Chapter 9
X.
“Half the storeroom?” He asked when she told him her plans. “Thou shalt be ynundated wyth jars.”
“I would rather have too many than too few.” She had been a little embarrassed to make the request but much of it would be for his benefit and she would not indulge in feeling shame for something she meant to do out of industrious consideration. “Can it be managed?”
He took a few moments of deep concentration, unmoving and eyes closed, before he redirected his gaze back to her. “Let us see.”
“Come on!” She acted as if he had made her a present of an ermine cloak or a gem-encrusted brooch. She raced to the buttery door and bounced as he took his time following her.
“As thou hast not been forthcoming, what dost thou plan for them?”
“Everything,” she explained unhelpfully, heading down the stairs when he was close enough.
“Salves, perfumes, oils, and balms, unguents, creams,” she called over her shoulder.
“The flowers and herbs here are so fragrant and bountiful that I am sure I could make enough for our use and enough to sell when I leave. And!” She reached the bottom and watched him lumber down the stairs.
“I thought I would dry some meat for you. And bake some of the garden offerings for future eating. We have the winter to think about if the magic dries up.”
“Thou art plannyng on keepyng us stocked yf we can no longer use the Magyc.”
“Yes and...” She twisted her hands. “I am only here for a year and a day. I know you can return to foraging and hunting, but at least there will be food if you need.” She pointed to the network of scars over his abdomen.
“Those took time to heal and it could not have been easy trying to hunt with such wounds.”
“Y grew gaunt and bonie from dyet of rodent. Y should much lyke to avoyd repetytionne.”
“I am offering a solution.” She turned her back on him, went through to the storage area, and exclaimed.
“Art there enough?” He followed her.
A mountain of glassware now resided in the cellar.
“I hope so!” She began filling her skirt with jars. “I don’t know what you had to do to conjure them, but thank you. I cannot promise that I will not need to make another request, but I will try not to.”
“Yf thou needest, ask. Y may not be able, but Y will do what Y can.”
She returned to gathering jars to fill her skirt. She smiled watching Baró gathering them too. He had more grace than one might expect of his size, but the small and precarious jars rested awkwardly in his arms.
“Not too many. I will run out of room for them upstairs,” she said as she indicated her return to the kitchen.
“Yf thou art yntent on mete preservationne, hast thou seen the vegetable garden or orchard?”
“I saw peas the other day. I can investigate that on my own, but I would be interested in a tour of the orchard.”
“Y can shew thee, but trees and grass art all that exyst, nothing to meryt a tour.”
When back in the kitchen, she emptied the contents of her skirt, smiling wearily at the literal interpretation of her words. He warned her about speaking imprecisely and though she understood it, it tried her patience.
“Would you take me there then and keep company with me?”
“‘Twolde be mooste agreeable, but art thou not yet tyred of me?”
“Did you not witness me those days before we met?” She headed for the door.
”Do you not recall that I talk to everything, all the time?
By right, you should be tired of me. Come.
Show me.” She let him take the lead once outside.
“Some days I will be engaged in tasks that require all my attention, and some days you will wish for your freedom from me and take long jaunts in the forest lest I find other occupations for you. If I am tired of your company, Baró, I will not be shy in telling you that I need space.”
The slow pace and his silence offered her opportunity to think of a hundred intrusive questions.
She opted to pick flowers on the way as a distraction.
Well, maybe just one intrusive question.
.. She hoped that being content with his company would make him more receptive rather than think of her as a long-nosed busybody.
“Baró,” she began, already quite comfortable with the name she had given him, “you said that you do not know if you are the Fir’Darl.” She trotted up beside him. The pace may have been slow, but his strides were long. “What are you then?”
He stopped without warning and turned to look at her.
He moved just enough that she stopped her progress before she crashed into him.
She worried her lip, realizing that such a question might be too sensitive, too delicate, too sore.
Would he snap if she probed too much? Would his animal exterior finally align with his actions?
He laughed.
