She thought she heard echoes. She thought she heard the sea. Then it was leaves rustling. She felt cold like smooth stone. Something shifted. There was a tap on the floor. She hadn’t yet decided whether she wanted to open her eyes.

She could feel that the sheet covering her was too thin. She was light like a ghost. Maybe she was dead or in a hospital room. It was too bright. She opened her eyes and thought that she was still asleep because above was a white plaster ceiling pushed out by patterns of overhanging branches and dangling leaves that met equally white walls of trunks. Even cracked as the plaster was by the passage of time it was still enchanting.

A book clapped shut and she turned her head to see the woman sitting in the chair beside her bed. The woman had two large horns curled on the sides of her head and her large black eyes seemed to hold the universe in their depths.

"Who are you?" the girl asked, sitting up with the bed sheet clutched against her chest.

The woman ignored the question and stood.

"Get dressed," she said. "Trisha is coming by to take you to work."

The woman went to the door, put her hand on the doorknob, and looked back to see that she was understood. The girl saw this and started to open her mouth.

"Don’t talk back," the woman scolded, "Just do it."

With that the woman left and the girl held her question. She had been wrong about the woman. The woman's eyes had been glass and those horns kept at a mean point. The girl had an idea and felt the top of her own head, but there were no horns there. She and the woman must have been of a different sort and that woman was in charge. 

Now the girl regretted getting up, but she remembered that someone would be coming for her and all she wore was a thin white nightgown. Across the room the girl saw what she recognized as a standing dresser. The sight of it was odd, but she couldn’t decide why.

She pushed the bed sheets away, walked over to the standing dresser, and pulled on one of the metal handles. The door swung open to reveal a row of identical dresses hung along a single rail. All of them were black with a folding white triangle in the skirt. They were not half as nice as the angry woman’s green velvet dress. She reached out to feel the rough cloth and flipped through each of them until she came to another white nightgown.

Realizing that she would need underclothes she swung open the other door for a better view of her wardrobe and saw shelves with more folded garments. She lifted through white tank tops and long white underwear that she wanted to call leggings. Common sense told her that these were undergarments even as her mind tried to tell her otherwise. She sat waiting for her mind to make a decision before she remembered that someone was expecting her.

The girl shook her head of the distraction and removed her nightdress for the underclothes and work dress. As she struggled to button the back of the dress a knock sounded at the door. She finished the last button and turned to the source. Her world was expanding slowly past the room.

"Come in," she said and waited.

Then she realized that whoever had come for her might not have heard her so she went to the door, but it opened before she got there. Standing there was an older woman with two horns on the back of her head, curving down with her messy brown hair. She carried a wicker basket of laundry in her hands and looked much nicer than the other woman.

"Are you ready? I would give you more time, but then we would all be in trouble," Trisha said.

She followed Trisha into a hallway lined with low oak panelling while the upper portion of the wall and the ceiling were left to the bare stones. The doors that they passed were of red wood and hanging from the ceiling were little lamps.

She could imagine herself following a line of stars, putting her feet in front of her, one after the other. She could almost smell the night air. The footsteps of the older woman kept her focused on real matters as they walked to the laundry room.

When they stopped she was facing into a stone room where two large wooden tubs of soapy water sat in the middle of the floor. Beside these were washboards for scrubbing and cushions for kneeling. The floor was already noticeably wet beside the left tub where a washboard lay half in the water. Smaller wooden buckets filled with white bars of soap were lined against the wall. In the back corner there was even a wooden hand-cranked press for rinsing. Trisha went in and dumped the clothes she had been carrying into a pile on the floor between the tubs and put the basket to the side.

"Have you ever used a washboard?" the older woman asked.

The woman had already knelt down on her cushion to dunk a shirt in the soapy water. Then she reached for the scrub board to hold in one hand as she fiercely scrubbed the shirt against it. As a final measure she ringed the water from the piece of clothing before tossing the clean shirt into the empty clothes basket, and took another.

"No," the girl replied.

"The trick of it is to keep the cloth between your hands and the metal. Give it a try."

