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I do not hate you
as tempting as it is to describe
my annoyance towards your stupidity this way.
I do not hate you
because hating you is cowardice.
So much harder to reach into your inverted worldview
and see through your eyes.
I do not hate you
I am you.
—Queen Saugrin
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKmxleiut3C
Moans mix with the crackling campfire. Hildr turns from the smoke and misery. The moon, half full, grays the night while bristling brush and twisted trees form a wall of darkness across the road in front of her.
Breathing deep, she wipes sweat gathering at her brow and twists her long, orange hair back into a bun. A horse snickers. Four of them stand asleep, still tied to their covered wagon. She sighs and moves to loosen their reins.
The salt and pepper-haired mother retches, curled in the dirt next to her family-sized tent, and another horse snorts. The rest of her family writhes about in feverish agony, disrupting the equine dreams. The little dark-haired boy rolls onto his back and reaches towards the star-filled sky.
Hildr pulls a wool blanket from the wagon, shakes it out, and drapes it over the child. He thrashes, kicking it off.
“Fine. Be cold.” She huffs and stomps over to the fire.
Life cannot be fair. This sadness and suffering balances things, keeping at bay unattainable fantasy.
She rotates a stick over glowing coals with the doll-faced brownie she captured bound to it. “Tiny hands stained purple and smelling sickly sweet … Did you sneak bile berries into the soup?”
The fae-born man jerks against silk string wrapped around him, almost slipping his right arm free. Shorter and stockier than his left, the stunted limb is prepped for slinging stones with the force of a coiled spring.
“Almost got me this time, Meepsin.” Hildr shakes her head. “I’d be as ill as them had I eaten it.”
Bile berries purge the body and soul. Used to prime prisoners for interrogation and abort pregnancies, they are not deadly to those with healthy guts.
The tiny man froths at the mouth, straining his twiggy limbs to escape the heat.
A twinge of compassion wrinkles Hildr’s brow. She growls to smooth the weakness away.
“You’re a brownie boy. Your mossy head barely tickles my calf. You’d struggle to drag a chicken. How could you get a delirious me to your fae queen?”
Sparks within Hildr’s heart awaken mystic power, becoming coals of rage that smolder. Her sweat steams off; a volcanic vent with a salty scent instead of sulfur.
“Perhaps Queen Saugrin only demanded a token.” Hildr narrows her dark amber eyes. “Confess, you little Meep-shit. Would you have snipped off my ear? Scooped out my eye? I hosted Lady Darla, and she as Phoenix’s avatar caused your habitat’s demise. Tell me what price will make things right.”
Meepsin trills, and his spit sizzles on a stone under his nose. Defiant, but his limbs hang limp. Death is close.
Hildr lifts him away from the fire. “Speak English, or I’ll toast your toes.”
He matches her gaze with fatalistic intensity.
Brownies, being creatures of fae, are plant-like enough to burn as brush does. Those long dead ignite like kindling, while vibrant youths like this one will smolder with the choking smoke of green leaves and pliant wood.
“I’d rather not suffer your tea pot squeal. Please, convince me to spare you.”
“English, ba-ad,” he says with a squeaky voice. “Not eas-sy. Makes me sa-ad. Head queas-sy.”
“What does your queen want?”
Meepsin puckers his thin lips. “Your body. Whole and intact. Her bounty demands you back. For some ritual, I know not simple.”
Hildr points the stick he is bound to at the sick family sprawled on dirt and thin bedding. “Do you know why these folk are fleeing south?”
“Hold me steady. I not ready.”
“The Pales claimed the girls for marriage.” Hildr holds Meepsin close enough that her breath makes him blink. “Understand, or can it not translate into your simple world?”
The brownie shrugs his thin shoulders.
“Loveless and arranged to suit the righteous evil of the Pales’ ‘greater good,’ marriage is no more than child slavery renamed. I’d start a revolt if I went that way.” She swings the stick he is tied to to gesture the other direction. “And then there’s the village you followed me from. We left Ishkur there with an epic mess he is too kind to leave behind.”
