Beth's Stable

by Amanda Milo

  Prow tries to wheedle my disapproval away. “Narra, you don’t understand—never, not in all my solars, have I succeeded in pulling a win on Tiernan.”

  “You guys are supposed to be like brothers—is this how you would treat your brother?” I meet each of their eyes, earnestly trying to appeal to the good inside of them all.

  “YES,” they assure me in enthusiastic unison.

  “Gah!” I groan, and cover my face. None of my white-picket-fence-perfect television show families ever did this to each other. Either my favorite sappy afterschool specials didn’t properly prepare me for what the inner male is truly like, or aliens are kind of devious and space pirates are a little (or a LOT) morally bankrupt.

  Prow tries once more to implore me with his eyes; a pair so deceptively sweet they’d put a blue-eyed husky puppy out of the begging business. “You’re so perfect! Beth, please help me do this.” He looks so earnest that if I didn’t know what he was asking for, I’d never suspect him of being so underhanded and sneaky. He plucks three hydration sleeves up and tries to push them into my hands. “Drink these.”

  “Before or after I finish this?” I ask hotly, wiggling my mug.

  “Careful now; drink it, don’t spill it,” Ekan says, and I glare at him.

  He just gives me his Grinch smile, unrepentant.

  “You are all rotten!” I tell them.

  “I’ll rub your feet all rotation tomorrow,” Prow promises.

  Oquilion nudges him aside, and bows gallantly. “Beth, I’ll rub you wherever you want. Anytime.”

  “Tevek off,” Ekan says, sounding almost scandalized. “Only I get to rub her.”

  “NONE of you are ever going to touch me,” I hiss at them—and then I stare into my mug in a little shock, because it’s empty. “I hate to undermine myself, but it turns out that I was sort of thirsty, and I’m sad to say, it seems that I could use a refill—”

  Prow’s pressing the cursed hydration packets back into my hands, obviously hopeful that I’ll refuel for him and really make him proud.

  How. Disturbing.

  This time, Ekan and Oquilion hide around the corner, grousing a little that Tiernan is so suspicious—evidently, they believe that if he sees them, he’ll know they’re up to no good.

  With the way Prow’s grinning, I sure as heck wouldn’t trust him either, but I’m not about to tell them that—let Tiernan have a running chance at stopping this madness. Prow takes me up to Tiernan’s door, his expression unnaturally delighted for this hour—but before he can have his fun doing the knuckle rap dance, I call out, “Knock, knock!”

  Prow gives me a very interested look. “On your Earth, your doors are voice activated?”

  We hear rustling behind the door, so I ignore his question in favor of venting my feelings on this whole business. “What are a group of Na’riths called?” I slap a hand over Prow’s mouth and supply my own answer. “A migraine.”

  Tiernan opens the door, brow furrowed threateningly at Prow, who doesn’t appear worried and who gives the same ‘Beth is very disgusting’ story as the other two, and who forces me to take the cursed spice shirt.

  Tiernan immediately swings the door open wider, shaking his head at Prow. “Despicable.”

  He welcomes me in, slams the door in Prow’s face, and this time, I get to laugh—because wisely, somehow Tiernan just knows to lay down clear waterproof greenhouse curtain material over his sheets before we climb in to sleep.

  Tiernan gets me settled on his bed, under his blankets, and starts petting my back. I could be imagining it, but he seems both amused and resigned when he pushes the spice shirt my way. He’s being so, SO nice—and I think he’ll protect me from being freeze branded. I can’t keep it from him. “They don’t want me to tell you but—”

  “Shhh,” Tiernan says, still stroking my back. “I’m aware they’ve got some kind of game going on.”

  I cheep, “And you don’t want to know? Your friends are bad! They are trouble!” I cry in a faux-Jamaican accent ala a talking crustacean from a childhood mermaid movie.

  He scoffs. “It got me you, didn’t it?”

  That’s really sweet. “Aww. But—but you don’t know—”

  “Beth,” he says on a laugh. And he tugs me to his chest—

  And it’s his spicy shirt that makes me sneeze.

  “There it is,” Tiernan says—not mad, not worried, not surprised. He expected foul play and took measures to mitigate the damage. He gets up, grabs a towel to sop up the plastic sheet under me, and dampens a washcloth, handing it to me to take care of my legs and skirt.

