by L. J. Longo
“Let’s leave your imaginary monsters out of this, Sock,” Nav said, then whispered again.
“It’s not imaginary!” Sock insisted. “I see them in the ceiling.”
Half-Ear drawled, “You realize that sounds even crazier, right?”
Porter placed the triangles of pita in among the beans. Leftovers from the day before but still soft. He didn’t know about any dark energy or monsters, but it made him nervous no one had told him anything about it. Sock hadn’t come to him with his fears. Sock always trusted him before.
The steak finished, and Porter sliced it in the pan, then added the thin folds to the bowls.
“I just know, she thought she broke the oath,” Nav said. “Then he convinced her, she didn’t. I didn’t have a single thought something was going on between them before last night. You?”
Half-Ear said at once. “Nope.”
Sock said nothing.
Porter looked around the kitchen. What else could he do? Some additional way to put off this conversation. He was sure to say something wrong, to fail to convince them, to confuse the situation further when he tried to put into words the complexities of his heart.
“Just let Half-Ear do the talking, yeah?” Nav said.
“Yeah,” Half-Ear said loudly. “After all, he can’t hide in the kitchen with our breakfast forever, can he?”
Son of a bitch. Porter picked up the tray and brought it out to the porch. The rain drizzled and misted the world, but it was going to be a hot day. Probably the last hot day of this season. Still, the jungle looked fresh and green, and Porter resisted the strong desire to drop the tray, then his clothes, and run off into the woods howling with his tail between his legs.
“Morning.” Porter joined them at the table.
“Damn.” Nav looked at the meal. His cheek was bruised and his eye swollen from when Porter had punched him. “Trying to ask for forgiveness or what, Port? You barely scratched me.”
Porter stared at his hands and waited for them all to take their cups before he took his own tea and sipped it. His own shoulder was badly bruised this morning, but he didn’t want to talk about that. Didn’t want to talk about anything. Just take the scolding and go sleep it off downstairs.
Half-Ear ate his breakfast coolly. “Can’t believe you’re getting into fights with the tiger without me, Porter. Not that I couldn’t take him on my own, but … it makes me feel left out.”
Porter couldn’t help but smirk.
“So, what went down?”
“Nav told you,” Porter said.
“I woke up with a black eye and a flaming sword in my hand,” Nav protested. “I don’t know shit. What went down?”
“Well, it was like she said.” Porter tried to remember what Emaula had said to make Nav understand and hated Nav for making him say it when he remembered full well. “She thought she broke the oath, but she didn’t actually break the oath, because I knew I was bespelled and so she didn’t bespell me.”
Porter talked too quickly, and the words got ahead of him. “I mean, I guess she did, but she didn’t because I didn’t care if she did or didn’t. But she didn’t.”
Half-Ear glanced over at Nav for help.
Sock said, “The witch has a guilty conscience. I put it in her head Porter didn’t actually want her, and then she went ahead and bespelled him anyway. She broke her oath.”
“She didn’t,” Porter insisted. “And don’t you go saying that she did. I know her better than the three of you, and I like her, and I trust her, and I don’t care what any of you have to say about it. I love her, and there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Half-Ear smirked.
Which was not what Porter expected.
The wolf scratched his mangled ear and said, “Port, you know, we’ve been like brothers for over a decade, and you’ve never once told us ‘no’? Especially not like that.”
Porter realized he was suppressing a growl, glaring, his shoulders were tense, and his hands were balled into fists. Porter wasn’t sure he’d ever felt that aggressive, especially not against his own pack.
“Especially not Sock.” Half-Ear put an arm around the little wolf and then jokingly kissed the top of Sock’s head. “Poor innocent little bugger. He must be so scared of you, baring your teeth and yelling at him like that.”
Sock elbowed Half-Ear, and Half-Ear chuckled and let him go so he could pick up his fork to eat. “All I’m saying is, the bitch must be special.”
