Beth's Stable

by Amanda Milo

  Human sarcasm: I like it!

  To sum up my feelings; Beth’s speaking to me, she doesn’t sound any more put out with me than before—and having her beside me makes me deliriously happy. With her, with this day, with life in general. “I see absolutely no cause for concern—and do you know why?” I take both of her shoulders and turn her so I can gaze down at her fetching face.

  “Because you’re a crackball.”

  I muse on this for a click, all the while wondering what her pouty lips taste like. “Try again, I don’t think I like the sound of that term for your esteemed master.”

  “Because you like a challenge?”

  I make her dance side to side with me a little, taking her shoulders left and right. “I love a challenge!”

  Her eyes are very round, and it makes her brows shape into sleek bows high, high on her head. She’s so wonderfully expressive, my Beth. “You’re saying that so happily. Crazily.”

  I pet her shoulder, right down her arm, and catch her hand. I make it pet my chest. “You are the most fun gift I’ve ever bought myself.” I squint at the sky a moment, thinking, before I catch a lock of her hair, and bring it up to rub it across my lips. “You’re the most fun gift I’ve ever stolen back from someone too, come to think of it.”

  She turns her limp fingers into claws, offering me a chance to rake them down my chest like it’s a punishment. “When I escape, I’m going to hurt you so bad,” she promises.

  At this, I go still, my happiness in this moment softening into something a little wistful, a little bittersweet. “Should you ever manage to escape me, I don’t doubt it, narra,” I agree softly.

  CHAPTER 7—BETH

  BETH

  His next attempt to sell me goes about as well as the first. “Aww, shucks,” I console him a tiny bit mockingly. “That didn’t go well. Where I’m from, they say third time’s the charm, but let’s not test that, you know? Can we stop now?”

  “No.”

  I huff and keep pace at his side. At least he let us pause for a ‘privy break,’ although I was plenty horrified to find out that we had to pay to enter what I thought was a porta-potty, only to be sent in and find nothing but a squatting hole in the dirt. I suppose it beat peeing outside in front of God, aliens, and everyone and all, but (as orphan Annie would say) leaping lizards! At least there was complimentary hand sanitizer upon exit.

  But Ekan’s one-word refusal sparks the replay of the scene from Les Misérables in my head so I start singing the lines—out loud.

  Then I stand tall and copy Ekan’s flatly delivered “NO,” from a moment before, which is exactly what the black-hearted guard, Javert, said to the poor imprisoned Jean Valjean.

  Except my Javert is exponentially more deranged, and I can’t see him ending his crusade to sell me (and steal me back) by jumping off the Pont au Change bridge any time soon.

  Ekan blinks down at me. “What are you reciting? And why did you get so loud? Did your volume modulator break?” His eyes dart away, snagging on something behind me, probably the latest alien making a move towards us, and Ekan gives his head a shake. “Nevermind, you’ll tell me later, just rest easy for now.”

  Oh I’ll tell him later, will I? And rest easy? Rest easy? Has this guy not had his ass sold three times in one day before? (Three times, if we’re counting when he bought me—and believe me—I’m sure counting.) I’d love to show him what it feels like, but he’s busy trying to set up my fourth sale of the day.

  Hot, insufferable, off-the-wall bonkers weaselbag.

  He moves past me—keeping a hold on my hand—until I’m at his back. I don’t walk with him.

  “Betttthh,” Ekan calls. “Have you calmed down yet?”

  I don’t say anything, but he doesn’t even turn around. However, I can still tell he’s amused, because he doesn’t try to hide it from his voice. “Was that the sound of your little fangs grinding? That’s moonringed cute.”

  “Do you have to be a pirate?” I plead hotly. I’m tired of being sold. “Seriously? Can’t you be a baker? A nice, quiet accountant, who just wants a little company?”

  Ekan wheels around to stare at me in disbelief before resuming his steps—moving backward effortlessly. “Yes to the first question and no and no to the next—what other vocations do you have in mind for me? Should I become a vineyard grower? A livestock keeper? A shoe cobbler? Those pursuits would be a waste of my purveying talents.” He holds his thumb and forefingers together before snapping them open in a dramatic fashion. “Beth, my skillset is at home in the surreptitious appropriation and redistribution of goods. And I am good at it. Rest assured, any maneuvers I make won’t be detrimental to you.”

