Undraland

by Mary E. Twomey

Twenty

  Fighting with Jens

  My stomach was in knots the entire afternoon, so I started the long process of settling in. I wanted to get Henry Mancini back from Foss and Nik, but that would involve going outside where more elves waited to bombard me with questions. Jamie took me back to my bedroom, where I shut myself inside and flopped on the bed. The beauty of the floating gold was not so enthralling anymore, now that my spirits were sufficiently down. The bed still felt like a cloud, so I stretched out on my stomach, digging my toes into the down of the mattress.

  My door opened, announcing Jens’s entrance. “Get out,” I ordered.

  “You know I can’t do that. You may not understand it yet, but you haven’t done much in the past five years that I wasn’t right there for.”

  “New regime. Get out.”

  “What are you thinking, ganking keys from an Elvage guard? What was that even for? Are you just bored, so you’re trying to cause trouble? Do you know how harsh penalties are around here?” Then he did a high-pitched imitation of my voice, his hands splayed near his face in a feminine manner. “Oh, Kristoffer, let me stroke your giant man muscles. Oh, Kristoffer, you’re so charming and funny. What is this? A cookie? I know so little about your mysterious land. Tell me more.” He snarled at me. “Pathetic.”

  I kept Uncle Rick’s secret and dodged that line of questioning. “Please just go.”

  He huffed. “Don’t be like this. I didn’t make the rules. I’m just doing my job.”

  I tried to maintain some semblance of a calm demeanor, so he wouldn’t know how much he was getting to me. “It’s been a long day, and it’s barely halfway over. May I please, please have a little space? That’s all I’m asking.” I buried my face in my pillow. I was hungry, and my empty stomach was coercing more irritability into me than I would normally express.

  “Look, I know I pissed you off, but you have to know we can’t be together. If you had more experience with men, you’d understand how bad we would be for each other.” He touched his throat and then rubbed the nape of his neck, trying not to tell me I had hit a nerve. “And that stunt you pulled kissing my neck like that? Never again.”

  I rolled over on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t think I could want to punch you more right now. I get it. Loud and clear. Crystal. I’m over it. It was a moment of insanity. Now do us both a favor and find a new address.”

  “Shut up. You’re just mad because I turned you down. You’re acting like a baby about it.” He held out his hand. “Give me the key.”

  “What key?” I asked, meeting his fuming glare with an indifferent one.

  “Kristoffer’s key. I’ll drop it back in his pocket, and he won’t be any the wiser. Hand it over.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He ran his tongue along the outside of his teeth before he spoke. “Give it. You have no idea what you’re playing at.”

  I displayed my hands with a smile, proving they were empty. “I don’t have any key.”

  He was steaming, his mouth opening and closing several times before he landed on what he wanted to say. He pointed to my breasts and shouted, “Don’t think I won’t go in there and get it myself!”

  I met his fury with a hearty laugh. “You’ll do no such thing. Run along, little garden gnome. Try that story out on someone else.” I dropped my pitch to imitate his gruff cadence and said, “Lucy’s stealing keys from trained military men and hiding them in her bra!” I laughed again, laying back down on the bed and examining my nails. “Classic. When you tell it, make sure you mention to my uncle that you tried to threaten me with getting to second base. I’m sure he’ll love that.”

  Jens was almost purple with rage. “That’s not what I…” He clenched his fists and let out a noise of frustration. “You’re punishing me for turning you down.”

  “No, I’m punishing you for hanging around after leading me on and then turning me down. You know, in my non-experience, when a guy flakes on you, he usually has the decency to leave you alone with your embarrassment afterwards. I’ll say it again. Get out.”

  Jens pulled at his hair, as if I was the one being the problem. “Fine. I’ll go check up on that Mace character. I knew Alrik had a kid, but I never met Charles. I don’t make many trips to Elvage. Most of my dealings with Alrik were on the Other Side.” He shook his head. “I don’t like the look of him, though. Something’s off, so stay away from him for now.”

  “Just for that, I think I’ll make him my new best friend. Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Are you really going to be this difficult? This is who you are now?”

  “Who I am?” I shouted, so angry I nearly forsook my non-violent ways. “You don’t know the first thing about me!”

  He turned and yelled back. “I know everything about you!”

  And you don’t want me. You’ve watched me for years, but you feel nothing for me. I’ve always been and always will be asexual. It has nothing to do with moving around. Even if I’d stayed in one place, I would still repel men like the plague. Fine. Message received.

  “Get out and don’t come back!” I commanded, pointing my shaking finger to the door.

