Liar’s Dice (Yellow) > Chapter 2: If Wishes Were Horses
“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.
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