Valkyrie of Desire

2. Brownie Soup

I do not hate you

as tempting as it is to describe

my annoyance towards your stupidity this way.

I do not hate you

because hating you is cowardice.

So much harder to reach into your inverted worldview

and see through your eyes.

I do not hate you

I am you.

—Queen Saugrin

Moans mix with the crackling campfire. Hildr turns from the smoke and misery. The moon, half full, grays the night while bristling brush and twisted trees form a wall of darkness across the road in front of her.

Breathing deep, she wipes sweat gathering at her brow and twists her long, orange hair back into a bun. A horse snickers. Four of them stand asleep, still tied to their covered wagon. She sighs and moves to loosen their reins.

The salt and pepper-haired mother retches, curled in the dirt next to her family-sized tent, and another horse snorts. The rest of her family writhes about in feverish agony, disrupting the equine dreams. The little dark-haired boy rolls onto his back and reaches towards the star-filled sky.

Hildr pulls a wool blanket from the wagon, shakes it out, and drapes it over the child. He thrashes, kicking it off.

"Fine. Be cold." She huffs and stomps over to the fire.

Life cannot be fair. This sadness and suffering balances things, keeping at bay unattainable fantasy.

She rotates a stick over glowing coals with the doll-faced brownie she captured bound to it. "Tiny hands stained purple and smelling sickly sweet ... Did you sneak bile berries into the soup?"

The fae-born man jerks against silk string wrapped around him, almost slipping his right arm free. Shorter and stockier than his left, the stunted limb is prepped for slinging stones with the force of a coiled spring.

"Almost got me this time, Meepsin." Hildr shakes her head. "I'd be as ill as them had I eaten it."

Bile berries purge the body and soul. Used to prime prisoners for interrogation and abort pregnancies, they are not deadly to those with healthy guts.

The tiny man froths at the mouth, straining his twiggy limbs to escape the heat.

A twinge of compassion wrinkles Hildr's brow. She growls to smooth the weakness away.

"You're a brownie boy. Your mossy head barely tickles my calf. You'd struggle to drag a chicken. How could you get a delirious me to your fae queen?"

Sparks within Hildr's heart awaken mystic power, becoming coals of rage that smolder. Her sweat steams off; a volcanic vent with a salty scent instead of sulfur.

"Perhaps Queen Saugrin only demanded a token." Hildr narrows her dark amber eyes. "Confess, you little Meep-shit. Would you have snipped off my ear? Scooped out my eye? I hosted Lady Darla, and she as Phoenix's avatar caused your habitat's demise. Tell me what price will make things right."

Meepsin trills, and his spit sizzles on a stone under his nose. Defiant, but his limbs hang limp. Death is close.

Hildr lifts him away from the fire. "Speak English, or I'll toast your toes."

He matches her gaze with fatalistic intensity.

Brownies, being creatures of fae, are plant-like enough to burn as brush does. Those long dead ignite like kindling, while vibrant youths like this one will smolder with the choking smoke of green leaves and pliant wood.