Bebe

by Phelps, Darla

  He briefly considered calling his uncle, but just as quickly he shied from that idea. He could already hear that cool, disapproving tone asking, “I’m sorry, did you think this was a human taxi service?”

  She moaned again. Reaching over her shoulder, Tral gently rubbed her back to comfort her and then got up and went outside. He found his axe in the adjacent woodshed and grimly located his cutting block under the snow. He cleared off the surface of that old and weathered stump, scarred by six years of chopping wood for the fireplace. Laying the axe a short distance from it, he went back into the station to get his little female stray.

  He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He’d hunted once or twice, but he’d never killed anything that he didn’t later intend to eat and this was not sitting well with him. Not at all.

  Bending, he bundled her in the bloody blanket, making her as comfortable as possible for that short trip out into the cold. When he lifted her in his arms, she didn’t open her eyes, but she did turn into his embrace, laying her head and one hand upon his chest, her small fingers fisting into the excess cloth.

  He walked out to the stump, feeling like a monster. It was beginning to snow again, a light sprinkling of flakes that settled upon her face, dusting her blonde eyelashes as he lay her on her back in the snow with her head arranged upon the well-worn surface of the cutting block. As thick as the snow was, it helped to boost her high enough for him to lay her head and shoulders across the wood. She made only the softest, muffled whimper of protest when he adjusted the blanket around her, tugging it down past her shoulders to expose the pale stretch of her neck. Gathering her hair in his hands, he gently stretched it across the block above her head, a golden flow of soft curls that stood out brightly against the wood and snow.

  Without looking at her face, he turned to fetch his axe. His footsteps crunching in the snow, he walked all the way around her to find the best angle—he wanted to do this right the first time—before sidling up to her right side. Raising one foot, he stepped on the length of her hair, just in case she tried to move at the very last second.

  His hands were starting to shake as he adjusted his grip on the handle and took careful aim, lowering the sharp blade until it hovered only a few inches above her vulnerable throat.

  Yeah, he was a monster all right.

  He hefted the axe, trying to gauge how much strength he’d need, hoping the axe was sharp enough to do the job without—dear God—bouncing off the bone halfway through and leaving her alive, aware, probably screaming...

  “Steady,” he told himself, banishing that gory image before it unnerved him completely. “One quick cut and it’s done.”

  He could do this. Just one powerful stroke. He could do one stroke.

  Tral breathed in deeply, adjusting his hands on the handle again and bracing himself to take a life. A dying animal’s life, yes. An animal who was suffering in the process and who would suffer all the more once her flesh started rotting out from under her. But it was still a life and he was the one about to prematurely end it.

  “Don’t think about it,” he told himself, a hard edge of annoyance creeping into his voice. “Just swing.”

  One quick chop. His uncle could have done it. Of course, his uncle also had the money and the means (although it was anyone’s guess regarding inclination) to take her to a decent medical facility.

  “Chop her damn head off already!” he snapped, growing steadily angrier at his own reluctant nature, right up until she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

  She could probably see the axe; his hands wavered even more.

  “Mm.” She tried weakly once to lift her head, but since he was standing on her hair, she only managed a few inches before letting her head drop back onto the block. One small hand drifted out of the blanket to touch his boot and she tried to crane her head to look at that now too.

  “Fuck,” he said as she blinked up at him again, her eyebrows drawing close together, as if trying to puzzle out what he was doing. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Chop, damn it all!

  He ripped the axe back, his muscles bunching as he threw all his strength into that backwards swing, but that was as far as he got. He couldn’t make himself bring the heavy blade forward. He couldn’t make himself aim for the bare expanse of her throat and just end it. For either of them.

  “Fuck!” he bellowed, flinging the axe as hard as he could. It hit a tree and ricocheted into the woods.

  Bending over, Tral braced his shaking hands upon his thighs, eyes squeezed tightly shut as he silently berated himself for being such a weak-willed, sentimental idiot. Small wonder he was stationed out here in the middle of nowhere. By himself. Thank heaven he wasn’t responsible for handling the important decisions; he couldn’t even cut the head off one half-dead human!

