by Jesse Teller
“Without asking me,” Rachel said. She stood up and picked up her mug to drop it on the table. “You give me away without asking for my mind on the matter. I come here to eat and celebrate my brother’s return and I get hit with a husband,” she snapped. The room went silent, and every eye looked at her.
“You are a princess,” Gerber said. “You are my daughter, and you will be married to a Son of the Seven.”
“Did you all three fight it out to see who would win your prize?” Rachel said. She glared at Erick, Helgor, and Jordai, and none of them could meet her eye except Erick.
“If this union hits you sour, then I will have nothing to do with it,” Erick said.
“You are marrying my daughter, Flurryfist.” Gerber stabbed a finger at Erick, who drained his mug and set it very carefully on the table. He stared Gerber in the eye.
“My family’s love for the Beastscowl clan is a thing of myth. To harm a Beastscowl is to wake the wrath of the Flurryfist house. Please hold tight to this notion when you hear the words that come from my mouth next.” Erick looked at Gerber. “I have no intention of marrying a girl who does not want to be my wife. I don’t care who that girl is, who her father is, or what noble line she is from. Hear me on this and know my mind is firm,” Erick said. “Rachel will agree to marry me or she will not suffer the fate.”
Gerber turned to look at her, and stood. “Look at this man,” Gerber said. Rachel turned to gaze upon the man her papa would have her marry.
He was enormous. The Flurryfist line was known for birthing men that averaged nine feet tall. His hair was a mane of blond, thick and gorgeous. His body was a clenched fist, hard and deadly. She looked at his hands, knowing they were his only weapons. One fist from this man could easily cave in a skull or a small building. She looked into his eyes and saw intelligence and honor. “I see him, Papa. He is a man to be humbled by. I find no fault in him.” But she did see fault, a glaring, loud, obnoxious fault.
Erick Flurryfist would never, even on his best day, be Whelter. He would never love her as Whelter did. Never make love to her in the same way. He could not make her laugh. Or say the things that made her want to sink into him. Erick would never smack her ass and pull her hair. He would not find the filthy lover in her. Never be able to weather her wrath when she was angry. Erick would never hold her like Whelter did or speak to her as he did. Erick was a god of men, but he was not her Mad Dog.
“I have found for you the best your nation can boast. He is noble by birth and action. He is the dream of every woman that lays eye to him. Erick Flurryfist is the very best man I can find. You have no love,” Gerber said. “Never have had one to my knowledge.”
Rachel felt it then. Her moment. The perfect time to speak of her love and adoration of Whelter. She looked around the room at so many of the great faces of the nation, and knew if she said his name here and they laughed, she would never be able to look at any of them again. If Flak were to say anything that demeaned Whelter, if Jordai scoffed or shook his head, if even her papa were to spit the ground and speak ill of her love, she would walk out of the city and never come back. She would take her man, the man who loved her, and would abandon her people and family. But he would ask why. And she would not lie to him.
The fact that his friends got together without him and laughed at him would sour it all. She knew this was her moment. This was the time for her to speak the name of her man… but she could not do it. She looked at Ellen who nodded. Rachel shook her head and sat.
“Erick Flurryfist will be my husband. He is the man my papa has been looking for all of my life. I will not turn him away.” The room erupted in joy, and she looked across the table at her intended. He looked about to be sick.
She could not go. She sat on Summer in the middle of the street as the people of Tergor moved all around her, and she stared at her hands. How could she touch him with them? How could she let him kiss them? How could she talk to him or make love to him now? She knew by now Whelter was in the woods outside the city waiting for her. She never made him wait before. She closed her eyes and saw him standing in the trees looking for her, but could not face him.
With self-loathing rioting in her heart, she turned Summer around and went to Ellen’s. When she got there, the great window Ellen spent most of her day sitting in held two faces, Ellen and Jordai. She knew she could not talk to Ellen, and turned Summer for Madeline’s house.
