Chapter Two: The Maid Behind the Bar
After the show, while Silver waited patiently on a haybale, Saera moved over to Brad and said, "There's something I need to ask you."
"No, I won't marry you."
She gave him a withering look. "Who's the girl Kryss came with?"
"I don't know. He was with her earlier, though," he replied.
"Well, there's something wrong with her."
"What do you mean?" He exclaimed, immediately going on the defensive.
"No, not like malicious wrong—just like—victim wrong. I watched her during the show, and the way she was wrapped up in the music—it's not natural, it's self induced. She enjoys the music, hell, even loves it, but…" She left the sentence hanging in the air.
"I see. You mean it's like she uses the magic as a shell, as a way to armor herself," he paused. "Against what, though? Bullied at school? She looks like she could handle that."
"I know. I don't think it's school."
Brad shrugged. "I don't know either. Let's not tell Kryss, though. He's got enough on his plate right now, with his parents getting divorced and all. We can just keep an eye on her…"
Silver gradually became more friendly and talkative over the course of the day, and she and Chris really enjoyed themselves. At the end of the day, they made plans to meet the next day. The Festival was in town for ten weeks, and this was only week one.
They met up the next day, and Brad and Saera joined them this time. Silver discovered that Brad was gay and Saera was his very close friend, almost spirit siblings. They were both here because Brad's homophobic father had disowned Brad when he came out of the closet, and since Brad was almost Saera's brother, and vice-versa, and she hadn't wanted him to leave on his own, they had joined the Faire a few weeks later, when Brad was eighteen and Saera nineteen. By now, they'd been with the Faire for a few years, living in their own trailer hook to the bed of Saera's old pickup. Saera's cousin, Thomas, who joined a few years later for no reason other than, 'I like to travel and I'm good at metal-working.' Thomas had turned out to be a natural at making chainmail and platemail, and now worked in one of the forges, making armor for both Rennies and travelers alike.
He slept with three other guys in a small camper.
Back in the present, though, Silver apparently had no problem with Brad's sexuality. They all finished up the day, with Silver taking the bus home again, and Kryss and the others going back to their respective camps. They continued in the pattern for two weeks, including the four school days, when Silver came with a school that Kryss was never able to find, until-
"Where is she?" Kryss asked suddenly, looking about anxiously.
"What?" Brad asked, distractedly- he was restringing his lute.
"She's not here."
"Oh."
"Something's wrong, I know it."
"You're overreacting."
"I can feel it," he insisted.
"Now I know you're overreacting."
"No, I'm not. She would have said something, or called."
"You gave her your phonenumber?"
Chris stretched the word out. "Yeeeees."
Brad shook his head and went back to replacing the strings on his livelihood.
§
She limped through the crowds nervously. Had Kryss missed her? Forgotten her? Would he be angry? She hoped not. He was a friend. One of the few that she had.
"Hey!" someone put a hand on her shoulder and she winced at the sudden pain.
"Hey," she answered back, trying to mask the pain in her voice. To her surprise, it only trembled a little. She was getting better at this.
"What's wrong? Why are you limping?" He was observant, she had to give him credit for that.
"I- uh." She couldn't think of anything to say. 'Now comes the trouble.'
"Did someone hit you?" Kryss asked. He pulled the fabric of her shirt away from her neck to reveal the bandage that bound her breasts in place. His eyes widened.
"What- who-"
"I-I-" there was a huge bruise on her shoulder, barely covered by the bandages, that spread from her shoulder to the base of her neck and disappeared down the front and back of her shirt. It was black at the center, but fading to green and purple at the edges, and felt like pounded meat.
"I fell down- down the stairs, and I hit my shoulder," she offered lamely.
His eyes narrowed. "I don't believe you."
"But… I… I'm sorry that I can't explain it. You'd hate me a-and- I have to go. I'm sorry."
She wheeled and dashed off through the crowd, out the entrance of the Faire, and along the road that led to the main road and the bus stop.
He stood stunned for a moment at what she'd said, then came back to his senses and ran after her. He caught sight of her running through the cars, and ducking into the bus stop. He slowed down for a moment, hands on knees, panting; he was not used to sprinting.
