3

Warm. I’m warm again.

My toes and fingers are soft and pliant. I don’t have to fear them freezing solid and snapping clean off.

I’m swathed in layers of dark fabric, with my nose barely poking above the bulk of a cloaked arm. I don’t open my eyes at first, because I’m so warm and relaxed, and I know when I look at the creature holding me, I’ll panic.

So for a moment I simply feel .

My arm, my bare breasts, and my hip are all pressed against hard, smooth, hot skin. My legs lie parallel to his, thighs and knees touching .

He smells like darkness. Like the middle of the night, when the fires are out and the air itself seems frozen in place. Like ice with the faintest hint of peppermint. It’s a violent kind of freshness, a bladed hit to the nostrils. And there’s a thread of coppery blood under the scent, too. I can almost taste it.

I know the scent and taste of blood all too well. I’ve been intimately familiar with it since the age of six.

When Goat-Mask stuffed me in that dark red sack, I nearly vomited. The fabric reeked of death, as if he’d soaked the bag in decades’ worth of mortal blood. I thought he’d crush me inside it, break my bones to splinters. Pulverize me.

But he saved me instead. He’s lying with me now, his large chest surging and sinking with slow, deep breaths.

I open my eyes.

He’s still wearing the goat-skull mask. Beneath the toothy lower edge of the mask, I can see a pale, sharp jaw with a crisp corner. Locks of red hair drape across his throat, like scarlet slashes on his snowy skin. A ruff of black fur and ebony feathers form the collar of his cape.

Behind me, a fire crackles, its glow dancing on the grayish-ivory bone of the goat skull. The sockets of the mask are too deeply shadowed for me to perceive his eyes. Is he asleep?

I need to move away from him. I’ve never been naked with a man, much less a monster. The quiver that runs through me isn’t cold, but anxiety. The need to escape. And yet my skin and my flesh crave the warmth of him, the heat of this hollow beneath his cape.

Conflicted, I remain tense and still for several moments before easing myself backward, out from beneath his arm, away from his shelter. I cover my breasts with my hands and stare at the ruined fragments of my nightgown. The bloodstained scraps aren’t the only garments on the floor—it’s littered with discarded shirts, tunics, trousers, socks, lounge pants, vests, and jackets. A giant wardrobe, which takes up half an entire wall, stands open, disgorging an avalanche of clothes.

At the cabin, I usually wore nightdresses or frilly frocks that were much too small for me. I had perhaps a dozen pieces of clothing, not counting underthings. The careless abundance in this room shocks me. But I’m nothing if not opportunistic, so I select a loose, cream-colored tunic, oversized for a frame as small as mine. Even buttoned, the neckline scoops low, grazing the tops of my breasts, and the hem falls just below the middle of my thighs.

The cut on my foot has stopped bleeding, but I rip a piece from my ruined nightgown and bandage it anyway, in case it decides to reopen. Thus attired, I begin to explore.

This room is as messy as the big gray one, except instead of a forest of furniture, this chamber holds precarious stacks of unwashed plates and mugs, tumbled piles of ornate clocks, and tilted paintings propped crookedly against the walls, with pocket watches on chains looped over their corners. The crystal watch-faces twinkle in the firelight.

Unlit candelabra, some as tall as me, stand in corners, draped with necklaces of multicolored beads. Trinkets and mechanical toys form careless heaps. Feathered purple scarves and gauzy green veils flutter from bookshelves crammed with papers, tiny carved statues, and painted glass vases. He has tacked embroidered tapestries and exquisite sketches to the walls, and between them I catch glimpses of elaborate maps and gorgeously illuminated pages from ancient books.

From the ceiling beams overhead, long strings of crystals twirl and twist, their facets catching the light and tossing it against the walls in triangles or diamonds of emerald, lavender, ruby, and yellow.

It’s a nest. A dragon’s hoard. A collection in which his massive, dark bulk looks out of place. And it’s terribly dusty, as well as disorganized. My fingers twitch with the urge to set the room to rights. It would take days, though… maybe weeks, if I intended to wash and sort everything properly. Most of these items are only familiar to me because of the books I read in the cabin, or because of stories told by a Mother or Wife who was feeling talkative.

