Broken, Bruised, and Brave

by L. A. Zoe

  The radiator clanged, and a valve hissed steam into the air.

  I put my head back down and snuggled closer to Rhinegold. He too wore sweat pants and a hoodie, and smelled of hot musk and dank wool.

  So this was love, huh?

  So far, I wasn’t complaining one bit. I liked that yesterday went much as many days before it. Rhinegold left early to protect a life insurance agent collecting policy premiums, and spent most of his time with the mothers. Saturday was a popular grocery shopping day for women with men who brought paychecks home on Friday night. And for women who worked Monday through Fridays themselves.

  I stayed in the room leafing through the course catalogs the University of Kiowa sent me. I realized I needed a computer, at least a tablet, and made a budget plan for that. I reported to work at five by myself, but Rhinegold waited outside the door for me when I left around twelve. I enjoyed closing on the weekends. Long hours, busy tables, and therefore lots of tips. And big tips

  Thanks to Rhinegold’s father, I spent a long time thinking about what to study.

  Before he talked to me, I just knew I wanted to “go to college.” That’s what rich and middle class kids did. Going to college was a qualification for the really good jobs. The nine to five, sit on your ass in a cubicle, attend boring meetings, and write reports kind of jobs.

  I enjoyed working as a waitress, but it was definitely a stand on your feet for long hours, put up with rude people, carry big trays heavy with food, rush around like crazy, kind of job. I didn’t know if I could handle it for four or six years while I attended classes, and certainly not the rest of my life.

  Rhinegold’s father helped me understand “business” was many things, and covered my specialized skills, so while I could skate by for a year or two taking general classes, eventually I would have to focus on just one or two areas. Accounting. Marketing. Finance. Management.

  I should also consider: Info Technology. Medicine. Science. Engineering. The Law—his favorite.

  And all of those were wide areas. I’d have to choose between programming with Java or managing databases. Heart surgery or proctology. Physics or physiology. Mechanical or electronic.

  With law, I could wait until law school to see what most interested me, or what kind of job I got.

  It seemed so overwhelming. I didn’t know what most of that stuff was, let alone whether I liked it or not.

  Good thing I still had time to decide. I’d talk to Rhinegold later that day. I hugged him more tightly, and let my mind slip down back into a sleep of hazy dreams.

  Some hours later, he woke me by slipping out of bed, and then he headed into the bathroom. I lay on my back, eyes open to a pale, plain yogurt light just a tad more intense than before, arms behind my head.

  Rhinegold approached from behind the top of my head, and leaned over. “Pardon, my lady fair. This golden knight left the floor only so I wouldn’t freeze my tushie off. I didn’t mean to warm my unworthy blood with your body heat. Shall I return to sleep on the floor?”

  “Do so, and I’ll call the Captain of the Guard and send you to the Dungeons to die the Death of a Thousand Agonies.”

  “Ooh, that sounds terrible. In that case, I guess I better get back under the blankets with you.”

  “That is my wish, golden knight. Nay, my command.”

  “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you look during a blizzard?”

  “Millions of knights,” SeeJai said. “Every one more handsome than you, and more covered with renown and glory.”

  “Oh, that hurts.”

  “But none who loved me half so much.”

  I traced Rhinegold’s face with my fingertips. The line where his thick blonde hair wanted to grow on his scalp, except he shaved all but a wide strip at the very top, like a stretch of grass between highway lanes.

  Thick, bushy eyebrows, the color of corn silk, framing his blazing blue eyes like the depths of a frozen-over Viking fjord. Dry, chapped skin on his rough cheeks. The sheltered rich boy had spent lots of time outdoors since leaving the king and stepqueen’s castle.

  Full, thick red lips, sensual as a Babylonian concubine. Even, white teeth. Several gold fillings in molars.

  I rubbed my palm lightly over the gold bristles along his jaw.

  “I wouldn’t want to give you a beard burn,” he said. “I should shave.”

  “Burn me,” I told him. “Scorch me with the fires of Hell.”