She didn’t think she liked his laugh. If his voice was strange, his laugh sounded even more unbelievable. In addition to not being built for language, his body had also not meant to accommodate expressive sound. There was a deep, breathy, growl-like quality to it. No, she didn’t like it at all.
“Yf only Y knew.” He shook his head and resumed his walk, talking to her over his shoulder.
“Aberrationne of nature? Yf thou askest for clasfyfycationne purposes, Y belyeve that anymal myght be best, the lyke of whyche thou mayest only see on the pages of yllumynated manuscrypts. Yf monster, thou sholdest refer to vases of the antyquyties. Y could, with some little ymagynationne, fynd other ways to descrybe myself but Y think that such exercyse woldeth not help thee.”
She held a few debates in her own head about what he might be, but neither “monster” nor “animal” satisfied her. Though Baró was incredibly ugly, she disliked the disparaging description of “aberration of nature.”
“The Fir’Darl is referred to as a masculine god and I have fallen into using masculine language for you without asking. Would you prefer I use something else?”
The Rivani, unlike the followers of the Great Holy, invited, welcomed, and celebrated sex and gender variance. While Baró’s physique resembled something she would call masculine, even if those wide, curved hips of his gave her pause, he knew his gender better than any campfire story.
“Nay, my clasfyfycationne mayest be unknown, but Y am a male beast.”
Like “aberration of nature,” she did not appreciate “beast” either, but she had little time to consider why as he brought her to a new expanse of vegetation.
She might have called it a field only there were rows upon rows of trees, the grass up to her belly, the branches heavy with fruit.
A momentary stirring of her initial wonder rose up.
She could feel the Magic humming around them.
“Thou wilt spy all manner of froot. Nothing quyte satysfies lyke mete but Y do oft enjoy that whyche Y fynd. The orangerie hath gone but yet some trees doth survyve.”
Of course they did. She could feel the Magic like a caress on her skin. Trees so steeped in magic would have been more impressive if they had failed to thrive.
“We will have plenty of food. I promise it. Nothing will go to waste this year.”
She spent a little time wandering through the trees, letting her massive host wander as he would, just a little behind or off to her side most of the time. Still, their conversation on their way to the orchard nagged at her. She should have left well enough alone, but could not. She needed to know.
“Baró, did you have parents or did you just come into being as you are?”
He came out from beneath the branches to answer her, a sweep of leaves nestling between his horns. He pointed at his navel with his claw, providing her all the answer she needed.
“Aye, Y had parents.”
“Were they gods or mythical creatures too?”
“Nay, Rivani. They wore the faces and forms of humans.”
She stopped walking, trying to process. If he had human parents, then how did she account for him? Did the gods grow angry with his parents and curse them with an abomination? There were stories like that. She didn’t know how to ask without being rude and insensitive.
“Baró, have you always been as you are?”
She could feel the tension ripple off him like waves. He closed his eyes, tightened his lips, and assumed the same look of concentration as when he had requested her jars. What he could be asking now? When his eyes opened again, he gazed at her, and in that look, she could see the horrible answer.
“Y have always been a monster,” he said at last. “But Y told thee,” he added, holding her gaze so that she understood, “Y change.”
His unspoken revelation destroyed her peace of mind. He made a hasty departure after their exchange, undone by such a confession made under invisible potential constraint. She spent the next few days unable to banish the implications of his answer.
Baró had once been a man.
A man becoming a monster made more sense to her than thinking he materialized out of the ether fully formed and ready to terrorize the world, even if the strangeness of his being was worthy of a myth taking form.
And she still did not dismiss the idea that he was the Fir’Darl.
In some tales, the Fir’Darl stole a human form from this world in which to inhabit.
That would account for his statement about having always been a monster.
But that did not seem right for the creature with whom she had been keeping company.
Words had to be selected here. Just how was he being careful with his words?
She did not have the opportunity to ask him for clarification.
She ate breakfast alone for the next few days.
By that time, she passed the point of disappointment, confusion, and upset at his unexpected absence.
