2

“Rabid sonofabitch— Randy!”

Subtly lowering the book resting on her raised knees, Parisa peered at her caretaker leaning alarmingly over the rooftop’s bannister; one hand gripping the rail while the other pointed a gnarled finger at the accused below.

“Randy! I done seen you already! Leave that girl alone! Hear me?” Yarrow paused, head tilting to the side as though the person below had spoken just quiet enough to escape the creature’s hearing threshold.

The summer sun lay overhead burning bright and malignant, its one eye falling upon the old woman’s visage burnishing it a deep bronze.

Parisa watched a bright trail of perspiration weave down the side of her caretaker’s visage, curving along the hills of her sagging jowl and disappearing into the cream starched material of her collar which had darkened significantly from the weight of sweat.

“Phew,” Her gaze rose to Yarrow’s as the woman pivoted from the sun’s face while fanning the side of one glossed cheek. She squinted at the creature wrapped in a light shoal and shaded beneath a wide UV umbrella, “if age dont kill me this heat probably will.”

“Come sit.”

“Naw, someone’s gotta keep an eye out for them fools. Lord knows if I aint here they wont be working.”

Parisa knew the answer before she spoke yet the suggestion slipped between in a quiet timidity. “Why don’t I keep watch for you?”

“You?”

She nodded hesitantly.

“Well.”

Her fine elf ears piqued at the uncertainty in Yarrow’s voice.

“I can do it,” she insisted in a measured tone, trapping the eagerness that threatened to pitch her voice. Parisa uncrossed her legs and carefully stretched them on the white bench while lifting one shoulder in a light indifferent shrug— a gesture observed from one of the servant’s that gave a peculiar air of nonchalance — “I’ve talked before.”

“You been talking to someone?”

“Well,” Parisa shifted her gaze away as if burned by the bright curiosity in Yarrow’s stare. “Well…” she glanced at the seamless blue sky, a single lone cloud white as snow indolently drifting by, “Well…” her eyes fell to the leather bound novel clutched in her hands with sudden interest. “Well...”

Her fine fingertips traced the rough material in a delicate manner, gazing at the stark contrast in her pallid complexion against the ocher while mumbling her confession incoherently to no one in particular, “... I’ve been practising in front of the mirror every night…”

“Have you?”

The creature’s head rose and fell in abashment, a tinge of pink spotting her cheeks which shifted as she muttered onwards; “I can talk better now… I don’t get nervous as much… I can hold eye contact for much longer—“ Ten seconds to be exact. She had been counting inwardly whilst gazing at the driver, “… I think I understand how to make the correct facial expressions, I need only practise more before someone like you and today morning I–” Her teeth clamped down on the tip of her tongue, fencing in the confession which might retract any freedom licensed to her over the months for pleasing behaviour.

If Yarrow heard, she chose to purposefully ignore. “An’ what the mirror say?”

Parisa’s lilac eyes darkened in the slightest, vexed by the mocking mirth in Yarrow’s voice, “I’m serious.”

“Lord knows I aint ne’er seen you not serious. Anyhow you aint ne’er spoken to none but me–”

“Randy–”

“... might’ve gotten your pale ass in trouble if someone else sawn you two speaking.” The woman frowned upon her with a look so weighted with judgement, Parisa felt her pillars of confidence crack. “And what if someone else sawn you? Huh? Think the commander’ll be happy his creature is fawnin’ o’er his driver?”

The heat of Yarrow’s words surfaced a crimson flush to the creature’s cheeks. Parisa lowered her head in shame, staring at her interlaced fingers as though a solution might accrue from the emptiness between her cupped palms.

“You was lucky it was me who came in.” Yarrow tossed her dreads and tilted one shoulder forward, blotting the sweat from her upper lip, “if it was someone else you’d be back in the factory getting re-”

“I’m not a defect,” the pale creature uttered.

“What now?”

“I said I’m not a defect,” she muttered low but clear, waiting a moment in the parentheses of silence before tentatively lifting her head. A lock of silver hair fell over her cheek partly veiling a purple eye. Parisa pouted and blew the hair away. “You said I was fawning over Randy but I wasn’t,” she paused, “because I’m not a defect.”

Yarrow watched her for a long moment. In the noiselessness, the creature grew conscious of the noonday heat and its dampness like a hand pressing insistently against her skin. She exhaled lightly, her breath the only movement in the windless, oppressive day.

“I know you aint no defect.”

Parisa sought Yarrow’s eyes but the old woman had turned her listless stare to the world beyond, gazing at no particular point in the distant horizon. A hawk had appeared from the nothingness, slowly wheeling about her head in a languorous circle that cast her face in shadows of light and dark. “I aint ever said you a defect.”

“I know that.”

It was silent after. Parisa waited with expectations of a response, good or bad, but none came. Sinking back onto the pillow propped behind her, she picked the novel and mindlessly fiddled with the pages before settling on a random page. Her eyes occasionally flickered between the page and her caretaker, wishing to speak words that might allay the tension yet finding none.

 A mellow breeze sighed through the spartan rooftop stirring the fine strands of hair held loosely at her nape. The crystal jug half-filled with water and chock-full of ice now melting formed a clear puddle on the glass table. The hawk screeched its farewell and dipped away.

It disconcerted her – these little silences between them.

