Chapter 24: 24 – Trace

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The sounds of motion and a voice singing made Trace hesitate briefly, but so far, he’d had only good experiences here, so he took a chance and went towards that instead of away.

Around a corner and through a very broad door he found a kitchen. The singer was the cook, who was large and red and multi-armed, but the song sounded upbeat and cheerful.

Then again, Trace didn’t recognize the language, so for all he knew, it was about disembowelling enemies and dicing them up for stew.

Thalia had steered him in this direction, though, and told him he could get something to drink. Probably it was safe.

“Hello?” he said cautiously.

The cook glanced back, and smiled. “Hello! Come on in. Everyone finds their way here eventually. But then, everyone gets hungry and thirsty. Wandering around the house and having strange experiences works up an appetite after a while.” All six hands, with some support from that tail, kept right on swiftly adding small balls of cookie dough to a metal sheet while simultaneously removing finished cookies from another sheet to a wire rack. They looked like the delicious oatmeal cookies he’d had with Richard and Dora. “I have a helper around who will be back in just a moment. Forgive me if I don’t stop, I’m on a bit of a roll and I have a lot of people to feed.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Have a seat at the table if you like, and you can help yourself to the grapes in the bowl. They’re seedless, nothing to break a tooth on unexpectedly.”

“That would be great, actually. I’m mostly looking for something to drink. I picked up some cola so maybe the sugar and caffeine could keep me awake, but it’s in the music room and it’s probably warm and it’s not really what I like anyway, so I thought I’d ask.” Trace hopped up onto one of the stools and took a grape from the shallow bowl of intricately-decorated glass on the table. Not far from it was another bowl, this one unadorned glass, which was half full of clean water but appeared to hold only a rather pretty pink and black rock and a thick polished piece of wood that leaned on the edge with the other end in the water. He could see no purpose for it.

“Absolutely. I try to keep tea ready on Hallowe’en night, but I know that isn’t universally to everyone’s tastes. Would you like something hot? We can raid Neon’s stash of organic vegan hot chocolate. There’s also milk and orange juice and apple juice in the fridge. No hurry. And we can find you something to eat, too. There’s always fresh homemade bread, and tonight there’s Newfoundland pea soup with salt pork and carrots, or a yellow-potato-with-mushrooms vegetarian soup. And there are vast quantities of lasagna, vegetarian version or otherwise.” The cook heaved an enormous and melodramatic sigh. “If I were less fond of our resident vegetarians...”

“Yeah, yeah,” a new voice said. “You love having the extra challenge and everyone knows it.” There was laughter in it, which might have been why it sounded like the pitch slid strangely. “Here. We should really restock on the flour, the next chance we get. There are only two more bags after that one.”

The bag of flour in question, which the newcomer set on one end of the counter, was a huge restaurant-sized bag, probably something like twenty kilograms, but if there were a lot of people living here, which seemed to be the case, that was probably easier.

“Thank you. I’ll add it to the list.”

The newcomer turned to face Trace with a smile. “Hi. I’m Neon. Sounds like you met Tarragon already. And given that you’re a different shade of red and there’s a distinct scent of raspberries, I’m guessing you’ve met Thalia. What’s your name?”

“Trace.” She looked strangely, even reassuringly, ordinary: just a woman around his age, long hair in a slightly-dishevelled blonde-brown braid, no sign of makeup, just casual faded blue jeans with colourful patches underneath several holes and a royal-blue t-shirt that said “KEEP CALM I’M THE DOCTOR.”

“Hi, Trace. Hungry?”

“Um... I didn’t think I was, but I might be.”

“Did you hear the menu for tonight yet?”

“Yes.”

“What sounded best?”

“Um, sorry, I’m not really into lasagna. Just... something about that clumpy ricotta that’s in it.”

“There are a dozen people living here,” Tarragon said dryly. “Each one has things they dislike. That means that meals such as a general lasagna tend to be simple. Pasta, garlic and onion tomato sauce, ground beef in a very thick tomato sauce, mozzarella, and a few spices. The vegetarian version has mushrooms and spinach instead of meat. On nights when we will not have company, I take the time to prepare individually-tailored servings, but on Hallowe’en I try to keep it simple.”

“Oh. That sounds okay. Um, the meat one sounds better.”

“Soup first?” Neon asked, headed for the huge old-fashioned stove.

“Sure? The pea one sounds good. Can I help?”

“Nope, I’ve got it,” Neon said. “You stay right there so I don’t bump into you and drench us both in soup or something. I mean, how embarrassing would that be?”

In short order, Trace had a black and red bowl filled with thick soup and a plate with two slices of homemade bread; once he admitted to liking hot chocolate, Neon put the kettle on, and presented him with a mug of caramel-flavoured dark chocolate richer than he was used to but delicious, with marshmallows melting into it. Neon joined him at the table with a mug of her own.

