4 - Preparing for Opening

Samuel Jay

June 4, 2000

As requested, I emerged early the next day instead of opening the curtains, setting up the paints, and working once more on that painting of a forest. Gin and I disagreed on how well it was turning out. Then again, an artist is his own harshest critic.

I left it behind with much difficulty, since I did not know when I could return.

I went hurriedly down the stairs, lest some other ornament float before my eyes. If they do, I preferred not to be there.

Several floors down, I got closer to the kitchen on the ground. I heard a gathering of servants, talking. I didn't know if I was invited, of if they cared that I heard, but it was too difficult not to hear and I was headed there anyway:

"We can move it sooner if we finish sooner," I heard the butler say.

"How confident are you?" Her voice made my heart leap unreasonably before I calmed myself. "There are jobs where there is constantly something that must be done, and I believe this has the nature of one."

"The place is in very good condition." Eckart's voice was final.

"The sooner they come, the better," a scrawny boy chirped as I finally turned the corner. The same one I often saw wandering on my floor long before and after the others, his eyes sometimes glazed. That boy makes me nervous.

Gin was facing me and saw me first. "Breakfast is served," she said, calm as ever.

I nodded in recognition, not trusting myself to speak to her with anyone else around. She went (almost floating, perhaps) on light feet, as though one of those little nymphs from Greek books, or something by Tolkien, to the large, ornate door behind her.

Breakfast was rather quick. Having never been there, I had to be reminded to eat instead of staring at the ceiling, or windows, or even the very chairs people sat in. I glanced around, and observed there were now more in the upper thirties of servants. Not so many had lined up to greet me.

Ten minutes of simply talking elapsed after they brought their plates to the kitchen. Then, all the servants rose, and scampered off immediately as Eckart barked orders. He knew all that needed to be done.

"How long did it take to build this place?" I asked, to no one in particular.

It was in Gin's direction, but she frowned. "I don't know."

"A hundred years," the butler said stiffly. He didn't want to tell me, and seemed to resent me for asking that.

"...this--this was built in---well, fifty years ago," I stammered. "Wait--how did my uncle get that kind of money?"

Eckert gave me a glare so piercing it hurt my chest and I resolved to ask some one else. He only said curtly, "Come along."

I followed the stiff-legged butler through the corridors once more. I did not remember them being so twisty, like goblin tunnels.

"What must I do to prepare?" I asked, and when I got no answer, I glanced around, eyes lighting upon a portrait of a lady and her little daughter in sunlight and greenery. "How about you tell me what paintings and art pieces we have in the hotel?"

"That one is 'Lady of Song and her Daughter Arin," the butler half grunted.

I whipped out the little notebook I always carry, shuffling in my pocket for one of the many pencils. Hoping to have snatched one that works, (thankfully, I did,) and swiftly took note of name and description. I glanced up in time to see a man in silverish armor, sword in the heart of a black dragon. "What is that one?"

"Silverstar's Battle with the Enemy of the World," the butler said, some ways ahead of me.

We went through many corridors, and marked down many historical paintings, some from myth, some copies from long, long ago.

"This one has many men with torches, several at the head holding red-bladed swords in the air," I called as I passed a particularly cool one.

"The Oath," I heard from ahead.

I quickly got it down, hoping I could read my handwriting again later, then looked up for the next one. I nearly walked right past it. "Which is this?"

He had stopped, in a back corridor, at a dead end. Candles lit, he stood silent, staring perhaps mournfully at the blackened portrait of two men, one with red hair, one black. The redhead was fiercer, taller, scared, perhaps. The other remained, calm, bright eyes the color of a series of paintings of a man like him. Both were in clothes found only on medieval nobles, the taller one in orange, the other in blue. The heraldry told both were from different families. The painting hung at the head, above the table of candles, seeming half in shadow.

I felt the reverence to whisper. "Who?"

"Our founders."