by Amy Lane
I wiped them and felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to envelop Hammer in my trembling arms. He were wearing pants with no shirt, and his skin felt flushed and heated under my anger-clammy hands.
“I’m sorry, Hammer,” I said gruffly. “I should have given you the word forever ago. It’s been our word from the start.”
I looked behind me to the prince, and he were looking at us with stricken, remorseful eyes.
He still couldn’t speak—whatever geas had held him trapped in bear form while here during the day had not faded. But his mouth moved, the words as clear to my blurred vision as they would have been if he’d actually put a voice to them.
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, too angry to forgive. “Gerrout!” I swore, the old word holding so much more hatred than the proper one.
He had his hand on the doorknob, still naked and running like a man, when the first light of dawn slid through our window, and he loped off into the still-dark morning in the form of a bear.
I didn’t care. Hammer were quaking in my arms, and I had to find words now that would give him his bones back, when he thought he’d sold them for my heart.
“I love you,” I whispered. “That’s our word now, Hammer. It’s not just for princes and servant girls. It’s for us too.”
“I thought he would take you,” Hammer muttered. “I know I said I could set you free, but a chance just to be near you. To see you, to work for you….”
I were crying now, like a child or a girl, and I couldn’t mask it. “Never,” I ground out. “You bow to no one, Hammer. You don’t bow to the likes of him.” I pulled myself together and framed his broad, bluff, dear, handsome face with my nimble, long-fingered hands. “I’ll die before you have to endure a thing in order to be near me, beloved. You’re mine. I couldn’t love you if you weren’t bigger than princes and braver than knights. You’re perfect. You’re my Hammer, forever and ever and ever….” I couldn’t talk anymore, and he saved me, as he’d saved me from the first, and met my eyes with a bit of a smile.
“There will always be a Hammer and Eirn, right?”
I nodded helplessly. Gods of magic, gods of motion, thank you, for my Hammer, safe in my arms.
We stayed there for a few moments, shaking, touching, pulling ourselves together, and then Hammer stepped back and wiped his cheeks with the backs of his hand.
“We still leaving today?” he asked gruffly, and I said, “Aye.”
“Good,” he replied. “We’re up. Let’s start breakfast and say goodbye to the place so we can leave before the sun is high.”
I nodded my head and went to get dressed. Neither of us mentioned that in order to leave, we would have to go through the bear’s cave, and that the bear might be waiting for us there, broken hearted and as violent as I had been.
I washed and put the privy to rights, then closed the drawers with their fine clothes regretfully one last time. We made the bed together, and I patted it fondly—it had welcomed us, welcomed what we had done in it, whether it had been for love or for play, and it would be hard to go back to a bedroll on the forest floor again. I found, once again, that the toy bear we’d put in our knapsack had ended up as a decoration there, and I kissed it, half embarrassed, and propped it up on the pillow, as though we’d be coming home to it in a day.
I turned to Hammer, who watched me do this, and shrugged. “All that it’s given us,” I murmured. “It’s the only gift we’ve got to give back.” Hammer nodded, put a hand on my shoulder and kissed my cheek, understanding. Our childhood, left behind in this place—it seemed fitting.
We went into the kitchen as the sky turned pink, and I were surprised to see Hammer rolling up the big sheets of parchment we’d used to plan our home with, with more care than I’d seen him show anything but my flesh.
“It’s ours,” he said, his voice like tree bark. “They’re our dreams, the home of our heart. Even if it never comes to be, it won’t matter. We thought it for each other. We should keep it.”
I nodded and swallowed, tried out our new word. “I love you, Hammer.”
He blushed, and his head dropped a little, but he held my eyes with his own of lake-blue. “Love you, too, Eirn. Ready to make breakfast?”
The cupboard gave us a feast this morning—eggs and soft bread, bacon and ham and fruit and tomatoes. I cooked the meat to make sandwiches and patted the cupboard in thanks.
