Unnaturals

by Merrill, Lynna

  Belle said nothing, just continued gathering clothes and plates and knives. "You need dishes and cutlery. I am not sure what he has in that house of his."

  "Belle, you haven't gone deaf, I am sure."

  Belinda went to the medicine chest. "You will need some of these. There." She gathered some leaves. "Do you know what these are for? You and I haven't had much chance to use them as healers, considering that our tasks have been grimmer—they are to aid conception."

  "Belinda—"

  "—and be careful whenever you go pick them in the field. They look very much like these"—She took a handful of other leaves—"which are sleep and appeasement medicine. This—we don't use it much. It's very strong. Works even on the horses. They won't kick or bite at all, but they grow confused. As for people, very careful, a tiny bit goes a long way. A bit more—and it can kill or damage a mind. Make sure you don't confuse the leaves. But, of course, you won't go picking any leaves at all. You're the chief's wife, and you will be good." Belle opened her palm over the pile of leaves she'd already gathered.

  The new leaves mixed in right with the rest. They did look alike. You must be good with herbs in order to distinguish them.

  "Right. Now you're fully equipped to go to your new home." That was old Codes' voice. Yet again, the hag had appeared silently.

  "Mistress Codes, you at least must have something left in your brain! What is this all about!?"

  Old Codes gave her a look. "You still have both of them. That's what it's all about! Now go to your husband."

  "But I can't go." Meliora actually smiled. "I have the husband I accidentally acquired to wait for. Can't go without his permission, you see. Meanwhile, why don't you give me the child I acquired just as accidentally? Where is my Lizzy? There is no way that idiot standing by the window can care for her. Her mother gave her to me."

  "There is no way you can care for her, city g—woman. Have your breasts milk? No? I thought so."

  "I'll get goat milk."

  "I've given her to Alice! I'll take her back some nights to check on her, and I'll take her back permanently only when—if—she makes it. I'd have given her to Arisa but Arisa's milk is already dry. You don't feed a sevenmonther with goat milk, you fool! You give her to a real mother and hope the gods let her live!"

  "She'd live with me! Your gods have nothing to do with it!" Meliora was screaming, but she didn't care. She'd been quiet for long enough.

  Bloodshed. Train crashes. For how long did the world think it could throw the same thing at her face? For how long did the world think she would just take it because something might break? Perhaps sometimes you needed to break in order to mend.

  "I'm going to take my child, and don't you try to stop me, you old witch! And don't you try to hit me!" The old woman seemed to want to. "You don't want bloodshed, do you, you daft old hag whose life I could have let slip away only weeks ago! Don't you touch me! Don't any of you touch me any more! Don't any of you talk to me!"

  Someone did touch her. She had sprinted towards the door and bumped straight into Nicolas. The one hour must be up. She tried to hit him, which he avoided, then gripped her arm and kicked the ground from under her feet, so that she'd fall. She didn't fall. He held her up. She thrashed in his arms, and a small part of her knew it was like the fight of a wounded animal caught in a hunter's snare. A useless fight—humans fought differently, humans knew better than that.

  She didn't know better just now. She tried to hit him again, and on the third time she succeeded. Then, he hit her. Not much, just enough and in the right place to make her lose her balance again. Then, he was kissing her, and she fought that, too, even madder than before, because a part of her wanted this, even as she hated him from the bottom of her soul.

  "Out," she heard his voice. "Go to my cottage, to the temple, somewhere. We are taking this house for today."

  "No, chief, please, don't do this to her—" Mati, the sweet, good girl. Old Codes pressed a palm to her mouth, and the women scurried away. The door slammed behind them.

  They left her. They just left her with him.

  One of her hands was momentarily free. She grabbed the back of the chair closest to her and smashed the chair into his knees. One of his legs gave away. He fell to the floor, but he dragged her beside him. Some bone inside her clicked. At the next moment he'd scooped up her and yanked her to himself and pressed her to the floor with his own body. Her skirt had risen up, and one of his hands was on her ankle. It glided up to her knee, even as he kissed her throat and then her lips again. She screamed, but it came out muffled.