Madeline lived in the Black Hand ghetto. When Rachel got to her house, the citizens crowded around her. The people loved her bear, and she did not come here often. They drew in close and hugged her Summer. They ran their fingers through her fur, even kissed her coat, and Rachel held back tears. She slipped off her bear and whispered in its ear. “Be good and let them love you.” The bear snorted, and she kissed its wet nose.
When she came to Madeline’s house, Madeline’s father stood outside with his arms crossed over his chest. He seemed furious. She did not try to talk to him. She was exhausted with the idea of dealing with men and their egos. She walked straight into the house and found Madeline. The girl stood, staring wide eyed at the bag on her bed.
“Madeline,” she said. “Are you okay?”
Madeline looked at her and smiled. It was a wicked thing, fast and strained. It seemed to poorly conceal a fast-approaching madness. “He wants me to leave,” she whispered. “Wants me to fade into nothing. Flak has said as much.”
“Flak told you to leave?”
“He doesn’t want me, Rachel.” Madeline barked out a laugh and ran her fingers through her hair. She wrapped a finger around a lock and pulled, ripping the hair out by the roots. Rachel ran to her, grabbed her hand. She looked at Madeline again, patches of hair missing from her friend’s head.
“What happened, Madeline?”
“Yenna told my father that Jordai would marry me happily. Will give me a good home, a noble name and children.” Madeline let out a little scream. It was a terrifying thing to behold. Madeline gripped both sides of her head, and her mouth opened in a wide O. She let out a barely perceivable scream. A muted cry of horror Rachel felt in her heart more than heard. It was the very image of madness. A scream held down by a quickly descending woman, a woman who had long been losing her mind, a little at a time.
Madeline screamed again and gripped her hair with both hands. Rachel struggled with her until she pulled the hands back. She smacked Madeline in the face.
“Wake up, Madeline. Stop this. Get your mind right. I’m here.”
Madeline froze. Her face, her body, everything about her locked up. She stared at the bag on the bed. Then with sudden, horrid speed, her face ripped into a smile.
“He is giving me away. First, he left me. Now he is giving me away,” she said. “Flak wants me to marry Jordai. He wants me to have a Stonefist baby. He wants me to have a Stonefist baby.”
Madeline sighed. She looked at Rachel and Rachel could see it then. This had been coming for a long time. This break happening to her friend had been slowly creeping up on Madeline for years. Now, with this last bit of injustice, Madeline was leaving them all.
“Stonefist.” She sighed. “Redfist. But I’m a Redfist. I can’t Stonefist. What if she dies? What if she leaves him? What if I kill her?” Madeline sighed again. The sighing was more terrible in some horrifying way than the screaming had been.
“Maybe he wants me to kill her,” she said. “Have you ever thought of that?”
Rachel was about to answer when Madeline did herself.
“I have not thought of that. Maybe he wants me to kill her. Maybe they want me to kill her.”
“No one wants you to kill her,” Rachel said. She wrapped her arms around her friend and patted her head. “You’re going to be fine. You just need rest.”
“Stonefist babies,” Madeline said. “What about it, Flak, should I kill her? I will do it for you. I will do anything for you.”
“We need Ellen,” Rachel said. “We need to talk to Ellen. Madeline, do you want to come with m
e to see Ellen? She wants to see you.”
“Stonefist,” Madeline said. “Ellen wants me to marry a Stonefist baby.”
Rachel knew she couldn’t take Madeline to that house. If she saw Jordai right then, she would snap in half.
“I will go get Ellen. We can all sit and talk for a long time. Maybe we can go for a ride together. Maybe we could go shopping.” Rachel was crying but did not want Madeline to see. She kissed her friend then ran to get Ellen.
When Ellen and Rachel reached Madeline’s house, they found Madeline curled up around the dagger she had thrust in her chest. They both sat right there in the floor. They sat and stared at their friend, and slowly wept.
