I Sing
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The Girl Who Must Not Sing Ch. 11 free porn video
‘Last I checked she was downstairs, sire. In the drawing room.’
‘Could you tell if she is taking to the manor.’
‘If not the manor, certainly one of its windows.’
‘This isn’t the time for jokes, Paetin. I need to be sure that she will be okay before we start taking in other orphans.’
‘Well sire, it’s only been a little over a week. Something like this will take time, I’m sure. She’s young yet so the memories should fade but they’re still fresh for now.’
‘I suppose so. It’s a tricky task of course. More so given the cause of her being here.’
‘Impressive too, from a grim point of view.’
‘Mmm.’
‘If I may be so bold, sire, it may be easier to find the best way for her to integrate if I knew the full story. The one you’ve been skirting around this whole time. I can see its shape, sire, even if I don’t know its contents.’
‘Sharp of you. It’s complex. I— you know I trust you Paetin.’
‘Of course, sire.’
‘Then trust me when I say I know little more than you do and I would tell you were I able. I wish to but I cannot. I don’t even know where the girl has been in the two years since the incident. That should tell you all that you need to know, understood. You’ve always been as loyal as any could ask.’
‘I understand, sire. All of it.’
===
The web still quivered like the strings of an instrument but the fly’s fight was over. A small spider but a large catch and just as large a job wrapping it up. The spider wasted no time in starting. Folds of web unwound from its abdomen as it carried them forwards to entomb the already entangled insect. Every second saw the fly slowly vanish beneath a deepening curtain of white.
The girl knew that feeling, though she didn’t know from where. That silky smothering that held you still and dormant but didn’t choke you out.
It’s like wearing these earmuff, she told Eldrian, breaking the story for a moment.
The spider made one final loop around the pod that had once been a fly. It stopped for a moment, as if to inspect its work, then left the cocoon and began fixing the damage that its catch had done.
Some spiders wove beautiful webs that hung between trees and plants and caught morning dew. When that happened they gleamed in the sun like Sire Mastro’s chandeliers. He had a lot of those. Each one hanging from the roof like a spider web.
This spider’s web looked tangled and messy, even when it had apparently finished as it scurried back to its crevice in the window frame. Yet its catch still waited on the silken threads. Had it forgotten? She kept watching to be sure.
Elsewhere in the house, or sometimes in the same room as her, there came the sounds of life and movement. Footfalls upstairs or on the floor behind, dampening to cross rugs. Lots of people seemed to live here and all of them busy. Some cleaned some gardened. Always work to do.
Had the spider gone home to clean as well? Delicately as she could manage, the girl pushed her voice past the threshold of the spider’s home but disappointment greeted her immediately. Nothing in here but empty space and a motionless arachnid.
She didn’t want to wake the spider so she retreated from the window.
The house opened up to her as her voice flowed out to fill every nook.
It’s been so long since I could see like that.
She was young at the time, and her mind always felt fuzzy – still did – but somehow it seemed like she didn’t belong in the house. Everyone had a purpose there, she’d learned that quite quickly. There were the gardeners, the maids, the cooks and kitchen hands, the stableboys, drivers, menders. Then there was Paetin and Sire Mastro, overseeing it all. So where did she fit in with everything.
Everywhere the girl walked, the feeling followed. In the kitchen the cooks skirted around her as though she were some new piece of furniture that had suddenly sprung up. Nobody said anything, even when it felt like she must have been rather in the way.
Once, out by the rose bushes, one of the gardeners had tripped over the girl’s foot, unaware that she had come to stand behind her. A moment of flustered anger came over this fallen Earthborn woman til she looked up and saw the girl’s face. Then her features softened like a wet rag and she apologized over and over.
‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there,’ the woman blathered as a trickle of blood began to run from her scraped knee.
And she said your name? asked Eldrian.
Mhmm, the girl nodded.
Do you remember it?
No. That was the other thing. The other side of the fuzziness. So many holes in her childhood. Nothing before the spider, not even a blur. No home before this, parents, gardens. Sometimes she dreamed up those sorts of things but she could tell they were fake. They changed every time. All the solidity of the world occupied itself in the confines of her vision from the tower.
The girl padded on bare feet across the drawing room and began to skip once she reached the hall. Sire Mastro didn’t like her running in the house, or anything more vigorous than a walk. But her voice swept around and found him nowhere in sight.
