Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
VALI
L ord Gental, the god of families, has a twisted sense of humor…because I get my monthly menses the very next morning.
Right after Ranan gave me lessons in swimming and made it very clear that I’m not to go into the deep waters of the sea if I have a wound because I’ll be seen as prey? Blood trickles from deep within me. I lie on the floor of the tent, hating the cramps and feeling utterly panicked. I don’t have rags to stuff into my undergarments. Gods, I don’t even have undergarments . I have nothing to soak up the blood with and I’m surrounded by the sea—a sea I am very much not supposed to get into right now.
What do I do?
I roll carefully on my side, hoping that will somehow keep the blood inside me until I figure out a solution. Ranan isn’t in the tent, and I’m relieved. He was gone this morning when I awoke to belly cramps. I should have known I was about to get my moon time—night before last I had utterly filthy dreams about Ranan holding me in the water and shoving me up against the turtle’s shell so he could drive into me from behind. I always have naughty dreams right before my period.
So much for swimming lessons. I’m going to be a burden to Ranan for the next several days. A bloody, messy, crampy burden. He’s probably going to be furious at me. If I was back in Parness, the wise-woman would offer me a charmed plug made out of wool and wrapped with herbs, but I’m starting to think her solution to all ailments is to shove things into holes where they don’t belong. It would at least be a solution, though. Right now I don’t know what to do. The stink of my period feels as if it’s permeating the tent and I need to fix this somehow.
I grab my ragged dress and rip a thick strip off the hem, then shove that bit of material between my thighs. It’s not enough to soak up much if my flow is heavy, but perhaps I can rinse it in the sea without Ranan noticing. It feels like a terrible idea, though—he said sea creatures could smell blood for leagues, and I’d be washing blood right into the waters where we are. What choice do I have, though?
Worse yet—what if Ranan decides he wants his husbandly rights? I won’t get pregnant, but something tells me that he won’t like my bleeding, either. I’ll still happily have sex with him, but I never feel less unappealing than when I’m crampy and bleeding and bloated.
I want to cry. I’m not much of a weeper, but today, I feel like wailing in frustration. Why does my body have the worst timing ever? Why can’t I be like one of the other village girls who skip their monthly cycle when the slightest stressful things happen? No, I have to bleed like a stuck pig.
Clutching my gut, I try to come up with a story. Back in Parness, a woman with her menses was considered unclean, a curse by the god Gental every month as punishment that we did not bear children. I’d have to hide from all men until Gental’s curse was lifted. Some women look forward to their menses because they can hide out from their husbands and children, but for me, it just meant the usual work and cramps.
Ranan’s going to think I’m unclean and avoid me if I tell him the truth. I need a good lie as to why I can’t swim today. Why I need to just stay here in the tent, stinking of old blood. An old wound, perhaps? That seems the most likely answer. Yes. I’ve opened an old wound I need to nurse it. I can swim later. I adjust my torn dress around my waist, hiding my loins. The wound is on my inner thigh, I decide, prepping my story. Perhaps I was gored by a bull once and now the salt water has made it flare up again. Completely believable?—
The tent flap jerks back, and I yelp in surprise. I’ve been so tense that the sight of him sets my heart to pounding. “Oh, it’s you.”
Ranan scowls at my words.
“Not that I was expecting anyone else,” I blurt out, sitting up. My dress gets shorter by the day, and to make sure that I have everything covered that needs covering, I’m wearing it as a skirt and leaving my breasts bare. The women in Parness would do so when the weather got hot and no one looked twice, but it’s just me and Ranan here, and I haven’t gone bare-breasted save for our swimming lessons.
He stared at my breasts then, and he’s staring at them now, too. I mean, they are rather nice breasts, but now is not the time that I want my new husband aroused by the sight of me. “I can’t swim today,” I blurt out. “Apologies. I’m just going to lie here in the tent.”
Ranan narrows his eyes at me. “Why?”
He seems suspicious, as if I’m deliberately working against his wishes. Gods, I wish I could reassure him. What if his people toss unclean women overboard and make them swim until the monthly curse is lifted? What if he abandons me on shore again? “Nothing much,” I say in my brightest voice. “The salt water has just opened up an old wound of mine and I need to rest it until the bleeding stops.”
“You’re bleeding?”
