O N E
I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream. - Vincent Van Gogh
This maid- no, this child felt the same.
“Ain’t they beautiful?” Rebelle asked aloud, plopped against the floor. Her hand drew circles in one of the boards. “The stars, I mean.” Those grey-hued eyes of hers never moved from the night sky.
August had come and gone and, as they ushered in the fall of 1890, Rebelle Monde found herself here. Had it not been for a late-night piss, the unopenable front door, now open, would have gone unnoticed.
There was something eerie about it all. How coincidental it was for her, of all people, to stumble upon this quintuple-locked entrance, to plop down before it instead of calling for help, to not remember the flogging awaiting her if she got caught.
Thirty.
Thirty floggings.
And whatever else Mistress Kaye could fit into an hour, into sixty minutes, into three thousand six hundred seconds.
A chill then waltzed in, scratching at her bare knees. She brought them to her chest, willing the cold away with a tug of her horrid excuse of a apron. It was much too short. “Bloody hell, I might actually piss me’self.” She clamped a hand over her mouth, silencing herself. One should never use foul language in front of Mother Nature; a huge no-no in Rebelle’s books. Now, she understood why the outside world was not, would never be, for her or her elder siblings. It was too fragile of a weapon, too docile of a calamity, for them to ever really appreciate. She could faintly recognize specks here and there, twinkling as if they had all the time in the world to do just that. But they did not.
“Call me stupid- or, you know, don’t, but I believe a lifetime is somethin’ outta reach,” she pointed out, gesturing vaguely, “Not even stars last long.” Yet, it was clear that she had no say in how their fatuous lives ended. A decision, one of that caliber, was for some higher, unseen entity to decide. She knew not who had control of her fate. Nor that of the stars. Amidst the slate of black draped overhead, Rebelle considered them dying embers being stomped out by some all-seeing overlord.
She hated to think that stars followed commands like her, like a mere child, like some lowly maid.
“Do stars obey, too?” Rebelle asked once more, furrowing her thin brows. “I would hope not. You agree with me, yeah?” She inched closer towards the door, outstretching one of her hands. The boundary between herself and freedom was a hair’s length away. She could feel how much colder it got as she neared the entrance. Hell, she could actually feel something. All that rivaled this desire building within her was the reminder of a sore rump and thirty additional scars. “They flicker and flicker; that’s all they really do, ain’ it?”
A rustle resonated behind her. Her gaze refused to leave the sky. If she so much as blinked, the harshness of reality, the pure guilt, the deafening adrenaline pumping through her, would sink in.
“Pretty useless during the day, wee bastards, and when we’re asleep.” A breath caressed her neck, nudging her closer to the door. Rebelle’s fingertips brushed the door-frame, stalling for just a moment more. A moment more. That’s all she needed. “But, we still love ‘em. More than the night itself, I reckon.” Her unruly bob of hair was no match for the wind, rendered downright powerless. The short tresses rivaled each other, standing erect in some areas and bowing in others.
“I know you agree.” Rebelle tilted her head back, her much taller overseer inches away, “Faustine.”
“You opened the door.”
Those grey eyes were indistinguishable from Rebelle's, widening to give the impression that she, in fact, gave a shit. Faustine appeared shocked. In reality, she already grasped that much. One could say she was there from the very beginning, one could say she showed up before Rebelle. The eldest of the three maids, of the Monde siblings rather, she sported a buxom frame and a lecherous smile. One of her hands was planted firm against her far better excuse of a uniform, the other smoothed her long, black tresses over her shoulder.
Rebelle shook her head. “Oi, don’t just jump to conclu-”
“I’m so proud of you!”
A blush took over Rebelle’s cheeks, her expression bashful. “P-Proud?” Everyone had a kryptonite, like solidarity or attention. Hers was the latter. “Don’t say stuff like that, Faw.”
“But I am!” Faustine grinned at her, arms outstretched towards the younger maid. “Rebelle, Rebelle.” She smoothed the other’s locks. “You opened this bloody door.” Venom was masked in her voice, not so much her smile. Five long years, and no one had attempted something this… this grand. For a split second, there was some doubt that Rebelle would ‘fess up to the accusation.
"I-I did!" Her cheeks took on a dark, red shade. Rebelle was the type that gave everything away. She talked about aliens with Lyon, her brother, when she could not sleep, played with Lydia, her other sister, when she wanted to apologize for being spoiled-rotten and, case and point, blushed at the slightest attempt at lying. "It... It was so easy, y-you should've seen how quickly all six locks fell off!"
"Five locks," Faustine corrected, offering another one of her tight-lipped smiles. She was ecstatic, she really was. “You know what that means, do you not?” She wrapped her arms around Rebelle, steadying her as she swayed to the side, as she grew ill at the thought.
She knew.
God, she knew.
