Ward of the White Worm

“The tree!” Olli pointed out the window, “the tree is gone!”

“That’s not an answer,” Theodore said calmly.

“There was a tree outside! Where did it go?”

“I asked you a question first.”

Olli stared at the pale man with her mouth half open and her thin hand still pointing at the window. She did not understand how an entire tree disappearing did not concern him, yet also she still did not understand much else around her either. Theodore sat in silence, still except to clean his little spectacles briefly, and continued to stare at her. Finally she said, “are you blind!?”

“Nearly,” he answered. “Now, why were you skulking around in a maddened fever in the halls? You gave Mister Burke quite a fright, you know.”

“And? I don’t know who that is,” she grumbled, now feeling more petulant than alarmed.

“He is my house steward, he was doing his nightly walk in the house and found you far from your bed,” Theodore said with little inflection. “Would you like to explain yourself?”

“I…” she tried to remember, but everything was more of a smeared blur rather than a cohesive memory. She pressed her hands to her head as if she could squeeze the memory out but nothing happened beside making one side of her face sting a little. “I don’t know! I don’t know, I don’t remember why are you asking, huh? Why do you want to know? You’re not my dad! Or my mom!”

“No, but I am an adult, and you are in my house as a guest,” he leaned forward and she instinctively jerked back. There was something about his face being so close that made her skin crawl. It was nowhere close to ugly, but the skin was so pale to be bloodless and his dull gaze was dark and pitiless. “What did you believe you would do, Olivia, wandering in my house? What did you think you could do?”

“I dunno, leave?” She hissed with as much insolence as she could summon up.

“Leave where? Do you know where you are? Do you know where you would go?”

“No but-”

He leaned closer, his pupils shrank into tiny pinpricks of black. “Did you not remember what I told you? They will kill you.”

“Who!?”

“The people, the superstitious good hearted villagers and the fretful but polite townspeople,” Theodore’s cold voice was as sharp as a knife. “You are a harbinger of bad luck, followed by the eyes of a misfortune spawning mother. I understand you are still recovering after a months long illness, but you need to understand the precarious situation you are in.”

Olli shuffled back on the bed, withdrawing from the cold bloodless creature across from her. “I don’t understand! I don’t get it!”

“Even if they do not kill you, you are without family or friends,” Theodore rose to his feet, he walked around the bed and over to the small desk. His white hair was held back with a green ribbon and for a brief moment Olli got the urge to grab and pull it, just to see Theodore yelp. She fumed quietly but had nothing to say as Theodore stopped. “There are those who would capture you to work in the mills, or the mines, they may send you south to the Royal Garden Menagerie. Or they may just turn you loose in the forest here, after all, the Neighbors already saw you.”

“Who? What? The people at the party-thing?” She asked. Olli felt a little hopeful that Theodore had decided to stop questioning her and giving her answerless answers.

“No, the Neighbors,” he answered, gesturing outside.

She looked outside, half-expecting the tree to have returned but all she saw there was the overgrown half-rotting garden and clouds passing slowly under the sky.

“Olli, whatever you were doing that night… do not do it again,” Theodore said with the finality of a parent giving an order. This deeply offended Olli, who despite being tired and her face aching, decided that adults no matter where they were from were all incomprehensible beings who expected absolute obedience. “Mister Burke said you were covered in bile and that it seemed you had slipped at least once already on the stairs. It would be very easy to fall and break your neck, do you know that?”

“Yeah,” she rolled her eyes.

“Do you remember where you wanted to go?”

The question was not forgotten after all. “I don’t know.”

“Home, perhaps? Did you think you could go home?”

“No,” she grumbled. “I don’t want to go there.”

Theodore was quiet for a few minutes while looking down at one of the books. “This place is likely no better than where you came from, Olli,” he said gently. “There will be many things you do not understand, many things you will need to be careful of mentioning, or being around.” He turned his gaze back to her, with an expression between pity and guilt. “Even appearances are deceiving here. One thing might be entirely different from another in ways you do not expect or can comprehend. I want to help you, Olli, but you need to follow what I say, and answer when I ask you questions. There is far more of this world you need to learn, than of what I need to learn about you.”

Her mind drifted slowly backwards, to school, to her family. She tried to recall when someone tried to ‘help’ her. But she felt like a shadow. She was there but unacknowledged. A name on an attendance list. A thing that drifted in and out of the living room. Her middle initials were T.C., which she remembered her father told her stood for ‘Tax Credit’. But as she thought more, she could not recall what they actually stood for.

She forgot Theodore was in the room.

She was focusing on her hands, pressed against the blanket. She wiggled her fingers, like pale little worms themselves, feeling the movement of them through the blanket and against her legs. She barely even knew herself. She sniffed, feeling snot threatening to roll out of her nose. A hand reached into her view and she recoiled. “Don’t touch me,” she whimpered, shielding herself with her shoulder.

Theodore pulled back, his eyes widened and his mouth opened-

“Hello!” Motzy’s voice rang out as she stepped inside dragging a strange small tub full of steaming water in one hand and a bundle of letters and lumps of fabric kept squeezed under her arm. “Goodness! I am quite late, you see Mister Button came and he had some letters and packages and that silly girl Jane forgot about the water.”

“Motzy!” Theodore ran over as the woman kept tugging the tub, grabbing it with both hands to help her draw it through the doorway and into the room. “Please tell me you did not carry this all the way up the stairs again!”

“Oh, oh goodness of course not, y’see I had Jane and Gloria and Burke help me.”

“You could have just had Mister Burke and Mister Stone do it,” Theodore’s voice was more than just a little exasperated. “For Rot’s sake you are sixty five years old! What if you fell? You would have been hurt.”

“Now you sound like my Charlotte and my husband combined into one, sir.” Motzy laughed as she placed the bundle of letters on the small table by Olli’s bed. “Good morning, Miss Olli,” she greeted cheerfully. She then picked up several of the letters. “Looksy, we have a letter from Mister Benjamin Pembrooke and Mister William Pembrooke, isn’t that just strange they arrived at the same time? There’s also a letter from Count Talbot, this one feels particularly heavy. There’s a letter from Mrs Greene, would you like me to burn it?”

“No, no, I can not keep putting off responding to the Greenes forever,” Theodore sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I am going to my room now Motzy,” he picked up the letters, including with some considerably reluctance the one from Mrs Greene, and left the room with a slow trudge to his step.

Olli looked at the small tub. It was barely big enough for an adult to sit in, with one side being higher than the other. The tub itself was black and shiny, with little gold clawed feet. “What is that?” She asked Motzy who was unfolding the lumps of cloth into what turned out to be skirts, stockings, and a dress. Motzy looked up at her with a cheerful smile.

“That’s your bath!”