MORASS
The world was white, then grey, then a purplish black – and then green, needles, soft soil underfoot. There was a coolness to the air, and the unmistakable smell of pine trees, pinecones.
In front of her: a forest. Underneath her feet: muddy, liquid soil. Nowhere to be seen: the city.
"Where…" started Martha.
"Outside Viridian Forest," replied the Marquis.
She looked around again. They were, in a sense, outside a forest. However, they were also, in a different sense, inside a forest. It towered up on all sides, great spears of pine and pillars of beech, only a careless breath away from Martha – covering ground everywhere, except a narrow streak of road spurting out behind them. In the distance, through the skywards-trained spikes of green, she could only just now make out a spot of grey, a patch of roof.
"Is that… Pewter?" she said.
"No," the Marquis said. "That is Viridian. Pewter –" and he grabbed her shoulders and turned her around, towards the forest, towards the tallest of the darkest and the greenest and then he went on – "Pewter is straight through there."
At first, it didn't bother her that the Marquis hadn't dropped her off in Pewter, like he had promised Agatha. The thought didn't even cross her mind. It couldn't cross her mind, because it was eclipsed by his hands. They were still there on her shoulders, pushing down heavily on her. She felt the smoothness through her clothes – no roughness, no sensation that he had ever picked up a mop or done the washing up. They were hands that had never gripped a tool or a weapon. They were hands that shook other hands, coated in a protective layer of words. And they felt like dumbbells and slime. She squirmed, tried to signal to him to let go.
"How – how far?" she managed.
"Scarcely half a day's walk," he answered. She felt a nudge on her heel. "Perhaps a whole, in those shoes."
She clenched her free hand, rubbed fingers against palm. Relished the roughness of her skin. Hardened patches stabbed into the furrows inside her fist – the hand of a working woman, she knew, the hand of a worthy woman, she knew, and if she turned around and slapped the Marquis in the face the hand would be too light to actually hurt him, but she would imprint on his cheek a map of her hand, imprint on his cheek the marks of nineteen years' housework.
"You t, told Agatha, you'd take me to Pewter."
"Hardly. I told her I would take you where you needed to be."
His hands stayed. Like he was trying to leave an impression of his pristine, heavy appendages on her. She strained every tendon, set her elbows so her skin would stay as straight and undented as possible. They were her shoulders, and the weight she carried on them would be hers and nobody elses.
"I need to be, to be here." She stated it as plainly as she could, but a question mark still crept in.
"I wouldn't say that," said the Marquis. "Personally, I would rather see you back in Pallet. You would be so much safer there, you know. You have no idea –" and here he leant in, his mouth only inches from her ear, his voice so close she could almost feel it like a punch in the neck – "absolutely no idea how dangerous it is out there. Anything could happen."
"Yes." She didn't turn around, stared straight ahead at the forest.
"Anytime. Anywhere."
"Yes."
"At anyone's hands…" His voice faded to a prod, a mere pinch.
"Is, is that a threat?"
"That is a very big word for you," he replied. "Try not to go above your station. Call it… a kindly warning."
She didn't answer.
He withdrew, pulled his hands away.
"Until I see you again," he said. He probably bowed. But he was gone.
She'd show him. Some way or other.
She unclenched her fist and stepped forth.