CHAPTER 2 — Impulse Buys #3
I gawk openly, awed by the whole place. It’s unrepentantly full of sylvan charm, and it’s amazing. At any other time, I’d love to be standing in here staring at it.
(Okay, I still love standing here and staring at it—but if this house comes with a mandatory Orc husband package, I’d really like to decline and go home.)
Soft cooing noises draw my attention to what I realize is a playpen to the right of the tree couch. It’s built out of wood spindles and—fitting in with the theme of this place—iron joints. Two Orc babies are inside, lying on their bellies, a colorful quilt spread out beneath them.
Joktepitha follows my line of sight, and grins like she’s pleased about something. “Come closer, Stephanie. Come see the babies.”
“I’m good here,” I tell her.
Joktepitha’s easy smile stays in place, but her eyes slide to Namak?ga. “Pinch her.”
She does, and I yelp, leaping away from her. “What the fff—!” I cut myself off, sounding like a pissy cat, because there are babies in the room and it feels wrong to swear.
“Come here, Stephanie,” Joktepitha repeats. “Come see the babies.”
Giving her a disbelieving glower, I shuffle toward her and peer into the playpen.
Ulda moves up beside me and lifts a baby out, one with adorable pistachio-shaded skin.
Ulda holds the child up for me to see, and my eyes go to the baby’s round-cheeked face: she has what my grandma called a ‘bunny nose’—boopable, in other words—and her lips are pillowy tuskless bows in a soft mossy green.
Her big bright eyes are only a degree or two darker than the rest of her, and corkscrewing off her head is a surprising amount of dark hair.
She watches me with some curiosity, and then she tries to turn herself in her mom’s hands, her body dipping and faintly jerking in that way babies do when they haven’t quite mastered either the muscles or the coordination to perform effortless motion yet.
“This is Opkug,” Ulda announces. “She is six months of pure brat.”
Opkug doesn’t look like a brat. Not in the least. Opkug is a cutie. A green Gerber baby. “No tusks yet?” I murmur. “Too young, I’m going to guess?”
Ulda nods. “She’ll have them by winter, perhaps.
” Ulda cradles her to her chest, and when Opkug’s little hands latch onto her chest with purpose, Ulda opens a clever panel on the front of her dress, below and behind her necklaces.
She pops out a shamrock shake-colored breast with a nipple so dark my brain auto-catalogs it as a juniper M&M, and Opkug latches on with abandon.
Joktepitha reaches into the crib and brings out the other baby. “This is my little Crushosh. Our newborn son.”
Crushosh is so ugly he’s adorable. Deep wrinkles start at the inside corners of his gray-blue eyes and swoop like festoons, creasing his apple cheeks.
His ears are set low on his head and the tips of them are a little pointed—and they stick out, giving him an endearing troll-baby quality.
His tiny chin has an even tinier dent in it, and his button nose looks like God sliced a giorgio mushroom and sculpted the thing to his little face.
And he’s Kermit green.
“Oh my gosh,” I breathe. I want to collect him and keep him on my shelf at home. I look over at what I assume is his half-sister, and decide I could display them as a set.
Joktepitha’s gaze is on me. “Thanks to this darling brat, I’m often exhausted.”
“Aww,” I coo to him but speak to her. “I bet. Worth it though, right?”
“Mmhmm.” She smiles slyly when she shares, “But I’m rarely focused or rested enough for sex. Roarg will appreciate you very much.”
My eyes slam wide. My gaze screeches to hers.
She grins. “It’s me though who might appreciate you more. I could use the break!”
Warily, I keep my attention glued to her, certain she’s hiding her aggression. Because no woman in her right mind shares her man—the father of her newborn child—with another woman. Willingly. NO ONE does that.
Namak?ga groans as she takes a seat on the log sofa. “I still have a strong desire for sex. But there’s so few ways that are comfortable anymore.”
“Get on top of him,” Ulda offers, popping a finger in Opkug’s mouth and checking something, then helping her relatch onto the green milkbar.
Namak?ga, at her back, makes a face. “Our little bundle of brat kicks him.”
Ulda barks a laugh, and turns to her. “Stops him fast, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, so fast,” Namak?ga agrees, squinting up at the magazine-worthy rafters. “And I didn’t think anything stopped that man when his kyrp? was getting attention. He cuddled me for the rest of the night.” She sounds a bit disgusted at this. “Cuddled!” she adds, as if horrified.
“Having his brat ‘involved’ during the act unsettles him too much.” Ulda smiles to herself, petting her finger along Opkug’s little cheek, which is slowly tensing and releasing, her sucking almost nonexistent as she falls asleep at her meal. “Turns his heart soft.”