“It’s not always easy to get but I love this stuff,” she said. “I ran out of the mint chocolate one, sorry. So how’s your night been going?” Rather absently, she picked a grape from the stalk and dropped it in the bowl of water. For a few seconds, it floated, then it bobbed under the surface. Trace was at a bad angle to tell for sure, but he thought he saw motion, and that the surface remained disturbed somehow.

Drawing his attention away from the bowl of water, Trace shrugged. “Nothing bad, everyone’s friendly, nothing to complain about. Do you live here?” She acted like it, but she seemed so out of place. Was she just a regular person who had wandered in and been allowed to stay?

“I do live here,” Neon agreed. “And I am very glad that I do. Beautiful house, amazing family, even wonderful food, a few responsibilities but lots of time to spend on what matters to me. It’s in every way better than my life before I lived here.”

“Where’d you live before?”

She chuckled. “Not here, obviously, since I wasn’t born in the house. But there are things we’re not allowed to talk about.”

“Okay. Sounds like a nice place to live. Here, I mean.”

“Some of us think so. I heard great music earlier, but I didn’t want to intrude. Was that you in the music room with the Master?”

“Music with him, with Dora dancing, was absolutely the best thing to happen in... I dunno how long. Maybe since my mom died. It was just... everything just connected, and...”

Neon listened quietly, sipping her chocolate and nodding and making encouraging noises and occasionally offering tactful reminders to eat, while Trace described the encounter, or at least the musical part of it. He tried to remember to slow himself enough that he didn’t trip over his own sentences too badly, but he heard it happen anyway. Neon didn’t seem to mind. If anything, she led him gently into talking about his own musical background as well. When Trace ran out of soup, she set her cup down and hopped off her stool, returning with a generous slice of lasagna on a white plate with flowery designs and ruffled edges, without her attention on his words ever showing any sign of interruption. Tarragon said little, continuing to work on cookies for a while, then switching to mixing and vigorously kneading a different kind of dough.

As Trace ate, his skin and scent flowed through several more colours, complete with scents that sometimes did not work well with the food or hot chocolate but sometimes were more neutral. Dark brown with his own chocolate scent was interesting.

“You are really passionate about that,” she said finally, smiling, and he was sure it was a friendly smile, not a condescending one. “And it sounds like you know lots, although I don’t have anything to judge by. But sounds like you haven’t been able to make it very much part of your life. Is that... you said your mom died? Was that part of it?”

“First my dad left, and I had to help Mom, and we didn’t have much money. Then she got sick and there was even less. With just me, I can just about keep up with work and general adulting before I’m tired. Dealing with people is exhausting. There’s too much to keep track of that my brain can’t just do, I have to actually think about it and remember to do it. At least pretend to make eye contact. Ask people about themselves because they might not just tell you what they want you to hear. Don’t get excited about music and start rambling about it at high speed. Watch for the body language stuff that means they’re hoping for an opening to leave or change the subject or say something. Remember about things like gender that matter to lots of people.” He frowned. “I think I’m screwing up pretty badly on some of those tonight.”

“It’s okay,” Neon said. “Around here, we’re really into just being yourself and not wasting energy putting on a mask. That does sound exhausting. Autism?”

“Somewhere on the spectrum, anyway. They said ‘high-functioning’ which I guess means I can pretend to be normal enough to satisfy most people most of the time.”

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“That’s awful. I’m afraid I don’t know much about it, but that really doesn’t sound fair.”

“Idunno. It just is what it is, I guess. It’s not a rose garden for people who aren’t good at pretending and need to depend on other people for help. And I think even if I was neurotypical, I’d still be pretty screwed as far as music, after what happened with my parents.”

“Yeah, could be. Being poor sucks majorly hard and it’s a tough hole to get out of. Were you just curious about the house?”

“New job. Some of the guys I work with dared me. The kind of dare that you can’t really get out of if you have to keep working with them, y’know?”

“Yeah, I know.” She gave him an unexpected grin. “Good thing you’re the one who actually came in, though. Bullies don’t do so well here. Tarragon’s not the biggest person in the house. Our minotaur Jake, he’s absolutely the sweetest and gentlest person ever, he won’t even eat meat at all ever, he’s huge and all muscle and looks majorly terrifying if he’s looming over you. And he will get in the middle if someone is being unpleasant to his family. He’d scare your bullies into needing clean underwear. But when you run into him, don’t be scared of him. Just say hi. He might not say much back but that’s just because he’s pretty shy and doesn’t talk to strangers a lot.” She smiled. “Ask him about the statues and the paintings. That worked for me to get him talking.”

“He made them?” That seemed likely, if he was that responsive to the question.

“Not the weird portraits near the front door, but the statues that move and talk to you, and the paintings upstairs that you can step into—did you find those yet?”

“No, just a book of poetry that was awfully real. I liked it.”

