Chapter 6 #2
Right. The heat in Raye’s torso flattened into something bitter and cold, and she wrenched her arm out of Gaelfr’s grip, far too late.
Of course it was all about his precious vow to his goddess, and to his precious ástvinur.
To Kalfr. Because Gaelfr hated her, and she hated him, and she was clearly just overtired and overwhelmed from this endless exhausting day. Worse than you…
Raye rubbed at her aching eyes, and even as she silently cursed herself, she picked up her fork, and started eating again.
Just like Gaelfr had wanted, like he’d ordered, because what the hell else was she going to do?
Waste the food? Shout at him over supper?
Stalk out into the dark and leave Svein in here with him, alone?
She needed to be civil, to do her best for Svein…
She was deeply grateful when Svein began chattering again, telling Gaelfr about the other kinds of food they ate, and the garden, and how they bathed and hauled water from the nearby creek.
All of which Gaelfr listened to with surprising attentiveness, asking various questions, while finishing every bite of his supper.
He’d taken his time with the sweetcakes, Raye couldn’t help noticing, as if savouring every morsel, and once he’d finished it all, he even shot a longing glance toward Raye’s empty pan by the fire.
“Are you still hungry?” Raye asked, with icy politeness. “I could make you more.”
Gaelfr grimaced as he glanced toward her, and shook his head. “No need,” he said flatly. “We shall eat the rest for breakfast, and then I shall hunt us more tomorrow.”
Breakfast. Tomorrow. Right. Because he was staying here — until Kalfr returned, he’d said.
And Raye was already casting a worried glance toward her small bed against the wall, and down at the cottage’s empty floor space.
Which, between the loom, the spinning wheel, and the table, was scarcely large enough for even a human to lie down on, and perhaps Gaelfr could sleep outside? Surely he could?
“Do you want to see my tunnel, Papa Gaelfr?” Svein asked now. “Where I hide from the men?”
Gaelfr blinked, once, but then he nodded, and followed Svein to his small room in the corner.
Where again, he listened patiently as Svein excitedly showed off his tunnel, his face flushed with pride.
As if the tunnel was something noteworthy, something important and worthwhile, rather than a tiny hole that trapped him cramped and alone in the dark.
Raye’s head had begun distantly pounding, and she sat at the table for far too long, watching dully through the open door as Gaelfr praised the tunnel, and Svein’s cleverness in concealing himself inside it.
And when Svein showed Gaelfr how he hid in it, folding his too-big body tightly inside and drawing down the trapdoor over him, Raye didn’t miss Gaelfr’s alarmed look back toward her, the way his face looked paler than before.
Judging her again, surely, for locking her beautiful son into a tiny dark hovel under the floor.
Raye couldn’t watch as Gaelfr urged Svein out of the floor again, and shut it with a too-loud thunk. And then, speaking faster than before, Gaelfr asked Svein about his favourite floppy toy — which he’d taken down into the hole with him, as always.
“Oh, he’s Mr. Snuggles, of Clan Terror!” Svein said brightly, every word scraping through Raye’s aching head. “Mama made him for me, and he even has pointed ears and sharp teeth and claws like me, see? And since he’s from Clan Terror, he knows how to scare all the bad men away from me.”
There was a long stretch of silence from Gaelfr, followed by a sound that might have been a cough.
“I am most glad to hear this, my son,” he finally said, so quiet Raye almost couldn’t hear it.
“Mr. Snuggles has been well caring for you, I ken. Along with” — Raye glanced up just in time to meet Gaelfr’s shadowed eyes through the open doorway — “your mother, also.”
Svein nodded, giving a toothy smile toward Raye, and she had to look away, while something too close to a sob again bubbled in her throat. No. No, she’d failed her son, and Gaelfr had been silently shouting it toward her, since the first instant he’d arrived here. Worse than you. Worse than you…
“Now, it must be near time for you to sleep, ach, my son?” Gaelfr asked. “How do you ready yourself for this? Do you wash? Or mayhap braid your hair?”
His hand brushed at Svein’s messy head — yet more silent judgement, damn him — and Raye could barely hear Svein’s response over the pounding in her ears. But whatever it was, Gaelfr waved Svein onto the small bed, and then settled down behind him, and began combing through his hair with his claws.
“Your father Kalfr bore hair just thus, also,” he told Svein. “As do many orcs of our Bautul clan. It is most comely, but it oft takes careful tending, ach?”
Svein nodded, and cast a guilty look through the open door toward Raye. “Mama always helps,” he said, “but it takes a long time, and it doesn’t stay.”
Raye braced herself for yet more criticism from Gaelfr, but he only nodded toward Svein, and kept combing. “Claws are a great help in this,” he replied. “In our clan, fathers oft tend their sons’ hair, until they are grown enough to either tend it themselves, or find a mate or brother to do it.”