“Not much,” I blurt out, wondering if I should have gone with a different tactic. “Just enough that I can’t swim today, as you said. I’m sure it’ll be gone by morning. It’s truly fine.”
He gives me such a look that I quail inside. “Where?”
I swallow hard. “Where what?”
“Where are you bleeding?”
Oh, by the gods. Surely he doesn’t want specifics. “Nowhere important. Like I said, it’s an old wound?—”
“Show me.” Ranan’s expression is unyielding.
“Truly, it’s nothing at all, I swear.” I adjust my skirt, hoping that no blood is coming through. “But if you have some rags I can use to clean up the blood, I’d be ever so grateful…”
My excuses die in my throat as he continues to glare at me.
“Show me,” he says again, not moving a muscle.
“I really don’t think that’s necessary.” I primly smooth a hand down the hem of my skirt, making sure it covers me to my knees and hides everything.
That small movement gets his attention, however. He points at my lower body. “Is it on your leg?”
“If you must know, it’s the inside of my thigh,” I lie. “An old goring from a bull. I—eep!” I yelp when he grabs my legs, sliding me onto my back, and spreads my thighs far apart. “Don’t! Please!”
He ignores my protests and gazes between my legs, and I want to die of shame. Just fall right off the turtle and drift down into the deep waters of the sea and forget all of this. I cover my hands with my face, embarrassed.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I know! I said that!”
He’s quiet, and I keep my hands over my face, trying to draw my legs together. His hands hold my knees apart, though, and then he strokes the outside of my thigh. “I see no old wounds. Is this your menses, then?”
I fight back the urge to cry. So much for hiding it. “Aye, it’s my menses. Please don’t toss me onto shore and leave me behind.”
He grabs my hands and pries them away from my hot face. “I am not a monster. I am not abandoning you. Understand?”
I bite my lip…and then whimper when a fierce round of cramps sets in. I manage a nod. “Th-thank you.”
Ranan leans back, two of his hands still on my knees, and gazes down at my body. “How long does this last?”
Is he asking because he doesn’t know about women, or is it because the women of his people don’t bleed like this? If so, that makes things worse. His human wife is a bleeder. “It should pass in about five days.”
Rubbing his mouth, he gently closes my legs again. I immediately snap my thighs together and turn on my side, curling into a ball.
“You are in pain,” he points out.
“Cramps. They’re worst the first two days.”
“What do you require from me? How can I help?”
Part of me wishes he would go away, because I just want to be left alone. I’m not used to someone paying attention to my cramps, much less offering to help out. I wrap an arm around my belly and shrug. “Willow bark tea? If you have that, it helps with the aching.”
“I have none.” He rubs his jaw. “Tell me what this tree looks like and I will try to find it.”
“I genuinely don’t know. I bought it from the apothecary. It’s fine. Thank you for offering.” I reach out and pat one of his hands. “If it’s all the same, I’m going to sleep through the worst of it if I can.”
He blinks at me, gaze somber, and nods. “Do you require food? Drink?”
I shake my head. “The thought of raw fish is nauseating right now. I’ll be fine. Truly. It’s like this every month.”
Ranan’s mouth flattens. He gets to his feet and abandons me without saying a word.
It’s not the worst round of cramps I’ve had, but it’s up there. I’m tired and thirsty and sore, but I don’t have the energy to get up from the bottom of the tent and find a waterskin. I doze instead, and when I wake up, my lips are dry and chapped and the cloth between my thighs is soaked. Ugh. I rub a hand over my face, wondering if I should go to the water’s edge and rinse it, or if that’s a bad idea.
As if my thoughts summon him, Ranan steps inside the tent. He’s got a wet trunk with him the size of a barrel and sets it down in front of me. “I brought you cloth.”
“You did?” I sit up, touched at his efforts. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“You are hurting and feel unwell,” he says simply. “If this will help, I will do it.”
It won’t fix my cramps, but I’ll definitely feel better cleaned up. I watch as he pulls out a knife and breaks the wax seal around the edges of the trunk, something I’ve never seen before. It’s to make it waterproof, I realize. A trunk full of sodden fabric would be twice as heavy and likely ruined, too. He opens the trunk and grabs the first bolt of fabric and offers it to me.
My jaw drops. I touch the delicately embroidered silk, a cloth that’s probably worth more than Lady Parness’s entire castle. “I can’t use this.”