  “Thanks,” I mumble, wiping myself down.

  “Think nothing of it.” He sets a second towel down next to me. “In case you need it, narra,” and he plants a forehead kiss on me that makes my toes—and my heart—curl and sparkle, just a little bit.

  Then he settles himself beside me. “If you get thirsty, there’s a thermos of tea,” he reaches to a recess next to his pillow, and passes it over my head to a recess in the wall on my side. “Beside you.”

  “Wow. You’re really great.”

  “Thank you,” he says—and yes, he’s definitely amused.

  “You’re not going to pass me off to the mystery guy?”

  His thick lips twitch up—with amusement, I’m pretty sure. “Qolt?”

  “He’s the one,” I say, rolling onto my elbow. “Where is he, by the way? I’ve never even gotten a glimpse of him in passing. Do you guys keep him locked up?”

  Tiernan snorts. “Hardly. He tends to keep to himself. At this moment in time, he’d best be on the bridge, manning the ship and overseeing our general safety.” His finger traces the sensitive skin of my elbow. I didn’t know my elbow liked to be touched. But it sure, sure likes to be touched by him. “We’ve got a female to care for; we can’t be letting some other crew get the sneak-up on us.”

  “Uh huh. Glad someone is steering this thing. So... the sneeze-and-pee tricking-crusade is done?” I purse my lips and eye him cooly. “I’m not going to be hustled off to prank Qolt?”

  Tiernan’s brow cocks. “I can spend my night in bed with a beautiful woman, or I could give her away to another? Do I look like these other fools?”

  I smile at him, huge. “No, you don’t, sir. Good for you.”

  Through the door, Prow’s voice is muffled. “I’m never going to succeed in skylarking you, am I?”

  “BIG mistake to give me away,” I call back. “Backfired HUGE.” (Yep. That right there’s an adapted quote from Pretty Woman.)

  Tiernan’s tone is wry and a little, tiny bit smug. “It doesn’t look good, does it?”

  Ekan’s voice is a little fainter, either because he’s further away from the door or more shocked. “I don’t understand—this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go…”

  Tiernan’s rough chuckle makes all my parts vibrate like the Operation game if the tool touches your body, except there’s no red buzzer, and it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. “Green rooks, all of you.”

  It’s an insult to which Ekan snorts good naturedly.

  “I swear you have a latent luck source gene,” Prow grumbles, his voice moving away. “Night, Beth!”

  “Night,” I answer, and despite peeing on myself four times tonight—these crazy guys have made me feel very… included. For the first time ever, I wasn’t observing fictional family hijinx through the plasma screen of my TV—I was smack in the middle of it. It was crazier and maybe a little more real than I ever imagined. They made me their pawn, but they also made me the center of a (somehow!) good natured game. I wasn’t left on the outside looking in, yearning to belong.

  I work to my other side and wriggle back a little, until big knees fit to the backs of my knees, and the tops of Tiernan’s sleep-pants-covered thighs are warming my hamstrings nicely. Ekan’s already gotten me a little bit addicted to the simple pleasure of touching another person with no pain on the menu, and I trust Tiernan enough to give me this much with no expectations for
more.

  A brawny arm drops over me, and rests there.

  I sigh in pure bliss. Perfect.

  My spacemen can be strange. But they’re also really... nice.

  And with that, I fall asleep next to the quiet, comforting presence that is Tiernan.

  CHAPTER 19—TIERNAN

  TIERNAN

  When my Comm to Oquilion brings up a view of him massaging his temples, I ask, “Not feeling well?”

  Oquilion jerks his thumb behind him. “They’re giving me a headache. The good news is, at the rate Ekan is going today, we won’t have to share Beth with him anymore. Perhaps never again—”

  Suddenly, their shouting drowns out our conversation. Beth’s voice rings out. “I said you ARE a huge dick!”

  Ekan’s rebuttal is smug and a little baiting. Creator, how he razzes her. “Ah. I heard ‘have,’ not ‘are.’ You can see why I was confused.”

  I shake my head. “I literally just let her out of my sight with him. He wanted to be the one to feed her breakfast.”

