Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters (70 page)

“How does the girl have such cheer in a place like this one?
Does she not know to where she goes?”

“I know. Really, I do.” Truly speaking, I did not. I only
had a vague notion that I was going off to be in the service of a king of whom
I’d never heard before a few hours past. “But there’s just so much going on. I
think I’m just stunned at all the activity. I’m from a little village outside the
city, so I’ve never seen people like you – I mean people like this.”

The man standing in front of me shook with laughter, but
made no sound. He reached out a hand and took a curl of my hair between his
fingers.
Why did he touch me? Does he like the way I look? That’s
ridiculous, I’m wearing a big, saggy tunic that a slaver gave me. If I was
wearing my nicer things, maybe, but no. That’s ridiculous. And he’s so big and
strong, gorgeous and exotic. I’m just a simple farm girl. He could have his
pick of any woman here, or most anywhere probably.
 

“Gold,” he said. “You are curious. Want to know things,
yes?”

“I suppose. I’ve always wanted to see the world outside my
little burg, but never had the chance. Thought I never would.

“A girl picked a strange way to do it.”

I shrugged.

He cocked his head a little to one side and stared at me for
a moment longer without speaking. Dropping the curl of hair between his
fingers, he touched my face with the back of his hand. Surprised, I pulled away
from him, which in turn made him jump a little.

“Why did the girl jump away? Are my hands too rough?”

“No,” I said. “No, it’s just that...well...it was a surprise
is all. I didn’t expect it.”

“There is something about your eyes that reminds me of
home,” he said. He cocked his head in the other direction. His voice turned
much softer, but stayed nice and deep. As he watched me, he curled the pointy
beard on his chin around his little finger and flicked the tip. Down either
side of his jaw thick, black whiskers ran and were all neatly braided, each one
with what looked like a coin around the end.

“You like Shingo’s beard?” He ran his hand along the coins,
letting them jingle against one another. “This is how a Zoran shows his might.
When a fight is won, you braid in a coin. When a fight is lost, the beard is
shaved and the warrior shamed. He can grow another, but that takes some time.”

“May I?” I said, reaching out to touch him.

He took a small step forward.

Taking one of the three-inch long braids between my fingers,
I rolled it around, and then tried another. Each tip was covered in something
like bee’s wax. A vague smell of spices and incense drifted off his face and
touched my nose when I got near enough to smell him. I let out a surprised puff
of air.

“The girl doesn’t like Shingo’s beard?”

“I do, it’s very impressive. I just didn’t expect you to
smell so...
nice
.”

Even as I spoke, I felt a warm flush creep up my neck and
immediately felt foolish.

“Sorry, sorry, I always stick my foot in my mouth when I
talk.”

He laughed very, very loud. “The girl’s feet are both on the
ground. How can one be in your mouth?” Shingo slapped his leather-clad thigh
over and over again, bellowing such that tears streamed down his face. “Can you
do this?”

“Do what?” A smile crept across my face. “Stick my foot in
my mouth?”

He nodded.

“I – no, probably not. Well maybe, but I’m only
wearing this tied off tunic. It might be indecent.”

“What does the girl mean indecent? Why would the girl be
ashamed of having a good trick?”

“Ah...well, I mean I’m not wearing any underclothes. It
would be embarrassing for all these men to see me writhe around to stick my
foot in my mouth.”

“Ohhhh, Shingo always forgets. Every time I come here,
forget Lotan modesty. Must be uhcum – uncom – ah...you must not
like being paraded around without clothes on, for the parade of slaves and the
inspection.”

His black eyes sparkled again as the sun rose high enough to
crest the city walls. The lines of Shingo’s cheeks stunned me for a moment. I
paid no attention to the words he said or the blush creeping up my throat. Then
it dawned on me that he said something about the parade.

“It was bad, but I took myself out of it. I forced myself to
look at faces in the crowd and not think about what was happening to me.”

Shingo raised his hand and put it on the back of mine. That
time I didn’t jump.

“How does the girl do it? So much sadness and crying and
yelling here; there is so much pain and terror. How do you not weep for what
you have lost?” His hand warmed mine. It sent little tingles down my wrist to
my elbow, then to my shoulder and down my side. “And why is she not afraid of
me? How does she keep smiling?”

