Hammer & Air (7 page)

I took my time in the privy—stood in the tub and let the warm water run—then washed myself as it came. By the time I felt clean, the water lapping at my shins were brown and thick. It left a ring around the copper tub that I resolved to clean up the next morning.

Since Hammer were naked, I figured I may as well be the same and emptied our clothes out of our rucksacks then, into the enormous tub, and ran some fresh water and left them there to soak. Then I wrapped a linen sheet around my waist and went back to watching Hammer and praying for the real miracle that this enchanted little cottage might just give me.

I took my seat beside the bed and felt Hammer’s head. He made a child’s sound then and leaned into my hand.

“Lay down beside me,” he grumbled. “Our whole lives, we’ve been sleeping in the same bed. I cannot sleep with you just sitting there beside me now.”

I were going to tell him “No” because I wanted to be able to do for him if he needed anything, but then he threw in the kicker, for a man who never asked for anything because he could make it happen himself.

“Please, Eirn?”

“Right,” I murmured, shooing him sideways. He had enough strength to roll to his favorite position—on his side—and I shed my sheet and climbed in next to him. He wrapped his burly long arms around me, and I clung to him, furnace-heated skin and all, and prayed that should Hammer die this night, that I would die with him, and our bodies would be found just like this, twined together like roses that had grown together for too long.

The morning found him no better but no worse. I helped him to the privy, and he asked me with wonder where I’d found the wherewithal to wring our clothes out to dry and hang them on a line above the tub, and I told him, with a little bit of wonder myself, that I hadn’t; the cottage had done that all on its own, thank you very much. He’d laughed and then blessed it gravely, with more soberness than I’d give him credit for.

He must have still been a little loopy from the fever because he looked at my surprise and said, “A storm, a forge, or a magic cottage, Eirn, it all deserves our respect, don’t you think?”

I agreed with him, and made a point of thanking the cottage myself when I went in to fill the tub for him.

I made the water warm—not to scalding but warm enough to match the heat of his blood and not make him shudder. I wanted his arm to have a long, clean soak, and then the cooling water to pull his body heat with it.

I checked on him periodically, as I made us breakfast and unpacked the meager contents of our knapsacks. I took out my book of science and my notebook and put them on the small end table by the bed. I took the hammer and our knives and put them in the drawers in the kitchen. In a fit of whimsy, I took out the small stuffed bear that I’d had as a child, and that Hammer had rescued for me as we ran, and put it on the bed, as though this were our home and we had time for such nonsense.

When that were done, I folded our clothes. I stacked the first armload of them together on a dresser, and then went back for another armload. When I came back, the drawer itself were open, and there were several new sets of linen small clothes, and I were so happy, I near to wept.

I put mine on, then went and pulled Hammer out of the cooling water. He hadn’t started to shudder yet, and his arm were smaller and cooler to the touch, and that
did
bring tears to my eyes. I hid them from Hammer, though. I didn’t want him to know how worried I’d been, because then he’d know how sick he really were.

He were a fractious patient—didn’t like me helping him into his things, didn’t like that I put him right back to bed when we were done, didn’t like that I set to making the house to rights without him. It were to the point where I had to laugh or snap at him, so of course, I snapped at him.

“Dammit, Hammer, I just hauled you through a week’s worth of fuck-all wilderness to get you some place that might not kill you! Do you think you could just lay back and get better already?”

“But how long, Eirn? I put a price on your head, whether I meant to or no. How long are we going to sit here and wait for someone to collect it?”

I blinked, and then I
did
laugh. “Hammer, this place doesn’t even exist in our
time.
It’s late fall outside, and we were trudging through the dead of winter. For all I know, we’re not growing any older while we’re here either! Enchanted cabinets, clothes that fold themselves, and a whole other season; I don’t think the constable of our unremarkable little town is going to come banging on the bloody door any time soon!”

Hammer blinked and wobbled where he stood next to the bed. I drew closer to him (as I had backed up to yell at him—it only seemed polite) and put my arm around his waist to help him into bed.

