I squeezed my fists together, then turned toward Val-hall and Óðinn’s retreating figure. A flagon of my father’s mead sounded just about perfect right now.
THE MONSTER’S LOVER: CHAPTER ONE
“I don’t want to go,” I said.
Ma didn’t even look up from the bread dough she was stretching across our flour-dusted tabletop. The basket of eggs sat next to the open door, heavy and demanding in the cold light of early morning.
“Sol,” she said. “You have to go.”
I bit my lip. My vision swam with tears already, but I couldn’t let them spill down my cheeks. “Can’t Egren take them?”
She sighed and her head dropped. “He’s gone to the forest with Jael.”
I should have gone to the forest instead. I should have gone anywhere else instead. I took a deep breath.
“The last time I went to town, Ma—”
“Don’t.” She turned. The dark circles under her eyes were like bruises on her thin, pale face.
“Ma, Maddie Liefsen spat on me. She spat in my face!”
“Ignore her. You’ll be far enough away from the likes of them soon.”
I shuddered as I thought of where exactly I’d be going. I’d always imagined Maddie Liefsen was a friend, the same way I supposed I’d imagined all the people in town were my friends. Before I’d been claimed by King Nøkkyn. I shifted in the doorway, hesitating. Perhaps, I could escape by offering to weed the potatoes instead.
“Sol. This is the last of the flour, and I still have four mouths to feed.”
Anger flared inside me, hot and sudden. “I know!” I snapped. “At least until you sell me off!”
Ma’s shoulders sank. I’d seen that gesture enough to last a lifetime in the months since Da died. My stomach knotted.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
Ma wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of flour across the concave well of her cheek. “Just take the damn eggs. Go to Johmaersen. He’ll trade you for flour.”
She stood and dragged her leg across the floor. A logging accident had ruined her leg before I was born. Da used to say she worked as hard as a man in the woods. She’d been his partner, finding the rare purple oaks we owed the king.
I frowned as she wrapped her hands around the egg basket. Her busted leg was the reason I wasn’t allowed to help in the forest, as if her injury proved all women were somehow incompetent, unable to handle the work of harvesting purple oaks, even though I was just as strong as my younger brother.
Ma’s busted leg and my own thrice-damned face.
“I’ll take it,” I snapped before Ma could pick up the eggs and hobble toward me.
I grabbed the basket and stormed out, not waiting for her reaction, and not stopping until I’d reached the shade of our farthest apple tree. The fruits that had been so hard and tiny a month ago were now plump, showing the first blushes of red. In another few weeks, they’d be crisp and juicy, ready to harvest.
Another few weeks after that, and it would be time for me to leave.
I balanced the eggs against my hip, shading my eyes as I scanned the edge of the forest one last time. Not that I honestly expected my brothers to return now. They must have left this morning, while I was doing the washing in the river. It could be weeks before they return.
Or, they might never return.
My heart gave a funny little pang. Logging the Ironwood was dangerous, far too dangerous for two boys. Jael was nearly fully grown, but Egren was still a child. He said he wasn’t afraid, but when I thought of him climbing into the dark canopy with a cold, sharp saw tucked under his arm, my chest tightened until I felt I couldn’t breathe.
I would be far away soon, just like Ma said. I wondered if that would make me feel any better.
TOWN WAS HALF A DAY’S walk away. I’d be coming back in the dark, but the moon was nearly full, and I didn’t fear the Ironwood forest. At least, I didn’t fear the Ironwood more than was necessary. Once, I’d told Da I was afraid of the Fenris-wolf, the legendary monster haunting our forest. He’d laughed and laughed as he held me close to his chest.
“Is that a bad way to go, my beauty?” he asked. “When you could languish in illness, or suffer on the birthing bed? A quick death’s the best any of us can ask of the Nine Realms.”
A fresh round of tears threatened to obscure the trail to town. I blinked them back. He got his wish, my beloved Da. Jael had come back early from their logging expedition last winter, dragging the huge sled by himself, with Da’s broken body laid out on it, cold and empty, his stiff, blue limbs filling the space where purple oak logs should have been stacked.
