Ward of the White Worm

Outside, the sun felt like a dim and distant thing. Yet with Motzy’s cheery voice and the vibrant blooms, Olli was surprised to find herself actually enjoying the slow meandering walk. Even the trees looming behind the crumbling walls felt more friendly and inviting than before. Her first glances had been of a decaying mass of floral, arborial, and vegetable matter, then her second glance had been of neatly ordered flowers and edibles with chickens and a frantic groundskeeper, but now outside and able to see beyond the confines of the window it turned out it was not one garden in various states but multiple different ones spread across the estate!

Their white stone covered path was a very slow and meandering one, which took them around well trimmed hedgerows and colorful flowerbeds where bees and other insects buzzily buzzed, fluttered, and zipped around.

“-so after that, they had this part of the estate set aside and called it ‘The Lady’s Garden’, because Countess Berenice had come from Gwenhold which back then was so well known for the blooms! I very clearly remember her ladyship Lilia talking about this as I was replanting some of the flowers-I was very young back then. Did I mention I started working here as a wee little thing, maybe perhaps a bit older than you! I was a scullery maid but because my older brother vouched for me they let me help in the gardens too. I built the chicken roost you see. The first one, actually. That burned down, the second one oh goodness I don’t even remember I was getting married and had been a little out of touch with the house… oh Countess Gladys was none too pleased but by-the-by, she had always been very displeased by the chickens.”

Olli nodded occasionally to give the impression she was listening but in fact she had not a single clue as to what Motzy was saying. She understood the words, but the larger picture that Motzy was grandly sketching out was completely lost on her. Instead she had been focusing on looking at every flower, hedge, and interesting large rock that they had gone past. Mentally she was taking a picture of everything they passed and comparing it to her memories of where she once lived. The sidewalks were grey and the front yards were all roughly the same green squares, more or less. The houses looked like small dollhouses compared to the large imposing structure of House Graef which squatted like bloating toad near them. Its own wood-and-stone walls seemed to have some green-ish mold or moss clinging to it.

She looked back towards the flowerbeds where she saw a small stone thing. From a distance it looked like a tiny house missing its front door. “What’s that?” She asked, pointing at it.

“-when Bernard was visiting at the time he had yet gotten mar-oh! That?” Motzy paused mis-stride through some recollection of Theodore’s adolescence to look at the stone house. “‘Tis for the Neighbors. We put offerings in there every sennight. They are usually very peaceful towards his lordship’s estate and person, but they…” she trailed off suddenly, looking into the distance as though she expected someone to appear. “Sometimes the Neighbors are quite kind, and may leave gifts, other times they will… well, poor Mister Burke could tell you much. He oft warns the children in Watshire.”

“Are the Neighbors bad people?” Olli asked. She was beginning to suspect that the Neighbors were not ‘people’ at all. She had vague images in her head of things like tiny winged blonde girls in green dresses and elves in toy factories but did not have a single word to match it to.

Motzy’s gaze was still somewhere else. “Olli, dear, listen to me. Saint Clara’s children may be cruel and hungry, but ‘tis only a night they come! The Neighbors however, are always here. You-”

“Motzy!” Theodore’s soft voice strained a little as he called after them, apparently unused to raising his voice at all. “Olli!”

Turning the duo found Theodore striding quickly to them, with Mister Burke following behind him before entering a brisk jog to go over to the stone offering house. Theodore soon reached Motzy and Olli and gave them both a smile that looked very out of place on his sickly face. In the sunlight Olli thought he looked like a dying woman. His eyebags made him look tied and his lips were nearly bloodless, his long lank looking hair was grossly pale and behind held back by a black ribbon somehow only made it look even worse to her. “Ah! Hello your lordship!” Motzy said, “I was just taking Miss Olli for a walk. She’s a sprightly child. So long in a sick bed, and she’s happily keeping this old woman company!”

“Well perhaps this old man can also keep you both company as well?” Theodore offered.

Olli wanted to say no, but Motzy spoke first. “Oh mighty kind… but thirty three is hardly old! How ridiculous!” She chuckled and shook her head. “If thirty three is old, then I must be like Losheba! Well, how about you walk on the other side of Miss Olli?”

Theodore moved to Olli’s free side, still with the same smile on his face as they walked forward together. “Motzy, I have read the letter from the Greenes.”

“T’what did it say?”

“What do you believe it said?”

Motzy was quiet for a moment, “an offer for her sister’s hand?”

Theodore snorted, “thankfully no. Besides, her sister is apparently much happier chasing after dashing young militia men.”

“Ah, well, what then?”

“An invitation for dinner at the Greene’s family home,” Theodore said before directly addressing Olli. “We were both invited, so we shall both go.”

“What?” Olli had already started tuning the adults out but was quickly brought back to attention. “Why!? Why me?” She asked.

“Because it was an invitation for both of us, so we both must go. If I did not bring you with me, then it would be seen as an affront. The Greenes have done nothing in particular to offend me besides be obnoxious, so I cannot affront them without being cast as a villain for my reckless actions of not bringing an appointed guest with me to their… dinner.”

Despite the usage of words quite beyond Olli’s vocabulary, and indeed a constant record of scoring at the near bottom of every test of literacy throughout her admittedly brief schooling career in her short life, Olli understood by Theodore’s tone and facial expressions he did not like the Greenes at all. But she also understood that adults seemed to operate on a strange and mysterious code of conduct that defied all logical reasoning, such as forcing themselves and innocent nine year old girls like her to endure a dinner nobody wanted.

“Oh, I should finish stitching up the pinafore then!” Motzy said, “when is the dinner?”

“Not within the week, you have time so there’s no need to go rushing to your basket,” Theodore assured Motzy. But then he looked back down at Olli, “but you, on the other hand, must have some education on manners.”