Chapter 8: Omission

He startled awake and lunged, biting blindly into his attacker.  

“You can't say I don't learn from experience,” Bianca let go of the log she had poked him with.

Tate released the wood from his grasp, adrenaline still singing through his veins.

“It’s getting late, and I thought you would want to get up,” Bianca retrieved the log, setting it next to the fire.  “Didn't you sleep well?  Your tail’s not hurting, is it?”

“Yeah, a little bit,” he lied.  If he said he had a nightmare, she might ask what it was about.  He couldn't imagine telling her the dream, let alone explaining the peculiarities of wolf man sex.  Just thinking about it made his ears burn with shame.

“You should see a doctor,” Bianca's forehead scrunched with concern, “There are doctors, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be okay though,” he had forgotten that lies always carried their own set of consequences. There was a saying about that, something about rats and traps.

Bianca was still scrunching her forehead at him.  She stood over him as if she was going to speak, then shook her head and limped out the door.  He stretched and stood up.  Limping or not, she would help him clear a homesite.  If he were to have any hope of winning Amber back, Bianca had to go.  

He waited for Bianca to return.  After a few minutes, he went outside and relieved himself.  Sniffing the air, he followed her scent to the last place she had used as a toilet.  He sniffed again, unable to locate a stronger smell.  Puzzled, he headed over to the creek.  She was not there.  Thinking he must have somehow missed her, he circled back to the cabin.  It stood empty, the fire popping companionably.  Feeling a pang of hunger, he wolfed down last night’s overboiled eggs.  From the position of the sun, he would guess it was nearing midday.  He put on a pot of beans, hoping she would come back while he was preparing them.  When she failed to appear, he picked up a machete and headed up the road until he found a spot that looked suitable for a house.  He began to work at clearing the underbrush, cutting and hauling it out onto the road.  When the pile was so large that the road was impassable, he returned to his cabin to fetch his wagon.  

He grumbled to himself as he filled the cart with brush.  Bianca should be here helping him.  It was already past lunch time and - the beans!  He had completely forgotten the beans!  He ran back to the cabin, removing the pan from the fire with a torn wad of denim he used as a hot pad.  Depositing the smoking pot outside, he ducked back into the cabin, choking on the smoke.  He carried a bowl outside and spooned burnt beans into it.  Frowning, he went back up the road to retrieve his cart.  There was a field down the road a ways, and he had used it before for burning brush.  Seeing how the day had gone so far, he decided to wait on burning the debris, merely placing it in the field for storage.

 

After eating some burnt beans, he headed back towards the homesite.  In spite of all his work, it looked a great deal like the surrounding area, and he almost walked past it.  As he continued chopping away at ferns and blackberry vines, worries filled his head.  He couldn’t possibly imagine where Bianca would have gone.  She was exhausted just from their short trip to the market.  Had someone or something kidnapped her?  Had she fallen unconscious somewhere he had failed to look?

The sun was low in the sky when he caught her scent.  At first he thought he imagined it, but it grew stronger, along with the smell of fresh bread.  He made his way to the road just as she passed in front of him.  She jumped, dropping the cloth sack from her arms.  A pair of apples rolled down the hill.  She sat down heavily in the dirt, “Tate, I thought you were a monster.  You look feral with all those leaves and branches stuck in your fur.”

“Unlike you, I was working on your homesite,” he crossed his arms, his relief fading into resentment.

“I thought you were hurt,” Bianca pulled aloe leaves out of the sack, “These are for your tail.  It’s supposed to take away the pain.”

“You went to the market for that?” guilt scratched at the back of his mind, “How much did you pay for that?”

“Twenty blessings.”

“Twenty!”

“She needed it in a way, and I needed the aloe,” Bianca rose to her feet.

“That wasn’t right of Amber, no matter who you were,” he retrieved the apples, handing them to her.  

“I got some bread for dinner,” she limped towards the cabin, “and look, cheese!”  She pulled out a shallow glass jar filled with farm-style cheese.

Reaching the yard, he scraped the remaining beans out of the pot, then hauled it over to the creek.  After rinsing and scrubbing the inside, he filled it and carried it back to the house.  Bianca was coaxing the fire back to life, a bowl with sliced apples, bread, and cheese waiting for him in his chair.  He tore into it, delighting in the way the tang of the apple complemented the creaminess of the cheese.  Bianca ate lying down, her weariness apparent in her drooping eyes.  