“Besides,” I said softly, “the price on our head is justly mine. It were for my defense. Now come on,” I urged. “Just lay down and accept that we’re safe.”

He allowed himself to be settled against the pillows, but the hand-knit little furrow between his brows stayed tight and anxious. “Are we ever safe?” he asked, and I took his hand and stroked it.

“I’ve always felt safe,” I confessed freely. “You always had my back. How else would I feel?”

He grunted, but I thought he were pleased. “I’ve never seen you shout before,” he mumbled, close to a healing sleep.

“I’ve never had to make you see sense before,” I grumbled. “You usually carry it ready at your belt.”

“You’re the smart one,” he muttered back. “All I am is the hard shoulder.”

I floundered for a moment, opening and closing my mouth like a puzzled baby bird. He fell asleep whilst I were still fumbling for the words to refute him, but what else were I to say? How could I tell him that I would not have followed a fool into the woods, no matter how good it felt when he buggered me into the ground?

There weren’t much to do that day. I poked around, discovered clothes in the drawers that seemed tailor made for Hammer and me: simple, strong, serviceable, but of finer make than we were used to. The shirts were of linen instead of cotton, the vests were of leather and not corduroy, but there were a set that were broad in the shoulder and a set that were long at the waist, and that were Hammer and me, so I wore mine.

They fit lush against my skin, and I gave myself time for a shiver of longing for nice things, fine fabrics, fitted seams, before I moved on to the rest of the cottage. There weren’t much to do there—much of it seemed to clean up after itself—but that were unsettling, so I tried to clear up breakfast dishes before they had a chance to put themselves away, and I picked up a broom and swept up the mud and dirt we’d tracked between the room and the bathtub and such.

When I were done, I went outside for a minute—Hammer were asleep by then—and breathed deep and tried to gauge the season by the smell of frost and the color of the leaves.

It couldn’t be done.

The sky were the blue of early October, that deep, lazy azure you could fall into if you let yourself, but that weren’t possible. It had been mid November when Hammer had been wounded. It were, earliest, late in the month now.

I ventured out from the house, with the intention of seeing where the enchanted world ended and the real world began—but I didn’t get far.

My feet crunched through the dead leaves, and I snapped through maybe half a league of underbrush, before a terrible feeling of unease assailed me like a bucket of cold bathwater. For a moment, I thought I could hear the sea, and then… oh gods of magic, gods of motion… what in the hells of the holy
were that?

It were a hideously sickening motion, as though the ground beneath my feet had been ripped asunder and tossed like a child’s flying disk, me on top of it. My head spun and I fell backward the way I’d come, flailing as I fell and rolling as I landed, and I stayed there, gasping, trying hard not to vomit.

I fancied myself a scientist; an investigator. But something clearly did not want me to progress beyond that boundary. I could, I thought resolutely. I probably could throw myself across that space with a lunge of pure momentum. And then I remembered Hammer.

I stood up and brushed myself off and turned my back on that boundary without a single glance. Even then I knew that any course, any course at all that deviated from Hammer, were not a road I wanted to walk.

When I think about it now, all that is good in my life has come from that squaring of my shoulders and tramping back to the little enchanted cottage that held my gruff, short-spoken companion. It seemed like the most natural course in the world then, and it seems that way now, but it were the beginning of my realization that the language of science does not have a word for the sacrifice of the paths of ambition to achieve a heart’s desire.

It should. All languages should.

I tramped back into the cottage, feeling an absurd notion to knock softly on the doorframe before I entered. Shaken by that terrible nauseating magical interlude, I did, the wood warm and giving under my knuckles. I
were
grateful, and, as Hammer had said, I
were
respectful. The cottage had wanted us. After feeling the protection it seemed to be giving us from the outside world, I would not offend it for naught under the sky.

Hammer were awake when I walked in smelling of leaves and crisp grass, but he had not left the bed. I circled the bed with a glass of hot tea (I’d left the pot to boil over the trivet) flavored with rose hips and some honey I’d wished up in the cupboard. (It seemed to respond to the things I wished for Hammer. I’d longed for cream this morning, and there had been no sign of it. I’d wished for honey, since I knew Hammer liked it, and there it were.)