“Please, don’t call her that.” Porter softened immediately bowing his head and clutching his elbow. Then he picked up the pita and ate a scoop of the beans. She was special. Too special for him at least, but he’d entertain her until she changed her mind.
“Well, I don’t care about it one way or another.” Nav, in one big shovel, swallowed most of his breakfast. “Just leave me out of your kinky magic sex stuff.”
Nav and Half-Ear laughed, and if Porter could have crawled into his teacup and died, he would have. “There’s no harm in her.”
Sock remained unconvinced, and Porter noticed he’d not touched the food.
“I swear it, Sock.” Porter nudged his bowl. “Don’t be … you know.”
“An angry little bitch?” Half-Ear ruffled Sock’s hair again. “After all, who’s gonna braid flowers into your hair if you’re mad at Porter for getting some? Though, can we even call it that since it’s all in your heads?”
Nav nudged Half-Ear. “Okay, that’s enough. She’s coming down the stairs now.”
Porter lifted his head toward the window, eager to see her. When the stairs remained empty, his smile fell.
“Fuck, he is in love.” Sock chuckled.
All three of them laughed then, and Porter relaxed and rubbed his neck. He had no defense because he was. And it was something silly they could make fun of him for. The pack was in agreement, and everything was fine.
“All the same.” Sock poked a tomato onto his fork and gestured grandly with his other hand. “There is something that doesn’t belong in the ceiling. Has been since she got here.”
“Come off it, Sock.” Half-Ear sounded more serious and concerned than he had all day. “There is no dark energy in the inn.”
Sock ate his tomato angrily.
“Yenna hasn’t seen anything out of place, Sock,” Nav said. “Maybe it’s … well, your eyes have never been very good.”
Sock chewed and glared at Nav. Then said, “Either way, there won’t be a ton of traffic over the next few weeks until the rain settles in. I mean to tear the second and third floors apart. If it’s not her, then someone put something cursed in our house.”
“Paranoid little shit,” Nav muttered.
“If it makes him happy.” Half-Ear shrugged, then slapped Sock’s shoulder. “Hey, get Porter’s girlfriend to help you. Bet she knows all kinds of spell to cast out darkness.”
When Sock did not deign to answer the obviously ridiculous suggestion, Half-Ear turned to Porter. “Hey, does your special girl play cards?”
His special girl. Porter smiled, thinking about how he’d get to show her the forest and the waterfall and they’d build something from the North together and—he realized he had not answered. “You’ll have to ask her.”
Part Three
Chapter One
Emaula played dangerously. Hoarding the two Crowns, the Blue Witch, and the Blue Prince. Only the Blue Crown could save her, and anyone could have that. She ought to start dismantling the hand.
Half-Ear leered across the table. “Taking a lot of time there, witch. We might have to force you to draw.”
Jasprite sighed, exasperated because she was not the clear winner. “For fuck’s sake, play a card.”
Emaula muttered under her breath and drew a card. It was a basic rune, and she scowled at it before discarding.
Porter and Half-Ear laughed, and she pressed her cards close to her chest. “What’s so funny?”
Jasprite played an Orange Prince into her moat and discarded a high rune. “Yo
u’re too easy to read. That’s why I have all the princes.”
Emaula rolled her eyes. Not all. Emaula ought to play the Blue Prince into her own moat for the point, but … what if the Blue Crown came next?
“Crowns are worth more, Lady Doughton.” Half-Ear played a Black Crown into his moat. He gloated over every victory, just as bad a winner as Jasprite. Then he discarded a witch. A witch! The second most valuable card. He was about to go out. Had to be.
Emaula bit her lip. She could play the crowns and the prince and discard the witch, then she’d only have the low rune to count against her. She’d stick them with all their cards for a change.
“I just think you’re cute when you're mad.” Porter drew a card and then discarded without taking much time to think. The Blue Crown. His expression never changed, but under the table, he teased the edge of her scarf, brushing it across her leg. Their version of an affection pet.
“That was stupid,” Jasprite said.
