Chapter 33
Avice
Avice awoke the following morning to Trewoofe shaking her shoulder.
“Little witch! You are bleeding!”
She smacked her lips together and pushed herself up from the pillow of his bandaged bicep. She shoved her hair from her eyes and looked at him sleepily.
“What is it?” she asked.
The Well King tugged back the furs that covered them and pointed where her rear had been pressed against his groin. “You are bleeding!” he repeated. “What has happened? Did you injure yourself in the night? Do you need me to sew you closed like you have done for me?”
Avice’s exhausted mind struggled to process his torrent of questions. She blinked several times, trying to focus on the source of her Knucker’s panic. Her face fell as she realised exactly where the blood had come from.
“Your expression!” Trewoofe exclaimed. “It hurts! Where are you injured? Can I see?”
She placed a splayed hand on his panting chest. “Lord, take a breath. I am not injured.”
Bramble raised his head. What is this noise? he huffed from his favourite spot by the hearth.
“My courses,” Avice stated. “I have lost track of my rhythm. I have not seen an unobscured Moon in months.” The midwife had always used the Moon to keep track of her natural cycles. “Where is she, Bramble? In her waxing or waning?”
The Grim cocked his head and pricked his ears, as though he could hear the Moon whispering to him through the ward, the snow, and the storm. Waxing, and nearly full. She will be full for Equinox. Which is five days from now.
Avice cast her gaze to the darkened light through the shutters. “I cannot tell when it is day and night anymore.”
I will keep you informed. Bramble assured, before dropping his head to rest on his forepaws.
“Little witch.” Trewoofe rested his palm over her hand. “Please tell me what is happening.”
First breast feeding and now I am to explain this.
She bit her lip as she stood. “Let me get tidied up, and you will need a new pair of hose as we will have to wash what you are wearing.” Her cheeks burnt as she studied the blood stain on him and looked away.
“There should be enough cloth left.” She pointed to the linen folded neatly on the table.
Trewoofe followed her, hunching just before he cracked his horns on the beams above their heads, and snagged her wrist. “Avice. Are you in pain? Are you injured?”
“No, no. I promise.” She gripped her pendant. “I… I am on my courses. It aches. I can be more tired and grumpier, but I am not injured.”
A line appeared between his brows. “Then why are you bleeding?”
“We get taught in church it is a punishment, for what Eve did in the garden.” The words spilled from her lips. “Because of that, women are cursed to bleed monthly, and with difficult childbirth.”
His frown deepened. “Who is Eve? Where is this garden?”
Blood dribbled down her thigh. “Lord, if I promise to explain it all, will you let me go? I am feeling very uncomfortable right now and I need to prepare something to catch the blood. Once I am resting with some willow bark tea, I will try my best to explain.”
Trewoofe whipped his hand away and dropped his chin. “Forgive me, I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“Quite alright,” she replied stoically. “I need privacy, so please turn the other way while I clean up.”
“Of course!” He spun on his heel and dropped to the pallet with his hands covering his eyes.
Avice chuckled at how obedient he was. It warmed her that he did not recoil from her courses, and that he was more concerned for her wellbeing than he was repulsed by the blood.
Trewoofe may look like a man. Her eyes flicked to his horns and massive height. Nearly a man, but he is a Knucker. He has no concept of courses being filthy, or women being cursed.
Avice smiled at that – of just being able to exist around him – with no preconceived ideas of what or who she was. There was a gift of acceptance between them: pure, simple, and reciprocal.
A cramp squeezed her insides, turning her back to the task at hand.
Avice reclined on their pallet with a steaming cup of willow bark tea in her hands.
Bramble had plonked his head in her lap, snoring loudly as she ran her fingers through his fur.
Trewoofe sat next to her, a cloth around his hips, as he contently stitched a second pair of hose for himself.
Ashling perched on his horn and occasionally let out an instructional chime.
The midwife had stuffed moss between her legs, secured in place with a complicated series of linen ties. She sipped her tea, the analgesic effect combating her dull cramps, and enjoyed the simple moment of domesticity.
Trewoofe cleared his throat. “Would you like to tell me?”
Bramble grumbled as she shifted so she was facing the King. “I have been thinking of how to explain. It is a complicated subject.”
“Before you mentioned Eve and a garden?” he prompted, his gaze following a stitch as he looped it.
