GRP Chapter 36

He kept filling the bucket. Over and over. The water came without intervals, and he paid no attention to what she suffered through it. He had the quality of a man who had decided his mission was to render this particular unclean thing clean in the minimum possible time and had committed to the assignment entirely.

Only after most of the fur and saliva had been washed away was Mariaeks permitted into the tub. Garthe removed his boots, rolled his trousers to the knee, and settled on the edge. She sat in the water between his legs. Then he washed her—literally "laundered" her, in every sense of the word.

'This human. Has he mistaken me for laundry.'

She lost the conviction behind this thought the moment she watched the actual laundry—the clothing that had been soaked through—go up in his fire and reduce to ash. This treatment was, by comparison, generous.

From a corner of the tub Garthe retrieved a small bottle and tipped it over her head. A slightly viscous liquid, pale yellow, ran down through her silver hair. Mariaeks's nose worked at the sweet, diffuse fragrance spreading around her.

She understood it now. He lived surrounded by this scent, and he had been unable to tolerate the reindeer smell overlaid on her. Except that everything Garthe himself smelled of was faint blood and cold wind and the bitter residue of burnt herbs.

'I can stand it. You, apparently, cannot.' This man simply operated according to his own standards.

While she was taking in the fragrance, Garthe gathered her oil-wet hair together and worked through it with both hands—the vigorous sounds of laundry being treated—with the focused expression and motion of someone who had determined thoroughness was required. Mariaeks felt a vague trouble at the implication that her smell had been that offensive.

Then his hand came down onto her face without preparation. He gripped the back of her neck and worked the oil-covered palm across her forehead, her cheeks, around her jaw with deliberate scrubbing pressure. He felt the small sounds compressed under his hand and the faint protests and didn't stop. Her face was where the reindeer tongues had traveled most—the clothing and gloves had protected the rest. The process continued long after the initial pass: oil applied, water poured over, repeated.

The ordeal finally ended. Mariaeks hung limp, pulling her breath back in short gasps.

His firm hand took hold of her slack chin and turned her face toward him. She looked up, lacking energy for anything else, and registered that Garthe was bending down close. She wanted to retreat—his hand was still holding her face. He came until the distance between them was breath.

Close contact had become marginally more familiar recently, but opportunities to examine him at this particular range had been few. The lashes around his downward gaze were long and dense. Each feature had its own clean, distinct shape.

'Could it be.'

'Could it be that this human—when he was not committing some outrage, or separating someone's head from their body, or letting his brow or the corner of his mouth do the work of announcing his character—actually had features that were, objectively, not bad?'

Mariaeks arrived at this conclusion for the first time.

The moment of observation lasted an instant. Garthe moved her face this way and that with his hands and ran his nose across her forehead, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth, her chin, below her ears. His brow shifted.

The reindeer smell was gone—acceptable. What had replaced it was the oil, clinging strongly. Better than the original, but not unlike finding a perfume one didn't care for had been applied throughout the room where one slept.

Mariaeks noticed Garthe had developed a quiet irritation with the oil smell. 'I thought he liked floral scents. Apparently not. Then why did he use it? He poured an entire bottle on me himself, and now the smell bothers him?' What kind of creature could be this consistently, thoroughly self-directed. She could not follow his thinking.

In any case, the bath was over. Garthe lifted her clean out of the tub, his subtle smile radiating pure irritation. He shook her. Water flew off in all directions—pat-pat-pat. Mariaeks was shaken with the helplessness of something that had no say in the matter. She had stopped expecting to be treated as a god some time ago. She had reduced her expectations to the level of a living creature. Even that, it appeared, was not forthcoming.

The oil fragrance lasted longer than expected. In the days that followed, Mariaeks had to face Garthe's mildly aggrieved expression with some regularity. Morning when she woke. During meals. He would take hold of her face or her wrists and smell her at various points, his expression communicating steady dissatisfaction. She had adapted, at least, to having him at close range—bad for the heart, but familiar by now. It was one of her recent accommodations.