“Gremlins.” He spits. “Hate them.”
“Yes, but at least their ghoulish hunger is honest.”
Ishkur was like this moaning family and their poisoned soup. His love was sickly sweet. Hildr winces at her own weakness in begging the handsome half-elf to come with her and shakes at his noble rejection. She pulls out a string of copper bells, silent with their clappers missing. One of his two parting gifts, she promised to keep it by her heart, but did not clarify for how long. A flick of her wrist, and the token spins into the fire. Soot stains the metal, and she rubs her belly. Given the man’s second gift, it is better to be alone than with anyone clouding her judgment.
A crow caws from within the shadows of a pine tree, squawking with modular intensity. Hildr walks across the rough road that borders the family’s camp, dragging Meepsin on his stick.
Two paths. With a vicious twist, she plants him in the gravel like a miniature scarecrow. Two ways this can go. She cannot leave this fae creature to come after her again. He dies or becomes her ally.
“Your kind are supposed to be great scouts,” says Hildr. “I want nothing to do with Pale crusaders or baby-snatching gremlins. Talk to your crow and tell me, would a straight-west shortcut be safe?”
Meepsin caws in the modular way the crow did. It squawks back. He wiggles his torso, testing the tension of the string binding him.
“Well?” Hildr traces a thin scar across her chin.
“Dap no like you.”
“Too bad for your bird.” She jostles his stick, making his round, moss-topped head wobble. “Scout me through the brush to the old, cobbled trade route. We’ll follow that to familiar ground, my favorite cracked mining town.”
The brownie sucks in a deep breath, swelling his light-green belly. Hildr’s eyes widen, and she hops to the side as he bleats out a primal scream that rings her ears, curls her toes, and makes the horses whine.
“Listen to my offer before you wail like a lamb thrown into a bonfire.” Hildr wiggles a finger in her ear. “When we reach Lotus Hollow, vouch on my behalf to the Verdant druids there, then I’ll grab a griffin and honey from our old friend, Apple. Unless you know another shaman we can call on to ready a ride for us?”
“Only know, fat fellow.”
“Well, Mr Fat Apple is a simple man.” She pulls a golden signet ring out of her robe, a stylized lute engraved as its stamp. “If this doesn’t remind him of his duty, I’ll flash my cleavage, and he will honor his vows to my band. Then, we can fly to your queen and pay her off with enough bee puke to get us both in her grace.”
“Honey?” He licks his lips with a tiny green tongue. “Yummy.”
She puts the ring away. “Yeah. Buckets of it. Will that end the bounty on me without any ritual fae justice?”
Meepsin shakes his mossy head.
Hildr stomps over to the family. Batting shaky arms aside, she scoots past drooling adults and steps over whimpering children to reach their traveler’s table. A small cup decorates its center, filled with dandelions Hildr had gathered under the afternoon sun with the pig-tailed girl.
Firming her mouth, she reaches past the wilting flowers for the bowl she had almost slurped. The family was kind to her, but they are not her family. Stirring the noxious soup, she takes the bowl to the brownie and turns him towards the campfire.
“I am sorry your home was destroyed,” she says, “but what if your berry poison had caused me to miscarry?”
Lemon-yellow eyes wide, Meepsin tilts his head. “You not plump, only ugly. Not pregnant, and not sorry.”
Hildr rubs her belly and growls, coaxing a lifetime of hurt into fuel for a furnace that awakens under her guts. Smoke drifts up from between her thighs, and she spreads her legs, stretching the thick wool robe she wears.
“Oh, I am.” She wrinkles her nose at the burnt cloth smell. “And yes, my vagina’s on fire.”
“Like a devil?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Do devils get pregnant?”
Meepsin nods. “It how baby devils made in Hell.”