“I suppose that is a good place to start.” Avice swirled her cup. “Eve, according to the church, was the first woman, made from the first man, Adam.”
A line appeared between his brows; the midwife had come to understand that was his ‘confused’ expression. “That does not make sense to me. Amongst Knuckers, females make more life. Males provide the seed, but the females do everything else.”
“I agree with you. I am simply explaining to you what I have been taught about where courses come from,” she said.
Trewoofe nodded. “Please continue.”
“Eden, it was the name of the garden, a paradise where all life came from: men, women, plants, animals—”
“But not Good Neighbours? No Faeries or Dragons or Folk?” A muscle feathered in his jaw. “If we are not considered life, then what are considered by this ‘church’?”
She placed her cup beside the pallet and laid a hand on his arm as he stitched, feeling the thick cords of tendons move beneath his bandages as he worked. “It is a cruel answer, but please know that it is not what I believe.”
His lips plucked up. “I know, little witch.”
“They teach us you are devils, demons, serpents, something evil that comes from below,” Avice explained, digging her fingers into Bramble’s fur as the words left her.
Trewoofe paused mid-stitch to look at her hand, and then to her face.
“I am from below, but I am not evil, nor these ‘devils’ or ‘demons’ or ‘serpents’ that the church speak of. I have lived in Albion far longer than the humans who follow the Cross God have walked these lands, and then they come from across the sea and call me evil.”
“What is ‘Albion’?”
The word struck a chord within Avice, much like Sidhe had. It rolled around in her head and tingled her spine. It was like she had always known these ancient words, and they awakened something dormant within her.
“The Faerie name for the land we walk on,” Trewoofe replied, continuing his sewing. “We have veered from the subject. You were going to explain to me why you are bleeding but not injured.”
“Ah, yes.” She chewed the inside of her cheek.
“Eve, after being tempted by a serpent, ate the fruit from the forbidden tree. The fruit gave her knowledge, and for that, both she and Adam were thrown from the garden. Then, as punishment from God, Eve was cursed with monthly bleeding and difficult childbirth.”
“Do you believe this?” he asked.
“I do not.”
“I value knowing your thoughts more than the church’s,” Trewoofe hummed, tying off the final stitch on the leg of his hose. “So, what do you believe?”
“I think it is a body’s way of keeping the womb – the place inside where a baby grows – clean and healthy,” Avice stated.
Trewoofe nodded. “To me, that makes far more sense, as the other explanation does not. Why would all women be punished because one so long ago ate a piece of fruit? What is so wrong with seeking knowledge?” He bit the thread free with his fangs and embedded the knot into the linen.
“Am I not learning things from you right now? Does that mean I should be cursed?”
“No, Lord.” Avice rubbed his arm. “So, you understand? I am not injured or dying. It is simply something that happens and I must manage it when it occurs.”
He smiled softly down at her. “I do, and thank you for taking the time to explain it to me.”
The Well King flapped his creation, throwing out the creases with a flourish. Avice chuckled at his enthusiasm as he ran his claws over the soft purple.
“Try them on,” she encouraged, sitting back to give him space to stand.
Trewoofe nodded and rolled off the pallet, rising carefully and shuffling out of her sight. Ashling floated down to rest on her hand as she patted Bramble. She tried to ignore the rustles of fabric behind her and fought the urge to peek at the handsome King.
“Thank you for helping him,” she whispered. The Wisp chimed, flaring proudly. “We would be lost without you.”
She lifted him to her nose and nuzzled into his cooled flames.
Bramble cracked a reproachful eye up at her. Avice, you have forgotten your mission.
“Yes, yes.” She dropped her hand back to the important task of patting her familiar’s head.
Trewoofe swept back into her line of sight. He had slipped his tunic back on and his new hose clung to his legs like a second skin.
“How do I look?” he asked.
Her mouth watered at the curve of his muscles beneath his clothes; the purple accentuated the red in his eyes and the silver sheen of his hair.
“I am not sure,” she teased. “Turn around for me.”
Trewoofe tossed her a smirk before spinning around. His starlight mane tumbled down his long back. She followed its path and studied how his slim shoulders dipped into narrower hips.
She pressed her thighs together. “You look beautiful, Lord.”
He turned to face her, a shy smile on his lips. “You really think so?”
“Yes, and I always have. Your human side is as handsome to me as your Knucker self.”
His smile broke into a wide grin, his fangs glinting in the flickering fire light. “Thank you, little witch.”