[writing] The Inn Between (1/?)
Jul. 20th, 2009 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perfectworrytitle: The Inn Between
verse: inn between
rating: K
notes: this is something I wrote a year ago today, the first of many parts (currently nearly 50 documents worth of scenes that take place in the present timeline, not counting backstories); please note that this is not edited
The Inn Between
“Mariel,” yelled Meep, “Mariel, where the hell did my PopTarts go?”
“They’re wherever you left them,” Mariel shouted back down the hall without looking up from her notes. “They didn’t go anywhere.”
“They did so,” Meep shouted. “Where the hell are they?” She slammed a cabinet closed in frustration.
Meep was normally pleasant enough, except when she was hungry.
“How’m I supposed to know?” Mariel shuffled her note cards again and rearranged them like a Tarot spread, hoping to glean some new information from her collection of facts.
“It’s your stupid house,” whined Meep, stomping down the hall towards Mariel’s study. “It’s rearranged it’s stupid self.”
“Did it?” Mariel asked, finally looking away from her carefully arranged index cards.
“Yes,” muttered Meep, idly flipping through the stack of unsorted cards. “The whole thing is all weird. I can’t find anything,” she added. Her little white kitten scampered up the leg of her jeans. She scooped him up and set him on her shoulder.
“Huh,” said Mariel, gathering the cards again. She took the stack from Meep and bound them together with a rubber band. “Let’s go see the damage.”
Meep wasn’t lying. The house was completely different. Even the paint had changed. Mariel made her way down the hall, opening and closing doors. Her rooms were the same, as were Meep’s and Glory’s, but they were arranged differently. Mariel’s bedroom and study were now across from each other, and Glory’s was at the end of the hall. Meep’s was next to the bathroom, which looked nothing like it had earlier. Mariel noted that the bathtub now had claw feet. The kitchen, living and dining rooms had changed as well.
The kitchen, green when they’d gone to bed last night, was now a sunny yellow with white cabinets and a bar in the middle with white wicker stools. Mariel peered out the window; it still looked out on their front garden, full of daisies and just a yard or so back from the street.
“Well,” said Mariel, standing between the kitchen and the dining room, which was now outfitted with a glass display case that most certainly had not been there yesterday, “I never liked the green much, anyway.”
“It’s fuckin’ weird,” Meep said.
“It’s done this before,” Mariel replied. She opened the cabinet nearest the refrigerator. Meep’s favorite PopTarts were right there in the front. “Here,” she tossed them to Meep. “The plates are next to the sink and the silverware’s in the drawer beneath it.”
“How d’you know?” asked Meep, opening the package.
“It is my house,” said Mariel.
The house had done this once before in her memory; when Meep moved in, when her room had just appeared one morning, next to the bathroom. The windows looked out on her yard from where she’d come from. There was a wooden swing set and stream that Mariel was certain did not exist in the rainy city.
Now, to Mariel’s surprise, there was a carpeted staircase leading to a hitherto nonexistent upper level.
There was dark wood paneling along the walls, and ludicrously ornate plaster embellishments along the ceiling. Like the rest of the house, it looked nothing like the rest of the house. There was only one door, which Mariel opened carefully. The house rearranging could only mean one thing: a new occupant would be coming soon. Mariel hoped their room would give some clues about their guest.
The door fit the décor of the rest of the new level; white and ornate. Even the iron door handle had been painted over in white, partially obscuring the detailing. It gave the impression of neglected grandeur.
It was also locked.
Mariel frowned and jiggled the door handle, but it didn’t budge. She tried again with more force to no avail. She’d never been unable to enter a room in her own house; even Glory’s door had given in eventually. That did not seem to be the case now.
She made her way back downstairs, occasionally glancing up as though she expected the door to open and someone simply walk out as though they had always lived there. That’s how Meep had arrived.
That was how she and Glory had arrived. It would not have been at all a surprise if someone simply showed up.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. Mariel flipped her cell phone open, but not seeing what she wanted, closed it with a snap and put it back in her pocket.
“I’ll be in the study,” she said to Meep, who was happily finishing her breakfast. “Don’t go upstairs and let me know if anything … weird happens.”
“Uh, okay,” said Meep, who finished her PopTarts and, without even bothering to put her dishes in the sink, immediately snuck up the staircase, followed by the kitten. Sneaking up wasn’t hard, due to the plush carpeting.
Meep, too, found that the door was jammed shut and refused to open - even when she jammed her bobby pin into the lock.
“Goddamnit,” she muttered, looking down the hall. It was the only door. The room behind it must have been giant.
Thwarted, she went back down the stairs. Glory was letting himself in the front door, shaking rain out of his long hair.
“It’s raining?” Meep asked, by way of saying hello. It wasn’t raining out her bedroom windows.
“We have a staircase?” he responded. He stepped carefully out of his shoes and left them on the welcome mat neatly next to Mariel’s boots and Meep’s worn out Converse, which had not been placed so carefully.
“Yup,” said Meep with a shrug. Not being able to explore much of the new addition, she had quickly lost interest in it. “Everything else is all weird, too.”
