Ring.
A clock chimed. The pendulum struck the pine boards, the trap door opened and the wooden statuette of a little girl with a crooked smile came out, mechanically waving her hand.
After two clicks of hands – at 8 o'clock and 2 seconds sharp – the door opened and in the darkness appeared the silhouette of a woman. Her little black leather shoes sank into the carpet, and the fabric of her black dress rustled against the doorframe. Back straight, legs anchored to the ground and right arm placed perpendicularly against her stomach, she glanced at the eternally frozen silver hands.
The room was pitch black, so she couldn't see much beyond her toes, the tips of which were firmly anchored on the red wool, just at the edge. Her eyes caressed the carpet absently, while her body swayed back and forth almost imperceptibly.
The night that enveloped her completely made her lose her bearings and forced her to violently clench her toes on the soles of her shoes, to retain the weight of her frail body, which would not fail to drag the young woman forward to every second of inattention. All her muscles tensed to hold her in place, for god knew what would happen if she crossed – even inadvertently – the invisible border that separated her from the heart of the room.
Motionless, her eyes resting somewhere in the dark, she camouflaged as usual the agitation that inhabited her, for fear of being overwhelmed by it. She concentrated on the limit, the invisible abyss which would nevertheless be so heavy with consequences if she dared to throw herself into it. He was like a burning flame: forbidden and yet so tempting.
She imagined a wall, which would extend from the mahogany floor to the ceiling and whose bricks as red as blood could not be broken by any man. An impassable wall that would separate two worlds, one in which she lived daily and the other whose access would only be authorized to her – like paradise – occasionally, by a superior being.
So she waited.
A click.
Two click.
Three click.
And a silhouette emerged right next to the wall, barely drawn in the darkness. It was just a shapeless black mass that rippled in the dark, making the sheets rustle.
Stoic and motionless, she continued to stare somewhere in the large bedroom, just around the corner where she knew the huge four-poster bed was. In the silence resounded a hazy breath and the cracking of a few bones before a look – she was certain of it – rested on her. She didn't move from her imaginary mark though, contenting herself with blinking regularly and breathing, since those were the only things she couldn't control.
Like a porcelain doll, she waited again and again, waiting for her owner's hand to bring her to life, since she couldn't exist without him. She was only an inanimate object, an empty shell which could have no other soul than the one that her master breathed into her, each time he spoke to her, or laid his hands on her.
After what seemed like an eternity, the silence broke and at the sound of a soft throat clearing, the rift in front of her was covered with a solid stone bridge. Immediately, her body plunged forward and she rushed a little deeper into the darkness. She walked straight ahead, in what seemed to her like a thick mist, in the heart of which any being could get lost, if he did not know the way.
'Seventeen.'
'Eighteen.'
'Nineteen.'
She silently counted her steps, letting her memories take possession of her and recreate the shape of the room she walked through. At twenty-one steps and not one more, she stopped, before extending her hands forward. Her fingers caught on a thick piece of fabric, which she grabbed. Like a butterfly flapping its wings, she suddenly spread her arms. She heard a slip, before a yellow light, barely stronger than that which a candle could produce, enveloped her entirely.
Her gaze rested on the garden, the darkness of which no longer surprised her, before sliding over the small particles of dust that were still floating in the air. Tiny white orbs, barely perceptible to the human eye, but still lingering, despite her efforts.
'All of this will have to be cleaned up.'
The mornings in the mansion were always particularly monotonous. The course was always the same, whatever might happen and each new day was in fact only a pale replica of the previous one. Life at the Memoria Estate was the same every day, like a broken record that would never stop spinning.
She was just a cog in this endless cycle, which had always been powerless. Nothing could stop the wheel of fate after all, for that was its purpose.
"Aina ."
A hoarse, cold voice broke the silence. It was relatively gentle and devoid of any anger, but the young woman knew better than anyone how to detect the underlying imperative of its words.
She turned around and took a step forward, to place herself right in front of the red silk curtain, which covered the imposing black wooden bed seated in the center of the room, just in the middle of the wall. Through its barely transparent fabric, she made out the outlines of a human, whose head was swiveling to the sides. The movement was accompanied by a crunch, the same one this person always did to stretch his tired neck.
She didn't particularly like that sound and it was fair to say that it almost sent shivers down her spine. She should have been used to it after so many years, but something caused a vague feeling of unease in her. Something that she couldn't explain. Each time she heard this bizarre sound that was unique to her, a deep discomfort twisted her stomach, as if she was about to witness something terrible. Beyond the disturbing habits of the occupant and his more than special person, it was this entire room in which she had difficulty staying.