“Thank you.” Emaula picked up the Blue Crown. Then daintily added the three crowns and the Blue Family on either side of the Blue Crown to her moat. “I believe the hand is over?”
“Cheater.” Half-Ear counted out his hand and drained the equivalent points from his moat. He’d end up in the negative.
“I am not,” Emaula objected, the way she protested every time he accused her. “Half-Ear, we’ve been playing this damned game for—Jasprite, when did the monsoons begin?”
“Five months ago.” Jasprite tallied her points and added them to the sheet.
“For nearly five months, and I have never once cheated. I defy you to challenge me.” Emaula corrected Jasprite’s score. “Fifteen and twenty, do not make fifty, Jasprite.”
Jasprite made mildly offended noises, but no actual words.
“You’re both cheaters as far I’m concerned,” Half-Ear said. “Negative three, damn it.”
“Count his again,” Jasprite demanded.
“All three of you cheat.” Porter showed his neatly tallied moat to Emaula. “Up, twenty-five.”
Only her moat, worth thirty, had beat his. And he didn’t have a single Witch, Crown, or Prince card. He usually played like that, building an enormous moat one rune card at a time. Rarely messing around with the dangerous cards.
Nav came in off the porch. “Sock’s on the path with twenty guests.”
“Hear that, wench? Into the kitchen with you.” Jasprite waved at Emaula. Then asked, innocently, “Did I win?”
“Porter won.” Emaula displayed the tally sheet to them all.
“He did not!” Half-Ear fairly leaped across the table to take the tally sheet. “I was ahead the whole—well fuck me, he did.”
Porter usually won or came in second with his patient, one point at a time approach. It lacked the flash and panache of lying down a collection of crowns and a family, but judging by the huge grin on his face as Jasprite and Half-Ear both double checked the tally, he took a simple pleasure in sneakily defeating his friends.
“We’ll get you next time,” Jasprite insisted. “And I’m not letting you sit next to each other. Cheating to help each other out. We should team up, Half-Ear. Show them we can cheat, too.”
“Just leave Nav out of it,” Emaula said. The tiger had a tendency to threaten the wolves until he got the cards he wanted, though he didn’t understand the game quite well enough to win.
“Losers clean the cards.” Porter opened the kitchen door for Emaula.
“Just like those crooked cooks,” Half-Ear said. “Getting out of the real work…”
Porter leaped over the stool and onto the counter where he sat cross-legged in front of the pile of potatoes. Emaula took her place at the stool and handed him a paring knife from the drawer. Garlic mashed potatoes were always a favorite, and it went well with the miniature griffin they’d been roasting out back all day.
“Porter, did you give me that Blue Crown on purpose?”
“What? No!” He exaggerated his shock. “I’d never!”
“Liar. You were looking at my cards.” She flicked a potato skin at him.
“Wasn’t.” Porter scoffed. “I was looking at your breasts. The cards got in the way. I thought I’d get a better view if you put them all down.”
“Shameless!”
“Wolf.” He smirked.
They continued peeling in silence. Porter tilted his head toward the window, hearing something Emaula had not. She listened a little more carefully and caught the faint noise of the travelers.
Porter said, “There’s about eight children. Must be a couple of families.”
Emaula’s chest panged with longing, but she said nothing. She’d always wanted children, and she often dreamed, privately, about what her children with Porter would be like. His patience. Magic, of course. So, it was possible they’d have her eyes.
She dropped a skinned potato into the pot and picked up another. Useless thinking about such things.
“I bet Sock is playing with them,” Porter said with a wistful smile. “Have you seen him with kids? Prettiest damned dog, I ever saw.”
Emaula hummed. Since that awful night more than half a year ago when her oath had become manifest, Sock had gotten less distrustful of her, but not by much. He ate her food, but he still hesitated to share more than a few words with her and smudged sage at least once a week. Hard to think that anything pretty could come from him. “Funny, I wouldn’t think wolves and children go well together.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t.” Porter shrugged. “Sock and I love kids. We used to play with them in the square in front of Yenna’s. Nav would give them rides on his back when he was in the right mood. I would anytime, of course, but I’m just a big wolf. That’s not as impressive as a tiger.”
