II. Speak


"It's Liberation Day!"

Eugene paled. The broth in his mouth was immediately spat back into his bowl.

"Not this," whined the orphan beside him, practically screaming Eugene's thoughts into the atmosphere. "Please, Sister Jensen!" The boy turned to the table of nuns with tears up to his eyes. "I don't want to celebrate this―"

"Quiet!" burped the fattiest nun. "We'll have none of your blasphemies today!" She patted her mouth dry and pointed a breadstick at him. "Bett'ar do what you know best and keep yer' head down befar' you allow any foulness like t'at to come outta yer' mouth again!"

Eugene's table looked on in horror and hunger, their beady eyes unable to part from the grand feast that was laid out before the nuns on the other side of the cafeteria. The junior nun who had been addressed paddled around the vegetables in her soup to make the most of her indifference.

"Old Scottish sellout; she knows the whole thing is a perfectly monstrous conspiracy," whispered the boy at his left, quite mature in his vernacular. "This orphanage is a cabal, and foreign hens like her wouldn't celebrate it if they didn't have whips coming down their backs―"

"You there! What t'ar ya' saying? Do you want to share it wit' the res' of the cafeteria?"

The boy stared at her with a napkin to his mouth before clearing his throat and folding it in his lap.

"...T'at's what I thought." The potbellied nun perched her hands on her hips and scanned the cafeteria with one eye. With a meanness trained through fifty years to petrify children, she hollered, "Now go back to yer breakfast."

Spoons and bowls clattered against the sound of sips and smacks. Eugene sighed as he palmed his sleepy tears, trying his best to stomach his meal. Every time that she-hog yelled, he was shaken out of health.

"Liberation Day!" Children started up, sitting their elbows on the tables to talk behind their hands. "I con't v'ait to see the lanterns!"

"But we 'ave to spend it with the likes of them."

"The nuns?"

"The bastard children of 'da traitors."

Eugene licked the oatmeal around his chin and sucked his lips inwards, hesitantly showing his eyes to the group in front of him. Neighbors were dropping whispers into one another's ears and passing insults around the table, chanting, "His dad is the reason my dad is dead." The pushover of a boy curled an arm around his head and his bowl as if his whole society was now protected by a Trojan wall.

"Don't look at him," hissed girls who were as in love with him as they were beside themselves with nationalism. "Don't even brush hands with him! He's filth!"

Eugene filled his gab with spoonfuls of porridge in an attempt to ignore theirs. Too sensitive for his gender, the boy couldn't handle being anatomized by the rest of the litter. Such necropsies made him painfully aware of every fault-line inside his body, every crooked bridge inside his DNA's double helix, his veins, his personality, and most compromising of all, his social rank. No one knew or accepted him, and he did not want to be known. To shave off his skin and zip himself up in someone else's body was a dream that slept in his head for eons. A privilege of that kind would free him of his squalid flesh and thin chicken-bones, followed by an incision on the brain that would slice off every nerve-ending that made him Eugene.

"Enough of this. I don't v'ant to sit here anymore," announced the ringleader of the conversation.

Table mates traveled with him, taking their egos to more like-minded territory. Orphans who were either foreign, native, or mixed began to split up in the cafeteria, making their own adaptation of the country's apartheid. Eugene scrutinized them carefully ― the way of ignorance, the way of being. Their eyes reflected nothing but the xenophobia that had been carefully manufactured by the quill pens of adults. Even little Stig, Eugene's only confederate, distanced himself from him to avoid being caught on the wrong side of the segregation. Other war children sat beside Eugene like pigs in a stye, but they neither spoke to nor for him.

Being outcasts together was nothing more than a trial that reminded the halvdels how much they hated themselves and each other.

'Why does it always turn out like this?' Eugene dried his mouth on his sleeve. 'Why does it always have to turn out like this?' He wanted to be back on the bandwagon that brought him here, rolling through meadows and valleys without an eye turned towards society. The children who had ridden with him were sent to what the coachman called "internment camps," and others were thrown behind the gates of a place called a "mental institution," but his unfortunate bunch had been dropped in the lap of Mercy's Sisters.

"This day does well to remind us of our inconveniences, Sisters."

Eugene looked up and glanced at the thirteen women across the room. They were all hot with conversation.