“I see,” said Glory, looking through the dining room into the kitchen.
“Your room’s fine, though,” Meep informed him. “So’s mine’n’Mariel’s. Bathroom’s different, though,” she said, following him through the house. “We’ve got one of those cool bathtubs.”
“Do we?” he asked, not really paying attention to her. He knocked on Mariel’s study door.
“Yeah?” Mariel sounded distracted and, Meep wasn’t sure about this, maybe a little guilty.
“Mariel?”
“Er, one second -” there was a rustling of papers and the sound of a drawer opening and closing. “Come in.”
Glory opened the door. The study stank of cigarette smoke. Mariel looked around guiltily. Glory rolled his eyes.
“It’s my house,” said Mariel.
Glory sighed. “What happened to the house?”
“We’ve got a guest coming,” said Mariel. What happened to the house was obvious and so she preemptively answered the next question, which she guessed, correctly, was “why?”
Glory seemed to accept this. It was part of the contract on the house that they let any stay there who asked for residence.
Mariel spent the next few hours checking her cell phone compulsively. It would ring when the time came, but she couldn’t help herself. She kept it in her pants pocket during dinner.
“What’s got you so wound up?” asked Glory, genuinely concerned.
“The guest. When Meep showed up she just showed up.”
“Now Mariel,” said Meep, all faux childish whininess, “if you’re worried about the mess, whoever it is probably doesn’t care.”
“If there’s a mess, it’s your fault. Clean it up,” snapped Mariel. “No, I just want to know who it is and why they aren’t here yet. I really don’t like letting someone I don’t know into my house, thanks.”
“it’s part of the contract,” Glory reminded her. He didn’t have to say “there’s nothing you can do about it,” so he didn’t.
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Mariel shrugged.
Dinner passed like this; Mariel anxious, Meep uppity, and Glory’s patience tried by both of them. Mariel had just settled down in the living room on the new couch with a coffee when three things happened at once.
Nat came in, saying “there’s someone at the gate,” Meep looked out the living room window, saying “hey Mariel, there’s someone outside” and Mariel’s phone rang. She flipped it open; there was a message informing her that the guest had arrived.
“Sonuvabitch,” said Mariel, setting her coffee down on the coffee table.
“Nice furniture,” said Nat, taking Mariel’s seat beside Glory. “New?”
“So is everything else,” Glory said with a shrug.
“You live in a mad house,” said Nat.
“You have no idea,” sighed Glory.
They saw the hem of Mariel’s white cloak flap around the frame and the door slam shut behind her. She had taken her rapier.
“She expecting trouble?” asked Nat.
“Better safe than sorry,” Glory shrugged.
“I wonder who it is,” said Meep, flopped over the new rocking chair, chewing a piece of toffee from the dish on the table. She’d never had a coffee table, but she thought she could get used to it if there was always candy there.
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Outside, Mariel had found the guest. He matched the limited description her cell phone message had given her; white hair, white eyes, weird hands. He was shabby and patchy; his clothing, like the new door, had been nice once but they’d fallen into disrepair.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone. He was surrounded by assailants, none of whom seemed to want to get too close. He stepped back towards the wrought iron fence Mariel hadn’t known they’d had, but he didn’t want to back up against it. His attacker’s didn’t seem to want to, either.
Well, that explained why the door handle was painted over. It also made Mariel’s weapon a lot less effective than it might have been. This might actually have to come to bloodshed, which probably wouldn’t have been the case if it was iron.
“Hey, all of you,” shouted Mariel. “Get the hell off of my property.”
That at least got their attention.
“You heard me,” she said. “Go on.”
They didn’t move. The one nearest her was holding a curved scimitar. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t deal with on it’s own, but there were seven of them and one of her. She’d probably win, but she didn’t want to find out. It would be a hassle, anyway.
She opened the gate and let herself out. They shouldn’t be able to get through the other barriers, and even if they did, Glory wouldn’t let them into the house.
“Your Highness?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the others. She hadn’t been given a name, just a title - the Prince of Ælphame.
“Yes -” he said, taking another half-step back. He didn’t want to get any closer to the fence, but he also had to avoid the scimitars.
“Nice to meet you,” she said cordially. She stepped closer, causing the others to draw in closer to the Prince.
He didn’t say anything.
She circled around gang. The kept an eye on her. She stepped forward again and they moved in. The Prince stepped to the side. They followed. She continued this, carefully herding them towards the open gate. It worked until they were within a few feet of the gate. Then they seemed to catch on.
So she ran. She dived towards them and, much to her surprise, they scattered, moving away from her - and the Prince. He also turned away, but Mariel grabbed his collar and hauled him through the gate, slamming it closed behind them.
“Come on,” she said, making her way down the garden path. That was definitely new. It was nice, though; she had missed trees and such while they’d been in the rainy city. She hoped the door would still open out on this. From this angle, the house even had a nice patio and a clear view of the night sky. It wasn’t raining.
She let herself back in, allowing the Prince go up ahead of her. He walked carefully, feeling his way forward. Mariel, exhausted from the fight, had failed to notice that he was completely blind until just then.