  Something touched his leg.

  Opening his eyes, he looked down. His little female stray was weakly caressing his pants leg, petting him. She only had enough strength to manage two or three shaky strokes, before it became too much and she retreated back into her blanket. Her eyes drifted closed and, with her head pillowed on the chopping block, she went back to sleep.

  Here he was, striving to end her life, and all she could do was offer him comfort with what little strength she had left when he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Leaving the axe wherever it lay, Tral bent to gather her into his arms once more and carried her back inside. He lay her on the bed, covered her with a second blanket and retreated to his work table to mix up another high dose of antitoxin.

  The muscles spasms began just before noon, followed by the vomiting which lasted all night long. For the next two days, Tral alternated between changing his bed, running continuous loads of laundry through the machine, and trying to get her to take fluids. He made pot after pot of tea, and held her sitting up against him while he tried to get it into her. She would drink, throw up, and drink again, moaning and crying, sweating and blazing with fever. When it hit 104.7, he stopped keeping track. He also carried her outside and rolled her in the snow. She cried, kicking and shaking the whole time, but he packed the snow in around her anyway and held her down, staring into those surreal blue and crimson eyes and guiltily wishing he’d had the strength to kill her.

  His eyes burned he was so tired, but every chance he got, he made another pot of tea and tried to get her to take it.

  On the third day, she stopped throwing up and she stopped bleeding. Her face was both flushed and sweat-soaked, and yet so pale that she seemed almost waxen and gray. He made her a thin vegetable soup, straining the vegetables out of it to give her the broth. That she kept it down became a minor cause for celebration. He gave her another bath, washing away the cloying smell of sickness and changed the bed (hopefully) one last time.

  On day four, her fever finally broke. He made her eggs for breakfast—a body couldn’t get more bland than eggs—and had to spoon feed her because by then she was so weak that she couldn’t feed herself. She did, however, keep her red-rimmed eyes open, watching him from her first bite until he gave her the last and she kept it all down.

  “I can’t believe you’re still alive,” he told her wearily.

  She blinked at him, and never said a word. Not that he expected her to. And when her eyes eventually drifted closed again, Tral celebrated that too by lying down on the bed behind her, pulling her small body into the cradle of his own, and falling asleep along with her. It was the first time in days that he felt he could without fear that she would either throw up in the night or quietly die while he slumbered on unaware. That deserved to be celebrated too. Tral did all of his with his eyes closed, and by God, he slept the hell out of that bed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Home is where the heart is.

  A cold rush of air washed over the top of him. Tral opened his eyes slowly, blinked twice at the rumpled stretch of empty bed beside him, but was having trouble getting his burning, tired eyes to focus. How long had he been asleep, he wondered. It was daylig
ht and the fire was still flickering, albeit barely more than smoldering coals on a bed of ash. Tired at he was, it wasn’t until he heard the soft bump of the breeze blowing the open door into the wall that he suddenly realized where all this cold air was coming from.

  He snapped over onto his back, struggling to sit up and staring in open-mouthed shock at that stretch of snowy yard beyond his porch. “Oh shit!”

  Tangled in blankets, he struggled to sit up and fell out of bed entirely. Clambering to his feet, he tripped on the blankets and very nearly cracked his head against the threshold before he caught himself against the door.

  Where was the wild pack? That was his first thought. That he hadn’t woke up with a spear stuck in him probably meant they hadn’t been the ones to breech his meager defenses and enter the station house. But there were footprints in the snow. One small set of human-sized prints that stepped off the front porch and staggered unevenly off into the North, disappearing into the woods. It was snowing—again or still?—but only just, and the tracks although still visible had been made long enough ago that the new falling precipitation was starting to fill them in by a scant quarter of an inch.

  Where was his human?

  Tral jerked around, eyes wide and wildly searching his small house. He ran the few steps that separated him from the bathroom, but it was empty.

