Disclaimer: The speech of the characters in this piece contains ungrammatical and racist language. By no means do I condone racism. The way the speech is written is only a means to build the characters.
Author's Note: Written for QLFC (Season 4, Round 9). Position: Keeper for the Falmouth Falcons
Word Count: 2,994
Write a story based on the Disney film The Rescuers.
He'd come to New Orleans for the sprawling colours and its effect on the city's people. In the midst of fireworks and blinking lights, he hadn't expected to be suddenly invited out to the bayou by an older, white couple. They reminded him, of course, of the Thénardiers from Les Misérables: all hospitality to mask their own hidden agendas.
Blaise had accepted the invitation in amusement.
Currently sitting in the passenger seat of a red, classic Buick─Blaise had learned a thing or two from a mechanically skilled fling he'd had in Detroit─he was quite content with his choice.
The woman─a red-haired, oddly shaped matron with crooked teeth and too much make-up─was chatting away in the backseat about the beauty of the swamps surrounding Louisiana. She did most of the talking, so whenever the husband spoke, Blaise heard it as an underhand comment, only meant for his ears.
The husband was a short, stout figure with a big, grey moustache and a checkered paddy hat. He drove the car the same way he spoke: droning and without seeming to know what he was doing with the tools given to him.
They were an interesting pair, and interest drove most of Blaise's actions.
He had decided to go by the name of Mia. It was the sort of name people found just ridiculous enough to believe of the British, and Blaise marvelled at the raised eyebrows and no-questions-asked.
When they finally neared the mansion, Blaise saw, quite against his prejudice, that they occupied a beautiful, white plantation mansion. The live oak trees on either side of the road gave the place an eerie, haunted feeling, as if they were remnants of a time that should have never been preserved. The Spanish moss dripping from the branches looked like ghosts or, perhaps more disturbingly, hanged people.
Blaise couldn't look away.
Upon arrival, they were greeted by a row of black servants. The first to move was a tall man in a sleeveless, Jeeves-like getup. Blaise found it comical─such a superfluously British display by such obviously American tenants.
"I'm part British, you know," the woman of the house, Dolucila, informed him in the true American spirit.
(He'd suggested the nickname Dolce with a hint of irony. However, upon learning that it meant 'soft', she'd insisted on it as her new nom de plume─not that Blaise thought she knew what nom de plume meant.)
"Is that so?" Blaise asked, exaggerating his own accent to further the contrast between them, "Is it your mother or your father, then, who hails from The Queen's Own?"
In truth, that particular pattern of speech was never used to signify England, but Blaise convinced himself it could pass for the intended meaning─had he said Perfidious Albion, he was afraid it would have been lost in translation.
Dolce, only allowing herself a momentary look of confusion, apparently decided the same thing, because she didn't question it.
"Oh no," she said instead. "No, dear. My great great great grandfather came from─what was it, dear?" she continued, turning to her husband.
"Essex," her husband supplied.
"Essex! He probably even knew John's great great grandmother. Maternal, you know."
Blaise didn't.
"I'm part Irish," John said in his conspiratorial tone, replying to a question Blaise hadn't asked.
The servants began unloading their bags, bowing and curtseying to Blaise as well as the Mister and Mistress. Blaise took long, hard looks at each of them in turn, trying to catch their eyes, but they wouldn't let him. It was a subtle rebellion; Blaise obviously wanted to cement the association between them, but he was denied.
Of course, Blaise had always liked to think he belonged nowhere. His loyalties were selective and fickle, and though his dark skin and wealthy upbringing placed him in very different groups of society, he'd never taken a side.
Constant ironic distance felt like freedom.
Without a second glance at the servants who so adamantly avoided his gaze, he continued inside with his hosts.
At dinner, however, he couldn't help but bring it up. "I notice you have only black servants." His knife and fork scraped against his plate, and he looked up, popping a piece of over-roasted chicken in his mouth, his face impassive.
Dolce made no sign that she was discomforted by the topic. "It just seems more fitting," she said, only almost haughtily and seemingly without awareness of her own faux pas.
"You mean the money doesn't stretch far enough to hire white servants?" Blaise inquired pleasantly.
"Oh no, negros nowadays are paid just as much, if not more! It's not about the money, dear," she replied.
Blaise tried to mask his distaste and succeeded by flashing her a toothy smile. She reciprocated it without question, and Blaise took a sip from his ice tea.
Overhead, a loud bang was heard.
Raising his eyebrows, Blaise smiled, amused. "Bedbugs?"
Dolce, now with a hint of what Blaise had been trained to understand as irony, smiled. "We've just hired a new servant," she said as if that explained everything.
A loud, consistent knocking sound was heard for about half a minute, then a crash. Blaise raised a single eyebrow, but the topic wasn't breached again.
When they had finished eating, John took Blaise on a walk around the estate.
"Her real name is Jane."
Blaise, taking a moment to connect the dots, stared straight ahead as he said, "Indeed," with just enough enthusiasm to warrant further conversation. He felt out of place and magnanimous next to the waddling figure of his host, his hands held behind his back as he surveyed the lawns leading down to the swamps.