“His heart wasn’t the thing that turned soft,” Namak?ga mutters so despairingly that even I snicker.
Joktepitha is bouncing Crushosh. “Lying on my side worked for me. I rested,” she makes a motion with her hand, rounding it like a belly, “my stomach on the bed, and Roarg took hold of my top leg.” She shrugs. “Otherwise, it’s pillows under you as you brace on your hands and knees.”
I shudder at the word brace.
In my mind, I’m seeing the huge Orc men I encountered earlier—Peterbilts behind a Mini Cooper. There’s no bracing for that. NOPE. Nope, nope, NOPE.
“Roarg’s tried me on my side too. But he’s big as an ox.
Hurts my hip.” Namak?ga heaves herself to her feet, fingers gripping along her back like she’s hoping to reach directly to her vertebrae.
“Ugh, sitting, standing. There is no comfort to be found.” Her eyes find me, her face clearing a little of its misery as she becomes preoccupied with me again.
“We need to get you washed and dressed.” She bites her lower lip—but not at the corner where a normal person (a human person, that is) bites their lip.
She bites hers a little off center. Which is out of necessity, because instead of canine teeth catching on the inside of her lip, she’s got a jutting tusk too large for her lip to roll over.
“I wonder if we have clothing here that will fit you.”
“Did you fashion that necklace yourself?” Joktepitha asks, and I realize she’s watching me very closely.
I turn to face her fully, fingers closing around the object of suddenly everyone’s attention. “I did. And you guys sure have an eye for jewelry.”
“Our husband is a metalworker,” Ulda points out. “That silverwork you’re wearing is crafted quite fine. You’ll have to show Roarg tonight. He’ll be fascinated.”
As if her words are some cue, the Orcs move closer at once to get a better look, hemming me in, making me feel claustrophobic—and dwarfed, because these women are giants compared to me.
I back up in a rush, making all three of them frown at me.
“Look,” I train my gaze on Namak?ga. “Thank you for saving my life. I’m really sorry I cost you money that I can’t pay back yet—but I’ll try to figure out a way to do that.
However,” I meet Joktepitha and Ulda’s eyes now, “I don’t want to share your husband—”
Ulda’s spine goes ramrod straight. Actually, all three of them straighten abruptly, steel in their backs—and their gazes.
“You don’t want to share?” Joktepitha says slowly, but not like she’s asking for clarification.
She says this like she’s giving me a chance to hear what I said and change my wrong answer.
I’m not changing my answer. “I’m so not interested in marrying an Orc. Although I’m sure your husband is great. Thing is, I shouldn’t even be here,” I start to explain.
Namak?ga is frowning at me. “Back on the chopping block, you said you came here to find yourself an Orc husband.”
“NO, that is not what I said—before I got here, I’d gotten tickets to play this game, and the quest screen told me I’d find an Orc hus—” I stop myself, not wanting to confuse the issue.
“But it was just a game,” I emphasize, gaze bouncing from their three unhappy, slightly sinister-looking expressions.
“Tickets?” Joktepitha asks.
“Yeah, you pay for tickets to play. It’s just supposed to be a fun way to pass time.
I was hanging out with very newly made acquaintances at this medieval-type carnival, and.
..” I shake my head at the incredibility of it, “now I’m here, somehow transported to wherever this is…
where am I?” I ask, my voice squeaking on the bubble of hysteria rising up my throat.
“Ogemaw by the Sea,” Namak?ga answers. “In the Orcian Kingdom.”
“Newly made acquaintances?” Joktepitha queries. “Who?”
“Temporary friends,” I explain. “Esther and Lisa. They were nice, and if I’m here… I have no idea what happened to them, but maybe their quests are happening right now too.” I swallow, scared for them and wondering what the heck they’re facing.
Ulda procures a burping towel and rests Opkug on her shoulder, patting her back as she gives me the scowliest of scowls. “I don’t understand. You say you paid for a chance to come here. Now you’ve arrived. Why are you snithering about it?”
My jaw goes slack. “I’m not… snithering! And because! It wasn’t a ‘chance’ that I paid for it all—it wasn’t supposed to actually happen!”
She stares at me like I’m an idiot. “You paid money for a thing that you hoped wouldn’t actually come to fruition? Girl, is money so aplenty in your world that you squander it like a common fool?”
Before I can explain, she waves her question away like my answer doesn’t even matter. “It doesn’t matter how you came to be here. The fact is, your bride price has been paid—”
“Dearly,” Namak?ga cuts in, hand going to her chest above her baby bump like she might be having heartburn at the thought. “Eternal never let Roarg know how dearly he paid for this otherlander.”