This warm-looking space, with its burgundy red upholstery and yet sinister atmosphere was the first of her little routine, but it was her least favorite place, even if she didn't really know why.
"Master." she finally breathed, tilting her head slightly forward, her right palm over her heart.
Like every day, she waited a few seconds, her eyes resting somewhere on the blood-red nielles that covered the carpet, interspersed with nettles that seemed ready to devour them. The object was elegant and delicate, not sticking in any way to the personality of its master. It almost seemed out of place, like a dead tree in a green forest. The atmosphere was strange in this place and this lack of harmony of colors and furniture was not limited to this room, extending to the whole mansion.
Many things in this place were in their place, without really seeming to fit there. Everything was carefully chosen and combined to form a beautiful panorama, yet any normal person could not help but find that something was wrong. She had never really known what bothered her about all this, but she had the strange feeling that the rooms in the house were oddly and subtly disharmonious, like an instrument playing out of tune in the middle of an orchestra. It was a detail that one could not notice without paying great attention to it and so, she seemed to be the only one in the house to be surprised by it.
Still, it was not her place to criticize her master's decorating tastes, so she did her best to ignore those details.
"Bring it to me." he ordered, his voice slightly drawling and yet very authoritative.
Nodding imperceptibly, she turned on her heels, briefly catching sight of a pale hand slicing through the bed curtains, palm outstretched.
She stared at the room for a few seconds, now uncovered by the filtered sunlight, dirty in color, as if its rays had been sprayed with muddy water. This time again, she did not see the blue sky she had seen in the books, or the dazzling rays that should have bathed the house in the gentle heat of summer. She only saw thick crimson clouds, covering a brown light like the hue of a dying leaf in the fall.
The weather in this place hardly ever changed, except on stormy days, when the skies were bathed in blood, covering the domain with a crimson veil, as if the end of the world was approaching.
"Aina." insisted the voice, this time colder than before, seeing that the young woman remained frozen in front of the large window, overlooking the almost dead garden.
The woman raised her eyebrows, before tearing her eyes away from the landscape, almost reluctantly. She wasn't usually so distracted, especially around the master, but something seemed to be troubling her, as if...as if something was different in the daily mundaneness of that day.
She ignored the strange feeling forming in the pit of her stomach and turned away from the outside, to face a huge wooden screen, on which were painted a man and a woman.
'I wonder if the master knows what this work really means.'
If we didn't look more closely, the scene could have passed for a tender embrace between two lovers, but she knew better than anyone that what emanated from this work was none other than the control of a human being on another.
"L'asservie".
That was the name of this painting. It had once been famous in the art world for the delicacy of its features and the beauty of the scene it depicted. The fact is that everyone had mistaken the original name of this work. Its author had carefully inscribed it in the lower right corner of his masterpiece, in silver ink. Melted into the half-open dress of the voluptuous woman lovingly – or so they believed – pressed against her lover, two characters had gone completely unnoticed. The painting, which everyone had called "La servie" for so long, thinking it represented a woman passionately contented by her husband, was in fact the cruel representation of the domination of a man over a woman.
This is how one day, a wealthy collector who had acquired it, realized the hidden message that the painter had cleverly concealed in the skirts of the young lady.
'He had changed his angle of view.'
No one had ever known if this was intentional, but many interpreted this strange detail as a message that appearances could be deceiving and that things were not always what they seemed. From the moment the original title of this painting had been revealed, all the signs of the evil deed carefully camouflaged in the scene had appeared, as if by magic, and no one had ever looked at this work the same way. Having this kind of object in his bedroom might seem incongruous, but the master was the kind of man who didn't care about what others thought of him. He had probably found something in this scene that he liked, so much so that he installed it right in front of his bed, where he could see it every time he opened his eyes.
If these quirks appeased her, she wasn't the one who was going to complain. The ease of her day depended in part of the mood of her masters. Thus, everything was good to satisfy them.
'The masters are demanding people.'
It was no wonder considering they came from a long line of ilEnvierious members of the Imperial family. The inhabitants of Memoria Manor were nobles, and it went without saying that they behaved as such, although their present fame was in no way comparable to that of their ancestors. Many people across the empire would gossip about the fact that the inhabitants of the manor were no more than a common family in decline, who had lost their power along with their colossal fortune .
No one ever spoke of these rumors within the walls of the castle, for that would have provoked the rage of the master of this place, from which no one – not even the innocents – would escape.
'No one is that suicidal... Even the young master.'