He started running again--and the bus pulled up. "No!" he shouted. He was sorry for doing whatever it had been that had scared her and made her run. She jumped on the bus, and it pulled off.
"Silver…"
'You'd hate me…'
§
Brad was in a group of other Faire-dwellers partying on the edge of the tent-and-camper encampment to give the sleepers some quiet. There was a small fire going, and turkey legs were being passed around. Saera was back in their camper, complaining of a headache, and Kryss was apparently sleeping, while Thomas was out visiting a lady-friend. The party was situated near the small road that led from the Fairesite to the campsite.
Brad had just gotten his turkey leg when a branch snapped behind him. Nobody else appeared to have noticed it.
"Who's there?" he called back quietly.
"Me," aclipped, familiarvoice answered.
"Silver?"
"Do you know where Krysh is?"
"Why?"
"I need to apologize for shomething."
"Come into the light."
"… I can't," she called from the darkness. "Can you just take me to him?"
He looked around. The other revelers hadn't noticed their exchange. "Okay."
He handed someone--Pippin, he thought--his turkey leg and stood up, and walked over to where he had heard Silver's voice originate from.
"Over here." He looked over to the road, at a moonlight-outlined figure. Blinking from the sudden adjustment from fire to darkness, he could make out Silver looking at him, and it looked like she was cradling her arm.
"Let's go," he said quietly, sensing that something was very wrong here. Maybe Saera had been right. For Silver's sake, he hoped she wasn't. They set off through the camps, to a clearing apart from the other tents and camps. In the middle sat a gleaming dark grey RV, with an over-the-bed bunk.
Brad led her to the door, and rapped sharply three times on it. The windows remained dark. He knocked again. After a few seconds there was a shuffling on the other side, the sounds of the door being unlocked, and a mostly-conscious Kryss stood in the doorway, clothed in black cotton pants and hair tousled, barechested.
"Brad, what in hell- Silver?" he asked disbelievingly. "What are you- never mind. Come on in." He held the door open, and closed it behind them. Brad heard a rustle of fabric that probably meant that Kryss had grabbed the shirt that he usually had hanging off a chair somewhere in the kitchen.
He groped behind him for the light switch, found it, and flipped it. He gasped and Kryss's jaw hit the floor. Silver was cradling her arm. More importantly than that, she was liberally covered in scrapes, bruises, and cuts. She had a spectacular black eye, and a misshapen bruise on her jaw. Her throat had finger marks on it, and the despair in her clouded eyes matched that in Brad's soul. 'How did we not see this? It should have been obvious'
Her biggest problem appeared to be the long, nasty gash that ran down the length of her right forearm. Her formerly apparently white shirt and blue jeans were covered in blood and what smelled like beer.
Kryss was, for once, speechless. Brad, however, voiced what both of them were thinking. "Holy shit!"
"What- happened to you?" Kryss finally managed.
"N-nothing. I just came to apologize for- today. I shouldn't have shaid that, I really just got in a fight, and I sorta need to go now, sho—"
"No. Nothing? Silver, this is not nothing. This is torture. Who did this to you?"
"I- no one. No one did this to me." She looked panicky, and Brad moved into the stairwell and locked the door. This needed to stop here and now.
"Silver, is someone abusing you?" Brad asked.
"Ye- no. Please, shtop."
"Is it your mother?"
"My mother's dead," she answered harshly.
Oops. "What about your father." Bingo. Silver stiffened, and the panic in her eyes turned to terror.
"Please," she pleaded, "Just let me go and forget about this. He's all I have. Everyone else is dead; the only people we have left is each other." She stifled a gasp at what she'd revealed, and Kryss smiled grimly.
"Why?"
"I can't tell you. You'll go to the police, and besides, they'll only put me back and then he'll be worse than before. Please, just let me go home."
"We can't do that," Kryss answered. "Tell us and we can help you."
"He's an alcoholic, okay! He's a recovering alcoholic, and I've been helping him."
"By being his punching bag?" Brad asked sarcastically.
"He'd been drinking before my mom's death, and after, it just got-worse. He's coming back, though! He loves me, and I love him, and he's going to get better!"
