My neck ached when I woke up. It was light outside, and I got the feeling that I was skipping out on work. I leaned forward with a groan, rubbing my eye with the heel of my hand and massaging my poor neck with the other.
“Does your neck hurt?” Ciel asked. I jumped, looking down at the disheveled hair of the Earl.
“Yes,” I muttered, yawning.
“Baka,” he said, rapping my forehead with his knuckles, “you shouldn’t have slept sitting up, then.”
“I couldn’t exactly lay down with you not letting go of my waist.” He gave me a dirty look, then scrambled out of bed.
“What shall I wear today?” he asked no one in particular, throwing open the doors of his wardrobe. It was much bigger than mine, though I’m not complaining - I didn’t think I’d ever be able to afford the amount of clothes needed to fill the space.
“How about that red one?” I asked, pointing at a crimson waist coat. He looked from one red object to the next, so I sighed and stood up, reaching for the one I meant. He froze when my hand reached it, but I ignored him. I grabbed his hand and pulled it up, hanging the coat over his arm. “Next should be, um…” I murmured, tapping my fingers on my cheek. I snatched a black vest and a white button-up shirt. I threw those on his head, and picked up some black shorts, socks, and tossed them on his arm, too. I grabbed a newly-polished pair of shoes like the ones he’d worn yesterday and hung them by the heels on his fingers. I brought out a red and black striped ribbon and draped it on top of the vest and shirt on his head, then finished off the look with a skull pin and a top-hat with a red bow on it.
“There!” I cried proudly, spinning him around.
“Gwenivere,” Ciel growled, holding up a fist.
“Oh, I guess I have to dress you in it to see if it looks good.” I took the hat and sat it on my own head, put the ribbon around my shoulders, draped the rest of the clothes on my arm and tossed the shoes down in front of me on the carpet.
I dressed him quickly and stepped back, admiring my work. He looked like he had yesterday, which I took to be good news, and the clothes were well matched. I smiled to myself.
“Gwen, is this how you act in the mornings?”
“Yep!” I chirped, looking around the room. I tossed yesterday’s clothes into the laundry basket, as well as his pajamas.
“Hmph. Remind me to avoid you until noon in the future,” he mumbled, tipped his hat over his eyes.
“The young master actually takes a bath before getting dressed for the day,” a new voice informed me. I turned to the intruder, putting myself between them and Ciel, and stood ready to pounce, tensing my hands at my sides menacingly. Sebastian chuckled at my reaction, and I immediately felt quite stupid. I stepped to the side and put my arms behind my back, clasping my still shaking hands together.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Ciel snapped. He was glaring at Sebastian, who looked back at him like he’d said nothing out of the ordinary. “Get the bath ready, and I’ll be there soon enough.”
“Yes, my lord,” Sebastian replied, bowing low. “Might I ask what you’d like the wear today?”
“This,” Ciel said stubbornly. “Gwen, change into a clean uniform and collect the laundry. Maylene will join you to clean it.”
“Yes, sir,” I muttered, curtsying.
“You’ll meet me in the drawing room when you’ve finished. I trust you have a good enough memory to remember the alphabet today.” He glared at me to drive the point home.
“Yes, sir,” I replied mechanically.
“Punctuation?”
“Gazoontight,” I said.
“No, Gwen, punctuation. You’ll learn that, too. Then we’ll move onto reading and writing. You should be able to finish that today.”
“Sir, I don’t think I’ll be able to. I don’t even know what the alphabet is.”
“Well, let’s hope you learn quickly. Sebastian will help me.” He then turned on his heel and left the room. I cursed my fate. Why does it seem like I keep ending up around Sebastian? I thought to myself, feeling resentful. But I had to think about the brighter side: I was finally going to learn how to read.
Gathering up the clothes from every bedroom, I carried the hampers one by one into the washing room, where Maylene was lugging steaming buckets from outside into the room and dumping their contents into tubs. One of the tubs was overflowing with bubbles.
