Ward of the White Worm

Olli had sat alone in the room, eating her own meal of white bread with a layer of oddly garlicky butter, a small pot of jam she decided to spoon into her mouth before then munching on dry scones. The tea was served in a small greying cup of white and she felt quite fancy drinking from it at the little table.

Even if she was alone.

But that was fine, she was used to being alone. The room was clearly set up as a smaller dining room, there were a few other small tables, a small bookcase, and paintings of picturesque fields. The window looked down on the street where sunlight was scattered upon the heads of people going about their business.

There was an indistinct fuzz in her mind, like something heavily coated in dust laid on something else that had grown misshapen with age. There were faceless heads looking towards a screen of white. There were noises. A cold box of a room where smaller faceless heads looked at her as dust fell over them.

She blinked, the visions fleeing her eyes and she was looking back down at the plate of food. A pale hand with a blue sleeve was reaching out, gently picking up the empty plates around her.

“My apologies dear, I thought you were finished.” A soft voice said behind her, and the hand withdrew slowly.

“Huh?” Olli did not remember anyone coming into the room, and as she picked up her cup of tea she found it had grown cold. The light in the window had moved upwards and pressed over her back, peeking inside to cast the table and the specks of floating dust in its glow. Beside her was the shadow of a woman, standing still. Then it moved slowly, extending four arms out slowly towards her.

Olli’s heart shot up to her throat and she fell out of her chair into a pile of petticoats and skirts before clambering back to her feet, cold sweat covered her palms and trickled down her back as she turned. The shadow also moved, so that whatever cast it stood behind Olli. The shadows of the arms were still as it followed her.

“Do not fear.”

The voice was painful. Like a cold needle being slipped under nailbeds. Olli wanted to scream but all sound beside that voice had been stolen from the room.

Olli felt something cold and metallic rest on her shoulder and with impressive strength managed to leap halfway across the room and knock into a chair, toppling over onto her back.

“Olli!” Theodore’s voice sliced through the quietude of the room. “What… what were you doing, young lady?” He asked, bewildered by the knocked over chairs. The tea cup had been knocked over on the table, its liquid thrown out in a spiral and falling onto the floor.

“Th-there!” Olli grasped around for the words. “There was a lady! A thing! A shadow, it had four arms and-”

“Excuse me” a soft polite voice asked. A maid was peeking into the room, her eyebrows raised in concern. “Oh my. Do not worry, my lord, we can clean the room quickly.”

“Olivia, apologize.” Theodore commanded. His pale face was flushed slightly, enough to turn his ear tips oddly pink.

“For what?” She snapped, the fear had drained into irritation. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You made a mess!”

Olli pointed at one of the knocked over chairs, “a mess!?”

The maid, looking gradually ever more bewildered, coughed lightly to speak. “There is no need to apologize. It is simple enough to clean up.”

“But there was-there was a, a thing!” Olli pointed wildly around the room, expecting to see the long-limbed shadow again but only catching glances of the confused maid’s face and Theodore’s deepening frown. “It had four arms and it was here!”

“Inventing monsters, are we?” Theodore said curtly. He moved quickly to clamp Olli’s hand in a steel-like grip and pull her out of the room. “My apologies,” he said to the maid as he passed by. Olli trampled on behind him, unable to stop their swift descent from the room, to the large opening hallway where the sun’s light seemed to slink away as though embarrassed by the scene. Beyond the doors was the carriage, already holdings it luggage, its impatient horses, and the footmen. The large black shaggy dog, the alleged Mister Burke, was sitting near one of the wheels gazing out into the street.

“But there really was-!”

“Hush! We can talk more in the carriage,” Theodore’s voice was like a low buzzing of flies in her ear as she was hurried over to the carriage.

“Is something bothering you, sir?” Asked one of the footmen as he opened the door.

“Nothing,” Theodore replied. He nearly lifted Olli off her feet and dropped her into the carriage, stepping in after her, and closing the door himself much to the surprise of the footman nearest. Then he took a deep rattling breath. “You cannot just simply blabber about seeing things. They may think you’re mad, or worse-”

“You don’t tell me anything! I don’t know! There was a monster and-and-... I don’t know!”

“Well it is not my job to tell you anything, I am neither your mother or your governess.” Theodore harrumphed as he crossed his arms. Then he added, almost like an idle reminder, “speaking of which, I should put out a notice in the papers about that…”

“Adults are supposed to tell kids things! Everything is confusing! ” Olli insisted with louder indignation, trying to use her admittedly small mental thesaurus of ‘big words’, like ‘supposed’.

“My, did your parents never teach you to lower your voice?” Theodore snapped.

“They didn’t teach me anything,” Olli growled, crossing her own arms and leaning against the back of her own seat. The faceless heads, turned to the glowing screen, never to her. “They didn’t even look at me,” she muttered.

Theodore became silent, staring at her with his expression shifting rapidly before settling on a softer one. He looked out the window, and raised his hand. Olli followed his eyes and also looked outside.

A burly large man was standing by the door, and with him were three children. A brown haired girl in a green dress, who held the hand of another brown haired girl in a yellow dress, and then a third girl with golden hair who shyly peeked out from behind the other two. The burly man waved at Theodore. The carriage rocked slightly as the footmen resumed their positions, and then there was a crack of a whip outside. The carriage jerked forward, then rattled onwards down the street.

Outside people were going about their day tasks. Costermongers wandered the street, clerks in their dark outfits peered out of businesses with names like ‘HAROLD AND SONS SPECULATORS’, ‘BANK OF PAETH’, or ‘BROOKS, HOLDENSON, & LAMB.’ Hunchbacked looking women with yokes on their shoulders carrying heavy pails sloshing with water walked past dingy looking men carrying nets and fishing poles.

“Olli, what did you… see?” Theodore asked, although he looked outside the window.

“Now you want to know?”

“Yes.”

Olli huffed loudly, making sure it was with an entire lungful of air so Theodore could truly understand her feels. “It was a shadow thingy. It talked, and first I thought someone was there! There was a hand and stuff. But then I saw the shadow, and it had four arms, I didn’t really… see all of it.”

Theodore did not turn his head away from the window. “It was not a monster, Olli. It’s your Mother.”

Sitting in the carriage, with those words still lingering inside, there was very little the girl could said besides, “what?”

“The Pilfering Mother, she has no children of her own. So she steals others. She snatches them from Godless Worlds, and brings them here. Her touch erodes the memories and bonds of those places, stealing them for her own ends. Because her ‘children’ come from Godless Worlds, they are not blessed, so the people believe,” his gaze finally turned to Olli, slowly. “They are cursed, and they bring misfortune to humans.”

“I don’t get it,” Olli muttered. She understood the words. Their individual meaning. But together, they made no sense.

Theodore leaned very close to her. He smelled strange, like old frozen meat. “Olivia, do you remember your parents' faces?”