"A most inconvenient responsibility!" One gasped as she threw her eyes into Eugene's direction. "They're baggage on our shoulders, and mine are too old to be carrying much more. God Bless the day they are deported. We can't keep the fights down, so it's best that they leave the system entirely."

"Deported, Sister Agnes? In all the world, do you really think the Storting will go through with that kind of foul play?"

"The Council of State has brought it to light, so why shouldn't the Storting bring it to fruition?"

"What Sister Erne means to say, is that they like to be squeaky clean in their doings. The king and queen are far too neutral on this matter―"

"Silent, is more like it!" The shouter's eyes shook like eggs ready to hatch.

"Sister Agnes," calmed another, "you must keep your fire to yourself. To speak illy of the king and queen is treasonous."

"Sister Erne, I do not speak illy; I speak truthfully," she raged, just about blue with it. "They have no side; none at t'all, but the Storting will not allow them to ignore this if it's put up for a referendum―"

"Yes, but not without a fight."

"True! A wedge in a door is enough to keep it unclosed―"

"Your metaphors are something terrible, Sister Annvor. There's nothing poetic about politics. Half the country will not, I repeat, will not be on their side if they choose to object."

"I agree; I do quite agree with you all," chittered another in her baby-doll voice, trying to stitch things up before they fell apart. "It's hairy, you see. They do not want to anger the people or the sitters of the Storting, but they have a different mind of what is right, so they can't quite go in as they are. It's best to just look frazzled on the outside―"

"Sister Bergveig, for how long can silence be affordable? How long until pitchforks and torches are at their gates?"

"Your thoughts are damnable!" The nerves crawling under Sister Erne's skin surfaced. "Anymore of that talk and you might as well...might as well hang up your veil!"

"You are taking me too personally; I am only speaking from Arendelle's perspective of things."

"Oh, stop it! You and I both know the kingdom of Arendelle is not full of savages. Why, most people here are kind; many do not participate in hatred. Discriminatory thoughts may be born through a type of groupthink behavior, but putting hands on others is not practiced here. If any rotten apples are in the kingdom, then they've come from outside of it."

"Sister Ernes, that is exactly my point. It's not the kingdom's capital itself, but Arendelle's lesser lands, which are wrought with segregation between angels, devils, victims, veterans, traitors, dirty bloods, and foreigners. So many of them have migrated here, bringing all their follies and sob stories with them. Any human being pushed against a wall will act as their primitive ancestors had, and Arendelle has its civilians and savages, who are all quick to follow the opinion of their neighbor, forever living in fear of having their own minds―"

"Enough."

The nuns shuffled and turned to see Mother Superior, and were immediately shaken down by the sight of her. She was a banshee even in the morning sun, and the women couldn't bare to look at the flabs of skin hanging from her cheekbones like rotten meat.

"Politics are not our bread and butter, and they certainly are not for the tongues of nuns," she spat, lips trembling with old age. "Leave them at your nightstand, if you will, where you can think about them under your nightcaps, but we'll have no talk of this in the cafeteria. Is that understood?"

The nuns bowed their heads as if they never had thoughts, opinions, or independence. "Please forgive us, Mother Superior."

Mother Superior looked them full in the faces that they would not show her and excused herself with a haggard walk. Her hand followed the wall as she staggered, the body she dragged growing supernaturally older by the day.

When she was sure to be gone, Sister Annvor twisted her napkin in her hands. "Why, she's a hypocrite, she is! She was just lecturing the halvdels about their place in society last night, and now she's lecturing us about our place in our own conversation. Perhaps she's senile; word has it that she spends her nights moaning over a flowerpot."

With her eyes in her book, the eldest of the group silenced Sister Annvor with her hand. "Compose yourself, Sister. You must keep your personality down. The day is just beginning, after all."

"But Sister Solberg―"

"That'll be all."

Sister Jensen, who'd been absent from the conversation, slowly leveled her eyes with Sister Solberg's, before looking down and nudging her spoon back into her mouth. The other women resumed position and took up their forks.

"I don't undar'stand...what 'tis it n'ao? Liberation Day, I mean."

The scattered outcasts at Eugene's table glared at the girl who spoke so suddenly to them now, but Eugene gazed with curious, guarded eyes, interested in what she might say.