She passed through the sun room where the air felt hotter than even outside. The plants here were so much greener. So strange and tangly with big, broad leaves that sparkled from the moisture on them. She didn’t linger long, not in these robes. The air felt clammy and wet and it always seemed to build up under her clothes. Then everything stuck together and that meant having to take a bath later. Bathes always seemed to do funny things to her voice if she opened her mouth underwater. Even an innocent gasp for breath could send big bubbles of sound bouncing away. Bathes weren’t good.
Next came the library with its walls and walls of books. Sometimes the other folk around the house could be found in here, reading from the pages of something or other. Not today, to her disappointment. Nobody to read to her. And she still couldn’t figure out the funny markings on the pages.
Then the girl saw it. She’d seen it before, every time she came to the library. But those past times had been in the presence of others so she could never investigate it the way she really wanted to.
It stood next to a porcelain lamp. The sweets case. A little box balanced on one of the stands beside the reading sofas. She knew it had sweets in it. She’d seen Sire Mastro take one in the past and pop it in his mouth, when he hadn’t known she was watching. But they weren’t for little girls, or so the housefolk said.
She crept up on the case like a cat stalking mice. Her feet moved silently upon the rugs. Elsewhere in the house, someone called to someone else and a door slammed shut a little too loud.
This place always felt alive. Moving. Watching. But not today. The house had its attention elsewhere. Nobody watched the sweets. Nobody but her.
The girl placed one knee on the sofa, then the other. Her feet were soon to follow but not before another sweep of her voice around the room and the hallways leading off from it. Feet weren’t allowed on furniture, they made things dirty. But she had to in order to properly reach the case.
A polished lid of silver, rimmed with two spiraling snakes and topped with a handle shaped like an ivy heart, blocked the girl from her prize. She pinched the silver in her fingertips and placed it upon the sofa’s back.
Sometimes the folk of the house told her stories of great adventurers and the treasures they came upon. Looking in at the trove of sweets, the girl felt as though this moment might fit as a fable too. Colorful wrappers abounded and the smell of sugar and honeyed wafers wafted to her nose. Several were missing but more than she could count remained.
Just one, thought the girl. Otherwise they might notice.
Her hand slid out, stretching fr
om the safety of her robe, and hovered above the bounty. Which one? What did they taste like? Mixed together like this, she couldn’t tell which flaunted a scent of strawberry and which promised peach. Some beckoned with blackberries while others advertised apple. A fruit salad of flavors, but indistinguishable from here.
A pale yellow wrapper caught the girl’s voice and she plucked it from the case. The smell said lemon when she lifted it to her nose. But not a puckering kind with which the fruit normally bit. A springtime taste that would surely be sweet.
The paper crackled like a leaf as the girl unwrapped her prize. A hard sweet, but not sticky. Not immediately, at least. She rolled it between her fingers, feeling the rough, round shape. Then she placed it on her tongue and curled it into her mouth.
The flavor came immediately, exactly the taste she had expected. A meadow of yellow with bees in the air and flowers filling the breeze with their scent. She bit down and the shell of the sweet shattered, letting flow a syrup that had a pleasant sourness to it, not severe. Sugary goodness coated her tongue and warmed her tastebuds. She sighed a satisfied hum at the flavor, sucked it all together, then swallowed.
The memory remained in her mouth for several seconds. Finally it too faded, leaving only longing.
Her hand crept forwards again, before she could stop it. Two then, and who could say that one of the other housefolk hadn’t taken them?
A pink wrapper, this time. A strawberry smell. The paper crinkled and she placed it flat upon the sofa’s arms, careful to avoid tears. Something so pretty should stay intact.
The strawberry sweet didn’t burst with syrup when she bit it. Instead it had a feathery filling that tried to cling to her teeth. Delicious nonetheless, though it didn’t really taste like a normal strawberry. And a bit too sugary as well. The lemon ones were better and it seemed sad not to leave on her favorite.
Without stopping to think, the girl reached for another, unwrapped it and placed it between her jaws. A splurt followed the crunch and she fell back to the meadow from before. She took her time with the taste. Her voice faded from the room, the rest of the world didn’t matter. Without such a distraction she could focus more on the sweet.
