by Aiken G. A.
“But I like talking to you.”
“I haven’t been listening.”
She shrugged. “That’s never stopped me before.” She studied him a moment before asking, “Does no one talk to you?”
“Not willingly.”
“Why? You’re very pleasant.”
“No,” he insisted. “I’m not. Ask anyone. My own sister will tell you . . . not pleasant.”
“Are you not pleasant on purpose?”
“If I’m pleasant, people will talk to me.” He leaned in a bit. “Understand?”
“Of course! Some people . . . they never know when to shut up. But what can you do?” she went on. “Life is full of talkers. People who can’t help themselves. As a blacksmith, though, I have to talk.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, yes. I need to know exactly what people want, when they want it, how they want it. And often they won’t say unless you ask them specific questions.”
“Sooooo, you’re saying there’s no way to get you to stop talking to me?”
“Well . . . I’m not speaking to my sister. Ever. Again,” she emphasized. “And when Keran talks to herself, that’s not a conversation you ever want to interrupt. But you’re here, so . . . No. There’s not.”
Suddenly, and without warning, she linked her arm with his and leaned into his side as they continued to walk to her parents’ farm. The baby lamb even rested its head against Caid’s shoulder, like it belonged there.
“But isn’t this lovely?” she asked.
“Is it?”
“It’s been a beautiful day and it’s turning into a beautiful evening. You’ll get a hot meal and some good wine and a roof over your head for the night. What could there possibly be for you to complain about?”
“You talking to me?”
“You might as well get used to it, Amichai. Because if you think I talk a lot . . . wait until you meet me da.”
* * *
Keeley handed the baby lamb off to Keran and then threw herself into her father’s outstretched arms, letting him lift her off her feet in a big hug. She knew at some time he would become too old to do that, but until that time came, she was going to enjoy the way her father welcomed her home.
“How was your day, my little Keeley?”
“Interesting.” She leaned in and whispered in her father’s ear, “Amichais, Da.”
“What?” He quickly lowered her and turned to face the Amichais standing behind them. “By the gods,” her father sighed. “True Amichais. It’s been decades.”
Grinning, her father grabbed each Amichai’s hand and shook it. The Amichais didn’t shake hands, so they only seemed confused and slightly offended.
“True Amichais on my farm! What a blessing from the gods! Names,” he ordered. “Names.”
“I’m Laila.” She pointed at her brother. “Caid. Farlan. Cadell.”
“Nice to meet ya, lads. I’m Angus.”
“Good morrow, Uncle!” Keran greeted in passing as she headed toward the house with the baby lamb over her shoulder.
“Keran, girl. Ale’s in the cupboard,” he added, stepping away from the Amichais. “And who is your friend here?” he asked, turning toward his second oldest daughter.
Keeley heard his quick intake of breath when he recognized Gemma.
“My dearest girl,” he said, arms wide open as he moved toward her, but Gemma quickly caught his hands, not allowing him to hug her.
Keeley could see the startled pain on their father’s face and she wanted to beat her sister into the ground for hurting him.
“Father. It’s so good to see you.”
He nodded, holding in tears. Unlike their mother, their father tended to cry a lot.
“I see you joined an order,” he noted, sniffling.
“I did.”
“Well . . . we’re all very proud of you.”
“Despite how chunky a life of piety has made you,” Keeley remarked, walking between her sister and father so that Gemma could no longer hold his hand.
“And you have shoulders like a man!” Gemma shot back.
Keeley spun around, ready to slap her sister and those ridiculous white robes into their neighbor’s farm several leagues away but her father stopped her.
“None of that, you two.” He nodded at Gemma. “Your mum will want to see you. Go.” When she walked off, he focused on Keeley. “And Big Bart is having problems with his back again. Go fix it.”
“Is he really or are you just saying that to make me stop fighting Gemma? Because I’ll never stop fighting Gemma!”
“Be a girl, Keeley. Try. For me. Because if you two don’t get along, I’ll have to hear about it from your mum. I don’t want to hear it from your mum. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned down, kissed her forehead. “That’s my girl.”
Keeley started off toward the stables but said to her father, “Da, could you take care of our guests for me? They helped me today, so I owe them.”
“Of course! It’ll be my pleasure.”
“I’ve told them a lot about you, and Caid, there,”—she pointed—“he has been dying to talk to you. To hear all your stories!”
Her father clapped his big hands together. “And I’ll be more than happy to tell him everything.”
Unable to help herself, Keeley looked over her shoulder at Caid. The Amichai was glowering at her through that shaggy hair he refused to push off his face and she struggled not to laugh at him. He was so annoyed, and she knew her father would only make it worse.
* * *
Keeley’s father watched her and the others walk toward the farmhouse at the bottom of the hill. When they were a good bit away, the man looked back at Caid.
“Have they been bickering all the way back from Keeley’s shop?”
Laila answered for him. “Aye.”
He chuckled. “My girls. They can’t help themselves.” He faced Laila. “They’ll get over it. Gemma’s just like her mum, and she never holds a grudge. At least not forever.”
