The Golden Egg: The Poor Maiden
A Grimm Novella — part 1 of 4
[Author’s Note:
This is the first part of a much longer story than I usually publish. It’s been in my Drafts for well over a year, and I thought I might never finish it. Now, I have. In more ways than one, it’s a tale whose time has come.
The story and I owe enormous gratitude to Lizella Prescott and Zachariah Wahrer for indispensable editorial advice, and for the idea of The Grimm Reaper.]
“You’re beautiful, princess, and talented. Don’t forget that. You are blessed.”
Sarah Miller didn’t feel beautiful or talented. She felt plain, and stupid, and right now she also felt stressed and tired. Some of that was overwork. Some of it wasn’t. Her father’s mantra rang like hollow mockery in her head. Every blessing is also a curse, she thought.
She removed the earbud headphones for a minute, then replaced them. They were a useful diversion, she had found. Whereas many of her colleagues were genuinely listening to music, using it to shut out the world and let them concentrate on coding, Sarah rarely had anything playing. The noise-cancellation function was sufficient, silencing the dull roar of the aircon and reducing the tapping of keyboards all around her to a soft wash. She tried occasionally to imagine herself in the old-fashioned kind of office her mother must have known, full of people chattering about work, or not-work, and operating equipment with actual, noisy, moving parts: mechanical adding-machines, typewriters, comptometers.
It was a vision of hell.
To an observer, Sarah would appear to be cocooned in her own world. As long as the stratagem worked on Steven, she didn’t much care what anyone else thought. Her hypersensitive hearing would allow — indeed, force — her to listen in on conversations on the far side of the office, though in practice those were almost non-existent. It was a talent, a blessing as her father would say, one that had proved of almost no use in her life.
She could have been a musician, her teachers had told her. Aged eight, she had found the toolkit inside her mother’s piano and worked out how to tune it. To Sarah the task presented no difficulty beyond the wear on her tiny fingers. Anyone could do it. Couldn’t they? No, said her father, through tears, as she picked out Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. You had to have the blessing.
Sarah caught the un-cancelled ping of the elevator arriving at her floor, and glanced up to see its door opening. Uh-oh, she thought. Steven, the Development Support Manager. Steven, the lumbering ogre. Steven the frog-faced seducer, although that was putting it very kindly. And with him a girl, undoubtedly an innocent such as Sarah herself had been when she started her own internship a year ago. Steven preyed upon the type, attracting them in some fashion that Sarah had managed to expunge from her memory. Someone in HR must be on his side: some previous conquest, perhaps, still under his spell.
They were heading for Steven’s desk, the one he maintained opposite her own. Despite herself, Sarah listened in on his lecturing. “And here,” he said with a flourish, “we have the beating heart of Secure Soft Information Gateway,” citing the official name that nobody outside Investor Relations ever used. “The most ultra of ultrafast trading systems.”
The girl looked suitably impressed, her eyes cartoon-wide. Sarah almost expected her to break into song. “S-S-I-G, for you and for me, la la la la…” That would be a noise worth cancelling.
Over the girl’s shoulder, Sarah spotted Jakob arriving from the stairwell to intercept the pair. Sarah liked Jakob. He had been the most friendly face when she started at ForEdge, kind and helpful even when he wasn’t required to be teaching her the job, and a positive factor in her decision to accept the offer of a permanent position. She had felt personally disappointed when he was promoted upstairs, three months later, to Internal Audit and Compliance.
His talks on historical economics had been particularly engaging. “Suppose you’re a farmer,” he’d said one day to Smelly Dan, “and you’re a baker” — this to Geeta, who always wore Indian dress and seemed to think herself superior to all of them — “and you, Miss Miller, are a miller.” His slight smile caused her heart to skip briefly. “The farmer grows apples and corn. The miller grinds the corn into flour. The baker bakes the flour into bread. The farmer gives some of his apples to the miller and the baker, and the baker gives some of his bread to the miller and the farmer.” He looked at them each in turn, seated with him around a small square table. “What’s wrong with that picture?”
Smelly Dan was silent. Everyone knew that he would not be offered a job at the end of their internship. “No money,” Geeta snapped. “Everything is barter, everything depend on goodwill.” She looked smugly towards Sarah, as if to say, Beat that.
Sarah nodded assent. “It sounds nice,” she said. “Like where I grew up, only before. Like where my mother — ” She stopped, shook her head, No more to say.
“No growth,” Jakob told them. “Also no resilience, in my simple model, but principally, no growth. Now if — ”
“Excuse me, Steven,” said the real, present-time Jakob. Sarah switched back from reverie to listening mode, not exactly earwigging, just for the sound of his voice. Steven turned, uncharacteristically quickly for him, as if startled. “Been trying to get hold of you, I need a word.”
“Will it wait?” Steven asked. “I’ve got — ” In her periphery, Sarah saw him gesturing towards the girl. I’ve got some pants to get into, Sarah silently filled in for him, wondering whether to smile to herself or blush.
“Bit urgent,” Jakob shook his head. “Please?”
Sarah heard Steven sigh heavily, not quite theatrically. Cinematically, perhaps. Outranking Jakob Woodman in every way except the one that mattered, he was defeated by the authority of IA&C. Sarah glanced up to see him casting around the room, alighting on herself. “Oh, Sarah,” he said, without confirming that he had her attention, “could you look after Genevieve for a few minutes?”
Sarah locked her screen and stood up. “How few?”
Steven turned to Jakob for confirmation. “Might be more than a few,” he said, with a little grimace. Steven looked dismayed.
“I can handle that,” Sarah told them. “I’m Sarah Miller,” she said to the girl, offering a professional handshake.
The girl took it awkwardly, a limp clasp that did not know where to begin or end. “Genevieve Hoste,” she said. She started in alarm as Steven and Jakob disappeared toward the stairwell. “Are they coming back? I’m supposed to be on a schedule.”
Sarah laughed. “New intern?” The girl nodded eagerly. “Right, then the first thing you need to learn is the First Law Of Software Development.” The girl’s face was querying, expectant. “It Takes Longer.”
“What takes longer?” Miss Hoste had quite a comprehension gap, Sarah decided. Just like me a year ago. Oh, the things I could tell my former self! Starting with how to get hold of the morning-after pill when you need it… Damn you, Steven!
“Everything does,” Sarah confided. “And the second thing you need to learn is where we make coffee. Follow me.”
The girl dawdled, once again gawking after the departed Steven. “He’s nice, isn’t he? Oh!” She flushed, a deep beetroot. “You’re not — I mean you and — ?”
“No,” Sarah said evenly. Not now. Not again. Not until the end of my days. Her cool, professional head took over the conversation. “Where did you study?”
[End of part 1. Part 2 continues:
]
