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“My knees is aching me again,” she complained, as if she wanted to cut off any objection he might voice, even though he never did. He thought it, though. She always seemed to know what he was thinking. “Today you can get started in the barn, and tomorrow you can go back to scraping the muck all the way down until you clean it all out. Before the day wears on, though, I want you to go get my medicine.”
Oba pulled on his ear as he cast his gaze toward the ground. He didn’t like going to see Lathea, the woman with the cures. He didn’t like her. She always looked at him like he was a worm. She was mean as rake. Worse, she was a sorceress.
If Lathea didn’t like someone, they suffered for it. Everybody was afraid of Lathea, so Oba didn’t feel so singled out. Still, though, he didn’t like going to see her.
“I will, Mama. I’ll fetch your medicine. And don’t you worry, I’ll get to work at scraping the muck out, just like you said.”
“I have to tell you every little thing, don’t I, Oba?” Her glare burned into him. “I don’t know why I bothered raising such a worthless bastard boy,” she added under her breath. “Should have done what Lathea told me, in the beginning.”
Oba heard her say this often, when she was feeling sorry for herself, sorry that no suitors came around anymore, sorry that none had wanted to marry her. Oba was a curse she bore with bitter regret. A bastard child who’d brought her trouble from the first. If not for Oba, maybe she would have gotten herself a husband to provide for her.
“And don’t you be staying in town with any foolishness.”
“I won’t, Mama. I’m sorry that your knees are bad today.”
She whacked him with the stick. “They wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to follow around a big dumb ox seeing that he does what he should already be doing.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Did you get the eggs?”
“Yes, Mama.”
She eyed him suspiciously, then pulled a coin from her flaxen apron. “Tell Lathea to make up a remedy for you, too, along with my medicine. Maybe we can yet rid you of the Keeper’s evil. If we could get the evil out of you, maybe you wouldn’t be so worthless.”
His mother, from time to time, sought to purge him of what she believed to be his evil nature. She tried all sorts of potions. When he was little she had often forced him to drink burning powder she mixed with soapy water; then she would lock him in a pen in the barn, hoping the otherworldly evil wouldn’t like being burned and locked up both, and would flee his restrained earthly body.
His pen didn’t have slats, like the pens for the animals did. It was made of solid boards. In the summer it was an oven. When she made him take burning powder and then dragged him by the arm and locked him in the pen, he near to died of terror that she’d never let him out, or never let him have a drink of water. He welcomed the beatings she would give him to try to silence his screams, just to be let out.
“You buy my medicine from Lathea, and a remedy for you.” His mother held up the small silver coin as her eyes narrowed into a spiteful squint. “And don’t you go wasting any of this on women.”
Oba felt his ears heating. Each time his mother sent him to buy something, whether medicine or leather work or pottery or supplies, she always admonished him not to waste the money on women.
He knew that when she told him not to waste it on women, she was mocking him.
Oba didn’t have the courage to say much of anything to women. He always bought what his mother said to buy. He never once wasted it on anything—he feared his mother’s wrath.
He hated that she always told him not to waste the money when he never did. It made him feel like she thought he was intending to do wrong even though he wasn’t. It made him guilty even though he had done no wrong. It made what was in his thoughts, even if he didn’t have them, a crime.
He tugged on a burning ear. “I won’t waste it, Mama.”
“And dress respectable, not like some dumb ox. You already reflect badly enough on me.”
“I will, Mama. You’ll see.”
Oba ran around to the house and fetched his felt cap and brown woolen jacket for his journey to Gretton, a couple miles northwest. She watched him carefully hang them on a peg, where they would stay clean until he was ready to go to town.
With the scoop shovel, he started in on the rock-hard muck. The steel shovel rang like a bell each time he rammed it at the frozen ground. He grunted with each mighty blow. Chips of black ice burst forth, splattering his trousers. Each was but an infinitesimal speck from the dark mountain of muck. It was going to take a long time and a lot of work. He didn’t mind hard work, though. Time he had in abundance.
Mother watched from the doorway of the barn for a few minutes to make sure he was working up a sweat as he chipped away at the frozen mound. When she was satisfied, she vanished from the doorway to go back to her own work, leaving him to think about his coming visit to Lathea.
Oba.
Oba paused. The rats, back in the small places, stilled. Their little black rat eyes watched him watching them. The rats went back to their search for food. Oba listened for the familiar voice. He heard the door to the house close. Mother, a spinster, was going back to spinning her wool. Mr. Tuchmann brought her wool, which she spun into thread for him to use on his loom. The meager pay helped support her and her bastard son.
Oba.
Oba knew the voice well. He’d heard it ever since he could remember. He never told his mother about it. She would be angry and think that it was the Keeper’s evil calling to him. She would want to force him to swallow even more potions and cures. He was too big to be locked in the pen anymore. But he wasn’t too big to drink Lathea’s cures.
When one of the fat rats scurried past, Oba stepped on its tail, trapping it.
Oba.
The rat squeaked a little rat squeak. Little rat legs scrambled, trying to get away. Little rat claws scratched against the black ice.
Oba reached down and seized the fat furry body. He peered at the whiskered face. The head twisted futilely. Beady black eyes watched him.
Those eyes were filled with fear.
Surrender.
Oba thought it was vitally important to learn new things.
Quick as a fox,
he bit off the rat’s head.
Chapter 8
From what seemed to her the least troublesome corner of the room, Jennsen kept an eye on the door as well as the boisterous crowd. Half a room away, Sebastian leaned on the thick wooden plank counter, speaking to the innkeeper. She was a big woman, and with a forbidding scowl that made her look like she was as used to trouble as she was prepared to deal with it.
The roomful of people, mostly men, were a jovial lot. Some of the men played at dice or other table games. Some arm-wrestled. Most were drinking and telling jokes that would set tables of them off in peals of fist-pounding laughter.
Laughter sounded obscene to Jennsen. There was no joy in her world. There could be none.
The past week was a blur. Or was it more than a week? She couldn’t recall exactly how long they had been traveling. What did it matter? What did anything matter?
Jennsen was unaccustomed to people. People had always represented danger to her. Groups of them made her nervous—people at an inn, drinking and gambling, even more so.
When men noticed her standing at the end of the counter near the wall, they forgot the jokes, or paused at their dice, and lingered on the sight of her. Meeting their gazes, she pushed the hood of her cloak back, letting her thick rings of red hair fall over the front of her shoulders. That was enough to turn their eyes back to their own business.
Jennsen’s red hair spooked people, especially those who were superstitious. Red hair was uncommon enough that it raised suspicion. It gave people a worry that she might be gifted, or perhaps that she might even be a witch. Jennsen, by boldly meeting their gazes, played on such fears. It had in the past helped protect her, oftentimes better than a knife could have.
Back at her house, it hadn’t helped one little bit.
After the men turned away from her and went back to their dice and drinks, Jennsen looked back down the counter. The stout innkeeper was staring at her, at her red hair. When Jennsen met her gaze, the woman quickly turned her attention back to Sebastian. He asked her another question. She bent closer as she spoke to him. Jennsen couldn’t hear them over the roar of all the talking, joking, betting, cheering, cursing, and laughing. Sebastian nodded to the woman’s words spoken close to his ear. She pointed off over the heads of her customers, apparently giving directions.
