Lips Like Ice

IV

Later, when it has bundled Lydia in a towel like a human burrito, they sit in the parlor. Lydia is a little more used to the excess oxygen now, a little more able to deal with the surfeit of calmness and light-headedness it brings. Though, the extra store of energy is just translating itself into a jittering in her leg that she can't seem to still, and the urge to pick at her water-softened cuticles. It doesn't help that she's feeling caffeine withdrawal something fierce, and she's got a headache like a jackhammer going to town on the back of her eyes.

The creature is hunched over some sort of desk and a great deal of what Lydia assumes is correspondence, and Lydia stares at it from the deeply piled rug by the grand fireplace, where it had put her. Like a dog, she can't help but think, blood boiling with resentment. Meant to curl up on the rug by the fire! Instead she clutches her knees in her arms and glares.

There is a credenza behind the desk, and over the creature's shoulder she can see several silver dishes and tureens. Some are covered, but on the ones that are not, food glistens and gleams.

Lydia's stomach growls and she presses against her navel with a palm, urging it to silence. She will not, she will not go to the creature's knee and beg for a treat. Besides, Persephone had been trapped forever by just six measly seeds. What would an entire grape do? An entire plate of them? And cheese? And bread, god, bread that is still steaming gently. Her stomach gurgles again, and she presses her forehead against her knees, eyes stinging with shame.

Without looking up from the letters, which it was writing with an honest-to-god quill, the creature says: "She has not eaten anything."

Lydia sucks in a breath. She didn't realize it was paying attention. "I'm not hungry," she says, a knee-jerk denial. She doesn't want to offer this thing any leverage over her, doesn't want to owe it any favors or to admit to any weaknesses.

The creature scoffs. "That is a lie. She must hunger by now. She has had little beyond broth and biscuit for a fortnight."

"I said I don't want—"

The creature moves so swiftly that she doesn't even see it until it's directly in front of her. It grabs her shoulders and shakes her once, hard enough to make her teeth clack and stars burst behind her eyes at the whiplash speed of it.

"Do not lie to me!" it sneers, ice-peak lips curled back in a snarl over white, slightly sharp teeth. "Do as I say and eat." It propels her out of the nest of towels and onto her feet. Lydia stumbles from the force of its push toward the desk, catches herself on its chair, and with as much offended dignity as she can muster while nude, walks stiffly over to the credenza.

There are several empty plates the size of her head to the side, and she fills one with bread, and fruit, cheese and some sort of still-warm chunks of meat on silver skewers. It all more or less looks like the food she's familiar with, even if the spices smell wrong and the colors are slightly off.

She takes her plate back to the rug, re-wraps herself in the towel, which by now has dried in the heat of the fire, and sets to eating with a grim, defiant determination.

I am obeying, the action says. But not happily.

The creature sighs, climbs to its own feet—it, at least, has donned a bathrobe of something that looks like satin—and returns to its desk.

"Aren't you going to eat?" Lydia asks it. "Later," the creature dismisses. "But—"

"Shush!" the creature demands. "I must concentrate. Be quiet." Simmering with antipathy, Lydia huddles by the fire and obeys.

#

"I see her body modesty will not allow her to go nude, and she is pulling the hems of my good towels," the creature says by way of explanation when it drops a bundle of fabric beside Lydia. It startles her awake, and she sits up muzzily. She has no idea how much time has passed in sleep. This parlor possesses neither windows nor anything that resembles a clock.