Unwritten
Sigyn returned home after a long day of work, still grinning from her recent fight with the youngest prince. Her mother was already sitting on the couch in their sitting room, staring at two sheets of paper and a small bag Sigyn knew to be filled with coins. Her brow was furrowed and she seemed unhappy. She always seemed unhappy.
Sigyn paused just inside their home, half turned towards her bedroom, “Is everything alright? Mother?”
Her mother looked up, “Yes Sigyn, everything is fine.” she sighed, glancing back down at the papers. “Sigyn, do you ever look at us and the other ladies in waiting and wonder why we have less?”
Sigyn felt a small amount of shame as she nodded. She had wondered that. Asny and Fulla had beautiful dresses and powdered faces. They wore jewels and precious metals. They received the same salary she and her mother did, and yet they had more. Of course she wondered about it, but she had never brought it up. It felt like something you didn’t talk about. Like her mother’s painting and storytelling. Like her father.
Her mother patted the cushions beside her and Sigyn made her way over to sit, “We receive payment for our work,” she dropped the bag in Sigyn’s lap and the coins inside clicked together, “We pay some of it back for our room and board. Anything we don’t pay off gets added to our tab of debt. The other women take out loans from the palace to buy things like dresses and jewels and that too gets added to the sum of money they must pay back. We cannot leave or quit our employment until our debts have been paid. We have less because I want to be free. I am selfish. I deprive you of nice things so that one day I may leave this accursed court.”
“You’re not selfish,” Sigyn told her.
Her mother smiled and cupped her cheek, “You will be grown and gone by the time I have paid off everything I owe. The queen took us in after… after an accident. She provided me with the resources I needed to heal. I am grateful to her for that, but these services I must also pay for. I started this job already in debt, and I will remain in debt for centuries to come. That bag is yours. You earned that. I want more for you than what I have. I want you to be something. Don’t stay here. You are free, Sigyn. You are making money. Your story is still unwritten, your ending has not been sealed. Mine is over. Make something of yours.” Her mother smiled sadly and dropped her hand.
Sigyn recognized the dismissal and stood. Her mother went back to her papers. Sigyn realized it was something like a budget. Expenses listed in one column, their cost in another, and the amount left to pay in a third. She looked away. She wished to drop her money in her mother’s lap, but she knew her mother would refuse. She would get angry. So Sigyn kept it and took it back to her room where she emptied the contents into her savings jar. Then she slid underneath her bed and stared up at the faded paintings from a happier time.
She had never thought she could ever be something more than a lady in waiting, it had never even occurred to her to hope for more. What would she be if she became something else? Would she have to move out of the palace? Where would she go? She had never considered her future or what it might look like. What did she want? If she could be anyone, do anything, what would she want? She wanted to be more than a servant. She remembered those daydreams: wanting to be something more. That’s all they had been though, a certainty of wanting more. She had no idea how she would get it. Did she want to leave? Her pages were blank and now she was being pushed to fill them.
She rolled out from under her bed and grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen. She set it to the paper and began to write. She wrote to Idunn. She told her everything about wanting more, but not being sure what more was. She asked for suggestions and thoughts. She asked what Idunn wanted, if she had ever dreamed about being something other than a noblewoman. What did she want? Was it weird that Sigyn didn’t want to leave the palace? Her whole life was within these walls. How exactly was she supposed to leave them?
She folded up the note and slipped it into an envelope. She grabbed a few coins from her jar and slipped back out the front door, leaving her mother frowning on the couch. The palace had its own postal service, but there was another post office in the city. If she left the palace that’s where she would live, right? That’s where she headed now. Might as well get used to it. She would be more and she would use the city post office.
Leaving the palace grounds felt like stepping off the end of the earth. It was new and startling and Sigyn didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. The sounds and colors of the city hit her full force and she blinked rapidly to take it all in. Everything was moving and shouting. She remembered going to get dresses with her mother. It was very much the same experience. She nervously stayed out of the roads where carriages- mechanical and horse drawn- raced past. Street vendors promoted their wares at the top of their lungs and waved products in the faces of passing pedestrians. The smells of eateries hit her nose, as well as the less pleasant smells of everything else that wound up in the streets. She was jostled through crowds, people shoved past her and knocked her back and forth on the busy sidewalks. A woman’s elbow sent her spinning. She wobbled, unable to regain her balance, certain she was about to hit the dirty cobblestone.