When he finished his meal, he lay next to her, trying to pull some of the leaves out of his fur.  They didn't poke at him the way the burrs had, so his grooming was perfunctory.  Bianca pulled off her sock and examined the blisters on her foot.  “When there is no trap, the cheese is poisoned,” he finally recalled the proverb.

“Your mother used to say that when she thought you were lying about stealing her cigarettes,” Bianca absently picked at her skin.

“Bee,” he ventured, “my mom?  Is she well?”  

“She's alive.”  Bianca hesitated.

“I think about her a lot,” now that he had broached the subject, he was unable to stop.  “Does she know that you cursed me?  Does she know why?  You know, my dad ran off and left her when I was two.  If she thought I just left . . . I know we didn't get along when I was a teenager, but that's normal.  That doesn't mean I didn't love her.  I mean, if I had a kid I’d probably be the same.”

“Tate.”

“Does she still live next door to you?  Did she stop smoking?  She was a nurse, she knew better.  I used to call her a hypocrite.  She got after me about smoking too.  It was crazy, one moment she'd be all, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna smoke a cigarette and relax,’ and then the next be yelling at me for doing the exact same thing.”

“Tate.”

“We had a fight before I left, but we were always fighting.  She was picking on me, saying I was moping about the house.  Ow, quit it,” he batted Bianca's hand away.  She had grabbed his ear and given him a pinch, right on the outer fold.  

“Then let me say something.  I’m not even sure I can keep track of the questions you've asked so far,” Bianca rubbed her eyes.  “Let’s see.  No, I didn't tell your mother, or mine, that I cursed you.  I didn't tell them anything.  There's some things you just don't want your mom to know.  So, she probably did think you ran off,” she sucked in her bottom lip, then continued, “She still lives next to my parents, still smokes, but she lost her job.  She was looking for you for a long time.”

Tate could feel the lump form in the back of his throat again.  He had been so afraid of her hating him for what he had done, that he thought it best to disappear.  But the pain of not knowing was one he was familiar with, one that was equally hurtful.  

He rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in the blankets.  Even if no tears would come out of his eyes, he knew he was grimacing, his face contorting as the pain roiled through his body.  

“Are you okay?” Bianca said the words barely above a whisper, almost as if she were talking to herself.  

He didn't answer.  If she knew he was hurting; if she touched him, he thought his soul would shatter.

Chapter 7: Beggars Can Ride

This chapter contains scenes of a sexual nature that may be disturbing to some readers.

By the time they made it home that night, Bianca was exhausted.  Tate had offered her a ride in his cart, but she had only shook her head, a weariness dulling the orange of her eyes into a more pedestrian brown.  She didn't argue when he told her to sit, flopping into the rocking chair like she had no bones or muscles.  He stoked the fire, carefully placing four eggs in the pot.  

Bianca’s head was forward, her eyes closed.  Realizing he was alone, he allowed himself to experience the sorrow that had been building in his chest all day.  It rose into his throat, a lump that refused to go either up or down his esophagus.  Part of his curse was an inability to cry.  There was no cathartic release of tears, no sobs, just the pain pushing against the insides of his body, trying to find a way out.   He picked up his fiddle and tuned it.  The least he could do was to play one last song for Amber; about the way she made him feel, about that cunning smile and boundless energy, that hidden gentleness and visible strength.  She had loved for who he was now, not for some memory of a comely young man or some hope that he might transform, no, Amber had loved Tate the wolf man.

His fiddle tuned, Tate began playing a song he had composed the first time he and Amber broke up.  He was never sure if the tune was entirely his, but out here it didn’t matter if a particular series of notes was borrowed.  He always thought of it as Amber’s Song, and he played it passionately.  He was unaware of the passage of time until Bianca spoke, “Do you know Beggars Can Ride?”  She stretched her arms above her head, “It sounds kind of similar to that.”  She started humming, slightly off-key, closing her eyes as she reached the chorus, the one part of the song she knew the words to:

“Beggars can ride whatever they choose,

You see it’s possession that owns the man,

Beggars can ride as far as the road goes,

Free as the emptiness in an open hand.”

