by L. L. Crane
I blew out a puff of air, exhausted.
Gods, it could be anything. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.
Chapter 41
Lordess and Love
Spice’s velvety voice propelled me out of my thoughts. “I’ll leave you two alone. There’s food on the table and water in the basin.” She twirled around quickly, slipping out the front door and we followed her silently. Then she turned back around, calling out to me while still gripping the antiquated door knob. “Lordess, I’ll send some ladies in to give you a bath. If you need anything, tell your man to go to House 11. That’s where Shade and I live now.”
The door closed quietly, as if it didn’t have anything to add to what she said. Suddenly it was awkward, standing in this strange house alone with Troll. He dropped my hand and without saying a word to each other, we both plunked down onto the soft, blue couch. Lily plopped at our feet.
I breathed in the crisp air, which was much fresher than the smoggy, brown air of the Provinces. A chilly breeze pushed against the blue curtains and they were swinging in rhythm to it, dancing for their new Lordess. I gulped at the thought of being a Lordess, still barely wrapping my arms around being a mother.
Shivering, Troll pulled me next to him, reaching for a blanket from the side of the couch. He tucked me in next to his lean body, and for some bizarre reason, I wasn’t put off by his blood splattered face and atrocious smell.
I was gathering my thoughts, though, piecing together everything that had happened since I left Garment’s studio. Turning to Troll, I asked, “What the hell is a Lordess?”
Troll’s voice was stern, snarky. “Watch your language.”
His bossy response irritated me. “Like you can talk!” I blew out a puff of damp air. “I don’t see what difference it makes, anyway.”
“They chose you to be Lordess. Don’t let them hear you swear.”
Confusion crept up on me, my ankle throbbing and my mind trying to comprehend all the Lordess business. Gods, I didn’t even know what a Lordess was, although the name indicated a touch of royalty. “What…why would they do that?”
Troll looked around as if someone might be listening in. I assumed they must have had cameras placed everywhere in Province H, same as in Province A, but that was just one more thing I mentally tallied up to ask Troll at a different time. At the moment I was too exhausted to delve into the details of his past.
Troll brought his face around, just next to mine. I wondered if he was going to kiss me again, and a part of me hoped he would, that if he did I could have the same feelings that smoked through me when Orion kissed me.
He didn’t.
Troll’s voice was low and deep, moving to a whisper at the end of his sentence. “How many kids have you seen here?”
I tallied up the people I had seen in Blue Spectrum, mostly grown men. I bit my lip, recalling a sprinkling of children interspersed throughout the crowd. “Just a few,” I reluctantly answered.
“That’s right,” Troll answered, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knobby knees. He paused. “I noticed it right away…every time they chased me back into the fu…into the tunnel. There are hardly any kids here.”
My scientific training kicked in. “Do you think they all take the Shot?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
Troll twisted his head, fastening his steely blue eyes onto mine. “I have no idea, but I bet when the bomb or whatever it was went off…it made these people sterile.” He hesitated, glancing at something on the floor. “I’ve thought about it a lot, just sitting there watching them from the edge of the tunnel.”
I furrowed my brow, feeling sorry for the Exiles, no matter how primitive they appeared. “Oh how sad.” Then a thought came to me. “What if the baby has S.L.A.G.?” I asked Troll. “Do you think they’ll kill it?”
“I have no idea,” he answered, just as a knock rattled the front door. Troll’s face turned to stone as he stood up. “They’ll have to get through me first, and I’ll die protecting it if I have to.” He paused. “I just want you to know that.”
I was left speechless, instinctively placing my hand on my stomach, which fluttered as though butterflies were soaring in huge circles inside of me. Was the baby moving? A smile formed on my lips, and a wave of love moved through me. Everything was going to be fine. Troll would protect me… and the Peanut. Still, that little voice nudged me from inside, nagging at me. It was worse than my mom making me clean my room, but much more subtle.
With Troll’s promise, I shrugged it off. We had made it to the Asters. We had been accepted, and even better, I was their Lordess, whatever that might entail.