“It is dry?—”
I shake my head before he can finish. “It’s too fine. Too beautiful. I’d ruin it.”
“It’s just fabric.” He glares at me.
“And you’re ‘just’ like a human man, right?”
Ranan huffs, amused by my comparison. “Very well, then.”
He digs deeper into the trunk and pulls out another fabric this time, this one a rich green brocade with gold thread shot through it. I decline again, and we go through the trunk of fabrics, all of them more beautiful than I ever imagined, and finally go with a dark, elegant, burgundy linen, as it seems the best choice. I hold the fabric and it’s the softest linen I’ve ever touched, with little white flowers sewn onto the edges. It feels wrong, yet I’ve no other choice. I worry that if I keep turning down Ranan’s thoughtful gifts, he’ll get annoyed and decide to get rid of me after all.
“Thank you,” I tell him, clutching the fabric to my chest and managing a smile. I decide I don’t care how stained the fabric gets. I’m keeping this and making a dress out of it and it’ll still be the finest thing I’ve ever owned. I pet the soft linen and ignore how my callused fingers catch against it.
He watches me for a moment and then turns, pulling a satchel off his shoulder. “I brought more.”
“More fabric?”
The sea-ogre shakes his head and opens the sack. Out spill something like…cattails. Cattails and a large berry that looks like a milky pink bubble. I’m perplexed at the sight of these things, but he picks one cattail up and breaks it open, and downy fluff pours out of it. “Absorbent,” he says. “It might help.”
“Gods, this is perfect,” I cry, so relieved I could weep fresh tears. “You’re wonderful.”
The sail atop his head flicks and he picks up one of the pink bubbles. “For you.”
“What is it?” I sniff it, but it doesn’t smell like anything. It looks waxy and strange, the size of a small plum. There’s dozens of them in the bag, too.
“After you said that you couldn’t eat fish today, I remembered that my mother likes a certain type of seagrass fruit once a month. I thought the reason might be similar. You eat them.” His eyes are dark, his expression cagey, as if he’s uncomfortable sitting here with me. “Try one.”
Oh. Food and fabric? I’m touched that he went to such effort, and a little worried, too. What if he decides I’m not worth all the trouble? Gingerly, I lift one of the bubbles to my lips and try to take a bite. The skin of it is hard, like an enormous grape, and I end up popping the entire thing in my mouth and chewing so it doesn’t splatter everywhere. A sweet, milky flavor floods my mouth when the bubble bursts, and it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. It’s like berries and sweetness and milk all combined into one syrupy bite. His mother must crave sweets during her menses, too. I snatch another up and eat it.
“Better?” he asks, rich voice oddly demanding.
I nod enthusiastically, raising a hand to my mouth to cover it as I chew the tougher skin. “You are too kind, truly, Ranan.”
He crouches in front of me on his haunches, silent but full of tension. “You lied to me again.”
A shiver runs down my spine. His voice is so low and deep that it makes everything sound ominous. I can’t tell if he’s pointing this out as a fact or if he’s upset with me. “Aye, I did. I thought an old wound might be better than my menses. Most men think a woman unclean while she bleeds. I’m making a mess, I can’t practice swimming, and I worried you’d be upset.”
“I am more upset at the lies. You said you would stop.”
“I know.” My voice is small and frightened. “It’s…habit. No one wants to hear the truth from a slave.”
“I do.” He puts his finger under my chin and forces me to look him in the eye. “You are my wife.”
But I’m not. He can say I’m his wife, but we haven’t had a ceremony. We haven’t shared a bed and we barely know each other. Nothing is permanent yet and it would be far too easy to walk it back. “I just didn’t want you to change your mind. I don’t want to be a bother to you.”
I’m still thinking about that day on the beach, and how he’d almost left me. In that moment, I realized that my future is more fragile than I’d realized, and it could end up being worse than the fate I’d had in Sunswallow.
Ranan’s eyes flash with irritation. “I told you that you were my wife. How do I prove this to you?”
“I don’t know.” All I know is that I’m going to do my best not to anger him. I’m going to be the sweetest, most eager bride ever. Perhaps I should try touching him to ease things along. My abdomen cramps with another painful squeeze and I shove another seagrass fruit into my mouth so I can avoid answering him.
With another frustrated growl, Ranan gets to his feet and stalks out of the tent.