Porter chuckled and whispered conspiratorially. “They would read to me.”
That hollow longing grew larger in her chest. Emaula could understand why some witches would go to extreme lengths to have children. Maybe they were cursed as she was.
“Have you ever thought…” Porter paused the way he did when he realized too late he should not share his thought. Whether it was a witch’s intuition, the result of their shared dreaming, or just knowing her lover, Emaula knew exactly what he was about to ask.
Instead, he looked at the potato. “I mean, do you like kids?”
“Yes.” Emaula could have left it at that. Allowed the longing to go unvented, but she didn’t like to keep secrets from Porter. Especially when he could be feeling the same gaping hole in his chest. “I’ve even had visions about what our children would be like.”
His face flashed into unbridled joy as if decades of fear and self-loathing fell away. But the moment was fleeting, and he never lifted his head before his expression because subdued and stoic. “Emaula, don’t be mean.”
“I didn’t think I was.” Emaula cringed. “I thought … well, it’s just a vision. They don’t mean anything.”
She added dismally, “Most likely, it’s just my mother torturing me with what I can’t have.”
Porter touched her scarf gently, then picked up another potato.
They worked in silence. The sound of the nearing travelers grew loud enough that Emaula could hear the children laughing.
Porter wondered, “So, what’s our kid be like?”
“Well, she’d have magic.” Emaula smiled.
“No doubt. Think she’d be pale with yellow hair?”
Emaula scoffed at the idea. “Not likely.”
Porter gave her a wide smirk. “Then we better have a boy with yellow hair, instead.”
“She will be dark as river mud with huge blue eyes and your curly hair,” Emaula said. “Her name will be Edlis.”
Porter seemed surprised. “You have thought about this.”
“Visions of a person who will never be.” Emaula shrugged.
“Pity. She sounds cute. Edlis.” Porter laughed out loud. “Wouldn’t it be funny if Nav and Jasprite had a kid and our kid bullied theirs?”
E
maula couldn’t help but smile at the idea. “I find that extraordinarily unlikely.”
“Can we call her Lady Eddy?”
“You could.” Emaula absently said something her mother had always enforced. “The Whispels don’t approve of nicknames.”
Porter made a sour face, then nodded thoughtfully. “We should lock her in a tower, too.”
“Porter!” But Emaula couldn’t suppress her smile.
He shrugged innocently. “Only ‘til she’s like … sixteen or so. Keep her safe from the wolves.”
“You’re not funny.”
“You’re laughing,” Porter added, as if forgiving her. “But it’s okay. I like it when you laugh. It bounces your breasts.”
“Shameless!” She threw a whole handful of potato skins at him and shielded her chest with her other hand.
“Wolf.” He flicked one of the skins past her hand and into her cleavage.
****
Porter teased her so much, that in their dreams, she didn’t give him time to build her a world, simply pushed him into the strange pit of pillows and sheets he called his real place. It usually made her uncomfortable making love to him in that room. All those doors were a reminder of the woman who’d been in this bed before. It felt like theft.
But Porter was not the sort to say no, and that night Emaula didn’t think too much of it until they were both breathless and satisfied and curled together in the center of the strange hall.
He kissed the back of her neck in sleepy little pecks and wrapped his arm around her waist like he’d hold her until she was dragged from him. Emaula could only imagine how comforting, how soothing he must have been to the witches behind those doors. She wondered how much happier she would have been if her mother had built a creature like Porter for her. Not even for sex. Just to talk to, to care for.
And foolishly, with the envy of a child, Emaula said, “Porter, the witches before… Did you used to describe the world outside to them?”
He looked at her sleepily then admitted, “I did.”
She demanded, “Describe the desert to me. I’ve never been.”