"...Are you a Scott?" a boy discerned. "What are you doing 'ere? Go over there with the others; your type is 'posed to be chummy with Arendelle's natives."

"But I want ta' be 'ere with you, like you choose ta' be 'ere with the oth'ars," she pleaded, before glaring at them with an "unladylike" defiance: "I'm not movin' my bowl jus' cus' everyone else is! I already done made my place."

Her offender scoffed and batted his bowl away, causing it to hit Eugene's and wrack the poor boy's nerves. "You think we choose to be together like this? Kicked around together? Made to be conjoined at the hip? I don't like a single person here; all of 'em give me trouble. That boy there?" He pointed to Eugene. "He pisses his bed every night, makin' that Gothel creature come in and wake us up to see him beaten. As if we don't got better things to do, like sleepin'! And he shakes funny, won't speak much because he don't got a voice."

Eugene darted his eyes to the side of the table, glaring at the vomit in the wood. His hands were clenching his pants―

"You got sump'tin on your tongue, Herbert? A fire ant, maybe?" the boy egged, pretending to widen his eyes with anticipation. "Spit it out, then. Go on. I'm a-wait'tin'!"

Eugene bit the inside of his cheek. The nuns said he was too sensitive for his gender, too sensitive to survive the times, and he always thought them right, because confrontations like these trampled on what little bravery he had. Why, he could only face threats by putting his head in the sand and not facing them at all―

"Go on, then!" The boy banged on the table. "Show yourself to me!"

...With a furiously shaky hand, Eugene picked up his spoon and sipped his broth.

"Tch!" His bully leaned back. "See? N'awt a voice in the throat or a brain in the skull―"

"Please," interrupted the Scottish orphan, her eyes as sad as she could make them. "Will someone tell me what tha' day means ta' you?" She looked at Eugene. "Ta' all of you?"

The table continued to stare, comparing her kindness to the barbaric stereotypes associated with her red curls. Eugene just sank between the shoulders of his jacket and continued to spoon his bowl, wanting no part and surely, no role.

"C'mon, then!" The girl's dragon scales began to come out. "Everyone's got t'a tongue!"

The eldest of the outcasts finally said, "Liberation Day is the free pass day."

"Free pass?" Her eyes flashed. "Aie! That be good, then?"

"Good? It's perfectly monstrous! The "legitimate" people in the country sentimentalize it, but illegitimate "others" are targeted by veterans sick with post-traumatic stress every year. Even the children are beasts about it; everyone can parade Arendelle's triumphs in broad daylight and exploit its frustrations at sundown. The Crown tries to act like they don't know what's happening, because it's so damn disgraceful to them."

The girl was too young to get the whole of it, but her heart knew the graveness when the other children started sharing horror stories:

"The swine feces wouldn't come out of my hair last year!" bawled one girl.

"We're going to be dirty before the day ends, and the nuns won't let us wash off afterwards―"

"It's all because of our v'athers―"

"Shut up! Gonna get us in trouble, you will!"

"But we'll be taken out in the streets, and you know what they'll do; you know what they'll do!"

"I hate my v'ather―"

"―March us out like ants―"

"―I hate my ma'ther―"

"―throw mud, spit, and food at us―"

"―for being traitors―"

"―then the nuns will act incapable of stopping it―"

"―and I hope they're both dead as dogs."

The screech of a chair ripped their ears in half. "Quiet! QUIET, I said! This isn't a bloody choir! What be wrong with you halvdels?!"

The war children kept their heads down.

"But, Sister Agatha...?" The redhead began, motioning to all the children around them with a baffled smile. "Everyone in tha' cafa'teria is talkin―"

"All I hear is you all whinin' and carryin' about!" she deferred.

Sister Solberg lowered her chin and looked over the rims of her glasses, frowning.

"You want a lashin' or two across that freckled bottom ah' yer's, gal?" the tubby nun went on with her threats, giving the cafeteria the very worst of herself. "Because I can do it me'self! I can take that bottom and leave a whole tattoo on it!"

Her spectator sighed as she folded the legs of her glasses, placed them on the table, and laid her book face down. "Sis―ter Agatha..."

Sister Agatha blinked.

