Chapter 6
The Landlady (Prelude)
Below lies the sixth chapter of the full-length novel, The Girl with the Strawberry Eyes. If you’ve not read the first six parts, I strongly suggest you go back and do so. You’ve the option of choosing either an EPUB file or a PDF, or reading the work in the space below. New chapters will be added every Wednesday. Cheers and Happy Reading.
The Landlady (Prelude)
Actually, it wasn’t Lady Drusilla herself who had been shrieking; rather, it had been her pet. Nobody really knew what this pet was, exactly, because it circled the skies above the valley whenever Lady Drusilla left her castle. All anybody knew was that it was very large and very black, and something like a bird. It might have been solely a tool for intimidation, or perhaps it swooped down and snatched away anybody giving Lady Drusilla trouble. Again, nobody knew for sure.
When Paginelle and Frost returned to the main room of the house, they found Mr. Babineaux sitting silently, staring at his worktable with hard, hard eyes.
“Papa?” said Paginelle. “Papa, is she coming here again?”
“Am I a mind reader all of a sudden?” her father grumbled.
“But why should she come here again?” Paginelle wondered, biting her lip. “And … and so soon? You have been paying her every month, right?”
Her father’s nostrils flared. “Are you suggesting that I’ve become negligent with my duties, daughter?”
On any other day, Paginelle would have mumbled an apology and backed down, but right then in that moment, she still felt exhilaration from her recent heart-spill to Frost. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Papa,” she said, keeping her voice soft but firm. “I’m just trying to understand—”
“You’ve been unusually mouthy today, haven’t you,” her father snapped. “I have to wonder why that is.” A quick glance at Frost gave a pretty good indication of where his thinking lay. “This house has never suffered exceedingly willful daughters,” he muttered, “nor will it have occasion to in the future. Not if I have anything to say about the matter.”
“Papa—”
“Perhaps,” her father cut in, “once Miss Frost decides to leave for the day, it might do you some good to clean out my ink bottles.”
The exhilaration within Paginelle deflated quite a bit. Her father owned dozens of ink bottles and they were scattered throughout the house. This was done intentionally, as he always wanted a bottle of ink at hand, no matter where he was, just in case he was struck with a bolt of brilliance. It took hours to hunt down and clean all of the blasted things, and always when Paginelle finished, her hands were completely black and remained that way for the next several days.
“And then, after that,” her father continued, “perhaps you can get started on typing my next set of notebooks.”
Paginelle’s exhilaration deflated even further. If there was anything worse than cleaning her father’s ink bottles, it was typing the intelligible scrawl that served as his notes. And she had to do it on her father’s ancient maroon Bragi typewriter, that’s keys were in such poor shape that more than half of them had to be pounded two or three times before they could leave even a touch of ink on the page. It actually wasn’t, thankfully, a very common occurrence, Paginelle’s having to type up her father’s notebooks. Only when he felt inclined to send a “bundle of brilliance” to some academic society or another for their perusal and (sure-to-be) glowing review. True, he always quailed at the last moment and never sent anything to anybody (“I’ve no stomach,” was his usual excuse, “for enduring the half-baked criticisms of shortsighted ignorami.”), but the fact was that Paginelle still had to spend hours squinting at loops of scrawled ink and pounding away at a typewriter that obviously hated her.
She sometimes had nightmares about the damned thing—about how her fingers would slip and become jammed in-between the keys, and she could only free them by breaking the bones in several places. She always woke in sheets heavy with sweat, and spent several minutes curled up in the fetal position, clutching her fingers to her chest. And then, eventually, she would remember the thing under her bed, and her anxiety would all but dry up because the thing, she’d decided long ago, was evidence that she couldn’t—wouldn’t—stay in that miserable little house forever.
“And on top of that,” her father went on, “I think my shoes are due for a polish.”
“Ooo, I could help with that!” Frost piped in. “I know all about polishing shoes: they teach it as an elective at my school.”
Paginelle could sense her father desperately wanted to tell Frost to stop talking, but all he did was give her a smile that may as well have been carved onto his face with a nail.
“Papa,” said Paginelle before she could stop herself, “what’s the point of polishing your shoes? You never leave the house!”
“I beg your pardon?” her father growled.
The sensible part of Paginelle knew she had spoken enough, that she would really be pushing her luck if, from that point forward, the only words out of her mouth weren’t “Yes, sir” and “No, sir”. However, once again, she couldn’t help herself. Her father was being absurd and she had put up with his absurdity for long enough. It didn’t make sense to have to put up with it on this day. Not after she’d hosted her first guest; not after she’d spilled her feelings to Frost. She felt as if she were a much different person from who she’d been at the start of the afternoon. It didn’t make sense for her to go back to the person she’d been.