  Oquilion snorts. “He wants to assert himself as her only mate, is what you mean.” His smile turns smug as he gives me a look. “He’s your responsibility this rotation.”

  Normally, I’d want to ignore this because it is my Ekan-rotation. The shift that each of us rotate amongst each other so we can monitor the danger level of our luck source’s activity. Ekan prefers Prow over the rest of us because Prow gives him the most freedom. I’d grouse about that, but it happened to be Prow’s rotation when Ekan wandered off only to stroll back with Beth, so…

  Well. I’ll give him his due: sometimes the trouble he stirs up for himself brings about something incredible.

  But I can’t leave our incredible Beth to Ekan’s company—or clutches, rather—not if he’s riling her up this early in the day. “I’m heading back.”

  “I’ll hit the bridge,” Oquilion replies, meaning he’ll relieve me of my post.

  Ekan and Beth are still sniping at each other when I reach them. They haven’t even managed to make it to the closest galley without a quarrel arising—and I know precisely who's to blame for that.

  Beth’s voice arrives to my ears first: “I’m just saying; you aren’t five broke college boys—how can this place have no silverware? It’s no wonder no woman will have you! It’s seriously uncivilized.”

  Unimpressed, Ekan enunciates like she may have missed something vital. “We’re pirates. And ‘silverware’? Do you mean cutlery? Exactly what do you think pirates do? Never once has a job gone easier thanks to—nor has my life been spared by—a spoon.”

  Oquilion is shaking his head at them. He gives me a weary roll of his eyes. “Manning the bridge will be a welcome break. Quest luck, as the Rakhii say.”

  The tips of Ekan’s sharply-pointed ears raise high. They say the sharper the ears, the more trouble the Na’rith gets into. His are sloped like the curve of a blade. “Wait, wait—I was just contemplating the origins of that parting phrase the other day. You believe it’s Rakhii-borne too?”

  Oquilion response is a firm, “No Rakhii, Ekan,” as he leaves me to deal with them on my own.

  I pass by Ekan, and cuff him upside his hard head.

  His hand flies up to clutch the back of his brainpan as he spins. “What the tevek was that for?”

  I stumble for my action against the luck source, but it barely checks my stride. I start to pass by Beth, who is raising her hands, looking like she’s about to clap, or cheer—or do her own cuffing of Ekan—and I cup her elbow to begin steering her away.

  “Gibbs him again!” she cries nonsensically.

  “You can’t just make off with my Beth-gift! I was in the middle of playing with her,” Ekan calls.

  Beth growls at him.

  I run my hand down her arm until I find her fingers. I tug at them to gain her attention. “Hungry?”

  “Starving,” she answers, her aggression leaving her as she decides to ignore Ekan entirely and focus on me. She walks faster to keep better pace with me. “That’s where we were headed. We would have made it there if he hadn’t opened his mouth. Do you guys have ‘man-lipstick’ here? It’s stuff you apply to a man who needs quiet time. On Earth, we call it ‘duct-tape.’ Upstairs kitchen or downstairs kitchen?”

  Kit-chen. It’s interesting, the little words in human that she drops here and there when her translator should auto-supply her with our words. “We’ve tried an affixative like it,” I share. “The luck bounced back on the applier though, and it was almost two rotations before Qolt could speak again.” Beth’s mouth drops open at the shock of luck-repercussions. “What have you tried in the tanks?” I query. We stock an assortment of lake and sea-bourne foods, growing them fresh in raceway tanks that line the walls and form an island between the cabinets, each fitted with filters that pull the fish waste up to fertilize the plants on the deck above us.

  For a moment, Beth wrinkles her nose. “Nothing yet. I’m not sure I like alienfish.”

  We clatter down the steps towards the lower deck’s galley and she takes a stool at the bar while I retrieve a net and a frying cup.

  I scoop out an iiwykia—something Beth comments looks a little like an Earth prawn, which I gather aren’t her favorite by the way she covers her mouth—but after spinning it so that it’s sizzling hot in the frying cup basin, I hand it to her and we find it’s quite to her tastes.

  “It’s sort of cheddar-cheesy,” Beth muses. “May I have another, please?”

