CHAPTER 12 — Makes My Hand Itch #2
Without developing feelings for Roarg. Despite the fact that he’s going out of his way to treat me like I’m his cherished wife number four.
Kwa?ara, I almost hear Roarg correct in my head, imagining his rough whisper.
I shiver, and have to shake myself. I have to stay focused.
Roarg and Ulda’s kiss ends, he bids us both a goodbye that promises things when he gets back, and when Roarg is gone, Ulda sighs and turns to me. She holds out the cream. “Rinse water is heating for your bath. I’ll bring it. And this is for your ache.”
I wrinkle my nose. “My ‘cookie’ feels fine at the moment—”
She widens her eyes with impatience. “It’s not for that ache. It’s for your ear.”
My hand flies to my ear, which is better than it was earlier, but yeah, it’s still tender. “Oh. Wow. Okay, thanks.”
Ulda opens her mouth, hesitates, and starts again. But not before she lowers her eyes. “Roarg was right to take me to task. I… I apologize. Unlike our last sisterwife, you—
“Last sisterwife?”
She meets my surprised gaze. “G?reen.” She curls her lip and lets rip a growl that would do a pissed off tiger proud. “That siren did us all so much damage.”
“Who did us damage?” Namak?ga asks, entering the bathroom.
“Guys, this isn’t a party,” I huff. “I smell like chicken, and not in the way anyone likes to smell chicken. I have big plans to wash up.”
“Did you think we didn’t notice?” Namak?ga asks. “Do you want warm water for your bath or not?”
I drop my eyes to her hands—which are wrapped around the wire handle of a steaming pail of water.
I rush forward. “You are wonderful. And why don’t I lug my own water?” I suggest. “I can’t watch a pregnant woman doing it. It feels wrong.”
“My honor mother had to stop the plowhorse to deliver her last baby, and then she left her newborn brat with her eldest child so she could return to the field and finish her row. I can handle a bucket of water,” Namak?ga says wryly.
“DAAAAAMN, that’s one tough cookie,” I inform her.
“I’m sure her koekje had very strong muscles,” she agrees.
“I meant her constitution, but yeah, her cookie muscles too, sheezus!” I shake my head, eyes wide. “Still though, I’ll haul my own bathwater.” I bend and catch the handle, tugging it from her hands. “Just for my peace of mind, okay?”
“This is what I mean,” Ulda says, watching me with a thoughtful face. “When I say you are different from the last one.”
“You’ve told her about G?reen?” Namak?ga asks.
She sounds odd; I glance at her and find her baring her teeth.
She keeps them clamped and speaks through them in the way you’d question someone in the presence of someone else who you don’t think should be filled in on some disturbing or detrimental detail.
“Do you think that’s wise at this early stage? ”
“I’d rather have her know what doesn’t work here,” Ulda replies firmly.
She sets the cookie cream on a small stand near the tub, takes my pail from me and empties it (and stalls my protest of, “No, you’re pregnanter than Namak?ga, let me—” with a firmly delivered, “Shut up.”), grabs my elbow, and walks me out of the bathroom in favor of guiding me along with her toward the kitchen.
“It takes good partners to make a healthy family. G?reen was poison. She loved to stir fights. She’d whisper trouble in Roarg’s ear—she lied to him to gain her fill of daily conflict. ”
“She fought with us like our misery is what fed her tiny black heart. She was slag of the most worthless order,” Namak?ga adds with a surprising amount of heat.
Ulda’s nod is sharp, in total agreement. Then her eyes move to me. “Your mistakes are unintentional. Hers were malicious. I should be less harsh on you.”
“I’d appreciate that. And slag is… waste metal, right?” I ask.
Namak?ga makes a clucking noise behind me. “Your husband is a blacksmith. We need to strengthen your education. Yes, slag is the dross or scum.”
“Forms on the surface of molten metal,” Ulda grunts.
“Thanks.”
Inside the kitchen, Namak?ga waves to the cauldron in the fireplace. “Rest of the hot water is over the fire.”
I take the pail from Ulda and refill it with a big ladle. When I start hauling it to the bathroom, both women follow me, moving at a slower pace, still discussing me and my education. “We should send her out to Roarg,” Namak?ga suggests. “She’ll learn best if she watches him work.”
