“Is Darsy really so bad?” Leesha asked.
Bruna’s watery eyes turned Gared’s way. “I know you’re stronger than an ox, boy, but I imagine there are still a few cords to split out back.”
Gared didn’t need to be told twice. He was out the door in a blink, and they heard him put the axe back to work.
“Darsy’s useful enough around the hut,” Bruna admitted. “She splits wood almost as fast as your boy, and makes a fair porridge. But those meaty hands are too clumsy for healing, and she has little aptitude for the Gatherer’s art. She’ll make a passable mid-wife—any fool can pull a babe from its mother—and at setting bones she’s second to none, but the subtler work is beyond her. I weep at the thought of this town with her as Herb Gatherer.”
“You won’t make Gared much of a wife if you can’t get a simple dinner together!” Elona called.
Leesha scowled. So far as she knew, her mother had never prepared a meal in her life. It had been days since she’d had a proper sleep, but Creator forbid her mother lift a hand to help.
She had spent the day tending the sick with Bruna and Darsy. She picked up the skills quickly, causing Bruna to use her as an example to Darsy. Darsy did not care for that.
Leesha knew Bruna wanted to apprentice her. The old woman didn’t push, but she had made her intentions clear. But there was her father’s papermaking business to think of as well. She had worked in the shop, a large connected section of their house, since she was a little girl, penning messages for villagers and making sheets. Erny told her she had a gift for it. Her bindings were prettier than his, and Leesha liked to embed her pages with flower petals, which the ladies in Lakton and Fort Rizon paid more for than their husbands did for plain sheets.
Erny’s hope was to retire while Leesha ran the shop and Gared made the pulp and handled the heavy work. But paper-making had never held much interest for Leesha. She did it mostly to spend time with her father, away from the lash of her mother’s tongue.
Elona might have liked the money it made, but she hated the shop, complaining of the smell of the lye in the pulping vats and the noise of the grinder. The shop was a retreat from her that Leesha and Erny took often, a place of laughter that the house proper would never be.
Steave’s booming laugh made Leesha look up from the vegetables she was chopping for stew. He was in the common room, sitting in her father’s chair, drinking his ale. Elona sat on the chair’s arm, laughing and leaning in, her hand on his shoulder.
Leesha wished she were a flame demon, so she could spit fire on them. She had never been happy trapped in the house with Elona, but now all she could think of was Bruna’s stories. Her mother didn’t love her father and probably never had. She thought her daughter a cruel joke of the Creator. And she hadn’t been a virgin when Erny carried her across the wards.
For some reason, that cut the deepest. Bruna said there was no sin in a woman taking pleasure in a man, but her mother’s hypocrisy stung nonetheless. She had helped force Klarissa out of town to hide her own indiscretion.
“I won’t be like you,” Leesha swore. She would have her wedding day as the Creator intended, and become a woman in a proper marriage bed.
Elona squealed at something Steave said, and Leesha began to sing to herself to drown them out. Her voice was rich and pure; Tender Michel was forever asking her to sing at services.
“Leesha!” her mother barked a moment later. “Quit your warbling! We can hardly hear ourselves think out here!”
“Doesn’t sound like there’s much thinking going on,” Leesha muttered.
“What was that?” Elona demanded.
“Nothing!” Leesha called back in her most innocent voice.
They ate just after sunset, and Leesha watched proudly as Gared used the bread she had made to scrape clean his third bowl of her stew.
“She’s not much of a cook, Gared,” Elona apologized, “but it’s filling enough if you hold your nose.”
Steave, gulping ale at the time, snorted it out his nose. Gared laughed at his father, and Elona snatched the napkin from Erny’s lap to dry Steave’s face. Leesha looked to her father for support, but he kept his eyes on his bowl. He hadn’t said a word since emerging from the shop.
It was too much for Leesha. She cleared the table and retreated to her room, but there was no sanctuary there. She had forgotten that her mother had given the room to Steave for the duration of his and Gared’s indefinite stay. The giant woodcutter had tracked mud across her spotless floor, leaving his filthy boots atop her favorite book, where it lay by her bed.
She cried out and ran to the treasure, but the cover was hopelessly muddied. Her bedclothes of soft Rizonan wool were stained with Creator knew what, and stank of a foul blend of musky sweat and the expensive Angierian perfume her mother favored.
Leesha felt sick. She clutched her precious book tightly and fled to her father’s shop, weeping as she tried futilely to clean the stains from her book. It was there Gared found her.
“So this is where ya run off to,” he said, moving to encircle her in his burly arms.
Leesha pulled away, wiping her eyes and trying to compose herself. “I just needed a moment,” she said.
Gared caught her arm. “Is this about the joke yur mum made?” he asked.
Leesha shook her head, trying to turn away again, but Gared held her fast.
“I was only laughing at my da,” he said. “I loved yur stew.”
“Really?” Leesha sniffed.
“Really,” he promised, pulling her close and kissing her deeply. “We could feed an army of sons on cooking like that,” he husked.
Leesha giggled. “I might have trouble squeezing out an army of little Gareds,” she said.
He held her tighter, and put his lips to her ear. “Right now, I’m only interested in you squeezing one in,” he said.
Leesha groaned, but she gently pushed him away. “We’ll be wed soon enough,” she said.
“Yesterday ent soon enough,” Gared said, but he let her go.
Leesha lay curled up in blankets by the common room fire. Steave had her room, and Gared was on a cot in the shop. The floor was drafty and cold at night, and the wool rug was rough and hard to lie upon. She longed for her own bed, though nothing short of burning would erase the stench of Steave and her mother’s sin.
She wasn’t even sure why Elona bothered with the ruse. It wasn’t as if she was fooling anyone. She might as well put Erny out in the common room and take Steave right to her bed.
Leesha couldn’t wait until she and Gared could leave.
She lay awake, listening to the demons testing the wards and imagining running the papermaking shop with Gared, her father retired and her mother and Steave sadly passed on. Her belly was round and full, and she kept books while Gared came in flexed and sweaty from working the grinder. He kissed her as their little ones raced about the shop.
The image warmed her, but she remembered Bruna’s words, and wondered if she would be missing something if she devoted her life to children and papermaking. She closed her eyes again, and imagined herself as the Herb Gatherer of Cutter’s Hollow, everyone depending on her to cure their ills, deliver their babies, and heal their wounds. It was a powerful image, but one harder to fit Gared or children into. An Herb Gatherer had to visit the sick, and the image of Gared carrying her herbs and tools from place to place didn’t ring true, nor did the idea of him keeping an eye on the children while she worked.
Bruna had managed it, however many decades ago, marrying, raising children, and still tending the folk, but Leesha didn’t see how. She would have to ask the old woman.
She heard a click, and looked up to see Gared gingerly stepping from the shop. She pretended to be asleep until he drew near, then rolled over suddenly. “What are you doing out here?” she whispered. Gared jumped and covered his mouth to muffle a yelp. Leesha had to bite her lip to keep from laughing aloud.