"Yeah. She's from Ohio, too."
It wasn't a surprise that his hostess wasn't a full-blooded Southern beauty, but there was something so base and desaturated about Ohio in Blaise's head that it almost took on an air of scandal anyway.
"Well, you can't decide where you're born," Blaise said.
"No, you can't," John said.
As they walked further away from the house, a small enclave of huts appeared.
"What are they?" Blaise inclined his head toward the cluster.
His host, doing a double take, said, "Those? Those are the servants' houses."
"They don't live inside the mansion?"
John gave him a look as if assessing how serious Blaise could really be with a question like that. When his eyes finally left Blaise, John said, "They'd rather live out here. Trust me."
Raising another eyebrow, Blaise stayed quiet.
.ooo.
He was shown to his room by a young woman his own age, still unable or unwilling to meet his gaze. However, when she closed the door, a piece of paper floated to the floor behind her.
Kneeling, he turned it around, his eyes scanning the word effortlessly.
Dusk.
They sure expected a lot from him when they slipped a note with just one word. Blaise smirked, satisfied in knowing they weren't going to be disappointed.
When he exited his room to make his way towards the servants' corners, however, he heard loud, rapping noises from upstairs. Staring up into the dark for a few seconds, he finally decided to place a foot on the first step. Before he could go any further, however, John appeared on the top of the stairs.
"Where are you going?" he asked, and Blaise thought he heard an unfriendly edge in his voice.
"Oh, nowhere," Blaise responded, unaffected. "I was just going to go visit your house ghost."
"She's gone to bed," John said smugly before ambling down past Blaise.
Staying behind for a few moments, Blaise finally decided against going upstairs and began his journey to the eastern part of the gardens.
The encampment wasn't far from the mansion, but it was far enough that Blaise felt completely certain that he wouldn't be spied upon by his generous hosts. Something told him they would frown upon his visit, and something else told him they had good reason to.
A light burned in the middle of a circle made by the clay-and-straw houses, and when Blaise moved nearer, he could hear singing. Whooping voices and acoustic instruments intermingled and gave the scenery an undisturbed feeling of some parallel society in which he would never be welcome.
After hesitating for a moment at the edge, he finally stepped in past one of the houses and into the light. The music died out slowly as more and more eyes were turned on him. Everything was quiet around them; only the cicadas still played along to the now silenced tune.
"You came."
A young, beautiful girl stepped in front of him. He hadn't gotten a good look at her when she'd shown him his room, but now, in the light from the fire, her features stood out and imprinted themselves on his memory.
"I did."
"Good. Baba didn't think you was smart enough."
Blaise realised in an unguarded moment that he found her broken English charming. Then he heard the embedded insult. "Glad to prove Baba wrong."
The girl smiled and took his hand, leading him into one of the huts and away from the intense stares of the other servants.
"You's the pure-blood," someone unknown said when he entered. It was so dark, Blaise could hardly see where he put his feet, but he was placed firmly on a seat on the floor, and after a couple of seconds, his eyes found the outline of an old woman sitting in front of him.
When he didn't respond to her greeting, who he assumed to be this Baba said, "That is what you call yourself, no?"
Blaise felt that there was no reason to be secretive about it and nodded.
"You's from a different world."
Uncertain whether it was a statement or a question, Blaise said nothing.
"You don't know the evil," the old woman continued, and he allowed himself to side-glance at the girl who'd brought him. It appeared to him that he hadn't asked her name.
"Take this." Baba held out what appeared to be a wooden amulet of sorts. Running a thumb over it, Blaise discovered some strange carvings.
"Will protect you. Come back when you's faced the evil."
On their way out, Blaise tried asking the young woman who'd led him there about the evil, but she merely shook her head. It wasn't until he was on his way back to his room that he thought about going upstairs again.
It was quiet now, and the whole house lay dark and slumbering, like a gentle, snoring giant. The feeling of foreboding that had hit him at the village, though, still sat with Blaise. Something else, too, had taken hold of him: curiosity. Whatever this evil was, he wanted to know.
When he put his foot on the first stair and it didn't creak, he saw it as an invitation. Making his way upstairs, he held his breath, and reaching the top, he stopped, allowing his eyes to adjust.
He was looking down a short, dark hallway with only one window lighting up the floor. Outside, the moon shone, and its light pooled on a long, narrow carpet, which extended down the length of the hall.
Four doors, two on each side, guarded the path.
Blaise chose the first on the right.
Inside, it was even darker, but he thought he could make out a row of bookshelves. Daring to bring out his wand, he whispered a soft Lumos.
The room was filled to the brim with haunting imagery: on a table by the window stood a row of human skulls in different sizes, some of them with their mouths open and all of them painted in weird patterns. Dream catchers and wind chimes hung from the ceiling alongside amulets of varying patterns. A five-pointed star appeared in several places.
Remembering his own amulet, he brought it up to the light to study the carvings better. They were like nothing he'd ever seen before. In the midst of everything else going on, he saw a fleur-de-lis, and that was all he recognised.