Oftentimes caused by a word or two that rubbed a nerve the wrong way leaving it raw and throbbing with silence as the only remedy before they could lapse into routine once more.

But that too had changed.

The silences seemingly more frequent, the time between their makeups much longer… what could be easily forgotten now remaining between them like splinters digging deep into each other’s flesh— too fine to find yet throbbing all the same when touched.

Parisa gazed after the woman with a longing that could only be born of loneliness. Her need reaching out to Yarrow through the air and finding her cold. That’s what had changed. Yarrow.

Or me. She thought, maybe I offend her more often these days. Though the book lay open in her hands, the words were indecipherable as her attention turned inwards in reflection.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken to Randy, it was wrong. I knew it was wrong yet I still did it and now she’s burdened with another secret to prevent my punishment.

I shouldn’t have done it.

I won’t do it again.

I swear it if not for myself, then for Yarrow’s sake—

“Aint it nice been a fool.”

Startled by the unexpected voice, Parisa glanced up from the page she had been mindlessly staring at for half an hour. Yarrow cast her a sidelong glance at the extended silence. “I said aint it nice been a fool.” .

For a wild moment Parisa believed the woman was calling her a fool. Her lips parted to speak then shut dumbly, repeating the process like a fish out of water whilst conflicted with her feelings on the situation— she was glad to finally be acknowledged yet could not hide the slighted look.

Yarrow must have seen the rush of emotions crossing her countenance for the woman's grim face melted into a slow smile, “Not you child, them folks down there.”

“Oh.” Parisa sheepishly ducked her head to escape the laughter directed at her. Her cheeks grew warm with pleasure at the sound elicited— whatever shadowy pall that eclipsed their moment of happiness soon dispelled itself to the wind. “Who’s a fool?” She questioned once Yarrow gathered herself.

“That boy you been foolin’ with,” gesturing at the obscured view below with a mindless jerk of her chin.

Parisa slowly shut the book and remained in her reclined position, “What are they doing?”

“Wanna see?”

“May I?”

The creature watched in bated breath, not realising that her fingers had begun fidgeting as an outlet for the excitement vibrating down her arms. Her eyes flickered to the clock on the metal table, the short hand at five, then back at Yarrow.

We’ve been outside for two hours. A subtle feeling of dismay threatened to smother the hope humming in her chest at the realisation that her weekly outdoor allowance had been used up.

“Come here.”

Parisa nearly started upright.

Forgoing the idea of masking indifference at her reply, she began climbing off the bench whilst wrestling futilely with the shoal wrapped about her limbs like vines. “Really?”

Yarrow shrugged, “Sun should be settin’ by now anyway.” And it was— the evening light now lingered along the rooftop in soft hues of tangerine and blushing pink, warm as sun-hot stones pressed against her skin. “Fore you come on up slap on some that sunscreen o’er there.”

Had it been any other day Parisa would have protested in vain but today was rare. Yarrow had chosen to turn a blind eye to the rules.

“Okay.”

“Put on a lot.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And wear them hat too.”

“Okay.”

“And shoal.”

The creatures arms moved in a blurry motion— lathering sunscreen thickly onto the exposed parts of her forearms, neck and face, working the shoal draped across her shoulders and finally reaching for the wide-brimmed hat a head too large and ill-fitted as it came to rest just below her dark brows. Completely clad and shielded from the rays, Parisa stood beneath the umbrella peering patiently from beneath the hat like some abandoned orphan or fugitive altogether.

“Come on over with some water, feel like my insides be shrivenken.”

“Shriveling.”

“What?”

Stepping out of the shade and into the waning sunlight with steps lightly brushing over the sun-hot stones, Parisa held the glass out in offering while smiling small. “It’s shrivelling… the word.”

“Huh… coulda swore mistress say that ‘bout her skin.”

Her hand felt damp without the glass. She wiped the condescension down the front of her dress while watching Yarrow’s head fall back, those familiar brown eyes rolling wetly within her skull as the dark and crepey skin of her neck pulsated haphazardly with each gulp.

Parisa averted her attention towards the bannister and rested her forearms on the hot railing, leaning down to prop her chin atop the sunscreen glossed skin whose chemical smell rose to affront her nostrils. The land below was as she had remembered, perhaps more mellow in the dregs of the withering day.

The commander’s estate sat hemmed in with rich forestry all around, the black ribbon of a tarmac road unwinding from the main gate, circling a water fountain at the centre and back towards the gate. To the far left there lay an orchard with rich foliage of oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered around a bewildering mass of fruit blossoms — apples, plum, pear, cherry; Parisa watched a number of petals fall from the fruit treetops and drift down in the manner of a lulling ship on calm waters, settling on the green grass beneath. 

Servants walked back and forth with basket-fulls brimming with ripe and swollen fruit she could taste so vividly at the back of her throat. A gardener halted his shearing of the hedge to pocket a pear after furtively searching about the area for persons.

Parisa struggled and failed to smother the smile twitching at her mouth corners.

“What you smiling on about?”

She glanced sideways at her caretaker then away at the realisation that Yarrow was watching her with an odd, walled look. An evening breeze swept through the forestry and curled towards the laundry lines which sagged beneath the weight of sheets so white they seemed incandescent with an internal light of their own. They billowed up and outwards like sails, revealing two figures that stood entangled behind.

The driver and a maid.