Even he, who sometimes seemed to come a little too close to death, wouldn't have risked it. The one everyone nicknamed "the patriarch" paid great attention to appearances and hearsay, which, according to him, constituted the foundations of all the great families of the empire. Thus, he would never let go of the slightest rumor against him, especially if it was false.
The Signavit family did not tolerate any straying from its reputation, because it was the root of its power. This was certainly true, but not in the sense that the head of the family might imagine. The rumors circulating about this bloodline were in fact what pushed the other nobles of the empire to submit to them, because all feared the wrath of the "cursed" family and its strange habits and customs. The object delicately enclosed in a gold box covered with roses bearing horns was the perfect example of it.
Sitting prominently behind the screen on the massive black oak desk, the chest would have caught the eye of anyone who entered the room, though no one ever dared try to steal it. The young master was one of those it was no good trying to trick, because he was among the cruelest members of this dark family, second to his cold and dreaded father. The object was particularly eye-catching, framed between two chandeliers set with diamonds and blood-red sapphires, shining with a pale brown glow. Aina's eyes wandered from that jewel to the deer's head sticking out of the wall just above her, but she looked away as a shiver of unease shook her when she saw its glowing pupils, staring everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She didn't like to imagine the animal still alive, whose soul would be imprisoned in this motionless head, howling without anyone ever being able to hear it.
She found this to be of bad taste and did not quite understand what the master found appealing in the art of hunting, which seemed to simply be a barbaric activity for her. Still, it seemed to her that the young master enjoyed tracking down innocent animals, as he always had a smirk on his face whenever he came back with a catch. It also explained why he hung these kinds of trophies all over his bedroom, amidst the other oddities he had acquired during his youth.
'This place is like a chamber of horrors.'
She ignored these thoughts to slip her hand into the pocket of her black ruffled dress, covered in yellow suns. This one had been offered to her by her masters when she began working here and it had never left her since. She pulled out a pair of immaculate silk gloves, slipping her hands into them. She put her fingers on the wooden lid covered with gold leaf and touched it delicately, until her hands were placed at the two lower ends.
Her right index finger lifted the white metal latch, before her thumbs pushed the cover away from the plinth to open the luxurious box, revealing its contents in the candlelight. A white wooden mask, splitting a face in two with a thick black line, was delicately placed on a red velvet cushion. On one side was a holey black eye, arched like a crescent moon and highlighted by a gentle smile. On the other, the same eye, but this time accompanied by a cruel grin, which sent chills down her spine, and a furrowed eyebrow, accentuating even more the terrifying aspect of this half-face. The expression depicted on the left resembled that of a demon and the other its angelic twin. They were like two sides of the same coin, like a person and their reflection in the mirror, similar and yet very different.
The object she caught with her fingertips was very precious. It had been carved – it was said – by the greatest craftsman in the empire, especially for the young master, and only one copy existed. This treasure was worth almost more than a mansion and therefore had to be treated with great care. It was particularly fragile and could have broken with the slightest mistake, so she slid her palm under it to hold the object in place, while she closed the trunk. She carefully folded the red ribbon that hung on either side and crossed the room to the edge of the bed, where her master's hand was still outstretched.
Her job had only lasted a few tens of seconds, but she was sure, knowing her master, that he had already started to get impatient the moment she turned on her heels. So, she hastened to hand him the mask and he grabbed it almost violently, communicating his displeasure frankly.
"It was almost time." he growled, his arm disappearing under the sheets.
The young man's bad mood was quite usual, so she didn't take offense at his aggressive tone. She had worked there for several years now. She therefore knew the members of this family by heart and was used to their changing moods and their more than surprising habits. Envie Signavit was the eldest of the Signavit men, second only to General Rage , the patriarch.
She hardly ever saw the latter in the mansion, as he was often holed up in his office, which almost no one was allowed to enter except for Elvan . So she only met him very rarely.
'And it is for the better.'
The patriarch was a frightening man, who tolerated no mistake. She therefore preferred not to deal with him, for fear of getting into trouble. Young Master Envie wasn't particularly more tender, but he was still less scary and less powerful than him. She was, so to speak, more likely to come out alive against the young man than against the head of the family. The choice was therefore quite natural between him and Envie.
The latter pushed the curtain of his bed after a few seconds and his silhouette appeared in the eyes of the young woman. Sitting, his back against the bed and his hands resting on his legs covered by his black silk sheet, he had put on his mask. It was carefully tied behind his head thanks to the red ribbon that she took care to iron to avoid creases. The knot he'd tied was twisted and very uneven, as if he'd had trouble doing it himself, but she didn't comment on it. Master Envie was a proud man and she was almost certain he would take the slightest bit of advice she tried to give him as an insult.
