Twenty-One
Charles Mace
Foss, Nik, Tor, Uncle Rick, Jamie, Britta, and Charles Mace sat at the long dinner table that was laden with two large roasts, potatoes, a wide array of vegetables and brown pretzel rolls. The gold and crystal chandelier hung low to illuminate the gold walls that matched the rest of the house. The room was long, but narrow enough to feel cozy and accommodate the large table that seemed perfectly suited for our sizeable party.
I walked past my uncle, placed one hand on his shoulder in a hug, and reached out to hold his hand with my free one. Once our grips locked, I pressed the key into his palm. I took a seat next to Uncle Rick, who was at the head of the table, and frowned when Jens squeezed in on my other side. Henry Mancini kept my feet warm.
“Pass the morötter,” Nik requested with a finger raised to gain Tor’s attention. Tor was ladling something that looked like a Brussels sprout soup over his mashed potatoes. The dwarf passed Nik the gnarled-looking purple carrots.
We all dug into the delicious pot roast, and I could not remember anything tasting so good. I cooked well enough, but I had nothing on my mom. She could work her way through any cookbook without breaking a sweat. There was no replacing her. As hard as I tried to be an adult and take care of everything myself, I was still only twenty and couldn’t make a decent lasagna to save my life. I could do chicken, so those were the dinners I had. A roast? A roast is a beautiful thing. I fed Henry Mancini scraps from my plate, and I could feel his love for me growing. That’s the thing about a good roast.
I was knee-deep in my second plate of food, ignoring the conversation around me when I noticed Mace staring. He sat across from me on Uncle Rick’s other side, taking slow bites as he watched me debase myself in my gluttony. I wiped my mouth on the cloth napkin and kept my eyes on my plate. Everyone else was regaling Uncle Rick and Jamie with their adventures on the mountain. I had little to add to that.
Jens scooted his chair closer to mine, as if he didn’t take up enough space. I continued to chew some vegetable that looked like a cross between asparagus and a tomato, and tasted something like both. I didn’t ask questions. I was just grateful someone was feeding me. The flavors were amazing, exploding on my tongue and livening my senses, and by proxy, my mood.
Mace’s fork was poised as if he meant to eat the food on it, but his hand forgot its mission. I could feel his eyes on me still, studying my every move.
Now Jens was fighting me for elbow room. I jabbed him off with my elbow, but he did not seem to notice my affront at his proximity. “Get lost,” I grumbled, clutching Henry Mancini closer between my ankles.
He responded by leaning his torso into my personal space, as if he was shielding me from something.
I released my fork with a clatter and crossed my arms. “Dude! Back off.”
Jens paid me no mind. “Rick, you want to tell your man to keep his eyes to himself?” He glared at Mace, motioning to me with his fork. “There’s nothing for you here.”
I wanted to snap at Jens for being rude, but the truth is that Mace was giving me a mild dose of the creeps. I kept my mouth shut, but kicked him under the table.
He didn’t even flinch, which made me feel pathetic that I couldn’t move him with my force. I instantly regretted my action. Martin Luther King, Jr. never would have kicked someone for being a jerk. I silently begged his forgiveness and vowed to use peaceful resistance next time.
Uncle Rick held up his hand to calm Jens. “Charles is of no threat to Lucy. In fact, if dinner is over, I would like a word with them both.”
I shoved three more bites in my mouth before anyone could take my plate away and gave Henry Mancini a chunk of meat. I ganked another roll from the basket before Uncle Rick’s housekeeper cleared the table. The housekeeper was graying, and kept from looking directly at the guests at the table. “Thank you, Delling,” Uncle Rick said to her as the others excused themselves for the night.
“Let me take yer yap outside till yer done eatin’,” Tor suggested.
I could only guess that he meant Henry Mancini. I gave my puppy one more snuggle before sending him off with Tor.
When Jens did not get up, I motioned for him to get lost. He responded by wrapping his legs around his chair and crossing his arms over his chest.
I counted to four before speaking, making sure to keep my voice quiet. “Are you trying to be difficult? Uncle Rick didn’t mention you on the guest list to this conversation.”
Uncle Rick spoke up. “Actually, I prefer Jens stays. It’s his job to know about you, and this will affect you, for certain.”
Jens shot me a superior look with a raised eyebrow and a triumphant smirk I kind of wanted to smack.
I plastered on a stewardess smile, making sure I spoke quietly, so as not to lose my temper at Jens. “Then I’ll write it all down in a telegram and send it to him in Guam, where you can reassign him. You can even verify the note so he knows it’s not my wild imagination running away with me.” I waved my hands in the air as I spoke, and then brought them to cross over my chest, mirroring him.
Jens looked like he wanted to respond, but he swallowed down his retort, so as not to incriminate himself by admitting we almost kissed.
Uncle Rick leaned his elbows on the table and pressed his ebony hands together, resting his lips on his fingertips. “Are you both finished convincing me you’re unhappy?”
“Did it get him reassigned?” I asked petulantly.