“I don’t understand why you’re getting angry,” she said. “It’s true, isn’t it? You spend all day at your desk, working. Why does it matter what your shoes look like when just the idea of leaving the house makes you break out in hives?”
“You speak of my habits,” her father said, clenching his fists on the desktop, “as if they are a bad thing. Tell me, daughter, if I am not sitting here, hour after hour, day after day, working to bring my ideas to fruition, then what is to become of said ideas?”
“Papa—”
“Are you not aware of our family’s legacy? Why is it that I must continually remind you? A Babineaux, my girl, can never be lax, for it is our birthright to be perpetually be within reach of genius.”
“Yes, I understand that, Papa, but—”
“Books,” her father went on, “entire books have been written about more than a few members of our family. Stretching all the way back to the days of Charlemagne. Do you think any of those people idled their days away when there was work to be done? Answer me, Paginelle. What do you truly think?”
It’s because their inventions actually worked. They were able to change the world and became famous because they could.
The words were right at the tip of Paginelle’s tongue. They were, she believed, the words that her father needed to hear, and yet, finally, it seemed that she had reached her limit for boldness.
“I think…,” she said slowly. “I think that anything … that anything worthwhile never comes quickly.” Or at all.
Her father glowered at her. “And?”
“A-and?” Paginelle stammered.
“You tell me, daughter,” her father said. “Clearly, you’d like to add a sentence or two to your sterling wisdom.”
“No, I—”
“You’re doing neither of us any favors by denying it,” her father sniffed. “I’m your father. There is very little you can hide from me. Now speak up.”
Before Paginelle could utter another word, Frost said, “What’s that sound?”
A low, distant hum had started to rumble.
“Is that what I think it is?” Frost said, another one of her smiles starting to play across her overbite. She hurried over to the closest of the house’s crooked windows and pressed her nose against the glass. “Wow,” she breathed. “Is that…? Oh, my goodness, it is. Nelle,” she said, half turning over her shoulder, “you absolutely must come over here and see this. Even if you care nothing for aerocraft, I promise you’ll be looking upon a rare beauty indeed.”
Paginelle was grateful for the interruption. Conversations with her father almost always ended with disappointment. If that afternoon’s dialogue had been allowed to draw out to its natural conclusion, the disappointment would have been two- or threefold due simply to the fact that she had decided to take something of a stand.
So she hurried to the window and pressed her face next to Frost’s even though she knew exactly what she was going to see: an aeroship that was a little larger than the Babineaux house itself; that was shaped vaguely like a conch shell, and was as black as the mysterious behemoth circling overhead. The aero smoothly descended from the tall, black castle, sliding through swirls of fog.
“That, my dear Paginelle,” said Frost, her voice hushed with awe, “is a Maravelle AS-33 Thundercloud. Incredibly expensive because they’re so incredibly rare. I didn’t think I’d ever see one in reality. Is that truly Lady Drusilla’s mode of transport?”
“Uh huh.”
“Oh, it really is a beauty, isn’t it. Look at those engines. Heliosi Quasar 5s! Has she had that aero for very long?”
“For as long as I can remember,” Paginelle grunted.
“Astounding,” Frost said, shaking her head. “To think that I was living within spitting distance of an AS-33 Thundercloud, for years, and literally had no clue. Do you think she’ll fly towards your house? I’d give anything for a closer look.”
“Only if she has business here,” said Paginelle. “And”—she lowered her voice—“and if my father really has been paying the bills, then she won’t.”
“Ah, a pity, that,” Frost said with a small sigh. Then, quickly: “N-not that I want you to have fallen behind on your bills, of course, but, hmm, I suppose my life can only have so much excitement.”
Paginelle wasn’t sure how to respond. She knew Frost was trying very hard not to come off as an out-of-touch snob, but it was a pretty silly thing she had said: There was nothing exciting about dealing with landladies or struggling to pay bills. Still, if there was one positive note about all of this business, it was that, by the looks of it, Lady Drusilla’s ship was heading in a direction opposite of the Babineaux house. What a relief: interactions between Paginelle’s father and Lady Drusilla were shambolic at best, and the last thing Paginelle wanted was for Frost to witness just how bad those interactions could get—
“Oh, look!” Frost chirped. “It seems she’s changed direction.”
For a few moments, all of the energy drained from Paginelle’s body and she couldn’t help her forehead from thoonking against the glass. Frost had been right: Lady Drusilla’s aero had swung around and was gliding directly towards the Babineaux house. It engaged its gravity locks with a loud tchunk that echoed throughout the valley, and then smoothly settled onto the snow.
Paginelle sighed. The afternoon was about to go from unusual to unpleasant.
Many thanks for reading(!) And now, on to Chapter 7….
Or,
if you liked what you read, and would like to devour a completed work in one go, why not give my romantic novella, Knits, a gander? Get it here.