Troll shuffled to the door, opening it tentatively. I could hear murmured voices, and Troll arguing with someone. I wondered what was going on as I took my shoes off and propped my sore ankle up on a navy blue pillow. I inspected my ankle. It was already turning colors, an array of blues and purples.
Just then three women dressed in plain blue smocks caught my attention. One was tall and had grey hair and a severely wrinkled face, rivers etched like grooves in dirt. A younger, smaller woman was by her side with long blonde hair and dainty features. She must have been about my age. Who knew, maybe we could become friends in time. The third woman was stocky and quite homely. Her eyes were slanted downward and her skin was the darkest I had ever seen, even darker than Jupiter’s.
They sauntered toward me holding towels and bars of soap like I had seen in our history courses – homemade. In addition, one of the women held a bottle with a violet liquid in it.
“Are you ready for your bath, Lordess?” the older woman asked. I sighed, thinking that a bath would be the most amazing thing I could conjure at the moment. The bloody mutant fingers were still hanging off of my neck, blood and jagged flesh oozing down my collarbone and chest, casting my raindrop tattoos into a smudge pot of goo.
I stood up, and Troll bowed to the women. He kissed me on the cheek then brought his lips close to my left ear. “Don’t let them take the fingers. Keep them on,” he warned.
It only took a second for me to piece together his caution, but I played along with him, my lips curving up into a true smile. “I love you, too,” I spoke back to him, shyly, diverting my eyes from his and back to the women. Once again, I wondered how Troll seemed to know all of their customs.
I followed the women into the bathroom. In the direct center of it was a large steel tub. The door closed softly behind me, and I somehow knew that Troll was outside fretting, worrying that the women would steal my fingers or do something worse. I could hear Lily whining and scratching at the door. I figured she would be okay with Troll out there. The tub was already full of water, and I couldn’t wait to just lie in it, wash the filth and grime and blood off of me.
One of the women unzipped my jumpsuit, and I tentatively slipped the body shield off, unwrapping it from around my expanding waist. I felt more exposed than I ever had in my life, hoping they wouldn’t do something to harm the baby. I relaxed, though, when my protruding stomach popped out and all three women oohed and aahed excitedly, as if they had never seen a pregnant woman before. Who knew, maybe they hadn’t.
Troll was right. I had begun thinking of myself as a woman. I guessed that I hadn’t had much choice in the matter, blowing out a huge huff of air.
Shivering and cold, I was naked except for the mutant fingers draped around my neck. One of the women, the small one with long blonde hair, tugged at my necklace in an effort to pull it over my head.
“No,” I sharply told her. I noticed that none of the women were wearing mutant fingers, and I felt pity for them. They must have been claimed by a man just to be in the band. They were powerless if Troll was right. Still, I wasn’t about to part with Troll’s gift to me. The woman yanked her hand away, and I slipped into the tub, fingers and all.
The bath was splendid, even though the water was cold. The women scrubbed my back and poured in some kind of perfume. It smelled of lavender and lemons, even drowning out the sick smell
of the mutant fingers. I wanted to stay there forever, just wilt away in the water, but I was getting tired. Finally, I stood up and the women dried me off with thick towels.
“Here is your robe,” the tall woman with grey hair told me. I slipped into it, feeling the soft cotton rub against my bare body.
“Thank you,” I told her. Then, suddenly awkward and shy, I didn’t know what to do. Hell, I didn’t even know what a Lordess was. I bowed to them all individually, nodding my head down and just walked out of the door and back to the room where Troll was waiting, hoping that they would leave.
But they didn’t. The threesome trailed after me and grabbed Troll, rather suggestively. For some reason, I bristled. Then I chided myself. I wasn’t interested in Troll. Still, there was that kiss. It wasn’t anything like Orion’s, but it was a kiss. My heart stung at that, but Orion was gone. Troll was with me and treating me as nicely as anyone ever had.
Troll stood up happily, turning back to me, a crooked grin on his face. “I really need a bath,” he told me. I realized it had probably been months since he had bathed if he indeed had been in the tunnel for as long as he said he had.