Kryss's expression softened. "Silver, if he loved you, would he be doing this to you?" he asked gently.
"It's just stress," she retorted. "We'll get over it together. He just needs time. Everyone does." She laughed hollowly, then winced. "Ow. That really hurts."
"Do you want to go to the hospital?" Brad asked.
She blanched. "No! I- I can't! They'll know and send me to a foster home. Please, can I go now?"
"Not until we've patched you up. Brad, the bag's-"
"I know." Brad grabbed the orange EMT bag out of the passenger's seat of the cab and placed it on the table.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Kryss rummaged around in it and pulled out a few things: bandages, gauze pads, cloth tape, antiseptic, band-aids, scissors, and cotton swabs. Brad filled a pan with water from the sink and brought it back to the table.
"You look like you're used to this," she observed, slumping a little in her chair.
"Well, I am one of the extra EMTs on camp. Brad's got some training too, so sometimes we get called to patch up some of the minor injuries that the people with the Malkas Empire get when the first-aid tent is busy."
"Oh." With that, Kryss got to work cleaning out the arm-wound and bandaging it, then cleaned out and smeared all of the larger cuts and scrapes with antiseptic, and covered them with gauze pads. As he was covering some of the puncture wounds with band-aids, he asked her what had done it. "A beer bottle," she quietly replied.
"You're a mess, you know that?" he joked, trying to lift her spirits.
"Yeah," was her only reply as she swayed a little.
"I…" he peered more closely at her. Her eyes were glassy, and as she breathed…
She's drunk, he realized. Not very, but enough. Why. . . ?
"Silver, are you—ah—intoxicated?" he asked carefully.
Her eyes widened. "N-no," she stammered.
He smiled gently. "I know you are, Silver. Just tell me why."
"The pain," she whispered. "It was too much and I know alcohol dims it a little."
"Good girl."
"Chris, can I talk to you for a minute?" Brad pulled Chris aside. "Have you thought about what she's gonna do now?" he asked. "She's gonna go back to that house, get beat up again and again, and sooner or later, she'll either die from it, or she'll break. A broken abuse victim is bad, Chris, they're usually better off dead. The only ones worse from abuse are rape victims. Cammie—don't flinch, Chris—she killed herself. She killed herself because of one goddamn perv. One. Where's she gonna stay, is she gonna press charges, are we? I mean, she can't go back there, and frankly, I won't let her. I don't care what she wants to do, I'll raise the whole camp if I have to, she's not going back."
"Brad, I fully agree with you. She's not going back."
"But how are we going to make her stay? That's like kidnapping. We can't hold her against her will."
"No, but I can make her go to sleep."
"How? Got any morphine?"
"No, but I got this." Kryss held up a package of Ibuprofen, and another package of sleeping pills.
"She can stay right here."
"You sure that's a good idea?" Brad asked.
"Yeah, I have more than enough room, and it gets lonely at night."
Brad glared at him.
"Not in that way!" Chris hissed. "God, she's been through enough. She's just going to stay here for as long as she needs to, okay?" Brad's glare softened. "I just hope you know what you're doing."
Chris handed Silver two Ibuprofen and one of the sleeping pills. "These are painkillers," he told her. Take these, wait a half hour, then I'll let you leave."
Obediently, she took them, much to Brad's surprise. Ten minutes later she was yawning and swaying slightly.
"Silver, do you want to stay here?" Chris asked. "I have room, and no, you wouldn't be a problem."
"But I don't want to be a burden, and I need to get-" he cut her off gently.
"Go. You'll never make it home without dropping, and your father will probably be gone tomorrow morning."
Brad watched with a slight smile on his lips as Chris practically manhandled Silver up the ladder leading to the upper bunk, who was protesting drowsily all the way.
"Well, folks, I'm going to go seek my own bed. Silver, sleep well and Chris, watch over her. Later."
He quietly unlocked and backed out the door.
"Kryss?" he heard a sleepy voice inside the RV say.
"Hmm?" came the tenor reply.
"My name- my real name is Reanna."
"And I, Reanna," Chris answered, though she surely couldn't hear him, "am Chris."
Brad smiled.