The Realm: Chapter 1 Part 1

The alley running between the grand townhouses was only dimly lit by a quarter moon rising in the east and the faint glow of a streetlamp on the other side of the row homes .  The cobblestone throughway was littered with trash, dirty pools of scum water and the occasional rat; but such a scene was hardly a rarity for this young woman.  She stumbled about slightly in the murk with a scrap of paper in her hand, squinting her eyes in an effort to distinguish any markings or familiarities in the buildings she meandered by.

She stopped abruptly and turned to her left to face a tall, white-brick home.  It was three stories high without a single lit window.  She approached slowly with some apprehension and climbed the two stone stairs to the scullery door.  She peered inside the glass panes.  Through the front windows, the light of Tottenham Court gas lamps glinted orange against hanging pots and pans .

She placed a hand to the knob and turned.  It was unlocked, as she expected, and so she entered, looking in all directions for any sign of life with no success. Holding the wrinkled paper to the light, she squinted once more to make out the scrawling.

“Bloody hell!” she muttered to herself.  “This better not be some game or he’ll have hell to pay for it.  I don’t have time for such nonsense.”

She stepped forward a few paces.  It was then that a flurry of sensations accosted her simultaneously. First the floor bent beneath her feet with a disconcerting creak. This was only half as frightening as the rush of cold, foul-smelling wind which came up from below her feet.  It fanned her dress and chilled her bare legs.  She hurried through the kitchen and down a short hallway leading to the foyer.

There in the foyer she had hoped to gain her bearings once more by the light of the street.  But to her dismay the orange rays fell awkwardly to the floor and gave her no clear picture of her surroundings.  Frustrated, she stooped to her knees, placed the paper in the light, and continued to read.  She sighed deeply, as nothing she read gave her any hope for a change in circumstance.  But she continued to look over the sheet, stopping occasionally to look blankly toward the ceiling and mumble to herself over and over a few words in a sort of cadence.  After repeating the phrase a good number of times she folded the paper up again and cursed aloud.  She groaned as she placed her hands to her knees and struggled to her feet.  Then the woman turned about and stared for a minute at what lie before her, or better still, above her.  For by the streetlight she could see one wide step and the foot of an ornately carved railing post.  But beyond that, the darkness swallowed up what she knew to be a great staircase which ascended into what and where she did not want to ponder at the moment.

Closing her eyes she spoke her strange incantation one last time and then began the ascent.  If anybody were there to watch the poor woman they may have very well thought her insane.  For as she climbed the stair she moved from the left side of the stairway to the right, and sometimes to the center with each step.  There was no clear pattern for her absurd movements, just a helter-skelter bobbing to and fro as she almost leapt from step to step.  Nearly three quarters of the way up she stopped momentarily to catch her breath in the darkness, when she felt something brush against her ankle and then what felt to be cold, boney fingers grasping at her foot.  She shrieked in horror and bound upwards in double time before she collapsed at the top of the stair whimpering over her gasps for air.

“Enough of this rubbish!” she snarled.

With much focus and many deep breaths the young lady at last regained her composure and realized that she was currently an island in a sea of shadow.  She dared not descend the stair alone, but presently she neither saw nor heard a thing.  She groped along the floor on all fours until her fingers met a wall, by which she pulled herself up and leaned against while she thought in silence.  Finally, after much private deliberation she began moving to her right, clinging to the wall through obscurity.  For what seemed to be hours, though it may have been a minute or two, she carefully stepped through infinite darkness – a blackness that filled her lungs with every breath and deadened the sound of her footfall.  She summoned every ounce of will to remain silent, though she yearned to scream to convince herself she was still alive.

When she was about to give up all hope of ever seeing an end of the hall, a friendly face, or, indeed, even another sunrise she was suddenly surprised by what  appeared to be a thin strip of red light, two strips in fact, no more than five yards in front her.  She hastened her sprawling creep against the wall until she stood between two doors, out from under which the red light shone, one on her left and one on her right.  Resting inches from the right door she stretched her hand to the knob when she recalled it sharply and reproached herself.  Again she closed her eyes in contemplation, tapping her foot nervously.  She dropped to the floor, fumbling for her folded paper and attempted to read it by the light emanating from under the door, but to no avail.  She could not read a word, and so she stood up and returned to the safety of the wall.

“Remember, you idiot!” she thought to herself.  She put her hand out to open the right-hand door, when suddenly she spun on her heel and burst through the opposing entry.

