Chapter 3 – A Lamb’s Tale #8
Remin squeezed her hand. They were both orphans, for all that her father was alive.
But soon, his mother’s embroidery box would arrive, one of the few things he had left of her.
He was looking forward to giving it to Ophele.
Elodie could carry it about for her, and before long he might have something that Ophele had made for him, embroidered with a wolf demon or a bear or even a silver R.
He was utterly confident that his clever wife could turn her hands to anything.
A little more than a mile from the road, they spotted the break in the wall, though only because several sheep were actively escaping through it .
“Oh, those bad things,” said Ophele, and seized his hand to break into a run, flashing a smile at him of sheer exuberance. Remin stretched his long legs and won a squeal of delight from her as he swept her along, her little boots barely skimming the grass.
They had almost reached the sheep when it happened.
Three of them were already through the gap and a fourth one was squirming through when it stumbled on a flat rock at the base of the wall.
Its head went down, its legs went up, and it turned a slow somersault and landed flat on its back between two large rocks, four legs stuck stiffly in the air.
The sheep let out a bleat of protest and looked directly at them, shocked.
Remin just shook his head, checking another laugh. He had gone a few paces before he realized that Ophele was no longer with him. She was sitting on the grass behind him, laughing so hard she could barely speak.
“D-did you see his face?” she gasped, holding her sides. “Me-eh-eh-eh, he said. Meheheh.”
It was actually a fairly decent imitation of the sheep’s bleating. Remin’s lips quivered dangerously as he went to right the sheep while Ophele expired behind him, grabbing for the animal’s flailing legs. It wiggled, looked him dead in the eye, and bleated again.
“Me-eh-eh-eh,” said Ophele.
“Ophele,” he said warningly. His own sides were starting to shake.
And it wasn’t that the sheep was heavy, but it was surprisingly hard to get a grip on, between its loose, shifting skin and thick wool.
He grunted as the sheep’s flailing back legs kicked him in the shin.
The way it was bleating and struggling made him feel like he was molesting the unwilling beast.
“Me-eh-eh-eh,” the sheep protested, flinging out an accusatory foreleg.
“Me-eh-eh-eh,” said Ophele, laughing wildly, and Remin lost it, a burst of laughter erupting before he could check it.
“Stop that,” he gasped, fighting to get the sheep out of there before Ophele killed him. He didn’t even care if it was going off to pick a fight with the goats.
That thought finished him. In desperation he kicked one of the rocks next to the sheep loose and let it scramble to its feet on its own, sagging back onto the stone wall and laughing so hard tears streamed down his cheeks.
His sides actually hurt. He was only just getting hold of himself when Ophele appeared beside him with her features arranged in a naughtier version of the sheep’s shocked face and set him off all over again.
“Stop, stop, I mean it,” he wheezed, covering her face with one huge hand. “Enough. Enough, I yield.”
She pulled his hand down, laughing.
“I’ve never heard you laugh before,” she said, delighted, and her giggles fluttered against his belly as he pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her slender waist.
“I don’t laugh much,” he admitted.
“I like your laugh.” Her chin tilted up, an obvious invitation to kiss her. For once he did, long and slow, never mind who might be watching.
“Let’s go collect the sheep before they start a brawl,” he said, pulling her along with him and trying not to laugh again as she softly and tenderly bleated behind him.
It was as if a dam had burst. For the rest of the day, he kept flashing back to that ridiculous sheep, making him bite his tongue to keep from smiling while he was at the barracks that afternoon.
At supper Ophele passed him the rolls with a muttered, me-eh-eh-eh, that made him look down hastily to control an explosion.
“Ophele,” he said warningly, covering his mouth with his hand to hide it, but he couldn’t hold it back and suddenly he was tired of living this way, hiding what he felt for fear that someone somehow would use it against him.
He laughed. In full view of his astonished knights and everyone else in the cookhouse, he laughed, and caught her chin to kiss her naughty sheep face.
“I told you to stop that, wife,” he said, more caressing than admonishing, and let her go, glancing at his knights with a flash of his black eyes to let them know this was how things were going to be from now on. “Tell Miche what happened with the sheep.”
She told them. Remin’s eyes lingered on her, wondering that she could tell such a story with no shyness at all, and make them laugh when she told it.
She even made him laugh again, and he let it come, amazed that it could leave him breathless and at the same time make him feel like he had finally stopped suffocating .
It reminded him of what Ophele had said, about how they had made an oath to share all of their joys and sorrows. Well, he owed her the full measure of this joy. All his life, by nature and necessity, Remin had been a wolf.
For her, he would try to become a little more like a lamb.