“No. Jens is permanent.”
“Then, no. I’ve got a whole laundry list for you.”
“Save it for later, dear. This is more important.” Uncle Rick motioned to Mace. “Allow me to properly introduce you to Charles Mace. I was given the privilege of caring for him over two decades ago when he came to me as a boy. His mother was Huldra, and was banished when he was very young. His parents did not trust the Other Side, since it would be teeming with jilted and angry Huldras, so they entrusted him to me.”
Something dinged in the back of my brain, but I could not place what. Charles’s gaze had not left my face. He did not seem perturbed that his messy childhood was on the table for open discussion.
“The Huldra are a people with strict aesthetics. They look like taller humans, but with cow’s tails about two feet long stemming from the base of their spine.”
“Huh? Cow’s tails?” Another ding went off, but I still could not place the connections my brain was making without any help from me.
Charles Mace reached behind him and slid a real, live cow’s tail over the top of his pants to show me.
“Whoa! Cool!” I exclaimed. I couldn’t look away from the odd sight.
Uncle Rick continued, smiling. “His father and mother went over to the Other Side. She got her tail removed and put her Huldra ways behind her. They started a new life and had two children, raising them in the human world. The boy was born with a small tail, and the girl was… you, dear. Completely and perfectly human.”
I was very still, letting the floating gold cease motion around me. The dings in my head blared like sirens now. My mother had a scar at the base of her spine that she said she got falling down the stairs when she was a teenager.
My parents had another child. A whole other kid I’d never known existed. My heart began to pound so loud, it was the only sound I heard, though Uncle Rick was still speaking.
Linus. He was born with a vestigial tail that they’d amputated when we were newborns. We always said that we would get matching tattoos to cover up his scar when we turned twenty-one. He was always a little sensitive about his scar, though no one could see it. It was the one thing he wished he could change about himself, other than, you know, the crapbag of cancer.
Now that I knew the whole picture, it seemed to me that Linus hated his scar a little too much. My breath caught, forcing my words to choke out of me. “Did… did Linus know?”
When Uncle Rick looked at me with that cursed pity, the blood drained from my face. “I told Linus who he was on his seventeenth
birthday when he was in the hospital and they didn’t think he would make it.”
I remembered that birthday. Linus hadn’t spoken to me for days. I blamed it on the chemo. It did funky things to your body and could crush even the brightest spirit. Spending your seventeenth birthday in the hospital is no one’s idea of fun. That was when he started treating me like his kid sister, instead of his equal.
I stood up from the table abruptly, but my knees were unprepared. They buckled under me, but I was yanked upright before I could plummet to the ground. Jens sat me in my chair, but my spine felt like a noodle. Echoes of my father telling me to sit up straight in my chair at dinner taunted me, but I couldn’t obey.
Uncle Rick and Jens were saying something. It must’ve been important with the way they were carrying on, but I couldn’t hear a word. Incoherent noise with no meaning reached me, burying me deeper in my fog.
Home. This place wasn’t my home. I didn’t belong. I wasn’t related to Uncle Rick by blood. I tried to piece together that Charles Mace was my brother, but my sandcastle of sense crumbled every time I tried to put structure to it.
Suddenly my feet felt wrong here. I put all my brainpower into telling my legs to move, and finally they obeyed, pitying me as they went.
“Lucy, sit down,” Uncle Rick insisted.
Jens tried to lead me back to my chair, like I was a senile old woman caught roaming the streets on her own at night.
I pulled away and reached for the door. “Air. I need air.” Bull. I was going to run. As soon as my legs cooperated, I was going to bolt. I didn’t care where or how, but I knew I needed Henry Mancini to come with me, and he was outside.
Jens held onto my triceps, searching my face for signs of life. “No, Loos. Just take a breath.”
I felt cold all over, but somehow managed to struggle out of his grip. “I need air! I can’t breathe in here!” I turned the knob and flung open the door, stumbling back and falling on my rear at the burst of unnatural sunlight that temporarily blinded me. My eyes shut tight as I moved to my hands and knees on the wood floor. I smacked the ground when Jens reached for me. “Don’t you touch me! You knew! You knew all of it! Did Linus know about you?”
“It wasn’t my decision!” I could hear the plea for clemency in his tone.
I let out a single cry of despair, and then slapped the ground again, my eyes still shut. “No! I will not cry in front of you!”
Uncle Rick and Charles were talking at me, but I could not understand the mix of voices all colliding with each other in dissonance. It was Jamie’s voice that reached me above the din.
“Miss Lucy! Close the door, or you’ll hurt your eyes.” Jamie ran in and shut the door before me, taking in the men all shouting, and me shaking with heartbreak and rage on the floor. Instead of asking for explanations, he scooped me up off the floor like a child, lending me one arm for support for me to lean on and the other as a shield around my shoulders. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves! When you are ready to apologize for upsetting this woman so, she’ll be in her chambers.”
Jamie walked with me up to the bedroom, where I climbed under the covers and shut out the world.
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