by Emma Coal
Grace reluctantly returned. This was not what she had intended. She hadn’t even said one word to her sisters. As she and the growling governess turned and turned around the play room, she snuck a glance at them. Louise was watching neutrally but Elsbeth was smirking. Little brat.
“Keep time. Ow-! Get back here!” The governess cried grabbing her foot as she yelled after Grace who disappeared into the hallway. When mama had told her to spend time with her sisters Grace felt certain that dealing with the governess was not what she meant. She darted down the hall and up the stairs to take refuge in her father’s study.
He wasn’t there so she closed the door and hid underneath the great big oak desk. it was dark and comforting because it smelled like her father. There was more than enough room for her to curl up nice and cozy. Despite how safe she felt, Grace did not allow her guard to lower. She could hear the governess moving about and then her muffled muttering as she ascended the stairs, no doubt slowed by her wound.
Grace held her breath when the governess knocked. “Mr. Bernadette, I’m sorry to disturb you.” After no response was forthcoming Grace heard the woman carefully crack the door open and peer inside. Perhaps because she didn’t want to invade her employers office, she left, never having set foot inside.
Grace relaxed. “Stupid woman,” she thought. She left the safety of the desk and opened the door. She looked to the left, nothing. She looked to her right and jumped yowling at the scowling visage that hovered only inches away.
“I found you, you devil girl!” yelled the governess and made a grab for her. Grace, ever nimble, evaded her and ran down the stairs. She hurried past the play room and stopped in front of the door she wanted.
“Mama, mama!” She gave up on knocking and burst through the door, looking desperately for her mother. The governess would never punish her if mama could prevent it. To her shock, the room was empty.
When the woman peered through the cracked door, she found Grace sitting on the bed and staring at her mother’s vanity where the silver brush lay. She looked up at Miss Erlehart.
“Mama’s gone. But, she was just here.”
The governess stepped into the room and looked around. Her face softened. “Perhaps she’s stepped out.”
“Mama doesn’t leave the house. Not since she got sick.”
The clang of a cart rang out loud within the confines of the room and both turned towards the source, startled. The window was open, just a little, only a few scant inches.
At dinner, papa wasn’t his usual self. He seemed confused. Grace sat silently and Louise cried while Elsbeth seemed not to understand what was going on.
A few weeks later, Papa called Grace into his office.
“It’s about mama, isn’t it?”
Johan Bernadette sighed into his hand. He straightened in his chair, gathering himself to look at his daughter. She could see tears at the corner of his eyes.
“Always astute, my little Grace. Yes, it’s about your mother.”
Grace knelt beside his chair and watched him intently. “Where did she go?”
Johan looked down at her and then away.
“Oh, my dear. You look so much like her, especially when you stare at me.”
Grace nudged his knee with one hand. “Where is she?” she asked insistently.
Johan sighed. “Alright, but before I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t tell your sisters what I’ve told you about Candice, your mama.”
Grace nodded hard so that her loose tawny hair fell into her face and then back against her shoulders. “I won’t tell.” She couldn’t think of a time she’d shared anything with her sisters since the governess had come so she doubted it would be difficult.
Johan picked up an object from his desk and held it out to her. As she took the little blue china vase with the rose still in it, though shriveled , she felt annoyed that papa would have gone into mama’s room and taken one of her things, even something as small as that.
“This was your mother’s most prized possession. Do you know what it is?”
“It’s a vase with a rose in it. Mamma always had a rose and she kept this vase on her vanity.”
“Do you know why it is, or was, important?”
Grace frowned, thinking. “Mama really liked seeing a beautiful flower every day because it made her feel a little better?”
She fiddled with the shriveled bud.
“Not…quite. I suppose your mother never talked to you about this or even about her mother or her grandmother. She never told you about the women in her family at all?”
“No,” said Grace simply. She was losing interest and wondered if she could take the vase and the dried up flower to her room so that it would be safe for mama.
“I’ll tell it to you plainly child. Your mother was different and you are different. She and I were together because I loved her, yes but at least partially because I was what kept her the way she was.”
“What?” asked Grace flatly, she didn’t like where this was going.
“Child, this is hard for me though I can’t begin to imagine how hard it will be for you. You are not exactly…human. There is something bestial about your mothers line, though only the first born. When you begin to enter the first blush of woman hood, you will experience something else, a change which will occur unless you make a bargain with someone, as I had done with Candice.”
Grace stared. Had he had a stroke? “Papa, are you alright?”
He stared at her, his eyes bright with tears.
“No, I am not. Your mother is gone like every eldest daughter of her line before her. I thought I could prevent it but I couldn’t.”
“Papa, it’ll be fine. I don’t believe you, whatever you’re saying, it’s not true. Everything will be fine because you’re just tired and worried.”
Johan shook his head. “Do you remember the story of Heracles, or Hercules, as he was named by the romans?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the story of his birth and of his mother’s nurse, Galanthis?”
“Yes.”
“How Hera took out her anger on Galanthis in the common way of Greco-Roman gods?”