She gasped.  For a moment she had no idea what lay before her, for her eyes had not yet adjusted to the gleam of a score of candles that were strewn about the room into which she had just stepped.  As the circlets and stars of her bedazzled eyes finally melted away she drew in her surroundings with amazement.  She was standing in what looked to be a library of sorts.  The perimeter of the room was layered with overflowing bookshelves containing books of every size and color, with letters both familiar and foreign printed on their spines.  Upon a table to her left were dozens of maps pouring over the edge and onto the floor beside her.  A solitary window directly in front of her broke the line of shelving and beside it was a high-backed leather chair holding a young man with crossed legs.  He stared at her without movement as she gawked open-mouthed at the haven of light into which she had stumbled.

“Oh, hello, mister,” she burst out upon noticing the seated gentleman.  “I guess this is the place?”

“Yes,” he replied quickly, but not altogether without a tone of welcome.  “How are you this evening?”

The young lady opened her mouth to give a reply of general well-being as one is wont to do upon meeting a stranger.  But she checked herself and her rouged cheeks grew redder with anger while her painted eyes squinted in a condemning frown.

“I’ve had the fright of my life on account of you!” she sneered with her hands on her hips.  “I nearly died trying to find you in this bloody maze!”

“I’m sorry, dear,” said the man in true contrition.  “Please sit,” he continued with a gesture to a bed that had gone hitherto unnoticed.  It was a fine oak bed draped in old, yet sumptuous linens of silk and other choice fabrics.  The woman sat as she had been asked, but her stiff deportment and crossed arms manifested her remaining vexation.  Flung upon the elegant bed covering, her dress now showed its true nature.  It was of poor cloth and yellow, an unbecoming shade, patched and filthy from neck to skirt tip.  Perhaps a decade ago it would have passed for fashionable, but presently it could hardly be called a garment.

She breathed in deeply and let out a heaving sigh.

“So, are we going to do this tonight or should I start making breakfast?” she asked with aimless eyes and a biting tone.  “Either way you’re paying me.”  With both hands she reached behind her back and untied her soot-grey corset.  She began to slip the rag off her shoulders when the young man stood up.

She had paid little attention to him thus far, hardly making eye contact.  Now that he was approaching she couldn’t have looked him in the eye even if she wished, for the glasses he wore reflected the candlelight and masked what lay behind them.  Despite this, she was impressed with his appearance.  He was not beautiful in a traditional sense, but certainly he was not unattractive.  Chestnut hair swept across his forehead, while a handsome brown coat and vest, pressed white shirt, and red necktie completed his attire.  Rarely in her line of work did her clients come so dressed to a business meeting.

“Hold a moment,” he said taking her hand from her dress.  He touched her face sweetly, gently rubbing his thumb beneath her eyes.  She closed her eyes briefly at his caress.  She felt the tension in her muscles release and she looked up at him.  The man smiled as he examined the smeared shades of red and blue on his finger tip.  Beneath the paint was the face of a young woman aged unnaturally by the abuse of her profession.  She was both comely and worn at the same time.

“There is time for that in a moment,” he said in a whisper.  “But first, would you mind doing me a favor?”

She wanted to say, “Yes, I’ll do whatever you like until the day I die if you would but touch my face with such tenderness again!”  But the suspicion that is naturally developed by women in her position coupled with a ripple of resentment from the evening’s prior inconveniences stayed her initial answer.

“My time is your money, mister,” she blurted out instead, rather frustrated with her curt response.

He smiled politely and turned to a bookshelf at his back.  Without perusal he pulled immediately from its shelf a slip of parchment, held it up for a moment to read, and then returned to his place before the seated woman.  He held the paper out to her and she grasped it tentatively.  It was heavier than she had expected.  It was old and drab, wrinkled and creased as if it had survived many years outside the comforts of its current residence.  But the text upon which it was written was another story all together.  In a stunning, sharp black ink that seemed to hover above the paper was penned a poem of several stanzas in a script more marvelous than she had ever laid eyes on.

“Will you read this to me, dear?”

She gazed into two candles dancing in the spectacles opposite her and felt a calmness take over as the mouth below the frames cracked an endearing grin.

“I suppose so,” she answered shyly.

The woman looked to the page once more and began to read slowly the first lines:

Immortal life, a gift – bestowed 

Upon your blessed head –

Which men would trade their very souls,

So ne’er to greet the Dead.

 

            She paused, at first for contemplation.  But when her eyes met the page once more she found that she was having some difficulty in reading the following words.  They appeared blurry; and her head began to ache, then throb.