  We kissed, and our tongues locked in moist embrace. Soon, our rolling, writhing bodies warmed each other, and somehow his sweat pants went down, and mine came off, and we kicked the blankets aside, but somehow didn’t feel the frosty north wind blowing against our naked thighs and asses.

  We kept our sweatshirts on, though.

  “A good day to stay inside and watch the snow fall,” I said. “And keep each other warm until I have to go to work.”

  Rhinegold kissed my nose. “What say you we hit Riverside Park, build a snowman or something?”

  “Visit your fantasy castle?”

  He grinned lopsided. “You caught me.”

  By the time we showered, ate a large hot breakfast of omelets and oatmeal, and returned to our sweats, with winter coats on top, the snow stopped. I wore a blue knit shirt and carried my work clothes in a small knapsack, and put on the same red rubber boots I used to wear to high school. Rhinegold wore black commando pants over long underwear, and combat boots.

  On Sunday morning not many buses run, and not many people ride them. We sat together in a front seat. Under the window, a heater bravely fought the winter by blowing out cool air at pop music concert volume, and lost.

  Rhinegold put his arm around the back of my seat. “So, you talked to Father at the party.”

  “He tapped my shoulder while you were nodding out to Helena.”

  Rhinegold nodded to show he figured that much out. “And did he say anything new, or just what I already know?”

  “You must know. He wants you back in school, studying for a career. He’s given up on making you a lawyer, so he told me to tell you he’ll support anything you want to do.”

  “Except freelance protection services.”

  “I think he’d go for you owning a security service. He says he pays one a lot of money to protect his business. Guard the office. Perform background checks on job applicants, stuff like that. But most of them have a military background. Do you want to spend a few years in the Army?”

  I really wondered how he’d answer. He so enjoyed thinking of himself as a fighter, a knight, a warrior—and protecting me and other people, some for pay. A black belt in karate, though he also studied kung fu, Tae Kwan Do, and a few others I knew nothing about.

  So why not take advantage of the training the Army would give him? Sure, he could be shipped off to Afghanistan or some other place where they fought with bombs and bullets, not imaginary swords, but he could also die in many of the Cromwell neighborhoods he escorted people through.

  At least as a soldier he’d have a gun to shoot back with.

  Not that I knew much about it. Joining the military never even occurred to me. Who would take care of Mom?

  I didn’t want him to leave me. Just thinking of it made me miss him already. I just accepted another human being into my bed and into me for the first time. Already I felt attached, empty at the prospect of losing him.

  Rhinegold took a deep breath. “I’ve thought about it. But I’m not good at taking orders. And the Army might not want someone as strange as me.”

  Strange … yes, sometimes I forgot that.

  Rhinegold went on: “It’d be like living under Father’s control, only all the officers could order me around, and I’d have no right to run away. If I went to college, only he’d be pulling my strings.”

  “Not if you didn’t let him,” I said. “Pay for it yourself. He also told me to tell you, he’d make it a loan if you wanted. Draw up an official financial note with interest rates and everything, which you could pay him back when you
finished and got a job.”

  “You guys had a nice long talk about me.”

  I wanted to say it was while he was kissing Helena, but I bit my lip. He loved me, not her.

  “And me too,” I said in a soft voice.

  “Oh? Father’s interested in you too?” He voice contained a faint sneer along with the blatant unbelief.

  My hands grabbed and held the fingers dangling over my shoulder. I looked into his eyes. “Rhinegold, we’ve got to think about the future. We can’t live together in one small room, you a freelance bodyguard and me a waitress, until we both die of old age.”

  “Why not?” He winked, then frowned. “All right. You mean, we’re not going to, whether we could or not.”

  That sounded like he wanted to make it my fault, ticking me off a little.

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “You know what?” he said. “In the future we’ll look back to this as the happiest time of our lives?”

  “Not if we’re still scraping by.”

  He smiled as though at a joke only he could understand. “So, my darling princess and the king are plotting behind my back.”

