7. Hannah
Hannah
After Otto’s first vocalization, I ordered three different kinds of tusk-teething toys off the internet, started a feeding log, and called the healer from the Breakstone enclave to set up a visit.
Three days later, I sat in the passenger seat of Brakkus’s customized G-Wagon, watching the hills change outside the windows. Otto was strapped into his car seat in the back. Brakkus had one big green hand on the steering wheel, his face an unreadable mask.
This was the most time I’d spent with him in the same room since moving in. Brakkus usually ate separately, choosing to take his dinner in his study or bedroom suite. Part of me thought maybe he was avoiding me. I felt like I’d done something to offend him that I didn’t understand.
But knowing he’d recently lost his wife and had fired the previous nanny for some undisclosed reason was explanation enough.
I didn’t need to be friends with my boss.
We just needed good communication about Otto.
And when I’d told him the healer Hesta Vurn had booked an appointment for Otto, he’d insisted on taking us himself.
It was a fifty-mile drive from Barton Creek to the Breakstone enclave. As we approached, the land turned harder and browner. Limestone cliffs cut raw and white on either side of the highway. Semi-trucks, heavy with crushed rock, were grinding past on the interstate.
We passed the WELCOME TO brEAKSTONE sign. There was a second board underneath it that seemed to have been tacked on. It said, HOME OF brAKKUS “THE brUTE” DRAKKAR—M.A.U.L. CHAMPION. And a painting of a snarling orc.
“Was that you?” I asked. I’d seen pictures of him in the same stance in the hallway of the house, but I guess it hadn’t fully sunk in what Brakkus did for a living.
I’d heard of M.A.U.L.—Monster Apex Unleashed League.
I wasn’t really a fan of that kind of thing, but it was popular enough that the League was really a household name.
“Now you know why I don’t live here,” he said. He didn’t elaborate.
As we entered the town itself, it looked to me like a typical Texas quarry town. A dusty feed store, a taqueria, a gas station, and a main street full of trucks. But then it became clear this was not an ordinary town.
All of the doorways were extra tall. The whole town looked sized for orcs. But you wouldn’t really notice it unless you were looking.
Of course, since the crypto-terrestrials had come out of the closet twenty years ago, many no longer felt the need to take on their human form.
It was clear this was a town dominated by an orc population.
Orcs were walking into the diner. Orcs were driving past in trucks.
Orc children were playing in the park with orc mothers.
We passed a gym with Brute Squad across the front in letters you could read from space. And it was Brakkus again, his face as the snarling orc logo. Next door was a Brute Squad merch store. With foam tusks and Brute Squad T-shirts in the windows with cardboard cutouts of Brakkus by the door.
“You’re very popular in your hometown,” I said, taking it all in.
He grunted but didn’t say anything else. The healer’s office was at the end of Main Street in a low stone building with a small sign over the door that read Breakstone Apothecary. Brakkus parked the car in the small lot in the back and we got out.
We stepped inside out of the Texas summer heat. The front of the building was a small apothecary shop with walls lined with remedies. Bottles and jars of ointments and tinctures, bundles of dried herbs, and paper packets tied with twine. The room smelled of crushed herbs and essential oils.
A counter ran down the right side. A young orc woman in a canvas apron was weighing a handful of bark on a scale behind it. An old woman stood at the counter waiting for her order.
A young man was walking down one of the aisles when we passed, his eyes going wide with shock when we passed. “The Brute…” he stammered.
“Good day.” Brakkus nodded, hefting Otto up higher on his hip.
The young man didn’t press further, as we approached the back of the main room.
There was a small alcove behind the shop that was marked as the waiting area.
Four orc-sized chairs were placed along two walls.
A stack of orc magazines covered a small coffee table.
We sat, and I folded my hands in my lap, waiting.
It didn’t take more than a minute for Hesta Vurn to step out of her office.
She was wearing a long denim dress with a turquoise belt, a row of silver and turquoise earrings on each ear, and soft leather shoes.