I blushed again when he spoke, but it was the sort that’s
deep inside. My skin felt warm when he touched my hand, but his words warmed me
from the inside out. It took me a second to collect myself enough to respond.

“I don’t know that I’m doing anything special,” I finally
managed. “I’m just getting by however I can. It’s not like I want to be here,
but my father, he needed...”

“A girl sold herself to a king out of love for her father?”

“Yes, that’s it, more or less.”

He stroked my hand with his fingertips, then gathered both
of my hands in one of his, and pressed the whole bundle to my chest. Just like
before, he radiated heat that sent curls of energy out from where our bodies
met.

“Shingo!” A cry came from off to the east, from one of the
guards atop the wall. “What are you doing? If you’re going to rape her, rape
her and get on with it. One of Morzan’s purchases tried to escape and hurt
herself somehow. Come set this wound!”

“Ah. Quite sorry little princess.”

“Princess?”

“Oh, not princess? Thought auctioneer said girl was a
princess.”

“No,” I giggled. “Most certainly not. Just the daughter of a
lowly lord without enough money to buy crops for the next year.”

He nodded a grave, serious nod.

“You are a special girl. Shingo will see you again.”

“When? I mean – do you work for Morzan?”

“Ha! Does Shingo work for Morzan, she asks.”

“Well?”

“Shingo and Morzan are very close. He trusts me to do things
he trusts no one else to do. I will see you again. Shingo will be in Zor after
the snowy season breaks.”

“But I thought Zor was a winter kingdom? I thought it snowed
all the time there?”

“No. Well, yes. For a part of the year, it snows a little
less. Zoran call that time of year summer.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is that when the sun shines?”

“Yes, yes, every day the sun shines. For at least an hour.”

As I turned to continue on my way to the small barracks, I
heard Shingo bellow another of his laughs on his way to check a broken ankle.

“That’s strange, I don’t remember...” I felt a scratch
between my breasts and pulled the front of my loose-fitting tunic open, stuck
my hand down it without a shred of shame and fished out a small slip of paper.”

“Do not forget,” it read. “Shingo will come after the
winter. Stay strong until then. Do not let the King break your smile.”

“Now what in the world does that mean? Break my smile?”

I stuffed the paper into my little bundle, rolling it up
nice and tight. Just holding the slip of paper made me feel better, though I
can’t say exactly why. Maybe it was the idea that even with everything going
on, I had a friend.

***

No sleep came that night. I turned the note over and over in
my hands so many times that I was a little afraid of rubbing the ink off. A
small hearth fire was all the light we had after the sun went down, but judging
from the reactions shared by the rest of the newly-sold girls, they were far
more accustomed to this treatment than was I.

“Are you going to sleep? Put the grass on the fire when you
do.” A red-haired girl said to me as she rolled over and tugged a sheet up to
her chin.

“I’ll be up awhile still.”

She nodded. “Hum. New to all this, aren’t you? You don’t
seem as bitter as everyone else.”

“Oh no, I’ve been through it a half-dozen times.” My lie was
obvious, but it made me feel some better.

As I sat, staring at the fire and poking it with a stick, I
started to wonder whether or not I had done something
tremendously
stupid. I mean, sure, my papa would be able to afford seed and help for the
foreseeable future, but what was to happen to me? Still, no matter how I
worried about what was going to happen to me, I couldn’t get my papa’s face out
of my mind.

Imagining the morning I left, a picture painted itself
behind my eyelids. I saw my papa waking up and calling me to help with the
chickens and then worrying when I didn’t come for breakfast. Mama would have
made the normal biscuits and marmalade we had every morning, maybe some eggs
from the hens, maybe a little bacon from the pig we killed last month. It’d be
burned black of course, because that’s how I liked it.

Mama was always pleasing me. I never felt able to keep up
with the things they did for me. Neither of my parents told me I was anything
but the most beautiful, wonderful girl in the world, but I never much felt like
it. Papa woke up before the sun and went to sleep long after anyone else. Aside
from the farming business, he had to administer the very few farmers who tended
lands on his estate. Not many of them, but they always seemed to have a problem
– wanting to fish slightly down river and a neighbor complaining, Billy
goats from the next house over eating their thatch – and it was up to him
to keep the peace.