  Instead of giving her another male, I dip the net back into the water, and chase and corner a female. “Try this one. Females have a chewy center and a mildly nutty flavor. It’s a little different from males; you might like it. Plus, they were a pair—now they won’t be roaming alone, one without the other.”

  Beth’s face falls. “I hate to stifle you, but I need you to not share my food’s life story with me, or I can’t eat it.” She grimaces. “If I’d known this ahead of time, I don’t think I could have eaten the first one.”

  I acknowledge this with a grunt. Nothing wrong with having a tender heart; I like this trait fine in our Beth. The iiwykia sizzles as I spin her around the frying cup. When she’s ready, I nudge Beth to take a bite of the steaming hot meat.

  Reluctantly, she does—then her eyes go very round. “Candied pecans!” she says around her mouthful, and whatever that means, she must like it very much. She chews and savors and when she’s done, her voice is oddly lower and ever-so-slightly demonic. “GIVE ME MORE GIRLS. I NEED ALL THE GIRLS, RIGHT NOW.” She clears her throat and shakes herself, adding a delayed, “Please.”

  A few clicks later, and I’ve captured so many pairs I’ve lost count, with me eating the male for every female Beth consumes. I’m hunting another female for her, but I tsk when I tug the iiwykia from the driftwood she was hiding under. “Scummy luck. Sorry, narra.”

  “What’s wrong?” Beth asks, crowding me, her stomach pressed to the glass and her hands curled over the lip of the tank. “What’s the matter with my sweet, sweet food?”

  Not even trying to suppress my chuckle, I point to the iiwykia’s back. “See the glowing dots?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Those are offspring,” I explain.

  “Okay,” Beth says. “What do those taste like?”

  I give her a disturbed look. “We don’t eat precious mothers with offspring here.” I send a judgemental glance down at her own proudly protruding belly.

  “Right, and I respect that,” Beth says earnestly. Then her eyes dart to the iiwykia again. “What about runts?”

  I gape at her.

  Beth sends an angelic smile up at me. “Just kidding!” She darts another look at the iiwykia and whispers, “Sort of.”

  “I’ve heard enough.” I release the iiwykia and set the net in the strainer on the counter. “You’re cut off for now.” I give her a mock frown. “You should probably be a little ashamed of yourself.”

  Beth stares into the tank. “I am.” And if I’m not mistaken—
she mouths “But only a little...” to the bug-eyed iiwykia that stares back us from the other side of the glass.

  I take Beth’s arm. “You. Come with me.”

  She snickers as I lead her to the greenhouse.

  CHAPTER 20—TIERNAN

  TIERNAN

  After she pulled her fourth muscipula sprout clear away from its taproot, it became plain that replanting is not Beth’s strongest skill.

  My movements slow with determined restraint, I pluck the latest unlucky seedling out of her unfortunate, death-dealing hands, and sweep up the carnage. I only pat her shoulder when she tries apologizing again—and then I brush away the dirt trail I left on her. “Let’s... start you on trimming,” I tell her as I retrieve and set her up with scissors in two sizes; one for the miniature trees, and one for thinning back vegetable plant stems. I show her what to cut, and where, and we stand side by side in the quiet for several moments, with only the snip and clip sounds of our shears passing between us.

  Heat creeps up my neck when I notice Beth’s attention keeps straying to me. I don’t know why her focus is speeding my pulse; we’re quickly getting covered in plant sap and dirt, but she might as well be licking the side of my throat for how hard my heart has started beating.

  After sharing my bed last night, and after enjoying a highly entertaining—if iiwykia decimating—meal, I should be growing less nervous that I’ll mishandle her, but after frightening her so badly when we first met, I’m afraid I can’t be too careful.

  I don’t want to make her fear worse.

  I wish I didn’t frighten her at all.

  I wonder if she can see some sign of my reaction to her, a pounding pulsepoint or two, because she looks like she changes two shades of color before she averts her gaze to what’s under her hands and breaks the silence, asking, “Did you garden with your parents?”

  I scoff. “I only had the vaguest idea of what a garden might look like. I didn’t know food could taste fresh until I set out on my own.”

  She gives me a wide-eyed glance, so I add, “Jesting. But barely. If I tried fresh foods, it came directly from a vendor we snagged, or whatever planet we landed on—not our ship. No one had a clue how to grow anything.”