  She'd seen a man do this to a woman without her agreement in the wonderful experiences. She'd hated it more than anything else there. So why did she respond to the kiss?

  She didn't hit him again. There was no use. Instead, her right hand extended from under him and grappled a piece of the items Belinda had so thoughtfully prepared for her. All had spilled on the floor—knives, leaves, shards of broken plates.

  There, this shard was sharp enough, and the leaf it had stabbed was the right leaf.

  For a moment, she cradled it in her palm. Was it enough? Was it too much?

  She couldn't just risk this. Even now.

  But it was the only thing that would work against him.

  But she couldn't do this to him.

  Could she?

  She realized she'd stopped struggling—and that he'd stopped assaulting her, too.

  "Good," he said, softly. "I thought I would have to tie you to the bed."

  She squeezed the glass—the part of it that hadn't stabbed a leaf—so hard that her palm started bleeding.

  "Like I last tied your father," he added in an even quieter voice, "so that he'd pass through his mad moment. The latest of those. But I see you're faster than him in coming out of yours."

  "I have better genes." Her hand fell to the floor, the glass shard rattling away. She was breathing hard and fast, and her limbs were twitching. She could barely find her voice. "He selected them himself."

  "So I see."

  He wasn't lying on top of her any more. He helped her rise to a sitting position and to lean her back on the wall. He sat beside her. Their shoulders and thighs were touching. They had toppled a cup of water from the table, which miraculously had fallen on its bottom and splashed only half of its contents. He now took it and offered it to her. She barely swallowed a mouthful. She gave the cup back to him and noticed he had the same problem. She also noticed the fist of his other hand was clenched, and his chest was heaving.

  "Drink more," she whispered. "Put some on your face, too. It helps with shock."

  "You're one to talk." He put some on her face. She closed her eyes. Her shoulders had started shaking.

  "So, how about you, Nic? Who ties you up?"

  He said nothing. She opened her eyes to him looking at her as if he wanted to continue what he'd started but wasn't letting himself.

  "It was either giving this impression to the others," he said, "or beating you. I didn't want to beat you. But I wouldn't really—not without your permission—Never mind."

  Wouldn't you, really? She wasn't sure.

  "You had to give this impression? You could have simply not interfered with where I was going or what I was doing!"

  "Right. And let someone else have his way with you, in whatever way his pea brain saw fit at that moment!" She'd seen him angry often enough. This was worse than normal. "Because, Meliora, that's what would happen to you sooner or later if you went on doing whatever you saw fit in this village!"

  "What are you talking about? And drink some more water. Really."

  "Right you are, Healer. Always giving orders without knowing when to stop." But he did drink, even though he raised the cup to her as if in a mocking toast.

  "I don't give orders without need." She closed her eyes again. She could not stop the shaking. She felt the cup of water being pressed into her hands.

  "Giving orders is just half of it," Nicolas said softly, "You must a
lso have them obeyed. Can you beat up Andreas? Walter? No? I thought not. You expect big ugly brutes to heed your words only because you have healed someone, or because you think you're right. It doesn't work like this. Not in such a primitive world."

  "It's worked so far."

  "Has it?"

  She thought about it. Sometimes it had worked. But not all the time. It had been all right when the big ugly brutes were frightened by something external—Alice and the baby almost dying, then the disease. But at other times she'd relied on her father—and even on Nicolas—to bring big ugly brutes to heel. And look at where that had all gotten her. They had turned against her in the end. Because she could not heal everyone, and because she could not hurt intentionally.

  No. No. She could hurt if needed. If earlier it hadn't been Nicolas but someone else who—she'd have—

  She glanced at the shard of glass a step away from the two of them. She kicked it further away. Nicolas raised his eyebrows.

  "Don't ask," Meliora said. Or ask Belle. She knows how to deal with brutes so much better than I do.