The girl eyed her washboard leaning against the stagnant tub of water. She already felt that hard times were coming, but she decided to go along with it. She knelt down on the cushion, held the wooden frame of the metal washboard angled in the water, and took a handful of clothing to scrub. She took things slowly, hardly making a splash.

"Try to get some done so Edith has something to take when she comes to hang the wash," Trisha told her patiently.

"Right," she said absently, but she couldn’t speed up.

For a while she tried. She tried to scrub everything clean, but she found the motion slowing down. She found herself stopping, and staring, and thinking. Had she always been so easy to slip away? Had the far wall always been so interesting to stare at? She had the odd feeling that she could feel all the echoes off the walls, of the water and footsteps.

"Hello Trisha," a young girl with small deer horns said coming into the room. "This must be the new girl. Hey, new girl. You met Ris right?"

"Ris?"

The girl knew it for a name, but not the meaning that it held.

"That lady who was in your room. Ris will give you some harsh words if she sees you sitting there and a beating if you keep up your dreaming."

"You have beatings?"

"Edith, don’t scare her," Trisha scolded.

"Sorry. I lied about the beatings. Just look like your working so Ris doesn’t get mad at us."

"I don’t think she’s even fit to pretend to work today after all that wine," old Trisha said.

"Don’t say that. I’m sure she’s embarrassed. Look she’s ignoring us."

The girl wasn’t doing it on purpose. It was just that something had occurred to her. She had just realized that her world wasn’t expanding, it was only moving room to room. It was strange.

"Hey girl, what’s your name?" Edith called out to her.

The girl in question didn’t know she had a name.

"Don’t tell me they didn’t give you a name," Edith said.

"Your master sure is an odd one," old Trisha said putting down her wash to attend the matter. "I was surprised he brought you here to work and now he hasn’t even told you your apprentice name yet."

"We should just give you a name," Edith announced. "I think you’re a Selene. That’s a good old name so don’t lose it."

"I think you should let the girl speak," Trisha said. "I’m sure she has some questions on her first day. As for naming, you should leave that to Tarin."

"That guy is just incompetent. Right, Selene."

The pace of their argument dazed her. Edith turned to her expectantly.

"I’m not sure," Selene said.

She didn’t know who Tarin was and she didn't want to get into trouble.

"Selene agrees with me," Edith announced for her.

"Don’t go repeating that," Trisha scolded. "Let Tarin decide what to call her."

"No way. Selene lets go hang the laundry. I don’t think you're fit to wash right now."

Selene was glad that Edith was taking her along. She understood that Trisha was a good worker and was worried about getting things done, but Selene felt the need to explore a bit. Being trapped in the laundry room just then didn’t feel healthy. Edit took the basket of clean clothes. Selene made sure to tell the old lady that next time she would do better with the washing and then she was off.

"I bet they forgot to tell you where the bath was," Edith said walking ahead with the basket.

"They haven’t had time to tell me much," Selene admitted.

She still wasn’t sure whom Edith was referring to so that was the truest answer she could give.

"So now that you’ve seen this place, what do you think of it?" Edith asked her.

"Well, working isn’t so bad," Selene said. "And I think you’re a nice person for spending time with me."

"You must not have had many friends," Edith commented. "I guess that makes sense since you’re a warlock."

That was the second thing that Selene learned about herself. The first thing had been her name. She wasn’t sure what a warlock was, but it sounded interesting. It sounded magical. She remembered that warlock’s were related to wizards and witches, but could not remember how.

They arrived at the end of the corridor. Selene opened the door for her new friend and discovered that outside was just as gloomy as the lamp lit corridor inside. The edge of an ancient forest crowded close, kept at bay only by a small strip of grass, and any light that the trees couldn’t block out was smothered by a thick layer of grey clouds overhead. She forgot about Edith and watched the grey sky meld slowly into itself. It was the type of sky that one saw on rainy days except that there was no scent of rain in the air.

"Kind of depressing isn’t it," Edith said looking back at her.

"Is it always like this?" Selene asked.

"Always. It’s better if you don’t look at it."