“Sorry -” she said, opening the door for him.
He went in.
“Your Highness, this is Glory -“
“Nice to meet you,” interrupted Glory.
“Nat -“
“Hey,” said Nat, waving uselessly.
“Meep -“
“D’you have a name, er, Your Highness?” asked Meep, not unsprawling.
“Not that I remember,” said the Prince, his hands in his pockets.
“Whatever,” said Meep. “Get comfy. You live here now.”
“I - what?”
“Live here,” said Mariel. “If you’re here it means you can’t go back. Am I right?”
The Prince paused, then nodded.
“Then Meep’s right. I dunno what your story is, and honestly, I don’t care but you may as well get comfortable since you’re stuck. You’ve got a room upstairs, if we can get the door open.”
She lead him up the new staircase to the door. Meep tried to follow, but Glory held her back with a look. She turned the knob sharply and threw her shoulder against it, expecting it to resist as it had earlier. Instead, it opened with ease, making her stumble and look like an idiot.
“Uhm, your room,” she said, gesturing needlessly.
Like seemingly everything else about the Prince, his room gave the impression of uncared for finery. The sheets on the bed were silk, but they were stained and patched and torn. There was a cracked and spotted mirror on a scratched wooden dresser. The window, barred, looked out over a graveyard ringed with a wrought iron fence.
The Prince felt his way over to the bed. He touched the headboard and the pillow before turning back to Mariel. “How is this here?” he asked, full of suspicion. “How are my things here?”
“Damned if I know,” said Mariel with a shrug. “Same way my stuff and Glory’s stuff and Meep’s stuff got here, I guess.”
“What is this?” asked the Prince. “What is this place?”
“Think of it as an inn, only you’re probably staying here forever.”
“Where am I?” he asked.
“In between,” answered Mariel.
*
It didn’t take long for the Prince to adjust to living with them, nor did it take long for them to get used to the Prince living with them. He made his way downstairs the morning following his arrival to find Meep scarfing down PopTarts getting ready for going to school.
“Morning,” said Meep, downing her glass of milk.
“Good morning,” said the Prince. He didn’t come the rest of the way into the kitchen; he could smell all the iron there, sharp and metallic, and it made him feel ill.
Meep squished past him, the white kitten at her heels. “Scuze,” she said, stuffing the rest of her PopTart into her mouth. She made her way back down the hallway, pulling her curly hair into a sloppy ponytail and sticking the rest up with a great number of bobby pins when she got to the bathroom.
She brushed her teeth, the kitten winding it’s way between her feet.
“Shoo, Rahla,” she said, nudging the kitten away. “I have school, you little furball.”
She spit, splashed some water on her face and headed out the door, picking up her backpack as she left. “Bye,” she shouted. “See you later. I’m gonna hang out with Basil after school, so I won’t be back ‘til late.”
The door slammed behind her.
The Prince, unsure what to do with himself in a stranger’s house, went quietly back up to his room, followed by the kitten. The Prince nearly fell over her, but managed to right himself in time. He picked up the kitten, who immediately dug her prickly little claws into his hands.
“Stop that,” he said, scratching behind her ears. She stopped. “Good kitty.”
He didn’t go back downstairs until later, when he heard someone moving around.
To his surprise, it was Mariel coming back in through the front door. She still smelled of cigarette smoke.
“Hello?”
“Oh, you’re alive,” she said by way of greeting. “How long have you been awake?”
“Earlier,” he said with a shrug. “The other girl was getting ready for school.”
“Meep,” suggested Mariel. “Good thing she went. I didn’t want to have to haul her ass out of bed again.” She threw the paper onto the coffee table. “You eaten yet?”
“No,” said the Prince.
“Well, don’t wait for me,” she said. “Help yourself to whatever you want. You can eat whatever you can find - right,” she said when the Prince gestured to his eyes. “What do you eat?” she asked.
“Bread and honey,” he said.
“That’s it?” asked Mariel, already pulling the bread out of the bread box. “Since when do we have a bread box?” she muttered as she went through the cabinet looking for honey.
The Prince hadn’t followed her into the kitchen.
“There a reason you’re hanging around out there?” she asked, putting the honey down on the counter next to the bread.
“It reeks of iron,” he said.
Mariel nodded. She had been doing some research on her new housemate last night. She had been right about his and his attacker’s reluctance to get too near the wrought iron fence. He couldn’t touch it, it would burn his skin. She was a little surprised that he could smell it, though.
“Well, I guess we can keep this in the dining room or something,” she said, taking it and placing it the small shelf on the wall that ran the perimeter of the room at about chest height. Handy. Mariel was pretty sure that this was not a coincidence.
“What do you drink?”
“Wine,” he said.
“Not here you don’t,” she said, and he was a little taken aback by her tone, “house rules.”
“Milk, then,” he said.
“Well, we can’t really keep that out here,” said Mariel. She went back into the kitchen and poured him a glass. “Here,” she said. “How’s that for now?”
He took the glass from her and took a sip. He was hungrier than he had realized.