I laid back on the couch, feeling content for the first time since I had left Garment’s studio. I was a Lordess in the Asters. Who would have figured? I guessed it couldn’t get any better than that if you were pregnant and the father of your baby had disappeared.
I must have dozed off on the couch, because I woke up in the morning in bed next to Troll. His arm was draped over me, and my first instinct was to nuzzle in next to him.
Then I thought of Orion. Of his strong arms, his fiery kisses. His perfect face with those ocean blue eyes…how he kissed my tears away in the hedge gap, our love so forbidden that sometimes I thought it made me want him all the more. Orion was like a glass of sweet liquid. One sip and all you wanted was more. I sighed my heart constricting into a ball. That glass was shattered, and I knew I would never sip Orion’s nectar again.
I glanced at Troll, sound asleep, snorting occasionally like he did in the tunnels. His hair was clean and a sandy blonde, not dark like I originally thought. I breathed deeply. He still smelled sweet, his face relaxed and even better looking than I had first judged. I scrutinized the rise and fall of his chest, knowing that his heart was just as bruised as mine, but somehow he kept swinging. In that moment, I loved Troll.
But, I thought, was it better to just take someone who was there or wait for the one you truly loved? I loved Snow and the toddlers, Dove and my dad. But not like Orion. Oh Gods, not even close to the way my heart exploded every time I was near Orion, even if it was just glancing at him from across a classroom.
Troll shifted to his side, looking younger than he did in the tunnels, peaceful and happy. Our breaths matched each other’s and he was there. Troll was always there.
My mind cascaded in turbulent waves. What was love? Was it leaving the person who you had asked to be your marriage partner? Probably not. I let out a huge puff of air, suddenly so angry at Orion that if he stepped through the door at that very minute I might want to kill him for all he had put me through.
Troll opened his eyes, one at a time. “Good morning, Lordess.” He grinned at me, as if we had a million secrets to share. Just then Lily leaped onto the bed. Someone must have bathed her, because she was silky white with brown markings on her. Her ears were brown, and there was an almost perfect brown figure eight on her back. I scrutinized her. She wasn’t a pretty creature, but, like Troll, there was something so sweet and kind and protective about her that I couldn’t help but love her. I planted my face into hers and rubbed heads with her. She responded with a sweet, sticky lick to my cheek. I giggled, turning to Troll.
I smiled at him, a genuine feeling that did come from my heart. After all, Troll did look so cute lying there next to me, and a part of me wanted to kiss him…really kiss him and see what would happen. I tilted my head to the side, though, knowing that Orion was the only boy I had ever been with, and at the moment I was just too raw to take on anything else. A thought flew into my head just then. “How did I…ah…get here?” I asked him, sitting up.
“I carried you here.”
I must have had a look of horror on my face, because he then stammered, “Don’t worry…nothing happened.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know if I was relieved or not.
I stretched out in my blue cottony robe, relaxing in the comfortable bed. It was soft, like it was made of feathers, so different from the temperature and thickness controlled mattresses I had grown up sleeping on.
Troll threw his head back into his pillow and laughed, not that irritating laugh that had annoyed me at first, but a real, genuine laugh.
“What?” I asked him.
“They called me Lord. Can you believe that?”
“I’m having a hard time believing any of this.” I reached up to my neck to feel for my finger necklace. Somehow it had stopped becoming disgusting to me and turned into a symbol of good fortune.
“Troll,” I shrieked, panic and fear spreading through my body like a disease.
“What?” his eyes popped open wide and he sat straight up. “Is it the baby?”
“No.” I turned my head sideways so I could meet him eye to eye. I was trembling inside, a manic blender churning my stomach into mush.
“My finger necklace is gone.”
Chapter 42
Invitation
Troll threw back his head and roared with laughter, and this time it annoyed me. Bitter words were waiting on my tongue, ready to lash out at him. Out of habit, I glanced around the spacious room for cameras, then I remembered that I didn’t have to worry about the Administration and all of their mandates, their spying cameras in every room of your home any more. But I did need to worry about those fingers.