“What is the matter?” the man asked, but with less concern than the woman would have expected from the gentleman who had been so kindly up until that moment.

“My… my head is spinning and feels like it will split open,” she mumbled through the palms of her hands.

“I see,” he snapped back.  His countenance had changed completely from amiable and agreeable to stern and disapproving.  “Well, then there’s no sense in you stopping now.  If it’s all the same to you would you please continue?”

“Could I just lie down for a min-”

“Read!” he shouted.  His voice hung about the room for a time as he stared red-faced and furious at the trembling woman.  When the dead silence of night fell once more upon the room, he returned to his chair and took up the cross-legged pose he had worn when first she had come upon the room of light.

Her shaking hand lifted the paper again.  She strained to read the words, for most were too cloudy to decipher.  She knew not where she left off, but she took up the poem waveringly where the text seemed least obscured.

With him shall come the Queen foretold

The errant princess found.

The feet of the Forsaken Race

Shall grace our hallowed ground.

 

As her lips uttered the final word, her arms dropped and her chin drooped to her chest.  At last her entire body went limp and she fell headlong upon the bed.

The gentleman sat for a moment longer gazing at the young lady.  Then he stood and blew out all of the candles save one standing in a small candelabra.  He stood for a moment, hovering over the woman and brushed her dried, fraying hair away from her forehead.  With two fingers he shut her eyelids softly.  Then he picked her lifeless body up in both arms, grasped the lit candle with a free hand and left the room.

**************************

The single candle on the nightstand cast unnerving, flickering shadows on dirty wood plank walls.  A girl not yet twenty sat shivering on a soiled mattress in the corner of the room with her knees wrapped in her bare slender arms.  She was not cold though, for the room was quite warm, especially for March.  She quailed because standing at the far side of the room was a vile wretch of a man removing his coat and unbuttoning his dingy shirt.  He looked over at the girl, half-dressed and flashing his toothless grin.

“Now, deary, why the sad face?” he said in a weaseling, purring manner that ran like ice down her back.

He sauntered slowly toward her, twirling once and dancing a foolish jig with loathsome delight.  When he was within arm’s reach of the girl he dropped to his knees and shimmied over to her feet with wide-eyed avarice.  The girl shifted on the mattress to the furthest corner and huddled tightly about herself, shaking her head in dismay and denial.  She pulled in the ends of her modest blue dress and tucked them under her bottom as tightly as she could manage.  Her thin, delicate face hardened as she clenched her teeth.

“Let’s just have us a feel, eh?”  The detestable creature ran his crackling, calloused hand up her calf, under her dress, and pawed at her thigh.  “Now that’s not so bad,” he added as she desperately struggled in vain to get away from his knobby, sinewy fingers.

She wanted to cry, to scream for help.  But instead, her overwhelming fear turned into anxiety, and anxiety to anger and with her free leg she kicked the villain square in the jaw causing him to leap back in shock and a good deal of pain.  He rubbed his smarting chin and spat blood on the dirt floor.

“You flimsy little whore!” he screamed in his sniveling voice.  “I see it’s time you were learned some manners!”

As he came after her she jumped to her feet to try for an escape out the room’s only door, but he proved too quick.  Clutching her elbow with one hand he delivered a stinging slap to the face with the back of the other.

“I paid for you, miss and I want my money’s worth.”  He threw the girl back down upon the mattress and followed directly after, only this time with no show and dance.  She screamed and flailed at her attacker’s face and chest.

But before the old ruffian had a chance to get any further the door behind him was flung open by a mighty blow.  Storming through the doorway came a thick, burly man with a great, black beard and fiery, charcoal eyes that set upon the attacker with a fierce gaze.  In two strides he descended upon the old man and picked him up by the scruff of his neck.  The filth squirmed under the powerful grip as he spattered a mixed chorus of obscenities and apologies.

“What the hell!?  Terribly sorry.  How’s about you let go?  Damn, ok I guess not.  But I paid for the little whore!  Shit…” he squealed as hand drew tight around his neck like a vice.

The bearded giant dragged his catch to the door and stood him up in the threshold.  “In the mood for a fight tonight, sir?” he gave the old man a jab to the gut that doubled him over.  A bear claw around the neck straightened him out again.  With a firm grip around his jaw, he pulled the old man close to his face and spoke in a foreboding whisper through his teeth.  “If I ever see you again, you’ll be the worse for it.”  Then he tossed the pitiful thing to the dirt alley and slammed the door behind him.