  “Oh shit!” he cried again, louder this time. He raked his fingers through his hair. The fever must have returned. She was still sick, possibly delirious. And in her delirium, she had wandered right out into the snowy woods. Where she had found the strength, he had no idea, but Tral grabbed his coat and ransacked the shelves for a working light. The day was overcast and gray, but from the look of the sky, the sun seemed to be setting. He estimated he had an hour, maybe two before it grew dark. Before the temperature dropped again. Before the snow picked up and buried her footprints beyond what he could track, and before the dreadfall wolves picked up on her scent. Or even, heaven forbid, she stumbled across the hunting wild pack. Any number of dangers tumbled through his mind, each of them worse than the last, but that nagging certainty in the pit of his gut never changed. He had to find her and he had to find her fast, or he knew he never would.

  * * * * *

  Staggering every few steps, on shaky legs Bebe made herself keep going.

  It was cold and growing dark. Dressed in a shirt she had stolen from the Big Man, she hugged her arms, the sleeves hanging off the ends of her hands by a good foot, and kept walking. She had to find the fence; she had to wait by the road in case Sir came back for her. She couldn’t not be there if Sir did come back, because then he really would leave her and she’d never go home again!

  Tears threatened, but Bebe blinked them back. The snow had begun to fall faster. She was walking right into it, making the uneven ground difficult enough to see without the added handicap of tears. And anyway, she’d done enough crying lately to last her the rest of her life.

  Shivering, she hugged her stolen shirt tighter around her and paused to search the distant landscape for signs of the fence. All she saw were trees, and sometimes in the depths of those she thought she glimpsed moving shadows, but that was probably just tricks of the falling snowflakes and the icy breeze that whistled through the branches, shifting the stark winter underbrush and dropping heavy clumps of whiteness to the already thickly blanketed ground.

  Her bandaged feet were soaking wet and her toes were mostly numb. Her legs were stinging too, particularly above the bandages where her bare legs touched the snow as she sank into it almost to her knees. Now and then, Bebe stepped on bits of stick or rock, buried out of sight and felt just enough to know she was hurt, but she kept going anyway. Maybe she should look for someplace warm to hole up for the night. But what if Sir came back and couldn’t find her? No, she had to keep going. She had to find the fence.

  In the distance, a low and mournful howl followed on the wind, stopping her for another look around. She brushed at the snowflakes clinging to her lashes, bending a little as she struggled to peer through the shadows. There was definitely something moving up ahead, something on four legs that skulked behind the underbrush just out of clear sight. She swiped at her eyes again and shielded her hands around them, trying to bring that shadow into some kind of recognizable definition.

  “Stop!”

  Bebe jumped. Jerking upright, she spun around to stare open-mouthed with shock as the Big Man came charging through the trees and snow at her. He looked very upset, but then she had stolen his shirt.

  She had known better. She always got caught when she did bad things.

  Bebe stumbled backwards, stripping quickly out of his shirt with shivering fingers. She held it out to him at first, but his expression only darkened. Her next shiver had nothing to do with the cold, and dropping his shirt, she turned to run. She only got a handful of vaguely painful steps. The Big Man charged right past his discarded shirt, stripping his coat off as he came to catch her in the folds. It was very warm and soft, and it smelled like him. A strong odor, but not unpleasant; simply masculine. She almost relaxed, except that in the very next instant her feet left the ground as he swept her up into his arms, tossing her over his shoulder like only so much cumbersome baggage.

  Bebe shrieked, a quick half-squeak of a sound before her stomach landed hard across his shoulder. The impact knocked the air from her with a grunt, and she quickly sucked in to replace it, the cold scorching the back of her throat.

  “No! No! No!” he snapped, the hard flat of his hand amplifying each word with three sharp swats falling in rapid succession across her chilled buttocks.