  “We both love you, Rhinegold. I don’t want to lose you.”

  When we arrived at Riverside Park, the haze of sunlight the shade of wilted dandelion flowers filled the air.

  One group of kids threw snowballs at each other even though the snow came up to their waists. Then they discovered a snow drift against the concrete wall of a closed hot dog stand so deep, they could throw themselves into it, and land as though on mattresses.

  Probably would have worked for me too.

  They didn’t seem to notice the man and woman marching straight into the middle of the park, empty but for clumps of trees. The snow up to Rhinegold’s knees, and the middle of my thighs. Without holding on to his arm, I might have gotten stuck there, in winter’s version of quicksand. Snow fell into my boots, and melted around my toes, numbing them.

  In the grove of oak trees he named weirwoods after that Game of Thrones TV show, he stood silent. In his mind, the tree looked back at him with a red expression carved in its white bark. Grim, probably—a jillion square miles of frozen tundra and taiga woods empty except for moose and bears.

  Did he really pray to the gods of a fantasy show?

  I shivered, and soon we continued on to the hillock he enjoyed pretending was a castle keep.

  Our footsteps marked the first tracks in this smooth, unbroken white expanse of snow.

  Wind swept snow drifts halfway up the slope, and slammed dry flakes like sleet against our cheeks. It made a loose, slithering sound as it swept along.

  The cloud cover thickened, cutting off the little tinge of yellow left in the daylight, making the day dark as twilight, threatening another snow storm.

  The air smelled pure as an ice field.

  Rhinegold charged the hill. Defended the top of it. Ran down the sloped at enemy attackers. Practiced karate exercises he called kata. Fought with swords. Pulled out the switchblade he kept in his boots and dueled with assassins.

  Every so often, he stopped to rest. He bent over, hands on his knees, puffing fast, breath smoking the air.

  “I never see soldiers do that in movies,” I said to tease him.

  “I bet real-life, old-time soldiers did it a lot,” he said. “Nobody can swing a heavy sword for three, four hours straight, not even Olympic athletes.”

  “I’d be worn out just wearing all that heavy armor,” I said.

  “Resting’s dangerous,” Rhinegold said. “But so is letting your arms get so tired you can’t even lift your sword or your shield.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said.

  “You stand on top of the hill,” he told me once.

  “What?” I didn’t want to fight my way up there. I was afraid I’d fall down on my ass.

  “You’re the queen. You should be inside.”

  “I thought I was a princess.”

  “That’s when I was just a prince. Now I’ve established my own kingdom, so that makes me a king and you a queen.”

  I didn’t like the sound of all that. “I’ll stand right here, and watch you pretend I’m inside the castle.”

  He didn’t respond, just returned to his exercises, his practice fights and battles.

  By the time he stopped, sweat dripped from his forehead. Quite an accomplishment considering the temperature.

  He pointed to the hill, and then around to different nearby places. To me, all of them just areas of ground covered by thick snow and ice.

  “The hill’s now the heart of my castle,” Rhinegold said. “Look, we’re surrounded by stone walls. There’s a tower over there, and an even larger one behind it.”

  “What about a moat?” I asked, teasing.

  “Not dug yet, but we’ve got thick walls started. We’ll place a strong gateway there, in the gap between the two pillars marking the entranceway. They’ll hold the drawbridge.”

  I nodded along with him, as though I saw anything except open land. All ours, only because nobody sane left their home on such a day, without work or another good reason.

  “We live here now, King Rhinegold and Queen SeeJai. In our own kingdom, separate from my father King Sanders, and Queen Sybille.”

  The stepqueen. Did they have those in the Middle Ages? Must have, because in so many fairy tales the stepmother was always an evil villainess.

  Widowed medieval fathers apparently had no sense when it came to remarrying. They always picked wicked women for their second wives.

  Rhinegold didn’t like his stepmother much, and she just barely seemed to tolerate him. Why? What happened between them?