“You’ve been wonderful,” I told it, feeling absurdly sad. “We’ve felt cared for here in a way we never had. We can’t thank you enough, little cottage. You’ve a heart in you bigger than your floors and ceiling, and sturdier than your foundations, and we’ll never forget you.”
There were a tiny clatter from the back of the shelves then, and I reached in curiously. There in my hand were the small seeing glass I’d brought from the orphanage and had needed to sell for food.
“Aw…” I sniffled. “That weren’t fair at all, little house. I hope you saved some kindness for the next children you find lost in the woods, and I hope they care for you like we did.”
Hammer and I finished packing up the food in silence, then. It had obviously been meant as a parting gift, and we would need it.
We had just finished getting our knapsacks together and were starting on the dishes when we heard the first scream.
It were a wild animal, a big one. It were a bear.
And he were in pain.
We looked at each other.
He’d betrayed us. He’d betrayed Hammer in the worst of ways—Hammer didn’t even have to tell me what he’d said to know that. He’d betrayed me by trying to trick Hammer, and my anger burned molten in my gut for it, that were a certainty.
But we’d heard that sound before. That were the scream of a creature trapped and in pain. It rang in our ears like the howl of the mountain cat Hammer had injured. The injury wouldn’t kill him, but the results of it were just as deadly.
It screamed again and again, and we nodded at each other as though something had been decided. Hammer picked up the packs, and I went to take the carving knife out of the soapy water, when there were a tromping of big boots on our little porch, and the front door splintered open.
Part X
Blood on the Threshold
He were a bloody great-sized man, he were, covered in black hair and a beard and wearing boots with rusty iron findings and animal skins. He seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see him.
“Two o’ ya?” he growled, as he surveyed the cottage, and the door slammed off the back of the wall. “This place looked near to deserted on the outside!” (Later this would have struck us as odd, for all our preparation to leave. I’m thinking the little cottage tried to dissuade the likes of this one from coming in with a bit of camouflage, and good on it for that!)
Hammer looked up from his pack, and I saw his hand inching inside. His hammer were there, and neither of us liked this stranger one bit. I kept my hands in the dishwater, and my fist wrapped around the handle of the carving knife the cupboard had given me when I were in my killing rage.
“Is it customary in your parts to just barge on in?” Hammer said with a scowl, and the man laughed. He took two giant strides into the kitchen and eyed us both with dismissal. Apparently, not even Hammer’s massy chest looked like a threat.
“Not much two little bits of you are going to do to stop me, now is there?” he boomed. “I’ve got a bear in a trap not far from here. I’m going to need some place to smoke and dress the meat. Saw this little place, thought it were a damned sight more pleasant than any camp I could make, and I were right!”
A slow, evil smile bloomed across the man’s face then. “And look atcha both! You’re near to pretty as girls! It’s been a long time since I had a girl.”
“I ain’t a girl!” Hammer snapped, “And he ain’t yours. Don’t you have a bear to kill?” He met my eyes and grimaced, and I knew that neither of us were going to let him kill that bear if we could help it, but first we had to get us
out of our sweet little cottage.
The man’s hand moved so fast to backhand Hammer that not even Hammer could lift a hand to defend himself. He went spinning to the bare wood boards of the kitchen floor, and I had to fight to keep my hands in the dishwater and my fist clenched.
In a quick stride, the hunter were directly behind me, his groin pressed into my backside, his meaty hands on my shoulder. He stood a head taller than I did—a giant of a man—and he smelled of rancid meat and his own filth.
“I’ll save him for later,” the man chuckled. “He’s feisty; it’ll be fun.” A rough hand with dirty nails came to touch my cheek. “You, you’re a sweet little piece. You’ll be nice. More like a girl. Bet your arse will open for me like a quim. It’s been a while.”
“My arse is my own,” I muttered sullenly, and he boomed with laughter. And while it rang off the walls, Hammer were standing up, I could see him from the corner of my eye. The man grasped my hips insistently, and I tried for a bit more time.