A painting of a beautiful nude woman petting a lion catches my eye. As I step toward it, my foot sinks to mid-calf in a pile of clothes… and my toes encounter something slimy . With a gasp I leap back and gingerly inspect the clothes. Some of them are seamed with dirt, others crusted with unidentifiable grime, perhaps food spillage. Two of the shirts reek of wine, and one pair of pants has a large stain across the front which smells strongly of piss. The slimy thing I stepped on is a pair of undershorts. There’s a glossy, whitish substance on them—a lot of it. A recent addition to the pile, I think.

Apparently monsters don’t like doing laundry.

“Nasty creature,” I mutter under my breath.

Even as I speak the words, a plan forms in my mind. A way to make myself useful and to claim a place here, at least for a while. The monster saved my life. Didn’t eat me or hurt me. If I repay the debt and prove my worth, maybe he’ll keep me around.

After surveying the room again, I pick my way over to a big basket full of colorful yarn balls, rolled-up papers, and two rotting apples. After dumping out the basket’s contents, I begin filling it with the foulest of the discarded clothing.

There must be a kitchen or a bathing room somewhere in this house. The monster is obviously magical, yet he has physical form and physical needs. If I can find the bath or the kitchen, I might also find soap, and a sink or a washtub where I can give these clothes the thorough scrubbing they need.

With the basket propped on my hip, I open the bedroom door and slip out into the hallway. I close the door quietly behind me, hoping the monster will stay asleep until I can finish at least one batch of laundry. I’d like to surprise him .

The basket is heaped so high it’s almost too heavy for me to carry. My legs still waver a bit from the terror and exposure of last night. Is it still night, or is it morning? The clocks in the bedroom all told different times, and I’ve yet to see a window in this place, except for the curtained ones in the great gray room. What joy it would be to live in a place with real windows—to feel the sun shining through the glass, onto my skin! My captor used to tell me the sun was dangerous, that it would burn me and blind me; but the other women said that if you were careful, the sun could be a wonderful thing. I’m not sure what to believe, but I would like to experience the sun and decide for myself, even if it’s dangerous.

Everything is dangerous, after all. The cabin, the town, and this house. I haven’t forgotten the monster in the walls, or the heavy-breathing creature on the staircase. As I walk the halls by the light of the occasional guttering candle, I scan the gaps in the walls and cast glances upward, into the shadows that cloak the high ceilings. But nothing interferes with my progress, and after a while I descend four broad stone steps and open the large door beyond them to find the largest, messiest kitchen I’ve ever seen.

I step inside, onto a flagstone floor. There’s a huge fireplace arch with a spit across its middle and stone ovens flanking its sides. The fire is nothing but faintly-glowing coals, so I stir it up with a poker and feed it a few sticks of kindling from a nearby bucket.

Both the kindling and the logs in the firewood rack are dry and dusty. It seems no one has fed the fire in days, yet the coals were alive. And the candles in the hallway were long and fresh, without a drip of wax, even though they must have been burning for hours. Strange.

“Magic.” I speak the word aloud with a shrug. It’s the only way to explain the inexplicable.

The kitchen cabinets, counters, and tables are piled high with grimy pots and crusty dishes. When I attempt to move a stack, several pots and spoons clatter to the floor, and a flood of brown insects scurry away, disappearing into the cracks between the wall tiles.

I freeze for a moment, stunned by the sheer number of them. But I’ve had plenty of practice swallowing my distaste for unpleasant surroundings, so I recover quickly.

Lucky for me, there’s a jar of soft soap near the sink, its lid filmed with dust. I’m doubly pleased to find that the huge sink has a spigot with two handles, one of which produces hot water without the trouble of heating it on a stove. It’s a modern convenience the most recent Wife bemoaned when she first came to the cabin and discovered that our water only ran cold. I’ve never experienced hot water flowing from a pipe before, and I’m beyond delighted with it.

My first task is to empty the sink, piling the grimy dishes aside for now. Then, with my two new allies, hot water and soap, I fill the sink and attack the laundry, immersing myself in the familiar comfort of making foul things fresh again.