“Just honey on bread?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” he said, feeling for the table to set down the glass she’d given him. “Mariel, right?”
“You got it,” she said, drizzling honey onto the bread. “Your Highness. You sure you don’t have a name?”
“I did once, probably. I don’t remember it, though.”
“Well, don’t expect any bowing from me,” she said, handing the Prince his breakfast “and don’t be so formal. You live here now. Dunno if I can take please and thank you for the rest of my life.”
The Prince blinked at her and was glad his mouth was full so he didn’t have to respond. He swallowed and said “uhm, all right.”
“Good,” said Mariel.
There was silence for a few minutes.
“This is weird,” said Mariel. “You live here now. Nice to meet you. My name isn’t Mariel but you should call me that anyway.”
“The Prince of Ælphame,” said the Prince. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mariel.”
“Good,” she said. “Introductions made. I’m gonna go read the paper, feel free to do whatever. You live here, after all.”
The Prince returned to his room, unsure where else to go or what else to do, as Mariel settled herself on the couch with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. He soon learned that this was routine; she disappeared to God only knew where before dawn and came back later with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. Invariably, on Sundays, she brought back doughnuts as well.
It also didn’t take him long to realize that this was about the extent of Mariel’s housekeeping. She didn’t cook at all, except the occasional pot of tea, and she didn’t dust or clean. Helping him with breakfast that morning had been an exception, not the rule.
The Prince hung about in his room with the kitten, who seemed to have taken a liking to him, until later that day. He had fallen asleep again, still exhausted from weeks on the run, when a commotion downstairs woke him.
“Ow, sonofabitch!” yelped someone - he guessed it was Glory. “Ah, damnit, forgot about this.”
“Watch out for the divider,” Mariel shouted helpfully down the hallway, several moments too late.
“Thanks a lot, Mariel!”
“Yup, no problem.” Mariel did not seem particularly concerned.
At first, these shouted conversations, constant swearing and apparent disregard for each other had thrown the Prince off, making him uncomfortable to be in what he slowly accepted was going to be his new home. However, he found to his surprise that he got used to the near constant noise. He was even more take aback when, later, he found himself joining in these conversations, shouting down the hall to one or the other of his fellow housemates.
He made his way carefully down the stairs that day, holding the kitten in one hand so she wouldn’t trip him on the way.
“Oh, good morning Your Highness,” said Glory. He was surprised for a moment before he finally remembered everything that had happened yesterday. The house completely rearranging itself and the Prince showing up at their new garden gate.
He kind-of wished that he’d thought of this before wandering out of his bedroom with his hair sticking up in the back and wearing only his jeans. He was glad that the Prince couldn’t see all that.
“Good morning,” said the Prince. The residents of the in between had plenty of capacity for being cordial when they weren’t dealing with their housemates. Once they warmed up to him - and he to them - they adopted their usual antics and horsed around and shouted with him. It was just how the in between worked.
Despite their shouting and apparent disregard for each other, the Prince also found that they were fiercely defensive of their fellow residents, especially Mariel. She disappeared for up to a week sometimes with her sword and reappeared exhausted. During these times, Glory took over running the house and cared for her upon her return. Even the effervescent and ineffable Meep worried then.
Of course, he knew none of this then. He was taken aback by them, quite unlike anything he’d ever known. All he knew then was that he was going to have to get used to them.
Nat followed Glory out of his room, careful to step over the divide. “Morning, Glory,” he said, nuzzling Glory’s neck a little. “Oh, morning, Highness.”
“Good morning,” said the Prince, though he was fairly sure it was past noon.
His response was drowned out by another shout from Mariel of “you two have rooms room! Use them!”
To which Nat responded “you’re just jealous ‘cause you aren’t getting any. How’s what’s-his-face? Uriel?”
“Flaming,” retorted Mariel. “You’d like him.”
“Sure I would, dear, sure I would.”
Mariel didn’t dignify this with a response and instead turned back to her paper. She read the whole thing through every day. She was looking for something, though only she and possibly Glory knew what. That (and her coffee) done, she disappeared into her study and they didn’t see her again for hours.
Today she’d hung around in the living room as a courtesy for the Prince, but she didn’t seem to know how to be a good hostess. He was the first stranger to come into her house and she didn’t really know what to do to make him comfortable.
Meep returned home that evening.
“Where were you?” asked Mariel before Meep was fully through the front door.
“School,” said Meep, dumping her bag on the welcome mat. “Then I went and hung out with Basil. I told you.”
“She did,” said the Prince and, suddenly overtaken with the rowdy camaraderie of the residents of the in between, added “I was surprised the whole neighborhood didn’t hear.”
“I wasn’t in the neighborhood,” Mariel retorted. “Whatever, just get your work done.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Meep, waving her off. She headed into the kitchen. There was a squeak, a clatter, the sound of the microwave and a beep. She returned to the living room, where the Prince had perched on what she had decided was her rocking chair, with PopTarts.
“Is that all you eat?” asked the Prince, who recognized the almost noxiously sweet smell.
