John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

Except… why was I only breathing in through my nose? What was blocking my mouth?

I came fully awake. I opened my eyes.

There were two large campfires burning left and right. I was wrapped snugly in a bearskin rug, folded over me and under me like a sleeping bag. It might have been the same bearskin rug Grendel wore as a robe.

I was lying, rolled up in the rug, on snow. Around me were a few scraggly trees, naked and powdered with snow. Every twig bore a little icicle. Not twenty feet away was the rocky soil the Kissing Well stood on, its little witch-hat roof layered with a second hat of snow. Beyond it was the cliff. I could see and smell the sea.

Even with the bearskin and the fires, I was still cold, although, perhaps, I was not near death. Grendel had not removed the wedding dress, and I could feel its sopping wet fabric clinging tightly to me, freezing.

Little puddles had collected from the garments and gathered under my stomach.

Yes, I was lying on my stomach. And yes, I had a gag in my mouth, the second one today, if I hadn't lost count. And, yes, I was tied hand and foot, and from what I could tell from a little wiggling, probably elbows, knees, upper thighs, around the waist, etc., etc. You get the idea. Grendel had gone at least a week without seeing me trussed up like a turkey; his favorite spectator sport. I was surprised he hadn't roped me down like a landing zeppelin to tent stakes in the ground.

And there he was, Old Grendel was back, bald and crooked, dressed in a wet gray shirt and sagging patched trousers. His peg leg was made of wood again, not ivory.

He leaned close and whispered, "Sush! Sush! If you make any noise at all, Boggin might hear. The winds do his sneaking and eavesdropping for him. Got me?"

Have you ever had something really, really important to say, when a magic sea monster had you gagged, so that you could not even make very much noise out of your nose? Very frustrating. It helps to have expressive eyes.

Thunking a bit with your bound legs can help, if you do it regularly enough to make him think you've got a signal you are trying to send. If he just thinks you are struggling, it would just turn him on. Pervert.

He took the gag out. "No carrying on. You're already due for a licking when we get back home, scaring me like that. Don't add to the account."

I said through chattering teeth, "I am going to freeze. I am going to die. My clothes are still wet. It's turning to ice on me…"

He looked up, worry plain on his face. "Yeah," he muttered. "Weather always turns fierce cold when he gets mad…"

I said, more loudly, "You have to dry me off, get me someplace warm! Get me out of these things!"

Without getting up, he reached over and picked up a broken tree branch he was using as a crutch. He whispered, uncertainty in his voice: "I were going to get Mom, seeing if she wouldn't change her mind, get me another cap. I'll bring her up here…"

I wondered if my powers would come back on if he went away. I did not think so; Miss Daw had implied there was no range limitation.

"Look!" I said, my voice shivering and choking with cold. "If we are engaged, it's legal to look at me naked, see? It's not like this dress actually covers me anyway! Are you an idiot? I thought this was your sick daydream come true: a half-naked girl begging you to strip her clothes off. Are you going to marry my corpse? Is that the plan?"

I should mention that Grendel did not seem to be doing too well, temperature-wise, either. His soaking wet pants and ragged gray shirt were stiff with frost. But it wasn't killing him. Maybe he had blood like an arctic walrus or something, or natural antifreeze.

Well, that little speech got me untied and got me out of that dress. Both the ropes and the fabric just parted under his hands. I spent a moment, for the second time this month, if I hadn't lost count, stark naked in the snow.

I hopped from foot to foot, while he shook the cold water out of the bearskin; then he wrapped the huge skin over my shoulders and all around me.

I was sure he was aroused by the sight of me dancing and shaking, goosebumps on my goosebumps, blue lips and all. Me, I just felt as if the nadir of misery was not far away. Where was that brave feeling, that I-am-not-afraid-to-die recklessness that had possessed me just a minute ago? Maybe people can only be brave when they are warm.

But Grendel did not look aroused by the sight; he looked concerned. When he folded the bearskin around me once more, I felt like a child at the beach being wrapped in a fluffy towel by a worried mother. The skin was voluminous enough that I could stand on one flap of it and have another flap wound around my sopping hair like a turban. Where in the world did they make bears this big? I wondered if Grendel had killed it during the previous ice age.

He leaned on his tree branch, watching me huddle close to the bigger fire. Every now and again he threw a worried glance at the sky, as if fearing the fires would be seen.

Grendel whispered, "Hurry it up. I'm going to have to gag you and bind you, so as you don't cry out for Boggin."

I whispered back, "I am not going to call out for Bog-gin, you moron! I am getting away from here in a minute. Turn my powers back on."

He blinked. Still in whispers, he said, "Lost your wits, is it? Mother said you might go mad, once you saw her. Didn't think it would happen before."

I whispered, "You've already lost, Glum. Lost. You are a card player? I called your bluff. You folded."

"Listen here, girl: You are my property. You're mine. I took you 'cause I wanted you, and no force under heaven can stop me. I never had nothing so fine as you. I never saw no one as fine as you. Except maybe Vanity, and I had to give her up to get that Telchine off my tail; and even her, to my thinking, ain't not so pretty as you are now. You're the only thing I have in my life."

I said quietly, "You can have my dead body. You want it? You can keep it. I'm not going to miss it once I drown."

He squinted, looking uncertain.

I said, "Or were you thinking of keeping me ashore? In the air? Boggin will find you. He'll make you cut your own penis off and eat it like a sausage. Or am I wrong about him?"

The look on his face told me I was not wrong. I had read about all the color leaving a man's face, but I never saw it happen before.

I whispered, "Do you have something else besides those fragile little mermaid caps for keeping a girl able to breathe down there? I don't think you do, or you would have used it. You wished me back to health when I was dying, and I thank you for that. But you couldn't wish air into my lungs, or you would have done it."

He stared at me, his face a little slack.

And then he grinned, a big grin, showing all his teeth. He tucked his branch under one arm, and pantomimed clapping his hands together, making the motion, but not making the noise.

"That were good," he said quietly, his eyes sparkling with admiration. "You talk a good fight. Let's see how it works out."

He flicked the branch back into his hand and struck the blunt end solidly into the bearskin, just at the point where my midriff was.

I doubled over, suddenly out of breath. He dropped the branch and caught me up in his arms, arms as tough as old tree roots. One arm wrapped around me, pinning my arms to my sides. With the thick folds of the bearskin draped over, I could not even raise my elbows.

His other hand he clapped over my mouth.

He breathed in my ear. "You're a quick one, a clever one. I like that. Lots of book-learning. Suppose to give a girl polish, book-learning. Refined. But you ain't never been one of my people. Everything we can do, we do with our feelings. The world is a big lie, and we are the biggest liars in it. And sometimes the world believes us, if we are sincere enough. Sincerity; that's the thing, the very thing. You see, I can't just stop wanting you, desiring you, needing you, just 'cause I want to. My feeling is too strong. Now you come and say your feeling that you'd rather die than be with me is stronger than my feeling to the contrary. Well, maybe you caught me in a weak moment. But I know all about feelings. I studies 'em. All my folk do. We know what makes a man go, and a man stop. Some feelings, they blaze bright enough, but they are like fire in autumn leaves, see? Poof, and they are gone. Now, you think you can keep your feeling up forever? No matter what I do? What if I was to burn off your foot, slow-like, so you'd be matched with me, eh? Then you wouldn't be so sad I couldn't go dancing with you."