  “I’m reassured.”

  “Excellent then,” he answers, taking my hand tighter and spinning us both almost distractedly. We’ve been walking along some sort of thoroughfare, with the outerspace equivalent of carneys calling out to us. Ekan moves fluidly, occasionally shifting up on the balls of his feet, swiftly spinning and taking in everything with the energy of a kid—so I shouldn’t be surprised when he suddenly changes direction and takes a detour—yet I’m still caught off guard, mostly because he yanks me with him by the hand.

  “Next up!” a carney hawks. “You think you’ve got the limbs for this game? Grab the chance at winning—”

  “I want to playyy,” Ekan says wistfully, dragging me right off the path and to the colorful stall in a row of a myriad of games. “Beth, I need you to play with me.”

  “Is playing with my life not enough for you?” I murmur to him, watching the carney games’ lights.

  Ekan assesses me happily. “Excellent point! All right, play something new with me. Something for fun.”

  Against my better judgement, my lips want to curve up in reaction to the naked excitement in his adorably weedling tone.

  Seeing this happen, Ekan pumps his fist up like he’s already won something. “HURRAH!”

  Around us, aliens give him quick glances, and scurry by. Some aliens also give me glances, but not all of these scurry away. Some of them stop right in their tracks.

  And despite Ekan’s witless-seeming behavior, he pauses and stares down a few of them, his entire body language changing, his posture altering and becoming far more intimidating. “Tevek off; she’s mine,” he warns in an angry drawl that doesn’t sound very Ekan-like at all.

  Hopefully, this means he’s tired of selling me for today too. Either that, or he’s got a personality disorder and he’s going to have trouble unloading me on any aliens he’s scared off just now.

  The moment we’re sort of alone again, he takes both my hands. “What do you want to try first?”

  I take in the sights around us. “I have no idea what any of these are…”

  “These,” he says, tugging my fingers until I look at him, “Are fun. Which one looks like the most fun to you?”

  He’s so exuberant. It’s infectious, and without any permission from me, my lips are smiling again. I’d smother it with my hand, but Ekan’s conveniently got both of them pinned in his. Helplessly, I take another glance around. “I don’t know…”

  Ekan makes an impatient noise. “C’mon, hurry, or I’ll choose for you.”

  “Bully.” I ignore the gainsaying noise he makes. “Uhhh…” I peer at the ones closest to us. There’s a game with flaming rings, some sort of laser-Twister hybrid that I’m sure would get a hole burned through my ass or my vulnerable stomach, so we’re NOT playing that one, and to our right is a bouncing—

  “Three clicks and we’re defaulting to whatever looks like it’ll be my favorite instead,” Ekan interrupts.

  I explode, “I told you I don’t know!”

  Ekan spins me and points to the tops of the stalls, where stuffed creatures and what looks like upside-down ice cream cones in all sorts of colors hang suspended from the roofs. “What prize do you desire most? Let’s narrow down your options that way.”

  He just heckled and heckled me… and then he tries to help me
narrow down my choices instead of taking over like he threatened?

  I gaze up at him, thinking that inside Ekan, there might be a sweet guy after all. He’s probably chained to a radiator and Ekan sells him on a regular basis too, but it’s nice to make his acquaintance. I wave at our options, gazing down the row again. “What’s good?”

  “Anything you want is yours, Beth.”

  I twist my neck to meet his happy-dolphin grey eyes. “How ‘bout my freedom?”

  “Oh, right,” he smirks broadly, “Anything but that.”

  I sniff and turn back to the prizes, pursing my lips. “Uh huh.”

  He gives me a mini shake. “Hurry, hurry, pick! Pick!”

  Half of me sort of wants to smack him. The rest of me pretty much finds the fact that he’s still trying to give me the decision on what we play, super charming. I fling my free hand at the chocolate and blue-swirled thing that resembles a soft-serve ice cream cone… only upside down and not melting. “Is that food?”

  “It can be,” is his reply.

