Dumb Ass Luck for a Happy Holiday Season - On the Road #29
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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
The Beautiful Beast
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I despised the Patron’s Daughter for many reasons. For starters, she was as beautiful as I was ugly. At least, on the outside, she was.
Her hair was as black as a raven’s wings; creamy, alabaster skin was flawless and unscarred. Her features were aligned in almost perfect symmetry.
The only flaw in her face was the only asset in mine. Her eyes were small, and I found her limpid blue gaze simpering.
But that was no consolation because everybody waxed eloquent over her startling coloring, her shining black hair, her blue eyes, and her perfect white skin.
Her figure was rather voluptuous for the highborn class, but that only added to her appeal.
She was celebrated as a beauty far and wide, and I absolutely hated her.
It didn’t help that we were the same age, our birthdays a few weeks apart.
I couldn’t stop myself from comparing the hell of my life with the heaven of hers, and the differences made my bones quake at night.
As self-defeating as it was to brood on that, I couldn’t help myself because I saw her every day on her rides.
I was hardly alone in my hatred of her. But I was alone in my obsession with her life.
All the workers scowled when the Patron’s Daughter made her appearance, but they had the good sense to forget about her after she was gone.
Not me. I tracked everything she did.
Because she was so spoiled, the Patron’s Daughter threw temper tantrums well past childhood to satisfy every whim that crossed her mind.
It was through a tantrum that she was able to make her debut a year earlier than her peers.
It was the custom for young ladies to come out in Society when they were eighteen, unless they were exceptionally accomplished, which she wasn’t, or they had older sisters who had already married, which she hadn’t.
So the Patron’s Daughter was still presented at court right after her seventeenth birthday.
Then the rampage began.
Because of her celebrated good looks, many eligible young men called on her. Yet beauty on the outside was a beast on the inside, and the Patron’s Daughter discovered a new source of happiness as she spurned suitor after suitor.
Vanity being a puckish pervert, the men came in droves.
Once word spread that her heart was not easily won, the hand of the Patron’s Daughter became the most valuable trophy to boast of that season.
There wasn’t a highborn gentleman for fifty miles round who could resist the challenge to master the she-devil.
I was mystified at the sheer numbers who came.
All of them were noble and many were desirable. Some were handsome, several had wealth, others had power, quite a few were charming, and one was even celebrated for his comical wit.
But no matter how desirable the match, the Patron’s Daughter was more enamored of the malicious glee coursing through her veins every time she rejected a would-be fiancé without giving him a sliver of a chance.
She loved cruelty, and she became more adept at degradation with each dismissal. Her reputation became so notorious, even her parents were embarrassed.
The Patron’s Daughter was making enemies of other patron families for humiliating their sons.
The next year, everything would change when we were eighteen.
This excerpt is from my WIP, “The Shepherd and the Courtesan.” If you’d like to read the previous excerpt, Ugly Addie, click here.
Ugly Addie
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They call me Adrianna the Beautiful. But I was peasant born and Addie had been my name.
I grew up in a village that bordered the west side of the Ancient Grove, the woods where the Sorcerer of the Caverns had made his domain.
For generations, the people steered clear of the dark forest of the Ancient Grove because everybody knew the Sorcerer preyed on the hearts of young girls and virgin women so he would never die.
Yet every so often a pretty maiden from the village succumbed to the Sorcerer’s temptation, only to show up one day with a breast empty of the heart she had sold and the look of smut about her.
They were fools, those women. What excuse could they have had, after hearing cautionary tales about the Sorcerer since they were children? I found that the girls who fell often had dreams and desires bigger than their comfortable lives could satisfy.
Most of the Sorcerer’s conquests were middle class girls, daughters of merchants and officials. Most highborn maidens were out of reach, and of course, the Sorcerer never bothered with the peasant girls.
The ones who had any beauty at all were usually defiled through force or deceit by the patron sons and merchant men of the village before the Sorcerer got to them.
Yet even for those peasant beauties who exercised the prudence to protect their maidenheads, the relentless hard labor of their lives destroyed their allure along with any fairy tale dreams they may have had.
I was not one of those personable peasant girls.
The girls who fell often had dreams and desires bigger than their comfortable lives could satisfy.