"You are too loud. How could children respond well if all you do is bark like a dog?"

"Wit' t'all due respect, Sistar...chil'ren are meant ta' be seen, not heard. This mouthy little youngin' shouldn't be talkin' back ta' begin with!"

"Yes, but they are also meant to listen. How do you propose they do that if all they hear is the dull ringing left in their ears by your pterodactyl screaming?"

"I was...jus' tryin' ta' make t'ings easier for you, Sistar Solberg," she faltered, humbling herself cautiously.

"Such lap-dogs," she grunted between her teeth, taking up her novel again. "Sit down, Sister Agatha; that'll be all from you."

Eugene watched as Sister Agatha sank back down into her seat to nibble on a carrot in scorned silence. The children at his table wet their lips with their broth while the red-haired girl picked at her bread, but no one spoke another word about Liberation Day.

After only five minutes, the young nun with the baby-doll voice shined a brighter topic onto her table: "Do you think we will be seeing Princess Anna on the balcony tonight, Sister Solberg?"

Sister Solberg's nostril twitched as she turned the page of her book and said, "I wouldn't bet your stars on it, girl. We will be seeing Princess Elsa, however."

"Oh! What a darling, that one! She's so very fair―"

"Yet she gets that trait from neither of her parents."

"That's not entirely true; King Agdar is a bit of a blonde, and Queen Idunn―...well, she's not as handsome, but Princess Elsa has the shape of her face. Perhaps the eyes stand further apart, and...―Oh! Here, then! Do you recall King Agdar's sister? What a picture she was! Her hair was as yellow as fairy dust ― the mother's, too!" She pressed her fork to her lips. "Though, the eyebrows matched in comparison; Princess Elsa's are darker than her scalp, which is peculiar...yet satin blonde she is, and nonetheless fair. Imagine her older! Imagine how beautiful she will be! Suitors will come flocking to her feet like geese before winter!"

The talk from here became light, but the information about those responsible for his conditions sat on Eugene's heart. "Princess Elsa..." he tasted the name, and immediately wanted to vomit it. 'By the time I'm grown, she'll be the one putting her paws on my problems, and I can bet that she'll handle them no better than her own two folks.'

The boy had no rosy delusions about the royal party; this was not because they were tyrants, but because they didn't repair his crumbling life with a determined moral obligation to fix it. He didn't have a clue of what went on behind their caste walls, but they most likely spent their hardships drinking out of gold cups while their daughter dined in the finest clothes with the finest goblet, all shimmery and gleaming with an embroidery of gemstones across her pretty neck.

"She probably doesn't know anything about dirty clothes and flies in a soup," Eugene grunted, the image casting a dark cloud over his own peasant future.

As nasty thoughts formed in his brain, he wasn't able to stop his shoulders from jumping at the disgusting sound of, "Have you got somethin' ta' say 'bout our prin―cess, Fitzherbert?"

Fear ran from the crown of his head to his chicken-bone ankles. The boy addressing him was Gottmar.

"She not good enough for you, eh? No, that's not it. We know your kin likes our blondes; can't 'ave 'em in your own country, so you 'ave to come ovar here and take them. Well, you're not 'aving no blondes, so you beddar keep the fairest one in Arendelle outta your mouth."

Even though nausea was making a whole volcano at the bottom of Eugene's stomach, he swallowed down the magma and acted like he couldn't hear him.

"I'm talking to you, half-blood!"

Water hit the back of Eugene's head in tidal waves. The girls at his table squealed and balked back, arms open in disbelief at the water soaking down their shirts. When they sneered up at Eugene, his eyes were unseeing and shaking, like a puppy who'd been kicked in the stomach by a playground of children.

After Gottmar finished emptying his cup with his squadron, he chucked it at the edge of Eugene's table, missing his wrist by an inch. "That's for your dead mother, half-blood. A toast to all the traitors no longer here."

The nuns pretended to not see this, choosing to stay silent as their forks continued to clank against their plates.

"What was that, Fitz―herbert?" Gottmar mocked, putting his hand under his earlobe. "I can't heaar~ yoouu~!"

Eugene sat in his humiliation, shoulders hiked up to his neck. Water dripped from his bangs and blurred together with his tears.

"Speak up, halvdel!"