It felt like a concession, maybe, followed by Raye’s depressing realization that Kalfr had never told her any of this either, at least not in person. Gods, she couldn’t recall even seeing him do his own hair, and wait, did that mean Gaelfr had been doing Kalfr’s hair, all that time? Worse than you…
It was another bitter twist in Raye’s gut, especially once Gaelfr somehow managed to put Svein’s hair into a perfect little braid, and he even produced a thick green ribbon, and tied it onto the end.
And when Svein inspected the end of his braid, and sniffed at the ribbon, he straightened, and twisted to flash Gaelfr a stunning smile.
“This is Papa Kalfr’s!” he exclaimed. “It smells like him!”
Gaelfr solemnly nodded, as something like pain flashed across his eyes — suggesting that yes, he had been doing Kalfr’s hair all that time.
And also — Raye’s head tilted — that he’d been carrying around that ribbon ever since, too.
He’d been across the southern sea, he’d told her, for all these years…
and yet, he’d still kept this with him? He’d missed Kalfr that much?
But yes, that horrible memory was already swirling behind Raye’s eyes — Gaelfr touching Kalfr in her garden, tasting him, biting him. Showing too clearly his affection toward Kalfr, his attraction, his ownership. You are mine, Kalfr of Clan Bautul. You, and your woman, and your sons.
It scraped through Raye’s thoughts, throbbed harder against her aching temples, while she blankly gazed at Svein, who was still sniffing happily at his ribbon, and beaming toward Gaelfr.
And when Gaelfr next suggested that they take one last trip to the outhouse before bed, Svein didn’t argue, and eagerly skipped over toward Raye at the table.
“You’ll come too, right, Mama?” he asked, clasping her hand. “And Papa Gaelfr can bring his axe this time!”
He shot an admiring look up toward the door, toward where Gaelfr had apparently, at some point, hung up his sword and his gigantic axe together with Raye’s own axe beside the door.
Making hers look tiny and flimsy in comparison, and she watched in silence as Gaelfr easily swung his down, and flipped the heavy wooden handle in his fingers.
“Come, woman,” he said firmly. “I shall guard you both.”
It was yet more bitter humiliation, taking turns using their tiny dark outhouse while Gaelfr waited outside with his axe — and then took his own turn, too.
And making it even worse was the fact that Raye had always hated these nighttime outhouse trips, and that Gaelfr’s looming presence still made the whole ordeal far less anxiety-inducing than usual.
“And now, time for bed, my son,” Gaelfr told Svein, once they were all back inside the cottage again, with the door safely barred behind them. “Is there aught else you do, before sleep?”
Svein was already heading for his bedroom, but then he hesitated, and cast a hopeful look toward Raye. “I need Mama to sing for me. You still will, won’t you, Mama?”
Raye darted a doubtful glance toward Gaelfr — she did not want to sing in front of this horrible judgemental orc — but she made herself nod anyway. And once Svein had climbed into bed, she sat in her usual spot beside him, and took his hand in hers.
“What would you like, love?” she asked him, though her voice wavered. “The lullaby?”
Svein happily nodded and wriggled deeper under his fur — one of the furs Kalfr had sent, the warmest one — so Raye nodded, and fought to block out the awareness of Gaelfr still standing there, still judging her. And then, on a deep, shaky breath, she started to sing.
It was the old Mirkandian lullaby her own mother had always sung to her, about the wind sweeping through the treetops, and the animals all curled snug in their beds below. The skunk, the possum, the fox, safe and warm in the dark, where no one would ever find them, or hurt them.
It felt painfully relevant now, heaping yet more guilt and misery upon Raye’s bowed head, but she kept singing, as steadily as she could, despite Gaelfr’s silent watching presence. Until Svein’s hand was slack in hers, his eyes closed, his chest slowly rising and falling beneath his fur.
Raye watched him for another long moment in the near-darkness — the only light was from the fire still crackling out in the main room — and she finally, gently released his hand, and leaned over to press a kiss to his warm silken forehead.
Her eyes were prickling again, the sobs too close and dangerous in her throat, but she could again feel Gaelfr watching, strong enough to be a touch.
Still judging her, condemning her, just like he had since the first moment he’d arrived.
It took almost all Raye’s willpower to stand up again, and to walk past Gaelfr toward the door.
Out into the main room, which seemed impossibly cramped and close, with just that one small bed against the wall.
And making it even more cramped was Gaelfr, quietly closing Svein’s door behind him, and coming out to stand beside Raye in the dim firelight.
Raye didn’t look at him, but she could still feel him there, too present and powerful beside her. The orc who had betrayed her, and ruined her life, and made Kalfr moan like that, and claimed her son as his own, and —
“You’ll sleep outside,” she said into the silence, as evenly as she could. “Won’t you?”
She held her eyes straight ahead, her heart and head pounding, waiting for his answer. She would be civil, she would do her best for Svein, and that was all.
“No,” came Gaelfr’s reply, deep and heavy in the dark. “I shall sleep here tonight. In this bed, with my mate. With… you.”