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PRINCE Dominic had warned us not to speak to the lady about employment, and McGregor reprimanded me for my loose tongue as we headed back after the meeting.
“His Highness told us that everything we discussed, and the lady herself, is to be kept secret,” he nagged. “I know she is much more capable than she appears; I can sense it myself despite this being our first meeting, but still… Besides, Viscount Noel is scary, so don’t do that again.”
He was right. Viscount Noel was frightening! I’d feared that his glare would stab right through me! Even more terrifying was the fact that I hadn’t noticed it right away!
The lady herself hadn’t minded though. In fact, she didn’t seem to understand the need for my apology, yet accepted it nevertheless.
And stranger still, I received an invitation to tea on our last day working together.
I hadn’t been invited to a tea party in years.
The elegant peach envelope was trimmed in gold and embossed with a chick carrying a bluestar flower. It wasn’t the Noel family crest, so I guessed it was the lady’s own. Peering closer, I saw that a round black blob had been drawn on a corner of the envelope. In crayon?
The lady must have noticed my staring, because she studied me with expectant eyes.
Okay! I must get this right! What’s this?! Black, with legs? Lots of legs… Fourteen legs.
“…A roly-poly?”
“Yes! Because Miss Rickman likes insects!”
Do I?! I guess I like animals?!
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THIS is a tale from long, long ago, about a little boy from a small village.
One day, the boy and his cat companion, Furball, went into the forest near the village and found a horned rabbit stuck in a tree as big as the boy’s house. The horns on its head were buried high up on the tree trunk, as deep as they could go.
Looking at the rabbit’s twisting round bottom and tail, the boy said, “I’ll free you, but you must give me your cute tail.”
“I’m stuck because I want to be! I won’t give you my cute tail!” The horned rabbit started to thrash, its two front legs and four hind legs flailing and scattering pure-white fur into the air.
The boy couldn’t stop sneezing. He toppled with another sneeze, rolling—boing, boing—into the deep forest.
Furball gave chase.
He rolled all the way to a spring far below, where boy and cat each fell in…
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“WHAT happened to the sneezing boy?!”
The lady has been writing down my stories so Tabitha can read them to her at bedtime. She’s still very interested in the boy’s sneezing.
I remember many of the stories I used to tell my baby brother, and they’re all short with abrupt endings. The lady writes each one on a separate sheet of paper and has accumulated a pile of about ten pages.
“Th-Th-The sneezing boy? Th-That’s right. There’s no f-fur in the spring, so…”
“Did he stop sneezing?!”
“I-I-I guess so?”
The lady nods in approval, then writes “He probably stopped sneezing” on a corner of the paper.
Does she really need to though? Someone as good with accounts and numbers as her can surely rely on just her memory.
“The pastries will be ready soon, my lady.” Mrs. Kofi, who has been sitting nearby and smiling the whole time, prompts a break. Although the viscountess looks ready to continue our storytelling session, the table is cleared of paper.
Mrs. Kofi is exceedingly considerate. She refills our teacups and adjusts the parasol to keep us in the shade as the sun moves across the sky. I’ve learned that she was also Viscount Noel’s nursemaid. Drewett truly hires the most amazing servants.
The pastries are presented in an endless parade, many of them featuring the wild strawberries the lady and I picked in the garden earlier. Tarts, pound cake, cheesecake, jelly, mousse, everything bite-size and cute.
Perhaps that was why Mrs. Kofi prevented the lady from eating the berries outright, so the chef could use them… Wait. No noblewoman would eat strawberries straight from the garden without ensuring they were thoroughly cleaned first. Of course Mrs. Kofi stopped her. The viscountess must have acted instinctively…
“Miss Rickman is amazing. You can think up so many stories.”
“O-O-Oh, th-they were just distractions for my b-brother.”
“My lady reads a lot, but she’s never been interested in fiction,” shares Mrs. Kofi. “She really likes your stories, Miss Rickman. I enjoy listening to them too. They’re just so magical and fun.”
How kind… So very different from the thoughtless maids at home!
“The strawberries are tasty, Miss Rickman. Can I tell your stories to Lord Samuel too?”
“O-O-Of course! A-And yes, the strawberries are good.”
Who’s Lord Samuel?! Also…these are wild strawberries, right? They’re somewhat large and taste exactly like the high-quality and expensive variety grown on farms, a perfect balance of sweet and sour flavors.
Mrs. Kofi smiles. “What a good idea. Lord Samuel is Master’s nephew; he’ll be happy to hear these. Perhaps he’ll enjoy naptime as much as Miss Rickman’s brother did.”
Wait, Lord Samuel is the youngest heir of the Drewett marquisate?! I’m honored, but…!
“I-I-Is that all right? I m-mean, I-I’m happy and I don’t mind, b-but who knows i-i-if he’ll enjoy it?” While my baby brother appreciated my stories, I also remember Wendy’s criticism: I should have made the boy a powerful character. He should go on epic adventures.
I tried to tell her that the boy was supposed to represent my brother, and if he was happy, that was all that mattered. But she insisted that he would prefer more action-packed narratives.
“W-Wendy says that the b-boy is the protagonist, s-s-so he has to be more extraordinary,” I explain to the lady as she ponders which pastry to eat next.
I mean, that’s true for most fiction, so I guess she has a point.
I tell the lady the jelly is delicious, and she nods briskly before asking a maid to serve it. Why does she suddenly look so serious?
“Wendy has always liked things that are special,” she says.
Always? How long has she known Wendy? But she’s right.
“She m-m-may be like that now, but she w-w-was nicer in the past, I think. Q-Quite different from now.” She was more carefree as a child perhaps, though she has always been blasé about what other people have to say.
To me, especially. Nobody has ever been interested in my opinion, so she wasn’t special in that regard. She treated everyone the same, which meant she treated me the same way she treated every other student. So although we didn’t mesh well, she never stopped talking to me.
At the very least, she’d never pushed others aside or used them to achieve her own goals, and that was her greatest strength.
“I-I-I heard that she was rude to you, my lady. A-A-And though it may not be my place to say this, p-please forgive her.”
“Rude…? She wasn’t rude. Wendy was just being Wendy.”
“Huh?”
“The jelly was great! Next…” She glances at Mrs. Kofi for some reason and, after the housekeeper nods, announces, “I’d like the cheesecake!”
As she waits to be served, she takes a sip of tea and lets out a contented sigh. “Is telling stories your Gift, Miss Rickman?”
“Huh?! N-No, th-th-that can’t be a Gift. I-I-It’s not a useful skill at all.”
“…Useful?” She stares at me. Under long lashes, her golden eyes flicker like fire. “Gifts aren’t meant to be useful. I don’t know what different types there are, but I know each is something special that only one person possesses.”
That is one of many theories about them, the phenomenon still poorly understood. Besides, whether a Gift is useful or not is ultimately based on the biased judgment of humans.
Something special that only I possess.
“D-D-Do I really have that?” I ask the lady. She nods without hesitation, and I grow tingly and warm. “E-E-Erm! I-I-If you don’t mind, I-I-I can write down a-all the stories I remember! I-I-If you have any requests, I-I-I can think of new ones too!”
“Thank you! I’d like to hear one with a thunderbird!”
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AFTER that, I write countless stories, all of which delight the lady. She begins to call me Agnes, and I call her Abby.
Many months later, Viscount Noel requests a story as well.
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THIS is a story from long, long ago, about a little boy from a small village.
One day, the boy and his cat companion, Furball, went into the forest near the village and discovered a large, pitch-black monster with a multitude of eyes, arms, and legs.
It was the Monster King, bouncing and jumping around…