The wind blew up suddenly, Jael told us, his voice ragged and wounded. Da was in the treetop, cutting off branches for Jael to gather. The limb he’d stood upon had snapped with a dry crack like a flash of heat lightning, and Da had plunged to the forest floor. Jael said his back was broken instantly, leaving his wide-open eyes empty.
I realized in the bitter months after his death that he’d been right. Da’d had it easy with his quick exit. The rest of us had a quota to fill.
Jael couldn’t finish harvesting the purple oak by himself, not even with little Egren’s help. Last year’s sudden, early frost had cost us most of our crops. We’d sold the cows first, then the pigs. Egren cried when our neighbor, Attin, led the pigs away, mourning the loss of all that smoked ham and bacon. Ma pressed her lips together and smiled as Attin counted out the coin, although I knew it was less than half of what she’d expected. And far less than what was fair.
“We’ll have beans and potatoes for the winter,” she’d insisted that night, as we laid out our coins on the table.
We’d counted and re-counted the money, my brothers and I. No matter how we arranged the dull, gleaming piles of chipped metal coins, it wasn’t enough to make up for falling short on our lumber quota. We might have food for the winter, but food wasn’t enough. This was a holding on King Nøkkyn’s land, and we were obligated to provide His Highness with twenty cords of purple oak every year. Anything over twenty cords he would purchase, although he usually paid less than what we could charge to anyone else.
Of course, none of our other potential buyers controlled an army.
“What else can we offer Nøkkyn?” Jael asked. It was late at night; Egren was already curled in sleep in front of the fading embers of the fire. “What more would the king accept?”
Ma and Jael both turned to me, but it was several long minutes before I grasped their meaning.
Indeed, perhaps I did not fully grasp it until a turn of the moon later when Ma had dressed me in the soft green dress she kept in her chest and painted my lips and cheeks with bloodberries. Ma had altered the dress until the neckline plunged almost to my navel, exposing the full curve of my breasts. She’d kissed my reddened cheeks and told me to be strong.
King Nøkkyn’s taxman had entered our home that spring to find me, dressed and painted, in front of the cool hearth. He was a thin, unpleasant man with a face like a fish’s belly. He poked and prodded me, his dark eyes watching me much as the townsmen had inspected our dairy cow. I followed my mother’s advice and did not meet his eyes although, when he pried open my mouth to examine my teeth, I had to fight the urge to bite him. When he’d left without writing Ma’s name in his tax roster, I’d dared to hope that was the end of it.
But King Nøkkyn, the Mountain King himself, had come a fortnight later, riding a great black stallion and accompanied by his fish-faced taxman. Nøkkyn was a massive man with dark eyes, thin lips, and a severe nose. His horse trampled our smoothly swept dooryard with silver-shod hooves. Ma rushed me inside, stripping my everyday dress, pulling the smooth green one over my arms, and lacing up my back. She pinched my cheeks as the door creaked open.
Nøkkyn entered our home as if he owned it. And I supposed he did. He owned the Ironwood forest, after all, and everything in the forest.
“This is an expensive claim,” Nøkkyn declared. His sharp eyes followed the exposed swell of my
breasts. “Not even the Æsir of Asgard dare to travel so far into the Ironwood forest. It costs much to have my soldiers protect your holding here.”
I bit my lip. No soldiers ever came this far. The only sign of King Nøkkyn’s rule we ever saw was the great wagons which came once a year, collecting the purple oaks we’d harvested as our tithe and dragging them to town to load the great barges traveling down the Körmt river.
Nøkkyn turned to my mother the way a man would turn to a stray dog. “You and your husband were slaves, no?”
She nodded, her eyes on the floor.
Nøkkyn clucked deep in his throat. “To think my predecessor gave slaves such a holding... Well, it’s not cheap to watch over this family. And here I understand you haven’t fulfilled your quota for the year.”
“Your Highness,” Ma said, her wan voice trembling, “we do have other goods to exchange.”
The King turned to me again. I didn’t care for the flash that lit his eyes as he examined my nearly-bare chest. He took a step closer to me. His head almost brushed the rafters.
“Yes,” he muttered. “I see.”
