The Faintest Ink (Watty Winner 2015)

Chapter Seventy-Two

It felt like a wooden barrel had been wrapped around Hawth's abdomen. With every breath, her muscles burned and her skin itched as if sharp splinters were scraping against her.

She reached down to push it away, but something grabbed her wrist, holding it away from her body. She tried to throw it off, but it held on. It wasn't tight enough to hurt, but there was the clear impression that she wasn't going to be let go without its approval.

"Calm down, Hawth. You'll do yourself a mischief."

Hawth scrunched up her face as she fought against the grip. The voice sounded well meaning, but the feeling around her stomach was unbearable.

"Oh no, you don't."

"Bugger off, Larst," she said, from between cracked lips.

"I'll let go if you promise to keep still."

She managed to open her eyes, just a crack. From between her squinted lids, she could see just enough of Larst's blurry face to know he meant it.

She nodded, and a second later, her arm was released. She lifted it, keeping her eye on Larst in case he got any strange ideas, as she moved it across her face, and scratched her nose.

"What happened?" she asked, trying hard to figure out how she had ended up in what felt like a very comfortable bed. She was pretty sure she'd just been lifting off a fresh new print, easing it off the frame so as not to smudge the wet ink. And now she was in bed, with no memory of the transition between those two states.

A thought occurred to her. "What day is it?"

Larst's eyes widened with horror before he realised why she was asking. "You didn't go missing," he said. "Whatever the hell happened to Straw, wasn't what happened to you." Hawth sighed in relief. "You fainted."

"Fainted?" How very uninspiring. Fainting people were useless when there was so much work to be done. They needed to be coddled, and fed, and looked after. There was no time for that sort of nonsense.

He sighed, and perched on the edge of the bed, so that Hawth had to do a painful wriggle to move her legs out the way. "It turns out that hefting about large pieces of machinery when you've got bloody great gashes across your belly, isn't a great idea. Who knew?"

"Right," said Hawth, easing herself up the pillows. "It wasn't you who...?"

"Dragged you up here? No. That was faithful old Straw. It would say it was romantic, but you were doing a fantastic sack of potatoes impression."

"I'm not sure that was an impression," said Hawth, wincing. "I definitely feel a bit sack-like at the moment."

"I know what you mean." He dropped his eyes to his knees and ran his fingers through his hair.

Hawth looked away, finding herself looking all around the room in an effort not to see Larst when his carefully built walls were in danger of crumbling. She frowned. "Where is he?" she asked, as her eyes landed on the door to the little side room where Straw usually slept.

Larst rubbed his chin and took in a deep breath. "I don't know," he said at last. "I think he went back down to the storeroom."

"Why?"

He tilted his head. "I suppose that he's tasked himself with guarding your baby."

Hawth felt the heat rise to her cheeks. It was bad enough having Straw feeling silly about her, without Larst having to talk about it. She didn't know why everyone was so keen to moon about one another. Heather could talk about Turnip for days on end without drawing breath. One of the things that she liked about Larst was that he never seemed to go in for that sort of thing.