Rachel hated Flak in that moment. Hated everything about the man. Ellen took a kerchief from Madeline’s things. Days later, she gave it to Flak.
He wept and gave something up. It was his first death, the first thing to chip him, to crack his happiness. In the end, there would be many things that conspired to break that man. This was just the first of those.
Rachel sat in the Flurryfist pub, watching Flak drink and weep after they sent Madeline away on a pyre. She watched to see if he was truly upset, if he was going to get past this quickly. Searched the man’s face to see if he was going to walk away from this the same man.
Erick stood behind the bar pouring drinks and talking in low tones to Brenden.
It was a meeting of the generation, the gathering of the minds that would move the people when their parents were gone. These were the men and women of the man who would be king chief, Flak’s most trusted friends.
They talked and they drank, and when the group of them fell into silence, when no one had anything more to say, Locke began to sing.
Rachel had never heard him sing before. Did not even think to imagine Locke had a bard’s voice, but as he sang, the whole of the room looked to him, and Rachel fought to think of anything more beautiful, anything more tragic. She fought to think of a sound she had heard that had ever captured an emotion better than the Fendis song of death Locke sang. But she could find none.
It was a song written long ago by a man whose wife had died. He had been left to raise their children alone, and in the song, he prayed, begging that she haunt him and help him care for his little ones. Locke said over and over, “Please do not go. Do not find your peace. Do not leave me like this. You were the best of us. You were our heart.”
Whelter watched Rachel from across the room, and she knew he was in pain. Word had to have gotten to him about her and Erick, and she did not know how he was handling it. He watched her for hours from his seat beside Flak, and when he could take no more of it, he came. He sat beside her and took her hand in his.
She flinched but did not take it away. She needed his touch so desperately.
“I’m sorry, Whelter. It was Papa.”
“I’m not going to ask you to care about that right now,” he said. “You just lost one of your best friends. The last thing I am thinking about is Erick Flurryfist. My only concern is you. How can I help?”
She broke down. She sobbed out in horror of the loss of Madeline, and he shoved the table aside and wrapped her up in a hug. She curled up on him, pulling in tight around him and gripping him frantically.
“Rachel, do you need me?” Erick asked, but she could not answer. She had not the power.
“I came here to check on her, and she broke down,” Whelter said.
“Do you want me to take her?” Erick said.
“No, I have known her all her life. If she needs a shoulder, I will gladly give it.”
Erick nodded and patted Whelter on the shoulder. “Thank you. If you need a break, let me know.”
She sobbed harder, but she was in the arms of her love. She let herself go completely, let herself sink into her man and break on him.
He said very little, seemed not to possess the words to give her. Instead, every now and then, he would squeeze her in his arms and whisper that he loved her. She wept, and he held her. He was safety and comfort, a big knot of love to bind herself up in. She let him hold her, and thought of his body, hard and thick, and the comfort of his arms.
“Madeline never had this,” she said. It was little more than a breath, little more than a gasp, but she needed to say it. “We are lucky to have this moment right here. She was never held by her love, never soothed by his touch.”
“I know.”
“Whelter, I am losing you. They are taking me away from you. And I will dry up without you. I will break down like a corpse. I will rot inside without your love, without you in me, without your voice in my ear. We are dying. And I can feel myself growing cold.”
“We had a fire bright enough to warm us for a life time. When you miss me, when you need me, go to our woods. Sit where I made love to you and know I never leave there. The best part of me sits in that grove waiting for you. Always. Go visit it any time you want to. Anytime you need me. I will do the same. We are out there, in a place as wild as your heart. We live there in the wilderness where we lost ourselves over and over again.” He sighed. “Where we found ourselves.”
Erick came over and sat beside her. “Whelter, please give her to me,” he said. “She is mine to soothe. She is my responsibility. Go be with Flak, he is in need of you.”