Eugene zipped his lips up with his teeth, unable to stop his chin from quivering.

"Look at 'im; tight as a duck's butt-hole, he is. You wanna do something about it?"

Eugene gripped his napkin so hard that his table mates could see the veins bubbling in his hand. They mutely watched him shiver because they were too afraid to sacrifice themselves.

"You ain't gonna do nottin', because you're nev'var gonna be nottin'."

Eugene shook his head, ripping at his lip with his teeth for a voice to tear through, for some voice of courage, for any voice at all―

"I'll scratch your eyes out with a wire hanger if you don't keep 'em where you got 'em."

The cafeteria was as quiet as a battle-field after Gottmar's threat. There was no laughter from the onlookers or the bullies, the latter of which hated and goaded like men at an execution.

At last, Sister Solberg rose from her table like a kraken as her elbows shook with her knees. "And that ― is ― enough." She scanned the cafeteria with bulging, black eyes, lips curled down at their corners in the expression of a bull dog's. "I will not tolerate threatening remarks in this―"

"NEH!"

There was an explosion of hysterics and other dramatics: a bowl shattered, a girl screamed, and a brown head ripped through the crowd.

"Fitzherbert!" Sister Solberg shook. "Fitzherbert, stop this instant!"

Eugene ran, tripped, and crashed into a trash can before he could make the exit. The boy and his efforts went down together, and Gottmar laughed at the failure, telling him that candle-wax wings weren't good enough to break free from a weak, eggshell heart. Trembling from elbow to ankle, Eugene pulled off the hair in his face with shaky hands, both eyes deliriously watered from the brunt of the fall.

"Fitz―her―bert," Sister Solberg emphasized in concern, lifting her gown to climb down the steps. "Stay right where you are―"

"Shut up, you ol' hag!"

Sister Solberg stopped in her tracks, face made older by the scream. Eugene pushed off his palms and tripped out of the cafeteria with tears shedding behind him, sprinting all the way down the halls as Sister Solberg's voice chased after him. He whirled past junior nuns sweeping the halls without stopping to heed their calls.

"Fitzherbert!" Sister Solberg cried with them. "Fitzherbert, I command you to stop!"

He flew straight into a closet and slammed the door, shutting the last of the light out with it. Heart still going like a sledgehammer, he backed up until his tailbone hit the wall of the wardrobe. Shadows moved under the door, producing a kind of shadow-play effect as they flitted in and out, meeting and separating over hisses of conversation.

"―Look in the dormitories―"

"―No, no, no! He must be down here!"

"He's hiding close by―"

"―I want you to bring him to me and have him beaten!"

Eugene gritted his teeth in terror, flattening himself against the wall. The hisses stopped and the shadows lifted from the door, disappearing in a pitter-patter of feet. He let out a shuddery sigh and held his head between his fists, sinking down the wood until his bottom hit the floor. His fists began beating against his temples as he took this moment to cry and laugh at this deranged liberation.

Yes, he was alone ― but he was alone and free. No eyes, no judgements ― he didn't have to care what they were going to say.

The world blurred over as he cried himself to sleep, fading into a peaceful silence without nuns, politics, or bullies. In his dreams, he shaved off his skin with a scalpel and watched ribbons of flesh peel from the bone like candle-wax. Then he took the blade to his face and carved out his future, his independence, his courage, his nobility, and gave his smile a new set of teeth. He shimmied his dirty feet into a pair of polished shoes and zipped himself up in someone else's body, drinking out of the finest goblets with the finest clothes, free of his own poverty-sooted complexion and worthless bones. But the hands were too cold, the hair too blonde, and the nap ended when a slit of light became a burning sunset in his face.

Eugene forced an eye open against the rays, waking up to a shadow that stood in the door of the closet. The shoulders framed the sunlight like devil horns, but he couldn't wipe his eyes fast enough to realize that it was―

"Out." Mother Superior.

He tripped out, having been thrown into the stomachs of nuns. They closed around him and held him tight, eager to whack him should he fight. Mother Superior's face was being boxed out of the circle, but he could see her looking down her nose at him. He tried to look every nun in the face, tried to ask them to wait, but their expressions wouldn't tell him anything, so emotionless and blank were they as they wrestled him out into the open.