Bile steadily rose up her throat.
“Yeah.” Rebelle clung to her, nails etched into Faustine’s back. "I-I know." A month was all that stood between this moment and her last encounter with Mistress Kaye. Lines wove patterns along her once unmarred skin. Her optimism, her love for attention, her desire to be herself- Mistress Kaye obliterated each one in the span of an hour. She broke at that. Tears sprang to her eyes, traipsing down her puffy, red cheeks. All Rebelle possessed now was the memory of this night, this incredibly starry night, and she needn’t lose this, too. No one expected anything worthwhile, valuable even, to render a child subject to sorrow. “She doesn’t kn- hic! I beg o’ you!” She pressed her face into Faustine’s bosom, whimpering like a wounded pup. “Sh-She doesn’t know!”
This, all of this, was tedious. “On the contrary,” Faustine paused to push Rebelle away, “she already does.”
Rebelle recoiled backwards, inching closer to the doorway. "H-How?" More tears threatened to drench her bright-hued cheeks. “Faw, ho--?!”
“Come along, dear.” That term of endearment was all but sincere and, though she could not have cared enough, Faustine attempted to take ahold of her hand.
“Tell me, or I...” Rebelle caught herself. Rather, caught the onslaught of bile. She tasted the vile blend of maple syrup and cheese. Something she had binged on earlier, something she would never binge on again. Had the meal alone sent her flying out the door? Not even close, it seemed. The mere idea of charging towards her ill-fate, towards Mistress Kaye with her whip in hand, towards an execution to rival all others, was to her detriment. Her body hunched beyond the hardness of the floorboards, her head finding the dew of the grass outside.
Grass.
Outside.
“Oh, dear.” Faustine attempted to feign sympathy, hand glued to her mouth. “Is this how you want to end your night? Hunched over as Mistress Kaye forces her foot up your arse?” She knelt down beside Rebelle, avoiding any contact with outside. A sigh left her lips, one that toed the line between sympathy and aggression, one that left Rebelle even sicker. “Wide, open fields,” she delivered a pat to her back, “Birds at your beck and call.” Another gentle pat came. “I hear the circus is in town, too.”
From where, you may ask, did she hear that?
Take a lucky guess, then get back to the story.
“Faustine, stop.” Rebelle wiped the vomit from her mouth, downing whatever remnant hoped to ascend. “I’m twelve, not stupi-”
“Says the one outside.”
Rebelle swallowed a nervous gulp, her bottom lip quivering. No! She risked a quick glance. Her feet were clean, sure, but there it was. Slender blades of grass wrestled with her toes, pawing between each one. The feeling alone pushed her closer to the brink of insanity. Then again, that implied she had always been sane. It had been five years, five very long years, and, at this point in time, she was hooked. It hurt her to stare down at them for much longer. More than that, it hurt her to not toss herself onto the ground.
“Faustine, I… Please, don’t tell!”
“You know the rules, Rebelle.” Faustine stared her down. “You are being dealt a terrible hand, yes, but Mistress Kaye seldom cares.”
“I’ll do anything, ‘aswear!”
“Rules, Rebelle, rules.”
Rebelle dropped to her knees, clutching her sides. Her forehead found the floorboards inside. Besides for that, Rebelle lacked any true intention of re-entering the Kaye manor without some level of force. Those tears of hers grew into separate waterfalls, accompanied by a blob of snot hurtling towards her lips. Any other human being would have been moved by this desperation-induced show of hers.
Faustine was the only exception.
She had expected Rebelle to come willingly, not throw herself under the bus. This could be blackmail, maybe something detrimental. She would use this encounter however she pleased, however she benefited the most. The elder maid spared a glance to the sky. To her, the stars weren’t aesthetic in the slightest. How Rebelle found them appealing was beyond her. “There’s only one thing to do, I’m afraid.” That sinister grin reclaimed her lips. “Leave.”
Leave.
Leave?
Could she, of all people, leave?
Rebelle whimpered, taken aback. She half-expected Scotland Yard to surround the manor, pointing their pistols in her direction. The other half had already surrendered to the idea of being hogtied, gagged and flogged downstairs. Running away from Mistress Kaye was the safest bet, assuming she wanted to live another day. The odds had never been in her favor before. What could she gain from taking such a risk?
Rebelle needed to make sure. "Run a-away?"
“Never look back at this god-forsaken place,” Faustine added.
She bit on her bottom lip. “But Lyon... and Lydia!” A blush then found her cheeks, attributed to her crush on Amon Emory, the butler. “Mr Emory- what will he think of me?”
“‘Twill be our little secret, mon petit oisillon, and our secret alone,” Faustine cooed, “Don’t you wanna ask the stars who they answer to?”
A glimmer of hope found residence in Rebelle's teary, arsenic eyes. That was all she needed to hear really.
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