  I swallowed my curiosity along with my doubts and fears. I took Rhinegold’s arm. “Come on, we’ve just got time to eat at McDonald’s before I start to work.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Worm Ouroboros

  Five blocks from The Sunshine Garden Restaurant where SeeJai was beginning her dinner rush hour shift, in the heart of the University of Kiowa, North Cromwell campus, Rhinegold took a seat in one of the comfortable chairs grouped around the magazine racks in the university library.

  As a Sunday, many more students occupied the long tables and study cubicles than last night, Saturday. A hushed quiet prevailed. The thick walls of concrete blocks, brick, and marble blocked all outside sounds, and intimidated the young people into near-silence. Broken only by the scrape of chair legs on polished stone floors, the rustling of paper, the click of laptops and tablets, and the whispers of study partners.

  Without any electronics except the cellphone in his coat’s inner pocket, books or notebooks, or a backpack, he felt conspicuous until he pulled out his paperback copy of The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, a fantasy classic.

  A permanent draft flowed by him from the front doors continually opening and closing as people went in and out.

  Not that anybody bothered or questioned Rhinegold. He was college age, he wore casual clothes. As a knight and warrior, he didn’t carry himself like most students, but that quality must serve to discourage anyone from challenging his right to sit there.

  At such a large university, no student or faculty could believe they knew everybody, so why not accept him? He didn’t cause any trouble, just read.

  Sometimes he looked up books in the stacks, especially the extensive volumes on the sagas of Iceland and Arthurian legends. Unfortunately, many of them were in French, German, Icelandic, Old Norse, Old German, and other such languages. But he enjoyed reading what he could.

  He rubbed his nose. The paper dust irritated his inner nostrils, already dry from the lack of humidity.

  He loved The Worm Ouroboros. Written before The Lord of the Rings, it contained tons of fighting, bravery, and heroes with true honor. At the end, the “good guys,” finding peace dull, resurrect the “bad guys,” so they can all have the fun of fighting more battles against each other.

  The dragon of time swallowing its tail. The
Worm Ouroboros.

  A version of the Norse Valhalla, where slain heroes fought each other all day, yet by evening came back to life to feast, drink mead, sing, tell tales, and bed serving wenches.

  And the next morning wake up to fight anew.

  His mind turned to a common winter activity of Norse brigands, Vikings, and everyone else who spent over half the year snowed inside.

  Brooding.

  For in the end, despite all fighting, all heroism, all bravery—came Ragnarok, the end of all gods and the universe.

  Götterdämmerung. The Twilight of the Gods.

  The Valentine party brought all that back. Before he lived as a freelance knight on the dangerous streets of Cromwell’s hoods, he occupied a room in the King’s palace. He was a prince.

  He would even now be a prince if the King had not remarried. Stepmothers always brought problems. Ask Cinderella and a thousand other fairy tales heroes and heroines.

  Rhinegold fought his anger and jealousy.

  After all, the king had physical, sexual needs to satisfy.

  And he, Prince Rhinegold, won more honor by founding his own kingdom, if only a hill in Riverside Park.

  He was better off leaving the King to his Sybille, and Keara. And cleaving to SeeJai.

  But he couldn’t help but resent Father’s attempts to interfere with his life. To recruit SeeJai to persuade him to abandon his dreams, and go to college to prepare for a “respectable” career.

  Not SeeJai’s fault, of course. Or, not entirely her fault.

  She made it clear she planned to go to college and get a good job upon graduation, though she hadn’t yet decided what she wanted to do.

  She knew she didn’t want to stay in that room, even with Rhinegold, for longer than she had to.

  Much as he loved The Worm Ouroboros, his life more closely mirrored another classic fantasy novel—The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany.

  Where a human man journeys from the human kingdom of Erl to Elfland, from ordinary reality to beyond the fields we know, to marry the elf princess.

  The human prince Alveric and the elf princess Lirazel fall in love with each other, but neither can comfortably exist in each other’s worlds.