Blade Song

Chapter 2- Like a Frog in a Well

I didn't always try to hide what I was. Before I cut my hair and bound my chest, before I was free, before I even had a name, I was just some tiny little girl born into bondage, and never did I dream of being something different.

Back then, in my ridiculously tiny corner of the world, I was known merely as Seven.

The day I won my freedom started like all my days did back then. I awoke to the loud clang of a metal ladle against the bottom of a large cooking pot.

"Get up, you dogs!" Otsune, the kitchen maid, bellowed. She was a stout woman with ears like a dormouse, though I never thought mouse really fit her demeanor.

I pulled myself free of the girl who slept beside me. Eight and I always slept that way, a tangled mess of limbs and matted hair. It was both for comfort and warmth. The small, dark room we slept in was cold at all times of the year.

I groaned and stretched as I sat up. "Morning, Eight."

"Morning, Seven." She yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

Eight was a pretty girl with soft facial features, porcelain skin, and hair like fire.

"Up!" Otsune smacked the pot a few more times.

Eight and I leapt to our feet. We'd learned long ago that if she had to ask three times you'd get a ladle to the back of your head. We filed into the hallway, along with the others, and lined up against the wall to receive our breakfast, a single rice ball.

Our numbers went in order of our age, with Eight and I being the youngest, which was somewhere between the ages of twelve to fourteen. I have never known exactly how old I was, or who my parents were for that matter.

There were four of us in total: Three, Six, Eight, and myself. I have no memory of One, Two, or Four. We did not speak of them.

We didn't see much of Five. She usually stayed in the young master's room. She was young, pretty, and his favorite. Though, this didn't stop him from occasionally summoning Three to his room late at night. I will be forever thankful that he preferred them a little older than Eight and I. Six was spared that particular horror as well, since he was the only male in the group.

"Eat and get to work." Otsune plopped a rice ball into my outstretched hands.

I shoved the food into my mouth, careful to lick up every grain. We would receive another meal at the end of the day, but only if they thought we deserved it. Our masters left that decision completely up to Otsune. She was still a maid, but a free one, and a full-blooded demon, which meant she had command over us.

Back then there was an order to things, a chain of command instilled in me since birth. The family, who owned us and the house, then friends of this family, next came the servants, then the dirt on the floor, and finally us, the slaves.

After our breakfast, Eight and I went to start our cleaning duties in the servant's quarters. The handful of servants the house employed did clean, of course, but they usually cleaned the main parts of the house. Servants can be seen, but filth dressed in rags, such as us, had to be kept out of sight.

The servant's rooms were small and plain, but to Eight and me, they looked magnificent. The maid staff had fluffy, thick futons. Not like ours, which were as thin as paper. They shared two to a room, but those rooms were bigger than the one all four of us had to cram into. But most of all, their rooms had windows and sunlight. Sometimes, if we finished cleaning early, Eight and I would gaze out the window at the vast, green lands of rolling hills and lush trees, and wonder what lay beyond them.

That day, after we'd finished cleaning the rooms, we set about our daily tradition to clean the hallway, a race.

"I hope you're ready to go down." Eight dipped her cloth into the bucket of water between us and wrung it out.