CHAPTER FIVE (THE BUG AND SIR)
Ma'am (as she had said I should call her) did not come back to the room to get me, so I stayed in it. I thought about all sorts of things, chiefly how to get money to buy paint. I had expensive tastes at the time— light purple would be nice for the walls, I thought then, and black for the bed-frame; blue for the desk and chair (and gold-leaf to decorate them, perhaps), white for the window-frame. Varnish would be best for the floor, of course, but it would have to be dark to look good with the purple walls.
There had been paint everywhere in the place where the king of this place lived, and if a kingdom as poor as this one seemed could afford so much of it then it could not be too expensive.
Ma'am had not sounded as if she liked paint much, but if I paid for it myself and only used it in my room then she would really not have a good reason to mind. It was, after all, my room, and even if I did not know what I had been before they found me in the forest I was certain I had not been a farmer, so paint would not be too heavy for my walls. Or my desk, or my bed, or my window-frame.
A massive bug flew in through the window, and I realized that it did not have glass in it. What had I been thinking? None of the windows in Mirkwood had glass in them that I had seen. Why had I been expecting glass?
Whatever and whyever I had been thinking, there was a bug in my room now. I closed the shutters first, to keep any more from getting in. Then I turned my back to the wall, and looked at the room, waiting to see something moving.
There! There, near the desk that was new-wood-yellow right now but would look much better once it was blue and gold. It buzzed in circles in the air for the time it took me to blink thrice, then it landed. It was the ugliest beetle I had ever seen, with things hanging off of it that were not eight extra legs but looked enough like eight extra legs to make me want the whole thing gone as soon as possible.
I crept over, as slowly and softly as I could, my hands ready to smash it onto the table.
Closer… closer… close enough. I raised my arm, and—
Ma'am opened the door. The freakish bug, startled, flew away from the desk.
"I was about to catch it!" I said.
She was confused. "Catch what?"
I pointed at the bug. "Catch that!" I said. "It flew in through the window, and I was just about to squish it when you made it fly away."
"Squish it?" She frowned, still holding the doorknob. "You might just have put it outside."
"It was an ugly bug," I said. "And if all I did was set it outside, it might get back in again!"
Ma'am frowned more. "Come in for dinner," she said. "Naithion is back from the farms, and you might get a name you like better."
She turned around and went back into the main room, and I followed her. She sat in one of two dark varnished chairs beside a table that probably had food on it. A person who was probably Naithion sat in the other varnished chair.
He had the dusty-dirt grey-brown hair that just about everybody but the king seemed to have inherited in this place. He was taller than Ma'am, and probably taller than Lindwen, but not as tall as the person who was probably the king of the forest but was certainly not the king of the place I came from. Not nearly as tall as either of my real parents, of course. I had to guess at his height, though, for he was sitting down. Standing up, he might have been taller or shorter.
It hardly mattered. He was a grown-up, so he was taller than me, and what else did I care about?
"What should I call you?" I asked.
Naithion looked up from his food. "What did she tell you to call her?" he asked, tilting his head at Ma'am.
"Ma'am," I said. "Or her name if I must, but—"
"Call me sir, then," he said, and went back to whatever he had been eating.
"What will you call me?" I asked, clambering into the only chair that was new-wood yellow. They must have had all these things built after agreeing to take care of me.
"Is it correct that you were found in the forest?" he asked.
The food was bread, and I had already taken a bite of a piece of it. I nodded.
"Taurwen, then," said Sir, and he ate the last of his bread.
Was it unusual for people here to talk this little? Lindwen liked to talk quite a bit, and the king talked a reasonable amount even if he talked strangely, and Ma'am seemed like she did not mind talking. Maybe it was strange. I would have to wait until I had met a few more people before making a decision, though.
"Ma'am said you were out in the fields before you came back," I said. "Were you plowing a field or planting radishes or something like that?"
"I was telling people how to plow," he said, "and I do not grow radishes." He left the table, not really looking at anything in particular.
Ma'am was doing something strange with her face. "Well!" she said, getting up from her chair. "It surely looks as if you like the bread!"
"Oh," I said, looking down at my now-empty plate. "Did I eat it all?"
"Yes," she said, laughing a little. "Did you not notice?"
"No," I said, squinting. "I suppose I liked it. Probably."
"Ah, well," she said, taking the plate. "There will be more tomorrow morning, and perhaps you can notice it then."
"Perhaps," I said, feeling far too tired for the few things I had done that day. Maybe Lindwen's pulling on my arm had had some effect? "I feel tired."
"The day has been long," she said, and she looked like she was planning to pick me up out of the chair and set me on the ground, so I scrambled out of the chair myself before she could get close enough. "You may go sleep in your room, if you like."
"I would like," I said, and I did.
Fin