  I crane my neck to meet his eyes again. “For real?”

  He tips his head this way and that to nod. “Sure. If you like vytata.” He drops his chin, and gives me an assessing look. “Do you care for sweet things?”

  “I love sweet things.”

  His eyes fill with more excitement, and he forces my hands together between his, rapidly making us do the joined happy-clapping he seems to like so much.

  Maybe we shouldn’t play for sweet things. This alien does not need the sugar.

  “This is our game then!” He marches us up to the carney. “Three tokens, Sir, and you can take that prize,” he points to my cone-thing, “down for my female, because we’ve as good as won it.” Then he looks at the stuffed animal that looks like an otter, a llama, and a dragon faced pipefish shared a test tube in a laboratory somewhere. “And my female’s eyes strayed to that too, so we’ll take that as well.”

  The carney looks unimpressed. “Tickets for a chance to win will be thirty credits.”

  “Thirty!” Ekan looks scandalized. Then he relaxes. “Ten credits, and I’ll kiss her for you.”

  I squawk, and the carney looks at me before aiming a bewildered glance at Ekan. Ekan rolls his shoulders, an alien-shrug. “I’m sure as krit not letting you kiss her.” He hands over his credit stick. “But if you want to see a princess giving a Na’rith her tongue, then agree to ten credits and hand me those tokens. I promise we’ll make it the best kiss your filthy dreams are made of.”

  The carney’s brows rise as his lids lower, unimpressed. “Na’rith, I’ve not had the pleasure of a female in nigh on twelve solars. That’s not hard.”

  Ekan grins. “No, in that case, that’s not what’ll be hard then.” To me, Ekan sends a sexy leer. “Come ‘ere, Beth.”

  It turns out, Ekan gives good tongue. He also makes me give him mine. I want to tell you it was awful, but what can I say?

  Pirates are good at plundering.

  It doesn’t take me long before I don’t care who is watching us. By the time he draws me away from him—his breathing even more ragged than mine, and his eyes looking wild—I’m sure my face is redder than the scarlet paint of the carnival stand next to us.

  He’s bursting with even more energy than before. It’s like kissing has supercharged him, and I’m surprised at how giddy I feel as I watch Ekan expertly knock down targets with first a laser gun, and then by throwing what look like ninja stars.

  My alien may be crazy, but he’s got a good arm. Like crazy good—he’s taking shots with his eyes closed and his back turned! He’s got one target to go, and I stare in open-mouthed disbelief when he aims, fires—and he’s way, way off the mark but somehow, the laser hits a wavy mirror three stalls down, bounces back, burns through a man’s tall hat, and hits the target, knocking free the lever catch and winning the game.

  “WHAAAT!” I shout in shock at the same time the carney throws down a net of toys or treats or whatever the prizes here are. He shout-groans, “You’re a luck source!”

  “That I am,” Ekan says with a proud, sly grin.

  The carney gives my swollen stomach a horrified look. “What if you spawn a princess luck source?”

  One hand shielding my bump, I make finger quotes (to the great interest of the aliens) as I ask, “What about the whole ‘there can be only one’ deal?”

  Ekan’s gaze flits around me, searching. “Where? What deal?”

  I snap my fingers. “Focus! You said there could only be one luck source.” I tip my head to the carney. “No worries, I’m not carrying this one’s anything.”

  “Not true! She carries my adoration,” Ekan professes, wrapping himself around me like an overexuberant anaconda.

  Not entirely successfully, I shrug and slink out of his grabby hands. He’s not being pushy or creepy, he’s just super, super affectionate. Which is at odds with how cooly he manages to kill aliens. I think of his lucky circumstances with them today, and with this game now, and with the reactions he’s had when aliens call him out on being a luck source.

  “Are you actually lucky?” I ask him, curious. I point to the last target he took out with a one-in-a-million… no, make that impossible shot.

  Ekan looks offended, and he gapes at me, being extra dramatic but in a playful-toned way. “What more do you need for me to prove it to you?”

  “Well whatever you do, don’t prove it here,” the carney says sourly. “If I’d known what you were, I’d have never agreed to let you play at all.”

