Damsel by Elana K. Arnold

Author:Elana K. Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

Five

The Queen Mother’s Chambers

When she returned to her room, Ama found an anxious Tillie waiting for her. She was pacing the floor, with Sorrow shadowing her, pacing as well.

“There you are,” Tillie said, her voice sharp.

“Am I not permitted to leave this room?” Ama heard her voice answering Tillie’s sharpness.

Tillie bowed her head. “Of course, lady, you are free to go as you please. I beg your pardon.”

Ama softened. “No, ’tis I should apologize to you. I have kept you waiting here, and I am sure you have better things to do than wait for an errant mistress to return.”

Tillie looked as if she might ask where Ama had been, but instead she said, “The queen mother has requested that your meeting be over breakfast, in her chambers. I am here to dress you.”

Ama swallowed. She was not hungry, and she still had no desire to visit the queen mother’s rooms. But she understood that a request is not always a request, and so she allowed Tillie to dress her.

Tillie chose the red gown that Ama had worn the first night she came to the castle, and Ama made her body obliging as Tillie tended to it. Then Tillie’s clever fingers braided black velvet ribbons into Ama’s hair, and she knelt to help Ama fit her feet into matching black slippers.

The whole of her ministrations felt hurried and tinged with anxiety, of words unspoken, and so, at last, when Tillie had declared Ama ready, Ama took Tillie’s hands up in hers and said, “I want to ask something of you. All right?”

Tillie nodded. “Anything, lady.”

It was Tillie’s duty to serve Ama, Ama reminded herself. As much as Ama would have liked for it to be true, Tillie was not her friend. Can there be friendship between a servant and a mistress? She did not know. “Tillie,” she said, “I’d like for you to be honest with me.”

“Yes, lady,” Tillie answered. “About what?”

“About everything,” Ama answered. “I am new to this place, as you know. I am new to everything. I have no knowledge of who I was before I woke in the king’s arms. I have no idea how this world of yours works, or how I fit into it. I have only the nagging fear that I do not fit here, not really, and I am unsure which parts of myself I must carve away in order to fit the way I am supposed to. Does that make sense to you, Tillie?”

“It does,” said Tillie. “That is the way of being a woman, to carve away at herself, to fit herself to the task, but, also, to be able to carve herself in a different way, when a different shape is needed.”

Tillie shaped herself in service of Ama, Ama knew. In what other shapes must Tillie carve herself when she was in other parts of her day? Ama did not know anything about what Tillie was, aside from her servant.

And here Ama was, asking Tillie to carve herself further

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