Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Eleven
A bargaining piece in a game.
Father taught Felecia a lot of games when it was late and no one else was around because “you’re brighter than both of your brother’s put together, just don’t let that grandmother of yours find out.” He taught her to play all those games so that he could have a worthy opponent but also because it was the one pastime that he figured he could do with a daughter. Later though, Felecia learned that the real games weren’t played with cards or dice or carved bits of wood and bone.
The real games were the ones Nana taught without even trying, the life and death games, who got praise and who got scorn, which of the servants earned favor or rebuke, which of the children the same. Those real-life games always seemed to get more difficult to play with ever increasingly dire results for the losers as time went on.
All Felecia had ever wanted was peace, a sense of every day normalcy, to feel the unconditional love and support of her parents and her grandmother. All Felecia ever received was the biscuit or the stick and then when she got too fast for the stick, the biscuit or the hunger. Hunger became a friend in Rotary house.
All the woods had offered so far was the same, hunger. So be it. Felecia didn’t want to be rude, she certainly didn’t want to be mean either but Phillip was being obvious and stating his intentions plain, why shouldn’t she do the same?
“I never want to be the mistress of that place, or any shepherds suckling cow either. My father plied the ocean for his living, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
Phillip laughed, it was a seal’s bark if there ever was one, a loud, harsh, sharp noise that made Felecia shrug and cower. “Your father was a whoremonger who loved his drink and his smoke and he let his vices run him up on the rocks one last time. He took the last of your family’s boats and their sustainable fortune with him when he did so.”
The groundskeeper was quick to change pace when he saw the girl before him shut down and reduce herself in the conversation. “He was my best friend too, hell, my only friend. The issues facing the people out here are too dire to play pretend or wish for things. Sailors don’t welcome women on boats, never have, but everyone here will welcome you as the rightful heir when the time comes. I’m not trying to make a tidy place for myself, I’ll likely be dead when the time comes, I’m in this for the future, for all our family lines.”
Felecia tried to wrap her mind around everything that was being said, she tried to play that increasingly dangerous game she watched Nana play time and time again while using her guile and her wiles. “If you want me to uphold the family banner of old so be it, but I still want to learn the life of the sea. I want to feel the life my father felt, at least for a time, and then I’ll do what you want, so long as it doesn’t entail marriage.”
Phillip didn’t need to force laughter or try to stay still and be his usual earnest self. The groundskeeper only shook his head and shrugged. “All I can teach you is my trade, the land and how to live off of it, for the sea you’ll have to find other masters and good look there. As for marriage, the long lineage of Rotary house has already taught me that marriage to anyone has never meant so much as pigs’ shit.