From time to time, I received a compliment about my eyes on those scarce occasions when anybody bothered to really notice me. But I had been born to be a human mule, that’s how most people saw me, and I certainly looked the part.
Made for arduous work, my body was stocky and sturdy, with muscular hands and meaty fingers. My skin was thick and sallow, my wide face cursed with pockmarks. The mane of horses was softer than my hair, which was frizzy and the color of mud.
No possibility of a fairy tale twist of fate for me. It was impossible that I would even get work as a house servant, where at least I might have married a steward. Our patron and patroness preferred pretty girls as housemaids, and I was hideous.
I was meant for the fields, the hardest labor, and the longest hours. Every year, in the peak of harvest, my fingers never stopped bleeding, that’s how long and hard I worked.
The lay of the land where I worked added insult to injury.
The Big House, where our patrons resided, stood at the crest of a small mound overlooking the vast fields where we peasants labored. So our ruling family could look down on us, while we couldn’t look up without being assaulted with opulence of the Big House.
It was ugly too, the color of rotten food retched from starving bellies with so many curlicues and carved shapes of satyrs and nymphs pointlessly frolicking around its façade. We often got headaches if we stared at it for too long.
Of course, the hideous manor boasted every luxury. The sight of that monstrosity made it impossible for any of us to forget where we were or for whom we worked.
My people worked for one of the most tyrannical patron families in the country. They were cruel, greedy, and despotic. Once a family was in debt to them, their lineage would be enslaved for eternity.
Everybody around us had been indentured by an impossible debt to pay off. No matter how hard we worked, the money owed grew every year from the ridiculous tariffs and penalties added. There was no end to the drudgery and misery of our lives, especially fifty years ago.
My people had been indentured to them for too many generations to count. The burden of paying off the never-ending debt was especially painful for me because I was an only child. Even though I had been fully productive since I was fourteen, my parents were worked into the ground until my sixteenth birthday.
As ugly as I was, it was improbable I would marry and birth progeny to this misery. Since I was most likely the last of my family line, I was treated even more brutally than everybody around me. At least once a week, I had welts on my back and bruises on my belly from being whipped and beaten for the most inane offenses.
Of course, I despised my patron and patroness. Grateful for minor mercies, they only had two children, a daughter and a son; and they were exactly the kind of people one would expect from such a family.
They were always above their company even though they had no superior qualities beyond inherited status and wealth. The son was so foolish, lazy, and frivolous, it was a stretch of the imagination to picture such an imbecile as the next patron in the village.
But the enmity I felt for the parents paled in comparison for the loathing I had for their daughter.
PS This 1st person narrative is an excerpt is out of my WIP, “The Shepherd and the Courtesan.” If you’d like to read the previous excerpt, “I Used to be Ugly,” click here.
Juggling Act of Creativity and Promotion - Me No Likey
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I’m not a fan of blogging. Isn’t this obvious given how long it has been since my last entry? It didn’t help that advice I received suggested the blog needed to be 1000-2000 words for SEO. Perhaps that is true, and perhaps it is not. I don’t think that makes a lot of sense for an author, because I’d much rather spend that time crafting a piece that is part of a much longer work – like my novel – rather than something that I do to promote my social media presence. This also doesn’t make sense to me because when I’m surfing the internet and come across blogs, I prefer them to be short and sweet. The ones that are longer and more detailed, I find tedious and usually stop reading after a couple of minutes unless the piece is really gripping.
I resent and resist this juggling act between creativity, promotion, and I drop a lot of balls.
Then I came across Seth Godin. This is a man who has written oodles of books and blogs EVERY DAMN DAY. Granted, he writes from a non-fiction entrepreneurial POV and I write fiction, fantasy that is rooted in archetypes and fairy tales. But he still has much to say that I need to learn about, so I finally checked out his blog.
Imagine my delight and surprise when I found that most of his blogs that I found are under 500 words. Within in those pithy pieces of brevity, there was plenty of sound advice and I didn’t have to spend twenty minutes absorbing his knowledge. He probably doesn’t need SEO like I do because he’s Seth Godin and I’m not an established name like he, but it made me stop and think that perhaps short and sweet pieces done quickly and more often might work more than having to spend more time on a longer article than I want to.
Like this blog. Less than 400 words. Perhaps you stopped reading after the first paragraph. But if you kept going, I didn’t demand much of your time and attention, now, did I?