How could he leave her with such a massive revelation and then give her no chance to pry into it?
She had been up to her elbows in the dirt of the vegetable garden when he, at last, presented himself. She cast him an unamused glare, trying to cover over the moment of pleasant relief at regaining his company.
“At last, the prodigal beast returns,” she said. The term he used for himself fit, at least when she was disinclined to be civil. She sat back on her heels, wiped her hands on the skirt and glanced up at him.
Something twisted in her belly when she beheld him.
She had seen many women over the years who had worn such telling marks.
Many of them came to her in secret when she traveled through towns, asking her for balms, for concealing creams, for talismans to make their spouses or their lovers care for them again, for poisons to kill those spouses and lovers if not.
Such stereotypes followed her even when she did not provide those particular services, but the women often confided their miseries to her because they had no one else.
He may not have been human, but he wore the evidence of abuse like anyone else.
Sunken hollow eyes made the strange face look cavernous and hunted.
The bruising on his temple, cheekbone, shoulder, and chest offered a strange palette against his bronzed furred skin.
A split lip and scabbed scratches on his face, chest and arms completed the picture.
“Baró, what happened?”
He shook his head.
She did not know how to offer meaningful preventative help if he could not tell her what tormented him. She tried not to make a fuss as she stood.
“Fisticuffs with a bear?”
“Aye, somethyng of that nature.” The uninjured side of his mouth turned upwards.
She grabbed his arm and tugged him into the kitchen with her.
“Sit on the bench.”
She left him to wash her hands and then retrieve a jar of boarberry salve.
She pried the wax top open as she brought it over to him.
He did not argue or protest. She dipped her fingers into the salve and began her work, focusing on the scratches and cut on his lip.
She usually had julica for bruising, but her stores had been depleted.
“These wounds healeth quicklie,” he said, like one accustomed to such injuries.
“They will heal more quickly if they’re tended. I wish you’d told me, or preferably shown me, sooner.”
“Nay, ‘twas worse.”
“Yes. That’s the point.”
He exasperated her with his strange ideas of what he needed to keep hidden. She may not have been a healer, but she possessed knowledge, had seen things, and had picked things up so that she could look after herself.
His fur did not register to her touch under the thick salve she applied. But she had touched him without the barrier of the salve while bringing him in. She could not recall it feeling strange or unnatural, but she hoped he did not notice.
When she finished, she resealed the jar.
“Should I find food for you?”
“Nay,” he said. “Y came to byd thee farewell.”
She put the jar down on the counter, but at his announcement, it came down harder than intended. The frustration and upset from earlier flared up. She took a deep breath and tried not to betray the strange mixture of emotions that muddled her mind.
“Why? I thought we were getting along.”
“‘Tis naught to do with thee — naught to do with us. Y can smell that thy tyme ys comyng.”
“My time?”
“Thy monthly tyme,” he said.
“I finished my courses. Is it so bad that you fear for your safety?”
“Nay! Y desyre thy safety above else. Y mean not thy blood time. Y mean thy fertylytie.”
Her ovulation.
“Will you return when it is over?”
“Aye.”
“Humans do not smell such things.”
“Anymals smelleth such,” he countered without betraying anything, “and Y do too.”
“So you are leaving for my safety?”
“Thy scent wouldest addle my senses. Y dare not rysk yt.”
She sat on the bench beside him, not so close as to touch him, but close enough.
“Be safe, Baró,” she said.
“Y shall do my utmost to complie wyth thy request.” He brushed the pads of his hands over the salved scratches of his arm. “Y thank thee for thy begrudgyng cyvylytie yn thy tendyng.”
“If you have wounds, come to me sooner with them, please. I can do more the fresher they are.” When he stood without saying anything else, she panicked. “Where will you go?”
“North,” he said. “Thou wilt be safe here wythout me. The forest creatures knoweth my scent on thee and avoideth thee.”
She eyed his injuries. She would be safe. The real worry was, would he?