Emilie of the Royal Heart

Chapter 8: The Countess Feels Foolish

Emilie wasn't allowed to travel alone across the palace grounds, even just to the opulent village where many of the nobles lived. When she asked her attendants about this, they said it wasn't because they thought she needed protecting or that she would get lost, it was that everyone who saw her needed to know what her status was. Emilie didn't understand why her status needed to join her for tea with a friend, but as always, she knew she had little choice in the matter.

Along the way, she waved to courtiers who were out on a stroll with their parasols and she envied their lack of cultural guards. Lady Rebecca was pregnant and naïve and even she was allowed to roam the grounds alone.

When her mind became to aggressive around her, Emilie waved the angry clouds away and whistled old Zuhian tunes. Emilie was a poor to average singer, but she was a rather good whistler. Her mother used to say that she had the soul of a bird and that's why the whistle came to her lips where the lyrics failed. One of the attendants gasped and Emilie kept her whistle as she glanced back to discover what shocked her maidservant. Though her attendants became intent on excluding her from the discussion, something told Emilie that there were confused and/or upset by the whistling.

Emilie did not stop.

"Is that... is that..." the woman with the greying chocolate brown hair croaked from behind, too shy to raise her voice for Emilie to hear the end of her sentence over her whistling.

But Emilie turned around, somewhat fed up with the bizarre secrecy and stopped whistling to ask her directly, "what is it, Agatha?"

Agatha wrung her hands together and exchanged looks with the other two attendants. It was the attendant in green, Minnie, who spoke for their group when Emilie's looks got less patient.

"Is this something they can do in Zuhia, my lady?" she marveled, "do all Zuhians possess such a companionship for the art of the bird?"

Emilie frowned. She waited a beat and then pondered, "are you asking me if all Zuhians whistle?"

"We don't have such a artform here," Agatha supplied.

Emilie somehow managed to frown even deeper, but this time with confusion more than frustration, "are you tell me you don't whistle... at all... in Fellen?"

The attendants shook their heads.

"Wait, that's not true," Emilie countered, pointing at them with critical and squinty eyes, "because Prince Aurora mentioned a dog whistle to me one time at least. You whistle here. Are you playing a joke on me?"

"There's a difference, though, isn't there?" Ester, with the thin blonde hair, added on, "in Fellen, we call animals with a whistle, but I have never-" she looked at the other attendants and they nodded, already seeming to know what was on her mind, "-we have never - heard someone make such a sound into a song. Never in a musical way. Never!"

"You must be joking," Emilie gawked at them, "never? In the entire country and the history of it, nobody has ever once turned a-" she whistled a still pitch, "-into a?-" she whistled two musical notes and gave them a quizzical expression.

Minnie shook her head and said, "no. That sound belongs to the animals, we'd never use it to make music. We never have before."

"I find that doubtful," Emilie countered.

She couldn't imagine the workers of the country not taking advantage of one of the easiest forms of song. Maybe she could ask Cedric about it since he used to live on a farm. She wilted. Maybe she wouldn't ask Cedric.

Emilie continued her whistling despite the increasingly strange looks she was noticing from people she passed and from her own attendants. Soon they arrived at the Countess Analeigh's mansion. Emilie went to knock, but Minnie knocked for her. Evidently it was imperative that a royal hand not perform too much work in a day. Emilie tried not to roll her eyes.