She felt him hurt when Whelter handed her over to the man stealing her away from him, felt Whelter’s soul wrench in pain. It seemed only she could hear it. Only she could feel his love break.
“My heart breaks for your loss,” Erick said. “And though your father has set our wedding for a month from now, if you wish to postpone and grieve, I will agree. This darkness can only dampen your wedding day. Let us set it aside, if it would be easier for you, and I will wed you when next I come to Tergor. I will be your husband in a year, when the loss of your friend is less sharp, when you can allow happiness in your heart once again.”
The words he said were whispered. There was a tenderness about them that did soothe her, made her feel less raw and gave her hope. She looked at him and nodded.
“I would like to wait. I think I need at least a year to mourn her.” She looked into his eyes and felt it rising up again. “She was my friend.” Tears came for her again, and he stopped whispering. He stopped talking at all. He simply held her and waited.
When she stopped crying, he set her in the chair beside him, and took her hand. She held it and found it to be dry and calloused. He looked at her and nodded. “Tell me of her. Tell me of your friend. I want to know her.”
Rachel had cried as much as she could, so when she talked about Madeline, she was hollow. The words that came out of her mouth were cracked and dusty, drained of emotion, but they felt good to say. It felt good to be talking about Madeline.
She told him of Madeline’s love of all things Redfist. How she had fallen in love with Flak when they were babies. She told him about how Flak would sneak out of the house and walk through the busy streets, from the Redfist ghetto all the way to the Black Hand ghetto—alone—when he was only three, just so he could see her. Rachel told Erick about how when they were six they had disappeared together.
“Madeline spoke of it all the time. They had run away, and tried to go find the mountain one day. They walked for days in a few different directions. They were hungry and ate grass. They had nothing to drink out there and were dying on the side of the road when a passing traveler picked them up. Madeline spoke of it all the time. Said it was the happiest she had ever been.”
Rachel betrayed her friend’s life, her friend’s secrets to Erick as they talked. He was easy to talk to, kind and attentive. She knew he would fight as hard as he could all their lives to make her happy. When she looked up at the end of the night and saw Whelter staring at her, she wanted to die because she was starting to like Erick Flurryfist.
Erick walked her home. He took her to the door, right up to the dogs barking on the other side, and took her face in his hands. He looked at her for a long time before he spoke.
“Y
ou don’t know me. I don’t think you want to marry me. I’m not upset about it. It was forced on you, and I know you probably hate it. It is what we have though, so I want to try to work with it and carve a life of happiness out of it with you.”
He kissed her, and she felt as if she would be sick.
“Goodnight, Rachel,” he said. “Thank you for agreeing to marry me. I will try to earn you every day.”
He said it all in that annoyingly comforting whisper.
When she got into her room, she found her chamber pot and vomited.
VI
21 Years Before The Escape
He danced. Whelter danced with her often and well. He had a flare for it. The way he stomped and planted himself, the way he threw himself into the song. He would call out a bark or a howl that not even her brothers and her papa would do, and they were the greatest dancers she’d ever known. The music carried him away, and her with him. Whelter was unapologetic about the way he danced, like the way he did everything else, he didn’t care what other people wanted from him, or thought was unacceptable.
“You have to stop being perfect,” she said. “It’s almost over. He is nearly here, and then the wedding, and the wedding night.”
“Want me to get loud and yell at you so it is easier to leave me forever and run off with a Flurryfist?” He spat.
He was drunk. They both were. She looked around at the crowd and shook her head.
“Not here,” she said. “Do you want to dance again?”
“No, I don’t want to dance, Rachel. I want to marry the woman I love. Can we do that?” Whelter said. “Maybe we can do that sometime.”
He drank deep of his mug and tossed it to the floor of the bar they stood in. It was a human bar on the other side of town from the ghettos. A place they came to hide from the world, and she had let them both drink too much.
“Whelter, you are drunk,” she said. “My sweet man, you have drunk too much wine, and we have danced for too long and—”