Hildr snorts, and the smoke thins to a curling wisp. “It’s been happening for a month, ever since my nipples got sore. A little irritation and whoosh, flame on.” She tugs at a strip of curled leather hanging under her loins. “Even leather doesn’t last long as underwear.”
“Yes, odd mystery. How know from baby? Research first, maybe.”
“Absent a grand library I can browse for precedent, I borrow from your overgod’s grace. By Gardener, I have faith in what my body and heart is telling me. There is a life … becoming … within me.”
“I sorry.” Meepsin’s doll-like face droops into a heavy frown. “All pregnancy sacred to brownies. I not poison soup if I know you pregnant. Oops.”
“Wonderful. Now, restore your brownie honor. See me safe until my baby is born.” She adjusts her golden beetle-shaped pin holding her hair in place. “And, I’ll turn myself over to you for a griffin ride straight to your queen with buckets of honey.”
The brownie shakes his head again. “Nature divides strong and weak views. Better neither hurt nor help you. Let baby born because health true.”
“Nature nurtures, you little idiot.” Hildr pulls a knife from under her robe and moves to stick the tip in red hot coals. “A baby is born healthy because of love as much as anything else.”
“Torture not work.” He stiffens his body. “Strong not jerk.”
Hildr cools the blade in her bowl of soup. “Aborting my child violates nature.” She waves the small weapon in front of her belly. “But being pregnant and alone is a problem. My mother was a monster. Perhaps, I am why. She cursed my absent father with a venom that poisoned me. Made me into … Yes, abortion is a logical answer.”
“Remove? Baby slit? You not do it.”
Several of the laid-out family puke in rapid succession. Meepsin glances in their direction, and Hildr steadies her grip.
“See my iron will.” Hissing, she pokes the tip into tight skin under her belly button.
A thin line of blood dribbles, and Meepsin shudders. Brownies can be quite sly in their forest domain, but they know little of the bluffs civilized gamblers can make.
Hildr says, “I will go hilt deep, unless you agree to aid me until my baby is born healthy.”
He avoids her eyes and hums under his breath.
She softens her voice. “Your overgod is known for compassion. That is why people whisper ‘by Gardener’s grace.’ Do not betray your faith. Swear service to me, and I swear to return your honor.”
“You come to Queen Saugrin with honey buckets full? Rhyme about my courage? Do not pause or be dull?”
Hildr licks her lips. Brownies think in pictures and rhyme to counter their poor verbal memories.
“Sure, Meeps. Remind me after my child’s birth, and I can do all that.”
“Okay,” he says. “You win. Gardener is gracious. Bless all children. I swear loyal service.”
“Great.” She slashes the silk string, freeing him. “Now, help me loot these folk before they recover.”
Meepsin rubs his wrists and tilts his head. “You not their friend? Hospitium?”
Hildr shrugs. “Since I didn’t eat. Ritual, not complete.”
She stuffs a wheel of cheese into her robe’s wide pocket. The family’s balding patriarch burps a sour curse as she raises her knife. How will they treat the next stranger they meet? She slashes down, cutting loose his coin purse. Maybe next time being more guarded will save their life.
“Be glad I don’t need your fancy fire starter.” Frowning at the copper bits inside the purse, she drops the man’s meager wealth. “Not worth their weight. How about your son’s sapphire-tipped scabbard?”
The matriarch hisses as Meepsin tumbles over and tugs open her beige blouse’s collar.
“I find shiny!”
“Yes, that.” Hildr squats and unhooks a simple gold chain from the woman’s neck and clasps it around her own. “I can bear this weight.”
The children moan with their eyes closed, regurgitated soup drying on their necks and chests. Hildr wrinkles her nose as she cuts strips of leather from their gear to make spare underwear. They had been charming, singing and dancing around her. She had smiled for the first time since Ishkur had lit a fire in her womb. But kind strangers are not kin, nor are they bound by oaths.
The family whimpers and dreams. Hildr leaves them alone.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