“Pretty much, yup,” said Meep with a grin. She flopped onto the couch beside Mariel.
*
verse: inn between
rating: K
notes: this is something I wrote a year ago today, the first of many parts (currently nearly 50 documents worth of scenes that take place in the present timeline, not counting backstories); please note that this is not edited
The Inn Between
“Mariel,” yelled Meep, “Mariel, where the hell did my PopTarts go?”
“They’re wherever you left them,” Mariel shouted back down the hall without looking up from her notes. “They didn’t go anywhere.”
“They did so,” Meep shouted. “Where the hell are they?” She slammed a cabinet closed in frustration.
Meep was normally pleasant enough, except when she was hungry.
“How’m I supposed to know?” Mariel shuffled her note cards again and rearranged them like a Tarot spread, hoping to glean some new information from her collection of facts.
“It’s your stupid house,” whined Meep, stomping down the hall towards Mariel’s study. “It’s rearranged it’s stupid self.”
“Did it?” Mariel asked, finally looking away from her carefully arranged index cards.
“Yes,” muttered Meep, idly flipping through the stack of unsorted cards. “The whole thing is all weird. I can’t find anything,” she added. Her little white kitten scampered up the leg of her jeans. She scooped him up and set him on her shoulder.
“Huh,” said Mariel, gathering the cards again. She took the stack from Meep and bound them together with a rubber band. “Let’s go see the damage.”
Meep wasn’t lying. The house was completely different. Even the paint had changed. Mariel made her way down the hall, opening and closing doors. Her rooms were the same, as were Meep’s and Glory’s, but they were arranged differently. Mariel’s bedroom and study were now across from each other, and Glory’s was at the end of the hall. Meep’s was next to the bathroom, which looked nothing like it had earlier. Mariel noted that the bathtub now had claw feet. The kitchen, living and dining rooms had changed as well.
The kitchen, green when they’d gone to bed last night, was now a sunny yellow with white cabinets and a bar in the middle with white wicker stools. Mariel peered out the window; it still looked out on their front garden, full of daisies and just a yard or so back from the street.
“Well,” said Mariel, standing between the kitchen and the dining room, which was now outfitted with a glass display case that most certainly had not been there yesterday, “I never liked the green much, anyway.”
“It’s fuckin’ weird,” Meep said.
“It’s done this before,” Mariel replied. She opened the cabinet nearest the refrigerator. Meep’s favorite PopTarts were right there in the front. “Here,” she tossed them to Meep. “The plates are next to the sink and the silverware’s in the drawer beneath it.”
“How d’you know?” asked Meep, opening the package.
“It is my house,” said Mariel.
The house had done this once before in her memory; when Meep moved in, when her room had just appeared one morning, next to the bathroom. The windows looked out on her yard from where she’d come from. There was a wooden swing set and stream that Mariel was certain did not exist in the rainy city.
Now, to Mariel’s surprise, there was a carpeted staircase leading to a hitherto nonexistent upper level.
There was dark wood paneling along the walls, and ludicrously ornate plaster embellishments along the ceiling. Like the rest of the house, it looked nothing like the rest of the house. There was only one door, which Mariel opened carefully. The house rearranging could only mean one thing: a new occupant would be coming soon. Mariel hoped their room would give some clues about their guest.
The door fit the décor of the rest of the new level; white and ornate. Even the iron door handle had been painted over in white, partially obscuring the detailing. It gave the impression of neglected grandeur.
It was also locked.
Mariel frowned and jiggled the door handle, but it didn’t budge. She tried again with more force to no avail. She’d never been unable to enter a room in her own house; even Glory’s door had given in eventually. That did not seem to be the case now.
She made her way back downstairs, occasionally glancing up as though she expected the door to open and someone simply walk out as though they had always lived there. That’s how Meep had arrived.
That was how she and Glory had arrived. It would not have been at all a surprise if someone simply showed up.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. Mariel flipped her cell phone open, but not seeing what she wanted, closed it with a snap and put it back in her pocket.
“I’ll be in the study,” she said to Meep, who was happily finishing her breakfast. “Don’t go upstairs and let me know if anything … weird happens.”
“Uh, okay,” said Meep, who finished her PopTarts and, without even bothering to put her dishes in the sink, immediately snuck up the staircase, followed by the kitten. Sneaking up wasn’t hard, due to the plush carpeting.
Meep, too, found that the door was jammed shut and refused to open - even when she jammed her bobby pin into the lock.
“Goddamnit,” she muttered, looking down the hall. It was the only door. The room behind it must have been giant.
Thwarted, she went back down the stairs. Glory was letting himself in the front door, shaking rain out of his long hair.
“It’s raining?” Meep asked, by way of saying hello. It wasn’t raining out her bedroom windows.
“We have a staircase?” he responded. He stepped carefully out of his shoes and left them on the welcome mat neatly next to Mariel’s boots and Meep’s worn out Converse, which had not been placed so carefully.
“Yup,” said Meep with a shrug. Not being able to explore much of the new addition, she had quickly lost interest in it. “Everything else is all weird, too.”
“I see,” said Glory, looking through the dining room into the kitchen.