He turned to the girl who looked up at her rescuer with tearful eyes.  Taking her by the hand, he stood her up and scanned the length of her for any damage.   With a finger he tilted her head up by the chin to examine her face, but she turned away.

“Only a scratch to show for your little scrape it seems,” he said calmly.  “If I hadn’t been passing by the door at the moment, it could’ve ended much worse.”  He turned her face once more toward his own, but this time with his entire enormous hand and not too gently.

“This wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place if you would do as you’re told,” he said harshly.  “You’d better smarten up, Dwynnie!  This is your job now, and I won’t have you scaring another pound from our coffer.”  He stared at her until she finally looked up and met his gaze with her red, tearing eyes.

“Am I understood?”

“Yes, father,” she answered.

His furrowed brow unstitched, his clutch loosened, and all at once it seemed as though the world began to move again after a long, choked pause.  He brushed some of her lengthy auburn hair away from her cheek.  The struggle had removed some tendrils from the pony tail that typically sat neatly on her neck.  Then he moved to her side and put his arm around her shoulder in an awkward embrace that did not soothe his daughter’s nerves as much as he thought it would.  For though Mr. Murphy was a severe, calculating, colossus of a man, he did believe that he was, indeed, a decent, loving father.  Circumstance, he would say, is what brought him to sell his daughters for pleasurable company.        Thirty years prior, Thomas Murphy was an honest farmer – one of the most well-thought of men in Fareham – earning his due wage and supporting a wife and two daughters.  But as the accursed threshing machine began appearing more and more in Hampshire, Surrey, and the Sussexes, his doughty back was no longer needed in the fields and poverty loomed.  He joined not a few of his brothers at arms to rage against the extinction of his trade.  But after the Swing Riots – as they came to be called – were finally quelled, Mr. Murphy declined his appointment before the bench and fled with his family to London in search of employment.  His beloved Sara found work in a textile factory for some time, but, to her husband’s devastation, died giving birth to their youngest daughter.  Having lost livelihood, love, and hope he at last stumbled upon a trade that knew not recession nor modernization and “sternly suggested” his last available resources to peddle their femininity in the name of survival.

He dropped his massive arm to her waist and guided his daughter out of the tiny room and into the poorly lit, dusty alley that ran between a row of dilapidated hovels.  It eventually opened into a small courtyard hemmed in by similar shanties.  Dwynn Murphy passed by the many doorways with her green eyes cast to the ground.  She gave her best effort to block out the various clattering and squawking that naturally accompanied the appointments underway behind the walls on her left and right.  They frightened her greatly in a way that she did not quite understand.  For her two sisters had long plied their trade with success and little harm done, save a bloody nose and a few scratches.  (Despite all of what may be thought of a man that whored out his progeny, Thomas. Murphy proved a steadfast protector and formidable bodyguard.)    Still, she couldn’t allow herself to be taken by a client, to the chagrin of her father and promoter; and what’s more, she had never lain with a man even under consensual circumstances.

The two stopped at the entrance to the courtyard.  There in the center of the square a few women sat cross-legged around a pile of burning rubbish, taking turns swigging Old Tom from a rusted, tin cup.  They looked up as the two made their way across the yard.  Each disheveled hen darted glances of detest at the girl, but carefully enough as not to be noticed by the looming figure at her side.  One gnarl-toothed moll muttered a hushed crack to her cohorts at which a roar of cackling erupted.

“I’m sure you’ve nothing to say about my daughter, Sharon,” Thom called out over his shoulder.  He turned and faced the three.  “Or perhaps I should fetch dear Mr. Hunt and let him carry on with you as he is wont to do.  I doubt I’ll be within earshot of your cries for help this time though.  Maybe he’ll beat some sense into whatever is left of you.”

The courtyard fell silent once more save the crackling of the fire.  As wretched as the women were, they were fully aware that without the stalwart Thomas Murphy, life would be far worse.  In fact, the dismal corridor in Mile End was generally considered Mr. Murphy’s homestead.  His commanding stature and understanding of the vocation had quickly expanded his one-room shop into a burgeoning business with many independent professionals more than willing to sacrifice a bit of autonomy for his umbrella of safety.  Thus, one-by-one, the shacks lining the filthy alley off Devonshire Street fell under Mr. Murphy’s jurisdiction.