Remembering the eggs, Tate fished them out with the ladle placing two in each bowl.  As he worried over them, Bianca continued talking.

“I never really liked that song.  It always sounded like it was encouraging people to just forget about the people they loved and run away,” she paused watching him blow on the eggs,  “No offense.”

He cracked one of the eggs, burning his fingers.

“Then I realized that maybe that wasn’t what they meant at all.  Maybe they just meant that people should be open, you know?  Open to new ideas and experience.  Open to each other.  Open to forgive,” she rubbed her eyes.  “I’m sorry, I’m talking nonsense right now,” she shifted her weight forward in the chair, “I’m just so tired.”  

What happened next seemed to happen all at once.  Bianca tried to stand, but her legs refused to support her.  Instead she pitched forward towards the hearth.  Frightened, he blocked her way with his body.  If he had been thinking clearly, he would have dropped the eggs and grabbed her.  As it was, he did little to arrest her fall and only succeeded in falling with her, still trying to protect his eggs.  He landed so close to the hearth that he could feel sparks hitting his tail.  Bianca landed not far from the chair itself, banging the back of her head against the seat of the chair.  She curled into a ball, moaning with pain.

Unsure of how to comfort her, he peeled the eggs and placed the bowl in front of her.  “Are you hungry, Bee?” he scooted away from the fire.  “Are you okay?” he held a hand over her back, then closed it and put it against his chest as if it was injured.

“Oh, Holy Circle it hurts,” she sat up slightly wiping her eyes, “What is that smell?”

He smelled it the same time as she did, the acrid smell of burning fur.  Bianca grabbed his tail, running her hands down it to smoother the budding flames.  Her reaction was so quick that he could tell she hadn’t thought of her own safety until the fire was out and she looked at her palms.  She froze, staring into her own hands, a look of sadness on her face.  Unnerved, he grabbed her by the wrists, expecting to see red skin or angry welts.  The skin of her palms was undamaged, and he released her with a sigh, “It’s been a long day, Bee.  Let’s go to bed.”

“Okay, but I’m eating my eggs and there might be crumbs,” she crawled onto the mattress, then reached for her bowl.  

He followed suit, stopping to inspect his tail.  The smell of burnt fur still hung in the air, turning his stomach.  Knowing he needed to eat, he bit into the egg. It was overboiled, a blue ring around the yellow yolk.  He forced himself to swallow, then discreetly placed the remainder back in his bowl.  Next to him Bianca was munching away contentedly.  He doubted her eggs were any better, but a clear conscious and a weary body wet her hunger to the point that taste didn’t matter.  She lay closer to him than she had in the past, and he found himself thinking about the previous night.  The coldness of her touch took a bit of getting used to, but it didn’t hamper his enjoyment of her.  Then there was that scent.  He could smell it underneath the burnt smell.  She no longer smelled of blood, but it was just as complex.  He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.  She smelled earthy with the salty notes of sweat, a sourness that came from a diet heavy in eggs and milk.  Underneath that was the curious smell of citrus.  He wanted to bury his nose in her and lick her.  

He opened his eyes wide then screwed them shut.  How could he even think something like that when his heart was hurting over another?  “It's spring,” he reminded himself, “You two grew up together.  It's just unfinished business, unsated lust.”  He took a breath out of his mouth, then covered his face with a blanket.  That at least smelled like him and wood smoke, nothing else.  Breathing through the blanket, he fell asleep.

In his dream he was fully human.  When Bianca saw him, she was so glad that she fell into his arms.  They were suddenly wearing no clothes, and he pressed himself to her, mating himself to her in that way peculiar to humans, belly to belly.  For a few blissful moments, their bodies moved synchronously.  He could feel himself swell inside of her, and he looked down at his hands to discover they were covered in fur.  Bianca’s eyes widened in terror, but he could not pull himself out of her.  

He sat up in bed, dripping in sweat, his heart racing as if he had been the one being violated.  Bianca lay beside him, her body turned towards him.  Her face was relaxed, eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar.  Unable to shake the horror of the dream, Tate unlatched the door and slipped out into the rain.  Turning his face to the sky, he howled.  He waited for a few moments, straining to hear a reply.  When he and Amber had first started dating, she would howl back at him if she was awake.  He howled again, praying that she still loved him just enough to answer.  The only sound was the pitter of the rain on the trees and the skitter of a smaller creature on the ground.  Even with Bianca near by, he felt more alone than he had ever been.  

