(A/N: Hey, look! I updated again despite all the enormous pressure of school and softball! Am I amazing or what? So please read and please please please enjoy! PS: Happy Mother's Day!)
Enna, taking her first free step in days, blinked in the blinding sunshine. The sudden heat of the day had gone right to her head, and she quickly began to feel rather ill. The palace courtyard's foreign sounds, smells, and sights pressed in upon her senses: people were shouting and laughing in outlandish tongues, there was a distinct smell of sweaty horse though there was neither hide nor head of any equine in the vicinity, and the creatures milling about! Enna was quite overwhelmed.
Naeomi pressed her hand with her leafy fingers, and Enna's heart began to pound. A quiver was building in her legs. She needed to go somewhere, and that somewhere was away from here, with the blazing daylight and the sickening smells and the crowds. She found herself breaking into a trot. Naeomi gave her a puzzled look.
"Why is milady in such haste?" she asked. "I am quite sure, milady's chambers won't go anywhere if we tarry." So saying, she stepped into a darkened doorway and led Enna up a cool staircase.
Enna breathed easier. "I apologize."
Naeomi curtsied in response. "Milady's bath has been drawn already, and milady's servant shall assist you in bathing."
"'Milady's servant'?" Enna echoed softly. Should I understand her?
Naeomi looked slightly embarrassed for Enna's sake. "Er…myself, milady."
Enna wanted to sink into the cobbled floor.
"After milady is clean to milady's satisfaction, if it be milady's will, milady's servant shall dress her as is appropriate to a guest in the High King's castle." Naeomi reached the top of the staircase and beckoned for Enna to follow her down a corridor.
Enna had to think a moment before cottoning on to Naeomi's meaning. "Er…aye. It's milad—I mean, my will."
"Very good, milady," said Naeomi. She then stopped, curtsied, and let Enna into a room. "These shall be milady's chambers for the remainder of milady's visit, if they suit milady."
Enna couldn't reply. The room—oh! the room! It was the largest bedroom Enna had seen in her life. Two windows taller than she (and that was a feat indeed!) opened over cushioned seats on the western wall to the wide blue expanses of the sky and the sea, which looked so gay and harmless when one was on dry land. They cast wide blocks of sunlight onto the floor with its warm fur rugs and onto the bed with its rich linens and curtains in emeralds and golds. A cozy chair rested near a massive fireplace with glowing red coals and charming painted scenes on the mantelpiece. At the foot of the bed was a chest carved with scenes of picnics and those strange goat-men. There was a handsome mahogany desk near the windows, too, with a stack of vellum and parchment arranged neatly on the surface. Enna could hear the waves crashing, crashing, on the rocks below.
"Milady's servant hopes milady will be comfortable in such close quarters," said Naeomi.
Enna stared at her, her earlier panic all but forgotten. "Aye. Milady will be!"
"Then would it please milady to bathe now?"
With a twinge of mortification, Enna remembered her bedraggled appearance. Certainly she must smell appalling—brine and fish and straw and sweat and sandalwood? "Aye, please."
Naeomi beckoned her over. In a pool of sunshine from the window rested a steaming tub. Little suds of soap lined the edges. Enna got gooseflesh just looking at it! She stared at it like a starving man stares at a rabbit, hardly noticing when Naeomi sat her down and began to comb her unruly mane—she was so eager that she hesitated barely a moment before shedding her baggy tunic and salty trousers in front of the maid and climbing into the hot water.
It sent shivers up and down her spine. She sank leisurely into the suds, her teeth chattering with enjoyment as the heat soaked into her muscles and slowly unknotted them. Dirt lifted off her flesh with every movement and stained the bottoms of the soapsuds.
Enna sighed. She was properly warm—for the first time in several very long months! Her fingertips tingled with the heat of the water. She settled down even further into the tub, until the tip of her nose brushed the bubbles.
"Milady?"
Naeomi's voice was a rather unappreciated interruption, but Enna masked her irritation and looked over at the tree-thing, who was now holding a flask. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"
"If milady pleases," Naeomi said, "milady's servant will wash milady's hair."
Enna grinned despite herself. "I please very much!"