When the first batch of laundry is done, I hang the well-wrung items on some half-moldered string I found in the pantry, so they can dry near the fire. Next I clear and scrub down one of the tables so the clean dishes can have a place to sit and air-dry. And then I attack the piles of filthy plates, mugs, and bowls.

I’m elbow-deep in suds when I glance toward the fireplace and nearly scream.

Something is hanging upside down inside the chimney, peering out at me with eyes the size of saucers. Short gray fur covers every bit of its body that I can see, including its long pointy ears, which both look as if something has chewed mercilessly on their edges. It has stubby horns and a wide, wide mouth— terrifyingly wide and thankfully closed. One tiny pointed tooth protrudes over its lower lip. Clawed fingers grip the bricks as it watches me .

It drops a bit lower, allowing me a glimpse at its scaly, serpentine tail, probably thrice the length of its body.

Heart pounding, I turn back to the soapsuds and keep scrubbing, debating if I should run. The creature resembles the sketch of a lemur in the book of animals I received a few years ago. But lemurs don’t have horns, and their tails aren’t scaly.

I steal another glance, only to see the creature catching live sparks on a tongue as long as its tail. Parallel rows of small triangular teeth line the inside of its mouth.

Definitely not a lemur.

The pot I’m scrubbing is clean, so I rinse it and set it down on the table, eyeing the creature sidelong to see how it reacts to the sound. Its attention swerves back to me briefly before it hops down to perch on the spit. It wraps its snakelike tail around the metal bar and leans over to lick at the flames. After it slurps a whole flame into its mouth, its eyes glow briefly purple and orange, like a sunset, and it smacks its lips.

“Fire-eating lemur with horns,” I murmur. “Nothing like that in the mortal world, I think. You must be Fae.”

The creature tilts its head and makes a clicking sound.

“Perhaps I should give you a name,” I say evenly. “Or do you already have a name? Are you a pet of the Goat-Mask? The—” I search my memory for the word the townspeople used— “The Krampus?”

The creature’s ears twitch, and it looks toward the kitchen door. I follow its glance, but the door is still shut. I’m still alone in the gigantic mess of a kitchen, in the small space I’ve cleared for myself.

“Once I wash all these dishes, I’ll need a broom and a mop,” I tell the creature. “I don’t suppose you know where those might be?”

Filmy eyelids close sideways over the creature’s enormous eyes, and it leaps down into the fire with startling suddenness. Unaffected by the flames, it bounds over the hearth, then springs lightly across the stacks of pots and moldy rags on the flagstone floor. Its speed sends my heart into my mouth.

The creature bounces up onto the counter by the sink, its claws scratching against the thin slab of stone laid across the wooden cabinets.

“Hello there.” I wipe my hand on my borrowed shirt before reaching out to the creature. It sniffs my fingertips delicately with slitted nostrils that are barely visible through its gray fur.

“Wait here.” I move away slowly, smoothly, careful not to startle it. I step over to the fire, retrieve one of the last sticks of kindling, and light it. Holding the unlit end, I return to the little creature and offer it the flame. Quick as a blink, it grabs the stick from me and shoves the burning end into its mouth, sucking it clean of the fire. Its eyes turn violet and orange again, and I laugh.

“You’re kind of beautiful, aren’t you?” I say softly. “Fiery and tiny and beautiful. I don’t know why that makes me want to cry.” I shake my head and return to scouring the next pot.

I’ve never been one to talk much while working. I was always afraid of saying the wrong thing—something Wife or Mother might repeat to him , to my detriment and their own benefit. In all those years, I only trusted one of them with my true thoughts and feelings—the Mother who saw me through my first bleeding.

I don’t talk much to my fire-eating friend, either. A few words, here and there. Once, when I mention that the water is getting cold, the creature leans over the sink, submerges its mouth in the water, and breathes superheated bubbles into the liquid. It seems pleased by my exclamation of delight.

“Full of surprises, aren’t you?” I croon, reaching out. I’m not sure what I plan to do—let it sniff my fingers again, maybe pet its fur—but before I can attempt either, a voice barks, “Stop! Don’t move.”

The Wolpertinger