And then there was mama and her cooking, and her cleaning,
and constantly taking care of me when I got sick. I could taste the bread she
baked, unfailingly, no matter how terrible she felt or how bad the weather was,
in the back of my throat, deep down, where you smell things and you taste them
at the same time – even when they aren’t there.

Sitting on my little palette in front of the fire, I tried
my best to push those things out of my mind. I think that I made the decision I
did to repay them for all of that, and so much more. At least that’s what I
told myself.  If I was never going to pay them back any other way, maybe this
would save the farm. Then again maybe not, I just didn’t know.

I felt myself sinking into one of those dark places that is
really, really hard to get out of. The ones where you think of one thing, then
another and then another, and before you know it, you’ve gotten into the worst
place you’ve ever been and then you go one worse. I thought what if my papa got
sick and couldn’t do the harvest, what if mama’s throat started to act up and
there was no one to cook or clean the clothes. What if the crops all died? What
if
I
died and never got back?
What if, what if, what if! Calm down,
Jo! You’re getting yourself worked up over something you can’t help. Just take
it how it comes.

A loud sigh escaped my mouth, on the end of which rode a
shudder, and a sniffle.

I told him it would be alright. The last thing I said to my
father, the man I loved best in the entire world, was that everything would be
fine. And then there I was, rocking myself on a palette in the middle of a
slave camp. The next morning I knew I was leaving the whole world that I knew
behind. Part of me was a little excited to see new things, hear new accents and
meet new people, but even my weirdly optimistic spirit knew it wasn’t going to
be all roses and fun.

For a long time, the fire danced in front of my eyes. Little
orange flecks disappeared into the chimney, and a lip of smoke trickled out of
the flue and back into the bunkhouse. A window was open and a breeze blew
gently through that sucked away whatever smoke was left.

Sitting and rocking back and forth on my heels wasn’t making
me feel any better. It was just giving me a chance to think up all the most
horrible stuff possible. Then I remembered that tiny slip of paper that Shingo
secreted down the front of my tunic. I hadn’t put it down since he gave it to
me, just idly rolled it back and forth. My eyes drifted down to the burned wood
as it fell to ash.

After another sniff and a wipe of my eyes to ward off tears
that I’m sure were caused by the acrid smoke, or at least that’s what I told
myself, I stuck my finger in the fluffy ashes and rubbed them together.

I got an idea.

A little bit of water and a squeeze of lemon juice later, I
had a decent supply of rather good, if slightly runny, ink. I managed to pry a
length of twig off a piece of firewood. Not the finest of writing utensils, but
it had to do. Paper was impossible, but I’d never miss a bit of hem, so I
ripped a square off one of my underskirts. I thought to write a letter to my
papa and wish him well but I knew it would never get to him, so I scratched out
the ‘papa’ part. When I started again, my makeshift pen seemed to move on its
own.

“Dear Shingo,

I don’t know why I’m writing to you, or even how you’ll get
this. I do hope you’re around the camp tomorrow morning so I can pass it before
the wagon leaves. Otherwise, I’ll leave it in my bunk and maybe you’ll find it.
I suppose I won’t know if you did or not. Sometimes things just have to be
taken on faith.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m taking a leap. I don’t know
why and I don’t know how far it’ll go, but I’m opening up because there’s
nothing else to do. Not right now, anyway. I don’t even know if you can read
and I’m writing you a letter. How’s that for faith?

As I sit here, I’m terrified. All that grinning and smiling
I did for you is just an act. I do it all the time, and this is probably the
first I’ve ever admitted to myself, much less to someone else. I can’t keep it
inside anymore. I just can’t. You said you were going back to Zor at the end of
winter. I don’t know what that means, but I hope it’s soon. I’m running out of
cloth so I have to go now, but if nothing else, know that just talking to me
made everything easier. I’m going to a place where I don’t know anyone, with no
friends and no one I can talk to. I’ve never been away from home. Never, not
once. This is the first time. You made it a little easier.