Chapter One (part three)

The first thing that the girls noticed about Whitehouse Place was....well....The lack of the afore mentioned white.
The “house” looked like a large Norman fortress, encumbering half of a high precipice.
And there was no white about the place.
Indeed-there was nothing about it that resembled a house or any sort of homey dwelling. It looked enormous, dank, crumbling, and there were probably hoards of mice (weathered castles were often the easiest places mice or rats could enter-because of the crumbling stone and loose mortar). A place well-fitting for Aunt Felicia’s personality, Arwyn thought ungraciously.
Emma crossed her arms over stomach. Why oh why did Felicia have to be here? And why was her precious son suddenly cowering at the sight of his own house?
The coach stopped in front of a rather large barn where an old man with a wig on backwards came stumbling out.
“She’s been waitin’ on ye for ‘alf an ‘our, doncha know?”
The man smelled strongly of brandy-the perpetual odor of Robert’s study.
“I know, I know.” Milford said weakly.
The girls stepped out of the coach after Milford and hoped, and prayed, that they didn’t have to carry their trunk in.
The old man clambered up to James, who was checking on the horses.
“It’s been rainin’ somefink ‘orrid, me wife though’ it some sorta omen. ‘ow’d choo see?”
James shrugged.
“Are we to go in or are we standing out here all night?” Mae asked Milford forcefully.
She was taking advantage of Milford’s strange fear of both her and her sisters.
Milford quivered and clutched his bottle of gin more tightly.
“This way.”
If possible, the inside of Felicia’s degenerate fortress was even less accommodating as it looked on the outside.
Milford led them into a dark parlor and left them there alone, where they kept discovering horrid things about the room.
The wood panels in the walls were rotting-giving them an almost red-brown glow. And everything was covered in miles of dust-one couldn’t walk into the room without sneezing violently.
Arwyn collapsed on a nearby sofa, only to find it creaking under her wait-and finally collapsing to the ground-leaving a very disoriented Arwyn on the cold stone ground amongst sagging cushions and rotted wood.
“Bugger! What’s she to do when she sees her sofa in shreds?”
Mae turned around, “SHH!” It reminded Arwyn, once again, of her horrid dream on that train.
Mae’s eyes scanned the room for something useful-nothing.
She turned to Emma-who was standing by a stack of books (covered completely in dust).
“There!”
“Where?” Emma swiveled around.
“Look, only two legs are broken, if we could put those where the missing legs are meant to be-perhaps Felicia won’t notice.”
Mae started carrying small stacks of books and placing them near the couch.
“Help me!”
Thanks to the books, they were able to salvage the couch before Felicia’s entrance. (“Poor books,” Emma commented.)
Aunt Felicia entered a few moments later with Poochy in her arms (whining as if to say “please, put me out of my misery, I beg of you”) and Milford at her side.
Felicia’s lips pursed at the sight of her nieces.
“Milford, be a dear and check on our guests’,” she spat the word, “dinner. Since they’ve arrived hours late without a moment’s consideration for their only living kin.”
Arwyn spoke up:
“Aunt Felicia,” she began, “we didn’t mean—“
But Felicia cut her off, tiny blue eyes narrowing.
For the next half hour (with no sign of Milford or dinner) Aunt Felicia lectured them with ardor about things they didn’t really understand.
“You, must, must do it, one of you must-I have no choice.....” She babbled on like an idiot, telling them at one point that she was not, by any means related to the girls, that they were those nasty little changelings that evil faeries left in cribs. Then another, they were her sisters’ only children.
They’d never seen Felicia in such a state-bad health or cold weather or something must have defected her thinking process.
Then, after awhile of nonsensical oration, Felicia started to speak out the girls’ most embarrassing qualities.
“Too tall,” she muttered at Emma.
“Too fat,” was Mae’s apparent downfall, according to Felicia. Well, downfall for something, none of them knew what.
Felicia stopped when she came to Arwyn.
“No, not at all....” Felicia shivered, “There’s something gypsy about that girl, I swear it....”
After awhile, Mae, the most impatient and bossy of her sisters, just couldn’t take it any more.
She interrupted Felicia’s muttering on about “leading the lamb to the slaughter,” with:
“If you aren’t going to allow us to eat dinner, the least you could do is show us our rooms.” (Emma tried to stifle a yawn-she had thought that seeing Aunt Felicia in all her glory-at her home with Milford and Poochy-would be scary, but now that she’d proved herself to be a tottering old woman, Em was ready for sleep).
Felicia looked taken aback-her small blue-button eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. Just strutted across the parlor imperiously and shut the creaky, old door.
Arwyn crossed her arms and went to the door.
“Arwyn, what are you doing?”
“Drilling Milford until he’ll give us some information.”
“What?”
Arwyn just smiled at Mae and shut the door behind her.