reak.
The dull, familiar croak of the weary wooden floorboards drew Lotta slowly from her light sleep. She knew that any servant would know to avoid that pesky floorboard during sleeping hours. Lotta squinted against the dull moonlight drifting from the hallway window through the open door and into the quarters for female servants, waiting for the silhouette of the intruder to focus in her sleep-blurred vision. She quickly recognized the twin braids of the small figure as her own handiwork, and she rolled away from the bothersome silhouette and pulled the thin blanket over her head with a heavy sigh.
“Go to bed, Eloise, or you’ll get us both in trouble,” Lotta commanded, her voice muffled through the blanket.
With another creak, she knew the galdor girl had stepped forward. Lotta waited silently, hoping that by not acknowledging Eloise, the irksome girl would go away.
“My mother told me I could come here to watch,” Eloise whispered loudly, giddy excitement embroidering her every word. Lotta did not answer. After a moment, Eloise sighed impatiently.
“Watch what, Eloise?” Eloise mocked Lotta’s higher, more childish voice.
“Well, Lotta,” Eloise answered herself, “I’m here to watch Father punish you. This is where you’d say, ‘For what?’ if you were a good, obedient servant that cares about me. Then I’d say, ‘For everything, Lotta!”
Eloise cackled as Lotta pulled the thin sheet tighter around herself, hoping to suffocate herself before she was punished, before she punched Eloise in her big, stupid-
“Ellie, go to bed,” came a man’s stern voice, and Lotta cursed the sheets for being too thin for her to smother herself as she inhaled the cool, stale air of the sleeping quarters.
“But-!”
“Eloise!” He cut her off, a definitive annoyance on each syllable as he exclaimed her full name. Lotta smiled underneath her sheets as she heard Eloise’s bare feet stomping back over the creaking board. Now, however, Lotta was alone with the seething master of the house and a dozen servants pretending to be asleep. She waited for the floorboard to creak again if only to tell her how close to her demise she was. She pulled the sheet tighter, this time out of fear.
Roughly, her small shoulder was seized by large hands that yanked her up, up out of the bed, up into the air, and finally dropped her down onto the floor. The child yelped in pain.
“Does that hurt, Charlotte? Like when you tied Eloise’s dress too tight or hit her with the doll?” the man snarled angrily, and Lotta stayed still, eyes to the floor. She couldn’t recall ever doing such things. Perhaps she had thought it, but she would never actually do it.
“What about pulling her hair?” He growled suddenly, grabbing onto the long, dark braid running down Lotta’s back and yanking her towards the the doorway.
“I didn’t do it, sir!” she shrieked, clawing at the sharp pain in the back of her head as he gave another thorough pull, leading the girl to tumble into the hallway.
“Didn’t do it?” He inquires sardonically, each syllable another heave on her braid. Hot tears tumbled down her small face as she followed him
down the hall hunched over like a whining dog on a leash. She watched her heavy tears leave dark spots on the carpet below her.
“Please!” she sobbed, feeling as though her young head might rip in two.
“If it means this much to you, maybe you won’t do it again!”
“I won’t! I promise I won’t, sir. Please, let go!”
With one final heave, the man let go of Lotta’s tormented braid, her inertia pushing her forwards onto her hands and knees and into the cold. She turned back toward the back door of the home, able to tell even through her curtain of tears that the ground on which she stood was cold snow. She scrambled towards the void of the open door, just to feel her outstretched hands touch the hard surface of a closed door. She pounded on it once, twice for good measure, then sunk tearfully onto the bitterly cold cement of the step, watching the shaking clouds of her ragged, hiccuping breaths.
“Let this be a lesson, not a nightly occurrence, Charlotte,” came a muffled voice through the locked door. She listened for the retreating sound of footsteps, then, laying back on the cold cement, curled up into a ball and began to grumble weakly through her shivers and hiccups, “I wish I could punch Eloise’s good-for-nothing, lying, stupid, evil, ugly face.”