Angus jerked his head toward several buildings. “Let me show you where you’ll be sleeping tonight.”
“Wait,” Laila said, holding up her hand. “You’re just going to let us stay here? Without asking us any questions?”
The man’s grin was wide and exactly the same as his eldest daughter’s.
“Really?” His grin grew even wider. “You want me to ask ya questions?” Arms crossed over his massive chest, he stepped closer to Laila. “You want me to ask what Amichais are doing this far south? Why one of the protector clans sent out a battle unit to come here? Or maybe you want me to ask why you’ve been lurking in the forest surrounding me farm? You want me to ask you about all that?”
Laila didn’t answer; she was too busy gawking at the human with her mouth open. Again. Father and daughter knew how to surprise.
Keeley’s father chuckled. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. Come on then,” he said, heading down the hill. “I’d let you stay in the house but we have a lot of brats and they can be noisy.”
He glanced back at them as he walked. “But you lot don’t mind the stables, do you?”
Then Angus laughed. Long and loud, enjoying himself immensely.
* * *
Keeley watched her mother hug Gemma until the babe clasped to her breast began to whine.
“Want me to take her?” Keeley offered, reaching for the child, but her mother pushed her hands away.
“No. I have her.”
Their mother sat down in her rocking chair, her gaze locked on Gemma. An intense stare that had Keeley looking back and forth between the pair.
Keeley wasn’t jealous. Gemma would say she was just jealous, but she wasn’t jealous. She was annoyed! The two of them pretending to speak to each other without words. Just long looks. So annoying!
“So you can hug Mum, but you can’t hug Da?”
“Oh, piss off!”
“That’s it!” their mother snapped before they could ge
t into it again. “I’ll not have my two eldest daughters squabbling like their younger siblings.”
Keeley pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. Another long look passed between her sister and mother, and then her mother said, “Why don’t you go check on the children, Keeley?”
“Because I’m a babysitter now?”
“Keeley!”
Keeley stood and stomped out the back door, making sure to slam it closed.
“That was unnecessary!” her mother yelled after her.
With a sniff, Keeley continued on into the surrounding field where her sisters and brothers were playing. Three of the older ones, two girls and a boy, watched over the much younger pack of wild animals. Screaming, laughing, and pouncing on one another like jungle cats, the offspring of Keeley’s parents continued to grow happy, healthy, and strong. Just as Keeley had.
One of the children spotted Keeley, screamed louder than she had before, and charged over. In seconds, Keeley was tackled and taken to the ground by nine brats that she loved dearly.
Laughing, she hugged and tickled and kissed each one until they became bored and ran off again. Except for one: Endelyon, and she had plans to work with Keeley one day as a fellow blacksmith, which was why Keeley pulled out a tiny steel hammer from her travel bag and handed it to the child.
“Yay!” Endelyon cheered. “My own hammer!”
“Now don’t go attacking your—”
“By this hammer I rule!” she screamed before charging after her older siblings.
“I said no attacking!”
“Always give a child a hammer,” a voice said from behind a tree, “that she can kill her siblings with.”
Getting to her feet, Keeley grinned and walked around the tree.
As she expected, her sister Beatrix sat with her back against the trunk. She wore a bright yellow dress, the skirt spread out around her, along with many books and parchment scrolls.
Keeley relaxed her shoulder against the tree. “We have visitors. If you don’t want to talk to them, you may want to avoid dinner.”
“Gladly.”
“I’ll bring something out for you.” She dug into her bag and pulled out a thick book, handing it over to her sister. “Here.”
Beatrix took the book, glanced at it. “You and your precious philosophies.”
“You’re the only person in the family who likes to talk about philosophy, so yes. I keep getting you books on the subject. That way we can discuss.”
“Yet my philosophies never change.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Keeley admitted. “You’ve never told me what they are.”
Beatrix gave one of her small smiles. “Anything else?”
“Yes. A few letters.” She handed those to her sister as well, but instead of reading them, Beatrix merely tucked them away in a small pocket sewn into her gown. She never opened the many letters she received in front of anyone. But she’d always been a private person. Something Keeley respected.
“So, who are our guests?” Beatrix asked.
“Centaurs.”
Beatrix gave a small chuckle, shook her head. “Listening to Da’s tales again?”
“Something like that.” Still leaning against the tree, Keeley folded her arms over her chest. “Gemma’s back.”
“Gemma who?” she asked, dipping her quill in ink and writing on a piece of parchment.
“Our sister.”
Beatrix’s hand paused over the parchment but, after a second or two, began to move again. “I see. What brings her here?”
“I don’t know. Guilt, maybe?”
“Doubt it.” She glanced up at Keeley. “Perhaps one of her gods sent her.”
“She is a nun now.”
Beatrix let out a surprised laugh. “Really? Did they also sew up her pussy? Because I can’t imagine her no longer using it.”
“Stop.”
“Oh, are we still pretending?”
“She’s still family.”
“And she’s still Mother’s favorite,” Beatrix said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
Beatrix got to her knees, piled her books and papers together in her arms, and got to her feet. Her beautiful yellow dress swirling around her.
