Heart of Dorkness

Terror twenty-Nine - Gertrude

Esme’s morning has been, in a word, surprising, which is pretty great. She’s storing so much surprise that some of it is leaking out. Already her blouse and skirt are clinging to her with the static she’s giving off, and she knows her hair looks even nuttier than usual.

“This is it!” she says with a wide sweeping gesture to the building before her.

It’s not the prettiest, she knows. The roof has a few shingles that are missing, and there’s rust from the gutters that’s leaked down onto the white stucco walls. Still, it’s not an ugly place, and there’s plenty of rooms for guests, especially if they’re friends.

“Is it an inn?” Valeria asks.

“Seems nice,” Felix adds.

Esme’s not entirely sure what to think of her new friends. Are they friends? She’s never really had any of those that were her age. There are a few people who work at the library she’d consider friends, of course. But they’re mostly old. The younger archivists are all travelling the world, studying things, meeting people, getting their hands on precious books.

Esme can’t wait to be older so she can become just like them; the way her parents were.

“It’s not actually an inn,” Esme says after a pause. Sometimes she forgets she’s supposed to reply to people. “This is Miss Gertrude’s place. She has rooms upstairs that she rents out. It’s really not much, a couple of billon a day.”

Valeria nods, then Felix sighs. “A couple of billon a day is very little,” she says.

Esme can’t help staring at Felix. Who says that kind of thing? Of course a couple of billon a day isn’t much. It’s like... half a loaf of bread. “It’s because Miss Gertrude mostly houses archivists. She used to be one herself, but she’s retired now.”

“Oh,” Valeria says. “So the place is filled with high-level adventurers who all have skills and classes centred around finding out secrets?”

She can’t help but think that Valeria sounds a bit tense. That makes sense. The archivists are super interesting, and they’re world-renowned as well; anyone would be awed, Esme thinks. “Sometimes, yes, but on most days it’s just me and Miss Gertrude. My parents left her a whole heap of gold to take care of me while they were gone, so I’ve been here for a while.”

“Is there anyone there today?”

“No, not that I know of. Like I said, most of the time it’s just Gertrude and I.”

Valeria’s shoulders slump, and she gestures ahead. “Well then, lead on. I guess saving some money wouldn’t hurt.”

Esme takes the lead, walking ahead of her maybe-new-friends while fishing her keys out from a pocket cleverly sewn into her skirt. It’s a pocket too small for even the smallest book, so she uses it mostly for keys and snacks.

“Miss Gertrude!” she calls out as she walks in and kicks off her shoes. There’s a small living space right inside, and the kitchen and dining room are just off to the side of that. Space is at a premium in Montele, so even someone as well-off as Miss Gertrude can only afford a house that’s so big. “I have customers!”

Miss Gertrude stomps out of the kitchen. She’s stooped over, with a bad bend to her back and a metal-capped peg in place of one leg. Still, her eyes are sharp as they stare past Esme and at the two girls behind her. “Hello, Esmeralda,” she says. “Who do you have here?”

“These are my new friends,” Esme says after a moment’s thought. It’s okay to call new friends “new friends” right? After all, it implies she doesn’t know them that well, and it gives her room to back out of the friendship if something terrible happens, like one of them secretly disliking books. “This is Valeria, and this is Felix. They’re in Montele to... uh...”

Esme stumbles. She can’t just say “rob the Church of the Hero.” That’s very likely not legal.

“Sightsee,” Felix says.

Valeria giggles, snorts, then cuts herself off with a hand before her mouth. “Yes, yes, that’s right.”

Miss Gertrude eyes them all for a moment, then she smiles, just a little. Esme hasn’t seen her smile that way in a while. She feels her hair rising as a bit of her surprise spills out. “Well then, you girls need some rooms, I imagine? And a hot meal or two. It would be positively monstrous of me not to help. My goddess would be quite ashamed.”

There’s a lot of emphasis there that Esme hears, but she can’t figure out why. Valeria and Felix might have though, judging by the way they tense up.

“Your goddess, huh,” Valeria says. “She’s, uh, pretty swell, yeah.”

“Yeah indeed,” Miss Gertrude replies. “Now, Esme, show them to some of the free rooms upstairs. And girls, don’t make a mess of my place.”

“Yes, Miss Gertrude,” Esme says. “Come on! I’ll show you to my bedroom!”

Esme races up to the second floor and down the corridor that bisects the building and ends at a pair of double doors leading onto a small balcony at the back. She only pauses once they’re halfway down, and it’s to point to a room whose door is ajar.

“That one’s free,” she says. “It’s right next to mine, and there’s a nice view onto the street. There’s not much to look at though. Oh, and that room over there, right across from yours, is the library. Nothing rare, but there are some nice books!”

“That’s neat,” Valeria says.

Esme nods. It is neat.

“And this is my room!” Esme says.

Her room is neat and tidy, the way it should be. It really isn’t right to let her room become disorderly, especially when it’s really Miss Gertrude’s place and she’s just renting a room.

She has a small bed with a nightstand next to it, an oil lantern sitting atop that so she can have some light to read at night. That’s the boring stuff. The fun part is the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf all along two of her walls one of their guests built for her some years ago. She has all manner of books! Guides and cookbooks and a few religious texts, because the other churches are always eager to give those away.

Of course, it’s mostly fiction, but Esme stands proud before her collection of non-fiction titles too. She’s read every one of them. She can’t remember half, but some of that knowledge probably stuck, and she’s quite proud of her partial knowledge of many things.

“Nice,” Valeria says.

“Complicated,” Felix replies. “Are those books?”

Esme blinks. “I... yes, those are books? What else could they be?”

“Oh, okay,” Felix says. “They just look like boxy rectangles to me.”

“What?” Esme asks. She has never been this insulted since... since that one man.

“Felix is blind,” Valeria says.

Esme glances at Felix and yes, she is wearing a blindfold, but then that might be some strange fashion. Esme doesn’t know anything about those; she just wears whatever the ladies at the library give her as second-hand stuff. Somehow they always have things that fit properly. “Oh,” she says as her mouth catches up to her thoughts. “Uh... how do you read?”

“She doesn’t,” Valeria says, the same pain Esme instantly feels in her voice. “But one of our goals while in Montele is to get Felix’s eyes looked at.”

“There’s not much to look at—there’s just two holes.”

Esme’s shock (and surprise!) is drowned out for a moment by a surge of uncomfortable disgust. She shoves the dark emotion away. It’s likely nothing worse than what she’s seen in some of those medical textbooks the librarians were displeased to find her reading.

She shakes her head and tries to refocus. She has too much Surprise in her, too much staticy electricity running up and down her spine and to the tips of her fingers. “I think I know a place or two,” she says. “There’s a temple of Acacia not too far from the middle of the south city.

“We should visit that,” Valeria says. “Do you think we can go there now?”

“Now? It’s a bit early, um, I think they accept people at all hours, because people get hurt all the time, but unless it’s an emergency, they don’t like people showing up outside of their specified times,” Esme said. She’d only been to the temple once, when a particularly large tome had dropped onto her toes. One of the risks of being a junior librarian.

“Well, tomorrow then,” Valeria says.

Felix’s smile can’t get any bigger, it’s almost scary.

“Tomorrow then,” Esme agrees.

“Now,” Valeria says. “What should we do between now and tomorrow?”

Esme thinks about it for a second, then shrugs. “Clean up, have a bath, then read before bed? The sun’s going to be setting in a few hours.”

“... Well, that does sound like a pleasant way to end the evening. Maybe we can read something together?”

Esme nods. She’s never done that before. This whole friends thing sounds like it might work out just fine!

***