But as her vision shrank down, it passed over the yellow wrapper and she noticed, for the first time, markings upon it. Writing, she realized. The same little scratches and scribbles in the books that lined the walls. But what would they be doing on a sweets wrapper?
The girl swallowed her mouthful, no longer interested, and brought her voice forwards again. She looked at the tiny marks, a soft blue. What did they say? The desire to know burned inside her. Asking one of the housefolk was out of the question. That would be the same as confessing to her pilfering.
The first mark looked a bit like a tree from one side. Every wrapper had the same markings, she quickly confirmed. The next could have been a pile of dirt with a shovel sticking up, or a funny-looking wine glass, depending on which side was up. She had her voice practically pinned to the letter, all else forgotten, in the hopes that doing so would somehow reveal the secret. Maybe if she tried saying it. Just a guess, for she didn’t know how.
The girl opened her mouth and plucked the out the first sound that came to mind. ‘Maa—’
‘Hoy child,’ came a voice from before her.
She jumped, nearly falling from the sofa. A man stood by the sweet case. One of Sire Mastro’s folk, though she didn’t know his name. Shadow covered his front from the sunlight streaming through the big windows behind him.
‘Careful there, don’t want to tumble,’ he said with a smile.
‘I— I didn’t—’
‘Oh, don’t worry about those. I won’t tell.’ As if to prove it, the man took one, unwrapped it and placed it on his tongue. Compared to his frame, the sweet looked tiny.
The chill and flutter of nerves slowly faded as the girl realized the danger had been imagined. She looked at the man, an Earthborn, and his friendly face. A big wide smile, rimmed in a somewhat scraggly beard that almost looked like a patch of moss growing on his cheeks and chin. His gray-brown eyes were honest with cheer.
‘What does this say?’ The girl asked. She held up the sweets wrapper.
‘I heard you trying to read it. Give it another go, then I’ll tell you.’
The girl looked at him a moment longer, then placed the wrapper on the sofa’s arm and smoothed it out. The tree letter, then the shovel and dirt, or maybe a wine glass. Where had she been up to?
‘Maa… tsst… ee?’ she sounded as a guess.
The sounds were wrong, that became clear almost immediately. Books didn’t do much when folk read them. It had always been a fact that confused her. Why spend so much time reading when so little happened. But this time, reading the sweets wrapper, something did happen.
A spark flared, then a flame. It started small but grew in an instant before bursting with a hiss to engulf the arm of the sofa.
‘Whoa there!’ the man shouted as he jumped back. ‘Careful.’
But the girl hardly heard him. Her voice found the fire, a swirling, ethereal mass viewed by sound. She scrambled away but it started to chase her. A creeping torrent that promised to hasten soon.
The girl clutched at her hood. Somewhere else, the man had grabbed a pillow and began beating out the flames. Over and over came the sound of fabric striking fabric but the fire continued to spread. Every time it looked as if it may have been defeated, it sparked to life again. It was a magical flame, after all. Somewhere in the crevices of the girl’s mind, she could feel it clinging on.
She wanted it gone. The how eluded her, but that didn’t matter. She needed a way to get rid of the fire. And, just like that, a way presented itself. A word, in fact, almost like the one that had made the fire in the first place.
The word sprang forwards and promised to get rid of the fire.
Say me, it begged as the man kept beating at the flames. Searing tongues engulfed half the sofa now.
Say me and the fire will go.
Her heart fluttered painfully in her chest. Footsteps pounded on the floors above and someone, somewhere, was shouting. It left a ringing in her ears.
The girl held out her hand. She should never have done that. Her lips formed the first part of the word. Another mistake. Her sight found the fire and the man behind it. He looked up, his face sweaty and worried.
‘Sskali,’ she whispered.
===
For a while, nothing happened. The girl had gone silent when she reached the word. She hadn’t said it, of course, or the spell would have taken place and whatever it did would have happened. Instead the girl had spelled it out, letter by letter.
‘Then what?’ he asked the dark silence. His eyes had adjusted long ago, the tower’s gloom remained. Yet it didn’t feel quite so bad anymore.
The girl shuddered and the twin streaks of black fell upon him.
‘Then…’ she breathed.
‘You tried to put out the fire.’