  Ekan throws his arm around my shoulders and I topple back against him with an oof. I have a sudden vision of Marmaduke, the clumsy but sweet Great Dane from the cartoon strip. I yelp, “Pregnant here, easy!”

  “Sorry, narra,” Ekan says sheepishly, and loosens up his grip on me, but doesn’t let me go entirely. Proving he had a reason to cling to me in the first place though, he uses his proximity to whisper into my ear, “My luck makes it so that I always win. And my luck protects me: if the carney tried to shoot me right now, his shot would miss and bad luck would reflect back on him.”

  “And the princess thing?” I whisper back. “‘Gryfala?’”

  Ekan skates his fingers over my shoulder blades thoughtfully, and the carney grumbles at us as he starts pulling down our prizes. Ekan murmurs, “You look enough like them that you’re being mistaken for them. The Gryfala are princesses in their homeworld; ruthless, brilliant females—and out of respect, they’re considered princesses just about everywhere else, too.”

  Ruthless? Brilliant? “Uh huh…”

  Ekan tugs me across the strip, declaring that we aren’t done playing, and now we’ll have to play fast before word spreads that the Na’rith walking around is a luck source.

  Luckily, there are a few on the far end who don’t receive the warning in time. We walk away loaded down with prizes and what I gather is alien junk food, and this whole sidetrip ends up being the most fun I’ve had in… Gosh, I guess maybe since I was a kid, and went to the fair with friends who insisted that I tag along with their family.

  My own parents couldn’t—or wouldn’t—ever take me. The memories make me vow to my baby that I’ll be a better parent than mine were, and I make a vow to myself that I’m not going to give any of the memories a chance to get my mood down. I’m having a good time with Ekan when this all could have been a horrible day.

  I focus on my food. It’s good. I love the taste of the cone-thing; this vytata-thing is sweet, and it’s fun too—it feels dry on the tongue, before it mixes with my saliva and hardens into crystal beads and bursts liquid.

  Sweet liquid.

  Ekan offers me his doughy treat (or is it meat?) that looks like a small, three-eyed bear-eel, but I decline, though I do take him up on his offer of a golden animal-ish shaped puffy treat. It’s a bit like a cinnamon stick and a cheeto had a weird baby together. When I see young-looking aliens carrying these same Cinna-Cheetos around like Teenie Beanie stuffed animals, not food, I get confused. �
�Are these supposed to be eaten, or played with?” I ask Ekan.

  “Both.”

  “That’s weird.”

  Ekan sends me an ‘I’m sad for you’ glance. “Beth, the best things in life are meant to be eaten and played with.” His lengthy perusal of my lower region is pointed and filthy.

  I send him a narrow-eyed glance.

  His mouth curls even higher at the corners. “Why not enjoy your prize in every way you can? Play with it—eat it,” his voice turns coaxing as he eyes me up and down. “I really must profess how much I enjoy the concept myself. If you’re ever willing to let me put the theory into practice for you, simply say so.”

  The area between my legs is definitely interested in his suggestion, but I tell it to calm down as I focus on my prize/treat/toy instead. “Thanks for the offer.”

  “Anytime, narra. Anytime.” He takes my hand that he’s been holding hostage, and sets it on his arm just ahead of the crook of his elbow, covering it to keep it in place. It probably looks very affectionate to anyone passing by.

  It feels very affectionate too.

  I swallow another bite of sweetness, and wonder why I’m getting comfortable with this alien. Then again, it’s not like he’s given me any choice. He’s sort of been a bulldozer—in a disarming, curiously appealing, almost, almost innocent way. Rebelliously, not playfully—surely not—I pull the back of his hand towards my face and use it to wipe my mouth on in lieu of a napkin, making him laugh.

  To distract myself from how the sound of his gamesomeness makes me feel, I ask, “Don’t you have to get back to your ship? Weren’t you kind of in a hurry?”

  He rolls back his shoulders, and although at first, I couldn’t tell if he was releasing shoulder tension or what, I’m now fairly sure that this has to be his alien version of a shrug. That’s almost exactly how he uses it. “Eh. They will never leave without me.”

  To have that level of confidence. His people must really care about him.