Giuseppe gave her a map to the house she would be watching over. It took her about a day and a half to get there from Roxia Port. It was in a small town nestled at the bottom of the Ioanima Mountains. It was about one days walk to either the Shuri Forest or the Fidem Forest. Two of the most dangerous forests in the world. There had to be run off dangerous creatures that made having a Retainers base there make sense.
She received some directions from the bar keeper in the town. The house was located on the edge of the town. Closer than she would have liked it to be to either forest. A one-story house with a two-story tall viewing tower with windows around it in the corner. It was run down. It was made of stone as was all the houses in the area. Some of the slabs necessary to build it must have been carried in by a large elephant, she thought. Though she wasn't sure if they had elephants in this country, since she had travelled halfway across it and hadn't seen any. There were tons of deer and rabbits. She had been chased by a large boar too, but no hippos or alligators. The shades of the windows were hanging off and there were spots of moss on the corners. Overall, a great home that had been regretfully neglected.
The ship that she sailed on as a pirate was old too, but they kept it clean and well maintained. She loved that ship, and, in her eyes, it counted as the only home she had ever known.
"HAHAHA!!!" As she walked up to the door, she could hear laughter. She knocked on the door and it fell flat inward.
"Whoa!" A boy wearing a fedora jumped out of his chair. "Hahaha! What was that?"
Bliperilla slid across the door. "Me! Bliperilla from Slomia. I am an awesome pirate warrior. You can call out Blipp and I will be there to save you."
"Who?" The boy said adjusting his fedora on his head.
"It's the housekeeper." A scowling boy in a sleeveless shirt and said confidently. "You can help clean the bathroom."
"Housekeeper? What do you know how to make? I mean what's your specialty?" The boy behind the bar counter asked with a grin. He had shaggy red hair that could use a trimming and was wearing a stretched out green shirt. Bliperilla could tell that they were all a bit younger than her. "Oh, thank god. Our clothes really need a wash."
"Speak for yourself, I don't sweat." The boy in the sleeveless shirt with his armpits hanging out said.
"Sure you don't." Fedora put a hand to his mouth and whispered. "He does, a lot."
Bliperilla stepped through the door to find there were clothes strewn all over the couch and a sink full of dishes. The stove looked like it had caught fire recently and was put out by some clothes close by.
"Three months." She said to herself. "Where's the wash bucket or the mop or the laundry basket?"
"I don't know where the laundry basket is, but can you make us some pasta. Like the ones the assassins eat."
"Coming right up." She stepped into the kitchen. There was rotted food in the sink and in the cupboard. The flour was still good thankfully and so were the eggs. She was gone for a while.
"You think she's coming back." Just as he thought it, she burst through the door with an arm full of herbs and wild mushrooms. She sautéed the mushrooms and kneaded home-made angel hair pasta. In a moment she had whipped up an edible pasta dish. In between, she cleaned some dishes and served it up on the bar in front of the kitchen after she cleaned it off.
The boys had been drooling while she was cooking. When she called out, they rushed up falling over each other.
"Hey!" She smashed a fist into the wall. "Even pirates wash their hands before eating."
They rushed to the bathroom. "Me first!"
After washing their hands, they sat down for their meal. They ate as if they had been starving only eating from local bars after failing at cooking.
"So, you guys are Retainers?"
"Yup we got our masks and everything. What are you a groupie?"
"What?" That was the dumbest thing she had ever heard. "I'm a pirate warrior."
"Really? Why are you just a housekeeper then?" The oldest boy with red hair asked.
"That was the only job they would give me." She was infuriated. She could beat everyone of them to a pulp with just one arm.
"Oh yeah. Girls are usually house maids." The boy with the green fedora and a black feather and dark skin said.
"Housekeepers!" She corrected.
A bird flew into the cage covering the window in the kitchen. "Can you get that?"
"Probably just another explanation on how the masks work."
"Yeah, we already know that. Can you grab it?" Sleeveless asked as he stood up pulling up his baggie pants.
Bliperilla crossed the kitchen and opened the door to the cage. The bird was black with two tails. The bird hopped out and flapped onto the sink and bent down and took a drink of the water and shook its head. The water was in one of the dishes that Blipp filled with soap. It burped and a soap bubble came out. "She reached down for the parchment tied to its leg.
She unrolled it and read it. "It's a call for a contract but the page is empty." The masks scattered all over the room glowed. "What's going on?"
"The masks glow when we get a contract. We're not supposed to talk about the contract with anyone outside of the house, besides who the contract is with." The boy with the shaggy red hair said.
"It binds the contract." The kid with the baggie pants said.
The boys finished eating and grabbed the contract. "We'll see you in a few days this should be fast." The boy with the hat glowed a dagger, cut open his hand wincing. The other two held the door steady while he sloppily smeared his blood on the door in a pattern that Bliperilla had never seen before.
"Make sure to clean this place up before we get back, housekeeper."
"It's Bliperilla." Before they could hear her name, the door closed. She stormed to the door and kicked it from the hinges. "Bliperilla!"
She looked around but they were gone. They had just walked out a cold breeze slammed into her, and she shivered. She looked down and saw she was standing on the door. She remembered the door was loose and had fallen when she knocked too.