Chapter 6: Goosegrass

When he came home, Bianca pressed a bowl of beans and rice into his hands.  A sunny-side-up egg sat on top, its yellow yolk a dome of perfection.

“I would like to go with you to the market,” Bianca hovered, barely allowing him enough space to enter the room.

“Let me sit down before we talk about this.”

“I know I said I’d mind your hearth, but I want to see what the market is like,” Bianca pulled something out of his fur.

He gaped at her, to stunned to move.  She had touched him.

“A pinecone.  Really, Tate?  You walk around with a pinecone on your head?” she giggled and tossed the pinecone into the fire.

He took a deep breath and crossed the room to his chair.  Sitting, he stabbed the egg with his fork and watched the yellow bleed into the rice.  “I have a girlfriend,” he dragged the tines of his fork through it, coating them with yolk.

“Uh, okay,” Bianca gave him a strange look.  “Not really sure what that has to do with - oh!  Does she know I’m living here?”

“She knows I have a guest.”

“Of indeterminate gender,” Bianca shook her head.

“That doesn't really describe you,” he dipped his fork in the rice and watched it stick to the yolk.

“You're going to have to tell her, otherwise it seems suspicious.”

Tate placed the fork in his mouth.  It was suspicious.  Unhappy with himself, he focused on chopping up the egg white.  “How exactly did you fry an egg?”

“I used this,” Bianca picked up the pail and gestured at it.  “I’ll go put it by the creek,” she swept out the cabin door, closing it behind her with a thunk.

He ate in silence, trying to imagine how he would go about frying an egg on a pail.  It could be placed inside the pail, or maybe fried on the outside.  He imagined it sliding down the convex side of the pail, the white running in a spidery trail.  His egg musings preoccupied him until his food was finished.  He picked up his fiddle, glancing up at the ceiling.  The cracks in the roof no longer showed the blue of the sky, and he wondered if he should worry about Bianca's absence.  

He puffed out his cheeks and sat back down to play.  It was none of his business what she did or what kind of trouble she got into.  If she couldn't manage herself, it was not his problem.  He bowed the fiddle’s top string, then the next.  It was out of tune not just with the standard scale, but with itself.  Exasperated, he set it down and went to the door.

There was a full moon in the sky with a complementary smattering of stars.  Tate sniffed the air.  Bianca’s scent seemed to rise out of the earth at him, rich and tantalizing.  Operating on pure instinct, he tracked the scent to his cart.  Bianca lay inside, wedged between two large pieces of wood.

“What are you doing out here, Bee?”

“Trying to sleep,” she sat up and glared at him, “Trying.”

“You must be freezing, come inside,” he said gruffly.

“Ever since I’ve been cursed, I don't feel cold.  I mean, I am cold, but I don't feel that way,” she climbed over a log and scooted to the end of the wagon.

“I’ll take you to the market tomorrow, just come inside,” the back of his neck itched.  He reached back to scratch it, pulling out a burr.  

Bianca swung her legs over the side of the wagon and stood.  “You have another right there,” she pointed at her own neck.

He put his hand to his neck.

“Other side,” Bianca watched him feel for the burr, then reached up and pulled it out herself.

“I must have got into some goosegrass,” dismayed, he stuck his hand up the back of his shirt.  Sure enough, burrs were stuck to him there as well, and he cursed himself for removing his shirt while he worked.  

“Let me see,” Bianca pulled his shirt up and examined him.  “I hate to say it, but you look like the time our dog rolled in a patch of yellow avens,” she let his shirt fall back into place, “Come on.”  She walked back into his cabin, settling on his mattress.

He followed her in, closing and latching the door behind him.  

Bianca patted the spot next to her, “Come here, and take off your shirt.  I’ll try to remove as many as I can.”

Uncertain if he wanted those cold hands touching him, he hesitated.  “Well,” he thought, “it's either that or spend all night feeling itchy.”  He turned away from her and pulled the shirt over his head.  Diffidently, he sat with his back turned to her.  

