Broken Tower
22 AGR, Winter
The sound of a heavy boot making contact with soft, human flesh caused the hall to reverberate with a sickening thud. A slip of a girl, barely more than ten Springs, collapsed to the floor with the force of that blow. The porcelain color of her skin was sullied by the splotchy yellow-browns of bruises not yet healed. Now, a cheek that was so often flush with the rosy pinks of youth sported a new, grim flower of purple and blue along the bone. She could feel the throbbing beneath her eye. That last kick had been a hard one.
“Now look what you’ve done,” came the chill voice of a young boy. With the same boot he’d used to punish the girl’s presence, he punted one of the books that lay scattered haphazardly across the floor in front of her. Pages had come free of their binding. Galiae knew she’d be in trouble for it, but when she’d first fumbled and dropped the stack of books while on her way back to the Library, she could swear there hadn’t been damage to a single volume. She’d simply been trying to pick them back up again when her cheek exploded in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Galiae said quickly. Her voice sounded smaller than she was in form.
“You’d best be sorry,” the boy replied. He couldn’t have been much older than Galiae, but he stood tall and dignified with squared shoulders and a cruel regard. A noble’s son, the girl was certain. She’d seen his face before. “But ‘sorry’ doesn’t give you any more a right to be here, now does it?”
“No...no, Sir,” agreed the battered girl. There was no argument she could rightly make, and so her voice maintained a conversational lilt despite how it wavered from withheld tears. With singular determination she reached for the scattered tomes, careful to keep her eyes lowered. “I shan’t be long in your way, I promise. Just let me--”
The request was left unfinished; sliced through by a new, biting voice. “‘Let you’?” The incredulous, almost-shrill tone of a young lady made Galiae aware that the boy wasn’t alone. The prone book-courier raised her eyes just long enough to catch sight of the other girl’s tightly curled ringlets and the way in which her red lips curved up at one corner in a sneer of distaste.
“‘Let you’. Really!” The young lady in her ringlets repeated. She made a grand gesture of looking to the boy and what others comprised their elegantly-dressed mob. In one swift motion, a polished slipper knocked aside the book that Galiae was reaching for. “No one needs to let you do anything. You shouldn’t be allowed the generosity you’ve already been afforded, you disgusting, wretched thing.”
Galiae didn’t move. Her fingers grabbed at empty air when the fallen tome slid away from her grasp, and she couldn’t help but lament how she’d only wanted to be of use. If she’d been more careful--if she’d only gone quietly the way she was supposed to--then those books would already be at the enclave and no one would have been troubled by her presence in the University’s halls.
Lady Ringlets seemed to find some delight in the smaller girl’s plight, however, for she continued the dramatic exposition with no less regard for her victim than a giant might harbor toward an ant. “Did you know that this thing’s actually given run of the Library’s grounds?” She turned toward her peers and inquired with genuine dismay.
A chorus of dramatic gasps, some sincere while others mocking, rose up from those gathered. Before Galiae could move, she felt the careless tug of fingers winding tightly into her hair. With a savage yank, her head was jerked in such a way that she was forced to meet the eyes of her newest, venomous tormentor, and she could vaguely smell the sweet perfume combed into that girl’s coiled tresses.
“The only reason you haven’t been cast out with the refuse,” the shrill voice spit, “is because that insane old man has too much money for anyone to argue against him. Just because they dress you up like a little princess doesn’t make you any less a stain, do you understand? If I were him, I would have burned you right from the start. Now wouldn’t that have been a kindness?”
With no more gentleness than she’d previously been afforded, the painted talons that clutched Galiae’s hair were wrenched free with such force that their prisoner was sent sprawling across the floor again.
“...I’m sorry,” Galiae managed to whisper for a second time. Somehow it was the only thing she could think to say, and yet she meant it wholeheartedly. She always did. The toe of a boot connecting with her side was the only unfortunate response she received, however, and Galiae bit back the urge to make a single sound more. She could bear the pain in silence.
Footfalls moved past her crumpled frame, inconsiderate of where they trod, and it wasn’t until they faded away that Galiae became mindful of others who had been watching; students and scholars, the old and the young. She could just barely register their presence. There was nothing a single one could say that made a difference, in the end, and it was only a moment longer before those lingering few moved away and back into a world where “Lady” Galiae Voltaire didn’t exist.
In silence, the little girl picked herself back up off the floor on unsteady feet. One silver-rimmed eye was nearly swollen shut, and its tears fell unbidden onto the torn and dirtied folds of a finely tailored smock she’d no right to be wearing. Those tears would ruin the books, she knew, and so she swallowed them again with more effort than she’d thought would be needed. After all, she’d made a promise not to ruin a single volume--not to crinkle a single page--and enough damage had already been done for one day.
With a smile, though, Galiae knew that everything would be alright.
Book bindings weren’t so hard to fix when you had the right needle and thread.
~End