"Out! Out, the lot of you! Half-bloods must stay behind the class until told otherwise!"

Children were being herded into the corridor like cattle by Sister Agatha. Eugene stood there like a fool with tombstones for feet, barely budging when he was shoved into the hallway of sweltered bodies. He fought against shoulders and thighs as he passed through the main vein of the beehive, trying to see over the tops of heads to track down Mother Superior. Her ant-sized back was leading the front of the line to the open doors. The younger nuns were stuck in the business of passing out lanterns, skipping the few war children there were.

"But we'll be taken out in the streets, and you know what they'll do; you know what they'll do!"

Eugene's steps fell away, legs becoming limp and sluggard. His panic took shape, becoming pitchforks and pig feces; he thought about it over and over again―thinking, thinking, thinking―staring out of the window―staring into the future. The nuns weren't looking ― the hallway had enough bodies to camouflage him ― and Mother Superior and Sister Solberg were still at the head of the assembly. He hesitated for five minutes, and then, with a sudden thunderbolt of courage, about-faced and ducked down, slipping between legs and knees like a rabbit in a burrow.

"Please be careful with your lanterns, children!" sang the younger nuns. "We won't be able to pass out too many more, but each Sister will light them for you when the ceremony begins. Remember to wave to King Agdar and Queen Idunn―"

"And Princess Elsa!" announced Sister Bergveig with jitters of excitement running all over her. "Princess Elsa will be gracing us, too―"

"Sister Berg―veig," Sister Solberg grumbled, lips frozen in a smile. "Please control your sprightliness. The children have enough for all of us, thank you."

Eugene cut the corner and tip-toed as far away as he could, before breaking out into a run. Bursting through batwing doors with his jacket flying behind him, the boy's eyes ripped through the scenery―from dormitories to bathroom corridors―before stationing on the staircase that led to an exit. He hurried down the creaky steps, dodging a pail of water, and began working the wooden latch. He looked around for an object that would help him pry the door open, but he could find nothing. The garden was just outside, and beyond that, the gate, where the sunset would be waiting for him, and the horizon would be all his―

"Do you think yourself wise?"

Eugene whipped around in a sweat, eyes zigzagging across the room before landing on the nimble little figure cloaked under a gown and veil. "S...Sister Jensen..."

The nun's face was tighter than a twisted muscle, and her throat was veined. "Do you think yourself wise...for putting me in this situation?"

"No, I―...I-I..." He didn't know what she meant, what to say, what to do; he just wanted to stay alive.

"They have eyes, all around...crawling in the walls like little nightmares," she spluttered, spit filming the corners of her mouth. Like her forehead, her chin was pocked with dimples.

"Please," he begged, finding her mad. "Let me go! I can't take it here anymore!"

Sister Jensen watched his eyes with tears moving behind her own, and then drew in a breath. "Mother Superior!" She yelled until the veins popped out of her temples. "Mother Superior! Mother Superior!"

"NO―"

"Mother Superior! Mother―"

"You impudent CHILD!" Sister Solberg came stumbling down the steps. "What is the meaning of this, girl?! What business do you have down here?"

Sister Jensen dropped her breath and turned her head away as if snapping out of a fever, holding her forehead to whisper, "The Fitzherbert..." She swallowed, recomposing herself, and started over, "The Fitzherbert child was trying to elude us."

Sister's Solberg's face rotated, stilled, and then blanked. With shaking hands and legs, Eugene kept his chin in his chest to avoid her gaze. It was tempting, as of now, to fold up into a ball and melt into the floor, but he knew he'd have to brave the next few minutes.

"Speak plainly, boy. What is your explanation?"

The boy flinched. "I jus'..."

"What?"

"I-I jus'..."

"Speak up."

Tears ran down his nose and dripped off the lump in his throat. "...I jus' wanted to be free..."

Sister Jensen looked at Sister Solberg with a hand over her mouth. A spindly hand seized the front of Eugene's collar. He was stuffed inside a cupboard like a sack of potatoes as he fought and resisted, and when he looked up to plead with them, Sister Solberg's shadow eclipsed everything he could see.

"Foolish child," she growled. "You think you're the only one...who wants to be free?"

The doors were shut on him, shutting the last of the light out with them.

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(-SCREAM-)