In the Hands of the Smith

scene 2

Flory started the next day slowly, both sides of her mid-back aching before she even got up. She wasn’t certain if she’d even slept. Her papa frowned and asked if she were all right, and she nodded as she always did.

What could either of them do if she answered with a shake of her head or a shrug of her shoulders? It wasn’t as if she’d be able to explain.

Or, at least, it wasn’t as if Papa would understand her mimed explanation. Her mama had been better at comprehending her, but Mama had taken off with a traveling troubadour after the last miscarriage. Flory came from Papa’s first wife, who’d died birthing her. Mama had been the wet nurse, bereft of her own child because it was illegitimate. Mama’s parents had apparently given her first child to an orphanage or some such thing the day before Papa married her. Or so Flory had come to guess, from the years of hints and gripes and worse. Mama had never forgiven Papa for not somehow forcing her parents to let him take the child, even though Flory was fairly certain the law wouldn’t have allowed that.

She took her cloth sack out back to check the vines. It was prime harvesttime for the current plants, which meant she was nearly filling the sack each day. She’d bring it in and store the vegetables in the root cellar, and then she’d prepare it all later to keep until next harvest.

“Good morning.”

Flory froze, her hands on a yellow squash. She’d so far escaped whenever Shom cornered her, but she was tired enough now to be uncertain that she could flee.

“What’s a flower like you doing among the weeds?”

Flory was too weather-worn and ill-proportioned to fit her name well. All that made her pretty was her hair, which she’d chopped with a knife after the first time Shom tried to hurt her.

Perhaps he did see her as beautiful, because she couldn’t carry tales or scream.

Shom let himself in her garden’s gate. Flory backed away, clutching her nearly empty sack to her chest.

“What kind of welcome is that? Here, let me help—”

Booted feet stomped as someone rattled the gate. Shom stepped away from her as Flory held her breath, hardly daring to hope that the current attempt would end so easily.

Thurst stepped through and closed the gate, latching it like Shom had failed to do. “Good morn t’ y’.” He stared Shom down for a long moment, then turned slightly to face her directly. “I has the beans.”

He tugged his cloak around front and folded it into a carrier as he stepped over to the green bean vine.

“What are you doing?” Shom demanded.

Thurst snapped a bean from the vine and tossed it in his cloak, meeting Shom’s gaze directly. “What be it t’ y’? Not ye land nor miss.”

Shom scowled at the dwarf. He glanced at her, and she read the displeasure and promise in there all too well. Her breath stuttered in her throat.

“Later, love.” He reached for her hand.

She skittered back farther, and her back hit the fence.

His expression darkened further. He hid it swiftly, but she found it no easier to regain her breath.

Shom strode from the garden, jumped over the fence, and headed for the smithy, to the job she wished her father would fire him from. She hoped her father didn’t understand her fear, because if he did and kept Shom anyway… She shuddered.

“Miss?” Thurst asked. “I be putting these beans in ye sack, all right?”

Flory stood still, hardly daring to breathe as the he-dwarf approached, closer than Shom had come, and took the sack from her stiff fingers. He poured in the few beans he’d gathered, then put the sack back in her hand.

“Now, miss,” he said gently as he backed away from her. “See that there stand of birch, past the gate? I be going there, an’ I’ll be harvesting some leaves an’ bark while y’ collect your things, yea?”

She stared at him.

He gave a slight, self-conscious smile and backed slowly down the aisle, back to the gate, and let himself out. He went to the birches, as he’d said, and set about searching for leaves and twigs. He even dared climb the pole-like trunks.

She watched him for a time, but he stayed at his task, keeping an eye on her garden without looking at her directly. She eventually went to her own harvest, and he stayed by the birches until she was ready to haul the vegetables back to the root cellar.

Flory had long given up even praying for a voice, but this was the first time in a while that the lack of it made her sad rather than afraid. Why are you helping me?

But even thinking the question made her stomach sour with fear once more. And what do you want in payment?