Solocrow — One Crow Against the World

Salamanca

Posted on July 13th, 2007 by solocrow.
Categories: Fiction, Generic Blatherings.

She can hear the moths breathing feebly, struggling sluggishly against the glass of the kitchen windows. Perhaps she will find them later, lying like morose faeries in the dawn’s wet grass.

Once, she’d found the wing of a bluebird perfectly separated from its little azure body — undoubtedly the work of one of the many hopeful cats that continuously prowl around the kitchen courtyard. She’d gathered the immaculate wing into her apron; a secret prize she later hung with a piece of stolen butcher’s twine from the ceiling of her small and stony room.

Salamanca turns her attention to the sky and sighs distractedly. Soon it will be light enough to start her most hated chore, the picking of slugs from the kitchen’s gardens. Instead, she decides to treat herself to a quick round of dusting.

Dusting is far better than any of the other chores allotted to Salamanca; even better than making up the beds with perfumed linens and downy coverlets. The silence and ease of the never-ending chore always soothes her, plus it is an honest enough pretext for wandering in the château should anyone happen to question her.

She grabs the few articles needed for the task, and heads for the remote eastern wing. The pictures are there. Especially the one with the serene boy minding the oxen. She loves that one. The others are more intimidating; vanitas paintings piled high with strange objects, steely-eyed family portraits, and murderous looking hunting scenes.

As a much younger girl, she’d been drawn to the fantastic mixture of elements in the still lifes, but not any longer. Not after her childish curiosity had once subconsciously caused her to scamper nimbly up a section of lion-footed balustrade to balance precariously on the handrail for a closer look at a painting. One of her hands eagerly wove slender fingers into the egg-and-dart pattern of the enormous frame for extra purchase. With the other, she’d reached almost reverently towards a moon-sized pearl heaped amongst the other heady treasures of the image, only to nearly dash her brains out on the stairs after recoiling in horror at the painting’s unexpectedly dry, leathery hide.

She didn’t return to the East Wing for weeks after the incident, inwardly convinced all of the paintings would find a way to collapse upon her in revenge for her trespass, smothering her alive with their monstrous, beautifully dead carcasses. When she was finally unable to avoid her duties there any longer, she was on the verge of fainting from her own fervid imaginings that first time she re-entered the wing. Of course being forced into a practical position, she eventually overcame her secret fearful flutterings of spirit to some degree by repeatedly confronting the troublesome issue.

However, the disillusionment from the event lingers with her even now, albeit unbeknownst to her.

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After having paid her brief homage in the East Wing with clear heart and steady mind, Salamanca trots faithfully back to the kitchens to grab the loathesome slug-pail. Her breath comes in satisfactorily steamy puffs in the chill air. Another three weeks and it will probably be too cold for slugs anymore, she thinks to herself as she deftly plucks the oddly muscular offenders from various plants. The usual gathering of clever blackbirds follow Salamanca’s steps hungrily as she takes the slug-pail out of the kitchen courtyard to be emptied at the edge of a nearby pond.

Were she more honest with herself, Salamanca would know that the tiny, bright stares issued from the hard eyes of the blackbirds are what truly bother her about the chore.

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