by Pixie Unger
Erika reached over to pull my hands away. “Off you go. It’ll be fine.”
I nodded and stood up. “How do you feel about farming alpacas?” I asked.
“What?” she just looked confused.
“I can explain,” Guildenstern mumbled, looking sheepish.
Lucky was suddenly in a bit of a rush to get me to leave.
----
Tybalt was easy to pick out from the selection of dust-covered, half-naked orcs working on the house. He was among the few without extra tattoos, for one. He was also way more focused than the rest of them.
“Go say hi,” Jo suggested as she came over to watch me staring.
“He’s a bit busy.”
Lucky grinned. “He won’t mind. It’ll be good for him.”
“Are you staying today?” Jo asked him.
Lucky considered that, then nodded and started walking toward the barn. Jo followed him. As they headed out of ear shot, I heard him rumble, “Guildenstern is talking to her.”
“It’s about time!” Jo replied.
I snorted to myself as I started walking towards the berm they were building. The excavation was already bigger than Miriam’s house. Someone shoved Tybalt, who glared at the guy like he was looking for a fight. The other orc pointed at me and Tybalt’s expression just softened. I smiled and gave a little wave. Tybalt waved back, but seemed uncertain. I walked over to him, ignoring how the other workers stared.
“Hi,” I said when I was close.
He gave me a dorky smile. “Hello, Mina.”
“I wanted to say thank you for the book.”
Tybalt grinned a little harder. “You are welcome. There will be a book holder over there,” he pointed, “by the cupboards. I found, um, shelves that match. Iago likes books too. This will be a good house for you.”
“For us,” I corrected. He nodded. “Come on,” I suggested. “I want to talk to you, and I think I’m in the way.”
Tybalt nodded again and led me towards the trees. “The fruit is gone for this year. Jo says we have to keep the seeds. Someone is organizing that. More orchards later. Some persons is talking about making each human camp feed themselves. Able to feed themselves. I’m learning.”
I nodded. “Me too. I’m trying to learn about you, anyway.”
“About orcs,” he suggested.
I smiled at him. “Well, yes, but mostly about you. About you as part of my family. You’re hard to understand, Tybalt. I know more about the others.”
He looked confused. “I am easy to understand. I want you to be cared for. I want to care for you.”
You want to be recognized, I thought. You got mad when I thought the first book was from Romeo, but that makes sense. Doesn’t everyone want to be recognized? “Can I hold your hand?”
He wiped his hand on his pants, which may not have made it any cleaner. I took it and we walked between the trees for a while. “Do you need to stop for some water or a snack or something?”
He shrugged. “I’m happy to spend time with you. Are you thirsty?”
“I wasn’t working in the sun. I want to hear how you got the book.”
He smiled shyly. “Stop for food with me.”
“Yeah, okay.”
We ended up having an impromptu picnic between the apple trees. Tybalt sat and watched me. “I go look for nice things for you while you are busy,” he explained. “There are lots of houses to be taken down, but there are also lots of things being saved for later. I have found a few empty books now, but I need to leave them in case someone else wants it first. Your book is almost full. I don’t read, but I watch. Time for a new one. You got the best I found, but someone knows how to make more. If you know how to take care of trees, someone knows how to make books.”
“Thank you.” I patted his hand. “What made that the best one?”
“It’s clean. No missing papers. No bent wire. No bad smells. The paper feels nice when you touch it. It will be good for you.”
“I’m sure it will be.” Then I added, “I want you to be good for me, too.”
Tybalt smiled at that. “I try. Others try to help me think the right way. I’m not—” he stopped. “I’m not the right person to be here, but I want to be the right person for you.”
“What does that mean? Why aren’t you the right person to be here?”
He frowned. “It will upset you.”
I squeezed his hand again, “I’ll try not to be upset. I want to understand.”
He pulled away and looked over my shoulder, biting at his lower lip. “I don’t want to say bad things about the others. I don’t … It doesn’t matter. Things that were bad at home are different here. They … knew for a long time that they were not wanted. I thought I was. I was—” he stopped and was clearly looking for words.
“Better than that?” I suggested.
“Hmm.” He needed to think about that. “No,” he said carefully. “More complicated than that. Married? Sort of?”
“You were married?” I was shocked.
“Not like here. Different.” He thought some more. “No,” he corrected himself, “just like here. I am with you. I am not a favourite, but I am with you. I was with another family. I worked for her. Until I didn’t and she wanted me gone. Now I work for you until you want me gone.”
I was shocked into silence. Both by the idea that Tybalt had been married before and by the idea that I was married to the four of them. It didn’t feel like marriage. I didn’t know what it felt like. Iago had sort of said I felt like a friend. I wondered about that. If friends with benefits was the default they were used to, maybe that wasn’t such a dumb comparison.
“Mina?”
I blinked stupidly at him.
Tybalt looked really worried. “I wasn’t a bad husband. I can do better. I didn’t want to tell you. The others said I had to. I will take care of you and find things you like. I am very good at it. Right?”
“Yeah,” I agreed faintly.
“I think second-hand isn’t so bad here. Right?”