‘I did.’ She pulled her legs onto the chair and wrapped her arms around them. ‘I did put it out. I put out everything.’
‘I don’t—’
Then the girl started to explain and, even though she lacked eyes, Eldrian felt sure that they would have been blank.
‘I put out the fire with my magic. An icy wind, colder than the coldest winter day and stronger than the strongest squall. It blew in from behind me. It came straight out of thin air, right in the middle of the library. The shelves fell and books blew with the storm. The fire went out straight away and furniture went crashing into the garden. And the man.’ She stopped again, swallowed. ‘He was behind the fire so he was in the strongest part. It blew him too, right through the glass and into the garden an
d all the way across the grounds, tumbling and tumbling. But I stopped watching.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I didn’t see. After that it’s a blur again. I think Sire Mastro was there. And we were in the cellar. He said I wasn’t in trouble and that the man was okay. But he was lying because I never saw that man again and a few weeks later they gave me these.’ The girl tapped her earmuffs.
‘And then they put you up here?’
She shook her head. ‘Not straight away. There was another one. Years later. He… I was in the kitchen. I wanted to help the cooks with the soup. I had the earmuffs on still so it was hard but they let me anyway. I think they might have been afraid. But then this man came in, only I couldn’t hear him come in. He was behind me when I was carrying the soup to the stove and I tripped and it splashed all over his trousers. It wasn’t hot yet but he got mad anyway. He shouted and shouted and I couldn’t understand him. I couldn’t read lips properly then. Everyone had to talk to me slowly or I couldn’t understand. But he shouted and his mouth moved too fast. I could tell he was mad because of how he moved. And he swaggered and stank of that stuff some of the folk drink. I just wanted him to go away so I said the first word that appeared. Only… only.’ The girl paused. Her jaw trembled a little, then clenched together. She took in a sharp breath through her nose. ‘Only, because of the earmuffs, it didn’t work like it was meant to. It went after one of the cooks, not the man. And it didn’t make the cook go away, it got rid of him forever. All that was left was a little streak of black on the floor. I didn’t see what the word did but everyone was screaming. They put me in the tower the next day but I think they’d been planning it before that.’ She breathed out. Barely visible in the dark, a bead of sweat rolled down the girl’s nose before she brushed it off.
‘Was it one of the orphans, the cook?’ Eldrian asked when it seemed safe to speak.
‘This was before them. I liked that cook. His name was Omarit Vansen. Sometimes… sometimes, when I was feeling lonely, he would make me something sweet. Whatever I wanted.’
Finally a spark lit up in Eldrian’s head. The shuddering breaths, taught features, pained words. The girl was crying. So much harder to tell without eyes from which tears could flow. Part of him wanted to step around the table and hug her but how would that be received? Instead he reached past the tray and took the girl’s right hand in his.
Her fingers closed around him immediately and she gave a shaky squeeze. ‘I don’t like it here anymore,’ she managed. Her voice sounded more warped than normal. Distant too. ‘I want to leave.’
It felt as if a cold hand had just brushed down Eldrian’s spine. He had to say something. ‘It’s not so bad here.’
‘You aren’t locked up all the time.’ She shuddered. ‘I hate it. All the orphans do is stare at me. Even when I’m out in the garden they stare. I can tell. But you don’t. You understand. You want to leave too, ah? Let’s leave together.’
‘You can’t. We can’t.’
‘No,’ she moaned. ‘You— you have the key. Give it to me. I’ll do it myself. You can pretend you dropped it or I took it from you.’
Eldrian pulled his hand from hers and stepped back. ‘I can’t.’
‘Please. Please. I hate it here. Everything’s wrong. Everything’s wrong.’ The girl stood, knocking her chair over in the process.
‘No.’ Eldrian stumbled back, fumbling for the key in his pocket. All the while he prayed that she wouldn’t use magic. Not with the earmuffs on.
In seconds he had crossed the room. Either the girl didn’t trust herself to chase or she didn’t want to.
‘Don’t go!’ she cried instead. ‘Please, don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be in the dark anymore. I want to go outside. I want to see and hear again. Tell them that! Tell them!’
The door’s slam cut the girl off and Eldrian sprinted down the stairs. Iyda had been right, he should never have tried this. Something in his presence must have set the girl off. Would she try to escape?
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