He grabbed my breast through the green dress and pinched my nipple hard enough to make me flinch. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out and fought the urge to push his hand away.
I was goods, after all. Goods to exchange.
Nøkkyn’s hand moved higher, sinking into my hair. With a yank, he pulled my head back. Then he leaned toward me until I could smell the sour tang of his sweat. He took a deep breath as he tugged on my hair, and the cold brass of his brooch pressed into the bare skin of my stomach. My skin crawled beneath his touch. He released me suddenly and shoved me backward. I staggered, hitting the stone of our hearth with my hip. Nøkkyn wiped his palm on his black cloak as though he’d just handled something dirty.
“She’ll do,” he said, speaking to no one in particular. “For this year, I suppose.”
He left without a backward glance. Ma scurried after him. I heard the stomp of his great horse beyond our door.
“We’ll collect her once the harvest is complete,” his taxman said. His thin, reedy voice carried through the open door. “At the Reaping.”
I shivered at his use of the old name for the Harvest Festival. Even the wealthiest families in town didn’t call it the Reaping, as though the bad luck chained to that old name might follow them back to their secure brick houses, draining their wealth and happiness like light fading from the winter sky.
Nøkkyn’s black horse deposited an enormous, steaming pile of shit on top of the basil patch in our kitchen garden before turning back to the village, and the men left without another word. It was mid-summer, and I was claimed.
Not as a wife, of course. Someone as low born as myself could never hope to be King Nøkkyn’s wife. No, I was to be the newest addition to the Mountain King’s harem, his fresh concubine.
His whore.
Ma had tried to prepare me.
“Don’t ever disagree with him,” she said, late one night, as we lay under our furs before the low flickering embers of the fire. “Try to make him laugh, but never at himself. Don’t ever tell him no. About anything. And always smile, but try to save a special smile just for him.”
I’d rolled my eyes, hoping the growing darkness in our house would hide my expression. King Nøkkyn did not seem the sort to be overly impressed by a special smile.
“And Sol, when he comes to you at night—”
I groaned as I turned away from her in the sleeping furs, trying to avoid any reason for my thoughts to swirl back to Nøkkyn’s pinched, cruel face.
I’d heard about sex, of course. I’d seen it among the chickens and pigs. I’d shared sweet kisses with boys in the village, although they were all too high-born to consider me worthy of courting. I’d even felt the hard length of Bryn’s manhood press against my stomach as his hips twitched while we danced beneath the colored lights at last year’s Harvest Festival. That kiss had left me gasping, dreaming about my own marriage bed and wondering whose handsome face I’d find on the pillow next to mine in the morning. Or who I would see grunting and moaning above me at night.
King Nøkkyn’s dark eyes and thin lips were not at all what I’d envisioned.
“Just...” Ma said, hesitantly. “Be sure he thinks you enjoy it. All of it. Whatever it is.”
My stomach clenched at the thought of what Nøkkyn might want to do to me. “Was that how you had to treat Da?”
She fell silent, and I wished I could take back my harsh words. When Ma finally spoke again, her voice was low and sad.
“I don’t have your beauty, Sol.”
“Some prize beauty is,” I muttered, “if I’m to be sold as a whore.”
Her cold fingers wrapped around mine, squeezing my hand. “My daughter. You’re saving us. You’re buying us food and freedom. Please don’t forget that.”
I snorted. Some gift, trading in my freedom so my family could eke out another year in the cold shadow of the Ironwood forest.
“And you’ll get to live in the palace,” Ma had said, her voice a shade too high to be sincere. “You’ll never go hungry, my dear.”
I bit my lip and kicked a stone out of the path. My stomach churned along with my memories. Damn my stupid face. Damn my beauty. If I’d been born a man, I’d be in the woods now, felling purple oaks alongside my brothers instead of hauling the eggs to market. Blinking, I wiped away the stray tears. The rank unfairness of it burned me, the injustice that I had to get dressed up and painted and hauled away. If only Da hadn’t died...
Da’s voice echoed in my head. Don’t chase the would-have-beens. And Ma was right. I might be going as a whore to King Nøkkyn’s castle, but I wouldn’t go hungry.