But for all the gratuity and royalties that the “Murphy District” handed over to its venerable proprietor, Thomas Murphy could hardly keep a shirt on his back.  For though Thom was presently a powerful man, infamous even in many London circles, a man does not simply carve out a profitable block of real estate from thin air without stepping on the toes of established organizations and entrenched competition.  Thus, Thom quickly found himself indebted to dangerous men whose balance sheets would never read square – a fact that kept his daughters hard at work.

Father and daughter entered their home located at a far corner of the courtyard.  It was slightly more impressive than the neighboring establishments, as it was better kept and larger.  It was comprised of two adjoining one-room shanties with a single doorway between.  The addition was acquired when the previous owner found a permanent lodging in the Tower Hamlets Cemetery.  Thom felt his local status warranted a fitting living space, and so it was annexed without word of complaint from the neighbors.  Business itself had not been conducted within the Murphy home for some time now, for he set up his daughters in whatever room within the greater complex that he wished.  Instead, the home was intended to be just that, a home that his family could retire to without the nuisance of ongoing appointments.

At first glance, the dreary room into which the two entered appeared bereft of any hint of a woman’s influence.  A small stove sat rusting on the left wall. Some finger-worn books were piled into two stacks in one corner. A rickety cabinet wearily managed a handful of chipped porcelain dishes.  Walls were unadorned and shelves were barren of baubles and bric-a-brac – the looming silent testimonials of a home in want of a true lady.

Only one bastion of warmth and color, one source of tenderness and welcoming sincerity could be found in the room.  In the far left corner, opposite the front door, hung a brilliant blanket, immaculately woven of golden and ruby thread, shimmering in the soft candlelight.  It was folded ceremoniously upon a wooden quilt rack.  The side rails of the rack were carved by expert hands to resemble thick braids of vine, dotted sporadically with intricately fashioned lily blossoms.  The greatest estate in all London possessed nothing that could match the splendor of either of the two treasures, yet here they resided resisting shadow and despair in the heart of Mile End.

“Not again!” a voice groaned as the solemn Dwynn stepped through the doorway.  The voice’s owner was that of one of her sisters, the middle Murphy child, Sophie.  She was seated at the splintered, round table in the center of the room with a chicken leg in her hand and a bit of grease around her mouth.  She wore a dress similar to Dwynn’s, but it was larger, to fit her hefty frame, and light brown.  Both were in-ornate, falling from a ruffled shoulder in a straight line to just below the knee.  The elder’s bore a few more signs of wear, but neither would be considered terribly fashionable nor utterly insufferable.

“What was the matter this time, highness? You have a headache or were you just too sleepy?” she mocked.

Without a word Dwynn meekly sat beside her sister at the table.  She made no attempt at the last bit of food scraps in the table’s center, but rather sat with her hands on her lap and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Sophie,” she said softly.  “It was not my intention.  I had summoned all my courage to go through with it, but I panicked.  That’s not even mentioning the state of the beast I was met with.  Toothless old sod.”

“My! Father, you didn’t tell me that!” Sophie choked out of her full mouth.  “Here you are setting me up with the Prince of Wales, and you’re pawning poor Dwynnie off on street rats!” she added with a laugh.

Thom opened his mouth to address his saucy daughter when the door behind them not yet five minutes shut was thrown open again.  In stumbled a tall, slender woman in a green dress not too dissimilar from the two sisters.  The stench of gin flooded the room.  The new arrival stood up straight and looked at the faces of the other three.  Then she noticed the grave visage of Thom, her father, the downtrodden Dwynn, and the dry smirk of Sophie.

“Not again!” she blurted out.  “Another got away, eh highness?”  It was common for the two sisters to refer to their younger sibling by that particular honorific.  Neither one cared for their sister’s unwillingness to perform, but Gwen, the eldest, held a particularly vehement grudge and flared with rage each time that a client was denied.

“Enough, you two!” Thom said sternly.

Sophie’s smirk evaporated but Gwen’s tongue was not stayed.  She hadn’t the fear of her father that her sisters, and many others for that matter, had developed over the years.

“You precious little bitch,” she said cooly and far more sober than her entrance would have predicted.  “I’ve had enough of you living off our earnings while you pout to your father.  And you can wipe that stupid grin off your face, Sophie!  We’d be living in a palace by now if you could sew that mouth shut.”

Sophie meekly dropped the last chicken bone and pushed the plate away, though her chewing continued as loud as ever.  Thom moved closer to Gwen now so that she could feel his breath in her face.