“New dress?”
“It’s not as expensive as it looks.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“But you were thinking it.”
Keeley watched her younger sister walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“Away.” She glanced at Keeley over her shoulder. “I’ll be in the feed shed, where it doesn’t smell like shit.”
“Dinner—”
“I’ll eat later.”
* * *
“Then there was the time I met elves,” Keeley’s father went on. “Not a friendly lot. Downright rude. But I liked them anyway.”
“Is there anyone you don’t like?” Caid finally had to ask the man.
“No.”
Caid didn’t know how to respond to that, but he didn’t have to. Keeley entered the stable.
“Everything all right?” her father asked.
“Yes. Gemma and Mum are doing just fine.”
“Keeley.”
“I mean, why should Mum give me a little more respect as I actually have stayed to help care for the family.”
“Keeley.”
“Especially when Gemma has just run off and become the whore to a god—”
“Keeley!”
Keeley blinked. “Yes?”
“Big Bart,” her father said.
Keeley stomped down the line of stalls until she reached an extra-large one. She opened it, went inside, and a few minutes later, came back out with a limping horse. A horse that met the name “Big Bart” head-on.
She had Big Bart stand in front of his stall and she took some time to stroke his hair and muzzle. The horse clearly liked her, constantly nuzzling her and trying to get closer. Eventually she held his reins in one hand and began to drag the fingers of her other hand down the animal’s spine.
Caid watched while Laila and the others stood beside him.
“What’s she doing?” Laila asked.
“I have no idea.”
The horse was clearly lame and probably in pain. Humans usually put down a horse as soon as it lost its usefulness, so Caid was surprised to see Keeley tending to the animal as if she had no intention of doing any such thing. If his pain was tolerable, that seemed fair enough. And he could recommend something that would ease the horse’s suffering without killing him.
“Did you find it?” her father called out.
“Would you let me do what I do, Father?”
“Oooh,” Angus said to Caid. “She’s getting cranky.”
“I can hear you,” Keeley snapped.
Staring at the floor, Keeley continued to move her fingers down the horse’s spine until she finally stopped, her head tilting to the side.
Where her fingers rested on the horse’s back, Keeley squeezed and the horse began to move all four of his legs; Keeley quickly stepped back, laughing.
She took off the bridle. “Move, would you?” she asked Caid and the others, and they all stepped back.
The horse started running, charging down the center of the stables and out the open double doors.
“What did you do?” Laila asked.
“His spine was just off.”
“But . . . what?”
Keeley waved Laila’s questions away. “You work with horses as much as I do, you learn to care for them outside of just putting on new shoes.”
“Don’t listen to her. My Keeley helps all our neighbors’ horses. She has a way with them.”
“So you’re an animal healer?”
“Don’t ask me to sew up wounds. But if bones and muscles are giving them trouble . . . I can try to fix them.”
“Not just animals, though. She fixes me back all the time,” Angus said proudly. “And her mum’s.”
“If you followed my dir
ections,” Keeley chastised, “you wouldn’t need me to fix your back all the time. It’s the way you pick things up. And you’ve got to stop playing with the pigs.”
“The pigs like me. They’re me friends.”
“And that’s why we haven’t had a side of pork in many winters,” Keeley muttered.
“You can have pig for dinner . . . just not our pigs.”
* * *
Keeley opened the back door, but before she could step into the kitchen, her mother and Gemma immediately stopped talking.
She clenched her jaw and, without meaning to, let out a little growl.
Her father patted her shoulder. “Back in the cage, little one,” he whispered to her. “Put that anger back in the cage.”
Loving her father too much to want to hurt him with any bickering, Keeley took in a deep breath, let it out, and stepped into the kitchen.
“Food smells good, Mum.”
“Thank you.” Her mother motioned to the pot of bubbling stew sitting over an open fire. “Get that, would ya, luv. I’ll get the bread.”
Once Keeley had put the large pot onto a nearby wood table so her mother could spoon the food into bowls, she noticed that Gemma was standing by her.
“Need help?” she asked with a sweet smile.
“Sure.” She motioned to her sister’s white cape. “You may want to take that off.”
“I’m fine.”
“But you don’t want to get a mess on it.”
“It’s fine,” she replied, the smile never wavering.
Keeley faced her sister.
“Why don’t you want to take that bloody thing off?” she snapped.
“Why don’t you mind your own fucking business!”
* * *
Angus cringed before the first shove even happened. He knew it was coming because nothing had changed. His two eldest daughters always bickered. They grew up, it seemed, eternally trapped in mutual headlocks.
But despite their constant arguing and complaining, they still loved each other. That’s why Keeley had been so hurt when Gemma, according to her, “just left.”
Of course, he also knew why Gemma “just left.” Because Keeley was the one person in the world who could talk Gemma into staying. Who could stop her from doing what she so deeply wanted to do.
It all made sense to Angus, but not to his two girls.
He waded into what had turned into an embarrassing slap fight, pushing the pair apart.