“Yes, she changed her into an animal, a cat.”
“Well, you are descended from that woman.”
“Okay papa,” Grace said quietly. She left her father in his study, carefully closing the door behind her. She still held the vase. She didn’t believe him. It didn’t make sense.
A month later, Grace had her first menses. She woke with the scent of blood in her nostrils and dressed, feeling strangely muddled. At breakfast, she stared down at her oatmeal with revulsion.
“Well, eat up. If you don’t like it add some jam,” said Miss Erlehart.
Grace turned up her nose at the jam pot when the governess tried to pass it too her. To her annoyance, the woman tried to spoon some onto the grey mush in front of her anyway.
Grace turned on her, eyes flashing and growled. She didn’t say anything. At that moment words seemed the most unnatural thing in the world. Teeth and claws seemed much better.
The stern young woman withdrew. She stared at Grace, her eyes beginning to show fear.
“All right then. No jam for you.”
Johan cleared his throat and called out “Cook, could you open a crock of smoked kippers, I’m feeling in the mood for something savory this fine morn!”
Cook came and at his insistence served two plates of kipper, one to him and one to Grace.
“How disgusting,” said Elsbeth, who disliked fish of any kind.
Grace merely glared until she ran away crying.
“I’ll just take care of that, shall I?” said Miss Erlehart, following with a nervous look behind her.
Louise remained eating quietly. Johan smiled at his middle child and frowned worriedly at Grace who had begun to devour her new breakfast, finding it much more palatable than the last.
“Grace, when you’ve finished breakfast and done the rest of your toilet
, I want you to meet me outside.”
With those words, he stood.
“Grace, I know mama’s passing is really hard on all of us but there’s no reason to be so mean. You’re acting like such a beast,” said Louise reproachfully.
Grace ignored her sister and finished her meal, leaving the kitchen for her room to change, eschewing any other tidying up.
When she stepped outside into the front garden she wore no shoes. She relished how her toes sunk into the grass and raised her face to the pale blue sky to bathe in the sunlight. She forgot what she was outside for and stretched, considering a nap beside the single tree. The outside felt much better than the stifling house had.
“Grace, come here.”
The girl turned in annoyance and saw her father sitting on the little bench beside their iron work fence. She went over, grudgingly.
“I have something for you.”
She hopped up on the bench, her interest piqued.
Johan held out a rose. It was one of the best kind, a deep velvet scarlet. With a small noise of surprise and appreciation, Grace reached for it. When her hand closed around the stem, her father closed both of his around it.
“I give you this rose today to bond you to this family, ever welcome and ever anchored. Do you agree?”
To her surprise, Grace’s throat which hadn’t wanted to cooperate at all that day, opened up. Her voice came out hoarsely. “I agree.”
Johan released the rose and his daughter’s hands, letting out a deep, ragged breath. “That should be enough.” He watched Grace carefully. “How do you feel?”
Grace stared at the rose in her hand and grabbed her throat with the other. She set the rose carefully down in her lap and felt herself, her arms, her chest, her face. Everything was as she remembered it but it was completely different from how it had been only moments ago.
She turned to face her father on the bench. “You were telling the truth.” It wasn’t a question.
“I cannot tell you how much I wish that you and not I were in the right.”
Chapter Seventeen: Porcelain
Every room Grace came to was warm and comfortable. She needed this warmth. The nip of the fog had truly chilled her to the bone and all of the frights she had needed to endure had only made it worse, not the least of which being the other inhabitant of the building. She felt too curious about her new living situation to stay put in the study but every room she came to, she felt a tingle on the back of her neck. It took effort to reassure herself that there would be no gigantic beast ready to pounce and rip her to shreds.
Grace felt quite bad for her anxiety. She hadn’t seen anything to suggest that Phelan, if the book had been correct about his name, was a monster, but it had shown her that he had a very normal lupine tendency. Wolves and cats were not friends. Wolves ate smaller furry creatures like cats.
Grace did not like wolves. She barely tolerated dogs. Though she wore her human form, she couldn’t shake the fear of larger things that might want to consume her. If she had encountered the great, green wolf while exploring the manor, she would have done her best to behave. She knew from experience that running only makes the attacker want to chase, but she knew it would be hard too stand her ground. Fortunately, she saw no sign of him with any one of the rooms on the first floor.
With a sigh, Grace made her way back to the study. It was warm, open and had a table which she knew often held food. She was feeling hungry. True to her expectations, she discovered a roast chicken still steaming from the oven, a bowl of miscellaneous fruit and a cup of tea. She eschewed the tea and had a pear while she waited for the chicken to cool.
When she finally ate, the cup had disappeared and been replaced with a silver banded, horn tumbler filled with milk. Grace sniffed the liquid. Satisfied that it passed muster, she had it with the chicken. It wasn’t until she’d stripped the carcass and was fighting the urge to chew on the nicely charred tips of the wings, which were wonderful in her experience, that she truly began to ponder the nature of her meal.