“I thought I said that was enough,” he said calmly, but firmly.  His tone was not that of perturbed father as it had been earlier, but rather as temperate peacemaker.  He touched her waist and stared at her unblinkingly.  Gwen’s eyes began to well up and turn purple-red.

“I see.  You’ve already spoiled two perfectly good daughters.  Trying to spare yourself one?”

Gwen took a step back and wiped her face with the short sleeve of her dress.  She took a long look at her youngest sister.

“No, I see it now,” she continued.  “I never noticed until tonight.  She does look an awful lot like mother, doesn’t she?  That would be too much for you.  That’s why you’re always within ear shot of her door.  That’s why you always come to the rescue.  You can’t bare to let another man screw your wife!”

She had hardly finish her last word when a great hand flew across the side of her mouth and turned her face aside.  She looked back at her father.  His solemn countenance had been replaced with a clenched jaw and crossed brow.

“Are you through?” Thom asked after a long pause.

From the corner of her eye Gwen caught sight of two shocked faces looking on in frozen silence.  She stared hard at Dwynn and muttered a curse under her breath.  Both youngest and eldest fled the room – Gwen to the courtyard and beyond, Dwynn to the darkened annex.

Dwynn Murphy flung herself upon the hard mattress and  buried her head in its coarse fabric.  She wept as the image of her sister’s bitter glare traversed her memory.  Her tears periodically ebbed until another flow of sorrow was set off by a new emotion – grief, shame, sympathy – but most painful of all was guilt. Disgrace burned deeply in her heart for each wound that was inflicted upon her sisters.  For those wounds put food upon a table to which she had never contributed, and so she wept.  When at last she had cried until no more tears remained, exhausted and despairing, she fell asleep.

Whether a minute or an hour had passed she couldn’t say, but she was suddenly awoken when the side of the mattress sunk quickly and she rolled to its edge.  The light drifting in through the annex door silhouetted a large figure sitting beside her, but she could not make out a face.

“She is right,” her father’s grave voice spoke.  “You could have been your mother’s twin.  I was the envy of every man in Fareham.  Not solely for her beauty, because she was the finest woman I had ever laid eyes on, but she had a fire inside her that made a man’s heart leap as she walked by.  You know she slapped me the first time I tried to kiss her? Nearly broke my jaw.”

Dwynn smiled an invisible smile in the dark.

“All the men of the countryside claimed that I was the only one that could tame her and that’s how she ended up my wife.  But I never did.  She was as defiant as a mule and as cunning as a lioness.  Though nobody ever saw it outside our home, it was true – she had broken the Bull of Fareham.”

The room went silent once more.  Then, Dwynn felt the weight on the bed shift closer to her head and she sat up further against the wall.

“Do you know that your mother was the finest craftsman I have ever met?  Sure I tended the fields and put bread on the table, but your mother was a seamstress without equal.  We were the best dressed family in the county – me, your mother, and your sisters.  I hated church as much as I loved the pub, but I would go seven days a week if it meant I could wear the garments your mother made for me.  I never felt more proud in my life than when I walked through those doors with her shirt upon my back and my arm around her waist.”

Another long pause, another shift of weight.

“You see, Dwynnie, she was a worker, strong and determined.  She loved her daughters and her husband very much.  When we moved to London, she took up a seat at a mechanized loom.  Can you imagine – an artist like your mother tied to a chair, risking life and limb, at a filthy machine next to drunkards and vagabonds…  She could have adorned Queen Victoria herself.”

Dwynn heard a crack in her fathers deep tenor.

“For the sake of her family she spent twelve hours a day taking orders from a blaggard that I would have torn apart if we hadn’t needed the money so badly.  And then, to carry on so, pregnant no less, with you my dear daughter.”

His voice dropped to a thin whisper.

“What I’m trying to say, is that Gwen was right, about everything.  She spent a fair portion of her years in the comfort of our old life.  There are times when I look at her that the memories of golden fields and the smell of freedom rush into my mind and I have to turn away before bitterness and despair overtake me.  Those days are forever lost, as perfect as they may have been.  But you were never allowed those fortunate years.  And then with your striking resemblance to Sara… I couldn’t thrust you into the full agony of what this life has to offer.  What I mean is…”

“I understand,” she interrupted.  “I understand what I have to do.”

Dwynn heard not another word from her father, though she felt tiny tremors shake the mattress.  After he kissed her forehead, Dwynn the Dependent pulled the sheet that now held both her and her father’s tears up over her head and fell asleep once again.