There were, really, a countless number of burrs.  The time it took to remove them seemed to blur, and his self-consciousness melted into a weary acquiescence.  He lay on his stomach while Bianca's icy hands untangled the burrs and pulled out tufts of his winter coat.  

He would doze off, only to wake and realize she too had fallen asleep, her head and hands resting against his back.  If he moved at all, she would jerk awake, her fingers running through his fur.  It was sensual and intimate in an unintentional way, and he was too tired to moralize or reframe his thinking.  

It would come to him the next morning, that Bianca hadn't been cursed as an ice woman without cause.  She had done for him what she would do for anyone, and though it made little sense, he was angry at her for that.

“Hurry up,” he grumbled over his shoulder.  Bianca, unencumbered by anything, trailed a good ten feet behind his cart.  “Why are you so slow?”

“Why,” Bianca panted, “are you,” she huffed, “so crabby?”

He stopped his cart, “Jump in the back, Bee, I’d like to get to market before the sun sets.”

“I’ll not,” she shook her head in defiance, “Go on ahead."

Seeing the flash of orange in her eyes, he shrugged and continued up the path.  If he arrived ahead of her, he could talk to Amber alone for a few minutes.  She might be a little less angry at him that way, he hoped, even though he deserved every last bit of her wrath.  Just about anything she could accuse him of had some grounds of truth to it.  Even the things he hadn't done, he had thought of, and it was wrong of him.  By the time he reached the market, he was fully penitent, his tail hanging between his legs.  

Amber watched him approach, a look of frank curiosity on her face, “What did you do?”

“The guest staying at my house?”  He stopped his cart in front of his usual stall, “The unwelcome guest?”  He slunk closer to Amber, “She’s a she.  I should have told you, and I didn't, and I'm sorry.”

“Is that all Tate?” Amber looked amused, “You know I’m a jealous witch, but as long as she doesn't look like-” Amber glanced around the market then pointed.  Tate felt his stomach drop.  She was pointing at Bianca, who was entering the market in her own personal cloud of mist.  “-oh, like that or something.”

Spotting him, Bianca headed towards him, oblivious to his panic.  “Hi,” she said to Amber, “You have some lovely basil.”

“Honey, I got the sweetest basil you can find,” Amber winked at her, “Only eight blessings for you.”

“Sorry, I don't have any money,” Bianca bit her lip.  “How am I going to pay for printing, Tate?” she turned her attention to him, suddenly registering his discomfort.  “Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.  I’ll just take a look around, okay?”

Tate watched Bianca wander off, her eyes on a booth of pottery.  “I grew up next door to her,” he said apologetically, “She's the one who cursed me.”

“What’s her curse?”

“Ice woman,” Tate couldn't bring himself to look Amber in the eyes.  Instead he stared at the ground.

“A snow maiden who called you a wolf,” Amber’s tone was harsh, accusing.  “You must have come on to her hard.”

He cringed.  “I’m sorry, Amber.  I’ll tell her to leave.”

“And go where?  She has no money.  Anyone that takes her in will do it for her body, and when she refuses them she’ll end up dead if she's lucky,” Amber was so angry she was spitting.  “Then you’ll blame me for the death of your failed crush.  I’m not playing this game with you, Tate Harper,” Amber's eyes flashed like cut sapphires, “You put me in a double-bind.  So guess what?  I unbind you.  Go have your little fling.  Just don't come crying to me when things don't work out.”

“Amber,” he begged, “It's not like that, I swear.”

“I don't want to talk to you,” she turned her back towards him.

The anger rose in him unbidden, and he stalked off into a stand of trees to vent it.  Fury swelling inside him like a bubble, he lunged at a tree, attacking it as if it were a foe.  The bark tasted bitter to his tongue, and his rage melted into a feeling of foolishness.  Here he was, a grown wolf man, attacking a tree.  He spit the bark out, wiping his tongue with his hand.  With his luck, he would get splinters in his mouth.  

“She’ll get over it,” he told himself.  They had broken up before, and they always got back together.  There was no reason this time would be different, no reason except the fact that Bianca seemed to shepherd misfortune to his door.  He rubbed his face.  His lip was bleeding, and like all head wounds, it was a gusher.  He blotted it with his shirt, then headed back towards the market.  If he did not want to haul a full cart back home, he would need to get to work.  

