The Pearl Savage by Tamara Rose Blodgett Read Free Book Online Page A

gave a grateful
exhale as the stays loosened and her ribs and breasts escaped the
prison of the corset.
    Olive breathed a sigh of relief,
“The usual damage has been avoided, Princess,” Olive said, a
discerning eye roving her torso.
    “Oh?” Clara inquired. It felt
about the same as all the damage she always suffered when Ada raged
against her.
    “Yes… it was the corset, my
lady, the corset bore some of it.”
    Of course! The dreadful encumbrance
was worth something after all. The irony was not lost on Clara.
    The rest of the garment slid off
easily without the resistance of the corset. Olive folded it over the
back of Clara’s vanity chair, the dress obscuring the ornate bones of
the polished wood, like glass in repose.
    She returned with Clara’s dressing
gown which Clara took to dress herself. How she detested being
dressed, this singular step she could do. As she took the gown, she
bestowed a grateful smile on Olive. She was someone that had been
steadfast and loyal throughout, in the terrible years after her
father’s passing, and before.
    The dressing gown on, Clara walked
to the vanity chair, sitting sideways so as to not interfere with the
dress, while Olive gave her hair the hundred strokes.
    Olive sighed, frustrated, “I am
sorry, Princess, I will have to remove these ruined bindings.”
    Olive carefully unwound the mess of
the bindings, a few pearls still clinging to their careful housing,
now beyond repair. Clara’s hair shone as burnished copper in the
faded golden light cast by the overhead chandelier, its cut glass
globes piercing jeweled rainbows on the interior walls, some prisms
absorbed by the wall of the sphere.
    Clara, not one to talk idly, sat
trancelike, as Olive brushed her hair, a ritual Olive’s mother had
established before Olive became her lady-in-waiting. It had never
failed to calm her, especially after a horrible night at the hands of
Ada. But this night, Clara could not calm herself, the normalcy of
this routine stolen from her.
    Olive paused in her brush strokes,
“What disturbs you, my lady?”
    What did not disturb Clara? Her Day
of Birth celebration beginning with a face-to-face engagement with a savage , the spectacle of her mother’s drunken behavior, the
menace of her later in Clara’s chamber, with the finish of Prince
Frederic and Charles almost coming to blows? Oh… nothing of
consequence! She must give just due to Olive, for this was all
that she knew; the Queen drank, she beat Clara, Clara resolved to say
nothing. Clara wished upon every star that lay Outside in its
captured velvet…that she could do something to establish protective
measures against Queen Ada. But the threats lay dormant, ready to be
activated if Clara chose not to cooperate. Cooperate or the people of
her Sphere would be ruled by tyranny, not mutual respect and
collaboration. The ways of her father would not be forgotten because
she was incapable of preserving them. That streak of resolve always
held her in its fist when the days grew dark in Clara’s soul.
    Clara thought of her father, even
though it made her sad, her memories of her girlhood in the oyster
fields alongside her father were dear to her. She ruminated upon them
more frequently than she cared to admit… even to herself.
    *
    Clara looked at the oyster King
Raymond held in the palm of his hand, its wavy and hammered surface
belying the succulent sea meat held inside, the pretty gem nestled in
its dove gray folds. How the oysters fascinated young Clara! Each one
a surprise. The pearl their reward for diligently and studiously care
taking them until their maturation reached an end.
    “Clara-girl,” King Raymond
began, prying open a too small shell, one even she knew was not yet
ready for harvest, “this young is not yet ready for yield.”
    “No father! Do not, I wish no harm
to befall the oyster.”
    Her father gave her a look of soft
compassion, “You must learn just the correct moment in an oyster’s
life span for harvest.