Troll must have realized how upset I was. I had come to think of those fingers as my ticket to safety and acceptance. His voice was gentle, as though he was talking to a small child. “They’re right there. In the cabinet by the bed,” he soothed, pointing to the daintily carved wooden chest. His eyes were crinkling merrily, though, and one little snigger slipped out of his mouth. I socked him playfully on the arm and then swiftly moved my eyes in the direction he was pointing. The cabinet was light in color, a wood I didn’t recognize, and it had three drawers with simple knobs on them.
I swung my legs over the bed and quickly pulled open the first drawer. Tucked neatly inside, spilling out remnants of purplish red blood, were both of the finger necklaces Troll had made for us in the tunnel. I spewed out hot breath, not believing that something so ugly could be that desirable to me. It seemed like a thousand years had passed since that mutant stalked into the tunnel. Even a thousand more since we had been accepted into Blue Spectrum.
I shoved the drawer shut, relaxing back into the soft bed. I laid there, gazing at the wooden ceiling, the thick rustic beams somehow charming me. “How did you know that someone wouldn’t have come in and stolen them?” I asked Troll without taking my eyes off of the ceiling.
“I didn’t,” he answered. “But I’ve been in the tunnel long enough that I’ve learned to sleep in quick bursts.” I turned toward him, and our eyes connected. He continued talking, his voice low. “I figured that you needed to sleep more than me.” His smile was tender while his eyes gazed at me lovingly. I smiled back. It felt like my heart was being glued back together, piece by piece and that Troll was holding the bottle of glue.
“Besides, I had these.” He pulled back the blanket that had been covering us. His knife belt was around his waist, the blades secured in leather sheaths. I dropped my jaw, because that was all he was wearing.
I turned away, then, embarrassed. I certainly wasn’t ready to see Troll without clothes on again.
Of course, he busted up laughing, which at first irritated me, but then I couldn’t help but join in. Who knew what could happen between Troll and me? I had been more annoyed with Orion when I first met him than I ever had been with Troll.
Finally, we quit laughing, and Troll stood up, strutted over to a different cabinet and rifled through the clothes that were stacked neatly in it. He pulled a blue robe around his body, leaving the knife belt intact.
“I guess I have to wear one of these faggot dresses,” he blustered, scrunching up his face in disgust.
“Yeah. It could be worse, though.” I got up and padded into the kitchen, snooping around for something to eat, Lily padding along behind me.
Just then there was a knocking at the door. “I’ll get it,” Troll told me. He grabbed my shoulder, twisting me toward him. His eyes were stern. “Go put your necklace on.” He already had one of the finger necklaces wrapped around his neck, his chest and stomach peeking through the half open robe. Tiny tattoos of connecting bones were lined up in a row vertically down his chest all the way down to the belt that loosely held the robe together. I gasped at the firm muscles that were chiseled out of his stomach.
Shaking my head, I retreated back to the bedroom, listening to Lily growl menacingly. I found my own necklace and put the smelly thing around my neck. From the other room I could hear hushed voices, then a door shutting with force, as if someone was irate.
Troll stomped into the room with a stack of clothing in his arms, a pouty expression on his face.
“You have to get dressed now,” he told me. “In one of these.” He handed me the stack of clothes. Curious, I took them from him.
“Spice said you need to go to a council meeting. It’s mandatory ‘cause you’re the Lordess.” His lip pulled up in a sneer when he said Lordess. I wondered if he was jealous.
I sighed, thinking that a council meeting was the last place I wanted to go. Gods, I didn’t even know what a Lordess was supposed to do at a council meeting.
Troll’s face was tied up in an angry knot.
I lowered my brows, meeting his eyes head on. “What’s the matter?” I tenderly asked him.
He blew air out of his mouth, frustration blasting away as he raked his hand over his head. After a few minutes he spoke quietly, defeated. “They won’t let me come.”