As usual, he was waiting for her like a prince, his face hidden behind his mask. She couldn't see his expression, which could be difficult to interpret her master's moods, but she had eventually managed to understand him by looking at his icy pupils, which she saw through the openings in his mask, as well as the movements of his body, which seemed to say much more about him than his own words.
It didn't take long for her to head for the door. She rushed into the long dark corridor, deserted to the point that she heard no other sound than the one of her little black pumps on the ebony floor. She quickened her pace to a recess, just between two plants, opposite the window overlooking the large courtyard, bathed in mist. Beneath a large painting of a demon devouring an infant was a silver grate, covering what looked like a bottomless hole, barely big enough to let a child enter. Approaching the door, she pushed a red button, before a click sounded and the iron wires that passed along the wall began to move. A metallic noise was heard in the bottom of the abyss – well, that was the image she had of it – and a plate gradually made its way to her.
The dumbwaiter continued to move forward for a few seconds, before stopping right in front of her, revealing a white porcelain plate, covered by a gold bell. Next to it were delicately placed a fork, accompanied by a silver knife, as well as a white silk napkin, with golden roses embroidered on it. A crystal stemmed glass containing fruit juice had also been added.
'The service is always fast.'
The process was the same every morning. Master Envie would take his mask, he would sit down, ask for his breakfast and she would rush over here to pick it up and bring it to him. The kitchens worked fast and punctuality was the watchword in this place, so she knew she could press the call button without fear, because the employees of this mansion would never fail in their task.
'I have to hurry.'
She grabbed the edges of the silver tray and pressed it against her chest to hold it in place. She then walked slowly towards the bedroom and entered through the open door, to see Master Envie still seated against the wall. He hadn't moved an inch, as if time had stopped in the room after she left. He turned his head towards her and she saw his icy pupils shine with a strange light, but she ignored this detail. She walked to the edge of the bed and placed the tray on the bedside table, right next to him. Hands still covered with her gloves, she lifted the bell and discovered a plate filled with an omelet and barely cooked bacon, the young man's favorites.
'He loves bloody meat.'
She then grabbed the fork and pricked into the tender pieces of meat, before grabbing the knife to cut small pieces. The nobles were like children. They couldn't do anything alone, or rather, didn't want to do anything alone. Thus, it was necessary to bring them help for each of their daily activities. The meal was one of them and not the most exciting. As she got down to work, she felt her master's gaze land on her. His pupils followed her movements, she knew it.
Master Envie had always been like this. He was a man of few words, but never stopped looking at her. She didn't like the way he stared at her. When he did that, she was almost always shot through with a shiver of disgust, which she couldn't explain. She couldn't see his face because of the mask, but she was pretty sure the man was smiling when he followed her with his eyes and that it was almost horrifying her. His gaze on her made her feel like worms were crawling under her skin and the thought almost made her nauseous.
"Here, master."
She heard his teeth grit from where she stood, like an animal preparing to butcher its prey.
She placed the tray on his lap and took a step back, bowing forward.
"You're too slow." he chided her coldly.
Obviously, he was still in a bad mood... Even if she had ended up getting used to his mood swings, that didn't make it any more pleasant. In these moments, much more frequent than she would have liked, he was always aggressive, cold and distant with others. It was only when he was eating that she could finally be at peace, without risking to be caught in the storm of his anger.
This moment was one of the few where she could breathe and she intended to take advantage of it. She silently watched Master Envie begin to eat his lunch, careful not to let him notice her little antics. He looked like he couldn't be more focused on his meal, not noticing that the young maid was giving him glares.
She was surprised again to see him manage to eat with his mask on. She wasn't sure why he bothered with such a thing on a daily basis, but she wasn't particularly curious to know.
'He must have his reasons.'
The Signavit were no ordinary people, and this strange custom was probably one of their "specialties".
It's not the first.
Few things still managed to astonish her in this place, for it was very unusual and unlike any other.
"There are letters to take to the village." added the master between mouthfuls, without even looking up at her.
Instinctively, she looked away from him to stare at the large bookcase that littered the wall opposite the bed, just behind the screen. The young master always put a small tray on one of the shelves, on which were scattered the letters he wanted to send to town. Today, there was obviously only one, but sometimes there were dozens. Envie didn't care if she had time to do this, because it wasn't his problem at all. He ordered and she had to perform, regardless of her other obligations.
"Understood, master."
There was a little silence after that, during which Master Envie stopped eating, his eyes staring into space somewhere.
"Did she ask for you?"