  "Well, healer, learn one basic village truth. There are times, true, when a hunter is at the mercy of a healer. But most of the time a healer is at the mercy of the hunters."

  Tell Belle this. See what she thinks of it.

  "I can hunt," she said instead. "At least, I can set traps. But I hate it."

  "I know you do."

  "My dad hates it, too. This is why he goes with the woodcutters so often."

  "Yes, if only we could all go with the woodcutters."

  "But the trees hurt, too."

  The disbelieving look on his face was something to see.

  "Oh gods, what am I to do with you?"

  "Why should you do anything with me at all?"

  He shook his head. "Don't ask."

  "You broke my computer and Mom's."

  He nodded. He didn't like it, she thought.

  "You broke yours, too, and claimed it was mine."

  "That was for the best."

  "But of course. The brutes are only after me now, and not after you. Isn't that nice!?"

  "Indeed it is. If they were after both of us, you'd be in more trouble."

  "Oh, yes. I think that everyone considering me a devil-worshiper—and me beaten and raped for it—is no trouble at all. Absolutely."

  "Did I say no trouble at all?" He sounded angry again, and she'd had just about enough of it.

  "Drink more water! I can't have you go berserk on me again!"

  He laughed, and the air in the room became easier to breathe.

  "You broke our own personal interweb." She looked away from him, which wasn't of much help considering how close he was to her.

  He sighed. She felt him move and reach into his pocket. He handed her something. It was a computer that she hadn't seen so far.

  "I didn't mean to show you this tonight—but, let's say I don't want you to sound so sad or lament our personal interweb. It's all in there. We still have it."

  "It's not the interweb. I can't message you."

  "Well, let's say you don't have to message me any more—my wife."

  "You have gone mad." But she didn't want to argue with him just now. Probably because of the incessant shaking and the pain still lingering in her belly, she didn't protest when he put his arm around her. It was fine. He did nothing else. He just leaned on the wall again and was silent, so she leaned her head on his shoulder and slept right there.

  ***

  When she woke up, it was almost evening. Her palm had stopped bleeding, but she was stiff everywhere. He was still sleeping, right there on the floor, leaning on the wall beside her.

  You fool of a hunter, would you ever dare to fall asleep in a room with Andreas? I know of a dozen ways to incapacitate a sleeping person. Do you trust me so much, or do you simply dismiss anyone who doesn't look like an angry, hairy hog and can't use a spear? You'll have to learn to do better than that, chief.

  Not that she could teach him much. He'd been right when he'd said she could not function well in a primitive world. She was almost as bad with sneakiness and deception for power-acquiring purposes as she was with a spear. If she weren't, she'd control Andreas.

  "I say we charge right in and take her right out. There's three of us." She jumped at that voice. Nic still didn't wake up. The voice was loud enough to be heard even though it wasn't in the room, and as clear as a child's. Because it was a child's voice. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, waking herself fully. The great spear-bearing crowd of the future. Her own hunters—or computer programmers and jar-makers, or whatever they were now.

  She tiptoed to the window, below which the children were evidently having war council. She opened it slightly. "Next time," she whispered, "you should be quieter." Big, round eyes stared at her.

  "Thank you." She smiled at them. "But I am all right. No need for rash actions just yet. Nic didn't hurt me."

  "You sure?" Ronny whispered. "We'll come right in if—" Big and round his eyes might be, but they held a glint not unlike Nicolas'. Well, the village would need a chief one day.

  "I am sure." She blew them a kiss. "Go home now, the adults will be looking for you."

  "The girls would have come, too—Stephanie and Sybil—but the chief said women should ask men for permission, and we didn't give them permission." The boy wrinkled his nose. "They'd slow us down."

  "Huh. Next time give the girls permission, all right? Sybil knows the blood moss. Do you, Ronny? No? Next time take Sybil, then. What if I were hurt?"

  "But you weren't."

  "True."

  "So it's all fine."

  How exactly to explain to you that it is not?

  "Off you go now," Mel said. "We'll make jars again next week."