“Your room’s fine, though,” Meep informed him. “So’s mine’n’Mariel’s. Bathroom’s different, though,” she said, following him through the house. “We’ve got one of those cool bathtubs.”
“Do we?” he asked, not really paying attention to her. He knocked on Mariel’s study door.
“Yeah?” Mariel sounded distracted and, Meep wasn’t sure about this, maybe a little guilty.
“Mariel?”
“Er, one second -” there was a rustling of papers and the sound of a drawer opening and closing. “Come in.”
Glory opened the door. The study stank of cigarette smoke. Mariel looked around guiltily. Glory rolled his eyes.
“It’s my house,” said Mariel.
Glory sighed. “What happened to the house?”
“We’ve got a guest coming,” said Mariel. What happened to the house was obvious and so she preemptively answered the next question, which she guessed, correctly, was “why?”
Glory seemed to accept this. It was part of the contract on the house that they let any stay there who asked for residence.
Mariel spent the next few hours checking her cell phone compulsively. It would ring when the time came, but she couldn’t help herself. She kept it in her pants pocket during dinner.
“What’s got you so wound up?” asked Glory, genuinely concerned.
“The guest. When Meep showed up she just showed up.”
“Now Mariel,” said Meep, all faux childish whininess, “if you’re worried about the mess, whoever it is probably doesn’t care.”
“If there’s a mess, it’s your fault. Clean it up,” snapped Mariel. “No, I just want to know who it is and why they aren’t here yet. I really don’t like letting someone I don’t know into my house, thanks.”
“it’s part of the contract,” Glory reminded her. He didn’t have to say “there’s nothing you can do about it,” so he didn’t.
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Mariel shrugged.
Dinner passed like this; Mariel anxious, Meep uppity, and Glory’s patience tried by both of them. Mariel had just settled down in the living room on the new couch with a coffee when three things happened at once.
Nat came in, saying “there’s someone at the gate,” Meep looked out the living room window, saying “hey Mariel, there’s someone outside” and Mariel’s phone rang. She flipped it open; there was a message informing her that the guest had arrived.
“Sonuvabitch,” said Mariel, setting her coffee down on the coffee table.
“Nice furniture,” said Nat, taking Mariel’s seat beside Glory. “New?”
“So is everything else,” Glory said with a shrug.
“You live in a mad house,” said Nat.
“You have no idea,” sighed Glory.
They saw the hem of Mariel’s white cloak flap around the frame and the door slam shut behind her. She had taken her rapier.
“She expecting trouble?” asked Nat.
“Better safe than sorry,” Glory shrugged.
“I wonder who it is,” said Meep, flopped over the new rocking chair, chewing a piece of toffee from the dish on the table. She’d never had a coffee table, but she thought she could get used to it if there was always candy there.
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Outside, Mariel had found the guest. He matched the limited description her cell phone message had given her; white hair, white eyes, weird hands. He was shabby and patchy; his clothing, like the new door, had been nice once but they’d fallen into disrepair.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone. He was surrounded by assailants, none of whom seemed to want to get too close. He stepped back towards the wrought iron fence Mariel hadn’t known they’d had, but he didn’t want to back up against it. His attacker’s didn’t seem to want to, either.
Well, that explained why the door handle was painted over. It also made Mariel’s weapon a lot less effective than it might have been. This might actually have to come to bloodshed, which probably wouldn’t have been the case if it was iron.
“Hey, all of you,” shouted Mariel. “Get the hell off of my property.”
That at least got their attention.
“You heard me,” she said. “Go on.”
They didn’t move. The one nearest her was holding a curved scimitar. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t deal with on it’s own, but there were seven of them and one of her. She’d probably win, but she didn’t want to find out. It would be a hassle, anyway.
She opened the gate and let herself out. They shouldn’t be able to get through the other barriers, and even if they did, Glory wouldn’t let them into the house.
“Your Highness?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the others. She hadn’t been given a name, just a title - the Prince of Ælphame.
“Yes -” he said, taking another half-step back. He didn’t want to get any closer to the fence, but he also had to avoid the scimitars.
“Nice to meet you,” she said cordially. She stepped closer, causing the others to draw in closer to the Prince.
He didn’t say anything.
She circled around gang. The kept an eye on her. She stepped forward again and they moved in. The Prince stepped to the side. They followed. She continued this, carefully herding them towards the open gate. It worked until they were within a few feet of the gate. Then they seemed to catch on.
So she ran. She dived towards them and, much to her surprise, they scattered, moving away from her - and the Prince. He also turned away, but Mariel grabbed his collar and hauled him through the gate, slamming it closed behind them.
“Come on,” she said, making her way down the garden path. That was definitely new. It was nice, though; she had missed trees and such while they’d been in the rainy city. She hoped the door would still open out on this. From this angle, the house even had a nice patio and a clear view of the night sky. It wasn’t raining.
She let herself back in, allowing the Prince go up ahead of her. He walked carefully, feeling his way forward. Mariel, exhausted from the fight, had failed to notice that he was completely blind until just then.