His cart was where he left it, Bianca sitting on the edge of it, writing in her notebook.  She looked up as he approached, a hopeful expression on her face.  “Don't tell me you're hungry,” he grumbled, “Stop freeloading and do something useful.”

“You don't need to be a jerk,” Bianca stood up and walked away from him.  He could hear her stomach growl as she left.  Ignoring Amber on his left and Bianca flouncing off to the right, he unloaded the wood and began chopping it.  Chopping the wood on site wasn't just a time-saving measure.  The action drew attention to his stall, and pulled in people who might have otherwise continued walking.

He hadn't been working even five minutes when Bianca returned to the stall, a block of ice in her hands.  She set it on one of the logs, then walked away.

“What is that?” Lamar had approached without Tate noticing.  He touched the ice, then pulled his hand back in surprise, “It's ice!  Where did you find ice in spring?”

“In the road,” Tate wiped his face, smearing blood across his arm.

“Is it for sale?”

“Yeah, eight blessings,” he parodied Amber’s earlier price gouging.  Much to his surprise, Lamar handed him the money and took the block of ice.  He continued splitting logs, and was in the middle of another transaction when Bianca returned.  She frowned, then placed the block of ice on the damp spot where the other piece had been.

“Here,” he said gruffly once he was done.  He placed the eight blessings next to the ice.

“What's that for?” Bianca ran her hands over her block of ice.

“I sold your block of ice.”

Bianca snatched the coins and disappeared.  He shook his head and stripped off his shirt.  That block of ice looked tempting.  Before he could think of taking it for himself, another customer came along, a man with reddish skin and horns, one of the Devils.  

The Devils tended to hang out with their own kind.  They were a business minded breed that ran a distillery and bar.  It was unusual to see a Devil at his booth.  They preferred to be self-sufficient, cutting their own wood, cooking their own food, and sewing their own clothes.  

“Heard a rumor you had ice,” the man licked his lips with a forked tongue.

Tate couldn’t repress a grin.  Ice was probably the one thing a Devil couldn’t make.  “A deal at only eight blessings,” he responded.

The man nodded and passed him the coins, “How did you get ice?”

“I angered a woman with a cold heart,” he joked.

“I’ll freeze you in places you never dreamed could be cold, if you keep acting like that,” Bianca’s voice came from behind him just as the Devil walked away.  He turned, startled.  She offered him a ceramic bowl with her left hand, a hand pie grasped in her right.  Nestled in the bowl was another hand pie.  He tore into it, surprised by his own sudden hunger.  After devouring the pie, he shelled out her additional earnings, then leaned on his axe beside her.

“We broke up,” he confided.

“I’m so sorry,” Bianca glanced over at Amber's booth.

“Don't look over there, she’ll know we're talking about her.”

“Sorry,” Bianca stared at the ground, “Um, it's not because of me, is it?”

Tate picked up a piece of wood and set it on the chopping block.  Ignoring her question, he swung his axe, splitting the log with a single blow.

Bianca dusted the crumbs off her pants, “I think maybe I’ve imposed on you too much.  Do, uh, people rent apart-” Bianca looked around at the surrounding shacks, “uh, houses?  Cabins?  Cabin is a good word.”

“It’d be better to build your own place,” he removed half of the wood, repositioning the remaining piece.  “There’s no land ownership per se in Egregia,” he swung his axe again.

“Uh, okay.”

“And I don't mean you need to build it out of ice, either.  That would just melt and then you’d be back on my threshold again,” he nodded at an approaching dog woman.

“I heard you had ice,” the dog woman stated.

“Eight blessings and five minutes,” he said curtly.  The dog woman nodded and Bianca walked to the right, towards the well, Tate realized.

Once the transaction was complete, he turned back towards Bianca, “I’ll help, of course, with the house.  We can clear an area upstream of my cabin.  Just as long as you mind where you do your business.”

“That's kind of you,” Bianca pulled out her notebook.  “On the subject of business, I found a couple that does papermaking.  No one does printing, so I will have to write every leaflet by hand.”

Tate looked at Lamar’s booth thoughtfully, “What if you had your words carved-”

“-on a big wood stamp!” she interjected.

“Well, not exactly what I was going to say,” Tate scratched his head.  

Bianca smiled and the openness of her expression reminded him of how she had looked as a child.