He watched me coming with wary eyes. “I had a notion you’d try and leave,” he said softly, and I blinked.

“Weren’t trying to leave,” I told him, tilting my head a little. Had never been no signs that Hammer were witchy. Maybe it were simply the house. “I tested the boundaries of the magic. It told me when I found them, that’s a certainty. But I didn’t want to leave you. Just wanted to know where we were.”

Hammer’s lips turned up in a sleepy smile. “That’s you, Eirn. Always trying to put a name to something, explain it away. Even I know magic and your science don’t mix.”

I set the tea down and put my hand to his head. I swallowed hard and blinked back tears. Sweaty, yes, but cool. The fever had broken. His body were sweating out the poison of infection, and that were why he lay so still.

I swallowed again, and went to give him his tea but my hand shook so badly I couldn’t lift it from the end table. “I wouldn’t leave you,” I said, licking the spilt tea off my hand. Now my voice were shaking too. “I wouldn’t,” I repeated. I had to say something. Oh gods… gods of magic, gods of motion, I had been so afraid.

Suddenly his hand came up and captured my wrist. I stared at the two hands—Hammer’s were broad and scarred and hard and capable, and mine were nimble and clever and long. Carefully—probably because he were weak and couldn’t move fast—he wove his fingers in with mine and squeezed.

“Eirn?”

Reluctantly I looked at him and used the heel of my other hand to clear my tear-scalded eyes. “You scared me ball-less, Hammer. Gods….” I took a deep breath, and then another, and then he gave my hand a tug, and I sank to my knees in front of the bed.

“No worries,” he muttered. “You wouldn’t leave me, I don’t plan to leave you. Right?”

I nodded and buried my face into the sheet next to his head and tried to wipe the tears off there. He let go of my hand and turned to his side so he could bury his hand in my hair and stroke my head until my shoulders stopped shaking, and I were still. Eventually, his voice, gruff and weak, penetrated my fog.

“Come on up and lie next me,” he ordered, and I kicked off my boots and did that while he scooted over. We lay there, face-to-face for a few moments and he raised his thumb to wipe my cheeks.

“Running were hard,” he murmured. “You were right. This place seems safe. Let’s be safe for a while, right?”

I nodded. “Right,” I whispered, but my throat were swollen, and my head were clogged, and I couldn’t manage much else.

“No. Close your eyes. When you wake up, it’ll be lunch time, and you can tell me a story.”

“You like stories, Hammer?” He’d been apprenticed young, had spent a lot of time in the nearby tavern when I were sitting with the other boys by the fireplace at the orphanage.

“I do.” He yawned then, the course of his healing taking over us both. “I always wished that book of yours were stories instead of seeds. Thought maybe you’d like me more if you could see me as a prince instead of a blacksmith.”

I stared at him, the fog and fatigue of relief and emotion muddling me. Still, I managed to say something, this once, to give him something that he needed.

“I couldn’t like you more if you were golden,” I murmured. “There is not a soul in all the kingdoms that I would rather have by my side than my Hammer. Not even a prince.”

“I wish I could give you a prince,” Hammer murmured, both of us so drowsy in that snug, enchanted little cottage. “I wish I could give you a prince, so you could know the difference, so you could have a choice.”

“Prince or parson, Hammer, I’d still choose you.”

We fell asleep then, side by side, fanning each other’s cheek with every breath. We were young and fond and foolish, and we did not realize then, the risk you take when you speak of wishes and princes in the hearth of an enchanted home.

Part V
Gold Light on Sable

It took Hammer some days to recover, but he let me nurse him, so I didn’t mind. I’d leave him inside sometimes, to go out and collect herbs, to collect edible roots, to make up our stores so we didn’t have to tax the house too greatly when winter finally arrived and the snows set in, but it didn’t matter. All Hammer had to do were mention a food or a taste, a smell or something we’d eaten in times long past, and I’d wish, and it would appear in the cabinet.

I didn’t tell him about it, but he figured out soon enough when his favorite foods kept appearing at his bedside. And, of course, there were the book.