Ulda makes a disgusted noise. “Do you really think he’ll get any work done if he’s got her to swive? The only iron he’ll be pounding is—”
My back goes ramrod straight, my abrupt change in posture almost making me slosh my water, and I clear my throat like Mary Poppins. “Ladies, I’m right here.”
There’s a pause in conversation behind me, then Namak?ga gently chides, “Ulda, you can’t hit her. Put your hand down.”
Ulda snort-growls. “I know! Almighty, she makes my hand itch.”
Smiling despite myself, I shuffle up to the side of the tub and talk over the rush of falling water.
“Don’t worry. The good news is, you shouldn’t have to keep control of your hand for long.
Roarg is a genuinely great guy—and I say that even knowing about all you harem wives—and I can’t imagine that I’ll need to do much more to ‘intertwine’ with your family.
When I hit whatever the game-winning threshold is, expect me to disappear at any moment.
” I straighten as the last drops of water drip out of the bucket and glance at them over my shoulder.
Ulda screws up her face like I’m shitting on the floor.
“You’re still intending to leave? What about Roarg?
” She’s looking at me like I’m a monster.
“What about you? You’ve only been here for a mere span of hours, but I’ve seen you.
You’d really amputate yourself from him?
Sever your own happiness? And don’t tell me you aren’t happy.
You were a mess when you came here yesterday, but Roarg makes you happy. ”
“I was slated for a beheading I didn’t deserve, somebody wanted to buy my body, and then I was held down and tattooed so I could become the fourth wife to a cult—yesterday wasn’t the best day to use to gauge my baseline happiness,” I point out.
Ulda narrows her eyes. “What’s a cult?”
I wince. “Wrong word.”
She growls.
“Oh, leave her be, Ulda,” Namak?ga chides. “It’s good for Roarg to chase her. He’s obsessed.”
“Obsessed—chase me?” Shaking myself, I make a face. “You honestly think that’s a good thing?”
She shrugs. “He’s not depressed and in dark mourning anymore.”
I set my bucket down. “Mourning? Why was he in mourning?”
Ulda waves for me to precede them out of the bathroom for my tub’s third bucket, and sighs.
“G?reen died.” She freezes me with a warning glare, her eyes burning into me.
“And no one is sad she’s dead, save for Roarg.
He’s barely smiled, hasn’t laughed a day since.
.. until you came here.” Her lips part, and her exhale is soft.
Her words, though, are hard. “He’s finally showing glimpses of his old self.
Yet you talk so easily of leaving him. You don’t know what you say.
How swift a man makes attachments. And what of you?
Do you really think you won’t ache for him if you go? ”
“I think I don’t belong here, and I want to go home,” I tell her honestly.
“Perhaps you don’t know what belonging truly is,” she returns, her voice cooling to something close to calm.
But her eyes are blazing. “You are new, and things don’t yet feel easy.
Thus you resist the idea that you belong.
But what you don’t realize is you’ve dropped into place here like a raw wood puzzle piece.
Unlike G?reen, you fit. So stop pushing us away with talk of leaving.
You need only sanding to lock in, that’s all. ”
Inside my head, her words set off a little niggle. My game’s voiceover when I was transported here replays. In the Orc’s kingdom, you shall join a handsome husband. Your Objective: become intertwined.
Intertwined. By constantly reminding them and myself that I’ll be leaving, is that actually inhibiting my ability to finish my game?
“You are the sweet butter Roarg has needed,” Ulda is saying, making me tip my head in confusion. “I’m the serious one. Namak?ga is the romantic. Joktepitha is practical. We’re all good for him, but together, we’ll be—”
“I’m butter?” I ask.
Ulda gives me a look. “Sweet butter. You make everything in Roarg’s life softer and more flavorful.”
“I’m butter…” I say again.
Ulda sighs. “I would have thought you of all creatures would understand. You certainly go after jam like a fiend. You’re his jam. Would that be more acceptable to you?”
“Let it go now, Ulda,” Namak?ga murmurs.
“I did like that jam,” I murmur thoughtfully.
“I want to hit her so badly,” Ulda confides, putting a hand to her stomach and straightening her shoulders. “But I won’t. I need to go check on the geese. Make sure Roarg didn’t throttle any of them.”