"The cheap oil seems to suit you, Mariaeks. Seeing as you've been wearing it this long..."

The accusation, which was entirely unwarranted under the circumstances, was one she never adapted to.

Particularly bright morning sunlight. Drifting consciousness surfaced.

Without opening her eyes, Mariaeks exhaled. This familiar solid quality. The warmth that registered as heat. The faint smells of blood and cold wind and bitter burnt herbs. The large steady heartbeat beneath. She had fallen asleep using Garthe as a bed again.

Until recently he had seemed to be someone who didn't sleep. Even when the night was deep he would sit on the sofa reading or drinking, occupying the time with something other than sleep. The wide bed had been entirely hers.

Then, at some point, he started lying down in the bed at night. This had begun the day after Mariaeks first fell asleep on top of him.

She had been acutely aware of the man who had suddenly occupied the space beside her—but Garthe only closed his eyes without looking in her direction. So she would watch her chance and fall asleep carefully at the very edge of the bed. And every morning she would find herself collapsed on top of him. By now, waking to a heartbeat was more familiar than waking to Ullri and Baen's voices.

No matter how close to the edge she slept. No matter how carefully she maintained her alertness. By morning she was invariably on top of him. She had tried sleeping on the sofa. That also failed. Garthe was warm to the point of heat, and that heat was something she had found she could not refuse—she who had spent a lifetime cold.

She must have shifted and rolled against him through the night, but Garthe didn't wake. When she sometimes opened her eyes early in the morning, she would find him sleeping peacefully. His indifference, which asked nothing of her, was something she was glad for.

Mariaeks stirred and began to sit up. Garthe opened his eyes at the same moment and reached out with both hands, taking hold of her shoulders. He pulled her toward him and pressed his face to her neck and collarbone, breathing in. The air at her skin tickled and she contracted slightly.

A routine that had been added to the others since the oil incident. Until yesterday she had needed to read his face—he would smile in the manner of someone displeased. Today, at least, his expression was not that.

"Now it's just about tolerable."

Mariaeks was grateful for this. She resolved never to come into contact with anything fragrant again.

Breakfast was more elaborate than usual. All meat, as always, but varied in form. Each time Mariaeks reached for something new, Garthe attached a brief explanation. She guessed this was a form of generosity produced by the tolerable oil smell.

"That's reindeer intestine. Stuffed with minced meat and blood."

The texture was soft. The flavor was deep.

"That's a reindeer eye."

Firm, with good resistance to the bite. Not bad.

"That's antler. Dip it in the salt."

More tender than she had expected, and satisfying to bite into.

Mariaeks held the antler in both hands and nibbled away with a steady scritch-scritch. Garthe, watching her with his chin in one hand, gave a small sound—pfft—barely a laugh. Someone who looked like she should eat nothing but first snow off a still morning was eating eyeball and intestine and blood and antler with complete equanimity. This appeared to strike him.

Mariaeks extended her fork toward a new dish.

"Reindeer tongue."

This was tender and more than tender. She narrowed her eyes and took in the flavor. Garthe speared a piece with his own fork and held it out toward her. The gesture left her with a nagging unease she couldn't shake, but she opened her mouth and accepted what he offered. He had been somewhat less sharp recently—a mild moderation in some direction—and it had made, without her entirely deciding to permit it, a small gap in the wall she kept.

The soft tongue dissolved—effortlessly, without resistance—and what she had been feeling went with it entirely.

Mariaeks swallowed, and the corner of Garthe's mouth moved—small, private, aimed at no one.

"What you just ate was the tip of the tongue. For reference—northerners never eat that part."

Mariaeks gave him a blank, hollow stare.

"The cook probably didn't know, being from elsewhere. The tip of a reindeer's tongue belongs to the spirits, they say. A human who eats it receives the spirit's curse."