“Could you wait until I finish the dishes?” I asked shortly. “If I’m going to be buggered bloody, I’d prefer not to have to clean up when I’m done.”
The man grunted, surprised. “I’ll fuck ya now, ya little piss-ant! And when I’m done, you’ll help me skin that fucking bear! But first, we’ll let him wear himself out a bit—make him easier to kill.” And that horrible parody of a laugh. “And fucking. We’ll do some of that. Now come along; I might even grease ya like a pig!”
“Right,” I muttered, grabbing the knife hard. “Just let me dry my hands off.”
I turned around and thrust, just as Hammer swung down with his smith’s hammer and caved in the man’s skull. Whoever the fuck he were, he didn’t even have time to look surprised as his blood splattered over the kitchen and the light died from his eyes.
The first thing we did were drag his carcass outside, one of us on each arm, his boots thumping incongruously on the stairs of the porch as we hauled him down.
“Where’d this arse-ripper come from, that’s what I want to know!” Hammer grunted, but I’d thought of that.
“The cave. He must have come through the cave. That’s where the bear’s hollering from.” I thought quick, and Hammer were quiet to let me. “We should probably take him back that way; it’s west, it’s where we want to go.” We paused, and I stood and looked around. Burying the body were out of the question, but we weren’t going to let him just sit on the cottage green and rot.
“You take him deeper into the woods,” I said after a moment. “I’ll clean up the blood.”
Hammer nodded and didn’t try to stop me. It were sacrilegious somehow to leave blood in that home. It weren’t right, and we wouldn’t do it.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t hurry, either. I apologized to the house as I scrubbed, and vowed to take the soiled linens outside and leave them, and told it that we were sorry to leave the place on such a note.
What I were also sorry about were that I didn’t get a chance to take some rose clippings with me like I’d planned as we left, but I didn’t tell the cottage that. There were other roses.
Hammer came back and took the soiled towels without a word, and by the time he came back with dirt on his hands, I had our packs, and we were all but ready to run out the door.
We paused for a moment to knock on the threshold softly.
“Bless you, little cabin,” Hammer said softly, and we met eyes that were glossy and wet. It had taught us about home—there were no words for that.
The bear howled again, and we took off at a run toward the mouth of the cave. We were half-way there when I realized I’d forgotten more than rose-clippings.
“Aw, fuck,” I muttered, that upset, and Hammer all but stopped.
“What?”
“The book, Hammer. The cottage gave us the book, and I left it on the fucking couch…oolf…”
There were a sudden, terrible weight in my pack, and before Hammer could even agonize over whether to turn around or not, I gave him a brilliant grin. “No worries. Hammer, I think that little cottage really loved us!”
Hammer grimaced and grabbed my hand, taking us closer to the bear’s agonized howls. “I hope so, Eirn, because I left our plans for the next one on the table.”
Those did not magically appear in his pack (although mine weighed a bloody ton) by the time we broke into the clearing of dry brush that surrounded the cave.
The bear were there, howling with pain, and his hind paw were clapped bloody in a terrible, iron-toothed trap. Not even Hammer could look at the thing without pity, and both of us winced in sympathy, garnering the bear’s attention.
The moment he saw us, he stopped caterwauling, and sank to his haunches, holding out his leg piteously. His look were as human as they came, and it were a frightening mix of shame, fear, pain, and humility. Help me. I’m a bloody arse, but please, please help me.
Hammer and I sighed in tandem, and Hammer pulled his smith’s hammer from his belt, and together we moved to see how to get the damned trap off. The bear watched us, shivering with pain, and Hammer drew close enough to fidget with the trap.
“That’s odd,” he muttered, his hands digging into the blood-saturated mess that were the bear’s fur. “It’s like the fur came off… like the rind off an orange….”
The bear gave an affronted howl, and Hammer swore for moments, the sun gleaming off the blue-black of his hair in the breathless silence of the dusty clearing. “By every fucking god….”