It was heavenly. Naeomi cleaned Enna's hair better than even Enna herself could have done, and Enna was so sleepy afterwards that Naeomi had to help her out of the bath and into a fluffy cotton robe like a little child—she nearly nodded off while Naeomi was combing the tangles from her sodden hair.
Enna didn't remember much after that.
She woke what seemed like a lifetime later, curled up under the mountain of bed linens like a bear cub, her hair loose and clean and her body deliciously warm. The window shutters were closed, but one had crept open, and outside, the sky was dark. A cheery fire was snapping and crackling in the ingle. A little lamp was burning next to the bed, and a few candles were glimmering on the wall.
Enna stretched slowly and tucked her hands under her head and gazed out of the window. The moon was hanging low over the horizon, casting white shimmerings on the black water. The smell of salt water and all other sorts of delicious sea smells were heavy on the air, and Enna could tell by its distinct tang that rain was not far off.
Unhurriedly, she sat up and wrapped the robe around herself again. It looked to be very late at night, and it wouldn't do any good to remain in bed stark naked, especially morning came round. (No decent kind of woman would even dream of doing such a thing.) Enna danced across the cold cobblestones to the chest at the foot of the bed and stopped to look at it. Her conscience panged terribly when she thought about looking for a nightgown inside. Nothing in this room was hers, nor could she ever dream of owning anything so lovely. But she was in need of clothing, and the king Peter could not expect her to go naked to supper and breakfast or out of the room at all.
She opened the chest guiltily. It turned out to be nearly empty, except for two pairs of slippers, ornate and brightly colored but several sizes too small; a yellow gown that Enna couldn't even pull over her hips; a purple one that felt and looked to be the size of a ship's sail; a man's tunic and grass-stained trousers; and a frilly nightdress that billowed about her legs and barely reached her wrists. But she put the nightgown on gratefully and put the cotton robe neatly into the chest in its place.
Enna then went to the window and gazed out, her elbows not minding the cold stone of the windowsill. The water was a glimmering onyx under the wide sky; the moon was swollen and so close she could see the dusky blue dips on its surface. Thousands of stars winked down at her from their places in a sky so black one would think it didn't even exist. All was quiet, except for the soft hushing of waves crashing on the cliffs below, and a soft breeze whispering across the surface of the water, stirring Enna's hair and dancing onward over the castle to unknown places.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, Enna caught a glimpse of something moving. She quickly turned to look. It was a lone figure, walking slowly along the battlements several fathoms below her window. The figure held his hands in his pockets and went forward with his head bowed, a solitary cloak fluttering about his shoulders. He looked absolutely frozen to Enna, whose heart throbbed with sympathy. The poor thing, she thought. A kitchen boy, sent to bed without supper for a silly mistake. I will give him a blanket so he won't freeze tonight. (She neglected to remember the distinct lack of human kitchen servants in the castle.)
Stepping away from the window only long enough to pull the woolen coverlet off her bed, Enna returned to find the figure leaning over the battlements with his chin in one hand, gazing wistfully off over the sea.
"Are you all right?" Enna called down. "Would you like a blanket?"
The figure looked up, but was silent for a moment before he said, "No, thank you, Lady Enna. But I would like to know where you were at sup?"
Enna was confused, and she looked closer at the stranger's face.
"My brother was wanting to hear your impression of him."
Enna felt her blood run cold. That was the high king! She leapt back from the window and slammed the shutters closed behind her. Without a second thought, she threw the nightgown off and replaced it with the man's clothing from the chest, binding her hair back in a plait. Here she stopped, her heart racing a thousand miles a second. There were no shoes, so she would have to do without. A second glance out of the window showed that the battlements were clear—
Enna then did a very foolish thing. With bitter tears, she pulled the silken sheets off her bed and tied them in knots and flung the homemade rope out the window after binding them about the bedpost. They were a fathom or so short of the battlements, but she could jump. A last look round the cozy little room and Enna was shimmying down the wall. She would get out of the castle and escape with her life if she had to break all the bones in her body. The high king would surely behead her if she let herself be caught, otherwise.
She must get away from this terrible place.