Mim

“Aaarriiaa!” Mim sank from inside of the library. The first two times she sings my name, it sounds like someone excited to see an old friend. The third time, it is in full operatic style, starting low in her belly and rising up to end on a high note with lots of vibrato. I am in the room by the time she finishes, staring at her, not sure what to think. She begins to giggle uncontrollably as soon as she finishes. This is not a deep belly laugh, like most people emit when they are highly amused. This is a series of chirps like a bird, sitting on a branch on the first day of spring, letting the world know it is full of joy that winter has passed.

I look at her wide eyed and then say, “Hi. Yes, I’m Aria.” I foolishly offer the petite blonde my hand. This is not enough for her. She comes around the small, round table she has been dusting and embraces me, the hug of a long lost friend. 

“Aria!” she says, this time as a word, not a song. “I am so excited to meet you!” Several seconds pass as she squeezes me, her head only coming to about my shoulder but her grip strong.

“It’s, uh, nice to meet you, too,” I say, not sure what to make of her. 

Mim lets me go but slides her hands down to take mine. “You are going to love it here!” she gushes. “You’re so pretty! I can’t believe how beautiful you are! How was your trip? Was it long? Did Grip bring you here?” She lowers her voice. “He’s terrifying, isn’t he?” She rolls her eyes. “We are going to have the best time together!” She promises.

I smile. I can’t help it. I can already tell that Mim is unlike anyone I have ever met in my life. As she takes me over to where there is an array of dusting tools lying out on a table, she doesn’t pause long enough to let me actually respond to anything she has to say, which is fine, because I still haven’t recovered from my encounter with Sebastian and am not sure I would be able to make any sort of coherent sentences now anyway, other than the routine responses I have already managed.

“Okay, so this is the library!” She lets go of me so that she can circle, arms outstretched. “It takes forever to clean, as you can imagine!”

I take in the room. It is massive, with more shelves of books lining the walls than I care to count. There are endless sitting areas with couches and tables and lamps, other small items that will require dusting sprinkled around the. Across the room, there’s a large window. I would normally see this as a perfect place to enjoy a lovely view. My newly trained brain recognizes this as a place that will be full of fingerprints, smudges, and dust. The room is beautiful. It reminds me a lot of our library back home, a room I loved. A room that is now in ashes like the rest of our house. I push the thoughts aside and focus on Mim’s voice, realizing I’ve missed quite a bit of what she’s telling me and will need reminders. Unlike Elvira or the kitchen staff, I don’t think it will be a problem if I have to ask Mim to repeat something.

“We are responsible for the first floor,” she is saying. “There are two other maids for the second floor and the third. Since the first floor has the most people and traffic, our job is the hardest, but we can handle it. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we clean the main section of the house, this big center section. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, we clean the west wing, and on Thursdays and Sundays we clean the east wing. Hardly anyone ever goes over there, but we still have to clean it all like it’s a high-traffic area.” She rolls her eyes, which are a chocolatey brown. It seems unusual to me to have such light blonde hair and dark eyes, but then, everything about Mim is unusual.

She goes into great detail explaining to me how we dust everything in a room first, from top to bottom, how we then polish anything that needs to be polished, vacuum the furniture and the carpets, clean the windows and the floors. She goes back to add in that she missed emptying trash cans and a few other things, like straightening up the pillows on the furniture, etc. “You’ll get the hang of it,” she says. “We also have to clean the bathrooms.” Another eye roll. “That’s really gross sometimes, but at least there aren’t a lot of showers and bathtubs on the first floor like there are up in the bedroom suits.”

“That’s good,” I say, feeling that I should say something.

She nods, her smile brightening. “We also have to keep our own room clean, which is sometimes hardest of all for me, I’ll admit.” Her pupils disappear, she rolls her eyes so far back.

“When I’m finally done cleaning this monster of a house, the last thing I want to do is clean my room, you know?”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I say. Our room was pretty clean when I was just in it, and there’s not much to get untidy, but I understand her point.

“All right!” she says, giving my hands another squeeze. “We better get to work before Elvira comes in and shouts at us.” She looks over her shoulder toward the open door and shakes her head. Looking back at me, she mouths, “Bitch!”

I giggle. An actual giggle escapes my mouth. I cannot remember the last time I made a noise like that. I cover my mouth, but then Mim is giggling, too, and we are both laughing uncontrollably, and I feel like everything just might be all right after all.