There were a click, and the iron jaws sprang open. The bear collapsed, panting on his side, as though the rush of blood to the rest of his foot had done him in for pain.
“Eirn, c’mere and look at this,” Hammer muttered in the stillness.
I looked, and fought the blackness behind my eyes and the greenness in my stomach. “Oh holy gods,” I muttered, sinking to my haunches. “Hammer….”
I had to think, I had to reason—it were how I kept Hammer alive until we reached safety, it were how we’d managed to escape the town and a murder charge before. It were everything I believed in, and not even the magic involved could fracture my belief in it.
The bear’s skin and fur had separated, were bleeding—pouring blood, as a matter of fact—but beneath it were not jagged flesh and muscle as there should have been.
No. Hammer pulled apart the two sides of fur, and what were underneath were smooth, pale, human skin.
“Gods.” He wouldn’t survive the bleeding, that were certain; it wouldn’t stop. But the smooth human limb beneath…. I reached out and turned on that cold part of myself that had nursed Hammer’s festering wound and walked until I stumbled into our future.
Suddenly, all I could think of were our cottage, and that hideous rug of many animal pelts on the floor. Now, if this were a story, that would have some meaning, now wouldn’t it?
“Should we take him to the other end of the cave?” Hammer asked, and for a moment, I thought it were the best idea I’d ever heard. And then—
“No,” I said softly, and the bear looked at me with summat like relief. At least I hoped it were relief; I were staking his life on my ability to know a man I’d seen only as a cock in my bed.
“No?”
I looked at Hammer and tried to put it into words. “I think if we do that, that big strip of flesh on his leg will be lost when he becomes the man. I think….” And again, that horrible rug planted itself behind my eyes as though someone had dug the hole and watered the picture, “I think, that the only way he’s going to survive this, Hammer, is if we take the whole skin off.”
The bear raised his head and whuffled a little, then, gods thank ye, he nodded. It were the closest thing to a certainty we were likely to get.
Hammer swallowed, nodded, and put on that face—the one I’d seen when he were washing the blood off his hammer, the one I’d seen when he were being buggered. I recognized that face now, and I knew mine were set along the same lines.
The next few minutes were to be endured, as
, perhaps, nothing else in our lives had been to this moment.
Hammer pulled out the knife at his belt, and I rummaged in the pack to find the great knife I’d used to cook. Hammer went first: he set the blade in the space made between bear skin and man skin, pointed it away from himself, and slit out.
The bear’s roar made my ears ring and my vision go black, and Hammer, bless his stoic heart, ripped the hide to the chest and kept going up the side of the neck.
I saw what he were doing, and I steeled myself to help.
Finding a pocket of loose skin at the neck, I pulled out and slit the fold and wrinkle. It were hard—the hair were thick and the skin were tough and the bear were twitching for all it tried hard to sit still for us. But my hands were hard and nimble, and the knife eventually were positioned for me to rip the blade through the skin of the head, and up to the ears, and together, Hammer and I slit the skin of the bear’s head in two. Hammer closed his eyes then, because the bear were still screaming and still twitching, but he weren’t trying to get away or kill us, so we must have been on the right course.
Careful not to touch the tender, blood-softened skin under the bear hide, Hammer slit the skin around the neck, and together, heedless of the bear’s screams of pain, we peeled the whole works off the prince’s head.
I shuddered, hard, and almost turned to throw up, when I saw that we were right, and it were the prince’s head. He looked at me through pain-hooded eyes, and through the mask of the blood that the bearskin left behind and mouthed, “Keep going,” at me.
“Keep going,” I repeated, nodding, and he nodded back.
Then he mouthed, “Through the cave.”
“Do we take the skin?” I didn’t think so, and his head flopped limply side-to-side, and I figured that the skin were a part of this enchanted land, like the cottage and the millwheel and the stream with all the fish. It couldn’t be a part of that godsawful rug if we took it out through the cave.