“Second-hand what, Tybalt?”
“Second-hand me?”
I blinked as I started to understand what he was saying. “It doesn’t bother me that you were married. I’m just surprised. I wasn’t thinking of that.” My mind was racing. “How did you end up being here? There is no way you snuck onto the ship.”
He frowned. “I did. I traded places with someone. He didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to stay.”
I looked at him. He seemed sincere but very worried. I was going to have to ask Iago about that; I had been fighting the urge to grill Iago about Tybalt for months. I crawled over and pulled his arm around me. “I want to understand you more. I need you to talk to me so I can understand.”
Tybalt just made a happy noise and rested his cheek on the top of my head. “I don’t know the words, but I will try.”
I hummed against his chest. “I don’t know what to ask, so we are going to have to work together.” Then I remembered enough to add, “All of us.”
“House will be done soon,” Tybalt assured me. “Jo is making sure. She told Warden that he must so you feel safe. Said it was very bad what happened to Mac.”
“Is that why it’s all hands on deck?” I mused.
“I don’t understand.”
“Why there are so many helpers,” I translated.
“Yes. Warden wants Jo to be happy. Like I want you to be happy.” Tybalt thought for a moment. “I don’t think she knows that.”
“Huh.” While I was busy realizing that all of the accommodations Jo was able to get, made a lot more sense if the Warden was trying to get into her pants, Tybalt’s brain had moved on.
“I want you,” he said carefully. “Iago is worried.” There was no “and” or “but” to connect those two thoughts.
“Iago is worried that you want me?” I tried to clarify.
“No. Iago is worried about himself. You did not take him to bed last night. He is worried he is in trouble,” was h
is explanation.
I didn’t understand what Tybalt was telling me. “Iago isn’t in trouble. What does that have to do with you wanting me?”
Tybalt sighed. He was quiet for a long time before he responded to that one. “If you don’t want him to be worried, he needs your time.”
“Tybalt?” I asked, hesitantly. “Are you telling me to have sex with Iago?”
“No!” he gave a frustrated groan. “I would not tell you who to favour! I’m saying this wrong! I don’t know!” He took a deep, agitated breath. “I don’t want you to think I don’t want you,” he whispered.
I tried again. “You want me and you want me to know that Iago is worried that he is in trouble because I didn’t have sex with him last night?”
“Yes. Not because you didn’t have sex, but because you didn’t spend time with him.” He carefully moved away from me then stood up and paced. “You are happy alone and we get worried that you are happier without us. All four of us know you wish we had never come here.”
“Well, that is something we’ll have to talk about as a family, because I am happy alone. I do wish the invasion hadn’t happened. But that doesn’t mean I would be happier without you,” I explained. “It just means that sometimes I want to be alone.”
He stopped pacing, looked at me, and nodded. “It’s harder to remember that now that they belong to you.” Tybalt went back to pacing. “No one wants to be chosen, then thrown away.”
And you just told me you know exactly what that feels like, didn’t you? I thought.
“Tybalt? What do you think I should do?”
He stopped again, this time with a pained expression on his face. “You should spend time with Iago, if he is not in trouble, so he knows that,” he muttered.
Huh. “But you want me.”
He looked at the ground to my right, “Yes. I want you, but you don’t favour me.”
Oh, you poor bastard! I thought. You’re trying so hard to do the right thing. “That can wait another few minutes. Sit down for a moment and tell me about the house.”
He did. He talked about the shape and the size and how I would have my own room. That the rest of the house would be open, except for the bathroom. That there would be a pool I could float in or that we could all sit in. He talked about Romeo fixing the stove to power the house and how Iago was still looking for the last things on my list. Tybalt was clearly so proud of this project; he wanted a place where I could be happy.
“And not run away,” he added.
That made me tense. “What?”
He blinked, going instantly back to worried. “You said if we couldn’t take care of you, it was time for you to go.”
“When did I say that?”
“The first night I took you to the house. You couldn’t stay with the humans and if we couldn’t take care of you—”
“—It was time to go,” I echoed. “Yeah, I remember that, now. I was scared. You said you weren’t strangers, you were my friends.”
Tybalt smiled. “Yes.” He watched me for a moment before he admitted, “I was scared, too. I thought you would say no.”
I hadn’t believed that I could say no, but there was no way I was going to tell him that.
“It was good to just have you with us,” he explained. “Even if you want your own room to hide in.”
“It’s not exactly hiding,” I argued.
Tybalt just shrugged, he didn’t seem bothered by it. “A space you feel safe.”
Well, it certainly started out like that, but it wasn’t exactly true any more. I didn’t feel afraid of them anymore, not my orcs at least. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep talking about this though. “Tybalt? Can we find lunch?”
----
I spent the rest of the day working on the house with Tybalt and took the shuttle back to the camp. It was different having to drive home from a construction site. When I was helping with Miriam’s house, I could walk home at the end of the day. As it was, I was sandwiched between Tybalt and Jo and trying not to nod off. The hard work and sunshine had zapped my energy.
Jo was smiling and telling me how she was learning things about the alpacas and how she was hoping Mac could cross train as a vet.