“Separate the colors, please. Blacks and reds, whites, light colors and dark colors.”
“’Kay,” I chirped, following instructions. When I finished, I threw all the darks into the soapy water and started washing. Maylene soon joined me.
We worked quickly, I doing most of the washing and Maylene doing most of the rinsing and hanging. My hair kept falling in my face and I became quite tempted to cut it off. Time, as it turned out, rushed by.
“Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub,” Maylene said, repeating the word like a mantra. I tucked my hair back behind my ears for the thousandth time that hour, and put a hand to my aching back. Don’t be such a wuss, you’re used to this. Chores at the orphanage made sure of that. I shook my head, chastising myself like that was my version of “scrub.”
“Are you in love with Sebastian yet?” Maylene asked, picking up an armful of soapy clothes and tossing them into a tub of rinsing water.
“Am I supposed to be?” I asked, throwing the last batch into the foaming liquid.
“Maybe,” Maylene muttered, rinsing the clothes, wringing them out and hanging them up to dry.
“Mmm,” I replied absently, nodding to myself. One more load, come on, just one more. Finished, I grabbed the last bit of laundry and put it in the rinsing tub. Maylene and I were nearly done hanging everything up, (there was a pair of socks left) when I collapsed.
“Gwen! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired, is all.” Maylene rushed to help me up, grabbing my arm and pulling on it mercilessly.
“Gwen? When was the last time you ate something?” she asked cautiously.
I put a shaking hand to my forehead and replied with “I’m fine, Maylene, really. Just a little dizzy.”
“You should lie down.”
“No, I have lessons. I can’t be late.” I rushed off, wrapping my arms around my waist. But I haven’t really eaten much, lately, I thought to myself. I ignored the thought and jogged to the drawing room.
Throwing open the doors and stepping in, I sat down at the chair that faced a blackboard.
“This is ‘A’,” Ciel snapped. I memorized the letter quickly. The big one looks like the small one, I noted.
“You know how to talk, so this should be an easy learning experience for you,” he growled, moving on. I did my best to pay attention.
********
Lessons, as it turned out, were brutal. Ciel was an impatient teacher, so if I didn’t understand something I kept it to myself, filing it away in my mind to ask Maylene or Finny later. Sebastian was just as bad, hovering in the background, waiting until Ciel would put down the stick that he used to point at the board. I guess that was Sebastian’s cue to step up to the board and erase everything, filling it with new information, new lines of symbols clustered together to form words, new situations in which I had to correct various intentional mistakes. If I missed one of the errors, Ciel verbally abused me and Sebastian smiled wickedly, as if my cowering in the chair amused him.
As it turned out, I was a natural. I remembered the tune that went along with the alphabet, which Finny had come in to sing for me, (he was curious and neither of my teachers wanted to sing,) and as for the lines, I could guess the words if they didn’t sound right when I said them.
“What was that rule? ‘A’ makes and ‘eh’ sound when there’s an ‘e’ at the end of the word?” I scratched my head. “Let’s see: Mmm…ah - no, eh!, meh, maid, and then the ‘e’ doesn’t make a sound, so it must be made!” I smiled, then realized my own mistake. “Wait, which made is that? Made or maid? Oh!” I groaned.
“Alright, focus. Look at the sentence. ‘I made…tuh-hu-ee?’ No! The, that word was the! Alright. ‘I made the buh-e-duh.’ I made the bed! Yes! Wait, hey, is that implying something?” I shook my head and laughed.
Setting the papers down on the bedside table, I lay back on my bed. The bed was very comfortable, and I couldn’t wait to sleep tonight. Maybe just a little nap now, I should be fine. If someone needs me, they’ll wake me up.
“No!” I cried, sitting up. The room spun around, my head aching suddenly. In fact, all of me hurt. Why was it so cold? “I have work to…” I landed back on the bed with a soft thump, already unconscious.