Mim suggests I use a particularly long feather duster to reach the highest shelves--on a ladder that rolls around the room--and I start cleaning up high while she gets the middle shelves behind what I have dusted. Otherwise, I might put dust back on the shelves directly below me. As we clean, we chat. No one seems to mind. At our palace, I’d sometimes walk in on the servants cleaning, and they’d grow quiet, so I know we must do the same if someone walks in, but as long as no one is in the room, we are free to discuss whatever we like.

“Aria is such a beautiful name,” Mim says. “I hate my name.”

Her name is odd, I agree, but it’s cute. Like her. “Why is that?” I ask her.

I am not shocked one bit when I look down to see she is rolling her eyes at me. “I am named after my mother’s favorite beverage, “ she says, as if it is the most ridiculous thing in the world.

I am puzzled at first, but as she slides my ladder a little to the left for me so that I don’t have to get down, I realize her full name. “Mimosa?” I ask her, trying not to laugh.

“Can you believe it?” she asks. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“It’s… unique,” I offer, stretching up on my tiptoes to reach the highest shelf. “But, no, it’s not ridiculous.” I am sort of lying. It does seem a little odd. “What’s your mother’s name?” I ask her.

“Selencia,” she says in a flourish, as if the name is only for royalty. “Selencia Margaretha Tablou Wilks.”

I am trying to digest all of the names when my mind lands on the last one. “Wilks?” I question, staring down at her.

Mim’s jovial expression fades, and she nods at me, and I read in her eyes that her story is similar to mine. Not knowing what to say, I look away.

She elaborates. “My father made the deal before it was too late,” she says in a quiet voice. “I don’t know what it is about Victor Kurts that makes him think he must control all of the other packs, but he certainly knows how to be a threat.”

I understand what she is not saying. Her father is Albert Wilks, Alpha of the Wilks pack, a smaller pack that is located to the east and a bit to the north of where my own pack once lived. It’s far from here, as my own lands are, but not so far that Kurts wouldn’t be a threat to the Wilks pack. She is telling me that her father arranged for her to be a maid here so that Kurts wouldn’t attack his pack. She is also implying that Kurts is behind the destruction of my own pack. I have no idea if that is true, but it would make sense. If he is out to destroy all of the other packs such that he is making the sorts of arrangements he made with Wilks that sent Mim here, maybe he is behind it. Maybe he offered my father a similar deal before the attack, and my parents refused to send me here.

I can’t think on that and not start crying, so I don’t. Instead, I ask, “Are there any other Alphas’ daughters here?”

“Not that I know of,” Mim says. “I think Victor is just starting his collection.” She says his name like it’s a curse word and pushes my ladder. She sighs. “I’m sorry, Aria. I didn’t mean to be such a downer.”

“No, it’s okay,” I tell her. “I’m glad to know.”

Her voice brightens as she asks, “Have you met Dez yet?”

I look down at her. “Dez?” I repeat. “No, I don’t think so.”

She smiles, and I can tell whoever this Dez person is, she likes him. Or her. What sort of a name is that?

“He’s amazing,” she clarifies, letting me know, or at least guess, the reason for her smile. “He’s the best. I hope you get to meet him soon.”

“Who is he?” I ask, dusting the lowest shelf I can reach from here before she slides me over.

“Well, technically, he is Victor’s nephew, but he’s also Sebastian’s second, his liegeman, or what have you. All of the Kurts family members have their own staff, their own personal maid and butlers, that sort of thing. Dez works for Sebastian, but I have the feeling that one day, he will be the Beta of this pack.”

“Wow,” I say, smiling at her. It is clear she is smitten with this Dez guy and seems very proud of his potential accomplishments. 

As Mim goes on to talk about how great Dez is, my mind wanders back to Sebastian. She mentioned him casually, like he was just a footnote in Dez’s story, and I have to wonder why. Was he already betrothed to another woman? Had he already found his fated mate? Or was Mim just smart enough to realize there was no way the soon-to-be Alpha of this pack would consider marrying a maid, even if she was the daughter of the Alpha of another pack. If she had that sorted out, she was a pretty smart girl, one I should try to learn from.

Because in the back of my mind, I was beginning to hope it was possible.