“What?” I sat up.
“We’re going to need vets,” she explained. “Not all the people in the camp want to admit what they did before, and many of them either don’t want to or can’t go back to their old jobs. Our doctors and vets don’t have their equipment and don’t know how to use the orcs’ technology. Whether we like it or not, we have to start back building an agrarian society.”
I nodded, and slumped back against Tybalt, pulling his arm around me. He pressed his cheek to the top of my head. Jo grinned and the other orcs stared, but I ignored them.
“Do you think we’ll need a well or a rainwater cistern?”
“Both!” She grinned. “But the dugout can wait until the animals arrive. I’m trying to find out where the best place for the well is, but short of waving a stick around, I’m not sure how to guess.”
“Orc tech?” I suggested.
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure how many more resources I can ask for here. We need to have more than one farm up and running. As soon as the house is done, we’ll have to move on to the next project.”
“Looking for underground water?” Tybalt asked.
“Yeah. We need a way to get water to drink,” I explained, “and wash and everything.”
“Hmm.” He looked over at a seemingly random orc and had a hurried, growled conversation. “By left corner of barn.” The other orc nodded, but the conversation wasn’t over. Others joined in and the discussion picked up, leaving Jo and I sitting quietly as they argued over water.
It wrapped up as we got back to camp.
Tybalt waited for everyone else to get off the vehicle before he told Jo, “The water on the farm is dirty. Need to clean. Romeo will do. Others will help.” He looked at me. “Want to make up for mistakes with Mac.”
I tensed. “Was that one of the guys that hurt Mac?”
“That is good guy who wants to help.”
“Welp, I think that’s my queue to leave,” Jo announced before she stood up and hurried off.
Tybalt moved his arm. “We talk to others and decided what to do.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”
Except I didn’t end up talking about water with the guys. I ended up curled up on the couch with my head in Iago’s lap as they talked about water and concentrated on remembering to speak English so that I could understand.
That was interesting all on its own.
They needed to break out the crappy translator at one point to tell me the water was “harmful, hurtful, unpleasant, unsafe. In present tense.”
“Toxic?” I suggested, but apparently not.
Eventually, I had to admit that I was too tired to follow the conversation, so I changed the subject. “Not talking about sex, how would everyone sleeping together work?” Yeah, that got their attention.
Mac shrugged and replied, “Pile of blankets; pile of bodies.”
“I’m not sure ‘pile of bodies’ is the right phrase,” I laughed.
“Want to try?” Romeo asked.
“Yeah, I think I do.”
It wasn’t what I expected. I stayed on the couch with Iago as the other brought in their blankets and the quilt off my bed. There was a brief pile of blankets, but it only lasted long enough for there to also be a jigsaw puzzle of mattresses spread out on the floor. I went to wash up and when I came back, the living room floor was effectively a big bed. I spooned Iago, and Tybalt curled up behind me. I nodded off before registering where Romeo and Mac had settled.
----
I woke up slowly, feeling warm and safe and vaguely aware of someone’s morning wood against my leg. The soft snoring suggested it wasn’t personal. We had all been sleeping in the living room for a week or so now. Iago still insisted on being on the outside of the “pile of bodies” so that
he was closest to the door, but other than that no one had assigned places.
The house was almost done. Water had been sorted out without me. Erika and I and our guys had joined Jo and the warden for dinner, where us ladies had a good visit, though none of the orcs said much. Erika had put her foot down, insisting that whether or not she was prepared to be an alpaca farmer, she wasn’t going to sleep in a barn.
Jo agreed that was fair and asked me what I thought.
I caught the look on the warden’s face and realized this was a trap, so I had tried to be diplomatic. “It isn’t for everyone. It might not be too bad once it’s converted.”
Erika didn’t help when she asked if I had seen the windows or lack thereof.
At any rate, we had all made it out of dinner alive and the plan was to be in the new house shortly.
The warden wanted Romeo to make more of whatever he had done to my stove, though Romeo was smug and not ready to commit. It was interesting to watch. That and how no one wanted to make eye contact with Mac.
It had been a nice dinner, but the next morning, I needed to climb out of the nest and find a bathroom and a large glass of water. When I wiggled around to sit up, Iago was immediately alert. I held my finger to my lips so he wouldn’t say anything, then just accepted his help as he plucked me from the center of the pile and carried me to the edge of the room.
“Thanks,” I whispered as I hurried off to the sound of him chuckling to himself.
He was waiting with a glass of water when I came back.
“How did you know?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“Wine at dinner,” he murmured.
I chuckled. “One bottle shared between three women. I’m not hungover.”
He shrugged. “If we grow fruit, we can make more.”
“In theory,” I agreed, “but I don’t know how.”
“All winter to learn,” Iago teased.
“Maybe,” I agreed, before stretching up on my tiptoes and stealing a kiss. “If we can’t find anything better to do.”
“Scrabble?” he suggested, making me laugh. It was a joke I still shared with Erika, but I hadn’t ever explained it to them. It didn’t seem to matter to Iago. “Or we teach them to read,” he added, nodding over my shoulder. “It would be a good reason to have extra books.”