He placed the amulet back in his pocket and moved towards the bookcases. From the spines, Blaise could infer that all the books were grimoires: studies of witchcraft, the way Muggles believed them to be. He wondered briefly if they knew what he was and if this was their reason for inviting him.
His fingers hovered just over the spines as his wand passed, but when his eyes caught a particularly interesting title, he couldn't help himself; he had to take it out.
A shriek, reminding him of a banshee, rose from somewhere on the floor, and Blaise flinched, dropping the book. Turning on his heel, he hurried towards the door.
Throwing it open, however, he stopped dead in his tracks, his blood running cold in his veins. In front of him stood a girl, her dark hair covering her face and her white nightgown tattered. In her hand hung a limp teddy bear, and she didn't appear to be looking at him─she simply stood there, unmoving.
Footsteps coming up the stairs reminded Blaise that he had to breathe, but just as he was about to call out, the door slammed shut in front of him. He could hear loud voices outside, a bit of whimpering, and another door shutting, before the sound of someone going down the stairs again finally reached him.
Carefully, he opened the door. He was already determined. Tiptoeing down the hall, he opened the next door on his left, peering inside. It was a child's room, that much was clear, and he stepped inside quickly, closing the door without making more noise.
In a small bed by the window, the girl sat up.
"Did you get my message in a bottle?" she asked immediately.
When Blaise didn't answer, she continued. "I sent a message in a bottle down the swamp. Have you got it? Did you come to save me?"
Blaise knew he didn't know the whole story, but it took very little effort to know what she meant.
"Why are they keeping you here?" he asked.
The girl looked down. "Promise you won't hurt me."
"I won't hurt you."
"I can do things," she whispered.
"Are you the one who's made all the noise?" he asked.
The girl nodded vigorously.
"Do you do things for them?" he continued. He'd heard about it before─Muggles forcing witches and wizards to do magic for them or face the consequences─and Blaise knew that it was one of the reasons the Statute of Secrecy hadn't been abolished. The girl looked up as if she'd been scalded, tears in the crinkles of her eyes.
"Please don't make me do things for you too!"
Blaise smiled. "I won't." Slowly, he brought out his wand. "I can do things too."
Bottom lip quivering, the girl looked ready to tell him something, but they heard a noise from downstairs, and she pulled away.
"Don't worry," Blaise said. "I'll get you out of here."
.ooo.
"Mia, I'd like you to meet our daughter, Jane," Dolce said the next morning. She pronounced his professed name with a certain effort not to show her discomfort, and he flashed her a smile as reward for her sacrifice.
"Say hello, Jane."
"You have a girl's name," the girl said, making big eyes as if she was surprised he hadn't told her the night before.
"I do," Blaise conceded.
"Mia, Jane likes to perform. We'd like to invite you to a little show tonight."
Blaise looked up, first at Dolce, then at Jane. The girl seemed to plead with him silently, but Blaise looked back at Dolce, smiling. "I'd love to."
.ooo.
"Seems I didn't need protection after all," Blaise said as he dropped the amulet in front of the old woman. In the daylight, crunching some berries in a bowl, she seemed more frail than fantastical.
"She's made a deal with the devil," the old woman croaked.
"I highly doubt that," Blaise said, good-humouredly. "I've dealt with her kind before."
The old woman shook her head. "Not her. Real Jane."
.ooo.
He was becoming increasingly aware of the whereabouts of his wand as he walked down towards the parlour. Shaking his head, Blaise smiled at himself. There was no such thing as the devil.
When he arrived, he was seated at a clothed table, looking up at a makeshift stage that they'd made from a couple of coffee tables.
"Welcome to the phenomenal, the fantastical, the one and only… Jane!" Dolce said dramatically and smiling widely as Jane appeared from behind a couple of curtains. Dolce was wearing a ridiculous, purple-ish turban with a feather in it, but Jane was in a clean, eggshell white dress with laces. The girl looked as uncomfortable as the woman looked exhilarated.
"But be careful," Dolce continued. "You may just lose your name."
Blaise smiled. "That's okay. I don't have one anymore."
That seemed to throw her off for a second before she smiled as if she didn't know whether she was in on a joke or if the joke was actually made at her expense.
John was nowhere to be seen.
"And now," Dolce said in her deep, theatrical voice, "Jane will summon the great genie!"
A mewl rose from the girl, and she looked at Dolce, pained.
"Jaaane," Dolce said in a saccharine voice, poorly masking a warning.
"But I don't want to! Please! Don't make me!"
"Remember what we talked about sweetheart. Help momma and papa."
Jane cast one last, longing look at Blaise, and then she stepped back, mumbled something that sounded like Abra kadabra, and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, a strange light seemed to glow inside, she spoke in a strange tongue, with a foreign voice, and Blaise couldn't move.
Down by the huts in the eastern part of the garden, vigilant eyes looked up towards the house. All sound died out, quick hands shut doors and windows tight, and the fire was quenched.