Fate's Choice

Peeling the Layers

Teresa and another slave girl named Suri helped to dress Aimee in her finest undergarments, step into her gown specifically fashioned at great expense for the occasion and apply expensive perfume.

Meanwhile, deep in the bowls of the general's massive house, Lamia splashed cold water on her hot stinging face from a chipped wash basin. Her lip throbbed and her only garment, a weathered hair shirt that hung long on her small frame, was dribbled in her own blood.

Staring at her reflection in the rippling pink water, Lamia saw eyes reddened and ready for more crying, a red nose, a split bottom lip and what would darken into a bruise.

"By tomorrow you'll be blue and purple!" Snickered Grimold from his chair next to the fireplace.

Not a slave but an indentured servant, Grimold had witnessed forty summers, fourteen of those spent in the service to the General. However he projected the cockiness of a man soon to walk free.

He sat with his shirt untucked and vest unfastened, his wide feet spread wide as he peeled an apple with a knife.

Everyone knew Grimold as the lurcher, a spy, a cretin. Yet he had an odd fascination with Lamia. He teased and tormented her, never getting a rise out of her but always hoping. But underneath his bad behavior he felt the pronounced ache in his loins for her.

"Blue and purple?" Lamia repeated as she cupped the water in her hands. " Those are beautiful colors."

Grimold chuckled and peeled the last of the apple skin off.

"You better stay outside the palace. You wouldn't want the Prince to see you."

"Because I'm such a horror?"

"No," Grimold said.

Grunting from the stiffness in his back he rose from his chair and crossed the floor. As was his custom he stood far too close for Lamia's comfort, leaning over her so she had no choice but to smell his body odor and sour breath.

"If I was the Prince or if I had the General's power I would take you over that ice princess preening upstairs."

Lamia swallowed the nausea threatening to overwhelm her. Be it in jest or in truth his declaration turned her weak empty stomach.

She stood stock still as he brushed his knife, a small blade, along her shoulder and brushed her hair aside to reveal the sunken valley of her collar bone.

It took everything within her to not wrench away as she heard him inhale by her ear.

"Who knows maybe my indenture is over and after I've made my rest I'll be able to buy you from the General's service."

This time Lamia could not suppress a shudder to which Grimold reeled back in a barking laugh. In that moment Lamia wished she could pry every rotten tooth from his rancid mouth and pull his foul tongue out by the root. But again she suppressed herself.

"Oh, Little Mouse! If only you knew how much you amuse me!"

"Please do not enlighten me."

Again Grimold laughed and without asking, grabbed Lamia's wet hand and slapped the peeled apple in her palm.

She stared after him as he made his way out only to stop long enough to shout back, "Eat up! You'll need your strength since it's not an easy run to reach the palace."

Lamia tried to recall if ever in her young life had she known any of the sweetness of pride and dignity. Orphaned and enslaved in the last war, always hungry despite the awful pain in her lip Lamia at the apple and devoured it as she finally let the tears fall.