Her skin was grayish green with age, and her short tusks had a slight yellowish tint.
Crow’s feet etched from the corners of her pale amber eyes. She smiled when she saw us.
“Brakkus,” she said warmly. “It’s good to see you and your little warrior. I’m glad you called, Hannah. Come on back.”
We all passed into the exam room. There was a standard padded table that was about one and a half times as large as a human exam table. A counter with a sink in it. And a large scale and a small scale in the corner. She asked Brakkus to put Otto on the smaller one while she washed her hands.
When she turned to read and record Otto’s weight, she frowned slightly and set her clipboard on the counter.
“Can you put him on the exam table?” she asked. Brakkus set him on the table and Hesta began her exam. She checked all of his vitals and added them to his chart.
“So, I understand that our little brute has been speaking?”
“Yes. He’s been saying ‘betta,’ which I take as better, in response to being asked if he’s all better,” I added.
“That’s very good. On our last visit, he hadn’t spoken since his mother passed. Is that right, Brakkus?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice clipped and low.
“And this is a new word?”
“He never said anything but Mama,” Brakkus said.
The thought of it made my heart hurt. This poor little boy who’d lost his mom had only ever said her name. It was so sad, I had to hold back my tears.
“You mentioned his tusks are coming in?” Hesta said, pulling back his lips.
“Yes, you see there, the little white part where the tusks are poking through the gums.”
“Teething can be especially hard for little orcs,” she said, glancing at me. “It’s good you’ve had experience with nonhuman children, Hannah. Did you get the toys I suggested?”
“I did. They’ve helped a lot.”
“I have a special recipe of gum-soothing ointment just for this situation. I’ll have Mara fill it for you in the front. And I’d also suggest a soothing herbal bath brew.”
“That would be really helpful.”
“What concerns me right now is that Otto hasn’t gained quite as much weight as I would like to see since his last appointment.”
“He wasn’t eating,” Brakkus interjected. “I didn’t realize he was in so much pain.”
“With proper gum treatment, his appetite should return to normal. Don’t beat yourself up, Dad.”
I noticed Brakkus’s shoulders relax. But his lips pressed together in a thin line before the emotion fully landed.
We left the exam room with a note with an order for the shopkeeper.
Brakkus handed her the order while I wandered through the shelves with Otto on my hip.
I found some sweet-smelling body lotion that I couldn’t resist and brought it to the counter when Brakkus was checking out.
After she rang up the order for Otto, I was reaching for my wallet when Brakkus stopped me and paid for everything.
My mouth dropped, and I was about to protest, but I wasn’t going to question Brakkus “The Brute” Drakkar’s generosity. Even if I wanted to.
The drive back home was quiet. Otto dozed in the backseat after a dab of teething ointment on his gums. Brakkus had country music playing on the radio, and I watched the landscape slide past out the windows.
When we got back home, Otto was still sleeping. It was his usual naptime anyway, so I put him in his crib and put my new lotion in my bathroom.
When I stepped into my bedroom, my phone rang in my purse.
I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID.
It was my younger sister Megan. I flicked my thumb across the screen to answer.
I wanted to tell her I’d gotten a new position in a mansion in Barton Creek.
She’d love to hear about it. Even if I couldn’t tell her specifics due to the NDA.
“You are not going to believe what Kayla did,” she started before I’d even said hello. “I’m not exaggerating, Henny. It’s like I’m living with a stranger who hates me.”
“What happened?”
“Okay, so.” And she went off. I sat down on my bed, gripping my cellphone in my hand. “Kayla switched the electric bill into just my name. Without telling me. I found out because the bill came and it was two hundred dollars. It’s her who keeps the AC at sixty-eight degrees… For him?—”
“Who?”
“Her creep-ass boyfriend Dustin. Suddenly he’s living here. He doesn’t pay any bills, eats my burritos, and leaves pee splatter on the toilet.”
“Uh…”
“You know what she said when I told her I didn’t appreciate it? She said if I’m going to be weird about it, I can find somewhere else to live. I can find somewhere else to live? I’m on the lease, not him!”