THE MONSTER’S LOVER: CHAPTER TWO
The beaten grass of the rutted road turned slowly to dirt, then to mud, as I approached town. The foul-smelling black earth squelched between my toes; my lip curled in distaste. Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a pair of shoes. Suddenly, Maddie Liefsen’s words echoed in my head. I’d overheard her talking with the other town girls during the last Harvest Festival. It was late at night, and multi colored lanterns burned in the branches above us. I’d spent the entire night trading dances with Bryn and the other handsome town boys, laughing as they spun me so quickly the flickering lanterns became a brilliant shimmering blur. Bryn had pulled me close and pressed his hips against mine until I felt the urgent heat of his manhood through the thin fabric of my dress. My own core thrummed in response, and I wished the music would never stop.
But the song ended, as everything must. I’d walked to the row of chairs in the grass to rest my feet while Bryn bought himself a horn of beer. Maddie was huddled with the other town girls, frowning at everything.
“Oh, yes, Sol dances with everyone,” Maddie snapped, “but she’s barefoot. Like a slave!”
Harsh laughter followed this observation. Some of my elation had leaked into the cold night air as I stared at my bare feet, dusty and sweat-stained from dancing. I wasn’t entirely certain if Maddie had meant for me to overhear her. I wasn’t sure what was worse, being the intentional target of her casual cruelty or being a barefoot eavesdropper. When Bryn returned, his eyes glazed with expensive beers from the drinking tent, I pled fatigue and turned him down. As I left the festival, I saw him dancing with Maddie, spinning her to the music, her silken shoes flashing in the lantern-light.
That was the way of it. I was far too low-born to be courted by a boy as rich as Bryn. He’d marry Maddie Liefsen, or one of her sniggering friends, and they’d dance together in the town square with shoes on their feet. It was no use wanting the world to be otherwise. Gather wishes in one hand and shit in the other, as my Da used to say. See which one fills up first.
I forced myself to stand tall when I saw the dull gray posts of Attin’s fence, the first sign of human habitation since I’d left our farthest potato fields. The ramshackle collection of his farm buildings would follow, and then the first of the town
buildings. I’d have to pass three of the fancy townhouses before reaching Johmaersen’s bakery and, I hoped, the best price for Ma’s eggs. Johmaersen had always been kind to me. At least before.
“Sol!”
I jumped at the voice. It sounded like a young man, and his intonation tugged at my memory. Was it one of the town boys, someone I’d recognize?
I turned and saw a tall figure step out from the shadows of Attin’s barn. Bryn, I realized. It was Bryn Attinsen. The sun lingered low on the horizon during harvest season, casting sharp shadows across the landscape and making it hard to decipher the expression on his face. He took a step closer, and I told myself to relax. This was Bryn, for the star’s sake. The boy who danced with me, who’d held me under the colored lights and kissed me until my head spun.
“Hello, Bryn!” I called. “You startled me!”
He smiled at my voice. In the days after last year’s Harvest Festival, I’d allowed myself an occasional, impossible dream about what it would be like to have Bryn as my husband, to wake and find his handsome face on the other side of the pillow every morning.
Bryn stepped into the middle of the muddy road, his feet wide and one arm cocked behind his back. Only then did I notice something oddly cold about his smile. Shivers crept up my spine. A flash of motion caught my eye, and I spun to see another figure emerging from behind Attin’s barn. He was a full head taller than Bryn, and he wore the same hard, cold smile. Both his arms were tucked behind his back.
I recognized him. Olafur. Once, when little Egren was only five or six, Olafur had chased him through town, pelting him with rocks until he bled. Da pulled us all aside and told us to run like deer if we ever saw Olafur again.
“You’ll be safe under the trees,” Da had told us, his voice rough and his eyes dark. “You kids belong to the Ironwood. They’ll never find you in here.”
I shifted uncertainly on my feet, not daring to glance behind me. I wasn’t far from the shelter of the Ironwood, but the basket of eggs pressed against my hip, heavy and unforgiving. Ma was right; we needed the flour. I forced myself to stand tall and ignore the tight knot in my gut.
The Complete Fenris Series Page 5