“Sorry -” she said, opening the door for him.
He went in.
“Your Highness, this is Glory -“
“Nice to meet you,” interrupted Glory.
“Nat -“
“Hey,” said Nat, waving uselessly.
“Meep -“
“D’you have a name, er, Your Highness?” asked Meep, not unsprawling.
“Not that I remember,” said the Prince, his hands in his pockets.
“Whatever,” said Meep. “Get comfy. You live here now.”
“I - what?”
“Live here,” said Mariel. “If you’re here it means you can’t go back. Am I right?”
The Prince paused, then nodded.
“Then Meep’s right. I dunno what your story is, and honestly, I don’t care but you may as well get comfortable since you’re stuck. You’ve got a room upstairs, if we can get the door open.”
She lead him up the new staircase to the door. Meep tried to follow, but Glory held her back with a look. She turned the knob sharply and threw her shoulder against it, expecting it to resist as it had earlier. Instead, it opened with ease, making her stumble and look like an idiot.
“Uhm, your room,” she said, gesturing needlessly.
Like seemingly everything else about the Prince, his room gave the impression of uncared for finery. The sheets on the bed were silk, but they were stained and patched and torn. There was a cracked and spotted mirror on a scratched wooden dresser. The window, barred, looked out over a graveyard ringed with a wrought iron fence.
The Prince felt his way over to the bed. He touched the headboard and the pillow before turning back to Mariel. “How is this here?” he asked, full of suspicion. “How are my things here?”
“Damned if I know,” said Mariel with a shrug. “Same way my stuff and Glory’s stuff and Meep’s stuff got here, I guess.”
“What is this?” asked the Prince. “What is this place?”
“Think of it as an inn, only you’re probably staying here forever.”
“Where am I?” he asked.
“In between,” answered Mariel.
*
It didn’t take long for the Prince to adjust to living with them, nor did it take long for them to get used to the Prince living with them. He made his way downstairs the morning following his arrival to find Meep scarfing down PopTarts getting ready for going to school.
“Morning,” said Meep, downing her glass of milk.
“Good morning,” said the Prince. He didn’t come the rest of the way into the kitchen; he could smell all the iron there, sharp and metallic, and it made him feel ill.
Meep squished past him, the white kitten at her heels. “Scuze,” she said, stuffing the rest of her PopTart into her mouth. She made her way back down the hallway, pulling her curly hair into a sloppy ponytail and sticking the rest up with a great number of bobby pins when she got to the bathroom.
She brushed her teeth, the kitten winding it’s way between her feet.
“Shoo, Rahla,” she said, nudging the kitten away. “I have school, you little furball.”
She spit, splashed some water on her face and headed out the door, picking up her backpack as she left. “Bye,” she shouted. “See you later. I’m gonna hang out with Basil after school, so I won’t be back ‘til late.”
The door slammed behind her.
The Prince, unsure what to do with himself in a stranger’s house, went quietly back up to his room, followed by the kitten. The Prince nearly fell over her, but managed to right himself in time. He picked up the kitten, who immediately dug her prickly little claws into his hands.
“Stop that,” he said, scratching behind her ears. She stopped. “Good kitty.”
He didn’t go back downstairs until later, when he heard someone moving around.
To his surprise, it was Mariel coming back in through the front door. She still smelled of cigarette smoke.
“Hello?”
“Oh, you’re alive,” she said by way of greeting. “How long have you been awake?”
“Earlier,” he said with a shrug. “The other girl was getting ready for school.”
“Meep,” suggested Mariel. “Good thing she went. I didn’t want to have to haul her ass out of bed again.” She threw the paper onto the coffee table. “You eaten yet?”
“No,” said the Prince.
“Well, don’t wait for me,” she said. “Help yourself to whatever you want. You can eat whatever you can find - right,” she said when the Prince gestured to his eyes. “What do you eat?” she asked.
“Bread and honey,” he said.
“That’s it?” asked Mariel, already pulling the bread out of the bread box. “Since when do we have a bread box?” she muttered as she went through the cabinet looking for honey.
The Prince hadn’t followed her into the kitchen.
“There a reason you’re hanging around out there?” she asked, putting the honey down on the counter next to the bread.
“It reeks of iron,” he said.
Mariel nodded. She had been doing some research on her new housemate last night. She had been right about his and his attacker’s reluctance to get too near the wrought iron fence. He couldn’t touch it, it would burn his skin. She was a little surprised that he could smell it, though.
“Well, I guess we can keep this in the dining room or something,” she said, taking it and placing it the small shelf on the wall that ran the perimeter of the room at about chest height. Handy. Mariel was pretty sure that this was not a coincidence.
“What do you drink?”
“Wine,” he said.
“Not here you don’t,” she said, and he was a little taken aback by her tone, “house rules.”
“Milk, then,” he said.
“Well, we can’t really keep that out here,” said Mariel. She went back into the kitchen and poured him a glass. “Here,” she said. “How’s that for now?”
He took the glass from her and took a sip. He was hungrier than he had realized.
“Just honey on bread?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” he said, feeling for the table to set down the glass she’d given him. “Mariel, right?”