“At the top of the main stairs there’s a big open space that looks down onto the great hall. All around the balcony and the walls of the corridor on either side there are paintings that are Jake’s work. If you look at them for a minute, they’ll start to move. If you hold out both hands and step towards one...” she demonstrated by raising both hands palm-out, “you’ll sort of fall into it. And to get out, you just decide that you’re leaving now. They’re a lot of fun to play around in.”

“That sounds really interesting. I’ll go look at those soon. Everything in this house is different.”

“Lots is,” Neon agreed. “And anything might be.” She paused and twisted to look towards the doorway—not the one Trace had come in, but one near it at a right angle.

The woman who came in was very regal, her dark hair elaborately styled and her reddened lips and lined eyes dark against her fair skin; her dress looked old-fashioned, full skirts and a fitted long-sleeved top with curves underneath that didn’t look natural, all in a soft dark red trimmed with black.

“Good evening, Ségolène,” Tarragon said. “Anything I can do for you?”

That warm smile looked like an affectionate greeting in itself, as was the hand she laid on Tarragon’s uppermost arm. “Richard and I are a little late tonight, but we would like to eat together in the breakfast room. I assume everything is ready?”

“Of course it is. I’d have half the household in here complaining if I didn’t have a proper meal ready by this hour. I’ll get that together for you.”

“Thank you. It can wait until you have a moment, since you’re in the middle of tomorrow’s bread. We’re hardly about to expire.” The lady looked past the cook. “Hello. You’re Trace, correct?”

“Yes,” Trace said, dropping his gaze. Suddenly he felt deeply awkward.

“I’m Ségolène Mallory. You made an impression on Richard.” He heard the smile in her voice. “Nothing to fear there. We do not get jealous or resentful of each other’s happinesses. I hope you’re having a good evening.”

“Um, yes,” Trace said, aware that it wasn’t all that loud, his eyes on the floor.

“I think the impression goes both ways, Mistress,” Neon said. “I was close enough to hear them earlier, and it was great. I’ll pretend I’m Maggie, since she must have wandered off. Tea?”

“Please,” the lady said. “And I appreciate it. I’ll go back to Richard and stay out of your way, since the two of you have made the kitchen so thoroughly yours.”

“Hardly,” Tarragon said. “Still mine. I just can’t get rid of this brat here so I put her to work.”

The lady chuckled. “Or that.”

“It’s okay,” Neon said softly to Trace. “She’s gone. I know she can be a bit intimidating, but honestly, she’s a really nice person with a very kind heart. She had a pretty rough start in life too. I think partly it’s the old-fashioned clothes and the way she carries herself and maybe that hint of a French accent, it just triggers for us post-Victorians as ‘stern authority figure’ somehow. She had to learn how to be an absolutely proper respectable lady while she and the Master were getting their feet under them. She does unbend sometimes, I promise, when it’s just family. Are you all right?”

“I... yeah. I’m fine. You have things to do.”

“Well, just running a tray with tea and then one with soup and then one with food over a couple of rooms. I’ll get the soup and tea together now. Tarragon? You think they’ll forgive us if they get the lasagna before they finish the soup?” She slid back to the floor and began to busily collect things, starting with a tray to set on the counter and then things to put on that.

“Of course they will,” Tarragon said. “And we can cover the lasagna to keep it warmer.”

“Cool. You keep kneading until you’re done. You’ve done all the cooking, I’ve got this.”

Trace watched her bustling around, making tea and setting the pot on the tray with cups and sugar and cream, which pretty much took up the space. They all matched, he noticed, even the tray.

“Um, can I help?” Trace offered. “And save you a trip?”

Neon paused to look at him. “Sure, I’d love it, as long as you’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, I think I will.” Neon was somehow comforting, and it was harder to feel off-balance with her there. Plus one of the two people in that room was Richard, who had actually made him feel good, not inferior.

“Just let me fill a couple of bowls with soup and we can take it over.”

Trace left the table and the last of his lasagna to carry the soup tray while Neon brought the tray with the tea.

The Mallory couple were seated at a round table of warmly golden wood that had six chairs around it, in a room that was not only in a corner so it had windows on two sides, but it had what he thought was called a bay window arching outwards on one of those walls to further increase the glass exposure. There was nothing much to see outside right now, with the night and the storm, but on a bright morning, it must be wonderful. The whole thing was decorated in pleasant golden browns and sky blue with hints of grassy-green and lemon, and it made him think of summer.

Richard greeted him with a smile that made him forget the room. “Keeping busy, I see.”

“Trying to help,” Trace said.

“Thank you, both of you,” Ségolène said, with a gracious smile. “Maggie is running an errand for me and I would hate to interrupt the smooth flow of the kitchen, but we’re late eating and getting hungry.”

“I’ll be back with lasagna soon,” Neon said.

Richard nodded. “You’re looking adorable tonight.”

Neon laughed. “You never know what to expect, hm?” She winked. “Come on, Trace, the rest of your supper and your hot chocolate are going to get cold.”

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