'WHY ARE YOU keeping me captive?' Vetta pursued, ignoring the other unpleasant word used to describe her. 'Are you holding me for ransom? That is like stealing things. You said you did not steal, but holding a person captive is the same as stealing.' She stopped, out of breath from the flurry of accusing words, and sat upon the nearest chair.
'Well, you are a one,' the girl said, impressed.
'One what?' Vetta was trying hard not to cry. She wondered if anyone was searching for her yet, or even if they would bother, so forlorn she felt at this moment.
'For speaking your mind when you have something on your mind to say. That takes great courage.' The blue-haired girl sat forward on the simple wooden chair opposite Vetta and looked earnestly into her eyes. For the first time Vetta noticed she had hazel eyes flecked with gold. They were pretty she decided, and wondered what her true hair colour was. 'Listen. What I have done this evening is not stealing. It is an exchange, a fair exchange. I have something you want and you have something I want.'
'What have you got that I want?' Vetta asked in all innocence.
'Your freedom you buffoon,' the girl said, shaking her head.
'You stole it from me,' Vetta insisted bravely, eliciting an impatient sigh from the other.
'Listen,' she said again, more abruptly. 'Two years ago my people came to this area on their travels, circuits we call them, visitations other call them. I was only ten at the time. You cannot imagine how I've counted the years until I was here again. When last here I stole away from the main encampment over at Cloven Skull and watched all you girls about your schooling from a distance. So fine you looked, so knowledgeable, so friendly. How I envied you. For just one second of your life I would have given all ten years of mine. Just one second.' She lowered her gaze then and her eyes roamed over the scattering of pine needles on the wooden floor.
'I wasn't here two years ago,' Vetta said, puzzled.
'Not you personally, you girls. You extremely exclusive girls. The things you must know. The things you must see, out there, in the wider world, coming from distant lands through storm barriers. I have only travelled as far as I can walk and see nothing but the stars above. Imagine travelling to them!'
'They are the same everywhere,' Vetta observed offhandedly, but there was a growing sense of what was troubling this strange girl with blue hair. It was what her father scornfully called shop window hunger, yearning after something you could not possible have. Yet there was something within her that ached to help the girl, to relieve that yearning so she could be at peace.
'Our Frangea stars are special,' the girl insisted, but then, having never left this land she could not know otherwise Vetta conceded.
'What do you want me to do?' Vetta asked, swallowing. 'In exchange for my freedom.'
'You do know I'm not really holding you hostage?' the girl replied unexpectedly and Vetta sat up straighter and looked around the cabin. A door opposite seemed unlocked. 'That's right,' the other said. 'You can walk out any time. I won't stop you.' Her eyes were sad and worried and pleading all at once and Vetta knew she really was a hostage, a hostage of her own good nature, for she wanted to help this girl any way she could. She wanted to see her smile in a way that was not scornful or dismissive, but through a genuine sense of happiness. Vetta Mindal was a captive indeed.
'I'll do what you ask,' Vetta said bravely. 'Though I do not know what it is.'
'Are you hungry?' came another unexpected question. The blue-haired girl seemed to skirt what bothered her most, as if ashamed of herself.
'I have missed the evening meal,' Vetta realised, an emptiness making itself known by this realisation.
'Then share a meal with me. Share a moment of your extremely exclusive time, and make this wandering girl feel a little of the magic of your world. That's all I ask.'
'I might be able to do this,' and when Vetta smiled, the blue-haired girl smiled too so that a bond of friendship was forged that would last longer than worlds.
The parting which followed, necessitated by the worry of lateness and the fact there was no more food left in the cabin, was a little intense.
'I have to go,' Vetta said softly yet made no attempt to move.
'You have to go,' Truancy replied softly as well, but she dragged the girl through the doorway and pushed her out into the twilit forest in silence.
Vetta paused and looked around her, spotting the telltale marker of an amble walk in the distance.
'Perhaps,' she began, looking back, but the cabin was empty. Indeed, it looked as if it had not been occupied for a very long time. She listened to the forest sounds, the whirr of spruce bugs and the scratchings of squirrels and the whispers of pine fronds in a gentle breeze.
'Perhaps we might see each other again,' Vetta completed the sentiment in a whisper of her own and then wandered out of the strange shadow world of the Blue Hair Clan back into the noise and bustle of Miss Plazenby's Extremely Exclusive Seminary for Girls.