  "Yippee, jars!" the boys whispered loudly. Jars were so much more fun than whatever their adults had them do.

  She heard steps behind herself as she closed the window.

  "So, feel yourself already challenged," she said, "old chief. You heard most of it, didn't you?"

  "I heard enough. You really don't understand." He shook his head in disgust. "Jars. As if I'd let you."

  "You're serious about this letting and not letting, then."

  "Have you ever seen me non-serious?"

  He had a point.

  "Well, have you ever seen me—Oh, gods!"

  He'd just come closer and touched her bare arm.

  "What, Mel? Did I hurt you?"

  "Oh, gods-damn you, how could you—and how could I let you sleep on the floor. Go to a bed. Any bed, take your pick. Now!"

  "Mel, do stop ordering me." He was holding her with both arms, and his eyes weren't nice. The man could go from fully calm to furious in less than a moment. But she was also furious. And frightened.

  "But if you do insist on me going to bed—"

  "—you will go, and lie there quietly and calmly, and, and—"

  When would it start? The shaking and the dry, peeling lips, the sweating, the smelling, the ramblings. The hours that would trickle more slowly than the creek's water at the height of summer. The hours of drenched sheets, soiled clothes, and desperation, and hope—and fight. She'd said she could not fight, but she could. She could fight for a person's life. For his life.

  The disease started like this, always. It started with hot hands and a hot face.

  He put his hand over hers on his forehead. He sighed. "I should have told you, I guess. I've had that, Mel. Years ago, when I first came to the village. You know it doesn't strike people twice. This now is nothing—if it is anything at all, it is just a cold. I get those often enough. It's fine. It's fine, Mel."

  It was she who had to be put to bed. Just to sit, not to lie down, but still. He even brought her fresh water from the kitchen and then put a wet cloth on her face as his other arm cradled her close to him.

  "It's all right, Mel, stop shaking."

  You don't even know what to do with a person in a new shock following so soon after
the previous one, she thought. You don't, but you plan to rule a village. You've done—the gods only know how much damage you have done so far. Why do I care so much if you die?

  "I hate you," she whispered, her face pressed into his chest.

  ***

  They went to Nicolas' cottage that evening. They had to sleep, the day hadn't been easy on either of them. Besides, old Codes needed her cottage. She said nothing when she saw them again. She just looked hard at Meliora's body, then nodded, as if to herself.

  So. You know nothing happened, old hag. But the others don't, and you won't tell them.

  Meliora couldn't stand to look at anyone except for her three boys and two girls and Belinda and Mati. Old Carlos winked at her when she and Nicolas passed him by in the village's only street, and she wanted to throw a stone at him. She knew she wouldn't. She didn't break stupid old men who cracked useless jokes but would do nothing when she needed protection. She patched them up. Same with whole stupid villages, though the thought of putting the temple on fire and letting the fire spread did cross her mind.

  Especially when she heard a scream and saw a man beating his wife in the street. Some people were watching. Belle was, for certain, her eyes only slightly narrowed. Meliora would have run to them, but Nicolas held her.

  "Not your responsibility," he said.

  "Do something, then! You do something, with your hunting ways!"

  "Wait here. And you there"—Nicolas beckoned at old Carlos, then slipped a knife into his hand. "You stay with Mel."

  Old Carlos grinned. "Right you are, chief. The prettiest apple of the village is safe with me."

  "Any apple is safe with you," Meliora snapped as Nicolas strode away. She hated being called that. "You're swaying so much that there's no way you could climb a tree any more!" He had climbed trees only last year. Old as the earth, with a mouth as foul as the cesspit, he was as nimble as a squirrel. Had been, before the disease ate half of him. "Did you drink again today, Carlos? I told you not to. How Nicolas could give you a knife, I don't know."

  "I do," the old man said, softly. "I am an old geezer who is fond of a young girl—and truly would protect her. For as long as I can—for long enough for him to hear the commotion and come. How many men do you think this boy can trust with a knife around you?"