Reasons for Silence

In Sickness

Chapter Three – Serefina

          I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep – for a while. The first two weeks that I was at the Manor I must have slept a total of four hours a night. I was spent and I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I had no reason to feel like I would get into trouble if I slipped out of the kitchen for an hour to sleep but I also had no indication that I was safe either and this was what concerned me more.

            Halfway through my third week at the Manor I was called upon by the Organizing maid. She told me to follow her.

            We didn’t exchange any words until we came to the same bathing room that I came to when I first arrived. She instructed me to wash and to put on the dress that she had set on the floor.

            I did as I was told.

            The dress was red and there was a white sash around the waist as well as around my upper arm. It had a modest neckline and the sleeves ran down to my wrists. I was going to die from heat exhaustion in the kitchen.

            The Organizing maid was waiting for me just outside the room when I was done.

            “Well don’t you look nice, all dolled up like that?” she said when I came out, crossing her arms over her chest. A playful smile appeared on her lips. She was really quite pretty and fairly young.

            I felt a warmness come over my face. I didn’t think that being “dolled up” was especially how I wanted to look – not after being bought, it didn’t promise noble positions. I furrowed my eyebrows and looked over her shoulder.

            She dropped her arms and let her face fall, rolling her eyes in the process.

            “This is a good thing, you’re being moved up from the kitchen.”

            I nodded and I clenched my jaw.

            She motioned for me to follow her once again, so I did.

            “The Sir has fallen ill,” she said leading me through the main halls, “he seems to have taken a liking to you and asked that you tend to him.”

            I heard myself let out a breath. I heard her chuckle.

            “For the upcoming while you’ll tend to him, until he gets better or gets bored of you, so you won’t have to work except for what he tells you to do. He doesn’t want you smelling of muck when you go to tend to him.” She said with a wave of her hand.

            When she stopped we were on the third floor of the Manor in front of cream colored double doors.

            “Any questions?” she said with raised eyebrows.

            I bit down on my tongue – hard. I gave her a meaningful glance. I was asking her something with my eyes, though I didn’t have my thoughts together enough to know what it was – I just needed some sort of reassurance.

            She made a face and shrugged her shoulders then proceeded to knock on the door.

            “Yes?” I heard a deep voice answer, I responded with a full intake of breath.

            “Kimana’s here,” the Organizing maid answered for me.

            “Let her in,” there was an edge in his voice.