She decided she should put it back up. She picked it up and leaned it against the house. She walked in and looked around. The place was an absolute mess, and she wasn't going to be able to find any nails or screws with the house in such ruin. She scanned the living room for a laundry basket. There were plenty of clothes everywhere she could tell the living room was being used as a laundry basket.
"If there isn't one, I'll have to get one in town later." She Glowed a shield and looked at the room again. She made the shield larger and ran around the room filling it with dirty underwear and smelly socks and sweaty shirts. She grabbed the burnt clothes from the kitchen and sat the pile of clothes by the front door and the shield released and the clothes sat on the floor.
She could see now the living room was large. Bigger than it looked with stuff all over the floor. She wondered what the kitchen would look like with out dishes all over the counters and an empty sink. She walked over to the kitchen and went to work. It took longer than she would have liked but she got all the dishes cleaned, dried, and put away. There was plenty of room in the cabinets for the dishes and the pots and pans. She organized shelves with mugs, plates, and pots and pans. She filled the compost bin with the leftovers and dragged the bin outside.
"It smells so much better in here. LA LA LA! Now I can sing."
She danced over to the pantry door and flung it open and was hit with a putrid smell. She coughed and gagged. "Too soon for that." She dragged the compost bin back in and dumped almost the entire pantry into it. After dragging it back out she walked through the door and realized she hadn't fixed the door.
It was starting to get dark, so she lit the gems on the wall. They shined bright white after touching them. She moved to center of the room. "They'll probably need clean clothes when they get back, I won't have time to fix the door today I can just lean it over here. She picked up the door and leaned it against the door frame, but it still wasn't closed completely.
She pumped water into the sink and found some powdered cleaner under the sink. It smelled floral and she was glad though she was sure they didn't buy it. In fact, as she cleaned the clothes, she noticed there were tons of clothes that didn't look like they would fit either of them. Some of the clothes were for a girl and a petite girl at that. Though, she cleaned it all the same.
When she was done, she hung it all out to dry on the lines out the back door down the hallway between the bedrooms. When she walked back into the house, and it was completely dark in the hallway. The doors for the rooms were closed and she could make out the closet that she found the mop and broom in under the stairs. It was creepy for no reason at all, so she rushed to the living room and plopped down on the couch.
Boom! Boom Boom!
She awoke and all the lights had gone out she looked around the living room but didn't see anyone. "Hello?"
Silence. She turned over and put her face in one of the pillows.
When she awoke for the second time the light was spilling in from the between the flapping drapes. She thought for a second and looked around. She was still alone. The guys did say they would be gone for a few days, so it wasn't weird, but something felt wrong. She concluded it was the door. She had cleaned up the living room, but the door was still going to be slightly ajar. It would be hard to say she finished with the room if the door wouldn't close. She went into the town markets and got some nails and screws with some of the Cardis she had left over from Captain Roberta. The boys would have to reimburse her when they got back. She Glowed a hammer and a screwdriver and in no time she had the door back on its hinges. She stepped inside and closed the door. "Now to clean this blood off of this door."
When she did the writing in blood started to Glow. There was a whaling, and she could feel wind blowing in from the edges. The door rattled and from curiosity and fear of the door flying in, she opened it and outside the door was two feet of snow that crumpled and fell to the floor in front of her. A few inches below the snow she saw a black and blue hand. She rushed and shoveled the snow revealing the boy that had scribed the mark on the door. She pulled him inside and shut the door. She put her head to his chest, and she heard his heart still beating slowly.
He stirred and his eyes shot open desperately he pleaded. "The door…close…wolves! Wolves…" His raspy voice trailed off.
"Fedora? Fedora!" She shook him and put her head to his chest, nothing. She checked for a pulse but there wasn't one. "Where's everyone else. Where's baggy pants and shaggy?"
She got up and grabbed the door handle and it burned her. The writing glowed and disappeared. She reached for the door again slowly. It wasn't hot anymore. She opened it and saw the tree line that sat across from the house and heard birds chirping. She turned around and looked at him and back through the door. The snow was gone. The mountains and snow scape had vanished and been replaced oddly by the image she was most used to seeing. The trees across the path leading to the front door didn't have a speck of snow on them. The image she vaguely remembered at this point was vast and unobstructed by trees. She was looking down a hill, sloping down the backside of an even larger mountain. It was all gone now.
She heard a birds wings flap into the caged window again. She rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the bird frantically. She snatched the note from its leg.
"Sorry about that. There seems to have been a loose lipped someone who gave away your drop off location. Please stand by for an updated drop off location. If the group has already left it is safe to assume the housekeeper is reading this and the group has already been captured or killed. If that is the case, please send an update with this bird immediately so the board can be updated."
Bliperilla slammed the paper down on the counter scaring the bird. She ruffled through the drawers remembering tucking away a pen. She jotted down all that she could remember with a long list of questions and stuck the paper to the bird against its will. She pushed it back into the cage. "Shoo! Go and get this back to them. I need to know what's going on here."
The bird hopped off the ledge of the window in a hurry. Whether or not it would follow her orders was uncertain but eventually it did. Bliperilla had taken the boy that she remembered wearing a fedora to the back and made a grave for him. She didn't know him or any of the other boys. They had spent only moments together, but they were filled with such joy at being Retainers. In the end they died. She sniffled. "People can cry for the loss of the empty lives of young men, too."