forgotten

[mute_pen]

It's past dark, but when you need the outhouse, you need the outhouse.

Isabel picks her way across the yard of her father's house in the moonlight, hoping to sneak back into bed without waking him.

Comments

[mute_pen]

Etty smiles a little bit. "Let me know if I can do anything in particular to help."

[growcrooked]

"Well, tell me about you," she suggests. "I hardly know anything about who you are. Maybe princes can fall in love with just a pretty face, but I think I need a little more to go on."

[mute_pen]

Etty sits on the floor and pulls her knees up to her chin. "I grew up in Astgabels. In Diotaland - are we even still in Diotaland? I have little enough sense of geography that I don't know how far he carried me. My mother died when I was small so it's just been me and my father, Carl. He's the sheriff. I kept house, but I had time to read - I was friends with the bookseller's daughter; she'd loan me things - and write. I mostly write about my own thoughts. I spend a lot of time in my head. That's what I wanted this for," and she lifts the blank scroll. "Especially since now I must fear forgetting - everything. Not just slippery brief thoughts."

[growcrooked]

"We're in Diotaland," she says. "Though my knowledge of geography isn't much better. I've only ever left the lake that once."

[mute_pen]

"I have not often traveled either. To a few neighboring towns, to buy things, not otherwise. But unworldly though I may be, I am puzzled about why the Kaiser calmly tolerates a baron who has been routinely kidnapping and draining the minds out of girls."

[growcrooked]

"Doesn't know, doesn't care, couldn't do anything about it if he did?" she suggests. "One of those, or maybe all three."

[mute_pen]

"Perhaps. Although - if it takes years to drain each, if the flock I saw is the second - there may have been more than one Kaiser since this began. I have heard that the royal court employs a sorcerer. Perhaps he is not a very good sorcerer, or the rumor was mistaken."

[growcrooked]

"Oh, it's been lifetimes," she says, nodding. "When the prince came, it was his mother who ruled. That must have been fifty years back at least. Maybe more like a hundred."

[mute_pen]

"You haven't been counting," observes Etty.

[growcrooked]

"What would be the point?"

[mute_pen]

"To know. To have an idea of how much the world outside the lake and the castle might have changed since the last time you had a look."

[growcrooked]

"I'm probably never going to see the world outside the lake again. I don't have anything to look forward to except my father's death or mine, and after the prince I was sure I'd never see either, until you showed up. Now - " She sighs. "I have no idea."

[mute_pen]

"Carl must be frantic. I'm sure I woke him when I screamed or he might have gone without noticing till dawn, but..."

[growcrooked]

"Is he likely to make trouble about you? The baron might have gone to kill him, if so."

[mute_pen]

[growcrooked]

"Sorry," she adds.

[mute_pen]

Etty covers her face with both hands and attempts to cry very quietly.

[growcrooked]

For a few seconds, she just watches.

Then she picks up a blanket and wraps it gently around Etty's shoulders.

[mute_pen]

Etty tucks the blanket in around herself and continues to weep. "I know your father is - is who he is - but mine, I love him, and he would make trouble, does the Baron know that? How would he know, when he just picked me up out of the yard...?"

[growcrooked]

"He would've been watching you first," she says. "He does that. He's gone for months, sometimes, when he's looking for a new Odette. Has to find just the right one."

[mute_pen]

Etty whimpers.

[growcrooked]

The baron's daughter leads her gently to the bed and sits her down and hugs her.

[mute_pen]

Etty cries on her shoulder, quite effectively distracted from the nudity at this point.

[growcrooked]

"You can cry all you want," she says, "I don't mind."

[mute_pen]

"I think," sniffs Etty, "I'll be done soon. It won't help him if I cry. Or me, or you, or anyone."

There's an odd creeping warm feeling up her back. Sunrise approaching, maybe, she has no idea what it feels like to turn into a swan, but when she lifts her head and wipes the blur out of her eyes the sky out the window is as dark and starry as before.