A hand on her arm steadied her and Sigyn looked up, honestly expecting to see Loki.
A man with charmingly messy dark hair smiled down at her, “It’s busy this time of day,” he said. His smile was crooked and lazy and Sigyn thought she might like it.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Where are you trying to get?”
“The post office,” she answered, looking at him curiously. She supposed this was what a normal person looked like, neither a servant or a lord. He looked the same. His hair was long and dark, not quite as long as Loki’s though. He was taller than her and shorter than Loki. she could see muscles defined under the sleeves of his shirt. The lines of his face were sharp and strong, clearly masculine. His clothes were well made and tailored to his body, but there were no other obvious signs of wealth. So maybe upper middle class. Still above her, considering she was a servant.
“Let me escort you.” He offered an elbow as though she was some high lady and bowed.
Sigyn giggled as she accepted, “You have my gratitude. May I be blessed with the knowledge of your name, kind sir?”
“I am no sir, don’t assign me such noble titles. You may call me Theo. May I be blessed with yours?”
“My name is Sigyn. I am honored to have such a noble man assist me in my quest.” She smiled.
“A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.” He winked at her in a display that sent pink into her cheeks. “Let us be off.”
Sigyn slipped back into her rooms late that night, a small smile on her mouth and her mind on the adventure she’d had. She held a small glass bowl in her hands, a gift from Theo. Her mother was still sitting on the couch and looked up sharply as she walked in, as though she had been waiting for her. Her blue eyes narrowed and pinpointed on her face and rosy cheeks. They were burning with a small, livid fire.
“Where have you been?”
Sigyn’s smile dropped at the fury on her mother’s face and her body tensed, anticipating a beating, “The city,” she answered hesitantly, the bowl moving to hide in her skirts.
Her mother rose from the couch and began turning her, inspecting her daughter for damage as though she were a candidate from the fruit basket at the market.“This late at night? What were you doing out there? You could have gotten hurt! You’re a pretty girl, Sigyn, you can’t go out alone after dark!”
“I wasn’t alone,” Sigyn said, but she said it quietly, something told her her mother wouldn’t take kindly to a boy. Even if he was nice, “I met a boy,” she half whispered.
Sure enough her mother’s hand struck out and left a stinging mark on Sigyn’s pale cheek. Once red and flushed from excitement and pleasure, now it was pink for another reason. She staggered backward from the force and her fear. She glared through tearing eyes.
The only sign of regret evident was in the way her mother curled her offending hand into a fist at her side. She snarled, “When I said make something of your life I didn’t mean find a boy. A boy will take your life away from you. All of your hard work will mean nothing!”
“Then maybe I’ll find a girl!” Sigyn retorted, anger roiling and burning at the unfairness of it all. Did one boy negate everything else she had done that night?
Her mother froze, eyes flashing, “You know how I feel about those types of relationships. There is no future for you in something like that . No daughter of mine will have anything to do with it. Go to bed, Sigyn. I do not want to hear about this boy.”
“Yes mother,” she bit out. She turned on her heel, face hot and eyes wet, and retreated to her room. She placed the precious bowl carefully on her bookshelf. Her chest and throat ached with her refusal to cry and felt empty in the knowledge that Ljot would never love her. Not once she found out that her daughter most certainly was a part of ‘that.’ No boys and no girls. Was she expected to be alone forever?
But it had been a truly wonderful night, and her mother would not take that away from her. Besides, Sigyn did not think of Theo as her future. She would be lucky to ever see him again. He was kind and funny. She kept seeing the way his dark hair moved and fell perfectly into place when he threw his head back laughing. His eyes would shine and his whole face light up, and then he’d shoot her that lazy grin of his that made Sigyn’s insides flutter. He had held her hand walking her back to the palace and kissed her knuckles when they parted with a murmured “My lady.” The memory conjured a smile in spite of her unshed tears and newly pink face.
After the post office they had awkwardly gotten dinner, and then he had insisted on walking her home. She had wanted to stop in an art gallery on the way. She had stared at the paintings, imagining her mother’s being displayed beside them, and then as they left he had slipped the small ceramic bowl into her hands. She hoped they’d meet again. He knew where to find her. She had never thought to hope for anything before, now she hoped for this. He wasn’t her future, but she hoped maybe he could be her present.