, if I play my cards right.”

Madam turned her back, heading for the parlor of the House.  There was so much yet to be done before her granddaughter’s suitors began to arrive, and she was not going to scrimp or pause on anything that might free her from the insufferable child’s company!  Once the girl was out of her hands, the real witchery, and the running about the house without a stitch of clothing on for the first time in years, could begin.

Melody Morrist followed a short length behind, thinking only of the moment when a big, strong hero would appear at her door and carry her away, back to the home she loved and the life she’d known before the Madam changed everything about it that mattered.  A bird could carry her away, or a mouse could chew through the door latch; but a hero would be even better.