  Jens gave me a look that showed me how little he actually understood me before exiting. When he left, a gust of tension flew out of the room with him, to my great relief.

  I dug the key out of my bra and examined it, and then tucked it back in its hiding place. I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for hours, content with my solitude. I focused on deep breathing and clearing my mind as best I could. It wouldn’t do to spend my time here with fury just underneath the surface. I mentally unwound each tightly knit bit of tension from my brain, breathing a little easier the longer I rested. Eventually I was able to be dazzled by the gold dust in the air again, and the sight gave me peace.

  I’m thinking it was a few hours later when Britta came to see me. “Are you well, Miss Lucy?”

  I let her in and shut the door behind her when I saw Jens in the hallway. “I’m fine. You can just call me Lucy, you know. We climbed around a mountain together. I think we’re past formalities.”

  Britta smiled. “As you wish. Alrik sent me to fetch you for dinner.”

  Thank goodness. The last meal I’d eaten was the apple from the red sack a day or more ago. “Thanks. Anything I should know before I go down? Do you eat with chopsticks or have separate tables for men and women or something?”

  “No. Just forks and knives. And men and women eat together, but usually there’s a separate table for the higher society folk. Alrik believes in having one table, so I don’t think that will apply today.” She worried the hem of her sleeve. “I’m afraid I don’t know everything about your culture, so I’m not sure what all’s different. Jens never talked much when he came home to visit.”

  “Huh. How often did he come home?”

  “First Sun’s day of every month. Gone by the morning.”

  “Jeez! Were we that in danger that he only had one day off a month?”

  “I can’t speak to that. Jens never fit in very well at home, except with Jamie and me. After the troll incident, he was too famous too fast. The king hates him because the people adore him. Jens is a private person, so he took a job where he could be invisible.”

  “I think I prefer him that way,” I groused, straightening my hair as I reached for the door.

  Britta eyed me. “No, you don’t.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her sudden gall. “I like you,” I declared.

  Britta laughed. “Glad to hear it. I very much like you, as well. Shall we?”

  As we walked past Jens and down the hallway, Britta drifted behind me. “Um, I don’t exactly know where we’re going. You don’t have to walk behind me, you know. Is that a thing here?”

  “Your station is closer to Jamie’s, so yes. I walk behind you in proper society.”

  I sighed and stopped, glaring at Jens to back far away. He obeyed and took several steps back.
I turned to Britta. “No offense to your awesome society, but I don’t need a lady’s maid or whatever it is. I have no friends here. Could you just be my friend? Is that ridiculous to ask?” I felt so awkward begging her to be my friend, but pride be darned, I needed someone who would be nice to me. Someone I could survive this with.

  Britta’s smile was warm when she reached out and held my hand. We walked like that down the many hallways, and I felt like a little girl, out to braid flowers in my hair with the neighbor girl for the afternoon. Britta was a nice addition to my empty life.

  Henry Mancini scampered to greet me with a wagging tail and a silly, winded expression that told me Foss and Tor were giving him a good workout. “Hi, baby!” I got down on my knees and scooped my puppy to my chest. He squiggled and squirmed in my arms, trying to lick my face. My smile had gone unused in the past few hours, and it felt good to exercise it for him. “Did you miss me?”

  Before I knew what was happening, Henry Mancini was ripped from my arms. “Hey!” I was on my feet, scowling at Jens. “He’s mine!”

  “Jens!” Britta protested.

  “He’s a wolf, Lucy! You can’t let a wolf that close to your face. He’s not a dog.”

  “He’s mine! I found him, and he kept you alive by warming you up when you were almost dead! Give him back!” I was so near tears at him taking my dog away, I think it shocked Jens into handing him over.

  “Fine! Jeez! Calm yourself down. Far be it from me to keep a wild animal from biting your face off.”

  I hugged Henry Mancini, who could sense my tension. He licked my face to comfort me. “He was all alone when he found me! He has no one! I’m his mommy, Jens. You don’t just take someone away from their mother!”

  Jens held his hands up and backed away, looking almost contrite that he’d confronted a crazy woman. “Okay. I get it. You can keep him for now, but if he starts nipping at you, I have to get rid of him.”

  “No! You won’t burn him up, like you did my whole life. He’s a person, Jens! He has feelings!” I knew I was being irrational, but I didn’t care. In fact, given the amount of crazy I’d been subjected to in the new world, Jens was lucky this was the extent of my outburst.

  Jens used his eyebrows to tell me how stupid I sounded. “I won’t kill him. I’ll just put him back in the wild.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” I snapped, turning on him and stomping in the direction of the scent of food with Henry Mancini scampering after me.