¿Qué... cuándo... cómo? No preví esto.

I most definitely did not see this happening, I thought to myself, in my native Spanish of course, as Nigar Kalfa, Gülfem Hatun, and the other women finished speaking. Dance for the Sultan? How does that work? I had so many questions, and nobody to answer them for me.

I speed walked back to my room that I shared with Elisabeth, hoping to find her there, which of course she was, trying to read a book in Arabic. Based on the direction her eyes were moving, she understood nothing.

She could feel my breathing over her shoulder and turned around and chuckled.

"Didn't see you there, princess Francesca. I'm just reading a book, as you can see." She motioned her hand towards the manuscript.

"Oh I see," I went on with it. "What's it about?"

"Well..." Elisabeth scratched her head as she sighed. "It's about some stuff..."

She mumbled on about something and began tracing her fingers along the pages from left to right, like how you would read any Latin script text, which by the way is wrong here in the middle east, and Elisabeth wasn't fooling me.

"You do know that it's right to left, not like in Europe?" I reminded her. Elisabeth's face paled a bit as she bit her lip.

"Oh it is? Sorry, I guess I didn't know..."

"We have spent weeks trying to learn the basics of Arabic, and you don't even know which direction to read? Ay ay ay." I reprimanded her. "Let's study a bit I guess."

Our small but cozy room had a built in book shelf since it used to be a favorites room, and we had a few books there, so I reached upwards towards it and pulled off one dusty book, which just as I suspected was on Arabic language.

"Alright Elisabeth," I sighed as I plopped onto a bed beside her, and opened up the book, blew off some dusty and pulled off a few small cobwebs from over the years.

Let's study.

~

That went alright so far, I suppose. We were studying for about 30 minutes at this point, and I think Elisabeth was a teensy bit closer to understanding than she was at the start.

I shut the book we were reading and sat up a bit, straightening my shoulders and taking on a teacher, or tutor sort of attitude, like my French teacher Monsieur De Laverne, who acted like a frivolous little puppy and ultimately barely taught anything, though my goal this time is to at least help Elisabeth a little bit.

Then I asked the most important question of the day, which I hoped by now was drilled very far into Elisabeth's head.

"What direction do you read in Arabic?" I asked. Elisabeth slapped her forehead, groaning.

"Can I take a break now?" She whined. "Please?"

I rolled my eyes. "No. Not until you answer the question."

Elisabeth groaned again.

"Can't I at least learn Spanish or something? That's far easier than-" She began deflecting until I interrupted her.

"If you wanna survive any longer around here, you best do as I tell you. So is it left or right?" I continued pressing her for an answer. 

Without any pressure, she won't learn. I don't know why she doesn't want to. Unlike me, Elisabeth has an absolute zero chance of being rescued or freed from this ugly place with barbarians, and that's an undeniable fact. It would be better for her to assimilate and learn as fast as she could.

Elisabeth tapped her chin, and at this point I sort of understood she was just trying to tease me, annoy me, to get a funny reaction. She didn't honestly care, but she did know the answer, and that kind of infuriated me. Back in Spain, nobody would think twice about ignoring or disobeying me, especially not a peasant or lower than royalty ranked person.

Even if we were technically equal rights slaves here, Elisabeth knew my secret, and I already told her I appreciated to be addressed and treated as a Princess, because I would return home soon and everything would be back to normal everywhere I went. At first Elisabeth abided by this request, because she also believed it just like me. But now more than a month has passed, and I have to admit, even I believe that as every day passes with no news from Spain, the more likely it feels that I have been forgotten, and I won't be saved and taken back home where I belong.

I think this has lead to her recent behavior, and I wasn't having it. But I would bite back my lip like they have taught us here in Topkapi Palace, to save myself from potentially dangerous consequences. When I am saved, I can make the most consequential statements I want and nobody would bat eyelashes and all would be well. For now, every moment counts and decisions must be carefully made.

I got up from the bed and began heading towards the door, and almost crashed into it as it was opening from the other way and a girl came inside. It was our friend, or at least I considered her a friend, Fatma Hatun, the soft spoken girl who often came to inform us on certain news.

"Francesca Hatun, Nigar Kalfa has summoned you to come join her in the rooms of the Valide Sultan." I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I turned to Elisabeth, and we exchanged glanced.

Could this be related to what I heard earlier? Dancing for the Sultan?