Firstly, she felt a bit like a pet eating what was left her. Secondly, how did the house manage to get the food? Magic surely was the answer but how? Was it a changeling situation? Would some family be about to sit down to a nice meal of chicken and find that the bird tasted strangely similar to shrubbery clippings? Perhaps magic could form things out of pure will and energy? Grace realized that even though she wasn’t strictly human she didn’t comfortable exploring the eldritch side of things.
She looked for something to wipe her hands with but found nothing, so she settled on wiping her hands carefully on her dress and her face on her sleeve. There wouldn’t be long before she didn’t need a dress anyway. Belatedly, the chicken remains were replaced by a large linen napkin.
“Thank you,” said Grace politely to the empty air. She finished wiping off her hands and stared down at her grease stained skirts with irritation. The frock was well on its way to being a rag but that she’d consciously made it worse was almost too much to bear.
Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to keep up the façade for short while longer. She wasn’t lost yet.
“Um, would you know where I might find a dress to change into? This one is quite soiled.”
Something dropped on her head and Grace yelped finding one of her arms stuck. What was it, a net? When she’d untangled herself from the coarse cloth, she held it up to see what it was and discovered the house had dropped a shift on her head. It was all one piece, the color of parchment and had armholes instead of sleeves.
Grace considered the garment and then sighed. Clearly the house, or whatever magical entity that embodied the house, had some deficits. For some reason she’d expected something more extravagant though it made sense that a building wouldn’t be well versed in the art of tailoring.
“Thank you.”
With a sigh, Grace slipped off her flats and began to unbutton her dress. She paused. “I don’t suppose I could have a bath, could I?”
She looked around but there was nothing. Perhaps this too was beyond the purvey of the unseen entity. She worked her arms out of her stained sleeves and pulled the skirts over her head. When she opened her eyes she found she was in a different room.
Cool tile pressed against her bare feet and she turned slowly in a circle in an attempt to get her bearings. She halted her survey when she saw the tile tub. It was quite large, not enough to swim in but definitely enough for her to immerse her entire body and still have room. Water filled the tub and she could make out stream rising lazily from the surface. She had underestimated the house.
“Thank you, this will do nicely. I appreciate your effort.” Grace knew how thankless serving someone could be and didn’t want the house to feel taken advantage of. She stripped off her undergarments and carefully stepped into the tub. As the warmth seeped into her bones, she let out an involuntary sigh. Tea was nice and so was being somewhere warm but the ultimate way to get rid of crushing fatigue and depression at ones situation was a nice steamy bath session.
She sunk down and began to make herself comfortable, swishing her arms from side to side. She noticed with amusement and disgust that a thin trail of dirt followed the path of her limbs through the water. Fortunately, the discoloration dissipated quickly enough.
At her request, the required accoutrements of bathing appeared, a sponge fastened to a stick, soap and, when she was quite finished and absolutely clean, a large plush towel. Satisfied and feeling quite a bit better at her situation, Grace looked about.
“Um, sorry to bother you but could I have something to change into? I seem to have left the shift provided me behind and you seem to have magicked my previous garment out of existence.”
when the garment fell on her head, she barely flinched. She examined the clothing and found not one but three dresses, each one identical to her old dress but in a different color and most importantly, devoid of streaks of dirt and spots. That the house had improved in dressmaking already was a touch disconcerting. If she�
��d come to the house wearing a ball gown, she would have the wardrobe of a princess, not that that would be comfortable in the least. Elsbeth would have preferred it, though.
Grace was astonished to realize that she was beginning to miss her sisters, especially the younger. Their clashes were part of her normal life and without them she was really beginning to comprehend that her old life had come to an end.
She selected the dress in faded rose and left the bathroom.
Chapter Eighteen: Saffron
Grace no longer felt afraid to meet the beast. She found herself desperate to talk to anyone and, unless the house had more surprises, Phelan was all that was left. The bathroom was located in a part of the house she was unfamiliar with, even with her exploring.
When she peered out the window, she was interested to find that the mist was less thick than before and she could see that she was on the top floor, the grounds lay far below her and she could make out a statue of a Pegasus below. There was movement beside the equine and Grace saw that the only other inhabitant of this strange realm lay curled up beside a cluster of yellow, perhaps daisies, the pop of color garish in the subdued landscape.
Grace walked the floor until she found a staircase hidden behind a door. She reflected that having the only way to descend be hidden was a little odd. Perhaps the house hadn’t thought of the need until she began to look. Having bathing facilities on the third floor didn’t make much sense either.
Grace took the stairs carefully as no light was provided. As usual, the staircase lit up, filling her need. She felt like a ghost in the otherworldly glow but continued on until she reached the first floor. Once there, she headed straight for the end of the hall and through the double doors.
The ballroom was much the same as it had been with the entire outer wall exposed to the elements, yet there were differences. The broken stonework was gone and the walls and floor were entirely intact. There was no debris whatsoever. It appeared as if the open plan was by the architects’ choice and not the work of a young, grumpy wolf. Cheery light shone through onto the marble floor as if the weather showed the house’s improving emotions. Grace hoped it wouldn’t get to hopeful, though she would try her best.