  Bebe grabbed his shoulders, her whole body arching under the stinging fury that enveloped her icy skin. This was a pain she felt with unbelievable clarity, but she held herself still in spite of the hurt, afraid he’d spank her again if she moved. And he might have anyway, if not for the second low, mournful howl that suddenly had the Big Man whipping around to look behind them so fast that Bebe had to clutch his shoulders again, this time just to keep from falling off his arm.

  He stiffened under her as he searched the curtain of trees, and then he cursed, almost whispering it under his breath. Snapping back the way he’d come, he began to run.

  Grabbing onto his opposite shoulder for balance, Bebe bounced and jostled with every hard step. Bracing herself against his back, she rose up far enough to see a huge black shadow separate itself from the trees and give chase. It was the largest dog she’d ever seen, huge and shaggy, snarling as it gave chase. In only three lumbering leaps, it closed the distance between them. In the next it would be on them, Bebe realized with a horrified jolt.

  She barely heard herself scream but the Big Man did, and suddenly she was sprawling face-first down in the snow, tumbling end over end as he dropped her and jerked around to confront the springing wolf. He only just got his hands up before the weight of the large animal slammed into him, and man and snarling black wolf went down together, scrambling, kicking and shouting, a spray of red snow splattering Bebe’s chest and face as the Big Man punched and punched. Bebe didn’t see the knife clutched in his fist until the wolf fell limp and silent on top of him.

  The Big Man lay in the snow, panting heavily, a long growling stream of half shocked, half angry curses steaming the air above the dead wolf.

  Was he hurt? Was he bleeding? Was she bleeding? She swiped at the splatters of red dotting her arms, breasts and belly, even her face. Her skin tingling everywhere it touched the snow, she nevertheless crawled through it to reach him. With shaking hands, she tried to pull the heavy wolf off him enough to see his face. The Big Man looked at her, and a flash of instant anger darkened his features. He got his hands and the knife under the animal’s chest and, with a mighty shove, heaved it up and over onto its side.

  Rolling to his knees, he seized the edges of the coat around her, jerking her in close and gesturing at the dead animal. “Bad!”

  He was even more angry now than he had been when he’d caught her. Th
e last time someone had looked at her like this, the Old Woman had beat her with her cane.

  Panicking, Bebe tried to shrug out of his coat, but the Big Man grabbed her arms and stood up, throwing her back over his shoulder once more. Again, he headed for home and all Bebe could do was cling to him. She tried not to cry, but as the denseness of the woods retreated and the station house came into view—dark against the white-smothered landscape, a thin stream of smoke rising from the stone chimney—the realization that she was never going home hit her. Sir wasn’t going to find her; in all likelihood, he wasn’t even looking, and that devastated her.

  Tears flooded her eyes as the Big Man carried her into the warm station house. He dropped her none to gently on the bed before slamming the door shut behind them. He braced a huge hand against it and, keeping his back to her, glared at the back of it, not moving, for a very long time. When he finally turned on her, his chest was heaving, almost seething he was so angry.

  Bebe shrank from him when he started towards her, but he caught her arm when she tried to crawl away and sat her forcibly on the edge of the mattress. She dared not move again, except an involuntary flinch when he raised his hand.

  The Big Man didn’t hit her. Instead, the backs of his fingers touched her forehead and then her cheeks. He tipped back her head, frowning as he looked deeply into each of her eyes. Without a word, he knelt to strip the soaked bandages from her feet, and even as angry as he was, his hands were still gentle. At least until he saw the bottoms of them, and then his expression darkened even more. He raised snapping black eyes to hers, shook his head twice and stood again.

  Now he was going to beat her. Bebe cringed, frightened and trying not to flee when every part of her so badly wanted to. She struggled to brace herself, knowing she probably deserved to be beaten for what she had done. Stealing and getting into trouble, being a burden to the same man who had pulled her out of the snow and kept her from freezing to death her first night in the wild. She wilted, but he only vanished into the bathroom. Packages rustled, bottles clinked, and a few minutes later, he re-emerged with fresh bandages.