“You got it,” she said, drizzling honey onto the bread. “Your Highness. You sure you don’t have a name?”
“I did once, probably. I don’t remember it, though.”
“Well, don’t expect any bowing from me,” she said, handing the Prince his breakfast “and don’t be so formal. You live here now. Dunno if I can take please and thank you for the rest of my life.”
The Prince blinked at her and was glad his mouth was full so he didn’t have to respond. He swallowed and said “uhm, all right.”
“Good,” said Mariel.
There was silence for a few minutes.
“This is weird,” said Mariel. “You live here now. Nice to meet you. My name isn’t Mariel but you should call me that anyway.”
“The Prince of Ælphame,” said the Prince. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mariel.”
“Good,” she said. “Introductions made. I’m gonna go read the paper, feel free to do whatever. You live here, after all.”
The Prince returned to his room, unsure where else to go or what else to do, as Mariel settled herself on the couch with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. He soon learned that this was routine; she disappeared to God only knew where before dawn and came back later with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. Invariably, on Sundays, she brought back doughnuts as well.
It also didn’t take him long to realize that this was about the extent of Mariel’s housekeeping. She didn’t cook at all, except the occasional pot of tea, and she didn’t dust or clean. Helping him with breakfast that morning had been an exception, not the rule.
The Prince hung about in his room with the kitten, who seemed to have taken a liking to him, until later that day. He had fallen asleep again, still exhausted from weeks on the run, when a commotion downstairs woke him.
“Ow, sonofabitch!” yelped someone - he guessed it was Glory. “Ah, damnit, forgot about this.”
“Watch out for the divider,” Mariel shouted helpfully down the hallway, several moments too late.
“Thanks a lot, Mariel!”
“Yup, no problem.” Mariel did not seem particularly concerned.
At first, these shouted conversations, constant swearing and apparent disregard for each other had thrown the Prince off, making him uncomfortable to be in what he slowly accepted was going to be his new home. However, he found to his surprise that he got used to the near constant noise. He was even more take aback when, later, he found himself joining in these conversations, shouting down the hall to one or the other of his fellow housemates.
He made his way carefully down the stairs that day, holding the kitten in one hand so she wouldn’t trip him on the way.
“Oh, good morning Your Highness,” said Glory. He was surprised for a moment before he finally remembered everything that had happened yesterday. The house completely rearranging itself and the Prince showing up at their new garden gate.
He kind-of wished that he’d thought of this before wandering out of his bedroom with his hair sticking up in the back and wearing only his jeans. He was glad that the Prince couldn’t see all that.
“Good morning,” said the Prince. The residents of the in between had plenty of capacity for being cordial when they weren’t dealing with their housemates. Once they warmed up to him - and he to them - they adopted their usual antics and horsed around and shouted with him. It was just how the in between worked.
Despite their shouting and apparent disregard for each other, the Prince also found that they were fiercely defensive of their fellow residents, especially Mariel. She disappeared for up to a week sometimes with her sword and reappeared exhausted. During these times, Glory took over running the house and cared for her upon her return. Even the effervescent and ineffable Meep worried then.
Of course, he knew none of this then. He was taken aback by them, quite unlike anything he’d ever known. All he knew then was that he was going to have to get used to them.
Nat followed Glory out of his room, careful to step over the divide. “Morning, Glory,” he said, nuzzling Glory’s neck a little. “Oh, morning, Highness.”
“Good morning,” said the Prince, though he was fairly sure it was past noon.
His response was drowned out by another shout from Mariel of “you two have rooms room! Use them!”
To which Nat responded “you’re just jealous ‘cause you aren’t getting any. How’s what’s-his-face? Uriel?”
“Flaming,” retorted Mariel. “You’d like him.”
“Sure I would, dear, sure I would.”
Mariel didn’t dignify this with a response and instead turned back to her paper. She read the whole thing through every day. She was looking for something, though only she and possibly Glory knew what. That (and her coffee) done, she disappeared into her study and they didn’t see her again for hours.
Today she’d hung around in the living room as a courtesy for the Prince, but she didn’t seem to know how to be a good hostess. He was the first stranger to come into her house and she didn’t really know what to do to make him comfortable.
Meep returned home that evening.
“Where were you?” asked Mariel before Meep was fully through the front door.
“School,” said Meep, dumping her bag on the welcome mat. “Then I went and hung out with Basil. I told you.”
“She did,” said the Prince and, suddenly overtaken with the rowdy camaraderie of the residents of the in between, added “I was surprised the whole neighborhood didn’t hear.”
“I wasn’t in the neighborhood,” Mariel retorted. “Whatever, just get your work done.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Meep, waving her off. She headed into the kitchen. There was a squeak, a clatter, the sound of the microwave and a beep. She returned to the living room, where the Prince had perched on what she had decided was her rocking chair, with PopTarts.
“Is that all you eat?” asked the Prince, who recognized the almost noxiously sweet smell.
“Pretty much, yup,” said Meep with a grin. She flopped onto the couch beside Mariel.
*