“What is she even thinking?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know how much longer I can take it, but I don’t know how to get rid of him.”
“Most places have rules about long-term guests. You could go to the landlord, tell him there’s someone basically living there who isn’t on it?—”
“And live with her after that? She’d make my life miserable, Henny, you don’t know her when she’s mad.”
“Then what if you?—”
“And I can’t afford the place without her. If she walks, I’m stuck with the whole rent, and I can’t—I can barely do my half.” Her voice had gone thin and fast, the way it does right before it gives out.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry, Meg. That sounds really hard.”
“It is hard.” And just like that, the fight went out of her, the storm spent as fast as it came. “Nobody gets it. You get it.”
“I’m always here if you need to vent.”
“I know. God, I feel better just talking to you. You always know what to say.”
I hadn’t said anything. I’d offered her three ways out, and she’d closed every door. Then I’d told her it sounded hard, and that was the part she’d wanted all along. The landlord and the rent and Dustin’s pee on the toilet seat were just the story she’d had to get through to get to it.
“I should let you go,” she said, already lighter, already somewhere else. “Thanks, Henny. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I set my phone on the bed and took a deep breath, realizing I hadn’t gotten to tell her about the house or anything. I stood up and looked out the window at the pool. The thought of going in it made me feel slightly better after the whirlwind of my sister’s problems.
I left my room with the baby monitor, quickly checked on Otto, and made my way into the kitchen for a glass of water.
The kitchen smelled like simmering tomato, roasted peppers, garlic, and cumin when I walked in. Lola was testing the heat on a tray of charred poblanos as I passed her. I pulled a glass from the cabinet and fixed myself a glass of ice water.
“That smells so good. What are you making?”
“Chiles rellenos,” she said. “I thought I’d do something special for Brakkus tonight.
” There was a pot of tomato sauce simmering on the back burner, and the counter laid out for an operation—a brick of cheese and a grater, a bowl of eggs, a dish of flour, tongs and a slotted spoon lined up like instruments.
“Can I help?”
“You sure can. You can peel these for me. They’re cool enough now.”
I drained my glass of water, thirsty from a day in the car in the Texas summer heat. Then I started to peel the chilies. I pushed against the blackened skin and stripped it back from each one.
Lola started to separate egg whites into a bowl while I worked on the chilies. She whisked them until they came up in peaks. When she was done, she took the chilies and we began to stuff them with cheese.
“You’re good for Otto,” she said, stuffing another poblano.
“Thank you. I hope so. The healer said he wasn’t gaining enough weight. But that was probably due to the tooth pain. We’ll get it sorted now.”
Lola turned to the stove and started the heat on low under a large pan of oil.
“The last nanny was a disaster,” she said, moving the stuffed chili through the breading process.
“What’s the story there?” I asked, not sure if I should pry.
Lola dropped the first breaded chili into the frying oil, and it began to sputter and cook.
“Brielle. She was a pretty viper.” Lola dropped several more breaded chilies into the oil. I bit my lip and waited, knowing I was about to be privy to some hot gossip.
“Oh?”
“She was after Brakkus. I’m sure of it. At least, that’s how she weaseled her way into his trust.” I held my breath. The woman sounded like a gold digger. “I saw her touching him at dinner, laughing at things that weren’t funny… the whole show.”
The chilies sizzled, filling the room with the scent.
“But that wasn’t even the worst part. She was taking pictures of Otto at his worst. And it turns out she was selling them to the tabloids.
Brakkus found her out and sent her packing.
” She tsked, turning over the chilies with metal tongs.
“That was the last thing that baby needed.” She shook her head. “The man either.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said, my heart sinking.
I picked up the large serving tray and brought it over to her by the stove.
“Otto and Brakkus have been through enough without something so violating happening to them. Brakkus seems like such a private man. To have someone he trusted to care for his son betray him like that…” I trailed off.
The violation of it was so immense. No wonder he’d been so short with me.
I was more determined than ever to help this family.